The story traces the lives of Buck and Jed, two orphans, one born and raised white, the other white and black and raised red. It is the story of how each molded their gifts of nature and nurture, to determine much of their character, their personality, their view of others, and of life. Their lives demonstrate how ancestors recent and remote, the religions of their youth, life experiences, and the mentors each encountered, helped to shape them. Buck's past allowed him the flexibility to change, the ability to import the best of his life experiences to mollify some of his genetic inheritance while reinforcing, even amplifying, the stronger traits. Jed, on the other hand, remained locked in unyielding adherence to past experience and unalterable inherited patterns of thought. Though set in the 1890's, involves Indians, and the white pioneers of the old west, the issues of greed, extortion, fraud and deception, mayhem, murder, courage and compassion have a universal and timeless flavor. The story follows the ascent of one, and the eventual life of hardship and isolation from friends, family, and all he once presumed was his, for the other.

Buck and Jed

By William Evans

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 William Evans, MD.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-8381-3

Chapter One

October 1895

Miles Carter, attired in an English herringbone suit, carefully manipulated his crutches as he stepped out of the sheriff's office.

"Remember what I said, Miles."

"It's not against the law to acquire property, Sheriff," Carter replied. He smiled as he donned his coat and top hat.

"It's not the acquirin', it's the method. Those are good people you're squeezin' out."

"If they can't make their payments, their land's there for the taking."

"It's an old scheme, Miles. When they need money to buy seed, supplies, or feed for their animals, you and the bank entice them to borrow more than they really want or need. You charge exorbitant interest rates, wait for their first lean year, then swoop in and take over. It may be legal, but whether it's right or not is the question. In the past, the bank always carried folks till they could get on their feet."

"Times change, Sheriff. Not my problem and not the bank's." The one-legged man negotiated the two steps down to the street.

"Best you keep your muleskinners from tormenting Indians. Bothering them is against the law. The next time they're all going to jail, and maybe you along with them."

Carter smiled as he adjusted his fancy hat, and crutched his way up the dusty street toward his saloon.

"That son of a bitch will be the death of this town before he's through," the sheriff said as he joined his new deputy.

Sheriff Walt Frazier and Deputy Cleve Wilkins tipped their chairs against the adobe wall, perched their scuffed boots on the weathered wooden rail, and watched the dust-blushed sun slip below the rim of the northern Arizona mountains. Charlie, the old Indian scout, lounged on the steps rolling a smoke. The remnants of daylight mixed with the half dark of dusk cast long shadows as folks scurried home for supper. The chill of early evening replaced the tolerable heat of the mid-October day, and as the breeze kicked up Frazier reached for his jacket.

Long gray-white hair spilled out beneath his sweat-stained, weather-battered hat. The skin of his face, neck, and hands, long exposed to the searing Arizona sun, looked like aged harness leather. Broad-chested, big-shouldered, his flat belly long ago replaced by an expanding paunch, Frazier showed the ravages of years spent in an unforgiving land that extracted its toll from even the toughest men. In his time he'd battled Yankees, he'd fought Indians, tamed a passel of tough cow towns, survived the Lincoln County fiasco and now, only twenty years after Custer's egomaniacal disaster, chose to finish his career in Roland, a town of a thousand relatively tranquil souls isolated in the high desert.

Soft-spoken, slow to anger, his gentle manner and kindly gray eyes shaded by bushy eyebrows belied the inherent courage, and unflinching fierceness of a man who faced danger and death more times than he cared to recall. If need be, even at sixty, Frazier knew he could do it again.

And he might have to. Carter was right; times had changed. The rough-and-tumble days of open hostility, feuds, whiskey-driven killings, lynching, and shootouts in the street gave way to crimes of a different kind. Cattle still turned up missing, and Indians occasionally caused trouble-usually fomented by white misfits. Banks still got robbed and shootouts, though rare, still happened. And Saturday night usually ended with the jail full of unruly drunks.

Frazier's newest nemeses, however, wore cravats, frock coats, ruffled collars and cuffs, silk vests, diamond stickpins, and shiny boots. Their hands were clean and their fingernails polished. Pen and ink replaced guns and knives. Phony contracts and clever manipulation of the relatively ambiguous, rudimentary western laws were their medium of exchange. When killing was required they hired it done, usually in the dark and from behind or by means unfamiliar to Walt's face-to-face frontier mind-set.

He'd seen its beginnings in other towns, but here, though few others recognized it, bankers, lawyers, self-appointed judges, and land barons slowly seized control-legally when they could, illegally if they had to, and by violence when that failed. Frazier watched and learned. Controlling their kind would be a long and dangerous process, and he'd need help. He could count on Josiah. The old doctor, recently voted off the Town Council, had battled them, and there were others, but not many.

Walt scanned the six sun-bronzed men sitting on the edge of the saloon porch across the street. Their moccasin-covered feet dangled just above the dust as they shared a bottle of whiskey. An aged Indian sat alone on the steps. This would be about the last they'd see of the reservation people till spring thaw.

"Charlie, what's with the Indians?" Walt asked.

"Rode in middle of the day. Spent most of the afternoon loading supplies on them pack mules and the wagon, then they moved to the saloon to warm their bellies. It's a long, cold ride to the reservation. You know, they never put them places anywhere you'd want to visit."

"How's come they buy goods here instead of the reservation commissary?" the new deputy asked.

"Price too high, Cleve," Charlie said. "Food spoilt rotten and full of roaches. Agents steal the good stuff. What's left won't get them through the winter. It's a crime what them agents do. Least they got their rifles back. Fresh deer meat sure beats spoiled beef."

He could add Indian agents to his list of folks who worked by deception, Walt thought.

"How long have they been on the reservations?" Cleve asked.

"Seventy, seventy-one, I guess it was. Custer, then Sherman and the others kept a tight rein on them in those days. Hard to believe, that's twenty-five years ago," the sheriff said, shaking his head. "After Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and a few other damn fool blunders, the army had to give them more freedom so they wouldn't starve. They're no bother as long as they have enough to eat and people leave them alone. Any trouble with this bunch?"

"Yavapai no trouble," Charlie said. "Pretty tame; takes a lot to rile them. Old miners tried to brace 'em a couple of hours ago, and some of Carter's bunch been insultin' them. Indians just ignored the old buzzards. They ain't bent on trouble."

"And that old one, over there?" Walt pointed to an ancient Indian slumped on the saloon steps.

"He's with them. Came in ridin' one of them mules. Been sitting there eating jerky and drinking whiskey, all alone. Name's Hawk. I know'd him, maybe forty year. Powerful chief once, but his time's a comin'. That's why he stays to hisself. One day he'll get up before the sun, and take his best horse and ride off to the mountain to die," Charlie said.

"They really do that?" Cleve asked.

"The proud ones," Charlie said. "Ride out sitting tall, chantin' their death song right into the rising sun. Usually picked their death spot long before. Funny thing, once they go, no one finds the body, the bones, weapons, not even the horse."

"What about those four young ones?" Walt asked.

"Rode in with them. Probably their sons."

"And that big black man? He don't look like no Indian, and neither does the biggest boy. Without the braids you might take the boy for white."

"Big one's an escaped slave, I reckon. During the war lots of them hitched up with the tribes. The boy's his, I'm guessin'. Mama's probably white," Charlie said.

"Black, white,...