The River Way Home: The Adventures of the Cowboy, the Indian, & the Amazon Queen

By M. E. Dawson

Best Florida YA Book of 2013!
Best Florida Adult Fiction of 2013!
(The Florida Authors and Publishers Association)

ALLIGATORS, OUTLAWS, AND TOURISTS?

It's 1914, and Florida's last frontier is coming of age. A young Cracker who yearns to become a Florida cow hunter, a Seminole who sees his way of life disappearing, and an educated African-American girl who is looking for a better future lose their boat on Lake Okeechobee and are stranded in the wild and mysterious Florida Jungle. When outlaws block the only road back, they have to find a new way home. How will they survive and who will they be when they get there?

With a section of old photos and short historical essays at the end, "The River Way Home" is historical fiction full of action, humor, and conflicts that remain contemporary today. It's a classic tale of friendship and coming-of-age that will take you back in time to your childhood favorites.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. E. Dawson
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991518401

M. E. Dawson

Like Nanette says, "It's complicated."Mary E. Dawson's life has been a series of right angle turns, each leading to new adventures and distant horizons never before contemplated. A former professional photographer, editor for NASA, community activist, elected official, and attorney, Mary searched from New Orleans, to Seattle, to Houston, and Miami, before she found the place she calls home - a small remnant of Florida's last frontier, which she shares with friends, family, and a black-and-tan hound that wandered in out of the Allapattah Flats one sunny afternoon. And Life has imparted lessons at every turn, but most notably the lessons Joe ultimately learns:"Never underestimate the power and strength of women, and it's how and who you love that counts, but when it comes to that, "Your heart and your body don't play by anyone's rules. They love who they love and want who they want, and there's nothing you can do about it.""Code Name Nanette" is Mary's thank-you gift to fate for the education, and "The River Way Home" is Mary's gift to the community she loves. Enjoy!!

Book preview

Turn your backs to the fire and shut your eyes. And keep them shut till I tell you to open them again.

The remaining few did what the old cowboy told them. Most of the news people had headed back to town right after the politicians, just before the blazing orange of the November sunset faded into the pitch black of the moonless night. Only a few of the guests had stuck it out to hear the last speaker of the evening—two reporters with no other story to cover, a small group of Boy Scouts working on camping badges, a few environmentalists, and a handful of locals who liked listening to old timers tell their tales.

Shhhhhh, he quieted some of the boys. Pay attention to your ears. Everything out here is trying to tell you something. You can pick up the language pretty easy if you listen close. That high singing sound? That’s cicadas celebrating the fact winter hasn’t quite got here yet. And that … the low buzz underneath. That’s frogs reminding us that it rained the other day. He waited. Many of the campers probably hadn’t even noticed the two sounds until he pointed them out. It could take a while to isolate them.

Hear that? That was the wind. Remember. You can never trust the wind. Right now, it’s pretending to whisper secrets to the pine trees, but the wind’s a trickster. What it’s really doing is asking the fire to dance. And the fire is seriously considering the invitation. You can tell by the way it’s starting to hiss and snap. Got to keep a close eye on the fire when the wind’s around.

The cowboy was putting on a show. The kids from the high school audio-visual class had stayed to record this campfire story as part of a local history project. Earlier that day, he had signed control of one of the largest ranches in Florida over to the state. They were going to use it to help restore the Everglades. This was a big deal.

He was a tall, thin, white-haired man whose clear blue eyes hinted that he had been fair-haired and probably considered good looking when he was young. Like a typical Florida rancher, he wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt buttoned at the wrists and all the way up the front under his chin, straight-leg, high-rise jeans, a leather belt, and well broken-in cowboy boots. Since the sun had already set, his straw Stetson waited behind him on the hood of his truck. It, and other hats before it, had done their job over the years, leaving his face noticeably paler than his hands. Leathery and tan, they supported his claim that he’d spent most of his life working cattle in the sun out on the prairie. He spoke in one of those soft, old-time Florida southern drawls.

Now see if you can feel the air. Not the wind … the air itself. He led them in a calm voice, mesmerizing like a hypnotist. It’s soft and warm tonight … like velvet on your skin. That’s the water in it. When the moon comes up later, you might be able to see a rainbow.

And, think with your nose. What can you smell? Everything out here has its own special perfume. Even the rattlesnakes…

A few of the city folks squirmed where they sat Indian style on the ground. Two even started to stand up. Whoa. Nothing to worry about. That got them every time. Rattlesnakes are musky. You can smell them coming long before you hear them. And I checked before you got here. He chuckled and exaggerated a few theatrically loud sniffs. Still clear.

He grinned to himself, and once his audience settled back down, he continued, Now, my family’s been taking care of this land for almost seventy years. This is our last day in charge, and I don’t rightly know how I’m going to feel about that in the morning. So, on this my last night, I’d take it kindly if you’d let me tell you the story about how we first got involved with this place.

He paused, sucked in a deep breath, and gathered himself. Sometimes it helps to know how things got started. Helps you make sense of where you are today. A hitch in his voice stopped him again for a moment.

Today… He started over. This ranch is part of what they call the Allapattah Flats. Even though it’s close enough to Stuart, Fort Pierce, and West Palm Beach you could all get here in under one hour, you are sitting on the best native pasture land left on the east coast of Florida. Back then … the first time my father walked it … this land didn’t look like what you saw on your tour today at all. Back before the government dredged the drainage canals north and south of here, the Everglades ran all the way up to … to right over there.

He caught himself pointing toward the east even though their eyes were still closed. To the east of here, he clarified. The Everglades started not half a mile away. Most everything between the sand ridge you’re sitting on and the coastal ridge sat under two to four feet of water almost all year long."

Now, the old cowboy strolled around the campfire so his voice came at the group from different angles. My father was only thirteen years old at the time, but folks grew up early in those days. He went by the name of Billy, and his best friend was a Seminole Indian he came to call the Chief. The story I’m going to tell you starts when those two met an African-American girl they called the Queen, and the three of them got caught up in an adventure.

He warmed to his tale now. Getting them ready. Use your mind’s eye. Try to see it… It was not even a hundred years ago. People in places like New York City already lived stacked one on top the other in skyscrapers and rode underground subway trains to work in office buildings. Sure, Mr. Flagler’s railroad had already reached Key West. But this part of Florida was still so empty and wild and full of strange and dangerous creatures that it reminded folks of darkest Africa. They even called it the Florida jungle.

He gave them a little time to think about that. Now, so much has happened since then that you could fairly expect those days to be gone completely. Out here, though, some things never seem to change. You can still get the sense of it.

Hoo. Hoo… Hoo, hoo, hoo-ah.

He shook his head in wonder. The barred owl had called out from a little ways off. He couldn’t have planned it better if he had tried. A few of the campers gasped, not from fear, but at the magic of it all. He smiled to himself. The wet earth smells the same. The wind and fire still dance in the night… And now… He paused again—this time for effect.

Open your eyes.

A collective intake of breath. Fingers pointed, and heads leaned together. Some campers swiveled in their seats. He waited for the rustling and the oohs and aahs to settle down before continuing. Almost all of them had come out from the cities, and he had made them sit with their eyes closed for so long to get them adjusted to the dark. When they finally opened them again with their backs to the fire, they could see the ancient heavens as clearly as if the world were brand new. So many stars filled the night sky that it glowed.

Shhhh. He brought them softly under control again. Sometimes out here … under this sky, you get the feeling you can travel back in time.

The old cowboy paced himself, like he had all the time in the world. After giving them a little longer to take it all in, he told them they could turn around if they wanted to and he slid his folding chair closer to the fire. Once he had their full attention again, he began.

Now, I have to be honest with you. My family didn’t get this story from my father. He never was the kind to talk much about himself. It was the Queen who told it to us first. And that was some years later. So, it’s mostly her version of things. But the Chief … he backed her up on every bit of it. So, I believe this is what really happened.

Chapter 1. Cow Hunters

The first time Queenie saw Billy and the Chief, her world was about to change forever. Theirs was, too. But, none of them had any idea what was about to happen, what they’d have to do to survive, or who they would be when it was over.

It was 1914, and she was in Tantie, Florida. Her father had gone to the back of Raulerson’s store to buy provisions, and she had nothing better to do than sit there in the afternoon shade, fanning herself and taking in her surroundings like she always did.

Crack!

The sound echoed through the trees. A rifle shot? Queenie sat up straight, instantly awake. Eyes wide, she tilted her ear toward the sound. On alert.

Crack. Crack!

The soft, deep thuds of horses’ hooves striking sand.

A yodeled, Yee …yee … haw!

Other voices answering, Whoo! Waaa-hoo!

No. Not gunshots. She shook her head and grinned to herself. Cow hunters, she said out loud, and they’re making a show of it. She glanced over at the docks along the creek. No fishing boats. Good. Still early for fish boys. There probably wouldn’t be any trouble.

There wasn’t much to Tantie. A few rough buildings scattered along sand trails up near where Taylor Creek feeds into Lake Okeechobee from the north, a sawmill, a school, a church, a store, and some small, mostly log, houses. Only a handful of folks collected their mail there, and most of those who did actually lived out in the Florida jungle some distance away, in hunting or fishing camps or small homesteads they had carved out of the wilderness.

And soon, Tantie would disappear all together. The Florida East Coast Railway Company had laid out a new modern town it called Okeechobee on the prairie a mile or so to the northwest. The new train station with Okeechobee written on it already loomed on the horizon, and they had renamed the post office in its honor.

The railroad people claimed boom times were coming, but they hadn’t got there yet. In fact, it would be almost another half a year before the first locomotive even rolled into town. So, life in Tantie that day was just about the same as it had always been, ever since the first white settlers found their way to the lake’s north shore some twenty years before.

Crack!

Yeeeee-haw!

Hoof beats pounded louder as four of the scrawny Florida ponies that cow hunters called marsh tackies rounded the last curve in the trail at an easy lope. Three of the riders slumped back in their saddles. The leader stood tall in his stirrups, swung his sixteen-foot bullwhip around his head in a big, lazy circle, and then snapped his hand down so fast the girl could hardly see it. The whip cracked like lightning.

Queenie couldn’t help clapping her hands under her chin. Her mouth still hung open in a giddy grin. Yes, cow hunters! she exclaimed to nobody but herself and clapped again.

About a year earlier, before she ever heard of Tantie, Queenie’s mother had brought home the popular novels about cowboys and Indians out in the Wild West. Those stories grabbed the girl’s imagination in a special way and held it so tight she raced right through them, hardly taking time out to breathe. For a while, she dreamed almost every night about riding herd on the western prairie, her six-shooter at the ready.

Then to her great excitement, she discovered there were cowboys and Indians in Florida, too. But Florida cowboys were a different breed from the cowboys she had read about in her books. They even went by a different name. They called themselves cow hunters.

The four in Tantie that day fit the Florida mold. They wore floppy old hats and tie-up brogan shoes instead of stiff-brimmed Stetsons and tall boots. Three of the four still rode flat, old-style military saddles left over from the war. Cow hunters could make do without saddle horns because they didn’t use their ponies for roping cattle the way western cowboys did. Instead, they sent catch dogs into the bushes and swamps to roust them out. Once the cows were out in the open, the cow hunters kept them under control by cracking their bullwhips and flicking their heels.

The girl squinted, trying to get a good look at the riders as they pulled up to Raulerson’s. As if he expected someone to be watching, the leader of the cow hunters nonchalantly looped his bullwhip and tied it to his saddle with one hand as he slowed his pony to a stop at the side of the store with the other. As if on a signal, he and his three companions swung their legs high over the backs of their horses and dropped to the ground all at the same time. They landed with one big thud, even making a show of dismounting and tying up their tackies. Then, they wiped their brows with the sleeves on their forearms, slapped their hats against their pants to get the dust off, resettled their hats on their heads, and stepped into the shade of Raulerson’s porch, laughing and pounding each other on the back.

Waaa-hoo!

Queenie was still grinning at all the commotion the cow hunters had made when two boys came half-running, half-trotting, around the same curve. One, a sandy-haired white boy, looked tall for his age, which seemed to be about a year or so younger than she was. Like most Okeechobee fish boys, he wore faded denim overalls, a broad-rimmed straw hat, and no shoes. The other was a Seminole Indian. About the same age, slightly shorter, a little wider and darker skinned than she was. Barefoot, too, he had on one of those long, light-colored cotton shirts some Seminole men still wore. It hung down below his knees. A sash held it tight at his waist.

She could tell right away the boys were trying to catch up with the cow hunters. They slid to a stop in the sand when they saw the ponies tied up at the store. Even though their chests heaved from the running, they bounced on their toes, gave each other a couple of quick looks, and sprinted toward the store faster than before.

When they got to the hitching post, though, they didn’t touch anything. Instead, they nosed up as close as they could get to the cow hunters’ horses and gear. They studied each piece seriously as if trying to memorize every detail, pointing and talking and nodding to each other all the while. Once they had seen all they could see, they pumped some water from the store’s well, plopped down on the edge of the porch, and waited for the cowmen to come back out.

Queenie settled in to wait, too. With so much new front-door trade, it could take the Raulersons some time to get around to her father’s business at the back door.

Before long, three of the cow hunters came back out. They took up prime spots in the shade of the overhang and started talking and laughing. Although she couldn’t make out their words, the energy in their voices reached out to her on the wind.

She wished she was up there by the porch with the boys. Every now and then, they elbowed each other or did little jigs in response to what the cow hunters were saying. Queenie was sure the cow hunters were telling stories.

The tales Florida cow hunters had to tell were every bit as exciting as anything she had read in her books. Like cowboys out west, cow hunters lived wild and free in the wilderness. They rode horses, slept under the stars, and always kept their guns at hand because they never knew when they’d run into a bear or a panther or a rattlesnake or a rustler.

But on top of all that, Florida cows often snuck away to hide in the swamps. When that happened, cow hunters had to be on the lookout for alligators, too. And they had to deal with other things that guns and dogs and whips couldn’t help with, like hurricanes and lightning storms, flash fires and swamps so thick with mosquitoes and black flies you could choke to death on them.

Oh, it was true. Cow hunters thought mighty highly of themselves. But the thing was, they had adventures to tell, and more than almost anything, Queenie loved adventures.

Chapter 2. Different Ways to Skin a Cat

Queenie saw the two boys again the next afternoon, out in the woods near a Seminole camp. Her father was discussing things with an Indian man who wore a dark vest over his long shirt and so many scarves wrapped around his head that they looked like a thick, wide hat.

She had climbed up a big oak tree, as she often did, to get the lay of the land. She hadn’t been there long before she noticed the boys a little ways off in the woods. This time, they seemed to be stalking something. She scanned the trees and bushes around them to see what they were after.

There. A scrawny, tan-colored cow with uneven horns picked and chewed its way slowly between clumps of fan-shaped palmetto fronds. The boys had knotted boat ropes together to make lassos and were sneaking up on it from different directions, trying to get close enough to throw a loop around its neck.

Suddenly, the cow lifted its head, its ears straight up at alert and aimed directly at the sandy-haired boy. The boy stopped stone-still, but too late. The cow mooed and started away from him in a jerky cow trot, straight toward the Indian boy’s hiding place. Queenie lost sight of it behind another clump of palmettos and pine trees.

But then she heard a Whoop!

The cow crashed back through the bushes with both boys in full pursuit. They hollered and flailed their ropes in the air. The cow ran right past her tree into the middle of a shallow pond and stopped in belly-deep water. From there, it gave first one boy and then the other a lazy eye before settling in to chew the tops off the water plants.

The boys danced around the edge for a while, but they couldn’t outmaneuver the cow. Every time they made a move in its direction, it shook its horns, blew water out its nose, and shuffled over to a different part of the pond.

This all changed when the Seminole boy called out, It heard you! Everything could hear you!

The sandy-haired boy called back, I was driving it to you! We’d of caught the thing if you’d just learn how to throw a rope!

Then, another Whoop! And some pushing and shoving and rolling around on the ground that ended with the two boys lying in the grass laughing. The cow raised its head and peered across the pond at them. After a moment, it stuck out its long, pointy tongue and slowly curled it up to flick a drop of water off the tip of its nose.

It was all so cute and funny Queenie couldn’t help laughing out loud, herself. She climbed down, walked over to the boys, and offered what she considered to be encouragement. You’d have probably done better if you had a catch dog.

The boys sat up to face her, and the sandy-haired boy rolled his eyes, which were the most amazing blue, and as clear as the water in the springs up in the middle of the state.

Of course we would’ve, he snorted in a Cracker drawl. But, we don’t have a dog. And what makes you think you’re in any position to tell us anything about cow hunting, anyway?

The girl knew a challenge when she heard one. She threw it right back at him. I’m betting I know a lot more about it than you!

A colored girl? In a fancy dress? He dismissed the idea by puffing up his cheeks and blowing air out between his lips. Puh!

Queenie could have let it go at that. Although her hazel eyes and black hair, which curled as much as it kinked, told a tale of mixed blood, the milky chocolate tone of her skin made it clear. She was Colored. And she was a girl. But that blue-eyed boy needed taking down a notch or two for thinking either one of those facts meant she couldn’t know more about cow hunting than he did.

True, she’d never heard of Florida cow hunters until a few months back, when her father decided to move her family toward the big lake. As their small steamboat zigged and zagged its way down the Kissimmee River’s vast open prairie, she hadn’t been able to believe her eyes when she saw dark silhouettes of men on horseback circling huge herds of cattle in the distance.

And then, about halfway down the prairie, a colored cowman who owned his own ranch invited them to stay a while. For almost two months, her mother set up shop every morning on the ranch-house porch to teach reading and writing to colored children from the nearby ranches and settlements. The girl and her father earned their keep helping out with chores.

But Queenie spent every spare minute shadowing the ranch’s cow hunters. Her wish had come true. Of course, the cow hunters didn’t give her a gun or let her ride in a round-up like she did in her dreams. They did, however, answer her questions and let her follow along close enough for her to be sure she knew more than this blue-eyed boy.

Looking down at him with her fists on her hips, she said, I spent a fair amount of time just now learning cow hunting. First hand! From colored cow hunters on a colored ranch. That ought to have put him in his place.

She could tell he was evaluating the truth of her claim by the way he narrowed his eyes and shot a questioning look at the Indian boy. When the Indian raised his eyebrows and gave an I-don’t-know shrug, the blue-eyed boy threw back a test.

Where?

A few days north of here. About halfway down the Kissimmee Prairie.

How big a ranch?

Not exactly sure. But bigger than I could see all of. They run over a thousand head. Sold three hundred down in Punta Rassa last year alone. She threw in the last few details to make up for not knowing the actual answer to his question.

The blue-eyed boy turned to the Indian again, but his friend only shrugged again.

How’d you find all that out?

I spend my time watching and listening when I get the chance. You’d be surprised what you can learn ... if you pay close enough attention. She had him now. Like you two were doing with the cow hunters yesterday. Only I was out there on the prairie with the cow hunters and saw it all for myself!

Queenie loved the way the upper hand felt when you got it. But the boys were so darned young and serious about everything that she backed down a little. She dusted off the front of her skirt. Plus, this isn’t my fancy dress.

But, it is fancier than the one you were wearing yesterday. The blue-eyed boy recaptured some ground. He apparently paid more attention to his surroundings than Queenie had given him credit for. And he kept a keen eye out for the details.

And yesterday? He sniffed in disgust. Those boys turned out to be just a bunch of new hands come to town looking for moonshine. More likely to find trouble. Not much good for anything.

With that, he screwed up his face until one of his blue eyes squinched shut and conceded, But I reckon there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Now, Queenie had not been in Tantie long, but she had been there long enough to learn that catfish had skin instead of scales which made skinning catfish a big part of the Okeechobee catfishing business. Fishermen spent a lot of time arguing over who was the fastest, and they were always spying on each other’s techniques and trying to come up with their own special tricks for doing it faster. It was one of those points of frontier pride.

So, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she took that to mean the boy had called a truce.

Chapter 3. Each Other’s Faces

The blue-eyed boy had called a truce. He gestured toward the shade of Queenie’s tree with a toss of his head, and the three moved out of the sun. They sat and talked for a while, starting to find out a little about each other.

The blue-eyed boy kept his introduction short. My pa and me, we stay in a palmetto-thatch shack. Down on the beach. Been there most my life. Eventually, he added, We scrape up a living fishing out on the lake. As if that wasn’t obvious from the look of him.

The Seminole had a lot more to tell. There are many in my family, he offered. Mother, father, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandfather, and grandmother. The other boy nodded in agreement as the Seminole counted his relatives off on his fingers. When the Indian finished the list, he looked up and said seriously, We are members of the Bird Clan.

He explained that the Seminole Tribe was divided into seven clans, and each clan was divided into families headed by elder women like his grandmother. His family stayed at several different camps in the woods, one of which Queenie and

Reviews for The River Way Home

[diane0walters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The River Way Home--What a Gem!I just turned the last page of this book. And, what can I tell you that other reviewers haven’t mentioned already? This book reminded me what it’s like to be a kid, and to dream of grandiose adventures in a world that is full of wildness, wonder, and possibilities. We are so conditioned in this age to wait for the “nightmare” to come out and grab us in current fiction. And, so I waited. And, I waited some more. The fun adventure never turned into a horrible nightmare. Because of this it gave me the ability to relax and really enjoy the mischief that the kids got into along the way. And, although to some, it might have seemed that the tight situations might have been tall tales stretched a bit too long. But for anyone who has lived in Florida, they might say most of what the kids did seemed like it could have happened. I did live there in the early 1970s through the 1980s. The storms are brutal and frightening, the Everglades were wild, the gators were scary, and I did have occasion to run from the boogie man more than a few times. It’s a bit hard to envision all of this from the big cities of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, but if you go upstate toward the middle—at least back then—you could see how the landscape and the people changed. It was a whole different world that could really give you a glimpse of this untamed wild Florida we see in the book. So, what if the story is a yarn told by an old grisly cowboy camped out around a fire on a clear starry night? Isn’t that what we are missing these days--just a good old fashioned story to tickle the imagination, and lend a person to believe that their hopes and dreams might come true? That’s what this book was--just a marvelous tale—unique, unlike any I’ve read in a long time. Three scrappy kids, all unlikely friends from totally different backgrounds, fall into all kinds of trouble in the raw wilderness of the Florida Everglades in 1914. This story has heart, and these kids have spunk and guts and imagination to get out of the crazy situations they get into. They’re smart. They’re brave. And, best of all, they are tight and true friends. The book is full of hope that all their dreams will come true: Blue-eyed Billy wants to have a ranch; the Chief wants the wisdom and insight to lead his people; and, Queenie the Amazon warrior wants to grow up and have adventures, live out quests, and be free. Today these don’t seem like such momentous triumphs. But, in 1914, in the backwoods of that untamed state these were lofty goals for kids to strive for. And, even though the book doesn’t tell us what happened to them when they grew up—we know, by the end of the story, that their dreams probably did come true. I offer my thanks to Mary Dawson for allowing me to read and review this special story. It really is a gem!

[maryedawson-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Alligators, Outlaws, and Tourists! With Historic Photos and the True Stories that Inspired the Tale at the End.It's 1914, and the Florida jungle between Lake Okeechobee and the Atlantic Ocean is a wild and magical place, but the train will change everything when it reaches the lake in a few months. Three improbable friends, Queenie, a proper young African-American girl from Baltimore who is helping her father search for the fabled Black Seminoles, Billy, a young Cracker fish boy who dreams of becoming a Florida cow hunter, and the Chief, a Seminole boy who sees his way of life disappearing, lose their boat in a storm on the lake. When the Ashley Gang blocks the only road home, they decide not to go straight back. Instead, they embark on a quest to follow the St. Lucie River to the ocean and see what the future will bring. What they find along the way is themselves. "The River Way Home" is a tale of old Florida for young and old alike. Rich in historical detail, it draws the reader deep into the beauty and mystery of Florida's unique environment to experience her characters' exploration of friendship, loss, and possibility. In the spirit of full disclosure I am the author of this book. Of course I gave it five stars, because I believe in it. And I do have it in my library. If I have violated any rules by posting this, please accept my sincere apology. It's just that I could not find another way to list myself as a Library Thing Author. I'll remove this review if anyone else reviews the work. Thank You.