Mary, Jube, and Cherry lived out their lives in the turbulent frontier era of cattle drives and land disputes. They did nothing that made the white community take note of them but went quietly on with the school and the barbershop, and Mary died in her mid-eighties without ever marrying again. It has been said by neighbors that she was faithful in visiting Britt’s grave and tending to its upkeep until she was very old and became bedridden. Despite genealogical research, it is not known what happened to Cherry and Jube.
Millie Durgan returned to the Elm Creek community at the age of eighty, traveling south from the Kiowa reservation with her Kiowa children and grandchildren. Sain-to-odii was unable to speak English, but she was polite and somewhat bemused by the community’s efforts to bring forward a birthday cake. She remembered almost nothing of her life before her capture.
Except for three pieces of hard evidence, Britt’s history is entirely oral; stories of his courageous journey to retrieve his wife and children, his rescue of other captives, his freighting endeavor, and his companions remained in the memories of the people of north Texas long enough to be recorded and written down. He is invariably spoken of in terms of respect and admiration. One man described him as “a magnificent physical specimen,” and others told of his travels and his freighting business. The elements of legend have collected around his historical figure, and its image remains bright and untarnished. He left nothing that could be traced either in land or written material or heirlooms. Only his gravestone, on which is written, Britt Johnson, Dennis Cureton, Paint Crawford, Killed By Indians 1871. All he had was the story of his life, which was as good as any other man’s, and in the end it is all we have.
Author’s Note
I CAME UPON BRITT Johnson’s story while researching Enemy Women. An early draft of that book ended with the protagonist’s journey into north Texas immediately after the Civil War. Britt Johnson is mentioned in many histories of north Texas, and the accounts are often contradictory or confusing. They all come down to two or three oral histories taken down in the early 1900s, and three pieces of hard evidence; a census of 1860, an 1864 muster of a scouting company, and the diary of Samuel A. Kingman, who was present at the signing of the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 and whose diary mentions Britt Johnson in search of captives. The story of Britt’s journey to rescue his wife and children from captivity is beyond doubt, as are the brief accounts of his life afterward. Entering Britt’s name in a search engine will lead to several good Web sites.
This is a work of fiction, but any full rendering of Britt’s story would of necessity be close to fiction since there is so little to go on, but that little is arresting and quite moving. I have sorted out the names of his children and of his former “owner” as best I could. Many of the Comanche and Kiowa people named here were real people, such as Kicking Bird, Toshana, Hears the Dawn, Aperian Crow, Esa Havey, Setanta, Satank, and Old Man Komah. Others are invented. Sergeant Elijah Earl was a real person, as were Dennis Cureton, Vesey Smith, Paint Crawford, and Medal of Honor winner Emmanuel Stance. I have tried to give them all a living presence and dreams and daily speech.
The character of Samuel Hammond is in no way a portrait of the remarkable Lawrie Tatum but is an exploration of Tatum’s dilemma; a Quaker sent as agent to warlike tribes of the south plains. Colonel Grierson was a real person, the first commander of Fort Sill. With one exception, the names of the captives are genuine, including Elizabeth Fitzgerald, who led a charmed life, and all of those taken in the Elm Creek raid of 1864.
This book is a novel, but its backbone—Britt’s story—is true. Britt’s story returned to me repeatedly as I read through north Texas histories over the years, and I often wondered why no one had taken it up. And so I did.
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Acknowledgments
MANY THANKS TO my agent Liz Darhansoff and editor Jennifer Brehl for their unfailing encouragement and support. To my brother, Kenneth Ji
les, for advice on firearms; all mistakes are mine. To my niece Denise Jiles Pollard for genealogical researches on Britt Johnson and his family. To nephew Matt Jiles Holtmann for the 1886 copy of My Story of the War. To June Chism for accompanying me on travels to the Red River and hiking the Wichita Mountains and for introductions to ranchers Loretta and Lane Corley in Oklahoma and De and Clint Brown in the Cross Timbers, and many thanks to the Corleys and the Browns for their hospitality and guided tours of the Red River bottoms and Spanish Fort. To Caroline Raskin for the loan of an original signed copy of Elizabeth Custer’s Boots and Saddles and for the literary loan of her Mount Vernon Street house in Philadelphia, to Sky Lewey for the Wilbarger book. Thanks to Sergeant Lee Coffee (USA Ret.), Buffalo Soldier re-enactor, for the story of Emmanuel Stance; and in memory of Melody, the Buffalo Soldier horse. For listening to long descriptions of a work-in-progress, thanks to Susan Lawson and Donna Stoner, and for an early read, thanks to Laurie Wagner Buyer. Much appreciated.
About the Author
PAULETTE JILES is a poet and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the bestselling novels Enemy Women and Stormy Weather. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
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Also by Paulette Jiles
Stormy Weather
Enemy Women
Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma-Kola
Credits
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket photograph collage: lightning by Alan R Moller; prairie evening by Eastcott Momatiuk/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE COLOR OF LIGHTNING. Copyright © 2009 by Paulette Jiles. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061970993
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