A love between two very different men is put to the test. John Strobaw, a young mixed-blood, grows up in the relative security of a family farm after the Civil War. His mother raises her family as Americans, but his foster brother, Matthew Brandt feels his red blood more keenly and leaves to ride with Crazy Horse. John doesn’t understand the longing he feels for his absent companion until he has his first sexual experience with a man and he only thinks of Matthew. After the murder of Crazy Horse, Matthew makes his way back home. John fights hard against a growing lust for Matthew, but when he ultimately succumbs, he is lost to this handsome, dusky warrior. Just when the future looks bright, another suitor appears -- a handsome Cheyenne army scout, and trouble looms on the horizon.

Echoes of the Flute

However, I wasn’t often alone. The Reverend Jeremiah Berglund kept regular company. Once, I sat down on the side of my bed and had a conversation with the dead bastard. I told him in a very logical fashion he’d taken the lives of two good men, so it was only proper he paid with his own.


He didn’t see it that way, of course. He blamed me for flaunting my nakedness and my obscene, jutting penis before the good folk of his flock. Ikilled my friends with my libertine actions, not him.


That brought sweat to my brow, so I explained I was preparing for my holy hemblecha. There was nothing sensual about it.


Holy? It was a heathen ritual filled with devil worship and unnatural sex and who knows what other affronts to the God Jehovah and his Christian congregation. According to Berglund’s lights, I’d robbed him of something more precious than his gold and silver—the rest of his life.


He’d put me on the defensive, so I turned snarky. Tit-for-tat.


Chapter 35