Charlie's Choice by Zina Abbott

Author:Zina Abbott [Abbott, Zina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-05T06:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 8

~o0o~

Bonner Springs, Kansas Territory

August, 1856

H is arms folded and his feet spread shoulder-width apart, Charlie’s face broke into a toothy grin as he watched his father enter the storage room in the back of the trading post. Owen Jones jerked to a halt as if the sight of his son startled him. Charlie waited until his father recognized him and found his voice.

“Charlie. It’s good to see you. I wasn’t expecting you.”

Charlie’s grin widened and his eyes expressed his merriment. “Why did you not expect me to visit? You know the Kansa have returned from their summer bison hunt by now. What you meant to say, my father, is you did not expect me to return looking like this.”

Owen pushed past Charlie and opened the back door so the sunlight flooded through the opening. “Come over here in the strong light, Charlie so I can get a good look at you.”

Charlie moved into the patch of brightness and submitted to his father’s perusal. His leather trousers as well as the off-white broadcloth shirt he wore when he left for Council Grove months before were in a pack on his horse. He had dressed purposely for his father, and he knew his father would understand what it all meant.

Charlie wore a breechcloth and leggings with a hunting knife secured around his waist. His bow and quiver of arrows hung from one shoulder and across his chest. His boots he had traded for a sturdy pair of moccasins. So that his father could see his warrior tattoos, he deliberately approached his father bare-chested with only the wide beaded medallion hanging from a wide band of pipe beads which circled his neck. Earrings made of quill clusters dangled from his ears. Following Meadowlark’s suggestion the day they met, he regularly plucked at the facial hairs that stubbornly insisted on sprouting on his face. However, earlier that morning before he arrived in Bonner Springs, he had made a point to once again scrape his face and the sides of his head with his knife until the skin felt smooth to the touch. He still struggled to become accustomed to the shorter hair of his scalp lock which, in anticipation of seeing his father, he had tinted red with vermillion and to which he attached his cousin’s gift of a deer’s tail roach festooned with feathers.

Charlie waited patiently as his father walked around him and studied the changes. Once he finished, Owen stood facing his son, a look of sadness in his eyes.

“This is your choice, is it, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded. “I am now a Kansa warrior. I will live among the Kansa people.”

“You will live among them—and plan to take a wife from among them?”

After his nod, Charlie watched his father heave a sigh and turn away. “We must all choose our way in life, Charlie. I respect your choice, even though I will miss you. I hoped when you returned you would be agreeable to a different job much of the time rather than always working in the store.

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