Ouray leaned on his saddlehorn and Keso saw that the man was ill. “I envy your other father—he is good. This is your piwan?” He looked at Wannie.
Wannie said, “Yes, I’m his woman.”
Ouray looked satisfied. “Then my bloodline continues. Do not forget your heritage, my son.”
“I will bring your grandsons to see you,” Keso said.
The chief shook his head. “No, I am dying, but I must live long enough to help my people. I was too late to stop this attack or what happened at the agency, but I will get the women and children released. The whites finally pushed my peaceful people too far.”
“And now they will take your land,” Keso said. “Someday, maybe they will realize how great a man you were. Know that I will often think of you.” Keso put out his hand and the two shook solemnly.
Then Chief Ouray turned and rode back through the forest and disappeared. They watched him go.
“Oh, Keso,” she whispered and wiped her eyes, “do you think the people of this state will ever realize the injustice they have done the Utes?”
“Some of them will and be ashamed. Maybe someday, justice will be done. Until then, Cherokee knows people in government and he and I together will do what we can.”
The pair rode on to the Evans cabin.
It was evening at Steel Manor. Cleveland Brewster had just fired “that trashy Maureen,” seeing her as a threat to young Cleve’s fashionable marriage. He frowned at his wife as they sat in the library, wondering when they would hear from their son. Cleve was the only thing that made his life worth while. Cleveland hoped he outlived Bertha. As she died, it would be his revenge to lean over and whisper in her ear about how much he hated her and how many, many times he’d been unfaithful to her; that he’d only stayed because she had finally given him a son. And such a fine son! Blood will tell.
The doorbell rang and he heard old Jeeves going to answer it. “Now, who could that be this evening?”
Bertha looked at him a long moment, knowing he had never loved her, that he’d married her for her money. Long ago, when she hadn’t conceived, she had realized he was going to abandon her.
In desperation, she’d hoped that another man might be able to impregnate her. Bertha had chosen a man who looked enough like Cleveland to pass his child off as a Brewster. She hoped she outlived Cleveland. If she did, she would have her revenge when she leaned over and whispered in the dying man’s ear that the son he idolized was not his, but the stable master’s, Ian O’Hearn’s.
Old Jeeves came into the library, his face grim. “It’s a telegram about young Cleve.”
She didn’t need to ask; she knew. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and it was waiting for them both in that telegram.
Wannie’s eyes teared up as she and Keso approached home in the dusk of the crisp October evening. Smoke curled out of the chimney and the dogs began to bark. Over in the pasture, her bay filly raised her head and nickered.
“Look, Keso, it’s Dancer. She made it home after all!”
Home, she thought. Yes, this is where I belong and with this man. Oh, it was so good to be here.
Silver ran out onto the porch, calling back over her shoulder, “Cherokee, it’s them! It’s them!”
Spirit and Blue seemed to sniff the crisp autumn air and know they were home as they nickered and hurried their steps.
Wannie and Keso dismounted and the four of them were hugging and crying, with everyone talking at once.
“You two really had us worried,” Silver said as she wiped her eyes, “when Dancer came home without you.”
“It’s a long story,” Wannie said.
“Keso, you’re hurt,” Cherokee exclaimed.
“I’m okay,” Keso said, “and we’ll tell you everything that’s happened.”
“I just pulled a roasted haunch of deer out of the oven,” Silver said, “and there’s hot berry pie.”
The four of them went inside, laughing and talking at the same time.
“Oh, by the way,” Wannie said as she held up her left hand so the light gleamed on the silver ring, “Keso and I are getting married and he’s going to build us a house up at Waanibe.”
“Well, finally!” Cherokee said, obviously relieved. “It’s going to be a great winter and a wonderful spring.”
They talked about everything and later, Wannie and Keso went out on the porch alone to watch the sun set over the Rockies.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I didn’t know I could be so happy. Pour toujours, my darling.”
“I knew you were mine the night Cherokee put you up on that horse behind me and we all rode out of Denver. It just took you awhile to realize it.” He took her in his arms and kissed her with a kiss that held a promise: he would love her and only her. Always.
EPILOGUE
True to his word, Chief Ouray forced the hostile Utes to give up their captives. All three women had been raped. Persune, a warrior who claimed Josie Meeker had fallen in love with him, did not want to return her, but Ouray insisted. Josie wrote a book: Brave Miss Meeker’s Captivity!, and lectured about her ordeal. She and her mother were destitute until Josie was given a job in Washington, D.C. in the Interior Department. Eventually, the government awarded the Meekers damages to be paid out of the Utes’ government allotments. Josie died of pneumonia four days after Christmas, 1882. She is buried beside her parents in Linn Grove Cemetery in Greeley, Colorado.
In the final analysis, the Ute outbreak was also a story of three men: Major Thornburgh, Nathan Meeker, and Chief Ouray; all were dedicated to their duty, yet failed in their goals, and died tragically and too soon.
Major Thornburgh received his Medal of Honor posthumously and was given a hero’s funeral in Omaha with General Crook and other important people in attendance. It was said there was not a dry eye in the huge crowd as the tiny casket of the Thornburghs’ Centennial baby was placed on top of his father’s as it was lowered into the grave at Prospect Hill Cemetery.
Nathan Meeker saw himself as a savior and a reformer of backward savages who should be forced to walk the white man’s road. When the Utes reached the breaking point, he died in a most inglorious manner, and is buried in the family plot in the Linn Grove Cemetery.
Chief Ouray, the Arrow, had fought a losing battle to mediate a successful compromise between encroaching civilization and the Utes’ ancient ways. He would never leave his beloved mountains, dying less than a year after the Milk Creek tragedy. Some think he held onto life almost by sheer will power against his terminal Bright’s disease, so that he might make the best deal possible for his beloved people. At least they would not be sent to faraway Indian Territory. Ouray was approximately 47 years old when he died in August of 1880. His followers buried him in a simple grave at Ignacio. In the dome of the capitol building in Denver, there are sixteen stained glass portraits of those people influential in Colorado’s history. The only Native American among them is Ouray.
If this is a tale of three men, it is also a tale of three widows who lived on into the next century, lonely, bereaved, and bitter.
The major’s beautiful young widow, Lida Clarke Thornburgh, was only 27 years old at the time of his death. She never remarried and hated Indians all her days. She died in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1930.
Elderly Arvilla Meeker never really recovered from her ordeal and her husband’s violent death. She lived with her son, Ralph, and died of senility in 1905.
Chief Ouray’s widow, Chipeta, was so bitter at the betrayal of the Utes that she shed all the conveniences and fancy trappings of white civilization and returned to the ancient ways. In her old age she went blind, but lived on until 1924.
And what of all the other players in this drama?
Twelve rank and file military heroes received Medals of Honor or Certificates of Merit for this battle, although Congress would single out Major Thornburgh, Captain Dodge, and Captain Payne for gallantry.
Captain Payne survived both the Nez Perce and the Ute war, but
his health became poor after Milk Creek. He retired from active service in 1886 and died in 1895.
Lieutenant Cherry survived the Ute fight only to be killed by a drunken soldier in a freak shooting incident in Nebraska in 1881.
The black buffalo soldier, Sergeant Henry Johnson, who crawled out under heavy fire to bring water to the wounded, received a Medal of Honor. The great Western artist, Frederic Remington, immortalized the bravery of the black troops at the Milk Creek fight with a sketch for the October, 1891, issue of Century Magazine entitled “Captain Dodge’s Colored Troopers to the Rescue.”
Joe Rankin, the Paul Revere of Carbon County and the Ute War, enjoyed his status as a local hero and was eventually appointed U.S. Marshal for Wyoming by President Benjamin Harrison.
The Utes got the worst of it, as was expected, but only a few people of conscience spoke up to say this peaceful tribe had been pushed and tormented beyond the breaking point, or even mentioned how they had scouted for their white friends against the enemy Sioux. An inquiry was held, but the three white women could not identify which warriors had killed Nathan Meeker and the others, so only one of them, Douglas, served any time in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth—without benefit of trial. Finally, the government released him to return to the miserable new reservation. No one pressed rape charges because the white women in that Victorian time would not testify; it was too degrading and humiliating.
In September of 1881, the well-known cavalry officer General MacKenzie and his troops were ordered to force 1500 bewildered Utes off their twelve million acres and across 350 desolate miles at gunpoint to a grim Utah reservation that measured only 270 square miles.
Other soldiers had to hold back eager white settlers and prospectors until the Utes were crossing the border. Then the greedy whites poured across the Utes’ land, staking claims and homesteads. The Utes must go! had been their battle cry and now the Utes were gone.
Many years later, the Utes finally had their revenge. In the so-called Ute War of 1946-1950, the Utes won a court settlement of $31.7 million for land the government had taken. It was not enough; no amount of money would compensate for the indignities and injustices they had suffered.
In western Colorado, there is a mountain known today as the Sleeping Ute. Seen just at dusk, it appears to be a giant stretched out in slumber, his massive stone arms folded across his great chest, his war bonnet trailing off into granite slopes. When the pale purple shadows of evening touch the mountain’s rocky ledges, the outline of the great stone man silhouetted against the sunset seems to come alive, almost seems to breathe.
Local legend says that someday, the Sleeping Ute will awaken from his long, long slumber, stretch his mighty arms and yawn, then rise, the rumble shaking the whole earth. Every time it thunders, small, dark children hold their breath in anticipation and pause to listen, wondering if the moment has arrived.
The Utes say that on the day that the giant ends his slumber, he will lead the downtrodden Native Americans and once again, things will be as they were long, long ago before the white man came. The air will be pure and clean, the land alive with deer and running buffalo, and as far as one can see, there will be no white men; there will be only Indians, rolling prairie, and snow-topped peaks.
The Utes watch their mountain and wait patiently for that day ...
TO MY READERS
For those of you who are wondering, yes, there really is a mountain called the Sleeping Ute. It’s located near the town of Cortez, in southwestern Colorado where there’s a tiny Ute reservation. I’ve been there several times checking to see if the sleeping giant has stirred.
The story about Ouray’s kidnapped son is part of Ute legend. Everyone agrees that the child was stolen by the enemy Cheyenne. They disagree on whether he was ever returned. However, even those who say he was say the story had an unhappy ending. The boy thought of himself as Cheyenne and would have nothing to do with what he considered an enemy tribe.
Alferd (no, it’s not Alfred) Packer, the “Colorado Cannibal,” was first condemned to death and finally had his sentence reduced to serving time in prison for eating five of his fellow hunters near Lake City. Released from prison, he lived quietly until his death in 1907, and is buried in Littleton. It is a legend that the judge who sentenced him said: “Packer, ye man-eatin’ son of a bitch, they was seven dimmycrats in Hinsdale County, and ye et five of ’em, God damn ye! I Sentence ye to be hanged by the neck until ye’re dead, dead, dead ... as a warnin’ agin’ reducin’ the dimmycrat population in this state.” I’m not sure whether anyone really knew the victims’ political parties.
When the students at the University of Colorado were allowed to choose a name for a new dining hall, the name that won was the Alferd E. Packer Grill.
My characters—Keso, Wannie, Cherokee, Silver, Coyote, Cleve, and all the Brewsters—are fiction. WARRIOR’S PRIZE is actually a sequel to QUICKSILVER PASSION, Silver and Cherokee’s love story. Yes, there really is a mountain in Colorado named Mt. Silver Heels and how it got its name is that state’s most beloved legend.
When Mr. Brewster mentioned his nephew, Captain Lexington B. Radley, who went missing during the 1873 Massacre Canyon fight in Nebraska, that was my 1996 book, TIMELESS WARRIOR, a time travel Indian romance.
The novel you hold in your hands is #15 of my long, long romantic saga called “The Panorama of the Old West.” Each is written to stand alone, but if you want to read them all, some are still available. Check with Zebra Books or your local store to see what can be ordered. No, I’m sorry, but I don’t have extra copies.
If you’ll send me a #10 stamped, self-addressed envelope, I’ll send you a newsletter and an autographed oversized bookmark that lists all fifteen and explains how the stories connect. To those outside the U.S. please ask your post office for postal vouchers that I can exchange for proper postage since I am not allowed to use foreign stamps. Address: Georgina Gentry, P.O. Box 162, Edmond, OK 73083-0162.
In writing this book, I spent many hours in Denver’s marvelous Western history collection and several days walking the Milk Creek battle site where Major Thornburgh was killed. This site is still almost as remote and unchanged as it was in 1879. If you’d like to walk the ground yourself, it is in northwestern Colorado, approximately 19 miles northeast of the town of Meeker. For many years, there has been a pyramid-shaped monument at the site dedicated to the fallen soldiers. In 1993, the Utes finally erected their own large monument explaining their side of the story.
While you’re in Meeker, you might want to stop at the museum and see the actual plow that destroyed the Utes’ racetrack and so began the uprising. The plow is on display there, although the State Historical Society sometimes borrows it to display elsewhere.
You may also drive out to see the valley where the White River Agency once stood and Nathan Meeker and his men were killed. It’s approximately two miles south of that town. There’s a monument out in the middle of the field where they still grow crops. Tractors were plowing up the soil and it all seemed quite peaceful the day I visited; cars passing by on the highway seemed unaware that anything momentous had ever occurred there.
Western Colorado is one of my favorite areas and I highly recommend it to tourists. The San Juan Mountains were taken away from the Utes years earlier and have produced more than 200 million dollars’ worth of precious metals. One of the prospectors who got rich was Tom Walsh. He later bought his daughter, Evalyn, the world’s most famous and coveted gem. You may not recognize the Walshes by name, but you have certainly heard of the jewel, the famous Hope diamond. That priceless, giant diamond is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Although I read dozens of research books before writing this novel, I’ll list just a few for those of you who would like to do further reading on the Ute Indian War. Many of these are available at your public library:
THE LAST WAR TRAIL—The Utes and the Settlement of Colorado, by Robert Emmitt, University of Oklahoma Press.
CHIEF OF THE UTES, by P. David Smith, Wayfinder Press, Ridgway, CO.
PEOPLE OF THE SHINING MOUNTAINS, by Charles S. March, Pruett Publishing Co., Boulder, CO.
So what story will I write next? A number of you have written to ask that I do another romance about a white girl carried off by a handsome Indian brave. I also heard from readers who were intrigued by the tragic Cheyenne dog soldier, Two Arrows, who played a small part in my 1995 novel, SONG OF THE WARRIOR, and asked if I would tell his story.
Two Arrows is the hero of my next novel, tentatively scheduled for late 1997 or early 1998. It is based on an 1878 true incident in Cheyenne history that began right here in Oklahoma. The white heroine is Glory Halstead and she’s engaged to a cavalry officer. That officer and Two Arrows hate each other. Is it passion or revenge that causes Two Arrows to kidnap the captain’s lady? And what will Glory do when she finally has to choose between the pair?
Come along and share the passion and adventure as we ride with the Cheyenne on their last great journey. That handsome warrior will be waiting for you between the pages of my next romance ...
Pour Toujours,
Georgina Gentry
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
850 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 1997 by Lynne Murphy
ISBN: 978-0-8217-5565-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Warrior's Prize (Panorama of the Old West Book 15) Page 36
