Strongheart Read Free Page A

to die.” They nodded and smiled.
    Leaving them, he raised his hand to bid them stay back, and ignoring the leg pain, he leapt on his pinto mount and rode toward the reassembling Crows. They had lost several warriors already and were shocked at the ability of these three determined men. They had to admire their perennial enemies.
    The Crows were planning a final charge, with the idea to count as many coups as possible, touching the enemy in battle. They were encouraging each other to “Brave up!”
    Thirty yards off, Claw Marks dropped off his war pony and tied a long rawhide thong to his leg. He tied the other end of the twenty-foot leather thong to a stake, which he jammed into the ground and pounded down with a nearby rock.
    Claw Marks then faced the Crow, a challenging grin on his face, and raising his rifle into the air with one hand and his war club with the other, he yelled, “Hokahey!”
    The Crow knew he was going nowhere, but would fight to the death, taking as many of them as he could with him. They yelled back, more in admiration for his raw courage than to taunt a warrior. They agreed they would ride him down, and each warrior wanted to count coup on this mighty enemy, touching him without killing him, with a coup stick, bow, or rifle. They charged screaming and yelling, and he raised his rifle taking careful aim, and bodies started falling. The group rode down upon him, and he swung his rifle one way and the other and broke the stock over the face of the largest Crow. Then he started swinging his war club, as he felt stab wounds and strikes hitting his body all over. His scalp was a great reward for the hardest fighting of the Crows, who finally struck the fatal blow against him. Near Siostukala’s body eight Crow bodies also lay on the grass by the shallow sand- and rock-bottomed Little Bighorn, and several more moaned with wounds.
    The two elderly warriors wanted to help the courageous young man, but they knew they must lay back and wait, buying more time for their extended family members. They knew they, too, would make the great walk this day. Inspired by the young warrior’s ferocious fighting and tremendous courage, they too held the Crows off, for another hour, giving the tribal remnants plenty of time to hide in Badger Coulee.
    After they hid far down the river valley, Joshua’s young half brother crept through the tall, waving buffalo grass high on a ridge that would be traveled years later by Custer and his men. He found a vantage point and actually watched the heroic death of his father. With no other warriors or tribal members around, he cried. But then he returned to the others. He was bursting with pride at the incredible courage of his father and vowed then never to tarnish such a family legacy.
    Joshua felt like he could easily cry wishing he had known his father. After his stepfather died and his mother gave him the gun and knife, only then did she reveal to him her relationship with Claw Marks. When his name was mentioned, she did not cry out of bad memory, but out of pure love-loss.

2
    Forbidden Love
    Abigail Harrison was the daughter of a British-born father and French-born mother. They were shopkeepers back east, where she was born in a small Ohio town, New Philadelphia, along the banks of the Tuscarawas River, in the midst of southern Ohio farming and coal-mining country. New Philadelphia, or as locals called it, “New Philly,” was first settled in 1777 by German immigrants, who named it Schoenbrunn, which actually meant “beautiful spring.”
    But wanderlust struck the Harrisons, and having heard about the green of Oregon and mining riches in California, they headed west. They were headed to see both and then settle in one. However, the trials of the westward movement took their toll. He died first, when trying to free a mud-encased Conestoga wagon wheel. As it came free and the horses lunged forward, he slipped, and the wheel rolled over his