by J. R. WRIGHT
“I have two favors to ask of you, Father,” Chaska said after considerable thought.
“Anything,” Luke responded quickly, even though he hadn’t a clue as to what the requests would be.
“The gold we have collected over the years must be taken away from here if we are to expect strangers among us.”
“Sure. Perhaps Bordeaux has room for it in his safe.”
“No, Father…”
“You don’t trust Bordeaux? I would stake my life on his honesty…”
“No, Father, I have seen Bordeaux’s safe. The gold will need a bigger place.”
“Well then, just how much damned gold do you have, Son?”
“Come,” Chaska said and poked the Colt under the buckskin sash about his waist. Arriving at a tepee near his own, he went to work cutting the laces that secured the flap. Once opened, he motioned for Luke to peer inside.
What he saw was laced rawhide bags the size of forearms, stacked like cordwood, five feet wide and four feet high. “Nope! You’re right, Bordeaux’s safe won’t do.” He laughed. “Your people have been busy.”
“We did as you said, Father. We left no gold in the streams for strangers to find. But still they come. Our work was for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that.” Luke glanced back at the many fully stuffed pouches, so neatly stacked. “I know you feel you have no need for it, but that’s worth a lot of money, Son.”
“My people are frightened. They saw the many Bluecoats that came with their big guns on wheels in search of it. Now they believe the gold has brought bad spirits among them. They want to be rid of it in hopes things will return to the way they were, once it is gone from here.”
“Now we both know that’s not going to happen. But there’s no doubt if word gets out that so much gold is kept here in your village, someone will come for it. I’ll stash it in the cave at the ranch. It has a small opening that can be closed off with boulders.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“You said two favors?” Luke studied Chaska, wondering what was coming next.
“The young men of the village are giving looks to Bree,” Chaska said, concernedly.
With that, a big smile appeared on Luke’s face. The girl was seventeen, if his math was correct. Of course the boys were looking. Most girls were married before now, Indian or otherwise.
“Bright Moon is against it, but I want you to take her away from here. It is for Bree’s own good. The ways of the Indian are soon over, I fear. The white man will never leave us alone.”
Luke understood where Chaska was coming from. But what he didn’t get was what plans he had for her future. “So I take her to live with us at the Tea Cup, and then what?”
“Then she is away from here,” Chaska said and walked away. Reaching the place where they were before, he drew the Colt and began firing at a log floating down river. Once the gun was empty, he turned back to Luke. “I had always been ashamed to be white. I felt like a dove in a village of crows before I knew the reason for it. But even then I always wanted to be Indian. Now I’m not so sure. After much thought, I have decided my children should have a choice in the road they choose to travel. Here, there is no choice – just Indian.”
“That wisdom did not come from me,” Luke confessed. “Be proud of what you have become, Son. I am.”
“Then you will take her?”
“I will be proud to have her in my house – she’s my granddaughter. But I will not take her if she doesn’t want to go!”
The following morning Luke rode from the Lakhota village. Behind him were five mules burdened with at least a thousand pounds of gold, the pouches rolled into buffalo robes and tied tightly to pack saddles. And beside him, astride her typically Indian cayuse, was a beautiful blue-eyed maiden, with a pacific smile on her face. Luke wondered now who originated the idea that Bree come to the Tea Cup to live, Chaska or Bree herself. Either way, he was happy to have her. Now, if he could just convince the rest of the family to do likewise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Luke purposely arrived back at the ranch after nightfall. Once he had gotten Bree settled in the house, he aroused Calvin Tinkman, and the two of them went about stashing the gold in the cave. Once that was done, they sealed off the entrance with rocks in such a way that it was no longer recognizable for what it was. In fact the end result appeared as though a cave-in had occurred. This, they hoped, would deter any ranch hands familiar with it to ever want to attempt entering it again.
Not wanting to appear as though it wasn’t just another day, Calvin and Luke showed up for breakfast as usual. Everyone was surprised, but pleased, to see Bree appear at the table as well. Especially White Bird, who had gotten to know and adore the girl from the family’s past four annual visits to the ranch. Even though fifteen years separated their ages, a bond had formed between them, primarily because they were both Indian, at least in appearance. And presently, they were the only two Indians on the ranch, female or male.
After breakfast, Luke went to his office to dash off a quick letter to Anne Budd. With all the worry for Chaska over this Custer thing, he had neglected her until now. And since Mary had informed him Grady would need to leave for supplies today, he figured he’d best get to it or wait another two weeks for him to return again, which he didn’t want to do. Since he had no other excuse for the delay, he decided to tell Anne the truth. And of course in order to do this he would need to tell her he had a son, and how all of that came about, that he was raised by Indians. Perhaps she wouldn’t be interested in any of that, being from the east, but it would fill lines, and he was in a hurry and tired from being up all night. But then it seemed the more he wrote, the more explaining he needed to do for her to make sense of any of it. Eventually he had five pages, much more than he had ever written to her before. Two was the norm. Thinking about it for a moment, he nearly tore the letter up. It was much more revealing than his nature had ever before allowed him to be. Especially to someone he’d never met.
“Grady’s ready to leave,” Mary said, arriving at the door.
“I’ll be done in a minute!” And with that, Luke absently signed the letter, shoved it into an envelope he had already addressed, and handed it off to Mary. “Tell Grady we need a case of cartridges for the Winchesters. With all the wolves we’ve had this year, we’re running low. Better make it two.” He then went up the stairs for a nap.
Bee hadn’t been at the ranch three weeks when a young cowhand come calling. His name was Garrett Chapman, hired away from the Texas crew that brought up Longhorns the year Andy Hayes went to work for Truman Rainford. He was a hard-working man, tall, sandy-haired, with an enormous handle bar mustache. And he was older than Bree by at least six or seven years.
It seemed Chapman had been paying close attention when Bree and White Bird went for their daily horseback rides, often times around where the ranch hands worked cattle. Now he had finally worked up the courage to introduce himself.
Luke wasn’t comfortable with Bree seeing anyone just yet. Seventeen was quite young in his eyes, even though that was his exact age when he and Breanne, who was only sixteen at the time, ran off to the North Country. But at least the man had the courtesy of asking his permission first, so Luke allowed it, but only for an hour each evening, in his parlor, with the door left open.
After this had gone on for a few weeks, Bree seemed quite smitten with the fellow, and that’s when she and White Bird came to Luke with a request.
“Can Mister Chapman join us for supper tonight? We’re doing the cookin’.” White Bird did the talking.
“Where’s Mary?” Luke asked in a near panic tone. Two somewhat inexperienced cooks in the kitchen couldn’t be a good thing.
“Mary will help, but we’re doin’ the cookin’.”
“Cooking what?”
“Tato kala, over a fire out back of the house.”
“Who shot the antelope?”
“Garrett,” Bree said, proudly.
�
�Well, then he should be here to help eat it, don’t you think?” Luke consented and watched Bree’s pretty face turn instantly from one of concern, to one of total joy.
“Thank you, Grandfather,” she said. Then, with a hand over her mouth, she ran away giggling.
“Sure,” Luke said, then turned to White Bird. “Is this thing between her and Chapman getting serious?”
“Yep,” White Bird answered with a smile. “She likes him.”
“Likes him in what way? You mean, like a friend?”
“No, like hignau.”
“Husband?” Luke came up from behind the desk. “Husband! They’ve only known each other a few weeks.” He headed for the kitchen at a fast walk.
“We knew each other only a few days,” White Bird reminded him as she hurried along beside.
“You weren’t my granddaughter!”
“She’s a woman, Luke. She’s ready. Just let her be!” White Bird wisely said. They had both been raised Indian, so who would know better than her?
With that, Luke halted and glared at her. “Can’t I at least talk to her? Find out if she even likes this guy enough…”
“No!” she said bluntly, glaring back. “This is a woman’s decision to make. I made mine the first time I saw you.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep!” She smiled again, her dimples showing prominently.
And so it went. A month later Bree and Garrett were married. This time White Bird performed the ceremony, at Bree’s request, even though Cola and James Bordeaux, who considered themselves grandparents as well, were present for the wedding.
One of the log bunk houses, not needed any longer since so many of the ranch hands had married and built houses of their own, was fixed up as a place for them to live until a better home could be built, somewhere in the valley. However, until that happened the two of them would take their meals in the big house. After all, they were both family now.
That night after everyone had gone to bed, Luke, with a filled heart, went to his office with an oil lamp and jotted a note to Anne Budd. He hadn’t received an answer to his previous letter yet, but since he had so thoroughly spilled his guts to her about his family in it, he felt it only right she know his first grandchild had married. “Her name is Bree,” he said, “named after her grandmother, Breanne, lost in the wild North Country, many long years ago.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Over the weeks since Breanne had received the long letter from Luke, she had been crying at every convenient opportunity. And at times, not so convenient; like when she was giving Harry, while lying sick in his bed, medicine one morning. He took her tears as grieving for him. Not that she wasn’t sad over his being ill, and possibly dying. She was. And she had cried for him a goodly number of times because of it. But that wasn’t the primary reason for these tears. These were because of all she’d missed out on over the years.
“Why has the Lord not strengthened your heart for the inevitable, Anne?” Harry had said at the time. “Has your faith failed you?”
“Yes, I guess it has,” she’d returned and quickly left the room.
In one recent letter from Luke, she discovered a son had been attributed to her. He had been raised by Indians. With some serious thought on the matter, she reasoned how that could have happened. Reading on, then, she learned there were grandchildren. And now this day, another letter came from Luke telling her the eldest granddaughter, named for her, had married.
All of this, and Luke didn’t even know he was writing it all to her, the Breanne lost in the North Country years ago.
How much more of this could she possibly take before telling him the truth? Was it fair to him, not knowing she was alive? No, it wasn’t. And she was not being fair to herself either, with this game she played.
However, it wasn’t a game. She had told herself that a thousand times. And it wasn’t. In her eyes, it was a necessary evil. Or call it whatever you want, she told herself one more time. What she had been doing, or not doing, was without a doubt the right thing to do. Why should Luke needlessly suffer, as she had once discovering he was alive and going under the name Tom Hill? There wasn’t need for that, even if it came down to her taking it to her grave. And that she was prepared to do, if God gave her the strength to prevail.
Now, with a renewed will, she decided perhaps she could respond to the letters without crying too much, and took pen in hand.
Dearest Luke… she started, then wadded the page and cried over the stupid mistake. Bravely she swiped away the tears and began again.
Dear Tom,
I was so happy to hear of your wonderful family and of the marriage of your eldest granddaughter. It’s these times in life that make it worth living…
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The first day of a trail drive always proved to be the most difficult for the drovers, and this one was no exception. Once the last of the five thousand steers were forced through the river gorge that gave them their first taste of freedom from the confines of the valley, they scattered like bees from the hive. By mid-afternoon, however, when all had a fairly good idea of what was expected of them, they settled into a steady stream of bouncing heads and swishing tails, heading south. Covering roughly fifteen miles a day, Luke expected to be at the south range near Cheyenne within seven days. If all had gone well for Kenny Hardy in his absence, the shipping corrals being constructed there should be complete.
And they were, when they arrived six days later. Even the short spur line to the corrals, which were started before he left here the previous trip, was completed and awaiting cattle cars that should soon arrive from Swift, a Chicago meat processing company. The sale of the steers had been handled by Titus Oxley at the bank, in accord with beef prices at the time Luke was in Cheyenne last, and scheduled for pick up three days from now. A healthy deposit had already been placed in his account, with the balance to be paid upon their arrival in Chicago.
The steers would be allowed to graze the tall grass of the ten thousand acre range until the cattle cars arrived. In the meantime White Bird and Bree, who had ridden the seat of the chuck wagon along-side Grady the entire trip, were delivered on into Cheyenne. Luke and Garrett would join them there at the Empire Hotel later, once things here were under control. After the cattle were loaded and shipped, an extended stay in Cheyenne was planned for the four of them. This would be Luke and White Bird’s wedding gift to the young couple.
But none of that went off as planned. First off, the hotel was all booked up, and they all had to stay in Luke and White Bird’s apartment, which was just fine with White Bird. She loved having Bree close, and the feeling seemed mutual. The men, however, would rather have had a little more privacy. Luke threatened to fire Willie Wilder if he didn’t come up with the extra room, but there was little he could do. Since there was such a shortage of respectable hotels in Cheyenne, the ninety-six rooms they had were generally booked far in advance.
Then, after the first couple of days of their stay, all the strange people walking the streets had Bree so frightened, she didn’t want to leave the rooms any longer. This made it necessary for Luke to make arrangements with the restaurant across the street to bring meals to the hotel. To top that off, the rail cars were ten days late in coming. By this time White Bird was so homesick for Tana Star, who had stayed with Mary, she was ready to go home. So they did, but not before Luke took care of what business he had at the bank and collected the few pieces of mail at the post office.
But the good that came from it all was that Luke got to know Garrett Chapman a whole lot better, and liked what he saw. The man was definitely someone to consider if Calvin Tinkman ever decided to hang up his spurs and build that little retirement house for him and Mary along that creek near the waterfall. In the meantime, though, he would keep an eye on this fellow for whatever else he could do.
No sooner had they arrived back at the ranch than Bree became sick. After three days of her not getting any better, Luke became worried and went to che
ck on her himself. He arrived just in time to see White Bird and Mary coming from the old log house where she and Garrett lived. They both had concerned looks on their faces until they caught sight of Luke, and then they broke into smiles.
White Bird spoke first. “Bree’s going to have a baby! Mary said.”
“What?” Luke froze in his tracks. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am you’re going to be a great-grandfather,” Mary said.
“Great-grandfather! Hell, I’m only fifty-two. That kinda stuff is for old people.”
“Best get ready to be old then, ‘cause it’s gonna happen.” Mary brushed past him on her way back to the big house.
“When is all of this all going to end, Mary?” he turned to follower her. “Do you know the population of this ranch has nearly tripled in the past five years?”
“It’s out of your hands now, Tom. You act as if you had something to do with them kids being born.”
“I did! I let it happen. It was Tink’s idea, but I let it happen.”
With that Mary stopped and turned to face him. “Look around you, Tom. I mean really look around. All those kids have given this place life where there was none before, since Abigail died. Now with Tana Star and all those other children, we have hope the human race will continue. And that makes me happy.”
Luke thought for a second. “But do they all have to be born here? We’re supposed to be raising cattle, not kids.”
“Are you afraid those kids’ll start eating grass? Well, you have a hundred and forty thousand acres of the stuff here, if they ever do.”
With that, Luke cracked a smile. “That’s what I like about you, Mary. You’re so damned practical.”
“And that thing about letting the ranch hands get married – well that was my idea,” Mary tossed in. “I told Tink to suggest it to you.”
