LEGEND of the DAWN: The Complete Trilogy: LEGEND of the DAWN; AFTER the DAWN; BEFORE SUNDOWN. Read online

  LEGEND of the DAWN

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

  LEGEND of the DAWN

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2012 by J. R. Wright / DKW Books

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  First Edition: July 2012

  Edited by Mia Manns

  Cover Art by Dianne K. Wright

  Cover Design by John R. Wright IV

  To Sherlock with Love

  CHAPTER ONE

  On the banks of the Little Blue River, Nebraska Territory, 1854.

  The howling squaw winds of winter had settled to little more than a whisper through the naked trees that bordered the river. That gave promise to the birth of spring in a near moon to come. The shrill honking of geese, flying too high overhead in the morning twilight to be seen, announced it was early March, if not a scant before.

  Even though the tall bearded man was certain the worst of winter had passed, the icy sharpness of a late coming norther stiffened his skin as it crept beneath the unlaced buckskins he had slept in. Sucking in deeply, he exhausted with an Indian-like yell that emptied his lungs of the stale cabin air and sent ricocheting echoes of it up and down the valley. His steel eyes slid blindly skyward as the geese passing above seemed to answer with noticeably more chatter than before. He followed the direction of their flight until the sound faded and, eventually, disappeared.

  The bearded man’s thoughts were suddenly anxious as he gazed at the shallow layer of fog that drifted ghost-like over the glassy surface of the river below. He would need to go soon, leave this winter cabin and head north, like the geese, for another season in the wild country. But there were many things that needed doing before that could happen; things that may take weeks to complete. There was time though, plenty of it, if he began now.

  Meat would be needed for the trip. This was not expected to be a chore. For months now he had been eyeing a dry doe that frequented the valley just downriver from the cabin. Since the doe had not been burdened with wintering a fawn, and also looked to have been missed in the time of rut last fall, she had done well on willow bark and what tall, lifeless, bottom grass remained above the heavy blanket of snow. Luke knew the meat of that animal would have the mild flavor and tenderness he preferred. And, if he hurried, she would still be feeding. Soon though, when the morning sun broke and the fog lifted, she would retreat to the woods. There she would bed down for a spell, or otherwise hide for the remainder of the day.

  He quickly dressed, charged the Hawken with a heavy load of powder, and headed back to the porch where he checked the wind for direction. Even though slight, he now knew how he needed to approach the valley.

  From the naked hill behind the cabin, Luke circled far to the south before approaching the tree-surrounded clearing below. Once there, hidden among the cottonwoods and willows, he saw many deer feeding before him. The dry doe was eventually spotted off to the left and would be an easy shot once he reached the edge of the clearing.

  Once there, he lowered himself into the tall grass and patiently crawled toward her. Many times while inching closer, he considered rising to shoot. However, that was something he could have done back at the edge of the woods. But now a challenge had risen up in him, a challenge much greater than his simple need for the flesh this doe possessed.

  The cold wind coming through the valley was strong at his face now, and the sound of it whistling through the grass suffocated what little noise he was making. Inch by inch, foot by foot, he moved closer. The rapid beat of his heart drummed in his ears; his eyes were glassy and watery.

  Suddenly, he was at her feet and, without hesitation, he lunged for her neck. His razor sharp knife was swift in slashing her throat.

  The doe stood stiff-legged for a frozen moment as if she had not felt what already had killed her. Ever so slowly life faded from her wide eyes, and she fell to the crimson snow beneath her. A curious buck ran up to within a few feet, caught wind of the fresh blood, and bolted off toward the woods. The remaining deer in the valley followed swiftly behind until the valley was barren of their presence.

  Feeling cold and alone, Luke grimly tended the doe. He was sorrowful for what he’d done. He’d killed many animals in the past, but somehow this was different. Each was out of its misery, a quick death in most cases, before the knife reached the jugular. He guessed it was her slow death that set against him now. Or perhaps it was that he had grown older and soft, that he felt such things. Too much death! Too much sorrow! Too many years!

  He knew Pierre, had he been there to see, would have been proud of him. Without any doubt, he would later have spent hours telling the story to others around winter fires. But somehow this gave him little relief. He gathered the Hawken and began the task of dragging the empty carcass to the cabin. He vowed never to take game in this fashion again. Leave that to the Indians, who were quite skillful at it. It came to him now that Breanne would not have approved. And this saddened him even more. Maybe it had been Breanne’s tenderness that had mellowed him over time, since he relived the memories frequently.

  In time, Luke had every bit of meat from the deer carefully cut into thin strips, brined, draped over smoke poles, and drying slowly, high over a bed of hot coals. This process would take days, but the end result would be several pounds of delicious jerky that would travel light and remain fresh until completely consumed, even months later, if allowed to breath in cheese cloth bags.

  Nearly a week later, with the jerky done and packed away, Luke set off for Pig Eye Smith’s trading post a day’s walk down river. It was the need for two strong horses that drew him there: one for riding and another for pack. He had set loose his remaining horse the fall before. The poor animal had given her all. She had carried him the entire summer over rough country and had finally given out some miles from the winter cabin. Since Luke didn’t have the heart to put her down, he set her free. He feared she might not make the winter, or possess the strength to outmaneuver a pack of hungry wolves, but she deserved the chance.

  Having started out two hours before sunup, Luke arrived in mid-afternoon. He dropped his saddle to the ground and his tired body into an old rocking chair out front of the crudely built log structure. His eyes then drifted to the nearby corral, where a dozen or so horses were penned. But before he had a chance to gather a closer look, a noise to the side brought him to his feet. Pig Eye Smith’s near toothless squaw woman made her appearance once the creaky door was fully open.

  “Big man come for horses?” she asked blankly, as if that was the only reason he ever came.

  “Tell Pig Eye I’m here.”

  “Man sleeps. Had long night with horses. White Wolf come back. Man afraid he take away horses, so stay up to watch. I get him,” she said and turned back into the darkness of the store.

  In her absence, Luke glanced up at the human skull that topped a high pole near the store and remembered the story he had heard years ago of how Pig Eye had acquired the unusual name. It was a name he apparently didn’t mind being called, and since Luke knew no other, except for Smith, he used it, as did most others in the area.

  Pig Eye had only one eye, the left, and i
t was the way the little man cocked it up at people that gave the resemblance to a pig. Where the right eye should be was a massive scar. This ugliness was the doing of a previous squaw. Having tired of his frequent drunken beatings, she took an ice claw to him. Pig Eye was so angered by it that he immediately killed her for the misdeed. He then cut off her head and placed it out in front of the store as a warning to future squaws, who might have like ideas. It was still there, decades later, weathered by the seasons, showing white against the gray sky. Only the skull, with a single tuft of hair that eerily shifted lightly in the breeze, remained. Luke felt the dark emptiness of the eye sockets glaring down on him when the voice of Pig Eye Smith drew his attention back to the doorway.

  “So it’s good horses you need again?” Pig Eye said cheerfully as he approached, fingering a batch of long gray hair away from his only eye, then topped his head with a rumpled old hat.

  “So you’re having some trouble with White Wolf again?” Luke asked, moving toward the corral.

  “I heard he’s back in these parts. Best tell them over at Kearny they’ll be needing to escort the wagon trains over on the trail again come spring. Most of my trade comes from them travelers.”

  Luke was a civilian scout under contract with the Army and presently taking his orders from Fort Kearny on the Platte. In fact, he would be heading there once he acquired the needed horses.

  “I’ll pass it on… Now, about those horses.”

  Luke wasn’t too concerned with White Wolf. His duties took him far to the North Country, where the natives were more uncivilized than the likes of White Wolf and his gang of petty thieves.

  “Got some good ones, just like you need,” Pig Eye said, scurrying alongside.

  “Got any fillies?” Luke preferred females for their natural spirit and their keener sensitivity toward approaching danger. Many a time, a filly’s frantic whinny had saved his life.

  “I have four good ones.” Pig Eye climbed the rail fence for a better look at what he had.

  “I see only one worth spit,” Luke returned. It was an attempt to put a damper on any hopes Pig Eye may have of extorting him, since he was the only horse trader in these parts.

  “That chestnut will carry a big man on long travels. Good muscle – fifteen hands at the withers…”

  “Where’d you get that mare over against the far rail?” Luke asked, recognizing her as the one he had cut loose the previous fall. It did his heart good to see the wolves hadn’t gotten her after all.

  “Just came in one day last fall,” Pig Eye said, not recognizing her as one Luke had bought from him the previous spring.

  “How much for the chestnut then?” Luke finally asked.

  “Eighty dollars,” Pig Eye said without hesitation.

  “Sixty,” Luke countered.

  “Seventy, and big scout will not have to walk to the fort,” Pig Eye said with a toothless smile.

  “Take sixty or I’ll walk out of here the same way I walked in,” Luke pressed.

  “It’s a good five days walk to Kearney,” Pig Eye reminded.

  “Four with my legs. I know. I’ve walked it. I can do it again.”

  “Take the paint for sixty. She’s good!”

  “She’s also showing with foal. I don’t have time to mess with a pregnant mare. The chestnut will be bad enough with her wild eyes and skittish disposition.”

  “Sixty then, on the chestnut. But you’ll be needing a second horse as before, yeah?” Pig Eye said, hoping to recover his loss of profit on the chestnut with a higher price on the second horse.

  “Yep. How about the bay?”

  “Fifty dollars.”

  “Forty and throw in that old pack saddle over there on the fence.”

  “Bargain,” Pig Eye said quickly, offering a hand to shake on it. He had only wanted thirty for the bay, and the pack saddle he had gotten free on another trade.

  Luke ignored the hand. “I’ll need some things from the store.”

  “Good!” Pig Eye hopped down from the fence and hurried to catch up with the bigger man, who was already halfway to the store.

  Within the hour, Luke was on his way back to the cabin. He felt, once underway, he had made a good bargain on the chestnut. She was a little spirited, but he liked spirit in a horse. The bay filly, on the other hand, was a bit on the lazy side, lumbering under the load of supplies on her back and constantly tugging at the lead rope.

  Following the familiar trail along the river, it was only a few hours into the trip before Luke drifted so deeply into thought that he didn’t notice the low clouds moved in overhead until a sudden cold wind reached him and it began to rain – a fine chilling rain that soon turned to snow. It would be a last reminder of the fierce winter, he figured. He turned up his collar and dropped his hat into the wind. He nudged the chestnut on and yanked at the lead rope of the bay.

  Before long the thoughts of earlier were back – but then they never really left him, ever. Not when they concerned Breanne. Not when they concerned St. Louis and the Blue Bear. It all began there in 1839. And so much had happened since then.

  CHAPTER TWO

  St. Louis, Missouri, 1839

  In 1839 it had already been seventy-six years since the Frenchman Laclede came up from New Orleans to establish a trading post on the west bank of the Mississippi, just south of where the Missouri flows into the larger stream. He named it St. Louis after King Louis IX.

  At the time, St. Louis was considered the gateway to the west, and had been since Lewis and Clark returned from their highly publicized expedition in 1806. But now it had grown to be a hustling, bustling city of ten thousand souls. In addition, steamboats and keelboats brought thousands each day. They came from New Orleans on the Mississippi, over from the east on the Ohio, and from the west on the Missouri.

  And they left almost as fast as they came, most anxious to reach a point somewhere in the west. However, for whatever reason, there were those who had found the west too harsh for their liking and were anxious to return home.

  During this era the Mississippi was so crowded with riverboats that often those that could not keep pace were forced over and run aground by captains of more powerful, seaworthy crafts. Some, however, ran aground because they were overloaded, and many burned to the waterline from over-fired boilers in the haste. It was truly an era of greed.

  Money flowed freely, as did the beer and whiskey in the fifty or so saloons along the river. The Blue Bear was no exception. And, like most of them, it never closed. The piano played constantly, the whooping never stopped, and the whores worked the crowds twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  The smells of sour beer, rotten garbage, and excrement, both human and animal, were everywhere along the levee. Little attention was paid to sanitation. Saloon piss troughs flowed directly into the river, while slop pails and chamber pots were emptied there as well.

  One may eventually become accustomed to the constant commotion, the ever-present noises, and the odorous smells, as many regulars did. But most didn’t stick around long enough for that. They stayed no longer than it took to make proper travel arrangements and buy the necessary provisions for the trip. You see, the St. Louis of 1839 was not a destination for most; it was what it was called: the Gateway to the West - and the gate swung both ways.

  “Beer…!” came the gruff voice of Hans from the bar room.

  Hans Hunzinger, a robust man of German descent, was the owner of the Blue Bear Saloon. He had come to Missouri with intentions of staking a claim and starting a farming operation. But when he arrived in St. Louis, with the thousands of people milling about, he saw such potential. He wondered then if perhaps he would be better served going into some form of retail business instead. It didn’t take him long to discover, since he was a beer loving man himself, that there just weren’t enough saloons to handle the demand for booze on Water Street. There were long lines at every establishment along the river, where most of the people preferred, or perhaps needed, to be. Finding it impossi
ble to buy an existing business, he was left no alternative but to build from scratch. And he did, on the only available lot, which was located at the far end of the street. A bad location, but at least the smell was better there, far from the other saloons three blocks and more away. And that, in time, proved to be beneficial. It pretty much gave his establishment an exclusive at that end of the levee.

  At first the Blue Bear was just a tent, whiskey barrels covered with planks for the bar, and a simple sign out front: a walking blue bear with SALOON lettered beneath it. And he operated in this fashion until the permanent structure was completed near a year later.

  The new building wasn’t lavish by any means, but it proved to be quite functional. It had a rock basement for the cool storage of the kegs and a counterbalanced pulley lift for bringing them up to just the right height for tapping behind the bar. It also had a huge kitchen with an ice room, and a large drinking and dining area that could accommodate two hundred persons. And upstairs, there were ten bedrooms, all reserved for whores.

  Luke had been dozing on some sacks of potatoes in the kitchen when he heard Hans’ call for beer. He made no effort to answer. He simply didn’t have the energy to spare. He had been on the run since daybreak, and it was now approaching midnight. He descended the steps to the basement, rolled the keg onto the lift, and yanked the rope that rang the bell upstairs. It was a signal that the lift was loaded and ready to be hoisted up.

  Luke was ready for his cot now, and was heading for it when the lift platform slammed back to the basement floor, an empty keg on it. Again the gruff voice of Hans shouted, “Throw another on her, boy!”

  Luke had spent the better part of his life here at the Blue Bear. His mother had once worked here. When she died nine years ago of the dreaded swamp fever, he just stayed on. Where else was he to go? As long as Hans could work him for near free, he assumed he needn’t fear being tossed out on the street. He had been thinking lately, it was time he had responsibilities more fitting his age. After all, he was seventeen now, and plenty smart. Hans had taught him math and reading. The mopping and cleaning he’d been doing for years seemed beneath him now that he was an adult. And if Hans refused to promote him to a more suitable job, such as purchaser of supplies, or the one who traveled to the farms to buy butcher stock for the kitchen, he would simply quit. Surely others on the levee would find value in his talents. Good reliable help was hard to find in St. Louis. At least that was what Hans ranted most every day, to every one of his thirty odd employees.