1 Chapter 1
The Moon of Hard Winter (November) 1891
Turtle Crick Farm, South Dakota
He managed to function in the ordinary hours, reclaiming his farm and working the smithy. But his days no longer raised the grand lust for life they once evoked.
The appearance of moon glow inevitably conjured images of his Other Heart, the man taken from him in the hours between the death of 1890 and the birth of the new year. Specters from that recent past crowded his nocturnal dreams and gripped him so firmly he feared ghost sickness infected his mind.
The simple extinguishing of his lamp upon retiring opened his splintered brain to the past, to reliving great love and crippling loss. Visions of the massacre at Wounded Knee and the fight at Drexel Mission made real the gunfire and blood and slaughter. The stink of black powder and the musk of shredded entrails came near to suffocating him. The crash of cannon and the bark of rifles vied with the cries of dying men, women, and children to haunt the shadowed corners of his bedchamber.
Better than ten months of the new year, as whites counted time, had run their course before he rose from his bed in the dark of night. The unsteady light of the candle he’d lit mirrored his shaky resolve. He paused, exhibiting uncharacteristic indecision. Eventually, he walked through the great room—still warm and redolent of spicy stew and yeasty bread—to enter another where the flickering glow of the wick’s flame revealed a handsome young man sleeping peacefully. Even as the watcher’s blood heightened, his intent faltered.
He would have backed away and returned to his solitary bed had not the sleeper awakened at that crucial moment. Recognition replaced confusion in those brown, soulful eyes. Then understanding, the man on the bed swept back the covers and murmured a single Lakota word.
“Wastelakapi!”
Beloved. 1
Six Months Earlier, April 1891
Turtle Crick Farm, South Dakota
Winter Bird spotted the riders first. At his whistle, I reined in the plow horse and followed his gaze. The horsemen did not appear to be uniformed, so they weren’t army. That was good. The sight of six blue coats would not have been tolerable at the moment. Recollections of death and mayhem were too raw. Still, half a dozen riders of any sort pounding toward the farm portended nothing promising.
After trailing Bird to the porch, I waved a warning as he picked up his rifle. We needed our weapons at hand but ought not to be brandishing them when this group rode into the yard. As we stood side-by-side on the porch, he leaned his Winchester against the railing near my Henry.
The horses were almost to the bridge over Turtle Crick before I identified Sheriff Charles Landreth as the man leading the muster. My heart churned. He’d been holding a six-gun on me the last time we talked. The riders pulled up in a cloud of dust.
The sheriff, a lanky man with legs too long for the rest of him, cultivated a thick, grizzled mustache flowing out of his nostrils to conceal his upper lip. The lawman walked his mount close enough to drive me back a step. The animal was a beautiful white with black rigging. I hadn’t seen this ride before. Of course, I’d not laid my gaze on Landreth in nearly six years. His badge had apparently survived statehood as it now read “Sheriff of Gadsby County.” Honoring that crooked, English magistrate, Julius Gadsby, with a county named after him came near to making me ill.
The sheriff nodded. “John Strobaw. Thought we was done with you. Heard you was back.” He paused, but I didn’t respond. “You’re like a lame gelding that shows up at every horse trade.”
The word “gelding” snagged my attention.
“At least we got rid of Brandt,” he said. “Or so I hear, anyways.”
My gorge rose until I realized he was deliberately provoking me. I’d never dealt this man a penny’s worth of trouble, so there was no reason for ending up on his wrong side but one: he could not abide Indians.
“How come you didn’t have the good grace to catch a bullet like Brandt?” he went on.
I stared rudely into his pale, mean eyes. “Shambling Bear’s time was up. Mine wasn’t.”
“Shambling Bear. So that was his Injun name, huh?” He turned to my companion. “Who’s this ‘un? Wait a minute, I know you. I run you outta town a couple a times. You that buck that did some trading with Mr. Brown down at the Emporium.”
Bird’s black eyes were hooded, but his answer was an easy, “I am Winter Bird.”
“Ain’t you supposed to be on a reservation?”
“I hired him to help out since my brother’s not with me now. The farm and my cattle operation are too much for one man.” It pained me to refer to Matthew Brandt as my brother. I wanted to proudly proclaim he had been my life-mate and lover, but that would serve none of us well.
