Free Meet the New Dawn by Rosanne Bittner Page A

then began following Wolf’s Blood toward his uncle’s tipi.
    Wolf’s Blood turned before entering, motioning to Sweet Grass. “Come! My father is here, and we are all hungry. Cook some venison for us.”
    She smiled seductively. She liked Wolf’s Blood. He was young and hard and eager in bed. Of all the braves she slept with, he was her favorite. She hurried to her own tipi to get some of the smoked venison she had made up from a deer Wolf’s Blood had brought her a few days earlier. She would prepare a worthy meal for her lover, and for his fine-looking father.
    Charles Garvey leaned back in the leather chair, putting his feet up on his desk. He liked his fine office in Washington, D.C. He was an accomplished journalist but also studying to be an attorney, and was now a fast-rising apprentice in a prominent law firm. He had moved up more quickly than others, but then money could buy a man a lot of things.
    He rubbed at his thigh, cursing again the young Indian who had stabbed him at Sand Creek. Never had he dreamed a man could suffer so much pain, and for a while it was feared his leg would have to be removed. But it had finally healed to the point where he could at least walk with a cane. The pain he suffered would always plague him, and it only fed his determination to do all he could to annihilate the Indians from any lands they still held. But it would have to be done cleverly, legally. His father had taught him that much more could be accomplished through twisting the law and through bribes than could be accomplished any other way. Already he had had a hand in convincing the railroads that they could provide food for their workers for free by hiring buffalo hunters. Three things could be thus accomplished: The workers would be fed, the railroads would get built, and the Indians would die of hunger. It was really quite simple. Now the hides were becoming more valuable back east, and Garvey had invested in a factory thattreated the hides and transformed them into all kinds of valuable outer wear, quite fashionable now. He had also invested in the huge, long-range rifles that were used to hunt buffalo from a safe distance, and had hired hunters himself. He wanted only the best. The job must be done right—and swiftly. The next ten years were bound to bring near extinction to the great, ugly beasts of the plains, solving a lot of problems for white progress.
    He grinned and lowered his feet, having to take his hands and literally lift the bad leg to the floor. He winced with pain as he did so. “Cussed red filth!” he swore. He turned to his desk then, picking up a quill pen and continuing to write. Every week he contributed a column to several eastern newspapers, telling of his own life in the west and his experiences fighting Indians, explaining what worthless, ignorant savages they were and how important it was that they be given absolutely no sympathy. Of course he neglected to mention that he had never committed a brave act in his life, or that the attack on the Cheyenne at Sand Creek had been brutal and uncalled-for, that women and children had been mutilated, their insides cut out, their heads bashed into nothingness. He did not mention that time and again the Indians had tried to live up to treaty obligations, only to have those treaties broken by the government, by soldiers, by settlers and miners who wanted more and more Indian land. There was no attempt made to help the whites understand the Indian side, the Indian spirit, the Indian culture. Besides, his readers did not want to hear those things. They wanted only to read exciting things, about the great wars between brave white soldiers and savage, wild Indians. So he would give them what they wanted. After all, he was his father’s son. Indians had obviously done in his father, although the man had never been found after that night the Garvey ranch was raided. Not that the boy cared. After all, that made everything belong to him now. But to say that