Red Dead Renegade

by Onkwehonwe Kashatstenhshera

From East To West: 5 seek their destiny. A lonely old warrior trying to save the western tribes from the same fate his suffered, an ex slave turned soldier seeking revenge , a bandida who sells guns to enemies of the state,a disgruntled gold miner & an ex confederate turned outlaw unwilling to accept the Union's victory. Will they find peace after the endless bloodshed?

10. Memories Old & New

For My Rakeniha

1812

"Now we become reconciled as you start away. Once you were a War Chief of the Five Nations League and the United People trusted you as their guard from the enemy.

Now we release you, for it is true that it is no longer possible for us to walk about together on the earth. Now, therefore, we lay it (the body) here. Here we lay it away. Now then we say to you, persevere onward to the place where the Creator dwells in peace. Let not the things of the earth hinder you. Let nothing that transpired while you lived hinder you. In hunting, you once delighted; in the game of lacrosse, you once took delight, and in the feast and pleasant occasions, your mind was amused, but now do not allow thoughts of these things to give you trouble." "Let not your relatives hinder you and also let not your friends and associates trouble your mind. Regard none of these things." "Now then, in turn, you here present who are related to the man, and you who were his friends and associates, behold the path that is yours also! Soon we ourselves will be left in that place. For this reason, hold yourselves in restraint as you go from place to place. In your actions and in your conversation do no idle thing. Speak no idle talk, neither gossip. Be careful of this and speak not and do not give away to evil behavior. One year is the time that you must abstain from unseeming levity, but if you cannot do this for ceremony, ten days is the time to regard these things for respect."

He looked down at his deceased father and whispered into his ears for messages to give to the Sky People. He asked them to send him visions on how to help the People. "Tell mother I love her. I will either join her in Karonhia:ke or join you with Aeiriskoi."

Kahwihta looked to him. "I cannot believe he is gone. He deserved better than this. Those bluecoats...they're evil..."

Tecumseh and The Prophet were there as well. "He was a great man, your father. He was a friend to the Shawnee. And the Delaware and Abenaki. He believed in our new confederacy. He gave his life for it and for you."

He noticed a delegation of strangers who were not Kanienkehaka or Rotinosionni. The Cherokee blooded Seneca adopted warrior rose at his side with his tobacco pipe tomahawk in one hand and a flintlock pistol in the other. "The Cherokee dogs are here."

"Your father was Cherokee..." Stated the woman.

"I'm not one of you. They treated me as though I was white simply because my mother was. The Cherokee are no people of mine."

"Your father made the choice to marry a white woman."

"But I didn't. I was a consequence of that choice. That community rejected me because the wrong parent was the wrong way. I would just as soon desttroy every Cherokee I see. Plus my father was a warrior in the war with the 13 fires 18 years he ended up signing the treaty years ago."

"You killed a clan mother. If we wanted to kill you we'd be right to do it..." Growled the warrior.

"She got herself killed for rejecting a child. The world around us is changing for the worse and we can't even move past the limitation of clan relations and rules of bloodlines. Does it not take a man and a woman to make a child?"

"But the Earth is a woman and pregnancy is like the crops themselves. You think like a white man. The opposite of the way we think," The angry Cherokee born Seneca snarled. "And that is why the Onondowaga nation will always be mightier than you. The clanhood goes through our women as well. The mother. But they wouldn't consider an Onkwehonwe child to be white simply because his mother is. You're no better than Chippewas thinking a child from a Chippewa mother and whitee father is white. We are Haudenosaunee. We are not fools."

"Whether you disagreed with the clan mother or not you had no right to kill her."

"You don't know what it mans to be a social outcast. I wish our nations were STILL at war so I could chase twenty of you Cherokee cowards across the Teneesee river with just myself and my war club. You'd make nice offerings for the gods."

"Your white blood courses through you..." Stated the Cherokee woman. "You threaten me as if I am a white man at war with you?"

"You Cherokees enter treaties with the white man. You chose to stop fighting him long before we did. i may come from a white womb but you are the ones that call the white man in Washington FATHER. And now you call Thomas Jefferson. I don't fight on the side of the 17 fires. I fight against them. I remember what they did when I lived with my father's people. The Seneca remember what the blue coats do to us. BUT THE CHEROKEE FORGET!" He pointed the tomahawk at them.

She boldly demanded, "Do you dare say that we are not capable of joining our brother Tecumseh? His wife was from our Nation."

"My relatives, please! I implore you do not fight each other. The white man is our enemy. Not each other."

"Him and any Onkwehonwe who stand by him."

"I dont stand by the Honi:io..." Replied Diletagi. "Or the Cherokee. they did not embrace the strings of peace. They would rather embrace the white man in brotherhood than his own brothers."

"But my people the Chickamagua are on Tecumseh's side. And I bring the Mvskogee nation with me. Our brothers and neighbors."

"The Mvskogee are divided too..." Karonhi:io. "You can get Indians to a meeting but you can't get us to agree on anything. It's a wonder our Confederacy has survived so long. The O'serreroni want to take everything from us and everything they touch becomes a bad thing. They even make our minds and hearts sick with their greed."

"Yes..." Tecumseh added. "We have been mobilizing in the south. The Upper Creeks we can count on but teh Lower Creeks...theey side with Harrison."

"You should have killed him. I know you are an Elder and you did not ask my opinion but e has been a thorn in our side."

"If I had...our people would have suffered when the long knives sought revenge if I killed their governor."

"Did the white man not kill many Shawnee chiefs as he did Kanienkehaka? We need to kill more of their chiefs. Your people are made to suffer, Tecumtheh...they suffer in the peaceul times as well as at war. The white man';s dea of peace is anybody else's idea of war. Your sister and your mother was made refugees. The good women of your family."

"I know this, Karonhi:io. But when you or any of the other warriors kill unarmed people you make the white man';s wrath against us that much worse. It makes it harder for me to make an case. I try to do captive exchanges whenever I can. I do not wish to keep white men from their failies i would rather they go home to their families than fight us. But any Shawnee warriors they take captive in battle, if they have not taken a scalp then neithr should I.. The more important thing is getting those men home to their families."

"Tecumseh...in your tribe...are the clans starting to become a problem? In Onondowaga culture we have seven clans. We got four of them from Bark Eaters."

"We do..." His brother answered instead. "The senior clans are unwilling to back us up in the war to come. This is a war we never wanted but it's a war we must fight. Tecumseh is our leader in this world with the physical world. My job is to make sure that the Great Spirit's children are ready for when they must go to the next life. Too many brothers of the Shawnee nation have become lost to the white man's Christianity."

Tecumseh nodded with a bit of a sad expression on his face. "Black Hoof. He seeks to undermine us at every turn. We are the youngest clan, this is true. But if only the clan with the least authority and the smallest one stands up when others will not does that not tell our ancestors who are being good descendants? We are the Kispoko. We will not sell our mother Earth."

The Prophet followed up on that, "We meant what we said when we made peace with our Iroquois brothers long ago. But only a third o my own tribe can be relied upon. The older clans they wish to sell out our Mother to their Long Knive masters."

"If Shonkwayatihson is with us...we will.

"But he hasn't been married for five years."

Tecumseh smiled. "I would like to again one day. I don't know if she will ever consider it but the mother of my son,

The Cherokee women approached. "I am Atsila . Daughter of Atsadi and Unega the Chickamagua people."

She was beautiul. She had deep dark brown eyes shaped like an almond with skin the color of maple leaf. Her nose was thin but her lips were full and her jet black hair had bangs hanging over the forehead. Her brother was a tall Cherokee man standing six feet four just two inches taller than Karonhi:io and he had his headress on. He wore a red ribbon shirt and black pants. "These are my brothers Anacona..."

She also pointed out a warrior with a scal lock haircut. "And Ahyuini," She pronounced his name as [ah-yoo-ee-nee]

Anacona had a wife with curly hair who was Shawnee and Cherokee but socially Cherokee. Her name was Walela. She had a pair of flintlock pistols that she kept on her at all times. She began to sew up his wound with stitches.

"Are Haudenosaunee men always this difficult?" Demanded Walela.

"Yes..." He replied as he winced a bit.

"I'm sure that's not true. There are stubborn and good men in any Nation, any people," Stated Atsila. She smiled at Karonhi:io.

"I am not concerned with being good, sister. I want revenge for my father's death. That is what the spirits demand of me."

"Yes. My condolences. You might not believe this but my father and your father were once allied."

"How do you know about me?" Demanded the inquisitive 20 year old. "Sure, my rakeniha was a chief but I could be anyone."

"I can see the pain in your eyes. Pain from many moons..." She put a hand on his hand and gave a smile.

He asked Tecumseh, "How would you go about marrying a Cherokee woman?"

"You would have another wife besides Kawitha?"

"She does not have a problem with it."

"All women are jealous creatures you young fool..." Chuckled Tecumseh. "Most in my tribe choose to marry more than one woman. This or me was never the thing to do."

"But you've been marrierd more than once and you divorced them for small reasons."

"Cherokee could marry into any of the clans except two, that to which his father belongs, for all of that clan are his fathers and aunts and that to which his mother belongs, for all of that clan are his brothers and sisters, a child invariably inheriting the clan of his mother. When a young man had chosen a girl he wished to marry he would kill a deer and bring an offer of deer meat to the home of the girl he was interested in. If she chose to marry him, she cooked the deer meat and offered it to him. If she rejected the deer meat, it was assumed to be a denial of this suitor. This courtship required approval of both clans before courtship could occur."

The Prophet nodded as Tecumseh smoked from his tobacco pipe. " It was only permitted to court one woman at a time. Although there are examples of polygamy in the ancient culture, this practice was not generally engaged in. There were also instances of same-sex cohabitation, however, there was never a concept of same sex marriage or same sex courtships.

"What clan is she?" Asked Karonhi:io

"She is Ah-ni-gi-lo(la)-hi.Long Hair Clan - This Clan, also known as Twister Clan, Hanging Down Clan or Wind Clan. Gilahi is short for an old in fact very old ancient Gitlvgvnahita, the warrior women's society, meaning something that grows from the back of the neck". Those belonging to this Clan wore their hair in elaborate hairdos, walked in a proud and vain manner twisting their shoulders. They are teachers and keepers of tradition. Peace chiefs usually came from this clan at one time in Cherokee history and wore a white feather robe. The Clan color for the AniGilohi is Yellow and their wood is Beech."

"Thats why I always see her in yellow.." He realized.

He was soon aquianted with the Cherokee woman as was Kawitha. "You have so many clans..." The Mohawk woman stated.

"Yes, we are a big nation. But not as big as we once I ask you a question?" Asked the Cherokee woman.

"You just did. But you can ask another."

This earned a smile from both women. "Why is your friend so hostile to our people? I know he is one of us. When our nation and Senecas made peace in the 1750's we had marriages just like any old enemies. His nose looks like one of ours."

She was right. Despite his hatred for his former Cherokee compatriots, he had a distinctly southeastern look. "Dilategi? He was considered white by many Cherokee. Because his father was Cherokee and his mother was white. When he heard that we would be going to war with the United States...he smiled. Because he said that wherever there are bluecoats to kill there are Cherokee scouts not far. He said he would quench his thirst for blood with both."

"Is he going to be a problem? We have Chickamagua here. I trust Tecumseh but your Seneca warrior is wild and he has a grudge. i do not agree with teh ol ways some people have viewed men like him. There are many Cherokee who would not see it that way. He made no choice to be born. It was the creators will."

"I think he will only kill any Cherokees that are on the American side. There are far more of them on our side than there are on ours. So he won't want for Cherokee men to shoot. He also swore the same of the Choctaws. But none of them have stood with us. They didn't before when my nation warred with the Continental Army before. They will not now."

"If he has any respect for Tecumseh he will stay his hand against us."

"Yes. But just to be safe, stay away from him. Keep Cherokee women away from him especially. They'd remind him of the village that cast him aside compared to the one that brought him in. Come to think of it also best to keep the men away from him too."

"You know it was a long time ago but we used to be one people, relative..." She stated looking at him directly. It was curious. Cherokees considdredd eye contact disrespectfyl so he was deducing that she did not respect him. He looked her right back in the eyes well aware of the fact that it was considered rude if he did it too. If she wasn't going to adhere to her own cultural custom then he would not either.

The reality, unbeknowst to Karonhi:io was that she was intrigued by him and studying his face. "I know this...a long time ago..."

"Do you know the story of your people? We used to come from up say you came from us though."

Dilategi walked forward. "I can answer that."

"Long ago, the Onkwehonwe lived on a different part of Turtle Island. They lived where the grass grew tall and the Buffalo roamed; some say they had moved there from the desert where they had started their journey. They were friends of the Wolf Nation (Pawnee) and lived close to them, near a place where two great rivers joined. One day, the Onkwehonwe decided to travel north and east to find the place they were destined to live. They travelled up the great river called Ohi:yo. The journey was very long. Some of the people grew weary of travelling and decided to stay in certain places along the great river."

"One group went to the east and became the Cherokee people.

Another group stopped along the shores of Ohi:yo and became the Mingo. One group went to live along the south shore of a great lake to become the Cat Nation Erie. Some people went to the north shore of another lake; these became the Huron Nation."

"Other groups split away and found places to settle - the Tobacco People, the Neutrals, the Nottoway and the Meherrin, and others.

Finally, the main body of travelers entered the river that would take them to the ocean the St. Lawrence River They continued down river, heading north, until they met a group of people who were very different than the Onkwehonwe. They were shorter and smaller but there were more of them; these people hunted more than they farmed; and they had a strange habit of cooking pieces of bark with their food. The Onkehonwe called them Adirondack which means "Eaters of Bark" and usually refers to porcupines."

"The Bark Eaters were unhappy that a new group of people had come to their territory because their language and customs were different. The Ongwehonweh wanted to live peacefully but the Adirondacks wanted war. The two groups fought and many people were killed. Eventually, because there were so many of them, the Adirondacks were able to the Adirondacks were able to defeat the Ongwehonweh. The Bark Eaters forced the Ongwehonweh to work, to pay tribute, and to accept the ways of the Adirondacks. The Ongwehonweh were very sad but secretly remembered their own language, their own traditions, and their own way of giving thanks to the Creator. After many years of living under the rule of the Bark Eaters, the Ongwehonweh resolved to escape. Secretly, the men began to build canoes while the women gathered food and stored it away. Everything was hidden so the Bark Eaters would not know what was being planned. One night, the Ongwehonweh quietly boarded their hidden canoes and silently paddled away. They travelled upriver, retracing the path they had followed years before, and paddled through the night. Weaving around the thousand islands, fighting against the current, moving farther away from their enemies, eventually they reached Kaniatarí:io (beautiful lake) and believed they were safe. But as the sun rose, they looked behind them and saw canoes on the water. The men dug in their paddles but were tired from a night of exertion. The Bark Eaters inched closer and closer, planning to recapture the Ongwehonweh. With no women and children to slow them down, the Adirondack quickly overtook the escaped canoes. A ferocious battle began! Arrows filled the air, with little regard for the women and children. The Bark Eaters rammed their canoes into the boats of the Ongwehonweh. War Clubs and axes smashed the canoe sides and sent people tumbling into the water. It appeared all would be lost. The Bark Eaters prepared for one final assault and moved their boats into position. The Ongwehonweh did not know what to do. They sent a prayer to Heno, the Thunder God. And Heno heard their prayer! Suddenly, a deep darkness covered…

As thunder echoed across the lake. Heno blew a mighty wind that caused huge waves to crash into the canoes of the Bark Eaters. They were pushed away from the Ongwehonweh who began to paddle their boats toward a distant shore. But the Bark Eaters would not relent so easily! They tried to surge through the wind and waves to make one final attack. They were desperate to recapture their quarry.

The Adirondack notched their arrows and paddled forward as Heno sent his lightning bolts and thunderclaps raining down. Just as they were about to fire this terrible barrage, Heno sent a great torrent of rain that engulfed the canoes of the Bark Eaters. They were blinded by the strength of the deluge. Their boats began to flood and several tipped over. The men could not swim with the powerful storm beating down on them. The remaining canoes turned North and returned home, anger and resentment still burning in the hearts of the Bark Eaters.

The Ongwehonweh were also paddling but they were headed south toward the mouth of a large river. Heno drew in a fearsome breath which he unleashed toward the Ongwehonweh. The wall of falling water began to move toward them while the wind and the waves gathered strength behind them. The people feared they would suffer the same fate as many of the Adirondacks. Everyone paddled but the forces of Nature overtook them quickly. The people braced themselves as the wind and waves rocked the canoes…

The people braced themselves as the wind and waves rocked the canoes but felt only gentle breezes and small waves Heno sent to help push them along safely. As they neared shore, the Ongwehonweh turned and saw that the Bark Eaters were gone…they had escaped and won their freedom! They people sang their Thanksgivings knowing that Heno had saved them.

They landed their canoes at the mouth of the river and found the land to be good for farming. The forest surrounding the river was filled with game. The river was filled with eel and other fish and the shore was dotted with berry bushes of all kinds. The Ongwehonweh lived there and were happy and peaceful for a long time.

But as they multiplied, some bands of people began to leave that place and went to settle in other parts of the forest. Some went east to the flinty mountain area and others near a large lake where stood a large stone; some went west to the mucky lands and others picked a beautiful lake next to a large hill as their chosen spot. One group went far to the south and lived among the hemp plants. Those remaining moved up the river, through the salt marshes and settled in the hills. But the People always remembered the place where Heno had saved them and called it osh-we-geh (or Oswego) which means "the pouring out place" or "from where they poured out".

The five bands of Ongwehonweh – the People of the Flint (Mohawk), Standing Stone (Oneida), Hills once been joined as one people. The People of the Hemp (Tuscarora) stayed away for a long time, but some returned later. The People forgot the ways of the Creator and how to think with the Good Mind. Eventually, a man would come to reunite them...but that is a different story.

The Seneca finally opened his eyes. "I haven't told that story in a long time."

"Yes. We are distinct peoples but we are one..." Karonhi:io saw Tecumseh who gave him a grin. He thanked the Seneca for his oral telling. The Prophet approached the Seneca and began talking to him inaudibly but from what the Mohawk warrior could gather, it seemed like he was asking him a question. He supposed there was no harm in this but Karoni:io had to admit that while he loved Tecumseh, his brother was a flawed man and he had heard about his witch hunts. The same had been done in the Gai:wio faith and the Huron had been practicing it.

"I am deeply sorry for your loss brother. I know what pain it is to lose my father. As heartbroken as i was when I learned of his death, at least he went quickly."

He would talk to him later to make sure he wasn't trying to influence Haudenosaunees. He saw The Prophet as a traditional for the most part but then his desire to do away with medicine bags in their own culture just because of the fear of witchcraft was a step too far and even with that, he suspected he Prophet had some influence from quakers. In fact, he knew he did. All these years of building up the confederacy lead to now,

"Yes but his pain was proolonged. It wasn't easy for him. Death came as a relief. He gets to his other children my brothers and sisters. They all died of the white man's diseases when they were younger."

"I did not mean any offense. I do not wish greater pain on any man but atleat you got to say goodbye. I would give anything including vision in one eye like my brother Lalawithka to have gotten just a little more time with my father. He understood why we lost the war to the Americans. He had insight as to how they could be beaten. He told me that if I helped unite the tribes thee way his friend Joseph Brant did we would defeat the Americans."

"

"I don't want to be like you in matters of the heart, Tecumseh. Or as a father. I have much to learn from you when it comes to war. but I've heard of the reasons you divorced your wives..."

"Iroquois have higher rates of divorce than my people even despite only having one wife at a time the way I do."

"Yet you divorce them."

"Is it better that I wait for them to divorce me? i know I am not an easy man to live with. but my life also has not been easy. i have lost many people./ My father. my older brother...i should be able to have the kind of marriage my mother and father had. The women of this day are different from my fathers time."

"But your sister is raising your son,"

"Do not the women in your culture and their brothers not do most of the raising of the children?"'

"Yes we do thids buit you are not Kanienkehaka. You are Shawnee. This is not your way."

"Yes but I thought about this when we divorced. If I let out daughter come with me the way my son and his mother had, she could have been killed by the soldiers. I thought i she went west the way many Cherokee already have, she might avoid the worst of it. Just because I am no longer sharing her wigwam does not mrean I don't love and carer for her."

He took a heavy breath. "If I get a chance...maybe I will remarry. Or go back with my ex wife. If she will have me. I didn't think the call of war would make me miss her but...it has. I see what you have with Kawita. Love is in the air for you. You are a father. A young father at that..."

"You can be a good father and husband. Just as you are a great warrior and chief. The great spirit's medicine is strong with you. Your brother...he is your Hiawatha. You are like The Great Peacemaker. You know...when I saw how many of our people you could organize I almost wondererd if you were not Dekanawia reincarnated...:

Tecumsen smiled. "You honor me, little brother. But tell me the truth."

"You can't be so hard on your wife. No woman is pefect and no man is either. Naythawaynah...you have to stop treating him badly as well. He is your son an yet you treat him as though he is a white man because his skin is somewhat fairer."

Tecumseh listened and processed what he said. Tecumseh's expression changed. "You're right...I've been a terrible father and husband. I always said I was not an easy man to live with in that way. I..I dedicate my life to The People. Is it too much to ask to have a marriage by my standards? Not that of anoher man?"

Karonhi:io then paused. "You have given me something to think this is why I would have more than one wife."

"But how can you have more than one wife?''

He smiled. "That Cherokee woman is fascinating and a great leader."

"Yes. We will need more people to think as she does. I have come to depend on theh Chickamaguas sometimes even more than my own."

Dilategi and Kariwase were preparing themselves for battle. Kariwase had plucked his hair out nto the scalplock haircut just a handful remained. They discussed the plan.

Karonhi:io glimpsed an American and his boy. He screeched like a bluejay. The farmer and his son were fresh meat easily taken. He drew a circle around the fontanel with the point of his knife, then ripped away skin and hair with his fist. Kariwase claimed the older one with his own blade.

Dilategi frowned at the two dead bodies after the two men had finished them. "Bring them this way..." He warned. "We spilled blood on a Eskent's land..." Karonhi:io watched through the looking glass as the columns of soldiers were coming. All of them ready to fight. Red skin or red coat. "We can't let the Army find us here. We do not have enough for a battle...follow me to the pig pen."

"Kwis?" Asked Karonhi:io

(Pig?)

"Hen..." The Cherokee born Seneca said and he took the dead boy from Karonhi:io. The boy had scarcely seen ten winters while his father had seen perhaps thirty five more than his son had. "He was a widow. No mother. No wife. If you think about it we are puttin these two out of their misery..." He tossed the child's body among the pigs. "Throw him in, brother..." Instructed Dilategi as Karonhi:io stood in shock. It was one thing to kill a child. Quite another to discard of the body with such disregard but then they did far worse to the men women and children of the Six Nations.

Given time if the father had seen the small war party of Indians he would have gotten the army. Kariwase returned with a Rifle from inside the house. "My gift to you, my brother. Killing your first pink pig..."

He handed him a Harpers Ferry Model 1803 Rifle. "Are the regulars not using muskets anymore?" Asked Karonh:io

"They are but they are starting to make rifles to replace them..."

"We can't trust the English to back us in this war..." Karonhi:io stated. "They used us in the last war. My father fought hard alongside Joseph Brant only to lose when the white man went after the women. The English did nothing."

"Tecumseh has taken the Englishmen by the hand..." Repied Delitagi. "Though he says the English think they are using him but it is he who uses them. Maybe this way the Hon;io can be of some use to us..."

Karonh:io repied, "Tecumseh has the right way of thinking on this matter. But the war with the white man is not easily won. We have to cause a diversion. Eentually somebody will be along and wonder where that farmer and his boy are..."

"We also need to deal with the field hands..." Kariwase stated.

The Cherokees emerged from the fields and Karonh:io aimed his Harper at the returning warriors but lowered it and the looking glass his father had gotten during the war when he saw they had white scalps as well. Even the Cherokee women had. "We can feed many of our people with this..." Kariwase stated. "If we can get just twenty riders in here we can get the livestock and live off it for a while."

"What about these settlers we just killed?"

"Into the pig pen. The pigs might not eat any of them right away but they will when one of them comes by the farm for quarter or food."

The farmer and his son and the five field hands the Chickamagua Cherokees had cut down were being brought over. A few had used arrows or tomahawks. They did not want to make any noise that would draw the army.

Befoe long, each bloodied corpse was among the swine and Karonhi:io knew that they would all soon be eaten without the farmers tp feed them, the pigs wopulkd have to eat the people.

"Do you think we should even risk going after the rest of the livestock?" Demanded Kariwase. "That Army patrol we saw was just one. If the white man catches us here raiding farms like the old days he will hunt us without mercy and he will take it out on the most vunerable. Plus if we are caught with the cattle the white man will say we stole them."

"We did steal them..." Karonhi;io stated much toi the cause of the laughter of others thouth he himself did not. "But they have stolen far more..."

Dilategi sighed. "We can feed a lot of people with these cattle. I know the Prophet wants us to hunt and not eat animals on the farm but even Tecumseh and he have made exceptions when starving was the other can still feed many people and not just mine or yours. Tecumseh's too. And Little Turtle. His people too. The white man does not hesitate to eat our maize. Why should we hesitate to take his cow?"

"Because they are ike puny buffalo..." Complained Kariwase.

"It's our choice, Karonhi:io. If we take these cattle we will need to wait until dark and get the people here with horses to jhelp. If not, we must leave the dead as they are and leave the Americans crumbs that lead back to the British..." Astila nodded as her arrows removed the arrows from the bodies of the farm hands. "And nothing that looks like Indians attacked."

"We can probably still make it seem like the English did this...if it wasn't for the scalpings you did..."

"But many tribes did not scalp before the white man came..." Protested Kariwase.

"Try telling them that. Or anythiung..." Karonhi:io chimed in. "Would you deny the English and Americans also scalp each other? It is not just us! It would be eeasier to make this seem like a Britsh attack and take the cows. It's what the Brits would do..."

"What the King's men would DO is burn the farm and take the cows. Our people at our purest would slaughter cows and some left the bodies. They would burn rhe cows symbolicaly to not eat of the white man's cattle," Kariwase advised.

Astila looked to Karonhi:io. Dilategi wanted to take the cattle, Kariwase wanted to kill the cattle or leave them which was as good as killing them. Unless he was to do it by leaving the bodies there long enough that the crows would take nearby American patrols over there and sure enough somebody would feed them. She added, "I think you should take some of these back to feed the people or at least we should feed them before we leave them until the next white man patrol shows up."

"I know Astila is a good sister and she speaks with compassion as well as strength..." Added a Cherokee warrior. "And I know my brothers of the North have long since used the white man's cattle and his pots and pans along with our own old ways. But they say the white death came from those cows. And the rats of the field that also eat the white man's garbage. I would not normally want to kill one of the Creators creations. I've wanted more two leggeds to die than four legged. But I have to agree with your friend..." He said looking but not looking with a nod to Kariwase.

Walela and her husband had heard the predicament too and they both had settler blood coating their hands. He wit the tomahawk and she had used arrows and a scaloping knife. "It should be your choice, Karonhi:io...what do you think we should do with this farm?" She asked him. "This is your revenge. You decide."

He looked to those who opposed killing the cows outright and thought they should be used to feed a starving people especially at war but on the other hand, they would have to return with warriors. The nearest Mohawk encampment was about twenty one miles away. Same with Tecumseh's camp. Between here and there, there was a lot of hostile white settlers up and down the Ohio. He also considered the ramifications. If these particular white people had smallpox or any other kind of disease they were not immune to, they would have just transferred it via the cows who had been in contact with the white farmers. He also knew of the symbolic killings of the cows that had been done in the Revolutionary War.

It was like the white dog ceremony to him but unlike the white dogs, these cows had come with the newcomers. He knew that either way the wrong choice, whichever choice that was, could potentially doom the People while the right move might lift them out of the state of perpetual poverty and hunger his people had known since the white men from across ponds fought each other and had enlisted Iroquois help.

He inhaled, took a puff of tobacco and exhaled and then spoke his choice.

Like A Thief In The Night

"Just so we understand each other. I'm not an Army man. That's done. That's the past. I earned my freedom. I aint like them Johnny come lately's that waited for the Union to free us. I escaped and I would have died rather than be a slave. Taking orders to get my freedom tha t was fine. But I don't like taking orders. "

"You're taking orders when you take bounties. This aint different. You just have me and Sam and Moses with us. Plus ten more soldiers. All we can spare and all that we need to go after Sanders and his men. He usually rides with no less than twenty men but we got word some of them aint there."

"It aint like you gotta put the uniform on again, Lem. This is just to get Sanders. He's behind a lot of the death that happened back home."

"I aint forgotten. The man's a menace. He needs to be shot. Or strung up. I just hope that if we can get him soon we can get after Crawfish next."

"That's gotta fuck you up...knowing we done fought the white man..." Moses then looked awkwardly at Captain Valentine. "Fought the Confederates and all the people that were part of us being slaves and now we going after a colored man and that's gotta be the last man you put holes in..."

"I don't give a damn if he a Negro. He a Negro in name only. He killed my daddy. He's more like a white man. Only not even no white man killed my daddy. And as for putting some holes in him if I do that it aint gonna be with a pistol and it aint gonna be slow. Crawfish looks like a fat black hog in the middle but he looks like a crawfish in the face. That's why folks call him that. So I think I'll gut him like a pig. Maybe I'll take his bottom half and sell it to the pork man and take his top half and take it to the trophy shop man say I done caught the biggest crawfish west of the Mississippi."

"You aint gonna collect the bounty on him?" Asked Valentine.

"Nope. Even if I take my time with the bastard if I take even one dollar of the bounty they paid on him it'd be like I did it for the money. This is personal. Not business. I'll take bounties for any scalawag I drop other than him. I'd sooner trade the fat bastard into a shop and let them make him into bacon by the pound if it was about the money..." Lemuel said.

"You forget, Lemuel,..." Moses stated. "We all knew Crawfish too. We knew what kinda bastard he was. He was a house nigger even if he was too black to be one..."

Samuel nodded. "That never made sense to me neither...the yellow niggers is usually the ones that was telling on us to massah and even then really it was mostly women folk up in the houses getting raped."

'We were getting raped in the fields too. Not just the women. The men. Only difference between the house and the field is ones getting fucked by massah ones getting fucked by the overseer. See them house negro women I don't blame them unless they was telling on escape plans. But when I say house nigger I mean them men folk that knew what was going on and told. Who you think was more likely to tell on us? A woman or a man?" Asked Moses.

"Whatever reason Crawfish had in that pea brain head of his I don't give a damn. I don't care if massah broke him I don't care if they made him hate his own black skin. He had a choice. He chose to kill my pappy. He's gonna reap what he sows. Like the bible says..." Lemuel promised nursing his pistol.

"Ya'll shut up with your 're looking for these ingrates..."

Lemuel noticed a few of the men with them were Indians but they had scalplocks for hair. There was just four of them. "Who are they?" He asked.

"They're Pawnee scouts. We're a bit farther south than their natural territory but they been known to fight the Comanches and the Sioux..." Valentine said. "But that one..." He pointed to a big Pawnee who was six four. "He's a great warrior named Little Fox. He said some strange white men that he thinks were Confederates came through their land headed south."

The head Pawnee scout looked back at them and addressed Lemuel. "Yes. We were looking for Raaríhtaʾto fight. When we saw at least twelve men run through our land."

'Raar...what...?" Asked Lemuel.

"He said Comanche..." Spoke up the older Pawnee.

"That one speaks better English than the other one..." Samuel observed to Lemuel.

"He is not pawnee..." Little Fox stated. "He is from the Fox nation..."

"I thought you were the Fox people? And not just your name either. I see a lot of Pawnees with fox imagery in your tribe..." Stated Valentine.

"We admire the fox but this is not what our name means.

"Why did you join the Army?" Asked Lemuel turning to the older man.

"Started out as civil war fighters."

"Why? That was just two years ago and you're an old man..."

"I earned my respect from wars with other tribes. My great great grandfather fought the French. We fought the Huron too in the past. It thinned our numbers. There are not many of us left but we are still warriors. I have scouted against other tribes but in the war, I scouted against and fought Confederates."

They came to an area where they saw smoke a ways ahead. They were in a heavily wooded advanced on foot. Captain Valentine dismissed the Pawnees. They had eyes on the camp. They spotted a camp with at least fifteen people. The men were ranging from their 20's to their 40's. A fat man about seventy five pounds heavier than he should have been spat Tobacco juice. He had blonde hair and pink cheeks and blue eyes and was of German American descent with ancestors who came to the United States back in the late 1700's.

"Hell, I don't know about this plan, Jimmy. We're better off just keeping west..." He suggested. "We took too big a loss in the war to try and start another one. The Yankees are gonna lick us we pull a stunt like this..."

"You heard what Sandford said...besides remember Taft? He was in California last we heard. And he's on his way to Arizona. That state is ripe for the taking."

"Oh sure as long as Indians to get us."

"We're here where there's always Comanches in muh daddy's day but I don't see any damn Comanches around do you? Probably aint no Apaches out there neither. We got a chance to show we're a force to be reckoned with.

"Fuckin smoked Yankees are here!" Growled the sniper. "Git em boys!" A volley of shots hit the members of the 9th cavalry. A corporal, Ronald Smith, was hit five times in the chest and he fell coughing up blood as he hit the earth. Emmet Watkins took a round in the right ribcage and fell with a round in the left cheek.

Captain Valentine unloaded his Evans Repeater and he dropped two gang members, the first was a white male with a white dress shirt and overalls with brown pants and matted blonde hair that hung over a pink face like moss growing over. He hit the man once in his solar plexus as the man had two Colt 45's which he discharged at the Captain but his round hitting him first made him miss. The second gang member was hit in the teeth and the round went through the throat and out the back of his head decorating the tree nearest him with brain matter.

Lemuel aimed up at the sniper who had hit yet another soldier. He struck the tree branch that he was perched up on and the shot hitting it beklow him brought it to his attention but Lemuel pulled back the lever and zoned in on the gang memer again. This time his shot stuck him in in the right leg.

"We already won the war!" Bellowed Samuel. "It's over!" He yelled as he struck a gang member in the right elbow blowing it out completely The man screamed in agony and he turned firing his Navy Revolver and a round crashed into Moses';s left hip. "It aint near over! The south will rise again!'

Another round struck and hit Moses and this time it went through his left hand. He screamed in agony and another round hit him in the right shoulder. He collapsed as he was losing blood and Samuel got to his side putting pressure on his shoulder wound. Lemuel saw the rebel grabbing a diary and crawling towards the camp fire. He coughed blood up but gfrunted crawling in pain. "Fuckin...Sandford will make sure you get yours..."

"If by yours you mean that diary..." He tossed it into the fire before Lemuel it."

Lemuel snatched it ot of the fire and grabbed the wounded gang member who had done this. "You wasn't quick enough."

The man turned around with a Derringer and he turned around to fire but his own brains and skull fragments erupted from his left eye socket as the eyeball dangled from a tendon. Captain Valentine took up the diary. "Good thing you saw this when you did. And that I saw you when I did..."

"This is Corporal Miles Baker..." Stated Captain Valentine to a bleeding Confederate renegade. "He witnessed ten of his friends die in the battle of bton rogue. Five in th fight and five in the were executed just for fighting for their own goddamn freedom."

"It was war...! Ya'll could have all run north yonder up to Canada. Other freedmen been living up there longer than that But once you joined the war...all bets was off. No matter what reason...you gonna pretend you aint kill anybod who surrendered, Yankee? What about Sherman's March To The Sea? They didn't just rape Negra slaves. Sherman had 18,000 of em lynched."

"Bastards like you been doing most of the hanging of colored folks in the south..." Valentine sneered. "The Union Army has created men of respect ut of people you understimated. You'd think you fuckin rebs would have learned from the war. Why don't you got the good sense Lee had?"

"He surrendered. I aint agreed to anything."

"You ask me you boys got off easy but Lincoln know what hee was doing./ Forgive and forget if you swear allegiance to the United States. I spilled plenty of Dixie blood but seems to me the worst of ya'll got off easy."

"Yeah...some slave masters hung Negros but that don't do no good for them 18,000 Sherman lynched. You talk about us like we're the wrst enemy we ever had but at least we tell you the truth. Them Yankees are supposed to be on your side and they killed and raped you. See why you should have run north to Canada?"

"Befre the war, that probably would be what I'd do. If I had escaped before the war that's exactly what I'd do. But the war happened. It was fate. And I was supposed to fight. I don't know nobody wh got killed by Sherman."

"Lemuel you've been a big help to us with the Indian problem and these dixie holdouts. Will you do me the honor of having a meal with me in the officers quarters? there's a lot to discuss regarding this Crawfish scallywag's."

Lemuel wasn't sure he liked Captain Valentine. He was a brute and while Lemuel didn't care about Indians one way or another, he found it somewhat disturbing that he used one tribe against another. But to him it wasn';t quite the same as what Crawfish did to his own people. Lemuel, his mama his papa his grandparents and siblings and every friend he knew had no tribe.

He'd heard of some freedmen being adopted into the Five Civilized Tribes but Lemuel had not encountered any of that on the border between Mississippi and Louisiana despite both states being Choctaw, he had not seen any and had not even learned they had slaves until the war itself. He also felt he was stringing him along to just pay him under the table and not a soldiers pay. We wondered how a Captain could even afford to pay him.

But he knew sometimes you had to go along to get along. "Why not."

He looked at what looked like some kindd of fish. It was covered in carrots and onions. "What tyou call this?" Inquired Lemuel.

"It aint something you would have ever got in the Army. Neithe did I for that matter. No, Lemuel, just because we are at war doesd not mean we can not eat well."

He took a bite of the sipped hot chocolate with it, to match what Captain Valentine had. He indulged in the meal. He took three bites and chewed slowly and carefully.

"Who was the first Rebel you killed?"

"My first battle was Fort Sumner. The day the 54th lost half our men in one battle. We were coming up over the ramparts. Shaw was with us of course. I saw a short man with wiry hair like the color of a sunset. He was blue eyed like you. But his face was caked in mud and dirt. Looked like he had come from a different battle. He fired right at me but the gun misfired and it went near my left shoulder."

He paused a moment and took another sip of hot chocolate and then sighed. "I fired my shot and hit him right here in the chest. Just below the heart. He was still alive when he fell...he might have lived maybe...but I was so dead set on punishingf every damn Rebel I saw. You don't understand. To be a slave your whole life and runaway. I been goingfoff then to find out not only are you not a bad slave you find out it's been against the law to hold you captive..and that it aint me who was the criminal it was the Confederates. So I cloaked myself in the law. This aint perfect this here law but emancipation still got us free."

He set teh cup down. "I ran over him like he was just a part of the same ground he was standing on. My left foot pushed down on the wound and I felt my pants get warm with his blood. I remember him coughing..."

Captain Valentine smiled at that. "Is that funny to you? My old war memories?" Challenged Lemuel.

"If you stepped on a dixie as he was dying?" Captain Valentine's grin grew wider. "Yep. It's funny. You know..." He sniffed hard as he began to sharpen some wood with a knife. "Last thing a fella does before he dies is shit his britches. I'm sure you known that long before you went to war...given what you been through."

"So what's your point, Captain?" He demanded with venom in the last word.

"My point is...you squeezed that inbred dixie fucker like a tube of paste. Made him shit his britches even sooner than he was gonna. You don't see the humor in that?"

"Stepping in shit? Not exactly."

"One day you will. Yopu'll see someday, Lemuel. We all step in shit. Whether it's the indigent..uh...that is men without homes. The beggars...or the president of the United States. Everybody has stepped in shit at some point. When you think about it like that...it aint hard to see why we're more alike than not."

"So if you think that way how come you hate the Irish so much? It aint like there was ever mick overseers whipping you..."

He then added, "It's funny...in the south I had micks whipping me who had forgotten they were micks. But then there was fresh ones in Union Blue that had a hand in emancipation...and you're a Northern Captain yourself."

"There is no Northern Captains anymore, Lemuel. Or Southern Captains. We won the war. You're free, the dixies are licked. They had to rejoin the Union."

"I'm not sure that'll keep. That's why I got the hell outta Missisipi. I didn't want to be anywhere east of the Missisipi or even near it. I need to go farther west."

"The reason I hate those paddies is that they burned New York City to the ground just five years ago. Plus...my ex...LATE wife...slept with a paddy. Now her..." He smiled. "I made an example outta her. The mick? I got my hands on that little bastard. Illiterate bug eyed son of a bitch. When I was at West Point. He did that. To this day he walks with a limp and speaks funny. It aint him they hear when they talk. It's me."

"You killed your wife?"

"Till death do us part. I don't believe in divorce. That's adultery if I get remarried. She broke my heart so I broke her neck. But the lephrachaun...him I wanted to suffer."

So that's why you hate micks, huh? They stuck your old lady? Lemuel chuckled on the inside. He then added, "You know they burned colored orphanages down right? In New York City. Attacked children. Al because those cowardly micks didn;t want to fight. They were pissed the coloreds didn't have to fight but they did."

"If you think about it...I can agree with that. ou make a better soldier if you believe in what you're fighting for."

"Yes but those paddies came here many of them ilegally and they carr diseases. Not to mention this is a protestant country if they want to pray to the virgin mary Canada or Mexico is the place for them. They betrayed the US in the Mexican American war juist because of that you know...If you're going to be a citizen of a country you willingly immigrated to you should have to fight."

"I don't know Even witj my own people im sure if we weere told the men had to fight and the women and children could run away we would have. It's a little diferent for us than the Irish. We would have done anything to not have to go back."

"Yeah but they are coming here from starvation. Which is their own fault. Potatoes come from America. Yet those paddies became so dependent on it that when a famine struck, they died. You ask me...I tink God wanted you to be free. And them to be exterminated."

"You do understand why it's strange or me to hear you say that right? Especially coming from the south."

"Well...what you don't realize is Gettysburg is as far north as the Rebs ever got. But because those Irish cowards didn't want to fight for their new country, they had draft riots. Now the war is over and people hae forgivena nd forgotten what the mick traitors did in Manhatan and now everybody is worried about the Chinese. But the Chinese and the Negro did not burn Manhattan to the ground. Many of my men were fresh off the battlefields of Gettysburg just to find potato eaters had destroyed the city. So we showed no mercy."

He took a puff from his tobacco pipe. "You see...the Draft Riots...with the Irish killing colors and attaclking the rich on Wall Street...from the Irish point of view that's the right thing to do. They were angry that the rich were exempt from that draft and they were angry that coloreds didn';t have to fight. They saw it as them dying for a cause that wasn;tt their own/"

"I can sympathize with that. But they should think about the fact that despite THIS war being the first one that got us all off the plantations, we fought in every war this country has been in. And those soldiers that fought got their freedom but not the entire race. So if they were mad they had to fight so,mebody eldses fight they can get mad at the colored m en that didn't fight and just ran wih the women and children to Canada. But me? I wanted revenge. They can't get mad at me. I fought for myself and my family. If they want to get mad at the Negros too yella to fight the same white man that enslaved us I understand."

He had a bit of respect for Valentine in that regard. "Really, I'm the same way with Indians..." Valentine added. "I have deep admiration for the Iroquois Conederacy. You know who Ely S Parker was? Seneca Injun Robert E Lee surrendered to. See the Iroquois Injuns got themselves a law called Great Law Ofp Peace. They don't allow slavery in their constitution. Or whatever the fuck they call it. But them Cherokees..."

"I know about the five civilized tribes. You might almost say the Yankee tribes whipped the Confederate tribes too. That don't explain why you hate western Indians though."

"Truth is I don't. But it's my job to place them on the reservation and make sure they don't attack settlers or other tribes. And...when you lose friends in battle...like Fetterman...it creates resentment. So...i have the most hate...for Conferate Indians and Dixie whites. I don't intend to fight every Indian on the plains. Just the Sioux. I suppose that colored fella you're gunning for over your dady is just as bad too biut he's yours. And of course the Irish. You asak me that attack on Manhattan that they did was the TRUE farthest northern attack the Confederacy ever did on our soil. Not Gettysburg. I blame the Irish for all that terror."

captain valentine nodded. "My first was at the Battle Of Fort Wayne. Out in Delaware county oklahoma. I was reassigned to another unit after that battle but it was my first taste. I learned back then that if we wanted any results in any war against Indians or white men it wa smart to have Indian allies. We had pro Union Cherokees. The Choctaws, Lower Creeks and Chickisaws were on the Confederate side of the battle."

He pulled out som whiskey which he put in his own chocolate. He offered some to Lemuel who politely declined. The Captain continued. " We come upon Johnny Reb around 5AM. Most of their men were sleeping. Just enough were awake for them to put up a fight but they were spread too thin. This was important. Because in those days we lost more battles than we won."

He took his drink. " Despite early Federal reports that he had as many as 7,000 men, Cooper in reality had roughly 1,500 men at his disposal, with Howell's Texas Battery of four artillery guns in the center of his three-quarter mile line. Blunt positioned howitzers in place to duel with the Confederate artillery, then deployed the 2nd Kansas, which soon pushed back Confederate skirmishers from a ridge fronting their main battleline. When the balance of Blunt's division arrived, which I was with, we attacked, concentrating on the center of the thinly spread Confederate battleline."

Lemuel lit a cigarette as he listened.

"His howitzers silenced the lone enemy battery, and the Kansans and Cherokees opened a wide hole in Cooper's center. Within a half-hour, much of Cooper's ill-trained force was in full retreat minus their artillery, with Blunt in pursuit for nearly 7 miles before halting. Blunt lost 14 men; Cooper approximately 150, including a reported 50 dead who were buried on the battlefield."

"War is hell...it seems like...or maybe armageddon. I remember wishing I was at that plantation when the cannons roared. It was what was familiar. It was the only home I ever knew. But I knew what was familiar to me was bad. I had to get away. I kept thinking the world was ending. Gota remember I learned to read in secret a few years ago ya see and the way the book of Revelations describes..."

The white Army Captain set his cup down, curious. "Describes what?"

"Well...just that some of them verses sound awful similar to a lot of the weapons and destruction and death I saw on the battlefields. We fought Johnny Rebel as equals least in that but it cost a lot of us our lives. I don't know about any other human conflict in history that was that violent. You don't know how many amputations I saw..."

"More than you cared to. Same as me. That gangrene is some nasty rotten stuff. We had to amputate arms and legs or them boys would have died. I saw a lot of them die from that."

"Thi8s here journal aint got shit but a map..." Moses announced. "Sir!"

"It looks like Wyoming. I know other scouting parties have been to this part of the territory but there's not a lot out there. There's just flat land. There's a railroad out there and a small station but aint much in the way of that. I know th area though. It aint that far apart from where we had the Fetterman Fight. I've had it with these damn Confederate sons of bitches. We'll need to make our way back north and see what the hell it is these fool want with the railroad and station out there."

"I know..." Stated a colored soldier standing five eleven with glasses and deep mahogany skin and kinky hair. He had skinny legs and a narrow bean pole body. He weighed more than he ever had in bondage but he was still skinny. "They aint figured out they're whipped yet?"

Valentine turned to him. "You're dismissed, Lemuel. You done good today. We'll try and get what we can outta that sack of shit Dixie rat. If you need more work, I have more for ya later. For now, get some rest. Stop by the Negro saloon if you want. You aint officially one of my men. But I'm afraid Moses and Samuel will be busy for the rest of the night."

Lemuel started towards a restaurant making sue it was colored. It was. He was delighted to see that there was fish on the menu. He ordered some with a beer. An older negro closer to age forty with gray hair and a scar just above his right eye addressed him without looking at him directly. "You know you carrying on all uppity down here in the south i can tell you aint from round here. Must be from somewhere like Philadelphia."

"I was with the 54th Massachusetts. Until i wasn't."

"I was Navy myself little brother. See you might feel safe cause they got all these Yankees round here. thinking you equal to the white man. Mouthing off to ex Confederates. But it's real easy to get into trouble doing that round here. i saw me some combat, boy. Killed white folks from a distance. And even i don't act like that."

"Maybe that's trhe problem with the older generation. I respect my elders till they don't respect me. I mean that with all due respect suh...it was my generation that went out there and started fighting. You look near on twice my age now! I don't rely on no white man to fiht my battles for me. See i knew even though they aint all bad they aint all good even in the north and I knew I could have just headed for Canada like some of the women and children that escaped the Foster plantation with me. But what few men there was of us stayed behind to fight. Even white folks that was sympsathetic...what if they lost cause there wasn't enouhh soldiers? When I found out we really could fight and Lincoln wanted us to i saw that as a sign from God."

"I don't know where the Foster plantation is but it sure as hell wasn't around no Texas. White folks around these parts would chop your foot off. String you up being as uppity as you is. There's no way you was this way with the white folks what had you..."

"You think they're any friendlier in Mississippi, friend? They aint. Only reason i wasn't strung up and castrated is cause I escaped..." He lifted the back of his shirt up. "But I got scars just the same as I know you got em. Most of em is from when I was just a boy."

"You still a boy. You just passing through so you aint gonna be the onee that has to suffer when the army pulls outta the south and trust me it's gonna already done started pulling Navy out. i don't know what the Army and Navy need to help make sure things don't go back to the old days but maybe they need more colored folk to sign up for the Army. Cause them Rebels is just gonna wait out the Yankees and then take they rage out on all us! thety already did."

"I'll try to keep that in mind. But what's the point of emancipation if things are only a little better?"

"You got the confidence of youth, boy. But not patience. I can see in your eye you got murder in it/. Not just soldiers heart. What's your name Greenhorn?"

"Lemuel Freemen sir. But I gone by Reeves too. That's my masters...former master name. "

"I'm Bartholomew Heaveaux. Most folks call me Shifty. I reckon I don't look like no St. Bartholomew. Can't be a Negro named Bartholomew."

Lemuel shook his hand but in his mind, he wondered why he was given that nickname. He understood the name aspect but not why he was called that. "So who you looking to kill, Lemuel Freemen? White? Colored? Injun?"

"In the near future, I figured I'll kill the man who killed my papa. He was a house nigger."

"Ah. Aint no shortage of them .you know...these4 days ater the things I saw in the war and did in the war...it seems the only people I got much in common with are other soldiers."

Soon Lemuel ate. It was good. He hadn't had meat that was familiar to him in a long time. He was used to the kind of foods you would find on the plantations and later with the colored enclaves. He tried to not eat things such as chitlins or pigs feet the way most of his people did. He could tell it wasn't good for him based on how sluggish he fel afterwards. Even then, it had been a year since he'd had catfish and while it had nothing on mama and grandmamas recipe, the truth was nobody else's could.

That being said, he wasn't used to the gamey deer and elk meat that was so common out here. He had yet to try any buffalo just yet either but he missed mama's cooking from back when he was younger. He had a fresh plate of fish taken from the river with a side of beans.

"I'm the same way..." Lemuel stated with a mouthful of fish. He ordered a root beer to go with it. It seemed to be this new drink on the frontier. Or at least new to him. It went down well with the fish. He'd finished the beer he'd ordered since he didn't want to overdo it and it was the perfect amount to have with a meal to him. "Course...i seen a lot of outlaws and religious types ouit west. Doesn't seem to be too much more in between."

"Wel now that's where you're wrong, boy. You got the working girls, you got the bankers, you got the cowboys and one outta four of them is a Negro like us. You got the barbers, doctors, butcher shops and even your circus men out here. You'll see some strange things in the west. And snake oil salesmen."

"I seen some strange things alreay..."

"Nah, greenhorn you aint seen nothing yet. But if you ever want to go from being a good shot to a great shot with that big iron I can teach you some things. I understand why you wanted to leave Mississippi but you ait gone far enough west to not still be in thee south. Sometimes you can fight back on a small scale but there's other ways you gotta fight back carefully."

"Kind of like a slow down on the plantation days, right?"

"Exactly like that, young fella. These Yankee soldiers aint gonna be around forever. we gotta start fending for ourselves. Can't rely on no federals to protect us from a lynching."

"I hear ya but the white boys got more people and more guns."]

"Sure. Still don't mean you gotta be one of their victims. The road ahead aint gonna be easy but it's beter than going back to how things were."

"I was one of their victims since the day I was born. That's why I can't stand white folks for the most part. They think it's been a couple years and we supposed to forget everything before it? I aint no victim, brother. i'm a survivor. And I got business in these here lands.

Shifty wiped his hands on a cloth as he ate. "If you ever want to learn some more skills to help you in the long run, just come to this side of town and ask for Shifty. But you gotta let go of that hate for white folks., I don't think you hate them all the way. Jus like I don't. But we can hate the people that put us in chains. They deserve no mercy."

He turned to Shifty and asked, "Sure enough but uh...what do you do these days?" Shifty responded, "I don't still work for the Navy if that's what you're asking. But I do got my own boat out near Galveston Bay. I seen enough of Texas's deserts and plantations, kid. So I got myself a commercial fishing vessel. I aint working for nobody ever again but myself."

"You interested in bounties?"

"You'll have to do a little bit better than what you done so far."

"What you know about what I done so far ole timer? You aint my commanding officer you aint better than me..." Snarled Lemiuel.

"I know you aint got the man that killed your pappy yet. That tells me all I need to know. Now I know you'll get him and when you do, that's the day I will ride with you."

Lemuel didn't like that idea. "If you aint helped me by the time I got to killing him you and me aint got no kind of business riding together. You said you understood. You know what it's like to have house niggers fuck everything up!"

"You know I might have a boat now because of force of habits. But boats was how we got to this country. The water isn't a barrier it's a bridge when you think about it. And maybe being a fisherman for a living was my way of doing something I loved before the war without having an overseer telling me what to do. But the war's done, Lemuel. Ya hear?"

"Like I said, You wasted my time..."

"Boy didn't your mama teach you to respect your elders?" Snarled Shifty. "I offered to work with you and you done said no just cause I said you got to set out and kill Crawfish. That's your road, brother and I cant walk it for you. That part of your journey has to be taken alone. Me, I'd just get in the way of that. After you kill Crawfish who knows what adventures await you? Then you might need somebody like me watching your back."

"We'll see..." The younger man breathed with a huff.

Comanche Spirits

Karonhi:io looked at the younger man. "There hasn't been anything or anybody I've loved in a long time. It's all gone. Maybe I have descendants. But what will it matter? When I find them they will not know me. They will not know I ever existed. But I could at least go to the spirit world knowing some survived."

"It's not good for man to be alone you know...even for us priests who have sworn an oath of celibacy we still need companions. The brothers and sisters in the church. You I know are a pagano. But you are a virtous one. Como Virgil," Stated the priest.

"I'll pretend to know what that means. And I never took an oath of celibacy. You know...in my homeland not only are we divided three different ways between just us traditionals, the Handsome Lake practicers and the Christians...even the Christians are split three ways between themselves on our land. The Anglicans, Catholics and all hate each other but they divided our territories among themselves."

"Theree is great pain inside you, my wise friend. I hope and pray you find peace in your time on this Earth. And God willing maybe one of your grandchildren."

They didn't seem to know that or they didn't care. Still, he would fight. It was one thing these lords of the southern plains loved and while it was far from his preference of warfare, he had to admit fighting on horseback had its advantages but it went against everything he had been trained as a young man to do as a warrior. He had been a Ghost Warrior and their whole forte was stealth killing. To be on horseback on the open plains was very different from what he was accustomed to.

In many ways, it made him uncomfortable. The horse was a fast creature and a noble one and he was fond of horses but he didn't like the idea of using another of Shonkwaytihson's creations, the four legged animals in combat but he was getting training now every time he rode with Comanches he planned to learn their ways. It might help me find my son if I have any left. If I don't...i'll have to just kill as many ranchers, soldiers and lawmen as I can. If I can't have my family back, I will kill until my time comes and I am reunited with my wives..my children...

The pain of them being gone was a bit much to bear. As he looked at the young Mexican Native woman, he wondered if any of his daughters from his second wife could have survived. s

Red River glared. "We have to go after the Texans soon. And the mexcicans."

"We are going out raiding. Our band will work together with the Yap Eaters. There are many horses we can take."

Karonhi:io began to ride. "I should still kill you for what you did to my husband."

"Your husband got himself killed. If you're a Comanche and horse back warfare is your way of life an you usually win when you fight, then when you finally lose you should learn to do it with humility. Your husband was going to do something evil and I stopped him. I'd do it again. Now I come from a village where everybody used to torture Christians. Women and children too. So I know women can be brutal too. Which is why I tell you that if you would have tried to help our groom to be I would have killed you too."

"I would cut you down old man..." She snarled.

He grinned and held up his twin revolvers. "Equal rights and lefts."

"So you agree with killing women but not defiling them? Your people torture them with fire. I found out who you are. There are people in this state who fought alongside with you. They remember your name after all these years. NOBLE KARONHI:IO!" She barked at him.

How? How could they be alive? He wondered. He showed no emotion on his face to what the fiery Comanche was saying.

"I didn't ask us to be a hero. I kill for my nation, I would die for my nation and our spirits. But doing what he was going to do...he was no different than a white man."

"Who are you to tell us our ways are wrong and that your way is right? For you to try an change the Comanche way is to destroy it!"

"There are ways to be and ways not to be. I have done a lot of things I am not proud of. I've tainted my hands with the blood of innocents. But my people do not rape as you do. I do not. Everybody must have a code. I have spilled blood of innocents but that always was revenge. It was never rape."

"You expect me to believe that because your tribe is run by women that nobody dares to rape?"

"No but when they do and we have proof we can and did kill him. We got rid of human sacrifice and cannibalism before the white man came. You need to respect women more in your tribe. Is the only way any of you can be empowered is to be as brutal as the men? What about your role as life givers? Do you not know even that it is bad for a pregnant woman to ride the horse? The puuku?"

"You come from the forest. I have seen pictures of your homeland. It is filled with trees. We live on the plains."

Karonhi:io was amused by the young Indian woman trying to one up an old man or at least act like an expert on where he was from. "What would you know about my homeland, child?" He asked her.

"I have seen how the Indians in your land used to live I have seen missionary paintings of the people of New York and their homeland. We have many trees here too but there is much desert You do not know how harsh desert is."

"I have been riding throuh here. It has its challenges but it's nothing I have not survived worse of. If you think your summers are bad here you should try summer next to the sea."

"That is not the point," The Comanche woman replied with visible irritation in her face and audible irritation in her tone. "I have heard about how the Indians of your land sold the island of Manhattan for twenty four dollars. I have seen the taibos money. Both on dead Texans and on the wagon trains from the east. You traded what you cannot eat for the land and then you dare to call yourselves warriors?"

"That was the Lenape. They are to the south and east of us. And it was closer to a thousand dollars. Not 24. They were tricked as many ofd us have been tricked. Do not act as though none of your chiefs have surrendered to the white man, warriors woman. I know that some Comanches sit on reservations in Oklahoma rather than be free in Texas. You are right about one thing. My people fought. You could say we won and we lost."

"How does one win a war and lkose it?"

He didn't know how he would go about explaining that the war of 1812 involved Indians and whites on both sides but that like the American Revolution, another war a Comanche would know nothing about, most of the tribes had been on the Loyalist side. He had the feeling that if any of the western tribes had fought in the war of 1812 or the American revolutuion they wouild be extinct.

"Who are we meeting? You said there was some up and coming warrior...who makes war on the white man?"

"Yes. and yet he is the son of a white woman. His father was a great chief who was killed by the white man. At least that is what I heard. He did not know that she was white..." Stated Red River. "I have met this young man and I have no reason to not believe him when he says the white man did not kill his father but they did kidnap his mother and bring her back to white society."

"Still, how can you not know?! Adoptions or not...we've adopted white people into my tribe too but we knew they were not really Onkwehonwe."

"When you are that young and your mother is white and she is raised among Comanches and speaks our language based on her behavior he had no reason to see her as a taibo. She did not act like taibo. His mother was a captive. A different band killed her family.

Karanho:io scoffed. "So she never bathed? He was never able to tell her true skin color? Or ask why his mother had blue eyes?"

"She had gray eyes and he does too. So because of this he thought this was something that could happen to Comanches from time to time."

"It is the same as your people do. They must have! I might not have the authority of the tribe to kill you but don't give me a reasson."

"Maybe so but with them these people used to be cannibals before the white man came. What if this is a trick to get us all inside and eat us?"

"We are not Tonkwawa either, my friend, We onky =

Before them stood a tall man of Comanche descent. Every Comanche Karonhi:io had seen before him had been significantly smaller but this man towered over him. He had jet black hair in braids and looked Indian as any of the rest had but he had gray eyes. Karonhi:io was taken aback by this. He had seen mixed Mohawks with Dutch or Scottish or Irish, French or German parents or grandparents that had green or even blue eyes but he had never seen a gray eyed Indian before.

He said something in Comanche. "He wants to know what tribe you are. He says your haircut reminds him of Pawnees."

"I have never even met a Pawnee. But they used to be friends to my nation."

The man introduced himself. Red River translated. "He is Quanah Parker son of Petah Noconah. He is of the Quahadi band."

"Karonhi:io Yonkyats. Kanienkeh nitewakenon

I am Karonhi:io. I am from Kanien:keh."

"He wants to know if you will go on a raid into Northern Mexico with him? To get some horses. He also knows you are friendly with Mexicans. We are friendly with Mexicans too but only the Comancheros. These are the only good Mexicans. The people we are raiding are taibos."

"So..you are asking me to go to war against Spaniards?"

"Yes," Red River stated. "And any Indian dogs they have."

Karonhi:io did not have a problem with Mexicans as a whole but he had heard of how Mexican ranchers from border states had treated the Comanches and the Apaches. He had seen a lot of Mexicans that were Indians but there were some that were black especially along the Texas border and some that were white.

"Do these rancheros wear this symbol?" Asked Karonhi:io. He drew a cross in the dirt. He looked the chief in the eyes. The Comanche nodded.

Karonhi:io shot him a look of steel and declared, "I will come raiding for horse flesh with you..." He held up both Navy Revolvers asthey were fully reloaded. They road for the Mexican border. Another Comanche warrior, Mukwooru, asked, "Have you ever taken horses in war, uncle?"

"Yes. But it was years ago. We were never like you. We didn't fight on horses. That works around here but it wouldn't have worked where I came from. The land is very different from here. Texas..."

"Texas...you speak like the Cado. That is their word."

"I did not give much thought to what Texas meant. It's near where I thought most of my family were. Now all that is left to avenge the fallen."

"Revenge can give even a broken spirit purpose..." Quanah stated. "I blame the Texans for the death of my father and mother. I haven't seen my mother since I was twelve. The Mexicans came for my father and they ended up capturing my mother. I have taken a wife myself I am earning many wives through horses. My father...he held on but we heard from the Comancheros that the taibo newspapers said he was killed in the battle where they took my mother. But this is not true. My father held on for a little while longer. But then his broken heart killed him. As for my mother, I do not know where she is."

They were getting closer to the Hacienda of the Salinas family a large Criollo family that was based out of Juarez and whose family had originally settled the country around three centuries ago. But that family had warred with all kinds of Indians in Central Mexico only to later during the years of the Revolution against Spain relocate to Juarez when the Mexican citizens of Spanish and other European ancestry learned of unconquered tribes in the north of Mexico and the possilbility of finding El Dorado the long elusive treasure sought after in New Spain, they had gone there.

In the end, most of that family had perished in the 1840's from Apache and Navajo raids though most of the tribes that had raided them were those two tribes and occasionally the Kiowa. They'd buuit their ranch in the end and that was what the family had. "Then we both know what it is like to look for family members who are long lost."

"I had a sister who my mother had with her. Topsana. Prairie Flower. She was just a baby at the time. I think if she is still alive she would be about seven winters. I only knew her as a baby but I would like to know her now that she can talk."

"May the creator give you what you ask for..." Karonhi:io expressed. Quanah stated, "My bad the Quahadi is a different band from my father's band. But we have avoided the white diseases mainly by avoiding them. But my father...he made war on the taibos of Texas. And they hunted him. They came for my father but his medicine protected him that day. But my mother and Topsana they took. I watched my father wither away. That is why I fight the taibos now. And the Mexicans too. They must be fought too. They made an aliance with the taibos. To come for Comanche scalps. But I have taken my share of theirs."

Karonhi:io coudn't help but notice a distinctive feature that marked that the Comanche chief had white blood."

He figured the mother must have been the white one. He'd heard of there being captives from not only other tribes in the Comanche nation but also other races but he had never seen a non Turtle Island man who lived to adulthood unless they were adopted from a very young age but usually since Comanche boys were expected to already know how to ride horses and do tricks on their ponies by that age he found it unlikely that they had been boys of other races surviving to adulthood. With Comanches being a patriarchal culture that often meant having wives from other tribes.

It was usualy safe to say that in certain Comanche villages the women were primarily from other tribes especially since Comanche women had a hgh miscarriage rate. But female adoptees of white or black ancestry were not unheard of among Comanches. He believed he was looking at the son of one such woman. But based on his lack of inclusion of his mother when referring to taibos and how he did not extend this to her, he wondered if Quanah himself even realized he was half white.

The other tribal members didn't seem to treat him any differently because of it. Lotsee carried a Henry Repeater as they rode to the hacienda. "We will start to herd the cattle, viejo..." Quanah stated. "Help us get them!" Karonhi:io did as he was asked and remenbered what farming tactics of this varity he had learned from his time living among the Cherokee.

He let the horses hooves beat behind a herd of cattle as the Comanche village began to move the horses and livestock through the pen. "Indios! Disparo!" Called out a male voice before a shot from an Evans rang out at the Comanche war party. Wasting no time, Quanah drew first blood firing with his own Rifle from a seventy five yard distance letting the rifle give off two puffs of smoke as the shots rang out and one shot struck the man who had done it in the sterum, a man of Basque ancestry who fell clutching at his wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.

Another rifle cracked from the dark of the night and a Comanche warrior fell from his horse as a round crashed into his right ribcage. Karonhi:io readied his own rifle and as he fired down the barrel he hit a ranch hand who was firing a .45 at them and who had managed to hit another warrior on horseback. This time, a middle aged Comanche warrior from the band of Red Wolf and Broken Arrow fell with two wounds to the chest.

Red River threw his lance through the abdomen of another Mexican rancher this man a mestizo from the Senora desert with deep brown skin and a handlebar mustache standing five foot five wearing whitee pats made dirty beige by the dusty winds. The lance came out of his back and the rancher vomited blood even as the mounted rider snatched the weapon from his meaty flesh and the man's body dragged in the dirt for a bit.

Karonhi:io fired a barrage of rouds, four each at the Mexican defenders who had formed a posse and were pursuing the Comanches on horseback. Karonhi:io slowed his horse down as he came around a bend at the Llano river. He was hit in the side of his jacket and while he was unscathed by the shot itself, he was knocked from his horse. The 75 year old grunted as he hit the earth hard.

"Mother...why is your bosom not as soft anymore?" He groaned towards the dirt. He got up and looked to see three of the ranchers closing in. They had their Evans Repeaters trained on him. A Comanche woman rolled forward on her horse and let off six shots from a similar weapon. She hit all of them killing two of them with a head and a neck shot respectivley and wounding the last with three shots.

"Andale viejo!" Cried the Comanche woman. The sun was in the man's eyes as he got to his feet but he recognized the Comanche's voice. Only she wasn't Comanche. It was Elena and she was painted for war the way Comanche warriors did and she was dressed like them.

Quanah fired a volley of shots as four more goons came in discharging rounds at them and three narrowly missed the big Quahadi chief but he hit each of the men in a nice lineup of shots before reloading. Two out of the four were killed outright while the other two were writhing and screaming as the first of the two survivors, a Mexican from Texas originally who was now hit with two inner left thigh shots. The other had a shot in the right side of the back and once in the gut.

Mukwooru dismounted from his own steed with a scaping knife in hand and was upon the man who had been shot in the thigh like a leapord and as the man shrieked in agony and horror, the Comanche warrior took his scalp and then procedded to bring his boot down on the man's exposed skull. He gave a similar treatment to the other.

Lotsee , meanwhile, had expired her rounds from her two revolvers and had not taken the time to reload it so she was back to using a bow and arrow and she had managed to hit two ranch hands who were trying to fire on her from the left side of the hacienda.

The nineteen year old Quanah took a warlance and thrrew it towards a gunman who was just aboyut to shoot Karonhi:io. The tall young man smiled i a jovial manner as he looked at the dead.

"My first raid...I wanted revenge on white people for what they did to my mother and my father and all the women they killed at Pease River. There was thirty of us. We went through Oklahoma from Kansas. We took thirty eight horses and we killed and scalped two taibos. They tried to round up more white men to hunt us down but we stayed ahead of the, There was a war dance held in our honpr."

"That...is a hell of an adventure for your first raid. You are turning into a great warrior before my eyes."

"We rode with sixty warriors from our camp in western Oklahoma. We sweapt west and south into New Mexico. We ended up on the Penasco spotted US cavalry. We stole mules from the taibos army. We drove the mules into the mountains while the rest of took up defensive positions We fired at each other for two hours and none were hit. The soldiers...they left went back to traveled back with the mules. We were exausted."

He smiled again. "So this raid was a good one too. Maybe they will have a war dance in my honor."

Elena told him, "Senor, you are a great gurrero already. You are not even twenty and you have defended your people with honor!"

"You are a good woman, Sun Woman. Your peiople and mine were..are enemies. And the Mexican givernment has been a problem for us too. I am glad to be enemies no more with the Yaqui...'

"I have gained some of the warriors respect but not all of it yet. As for the government I hate those hijo de putas more than anybody could."

They spotted the bulk of the Comanche caravan up ahead. "This will make both my father and yours very happy...' Lotsee stated before she mounted her horse and took off in the distance to the east.

Elena turned to Broken Arrow and Red Wolf. "What are you going to do with your share of the horses?" She inquired.

"Those Zuni clan mothers of yours are suspicious of Numunuu..." Red Wolf stated. "Their men look at us like they want to kill us. But maybe these horses will be a sign that at least my father and my village will not raid this Pueblo. We'll even protect it. We'll give twenty of the horses we took to your people."

"Red Wolf are you sure?" She asked her eyes gazing at the mounted Comanche warrior. "Yes. We'll even try to convince some of the men to keep watch over the lands from a distance. Make sure no Taibos come to bother the Zuni..."

"I know there has been bad blood between our people in the past. My forefathers killed Zunis..." Admitted Broken Arrow. "But I never saw a point in raiding and fighting a tribe that did not have an appetite for war. I would rather fight a tribe that was horse rich. Or taibos. The Apaches love to fight too. They are a worthy enemy. And the Tonkawa...those cannibal demons need to be driven out of Texas..."

"There are people in Texas..." Elena spoke up. "Tribes. Como Karankawa. They're the true Indios of that tierra. Comanches aren't. You came north."

"What are you talking about?" Demanded Red Wolf with annoyance in his tone. "We are of THAT land. The Llano Estecado. I do not come from the north. North there are Cheyennes."

"The stories of the tribes. There are people from Tejas who come to our markets and they tell us stories. They say your people came to these lands two centuries ago. The Tonkawas are from Tejas..."

She could see the anger in Red Wolf's eyes at what she said. He turned away from her. His eyes narrowed however and he said, "And the Yaqui are from Arizona? Last time I remembered you come from Sonora country. And the Zuni are here...but New Mexico is Apache land. We have been here as long as my family can remember."

Elena could see she struck a nerve. Broken Arrow chimed in, "It doesn't matter if the Tonkawa were here first...tribes fight over land. That is the way of things out here. The Tonkawas eat people. I believe the stories of us coming from the north. My family does not tell such stories but the Elders and the uncles in our village do. The Tonkawas have allied with the Taibo. I know the Zuni, the Apache the Navajo, the Yaqui and the Utes want us dead or out of their territory. We have dominated these lands for many years. But the taibo destroys the buffalo. If the Tonkawa are friend to such people then they betray all Indians. Not just Comanche."

Broken Arrow exhaled and then added, "I would not kill all Tonkawas. We should just kill their men. Let them lay in the same grave as the taibo! But their women and their children we could make part of our nation."

Elena didn't like the idea of it and they could see it on her face. "I don't want to wipe out the Tonkawas either..." Began Red Wolf finally. "But sometimes when you kill a people you don't know if that is the last of them. Until it becomes years until any of your enemies or allies have seen you. But if it came down to Comanches or Tonkawas I will always choose us. My father would say the same thing. There are more of us than the Tonks but they are doing more damage because they help the taibos."

"If I see any Indios with the Rinches that are eating gente I'll avoid them?" Elena insisted. "But it's going to take some time before any of my madee's village trusts any of you. Even if the two of you managed to get the women to trust the two of you, they would never trust somebody like your father."

"They accepted your father didn't they?" Asked Broken Arrow. "And he is Yaqui. A genizaro Yaqui at that!"

"They did not accept my father because he was Catholic. He never tried to get my mother to practice this but he taught it to me and my brothers so they hated him. But even in the adobes i have seen Crucifixs on the wall. The church has captured many Indio almas long before me and my father.'

"And what about you, Sun Woman? Do you worship the white man's God still?" Asked Red Wolf.

"I was raised Catholic. We went sometimes to mass but not often. The war was happening when me and mi hermano were young. My father was focused on war in those days and our mother was trying to keep us away from it. But it's men's duty in Zuni villages to fight. But a man who has come back from war and has killed is considered inclean in the same way that a woman is during her moon..." She then added, "No he creído en nada durante al menos tres años. Desde que perdí a mi madre. Dejé de creer en la Mujer Araña pero también dejé de creer en Jesús y la Virgen de Duadalupe."

(I haven't believed in anything for at least three years. Ever since I lost my mother. I stopped believing in Spider Woman but I also stopped believing in Jesus and the Virgin of Duadalupe.)

The answer seemed to satisfy Red Wolf for now but she didn;t like that he was starting to sound more like his father and less like himself. Still, the hotrses idea was not bad. "I have an idea...I will take the horses to the gente but I will say it is a gift from you. That you are willing to protect this village from gringos. But what would you want in return?"

Red Wolf spoke up instantly. "Some of the crops. The people are hungry. There are many bison we can still hunt but not like in my grandfathers day. The taibos are destroying them. The Texas Rangers..."

"The Rangers are lynching Mexicans all over these deserts..." Elena stated. "I will take these cabellos to the clan mother but I can't promise she would agree to what you ask. Did you even talk to your father about this?"

"Father will not always be chief. He wants me to be his successor. I have to start making these choices now for the good of The People. A lot of our women are miscarrying. We need more wives. I do not want to raid Zuni villages and take women against their will the way some other bands have. I would rather that some of them over time agreed to marry Comanche men in exchange for protection. We can still bring your people buffalo meat. We would not ask for crops without bringing something ourselves."

Elena thought he was getting a bit overly ambitous but she liked that he at least had the people in mind.

"They might not agree to this..."

"They might nit..." Broken Arrow agreed. "But we have married each other even as we have fought before. I hate the Tonkawas just as much as taibos and I have always fought the Apaches and Navajos. But the taibos are worse than any of our old enemies. That's why we're even willing to fight alongside Apaches sometimes."

"It will be hard to sell them on you intending to protect them when you have just raided into the north of my country for horse flesh and now yoy have brought these horses to be traded at my fathers caravan."

"Those ranchers have wronged us too. The taibos don;t stop them from shooting us when we come south to hunt. They bring the cross. It is a bad sign to my people. It means disease will follow."

"The Quahadis avoided the white man;s disease by trading with Mexicans..." Reminded Red Wolf pointed out. "But they have the cross same as the American and the Spanish missionaries."

"I have to find my brother, muchachos. He is causing a lot of trouble in the territory and I don't want him to end up in a rope in a tree because of some Ranger posse.'

Old Friends Make The Worst Enemies

Dalton looked to Beauford. "Be honest. Even though you fought with us in the war could you have ever really seen yourself living down there? If we wasn't on the run I mean. And we were able to stay?"

"That's hard for me to say, Dal. We are under Yankee occupation back home. Anybody that rebels against that can only do it on a small scale. The south was supposed to be my new home when the war was over. I knew...win or lose I could never go back to New Jersey. Even if they didn't hang me my own family wouldn't face me after what I done. You know...I fought alongside ya'll in that one battle. But then I got reassigned. And you know what they had me do to prove my loyalty to thee south?"

"Corn hole a pig. I don't know...what?" Asked Dalton with a smirk.

"I helped take Yankee prisoners to Andersonville..." Bob said with a solemn tone and expression. "Now I know I was saying beforre how I saw the Yankees as traitors. And they are. But even I was surprised at what theey done to them boys there. I'd always heard the phrase starve to death before growing up. Winters could be harsh up there. But I never saw it with my own eyes."

"I...well...my condolences...I had no idea you went through that. It couldn't have been easy. Even though they're Yankees...they're still people..."

"Yeah...that's what I think too. Until I realize something. The Yankees raped more southern women than any of us raped of theirs. I don't even know if any of us did rape them but not only did they rape a bunch of southern white women...the Yankees also raped a hell of a lot of coloreds. I mean a LOT of coloreds."

"The records on the Confederacy got brned a lot of it. Who knows what the records say about who may have raped or pillaged what? Just cause there aint no more records on it no more if there ever even was don't mean that itt didn't happen. Cause you and me don't know what all happened..."

"Think about it shitbird. We weren't in the North long enough to have done any raping and the way we got licked at Gettysberg made sure we wouldn't never get a hold in the North. Shit if we had? Maybe we could have taken America back from the Federalists."

Beauford took off hs hat to wipe sweat from his forehead. "I'll tell you what. Whether or not coloreds belong in slavery or not dishonoring a woman aint right..."

"Most slave owners don't give aa damn.

The Pawnee's blade went through flesh and bone. and the man's forearm dangled loose. flopping on a thin cord of sinew and skin. His next cut was at the ear so rutally that it looked like his face imploded/.

"When does it end? There's thirty seven states. We can't make a stand against the government."

"If we take back the states the carpet baggars took fromn us we can. It will be more even."

"Hey, I never said i don't believe in the cause, Bobby. It just seems like all we're doing is running. You know at Gettysburg that was the only time I recall being in the north. And it ended bad."

"We still won a lot of battles for Dixie..." Insisted Sid. Crocks agreed. "Them bluecoat sons of bitches can't never take that away from us."

"But without Taft it seems lost..." Dalton said. "And I aint got a clue where Sanders is. And Patterson is doing what he can. But I don't know if we're headed in the right direction."

"Dalton, you're the one that killed him..." Reminded Beauford. "I understand why you done it but it don't change the facts."

"He was gonna leave the kid behind. I loved Taft. You know I did. He was like a father to me. But you don't leave men behind. That's what YANKEES do. We're from the south. We're supposed to stick by each other."

"He had to do it..." Crocks bellowed. "Taft was leading us like lambs to the slaughter. I aint going as far as to say he's a Yankee in disguise but he lost his way. You're still young Dalton but you got better leadership skills than he does."

"That boy aint ready..." Sid stated. "You still got a lot to learn, boy! And you should have just beaten him unconscious but instead you killed him. Now Robert is a good leader but it was better when the two of them was around."

Sid then mentioned, "By the way...goes without saying but we should all keep this from Crawfish. I don't know how everybody who was there would react to knowing what really happened but that nigger's untrustworthy. I know he killed a slave back on the plantation. I aint sure when it all happened if it was before or after emancipation but it was around the same time as when they started getting free."

"Crawfish is dumb but he's been loyal to us so far..." Stated Bob. "Aint no reason to cut him loose. Who knows what that man did to him that he killed? If he did it when slavery was still legal then he would owe his master. Probably get punished. Now i admit I don't know much about slavery..." The Jersey born outlaw stated. "But something tells me even though you'd think he'd be out in the field, looking at him, he probably got away with more than most slaves did. To the point where he almost wasn't even a slave. But slavery is over. So if he killed another Negro when that happened then the law aint gonna really be after him. They wouldn't pursue him for that."

"What's your point, Sid?' Asked Dalton.

"I don't trust Craw for the reason a lot of folks round the camp don't. He's a nigra but he aint even a dignified one. If he was willing to sell his on people down the river...just think of what he'd do with us if the Yankees come at us hard enough. Lovecraft wanted to be free but he aint really have a dog in that fight. Then there's people like Johnny Water and Greenleaf and when I think about them two I know they may not always be with us specially if they don't agree with Patterson but they'd never help the Yankees neither."

"Look here, Sid i aint trying to split us up. Last thing I'd ever wanna see. I just didn't think leaving Marshall to die was the right call."

"The boy only fought one battle. Why you care so much about a kid with a bum leg? Aint saying it was right to leave him but if was in charge I'd have mad the same choice. So would Robert.

Just then, they heard a scream and looked and saw a wagon with a cage in the back. There were three women. One was Mexican, one was Chinese and one was colored. "Please mistah!" Cried the third woman, a woman with a red ribbon in her hair and a yellow and white dress and mahogany skin. The Chinese woman was the palest of the three and she was attractive but dirty. She wore a blue tunic. The Mexican woman was wearing a green and red dress and had almond colored skin.

There were two men manning the coach. "This don't concern you!" Warned the man riding shotgun as he had a Evans repeater. "Law enforcement business!"

"They're trying to make us slaves again! Help us please!" Cried the woman. The Chinese woman also called out, "They will make us prostitutes!"

"Goddamn it, Mary Ann! Shut your hole or I'll blacken your eye!" Barked the driver.

\

"I aint Mary Ann! My name is Otta Mae!"

"Aint your business to tell us what our business is ya fuckin rube!" Sid sneered. The man aimed his rifle at him.

"You gonna draw on me, partner? I SERVED!' Bellowed Sid.

"If you fought for the right side then you know what has to be done!" Dalton knew of Sid that while he did not believe whites and coloreds were equal he didn't believe slavery was necessary anymore or at least that only one race or two should be slaves. He had liked Dalton's idea about enslaving Yankees, any of the freedmen who fought for the North or any Indian tribes that did but he didn't believe the civilians needed to be slaves way he looked at coloreds were that they were inferior but they had a right to be free and try to make something of themselves./

He believed that whether they were inferior or not, they had a right to give it a fair try. He was the same as any other white man from the south at his age but even with those beliefs he was still at his core liberterian.

"Come on, boys...he's right. It aint our problem. A greaser a darkie and a coolie are the least of our problems..." Stated Sid.

They began to pull off and the man with the Rifle eased up. Bob shook his head. "I don't like seeing women mistreated to matter who it is...I'll fight a damn freedman on the battlefield. My pop fought in the war with Mexico but that was men." Dalton pulled his horse to as stop and the others did teh same. He aimed his repeater towards the wagon kicking up dust in the distance.

He opened fire and hit the driver in the left side of the neck. Blood sprayed like a geyser from the wound and as he did that the man riding shotgun whipped his rifle around to shoot but Sid was beating him to the punch firing three rounds. One round hit the shotgun rider in the left shoulder and he fired one shot before dropping the Rifle. He ducked down as more rounds crashed at him and Dalton charged at him as the man came back up with a .45 Colt. Dalton struck him him in the right side of the chest and the horses veered to a stop with nobody to man the reins.

"This is...a big fuckin mistake boy...!" Cried out the shotgun rider. Dalton looked at him and the dead driver. They both had tin stars. "You're killing me...over them...? You aint no.." Dalton fired into his stomach and he cried out as the crimson spread across his shirt. Dalton told him, "When I said I was sorry I meant I was sorry you're dumb enough to draw on me..." He hissed. He then pressed the barrel of his Rifle against his lips and pulled the trigger. they opened the cage and untethered the horses from the carriage. "Two of ya'll is gonna have to share a horse. Doubt you'll be complaining much it'ds better than whatever they had planned for ya..."

The three of them hugged him and the others crying. "I know you aint really named Mary Ann..." He chuckled to the Asian woman. "Never did like that name much anyhow..." She didn't speak English. The mexican lady spok some. "Thank you so much mister...we owe you our lives!"

"Least I could do. War's over..." Dalton said with a sigh.

"I'm Otta Mae, that's Consuela and she's Li hua."

"Don't mind me saying...would you boys happen to be Confederates?"

"There aint no confedeates no more, miss..." Dalton replied to the colored woman. "We're long past whipped."

"The fact you said we says it all. What kinda confederates sticks up for colored women?"

"Believe it or not, m'aam we aint Yankees..." Bob stated. "So we aint in the business of killing women. No matter what side any husband or father or brother of yours may or may not have been on...alls far in love and war. War with men and love with women but..."

"We know slaves weren't treated none too good by the plantation owners..." Finished Crocks.

"My family aint slaves we was made into slaves long time ago. The Noir Codes out in Nawlins...but you right. You still aint answer my question."

"Maybe it's cause we aint in the business of answering the questions of a damsel or three in distress. Be glad we rescued the three of ya and you still got a chance at freedom."

"If ya'll got a problem you want I should go back and wait in the cage for them to come let me out? Haven't we been through enough?"

Consuela added, "Chica, ¡es mejor fingir que no hablas inglés tanto como ellos te van a escuchar!"

(Girl, you're better off just pretending you don't speak English for as much as they're going to listen!)

"We didn't say nothing of the sort but look miss...when America first made slavery legal we was one country. It's easy to blame the Confederacy..the south for everything."

"Your constitution says all men are created equal. I can't even speak English and I've heard of this. But this country treats anybody darker than you like draft animals."

"You're right. But that's the difference between the North and South. Our constitution was clear in language on where we stand. But that don't mean we all agreed with it. I would have fought and died to protect the institution of slavery...the economy depended on it and to me a little evil sometimes is justified when you do a lot of good," Admitted Dalton. "But I stopped believing in the cause when they started letting men go home if they had enough slaves to 'look after' as long as i thought they was willing to die in the field next to me i would have fought beside any plantation owner but they want poor white men from the south to fight poor white immigrants in the north and recently liberated freedmen when they aint willing to do it themselves."

"Where are you going with this, mister?" Asked Otta Mae.

"I'm saying just like the Yankees used to own slaves themselves till they got tired of it even though the country was founded on it, the south can always change too. We still oppose the Union. That hasn't changed."

"You're pretty honest, suh...what makes you tell lil ole me all this?"

"There's not a lawman in a thousand miles that would believe a word of what you might tell em about us. Even if they believe everything about what they heard, they aint gonna believe we'd tell the three of ya. We rescued ya'll from other Confederates. Risk getting a higher bounty on us..."

"I don't know if picking these whores up was a good idea, Dalton..." Grumbled Crocks. "They're hearing way too much."

"I aint no night lady, mister! Aint yo mama teach you respet for women?"

"i respect em enoigh not to kill em but there's sa reason women aint let in bars. they aint earned a fuckin drink. They weren't in the trenches with us fighting yankees. If somebody wants my respect they gotta be able to do what I do. Shit you wasn;'t even on the other side fighting us!"

Dalton turned to the three women saying, "Recent and ancient history aside...this really is a nice country and southern hospitality is a thing. Just aint every man in the south is a gentlemen that's the only problem."

"Well you fellas sure enough is..." Otta Mae agreed. "Can't say much for the manners of those men you sprung us out from under though!"

Consuela stated to the Chinese worker, "No podemos confiar en estos hombres. ¡Son forajidos! Se ven y huelen a problemas. Todo lo que huelen es a tabaco y pólvora, ¿no lo reconoces?"

(We can't trust these men. They're outlaws! They look and smell like trouble. All they smell like is tobacco and gunpowder don't you recognize it?)

"We're not being taken to jail because of them. Outlaw or not, they're all right be me."

Bob exhaled. "If the New South rises, we're gonna have to arm our freedmen. But just like the Yankees utilized the escaped slaves that went north we should have got all them colored plantation owners in Nawlins to stand with us."

"You gotta admit, Jefferson Davis was a flawed man. Lee I'd take as a president. I'd follow that man to hell and back after he helped me get some justice for my family...but Davis said the Confederacy is funded on the fundamental truth that the Negro is inferior to whites. And while we show our red brothers solidarity, who knows what Jefferson Davis would have said?"

"He lead Black Hawk to prison. I remembered reading about that in old newspapers from thirty years ago."

"By the way, where's Greenleaf, buddy?" Asked Crocks as he eyed Dalton. "Supposed to be with us again weeks ago."

"I'm guessing he likely got tied up in Oklahoma, brother. We can see about it when we get back to camp."

"We don't gotta found the new country on what Davis said..." Interjected Bob. "We can get rid of slavery without having there be equality."

"Is equality really so bad?"

"It don't exist in nature..." Sid sneered. "It's like we've been saying. How do you prove two men are equal? They'd have to equal at everything! Colored men are starting to farm watermelons and some of em made their living well doing I equal to them at planting melons? Can he outshoot me?"

"Then equality don't exist between nobody," Dalton stated.

"I was going to say that..."Bob replied. "There's good folk under every nation on earth but equality? It's all about the strongest."

"There's tribes i Africa that sold these people to slavery here. Aint none of them looking for no abolition," Chimed in Sid. "The tribe that sold other tribes to America are stronger for it. Some thirty years ago I met a few slaves off a ship. Said this one tribe called the Fulani both was slaves and they sold each other."

"I don't suppose any of you'd be open to recruiting more women?" Asked the New Jersey born gunman.

"Why not? Aint got enough women folk for the shall we say...swarthier members of our gang. Now you ask me or any papist priest, i say we're all pink on the inside..." There was a twisted glint in the eyes of Crocks as he said this with a smirk.

"You ladies want to join our camp? You wouldn't be the only gals there. If you don't want to join us, I understand. But there's safety in numbers. And well...I think I agree with Robert here of New Jersey, ma'am..." Otta Mae's eyes widened at a southern white man calling her a term of respect, no doubt a first for her as he could tell by her body language. "I hate to see a lady in trouble. I saw plenty of that in the war."

"I don't know...running off with a bunch of gavachos seems like a bad idea."

To Consuela's surprise, Dalton responded in very broken Spanish, "También tenemos una mujer y un hombre indios Cherokee en el campamento. Luchó del mismo lado que nosotros."

(We got us a Cherokee Indian woman and man in the camp too. Fought on the same side as us.)

"¿Cómo aprendiste español, gringo?"

(How did you pick up Spanish, gringo?)

"Serví con un chico de Texas. Aprendí aproximadamente un año de español. Hasta que lo mataron en...uh... 1865.

(I served with a Texas boy. Learned about a year's worth of Spanish. Till he got killed in '65.)

"We can't promise all the creature comforts a lady might be accustomed to but we can at least promise a bed roll and a warm meal at least once a day. There's more men than women but like I said there's enough gals there that ya'llshould feel welcome," Bob stated.

"You really from New Jersey mistuh?" Asked Otta Mae.

"Yes. Trenton New Jersey to be exact. Unlike these inbred graybacks who are no doubt good boys every last one of em I started off with an education and I was loyal to the Union. And I still have all of my teeth. See these boys are good boys but every last one of em is duller than a mule scalped by a Comanche. It was a tough call in the war."

"Well no offense but I'm from South Carolina and even down there on them plantations we heard about New Jersey. Folks where I'm from call it up south, New Jersey."

"Defecting to the southern side seemed like a good idea at the time when we were still winning battles..."

Crocks heckled, "Yeah go figure ya fuckin Yankee half wit! Call us illiterate but when you switched sides is right around the time the south started losing. You're the reason we lost..." The middle aged blonde haired veteran smirked. "You should have stayed a Blue Belly if you wanted to help the South!"

"But when I look at George Crocks and that stupid goddamn expression on his face it occurs to me maybe I am still just as dumb as any southerner."

This earned laughter from the three girls even Consuela and the Chinese woman whose name Dalton had already forgotten just as soon as he'd heard it. He didn't know if bringing three more women was a good idea. Sure it gave Salali more than just men or white women to talk to but on the other hand because the woman whose name he had forgotten was who she was he needed to remind her to try to keep clear of Robert Patterson.

It would be hard to do since he was the gang leader but with Sandford out there somewhere plotting whatever he was they were the last of the Gray Shirt Gang leadership with Taft dead. Dalton by no means had any desire to be any kind of leader. In the war he had been promoted to Lt. but he had never wanted leadership. At first he'd just wanted to do his then he'd wanted revenge. For his wifes rape and death and for their farm being burned.

By the war's end, he was actually a major. He'd been about as brave and accurate with his Rifle as any other Confederate soldier but after losing his wife and children, he had lost countless friends he'd grown up with including five from his hometown. When Lee surrendered, Dalton and the rest of the Taft-Patterson gang had not been among those Confederate soldiers who came in and surrendered and turned their guns in.

He would find a way to warn the Chinese girl to steer clear of Patterson but realistically he didn;t know how he would sell Patterson on that point unless he pointed out that the last thing the authorities would expect to find among a gang of southern outlaws on the run is a Mexican a Chinese and a Negro woman. Thomas Lovecraft had also been a gang member but he had been killed just months ago and now he was buried somewhere that nobody who had known him would ever find or pass through again. Even then, having men in their gang of occasional different hues was one thing.

To have women was another. It was the smart play.

They certainly couldn't go back towards California. Not now anyway. He'd heard the gold had dried up out there as it was and he knew Patterson had been saying since the start of '66 how it was those 'damn coolies' fault and he had insisted that they had gotten rich off of the gold rush. From what little Dalton knew about that, they had not been very welcome aftr 1849. To Dalton the exiled Chinese wouldhave made a good gang member too for what kind o fighters they were.

They were socially shunned by society and though many Confederates disliked the Chinese, Dalton was of the mind that these days a Confederate was hated just as much as a Chinese railroad man or gold miner. But Patterson could never look past the Chinese blue belly who had almost killed him. He didn't quite understand his views. There had been Seneca Indians among teh Yankees that had ought against Patterson. He had fought some of Ely Parkers men. This seemed to have been balanced by more Indians fighting for the Confederacy. There had also been a number of Irish Yankees and Dutch but he didn't hate them perhaps because they were white like him.

That being said, even though he did not view Indians or Negros as equals to whites, he seemed to share the most disdain for Chinese men. It might help that the woman wasn't a man but the three of them were outlaws so they had to figure they weree safer. Dalton would make sure the woman was never harmed by their de facto gang leader. He had already killed one leader. If he had to kill Patterson someday himself, he would.

He knew that would fracture the gang if he did.

"I don't know what use those three are gonna be to us..." Stated Crocks. "We could just give em some money and send em on their way. They aint gonna be no safer with us and they aint much use if they can't fight."

"Because they're women? Or cause they aint white?"

"Fuck you Dalton I aint Patterson. But i meant they aint served."

"They don't let women serve."

"Some countries do. Some cultures..." Spat Crocks as he hawked up tobacco juice. "Besides...most homes in the south got a gun. They don';t got no reason to help us."

"We don't constantly get into fights all the time, George. We've just had a bad share of luck. The two robberies..."

"I knoew what goddamn happened. All I'm saying is that if we had any use for em outside of combat what would it be? They couldn't even stop themselves from getting arrested."

"You and me been to war together, Georgie. You know better than to underestimate people."

"If between the three of em they can't pick a lock what else we need em for?"

"Sometimes it aint about what we need right now. Maybe it's what they need, And later on if we need something they can help . But if you're gonna insist on them being savy with a lockpick why don't you show em?"

"You remember I'm missing a couple of fuckin fingers, right?"

"You just need the fingers on one hand and part of anotrher one to teach em. Come on, Stumpy...you can do it."

"Goddamn it Daltn I told you not to call me that!"

"Just think it over Stumpy cause then if a one and a half handed man teaches three church bells how to pick locks and pockets don't that make him one of the most handy soldiers?"

"Yeah, I reckon so. I aint teaching em shit for the rest of today. I'm drinking whiskey till i nap. This heat is too much and I'm goddamn thirsty. If there aint whiskey I'd settle for some water..."

"We got water."

"Water? IU can have that any time. Nanty Narking..that's what whiskey is..."

"Nanking?" The Chinese woman asked looking at them.

"Narking...it means great fun..."

"I ain never heard nobod talk that way beore mister."

"That's because nobody has for about thirty years. That saying was around when I was just a boy."

Dalton turned to Bob Beauford and stated, "I just realized you did fight with us but you never lived in the antebellum sout did ya?"

"No I haven't. All i saw of it was during the war and you know how that went. I want to live in the south I fought for the south but we can't go back. They'll hang us as traitors."

Though the Confederates who had surrendered then swore alliegiance to the United States right after the war,

The sound of the rifle shot rang out through the canyon. Bob took a round in his left hip and cried out in surprise. He cleared his holster as several more shots from two rifles off in the distance cracked off. The next round hit him in the right side of the chest and he swayed and stumbled as his weight was now disproprtionate and not balanced.

He fell from his horse, down the canyon, his brain matter and teeth decorated the ground and he had been hit in such a way that there was brain matter and skull fragments in his mouth. "BOBBY!" Growled Dalton as the rounds came cracking down at them as the California Rangers fired at them.

Dalton returned fire striking a California ranger and he fell from the cliff screaming the entire way down. "Goddamn it, Dalton we're fuckin pinned down here! they got Bob!"

Salton told them, "I'll draw their fire. Ya;ll get back to camp and warn the others. We gotta move. Robert needs to come up with a plan!" Crocks and Sid retreated as he let off a volley of rounds back at the shooters.

On the other side of the barrel that had fired the killing shot that had ended Beauford's life was none other than Taft himself. "I think that's Dalton down there! Leave him to me!" The California Ranger sneered as they reloaded. "Whoever gets him gets him, Taft! Come on, boys! Mount up! That pecker head son of a bitch is making a run for it!"

Dalton steered the horse at a slower rate than the other two but he dismounted taking cover behind some boulders. He fired from cover with the rifle and he let off four rounds back at them. As the rounds came close to hiting his horse, Dalton smacked it on the behind sending him running. "Go on back to camp, boy!" He got on Bob's horse. "Goddamn it, Bobby..." He high tailed it on the faster horse as the rounds came thundering at him when he resurfaced but luckily, the snipers hadn't

They made their way to the fallen body of Beauford. He had not been an attractive man, but he had sometimes used his charms on the ladies and it worked. One of the Rangers got out a knife and went to the head of the deceased outlaw. Taft stopped him with his .45 at the back of his skull "No! He was still a man and a soldier. He was my mine. Bad enough he's gotta have a closed casket funeral."

"He left you for dead same as the rest of em. What do you care?' Sneered the Captain. "You shot him..same as me..."

"i wouldn't expect some low life shit for brains like you to understand war...but this man served under me. Nobody disfigures his body. Less they wanna end up like him."

"Yeah. In an army of traitors. You showed you're all in. You better not have secondthoughts about killing nobody else. you said it yourself. They shot you. That proves you Confederates are nothing to admire. You aint even loyal to each other."

Taft put Bob's body on his horse. "We're loyal to ourselves. Hell, you sons of bitches broke every treaty you made with the Indians. You wanna lecture me about betrayal?"

"Last I checked it was the goverrnment in the south that put Indians on the trail of tears. Aint just the north who done that."

"And when Georgia did that thy were still part of the Union, boy."

"You kp telling yourself that. And you can tell yourself whatever bullshit you want about how ya'll were like th founding fatheers when you say ya'll were against the constitution. Jefferson Davis said he hates the constitution case it says all men is equal. And the Confederacy don't beliefve that./ Say what you will about the Union..real Americans who never defected like you traitors...at least we try to do better.'

"What happened between me and Dalton aint nobodies business but mine and his. And I'm, telling you that some of them might be willing to cooperate."

"Aint taking any chances with them we seen what you did in San Francisco. You're savages..." Growled the Captain. "And every last one of you deserves the noose. But if you help us bring down all of your gang we might put you at one of them work camps instead. You fellas love slavery. Maybe you should see the other side of it. New expriment they started in the east and it's coming west. Instead of hanging you bastards you just can't go nowhere. Really I should just string you up here and now and take your friends scalp anyway. For all I know if I sent you back east thy might just put an asshole like you in the Union Army. I heard thy aint executd ALL the Dixie war criminals."

"They didn't execute us cause they wanted the war to stop."

"You're licked..." The Captain sneered. "You and your band of renegades came into this state after robbing Chinamen back in California. Now the Arizona and California Rangers are working toether on this one. And don't go thinking just cause Arizona aint a state yet they can't send more men to find all the rest of your merry band of scum. You can still get out of prison someday and don' nobody gotta know you helped us. Who knows...maybe thee judge will pardon you after all this."

"What reason I got to think ya'll are gonna spare me when this is over?" Demanded Taft.

'

"You got no choice. It's that or we string you up. You made good on your word and shot one of the men who betrayed you. You should feel GOOD about it. There's no reason not to go the rest of the way with making it up. You're a man of your word so far, Taft. That's more than I can say for most Dixie can keep your word futher like a real man. Like a real soldier."

"You mean a soldier in a traitoprs army?"

"You forget just cause Arizona aint a state yet dont mean California ant and we have the authority to hunt you. We still got post offices in California what with it being another American state and all. That must drive you dixie bastards crazy! You came thinking California was a wild land still but it's been a state for decades! We got the Navy too."

Dalton reloaded from cover as the rounds came cracking at him as the others took their chances. "

Dalton looked at Robert. "I don't know how to tell you Rangers got Bob."

"You brought three mouths to feed? And you got Bob killed?! What the hell is wrong with you Dalton O'Hara?! You lose us a soldier and you get three women?"

"We aint no light weights. Consuela is the daughter of a Comanchero, Li Hua used to be a workling girl in Chinatown out in Seattle. And I'm wanted dead for horse theft."

"It was the Rangers..." Dalton insisted, getting between Patterson and the girls. "We need more local guides. If we got them plus the Papagos we'll be set to survive this country a while. That's what we're trying to do, right?"

"Yes but...how ...did you find them?" Crocks stood up. "I'll explain it to ya, Bobby. I'll explain it all..."

"Shit..." Patterson loolked down. "I was so used to being Robert while Bob was Bob. I saw myself as the more cultured of the two. Distinguished southern gentleman as opposed to a Yanke turncoat. But he was our brother...don't call me Bobby, friend. We lost him today. To some cowardly goddamn Rangers..." He turned to the three women. "I'll let ya;ll stay with us. But ya'll gotta know how to speak English amnd you gotta learn to shoot if you don't."

"Lovecraft died..." The brown haired woman said with tears in her eyes. "Then Taft. Now Mr. Beauford? IK can';t take too much ,more o thui.

Dalton sat down by the camp fire, a dark expression in his brown eyes. "Beauford deserved better than this. We can't even give him a proper burial."

"Goddamn it! He was one of our best men! People might have distrusted him case he was a Yankee by birth but he went and proved himself loyal. He was there in some of the bloodiest battles in the war and he was killing Yankees. I have no doubt in my mind that he would have been lynched if he had been tried in their courts. That was why he had to run! And he ran with us and it weren't far enough!"

"I don't know about no bills. Thing is the Confederate dollars worthless now. Worth only three cents. Why would we want to make a currency without any value be the main thing here in this here town?"

"If we can't get our currency going again just in this one community what will be the point in trying to do it all around our new nation? You know how things are, Dalton. This country needs a rebirth. It's had a few of them sine the Revolution. 1812, Mexico and now the war between the states. America is a threat to its own democracy. Aint that ironic? PEOPLE DECIDE what the worth of money is."

"I hear ya and I aint saying I disagree but maybe until we win again, we just use Yankee currency? It aint so easy to get people to agree to change what they're used to. We weren't used to dealing without the southernn economy and these folk aint gonna be used to not using American dollars."

"We're Americans, Dalton. Them Yankees don't got a monopoly on 're being truer to George Washington than Linoln was. Man, I wish I could have been in Booth's shoes. Must have been satisfying to pull that trigger and snuff that bastard out."

"I'm sure he had a great time, Jackson. Right up until he got shot in a barn. Surrounded by fire and men with rifles looking to plug holes in him. I can't think of two many worse ways to go other than getting crucified I reckon."

"Well we're like the Central American states like Belize. A rebels paradise back then. Native tribes, enslaved Africans and indentured European servants all escaped anmd formed para military alliances back in the 1600's It was the basis for a lot of the pirate culture. We're a developing nation. We have to rebuild,"

"I suppose but the Yankees aint gonna leave well enough alone with reconstruction. They didn't start executing a bunch of us for war crimes and such but they don't trust us neither."

"Dalton willyou at lkeast TRY to help me build a Confederate economy here? I want to get us independent of the Yankee States of America. Patterson wants it. Sandford wanted this. And Taft God rest his soul that crazy son of a bitch he wanted it. We could be like the Roman Empire in America. We act like we're a great country but we aint reached our full potential. America aint aint as big as Rome was in its peak."

"Can't possibly do any worse than them Three Hundred Dollar men on Wall Street..." He poured a drink out for Beauford.

"He was a Lutheran not a papist ya dumb rosary diddler!" Growled Patterson. "But you're right he does deserve a Christian burial."

"The day I take shite from a feckin Proddy will be me last days on Earth. Not even you Patterson."

The women were crying at the mention of Bob's death.

"Those Rangers..." The ex Confederate glowered looking down. "They're gonna keep on pursuing us. Only way I see us coming out of this alive is if we trap em."

"How do you think we should do that?" Asked Daltin.

"I have an idea, brother. Just stick with me. We hit em guerilla style. It's what Nathan Bedford Forrest did, remember? We got to options the way I see it, boy. We can either let them come to us and let them try out whatever attack they want or we go to them."

"Hey, I may not have served in the war But I was ith you boys in heart and spirit. Me and most of Manhattan wanted New York to seceed frm the Union."

"I can't believe Beauford's gone. The Rangers are gonna bleed for this."

Dalton shook his head. "I don't know if going after California or Arizona Rangers is gonna hep our cause. We do want to take over the west don't we? Some of those boys served. They should be looking ou for fellow veterans even if their yella leader is too cowardly./

[

"Dalton, I talk with you a moment?"

He nodded.

"We've moved from the south. Then we moved west and now we;ve lost men and we're leaderess. Like a chicken with its head cut off. And that's twice we lost people. I just wonder if I'll ever have a real home. Not just sleeping in a camp like outlaws on the run."

Dalton chuckled. "We spend more time sleeping on the ground than we have in a bed. Hell, everybody here knows you pay a whore to do whatever you want there might be a bed but sleeping takes on a whole new meaning."

"Your manner leaves a lot to be desired..."

"I'm a product of my environment, cher. If you'd rather be one of them socialites go right ahead."

"No it's nothing of that sort...it's just that...Bob...he was a gentleman..."

"He was. He was a good fighter too. Ah hell..I wasn't even able to get to his body and give him a decent buriel. Lord only knows what those Rangers did to his body. They're out for blood after that robbery."

She was in tears. He sighed and put an arm around her. "I know..."

Just then, he looked to see two men entering the camp. One Indian and one white. The Indian was Greenleaf the Seminole outlaw and friend to Johnny Water. With him was another Confederate that Dalton had not seen since the war but like Dalton, he had been born in Loiusiana. Uriah Jackson. He had been a Confederate veteran that Dalton had served with but he had not known him to be up to any post war activities.

Patterson greeted the two men as they dismounted from their horses. "Greenleaf!" The de facto gang leader had a grin on his face. "Here I was considering sending Johnny back east to find you only for you to return with a Loiusiana senator. To what do I owe this great pleasure?"

As Dalton eyed the new company he thought to himself, The senator? So much for a low profile. You let a goddamn ex senator here and a cabinet officer of the Confederacy? We're supposed to be a rebel camp! He can't be seen with us!

August 14, 1810

Karonhi:io looked at Tecumseh. "So you would have me atttend this meeting with you?

""Karonhi:io...will you translate for me? i understand these long knives but I don't wish them to know that I do or that I speak thir language. I speak perfect English but if they think I don't they'll be at a disadvantage.'

"It's an unusual request but I will do it."

Perhaps seventy five warriors camped with Tecumseh a mile or two above town while word of their arrival went ahead. Then Tecumseh led his party into Viccenes toards a c;learing in a small grove of trees close to Grouseland. Governmor William Henry Harrison's two story house with its tall chimneys. Here, fenced from the crowds, Harrison had prepared the council ground.

This was a legendary meeting. The first confrontation between Tecumseh and the man he regarded as his principal oponent in the fight for the northwest.

"Tecumsh the governor welcomes you. So that we may council in peace he asks that your men lay down their arms."

Tecumseh stated in Shawnee what Karonhi:io translated next. "He will lay down his arms only when the soldiers do."

William looked at Tecumseh with an impatient sigh looking at the dark skinned warrior who stared back at him a stoic expressiion across his face. "If Tecumseh and his men wish to meet in peace...you and your warriors may keep your weapons..." He then strode towards a dais. "It is a wish of our great father in Washingtron that you sit."

Tecumseh replied, "My father? Wishe Manitou is my father. And the Earth is my mother. Upon her bosum I will recline."

Of the two men who now faced each other, Tecumseh was the more striking and impassioned. The handsome chief saw before him a long faced man with brown hair, a wandering nose and a mild but alert expression. Not a man to be persuaded, Tecumseh spent several days explaining his point of view to Harrison. Harrison sat with several officials including judges of the territorial supreme court, the secretary of the territory, and several army officers and unarmed citizens.

Close by, was a guard of thirteen soldiers from Fort Knox stood ready. in addition to Tecumseh's following, several Indians were in attendeance including some Piankkeshaws and Weas.. One was principal chief of the Weas who had consented to the Treaty Of Fort Wayne. He had been boasting he would tell Tecumseh he had no business interfering in Wea affairs but now he sat silently unwilling to fufill his promise.

Another supporter of the treaty was the much despised Potawatami chief Winamedk who had been living under threat of assasination for his part in the business. He lay on the grass to the left of Harrison, silent but nursing a brace of pistols.

Patiently, Tecumseh put his case again. He began by explaining that the Indians regarded neither the Americans nor the Brirish as satisfactory to their French father. Indian oratory normally included an appeal to history or at least history as the Indians chose to represent it. As he had translated the words from Shawnee that Tecumseh said to him, he felt sick just saying this. While the Shawnee dutring the French Indian wars had been on the French side, the opposite o his people he also knew that the French had also been unfair to his people but he had to keep in mind that if the alliance between Iroquois and the other tribes of Tecumseh's confederacy, he would have to remember that in the French Indian war which hi grandfather had fought in, most Indians had been against the British and whilre the French had sewn their feet as enemies of Iroquois people both by converting so many in the north to Catholicism and killing Mohawk chiefs, he understood that the Shawnee were different.

The Shawnee had been old enemies that the Mohak had conquered in the mid 1700's when they had taken Ohio. The fact that Tecumseh and his father had overlooked this to listen to the likes of Joseph Brant, fathers old friend was good enough. The French, Tecumseh, had said, had treated his people like their children bestowing gifts on them but asking little in return. The British father had been wanting. Forgetting how the Brirish had taken Kentucky from the Shawnees when he was a mere child, Tecumseh claimed the British had not threatened Indian land though they were niggardly with their presents and had used the Indians to fight wars for them.

However, Tecumseh reserved his severest critiscism for the Americans. "They have never been trustworthy. You murdered the Christian Delawares at Gnadenhutten in 1782 and you murdered Muluntha four years after this. My brother, after this conduct can you blame me for placing little faith in the Americans?"

Karonhi:io translated faithfully. "The seventeen fires have goaded us into war. You kill our people and many of our Kickapoo relations contracted smallpox. From infected annuities given by your people. You are taking the land. I do not see how we can remain at peace with you. If you continue to do so you try to force the red people to do some injury. It is you pushing them on to do mischief."

"Very well. The American government is concerned. That the situation between pour people is explosive. We must a The sk our Shawnee friend why he goes from tribe to tribe stirring up anger against us?"

"I will speak plainly. We have learned your ways. And we know your treaties are for us to keep and you to break. Before you came the land was free for all to use to make a home. It belonged not to one man but to all of us. But then you attacked us separately and forced weak leaders to sell land the land you wanted that was not theirs to sell," Tecumseh relayed this in the Shawnee language and Karonhi:io interpreted.

"Sinc you bring up the past..." Began William Henry Harrison, "I must tell you that all the chiefs in the treaties gave us their solemn word that the land was theirs to sell."

"What is teh word of such men?! Sell the Earth?! What madness! Why not sell the rivers or the sky or the great sea?! Land is not a thing to own anymore than air or is the life and spirit of all creatures who live on it. I am Shawanase. People of the South as Wishe Manitou allows me to make the destiny of my people I say tear up your treaties! Go back to your own country."

Tell them, uncle. They are not our friends. They never have been. Our Shawnee brothers are wise to distrust the long knives. We went through the same thing in my fathers generation and Joseph Brant and now our brothers in Ohio are suffering the white man's wrath and greed.

Tecumseh explained that the tribes would meet soon at Brownstown to find out which chiefs had abused their trust by selling the land so that they could be punished. Their deaths would be the responsibility of the United States. He also announced that he was uniting the tribes against any further land sales and that they would resist any attempt to settle the recent purchase.

Yet he did not want war. He offered Harrison an escape from it. He asked the governor to return the land and permit more traders to serve the Indians. The Indians wanted no annuities or presents and would buy what they required. Beyond this, they needed no more than the occasional services of a gunsmith.

Harrison had spent years speaking to Indian leaders but he had never met one like Tecumseh before. Here was no humble supplicant or surley dissembler. The man standing before him boldly claimed to represent every tribe on the continent and candidly denounced the land cessions and fiecely declared his determination to resist them. Allthough he disaowed hostile intentions, he predicted that war would be the result of American policies and showed no fear of it. Tecumseh confirmed that he would accept powder from the British and would proudly proclaim himself thre head of a defensive confederacy.

He wanted no charity from the white man. Only an honest trade. Yet although his speech was defiant, it was not aggresive. Rather Tecumseh pleaded for justice. He was trying to tell Harrison that his people were being oppressed and if nothing was done, they would fight.

Some whites would have understood, but the governor could or would not listen. As far as he was concerned, the land had been bought from its rightful owners and the idea that Indians held land in common was not only manifestly proposterous but dangerous. It would undo every treaty he has made and block further purchases he had in mind. His reply was translated into Shawnee, Potawatomi and Miami by Joseph Barron for the Indians on Harrison's side.

Karonhi:io also translated his words back to Tecumseh in his best Shawnee.

The governor denied that his government had treated the Indians dishonestly and unjustly The Indians were not one nation nor owned the land in common, for had the Great Spirit not given them diferferent tongues?

. "Tecumseh must be joking. He knows very well the treaties lawfully made can never be rescinded. What we ask now is you cease your efforts to organize the tribes against us and you join us in one last agreement giving title to the la..."

Tecumseh didn't let him finish. He stepped closer to the white man. "One last agreement?! Every treaty you have ever made with the red man since coming upon this land you promised was to be the last and each time you invaded us again. You ask us to have confidence in your word. When Jesus Christ came upon the Earth the son of your own God you killed him and only after he was dead did you worship him and start killing those who would not. Who could trust teh word of such people?" He paced and then sat back down.

The governor however stood proud and arrogant. "Tecumseh is wrong. Most of all about our treatioes. We have dealt justly and fairly with the Indians. And the fact is this was Miami land until the Shawnee invaded them and stole it..." Karonhi:io could see he was visibly angered.

Tecumseh finally decided to drop the act of not understanding English "This man is a LIAR!" Roared Tecumseh as he pulled his hatchet out. The chief rose in anger gesticulating violently. The warriors at his back also stood. They had left their firearms behind as the parties had agreed but their hands fell to war clubs, knives and tomahawks. For a few terrible moments, it seemed like the council would disintegrate into bloodshed. John Gibson, secretery of the territory, flashed an anxious glance at the governor. "These fellows intend mischief!"He said. "You had best bring up that guard!"

He signalled the small band of regulars who started from where they had been standing in some shade. Harrison drew a dress sword and Captain Floyd a dirk while Winamek cocked a pistol. A civilian, the Reveraend William Winans scurried to the governors house to find a gun to find a gun to defend Harrison's family. And other citizens pulled rails from a fence to defend themselves.

Harrion was never cooler. He told Karonhi:io to tell Tecumseh that the council was finoshed. He woud reply to the Indians complains in writing and if the chief wished to speak to him again, he must act through another person. Heated, but restraining themselves, the Indians returned to their camp.

That night was charged and Harrison put together three companies of militia in case Tecumseh attacked the town. In fact, the Shawnee chief was already regretting his show of temper which had done his cause no good,. Early in the morning the translator, Barron, appeared at his camp with Sheriff John McCandless and a man named Whitaker with a message from Harrison.

Tecumseh apologized through Karonhi:io. He excused himself by that some people in Vincennes blamed Harrison personally for the treaty of Fort Wayne which had not been authorized by the president. Barron left Tecumseh smoking his pipe beside his tent po;e with McCandless and Whitaker as well as Karonhi:io and amnimity seemed to be restored. Later in the day, the council resumed but the militia was ready and a nervousness hung in the air.

Tecumseh rose to speak with a model of courtesy. He repeated, more my way of apology, the information he had been given that Harrison did not represent the view of all the people of Vincennes. "Will the surveyers running the new purchase be safe?" Asked Harrison.

Tecumseh replied, "We want our land. Not annuities. Brothers, they want to save that piece of land. We do not wish you to take it. It is small enough for our purposes. If you do take it you must blame yourself as the cause of this trouble between us and the tribes who sold it to you. I want the present boundary line to continue. Should you cross it, I assure you it will be productive of bad consequences."

When Tecumseh sat down, Wyandot, Kickapoo, Potawatomi and Winnebago orators spoke to the same intent approving Tecumseh's principals and confirming he was their leader. Neither Harrison nor Tecumseh would yield ground. Harrison insisted that the lands had been fairly bought and would be defended by force if necessary. Tecumseh's speech would be sent to the president but the governor warned the Shawnee that he should not expect a favorable answer. For the United States would never acknowledge the Wabash lands to have belonged to any Indians but those who had been occupying them.

Both men sensed the inevitable conflict and would return to prepare for it. Tecumseh would canvass the western Indians while Harrison would temporarily suspend the survey of the new purchase but recco,mend to the government a show of force and the establishment of one or more military posts on the upper Wabash where trouble was likely to begin.

Tecumseh sat with Karonhi:io and his father that night. They discussed the meeting at great length. "Nevertheless..." The eighteen year old man stated, "He is a liar."

"It was a foolish thing. I lost control.." Tecumseh replied with regret in his voice.

"There is only so much a man, any man can take!" The Kanienkehaka man replied.

Tecumseh answered, "No. I preach to others. Curb your anger. Take any lie or insult to keep the peace..."

Karonhi:io's father agreed and put a hand on the middle aged warriors left shoulder. "This is also what is expected of me. I am a peace chief and I must give up my office temporarily if we go to war. I did this before. In our Kayoni...our wampum our law...The chiefs of the League of Five Nations shall be mentors of the people for all time. The thickness of their skin shall be seven spans nine (tsatahniioronkarakeh), which is to say that they shall be proof against anger; offensive 'action and criticism. Their hearts hall be full of peace and good will, and their minds filled with a yearning for the people of the League. With endless patience, they shall carry out their duty. Their firmness shall be tempered with a tenderness for their people. Neither anger nor fury shall find lodging in their minds and all their words and actions shall be marked by calm deliberation."

He put another calming hand on his son.

"Lives depend on me. But wisdom comes slowly," Tecumseh replied. "Soon we will see what my folly cost us..."

August 22, 1810

They visited Tecumseh's tent for a final but private meeting. Tecumseh sat next to Harrison and he had his pipe tomagawk but it was being used for tobacco. "I appreciatee your willingness to meet with us again..." Harrison told him. Tecumseh handed him the pipe.

"This is how men who have differences should talk. privatley. Quietly. Too much show can make a man proud.

"It's good to use this in the peaceful way..." Harrison softly said as he smoked. "Yesterday, it came near to splitting my skull."

"I regret that. Man must learn to control his temper or like a wild horse it will run with him."

"Tecumseh...you could become the greatest man in the history of your race. We're building a new world and you should be part of it. You should join us. Let us be parttners and you lead yor people into the American way of life."

"I have seen the American way of life in the village of Black Hoof and it is a way of death. I would rather die."

"Then we have nothing more to discuss...there will be war..."

The Shawnee chief tried to reach Harrison. If the treaty of Fort Wayne was rescinded, and the Americans agreed to hold future negotiations with all rather than a few tribes, Tecumseh would prove himself a good friend to the United States. He would even join them against the British. He was not deceived by the redcoats.

He clapped his hands to imitate a person shouting for a dog to illustrate the way the redcoats summoned the tribes to fight. However, Tecumseh spoke frankly in the end, he believed, he would be forced to fight a war with the Americans. But he promised that if that happened he would do his best to protect women and children.

Harrison smoked from his own pipe. "I will relay your complains to the president but I doubt very much that your terms will be acceptable to him."

. "Well..." Tecumseh replied with an air of resignation, "As the Great Chief is to determine the matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put some sense into his head to induce him to to direct you to give up this land. It is true, he is is so far off. He will not be injured by the war. He may still sit in his town and drink his wine whilst you and I will have to fight it out."

Ride Em Cowgirl

Elena leaned in. "You know...mi padre told me about how oura ncestors and yours have been trading for almost a hundred years. I know your father hates Mexicans but you lost most of your land to the Americanos after the war. It's funny...I see these rebels in Texas talking about what the Yanquis took from them never realizing what they took from us."

"Right now...it seems like th whole world is against us. We got Apaches, Tonkawas, the taibo, Mexicans and buffalo hunters after these lands. We..we need some allies. If you had asked me five years ago to make an alliance with a Zuni I would have said you were processed by spirits. But now...we have to try everything., I would rather ask your father's people than your mother;s I mean no disrespect, Sun Woman. But the Zunis aren't great warriors. They are better at living the simple life. But the Yaqui fight the Mexicans and the Americans well."

"Why does it all have to be a fight, Red Wolf? Why can't you Numunuu see that the simple village life is what keeps the world going? It's the life blood of the land. It's a woman's womb. The birth of a boy. You only see things the masculine way but there is life and birth in the ways of crops."

"I'm not against crops but we eat what we can from our enemies. Even a baby needs some meat to eat. They should not live on beans alone. But you are right. Womanhood is sacred. But this isn't about that. The Zuni do not have guns and have not practiced fighting so they are not ready. I think because the Zuni do not fight we should have the Comanche fight for them."

"You would have to agree not to wrong them in any way, Red Wolf. These are my mothers people. Mi padre he won't give guns to any band that attacks us. It isn't for all villages but my padre found a way to get the clan mothers of this village to agree to let the Yaqui nation protect them."

"And the Zuni warriors are accepting this? They would rathe let another Nation defend them than to do their duty as the men?'

"We don't see warfare as a way of life. Zuni don't move with the buffalo we move with the water. We go where it goes. We see war as an unclean thing that civilized people don't do. That's what our Hopi primos say too.'

"And how is that working out for them? Has the Spanish, Mexican or American army left them alone?'

"No they haven't,,..." Stated the clan mother approaching from behind. "And yet we live because we function like water. Always adaptable. Taking whatever shape we have to. We are not a big nation or a mighty nation. It hurts Elena's pride to say this but you are right. We are not warlike. We are not Comanche. We hate war. You love it. But just because we choose not to fight Comanche doesn't mean some do not HATE Comanche."

"If you hate us enough you have the way to stop us. Even if we have better weapons. If I had only my fists and somebody came for me I would fight."

"The white man is better at killing than you.." The clan mother told him looking the fierce war chief's in the eyes. "You kill them and you kill them and they don't stop coming."

"We'll see who fights better. The taibo has not seen the likes of me. These Arizona taibo are soft compared to taibos in my home."

"You adopt children and it still isn't enough to replace the people you lose. your women they miscarry because you ride with them on horseback,"

"So what should we have our wives do? Walk while they are pregnant?"

"It has been done before. Men do many things to help us and they are part of the natural order. But we are the ones who must push babies out. This is what Spider Woman weaved in her web."

"Spider Woman? I do not know of that spirit..." Red Wolf echoed with a hint of curiosity to his tone.

"Elena..." The clan mother turned to her, "This is important. Your brother is out in thee deserts causing trouble. He is one of us through his mother but he causes trouble in the white man's villages. This is not wise."

"Diego? I haven't seen him in three years. He went off to fight in the war in Mexico. He fought the French."

"Mexico has a big enough army to kill as many white soldiers as they like. Except for Americans. We don't even have that much. We can barely hold off Comanches. But just two of them..some of the men think we should kill them and But now he's up here doing that."

Elena sighed. "Where was he last seen?"

"Outside Tucson. He's rolling with a gang of banditos that go on both sides of the border. They raid farms and kill ranch hands in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, all the Four Corners. You have been with your father. The Comancheros. Genizaros. But even if the law knows we are a peaceful tribe and they don't know where you and Enrique are they will settle for the scalps of peaceful people."

"Your father had a good heart once when he was younger but he has hate in his heart He has always hated coming to our village. Is that why you come here now?"

"No. I haven';t been here in a long time. I was always on the road.

"Your brother, Diego. He's causing trouble in all four corners of Navajo territory. Fighting white outlaws, raiding rich farms and settlements in Northern Mexico. He's even had some trouble with a couple of the tribes in these lands and back in Texas."

"How do you know these things?" Asked Elena.

"Other villages tell us these things. We see his wanted posters at the trading post."

Elena sighed. She sighed. "I have to find him, then."

She and the two Comanche warriors went to their mounts and got on. Elena did so last. She had her Repeater on her in case anything bad went on. Red Wolf and Broken Arrow had insisted. She had tried to tell them both she was capable of taking care of herself but she knew they didn't trust the gang members. She wondered what they'd done as the three Natives rode east. As they came around the side of a rock formation,they noticed six dead men on the ground.

All of them were white and they had various clothing but Elena figured out they were Texas Rangers. The first man, a blonde with green eyes,and a scragily beard had his stomach blown out from a shotgun blast courtesy of Los Culebras . Elena spotted three more dead bodies. Mexcans this time. She could smell the gunpowder in the air.

They heard the clicks of weapons and suddenly a shot was fired that narrowly missed Elena's nose. The Comanches instantly got their weapons ready but soon realized they were outnumbered as twelve men were surrounding them with rifles and pistols and shotguns drawn. A sea of brown faces, ponchos, and ammo belts faced back at them.

"Cabron!" Growled Elena. "You gonna shoot Diego's hermana?"

"Elena?" A slightly chubby Mexican man with dark brown skin and a soul patch with a handlebar mustache and a green and red serape and black gunslinger pants and a sombrero leaned in. "que mierda haces aqui?"

(The fuck are you doing here?)

"Is that anyway to treat your sister? With a warning shot and unkind words? The clan mother said you were here causing trouble. I didn';t think we would run into you so soon."

Diego was holding up his two six shooters. "Those pendejos from the Bloodhounds are arund here."

"Diego...you're going too far out here."

"I don't care what the clan mother says. I'm never going back to that village. I can't...just sit still in one place in Arizona. On a reservation."

"Who are these cuerpos?" Demanded Elena.

"You two Comanche?" Demanded Diego. "What the hell are you doing with my sister?"

"You really want the answer to that question, amigo?" Asked Red Wolf.

"Red Wolf!" Elena barked. "Callete!"

"I've killed some Apaches you know..." The mixed Yaqui and Zuni outlaw declared. "Comanches too."

Broken Arrow, while not choosing to disrespect Elena with what he had implied, still was a proud Numunuu and he wasn't about to take disrespect from a Yaqui or a Zuni. Especially a detribalized one.

"They must not have been much of warriors if they couldn't hit a fat man like you. So you haven't killed any real Numunuu.."

"Diego, we don't have time for this..." Growled one of the bandidos. "The law is after us we can't stop."

"You're gonna get mama's village attacked by gavachos if you don't stop," Elena insisted. "I know you're not proud to be Zuni but do you really want to disrespect mamas memory?"

"What you saw here is self defense, chiquita..." Diego stated earning a scowl from his younger sister. "And these gringos you see attacked us. They're Bloodhounds. We just defended our camp."

"

"Bloodhounds? Who are they?" Asked Elena.

"They're a bunch of white boys with a thirst for Mexican sangre. They got their first taste against papa before. He gave one of them a nasty scar the last time they tried robbing his caravan. There's a lot of gangs in the four corners. But these ones are worse than Rinches even."

"I know I probablt know the answer but has the law done anything about it?"

"Yeah. They sentenced some of them to ten years. Ten fuckin years for a life they took. All in some prison work camp. That's no punishment at all!"

Diego nodded. "I knew the world was coming to an end for people like us when the Comanche bands started to thin in numbers. And when we lost the war... but I can't go back to mamas village. At least papa is funding enemies of the gringos. I can sleep at night with that. But Zunis are fucking cowards. That's why I left."

"Diego!" Elena looked to see her father. He had with him four Yaqui warriors dressed in traditional clothing.

Diego paused. "Papa? ¿Qué estás haciendo aquí? ¿Qué pasa con la caravana?"

(What are you doing here? What about the caravan?)

Enrique shook his head. "Santa Fe will be fine. You are familia. Elena...isn't the only one who heard what you were up to. You need to come back with me. It's too dangerous for you to stay out here in the open with the Rinches out and about."

"Papa, I have a bounty on my head. I can't just show up in a major city."

"You don't have any bounties in Santa Fe...but you do in other parts of the state. If you can keep a low profile and tell your men to do the same or find a different camp and send word to you, you can survive, mijo. You just need a change of appearance."

"Orale..." He sighed. Before they all mounted up again, the Yaqui warriors paused to take scalps from the dead Bloodhounds and they went through their pockets and saddlebags taking their money. "Tell Rodrigo i'll meet him at the old spot...in old Mexico. Estados Unidos is too hot for us as a group."

They began to ride back. Elena wasn't sure what to expect when they got back to the caravan but she was happy her brother had at least survived. She wondered if they would be running into any Bloodhounds later.

"It doesn't have to end, papa but we have to stop fightin the gringos for a long time. We need to rebuild the number of Indian nations en la tierra. But Red Wolf and Broken Arrow..."

Red Wolf and Broken Arrow insisted on riding up ahead just to make sure there was no nasty surprises. She didn't like riding in the desert at night.

"Cuidado with those two. They're our allies but we don't know how much. Some Comanche bands are friends and others are enemies. I know the Comanches want an upper had over the Texans again but don't let them drag you into their war. We will always give them guns but not the bands that we know are bad..."

Elena took in a big breath through the nose and out throgh the mouth drinking in the hot winds. She thought of Red Wolf and Broken Arrow. They were out of earshot but she didn't like talking about them when they weren't present. Both mama and papa had raised her not to but now she felt like he was breaking his own word. Had papa been at this too long?

He had his first battle at the Alamo. Even though I know we won, that was still a bloody battle for Mexicanos too. But then when he grew up and had us he fought in the real war. Now he's selling guns to Comanches. Will he ever get tired of fighting?

She could hear war cries suddenly ahead and the sound of gunfire. She saw Red Wolf and Broken arrow riding and firing as they were being chased and attacked by eight men but they returned fire. Red Wolf used a rifle while Broken Arrow used his bow. They managed to hit two of them and wounded them but she saw Broken Arrow fall with a wound from his horse as a shot went through his right shoulder. "FUCK!" The Comanche warrior cried as he fell.

Elena charged in firing her Rifle as did Enrique, Diego and the four Yaqui warriors. Diego let his six shooters cry out while Elena let the Evans hit the rival gang members who had maroon bandannas. As he got in closer, Enrique let a round from his shotgun hit a Bloodhound in the chest and Elena could have sworn she saw his heart through the wound and hole in his shirt as he fell from his horse.

The four Yaqui warriors that were old friends of her fathers fired their own Evans Repeaters and dropped five of the Bloodhounds with crack first Bloodhound took two in the chest and fell from horseback. The second took a round in the gut and was dragged as he only party fell but he hung off the side screaming as it dragged his legs and back against the dirt and a trail of blood was left behind him.

Enrique aimed the shotgun at a man with brown hair, blue eyes, a thick beard, standing six foot four. He hit the man in the stomach and his guts were exposed his entrails drenched the horse even as he fell off of saw the last Bloodhound trying to retreat, a blonde haired brown eyed white man of Scottish descent. He aimed both six shooters in his direction and where he was going to be as he rode. He fired a round each and missed but he kept firing. The next two rounds struck the man in the back. He could see the man writhing in pain as he fell off the horse breaking his left ankle.

He was still alive but he wouldn't be for long after the fall plus being shot twice and there were no doctors around for miles. "Let's take these horses back to camp!" Diego called to the other Yaqui warriors. "We can drop them by your village."

"It would be better if your men took them. We are warriors but we are not robbers. If stolen horses were found by the white man on our land someboedy would die for it."

"Fine by me. I can get to the other side of the border by this time tommorow."

Elena aimed for a bigger man with gray hair looking to be in his early fifties. She hit him in the right side which made the man who was also carrying two 1851 Navy Revolvers drop the left one but his right hand fired a shot. She took a round from it in the right hip and she cried out, "AHHH!" She fell from her own horse as the man shot her again. The Bloodhound grabbed her left leg and got it caught up with a lasso. "Come here, seniorita! I'm gonna give you some more holes on top of the ones you got and when im done with ya I'm gonna FUCK EM ALL!"

He was about to shoot the wounded woman in the left knee cap and he pressed the burning barrel to her knee and she screamed but two arrows from Broken Arrow hit the man in the right side of the chest. He staggered back and Red Wolf came from kicked the mans legs out from behind him. He fell to his knees in the dirt. He began to scalp him but unlike many tribes who started at the scalp itself, Red Wolf carved the sides near his ears starting there at the scalping. He screamed in agony. "YOU FUCKIN REDSKINED PIECES OF SHIT! ARGHHHHH!"

He took his scalp from him. "I prefer to take a taibos scalp while he still lives..." Sneered the elder son.

"I THOUGHT COMANCHES HATED GREASERS!" Howled the Bloodhound.

"Not her..." Red Wolf stated as he showed him his own scalp. "This will make a fine addition to my collection."

Broken Arrow retrieved his arrows from the wounded gang members chest and he howled. "YOU FUCKIN SAVAGE!" Roared the Bloodhound.

Broken Arrow chuckled. "Savage, salvage...it's all relative..." He grinned ear to ear as he held the bloodied arrows and looked at his an his brothers handiwork. "Brother did you ever hear that story of the taibo woman who was taken captive by another band?" Asked Red Wolf.

"No..." The more introverted brother replied to his elder brother,

"They say the band gang raped her. I don't know if that's true. Hard to say because some men are this way but the taibos also lie in his newspaper made from dead trees. But they most likely did and even if they didn't they cut her nose off in town and had brought her into town during a meeting with the white man. The Texans saw the noseless woman and started gunning down Comanches."

Broken Arrow winced from his own wounds. "I'm lucky I can still hold a bow...it hurt like hell to shoot though..."

His brother checked him out, "It went through. You are lucky..." He then continued his story.

"Like I was saying...the sight of the taibo woman without a nose horrified those white bastards. I don't like rape. Even if it happens to a taibo...but I wish I could have been there to see the look on their faces when they saw her. I don't know why they should be so horrified. The French, the Spaniards, the Texans they've all done worse to us. But that is their way. They never see their own actions."

"If the shooting you are talking about is the Concil House massacre then I HAVE heard of that..." Enrique stated. "That was over a gringa with no nose?!"

"Yes..." Red Wolf insisted. He helped Elena to her feet. "You get the final say, Sun Woman...you can use that Rifle of yours or you can use my brothers arrows. Or my scalping knife..."

"You already scalped him. He can't have long to live..." Elena said.

"He was just going to violate you..." Growled Broken Arrow with anger mixed with agony in his voice. "If I hadn't come along..."

But you did, papi. You did. Te amo...

"You don't have to scalp him..just take his nose..." Red Wolf insisted. He then said to his brother only in Comanche, Maybe we should bring him back to Lotsee. She would probably violate him with her lance. She'd make it slow. Knowing her? She'd put the lance in the fire first so it was as hot as the sun..."

Though Elena knew some Comanche, she did not understand this part. Staying in Numunuu, Broken Arrow nodded as he knew that Lotsee herself was the one rapist they actually knew. They didn't like rape but they didn't know how to feel about women doing it and some Comanche women had raped settler women and men. They were like red Vikings in a way in that the kind of brutality they commited against enemies and slaves was one that they would not be allowed to do to their own people. That also included killing too as it was murder if it was a Comanche.

However, despite some Comanche men being dishonorable in this way, if a Comanche woman did manage to fight him off and kill the attackers, it would be considered self defense in Comanche society. He didn't like what he'd heard Lotsee had supposedly done but he also knew he couldn't control her. Not even father would dare tell her she couldn't rape and pillage on top of killing.

Diego and Enrique approached the wounded Yaqui-Zuni woman and Diego growled, "I say we let him go like he is. Leave him without his top. Let the sun bake his sesos into carne asada.."

"He'll die of thirst or starvation before that happens..." Enrique explained. "And his injuries? He can't walk."

"Yes he can..." Diego pointed out.

Enrique took his shotgun and aimed at his right knee. BOOM. His knee resembled raw beef. It seperated the leg in two and blood sprayed from the wound. The Bloodhound howled. "ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Diego got his hunting knife out and stabbed the man in the groin four times lacerating his scrotum and piercing his left testicle through the sack.

"Enough of this..." One of the Yaqui warriors who had just taken a scalp from a red haired Bloodhound. "We need to get out of here. Outlaws or not these are still white men..." He removed all of the arrows that had been left in Bloodhound backs, chests, necks throats and eyes courtesy of Broken Arrow. The Bloodhound was turning very pale from bloodloss but it didn't stop him from spitting and cursing Mexicans and Comanches both. "Whatever she decides?" Red Wolf squatted near the wounded dying gang member. "I have your scalp. You're going to be my captive in the spirit world, Taibo."

"W..what..who the fuck is Taibo that ain my name!"

"What are you doing?" Demanded Red Wolf as he sized up the smaller Yaqui warrior.

"We can't leave behind any clues Yaquis or Comanche were here or they'll hunt us both. They could also go after the Zuni over this if they knew you were here. Your son is an outlaw so those bodies in the desert just looks like a fight between Los Culebras and the Bloodhounds..." He couldn't do anything about the wounds that had arrows in them but he fired rounds into each arrow to cover it up.

Red Wolf saw the logic in what he was doing and gave him a nod. "Probably gonna know there were Indians here cause of you scalping them..."

"Maybe but everybody...even the law knows that Los Culebras have a lot of detribalized Indians from Pueblo tribes as well as Mexicans. Plus the Bloodhounds take Mexican scalps all the time.''

"You saying it's all right to kil Mexicans?" Demanded Diego. The Yaqui warrior simply replied, "If they're from the government, yes. You forget, Diego our people are hunted on both sides of the border..." He also added, "Plus you have no women or children in your gang. The same can't be said for us. We have women and children and Elders to worry about. On this side of the border and in Sonora.'

"The lifestyle we live mostly attracts working girls. Everybody else is scared of us. Besides this is our territory..." Insisted Diego.

Red Wolf sneered, "You don't have any territory. You're just gang members. You kill for money. And they say Comanches are least these men with your father are warriors. Your father is a friend and a warrior. You're just a kid with two six shooters."

"We're on horses same as you cabron and we're always moving. You being on horseback hasn't stopped you from having territory. We don't try and take land from any of the tribes like gringos or Mexican soldiers do but if anybody tries to kill me or mi comaradas they die. It's that simple."

Broken Arrow thanked the Yaqui warrior for giving the shafts back.

"All right fine but we gotta go!" Enrique insisted. "Elena needs to get that wound taken care of."'

"What will it be? We need to go and you need to decide now..." Red Wolf stated. "Kill him or leave him or mutilate him...but do it fast."

Red Wolf nodded, "You're the only one who hasn't taken a piece of this fat bastards hide."

Elena looked at each of the choices she had. What should I do? Her brown eyes scanned her rifle, Broken Arrows bow, Red Wolf's scalping knife and wondered which she could do. She liked the idea Diego had as well.

The man was by some miracle not dead but he looked like he would be going into shock soon. "We could even keep him alive...sew him up and send him back to his people. No balls no nose no scalp."

The outlaws and warriors began to head back.

"I doubt he can walk, Red Wolf," Replied Broken Arrow. "And that's not smart. If we leave him alive and send him back to a city he'll tell everybody there it was us."

Elena knew that the arrow or a gun was likely too good for him. Too painless but they had already done a number on him as it was. At the same time, she was disgusted by the older man. Plus the pain from being shot still filled her with anger and adrenaline."He hecho mi elección."

(I have made my choice.)

---

Thats it for this chapter it took me a while to update still got some editing to do but fuck it we die on the hill like men no betas. Anyway, the meeting between Tecumseh and Harrison is a mix of the scene depicted in the movie Tecumseh The Last Warrior and that of his biography Tecumseh A Life.

Nanty Narking

A tavern term, popular from 1800 to 1840, that meant great fun

As for Lemuel it seems he has uncovered a plot that the Confederate guerillas are planning back in Wyoming. What do you think they're up to? It's higher profile than you think and it involves a train. And if you think it's a train robbery, it's not but it would involve bloodshed.

As for Karonhi:io even though i showed our funeral custom for his father i still included his father in the flashback since he would have been alive. As for the three women you could consider it a stranger mission that became like a main quest or will impact it if this was a game.

I still need to show what Bo is up to next chapter but just bear with me for now there was a bit of Elena and the two Comanches and her brother that will have to be shown next chapter in a mission called Ride Em Cowgirl. Anyway thats all for now.

Uriah Jackson is based on the real life Judah B Benjamin the Jewish Confederate figure from the civil war. Greenleaf is also a real life person but I kept his real name a Semiole Indian outlaw. I had to cut it short there due to the length that was already going on.

As for Elena how do you think she should finish off the rapist? Of all the choices presented which should she take? Reviewers choice majority rule :D

Plus Karonhi:io got to meet Quanah Parker the last chief of the Comanches. What lies ahead for our characters? Stay tuned.