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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Herman Longburrow, Cherokee
Tom Sheehan
Herman Longburrow, a flat-out 100 per cent Cherokee boy about 9 years old, got his name from a German minister who rode a big black stallion, carried a bible for ready use when he came upon possible converts or those who wanted to pray, and a Colt on his right hip, generally hidden under his black coat in case a different statement was needed.
The minister, Rev. Klaus Werner of the Granted Grace Ministry, heard someone crying in a cave many hours after a swarm of army troops had set upon a Cherokee village. The youngster was frightened beyond his years for he had seen soldiers at work before … unforgettable work. And the cave was a long, narrow confinement that might well have hidden a hundred others like him after other encounters. In the entire west, the burgeoning west, there had to be a place of comfort, a haven, for the boy. Klaus Werner would find it for him; fate, and the Good Lord, had decreed it.
The Good Lord had appointed the right man for the boy’s salvation; the reverend was locked into that appointment as if the Good Lord had whispered it directly into his ear.
Rev. Werner was a reader of many sorts, the Good Book in one instance and the faces of people in another instance, in the mannerisms forecast by those people he came in contact with. He saw suspicion, cruelty, nervousness, keen awareness, fear of dangers of any kind, fear of the cloth from some people, and sundry other characteristics or traits that people carried visibly about on their countenances or in their body language.
He was rarely incorrect in his readings, or “the great suppositions that beat upon us in this life,” as he’d often say.
And the Reverend Werner often made himself a target of a sermon, such as saying aloud, “I wonder what in heaven's sake I’ll do with the young Indian. He’s still frightened and doesn’t know what’s coming to him in this life, on top of what has already happened. If I can leave him someplace, not desert him so that he’d be left alone again, the Good Lord will send His graces this way.”
The boy, even frightened, wore a sour face, and Werner couldn’t blame him for that. Life was tough enough out in the growing west and he had an assortment of ideas of what the boy had been through before he came upon him. “There are so many curtains that separate us in our lifetimes,” he said aloud as he tried to envision the future and his next sermon coming to any congregation he’d find.
The sun was at its high point, the heat coming heavy upon Werner in striking waves as he tapped his empty canteen and saw the haze of heat lift off the grass in a quick blanket of cloud-like vapor. His throat was coarse and dry. Not once had the boy asked for water, though Werner knew he had to be thirsty.
The pair of them came onto Conrad Dibbler’s spread at the point furthest from the ranch house where Werner could see a single stone chimney poking into the far horizon.
Herman Longburrow’s native clothing offered little covering but identified him as an Indian right up front. The two of them were not a couple of hundred yards onto the Dibbler spread, known as The Little CD, when a horseman came out of a small copse of trees and challenged them, waving a pistol in his hand.
“Whoa there, mister. Where you going? This is Little-CD land. No trespassing.”
As Werner reached for the Good Book, in a small sack strung on his pommel, the rider aimed his pistol at him and said, “Easy there, mister. Pull your hand out slow. What you got there?”
As the rider asked his question, Werner marked his physical elements: he had big teeth in a large mouth that would be a huge smile if ever let go in a pleasant manner; bushy blond eyebrows meeting in the middle of his brow and making him serious looking; but in contradiction his Stetson sat back on his head in a casual, lackluster manner with no tie string visible saying he had no hard ride in front of him, as if he had all the answers before he asked his questions.
Holding up the Good Book, Werner said, “It’s only the Good Book of the Lord, young man. The book of the Lord.”
“I don’t mean that book, mister. I mean him, that critter with no clothes hardly on him. That Indian critter who looks like he lost his way out here on the grass where he don’t belong no how in the first place.” The gun was still in his hand as he said, “He give you some trouble, did he?”
To himself, Werner said, “One more for me. Gent can’t hide his feelings, not that he’d ever want to, I’d bet. Might shoot young Herman if I don’t be careful here.”
At the completion of his thoughts, he said to the cowpoke, “No trouble from this youngster, Herman Longburrow, who has lost his mother and father and all his brothers and sisters to a rambunctious troop of soldiers who have more fear in them than the Indians have of the troops no matter how many there are nor where they are.”
“Longburrow, huh? Hiding away was he? Where’d the Herman come from?”
The wise mouth was almost ready to break into a huge grin, when Werner said, “He got that name from me when I baptized him in the name of the Good Lord whose book I carry wherever I go. He’s Herman Longburrow from now on in this here life, as declared by the Good Lord and me as his emissary.”
Werner was still measuring the man.
“Well, my name is really my name, Clutch Harris, put on me by my mother and father. That’s all. And I don’t know what the boss will say about this, but you got to come with me and see him. Says anybody comes on his land he gets to know, see what they’re up to, if you know what I mean. Now, let’s get along there, you and the Injun, and head over that way toward the ranch.”
Conrad Dibbler, a short man but wide in the shoulders and arms full of muscle, was throwing horseshoes directly in front of the ranch house, the shoes flung from his hands swinging in a gentle arc to clang in most attempts directly around or near an iron stake.
“Who’ve you got there, Clutch? I thought you’d be all alone out there today. Where’d you find the Injun kid, and who’s that gent you got there who’s all dressed up?”
Harris said, “The gent in black is a church man of some sort and the Injun was baptized by him as Herman Longburrow ‘cause he found him hiding in a cave.”
“What’s your name, churchman? Mine’s Conrad Dibbler and I own this spread and I don’t want any Indians, baptized or not, on my place. Is that clear?” His chest puffed up as he spoke as if trying to impress Werner. “I carved this place out of nowhere, and I started with a horse and a shovel and an ax and nothing else.”
Studying the rancher, Werner saw a contrived hero of sorts who, right from the start, tried to impress strangers with his history, his achievements. Werner had met all types and Dibbler was no different than others of the same ilk … self-important, contrived, seeking what they knew they’d never attain, real respect.
Werner said, “After all that, you’re not going to offer us a drink of water on a hot day? That’s mighty inhospitable of you, if I do say. All the Lord’s children deserve water for their thirst. Are you saying different?”
“Well, Mister Whatever, I’m not worried about your feeling that way. It just ain’t my way unless folks is just like me, and that kid ain’t like me. No way.”
“His people were here thousands of years before you, Mr. Dibbler, and they deserve a drink of water, no matter how they come here.”
“You saying they come raiding me and I got to give them water. Hell, man, that ain’t even fit to talk about.”
Spinning about he said, “Clutch, you get them off here as quick as you can, and don’t let ‘em come back, the bigmouth with the collar or the Injun kid.” He puffed his chest again and all of it was lost on Werner and Herman Longburrow who rode off with Harris.
“Out of hearing distance from Dibbler, going down an incline, Werner said, “Are you going to give us some water from your canteen, Clutch?”
“Hell, the boss’d run me off the place if I did. He ain’t kidding any what he says.”
“I’m not kidding when I tell you that Herman Longburrow’s people will know you turned us down as well as your boss. Might not sit well with them. It wouldn’t sit well with me if I were in their shoes. Makes me wonder if you spend a lot of your time out here alone, as a line rider or a fence rider and sleep in a line camp someplace all by yourself. I’m curious about that.”
The air about them was thick with a promised fate, thick and hard to breathe, and harder to accept any of the consequences.
Harris’s response was all body language at first, as though he was feeling an arrow out of nowhere or a hatchet flashing from evening shadows. The shiver was slight but perfectly visible to Werner.
“Well,” said Harris, his whole demeanor changed by possibilities, “I been thirsty a time or two and it gets real touchy, so drink what you want and put the rest in your canteen. There’s not much water between here and the Lucas ranch due west of us, against them mountains off there.”
He pointed west. “Lucas’ll be different from Dibbler and so will his wife. She’s half Indian. Might even take to the boy herself. They got no kids of their own.”
The decree had come from close to the devil himself and Harris slipped back into a shell, realizing he had given up too much information to a complete stranger, no matter what kind of collar he had on.
And, as suggested or decreed, the Reverend Klaus Werner, and his protégé, Herman Longburrow, were welcomed at the Lucas ranch by both Harlow Lucas and his wife, half Cherokee herself and half white.
Werner had said, “I guess you’d like to have some comfort in your life, Ma’am.” Mrs. Lucas’s name had been Feather Drift early in life until she had been taken and raised by a family of settlers way out on the grass. It was her long-time hope that she’d be able to find some balance in her life, and that meant children.
“If you will take this boy off my hands, Ma’am, the Good Lord will bless you. I have no means to bring him along with me. He’d face continuous hostility in all the places where I’d go in my passage.”
“I have no children of my own, Rev. Werner,” she said, “and I will do my best for the boy as long as I have any breath in me. My husband will do as I suggest, for we both realize I have better sense than him. But he is a good man, a believer in the Good Lord, though he tends to be rash at times, like most men out here who struggle to survive.”
Harlow Lucas and Feather Drift watched as Reverend Klaus Werner rode off on his big black stallion into his own destiny, their arms around Herman Longburrow, not yet 10 years of age, not yet grown, not yet a college student, not yet a lawyer, not yet an advocate for the downtrodden, the lost, and those other youngsters dislocated from the Cherokee nation.
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