The Indian Ring (19 page)

THE HANDSHAKE

Scottie Middleton was a towheaded youngster with freckles and an infectious smile. He had a serious set to his jaw when he looked at the imposing three-story brick Fremont County sheriff's office and jail on Macon Street one block over from Main Street. It was 1875, and Cañon City, Colorado, home of the territorial prison, was a small bustling town enjoying the best climate in the Colorado territory, which would become a state in less than a year.

It had been less than a year since Strongheart had lost his fiancée and true love, Annabelle Ebert.

Scottie hitched up his homespun trousers, wiped the drainage from his nose, and walked into the big, imposing building. In the front, he first stopped and looked again at the tall black-and-white half-Arabian, half-Saddlebred gelding, Eagle, which was ridden and owned by the famous half-Sioux, half-white Pinkerton agent Joshua Strongheart. When he got inside, he saw a large sheriff's deputy with a large muttonchop mustache.

“Well, saints preserve us!” said the deputy. “It is a leprechaun we have here. Or is it just a strappin' young lad?”

“I'm a boy,” said Scottie, his jaw set despite feeling intimidated in the strange surroundings. “I want to see Mr. Strongheart, sir,” Scottie said.

“Well, he is here visiting Sheriff Bengley,” the deputy replied. “Let me tell him you are here. And what be yer name, lad?”

“Scottie Middleton, sir.”

“You stay right here and have a chew on this wee bit a licorice I had back here, an' I'll go fetch him,” the deputy replied.

He handed a small licorice whip to the boy, who took it with wide eyes saying, “Thank you, sir.”

A few minutes later, the deputy had the little boy follow him and escorted him into the sheriff's office. The sheriff sat behind his desk grinning, and the boy looked with awe at Joshua Strongheart. He took it all in with his jaw hanging at knee level. Strongheart stood and winked at Scottie. This man was such a giant in Scottie's mind and now he was looking at him in person.

His long, shiny black hair was hanging down his back in a single ponytail, and it was covered by a black cowboy hat with a wide, very flat brim and rounded crown. A very wide, fancy, colorful beaded hat band went around the base of the crown.

He wore a bone hair pipe choker necklace around his sinewy neck and three large grizzly bear claws helped separate some of the rows of bone hair pipes. Just months earlier, a massive grizzly had mauled Strongheart, who'd eventually killed it with his knife and pistol, and he still bore many scars from the attack. They fit in just fine with the many bullet scars covering his body. His soft, antelope-skin shirt did little to hide his bulging muscles, and the small rows of
fringe, which slanted in from the broad shoulders in a V shape above the large pectoral muscles and stopped at mid-chest, actually served to accentuate the muscular build and narrow waist that looked like a flesh-covered washboard.

Levi Strauss had two years earlier patented and started making a brand-new type of trousers made of blue denim, which folks were calling Levi's. They had brass rivets and Joshua had bought a couple pairs from a merchandiser, who bought them himself for $13.50 a dozen. They were tight, and they too did little to hide the bulging muscles of his long legs.

Around his hips, Joshua wore his prized possessions: one a gift from his late stepfather and the other a gift from his late father. On the right hip of the engraved brown gun belt was the fancy holster, with his stepfather's Colt .45 Peacemaker in it. It had miniature marshal's badges, like his stepfather's own, attached to both of the mother-of-pearl grips and fancy engraving along the barrel. It was a brand-new single-action model made especially for the army in 1873, and this one was a special order by his stepfather's friend and Strongheart's new friend Chris Colt, who was a nephew of inventor Colonel Samuel Colt.

On his left hip was the long beaded, porcupine-quilled, and fringed leather knife sheath holding the large Bowie-like knife with the elk antler handle and brass inlays. It was left to him by his father.

He wore long cowboy boots with large-roweled spurs with two little bell-shaped pieces of steel that hung down on the outside from each of the hubs and clinked on the spur rowels as they spun or while he walked. These were called jinglebobs.

Joshua stuck out his hand saying, “Sir, I heard you were looking for me. My name is Joshua Strongheart, and what is your name, sir?”

A little of the trepidation disappeared while the kid's shoulders went back a little, and he shook hands with his hero. He tried to lower his voice and said, “Howdy, sir. My name is Scottie Middleton.”

Joshua stuck out his hand and shook, saying, “I like that. You have a good, firm handshake and you look a man in the eye. Now, what can I do for you, young man?”

“Well, Mr. Strongheart,” the tyke said, “I want to hire you.”

Strongheart looked over at the sheriff and grinned.

He replied, “You want to hire me? What makes you want to do that?”

Scottie said, “Yer a Pinkerton agent, ain't ya?”

Strongheart said, “I am that Scottie. So, what is this all about?”

“Well, sir,” Scottie said bravely but still nervously, “my pa said that you are the best there is even though you are a blanket nigger.”

Joshua interrupted, grinning. “Son, first let's start things off right. Do you think calling me a blanket nigger is the kind of language we should use for somebody that does not look like us?”

Scottie hung his head and Strongheart felt bad. He knew this must be tough for him already,

He said, “Go ahead, Scottie.”

“Well,” Scottie said, “my ma died last year of consumption. Then some bad men come last month and killed my pa.”

“I am so sorry, Scottie,” Joshua said. “Do you have folks to live with?”

Scottie said, “Yes, sir. My sister and I live with my aunt Kathy and my uncle Dave, but he is a drunk and don't amount to much. She is nice to me.”

Strongheart said, “So what did you mean you wanted to hire me?”

The little boy reached into his trousers and pulled out a small leather bag, He opened it and marbles rolled out on the desk. He reached in and pulled out some change and held it out.

He said, “Mr. Strongheart, I saved me up some money and have four dollars here. I want to hire you to find the men who stole my pony Johnny Boy and get him back for me. Ma and Pa gave me Johnny Boy last Christmas, and it is all I have from them. That gang a men burnt our house down when they kilt Pa.”

Strongheart winked at the sheriff.

He said, “Well, Scottie, you brought too much money. I only charge one dollar to recover ponies.” He took one dollar in change from Scottie's hand.

Scottie beamed.

He said, “My pa told me to always sign a paper when you make a deal. But I heard you was gonna marry that sweet Missus Ebert, the widow woman with the café and she got kilt. But I heard, before, some bad men stole her ring and you give your word you would get it back. Then I heard you went out and tracked each of them down and kilt them and got her ring back. I just want to know if you will give me your word to get me Johnny Boy back.”

Strongheart got choked up thinking about Belle Ebert who had been murdered earlier in the year by the seven-foot-tall Lakota mass murderer named We Wiyake, Blood Feather. The monster paid dearly for that, his greatest mistake ever.

Scottie's words snapped him out of it as he heard the little boy get choked up, too, while saying, “I can't have my ma and pa back, but getting Johnny Boy back would be kinda like getti' part a them back, Mr. Strongheart.”

Joshua stuck out his hand and said, “If he is alive, I give you my word I will get him back for you.”

The little boy proudly shoved his hand into Strongheart's, and they shook.

He said, “Scottie, I will need you to tell me everything that you can remember about those men. Sheriff, I remember hearing about this case and believe you had a posse after them for a while. I need to know all the details.”

The following day, shortly before daybreak, Joshua Strongheart rode his big majestic half-Arabian, half-Saddlebred black-and-white pinto, Eagle, out of Cañon City headed in pursuit of the killer horse thieves. First though, he stopped at Scottie Middelton's house, where he lived with his aunt and uncle, on River Street. He had to cross the Fourth Street Bridge over the fast-moving Arkansas River. The Arkansas River due west of Cañon City, where it churned its way through a rocky canyon for miles, dropped thousands of feet and produced some of the largest and wildest whitewater rapids in the world. After it poured out of the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas, which was starting to be called the Royal Gorge, the whitewater rapids disappeared pretty much, but the water still rushed with more power than most rivers in the West.

Seeing Scottie's place he rode up to the front of the modest home, dismounted, and Scottie rushed out of the house, grinning broadly. A middle-aged woman with a kind but haggard face walked out, and Strongheart doffed his hat to her. She was followed by a staggering brute of a man who obviously had been drinking.

As Strongheart walked up to the group, he said, “You have a fine young man here in this nephew of yours. My name is Joshua Strongheart.” He tipped his hat brim again. This brought a big smile to her tired but pretty face.

Strongheart walked straight up to the uncle and said, “And you must be Dave.”

The man started to say something, but his words were
shut off when Joshua suddenly reached out and grabbed him, spinning him around. He then grabbed the back of the man's unkempt hair, then grabbed the waistline of his homespun trousers in his other hand, jerked up, and gave it a twist. Now holding Dave up on his tiptoes, he started marching him toward the river in a rapid manner. Reaching the river's edge, Strongheart pitched the drunk into the cold glacial-fed water. The man went under and came up ten yards downstream gasping and flailing at the water, while his family watched from the house in horror. Strongheart jogged along the river's edge and waded into the water at a shallower spot.

He grabbed the drunken uncle and pulled him to the water's edge, dragging him up on the bank. The man lay there gasping and sputtering.

He finally sat up and said, “What d'ja do that fer?”

As the man flinched, Joshua reached down, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him, screaming, back into the water. He held him by the lapels and shoved his head under the fast-flowing current and held it there. After several more times, Strongheart pulled him out of the water and once again up onto the bank, where the man moaned and groaned and sputtered for several minutes.

“I did all that,” Strongheart said, “just to make sure I had your full attention. Are you paying very close attention?”

“Yes, sir!” the uncle said with great enthusiasm.

Strongheart said, “Good. That is a fine young man, and he recently lost his ma and pa. He needs a strong man in his life to teach him how to grow into a man. Just like me, mister, you cannot hold your liquor. Therefore, just like me, you are making an iron-clad decision today, right now, to stop drinking. If you don't, every time I am in town and find out you drank, you will go back into the river but a little longer each time. Do we understand each other?”

Now the uncle's masculinity had been challenged, so he flexed his whiskey muscles and straightened his back a little, hand hovering near his pistol, saying, “Yeah, wal, what if ya was to try to throw me in the river, and I yanked my hogleg and put some holes in ya first?”

Joshua stepped forward, his own hand near his gun, saying angrily, “Go ahead, grab that smoke pole, and start the dance! Please do. Skin it! Draw down on me, and see if I don't punch your dance ticket for you!”

Joshua moved in as the man's eyes opened as wide as a canyon, and he obviously was in a panic, looking for a place to hide. Strongheart's hand shot out, grabbed the uncle, by the lapels, and by pulling and taking two steps backward, he flung the uncle through the air one-handed. The man hit the river once more with a splash and came up sputtering and coughing again.

Strongheart walked back up to the front of the house and took the reins from a broadly grinning Scottie and mounted up. He doffed his hat to Scottie's aunt and got a slight self-satisfied smirk and almost hidden grin and nod of gratitude from her. He galloped away from the house, and rode toward the depot. He would telegraph Lucky, his boss in Chicago, to keep him apprised of what he was doing, then book a train to Pueblo and from there north to Denver.

A few reports stated that a gang had been in Denver and had moved into the mountains northwest of there. He suspected it was the gang responsible for killing Scottie's pa. The pony, Johnny Boy, which was not albino but pure white, had been used as a pack animal. He got a train fairly quickly to Pueblo but had a two-hour wait there before he could load Eagle on a car and get a seat himself.

It was nighttime before Joshua had gotten Eagle fed,
bedded down in a livery stable, got dinner, and a hotel room. He was going to be busy the next day, he knew.

The next day at daybreak, Strongheart went to the Pinkerton Agency office in Denver and started researching all the reports he could find about the gang. He found two of the alerts indicated the gang had been in a place in Denver called the Cowboy Saloon and were nothing but trouble. He would start there.

He rode toward downtown crossing a bridge over Cherry Creek and pulled up in front of the Cowboy Saloon, which was in a two-story redbrick building with rooms above it. He tied Eagle to a hitching rack and went inside. He was almost knocked over by painted ladies, and there was a man with gartered sleeves in the corner playing tunes on a piano. It was raucous, and he saw a number of drinkers giving him dirty looks, probably simply because he was an outsider.

Six cowpunchers confronted him: Two were white, two were black, one was Jicarilla Apache, and one was Mexican. They came up around him at the bar giving him the evil eye.