Sioux Sunrise Read online

  Sioux Sunrise

  Ron Schwab

  Poor Coyote Press

  Contents

  Also by Ron Schwab

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Afterword

  New Release

  Also by Ron Schwab

  Sioux Sunrise

  Paint the Hills Red

  Ghosts Around the Campfire

  The Lockes

  Last Will

  Medicine Wheel

  The Law Wranglers

  Deal with the Devil

  Mouth of Hell (forthcoming)

  The Coyote Saga

  Night of the Coyote

  Return of the Coyote (forthcoming)

  SIOUX SUNRISE

  by Ron Schwab

  Poor Coyote Press

  PO Box 6105

  Omaha, NE 68106

  www.PoorCoyotePress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Ron Schwab

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews—without written permission from its publisher.

  ISBN: 1-943421-01-3

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943421-01-5

  1

  SAM KESTERSON YAWNED sleepily and squinted as he stepped out of the little sod house. The glaring rays of the August sun streaked through the cottonwoods across the creek and proffered no relief to the scorching, parching drought. It was still—not enough breeze to even stir the fragile cottonwood leaves—and, although the sun was just rising, the heat was stifling.

  "Gonna be hotter than hell again," he murmured to himself. He shook his head dejectedly and called back into the house, "We've got some water to tote, Billy. Grab the buckets, and let's get at it."

  Sam, a solid-looking, barrel-chested man, stretched his arms and legs, working out the early morning stiffness as he walked down the bare, dusty path that led to the creek. The trip to the creek was less than fifty yards, but beads of sweat were already glistening on Sam's forehead and shirtless back as he knelt at the clear stream and splashed its cool contents on his bronzed, weathered face and arms.

  As he stood up, shaking the droplets of water from his face and arms, he looked impatiently toward the house. "Billy, hurry up, damn it!" he called.

  A boy's voice responded, "Be there in just a minute, Pa. Can't find my britches."

  Brushing back his prematurely white hair, Sam scrutinized his small domain with the satisfaction of a man who had carved his own small place in the wilderness. Sam had been among the first permanent white settlers in Jefferson County, Nebraska, having brought Martha and their four small children in a heavy, bulky Conestoga wagon from Illinois to this spot, only a few miles off the Oregon Trail, after the Civil War. Billy was born less than a month after their arrival. Sam and Martha had homesteaded the quarter section where they lived and in the ten years that followed added two more adjacent quarters to their holdings. The Big K Ranch now comprised 480 acres, most of it prime, lush native grass. The ranch was small by many standards, but the land and the sixty cows that grazed it were "free and clear" as Sam frequently reminded Martha.

  Sam had chosen the table of land nestled in the hills above the creek as a natural building site. The cold, clear creek, appropriately named Rock Creek for the sandstone and hard granite that formed its bed, meandered through the grass-covered hills of southern Jefferson County and provided a dependable water supply for the small farmers and ranchers of the area. The location of the home had deferred the necessity of a well, but Sam, as he had intended for several years, planned to start the slow, painstaking task of digging a well next spring. He had also promised Martha faithfully that with the coming of fall and slowing of farm and ranch work, he would commence hewing timbers for the new frame home that was to replace the Soddy. There would be no shortage of lumber for the job since the bottomlands of Rock Creek were lined with huge, towering cottonwoods. Farther up the slopes, sturdy, hard oaks thrived and waited for thinning. The brown outer walls of the sod house were starting to deteriorate and crumble. The grass that had earlier grown so luxuriously from the sod-packed roof had now browned and withered, and it was evident that strong winds would soon begin to peel the dry covering from the roof.

  The austere two-room dwelling was dwarfed by an imposing, expansive barn. Neighbors had helped Sam raise the frame structure the previous fall, and the solid, white-washed building was something of a county showpiece. Martha had teased Sam good-naturedly, but with a streak of truth, about the horses living better than she did. Sam intended to remedy that soon. The lean-to hay shed and other rickety outbuildings would have to wait a few years for replacement.

  Unlike some of the neighbors, Sam could withstand the devastating drought. Cash might be hard to come by for a while, but these Nebraska hills had been kind to him. It would rain again—it always did.

  It was no accident that Sam Kesterson had sunk his roots in Jefferson County. Located in southeastern Nebraska adjoining the Kansas border, the county had been relatively free of Indian troubles for some years. The Pawnee, who once roamed the rolling hills, were mostly friendly and often allied with the whites against their ancestral enemies, the Sioux. A veteran Union sergeant who had fought at Bull Run, Sam had seen enough of the atrocities of war, and these green, grass-cloaked hills had offered a secure haven for Sam and his family. In fact, Sam hadn't raised a gun at another human being in the years he had resided on the Rock Creek homestead. In the late 1860s, there had been Sioux raids on farms and ranches lying north and west of the Kesterson ranch, but Sam's homestead had come through the troubled period unscathed.

  Thanks largely to Major Frank North and his brother, Captain Luther North, most of Nebraska south of the Platte River remained free from Indian trouble. In 1867, Major North had been given command of a battalion of 200 Pawnee scouts. The battalion was divided into four companies of Pawnee, and Major North's younger brother, Luther, was made captain of one of the companies. They were armed with the new Spencer repeating rifles, or "seven shooters," and the Pawnee, spurred by their ancient hatred for the Sioux and Cheyenne, had pursued their old enemies with a vengeance. Although there was talk of a Sioux uprising again in the northern part of the state, especially near the Black Hills of South Dakota, there was no apprehension in the southeast. The railroad had arrived, settlements had been established, and civilization was on its way.

  With the back of his hand, Sam wiped away the salty sweat that was dripping from his thick, wiry eyebrows and stinging his eyes. "Billy, will you get down here?" he yelled.
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br />   Maude, the old Jersey milk cow, bellowed in the lot outside the barn. Several horses whinnied nervously and banged against the heavy wood stalls. The hair bristled on Sam's neck and turning toward the barn, he walked cautiously back up the path.

  "Red,” he called, "come here, boy. Here, Red." The redbone coonhound did not respond. The arthritic old dog usually slept on a hay pile in the barn and, without fail, limped out of the barn every morning to greet Sam and Billy, his pink tongue flapping, and his long tail wagging.

  Reaching the top of the slope, Sam surveyed the clearing around the buildings. North of the barn, he spied the rust-brown patch partially camouflaged by the tall, browning switch grass. He stepped quickly toward the dog's still form but stopped short when he came upon the animal's bloody, decapitated head resting in the soft, loose dirt just outside the barn door.

  Instinctively, he turned to run to the house. His mouth opened to sound a warning, but the words choked in his throat and were muffled by the crunch of bone and gristle as a feathered Sioux war axe split his skull.

  2

  TEN-YEAR-OLD Billy Kesterson, a skinny, blue-eyed boy with straw-colored hair and shirtless under bib overalls, stepped out of the house barefoot. He ambled slowly down the path to the creek, two tin pails dangling from his right hand, clanging noisily as he walked, his other hand thrust lackadaisically in his pocket. The tanned, freckle-faced boy stopped intermittently to kick at the fine dirt and watch the dust puff up between his toes. He quickened his pace as he neared the creek.

  "Pa," he complained, "I've got the buckets. I don't know why I got to do this all the time. Sarah never does anything. She just sits in the house and writes those silly poems. Why can't she do this sometimes? Oh! Ma says breakfast is ready. Pa? Pa, where are you?"

  Billy's eyes searched along the rocky creek bank for his father. Seeing no sign of him, he waded into the translucent stream and stood there for a few moments, entranced by the foamy water splashing and swirling around his calves and ankles. Abruptly the spell was broken by a round of Maude's persistent bawling, and Billy tilted the empty pails into the creek to catch the surging waters. Then he hoisted the buckets free and, barely able to cope with the heavy load, staggered to the bank and set the full pails on the ground. Catching his wind momentarily, he started up the path and called, "Pa, the buckets are full, but I can't carry—“

  Billy saw the silent form of his father stretched out face down in the dirt, the back of his head a scarlet mass. His eyes widened in terror. Suddenly, a big, rough hand closed across his mouth, and he was jerked backward down the slope, breathless from the powerful arm that clamped his chest like a vice. He was dragged, kicking and struggling, into the prickly, gooseberry thicket that covered the ground between the cottonwoods on the opposite side of the creek and was pressed brutally to the rocky ground, the hand pinching his cheeks together so tightly that Billy's teeth gouged and cut the inside of his mouth.

  He looked up wide-eyed at the black-bearded, long-haired form crouched over him like a grizzly bear moving in for the kill. Perspiration dripped off the man's big, twisted nose onto Billy's heaving, bare shoulders. A powerful, thickset man, at least six feet three inches tall, Bear Jenkins looked like his namesake, and his broken, rotted teeth gave him an even more menacing, animal-like appearance.

  "You say one word, you little bastard, and I'll have your balls hangin' from this bush," he whispered and moved his hairy free hand eagerly toward the horn-handled Bowie knife resting in the sheath suspended from his rawhide belt. He slipped the long razor-shark "Arkansas toothpick" threateningly from the sheath. In doing so, he relaxed his grip on Billy's mouth, and Billy kicked upward with all the force he could muster, catching the man sharply in the groin with his foot. Bear doubled up in excruciating pain and gasped for breath. Billy, seeing his opportunity, squirmed free from Bear's grasp and dashed toward the creek, oblivious to the vicious gooseberry brambles slashing and tearing at his naked feet and ankles.

  His escape was cut short when a squatty, brown-skinned man brandishing a Sioux war club in his right hand stepped into his path. Billy dodged to his left in an attempt to slip by the Indian. Simultaneously, the round flint head of the club arced downward, glancing off Billy's right temple before he slumped quietly to the ground.

  Bear crashed through the dense, tangled underbrush in pursuit, grimacing in pain and clutching his injured parts guardedly when he failed to step with sufficient care. When he came upon the Indian tying the unconscious boy's hands and feet with rawhide strips, Bear stumbled to his knees, drawing the gleaming Bowie knife as he knelt over Billy's still form.

  "I told the little shit what I'd do," he spat as he started to unbutton the boy's trousers.

  The Sioux whacked Bear's wrist sharply with the handle of the heavy war club, and the knife went spinning into the brush. Bear clasped his throbbing wrist in agony and glared at the stone-faced Indian furiously.

  His own black eyes meeting Bear's unflinchingly, the Sioux said firmly, "The boy is mine."

  Bear's muscles tensed, and his face turned crimson. For a few moments there was an awkward, nervous silence during which a single threatening move or one misspoken word might have brought death to either of the antagonists.

  Then Bear's outrage cooled slightly and he grumbled acrimoniously, "All right, Lone Badger, this little bastard sure as hell ain't worth fightin' over. You can have him. Now let's get the others." The big man rose slowly to his feet.

  "No, we wait," said the Indian. "We are only five."

  3

  INSIDE THE SOD house Martha Kesterson lifted the cast-iron lid of the Dutch oven and pressed a golden biscuit lightly with her forefinger. The top of the biscuit sprang back and Martha nodded in approval.

  Martha, in her early forties, was still a handsome woman. Her honey-colored hair was streaked only slightly with gray, and, although her waist was beginning to thicken, she was one of those women who held her age well. Martha hummed as she forked the hot biscuits from the black kettle-like oven and deposited them on a shiny tin platter. Her cheerful, pleasant face belied the trying tragic times she had endured since her family homesteaded in the Nebraska hills.

  Five years earlier, a diphtheria epidemic had ravaged the county. When the rampaging disease hit the Kesterson homestead, Sam and Martha had nursed their three stricken children for endless hours without rest, tormented constantly by the coughing, choking delirium of their fevered sons and daughter. First Jane, two years Billy's senior, had succumbed and then Frank, and finally her second eldest, James, had died. Billy and Sarah had been unexplainably immune to any assault from the disease and, grateful that two of her children were spared, she had come to terms with her loss, accepting that she must carry on for the living.

  Martha's daughter, Sarah, turned the thick, curling slices of bacon sizzling in the black, cast iron frying pan atop the burner of the cast-iron cooking stove. The aroma of coffee steamed from the huge pot next to the skillet. The big cook stove was Martha's single concession to luxury and occupied the prominent place in the cooking area of the room. Sam had had the stove shipped by railroad from the East as a gift for their twentieth wedding anniversary two years earlier. It was the newest model range and even had a small oven, but Martha still preferred her old Dutch oven resting on hot coals in the stone, open-hearth fireplace for baking.

  "What's taking them so long?" Martha asked offhandedly.

  Hot grease crackled and splattered from the frying pan and Sarah stepped back from the stove momentarily. "If I know Billy," she said, "he probably got Dad to help him check out his rabbit snares before they come in."

  Sarah, a few months short of twenty, was a lithe, slender young woman with a fair, Nordic complexion, tanned only slightly by the simmering Nebraska sun. She was taller than the average woman of her time and her shimmering golden hair, pulled back and tied with a wide blue ribbon, reached to the small of her back. Full, ample, but not disproportionately large, breasts were evidenced by the womanly moun
ds that pressed against her flowered cotton dress. She had laughing mischievous eyes and a nose that was perhaps a bit too straight—the heritage of her Scandinavian ancestors. Her full lips covering white, even teeth seemed to be set in a perpetual, genial smile.

  Sarah was an enigma even to her parents. Martha worried that Sarah's seeming contradictions scared off the many bachelor neighbors who might be prospective husbands. Her openness and wholesome good looks had drawn many a young farmer and rancher to the Kesterson homestead. After several visits, however, few called again. Martha had suggested to Sam that the young men were frightened by Sarah's keen intellect and defiant assertiveness. Sam had just laughed. "Not all men want a meek woman, Martha. God knows, you'd have never found a husband if they did. She'll meet her match one day."

  Martha had not been appeased, however. She had a beautiful, eligible daughter who would soon be past prime marriageable age. On the one hand, Sarah was gentle and domestic with all of the feminine graces; on the other, she handled horses and a shotgun as well as or better than most men. At times, she lived in a dream world, writing poetry and little romantic stories; still, she thrived in the outdoors helping Sam round up the cattle or felling cottonwoods with an awesome, wicked, double-bladed axe. Sarah was warm and friendly; she could also be volatile and explosive.

  Once, Sam had made what Martha thought was an unflattering comparison of Sarah to one of his old range cows. The scarred, grizzled cow was blind in one eye, the result of an infection incurred as a calf. Old One Eye, as Sam had called her, faithfully raised a big, hardy calf every year. She was the boss of the herd, the top of the pecking order. "Not even the bull messes with her till she's good and ready." Sam had observed. The other cows might come through the winter skin and bones, but old One Eye would always be fat and sassy. "She's the kind of cow that'll make this country," he had said. "That old devil's a survivor, and that's what Sarah is—a survivor."