The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby

by H L Grandin

  The link that the charismatic couple provided between the profiteers in the fur, lumber, and mineral trades and the Native Americans with whom the more scrupulous felt obliged to deal proved invaluable. The esteem in which Tyoga was held throughout the Indian Nations provided immediate credibility for the Europeans’ cause. Yet, the trust placed in him by his Native American brothers proved a wise investment because of his unwavering defense of their rights to the resources of their lands.

  Tyoga and Trinity Jane had become statesmen, negotiators, interpreters of the laws of nature and man, and, in the end, king makers or dream breakers in the wild and open land.

  The home that they had established in a glade on the banks of the Mattaponi River four and a half years ago had grown from a tiny survival shelter into one of the largest estates in Virginia.

  Tyoga had become a very wealthy man. Life had been good for the Weathersby family until that cold, starry, winter night when the quiet was shattered by the unmistakable howl of Wahaya-Wacon.

  Chapter 55

  Return of Wahaya

  The dowlful cry descended from the midnight shadows and blanketed the east slopes of the Appalachian Ridge across the Mattaponi River from Twin Oaks with an eerie prescience.Tyoga opened his eyes first, unsure of what he had just heard.

  The second cry was not closer, but louder and less temperate in its missive.

  Throwing off the heavy buffalo robes with a casual wave of his powerful arm, Tyoga placed his bare feet on the pine wood floor and scurried, bent at the waist, to peer out of the chiseled glass adorning their front door.

  Sitting up in bed, Trinity anxiously asked, “Tyoga, what is it? What is wrong?”

  “Shhh. Nothin’,” he replied. “Listen.”

  As the third cry drifted down the mountainside to fill the glade, Tyoga turned to her and said with a grin so broad that it nearly stifled the words, “It’s him. It’s him. He’s come back!”

  Throwing open the door latch so forcefully that it nearly ripped from its mooring, he stepped barefoot onto the freezing granite stoop of the cabin’s entranceway. Stopping, he cocked his head to listen. Jumping over the steps, he stood on the cold frost covered earth and peered off into the distance.

  It was a clear night and the full moon lit the east slopes of the Appalachians from Turner’s Pass to Luther’s Gap. Tyoga could see across the reeds and open plain that carpeted the foothills on the far side of the Mattaponi River all the way to the base of the mountain the Indians called Akwesasne.

  He cupped his hands over his mouth to shout as loudly as he could. “Wahaya! Wahaya-Wacon! Itse ta eho la eh alo!”

  Dropping his hands to his sides, he gazed off into the distance.

  With a furrowed brow, he swiveled his head from side to side straining to hear the wolf’s reply floating across the river and filling the glade with the news of his return. Just as he brought his hands to his mouth to call out again, he noticed a speck of gray bobbing above the tall grasses of the plain. Like a seagall floating on the surface of the Chesapeake before a storm, the gray speck bobbed along a course headed straight for Twin Oaks.

  When Tyoga saw the flash of Wahaya’s bushy tail rise above the savanna grass, he knew that his spirit guide had returned.

  Tyoga ran to the fire pit in the front yard of the cabin and stoked the dying embers into roaring flames to welcome the wolf home after nearly a five-year separation. As the flames rose to bathe the treeline in its warming glow, Tyoga called out again, “Wahaya! Itse ta eho!”

  He turned to see Trinity standing in the doorway of the cabin wrapped in the red blanket. “T.J., it’s Wahaya. He’s come back to me.” He turned back to face the distant mountains.

  Trinity had heard the true story about Tyoga’s encounter with the Runion wolf pack. She learned first hand that the stories told around campfires about the battle had been so embellished that they had become no more than a fuzzy reflection of the truth.

  What had really taken place on that night so long ago was far more powerful than any story could ever recount.

  Tyoga had told her the story about losing himself in the dark chasm of the wolf’s endless eyes with a reverence and respect that bordered on a religious-like worship of the mighty beast. Words failed him whenever he tried to explain how the magnificence of the wolf filled him with the call of the wild that infused his heart and ignited his soul.

  The bond between man and beast was inexplicable and powerful beyond measure.

  She also had heard Tyoga tell the tale of releasing Sunlei to love another man if that was fate’s call, and how he had sent Wahaya to protect and defend her from harm. The wolf’s return could only mean that Sunlei was settled and happy and safe, or that she was dead.

  He would not leave her unless she were dead, Trinity thought to herself.

  She felt her heart skip a beat as the new life growing within her nudged its awareness of her fright. Can he be smart enough to know that she is in danger beyond his means to help her, and that he has returned to take Tyoga away from me? She placed her hand over her not yet burgeoning abdomen and rubbed gently. “Don’t worry, Little One,” she said out loud. “He will not leave us.”

  Hearing Wahaya’s splash as he cast himself into the river to swim to be by his side sent Tyoga running toward the shore. When he got beyond the light of the fire, he thought better about surprising the wolf in the dark with his unexpected presence and slowly backed into the firelight. He heard Wahaya pause on the near bank to shake himself dry, and finally saw the brilliant, beautiful orbs of his glowing amber eyes emerge from the night as he walked slowly towards the fire.

  Tyoga heard but did not respond to Trinity’s gasp at the sight of his long lost friend.

  While she had heard Tyoga tell the tales, she had never witnessed the magnificence of Wahaya-Wacon. Trinity found him terrifyingly large and unimaginably muscular. His chest was heaving from the strenuous run across the marsh and his tongue was dripping a viscous fluid onto the ground. He was much taller than any wolf she had ever seen. If he were standing next to her, she could have rested her elbows on the top of his head. His eyes were mesmerizing. She watched them burn through the blackness as they fixed upon his soul mate. She wanted to look away, but she could not. She brought her tiny hand to her mouth, wrapped her other around her waist and remained frozen to the cabin door.

  Tyoga’s first impulse was to run toward his old friend and greet him like he would a lost pet. Instead he held himself in check. This was the apex predator, Wahaya-Wacon.

  It was the right thing to do.

  Wahaya did not approach like a pet reunited with his owner. With hesitance, he stepped into the glow of the firelight and sat.

  Tyoga knelt down onto one knee so that Wahaya’s head was just slightly above his own.

  At first, he appeared unchanged. A little thinner than Tyoga remembered, but still a magnificent animal. When he stood to once again shake the water from his coat, Tyoga noticed a linear patch of missing fur that ran nearly the length of his left haunch. His right shoulder bore the scar of a large puncture wound. Wahaya had fought hard – and often. It was clear to Tyoga that these were wounds inflicted by hatchet, spear and arrow. Still proud, strong, and resolute in his knowing, Wahaya reflected the acceptance of the battle scars without judgement or animosity. The affirmation had sustained his kind for time immemorial.

  His eyes gave no hint about why he had returned. He broke the lock of their stare and flicked his eyes toward Trinity standing in the cabin door. He licked his lips and Tyoga could tell that he was hungry.

  “Jayo si has, Wahaya?” Tyoga asked.

  Standing up slowly, he walked casually, but confidently, over to the smokehouse and returned with the haunch of a recently butchered deer. With equal confidence, he came toward the wolf to lay it at his feet. At Tyoga’s approach, the wolf stood up and cautiously backed away.

  “Okay. Okay.” Tyoga set the haunch down and stepped back toward the fire. When he had created enough space
between himself and the meat, the wolf came forward, picked it up in his jaws and trotted off into the darkness.

  “Well, what do you think of that, Trinity Jane?” Tyoga asked while watching the wolf disappear into the night. “Wahaya has returned.”

  He turned toward the door of the cabin with a big contented smile beaming from his face.

  The doorway was empty.

  Chapter 56

  She’s Alive

  The next morning Tyoga was up before sunrise. He and Trinity Jane had been living as wealthy white colonists ever since Twin Oaks took its place on the frontier as a successful business concern.

  As such, they had dressed the part every morning. Trinity’s dresses had gone from linen to taffeta, while Tyoga’s waistcoats were tailor-made of satin and lace.

  Today, Tyoga opened his dresser drawer and pulled out his doeskin britches and fringed buckskin tunic. After pulling on his elk moccasins, he grabbed his long rifle and powder horn, and headed for the door. He was reaching for the latch, when he heard Trinity’s voice call from their bedroom.

  Putting on her silken robe, she rushed down the hall. “Tyoga, wait! Where are you going so early in the morning?”

  He turned around to face her. “Trinity, Wahaya is back. You saw him last night.”

  “I did.”

  “Don’t you want to know why he has returned? Aren’t you curious about what this means?

  “I am only curious about what you think it means, Tyoga?”

  When he did not answer, she said, “The reason that the wolf has returned to you means nothing to me. Nor should it matter to you. How many times have you told me that the “why” of things makes no difference at all? How many times have you told me that events unfold exactly as they should and to think that we are capable of changing outcomes is like thinking that throwing a pebble in the Mattaponi is going to change its course? Sunlei is dead, or she is alive. She is happy in her life, or she is sad. She has forgotten you, or she has not. None of these things can you change.”

  “No, Trinity!” Tyoga said more passionately than he meant to. “I’m sorry,” he apologized right away when he saw the startled expression on her face. “I didn’t mean to shout, but this is important, Trinity. This matters. Wahaya has returned for a reason. There is sense to be made of this in the ways of the promise. The return is more than the wolf coming back. It means something that I don’t yet understand. All I know is that I have to try to figure it out.”

  He turned and walked toward the door, just as he heard the pitter patter of little feet and a tiny voice ask, “Why is Papa shouting, Mama? What’s the matter?”

  Trinity stooped down to pick up Joshia. She clutched him to her bosom while he threw his legs around her waist and locked his ankles in the small of her back. “That’s what your papa is trying to figure out, kanunu (little frog).” She peered over the top of his head.

  Tyoga opened the front door. He hesitated for just a moment before closing it softly behind him. He jogged down the stone steps two at a time.

  Wide-eyed with excitement, Brister, Twin Oaks’ foreman and Tyoga’s right hand man, met him at the bottom of the porch steps. “Massa Ty,” he nearly shouted while marching after him with that awkward hitch in his stride. “Massa Ty,” he continued trying to get him to stop to listen.

  Tyoga slowed down his pace. “Yes, Brister, what is it?”

  “I tink me see a wolf, Massa Ty. Me never seen da wolf—Wahaya-Wacon—but las’ night late, late, me tink I seen him sho’ enough.”

  Tyoga stopped and waited for Brister to catch up. He was so anxious that someone share his excitement at the return of his old friend that he placed both hands on his shoulders and said with a big smile on his face, “You did. You did see Wahaya-Wacon last night, Brister. Isn’t it wonderful? He’s returned to me after all of this time.”

  “Yes, Massa,” Brister said. “Me tink dis very good ting. But, Massa, what he come back mean, Massa Ty? What tink it mean he come back?”

  Tyoga released his grip on Brister’s shoulders and looked off toward the woods to the east. “I don’t know, Brister. I just don’t know,” he said. “But I aim to find out. Come on.”

  With that the men hurried along the cobblestone way that had become Cottage Lane, and cut through an alleyway between the Cooper’s workshop and the tannery. The tiny village of Twin Oaks was just waking up and the sounds filling the Lane were those of the tradesmen preparing for the day.

  The blacksmith, a huge Nigerian with arms that dwarfed even Tyoga’s, waved a blackened, calloused hand toward the two men as they hurried along their way.

  “Monin’ Massa Ty,” he called out with a thin reedy voice that did not match his three-hundred pound frame.

  “Good morning, Sabu.” Tyoga waved with a smile.

  “Makin’ dos tongs for Ginny today,” he said.

  “Good, good, Sabu. We mustn’t vex Ginny.”

  “No-sa! No-sa, we keep her ‘appy, long she keep makin’ dat conebread like she do,” Sabu said with a wide toothy grin.

  Tyoga stuck his hand high in the air as a gesture of absolute agreement.

  Ginny, the four-foot-two ‘matron de cuisine’ who oversaw food preparations at Twin Oaks, made the best cornbread in all of Virginia.

  It was about three-hundred yards from Cottage Lane to the edge of the woods. Along the way, they scared up a huge flock of wild turkeys. When about thirty of the beautiful birds took to the air all at once, the sound of their massive wings beating against the heavy morning air created a tumultuous sound as they passed overhead. Turkeys don’t fly far, but they fly really hard. Before they reached the forest, a flock of deer, fifty strong, stood their ground to watch passively as the two walked by.

  Just before they entered the underbrush that edged the mighty pines and elm trees, Tyoga stopped suddenly in his tracks.

  “Wus da matta, Massa?” Brister asked. “You hear somthin’?”

  Holding his hand out in a gesture to quiet Brister, Tyoga closed his eyes and said softly, “No. Not hear, but feel. I feel him. He’s close by. Stay here.”

  Without answering, Brister stood stone still. He watched Tyoga disappear into the woods. Uneasy about not being able to watch over him, Brister took ten more steps toward the brush line to stand on tiptoe and peer over the bushes and scrub pines to look for his friend. Unable to see him, he sat on the ground to wait.

  After a ten minute hike into the woods, Tyoga stopped at a granite boulder at the base of an ancient pine tree. He climbed to the top of the rock and sat in the silence of the deep primal forest.

  Closing his eyes, he emptied his mind and basked in the silence that spoke to him in time and depth and texture. Smiling, he heard the messages carried in the silence. He did not understand how it happened. He only knew that he understood.

  When he felt him near, he opened his eyes.

  Standing in a clearing twenty feet away was the magnificent Wahaya-Wacon. He was even more startling in the light of day.

  Now that he could see him more clearly, Tyoga was astonished that the wolf appeared as if he had not aged a single day since they were last together at the entrance to the cave. The battles he had fought had taken a toll in flesh and hide, but if anything, Wahaya-Wacon looked stronger and more powerful than could possibly be explained by any measure understood in terms of the passage of time.

  His fur was thick and lustrous save those spots where it had been lost to wound and scar. The light danced off of his coat’s silver tips like the blinding sparkle from the surface of a mountain lake in the noonday sun. His haunches were more muscular and his chest muscles seemed to have doubled in size. He stood taller, and the girth of his neck left little demarkation between his head and back.

  His eyes sizzled with an intensity that Tyoga could not decipher.

  He dropped his head a bit, which was a sign of welcome and submission; and took four sharp steps toward him. Tyoga jumped down from his perch, but did not venture toward the wolf.

&nb
sp; Looking up into Tyoga’s face, Wahaya stepped up to brush his head against his upper thigh in a gesture of affection and trust that he had never allowed before.

  Overcome with Wahaya’s show of affection, Tyoga reached down and cradled the wolf’s head in his hands. The wolf pushed against his hands with an equal pressure that conveyed a message that no words could speak. He rubbed the length of his body against Tyoga’s upper leg, which nearly pushed him over with his spirited re-bonding.

  It hit Tyoga like a cold winter wind on his bare arms. He furrowed his brow, knelt before the beast, and asked, “Wahaya, what is it? Why have you returned?”

  The wolf circled Tyoga twice before sitting down at his feet, facing the northwest. Pivoting on his knee so that he was facing the same direction, Tyoga put his arm around the wolf’s neck and looked through the pines. He looked into Wahaya’s eyes. The wolf licked his lips and sighed a haunting moan.

  His eyes gave Tyoga no clue.

  “Why did you leave Sunlei, Wahaya? Is she—is she alive?” he asked without looking at the wolf.

  The tension in the wolf’s body while he continued to stare intently toward the northwest conveyed the answer that he had hoped for.

  She was still alive.

  “Okay. Okay, Wahaya.” Tyoga patted the wolf’s back. “I reckon you’ll let me know in your own good time.”

  The wolf stood and took several steps toward the edge of the woods.

  “Let’s go home,” Tyoga said.

  The two walked toward the cabin side-by-side.

  Chapter 57

  Wild Restlessness

  The harvest had been the best in years. The corn cribs overflowed with the bounty. Twin Oaks coffers were filled with pounds in payment for the food stuffs and fodder that the estate had supplied to farms, plantations, and towns dotting the tidewater and lining the Atlantic coast. From the Carolinas to New York, flour from Twin Oaks’ grist mill, hay and straw for livestock, and produce for winter larder traveled by pack mule, wagons, and barges to Chatham Hill, Pointer’s Landing, Canterbury and Whitehall. Game was so plentiful that an addition had to be built onto the smokehouse to cure all of the meat the families living on Twin Oaks gave to Tyoga and Trinity Jane. Knowing that they could come and get whatever meat they needed to feed their families throughout the winter, the Indians hunting parties dropped game off at the smokehouse.