The Indian Ring (16 page)

Brenna shook her head.

Joshua continued, “That was the first time I ever heard words like that I had never seen such hatred. I mean this cute little girl seemed to turn into a demon with her demeanor. It sure made me smell the coffee for the first time. When I got home, I was doing chores and slamming things down and just letting off steam. My father was town marshal and was at home recuperating because he had been shot in the lower leg during a gunfight. I didn't know it, but he was watching me out the window the whole time and knew I was upset. I had just finished stacking fire wood, and he came out the door using a cane. He walked up to me and said to join him.

“We sat down on the bank of the creek near my house, and he asked what was wrong, and I told him.”

Brenna said, “What did he say? And, I must ask. You clearly are half white and half red and said your father was town marshal, so was your mother an Indian?”

He grinned, “No, sorry. She was white and a very successful merchant starting at the age of fifteen, when she had me. My father was a Lakota Indian. You folks call them the Sioux. His name was Claw Marks, and he was a member of the Strongheart Society, a group of the very best warriors. That is how I got my last name. He never married my ma, because he knew what you were talking about: Many people
are narrow-minded and ignorant. He told her he knew that I would be a boy when I was born, and asked her to give me my last name, and he left me this knife and sheath, and he told her to take me to Lakota villages, his village, and let me learn the ways of his people, as well as of the white world. The man I called my pa was a lawman named Dan Trooper, who left me this pistol and fancy holster.”

She saw the miniature lawman's star on the side and also admired the intricate beadwork and fringe.

Strongheart went on, “He was actually my stepfather, but he was like a real father to me. Very strict.”

She said, “Fascinating. Very fascinating life, Joshua.”

“Getting back to what my pa said,” Joshua continued. “He asked what happened, and I told him. Then, he said, ‘Son, I am not a Bible-thumper but one verse I learned and liked when you were a toddler because of comments I had to deal with about you was Romans chapter 12, verse 21: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” I always say that the very best revenge in the world is success.' I tell you, Brenna, those words have never left me.”

He then said, “Brenna, I really need to check on Eagle, my horse. I need to feed him, and—”

Brenna laughed and interrupted, “Come with me. I think you will be surprised.”

They walked to the large barn and entered. Joshua had never seen such a well-appointed stable. There was a large pump handle at the end of the building and piping that ran downhill on an angle from that, with spouts at each individual stall over the stone watering troughs for each horse. It had an upstairs hayloft and the stalls were impeccably clean with fresh bedding straw and Strongheart saw that each stall had what looked like rich green hay in the corner feeders. The horses, all handsome, were very well groomed. At the very
far end, a large wooden door was closed and locked shut with a pair of lawman's handcuffs. There was a sign on the door, which read,
KEEP SHUT, FRESH F
EED.

They got to the door, and Brenna, yelled, “Buck!”

He emerged from the far end stall and ran down to her and unlocked the cuffs, sliding the door back. Strongheart followed her and saw there was no feed at all. There were two larger stalls, presumably for stallions, with tall rock walls for the runs instead of fencing like all the other stalls. This apparently was to keep studs calmed and not see other horses and get excited. There stood Eagle eating hay in one stall, and he gave out a low whinny when he saw Joshua.

Strongheart went into the stall and fussed over him a little, while Brenna watched on, smiling. Eagle had been cleaned, groomed, combed out, and someone had worked on his hooves, which looked great. He had a run, privacy, and nobody coming into that barn would know he was there unless they heard him whinny.

“Oh my gosh,” Joshua said. “Brenna, this is too much. You are too kind. How can I thank you?”

She said, “Do not get killed or caught and finish your job.”

He smiled.

They left the barn and Strongheart was very amazed at the wonderful care Eagle was being given and how well hidden he was. He was also amazed at the beauty and grace of this woman beside him. He felt stirrings that he had not felt since Belle was murdered.

At first, Joshua resisted the feelings, but he remembered the talk his cousin Beautiful Woman had given him. He was a survivor, and he knew that as much as he loved Belle, he would dishonor her memory by curling up in a fetal position like a dandy and just giving up on life. That was not him. He was a warrior, a man, and he was indeed a romantic. He could
not help himself, probably because he was the love child of an adventurous fifteen-year-old girl making her way west, having had both parents killed on the way yet forging ahead, and a handsome Lakota warrior who saved her life from a grizzly, almost dying himself in the process. How could Joshua not have become a survivor and a romantic?

He also knew that this refuge was wonderful, but he had to get to Washington, D.C., and try to end the horrible antics of the Indian Ring, and he had to eliminate Robert Hartwell and his henchmen. However, he had to make sure they did not eliminate him first, and he did not know that a local had seen Sammy Davis with him and where they were riding to.

TOP OF THE DIRT PILE

William W. Belknap was born in 1829 in Newburgh, New York. Having graduated from Princeton, he got his law degree at Georgetown University. He passed the bar exam in 1851, and then practiced in Iowa, before running for and winning a seat in the state legislature.

During the Civil War, William Belknap fought in the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry and saw action at both Shiloh and Vicksburg. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to brigadier general and become close with General William Tecumseh Sherman.

After the Civil War, Belknap became the head tax collector for Iowa until 1869, when President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him secretary of war. Almost immediately, in what became known as the Trader Post Scandal, Belknap started taking kickback payments every three months from a crooked Fort Sill tradership contract between Caleb P. Marsh and sutler John S. Evans.

At the very beginning of the Civil War, Union soldiers began purchasing supplies from private vendors known as
sutlers. These sutlers set up trading posts inside U.S. Army forts and were at that time chosen by regimental officers to do business. That policy changed completely in 1870, when Belknap lobbied and got Congress to pass a law in July to grant him the sole authority in the War Department to license and choose each and every sutler at Western military forts. Both U.S. Army soldiers, civilian workers, such as scouts, and Indians, shopped and bought most of their supplies at these trading posts. Controlled by Secretary Belknap, the trading posts became very lucrative monopolies, and he attracted people like Robert Hartwell, who was an empire builder in his own right. As secretary of war, Belknap not only appointed handpicked sutlers, but made sure that soldiers stationed at forts could only buy supplies from the trading posts. Soldiers in the West, who were forced to buy supplies at higher than market prices, were left destitute.

Behind this scam was William Belknap's second wife, Carita, who initially got her husband to appoint a Caleb P. Marsh to the trading post at Fort Sill located in the Indian territory. John S. Evans, however, had already been appointed to that position previously, so to settle the question of ownership regarding the trading post, Belknap had an illicit partnership contract drawn up and then authorized by him. The contract allowed Evans to keep the trading post at Fort Sill, provided that he pay $12,000 out of his annual profits to Marsh. Evans would keep the remaining profit. Then Belknap had Marsh pay half of his money from the contract or $6,000 per year to Carita so it could not be traced to him. She only lived to receive one payment, dying from tuberculosis during childbirth. So Belknap then had Marsh continue to pay Belknap Carita's share directly, with the secretary claiming he would save it for their child, but the infant child died one year later, so Belknap pocketed the money and had Marsh
keep paying him directly. Then in less than a year, Secretary William Belknap remarried, but this time it was Carita's sister, Amanda, and she gladly accepted Carita's portion of the quarterly payments from Marsh so they could not be tied directly to Belknap as easily.

This was the birth of the Indian Ring.

National attention was drawn to the plight of the American Indians two years earlier in 1874 when world-famous paleontologist Othniel Marsh revealed that the Lakota had “frayed blankets, rotten beef, and concrete-hard flour.” Secretary of Interior Columbus Delano, responsible for Indian Bureau policy, resigned the next year. Following that, the
New York Herald
, a Democratic newspaper, reported the rumors that Secretary Belknap was receiving kickback money from various trading post sutlers.

Prior to this, Allan Pinkerton had personally conducted some very quiet investigations along with some of his Washington-based agents into the Indian Ring, on behalf of private requests from various politicians. On February 29, 1876, during the Great Sioux War and a presidential election year, Democratic U.S. Representative Hiester Clymer headed an investigation into the corruption under Belknap in the War Department. The Democratic Party had recently obtained a majority in the House of Representatives and had immediately begun a series of queries into corruption charges throughout the Grant Administration. Clymer's committee barely began investigating when they learned about Belknap and both his wives receiving the quarterly bribes from the Fort Sill trading post contract. However, Washington, D.C., has always been loaded with deal-makers, cronies, and politicos and Congressman Clymer was among them. Even though he was investigating him, he advised Belknap to resign his office to keep him from going to prison. Belknap hired an
attorney, Montgomery Blair. Secretary Belknap defended himself by admitting that the payments took place. However, he proclaimed his innocence, stating that the financial arrangements were instigated by his two wives, both sisters, used to high society living standards and opulence. Clymer, however, had Caleb Marsh, who exposed the Fort Sill ring under Congressional testimony. And to save his own hide, Marsh testified under oath that he had directly made payments to Secretary Belknap and that Secretary Belknap even gave Marsh receipts for these payments.

It was at this time, foreseeing Belknap's end, that Robert Hartwell started using more strong-arm tactics to keep the monies flowing in, through him, from all the trading posts that were part of the scam. There were also a number of political leaders and investors around D.C. who wanted the Indian Ring to keep operating and wipe out the tribes, so various ventures such as gold prospecting in the Black Hills could be carried out without attacks. A number of investors had put money into the trading post scams and were reaping benefits quarterly.

William Belknap, along with his attorney, testified before the Clymer Committee on February 29, 1876. Belknap then withdrew from giving any further testimony. Now, his attorney Blair approached members of Congress and proposed that they drop any and all charges against Belknap if his client would simply resign. The Clymer committee refused the offer. When a cabinet member named Bristow went to the White House and sought out President Grant, who was eating breakfast and getting prepared for a studio portrait session with Henry Ulke, Bristow told President Grant all about Belknap's trading post scams. He suggested that the president speak with U.S. Representative Bass for more information about the Indian Ring. Grant scheduled an afternoon meeting with
Congressman Bass. Grant started to finally leave for Ulke's studio for his portrait sitting, when he was interrupted by Secretary Belknap and Interior Secretary Zachariah Chandler in the White House's Red Room. Bawling like a two-hundred-and-some pound baby, Belknap literally threw himself on the floor in dramatic fashion in front of the president. He confessed the kickback scam to Grant but blamed everything on his two wives. Belknap begged the president to please accept his resignation. U. S. Grant, knew both sisters' reputation as elitists who always seemed to want the best of everything. Actually moved by William Belknap's plea and dramatic scene, the president wrote the resignation for Belknap himself, and then accepted it at 10:20
A.M.

Even though Belknap resigned, the angry and indignant House of Representatives voted to impeach the now former secretary of war. Members of the House argued about whether they had any right to impeach Belknap, since he was now a private citizen. A couple of outraged Democratic congressmen really criticized Grant for accepting Belknap's resignation. The House finally, after arguing all day, passed five articles of impeachment, to be presented to the Senate for trial.

In May 1876, after a lengthy, often political, debate, the Senate voted that Belknap be put on trial by the Senate. Although there was a great deal of strong evidence that Belknap willingly and knowingly accepted quarterly bribes from sutler Marsh, Belknap was actually acquitted when the Senate vote failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority for conviction. This was because most of the senators present were against conviction, feeling that the Senate had no right to convict a private citizen.

George Armstrong Custer was now dead and being lionized in the news back east. The Battle of the Little Big Horn, which Joshua had recently learned about, was already being
called Custer's Last Stand. He was an egomaniac who graduated at the very bottom of his class at the U.S. Military Academy of West Point and received more demerits than any previous cadet. He did well leading men, as he was very ambitious and wanted medals, and his long-range goal was the presidency. The reddish-blond George Custer, known to friends as Autie, but to his wife as Cinnamon, wanted one, too. He did however gain national fame as the “boy general,” as he was promoted to brevet brigadier general, a temporary rank, at twenty-three years of age during the war. After the war, he fell to the rank of captain and was later promoted to major then lieutenant colonel, but was used to the accolades and respect of being a general officer.

Earlier in the year, Reprentative Clymer had met with Lieutenant Colonel Custer, who was a Democrat with his eyes on the presidency and who was also quietly feeding stories about Belknap and Grant to the news media. Clymer continuing his investigation into Belknap's War Department, having called upon Custer at Fort Lincoln, Nebraska. Autie then testified in the nation's capital on both March 29 and April 4. Custer was rumored to have anonymously aided the
New York Herald
in its investigation into Indian trading posts in a March 31 exposé, entitled “Belknap's Anaconda.” Custer boldly swore to Clymer's committee that sutlers gave a percentage of their profits to Secretary William Belknap. He was genuinely upset about it, as he become suspicious in 1875 that his men at Fort Lincoln were paying ridiculously high prices for supplies, and then found out the sutler at the fort was only being paid $2,000 out of the trader-ship's $15,000 in profits. Custer believed that the $13,000 difference went to partners in the trader post deals, or to Belknap himself. With much of his testimony based on hearsay and always also eager to feather his own political nest, Custer testified that he had
heard that President Grant's brother, Orville Grant, was an investor involved in the trading post rings, having invested in three posts with the president's blessing.

President Grant was furious that Custer did this. Custer also testified that Colonel William B. Hazen had been sent to a remote post, Fort Buford, as punishment for Hazen having exposed Belknap's trading post scam in 1872. That testimony really angered General Philip Sheridan, who wrote to the War Department and contradicted Custer's claims, including his remarks about Hazen's so-called isolation. Prior to that, Sheridan had been a staunch supporter of Custer's until the boy general's testimony before the Clymer committee. Although Custer's testimony, as mentioned, was based on almost all rumors and innuendo, his national reputation as a military commander really impressed the Clymer committee, so they gave more weight to his gossip. Belknap, despite his resignation and damaged reputation still had many strong connections in Washington, D.C., and he used his influence to try to discredit George Armstrong Custer's testimony.

So, now in actuality William W. Belknap was a has-been and no longer relevant. Hartwell was the head of the now-invisible but still functioning Indian Ring. Oddly enough, Joshua Strongheart was now being helped by the now-invisible but still functioning Underground Railroad.

Joshua Strongheart faced and defeated the infamous and frightening We Wiyake, Blood Feather. He had defeated many powerful foes, but he had never been up against such a powerful and extensive machine that could reach all the way across the country. Worse yet, this man was not seven feet tall like Blood Feather. He was slight and short and weak, physically, but he was gigantic in his ruthlessness. He also had an inordinate amount of power and his money was in a steadily increasing unending supply. Even worse, all of his money and
power had been accumulated at the expense of the true Americans, not immigrants, Strongheart's father's people, the American Indian. He despised the red man and could care less if every man, woman, and child perished. Unfortunately, there were also many greedy investors in the Indian Ring who wanted Hartwell to succeed and make them money. There were also those in power who wanted the red man to become a nonfactor, so they and their cronies could prospect and mine the sacred Black Hills for gold, as well as violate other American Indian rights.

This was indeed Strongheart's biggest challenge, and it was starting to present an even greater threat.