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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Retribution for Red-Dog Tongue
Tom Sheehan
Michelle J. Foxx stood heroically as her ranch house burned to the ground, the barn ignited in three places, and her rifle aimed at Red-Dog Tongue sitting her own palomino he’d taken from the barn but minutes earlier. She knew she could kill him even as he smiled down at her, her husband off chasing a few horses the Indians had set free for that purpose by tossing a snake in among them. She saw Red-Dog Tongue widen his smile as she heard a sound behind her; death or worse was coming her way, so she fired and knocked the Cherokee clear off her favorite horse and heard another bullet shatter the edge of a post and tear through the Indian who crept behind her.
When she regained consciousness her husband’s arms were holding her, the barn fires had been extinguished, and Red-Dog Tongue lie at her feet. The raiding party of about 30 had scattered at his death, heading back into the Freelet Hills strung the whole length of the river.
“Harley,” she said, “I didn’t think you’d get back and I wasn’t going with him. Where’d you shoot from?”
“From the trench I started to dig for a new sump hole for trash. It got me close enough to get a shot at him and that’s when I saw the one creeping up behind you. I picked him even as you started to aim at the chief.” He hugged her and asked, “What do you think we should do now?”
Michelle knew he was asking her if they should leave the place and go elsewhere, start over, but it hit her in a different way. She saw the whole scenario at once and announced a fateful decision, “Here’s what we should do,” she said …
Harley Foxx was astounded at his wife’s words, but swore he’d get it done as soon as she was comfortable. He put her in the barn, under cover and comfortable for the night, and went to work.
On the following morning Michelle, with a good night’s rest, watched the scenario she had seen in a flash had put in place to bring the scene to completion.
Three small piles of wood, many yards apart, were covered with pine boughs in a rough triangle. In the middle of that triangle, on a framework six feet high of fence parts and boards taken from house remnants, rested the body of Red-Dog Tongue on a platform. All his personal ornaments were in view. They had been placed on a bright blanket Michelle had found in the barn.
As she had envisioned, she lit the first pile of wood and pine boughs on fire. At first the smoke rose slowly into the air of a very calm day, a day of no breezes. Soon the column rose as she had seen it, a steady and sure-enough signal for the whole tribal nation. The column of smoke rose like it was coming from the mouth of a kettle, and it went straight into the air. In innocence and ignorance of the meaning of such signals, she still waved a blanket at certain moments over the smoke issuing from the fire. The bundles of smoke also rose straight into the air.
Harley Foxx said, “They’re up there, Michelle. I spotted a couple of them on the flat rock in the hills you can see just off to the right of the barn.” Excitedly he added, “Now I see more of them. You’ve summoned them.”
Michelle lit the second and the third piles of wood and pine boughs and the smoke of three fires rose, and when the small bundles of smoke rose also, she said, “Harley, those are bundles of words the whole nation will see. I hope they understand what we’re up to.”
Foxx said, “Michelle, I see hundreds of them now, and many of them are moving down to the little rise on the south end of the pasture.”
With a determined stride she was on her horse and started out to the south pasture, after telling her husband to stay where he was. In a few moments she waved her hand in a sign of friendship and motioned with her hand for one rider to come forward. When a few started toward her, she raised one finger in the air. She waved it again, and lone a lone rider came along the wide grass. In her hand she held an unlit torch. As the Indian, a young brave came close to her, she lit the torch and held it out to him and pointed back over her shoulder, at Red-Dog Tongue easily visible on the framework, Indian style cremation.
The young brave she thought to be about 20 years of age took the torch from her hand, and said words in his language, words she could not hear but understood. The brave said the words a number of times, slid off his mount, approached the framework, looked at Red-Dog Tongue’s emplacement, nodded, and said the same words again.
He lit the pile of wood beneath the framework with the torch, made a sweeping motion low over the ground, nodded once more at Michelle and Red-Dog Tongue, mounted his horse and left. He rode toward the south end of the pasture where hundreds of Cherokees sat their horses, and within minutes they were all out of sight.
A few days later, Foxx collected the ashes from the Indian style cremation in a bucket and placed them in a hole directly below where the framework ashes had been. Michelle placed a single piece of Red-Dog Tongue’s possessions she had kept for one explicit purpose: placing his unstrung bow on the site.
Every night, from one full moon to the next full moon, an unseen Indian placed a small article at the site. No sound was ever heard by the Foxxes, no shadow or form seen, no other sign left to interpret.
For the 40 years of their life at the rebuilt ranch house, no other Indians ever trod the grounds where Michelle and Harley Foxx lived and where Red-Dog Tongue rested with the gods.
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