Authors: Win Blevins
Just then Sheriff Hospers banged in, followed by a deputy, both bearing side-by-side shotguns.
Hospers discharged his ten-gauge into the floor, blowing puncheons to smithereens. He leveled the gun. “Who wants the other barrel?” he roared. The deputy was ready as well.
Men backed off. Mac and Smith lowered their pistols. Now it was over.
“I’ll pinch the pokes right now,” said the barman sharply.
“Every man sit down!” bellowed the sheriff. He reloaded the shotgun.
They did. Mac helped Strikes Foot lift Red Hand onto a table. The boy was moaning softly. His face was all chopped up.
“Pokes on the table!” the sheriff shouted.
Krier didn’t get to his feet. He was curled up holding his belly. Mac wondered if he was hurt bad.
The barman got a beam scale and started making his rounds. He dipped his fingers into every man’s poke, except a few in back who had kept their seats, and came out with dust. He had to tap his fingers on the tin scoop to get it out from beneath his long fingernails. And probably didn’t get it all out, thought Mac. Handy.
“How much you figure, Amos?” called the sheriff, his shotgun thrown down on everyone, grinning big.
“Five hundred,” said the barman, still pinching dust.
“Fifty ounces, then,” said the sheriff. Gold was sixteen dollars an ounce. “Any man doesn’t want to pay a little extra to run the jail, he can spend a couple of days there.”
Sheriff, judge, and jury, thought Mac.
The waitress came in with a man carrying a medical bag. Maybe this was Dr. Crepin, who advertised his office across from the hay scales. He started examining Krier. The injured man was sitting up now, propped against the bar.
Amos the barman faced Mac. “Let’s have your pokes too.”
“We didn’t start it. They did.” Mac tipped his head at Stocky and Scraggle. Stocky was sitting up by the stool, holding his head. Scraggle was tippling from a bottle.
“Makes no difference,” said the bartender. “And your Injun busted that table.”
Mac stacked coins on the table. “Take for all of us,” he said. The barman helped himself.
“What in hell made this wound?” demanded the doctor in a bass voice.
Mac pointed to Strikes Foot’s shod hoof and spoke in Cheyenne. Strikes Foot held up the hoof and let the doctor check out the filed shoe. “My holy Jesus Christ!” he boomed.
“Some of you brawlers carry this man to my office.” The doctor sounded disgusted. “He’ll live, if his liver isn’t bleeding.”
The doctor started checking out Red Hand, clucking as he did. Red Hand was up, but looked out on his feet.
“Someone show this boy over to my office,” said the doctor. “He needs stitching up.” No one but Zach Lawrence stepped forward.
“How much you got?” the sheriff asked the barman.
“Forty-six,” he answered, adding an ounce weight to the beam scale.
“Take the rest from them as started it,” ordered the sheriff.
Amos reached into the pokes of Stocky and Scraggly again. He dropped the dust into the scoop, but didn’t tap his fingernails. He’d clean his fingernails in his own poke, Mac supposed.
“You!” Sheriff Hospers barked at Strikes Foot. “Come on, you’re under arrest.”
“What for?” Mac said sharply.
“Could be murder,” said the sheriff pointedly. “Depends on whether Krier lives.”
“You know it was self-defense,” growled Mac.
“What I know is an Injun attacked a white man,” snapped Hospers, glaring.
Mac looked around. “He gonna be safe?” The mob was watching, maybe hostile, maybe dully indifferent.
“That’s my job, Maclean.”
“How long you gonna hold him?”
“We can talk to Judge Bissell in the morning. If Krier’s dead or out of danger.”
Mac thought of the little jail, freestanding, one room of wood with barred windows the size of a man’s hand. He spoke softly to Strikes Foot in Cheyenne. “Father, I suggest you go along with this impolite man. He’s going to lock you in a small room. I think we can solve this without trouble in the morning.”
Strikes Foot nodded. Mac was glad his father-in-law had patience. He didn’t resist when Hospers took his arm and led him toward the door.
At that moment came the shot.
Strikes Foot lurched violently forward and crashed to the floor.
The pistol was in Krier’s hand. The man showed a sick smile, lying slumped there, and his gun was still moving, seeking.
Neither Mac nor Smith nor Thomas got a shot off before the sheriff emptied one barrel of his ten-gauge into Krier’s head.
Mac bent over Strikes Foot. Blood of brilliant scarlet was pulsating out his back.
Mac turned him over. The life was already dimming in his eyes.
“No man lifts a gun!” the sheriff hollered.
Mac held the Cheyenne’s head in his hands and put his cheek down against Strikes Foot’s. Mac’s tears wet both their cheeks. He murmured softly, “Good-bye, Father.”
“Goddamn Injun lover,” Mac heard someone grouse.
He looked up at his sons. Both of them were bent over their grandfather, their faces awash in grief. And in Thomas’s face, something else. Hatred.
Chapter 5
Fat moon
When you’re in trouble, some people turn against you, like a herd cutting out a cripple. Others come to help, like human beings. That’s why Zach Lawrence’s long frame sat folded against a wall, and maybe why Owen Mackenzie paced the floor. And why everyone was in Mae Jhong’s parlor.
Mac looked across at his sons and his brother-in-law. Red Hand’s face was puffed up like a pumpkin, and stitches made ugly tracks all over it. Thomas was playing solitaire on the table next to Mac. Smith was on the sofa with Red Hand, staring out the window. Mac reached for the tea and sipped some. It was cold and he didn’t give a damn.
Mac had spent the night adrift in sorrow and guilt. He had brought Strikes Foot and Red Hand to Virginia City to learn about white men and be amused. Now Mac was responsible for his father-in-law’s death.
But he had to cope. He had to get the rest of his family home to Yellowstone House, to the big circle of Cheyenne lodges. It might not be easy. Some of Krier’s friends might want revenge. They didn’t give a damn who actually pulled the trigger. Krier was dead, wasn’t he? The Injuns and the Injun lover was to blame, wasn’t they?
Others might believe Mac still had the gold on him, whatever story he gave out. So it would be an edgy journey home.
Mac stood up. “We’ll go tomorrow at dawn.” No one responded. “Whether Jacobs gets back or not. We have no drivers.” The mule skinners who had driven Mac’s wagons over wanted to stay and try their luck at gold in Alder Gulch. “Red Hand will drive.
“Well be taking Strikes Foot home,” Mac said needlessly. Home to be buried in the traditional manner, and where his relatives could come to pay their respects.
“The word for that is
dangerous
,” said Smith with a smile.
Mac smiled back, bitterly. It was a sort of family game, The Word for That Is….It started a decade ago when nine-year-old Smith sniffed some sage grouse Anniemarie had cooked. She had almost no sense of smell. Smith said, “The word for that is
putrid
,” showing off his new English term. Thomas smelled the birds, and with a seven-year-old’s vocabulary, took up the game with, “The word for that is
sti-i-inky
.” That night Little One applied it to a way Mac rubbed her back. “The word for that is
luscious
.” It got to be family play. Mac encouraged it because it improved everyone’s English. Anniemarie’s was the weakest, Smith’s the best.
Mac said quietly to Smith, “The word for life is ‘dangerous.’” But Smith was already back to his staring. Mac was concerned about him. About Thomas, too, masking the hatred Mac had seen by playing cards indifferently. And Red Hand, completely numb and passive.
Mac couldn’t help mulling about how awful this death would be for the family. Strikes Foot’s three wives would each hack off a joint of a finger, or more than one, and maybe scarify themselves as well. Then they would be split up—the family would die, too. Strikes Foot had no brother to take them in as wives, and three were too many anyway. Perhaps Mac could get them to come and live at Yellowstone House for a little while, but that would be awkward. It was forbidden among the Cheyennes for a man to speak to his mother-in-law.
What would happen to them? Calling Eagle was aged, and a would-be woman. Yellow Bird, Red Hand’s mother, might be past the age of bearing children, and so of marginal use. Corn, the youngest, had two little kids. Mac supposed the wives would go to the lodges of their brothers, or of their sisters’ men. Even Calling Eagle would. Strikes Foot’s other sons and daughters—Mac never knew how many adopted children he would find in the lodge—would go with one of their mothers and lose the other mothers.
Strikes Foot’s married children would grieve as well. Since Lame Deer was long dead, Anniemarie had neither father nor mother. She lived away from the tribe, and her sons and husband were only Cheyennes in part, so she might feel the Cheyennes’ most terrible affliction: I have no relatives.
A gentle tap on the door. Smith stood up and opened it. A stout, elderly white man stood there. Skullcapped, a black-bordered newspaper in his hand, and a white terrier of some kind perched on his shoulder.
“Young Mr. Maclean,” said the man in a guttural accent, “I am Peddler. May I see your father?”
The voice took hold of Mac, but for a moment the picture of the stout old Jew in a skullcap didn’t add up. Then Mac saw. Dreyfuss.
He reached past his son and embraced his old friend by the shoulders.
“I’m sorry to come to you, Mac, in this time of trouble.”
“You couldn’t be more welcome.” Mac discovered he was a little choked up. He put his arm around Dreyfuss and ushered him in. While once Dreyfuss had said nothing about being a Jew, he now wore a yarmulke centered on a shiny pate. He had only a thin fringe of gray hair. But that wasn’t what was really different. In his old age Dreyfuss seemed to have a glowing benevolence, an aura of robust spirituality. Had Mac not known him, he would have taken Dreyfuss for a priest, at once beatific and jovial. A priest with a little white dog for a mascot.
Mac introduced Dreyfuss to everyone—his sons, Red Hand, Zach, Owen. It felt awful that with Jim gone and Strikes Foot dead, not a single one of Mac’s companions knew as good a friend as Dreyfuss.
But the old man corrected Mac gently. “My name has not been Dreyfuss for many years. People call me Peddler. I want you all to meet Punch, too.”
Peddler set the little dog down and spoke to it in a Strange, guttural language. The dog approached Mac, sat up, and put its paw out to be shaken. And then shook the hand of every man there.
“Dreyfuss—Peddler—tell us everything,” Mac urged.
“There is little to tell. I have wandered the earth and passed among its human beings, joined them in their travails, and felt their joys and sorrows. These years have been a great gift.”
“You don’t work for a living?”
Peddler smiled gently. “I pull a cart and sell a few sewing items.” His shrug added, It’s not important.
“My friend,” Peddler said to Mac, “do you know about Sand Creek?”
Mac shook his head.
“Then I’m obliged to bring you sad and important news. Start with this.”
The peddler handed Mac the newspaper, folded open to an inside page. The peddler pointed Mac past the headlines about Lincoln.
SLAUGHTERER OF CHEYENNES UNPUNISHED.
Mac looked at the newspaper—all the way from St. Louis. He read about the slaughter of hundreds of innocent Cheyennes at Sand Creek, and about why their murderers could not be brought to justice.
Mac looked up. “Zach, would you go get the body and bring it here?” The young man nodded, a puzzled look on his face, and went out. Strikes Foot was in a pine casket at the doctor’s office.
“Are we leaving now?” Smith asked.
Mac spoke instead to the Chinaman. “Mae Jhong, please.” The old gentleman bowed and scurried out.
Mac read how women and children were killed under a take-no-prisoners policy, and how the soldiers showed off parts of Cheyenne bodies on a stage in Denver.
Mae Jhong appeared immediately in one of her elaborate gowns. Mac asked her please to send his wagon for a load of ice.
“Immediately,” she said.
Had she heard anything from Jacobs?
“I’m sorry, no,” she said demurely.
The demure part was an act, but Mae Jhong was a friend, to help when it could be held against her.
Mac read that retaliation, terrible retaliation, was expected from the Cheyennes, and their allies the Sioux and the Arapahoes.
“What happened?” insisted Thomas. Mackenzie was watching Mac with hard eyes.
Mac took a deep breath and said, “There’s been a massacre. Cheyennes.” The boys look gut-punched. Red Hand looked too numb to know what was happening. “As soon as I tell this,” Mac said, looking everyone in the eyes, “we’re getting out of here.”
The boys nodded. Mackenzie nodded too.
“Denver was having some trouble back in the fall.” That was the site of the rich Cherry Creek gold diggings, where fifty thousand white people lived a thousand miles from civilization. “Indian raids along the Oregon Trail.”
Mac used the English word “Indian,” a family irony meaning some redskin, any redskin, who knows which one or what tribe, let’s just kill ’em all.
“The telegraph connection with the East got severed. The stage lines cut. Some supplies didn’t get through.
“The soldiers decided to punish the bad Indians. They told the good ones to camp on Sand Creek. Black Kettle’s circle. So they couldn’t mistake them for the bad ones.
“Then they made a surprise attack on Black Kettle’s lodges. Killed four or five hundred, including lots of women and children. Killed the horses, burned the lodges. The people fled miles and miles on foot to other circles, Arapahoe, Lakota, whoever they could find.
“There’s gonna be hell to pay. And since we’re Cheyennes, we better get out of here.”
The boys, Red Hand, Owen, Peddler—all accepted this necessity immediately. That’s what it meant to have red blood, or mixed blood.
Zach Lawrence and a teenager from the doctor’s office came in with the closed casket.
“Mackenzie,” said Mac, “will you go with us as far as the Madison?” That was fifteen miles away, at the site of a mill.
“This child is with you all the way to Yellowstone House,” said Mackenzie. Funny how everything the man said and did had a kind of mockery to it.
“Fine. Take the north side of the road.”
The damn road would provide rocks and cedars and gullies enough to hide a dozen highwaymen.
“Smith and Thomas, take the south side. Use your own judgment. But if you find anyone, probably the best thing is to wait till we get there and they start their move. Then take them from behind. We’ll wait two hours to leave. It’s enough. Whatever you do, take your time and don’t let them see you.”
Mac didn’t like having to use his sons for serious work, but they should know how to do it, and he had no one else.
Smith and Thomas left with Mackenzie.
“Zach, you’re with us?”
The tall man nodded.
“Then bring the wagon around and load it right here in front. Let everyone see we don’t have any gold. I’ll ask Mae to send some boys to help you. I’ll be above at the second-story window with a rifle.
“Red Hand, you go with Zach.” The boy didn’t respond. Mac touched his arm and repeated the instruction. Red Hand shrugged. Zach hustled him out.
Mac sent the Chinaman for Mae Jhong and then took a moment to think. His chores were in the present, but his mind was on the future. For sure the Cheyennes, his wife’s people, his children’s people, really his own people, would rise against the whites to get even for the horror of the destruction of Black Kettle’s circle. Their friends the Sioux and Arapahoe would join them. Together they would close the gate tight on John Bozeman’s road to Montana. Might close the Oregon Trail itself. Would kill plenty of whites, most of them not in the goddamn U.S. Army. And then would draw the full wrath of the U.S. government. It was going to get bloody.
Mac and his family would be right in the middle.
“Mac.”
Mac jumped. He had forgotten about Dreyfuss—Peddler—standing over the casket. In fact Peddler had opened the lid and was looking down at Strikes Foot.
Mac went to him and touched his shoulder. Strikes Foot did not look serene in death. His features spoke pain. Mac could not see how that death could be paid for.
“Thank you for your help,” Mac said to Dreyfuss. “What a terrible day to see you again, after twenty years.”
Peddler inclined his head. He put the dog on the other shoulder. “I want to go with you,” he said softly.
“You want what?”
“May I travel to Yellowstone House with you?”
“Of course. Anniemarie and Little One will be thrilled.”
The dog opened its mouth and closed it. Twice. “Thank you,” said the dog in a guttural accent.