Joe Redcloud

By Doug Brittain

This is the story of the life and fast times of Joe Redcloud - a regular guy. Joe is the first Native American since the Korean War and the first White Mountain Apache since Kosoha in the Indian Wars to receive the Medal of Honor - the highest U.S. military decoration, awarded by the President in the name of Congress to members of the armed forces for gallantry and bravery beyond the call of duty in action against an enemy. It begins with an elk hunt in Arizona's White Mountains but turns rapidly into Joe's struggle for survival against a powerful adversary with global reach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456609986

Book preview

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Chapter 1: The Hunt

Joe Redcloud watched as the passenger plane traced a lazy arch across the cloudless October sky a few miles northeast of Flagstaff, the evening sun turning the plane’s fuselage from silver to bright orange. A couple of late season flies buzzed around the carcass of a four by five bull elk that Joe had just killed after seven hard days in the mountains. Joe squatted on his heels and admired the six hundred pound animal as he fired up a Dominican cigar he’d sealed in a sandwich bag to celebrate the kill – 227 yards with a .50 caliber muzzleloader he’d bought at Wal-Mart. One shot. He knew that the smell of the cigar would discourage prospective scavengers from feeding on the elk in the time it took him to transport the first load of meat back to his 15-year old Chevy pickup and return to the kill.

A big bull bugled once from the next ridge as the sun dropped like a rock behind the San Francisco Peaks. Undoubtedly the six by six bull I was chasing – maybe that boy’ll be around next year. Although Joe was a native White Mountain Apache, this hunt was not on the reservation but was only a stone’s throw away.

Joe’s family would eat well this winter. He silently thanked the Great Spirit for this gift and absent mindedly rubbed the sweat off his forehead with the back of his mostly prosthetic left hand. The sweat was starting to roll into his eyes, but only the right one was still useable. Wounds suffered in a faraway war in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.

No one who knew him as a child would have picked Joe Redcloud to be a success story late in life – much less a Congressional representative in Arizona’s first district. In fact, Joe had started life as a wild hellion. These days, he would have been diagnosed as an ADD kid and medicated. Heavily. Fortunately for Joe, he was not a Ritalin-generation kid and had benefited from neither the drug, nor the drug’s side effects: Dizziness; drowsiness; headache; loss of appetite; nausea; nervousness; stomach pain; trouble sleeping. But which in worst case could apparently all but kill you.

¹

As a youngster Joe had a lot of energy – he ran hard, played hard, fought hard. As he matured, Joe’s fights took on a somewhat murderous quality – he became methodical and extremely gifted in his ability to administer pain to rival boys in junior high and high school. Had it not been for sports and cheerleaders, he probably would have never even finished high school.

Joe’s familiarity with local law enforcement officials – mostly in the form of Sheriff John Tate, was comprehensive. So much so, that when Joe wound up in jail during his senior year for drunk and disorderly, Sheriff Tate was able to help Joe mitigate the charges by promising the judge that he’d enter the US Army upon graduation. Only smart thing I ever did Joe mused as he shouldered the first load of meat, about 80 pounds of backstrap and a hind quarter, turned on his headlamp, and began the long trek out to his old Chevy 4X4. He didn’t have a GPS – waste of money he felt – God issues us all a GPS, we just gotta learn to use it – but he estimated the truck to be roughly four miles from where the elk lay. It would take him about two hours to get there, so he’d be working all night.

He’d have the moon and stars for company. Fortunately, he’d cached a game cart at the edge of a clearing about a mile from where he’d shot the elk and between his location and the truck, so he could move the load easier once he reached the cart. Joe had simply stripped the hide off the elk’s back where it lay and filleted the meat off in two very long, thick strips. He’d used the same technique over the years to remove the meat from the front shoulders and hind legs. Hide and guts could go to brother coyote. Coyotes would have the remains of the carcass disposed of by tomorrow evening. The big bones would lie around long enough to bleach out in the sun, but they’d gradually be disposed of as well. Not a trace of this elk would be left by next year.

He’d started his elk hunting career as a sixteen year old and had only missed hunting during the training and deployment parts of military service. In fact, Afghanistan could probably count as hunting too – only the game shot back at you, sometimes to good effect.

Joe was a good sized man, a little more rangy than average. Built for running down offensive backs, which he’d done well in high school as an outside linebacker, or hauling dead elk out of the mountains, which he’d done for most of his adult life. He was born with 2010 vision and an eye for movement, which had helped him spot elk but had made him almost indispensable at convoy security in Afghanistan. Now he only had one functional eye but it was almost as good as it ever was – still 2015 according to the Doc and not too shabby for forty something.

Wind from the south Joe noted as he made his way toward the top of a rocky promontory he allowed would afford him a moonlit view of his truck – or at least the open area near where he had parked that morning. Could bring moisture he mused as he eased his way around a large boulder on a narrow ledge covered in pea gravel. Ironically, much rain or snow in Arizona could, and often did, create a hazardous fire season in the ensuing months. That was the cycle in the southwest – monsoons – generally starting in early July and lasting for a couple of months, followed by drought. Joe was not sure why bureaucrats didn’t just let loggers harvest timber – trees are a renewable resource after all. And let regular guys with chainsaws and fireplaces or wood burning heaters clean up behind the loggers. Get the combustible material out of the forest. Have more and smaller fires – grass loves fire. Native Americans usually managed their resources better on the reservations – due in no small part to less bureaucracy. They just used a common sense approach to land management and they’d have wildfires too but they tended to be much less intense than the ones that occurred in the national forests.

Joe never had a chance to finish this thought as his left foot began to slip in the ball bearing-sized gravel, sailing him and his recently acquired load of fresh elk meat into a slow, almost graceful arch over the ledge, planting him headfirst into a boulder – the top of his backpack preventing catastrophic damage to his skull before he nearly reestablished contact with terra firma. A Manzanita bush actually broke his fall and kept him suspended about three feet above the ground in a position which he might have actually found comfortable for viewing television after diner had he been in his living room rather than out in the White Mountains in late October.

I'm just a regular guy

And I'll work until the day that I die

I'm too young to quit too old to hire

These days a man can't afford to retire

Didn't vote for nobody last time

Cause they wasn't worth a trickle down dime

But one man's promise is another man's lie

And I'm just a regular guy….

²

Was the Steve Earle song reeling slowly through the edge of Joe’s consciousness as he awoke to the sounds of coyotes barking in the near distance – probably feasting on his kill he realized as he gradually became aware of his predicament. Joe was pretty sure he’d suffered a concussion (might’ve raised my IQ he chuckled) but nothing seemed to be broken. He wormed his way out of his pack and worked his way to the ground, realizing he’d sprained his ankle pretty badly as he eased some weight onto it. Better keep that boot on he thought – keep the swelling down and give the ankle some support.

The moon was going down and the sun was just holding its breath. Joe judged the time to be around 0430 – he had a broken wristwatch from the fall – which had apparently occurred right at 9:57 PM – and his cell phone was in his truck (no coverage out here anyway). Joe had never made it to high enough ground to actually see his truck but he guessed it was another couple of hard miles to the southwest. As he snaked his backpack out of the Manzanita’s clutches, he realized that he was definitely not able to pack the full load out on his injured body. He’d have to settle for two thirds of the weight. He fired his muzzleloader into a juniper log about 50 yards away – he needed to empty the chamber anyway and it might keep the coyotes away from his elk for another hour or so.

May have to rethink this whole hunting alone thing as I get older Joe realized – he did about half of his hunting alone. It was not that he was anti-social; he just didn’t know that many guys who could keep up with him in the woods. Hunting in Arizona required a high degree of mobility and Joe refused to use an ATV. He didn’t really object to their use, he just couldn’t see himself using one. And most of his hunting buddies used them.

Hopefully he’d get to his game cart before long. Nothing was frost bitten, fortunately, even though the temperature was hovering around freezing. Thank God for fleece and wool thought Joe as he made his way around a large familiar looking clearing, not far from where he knew he’d left the game cart. Once at the cart, it would be clear sailing back to his pickup. He was starting to warm up as the sun began to lighten the eastern sky, two blue jays screeching at each other in a juniper thicket, an Abert’s squirrel scolding him from the safety of a small ponderosa pine.

He’d ride Henry, his big red mule back over to the elk as soon as he could – Henry had been hobbled in the meadow where Joe had parked his rig the morning before. Grass was plentiful and a small stream wound its way through the bottom of the meadow within a quarter mile or so. Henry would not have suffered unduly. Blue was a different matter entirely. He was Joe’s big blue tick hound and Joe had locked him in Henry’s horse trailer. Blue had a water bucket but he disliked being confined to any extent, much less for 24 hours. He’d be a mess – sort of a crazy-ass hound