Echoes of the Flute

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Major Morrow returned that afternoon from visiting the Tiller farm. Andre Tiller was a widowed man with a seven-year-old daughter called Libby who lived up Turtle Crick about a mile to the west. According to Otter, James—that’s Major Morrow—had virtually adopted the girl as his granddaughter.

The Major had been Otter’s companion, what Grandpa Billy would have called his win-tay wife, for years now. Nobody ever thought anything of it—except my ma. Her Christian Danish soul couldn’t abide the idea of men lying with men. Considered it shameful, not to mention sinful. Strange because she’d come to live in Billy’s house when she married Pa and had been happy. She’d loved Billy and looked on Otter with great fondness. Pa and us kids just accepted their relationship for what it was. Truth be told, I’d never given it much thought until Timo Bowers came into my darkened bedroom last night.

James was a retired cavalry officer—the previous commandant of Fort Yanube, in fact. He was some older than Otter, and while the man I sometimes called grandfather remained youthful in appearance, age had begun to show in James. His once-blond hair was taking on some snow. The ramrod spine remained, but his steps were not as steady as they once had been. Nonetheless, his mind was quick. He challenged me to a game of chess and trounced me thoroughly.

I remained overnight with them since it was over fifty miles to Teacher’s Mead, so I started reading Grandpa Billy’s journal that evening. While it was difficult to put down, I courteously starved the lantern when they went to bed. I settled into my blankets beside the stove and thought about things in the journal. Grandpa Billy had been twenty-one when he came from New York on his way to Fort Wheeler. He and his two traveling companions had captured Cut Hand—actually, they saved him from three Pipe Stem Draw warriors bent on killing the son of the headman of their bitterest enemies.

My groin grew warm and tingly as I recalled how Billy had been drawn to Cut Hand from first sight. He’d had no experience with unnatural love and suffered greatly from his longings. But he’d pressed himself on his prisoner and found his excitement grew into deep feelings of love. I grew hard and thought of the two men across the room. They’d shared that experience—that same kind of love—and they didn’t seem monstrous or evil like a lot of folks painted people with those appetites. Sleep was a long time coming that night, something alien to my nature.

* * * *

Otter stuffed me with pork and eggs and potatoes the next morning before I started for home. He didn’t mention the Timo Bowers thing again, but he brushed aside my handshake and enfolded me in a bear hug, murmuring in my ear to read the journal and find my own nature.

Those words stuck with me as I crosscut straight for the Mead, foregoing the road, since it was a longer way. Nonetheless, I was in no hurry. My entire life had been spent surrounded by family, so it was a treat being alone. A rill and a small stand of trees beckoned at mid-day, providing an excuse to give Arrow a rest. So after removing his saddle to use as a back rest, I flopped down to munch jerky and open Grandpa Billy’s journal.

His clear, reasoned thinking about the morality of the life he’d led stirred me. He was raised in a strict Christian home and was shaken by his physical longing for Cut Hand. In time, he came to accept it as something the Lord Almighty could not possibly condemn because of the deep love he held for his partner. But Grandpa decried casual liaisons without commitment as sinful. My skin prickled at that one. I held no love for Timo Bowers, although I liked him above most men.

Cut Hand had not had a problem with their union. He was raised with the concept of the Circle of Life, allowing men and women to live according to their nature without strictures about their choices. There were a few rules, apparently. Something about a man/man shouldn’t lie with another man/man and a win-tay shouldn’t lie with a win-tay.

Then I came to the part of the journal that almost shook me loose from my senses. Dog Fox—that’s my pa, Cuthan—wasn’t Grandpa Billy’s son. He was Cut Hand’s. So Grandpa Billy wasn’t my grandpa. Pa wasn’t a half-breed…I was. And Alexander and our sisters, Rachel Ann and Hannah too.

I laid the book on my belly and stared up through the tree limbs at the blue sky above. They’d undertaken that monumental deception because of Teacher’s Mead. Billy had willed everything to Cuthan, whose name was an artifice to keep Cut Hand’s name alive without exposing Billy’s hand. No blood Indian would have been allowed to inherit the good rich earth of his own homeland. As it was, upholding Billy’s will had been a narrow thing when some who coveted the large, successful farm suggested trading it for a plot up on the Mississippi River where ground had been set aside for half-breed landowners.

I must have dozed because Arrow’s snicker roused me in time to see a squad of cavalry riding in my direction. I scrambled to my feet as they rode up but made no move toward my rifle, even though the army tended to look on all Indians as traitors since some of the tribes had fought for the Confederacy. They ignored the fact others made war for the Union.

The sandy-haired lieutenant leading them showed no overt hostility as he gave a casual salute. He wasn’t much older than I was. “Everything all right?”

“Just doing some woolgathering. On my way home to Teacher’s Mead.”

“You’ll be one of the Strobaw boys, then. Met you father at Fort Yanube a few weeks back. You favor him. I’m Second Lieutenant Gideon Haleworthy.”

His blue eyes wandered to my black mop with gold speckles, causing me to clamp my hat on my head. “Pleased to meet you, sir. You new to the command?”

“Been in-country four months now. Hail from Boston originally.”

“Hope you like our part of Turtle Island. Have you been to the Mead, yet?”

A smile lit the officer’s pleasant features. “No, sir, but I’d like to visit.”

“Consider yourself invited. My ma always has a place set at the table. You out patrolling or do you have a mission?”

“Patrolling. Our commandant, Major Irons, figures that’s the best way to keep from having a mission.”

“Something to be said for that.”

With another fingers-to-the-brim salute, Lt. Haleworthy led his patrol north toward Trickling Water Crick. I watched them go for a bit before throwing my saddle on Arrow and turning his nose toward Teacher’s Mead.

It was coming dark when I raised the three hills that protected the north side of the Mead from snow squalls during the winter months. The moon was up by the time I dismounted in the yard in front of the big stone house that had been home all my life. The forge sat across the road next to the stable and the corral holding spare stagecoach horses. For ten years—up until last summer—the Mead had been the last way station before the run into Yanube City. There was now a rude swing station between us and town, but this remained the last opportunity for the passengers to visit a decent necessary and have a good meal. Ma and her helper, Jane Appleton, had become famous from Fort Ramson to Yanube City for their meals. Jane’s husband, Curtis, worked the farm alongside Pa and Alex as a hired hand.

Aside from smithing, I also cared for the stagecoach teams—something Matthew had done until he lit out last year. Where had that son of a coyote got to? My sisters, Rachel Ann and Hannah, helped with cooking and taking care of the stagecoach passengers when they stopped here twice a week—outbound to Fort Ramson on Tuesdays and inbound to Yanube City on Thursdays.

Our two hounds were so old and accustomed to people traipsing all over the place they no longer bothered to bark and bay. They just snuffled and slobbered when I led Arrow into the stable. I was brushing him down while he munched oats when Pa came in.

“Getting worried about you.” There was a smidgen of rebuke in his voice. “Expected you yesterday. This morning at the latest.”

“I stopped by to see Otter before coming home.”

“How’s he doing?”

So I filled him in on all the talk about Otter and James without owning up to what took me there in the first place. As expected, Ma had a tin of food warming on a hook in the cooking fireplace. She liked that fireplace and its reflector better than she did the big stove Timo’s father had made for the Mead.

As I ate, the family crowded around wanting news of Yanube City and Otter and all. Pa sat at my right. Rachel Ann and Hannah claimed seats at the table, eager to catch every word. Alex plopped into a chair at the opposite end with a studious look on his face—like he always had. Matthew used to say he was Pa’s age, not ours. That was balderdash, of course. Alex was twenty while Pa was forty-two. Ma puttered around in the kitchen with an ear fixed on us. She was pleased to have me home.

I understood how she felt. To have one of the family missing left a hole in your life. Matthew’s absence did that for me. While he wasn’t Strobaw blood, he might as well have been. He’d been a part of my life ever since Otter brought him to the Mead as a scared six-year-old after the militia controlling the territory during the War Between the States had killed his mother and older brother—all the family he had left. Half Yanube and half Teton Sioux, he was closer in age to me—only a year older—so he was more my brother than my real brother. Alexander’s primary interest was in pleasing Pa, and to do that he worked the fields alongside him and Appleton.

From time to time over the years, Matthew—whose other name was Bear—would get a bellyful of Ma not permitting him to be “Indian” enough, so he’d take off to see Otter who let him run around in a breechcloth and be Bear. Matthew understood Ma was just doing her best to see we survived in a white man’s world, but that didn’t keep him from feeling his blood from time to time.

Spring a year ago, his pecker got him in some trouble. He’d taken to hopping on Wind Rider, his roan gelding, and riding off to see a family of new arrivals about four miles upriver. Supposedly, he was helping the Killpennys get their farm established. And there was some of that in it for him. He and Esau Killpenny, who was just a year older than Matthew, got along okay, but it was Esau’s sister Minnie who really got his attention. She was only sixteen, but the first time I saw her, I thought she looked like Mother Earth. She was full and ripe and luscious, even though she didn’t seem to know it.

Mr. Killpenny caught them sparking out in the woods, going at it hot and heavy. To hear Matthew tell it, he didn’t actually have it in, but it was out and hunting for a warm place to call home. Anyway, it caused a hell of a stink, so Ma didn’t put up much fuss when Matthew wanted to go stay with Otter for a while. Trouble is, he didn’t stay on Turtle Crick long. About this time last year, Otter sent word asking if Matthew got back home okay. We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him, so Pa and I went looking. We traced him to a little settlement west of Fort Yanube before losing track of him. A month or so later, an Indian traveling from the Laramie country stopped at Otter’s and delivered a message saying Matthew was okay but was going to try it on his own hook for a while.

Everybody was relieved but me. Well, I was relieved, but that man left a gaping hole in my chest. We’d played and hunted and studied lessons and worked beside one another for thirteen years, and I’d never thought ahead to the time when we’d go our separate ways. Everybody tells me I’m smart, but I can be a blockhead sometimes.