1
APRIL 1867
Blue Elk O'Brian laughed at the men who were trying to kill him. He clung to his concealed perch in the lofty branches of an oak tree and watched as the Regulators lined themselves on the crest of a limestone ridge, then continued down toward him, following the circuitous trail he had left for them. O'Brian, better known as the Osage Kid, brushed his shaggy black hair out of his eyes and grinned. He adjusted his weight, being careful not to disturb the swarm of bees at the end of the branch he had sawed almost completely through. Supporting the weight of the branch and massive hive with his left arm, O'Brian braced himself by shoving his right foot against a nearby branch and worked himself deeper into the cleft of the trunk. As yet, the mass of bees hadn't noticed him. O'Brian's build was small, unlike that of most Osage men, and he was able to blend into the shadowy recesses of the tree. He had wrapped himself in a faded brown blanket to better conceal his beaded buckskin shirt and Confederate-issue britches.
His fingers absently played with the mussel-shell necklace circling his throat as he watched the three troopers riding toward him.
The officer in the lead, Major Andrew Kedd, wore a blue felt hat that trailed a black plume. The thin, delicately built Regulator rode as if he were on parade. As he paused to study the tracks leading down the hillside into the grove of oak trees, Kedd removed his hat and brushed back a shock of prematurely silver hair. A silver goatee added emphasis to an already jutting jaw. Kedd replaced his hat and motioned for the two men behind him to follow as he continued down the slope. The other two Regulators looked worriedly from one to the other. The Ozarks were hardly things of beauty to them. These forested ridges and dark hollows were places to be avoided.
A man could wind up real dead hereabouts. And the only thing worse than being dead was being real dead. Everybody knew that.
Their voices carried to the Osage Kid in the treetop.
"Major Kedd, sir, meaning no disrespect, but shouldn't we be waiting for the rest of the men to find us," the bolder of the two, Corporal J. D. Canton, called out.
The man at his side, middle-aged like the corporal but without any ranking, rubbed his reddened cheeks. He needed a drink. Hell, Pepper Fisk always needed a drink. "J. D.'s got a point, Major, sir."
Kedd did not bother to reply but waved the men onward. "Come along, lads. We'll skin this half-breed buck today. Mark my word we'll shoot him down like the disreputable savage he is or truss him up and ship him off to Indian territory the same as we did the rest of the red devils."
"Yes sir." Fisk found the courage to continue the argument. "But he's gone and scattered the boys over half of almighty creation … and left just us three …" He searched the forest ahead, his gaze wide eyed and worried.
"That's quite enough, Private Fisk."
Pepper Fisk swallowed a retort and glanced aside at the corporal, who shook his head.
"Show some backbone, Pepper," the corporal growled as if he had never complained. He flexed his big beefy shoulders and flashed a yellow-toothed wicked smile that added no warmth to his grizzled features.
Sideburns thick as briar patches covered his cheeks. Beneath his hat, his bald skull was dotted with sweat. Moisture glistened in the graying sideburns. A ragged scar cut a crescent moon just beneath his right eye.
Pepper rubbed a hand over his thick fleshy lips and veined cheeks. His bulbous nose twitched as he sniffed the air in hopes of discovering the scent of a campfire. His rounded belly growled, but his thoughts weren't of food. Only of the taste of the rye whiskey the corporal had concealed in his saddlebags.
The three men reached a dry watercourse and, keeping to the winding ribbon of hoofprints, continued on into the shade. There the spring air brushed cool against their features and the land waited in mystery, for the tracks in the soft earth indicated their quarry had experienced some confusion as to the path ahead. No tracks led away. They simply stopped.
"What the devil is this?" said Andrew Kedd.
J. D. Canton and Pepper Fisk were busy trying to make some sense out of the tracks beneath the tree. They never had a chance to reply. Up above, the Osage Kid slashed down with his broad blade—four—teen inches of double-edged steel honed to a razor-sharpness—and severed the branch at its base. The branch dropped like a rock carrying its burden of newly swarmed bees right into the middle of the Regulators. The cluster of insects exploded and attacked both horse and rider in their agitated state. As the bees found their target, O'Brian ducked beneath his blanket to keep from being stung. Kedd, Fisk, and Canton yelled and batted at the insects. Their horses neighed and reared and kicked the air teeming with furious bugs. All three horses bolted as one away from the woods and headed at a gallop toward the slope. They took the incline without breaking stride as the bees swarmed after them. Fisk howled the loudest as stinger after stinger lanced his skin. Corporal Canton bellowed like a bear. Kedd bore his pain and suffering in silence until the last minute, when a peculiarly vengeful bee found his ear and thrust deep. The major straightened in the saddle, slapped at his head, and rent the afternoon with a piercing cry that turned to a curse levied against O'Brian.
When the troopers had vanished in the distance beyond the hills, the Osage Kid took his chances and scampered down the oak. He darted away from the tree and followed the deer trail deep into the woods.
He found his horse where he had left the animal, ground-tethered near a bubbling spring. O'Brian knelt by the chestnut and unwrapped the strips of cloth he had tied on its legs to soften the imprint of the shod hooves in the soft earth. The animal continued to crop the tender shoots of sweet spring grass growing around the edge of the spring.
When O'Brian finished unwrapping the hooves, he pulled up the stake he had driven into the ground, and patted the gelding's neck. "Looks like we won again," he said softly. Taking reins in hand, he swung up into the Confederate-issue saddle.
O'Brian had skirmished with Major Kedd on several occasions, ever since the Yankee major had arrived in Arkansas with his force of military police, men from both sides of the Mason-Dixon. Under Reconstruction, Kedd enforced the laws with a ruthless intensity that had earned him the enmity of the populace.
O'Brian paused, listening to the music of the hills, the wind's sigh, the rush of a nearby creek hidden beyond the dense foliage of cedar and oak, sweet gum and redbud, leatherwood shrubs and beech ferns.
"And the winner gets to stay," O'Brian added. Twenty-one years old, he was the last of his kind. All the rest of his mother's people had been relocated west, to Indian territory. But not Blue Elk O'Brian. And so long as he remained, these verdant hills belonged to the Osage.
Copyright © 1987 by James Reno.
