Chapter 3

Grandpa Henry shook his head then grinned at me. "Believin' it in yer head, but not quite in yer heart, then hearin' it made real does shake a body up. Now I know why y'all looked so odd when I told you the date. Still, after some of the stuff I've seen them Lakota medicine men do, I guess this ain't a hell of a lot more strange."

He waved me toward the barn. "We still hafta find you some decent clothes and things."

After our mutual revelations, we walked on into the barn and over near the tack room. Grandpa started rummaging around in a stack of wooden boxes, pulling one out to the side every now and then. Soon he had three setting side by side.

"Here we go ... this is all the stuff the army sent back. It ain't much – not for the six years you've been gone. Well there's a small mercy –– at least they didn't steal your guns or books. They even threw in your doctoring bag. Everything is here.

"You musta been well respected and liked for them to return everything you owned. Usually all that gets sent back to the family when a soldier is killed is the worst of the clothes. Troopers are not well paid and often come from poor circumstances. They rob their own dead, not just the fallen enemy. I saw a lot o' that when I was a lawman workin' out of the forts.

"Now then, the clothes look a might big but if we boil them and you wear them wet they should shrink a mite."

"You mean Clay's things don't you, gram – oops – I mean ... Uncle Henry. Damn this is confusing."

"It sure is. You just look so much like Clay would have, if he had lived, and ... you're even a doctor."

"Well I'm not really a doctor. I just had a bunch of training in what I would call Battlefield or Combat First Aid, but compared to what they get now, probably as much or more than most of them around here. I've patched up wounds, removed bullets, sewn them up, treated sickness ... Hell, I've even delivered a couple babies."

"Shit, Son, that makes you about the best doctor in 200 miles, if not one of the only ones – there ain't many. And of those there are, you're prob'ly the only one with any real schoolin'. Some o' these quacks just bought a mail-order doctor's bag and hung out their shingle."

"Be that as it may, I'm still not really a doctor! Where I come from I'm actually a deputy sheriff and I thought, a good one."

"That's even better! This country can use more good lawmen. Since this damn gold rush, these hills'r full of no-goods, robbers, gamblers, renegades and murderers. Things are just getting worse with the Indians, too. A year ago there was about 800 white men in the Black Hills. The Indians didn't like it, but most of those whites were considerate and didn't cause much problems. Now we got more then 10,000, and more pouring in everyday thinkin' they will strike it rich. Damn fools! Most of them will either starve to death or be killed! Can't they see the main ones to get rich are the ones selling to the miners – the storekeepers, saloon owners, gamblers, and whore houses?"

"Speaking of gold, I know where some can be found right here on this land. When I was ten, I went poking around in a old mine and found a small nugget. Dad found out and took a pine switch to my ass. I couldn't sit right for a week."

"Just leave that alone! We work for our money here and we don't need the trouble it would bring. Your Pa was right. Sounds like he knowed the trouble gold could bring and tried to stop it from happening."

"Well, how can I make a living here then?" I asked.

"Hell, you're a doctor and you seem to know your way around the ranch pretty well."

"I was born here and lived here till I joined the military. Except for a couple real short visits, here and gone the same day, this is the first time I've really been back since."

"What! This is family land! Why didn't you ever come back?"

"I got tired of people calling me a half-breed, dirty injun and other names like that. It seemed like my whole childhood was one fight after another. Hell I'm proud of being part Indian and especially being Lakota, but even the Indians don't like breeds – at least in my time."

"Well we got some stupid people now too, but if Red Cloud has any say about it, that will change."

I had to hang my head in shame.

Grandpa uh, Uncle Henry, noticed and asked "What's wrong, boy."

"Custer's whole command was wiped out June 25, 1876 at the Little Big Horn River. Custer was a fool! He didn't listen to his advisers and split his command so he didn't have the troops he should've where he should've when he more-or-less walked into a trap.

"In less then 20 minutes over 200 soldiers were killed to the last man, including Custer himself. That set the American government off on revenge. The Sioux nation will be defeated in the next year and moved to reservations. In my time, on many reservations, there is violence, drunkenness, apathy and despair. School drop-outs rates range from 45 to 62 percent. Suicide among the indigenous people is twice the US national average and unemployment runs around 80 percent."

"That just can't be! They were promised this land! They have a treaty!"

"It's the gold and the greed. If there's anything worth any value, the government is going to take it no matter who they have to step on. In my time, in 1980 the Sioux won a Supreme Court case against the U.S. Government for 17 and a half million dollars plus five percent a year, totally over 105 million, going all the way back to 1877, when the government seized the Black Hills because the Sioux supposedly broke the Treaty because they defended their land against the gold miners.