The Year After Custer

Myles Boone's Murchison

Description

1877, the year after Sitting Bull's victory at Little Big Horn, the U.S. cavalry chases the Nez Perce nation from its homeland in Oregon's Wallowa Valley. Chief Joseph escapes, leading 800 men, women and children and thousands of horses on an amazing 1700 mile retreat, outwitting five separate U.S. army divisions in a race to reach the Sioux in Canada â?’ to unite with them, the Crow, Blackfeet and other native peoples in a war for the American northwest.

THE YEAR AFTER CUSTER recreates this heroic year with authentic detail in all its epic Western drama â?’ that reaches from the whorehouses of Ogallala to lunch with the Rockefellers in New York City; from the tipi of a Nez Perce shaman who believes The Great Spirit speaks in his dreams to the field tent of Colonel Nelson Miles who dreams of becoming the new Custer; from the Oregon orchards that a half-white widow abandons to guide her people through Yellowstone's secret canyons to a Texas wrangler who flees the law across the Great Plains and finds the passionate and ennobling purpose of his life.

In the style of Michener and McMurtry, Myles Murchison's new historical Western brings to life the glory and myth of what is marked today as the Nez Perce Trail, a U.S. National Monument.

Sujets

• Civil War Period
• Histoire
• United States
• History

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456608477
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE YEAR
AFTER CUSTER
 
by
Myles Murchison


ALSO BY MYLES MURCHISON
 
 
The Deathless
 
Walking In
 
The Perfect Breadbox
 


THE YEAR AFTER CUSTER
Copyright © 2012 by Myles Murchison.
 
 
Published by Kelly Books.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0847-7
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Kelly Books, 202 - 2239 152 Street, White Rock, British Columbia, Canada V4A4P1
 


 
 
For Ada
 
 

 
"The Wyakin belief reflected a Nez Perce universe filled with individual spirits that existed in dreams and in real life, and to which Nez Perces could appeal for assistance: thunder, lightning, a soaring eagle, a grizzly bear, and so forth. Each spirit could harm or protect a man according to its powers and inclination. The Wyakin could be a single force or a combination of forces acting in concert. Each man had a personal Wyakin, warning him, protecting him, and assisting him through life."
 
Alvin M. Josephy, Jr
THE NEZ PERCE INDIANS and the Opening of the Northwest.
Part One - Big Hole
 

Chapter 1
The Great Spirit
THE GREAT SPIRIT WAS DYING. LIKE Zeus and Odin and the other once-powerful gods now extinct, The Great Spirit existed only in the faith of His believers and they were being swept from the land − by disease, gunpowder and heartbreak.
A new race was reaching from the eastern ocean to the western sea. The Great Spirit had no power to stop this invasion, for this new race had a mightier god, one who lived in the sky, whose wife was not Mother Earth but a virgin girl whose only son these white people had killed. Yet this mighty god had forgiven them for this murder − and in that forgiveness came their power, for these white people believed their god would forgive whatever they did in His name, so they did whatever they desired.
All that was left were the last great tribes hidden in a valley behind a range of mountains that divided the land, and the greatest of these were a people known as the Nez Perce. Among them were some who still believed in The Great Spirit and He summoned the last of His magic to save the few who would one day become the Dreamers who would see into the Spirit Land and free His people.
To do this, The Great Spirit sent a messenger ...
 

Chapter 2
John Rundy
ONE MAN RIDING ALONE WITH SIX HORSES over the sun-burned Nebraska prairie, that was a sight bound to draw all kinds of wrong attention. Particularly with these horses, all branded and shod, coats shining − a blind man could see how plummy they were. Dark colored for durability. Solid colored to the hoof because white feet are soft and don't hold a nail. Geldings, because stallions and mares have too much temperament. A lone rider out here with six mounts boss as these would either be a fool tempting horse thieves or be one himself.
John Rundy rode the lead horse, a big black mustang named Kansa − with five horses tethered tail-to-halter behind him. Rundy knew how he looked, loping across the plains like this, out of place as an elk on a shorthorn drive. It made his guts wrench. He was fourteen years a cowboy − a wrangler, a top hand with horses − but he didn't have the stomach for law breaking. He wanted to double back but he didn't see how he could now he'd given his word.
You're just the relay man, John. They won't even know you was there.
That's what Indian Bill Massey had said three days ago when he tracked John Rundy down at Tuck's Saloon in Ogallala and started ordering whiskeys. That was the night Rundy had lost three month's pay at the tables across the street in the Crystal Palace and Indian Bill was full of sympathy.
"The Crystal Palace is an ill-named place," said Indian Bill. "Ain't no more crystal in it than there is honesty."
Rundy had come up with a herd of longhorns from Texas with the Running W, getting into Ogallala late in the season, a week after the Fourth of July, shooting up the town. Now he was a little drunk and in the mood to go back and call down the cheroot-smoking bastard in the bright tartan vest who had laid four eights over his full house. He tried to talk Indian Bill into coming across the street with him. Rundy felt cheated at cards and by a certain unfairness he couldn't define.
But Indian Bill had something else in mind. Big John Rundy was hard-working, trustworthy and aimless as a tumbleweed − just the qualities Indian Bill was looking for.
"You know what injustice is, John? Look at you. You've worked for Goodnight, and now he's owned by that English couple. You worked at XIT, largest spread in Texas, and it's owned by Europeans in Boston and New York. You've worked for spreads owned by German banks and Scottish banks. Now you're working for the Irishman, King, at the Running W. Foreigners own the damn country and here you are, American-born, earning what? Thirty dollars a month?"
"Twenty nine," Rundy said, the liquor going to his head.
"All that hard work and they're drinking champagne and you're broke. That's what's called an injustice, John."
Indian Bill signaled for two more drinks and leaned closer to the cowboy.
"You look at these boys." The saloon was rowdy, full of loud men gambling and drinking. Upstairs they were fucking in fifteen minute shifts. "These boys have little understanding of how the local economy works. They don't know about the mathematical improbability of beating the house odds at roulette and, no offense, Big John, but they don't stand much of a chance with a gambler with an eye for tells, either. And pussy, well, they're lining up for that. Cowboys in the local economy are simply the means to redistribute the wealth − paid at the railhead and played out at saloons and whorehouses just like this one. You just have to look at this from a different point of view."
John knew Indian Bill from XIT − before Bill had turned outlaw − so he wasn't surprised at the kind of mischief Bill had in mind, but when it came clear it was the Cattleman's Bank he was talking about, John said, slurring a little, but without a second thought, "Not for me, Bill, but I'll keep it unner my hat, dun worry."
"I don't worry about you, Big John. You're that rare thing − an honest man. But hear me out. You won't have any part of it. They won't even know you was there. You're just the relay man. Gone before they get there."
Bill laid it out. "I need somebody I can trust, somebody good with horses. Somebody who can buy 'em, all legal-like with a bill-of-sale, raise no suspicion, and keep 'em fresh and ready. Good time to buy horses, the end of a trail ride. They're cheap. Trail boss'd rather sell 'em than winter 'em. Right?"
"Right," Rundy said, the whiskey talking.
"I got a place we can cross the Lewellen River," Indian Bill sidled up to him, talking in his ear. "We just ride up, change horses, and leave whoever might be riding after us long gone. No one would even see you, even know you'd been there. And I'd make it worth your while. How much you lose tonight?"
"'Bout a hundred."
"How would you like to see five times that much?"
"Bill, I can't−"
"Seven times that much."
It took a lot of whiskey to convince him but by the end of the night Rundy had seen the benefits of entrepreneurial capitalism and the opportunities that lie ahead for a man with two years pay in his pocket.
 
***
 
Coming to sundown, Rundy chose a leafy spot downriver, corralled the horses among the trees, fed them from feed bags, and rubbed them down. Didn't light a campfire for fear of who it might attract. He ate his canned beans cold. He had no art for deceit, and a conscience like a rock tied to a downing man. It wouldn't let up. He cursed himself again for getting into this.
He'd told Mitch, the foreman for the Running W, he was buying the horses for an uncle in South Dakota who had a spread up there. Rundy didn't think Mitch had believed him.
"Didn't know you had kin," Mitch had said in his slow way of talking. "And he sent you the money, too?" Of course, Mitch was only too willing to sell. Otherwise he'd have to winter them, add to his overhead. "Sorry you're leaving us, John. You're sure a drifter but you're a good hand."
John Rundy had always drifted. He'd run away from home at fourteen. Big for his age, he caught on with Goodnight in Colorado when men were in short supply because of the Civil War. He learned to cowboy like he learned everything else − from bunkhouses, whorehouses, ignorance, poverty and hard work. At first, he copied men he admired but they tarnished, and John moved on. Later, he measured himself against top wranglers wherever he found them because that's what he believed a man did.
Keeping to himself, a loner, fit him. No ties. Nothing to hold him down. No horseshit to believe in.
Buying from Mitch, Rundy knew exactly what he wanted. He'd ridden them all. A herd of horses follows beside every cattle drive and cowboys ride five or six horses from the remuda every day, keeping the horses fresh. Each horse had a name and a specialty. Checkers, the cutting horse. Spider, the speed horse. Texas Tom, the cow horse. Ol' Tom would pull you through the brambles to chase out a steer without the nudge of a spur.
"You've got a good eye for horseflesh," Mitch had told him. "Just be sure to keep the bill of sale on your person at all times. Don't want to be mistook for a horse thief."
Rundy didn't sleep well that night. He woke from a dream: an angel of God had appeared to him, just as He had appeared to Joseph Smith. For a minute Rundy didn't know what was real and what wasn't. He heard the river, saw the stars, felt the night air, turned to see the horses in moonlight, hobbled and foraging. He was breathing heavy and had sweated through his