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Title: God Dogs
Author: Hank Le Savage
ISBN: 0966788370
Description:
"God Dog" is the Comanche name for horse - so called because the animal - imported to the continent by Spanish conquistadors - possessed the seemingly supernatural power to transform the lives of the inhabitants of the American prairie. No longer bound to an area by walking, the Plains Indians were free to hunt, trade, travel, and make war over vast distances, enriching themselves and changing their way of life forever.
Hank Le Savage, an author of several books, worked in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest, where he learned the lore of several tribes. In this Western novel, Le Savage uses the Comanche name for horse as a metaphor for the transforming changes brought to the West by the emigrant settlers from America's East. Le Savage's story, God Dogs captures the turbulence of life on the American Prairie after the Civil War as a new nation is constructed by emigrants starting over and transforming the land and its people forever.
God Dogs is set in 1873, as the new nation is spreading its civilization across the Prairie. Frontier trader Jake Quinlan is summoned to Wichita by his old Union army friend to solve a recent murder. Quinlan, famous with a reputation as a gun-fighter, owing to a sensational dime novel, becomes immediately embroiled in a world of frontier corruption as the new residents of Wichita try to establish their town in a land overrun by a new breed of people eager to get rich quick. During his investigation, Quinlan is attacked on the prairie and his life is saved by Storm Cloud, the beautiful daughter of Quiet Elk, an aging Arapaho Chief eager to adapt as best he can to the "God Dogs" that are transforming the American West.
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Excerpt from Chapter 1:
Wichita had changed plenty in the three years since I first saw the place. At that time, it was just a prairie outpost on the Arkansas River, home to say 200 settlers, teamsters, tanners, merchants and the like. It was a going settlement then, complete with a hearty mix of folks, including some from Kansas and Osage, who were trying to make a living as traders. But Wichita was like many other frontier towns. They would crop up now and then, only to die later, the people to blow away like so much sagebrush.
That was the picture I had in mind when I got a letter at Fort Laramie from an army pal, Jimmy Waters. It turned out Jimmy had come west with his bride to Wichita in '68, opened up a dry goods mercantile and, he wrote, things had gone well by him and his in the time since.
I was happy to hear that. Jimmy and I had our share of times together, in Mr. Lincoln's Army, going from the time we joined up with the Army of the Potomac, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and later at the garrison at Plymouth, North Carolina. Bad as all that way, it was just a picnic compared to the months Jimmy and me and some 35,000 others spent on a 16-acre plot of sand and mud behind those 20 foot pine planks-a-hell Rebs built near a traindrop named Andersonville. Having survived those times and experiences and coming out alive together can make a men more than pals. You're blood brothers.
Jimmy wrote that he'd heard I was in the Rocky Mountains with a friend, Jedediah Harrison, and that he knew from his own account with me that some of the stories he'd heard were closer to true as not, which was why he felt comfortable writing and asking if I could help out.
He wasn't specific about the kind of troubles he was in. But I figured if a man like Jimmy put some ideas to paper and asks for help, I'm going to show up and do what I can.
Jimmy couldn't have known that his letter came as a good time for me. It happened that Jedediah had just passed on and I was ready for some new chores. Fact is, we were along quite some time and only the Nez Perces knew about Jedediah's illness and death. I was still a bit out of sorts with his passing, and when I got Jimmy's letter it was just the excuse I needed to get back east to civilization.
I set out east from Laramie and followed the Platte River until the north-south fork, when I turned south along the old Arapahoe trading trail into Kansas. I had no mix-ups with any of the Cheyenne and Pawnee hunting parties I came across. And I didn't dally hunting or talking with the railroaders I saw. Jimmy indicated his trouble was pressing. I kept that appaloosa moving I'd traded with a Nez Perces in the Idaho country moving along, stopping only for the necessities of rest, food, water and such.
I picked up the Arkansas River at the Great Bend and followed it to Wichita. I approached town after dusk. It had changed so. By that time, May 1873, it was much different than I had remembered. It had two-story buildings, its streets were crowded with wagons. People of all sorts and sizes were milling about, many in store bought clothes.
I rode the paloose slowly down the main street, looking at what the settlers had bought. Horses were lined up outside the roughly built stores and merchants' shops of all kinds. There was a barber shop, a grocery store, land offices, a few boarding houses, so-called, though they looked to be more like bordellos to be honest about it, and at least three saloons that I could count.
The street was packed down hard and dry, luckily, as if there'd been any rain it would be mud. A mild stench rose from the little trickle of sewage that ran down the center. The evening was warm, a fine spring evening, and folks were scurring about. This time of day most of the respectable people were long ago at home and away from whatever night life might be handy, which seemed to be about to get into full swing. I could hear a piano playing and some singing coming from one of the saloons. It sounded friendly enough and I was a bit thirsty after the day's ride. But I itched from lack of water, and I tought I'd best get a bath and shave and some rest before seeking Jimmy and his family. They were town folks now and there was no use scaring them with my beard and trail clothes.
I dismounted in front of the largest hotel in town, the Wichita Arms, and tied the paloose to the hitching post outside. I saw the livery and blacksmith shop at the edge of town, some 100 yards south. I figured after I fixed up myself with a room, I'd get him stabled.
Still stiff from the ride, I stretched myself on the wooden plank sidewalk. I was in good shape, I suppose, but I could tell from what my back and legs were telling me that I wasn't the same kid I'd been when I joined the army. Ten years it had been, and much had changed, not just my joints.
I walked past a few folks seated on chairs near the hotel entrance and nodded neighborly-like. Inside, the hotel looked clear and the apolstery on the fixings was well brushed.
There were clouds of cigar smoke from the pockets of people talking together here and there; and me coming in amidst them all looking like a grub line rider caused a few heads to turn.
I'd always made it a point to keep on hand some cash money that I'd earned in my years hunting and trading in the Rockies with Jedediah. I don't gamble, owing to a lesson taught me by my Da, and when I do make it to town I try to stay in the fine places. I'd prefer away from people to sleep right under the stars. But when amidst people, I figure it safest and smartest to get the strongest and best walls you can between you and any strangers who might like the poke you're toting.
There was nobody behind the front desk when I approached it, so I worked the little bell . I turned the register book around toward me and signed my name: Jake Quinlan.
I glanced around the parlor to see if there was anybody there I knew. They were town-folks and I knew none. The women were dressed proper in satins; the men, well-groomed and bearded, had the clothing I'd seen on men of means in New York City, when I'd lived there after getting off that boat from Liverpool with the other Irish. These folks may have been in Wichita all these years later, but they had the same content, well-fed and confident way that their way of life made sure they'd get their comforts and their salvation. Me, I had my doubts.
Many things might have changed since I'd stepped off that boat. But my feelings about that hadn't. My continued musing along those lines ended when the hotel manager appeared behind the front desk.
"Yes," he said, looking down his snoot somewhat. I admit I wasn't dressed like those well-tended fellows seated over yonder with those fine ladies, smoking good smelling cigars. But I was a paying customer with manners and money just the same.
"I'd like a room," I said.
"Well, I am sure that other establishments…"
"None of that," I interrupted. "I've got the money and you've got the room. You also got yourself a bath house and I want four bits of hot water in 10 minutes so I can clear off this prairie dust."
He looked me over and I kept my eyes on him, steady and sure, telling him silently what I didn't want to say aloud: that if he wanted to put up a fuss, I'd be more than obliged to accommodate him. My sergeant in Company C, named Muldoon, taught me there was nothing to be apologizing for because I was an Irisher first before being American. 'Don't give any of those kind any encouragement, if they want to make it tough on you' he would say over and over, 'only makes them worse next time.' Jedediah taught me other lessons, first among them that a man in this country is as good as the next and, if he can survive by himself, better than most.
These ideas were going about my head, and it seemed the manager liked me comment about a bath enough to persuade himself to take a second look.
"May I have payment in advance," he said, finally. "That will be one dollar for the room and 50 cents for the water."
I pulled out the cash and put is on the desk. He reached for it and I held my hand over the money. "Now that'll be hot water, right?"
He closed his eyes as though I had asked a question too obvious for a response.
"Sign please," he said.
I pointed to the register. "Already did."
He turned the book around and looked at my name. I'd seen the reaction before. It was quick and complete surprise, perhaps even a touch of fear.
"Jake Quinlan!"
I didn't like to pay attention too much to that kind of thing, knowing that what people thought about a man's name had nothing much to do with what the man actually was. In my case, that was sure true enough. But ever since that writer rode with me and Jedediah and the others on that cattle drive up from the Texas Hill Country with boss Vince Blair, it's been the same thing all over these parts.
The writer, a portly fellow from New York City named Robert Schuyler, put together one of those stories in a dime adventure novel about the West and used me as his subject for his tales. I'd lost track of how many he'd written. I saw one once. I couldn't get past the first few pages, which themselves were so full of lies, tall tales and whoppers it made me embarrassed. Things like that stay with a man.
So when this hotel manager was sputtering and carrying on reading my name, I just ignored him and turned to get my horse to the livery.
"… Mr. Quinlan," he was saying, "if I had known it was you, well, I, that is, I…"
"Don't carry on there," I called back, trying to keep him as quiet as possible. "Just have that bath water hot in 10 minutes."
"Why, Mr. Quinlan, of course. Yes, sir! Right away, sir…"
