White Moon Rising

by John Foxjohn

  Whistling, Andy yelled, “Sunka, come here.”

  A moment later, the dog stuck his head in the tent flap. “Come here, boy,” Andy said.

  Warily, the dog came most of the way in. Andy tore off a piece of meat and laid it on the robes beside him. That was enough to entice the dog all the way in. Sunka gobbled the meat down in one gulp.

  “I don’t know what kind of meat that is,” Cap said, “But sure is tasty.”

  “The women know how to cook…good.”

  “You called the dog Sunka. What does that mean, and why’d you call him inside the tee-pee?” Cap asked.

  Andy thought a moment about the words to use. “Could not think of good name…called him Sunka. Means dog.” Andy tore off another piece of the meat and began chewing. “I called him in…do not want anyone eating him.”

  Confusion crossed Cap’s face. “You mean these…”

  He glanced at the meat Andy was holding, then the dog. His face became a nice shade of green right before he rushed out of the tent. They could hear him retching on the outside.

  Worm said in the Lakota language, “Your white people sure are strange. What made him sick?”

  The old man shook his head when he told him Cap hadn’t known he’d been eating dog.

  “Hand,” the old man said, “We have some serious problems here. We did not get the rations the whites promised us. Every moon they bring flour, sugar, coffee, and salt. Supposed to drive in fifty head of cattle. We usually only get ten head. This time we get none. We are hungry. The men are mad. Many have left to get rifles to hunt.”

  Andy frowned as he struggled to put his shirt back on. The only way for the Lakota to get rifles was to take them off the whites. If they did that, there would be open warfare on the plains.

  Before he could say anything, Cap re-entered the lodge. His green color had turned to a pale white. “Bull, are you telling me I have been eating dog all this time?”

  “Yes, the people eat dogs…good meal. When they have nothing left. Be glad you got food.”

  Before Cap could say anything, Andy said, “Let me…question you.” He reached and pulled the saddlebags over. “Are these…valuable…for money?”

  Andy dumped the two saddlebags of yellow rocks on the robe.

  Cap’s eyes grew the size of a wagon wheel. He uttered, “Oh, my God.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sun, trying to peek through the clouds high overhead, found Joshua Perkins wet, tired, and bad-smelling even to himself, and he didn’t like to take baths. He was ready to kill someone. At the moment, he really didn’t care who, either. On his orders, Whiteside had followed the big red horse. Lost his tracks, found them again, and then lost them for good.

  After a half of a day of trying to find the horse, Perkins had instructed Whiteside to find Johansson. The tracker had gone back the way they came and picked up the horse’s tracks where he’d discovered Johansson wasn’t riding him.

  Whiteside figured he’d be able to tell where the rider had gotten off, but it turned out to be more difficult than he’d anticipated. The six horses following had almost wiped out the big red horse’s trail. In fact, they went all the way back to the fight. The five bodies Johansson had killed were still there, but flies, buzzards, and other animals had been feasting on them.

  Casting about the trail, Whiteside finally found where Johansson had fallen off the horse, but even then, it was luck. He just happened to see a piece of thread on a bush off to the side of the trail. After checking it out, he called Perkins over. “Johansson hurt. Blood.”

  Patiently, the tracker stuck to the trail, but it wasn’t easy. That worried Whiteside even more because he was almost positive Johansson wasn’t trying to hide it.

  A little while later, his worries turned out correct. Johansson’s tracks disappeared. In fact, Whiteside would never have found them again if he hadn’t found the tracks of the big horse. He was squatting by the horse’s tracks when Perkins joined him. He pointed. “Big horse hunt Johansson.”

  Astonished, Perkins asked, “You mean the horse is following him?”

  Whiteside grunted. That’s what he had said. Sometimes he didn’t think the white man heard so good.

  Instead of rising and following the tracks, Whiteside remained squatting in the rain looking at them. After several minutes he rose and wrapped his horse’s reins around a bush. “Stay here. I come back.”

  As he walked off in the direction the horse had come from, Hilton demanded where he was going.

  “Hell if I know,” Perkins said.

  When darkness began to descend on them, a disgusted Perkins ordered the men to set up camp. The five white men were sitting around the fire drinking coffee and eating when Whiteside finally returned.

  “Where the hell you been?” one of the men demanded.

  The half-breed ignored him, squatted by the fire, and poured himself a cup of coffee. After taking several sips, he turned his attention to Perkins. “I followed horse. He’s too heavy.”

  Puzzled and irritated, Perkins asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Whiteside shrugged. “Horse carry heavy things. No carry when he left town.”

  “Are you saying Johansson was on him?”

  “No, no rider. Carry heavy things. Big horse’s hind legs a lot deeper than the front. Even weight. No carry when left town.”

  Exasperated, Perkins asked, “Are you saying the horse is carrying something heavy in his saddlebags?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Hilton said. “Why would Johansson come out in the middle of nowhere to get something heavy?”

  “Shut up, Hollis,” Perkins snarled. He turned to Whiteside. “Was the horse carrying the heavy stuff in his saddle bags?”

  Whiteside shrugged. “That’s what I said.”

  Hollis hadn’t gotten it, but Deke Proton, one of the white men, did. He said, “You’re saying Johansson lucked out and found gold out here.”

  Hurrying to his horse, Perkins said over his shoulder, “Lucked out my butt. He knew where it was.”

  “Where are we heading to, now?” Hilton demanded.

  “To Heath. Need to report in.”

  As Perkins rode toward town, he was worried about reporting another failure. Stephens wouldn’t like it, but that wasn’t who bothered him the most. He could handle him; it was Stephen’s boss he feared. He wasn’t even supposed to know about him, but he did, and the man was far more dangerous than Stephens. But the knowledge of what Johansson carried might be something in his favor.

  Lloyd Stephens, with only a sliver of moonlight playing through the office window, sat at his desk, clutching a full glass of whiskey like he wanted to choke it to death. The boss had just left and he’d gotten another dressing down because of the incompetents he had to depend on.

  After inhaling the harshness of the whiskey, he gulped it all down.

  The raw liquid scorched his throat, hit his stomach like fire, and exploded. The jolt erupted shudders throughout his body like a bolt of lightning.

  Gasping for breath, he reached and grabbed the bottle of Indian whiskey. He could easily afford the good whiskey, but he first started drinking the bad stuff, and at times like this, that was what he wanted.

  Refilling the glass, he held it up to the shards of light. The amber fluid gave no clue to what lay beneath the surface. Indian traders took a barrel of branch water, added a couple of ounces of strychnine. They cut up a couple plugs of chewing tobacco for color and punch, a few bars of soap for a bead, a couple gallons of molasses for taste. Then they added some red peppers and finally a couple of gallons of raw alcohol.

  Most people referred to the whiskey as block and tackle. People drank a couple of glasses, walked a block, and tackled anyone who came near them. The Indians called it firewater for a reason.

  Stephens swallowed the glass of whiskey and the searing heat erupted, causing him to gasp for breath.

  He slammed the bottle down. Nothing was going his way. Before, he could alwa
ys charm, take, or kill to get what he wanted. He had a small fortune sitting right in his lap. When the railroad came through, they’d find he owned most of the land outside of town, and quite a bit of the businesses in town. They would have to negotiate with him. For some reason the boss needed Johansson dead, but the breed or whatever he was wasn’t cooperating. Then there was Abbey. At first he wanted her to be his wife, his window dressing, but she dallied with him, led him on.

  His nostrils flared as he thought about her. She’d turned him down. Him.

  Stephens would have been happy to let her come back and punish her a little, but not now. Not after she ran to the jail to get Johansson out. Not after crying her eyes out in the middle of the street over him. No, no, no. She would be his and no one else’s. Soon, there wouldn’t be any more of her games. This time she would beg him to have her, and keep on begging. Her life would be miserable until she did.

  Where the hell was Perkins? What was taking so long?

  It hadn’t helped his ego one bit when the boss told him he’d been right about Johansson helping Capland Walters. Too bad Perkins couldn’t have sense enough to realize it sooner. By the time he got people to go look at the cabin, both men had left. Then the idiots had to burn the cabin down, and almost the town.

  He banged his fist on the desk. He hadn’t told them to do that.

  Walters had to die, too. He’d wanted to shoot him and get it over with. The damn boss was the one who insisted it would be too noisy. The man was always worrying about what people thought, trying to maneuver them, outthink them. Hell, just kill them was the best policy.

  As he contemplated another glass of the Indian whiskey, boots clumped on the outside stairs. He gritted his teeth when the door opened without a knock.

  Chester Pitts, the mayor of Heath, stuck his little pig face in the door and entered. With as much contempt as he could manage, Stephens put his boots up on his desk and leaned back. This was another one of the hangers-on who disgusted him. He indicated the Indian whiskey. “Have a glass of the rot gut, Mayor; maybe it’ll do you some good.”

  The mayor’s fat cheeks giggled as he shook his head.

  “Then what brings you by here?” Stephens asked.

  His little eyes narrowed. “I wanted to know if your man had killed that damn Johansson yet. We’re getting tired of waiting.”

  At mid-morning, Abbey strolled from her house toward the stable. She’d spent the morning helping her mother bake bread and a pie, but her mother could tell she was preoccupied and shooed her out of the kitchen. She had nothing else to do so she decided to pet her horse, which was all her father allowed her to do. She loved to ride and was good at it, but her father thought it was too dangerous for her to ride out on the prairie by herself.

  Abbey argued but to no avail. He’d threatened to sell the horse if she disobeyed him, and had no doubt he meant it, and told the hostler to tell him if she tried.

  At that time of morning, few people were out and about. She passed a man who smiled, tipped his hat, and continued on his way. Several women either said good morning as she passed, or like Mrs. Turner, frowned and grunted. Abbey forced a smile and nodded. She did not intend to engage them in conversation. She knew where it would go—where it always went, and that morning she wasn’t in the mood to pretend politeness.

  The huge barn-like structure at the end of town opposite where they lived was three stories high with a huge hayloft on top. On the side toward the river, a pole corral held a dozen head of horses with a large water trough on one end.

  Abbey glanced at the corral. Her horse wasn’t there, but she hadn’t expected him to be. The hostler kept him in a stall most of the time.

  Pausing just inside the door, she let her eyes adjust to the dimness. The rank odor of hay, mold, and horse manure engulfed her. Most women wouldn’t dare come near the place because of the odors, but Abbey liked them.

  Elijah, a man who resembled a licorice stick, both in size and color, was forking hay just inside the barn. He glanced up and beamed a smile. “Missus Abbey, you here to check on Princess?”

  When Andy had given her the horse, she’d named the dapple-gray mare Princess because she walked with a regal air. The horse was black as soot, but covered with light gray rings of hair called dapples. She smiled at the hostler. “No, Elijah, I don’t need to check and see if you are taking good care of her. I know you are.” She patted his arm. “I appreciate it. I just wanted to walk him some, get the kinks out.”

  He frowned. “Yes um, Ma’am. You not going to ride him, are you? Yore pa done told me to let him know if you go riding.”

  “I’m just going to walk him. I don’t even need the saddle or anything, just a lead rope will do.”

  As he placed the rope around the horse’s head, she smoothed the hair on the animal’s back. With as much nonchalance as she could muster, asked, “Have you seen Andy, or know when he’s coming back?”

  The black man glanced around, and then stepped closer to her. “No, ma’am, not since he took off. He carried that injured man to the reservation to protect him. But you don’t worry. He’ll be back by and by.”

  She tried to hide the elation bursting inside her, but she wasn’t altogether successful at it. Elijah handled her the rope but said, “Don’t you worry yore purty head Missus Abbey. Andy’s too smart not to come back and see you.”

  His words were like a salve to her soul. It wouldn’t cure what she’d done, but it took away some of the pain.

  “Thank you, Elijah,” she said as she led the horse out of the barn.

  Abbey walked the horse around the back and toward Andy’s burned-down cabin, hoping he might be there. He wasn’t, and she turned back because Princess didn’t like the charred smell. She spent most of her time worrying Andy wouldn’t come back, but Elijah seemed to think he would, and if anyone knew Andy, it was Elijah—even more than JT.

  When Elijah had more work than he could do himself, Andy always pitched in to help him, and without being paid. Because Elijah was a black man, the owner of the stable didn’t pay him much. He allowed Elijah to sleep in a back room in the barn, but food was up to him, and he didn’t always have enough to buy food. But Andy always made sure he had something to eat.

  Elijah put Princess back in the stall, and she rubbed the horse’s back and said, “Elijah, I’m worried about Andy. He has a lot of enemies already, and then he jumps in and helps this man he knows nothing about.”

  “Yes um, Missus Abbey, he has enemies. Ain’t any of Andy’s making. The folks in this here town think because he’s white but can’t speak all that well, Andy ain’t smart. They be wrong. Andy is smart, and he knows who all his enemies is—all of them, ma’am.” He looked at her a long moment. “Be careful whose you trust, ma’am.”

  As she backed out of the stall, he shut the gate. “Ma’am, Andy had no choice. Had to help that man. It’s in his nature to help the helpless. He doesn’t like to see suffering. If ‘n you going to appreciate the man he is, need to know who he is.”

  She left the stable with her mind in a fog. She knew Andy, but did she really know him? She’d talked to him, mostly her talking and him listening, and he was a good listener, he just didn’t open up. She figured a lot of that was his trouble understanding what words meant.

  He’d had an Indian wife, but she had no idea what happened to her, or where she was. This thought caused a pain to rip through her. Maybe Andy still had a wife. She’d gotten the impression he wasn’t married, but she didn’t know. Maybe he was with her right then. He might even have kids.

  Tears welled in her eyes. He was the kindest, most gentle man she’d ever known, but she didn’t know anything about him besides she loved him.

  With nothing else to do, she entered her father’s dry goods store. This was another place she liked the odors, but in her mood, she paid them little attention.

  Her father glanced up as she came in, checked his watch, then said, “Could you watch the store while I run down to the saloon a momen
t and talk to Hiram? Not much going on this time of day.”

  “Sure, papa. Go ahead. Take your time.”

  “You okay, Abbey?”

  “I’m fine, papa, just a little down today is all.”

  After her father left, she busied her hands with folding and arranging dress fabric on the selves. She was like that when Laura Sutton, one of the few friends Abbey had in Heath, hurried into the store.

  Where Abbey was slim and blonde, Laura was just the opposite: dark hair, large and robust, and strong as an ox. The two women had few things in common. Beside the women who worked in the saloon, they were the only young, single women in town.

  “Abbey, I just saw one of those girls who works in the saloon. She didn’t have any makeup on and she looked just about our age.”

  This was a subject decent young women were not supposed to talk about. They were supposed to act like those women didn’t exist, and that went double for what the women were paid to do. Despite that, curiosity got the best of Abbey. “What was she doing?”

  “She looked to be taking a load of laundry to the river,” she whispered. Laura’s voice got even lower. “Ever wonder what it’s like to have a man do it to you?”

  Fire engulfed every pore of Abbey’s body. Even her hair seemed to burn. They’d now gone well past a topic decent women were not to talk about, or even think about. “Laura,” she said in a tone that should have been shocked, but didn’t quite make it all the way.

  “Have you ever thought about it with Andy?” Laura asked.

  Abbey hadn’t thought it would be possible for her face to burn anymore than it already did, until that moment. “Of course not,” she lied in her most disgusted tone.

  The ringing bell over the front door was a welcome relief, until Abbey saw who had come in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The inside of Worm’s lodge smelled like smoke and hides, but no one paid attention to the odors. Cap’s reaction to the yellow rocks Andy had dumped on the robe seemed to choke the oxygen out of the air. Even Worm, who didn’t speak a word of English, realized something was different.