Grayfox Read online

  © 1993 by Michael Phillips

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-2951-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To boys and men everywhere, who are seeking the maturity of their own personhood and being.

  And to the women who will love and admire them for their depth of character.

  To my young men who are well-advanced on the road to their manhood, Gregory, Patrick, and Robin Phillips.

  It is my prayer that you will each meet your own Hawks as you progress along life’s trail, that you will learn to see the depths of your Father’s mystery and being and revelation, and that you will, like Zack, discover character and strength and the meaning of life within yourself, and thus will come to know the depths of true manhood.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to Readers

  Prologue

  Chapter 1. Riding from Home Like the Wind

  Chapter 2. Believing the Lies

  Chapter 3. The Explosion

  Chapter 4. Me and Pa Come to Blows

  Chapter 5. On My Way

  Chapter 6. To Flat Bluff

  Chapter 7. Hammerhead Jackson

  Chapter 8. Taking the Oath

  Chapter 9. My First Ride

  Chapter 10. Thoughts on the Trail

  Chapter 11. The Accident

  Chapter 12. A Voice in the Dark

  Chapter 13. Hawk

  Chapter 14. Bigger and Deeper

  Chapter 15. The Lay of the Land

  Chapter 16. Looking for Water

  Chapter 17. Legend of the Gray Fox

  Chapter 18. In Search of Food

  Chapter 19. A Talk Over Cattail Pancakes

  Chapter 20. A Visitor

  Chapter 21. A Guest at the Campfire

  Chapter 22. Surprise Morning Attack

  Chapter 23. Where Do You Figure We’d Get to?

  Chapter 24. Cooking Up a Character Stew

  Chapter 25. A Second Stranger

  Chapter 26. Hawk the Medicine Man

  Chapter 27. Where Do the Roots Go?

  Chapter 28. Crisis!

  Chapter 29. In the Camp of the People

  Chapter 30. A Talk Before Falling Asleep

  Chapter 31. Waiting

  Chapter 32. Making a Run for It

  Chapter 33. Trying to See What the Birds Saw

  Chapter 34. Remembering to Look Up

  Chapter 35. Laughing Waters!

  Chapter 36. Out of the Hidden Ravine

  Chapter 37. The Wounded Bird Ploy

  Chapter 38. Water . . . Water . . . But Where?

  Chapter 39. An Evil Strike

  Chapter 40. Riding for Our Lives

  Chapter 41. Back in Camp

  Chapter 42. Where Hawk Had Been

  Chapter 43. Grayfox

  Chapter 44. Saying Goodbye

  Chapter 45. Why Did God Make Fathers?

  Chapter 46. Back Up to the Winter Cave

  Chapter 47. Two Men

  Chapter 48. The Rest of Hawk’s Story

  Chapter 49. Looking Inside Myself

  Chapter 50. A Desert Rain

  Chapter 51. Don’t Be Half a Man

  Chapter 52. Down to the Valley

  Chapter 53. What Kind of Man Do I Want to Be?

  Chapter 54. Goodbye to a Friend

  Chapter 55. The Ride Back

  Chapter 56. Home Again

  Chapter 57. Whole Again

  Chapter 58. Words Between Men

  Chapter 59. Family Reunion

  Chapter 60. Pa’s Eyes to See

  A Personal Word from the Author

  About the Author

  Books by Michael Phillips

  Acknowledgments

  The following books were helpful in researching the history of the Paiute Indians and the 1860–61 period in the western portion of the Utah territory. I would like to acknowledge my appreciation for these authors and their research:

  Gae Whitney Canfield, Sarah Winnemucca of the Northern Paiutes (Norman, Ok.: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1983).

  Marion E. Gridley, American Indian Women (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974).

  Ferol Egan, Sand in a Whirlwind, The Paiute Indian War of 1860 (New York: Doubleday, 1972).

  Margaret M. Wheat, Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes (Reno, Nev.: Univ. of Nevada Press, 1967).

  A Note to Readers

  The story of Grayfox stands alone and may be read and enjoyed by itself. However, you will undoubtedly enjoy it more if you read it in conjunction with its companion volumes, each told by Zack’s sister, Corrie, in the JOURNALS OF CORRIE BELLE HOLLISTER series. How Zack and his brother and sisters came to California is told in the book, My Father’s World. The rest of the books in the series are listed at the end of Grayfox.

  Prologue

  Before my sister, Corrie Hollister, left for the East—that was in April of ’63—she hounded me near every dad-burned day to get to writing down about the eight months I spent up in the mountains and deserts of Nevada with Hawk Trumbull.

  “I ain’t no writer, Corrie,” I must’ve told her sixteen dozens of times.

  “That doesn’t matter, Zack,” she told me back just as many. “You write it down, and I’ll fix it up for you so folks can read it.”

  (She did help fix it up too, but I told her I wanted to write down this personal part all by myself. That’s why it probably sounds a heap different than the rest.)

  “Who’d wanta read it?” I asked her after a bit.

  “I do, that’s who. And I know Pa does, and Almeda. And don’t forget your kid brother Tad. He’s more’n just a mite proud of you, Zack, you gotta realize that.”

  I shrugged. Yeah, she was right. My little brother does look up to me some, I reckon.

  “Lotta work just so my own kin can read it,” I said after another minute. “Shoot, Corrie, I can just tell ’em all about it in a coupla hours—but it’d take me a month of Sundays to write it down! You recollect what a hard time Miss Stansberry—I mean Mrs. Rutledge—used to give me about my writin’!”

  “You were a boy then, Zack, and you’re a man now. Let’s go visit her right now, and I’ll wager she’ll agree with me that you oughta write it down.”

  “I still don’t understand why I hafta write it.”

  “’Cause telling it’s not the same, Zack. Then you got nothing to hold in your hand after you’re done. But when it’s written down, it’s forever. Writing makes things more—more permanent.” And mainly it’s for you, Zack. For the rest of us, too, but mainly for what it’ll mean to you someday. And to your family someday when you get married and have children.”

  “Shoot, Corrie, I just don’t think I could do it.”

  “’Course you could, Zack. Anybod
y can write down what’s happened to them and what they’re thinking. No big secret of how to do that. If I can, you can. Just write it down, that’s all—just like it comes into your head.”

  “That’s easy enough for you to say. You’re a famous writer.”

  “But I wasn’t when I started writing in my journal—that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Besides, Zack, from how you told it to us, I think lots of folks would like reading about you and Hawk and what happened to you. No reason why it couldn’t be just as interesting a book as anything I’ve written about. If they can make a book of my journals, there isn’t no reason they can’t do it from something you’d write too.”

  “A book!” I stared at her, thinking that she’d gone plumb crazy now. “Corrie, I can’t write good enough for no book.”

  “You write down what happened to you, Zack, and I’ll help you fix it up. And Mr. MacPherson—he’d help too because he likes to publish things like that. You know all the stories about the West by Ned Buntline and Edward Ellis and Prentiss Ingraham? Folks are keen to read their books, and they’re all made up. I know Mr. MacPherson’d publish a story that was true about the Pony Express and the Paiute Indians and living with a mountain man and surviving out there where there’s not much more than rattlesnakes. I know that folks’d want to read about that, Zack! You write down what happened, and I’ll help you fix it up, and then we’ll send it to Mr. MacPherson.”

  “I reckon I could write down what I did,” I told her finally, “though it’d take me a coon’s age. I don’t write none too fast.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You just work on it while I’m back East, and when I get back, then we’ll see what’s to be done next.”

  “Just tell what happened?” I asked her again.

  “Yep,” she told me. “Write it down just like you’re talking. Pretend you’re telling it to all of us. Writing is just talking on paper—nothing more to it than that.”

  Then she got a thoughtful look on her face.

  “Actually, Zack,” she added after a minute, “there is one other thing you oughta do while you’re writing down what happened.”

  “What’s that?” I asked her.

  “I think you gotta tell about the inside of your story, not just the outside.”

  “I don’t get you, Corrie.”

  “Outside is what you’re doing. Inside is what you’re thinking and feeling.”

  “What difference does it make what I was feeling? Ain’t it supposed to be about what I done?”

  “I reckon you’re partly right, Zack,” Corrie answered me. “But the minute you start writing, the folks reading what you did’ll start wondering about who you are too. They’ll like to know what was inside your head—what you were thinking—and what was inside your heart—what you were feeling—all at the same time as you’re telling them what was happening. That’s what most folks is interested in when they read—all of it put together. All about you.”

  I thought for a long spell on what she’d said. It sounded to me like a downright hard thing to do.

  “It’s just like talking, Zack,” she said to me again. “Talking on paper. The only thing that’s hard about it is that you menfolk aren’t usually too practiced at talking about the feeling part. I reckon you feel things just as much as women do but you just don’t know how to tell about it. But I reckon you can do it if you set your mind to it.”

  I thought a lot more about what she said, and in the end I figured my sister was right. I could give it a try, and if I didn’t like it, I could always throw it away.

  Besides, what Corrie’d told me made a heap of sense.

  I did like the idea of having something to help me remember what had happened to me out in Nevada, even if it was just for me. I’d learned a lot of things from Hawk—a lot about life, a lot about myself. If I didn’t write it down, maybe I’d forget most of it someday. I didn’t want to forget any of it! If I ever did have a son of my own, I wanted to be able to give to him some of what Hawk had given me. And I reckon, too, I wanted to help him stay away from some of the fool mistakes I’d made.

  So I decided to give it a try. I worked on writing everything down while my sister Corrie was in the East, which turned out to be longer than any of us figured it would be. Then when she got back to California and Miracle Springs, we worked on it some more together before sending it to Mr. MacPherson in Chicago.

  What you got here’s the result of all that.

  I don’t know how many of you’re gonna care about reading it. I done it mainly for me, and for my son if ever I’m lucky enough to have me a son of my own someday. I reckon even if it’s just for the two of us, it’s worth it for that.

  I left home to join the Pony Express in early July of 1860. I came back a little over a year later, in August of ’61. So this is the story about my life during those thirteen months after I left home as a little kid, and came home pretty well started on the road to becoming a man.

  Chapter 1

  Riding from Home Like the Wind

  “You ain’t got no right to call yourself my father no more!”

  The bitter words rang over and over through my brain. I urged my horse harder and harder, as if riding faster would take them away.

  But they kept coming back, echoing in my mind . . . no right . . . no right to call yourself my father!

  They’d been out of my mouth before I knew it, smashing against Pa harder and more cruelly than if I’d have actually hit him with my fist.

  It was all I could do to force the tears to stay inside my eyes! A horrible knot grabbed at my stomach. How could I have said such an awful thing? But the words kept ringing through my head, like an iron gong crashing inside my skull from ear to ear. Above the pounding of hooves on the dirt, above the sounds of the wind on my face and the leather whip on the horse’s rump—above it all the sound of my own voice kept yelling the cruel words at my own father.

  On I rode.

  I hadn’t looked back yet, though my heart was sick over what I’d done.

  But kids aren’t usually able to calm themselves down and then go back and apologize for what they’ve done. And though I may have been twenty-one at the time, I was still a kid, as sure as my name was Zachary Hollister. And besides being a kid, I was full of all kinds of angry feelings toward my pa, though half my reasons for them didn’t make much sense.

  It was a mighty mixed-up way to feel—aching for what you’ve done and said . . . and guilty for hurting someone you half loved and half hated at the same time . . . and full of resentful and selfish thoughts that had got you believing all the accusations that had just erupted out of your mouth without you planning it. That’s how I felt—angry, guilty, mixed up.

  But I couldn’t go back. I was too proud, too hurt, too mad, all rolled into one.

  I reckon that’s right common among young boys who figure they’re old enough to be considered men but don’t figure enough folks know it yet. They’re too hardheaded to admit it when they go off and do something foolish that shows how much growing up they’ve still got to do. And then their pride gets them all the deeper into the hole they dug themselves into.

  That’s sure what happened to me! Angry and selfish and not so grown-up as I wanted to be . . . but too proud to admit any of it!

  I’d told my father I was leaving home to join the Pony Express. I hadn’t just told him, I’d yelled it at him—said he didn’t have any right to call himself my father anymore. And though I was aching and crying inside, and feeling so alone in the middle of my hurt, another part of me had meant the words.

  I’m ashamed to say it now, but it’s true.

  So I kept right on riding. I didn’t turn back. And I forced back the tears. That was another thing that showed that I was still a boy. I thought it wasn’t a manly thing to cry. And I kept riding from home as fast as my horse would carry me.

  That was July of 1860.

  Chapter 2

  Believing the Lies

  I was thirteen when we came
to California.

  Pa left when we were young, seven years before that, when we still lived in the East—New York State. I was seven or eight when Pa went west. Then the rest of us and Ma headed for California in a wagon train in 1852. Ma died on the way, and me and my older sister Corrie, with the help of the captain of the wagon train—Captain Dixon was his name—we got ourselves and our two younger sisters and younger brother out to California where we hooked up again with Pa. That was the five of us—Corrie and me, our sisters Emily and Becky, and little Tad. Corrie wrote about all that in her book, so I don’t reckon I need to say much more about it.

  After we got to California we lived with Pa at the claim he and Uncle Nick—that’s our ma’s brother who came west with Pa—had been mining outside the town of Miracle Springs, north of Sacramento. A couple of years later, Pa married a widow lady in town by the name of Almeda Parrish. That would have been in ’54. Two years after that, our Pa became the mayor of Miracle Springs.

  Maybe there’s nothing wrong with all that. Nothing except that all those years, while I was growing from thirteen to sixteen and then eighteen, I didn’t feel I had much of a claim on Pa’s time or attention.

  First, he was all tied up with the mine. Then it was Almeda and all kinds of trouble that seemed to happen to us. Becky got kidnapped once, and Pa had trouble from the past from being on the wrong side of the law a long time ago, back when he and Uncle Nick had been in the East. And after all that settled down, pretty soon he was getting himself elected mayor of Miracle Springs. Meanwhile I was growing up, and he didn’t even seem to see it.

  Don’t get me wrong.

  I ain’t saying Pa actually done anything bad or mean to me. I reckon by most folks’ standards he was a pretty decent pa to me, considering what he’d been through. It’s just that I always felt kinda off to the side of things. I helped him and Uncle Nick with the mining for gold, and Pa was right good to me in a lot of ways. But to me, it always seemed like he had his mind on other things.

  I reckon this is one of those times, like Corrie told me, when you gotta not just tell what happened, but tell how you were feeling too. So I was feeling like I didn’t matter much to anyone—that nobody, least of all Pa, had much time or need of me. And I started to think that nobody really cared.