dontravis.com blog post #408
A shout out to my readers from Hong Kong, who still led the pack last week. Russia had moved into second place the last time I checked, and stateside readers came in third.
WASTELAKAPI… BELOVED
By
Mark Wildyr
Oppressors herd us to
far patches of barren ground.
Drums fall silent in
misery.
Flutes become
forlorn.
Stanza from the poem,
Echoes of the Flute, by Mark Wildyr.
Prologue
The
Moon of Hard Winter (November) 1891, Turtle Crick Farm, South Dakota
He managed
to fumble his way through the ordinary hours, functioning well enough to reclaim
his farm and work the smithy. But his days no longer raised the grand lust for
life they once evoked. At odd times, he found himself staring at his medicine
bag without realizing he’d taken the tiny sack holding a bit of his umbilical
cord and a lock of Shambling Bear’s hair from its customary place nestled
against his sore heart.
The
appearance of moonglow inevitably conjured images of his Other Self, who had
been taken from him in the hours between the death of 1890 and the birth of the
new year. Specters from that recent past crowded his nocturnal dreams and gripped
him so firmly he feared ghost sickness had infected his mind.
The
simple extinguishing of his lamp upon retiring opened his splintered brain to
the past, to reliving boundless love and crippling loss. Visions of the
massacre at Wounded Knee and the conflict at Drexel Mission made real the
gunfire and blood and slaughter. The stink of black powder and the musk of shredded
entrails came near to suffocating him. The crash of cannon and the bark of
rifles vied with the cries of dying men, women, and children to haunt the shadowed
corners of his bedchamber.
Better
than ten months of the new year, as whites counted time, had run their course
before he rose from his bed in the dark of night. The unsteady light of the
candle he’d lit mirrored his shaky resolve. He paused, exhibiting
uncharacteristic indecision. Eventually, he shuffled through the great
room–still warm and redolent of spicy stew and yeasty bread–to enter another
where the flickering glow of the wick’s flame revealed a striking young man
sleeping peacefully. Even as the watcher’s blood heightened, his intent
faltered.
He would
have backed away and returned to his solitary bed had not the handsome sleeper awakened
at that crucial moment. Recognition replaced confusion in those brown, soulful
eyes. Then understanding, the man on the bed swept back the covers and murmured
a single Lakota word.
“Wastelakapi!”
Beloved.
Chapter 1
Six Months Earlier, April 1891, Turtle Crick Farm, South Dakota
Winter
Bird spotted the riders first. At his whistle, I reined in the plow horse and
followed his gaze. The horsemen did not appear to be uniformed, so they weren’t
army. That was good. The sight of six bluecoats would not have been tolerable at
the moment. Recollections of death and mayhem were too raw. Still, half a dozen
riders of any sort pounding toward the farm portended nothing promising.
After
trailing Bird to the porch, I waved a warning as he picked up his rifle. We
needed our weapons at hand but ought not to be brandishing them when this group
rode into the yard. As we stood side-by-side on the porch, he leaned his
Winchester against the railing near my Henry.
“You
recognize them, John?” he asked.
“Nay,
not yet.”
The
horses were almost to the bridge over Turtle Crick before I identified Sheriff
Charles Landreth as the man leading the muster. My stomach churned. He’d been
holding a six-gun on me the last time we talked. The riders pulled up in a
cloud of dust.
The
sheriff, a lanky man with legs too long for the rest of him, cultivated a
thick, grizzled mustache flowing out of his nostrils to conceal his upper lip.
The lawman walked his mount close enough to drive me back a step. The animal
was a beautiful white with black rigging. I hadn’t seen this ride before. Of
course, I’d not gazed on Landreth in nearly six years. His badge had apparently
survived Statehood as it now read “Sheriff of Gadsby County.” Honoring that
crooked, English magistrate, Julius Gadsby, with a county named after him came
near to making me ill.
The Sheriff
nodded. “John Strobaw. Thought we was done with you. Heard you was back.” He
paused, but I didn’t respond. “You’re like a lame gelding that shows up at
every horse trade.”
The
word “gelding” snagged my attention.
“At
least we got rid of Brandt,” he said. “Or so I hear, anyways.”
My gorge
rose until I realized he was deliberately provoking me. I’d never dealt this
man a penny’s worth of trouble, so there was no reason for ending up on his
wrong side but one: he could not abide Indians.
“How
come you didn’t have the good grace to catch a bullet like Brandt?” he went on.
I
stared rudely into his pale, mean eyes. “Shambling Bear’s time was up. Mine
wasn’t.”
“Shambling
Bear. So that was his Injun name, huh?” He turned to my companion. “Who’s this
‘un? Wait a minute, I know you. I run you outa town a couple a times. You that
buck that did some trading with Mr. Brown down at the Emporium.”
Bird’s
black eyes were hooded, but his answer was an easy, “I am Winter Bird.”
“Ain’t
you supposed to be on a reservation?”
“I
hired him to help out since my brother’s not with me now. The farm and my
cattle operation are too much for one man.” It pained me to refer to Matthew Brandt
as my brother. I wanted to proudly proclaim he had been my life-mate and lover,
but that would serve none of us well.
“Don’t
see no cattle.”
“I’ll
be buying when next month’s calf crop’s on the ground.”
“After
all the troubles, you got money for that?” As if to reinforce his point about
the recent hostilities, his gaze wandered to the stone house looming over him.
“Bit grander’n what stood here before the cavalry burned you out. I hear the
family at Teacher’s Mead come and rebuilt it while you was hiding out on the
reservation.”
The
comment about “hiding out,” nearly swamped my self-discipline, but I held my
tongue. The part about the house was true. My whole family had come to rebuild
the farm buildings out of rock quarried near Teacher’s Mead. Unlike wood, rock
doesn’t burn. Landreth’s next words brought me alert.
“You
ever heard tell of a Injun called Medicine Hair?”
His
mention of the name was a surprise. Not many white men knew of it. No use
putting this off. I’d have to face it sooner or later. “Some call me that.”
“I
figgered. Cause of that yella hair mixed in with the black, I reckon. Looks
like big medicine to the heathens, don’t it?”
All
my life, stray strands of my ma’s yellow hair had mingled with pa’s black,
marking me as different. With a conscious effort, I moved my mind from the
hate-filled man in front of me to the faint, dry aroma of creek bed cottonwoods
riding a western breeze. The odor brought an appreciation of the dawning spring
and the rich smell of freshly turned earth. I could almost imagine tender new
shoots rising like new-born infants from mother earth.
“I
hear you bossed one of them bands at Wounded Knee.” Landreth’s tone hovered
between a question and an avowed fact.
“Then
you heard wrong.”
“That
so? You know a place called Rivers Bend?”
My stomach
rolled. Landreth was better informed than I thought. And if he knew these
things, so did the army. “That’s where I lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation
for five years. And yes, I was head man there.”
He
allowed an uneasy silence to grow before saying something strange. “You know
the war’s over and done with, don’t you?”
The
intensity of his voice gave me pause. “Yes, Sheriff, I recognize that.”
He
shifted attention to Bird. “How ‘bout you?”
My
friend shot a puzzled glance my direction before answering. “The war’s done.”
It
seemed for a moment Landreth was going to pursue the subject but instead, he
back-walked the white and turned away, nodding in Winter Bird’s direction. “I’ll
check with the military about this buck. You’ll be hearing from me again if I
don’t like what I hear.”
My
friend was on the nettle as the sheriff and his men thundered across the wooden
bridge. I was a little disturbed, as well. Landreth hadn’t made the seven-mile
trip from Yanube City just to check up on me. Likely he’d heard there was
another Indian on the place and wanted to make sure he hadn’t been given bad
information about Matthew’s death. He didn’t need five men at his back to determine
that; they were just to impress me that his interest wasn’t benign. The man’s
hate ran deep, making me wonder at the cause of it. Lots of white folks didn’t
like Indians, but Landry’s loathing had a keen edge to it.
But
what was that baffling question about the war being done? And the comment about
a gelding? Had he somehow learned of the man-love Matthew and I shared? I
slapped the porch railing and tripped down the steps.
What
did I care, anyway? This wasn’t living. Simply existing. Waiting. My heart
waited to cease beating. My mind waited to awaken or perhaps go totally dark.
My limbs waited to reclaim everyday skills. The whole of me seemed suspended as
I drifted through each day accomplishing mundane tasks but tackling none of
consequence.
It
had been thus ever since the terrible, bloody slaughter at Wounded Knee and the
battle at Drexel Mission where the better part of me, the bigger, stronger part
of me, had been slain some four moons past.
Matthew
Brandt–nay, Shambling Bear, since he died a warrior and not a farmer–fell along
with hundreds of others to the murderous fire of the Seventh Cavalry but
refused to die until we reached the supposed sanctuary of Drexel Mission. Why
had I not been struck as I stood alongside him when a bullet tore into his
chest? Why hadn’t I been taken instead of
him?
After
the Army’s indiscriminate slaughter of our people at that terrible place,
Winter Bird and I had fought our way through a three-day blizzard to bring
Matthew home. My shock at discovering Pa and the family had traveled fifty
miles from Teacher’s Mead to rebuild the farm almost undid me. I’d last cast
eyes on nothing but charred ruins after the army fired the place in late ’85 and
drove us west to meet Bear’s destiny in a desolate gully on the Pine Ridge
Reservation. The faith this demonstrated that I would survive the war was
almost overwhelming, given what occurred, but there was no question my mother
had been the driving force behind that effort.
What
little interest I had in living each day was due to Winter Bird’s quiet
strength and gentle encouragement. My friend had lost everything in those same
tragic hours: home, family – his very way of life. While I had suffered a devastating
blow, there were yet kith and kin to lend me support. Still, I seemed weighed
down by my thirty-two years while Bird, who had not yet seen his thirtieth,
buttressed me every minute of every day.
I,
John Joseph Strobaw, endowed with the honorable names of War Eagle, Night Sky
Hair, and Medicine Hair must surely stand revealed as a hapless weakling.
Thanks, Mark.
The following are buy links for my BJ Vinson mystery The Voxlightner Scandal. The next one, The Cutie-Pie Murders,
Dreamspinner: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/the-voxlightner-scandal-by-don-travis-11285-b
DSP
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Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-voxlightner-scandal
Universal
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Now my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!
My personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com.
Email: don.travis@aol.com.
Facebook:
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@dontravis3
Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
https://www.dsppublications.com/books/abaddons-locusts-by-don-travis-486-b
https://www.dsppublications.com/books/abaddons-locusts-by-don-travis-487-b
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Abaddons-Locusts-Vinson-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B07JLHKJLY
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Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=R0Z0DwAAQBAJ
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/abaddons-locusts-don-travis/1129769593
See you next Thursday.
Don
New Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. US Mountain time.
