Cut Hand

by Mark Wildyr

  Once, Captain Smith himself faced me in the commandant’s office before a gathering of his peers and promptly lost his composure, referring to me as an Indian lover guilty of aiding in the murder of white men. He, of course, referred to the Sergeant’s Gang, although in the recesses of my mind, I held the secret knowledge of the slaying of the two man-stealers. I remained true to my bearing—solid and dignified, I hoped—and in my opinion, his loss of control did not fall to his favor.

  Nonetheless, to make an officer of the United States Army pay for the killing of heathen Indians, no matter that many were women and children, was no easy task. I had seen newspapers and penny dreadfuls decrying savage, murderous red Indians of the western frontier and comprehended the mood of the public. After the facedown with Smith, I hastily posted another set of documents to the authorities with additional details, including the names of some of the enlisted personnel required to take part in the action. Caleb Brown, Banker Crozier, Abraham Kranzmeier, Benjamin Bowers, and others of my acquaintance also posed questions to the authorities over the misnamed Battle at Hampton’s Homestead.

  THE WEATHER turned fierce on my return to Teacher’s Mead, but I pressed on, anxious to reach home. Otter and Dog Fox were both happy to see me safely back. Morning Mist, now recovered, acted as if the place were her own. I would have none of it and sat her down at the kitchen table to tell her so.

  “Morning Mist.” I shook my finger in her face, uncaring the rudeness of the act. “You are here by my sufferance. I have been willing to forgive past wrongs and a hateful countenance, but I will no longer suffer such actions. Behave as a guest—no! Behave as a servant and carry your own load, or I swear I will throw you off the place and have you live or die in the cold.”

  Her puckered features creased into a hateful smile. “You will not do that, win-tay. You will not do that because of the boy—my son. You covet him too much.”

  “If this is true, woman, then beware. There is nothing to prevent me from throwing you out into the snow and keeping Dog Fox for myself.”

  The look on her face revealed she had not considered that possibility. Had she the means to do so, Morning Mist would have set up a lodge of her own. Recalling the time she came at me with a hatchet after her marriage to Cut Hand, I closely watched my back for a sennight.

  The winter was as miserable as any I recall. Only Otter and Dog Fox allowed me to survive. It was not Morning Mist’s hateful presence that oppressed; it was the knowledge that all those beautiful souls were gone, a thought that started me on the path of healing. Those souls were gone, but where? If God were just, as I believed, he had taken them unto himself and treasured them as dearly as I. In a further effort to repair, I resumed lessons to Dog Fox, attempting to include Morning Mist as a peace offering. She would have nothing to do with it and discouraged her son at every opportunity.

  That was when I saw the boy for the man he would become. He handled his mother deftly, never outright rebuffing her, but manipulating the woman to his will. He pursued his lessons diligently and gave me as near proximity to Cut Hand with those haunting gold-black eyes as was humanly possible.

  GIVEN THE uncertain state of my household, I decided it was time to review my plans with Otter. In the dead of night after he inflamed and then satisfied every fiber of my physical being, I explained I was arranging to leave the Mead and its environs to the boy rather than to him because Dog Fox, or William Cuthan Strobaw as he was to be renamed, should outlive him by years. If examination of title survived my death, I did not want another test of ownership until many years later.

  The remaining gold coins secreted in the cavern, however, were Otter’s alone. Over the years I cautiously exchanged the more valuable pieces at the banks in Yanube City and Fort Ramson for a greater number of gold and silver coins of reduced value. My goal was to excite less interest when exchanging such coins for goods or services. Now this had an added but unintended benefit; an Indian spending an occasional coin should not draw undue attention.

  Otter heard me out and strongly urged that I not take Morning Mist into my confidence, perceiving her as one who would grasp any opportunity to further her own fortunes, even at the expense of her son. Once I was gone, Otter would find himself evicted if she had her way, whereas Dog Fox would understand the place was really Otter’s so long as he saw fit to live there.

  By spring thaw, Morning Mist and I were at one another’s throats daily. One or the other was constantly on the peck. She was a hateful woman who brought out the worst in me. I know not where the thing would have ended had not Stone Knife, now an old man, stopped by the Mead after the thaw. Morning Mist, at the rag-end of a thrown fit, quickly accepted an offer to join his camp since there were already a few Yanube with him. I despaired of the boy’s departure, but it was necessary at this juncture.

  It was well into spring before Otter agreed to the next step in my plan. We journeyed to Fort Ramson, where we were not so well-known as at Yanube City, and set about legally changing his name to Joseph Strobaw Otter. He insisted on keeping his own name but proudly accepted part of mine. He stood before the court dressed in civilized clothing with his long hair shorn into a white man’s haircut and spoke to the magistrate in perfect, unaccented English. The clerk was impressed in spite of himself. I carefully explained that Otter was a nephew who recently came to live with me and accept my civilizing ways. Thus I managed to get the totally false claim of one-half white blood entered into the record.

  I rested at the Mead for a day before undertaking another trip to Fort Yanube alone. Abraham handed over the precious documents I required, and I promptly had them copied and certified at a local lawyer’s office, where a will was drawn leaving my entire estate to my son, William Cuthan Strobaw.

  Major Jamieson’s reception was not as cordial as usual. He treated me distantly, as though uncertain as to how things stood between us. Apparently Jamieson had received queries from higher authority over the Hampton’s Homestead affair. This led him to a false conclusion about my “influence” in Washington City—a circumstance that afforded me some measure of protection, I finally concluded.

  James was in splendid isolation, totally shunned by other officers of the post. Such treatment was not unexpected, and he bore it with the best possible face. Nonetheless, I knew our dinner together that evening was a rare treat for him. Caleb and other influential men took note of his plight and made a point of extolling the virtues of the junior officer. It was to our fortune Jamieson was a weak man. James advised by messenger a few weeks later that his exile was easing.

  Otter undertook regular visits to Stone Knife’s camp; I, less frequently. On my last one, the old man asked if I wished to have Morning Mist back among my household. I hastily declined.

  Chapter 23

  FOR TWO long years, I posted letters and inquiries concerning the Yanube Wipe-Out, as the incident came to be retitled, even though my prosecution was unpopular in some quarters. Although Smith never confronted me again directly, I received oblique messages. Miscreants shot up the front of the house in the middle of the night, shattering two of my precious window lights. The Pipe Stem told me later there had been soldiers in the area.

  A party of Nakota speakers unfamiliar to me marooned on my doorstep, demanding liquor. When I denied having any, they informed me I lied. The Blue Coats said I stocked it by the kegs. I took two of their ringleaders through my house and barn to convince them otherwise. Eventually they went away after chopping up the edge of my porch with hatchets out of ennui.

  In early October 1852, a message reached me from James advising that while Captain Smith would not be brought to trial for his crimes, he resigned his commission under threat of a Blue Ticket, a bad-conduct discharge. In no small part, the man was caught in his own loop, because the tribes were rendered hostile by his cowardly, murderous actions. He professed to be returning back east, but James recommended caution, as Smith was an angry, vengeful man who took refuge in strong drink as the pressure on him grew.
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  Otter grimaced sourly and said at least the whoreson would not be in a position to assassinate anyone else. It was a short measure, not what we wanted but better than we expected.

  A few days later, a Sioux arrived to warn that a white man with a packhorse was on the trail from Fort Yanube. He was an army man, yet not an army man, wearing the shirt but not the decorations of a real Blue Coat. It could, of course, be any veteran on the drift, but there was no doubt in my mind the man was Smith.

  Otter was at Stone Knife’s camp on one of his visits to Dog Fox, so I set out to meet the murderous thug on my own. The man lacked the stones to face me honestly, and I was not about to submit to a bullet in the back when I least expected it, so I determined to put an end to the thing once and for all.

  Long Wind had been put to pasture, and I now rode a quick, maneuverable pony named Arrow after Cut’s old mount. When Smith and I settled our score, the pony would help me survive.

  Three hours later, I grew worried. I should have encountered Smith unless he’d left the path for some reason. Paying closer attention, I bent to the trail and found prints of his horse and pack animal. Turning about, I followed his tracks, at times covered by my own slipshod passage. A hundred yards on my backtrack, I broke sign carelessly unobserved in my earlier passing. Two individuals intercepted the man, and four horses left the trace, heading north. The sign went cold in a small brook. I searched up and down the rill but located nothing further except a splash of blood on a bush at the edge of the bank. I plucked and shredded the stained leaves.

  At first I suspected the Pipe Stem of extracting revenge for me but discarded that notion. Carcajou would have found some way to let me know. And it was a Sioux, not a Pipe Stem, who warned me the man was on his way. Finally I settled on the unthinkable. Among the Yanube a seventeen-year-old is already a man, with a man’s obligations. In a few months, Dog Fox would be seventeen. If it had been my mate with him, Otter would bury Smith’s horses and personal goods to avoid exciting the interest of some law dog.

  When my husband came home the next night, I failed to raise the question, and he volunteered nothing. So far as I know, ex-Captain Smith was neither seen nor heard from again.

  DOG FOX spent a few days with us the following summer. Although he was practically grown physically, I judged his mind too young to contemplate deeper matters. Besides, the question of how to handle his mother was not yet resolved. The bright, handsome, young man showed demonstrable progress in his studies. He had read each and every book he took with him when Morning Mist left the Mead. His favorites, he could quote virtually without fault. The boy looked so much like his father that I wept silent tears the first night he was with us. Otter understood and held me quietly in his arms.

  My hand was almost forced when Stone Knife came to talk me out of a twist of tobacco. The pressure on the band was too extreme. The village was moving west. I argued the white man was there as well, but the old chief felt he had no option. When it developed he was moving only fifty miles to the northwest, I rested easier.

  Carcajou came next to say he was taking his tiospaye in tandem with his cousins, the Lakota. I sighed with sadness. That meant our country would be opened to strange bands from the east and more settlers than I wanted to face. It also meant I needed to do something to outline my boundaries. An American squatter on the Mead’s patented land could cause serious legal problems in the future.

  Otter and I labored long and hard to raise obvious markers. They worked reasonably well, although a few were maliciously torn down. Two families had to be removed from my land at gunpoint, but they moved only across my boundary line to become unwelcome neighbors. Some, as I came to know them, were decent folk, but they were where they ought not be. This land belonged to the Indians.

  IN THE summer of ’54, Otter came home from a visit to Stone Knife’s encampment with another rider in tow. I stepped to the porch and was pleasantly surprised when a taller, more mature Dog Fox smiled at me and clasped my arm affectionately.

  “Uncle Billy,” he greeted me.

  “Dog Fox, it’s so good to see you.” I looked at Otter, who nodded. With a catch in my throat, I joined them at the table, a cup of coffee clasped in my mitt.

  “She has married,” Otter spoke into a comfortable silence, “and Stone Knife moves farther west before the winter. He will likely join the Oglala at Fort Laramie.”

  “Then it is time,” I murmured.

  The youth shot a curious glance at the two of us. “What is it, Uncle Billy?”

  “Son”—I experienced a strong emotion at the word—“the red man’s time is almost run. In a short day, the army will herd your kinsmen onto reservations and turn them into white men, without the attendant rights and privileges. There will be hardship, starvation, killings, wars, terrible suffering on both sides, but the red man will lose. I can think of only one way to give you some measure of protection from this. Even this might not work, but it is the best I can do.

  “You must learn to call me by another name,” I continued, laying a hand over a strong brown arm shaped exactly like his father’s as I told him he must become William Cuthan Strobaw, the issue of William Joseph Strobaw and his wife, Butterfly. I told him he must cut off his shining glory, his long hair, and learn to wear trousers and call me Father. And I told him why.

  “When I die, William, this property will be willed to you. The official records show my marriage to your Aunt Butterfly, and the birth of a son to that union. Her death certificate has been filed showing she died giving birth to a child… you. According to the white man’s official records, something by which he lives and dies, you are my son, and in this bag”—my hand touched a parfleche on the table—“is a birth certificate making this an official fact.

  “If I passed over and my will was probated today, I do not believe the law would permit you to inherit the more than four thousand acres of this Yanube homeland I have purchased. But I am planning on hanging around a few years in the hope times and attitudes and laws will change so the Mead will be yours. It comes with only one condition. Otter has earned a warm corner and must always have a home here. He is never to be denied anything. He knows this place will be yours, and he understands why. He is reconciled to it. But no matter who comes to live with you here, no matter who you marry, you must give me your sacred word Otter not only has a home, but is also made to feel welcome. In truth, you will be holding the farm in his stead until he comes to join me.”

  “You have my oath, Father.” The young man entered into the spirit of the thing. “But what of my mother?”

  “She rests beneath the earth outside that window,” I replied.

  “What of Cut Hand’s widow?” he restated the question.

  “That is up to you. She hates me, son. I do not know what she has told you, but surely you are aware I was Cut Hand’s win-tay wife. I loved your father and only gave him up so he could build a family and assume the leadership of his people. Morning Mist would not accept me as his mate. She had her own reasons, I suppose, but never in my life have I tried to harm her. Just understand that she will never be my friend. And if she discovers what we are doing, she will wreck it. She will cost you your inheritance.”

  The boy’s eyes flicked toward Otter, who answered his unasked question. “Yes, we are together now. He has been my mate for fourteen years. He has been good to me, as I have been good to him.”

  “So I must be my father’s sister’s son, and that of his male wife,” he said, but there was no sting behind the words. “I knew of this thing with Cut Hand,” he admitted, “and I have always loved you, Uncle Billy. I knew he loved you too. I will be proud to call you Father. I will not like losing my hair, but I’d rather be scalped that way than the other.” He made a feeble joke of it.

  “And I have loved you, son, like you were my own since Cut Hand brought you to me to start learning.”

  “My new name… you gave me the middle name for my father, didn’t you?”

  “In his honor
, yes. But I couldn’t make it exact because….”

  “Because it sounds too Indian,” he finished. “So must I become a white man at heart as well as in name?”

  “You must be who you are. It matters not what we call you.”

  “These names you have given me, I will accept. But you will call me Cuthan.”

  “With pride.”

  SO THAT fine young man joined our household and lived a solitary life, learning to be a farmer and rancher in the white man’s way. Cuthan eagerly sought contact with young people of his own kind, but that was difficult with the camps as far removed as they were. He saw fit to visit his mother only three times in the years he had been with us. I do not believe this was his choice. Rather, it was Morning Mist making him pay for his desertion to the hated win-tay. I am quite certain she believed he flanked me daily. Nothing of that sort ever happened, of course. I truly considered him the son of Cut Hand and myself.

  Fate intervened to lend a hand in his future salvation. One of the families homesteading across the boundary of our land had two sons and a honey-haired daughter. Dog Fox… pardon, Cuthan… fought the boys at least a half a dozen times before they learned to respect him. It was not easy for Cuthan. Indians do not fight in the same manner as white boys, and he was impatient of the boxing lessons I gave him. He preferred rushing in and ending the affair in any manner possible.

  We asked our neighbors over for picnics and dinners, and one of them responded… the neighbor named Jacobsen with the honey-haired daughter and two feisty sons. The other neighbor, whose name I do not recall as he did not last long in this country, held obvious prejudices and never set foot through our door.