The Indian Ring (2 page)

I started American Indian fancy-dancing when I was just a young boy with the Minniconjou Indian Dancers in Akron, Ohio. We performed quite often and I won several competitions, even against Native American dancers. When my buddies and I played cowboys and Indians, I always wanted to be the Indian and studied American Indian lore all the time. I wore moccasins all through grade school and carried a beaded headband in my pocket and put it on when out of sight of my house. I started bow-hunting while still in elementary school. I had no Native American blood, but it was in my heart. I was like a cherry cupcake with vanilla frosting. I was white on the outside, but red on the inside.

I also grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood until middle school and always got along with everybody, never really understanding the reasoning behind or sense in racial prejudice. To me, it was stupid, pure and simple. By the time I was twenty years old, I was commissioned as second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, a product of Infantry Officers Candidate School, and after Jump School, I found myself at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, earning a Green Beret. It was 1967, and I voluntarily took part in racial seminars for soldiers at Fort Bragg. I was the only white soldier standing with the black soldiers arguing for integration, and I was the only officer in the room.

This novel deals with the Indian Ring, one of the most unfortunate and shameful things that ever came out of Washington, D.C. It deals with racial prejudice, especially for the true Americans who were here when the white men first arrived. The Indian Ring was real and so was secretary of war under President Ulysses Grant, William W. Belknap, and so were the incidents involving him and his wives mentioned herein. Belknap was the head of the Indian Ring and was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives after resigning in disgrace, but what about all those in the Indian Ring who were never brought to justice? The character Robert Hartwell is fictional, but could have been a real person. There were many in the Indian Ring who sought personal gain on the backs of the American Indian. That is what is so sad about our nation's history. There have been those throughout history who want power, fame, and riches; without caring a whit about those they hurt in the process. We should learn from our mistakes, not repeat them.

EAGLE

The warrior's eyes scanned the deep snow, and on the surface of the crusted, frosty blanket were the saucer-sized tracks he had been following all morning. He saw before him a wide fan-shaped track along the top of the snow, and his mind pictured the long tail of the two-hundred-pound male mountain lion, as it crouched here looking at three mule deer who had fled high up and were having trouble moving in the deep, silvery, natural straitjacket. The tall warrior knew what had occurred. The lion had watched the three nibbling deer browse for old vegetation after pawing it away through the snowy morass, while his tail slowly switched back and forth making the fan-shaped track as he prepared to attack.

Dark, intelligent eyes looked at the sign over high cheekbones on the handsome chiseled face, and the brave could see a deep imprint on the snow's surface where the big cat had hunched down and sprung forward in a fatal charge. His eyes swept the snow in front of him in twenty-yard arcs going back and forth until he spotted the bright red crimson he had
been looking for. Earlier, the warrior had constructed a pair of expedient snowshoes by bending spruce boughs into a large teardrop shape and lashing them together, weaving to create a back-and-forth webbing. These were lashed onto his feet, and he had easily glided along the top of the three-foot drifts following this large tom all the way up to this alpine spot. The nearest trees could only by seen by looking down thousands of feet below him. His horse was down there in the dark trees, grazing on lush green mountain gamma grasses. He had dabbed black ash from his campfire below his eyes to prevent snow blindness from the sun glare off the snowcapped peaks he was ascending in the magnificent Sangre de Cristo mountain range, which extended from southern Colorado down through New Mexico territory.

He moved to the splashes of bright red on the snow and saw the area where the lion had jumped on the back of the doe and broke her neck with one bite while gripping her sides with his retractable claws. He had apparently just started to feed and, sated, moved to a higher perch to watch the kill. The warrior knew he was above him somewhere, lying under a ledge watching over the prey while he rested.

A big tom like this would have an area he would patrol every ten to eleven days that would cover fifty to one hundred square miles. He would look for females in estrus, kill any male kittens he could find, and mark his territory. In the meantime, he would make kills like this once or twice per week and feed on it until the meat started to get a little tainted and move on, leaving it for other predators.

The warrior did not get too close to the kill as he did not want to scare the cougar away. Instead, he stood there, his eyes scouring the ridge above him, which rose up another five hundred feet or more to become part of Crestone Needle, a peak of 14,197 feet in height. Far below the white
blanket he stood on, he could see the crystal-clear bowl of Colony Lake and the blanket of thick green evergreens. His eyes had been scouring every rock overhang and the big tom made a mistake. He twitched his long tail and the movement caught the warrior's eyes. The cat was bedded down no more than one hundred feet above him. He turned his head, knowing he was being watched intently, but his eyes scanned an approach route, and he moved off to his right over the ridge and out of sight. The wind was blowing from his left to the right, but he knew at over thirteen thousand feet up on these windswept peaks, the wind direction could change fifty times over the next hour.

He disappeared over the ridge and as soon as he was out of earshot, started climbing. He worried on this slope about an avalanche starting. He tried to figure an escape route as he climbed in case one started. However, he lucked out, and an hour later he was in the notch he had used as a navigation spot. If he worked carefully around this ledge, he should come within sight of the big cat fairly quickly.

Ten minutes later, moving slowly now on solid rock under the ledge, he stepped carefully in his winter moccasins. He had removed the snowshoes when he had gotten on the rock. He rounded a bend and the big cat was lying there asleep. The brave averted his eyes, knowing that animals and elite warriors have a sixth sense that alerts them if someone is staring at them. He affixed his gaze on a spot to the left of the cat's tail and proceeded slowly, cautiously. Twenty feet away, he stopped and raised his bow, nocking an arrow. Just then the cat raised its head and stared straight at him, and his ears laid back on his head. A long low hiss came from behind the bared fangs as the cornered animal readied to lunge itself at this intruder. The warrior released the arrow, and it entered the cat's chest low next to the left shoulder,
and it penetrated its heart, went through the left lung, and exited the left hip near the hipbone. Blood streamed from the big cat as it screamed and bit at the exit wound, and it suddenly dropped down dead.

The warrior looked skyward, then at the big cat. Smiling and quoting Shakespeare's
Richard II
, Act III, scene 2 in perfect English the warrior said,

Nothing can we call our own but death

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

He grinned and added, “Sleep ye well, yon lion, and may I not waste your hide or meat, for the Great Spirit has indeed blessed me this day. Thank you, God. Amen.”

Within an hour, his snowshoes replaced, and a field-dressed mountain lion hanging limply over his broad shoulders, half-white and half-Lakota Pinkerton Agent Joshua Strongheart started down the long ridge to the trees below timberline where his magnificent pinto gelding Eagle waited, as did a campfire just waiting to be lit.

The snow ended before he entered the big stand of lodgepole pines, so he removed the snowshoes and cast them aside after retrieving the leather thongs used to construct them.

When he arrived at his camp he immediately started the fire and placed some cougar steaks on a spit he made out of a green branch. He would eat a meal and then dress and cape out the lion, and stake the hide out in the sun and brain-tan it with the lion's brains.

After dinner, Joshua walked out onto a large rock outcropping jutting out from the trees. The terrain was very rocky in this area. He was down below Colony Lakes with his camp and now looked up at the peaks towering above
him: Crestone Needle, Humboldt Peak, Crestone Peak, each sticking up through the white fluffy clouds that were hanging around fourteen thousand feet.

He thought about the woman he loved, the woman he'd lost. Her murder had been so horrible and so brutal, it had a tremendously negative effect on him, which still bothered him. A seven-foot-tall psychotic serial killer, a Lakota or Sioux, named We Wiyake, meaning Blood Feather, had killed her. Joshua Strongheart, after a year, still blamed himself for not protecting her. It made him decide he would never marry again. His work would become his life, but Strongheart was still grieving and spending much time like this in the high lonesome. He looked out over the Wet Mountain Valley and the Greenhorn Mountains on the eastern side of the emerald-colored valley. Tiny specks of ranches dotted the landscape, and to his left front he could see the growing town of Westcliffe.

Joshua Strongheart was one of the premier agents of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency and was a favorite of Allan Pinkerton himself. Joshua's immediate supervisor was Lucky DeChamps, a Paris-born, very dedicated manager with the Pinkertons and Joshua Strongheart's strongest supporter and harshest critic when need be.

The tall Pinkerton agent's mother was a successful store owner in northern Montana who left him a healthy inheritance and his father was a Lakota (Sioux) warrior named Claw Marks, who fathered Joshua when he had a love affair with Joshua's mother, who was then fifteen years old. Feeling strongly that life would be too rough for her and his child, Claw Marks left her, telling her that the world would be too cruel for her and a half-red child if they stayed together as a couple. He died later heroically fighting a band of Crow warriors while serving as a rear guard for fleeing tribal
members. He told Strongheart's mother that he knew their baby would turn out to be a boy, and said he wanted to leave his knife for him. It was the size of a Bowie knife, very well made, scalpel sharp, and was carried in a fringed beaded and porcupine-quilled ornate sheath, with the instructions that it was to be kept sharp, used effectively, and treated with respect by his son. He was a member of the newly formed Strongheart Society, so he told her to use Strongheart as their child's surname.

She married a very courageous, tall, slender lawman, Dan Trooper, who was a harsh taskmaster for Joshua but loved him like his own son. He left him his Colt .45 Peacemaker, one of the first made by Colt firearms, which had a miniaturized copy of his sheriff's star on the pearl handle of the gun. After spending years teaching Joshua how to handle pistols and rifles, and how to fight with his bare hands, he too left instructions that the weapon be kept clean and well oiled and only used as a tool to protect others, for self-defense, or sometimes for hunting.

Joshua had learned several years earlier that he simply could not drink, that he had a problem with alcohol. Lucky had paid his fine to get him out of jail, in fact, over an incident that he did not even recall. He had severely injured several men in a saloon fight, and was very fortunate that Lucky was able to essentially bribe Strongheart out of the problem, but his charge was to pay him back from his pay for months. In actuality, Joshua could have paid from the generous inheritance his mother had left him, but he was very conscientious about credit.

As he ate a delicious piece of meat, he thought about the Spanish who had come through this area decades before and reportedly left a giant cache of gold nearby on Marble Mountain in a place called Caverna de Oro, the Cavern of Gold.

After eating, Joshua worked on tanning the hide and kept sorting his thoughts. His job as a Pinkerton agent was an important one. The big half-breed did not know it, but his business would end up becoming the model for the U.S. Secret Service. He had to be on top of things, and he knew he was not. He knew that he often sorted things out up where the eagles soar and people's voices could not be heard. Before dark, he moved to the shore of Colony Lake and fished for cutthroat trout, and kept several nice ones. He returned to camp and cooked them up for dinner, then slept early.

It was two hours before daylight when Eagle's soft whinny brought him wide awake. Joshua looked at Eagle's ears and they were pointing toward the winding trail he took to ride up to this loft. His powerful black nostrils were clearly flaring in and out. Rifle in hand, Strongheart ran over to the large rocks overlooking the trail as it rose from far below. The wind was carrying a scent up the ridge from someone or something out of sight thousands of feet below, but Strongheart could see nothing, nobody, no animals.

•   •   •

The small patrol had camped for the night one thousand feet below Strongheart. They were well back into a grove of aspen trees and one man sat on guard while the other five slept.

The sun started to peak through the aspens above as it rose over the Greenhorn mountain range across the valley to the east. Shards of light pierced the forest veil like arrows seeking unseen targets in the dark green morass of leaves. The guard had fallen asleep right before dawn and right after he built the fire to be ready for warming his waking fellow cavalrymen. The corporal in charge chewed him out for sleeping on guard while relieving his bladder. The men stirred and started to move toward the fire and suddenly saw
the tall Indian half hidden in the forest shadows. There was no hiding the sixteen-hands-tall black-and-white pinto horse he sat upon. All the men froze staring at the business end of Strongheart's Colt Peacemaker. He had dealt with deserters before so he was not taking any chances.

“Howdy, boys,” he said with a smile.

“Mr. Strongheart?” the corporal said, relieving Joshua's concern.

He holstered his pistol, clearly seeing the relief drain from several faces.

“What brings the cavalry up here in the mountains, Corporal?” Joshua asked.

“We were sent, Mr. Strongheart, to find you, sir.” the cavalryman replied, “You are supposed to report to your boss with the Pinkerton Agency. They said it is top priority.”

“Well thank you for all the effort, gentlemen,” Joshua said. “How about breakfast?”

The corporal said, “Sure, Mr. Strongheart. We were just gonna fix hardtack, beans, and sourdough. Will, get the fire going better.”

Strongheart said, “Instead of that, how about some fresh cougar meat and wild turkey eggs?”

“Cougar meat,” one of the soldiers said, “Ah'm gonna git sick.”

The corporal said, “Lion is the best wild meat there is. I'll take some, Mr. Strongheart.”

Joshua looked at the naysayer while he dismounted and started getting the food out of his saddlebags, and said, “Stop and think about it, partner. Most of their diet is deer. They only feed on a fresh-killed deer a few days, and then leave it for other predators, and find another one to kill.”

The young trooper said, “No thanks, Mr. Strongheart. Every bite I would be picturing eating mah paw's barn cats. Ewww.”

The other men chuckled but all except the one tried it and loved it.

Strongheart, accompanied by the patrol, rode into Canon City two days later. They left on the train, and he rode immediately to the Western Union office.

The telegram from Lucky said one thing, “Must talk STOP Meet in Denver STOP.”