Settling Old Grudges, Part I

This house belonged to grandfather Rudolph, though its history goes much further back, all the way to the eighteen seventies, when to this vast land Herbert Blake did trek. It had once been a grand ranch homestead, centerpiece of sixteen thousand acres, though now it was but six hundred or so, sold off to make bank accounts bigger. Two months ago grandpa Rudolph passed on, at ninety-three, having lived a full life, to my surprise he left the mountain home to me and my beautiful, young wife! Having lived in cities, just scraping by we could not pass up just such a break, out to grand Wyoming we up and moved, so excited for the life we would make. I got a job running a hardware store, my wife waitressed at a tourist café, prices are so much cheaper out here that we didn’t mind a small drop in pay. It was a month in that is all began, my wife claimed she saw a figure at night, walking the parkland outside of the house, so I stayed up to see if she was right. To my shock a lone figure did appear, but what I saw seemed a lie to my eyes, it was a half-naked Indian man, with but a loin cloth cast over his thighs! I blinked to try and clear up my head, but the man remained out there in the grass, be had a bow, tomahawk and knife, and a lance clearly meant to be cast. What was going on, I couldn’t say, did the local tribes have claim on this land? Was this some ritual grandpa had allowed? What could account for this odd-looking man? I was about to call for the police when the figure disappeared in the woods. I called anyway, just to report it, not knowing that it would do no good. The cop who arrived was a grizzled old man who’d been friends with my Grandpa Rudolph, He said,”I can tell you why this happened, but I’m afraid when you hear it you’ll scoff.” I motioned him to go ahead and speak, he nodded, said,”Rudolph knew of all this. See that Indian is the ghost of Blue Hawk, who died way back in nineteen-oh-six. “See when Herbert Blake set up his stake here, Blue Hawk was chief of a local band of Sioux, it’s said for years they sniped at each other, neither seeing the other’s point-of-view. “Now that’s easy enough to comprehend, ’cause everything was quite different back them, but they say that his son, and Blue Hawks’ daughter, had something become much more than friends. “When it was found out each attacked the other, the feud erupted into all-out war. and when the children were killed in the fight it just fueled both side’s hatred all the more...