River Otter

Chapter 3

Chapter 3At the beginning of the Month of June Cherries, James closed down the signal station on the eastern hill at Teacher’s Mead. I was proud of him. He had not only successfully relieved Fort Ramson; he had also chased the Rebels out of the territory. The battle on the south bank of the Yanube River had been his first command against an opposing organized military unit. Of course, many would argue the tribesmen—particularly the Sioux—were equal to any cavalry in the world, and he had done battle with them many times.

Two months after the attempted invasion, I was only just beginning to realize how lucky we had been. No one had suffered a loss—beyond a drop of two of blood when Jacob had put his shoulder too close to a passing bullet. There was no damage to any of the farm structures, and more amazingly, neither the Rebs nor the Cherokee had taken time to burn the Jacobsen farm.

With the disappearance of the last wah-shee-chue from the farm—who happened to the surviving wig-wag signalman from the day of the fight—Cuthan’s family finally settled back into a familiar routine after all the excitement. Thus, I deemed the time right for my departure to help build a farm with James. To delay longer would put me at risk of having to winter in nothing more substantial than a buffalo skin tipi. I had often done that in the past, but many years spent in a comfortable house had weakened my will in that direction.

I leaned against the fence of the Mead’s little cemetery and let my eyes roam over the headstones: Billy Strobaw, the Teacher and the famous Red Win-tay, who had been first mentor and then mate for most of my life; Cut Hand, the last chief of the Yanube; Lone Eagle and Butterfly. They were powerful forces from the past anchoring me to the Mead. I turned and looked at the stone house Billy and Cut Hand had built. Dog Fox and I were the only ones who survived to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Dog Fox, who now bore the name Cuthan Strobaw, and his children were all the family I had left. These were the elements clutching at my heart and holding me close to this place. All that was or had been precious to me was here.

Yet, other things argued for my leaving. Cuthan’s title to the Mead under the terms of Billy’s will had only recently been upheld by territorial authorities, thanks to his conjuring trick of turning Cut Hand’s son, Dog Fox, into William Cuthan Strobaw, the natural son of his Yanube wife, Butterfly, and himself. The fraudulent documents supporting this claim had all survived scrutiny, but it was Cuthan’s marriage to Mary Jacobsen that held the fabrication together.

The decision had been a narrow run thing and fanned resentment because some whites felt Indians should not be allowed to hold land. Because the Mead was a desirable property situated on the river between Fort Ramson and Fort Yanube, the animus against bloods ran especially deep. I was a full-blooded Yanube, so it was possible I represented a danger to Cuthan, or at least served as a provocation to the Americans.

Then there was the other matter. In the fall of ‘62, James and I had stood at this very spot as we mourned the loss of a loved one.

“Otter, I am tired,” he had said. “Before long, I am resigning my commission, war be damned, and retiring to some acreage north of the fort. I don’t suppose you would come with me?”

I had agreed without fully comprehending the nature of the invitation. James certainly knew of my liaison with Billy; indeed, he had enjoyed his own for a brief time, but his expectations of me were left unstated. I was in a state of indecision over those prospects, an unusual condition for me. I usually knew my mind in such matters. I had been with no one since Billy’s death, and James was a handsome man and a comfortable companion. Intimacy with him was not distasteful to contemplate. Then fate intervened to confirm the soundness of my reasoning. Mary’s handsome brother, Christian, rode into the yard on his way to Yanube City, and I took advantage of his travels to send a note to James advising of my impending arrival at the farm site.

* * * *

The following morning, I hitched my mare to the traces of a buckboard piled high with personal belongings and tied Patch’s reins to the wagon bed. I do not do farewells gracefully, especially with a heart rent in two. As painful as it was to leave Cuthan, the loss of the children was almost unbearable. Their energy and curiosity and enthusiasm were what kept me young. Of this I was absolutely convinced. Their tears at my desertion almost undid my resolve. I hugged each of them, kissed their mother’s cheek, and shook hands with their father before taking my seat on the wagon.

Steeling my will, I reined the mare down the wagon trail on the high side of the river toward a plot of land seven miles north of Fort Yanube. Two years after we had made our agreement, I was finally going to meet my commitment to James.

Less than an hour into my journey, a party of horsemen passing on the far side of the river prompted me to take cover in a thin copse of trees lining the north bank. Uncertain if I had been observed, I jumped from the buckboard and freed Patch’s reins, just in case.

Those men had the look of militia, as vicious and unpredictable as mah-doh-dah-gah, the big bear of the north. The riders could be out on patrol or simply looking for trouble, and there was often little difference between the two. The war back east had virtually denuded the countryside of military dragoons—they were now calling themselves cavalry—and ceded virtual control of the territory to this gang of killers.

I remained in hiding as the riders grew small in the distance. If they continued in their present direction, they would pass the Mead. Could they be headed there? If so that boded ill.

As the distant riders passed from view, my sense of unease increased. I unhitched the draft animal from the buckboard and hobbled her near a small rill in a hollow somewhat distant from the wagon. She would have both grass and water until my return.

Without a thought for abandoning my worldly belongings, I headed east back down the wagon track, chugging White Patch, named for the bit of white circling his left eye, into an easy lope the pinto could maintain for hours, despite the summer sun. A scraggly line of trees on the north bank of the Yanube provided some relief from the heat.

I paused to allow my mount to blow at a small rivulet that had once marked the divide between the hunting grounds of the Yanube and our enemies, the Pipe Stem Draw People. They were all gone now—my Yanube kinsmen annihilated in a cowardly ambush, and the Pipe Stem moved west to the Laramie country with our mutual cousins, the Sioux.

Pulling Patch’s muzzle from the stream before he bloated, I set off down the track again, this time at a brisk pace. The militia riders had too great a lead to for me to overcome, but I wanted to be near enough to the Mead to provide aid if it was needed.

A third of a league shy of the farm, I found where the party had forded the river and headed straight north. There was little but empty country in that direction, but the militia often patrolled such terrain. On the other hand, if they had circled and approached the Mead from behind, they intended the worst kind of mischief. I followed their trail until I found where two horsemen had left the group and rode straight for the hollow hill visible in the distance.

There was no sign of the main party on the northern horizon, but the countryside was deceptive. It often appeared to be a flat piece of earth when in truth, it was cut with washes and unexpected draws called ha-has. The militia could be miles ahead of me or merely yards. The two men who had ridden for the farm’s guardian hills were of more immediate concern. I turned Patch east and rode in their tracks.

The pony snorted as we discovered one mount tethered at the base of the hills. I found the second a little farther to the east. The men had separated; one climbed the highest mound, the hollow hill, while the other scaled the eastern hummock.

I tied my pony’s reins to a tree a hundred feet back down the trail where he would not be noticed and scrambled up the more heavily forested western hill. I reached the top of the stubby hillock and spotted a man still struggling up the hollow hill. He had not advantaged any of the game trails and was having a problem with the ascent. The second man was not visible.

Turning to look down upon the Mead, I saw Cuthan and his two sons at work in the fields. They made as calm and pastoral a scene as any described in the books I had read. Yet mayhem was about to visit them unless I put a stop to it.

When the rifleman reached the top of the hollow hill, I stood where Cuthan could see me and fired a warning shot to alert him to trouble. Then I ducked as the bushwhacker sent a careless bullet my way before racing back down the hill. He stumbled and fell but scrambled to his feet and kept going.

Considering Cuthan warned, I took off after the fleeing man, uneasy over not knowing where the second militiaman was. I burst out of the trees onto the plains as a horse tore through the underbrush and bore down on me. The rider brought up his rifle, but I had the advantage of solid ground beneath me. I shot him from the saddle.

The second man had also reached his mount and angled off to the north to avoid me. Although well out of range, he emptied his six-gun in my direction. As he came abreast of me, I got off a shot but only managed to wing him. He almost lost his seat, recovered, and disappeared into a gully.

I ran to the lip of the draw, but the curve of the ditch hid him from sight. My inclination was to give chase, but I was in a conundrum. If I left a corpse at Cuthan’s back door, the Americans would use that as an excuse to drive him off his land. Yet, I would suffer the consequences if the wounded man had recognized me.

I talked my way to the dead man’s mount grazing not far away and hoisted the corpse aboard the nervous animal, not an easy task for a man of my middling size, but I got it done. Then I used a stone to scratch a message in sign language in the sand to warn Cuthan of the attempt on his life. He was a thorough and cautious man; he would investigate and discover my message. Then he would erase any trace of what had happened here. Even if he failed to find it, the scratches in the earth would be meaningless to others. Satisfied I had done all I could, I made for the trail north of the river toward my buckboard, trailing the roan bearing the corpse along behind me.

Those men had clearly come to kill Cuthan. I had prevented that, but by allowing one of them to escape, had I compounded the danger to us? I doubted the wounded man had gotten a good look at me, and my pinto had been tethered at some remove from the kill site. There was little likelihood he knew no more than some Indian had fired on him. I did not believe he would claim Cuthan was the man, since the militiaman would have to explain why the two of them were on the hill behind the house, thereby opening himself up to questions he would not want to answer.

I picked up my pace. I needed to get the dead man far away from the Mead and make discovery of his body as difficult as possible. When I reached the rill where I’d watered Patch earlier, I discovered the injured horseman had joined the wagon trail and paused at the stream to treat his injury. All of this could be plainly read in blood in the grass, scraps of his shirt ripped into bandages, and drying urine where he had relieved his bladder before moving on.

As I drew near the copse of trees where my wagon was hidden, I saw he had approached the buckboard, circling it at least once before attempting to paw through my belongings. Had he searched for medicine in aid of his injury or for something to identify the wagon’s owner? He likely reasoned the driver was the man who had shot him and his companion.

He was apparently in some distress from his wound, as he had accomplished little beyond disturbing my heavy buffalo hide tipi skirts and leaving traces of blood on them. Yet, before riding on toward Yanube City, he’d taken the time to mark the buckboard with two unobtrusive notch marks on a corner so it could be identified. Apparently, he was weakened by his wound but cogent enough to reason things through.

I spent precious minutes scanning the landscape for any sign of an ambush, examining each fold in the earth, the movement of every leafy twig in the almost breathless air. A barking wolf—what the whites called a coyote—was the only creature I saw moving on the flat expanse of dry plains stretching south from the Yanube to the distant, blue-hued humps of the Little Island Mountains. It was from there Cut Hand had first led Billy Strobaw to the People of the Yanube some thirty-two snows past.

Reassured by a messenger bird—a gray-plumed mourning dove—playing among the cottonwood branches, I set about undoing the trap laid for me. I found the draft mare munching grass at the bottom of the ha-ha exactly where I had hobbled her and hooked the animal—made skittish by the smell of blood—into the harness.

The Yanube River was as familiar as the backs of my hands, so I drove to a deep spot in the normally broad, shallow river. Working rapidly, I hacked off the bloody skirts of my ah-kah-pay, my tipi skins, filled them with rocks, and bound the body of the militiaman into the hides. I felt no stirring of regret as I cast the dead bushwhacker into the river.

After loading my goods onto two pony drags made from lodge poles and my remaining buffalo skins, I worried the wagon into the current and watched it sink out of sight. I was satisfied the low flow of the river next winter would be sufficient to hide both body and buckboard, but I had to count on the weight of the wagon to keep the corpse from washing away during the spring flood tide.

I turned north off the wagon road for a quarter of a mile, dismounted, and walked back to the road to obscure any trace of my passing. I also erased the wagon tracks a distance on my back trail to a go-down to the river so they would not betray where I’d disposed of the buckboard. Then I made false marks as if the wagon had crossed the water.

Finally convinced it would take a keen eye to expose my misdirection, I released the dead man’s pony to go where it would and made my way back to Patch and the mare. Then, keeping a keen eye out for the militia patrol, I crosscut the prairie toward the land James had bought.