Excerpt from "Horizon Dawn" book

Some of his antics undoubtedly reflected his covering for the severe limp he suffered from injuries received in the “Cave-of-the-Coyote” episode; none mentioned the affliction where the grumpy brave might overhear and take offense, and, retaliate, yet, he resented the tragedy.

Wounded Coyote took pleasure in meanness. The warrior made a habit of harassing white settlers; many scalps were claimed by the degenerate including women and, even, children.

Ezra Van Gangen lived in peace among the Otoe tribe; still, Wounded Coyote hated him.

 A rumor persisted that the white rancher had encountered the beautiful wife of Wounded Coyote one warm summer day along the river where the Indian squaw bathed in the cooling water. As nature took its course, romance beckoned, and, grew. When word finally reached the ears of Wounded Coyote, he demanded to be heard by the council-of-elders.

As the tribunal assembled, headed by the old chief, the council-of-elders and the entire tribe, Wounded Coyote dragged his squaw, Blue Spruce, by the hair of her head to the center of the assemblage before a huge bon fire. She had been severely beaten, nearly to the point of unconsciousness. The brave’s dark eyes issued a challenge to anyone to dare object. None did so.

“This evil woman, my ‘Squaw’!” He spat the words, “has dishonored brave Wounded Coyote and the entire tribe with her infidelity antics with the stupid white-eyes. She has no shame. It is I who am shamed.” With that declaration, he dissolved his marriage to the woman by breaking an arrow and casting the pieces in disgust into the fire. The chief nodded agreement.

Blue Spruce was banished from the tribe; she immediately fled to Ezra Van Gangen’s cabin.

That should have been the end of the episode; but, Wounded Coyote had a deep, evil streak.

On a hunting outing upon the vast prairie for antelope in the fall of the year, the spurned Indian brave plotted his revenge on both his squaw and her new man. That his injury from earlier years at the bite of his name sake, the coyote, should prove to be his ultimate demise could not have been better scripted. The gods of the universe had decided the rapscallion brave’s dire fate.

Ezra Van Gangen sensed that he was being observed; he laid a trap to catch his tormentor.

As he and Blue Spruce pursued an antelope herd across the plains, Ezra purposely spooked the animals so that they would move on before he could get a shot. Each time, the savvy mountain man would make a turn at an angle to the right to intercept them; the errant game of tag continued for two days. Several times the Plains-man caught a glimpse of Wounded Coyote as the tyrant surreptitiously pursued the pair, planning their torture, and, ultimate evil demise.

For two nights, Van Gangen camped under an overhanging hollow in a coulee where the Indian could not easily approach in silence, knowing that the brave might assume he could clandestinely sneak up on the inept white man, but, also, realizing full well that Blue Spruce would quickly detect his attempt and sound the alarm. While a warm glow reflected above the wall of the coulee onto the vacant, cold prairie, Wounded Coyote remained cold and alone to fester in self-pity and grief as he thought of the warmth of Blue Spruce with the white-eyes resting in comfort. This, Ezra knew, would eat at his pursuer, making him angry and, hopefully, careless. A delightful game. Indeed!

On the noon sun of the third day of a chasing hide and seek with both the phantoms of the plains and the annoying persistence of the vindictive Indian brave, Van Gangen spied what he had been looking for: a place to set his trap and spring the ambush on Wounded Coyote.

Ezra held no personal animosity toward the vengeful Indian; he did not really want to kill the brave, but he had been left no choice. Secretly, he wished the Indian would relent and go home.

In effort to hunt the wraiths of the prairie with any degree of success required skill, patience, endurance and a huge amount of good luck. It was like catching fog in a fish basket sieve.

Ezra had the wraiths in sight, about three hundred yards away. Ahead of them stretched a swale of a fair depth where they would disappear for a time before coming up to the prairie rise again. A rock outcropping showed itself further in the distance running parallel with the direction the herd would take and veered generally right; exactly what Ezra had been searching for. He could read Wounded Coyote’s idea of a plan of attack as Ezra surveyed the layout. With this insight, the Plains-man detailed his counter-measures in a diabolical scheme.

Coming out of a gentle swale two hundred and fifty yards from the antelope herd, Van Gangen spooked the grey ghosts; the wraiths headed for the jumbled rock outcropping, ahead.

Veering slightly to the right, just as he hoped the Indian would surmise, Ezra focused on the running herd, seemingly oblivious to the brave’s movements. If the hunter had planned correctly, and shrewdly enough, he would very soon see his adversary, up front and personal. Very!

Wounded Coyote observed the novice hunter put into motion his futile plan to head off the wily antelope; didn’t the idiot realize after so many failures that the animals were too smart for his antics? The Indian brave allowed a wry smile; that stupidity would cost the white-eyes, dearly. He moved in a wide circle far to the right; when the white-eyes arrived, he’d be waiting.

A thin veil of dust rose from the valley floor as the wispy ghosts of the plains raced through a wide coulee bounded on their right by the limestone cliffs. Wounded Coyote waited on a boulder which would be seen by the white-eyes only when it was too late; then, he would put an arrow in his enemy, low in his belly; a shot deliberately meant not to kill, but, only to wound, causing excruciating, slow pain. With the man incapacitated, Wounded Coyote would capture the woman, violating her in sight of her man, degrading his former squaw while insulting the white man; all, a beginning part of the horrendous torture he planned to inflict on his victims.

Just as Van Gangen had correctly surmised, the antelope herd veered left, taking a sandy draw which brought them away from Wounded Coyote’s ambush site and onto the top of the grassland plain where they thundered, unmolested to disappear into a hidden valley a half mile away.

Ezra waited, secluded a quarter mile from where he expected his nemesis to be hiding in ambush. His plan was for Blue Spruce to come riding past the Indian brave, alone, thus forcing him to pursue her when Van Gangen did not show. Then, after the squaw rode by Ezra, he would mount and charge toward the pursuing brave, laying challenge to the Indian head-on; and, not merely to “count coup”, but rather, a fight to the death; may the best man win.

Ezra could hear Blue Spruce’s horse’s hooves pounding the turf; he mounted. Shortly, he heard his squaw scream her signal. Tearing out of the alcove where he had been secreted, Ezra had to ride hard for a good quarter mile alongside the rock formation before he caught sight of them. The scene was not as he had expected it to be. Ah! The best laid plans!?

Blue Spruce’s horse lay prone with an arrow sticking from its side; he heard its death scream.

About fifty feet farther, Ezra spied Wounded Coyote; he was on top of a struggling Blue Spruce who screamed in terror. What the Indian was doing enraged Van Gangen. He raced on.

Wounded Coyote sprang to his feet as Ezra’s mount approached. The Indian grabbed Blue Spruce by the hair and wrenched her head backward, exposing her neck. As sunlight glinted on his scalping knife and just as the Indian began his lethal downward plunge to slit her throat, Ezra’s horse slammed into the brute, knocking him off his feet. Ezra heard him grunt in severe pain as the man spun away and crumpled in the tall grass.

The violent impact also dislodged Van Gangen from his mount; as the animal went down in a cloud of dust and flailing hooves, Ezra hit the grass floor of the valley, landing on his back only five feet from Wounded Coyote who snarled hatred as the Indian-demon regained his feet; Van Gangen managed to get to his knees, planning to grab for his six shooter.

Ezra had lost his rifle in the melee and reached for his pistol; the holster was empty. Frantically glancing around, Ezra caught sight of the weapon a few feet to his left. Too late!

Wounded Coyote knew it, too. Victory was, at long last, at hand. He waved his shiny knife in the sun, taunting his enemy, as if to say, “Go ahead. Try! White-eyes! You’ll never make it.”

Ezra knew that his nemesis was right: Too far to reach the gun and fire. Still, he had to try.

Wounded Coyote snarled an evil grin; at long last, he had won the day, defeating the white-eyes. Victory was truly at hand and he savored the moment, evil eyes blazing red-blood hatred.

Diving in a futile effort to retrieve the pistol, Ezra mentally resigned himself to meet death.

Stepping quickly forward with deliberate-purpose intending to “gut” his adversary, the Indian’s snarl suddenly faded, replaced with concern and utter disbelief. The enraged Indian lost all sense of assured sacred-survival as hatred-rage totally consumed him; the “white-eyes” had to die---and…now! Clouded by his deep hatred for the interloper, with the disarmed enemy on his knees, pathetic before the Indian, in a sense, making the adversaries equal in deformity, sweet “vengeance” should have been “at hand”. Rage obfuscated Wounded Coyote’s final advance toward “sweet”-deserved victory as emotion blinded him to the prairie dog hole in his path to the victim of long-awaited justice. Only an instant stood between the evil Indian’s triumph---and…vacant, vile, despicable, empty, laughable failure!

Fate! It seems, is the hunter. Woe! Be to those who tempt its pre-ordained history.

Usually surefooted, even with the annoying disability of his injured leg, Wounded Coyote failed to allow observance of the obviously menacing prairie dog hole between himself and his incapacitated, and defenseless, hapless victim who stared in wide-eyed recognition that he had lost the battle and could no longer muster any further resistance. A victorious smirk immediately disintegrated into a pernicious, vile snarl as Wounded Coyote savored his moment of “success” at long last. His leg injury from the evil demon-coyote of his youth occasionally hindered his progress through life; on this fateful day, the persistent affliction would resurrect its ferocity.

As Wounded Coyote snarled damning curses at his fallen-foe kneeling before him in piteous abject surrender, spittle formed at the corners of the Indian’s mouth telegraphing his mental rage.

In the Indian’s haste to finish the revenge-job as he quickly stepped forward to lunge his body in a full-length final assault at the “white-eyes” who would be dead in a second, or two, his moccasin-foot of the beleaguered wounded leg managed to find the tunneling rodent’s hollow void interrupting his vicious plunge causing his leg, injured so long ago by the coyote, to give way, failing to support his weight with the violent force of his angered-exacerbated exertion.

Ah! But, alas---Fate! And, evil…Defeat! Would combine to have their way.

As Wounded Coyote’s foot sought firm footing as a base from which to throw himself at the evil man with the razor-honed blade held forward aimed at the black-heart of his nemesis, the prairie dog entrance betrayed the red man, ensnaring his foot in an earthen trap causing the Indian’s extremity to crumple beneath him causing him to lose his balance, the momentum forcing him forward; the warrior screamed as the green valley floor came up to hammer him in the mouth. When he managed to look up, the white-eyes’ gun pointed its menacing black hole circle directly at his head, only three feet away. The Indian groaned but refused defeat.

In one final, desperate effort, Wounded Coyote reached back his arm to fling the knife-weapon at his enemy. Before he could transfer the momentum-gaining potential energy of the action into lethal kinetic energy of hurling the knife, the round black hole of the pistol blazed red fire. The potency of the forty-five struck Wounded Coyote in the forehead knocking him backwards in a heap, dead before his ruined skull kissed the waiting ground. The coyote-of-the-cave finally exacted its long-awaited revenge for a deserved-justice upon the interloper to his winter lodge from long ago.

Van Gangen gathered up his horse, then Blue Spruce, and headed home. Neither ever mentioned the incidents of that day, again. Nine months later, her son, Adrian was born.

As a boy growing up, Ezra built a wall between himself and Adrian. He always wondered, in fact, felt that---Indeed! He knew for sure that the boy was the progeny of the wild Indian. Still, he could never be one hundred per cent positive. Blue Spruce refused to approach the tenuous subject sensing her man’s seething anger boiling just beneath the surface.

Ezra Van Gangen was a very proud man, and, a rich and powerful rancher. He founded the town which bore his name. Occasionally, some drunk or a jealous busybody biddy would rumor the true parentage of Adrian casting aspersions on the very virtue of Ezra’s “wife”; this insult, the king of the territory could not tolerate. The innuendo began to eat at his pride, causing the affronted man to come to despise the “bastard” son; even, to nurture a hatred for Blue Spruce.

Adrian turned seven the year tragedy struck. He adored his Indian mother and Blue Spruce catered to the boy’s every whim. Ezra did not care about the squaw, blaming her for what had happened that day out on the prairie which gave rise to all the controversy; he hated Adrian since the boy remained a constant reminder of his “wife’s” pedigree. Adrian settled his own accounts.

One fall day after round-up; Ezra invited Blue Spruce to go hunting with him. Maybe some time alone, out on the lonesome prairie, would quell the angry spirits between the two. And, to her query about taking Adrian along to learn the skills of the hunt? No! The boy was not invited.

When Adrian awoke one rainy morning a few days after his parents had departed for a hunting expedition on which he had, purposely, not been invited, at the express insistence of Ezra, he came down to breakfast and heard the cook crying. One of the ranch hands stood beside the kitchen cook-stove talking to her. The boy listened, unobserved by either of the adults.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s the truth of it, I guess,” he looked nervously at his hat which he held in his hands, turning it and staring as though it might offer some comfort-respite; it didn’t.

“And, since it’s the boss’s word, I guess, too, that’s all of it.” He added, half-apologetically.

The lady-cook wept, openly, but said nothing; Adrian was totally confused.

“Yes, ma’am,” the cowboy repeated. “He said she accidentally shot herself and he buried her out yonder on the lonesome prairie.” He gave his silent hat another hopeful look; still, no answer.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “Mr. Ezra said ‘No questions’ and not to ever mention her, again.”

With that explanation, the man turned to go and came face to face with the boy.

When Adrian opened his mouth to ask a question, the cowboy replaced his hat and fled the house. When Ezra came in, later, he said not a word about the incident. No one ever mentioned it and Adrian was left to his own conclusions. His father became even more cruel toward the boy.

Within six months, when Ezra returned from a trip to the east, he moved a “lady” into the household that same fine day, announcing to the hands, the cook and the boy, that he had never really been married to Blue Spruce, had just been kindly to her and the boy after her Indian husband had somehow gotten himself killed out on the prairie. Sure, he had come to love the boy as his own flesh and blood, but, there was no hereditary lineage-relationship binding them together save Ezra’s kind charity toward the unfortunate squaw and her boy.

Adelaide, the newly arrived mistress-of-the-manor, had just that day come in from St. Louis. She and Ezra had been married in that fine place on his previous trip to the eastern civilized city. And, yes, “actually”, that was his son she was carrying. If it did turn out to be a boy-child, there would be the rightful heir to the Van Gangen fortune and dynasty, the ranch, the town, all of it. And with that fiat, Adrian had been summarily disowned and disenfranchised, all in one fell

swoop. That very day, the vengeful, angry Indian boy solemnly vowed to have his revenge.