Medicine Wheel

by Ron Schwab

  Thad's eyes were fastened on puffs of dust a quarter of a mile north tracking a deer path that threaded its way along the steep, rocky slopes below. At first, he assumed the creature stirring up the powdered lime was a doe fleeing some real or imagined threat, but then he decided the form was human. He reached into his saddle bags and pulled out the old seaman's telescope the Judge had given him and twisted it into focus.

  The creature was indeed human. Moving swiftly and gracefully over the trail as though swept by the wind, a young woman raced along the path. She was scantily dressed in what appeared to be a short buckskin kilt and a sleeveless shirt, and her black hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon in what he’d heard some ladies call a pony tail. She ran with determination and seeming intensity, as though she was in a rush to get somewhere before a deadline.

  She had engaged his curiosity, and he followed her with the telescope as she angled downhill toward the Big Blue River Valley. Suddenly, she stumbled and catapulted forward, landing face first in the trail rut. She was deathly still for a moment before she tried to lift herself up and then collapsed again.

  Thad dismounted and began leading the gelding down the treacherous shale footing of the slope, keeping his eye on the fallen runner as they inched their way toward her. She was sitting upright now, he noted, clutching her shin or ankle. As he approached, he yelled, “You okay, ma’am?”

  She looked up but did not reply.

  He released Cato, confident the Appaloosa would not stray and approached the young woman, stopping when he saw the wary look in her dark, defiant eyes. He was momentarily speechless as he got a closer look at the runner. Her face was smudged with dirt and her nose was skinned and dripping blood—and she was the most incredibly beautiful female he had ever encountered. She had flawless, bronze-toned skin and thick black lashes framing coffee-brown eyes, and her form was lithe and slender, almost boyish, but not quite. He couldn’t tell for certain, but he guessed she wouldn’t stand more than a few inches over five feet.

  “You’re staring at me,” she said.

  His face flushed. “Not my intent, ma’am. Can I help?”

  She probed her ankle gingerly. “Who are you?”

  “Thad Locke, ma’am.”

  “The lawyer family?”

  “Yes, ma’am. My father and my brother practice law in Manhattan.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “I live a few miles south of here . . . with my aunt and uncle. It’s a complicated story. I was riding out this way and was up on the ridge when I saw you take a tumble. Thought I should come down and check. Can you get up?”

  She started to rise but then winced and sat back down. Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. He didn’t know what to say. She seemed a bit contrary, but she was obviously hurting more than she was letting on. He decided to disregard her testiness. He gave a low whistle toward Cato, and the horse abandoned his grazing and trotted back.

  He plucked a canteen from his saddle horn and dug in his saddle bags, pulling out a few clean, well-worn white shirts and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. He returned to the young woman’s side, knelt down beside her, and began ripping the shirts into strips. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  She hesitated, watching him with curiosity. “Serena. Serena Belmont,” she replied softly.

  “Kin to the Preacher Belmont?”

  “His daughter. Do you know him?”

  “Heard of him. Never met him. Lay your head back and press this against the nostril. Bleeding’s already slowing.” He handed her a piece of cloth, moistened another rag, and began wiping the blood and dust from her face, his fingers moving gently and deftly over the scraped nose. He applied some alcohol to the scrapes. She flinched, he noted, but didn’t complain.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re a doctor. You can’t be much older than I am.”

  “I’ll be nineteen in a month. But I’m as close to a doctor as you’ll find within ten miles from here. I’ve been helping folks around here with their cows and pigs and cats and dogs since I was a kid.”

  “Some might say you’re still a kid . . . of course, you’re two years older than I am. By the way, I’m not an animal.”

  “I noticed.” He turned away. “Now, let me take a look at that leg.”

  He took the muscled calf of her slender right leg in his hands, and his fingers probed and traced over the shinbone.

  “Now just a minute, mister,” she protested.

  He ignored her objections and squeezed her ankle.

  “Hurt?”

  She grimaced. “Yes, it hurts.”

  “Grit your teeth. It’s going to hurt some more. Try to wiggle your ankle . . . slowly.”

  She winced and tears came to her eyes. “I can’t move it any more. It feels like it’s locked in place.”

  Thad slipped the moccasin off Serena’s foot and ran his fingers over the top and under, pressing the soft flesh firmly. “No pain in the foot is there?”

  “No, not much.”

  He turned his attention back to the ankle. “I don’t feel a break, but it could be a ‘green stick.’ I doubt it, though. More likely a nasty sprain. I’ll wrap it for support and get you home to your folks, and they can decide if you need to see a sawbones.”

  “What’s a green stick?”

  “It’s a break in the bone where the two ends haven’t moved out of place . . . sort of a clean break, where the bone isn’t pressing against the skin or punched through it.”

  “You’re scaring me. I can’t have a broken ankle.”

  “Well, you can, but I’ll bet you don’t.” He took a long strip of cloth, centered it on the bottom of the foot, pulled the ends behind her ankle, and wrapped them around the leg before crossing the ends and looping them through the starting lengths. He pulled tight and tied. “This will give you some support, but you’ll need to keep your weight off the foot for a week or more. Now we’ve got to get you home. I’d say your place is about three miles as the crow flies. I know you can run. How do you do on a horse?”

  "I can ride well enough. But we only have one horse.”

  ”Then we’ll have to share.”

  Thad gave two sharp whistles, and the Appaloosa moved in close. He reached down and grasped Serena's hand firmly. "Okay, now you need to pull yourself up and see if you can put some weight on the foot.”

  He helped her up, and she pressed her foot to the rocky pathway. Her sharp gasp betrayed her pain. Abruptly, he lifted her into his arms and swept her mid-shriek her onto the horse's saddle. He grabbed the saddle horn and, putting his booted foot into the stirrup, lifted himself less gracefully onto the horse's rump and settled in behind her, arms wrapped gently around her slender waist.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked, clutching his wrist in an effort to push him away.

  "I can't ride free-handed, ma'am, and I'm not so noble that I am going to lead this horse all the way back to your place. There's no way you're going to walk that far, so you can either take the reins and I'll hold on to you or you can hang onto the saddle horn, and I can lean forward and handle the reins. Either way, we’re going to be in close company for a spell.” The choices were no loss options from his standpoint. He did not find the nearness of this dark beauty the least unpleasant.

  She looked over her shoulder, her dark eyes, less suspicious and hostile now, fastening on his. "I'll handle the reins."

  5

  THE MID-AFTERNOON sun had suddenly turned blistering, and the terrain had become rugged as they climbed the shale slope. Notwithstanding his previous vow to ride, Thad had dismounted and was walking beside the horse and solitary rider. He caught sight of a small cluster of young cottonwoods a hundred yards or so to the northwest. He broke the uneasy silence that hovered over him and his traveling companion. Pointing in the direction of the trees, he said, ”I could use a spot of shade and a break. That’s not far out of our way. Likely a spring or stream there.”

  Serena nodded her a
pproval and nudged Cato toward the cottonwoods. As Thad had predicted, the trees were near a stream that meandered and snaked its way over the limestone creek bed and through the Flint Hills on its journey to the Big Blue. "At the pace we’re moving, I'd guess we have an hour or a bit less to your folks’ place. Let me help you down and we can unwrap your ankle and you can soak it in the cold water. It’s starting to swell, and that should help some.”

  This time she cooperated without protest and leaned from the saddle, resting her hands on his shoulders as he lifted her by the waist and eased her to the earth. He placed her down next to the stream under the shade of a cottonwood branch and then unwrapped the ankle. "It'll be worse tomorrow," he observed, "but if you keep soaking it in cold water and step very carefully for a week or so, you'll be fine."

  She slipped her foot into the water and after a few moments gave a sigh of relief. "Maybe you do know what you're talking about."

  He returned a wry smile. “You need some water and I wouldn’t drink it out of here. I have three-quarters of a canteen left, if you don’t mind sharing. Sorry, ma’am, but I don’t have any drinking glasses.”

  Cato was quenching his thirst downstream, and Thad retrieved the canteen and handed it to Serena. “You can have first swig, ma’am.”

  She accepted the canteen and he sat down beside her, keeping a respectful distance between them.

  “You may call me ‘Serena’ if you like.”

  "I like," he replied, “if you'll call me 'Thad.'”

  She smiled. She actually smiled, revealing perfect white teeth, of course.

  “Here, Thad, your turn,” she said, passing the canteen back.

  He drank sparingly, and they passed the canteen back and forth several times like two old cowboys sharing a jug of moonshine. "Why haven't I seen you before?" he asked.

  "We don't exactly move in the same society."

  "I don't move in any society. My sister and I stayed in Manhattan with the Judge—that’s my father—while we went to high school, and I broke for the ranch whenever school was out . . . but I've seen your folks with some tiny girls in town. You weren't with them. I'd have remembered.”

  She looked off into the distance. "I really don't live here. I come to see Mama and Papa and my sisters for a few weeks in the summers, but then I go back to school. I'm staying longer this year. I just got back, and I'll be with my folks another month or so.”

  "Where do you go to school?"

  "Washington D.C. You'll never remember the name. It's called the 'Institution for Education of Colored Youth.' Papa's sister—my aunt—teaches there, and I live with her.” She turned and looked directly at him. "You have noticed I'm colored, haven't you? A Negro?"

  This was a challenge of some kind, and he sensed that his relationship with this young woman hinged upon his response. The Judge always told him “walk straight and talk straight, and you'll stay out of trouble.” He figured that was just another way of saying it's best to tell the truth. "Well, yeah. I'm not blind. I wasn't sure when I first saw you . . . never gave it that much thought. I figured as much when you said your folks were the Belmonts." He shrugged and smiled, "You've noticed I'm Scottish, haven't you?"

  “I don’t understand. I can’t tell what you are.”

  “Actually, I’m only one-fourth Scottish. I’ve also got parts of Irish, French, Swiss, German, a pinch of Mexican and God knows what . . . maybe a bit of African way back. The Judge always says the Lockes are pure-bred mongrels.”

  “That’s an oxymoron.”

  “Wow. And she uses big words, too. What kind of a cow is an oxymoron?”

  With a look of feigned exasperation, she said, “It’s a contradictory state . . . you’re making fun of me.”

  “Look for your sense of humor. I’m sure it’s around here someplace. You’re way too concerned about who’s what. I’m guessing you’re as much mongrel as I am. Anyway, that’s for idiots who care to worry about.”

  “You’re really serious, I think.”

  “Now, one question before we get on our way. How did you end up in Washington?”

  “Papa came from near Boston. He was a free Negro descended from several generations of freemen. Mama is Seneca, although some places she’d be called a half breed since only her mother was Seneca and her father was some kind of a white man . . . I don’t know if he was a mongrel or not. To make the story short, Papa was blacksmithing on her father’s farm when he met Mama. They fell in love and got married over the objection of Mama’s father. She was more or less disowned and they moved to Pennsylvania, where I was born. Papa started another blacksmithing business and, according to Mama, was doing very well when the war came along. Then he took Mama and me to Washington to stay with Aunt Clara while he went off with a Yankee infantry unit.”

  “But I’ve been told he was a buffalo soldier. They were cavalry.”

  “Papa was good with horses, working in blacksmithing the way he did, and when the war ended, and Congress set up the Negro army regiments, he enlisted with the Tenth Cavalry. Sometime while he was in the Indian Territory he caught religion, and when his enlistment ran out a few years later, he left the Army and came back to Washington to just pick up where he left off. Mama and I hadn’t seen him for more than seven years. I didn’t even know him.”

  “And then he brought the family to Kansas.”

  “He brought Mama to Kansas. He wrote her at least once a month all those years he was gone, and I guess that was enough to stoke the embers of love she had for him. By this time I’d been going to the Institution since I started school, and I didn’t want to leave Aunt Clara to go off in the wilderness someplace with this gruff, scary man. Papa insisted I go with them. Mama had a private talk with him. I stayed with Aunt Clara.”

  Thad took her foot and started re-wrapping the ankle.

  “I can’t believe how I’ve rattled on. I’ve probably bored you silly. I don’t usually talk much at all to strangers.”

  “We’re not strangers now, and I find nothing about you boring. But I’d better be getting you home.” He helped her to the horse and lifted her into the saddle.

  “You’re one of those responsible types, aren’t you?” she teased.

  He shrugged. “Most of the time, I suppose. I try.”

  The canteen had been emptied well before they approached the Belmont farmstead. Thad’s legs felt sore and rubbery. Too much time on his ass, he thought. They had moved in silence for the last fifteen minutes, almost, it seemed to him, with a joint sense of foreboding. Thad knew there was nothing to physically fear, but he was terrified at the thought of just dropping Serena at the Belmont place and not seeing her again. Finally, he pulled up his courage, looked up at her, and broke the silence. “I want to talk to you again. I’m going to come by in a few days and see how you’re getting along.”

  Panic flashed in her eyes. “No, you can’t. You must not. Please.”

  “I wouldn’t stay long. Just to know you’re okay.”

  “I’ll meet you someplace.”

  “When? Where?”

  “A week from today. Noon. Where you found me. I’ll bring something to eat. I’ll show you where I was headed when I fell. Don’t come to my home. I will be there.” She hesitated. “Will you?”

  “You can count on it.”

  Spring 1885

  6

  KIRSTEN CAVELLE LAY on the cedar-planked floor of the single room that served as the dining and living area of the small ranch house. Except for her boots, Kirsten was fully clothed in her well-worn denims and heavy flannel shirt, but she was still cocooned in several blankets to ward off the early-March night chill. Only the top of her head ,with its short-cropped chestnut hair, emerged from her nest. The few remaining embers in the fireplace were dying, and the only light remaining in the room came from the streaks of moonlight that shot through the two small windows. Henry, her huge, gray tabby tomcat was snuggled against the small of her back, snoring softly.

  Killer, her shepherd cow dog, sl
ept next to the fireplace a few feet away, trying to soak in the last remnants of any warmth, even though the fire had been a token one to chase an evening chill. It was kind of a sad state of affairs, she thought, that her best friends in this rugged country were her furry companions.

  She heard her husband, Maxwell Brannon, stirring in the bedroom, which she had refused to share for several months now. He refused to give up his claim to the bed, and she had made up her mind that she was finished with the mean drunk. She had met with Cameron Locke, the lawyer, about a divorce, and he had assured her she had grounds as a result of Maxwell having beaten her savagely the night before she abandoned the bedroom to him—not to mention his nightly drunkenness. The ranch was titled in her name, and Locke promised he would file the divorce papers tomorrow morning and procure a restraining order that would boot Maxwell out of the house by nightfall. This would be her last night bedding down on the floor.

  “Kirsty! Get your ass in here now,” Maxwell bellowed.

  “Go to hell.”

  “I mean it. I’ve had enough of this shit.”

  Kirsten heard Maxwell stumbling across the bedroom floor, and momentarily, the door opened. Henry disappeared, and Killer retreated to a haven under the kitchen table. She untangled herself from the blankets and struggled to her feet. “Go back to bed. Stay away from me.”

  She could not see his eyes, but she could feel them glowering at her through his drunken haze. He was a big man, at least six feet, four inches, and he weighed close to two hundred eighty pounds. With his ample beer gut, he was a far cry from the muscular, young cowboy she had married four years ago when they were both twenty-two. Over five feet, nine inches, Kirsten was taller than most women and many men she encountered. Lean and sinewy, she could wrestle cattle with any man, but she knew in physical combat she was no match for Max.