by Terry Grosz
That answer was not long in coming. Leo and Jeremiah emerged from their cabins carrying two old but perfectly functioning Hawken rifles in their hands. Without a word, the men took the boys’ newer rifles and fastened them onto the first animal in their pack string for easy and fast retrieval in case of an emergency. Then the boys were handed the two older Hawkens as their primary rifles. Both boys just looked at each other in amazement. The Hawkens had belonged to the boys’ biological fathers...They had been retrieved from the dead Indians after Leo and Jeremiah had exacted the supreme measure of justice from the murderous band who had killed their parents years earlier. For years the Hawkens had hung on the wall in the back of the cabin as if awaiting an important event. That event had arrived, and now the rifles were in the hands of their rightful owners.
Fingering the Hawkens and admiring the still precise tools they were, both boys found their eyes misting up. They were holding their dads’ rifles and had been given the honor of continuing their use. Looking into the eyes of their adoptive fathers, they saw that they held tears as well. A coming of age was taking place that morning, and both boys had been given the ultimate gift to herald such an event. They could feel the energy such a symbol represented and seemed to grow even taller and more mature as a result. Yes, such rifles would fit into their lives and continue the tradition their fathers had started.
Looking back as they dropped over a hill, both men waved at the four figures silently standing by their cabins watching them go. All waved back, and the young men’s adventures now began in earnest. To bring home great amounts of buffalo or elk, they had to find the creatures and be successful in their stalking and shooting. Then the real work would begin as they removed the hides and prepared the meat. To avoid spoilage, they had to kill and work fast—and do so without attracting the attention of the hostile Lakota in the area who would be out hunting as well.
***
Jacob and Martin crawled through the dense brush surrounding a small grove of cottonwoods to get closer to the herd of buffalo calmly feeding upwind some forty yards away. Crawling up to the base of a small cottonwood, Jacob slowly rose up into its branches so he could steady the big Hawken as he prepared to shoot. Pushing through those branches and leaves, Jacob and Martin, who was rising on the opposite side of the same tree, found themselves instantly engulfed by swarms of angry bald-faced hornets from a large nest hanging on a limb they had bumped! Screaming and yelling in abject pain as the swarm repeatedly stung the two intruders, the boys fled the scene, lucky to hold on to their rifles. The offended hornets followed them for another hundred yards, administering what they thought was the appropriate justice for disturbing their peaceful nest. As if that were not enough, the buffalo, seeing two human beings fleeing across the prairie in plain view and waving their arms like banshees, lit out for quieter parts, leaving only the dust of their passage and fresh droppings on the ground as a reminder of their earlier presence.
That evening, both boys sat close to a small, densely smoking fire in an attempt to keep the hordes of mosquitoes from their exposed, throbbing flesh. They both had swollen ears and lips and welts on their hands, noses, and cheeks. Their eyes were almost swollen shut. As if that were not enough of a mess, the boys applied their precious bear cooking lard to the affected places, hoping to reduce the pain, as their mothers had taught them. Then they settled into their sleeping furs amid the constant whining hum of a million mosquitoes. But the mosquitoes were almost drowned out by the growling of their empty stomachs as the big guts ate the little ones, since supper had stampeded off earlier.
They might have thought matters couldn’t get any worse until Martin woke up to something licking the bear grease off his face. Roughly shoving the unknown creature away in fright, he jumped to his feet and yelled. Jacob leaped to his feet with his pistol and knife in hand, ready for the action that was sure to follow, based on the volume of Martin’s hollering.
“Agggguhhh!” yelled Jacob as a large, very surprised, and pissed-off striped skunk righted himself after being tossed roughly aside. Stamping his front feet, he let go with both barrels into the jumping and hopping men from a distance of no more than six feet. Instantly both men fell to the ground, blinded, as the spray flew right into their open eyes and mouths. As they knelt on the ground, frantically rubbing their eyes, the skunk let go with another barrage—this time at a distance of no more than three feet. With that blast, both men rolled away and jumped up to blindly run away from their smelly adversary. Jacob ran full- bore into a cottonwood tree, knocking himself out in the dark. Martin fared little better, blindly running the opposite way and dropping suddenly into a seven-foot-deep ravine holding a small creek—and hitting his already swollen lips on a protruding root on the way down.
The next morning found two sad-looking and disgruntled hunters, and a campsite in disarray. The young men looked like death warmed over and smelled even worse! To make matters worse, the mosquitoes, undeterred by their bad looks and evil smell, bored in unmercifully. After moving their camp to a more breezy location to be rid of the smell and mosquitoes, the youths spent the next two days healing up without any thoughts of making meat.
Setting their triggers, Jacob and Martin each selected a fat buffalo cow and squeezed off their shots. Both cows instantly jumped up under the impact of the heavy .54 caliber slugs, dropping to the ground and groaning out matching death rattles. Even before they ploughed into the dirt, two more cows were staggering after having been quickly hit with slugs from the boys’ reserve Hawkens. The men hurriedly reloaded as the herd began to shuffle off, and before the animals got far away, four more cows soon lay kicking their last on the ground. The herd, smelling the blood and finally realizing that this was a place of danger, moved off in the buffaloes’ typical ground-eating shuffle, with tails held high.
The boys stood up from their places of concealment with grins of success. Before them lay eight fat buffalo cows, representing a hell of a lot of good meat and one heck of a lot of work. Jacob went back for the horses and pack animals as Martin began the long, messy process of gutting and removing the meat and valuable hides. Hard work aside, the boys felt nothing but elation. This was their first hunt on their own, and, setting aside a small problem with the hornets and that damn skunk, they were now successful hunters in their own right. To make matters even better, they had done it with their dads’ rifles. Whether they knew it or not, their rite of passage had now truly begun.
Finally getting back to their campsite, the boys tiredly collapsed at their new campfire, sitting there as fresh buffalo meat began cooking on sharpened green willow sticks. After gorging themselves on about five pounds of freshly cooked meat, they began building small cottonwood-limb meat racks with low-heat smoking fires underneath. They cut the meat from the huge hams, shoulders, and loins into strips and laid it over the racks for smoking and drying. They knew it was something to kill so many big animals, but the most important part was to see that the meat was correctly processed. By daylight, over half the meat was in the process of being smoked and dried. After a short break for breakfast of more skewered fresh meat, they continued into the evening, processing the rest of the meat so it could be dried and smoked. Dried and smoked, the weight of their hunt would be far lighter to transport home and would avoid spoilage from being flyblown.
Soon the boys slipped into a deep sleep brought on by the day’s exertion and slept soundly until first light. As Martin cooked some buffalo back straps and a pot of beans, Jacob tended the smoking fires and turned the meat so it would continue to dry. Sitting across from each other, they began to laugh at one another. The swelling from the hornets was almost gone, but Martin still had a split lip from falling into the ravine and hitting the root stub. Jacob still had a large cut on his forehead from running into the cottonwood tree in the dark. And that awful skunk smell still permeated their entire camp and their buckskins. As the boys broke a sweat processing the meat, they began to smell even more strongly of that holy-hell skunk smel
l once again.
“I think we could call this look and smell one of success,” uttered Martin through his swollen and split lips with a slight, mischievous grin.
Jacob just leaned back and roared a hearty laugh, saying, “I am sure glad our moms and dads cannot see us now.”
Fact of the matter was, their parents couldn’t see anything.
Chapter Three
Comes with the Dust and Leaves with the Wind
Rising from his sleeping furs at the crack of dawn upon hearing the horses and mules shuffling nervously around in their corral, Jeremiah grabbed his Hawken and walked to the front inside wall of his cabin. He peered carefully through the nearest shooting port. Seeing nothing in the early light but nervously milling livestock and suspecting a nearby grizzly, he opened the door. Zippppp—thunk went an arrow into the cabin wall, inches from his head.
Quickly drawing back the hammer on his Hawken and yelling, “Indians,” to warn his brother in the adjacent cabin, Jeremiah desperately looked for his assailant in the half light.
Zipppp—thump went the next unseen arrow into the side of Jeremiah’s neck with such force that it shot clean through the muscle and tissue and slammed quivering into the wood facing of the opened front door behind him. As the arrow passed through the neck, it ripped into an internal carotid artery. Dropping his rifle and clutching his neck, Jeremiah staggered out into the front yard in agony as blood gushed uncontrollably through his fingers. Zipppp—thump, zipppp—thump went two more arrows into his chest and stomach as he staggered forward, then fell face first into the dirt. No longer could he see the welcome first light in the sky to the east, only a darkness closing in from the sides of his eyes along with a quietness now descending over the roaring sounds in his brain.
Boom went Leo’s Hawken, and the bullet found the Indian who had shot the first arrow into Jeremiah’s neck. Ironically, Leo’s shot hit the Indian in the same spot where the arrow had struck Jeremiah. The man died in moments as his blood gushed out from a torn artery over the dusty ground next to the corrals.
“Aye-aye-yahaaa,” yelled a second Indian as he jumped on top of the inert Jeremiah and, swinging his knife wildly, scalped him in one swoop.
Boom went Leo’s reserve Hawken, and the Indian had scalped his last enemy as the heavy bullet smashed through his chest, tearing out a chunk of his spine as it exited his body.
Two more Indians made a run for Jeremiah’s open front door, only to be cut down in their tracks at the stoop by a fast- shooting Prairie Flower with her double-barreled fowling piece. Four more Indians materialized from behind the horse corral in the swirling dust cloud kicked up by the panicked horses, only to have one killed outright by a pistol shot from Leo as they ran across the front yard. The other three reached the front door of Jeremiah’s cabin only to have one killed by a point-blank pistol blast from Prairie Flower. The other two made it into the cabin, and the screams of Prairie Flower told Leo they had begun hacking her to pieces.
Slamming shut his front door, Leo grabbed the fowling piece held by wooden pegs over the front door and, sighting through a shooting port, cut in two another Indian running across his field of view. White Flower was hurriedly reloading his two Hawkens.
Wham, the front door was ripped off its leather hinges by the combined weight of three Indians hitting it simultaneously! In a second, Leo was on top of the Indians on the floor where they had fallen, using his pistol and slashing knife with a fierceness born from desperation.
Boom went his pistol, and at such close range the ball passed through the Indian on top and into the second one lying underneath, killing both instantly. The remaining Indian staggered to his feet only to have Leo’s knife plunged to the hilt into his chest.
By now screaming Indians were streaming through the cabin’s front door. Leo killed two more with his knife and one with his tomahawk while White Feather dispatched another with a close- in shot from a freshly loaded Hawken. However, the odds were too great, and both died moments later in the melee after killing two more Indians with their knives.
By now the cabin was filled with the dust kicked up by the nervous horses in the nearby corral, white clouds of black-powder smoke from close-quarter shootings, and a dozen yelling, victorious Indians.
Soon the cabins’ contents were turned upside down as the Indians looked for anything of value. Rifles, pistols, axes, cooking pots, furs, barrels of powder, lead ingots, and the like became the proud booty of the victorious raiders led by Lakota subchief One-Eye-Only. Having survived the onslaught, he was now concerned. Sixteen of his raiding party of twenty-eight lay dead or dying in and around the trappers’ cabins. The two trappers and their wives had put up a tougher resistance to the surprise attack than he had expected. To lose so many warriors would disgrace him as a war-party leader in the eyes of his tribe. However, his thoughts soon turned to a small degree of happiness when he saw that they had acquired four of the famous Hawken rifles, two fowling pieces, six pistols, several bundles of high-quality furs, many buffalo skins, four brass pots, and sixteen horses and mules with all of their tack.
With this trove of treasure plus all they had taken during their previous raids in the valley, One-Eye-Only began to think he might still return to his tribe with honor.
As the winds from the eastern plains blew as they always did in the afternoon, One-Eye-Only led his tired and decimated band toward the protective cover of the southern mountains. From there they would travel back to their tribal encampment on the eastern prairies and spread among the members of the tribe the goods taken on these raids. The wealth in equipment, horses, weapons, and furs that his raiding party had taken from six other hapless settlers and their families was considerable. And that was before they had attacked Leo, Jeremiah, and their wives. In fact, every horse and mule they had taken was loaded with possessions once owned by those settlers. In addition, they were in possession of twenty-three scalps from the hated whites. The scalps of the Indian women killed in the raids were left where they had fallen because they were deemed not worth a warrior’s time. As they trekked away, they left the two cabins and storage sheds once belonging to Leo and Jeremiah burning. With that smoke spiraling upward in dense clouds, the legacy of this family of former mountain men and their Indian wives became part of the fabled history of the frontier.
As a matter of course, two of the trappers’ own, yet unharmed, would carry forth and serve their memories well as they moved throughout the West now and in later years. However, the curse of the Spanish gold ingots remained buried beneath their burned cabins. That curse had struck once again, and if and when the golden ingots were dug up, it would be transferred, unbeknownst to them, to the boys.
Chapter Four
Homecoming and the Reckoning
Coming back from the prairie country to the southeast, Jacob and Martin were hot, tired, smelly, and happy. They were returning home victorious from their first quest as lone hunters for the family and had survived what the forces of nature had thrown against them. They had grown from the experience and expected now to be treated as men in their families. They also expected looks of respect from their dads and some great home cooking from their moms. Yes, they thought, this would be a great homecoming, one long to be remembered...
Pulling up over the last rise before their parents’ cabins, both boys were shocked to see that their homes were not on the horizon! Stopping in surprise, they looked again for the familiar silhouettes, only to find nothing. Spurring their tired and heavily loaded mounts, they trotted on to their homesites. Blackened ruin greeted their eyes, along with the four bloated and mutilated bodies of their parents! They jumped off their horses and ran to the inert bodies, only to discover that their parents were now with the Cloud People.
Fighting back tears of anguish and rage, the two began examining the ruins and piecing together the events that had led to the deaths of their parents. Before long, they had discovered the Indians’ hiding places before the battle. From the arrow shafts left be
hind, Jacob and Martin discerned that the raiding party had come from one of the many bands of Lakota in the area. They figured out the raiders’ escape route into the southern mountains and memorized what they needed to know from the tracks of the horses and mules the Indians had taken with them. They calculated how many Indians had been involved in the attack, based on their footprints. And from the dried, dark pools of blood scattered around the battlefield, they deduced approximately how many Indians had been killed in the battle.
After burying their loved ones in a single grave (Leo and Jeremiah’s wives had no biological children. Just the adopted boys of Jacob and Martin). Then they checked the ash piles to see if anything of value remained. They found nothing out of the ordinary. Then Jacob remembered the ingots of Spanish gold that their biological fathers had left them. Knowing the ingots had been buried in the northeast corner of Leo’s cabin, the boys took their knives and began digging. Soon a large cast-iron pot emerged, and in it were the yellow bars their parents had considered of great value. They discovered that all 126 ingots remained intact, and that the pot had been buried deeply enough that the gold had not melted in the heat of the cabin fire.
Filling their saddlebags and those of all the pack mules with the precious yellow metal, they remounted their horses. Instead of a homecoming surrounded by love, they had entered a dark world of death, ashes, and a lost childhood. They sat there on their horses and vowed vengeance on the killers, driven by a cold determination that came from the genes of their biological fathers and the intense training of their now dead adoptive parents.
