A Novel of Sterling Quality: The Last of the Sage

By Barbara Wyckoff

Of Sterling Quality
Book Six
The Last of the Sage
Who can say when the bundle of sage will be burned?
For some, not soon enough.
For others, it should never happen at all.
Charley Paul Standing Horse Sterling became one of the others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503576452

Barbara Wyckoff

About the Author… Barbara L. Wyckoff As with all families Barbara L. Wyckoff has a heritage she is very proud of. From her mother’s side, she can trace the family back to the Cherokee Trail of Tears. From her father all the way back to Ireland. Like so many, her Irish ancestors fled Ireland to find a better life in the Americas. Her Cherokee family had a beautiful life in Georgia but was forced to leave by a stroke of a pen and the Manifest Destiny forced on them. During the winter, they were force marched to the Indian Nations of Oklahoma. The story was told how those not so distant relatives were in Colorado in the late 1800s. What were they doing here? Possibly herding sheep? Who is to say? There were few to no records kept. However, her grandfather, Charlie Orem Hull, was born in Pueblo, Colorado. His mother was Little Flower. Did they ever know Charley Paul Standing Horse Sterling? Did Barbara Wyckoff’s grandfather ever go to Denver and see the Sterling House? Anything is possible!!!

Book preview

Prologue

for

The

Last of the Sage

Is forgiveness an emotion?

Hatred is!

When one learns to forgive, forgiveness takes the place of hatred.

Therefore forgiveness becomes an emotion stronger than hatred ever was.

~ ~ ~

Charley Paul Standing Horse Sterling’s

greatest lesson to learn …

was how to forgive.

As with all the Sterling Family …

he finally chose well.

Chapter

One

1901 * * *

Against the odds of the winter elements of Colorado, the man known as Charley Paul Standing Horse Sterling was following what he knew to be a correct direction while he slowly made his way south out of Denver City on a wintry cold day on January 1st, 1901.

Although frozen in spots, being very low in some areas, the South Platte River and the dry little Cherry Creek bed would be the highways he would follow south for several miles. He had been told by those who knew the lay of the land the directions he needed to go, along with the names of other rivers and creeks he would follow until he reached the Canadian River which would take him east to find the Indian Territories of Oklahoma. Rivers had always been the highways to get one where they wanted to go when scarce to no roads existed.

Ta git where ya are goin’, follow the rivers, Buckland had said while he taught him the ways of survival. That was exactly what he was going to do. Survive.

Sometimes the route proved to be a bit longer, because rivers had a tendency to wander and wind a bit. But there was always water and feed for the horses he rode to get from place to place if he followed the rivers. Plus game was plentiful which relieved the monotony of eating jerky, pemmican and hardtack Charley Paul always had with him.

Being raised in Denver City, Colorado’s very elegant Sterling House, Charley Paul had never been exposed to wilderness survival. In that house of many secrets, he had learned to survive the hateful wrath of the woman who would not accept him for who he was. In the schools where they had sent him, he had learned to defend who he was.

He had learned wilderness survival skills when he had gone with Buckland and Soolie to the Bitterroot. This had been when tensions had reached an absolute breaking point in the Sterling House because of the violence toward him from one person. Abigale Westmoreland Sterling.

She was like bitter bile in his throat.

Charley Paul Standing Horse chose not to think of her very often. Certainly not on this cold wintry pre-dawn day while he rode away from Denver City and a lot of memories.

His wool capote warded off most of the cold. He was however, beginning to feel it more intensely right before the dawn of the day. He did have regrets he had chosen to leave the comforts of the Sterling House with its warmth, charm and Sterling elegance.

In his heart, although he kept pushing the feeling away, he knew he would probably forever regret leaving his elegantly beautiful sister, Lillian Anne Sterling, along with all the Sterling House had to offer as a home. Yet, deep inside his thinking, no matter how tempting it all had been, he knew he could not stay. Somehow being half Indian and half white seemed to bring disaster no matter where he was, or had ever chosen to try and stay.

At this time in his life, and after being gone for so long, he knew his destiny was somewhere else.

There would only be trouble, he thought. He did not want to bring this burden on his sister or the Sterling House.

The message he had scrawled in the ashen dust on the fireplace mantle a few hours earlier had came from his heart. My love stays with you, but I must go.

He had not meant to be cruel to her but quietly leaving, the way he had, was less cruel than to watch her cry while she begged him to stay which he knew she would do.

The horse, he had stolen from a hitching rail near some non-descript hotel, had stopped again. He felt no remorse by the theft, rather merely hoped this horse would get him to his final destination in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma or wherever he might eventually go.

Charley Paul got off the animal to relieve himself. He marveled at how the entire rim of the Eastern horizon was a pale yellowish glow with one tiny brighter spot where the sun would soon make its appearance. It could not be soon enough because he was cold through and through.

An’ you, ya worthless nag, he said, while he stroked the horse’s neck affectionately, Could move a might faster.

In Denver City’s darkness, along with his haste not to be detected, he had not noticed the age of the animal or he would have made a different selection to assist his journey out of the city. He shrugged off any feelings of guilt for his actions. It was the way he lived and survived in a world where little had been given to him unless he took it.

He got back on the horse, already weary of the journey which lay before him. Inwardly he felt wearier of not fitting in no matter where he had been. To say nothing of what he tried. Would there ever be a time when he would not have to move on?

For a brief moment he turned in the saddle and looked back. All he recalled tempted his mind to return to 19th and Larimer. The only real home he had ever known.

No, he miserably thought. Although the Sterling House had been the place where he had grown up after his blood mother had been so savagely killed near Sand Creek, the brutality he had experienced from Abigale Sterling had finally fractured the family. This had caused Buckland and Soolie to take him away from her hatred.

He had often wondered if he could have physically hurt that woman defending himself from her blows while he was growing up? Because of his anger, and because he hated her so much, the answer in the back of his mind had always been … . . Yes!

When he had been a little boy, he had cried into Soolie’s comforting arms where she had dried his tears and calmed his fears when he didn’t understand why he was being treated so shabbily. In his teen years, he had learned how to evade Abigale Sterling whenever possible and avoid her brutalities.

In his mind, when he had become a young man he felt he had a right to resist her. Uncontrolled emotions, both his and hers, plus the final violence had caused a complete collapse of his home in the Sterling House. Feeling he had been the reason why Buckland and Soolie had left the Sterling House did not ease his conscience. It had been their home too even though Buckland said he longed for the wilderness away from civilization.

He knew if he had stayed with his sister, aware of what the past years had been for him with his renegade, rebellious ways, he would bring nothing but more miserable grief to the Sterling House and Lillian Anne Sterling the person he loved the most.

The Sterling House could not be his home or his journey’s end.

He encouraged the horse forward to the south with a very uncertain future among the Cherokee people who had been so kindly spoken of by others. These were the People he hoped to find.

In the talk circles of the People he had heard mostly good words spoken of these People who, like so many others, had been driven from their homelands where they had been forced to settle in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. It had been a place alien to them, where they had become farmers and sheep herders complacent with what they had. Others of the People, the more militant ones, said their complacency made them soft in the ways of their thinking.

No matter what was said about them, not a one of the Cherokee who had survived the forced winter marches from their homeland far to the East, or their descendants, could ever forget what they called Nunadaul Tsunyi. The Place Where They Cried - - The Trail of Tears.

All he could hope, and maybe pray for, was to find some kind of comfort somewhere. It certainly was not in his past in the wake of all the disasters he had left behind.

Prayer! he thought.

He had never been in a church in his life. Prayer was a concept he did not understand. He had; however, seen some of the sacred pipe ceremonies along with sage burnings with the Cheyenne people he had lived with back up in the Bitterroot. They bundled this strange weed which grew profusely everywhere. Once it dried, they seemed to bathe in the oddly sweet smelling smoke from these smoldering bundles by waving the smoke over their bodies from the top of their heads to the very soles of their feet. After this was done, they would puff on their clay pipes blowing the sweet smelling smoke from their kinnikinnick tobaccos toward the four directions, the sky above and the earth below. They would mumble some words which he did not understand in the Cheyenne language. Then they would go peacefully on their way for another day.

It had not made sense then and in his cold way of thinking, it made no sense now. All of their praying, along with the waving and blowing of smoke, had not spared them from the torment they received from the white man and his conquering, stifling ways.

He had asked Tall Trees, his closest Cheyenne Indian friend, about it. The man had nonchalantly told him it was their way of offering thanks along with other prayers when the need arose.

Charley Paul saw their greatest need was to get away from the white man and his taking ways. In his opinion, that would be their only salvation. It had nothing to do with the smoking of a pipe or the burning of dried weeds to fill the air with some sweet smelling smoke.

He sadly shook his head. He knew of no way the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Sioux, the Shoshone let alone a dozen other tribal names the white man had given these people could ever take back what was rightfully theirs. There were just too many whites with more coming every day to build their buildings, their towns and take everything they wanted wherever they touched the earth.

On this brisk morning, it had taken him a lot longer to leave the confines of civilized Denver City than he recalled the time required to leave the city when he was 17 just 10 years before. It seemed these towns just kept on creeping and crawling along, forever covering the earth with their progress. Growing and spreading out to accommodate the white people along with their taking ways.

When he had left before, it had been when he, Buckland and Soolie had been, in reality, forced to leave the Sterling House mainly because of the continual cruelties he had suffered at the hands of Abigale Sterling. He still could not understand how one woman could hate a child so much. All he knew was he was the get of a man who loved a woman other than his wife.

Abigale Sterling had taken a brittle, brutal stand against the child once she had found out the child existed because of the love between Andrew Sterling and his Indian woman. This had been after she had been slaughtered out on the plains at a place called Big Sandy or more commonly known as … Sand Creek.

He reached up and thoughtfully touched his blond curls. Maybe it had been this white man’s color of hair that had saved his life as so many children had been shot and killed that day. All he knew was he had survived and his mother had died. The story was told how Buckland had found him and brought him home to the Sterling House, the hatred of Abigale and the love from Soolie who had raised him.

Charley Paul knew about slavery. He was aware, due to the stories told at the Sterling House, that Soolie had been a slave before her coming to Denver City with Abigale Sterling. He did not fully understand how one person could own another, telling them what to do and when to do it, savagely punishing them if they did not obey. But then, Abigale Sterling had treated him in such a manner. Did that mean he was a slave to her whims and wishes? No, he was not because he was not black. He was red and he was white and he was confused.

Buckland made a wise decision for them to leave before more violence erupted. What Charley Paul remembered the most was in his 17th summer, he was not going to continue to have that woman slap him, kick or hit him whenever she felt like it.

Buckland Kavanaugh had came to his defense.

The man had trapped and traveled so much of the Northern wilderness in his younger years in a place he called the Bitterroot. He had found them a quiet, peaceful place to live away from the wrath of Abigale Sterling. A place of peace and quiet. With all of that, Charley Paul Standing Horse Sterling still could not escape the rage he felt in his heart.

Running away from the problem had not solved the problem. He was resentful of where he was with Buckland and Soolie in Montana, wishing to return home to Denver City when in reality no home existed for him to return to because of Abigale Sterling.

He closed his eyes and let the horse take the lead while he tried to blot out the memories he had stored in his mind of that hateful, spiteful woman. As far back as he could remember all he had ever known from her was cruelty with little to no protection from the man who was his father, Andrew Wesley Sterling. What was the hold she had over him which caused him to never stand up to her?

It wasn’t until Charley Paul had finally, violently reacted against her to protect himself he had found out part of the reasons why his life was the way it was along with how it was possible one’s hatred could be turned against a child in such a vicious manner.

All of this had happened because Andrew Sterling had fallen in love with an Arapaho Indian woman known as Pale Star Rising when he had first came to Denver City to find gold. He had been legally married to a woman from his home back in Georgia. That legality had not stopped his amorous activities outside the confines of a wedding vow. His love for this Indian woman had produced a child the rightful Mrs. Sterling should never have known about. Yet destiny revealed the truth and Charley Paul had suffered not knowing why until he stopped Abigale from striking him the last time in the middle of Market Street.

Abigale Sterling had been betrayed by her husband.

Her wrath had known no boundaries.

His memories were deeply ingrained. They were not good. As far as he was concerned, they never would be.

Charley Paul opened his eyes as he felt a spit of moisture hit his face. The sun had rimmed the horizon, yet it was still very dark to the west. Although being raised in the shadow of these Rocky Mountains, he realized he had never learned how to read the constantly changing moods of these Rocky Mountains to predict the oncoming weather.

Not so in the Bitterroot. One always knew, if one paid attention. Buckland taught him about the rivers teaching him to pay attention to the elements. Tall Trees and Young Thunder had taught him their Indian ways of survival the years he had been with them running the Northern wilderness area as if they owned it.

When another, heavier spit of moisture found his face; he quickly surmised he would need some shelter until this storm passed. He had thought entirely too much about Abigale Sterling along with the past.

Up ahead there appeared to be an outcropping of rocks in a small grove of Ponderosa Pines. Perfect, he thought. Build a fire, get warm, make some coffee and chew on some pemmican he still had in one of his possibles bags. The mood of the morning would pass. The winter sun would warm the day. Then he would move on. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would pass by a ranch house where there might be a peach pie cooling on a porch railing, warm and perfect for the taking if one was careful.

With inward thoughts of another time, a peach pie and freshly baked bread, which had bought him some jail time, he unsaddled and picketed the horse under one of the pine trees. Charley Paul built a small fire beside one of the rocks, got out his tin for coffee. He pushed his blond curls up under his old felt hat and hunkered down to let the flurry of snow blow itself out.

It was a light swirling snow which was melting before it hit the pine needle covered ground. As the coffee gurgled, he said aloud to the horse, Maybe there is somethin’ to be thankful for. He was warmer, he was dry and it was possible the pie he was dreaming about would be made of cherries.

Then he chuckled out loud, causing the horse to look up at him in a startled manner from the tuft of new grass it had found growing under the tree.

Hey ol’ horse, Charley Paul said, Where do you suppose they would get fresh cherries here in the middle of winter at the base of these here Rocky Mountains?

The horse flicked one ear and went back to its tufts of grass, content to find new, tender, sweet grass under the shelter of a tree.

Like with so many times before, Charley Paul refused his memories or the reasoning about his memories. Seeing his sister had warmed his spirit which brought back childhood memories. Yet, being in the Sterling House had also released an avalanche of contradicting memories of a woman who despised and tortured him.

After the coffee, the pemmican and a small nap beside a dying fire, Charley Paul, and the old horse he had stolen, moved on because like he predicted the snowed eddied its way into nothing.

To the east and through the scattered juniper trees and pines which were beginning to thin, he saw grassy plains beginning to spread out to the east and to the south with the ridge of the Rocky Mountains to his west. One very predominant snow covered peak stood out from all the rest. He had heard of Pikes Peak to the south of Denver City and wondered if this might be that famous mountain where so many thought all the gold to