Siege At Baker Ranch, Part I

I. Myron Baker wasn’t much of a man for gunplay, whiskey, or ladies of the night. He'd made his move out the western way for space to live his life just as he liked. He’d gotten himself a good spread of land not too far south of the rolling Black Hills, his pa said the land was thick with Injuns, said soon enough he would probably be killed. But young Myron could not afford much else, and built a cabin quickly on the spot, then came a corral, a herd of horses that he planned to raise and sell from the lot. After a year he brought out his young wife she was Larissa, and she was his pearl, and in her arms she bore green-eyed Meagan, his precious and little one-year old girls. His in-laws to came too Mary and Harold, burned too many times by New York’s business scene they hoped to help out however they could, and the west had long haunted Harold’s dream. Myron built a new room for the cabin and then they all began settling in, Myron taught Harold how to work horses until the man wore a proud wrangler’s grin. Amongst waving grass and low-rolling buttes, it seemed as if things were finally fixed, but then in June some dark news would arrive, the year being eighteen seventy-six… Myron was rounding up several new colts when a hurried blue-coat raced on in, back to the ranch house Myron pushed his mount, to see what ever was going on with him. He found the man speaking low with Harold out by the corral on that gray-light morn, the works he spoke put a chill in Myron: “Disaster up on the Little Bighorn!” Custer’s command had been killed to the last the campaign, a shambles, advanced no more, the Sioux and Cheyenne were now all aflame war-bands set out to even up the score. Even worse, the warrior Diving Bird had been seen not far north with twenty braves, Myron thanked the man for bringing the news, as he rode off they frowned, fearing Sioux rage. He asked Harold to got back to the house and he went back out to drive in the herd, the whole time his mind did nothing but echo the young soldier’s hurried and frightened words. He’d never had much trouble with the Sioux even traded horses with a few bands, and he’d heard that some weren’t playing it straight when it came to the boundaries of their lands. He knew they hated miners in the Black Hills, and even sympathized more than a bit, but he doubted in war they’d discriminate, so he’d defend what was his, that was it... CONTINUES IN PART II.