by Don Bendell
Riding in and along Grape Creek, they finally came to Pine Gulch. As they rode, they heard the echoes of their steel horseshoes clicking on the solid rock walls jutting straight up on their right for hundreds of feet, but out of the gulch off to their left they smelled the sweet odor of pine trees and felt a cooler breeze. Hartwell declared they would move into this gulch and make camp. Joshua Strongheart knew this would be the case, as it was the only place that made sense.
They made camp up Pine Gulch next to a spring and picketed their horses exactly where Joshua knew they would. It was well after dark. One guard sat in front of the fire drinking coffee, and another leaned against a rock to watch the horses, but was soon fast asleep, his head cocked off to the side. Joshua had been watching them from a rocky perch less than fifty feet above them while they prepared their camp. Wearing his moccasins, he slowly made his way through the path he had cleared of branches and sticks earlier. He then methodically tied war bridles on each horse, then used their picket line as one giant lead line. He quietly led them out of the grove of trees, around a corner, and there mounted up on Eagle and led them at a fast trot several miles to Reed Gulch, which was full of rich grasses and flowing clear water. He then returned to the camp. Now, both sentries slept soundly.
Strongheart crawled into the campfire area, grabbed a cooled-down, ashen stick by the fire, and then crawled behind the one who was sentry for the fire and was now lying down sideways in front of the glowing embers. Slowly, carefully, he drew a big charcoal letter X on the back of the man’s shirt. He barely stirred. Then, he crawled away to his hideout in the nearby overlooking rocks.
Strongheart earlier had prepared a passageway through the rocks and scrub oaks along the ridge that would totally mask his movements if he ran, crawled, or walked away along and over the ridge. He waited for dawn, taking a catnap himself.
Joshua enjoyed the smell of the evergreens wafting in along Pine Gulch and from Reed Gulch several miles away, where the horse remuda was grazing along toward Iron Mountain. On his way back, he brushed their tracks away for the last mile toward the camp. He had already gone back covering their tracks in the trees where they were moved from the picket line.
Now, he grinned watching as Robert Hartwell and two of his top hands started yelling and screaming at the sentries. The men were complaining and grumbling and several started looking up into the rocks and off into the trees.
Strongheart hated back shooting, period, however these men had opened the ball in his mind and declared war on him, ten against one. He was going to punch their dance ticket for them, and do it on his terms. He carefully rose on one knee holding his Lakota bow in his left hand, a cedar arrow across his left hand, the nock of the arrow against the string, and the first three fingers of his right hand wrapped around the string, with the nock between his index and middle finger. He kept watching the guard by the fire, until he turned fully, exposing his back to him. When the man did turn, finally someone saw the X on his back, and started to say something. Before he could, though, Strongheart had drawn the arrow back, the heel of his thumb resting just under and in front of his ear. He took a breath, let half of it out, and held to the upper right of the man’s chest. He concentrated on not snapping the string, and let the string slide smoothly off his fingertips, making sure he breathed through his nose and kept his mouth closed. Joshua knew that opening his mouth would lower the anchor point on his cheek and jaw and send the arrow over the target.
He watched it slice through the air and watched it enter the man’s back right in the center of the large X. He took off crouching and running through the rocks and was almost over the ridge before the first of many bullets was fired at the ridgeline in his general direction in an attempt to find the hidden assassin by luck. The Pinkerton did not get to watch their reaction. Men were panicked, and Hartwell was furious. Nobody had to say anything. They knew that Strongheart had stolen their horses from under their noses, that he had done so while two armed guards were specifically watching the campfire and the horses, that he had placed a giant X on the back of the shirt of one of them, then in broad daylight put an arrow through the X, dead center, and hid or got away without even being seen. Several of the men present had been in the Midwest when he’d wreaked havoc on them.
Hartwell could not even speak he was so angry, and the man who was supposed to guard the horses said, “Mr. Hartwell, this Strongheart is more ’n a handful. We oughta scrap this . . .”
Boom! Boom! Hartwell had actually drawn his own pistol and shot the man in the stomach and chest, and he fell back over a log dying and screaming from the pain. Teeth bared, Hartwell faced all the rest of the gang,
He snarled, “Any other yellow curs here wanna tuck tail and run? Any takers?”
Men nervously shook their heads and waited to be told what to do next.
Seeing this, Hartwell pointed at three men together, and said, “You three, head up that gulch and see if you can pick up the trail of our remuda.”
They looked at each other nervously, nodded, and took off carrying their carbines, with two drawing their pistols, too. It was easy, however, to hide tracks in this rocky sandy soil, and Joshua had already cut pine branches to blot out the tracks. Knowing the minds of outlaws, he figured that being lazy, they would give up in less than a mile. He was correct.
The three came back to the camp.
One said, “Mr. Hartwell, we checked for tracks way up the gulch, maybe a couple of miles. No sign.”
Robert had sent another two out to search along Grape Creek in both directions. They came back in less than a half an hour.
“How did one man sneak in here, while we were all here, steal our horses with no one seeing, and make them disappear?” said Brandy Marks, his remaining top gun hand.
Hartwell said, “He thinks he has outsmarted us, but we are going to take care of him, Brandy. I am going to spit on his bloody body.”
He sat drinking coffee, hoping his big black Thoroughbred might make it back to camp. The horse was smart, and it was the one thing he truly took good care of. That was because to him the horse was a tool that was superior to others. Also, because of its size, he felt much bigger riding that big horse.
His assumption was correct because the giant gelding was indeed coming back from Reed Gulch at a trot and a few others started to follow him. Pretty soon, they were all strung out, in a long spaced-out line.
The black rode by and then Eagle came galloping out of the trees behind him, and Strongheart waved his slicker at the others, yelling, and whooping. The black kept on toward its master, but the others were cut off, and ran the way they had come. He pursued them still waving the slicker and yelling louder.
Horses suffer from two afflictions. They are constant conditions. One is claustrophobia and the other is being prone to panic.
This small herd was now in the latter mode. Eyes opened wide, ears laid back, listening to the predator behind chasing them, getting more fearful with each wave of the slicker, they were running all out at full gallop back toward Reed Gulch. Once there they turned upstream, but Joshua ran around, cut them off, and sent them downstream well past the mouth of Pine Gulch. He knew they would start grazing and would be more likely to graze forward downhill on a slight angle, continuing to graze in that direction, as long as there was good grass and water.
By the time Joshua returned, he rode up on the ridge to the left, and watched the gang from the rocks with his telescope and started laughing. Robert Hartwell was up on his horse riding around the camp area barking out orders, and the whole scene was quite comical to the half-breed. The Indian Ring architect was watching his construction come unraveled, and he was becoming unraveled himself.
Strongheart thought about how appropriate this was that he, a man who walked back and forth between both worlds, might be taking down the leader and moving force behind the Indian Ring. He was a man of contradictions. He was a passionate Mi
nniconjou Lakota warrior, but he was also a white lawman, a Pinkerton agent developing a national reputation, he was very adept with many weapons, yet he was very fond of quoting William Shakespeare.
In fact, looking down at the gang and knowing how important he felt it was to rid the world of them, he quoted Shakespeare aloud to himself, “‘’Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.’”
“Be careful, Josh. You finally have him where you want him,” he went on.
Now, Robert Hartwell knew what direction the horses had been taken, because his gelding came from the direction of Reed Gulch. He sent the same three men back up the gulch and told them not to come back without the horses. Strongheart mounted up on the far side of the ridge to their right and rode off at a trot, planning to intercept them where they would be close enough for Hartwell and his men to hear gunshots but far enough that they could not walk or run and join in the gun battle.
The three men walked along in the gulch, carefully checking for tracks and signs and of course backtracking the very obvious tracks of the big Thoroughbred. Joshua checked from ahead several times, and could tell they were very nervous. He went on to intercept them.
It was getting closer to sundown when they came around a bend and one in the back found a trail with a couple hoofprints in it passing through some trees.
He turned his head and said, “Y’all stand ready, boys! I got me some man tracks heah. Watch thet ground close but keep yer eyes on thet ridge!”
He followed the little trail and there were some seemingly windblown branches actually funneling him into the trail and into the grove of trees. It was a perfect place for Strongheart to have placed one of his surprises.
The eagle was a very sacred symbol of Native American culture and always has been. The plains tribes, such as Joshua’s, never believed in killing eagles. In fact, the Plains tribes such as the Lakota believed in only taking feathers from a living eagle without hurting it. The way to accomplish this was by using an eagle trap. You had to be a select special warrior to even construct one or a net for catching eagles. Strongheart had carried a pick and shovel on his pack horse for just that such purpose. To construct one, the eagle trapper would make a large lid of small branches woven together, with a round cover bordered by bent branches. It was camouflaged and covered with leaves. He would dig a shallow grave-sized pit and lie on his back holding the lid over him. He would tie a captured rabbit to the lid by one leg, and wait. As the rabbit squealed and flailed around, eagles flying overhead would easily spot it, swoop down, and when it started to snatch it up, the brave would reach through the lid with one hand, grab the eagle’s leg, and reach up with the other plucking several feathers. He would then release the leg.
The man tracking his carefully laid hoofprints was almost under the trees when gunfire erupted from the ground directly in front of him. He flew backward, the top of his head exploding. Strongheart stayed in his eagle trap listening and counting bullets as the other two, seeing their bloody friend die suddenly, fired wildly in the direction of the trees. They foolishly did not overlap fire and both ran out of bullets at around the same time and were trying to reload quickly when Joshua sat up, tossing the lid of the eagle trap to the side, and opened up with his carbine. He hit the one on the right dead center, killing him almost instantly, but he missed on the other one with his first shot, hit his left hip, spinning him with the second, and he carefully aimed the third shot and took the man in the head.
Down the gulch Hartwell and his men were completely unnerved hearing the shots, and each fearfully and correctly concluded that Strongheart had just had a shootout with those three men, and they were probably dead. Robert Hartwell’s gang was now down to just a handful.
Not sure what to do, Hartwell saw that night would soon be upon them.
He said, “Men. Let’s move our camp into those rocks where we have more cover, and we will make our camp smaller with no fire.”
Brandy Marks, the only one with the courage to address Hartwell right now, said, “Boss, we are in the mountains and it will get cool tonight. He is watching us all, so no fire ain’t going to fool him. Just make us cold. I need my gun hands warm, so they work right, boss.”
Hartwell, scared out of his wits now, finally listened to someone and said, “That’s a good point, Brandy.”
Marks got several nods of approval from the other three. They made their fire and settled in. Dark closed in and the men sat around the fire drinking coffee and talking nervously.
Suddenly, the voice of Joshua Strongheart rang out from above them in the darkness, “You, men! My beef is with Hartwell! If any of you wants to walk out of here, just leave during the night, head down Grape Creek to Cañon City, and I will let you be! Anybody who is with Hartwell tomorrow morning is going to die! Make a sound decision!”
“I have always rode for the brand, boss,” Brandy Marks said right away.
The others nodded like they agreed, but gave each other nervous looks.
Joshua knew they would stay in their camp until daybreak, so he headed back to the camp he’d made a mile away, where he left his pack horse. While Hartwell and his men sat in the rocks around a fire, most staying awake most of the night, listening for sounds, jumping over a rock that fell, Joshua had a nice fire in a grove of pines with scattered boulders, and he drank coffee and ate corn dodgers and a tin of peaches he had picked up in Cañon City. He knew if anybody came, Eagle would let him know. He slept soundly and woke up before dawn, well rested and ready to tackle the important challenge that lay before him this day.
By the time Joshua arrived at his overlook, it was dawn, and he pulled out his telescope just in time to see Brandy awaken and start yelling something that could not be heard. Hartwell jumped up drawing his six-shooter. They were alone. The other three had left an hour before dawn and were convinced that Brandy Marks and Robert Hartwell were dead men. Those three had no idea that the Vinnola brothers were waiting at the Hot Springs Hotel and watching for any that may come out of the Grape Creek canyon.
There was also another pair of eyes watching from the hotel. They had a twinkle in them. They belonged to Zachariah Banta, who always seemed to know where to go and knew everybody that should be known.
The three had left an hour before dawn and were fast-walking down Grape Creek as fast as they could move. Jumping at every shadow, they would walk fast, then jog a little while. Each felt like their mouths were filled with cotton, and two had severe pains in their lower abdomens. Their fear of what they had seen and had previously heard about Strongheart’s actions in Indiana, had made them true believers that they would die if they stayed until daybreak. The three crawled away from the camp in their stockinged feet and then walked over rocks and even ran into cacti until they were well away from Robert Hartwell. Their feet were feeling it now.
Brandy Marks was not showing it at all. He had been through too much and was the classic hard case, but he was more frightened than he had ever been in his entire life. Two men had been killed under his guns for making fun of him for drinking brandy, his favorite drink. He always drank brandy simply because he liked the taste of it, but God help anybody who ever made jokes about it. Nonetheless, the nickname stuck with him. Brandy grew up in Akron, Ohio, in the area called North Hill, which was next to Cuyahoga Falls. He had a stepbrother who was two years older than him, and the stepbrother tried to sexually molest Brandy when Brandy was thirteen. The younger lad beat the stepbrother to death with a stout hickory club, then ran away from home knowing his mother would not even listen to his explanation and his stepfather would be out for blood. Moving out west, by the age of fourteen, Brandy was already riding the owl hoot trail.
Less than a decade earlier, people started referring to killers, bank robbers, bandits, and the likes as owl hoots. Then, the expression started that someone was riding the owl hoot trail, meaning he’d left a straight and narrow path for the life of a criminal
. A cowboy in the Indian territory in 1870 explained that Indians used the sounds of hooting like owls to signal to each other when white men they were going to go into battle with were nearby. Some cowboys started calling them owl hoots, and because of so much being done in the shadows by criminals the nickname got transferred to them.
Robert Hartwell, on the other hand, was not frightened. He felt he was too superior to Joshua Strongheart. In his eyes, Joshua was impure, a half-breed. While it was a major source of pride for Strongheart to be that way, to a racist and elitist like Hartwell, it was disgusting. He often described Joshua Strongheart, not by his name, but as “that blanket nigger,” or that “red nigger.” However, Hartwell always thought he was superior to any man. The fact that he was very tiny and slight and plain-looking while Strongheart was very tall, muscular, and handsome, increased the hatred all the more.
As Joshua rode forward on his proud, prancing mount, Eagle, he understood this about Robert Hartwell. He knew this man was singularly responsible, probably even more than William W. Belknap, for building and strengthening the Indian Ring. The Indian Ring really was strengthened by the inaction or head-turning of some in the halls of power in Washington, D.C. Some invested money in the many larcenous Indian Ring trading posts operated by crooked handpicked sutlers. Belknap may have been the commanding general who got the credit or blame for the infamous Indian Ring, but Hartwell was his command sergeant major. He ran the operation, and he expanded the scope of the racist organization, which became an embarrassment, actually a disgrace and black mark on the U.S. government. Those who turned their heads in Congress and in the Grant administration were either investors, friends of investors, racists, or extremely selfish people in power who did not care about the decimation of the red man just so inroads could be made into their territory for westward expansion or mining exploration.