Thirty-two-year-old mixed blood John Strobaw, known to the Sioux as Medicine Hair, returns to his Turtle Crick Farm after a six-year exile on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Grief-stricken at the loss of his mate and lover Matthew Brand, known as Shambling Bear, at the Battle of Wounded Knee, he struggles to become a farmer again while fighting an internal battle to let go of the past and face his future. Will that future be with his best friend Winter Bird or with Pretty Face, an outrageous flirt who hasn’t yet decided who he is?<br><br>But before he can come to grips with this, John faces several battles. Will his former friends and neighbors accept him now the Indian War has come to an end? Can John forgive those same friends and neighbors after the murderous ambush of the Sioux by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee? Or survive the hostility of an Indian-hating sheriff named Charles Landreth and protect himself against the mindless fear and loathing for Two Spirits, men who love men?

Wastelakapi…Beloved

I turned back to Gideon. “Do you know who those three strangers we killed were?”


He nodded and explained he had gone on the singing wire to determine they were three ne’er-do-wells who’d come up on the run out of Arkansas a step ahead of a murder charge. Luke Weathers had been married to the young woman who’d come at me with a shotgun. Jim Weathers was his younger brother with a reputation for abusing women. He was likely the one who’d raped and beaten the sheriff’s wife. No one knew the infant girl’s name.


We examined the idea of Gideon stepping out and reasoning with Landreth when the sheriff arrived, but concluded Landreth would just shoot him and claim that I did it. By the time darkness was falling, we’d come up with no better idea than to spend the night in the cabin again. At the last minute, I determined to go to the house so that I could answer, provided Landreth gave me the courtesy of hailing me before trying to kill me. 29


Chapter 94