Native Wolf

  Native Wolf

  by

  NATIVE WOLF by Glynnis Campbell

  Copyright © Glynnis Campbell 2015

  Glynnis Campbell

  P.O. Box 341144

  Arleta, CA 91331

  ISBN-10: 1-938114-12-0

  ISBN-13: 978-1-938114-12-0

  Cover by Tanya Straley and Richard Campbell

  Book Design by Typesetter For Mac

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations for articles and reviews.

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

  Learn more about Glynnis Campbell and her writing at www.glynnis.net

  Dedication

  In homage to the real Yoema*—

  the last surviving member of her family

  after California’s Trail of Tears—

  with honor and respect

  And for those who remember

  and seek to mend the broken past

  *This story is purely a work of fiction and not based in any way upon Yoema’s life. For a real account of her life, read “Yohema (Little Flower),” written by her great granddaughter, Rose Waugh.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  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

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Chapter 1

  PARADISE, CALIFORNIA, 1875

  Claire crammed her collection of dime novels into the carpetbag, on top of her spare set of clothes. But her most beloved book—a dog-eared copy of THE TRAIL HUNTERS OR MONOWANO THE SHAWNEE SPY—she tucked inside the top of her cotton camisole.

  Then she caught her lip under her teeth. Was she doing the right thing—running away? She gazed out her second-story window at the midnight sky above the Parker Ranch, the only home she'd ever known. Her eyes moistened, and the stars blurred.

  But it was too late for regrets. There was just one more thing to do before she finished dressing and headed out into the night, toward an uncertain future.

  She glanced at the letter on the bed. It was brief. But there was really nothing more to say.

  Dear Father,

  By the time you read this, I will be gone. I am sorry to have been such a disappointment to you. I hope my leaving will not bring undue shame to the Parker name. Please give my apologies to Frank. I am certain he will find a more suitable bride. I have had to take the dappled mare, but will send compensation for her when I find employment.

  Kindest regards,

  Claire

  Beside the letter were the things she planned to wear on the journey—her plain brown dress and matching bonnet, calfskin gloves, wool stockings, and sturdy low-heeled boots. Next to them was a pair of scissors. These she picked up, stroking the cold blades with trembling fingers.

  Her father might disapprove of her tears over the death of Yoema, the native woman who’d raised her, but he couldn’t stop Claire from showing her grief in the way of Yoema’s people.

  Claire held her breath as the scissors sliced through the first lock of her waist-length hair with surprising ease. She let the pale tress fall from her fingers onto the bed, where it glistened in the candlelight. Then, with tears filling her eyes, she cut another...and another. The scissors snicked with cruel efficiency in the silent night as strand after strand slid down over her camisole and dropped onto the quilt, severed from her as quickly and irreversibly as Yoema had been.

  She’d lost two mothers now.

  Her real mother she only vaguely remembered. Claire had been a little girl when she died.

  It was Yoema who'd brought her up. Though Claire’s father had refused to let Claire address the native woman as Mother, Yoema had been the one who bathed and dressed her, told her stories, sang her songs, and comforted her when she was hurt. Yoema even sneaked copies of Claire's cherished dime novels to her, though the woman clearly disapproved of them. Yoema had given Claire the affection that her father was incapable of expressing, affection that had died years before, along with Claire’s real mother.

  Even at the tender age of six, Claire had tried to fill her mother's shoes and become the woman of the house. But her father had made it clear in his tight-lipped grief that nobody would ever be as pretty, as talented, or as good as his dearly departed wife.

  It wasn’t her father's fault. Claire was old enough to know that now. He’d simply adored his wife. No one could live up to her memory...not even his own daughter.

  A tear escaped down Claire's cheek. Out of habit, she brusquely wiped it away. She’d learned very young that weeping was something her father couldn’t abide.

  Fortunately, Yoema had always given her a shoulder to cry on.

  But now, Claire had no one.

  A fresh surge of tears threatened to spill over. She squeezed her eyes shut against it, continuing to snip blindly at her hair, leaving it in jagged jaw-length spikes.

  When the last lock fell, she opened her eyes, dropped the scissors, and gazed at the remnants of hair strewn across the bed. They were a painful reminder of the finality of death. But they also symbolized acceptance. Now there could be no wishing for Yoema’s return, any more than she could reattach the hair to her head. What was done was done. Akina, as Yoema said. That was all.

  Chase Wolf slugged back the shot of whiskey. He grimaced as the rotgut burned the back of his throat. It was potent, but not strong enough to ease the guilt gnawing at his insides. He slammed the glass down on the low table in front of him, startling the woman who was pouring drinks.

  “Easy, Chase.” His brother Drew laid a hand on his arm.

  Chase shook off Drew’s hand. He was in no mood to take it easy. But he supposed they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves either. That was why they’d come to the Parlor, a discreet bordello, rather than one of the regular saloons.

  Drew looked right at home in the overstuffed red velvet chair, but Chase felt as out of place as a trout in a tree. More velvet draped the walls, vases of fresh flowers decorated the room, and a chandelier dripped crystals from the middle of the ceiling. A balcony opened onto the sitting room where Chase imagined scantily-clad ladies paraded at a safe distance before prospective clients.

  Fortunately, at this late hour, there were only the two of them and the madam, who had probably seen everything under the sun. So when a pair of half-breed twins strolled into her establishment after midnight, she didn’t even bat an eye.

  Sitting beside Drew in another plush chair, Chase glanced at their reflection in the enormous mahogany-framed mirror filling one wall. He supposed they looked even more similar now, since he’d chopped off his long hair in mourning and put on a shirt.

  He raked his hand through the short black waves and scowled. His ebony eyes narrowed back at him. He didn’t see the resemblance. To his way of thinking, he looked
nothing like his twin.

  His brother Drew Hawk took after Trickster Coyote. No matter how much trouble the rascal stirred up, Drew managed to steal away with a grin, unscathed. He was a quick draw and lucky at cards, what the whites called a man’s man. But he could charm the ladies with words that would put a blush on a peach. Already Drew had the madam pouring him drinks from her dusty-shouldered reserve bottle stashed in the back.

  Drew loved the limelight.

  Chase preferred the shadows.

  Drew embraced the white world of their mother, Mattie.

  But Chase clung to the old ways, the native ways of Sakote, their Konkow father, and the Hupa village where they’d been raised, ways threatened more each day with the intrusion of the whites.

  His brother followed the whim of the wind, but Chase walked the path of the Great Spirit. That path had brought him two hundred miles from the reservation to this parlor house in Paradise, California—once the land of his ancestors, the Konkow people.

  Drew nodded toward Chase’s empty glass. "You want another one?"

  The madam stared at Chase in expectation—her bottle of whiskey uncorked and a knowing smile pasted on her brightly painted face. He declined with a shake of his head. He’d already had way too much to drink. She pouted, shrugging at Drew and re-corking the bottle.

  Drew took a slow sip from his own glass, then swirled the golden brown liquid lazily around. "You want my advice?" he said. "Let it go."

  "Nope," Chase said.

  That was the one thing he couldn’t do. He’d had a vision from the Great Spirit. And a man didn’t take such things lightly. In that vision, Chase had seen his Konkow grandmother—not dead, as everyone had long believed, but alive and dwelling here in the white man’s town. Chase had been given a sacred message. The Great Spirit had told him that it was time for him to find her, to close the circle and heal the past.

  So Chase had planned to make the long journey to the place of his birth. But that trip had been delayed. He’d missed seeing his grandmother alive by a matter of a few weeks. He’d failed the Great Spirit. Now he had to do everything he could to make amends.

  "Listen, Chase." Drew set down his drink and clapped him on the shoulder. "She’s gone now. There’s nothin’ you can do to change that."

  Remorse weighed heavily on Chase’s spirit. He scowled at his empty glass, working the muscles of his jaw. All those years, their grandmother must have believed she'd been forgotten by her people. He shrugged off Drew's hand. "I should have come sooner."

  "You couldn’t. You know that. If you hadn’t put off the trip to mend Joe’s wagon, he would have been out of work this winter.”

  He knew Drew was right. But the week of blacksmithing to repair Joe’s broken axle and shattered wheels had cost him everything. "I should have come."

  "Ah, hell, Chase. It’s not like we knew her. We were still in cradleboards when we left. Grandmother Yoema was..."

  Chase stiffened, his nostrils flaring. His sharp glare silenced his brother. It was unwise to speak the name of one who’d gone from this world. He glanced into the corners of the parlor reflected in the mirror, half expecting his grandmother’s summoned spirit to materialize.

  "Look, Chase, even Father didn’t come," Drew argued. "He knew it wouldn’t do any good." He shook his head. “He said his goodbye a long time ago. For him, she died on the march.”

  Chase’s jaw clenched at the painful reminder. Maybe he’d take that refill after all. He raised his empty glass toward the madam, who was happy to oblige him, then downed the three fingers of whiskey in one searing gulp.

  The march. He knew the story well. A dozen years ago in this place, tensions between the land-hungry whites and the vanishing tribes had grown into rampant violence. Whites were slaughtered, natives massacred. Finally, the white soldiers—at a loss over what to do with the Indians they’d reduced to starvation—decided to relocate them. Rounded up like cattle, they were driven nearly a hundred miles to Nome Cult Reservation.

  Only half of the natives survived the grueling march over rocky terrain. Chase figured that was still a good deal more than the army intended. Though Chase’s grandfather, the proud headman of the Konkow tribe, searched for his wife Yoema, he was unable to find her and assumed the soldiers had killed her. Grief-stricken, he starved himself to death on the journey.

  But Chase’s recent vision had told him that Yoema had not been killed. Indeed, the letter that his Uncle Hintsuli had forwarded to the family from the reservation at Nome Cult several days ago confirmed that fact. Chase’s grandmother was alive...or at least she had been. She'd been kept all these years by a rancher near the old Konkow village. According to the letter, she’d succumbed only recently to a fever.

  At the news, Chase’s parents, Sakote and Mattie, had mourned quietly. After all, like Drew said, they’d made peace with her passing long ago.

  But Chase couldn’t let it go. The Great Spirit had called him to his grandmother’s side while she lay dying, and he’d failed her. Now, according to his vision, it was his obligation to help her finish her spirit’s journey, to complete the circle, to heal the past.

  "Hey, tell me something," he mumbled to the madam, who was rearranging the flowers on their table. When she didn’t realize he was addressing her, he got her attention by reaching out and grabbing her wrist.

  She gave a little gasp, and Drew frowned at him in clear disapproval. With a wince of apology, Chase released her. Sometimes a blacksmith forgot his own strength.

  She swallowed visibly. "More whiskey, mister?" she asked.

  He didn’t bother to answer. "Where’s the Parker Ranch?"

  "Now wait a minute, Chase," Drew protested. "You can’t just go waltzin’ up and—“

  "Where is it?" Chase locked gazes with the madam.

  "Shit." Drew rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. "What are you gonna do, Chase?"

  Chase ignored him, staring at the woman, willing her to tell him what he wanted to know.

  She did. "It’s west of here, a couple of miles along the main road."

  "Chase," Drew warned.

  He nodded thanks to the woman.

  "Chase!"

  He turned to go, but Drew caught his arm. "You’re not goin’ there. Not now. Not in the middle of the night. Look, we’re both pretty liquored up. Wait till mornin’, and I’ll come with you. You can’t go off half-co-" His glance caught on something over Chase’s shoulder, and he suddenly stopped with his mouth agape.

  Not much could leave Drew speechless. Chase frowned, glancing up at the reflection of the room in the mirror, just in time to glimpse the swish of blue skirts as one of the shady ladies upstairs entered a room and closed the door.

  Chase could see by the look on Drew’s face that he’d get no more interference from his brother tonight. He shook his head in disgust.

  "Enjoy yourself," he muttered, snapping up Drew’s whiskey and downing the rest of it. He plunked a silver dollar on the table, sure that by the time he hit the brothel door, his brother would be halfway up the stairs.

  Once outside, the chill night air smacked Chase in the face, taking the edge off the dizzying effects of the whiskey. Still, he stopped on the boardwalk in front of the Parlor to get his bearings.

  He shouldn’t have taken that last shot of whiskey. Hell, he probably shouldn’t have taken the last three. He’d never had Drew’s constitution. But he needed the whiskey’s fortification for the task ahead of him.

  Overhead, a sky full of stars kept a close vigil on the earth. Their patterns circled the star in the north, showing him the way. He stepped off the boardwalk and trudged along the main street of Paradise. He passed a dry goods store, a schoolhouse, a hotel, a church, and four saloons, where the muffled music and flickering lamplight seeping through the doors signaled that—in the saloons at least—the night was young.

  A full acorn-white moon helped him navigate the curving road. He descended the ridge, his boots soundless in the soft powder of the well-worn pat
h. Eventually the fragrant pines thinned, yielding to stands of oak. Hills thick with spring growth rolled gently on either side of the road.

  One of those new barbed wire fences sprang up, dividing the lush grass from the grazed. It served as a bitter reminder of how the ranchers’ distorted sense of entitlement had destroyed the beautiful land. Land that had once sustained hundreds of Konkows was now browsed to the dirt by the voracious beasts the white men brought with them. And to protect their cattle, the ranchers shot any creatures that threatened the land they claimed for their own, whether they were coyotes, wildcats, or Indians.

  Chase’s mouth twisted as he looked into the distance at the endless stretch of fence. Such an expanse had once supported several Konkow villages. Now it belonged to one greedy man.

  He gave his head a sobering snap, but it didn’t help much. He still weaved as he walked along the row of posts, following them until the moon had climbed two fingers higher into the heavens. Finally, an ostentatious sign across a gated side road announced THE PARKER RANCH in letters burned into the wood. At the corner of the sign, the letter P within a circle formed the ranch’s brand.

  Chase spat his disgust into the dirt. Branding irons were the one thing he refused to forge in his blacksmith’s shop. The domineering whites thought they could own beasts. They felt justified in burning animal flesh with hot iron, trapping cattle behind fences of metal thorns, killing them with no blessing, no honor. He’d even heard that some of the whites believed the Konkows were animals, that ranchers herded and slaughtered them like livestock.

  Chase was feeling the full effects of that last drink now. Anger flared in him as quickly as brush fire. He stared hard at the brand on the sign as rage shuddered through him. Had Parker believed that? The rancher had torn his grandmother Yoema from her husband’s side, made her his property, his slave. Had he branded her with his mark, too?

  The idea sickened Chase. He staggered, clutching the barbed wire in his fist to regain his balance. He hardly felt the star-shaped barb piercing his palm.