Danny Blackgoat Read online

  Danny Blackgoat:

  Dangerous Passage

  Tim Tingle

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

  © 2017 Tim Tingle

  Cover design: John Wincek

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the publisher.

  7th Generation

  an imprint of Book Publishing Company

  PO Box 99, Summertown, TN 38483

  888-260-8458

  bookpubco.com

  nativevoicesbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-939053-15-2

  22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Hand from the Coffin

  Chapter 2: You Can’t Outrun Your Past

  Chapter 3: Crossroads of Danger

  Chapter 4: Shotgun Surprise

  Chapter 5: Hide-and-Seek Conversation

  Chapter 6: Bridge-Builder Rick

  Chapter 7: By Bullets or Hanging?

  Chapter 8: Road to Nowhere

  Chapter 9: What Was He Thinking!

  Chapter 10: Back Home at the Carpentry Shop

  Chapter 11: The Shadow

  Chapter 12: Invisible Navajo

  Chapter 13: Soldiers in the Shadows

  Chapter 14: Navajo Blood

  Chapter 15: The Bloody Trail

  Chapter 16: Death by Hanging or Firing Squad?

  Chapter 17: Confederate Soldier’s Trial

  Chapter 18: Life-Saving Navajo Horse

  Chapter 19: Please Believe Me!

  Chapter 20: Danny’s Offering

  Chapter 21: Confession and the Hanging Rope

  Chapter 22: Sarah Meets the General

  Afterword: Navajo Future, the Treaty of 1868

  Recommended Resource

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Hand from the Coffin

  Danny climbed into bed and pulled the sheet tight around his neck. It was wintertime in the barracks, and the night air was icy cold. As he drifted to sleep, he felt something crawl across his feet.

  Danny sat up. He heard the soft whirring of a rattlesnake curled beneath the sheet. Ever so slowly, he lifted his legs and rolled to the edge of the bed.

  But the rattlesnake was too quick. It struck Danny on the thigh and clung tight till every drop of poisonous venom shot from its fangs. Danny rolled to the floor and screamed.

  “Ohhhh! Help me, somebody!”

  Danny spotted a coffin lying next to him on the floor. As he moaned in pain, the lid of the coffin slowly creaked open. He held his breath and felt his heart pounding. What he saw next was the most terrifying sight of his life.

  A bloody hand crawled from the coffin and reached for him.

  “Noooo!” Danny shouted. The hand grabbed Danny by the shoulder and shook him hard.

  “Let me go!” Danny hollered.

  “Danny, wake up, son,” a voice called from the darkness. Danny closed his eyes and wished this night would go away.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “It’s me. Rick,” the voice replied. “You rolled out of bed, Danny. I’m guessing you had quite a nightmare, the way you were screaming and kicking.”

  Danny opened his eyes and sat up. “The rattlesnake?” he asked. “Where did the rattlesnake go?”

  “There’s no snake, Danny,” Rick said. “It was all a bad dream.”

  “That can’t be. The snake bit me. On the leg, in the same place the rattlesnake bit me before.”

  Rick said nothing. He gave Danny a friendly smile and waited for his young friend to understand what he had just said.

  “I guess I dreamed about the coffin too,” Danny finally said, “and the hand coming from it?”

  “Yes.” Rick laughed. “No coffin either. Danny, I think you’re reliving old memories.”

  “Where are we?” Danny asked.

  “Look around you,” Rick said. “See if you remember.”

  Danny looked first to the ground, at the blanket curled at his feet. He saw several blankets and the shapes of sleeping men beneath them. The campsite was near a shallow arroyo, with a trickle of water snaking through the rocks.

  Danny’s sleeping place was under a skinny mesquite tree. He cast his gaze to the sky and spotted a thin slice of moon surrounded by bright blinking stars.

  “Oh,” he said. He reached for his leg and felt the scars of that long-ago snakebite. “I dreamed we were in the barracks. I feel foolish and dumb.”

  Rick laughed out loud and patted Danny on the shoulder. “You’re neither one,” he said. “You think I’d let you flirt with my daughter if you were dumb?”

  Danny jumped to his feet. “I do not flirt with Jane,” he said, holding his palms to the sky in a show of innocence.

  “I know, Danny. You are always respectful. I just wanted to take your mind off your nightmare. Now, we have a long day tomorrow. Let’s get some sleep.” Rick turned to go, and Danny saw him cover his mouth to hide his laughter.

  As soon as Rick was gone, Danny shook his blanket, making sure no snakes were curled up and waiting to strike. “I guess it was all a nightmare,” he said to himself, as he snugged his blanket around his neck and tried to sleep. But the memories were too strong. He smiled when he thought of the shy Navajo girl with shiny black hair, Rick’s daughter Jane.

  The other memories, the bad ones, soon returned.

  Danny remembered—on the day the soldiers came—climbing to the top of Canyon de Chelly. He looked down at his sheep grazing on the floor of the canyon. As he thought of his morning prayer, his fingers crept to the string around his neck and the pouch of corn pollen.

  Danny remembered the twisting columns of smoke rising as the soldiers burned the hogans, the Navajo homes. He recalled the tight ropes that bound him together with a hundred other Navajos, forced to walk in the searing heat.

  After he tried to escape, the soldiers stretched Danny across a horse like a saddle. They fed him twice a day, lifting his head and pouring water and soup down his throat. The soldiers ripped his shirt away, and his back was soon covered in blisters from the burning sun.

  When the Navajo walkers arrived at Fort Sumner, he was tossed onto the bed of a supply wagon and hauled away. “He’s a troublemaker,” a soldier said, and he was taken to Fort Davis, a prison for Confederate soldiers captured during the Civil War.

  Rick, the driver of the supply wagon, was the friendliest white man he had ever met, and Danny soon discovered why. Rick was married to a Navajo woman, Susan, and their daughter, Jane, was a year younger than Danny.

  At Fort Davis, Danny was a prisoner and a Navajo, disliked by the soldiers and hated by the other prisoners.

  “I’m not working with that dirty Indian,” they said. The meanest of the prisoners put a rattlesnake in Danny’s bed one night. Danny would have died without the help of his only friend among the prisoners, an old Southerner named Jim Davis. Davis cut the flesh of Danny’s leg and sucked the blood to drain the venom. Danny shivered to think of Jim Davis with a mouthful of blood and rattlesnake venom.

  With the help of Davis, Danny gained his freedom in a daring graveyard escape. But Danny’s family was still imprisoned, held captive with thousands of other Navajo people in the scorching, barren land surrounding Fort Sumner.

  With his nightmares and his memories over, sleep finally came to Danny Blackgoat. At the first hint of morning light, he climbed to the top of the tallest hill and lifted the leather pouch from around his neck. Danny sprinkled corn pollen onto his palm and turned to the east, to the rising sun. He closed his eyes and whispered the words his grandfather had taught him.

  When the morning sun ca
sts its light on the canyon walls

  A new house is born,

  A house made of dawn.

  Before me all is beautiful.

  Behind me all is beautiful.

  Above me all is beautiful.

  Below me all is beautiful.

  Around me all is beautiful.

  Within me all is beautiful.

  Tajahoteje.

  Nothing will change.

  Danny opened his eyes, lifted his closed palm, and sprinkled the corn pollen on the distant rising sun.

  Chapter 2

  You Can’t Outrun Your Past

  After his morning prayer, Danny gathered wood and built a small fire to boil the water for coffee. Soon he was joined by wagon driver Rick and the Grady family.

  Grady was a rancher who was left for dead by slave traders. They had killed many of his workers, captured several more, and burned his ranch house to the ground. The slave traders then took his wife and daughter, Sarah. In a daring rescue, Danny Blackgoat saved their lives, and Manny, the leader of the slave traders, was killed.

  Now, Mr. and Mrs. Grady, their lively daughter, and their remaining men were returning to the Grady ranch—or what remained of it.

  “What was all the ruckus about last night?” Mr. Grady asked, sipping his coffee.

  “Just some misunderstanding about a rattlesnake,” Rick said, staring into his coffee cup as he spoke, letting Grady know to change the subject.

  “We have another long day ahead of us,” Grady said, tossing the remains of his coffee to the ground and standing. “We’ll stop only long enough to rest the horses.”

  Danny rode in silence behind Mr. Grady and his men. They rode all day and well into the night, as thin blue clouds floated across the moon. After midnight, Mr. Grady halted.

  “Whoa,” he said to his horse, pulling the reins and turning to face his men. “It’s time we get some sleep,” he said. “But before we do, I have something to tell you. I know you’ve been wondering what happened to the other ranch hands, your fellow workers.

  “I wanted to get far enough away from Manny’s hideout before I said anything about them. I was afraid some of you might want revenge and put us all in danger. Though I wouldn’t blame you, we cannot raise the dead. We must consider our own safety first.”

  As he said “we cannot raise the dead,” his ranch workers stared hard at him. The tension in the air was thick, and they waited for his explanation. He waited till they circled their horses around him.

  As Danny watched, Mr. Grady opened his mouth to speak. He took a long breath and said nothing.

  He is grieving for his men, thought Danny. I know what he is thinking. If he doesn’t say it, it isn’t true, not yet.

  Rick rode beside him, leaned close, and said in a quiet voice, “This will never happen again, Grady. You have more friends than you’ll ever know. I’m one of them.”

  “So am I, Mr. Grady,” Danny said.

  “Me too,” said Williard, one of his workers.

  “Same goes for me, Mr. Grady,” said Vickers, another ranch worker.

  “We might be your ranch hands, but you’re as close to family as we’ve got,” said a third man.

  “I think you know what I’m about to say,” Mr. Grady continued, looking at each of his men one by one. “Our fellow workers, all of them, are dead. Their graves are in the woods overlooking the spring. I am only alive because these two men, Rick and Danny Blackgoat, found me in the woods and saved my life.”

  The men moved not a muscle. The dead men were their friends and fellow ranch hands. For years they had bunked with them, shared meals with them, and fought with them to keep the wolves away. Hearing of their death, they hung their heads in silence.

  “We’ll camp here till sunrise,” Grady said. “I’d like to get to the ranch as soon as we can.”

  The men tied their horses to a stout tree trunk and rolled their blankets to the ground. In less than half an hour, everyone was asleep.

  As Grady and his men drifted into a peaceful sleep, a dozen United States cavalrymen slept on the other side of the same hill. While Grady told his ranch hands of the death of their fellow workers, a soldier nudged Jim Davis with his rifle and awakened him.

  “Davis, sit up,” the soldier said.

  “What is it?” Jim Davis asked.

  “You can’t be very comfortable with that chain tied around your ankle,” the soldier said.

  “Ummm,” Davis muttered. “It does make rolling over in your sleep a little hard to do.”

  The soldier smiled. “That’s what I like about you, old man. You’d squeeze a laugh out of a bloody blanket.”

  “As long as I’m not in it,” said Davis.

  “Well, I’m unlocking that chain for you. We’re so far into the desert, you’d have no place to go. Just understand, if you decide to run, we will wrap your body in that bloody blanket.”

  “I am too old to run, and I thank you,” Davis said.

  “Now let’s get back to sleep, old man. We’ve still got a long ride to Fort Sumner.”

  Jim Davis rolled into his first comfortable sleep since the soldiers had left Fort Davis, a Civil War prison camp in west Texas. Although a rebel prisoner, Davis was in charge of the carpentry shop.

  Over time he gained the trust of the soldiers and officers and was able to move freely about the fort. Jim Davis was the only prisoner who became friends with the hardworking Navajo boy, Danny Blackgoat. For several months, during late-night sessions, Davis taught Danny to speak English and to begin to read.

  Jim Davis even told his young Navajo friend about gift-giving at Christmas. And to prove his friendship, Davis gave him a horse and helped Danny Blackgoat escape.

  As he lay on the ground and tried to sleep, Davis remembered Danny Blackgoat, the Navajo boy he had grown to love like a son. He had no way of knowing that Danny Blackgoat was asleep on the far side of the same hill.

  As dawn broke and streaks of red colored the hilltops to the east, Davis stood up and slowly made his way to the top of the hill. He thought he heard something moving behind a boulder. He froze, hoping it wasn’t a cougar looking to feed her young.

  As he carefully leaned around the boulder to catch a glimpse of the morning prowler, Davis heard a voice—the voice of his young Navajo friend, Danny Blackgoat!

  I know he is saying his morning prayer, thought Davis, so I will wait for the prayer to be over. As Danny sprinkled corn pollen on the rising sun and turned to the path leading downhill, Jim Davis stepped from behind a boulder to greet him.

  “Good morning, Danny,” he said.

  After his nightmare only a few hours earlier, Danny was not ready for such a surprise. He flung himself against the boulder, with his arms stretched out beside him, as if he were clinging to life to keep from falling.

  “I’m sorry,” Davis said. “I didn’t mean to scare you! I waited for you to finish your prayer, out of respect. But I couldn’t let you leave without saying hello.”

  “What are you doing here?” Danny asked.

  “I am traveling to Fort Sumner,” said Davis. “They need a carpenter, and that’s what I do best. Besides scaring you—I guess I’m pretty good at that too. Will you forgive me?”

  “Jim Davis, of course I forgive you. I was afraid I would never see you again.”

  Chapter 3

  Crossroads of Danger

  “We don’t have long to talk, Danny,” Davis said. “Just tell me this, are you safe?”

  “Yes,” Danny said, “I am with friends. Rick is here, down the hill.”

  “Ahh, good. I am still a prisoner, and they’ll come after me if I don’t return to camp soon. As I said, they are moving me to Fort Sumner to help with carpentry work. Is your family still there?”

  “Yes. I have seen them. They are well for now, but slave traders raid the camps at night. The water is bad. People are dying, and I am afraid for my family.”

  “You are smart to be afraid, Danny. Do you know the soldiers are still looking
for you?”

  “I know to stay hidden.”

  “Your life is in danger, Danny. If they catch you, they will hang you for stealing your horse, Fire Eye.”

  “I will be very careful when I visit my family,” Danny said. “For now, I will live and work at this Grady ranch. The men I am with all work there too.”

  “Good. We should say good-bye now. I am very glad to know you are alive, Danny.”

  “You are a good man, Jim Davis,” Danny said, laughing, “even though you almost made me fall from the hill.”

  Davis gave Danny Blackgoat a warm hug. “I will keep a lookout for your family,” he said.

  “Let’s meet at the next full moon. If you can, slip out of the fort before sunrise,” said Danny.

  “Where?” Davis asked.

  “There is a small cave not far from the road, on the way into the fort. Rick can show it to you.”

  “A good plan. See you then. Be careful, Danny.”

  “Oh, Jim, I should warn you,” Danny said. “Sometimes rattlesnakes sleep inside the cave. So let’s meet close to the cave, not in it.”

  “Thank you for remembering, Danny,” Davis said, smiling and shaking his head. Happy to see each other alive, both Danny and Davis returned to their camps. Davis, of course, said nothing of his encounter with his Navajo friend.

  When he returned to camp, one of the soldiers called out, “Where have you been, you ol’ fool?”

  “Doing my business and watching the sunrise,” Davis replied. “Don’t worry, I can’t outrun a horse.”

  On the other side of the hill, Danny crept among the sleeping men and approached Rick.

  “Rick, it’s Danny. Wake up.”

  “What is it?”

  “We should be very careful,” Danny said. “The soldiers from Fort Davis are camped on the other side of this hill, just above the road. They have Jim Davis with them, and they are on their way to Fort Sumner.”

  “That is not good,” Rick said, leaping to his feet. “My wagon is still in the woods by the roadside. It is filled with supplies for Fort Davis. I’ve got to beat them to it.”