Thunder on the Plains Read online

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Robinson, Gary, 1950-

  Thunder on the plains / by Gary Robinson.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-939053-00-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-939053-86-2

  (e-book : alk. paper) (print)

  1. Cheyenne Indians--Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.R56577Th 2012

  [Fic]--dc23

  2012039546

  ©2013 By Gary Robinson

  Cover and interior design: Deirdre Nemmers

  Cover photo: Shaun Santa Cruz

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the publisher.

  7th Generation, a division of Book Publishing Company

  PO Box 99, Summertown, TN 38483

  888-260-8458

  bookpubco.com

  ISBN: 978-1-939053-00-8

  18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  Printed in the United States

  Book Publishing Company is a member of Green Press Initiative. We chose to print this title on paper with 100% postconsumer recycled content, processed without chlorine, which saved the following natural resources:

  • 18 trees

  • 563 pounds of solid waste

  • 8,414 gallons of water

  • 1,551 pounds of greenhouse gases

  • 8 million BTU of energy

  For more information on Green Press Initiative, visit www.greenpressinitiative.org. Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator. For more information visit www.papercalculator.org.

  Contents

  Chapter 1: The One-Two Punch

  Chapter 2: Moments of Brilliance

  Chapter 3: The Bully Brigade

  Chapter 4: Exiled

  Chapter 5: The Middle of Nowhere

  Chapter 6: The Buffalo People

  Chapter 7: In My Father’s Footsteps

  Chapter 8: You Can Blame John Wayne

  Chapter 9: Our Brothers Need Us

  Chapter 10: The Race Begins

  Chapter 11: A Magical Journey

  Chapter 12: Worthy of Being Cheyenne

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The One-Two Punch

  I sometimes wonder what goes on in my room before I wake up or when I’m not there. Do my books and CDs move from one place to another so I can’t ever find them? Does my soccer ball roll across the floor so I’ll trip on it when I come in the door? These are mysteries I may never solve.

  The first thing I remember hearing on this particular morning was the opening words of Road Warriors’ hit song “Don’t Hate Me” blasting at full volume. “Don’t hate me ’ cause I live on Native land. Don’t hate me ’ cause I am who I am.”

  I stuck my arm out from under the covers and searched for the snooze button to quiet the bass drum throbbing in my ears. The pounding stopped.

  “Daniel Nathan Wind!” My mother’s voice came from down the hall. “You’d better not push that snooze button. You’ve got to get up and finish your report for school!”

  A moan escaped from somewhere deep inside me. Dragging myself upright, I flung the star quilt off me. My grandmother made this quilt for me years ago when I was little. We lived on the reservation then.

  I tried to make my eyes focus. The first thing that came into view was the front of my T-shirt. The faded writing shouted “Road Warriors Live On Stage!” That reminded me of their concert I got to go to last year. Awesome!

  I looked up at the ceiling above the bed to see the poster I’d taped up there. The guys from Road Warriors glared back at me with painted war faces. Urban skins, just like me.

  “Danny! Do you hear me?” my mother called again.

  “All right, Mom. All right.”

  I took a look around my room. Rays of morning sunlight streamed through the window and onto the bed. Was this the typical room of a typical teenager? Dirty clothes covered parts of the floor. The faces of rock stars, skateboarders, and race car drivers looked back at me from the posters that lined my walls.

  My “Duty Calls” video game called to me. I had left it on all night. My laptop computer waited in standby mode for me to bring it to life.

  First I had to bring my brain to life. I realized it was Monday. My history report was due today. That’s what Mom was yelling about. I got up slowly and sat at the desk. Cheese from a slice of uneaten pizza hung over the edge of a bookshelf. Several soda cans stood guard around the pizza like cops guarding an armored truck.

  I took a bite of pizza. It was cold. I took a sip of one of the sodas. It was warm. I touched the computer keyboard. The screen woke up a lot faster than I did. The title of my history report showed at the top. “The Civil War in Indian Territory” was waiting to be written. I began typing.

  Fifteen minutes later, I hit the print button and got up to get dressed. The left side of the closet contained clothes approved by my school. My mother had picked out that stuff. The right side held the clothes I wore all other times. Whenever possible. It was a school day. Of course, I had to choose a shirt and pants from the left side. Really stylish.

  After dressing, I gathered up the pages from my printer. I stuffed them into my backpack without reading them. I was confident the report would be fine as is.

  I stumbled into the kitchen to see what else there was to eat for breakfast. My mother was standing at the stove cooking a batch of scrambled eggs. My stepfather, Bill, was reading a newspaper at the table.

  Mom was already dressed for work. A bright red apron covered most of her beige dress. Her dark brown skin and black hair told me she was still Indian underneath. I always liked it better when her daily wear was blue jeans and denim shirts. They seemed more Indian somehow.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said.

  “Morning,” I mumbled.

  Mom scraped the eggs onto a plate and set it in front of my stepfather. Bill was a white businessman, forty years old. He was wearing his usual gray suit, white shirt, and blue tie. He was from another world.

  “Did you finish that report?” Mom asked me.

  “Yeah, it’s done.”

  “Good,” my stepfather said. He always seemed angry when he spoke to me. I think Mom said he was “stern,” not angry. He folded the newspaper and picked up his fork.

  “We wouldn’t want a repeat of the problems we had last month, would we?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Want some eggs and bacon?” Mom asked in a cheerful voice. She was always trying to smooth things over between Bill and me.

  I nodded and reached for the pitcher of orange juice. I certainly wished things could be like they used to be. My full-blooded Cheyenne father died in an accident at work two years ago. I’m still not over it. I don’t think Mom is either. Really. But she tries to hide her sadness.

  It was right after Dad died that my life began to fall apart. For some reason, things just didn’t go right any more. School was a hassle. Home life was a hassle. I couldn’t stay focused on any one thing. My mind was a mess. How could it be any other way? Dad and I were close.

  But then Mom announced a year later that she was going to get married. This white guy named Bill from the bank where she worked asked her to. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t ready for a replacement father in my life. Especially someone as different from me and Mom as Bill is. Mom said he was good to her. She said he would make our lives a lot more stable.

  This was way too much for a fourteen- year-old boy to handle. First my dad’s gone. Then Mom replaces him with a stranger. Pow! Pow! It hit me in the gut like a one-two punch.

  Dad a
lways said I was a pretty smart kid. So why had my grades started dropping? And why was the principal calling me into his office every other week? He’d said I was “acting out,” whatever that means.

  “You need to eat before your food gets cold,” Mom said, putting down the plate in front of me. A smiley face made from two fried eggs and a curled strip of bacon looked up from the plate.

  “Wathene, we need to leave in ten minutes,” Bill said to my mother.

  The food she had cooked tasted good. As I ate, Mom worked my long black hair into a single braid down my back. I pretended not to like it, but secretly I did. It reminded me of when Dad was alive. Mom would braid his hair like this before he went to work.

  After breakfast, the three of us got into Bill’s car, a shiny new blue Buick. We took our regular route to my school. The busy streets of Los Angeles were crowded with other cars headed to offices and schools. My school, the D. W. Griffith Middle School, was named after some old Hollywood director that I’d never heard of.

  Sitting in back of the Buick gave me more time to think about the past. We had moved into Bill’s house here in the San Fernando Valley when Mom and Bill got married. It was definitely a high-class house in a high- class neighborhood. Especially when you compared it to our old frame house on the east side of L.A.

  Before Bill, we had lived in a mixed neighborhood of African American, Latino, and Native American families. Everyone lived in small homes crammed together. It was sort of like a big tossed salad. Our fancy new neighborhood seemed a lot more like a loaf of bread—white bread.

  I dreaded going to school today. And it wasn’t just because of the math test in third period. Or the quickly written history report. It was mainly because of Willy Phillips. Willy was the blond-haired bully of Griffith Middle School. He had promised to clean my clock this week. But he wasn’t talking about a timepiece. I knew he meant he was going to beat me up.

  “Good luck on your math test, dear,” Mom said as I got out of the car in front of the school.

  “And try to stay out of trouble, okay?” Bill added. “There’s only a month and a half left of school. I know you can do it, sport.” He winked at me as the car pulled away. I hated being called “sport.”

  And they didn’t know about Willy.

  Chapter 2

  Moments of Brilliance

  By noon I was feeling better about the day. My math test had been easier than I expected. I only had to fake it on a few of the questions. There was a substitute teacher in language arts who showed us a film about William Shakespeare. And in social studies, the teacher told me my Civil War report looked “interesting.”

  That afternoon I had science and computer lab, my two favorite subjects. So all I had to do was dodge Willy Phillips during lunch. Then I’d be home free.

  I found Jesse in the lunchroom and sat down beside him. Jesse is my best friend. He’s a Latino boy who likes a lot of the same things I do. We ate lunch together most days. After lunch we would go to science and computer lab together.

  “Hey, Jesse, what’s for lunch?” He had gotten a tray of cafeteria food. I could tell he was trying to figure out exactly which food group each item was from.

  “Today is Monday, so I guess this must be last Wednesday’s meatloaf disguised as lasagna,” he said, cutting into the food like a surgeon operating on a patient.

  I opened my brown paper bag to see what my mother had packed for lunch.

  “Boy, have I got a surprise for you,” Jesse said in a whisper. He looked around to see if anyone was watching.

  “I think the coast is clear,” I told him, also whispering. “What are we whispering for?”

  Jesse opened a notebook. He took out a piece of paper and slipped it to me.

  “With my devilish mind and your computer wizardry, what sort of chaos can we create with this?” he asked.

  I looked at the paper. It was a sheet of stationery from the principal’s office. It had the school’s name, address, and official school seal at the top. The principal’s name was printed at the bottom.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  “I just lifted it from Mr. Rippleton’s desk this morning when he wasn’t looking.”

  “What were you doing in the principal’s office?” My eyes widened.

  “Just clearing up a little dispute about who glued Mrs. Wright’s locker shut last week,” Jesse said.

  “Well, this really isn’t much use without Mr. Rippleton’s signature.”

  “Which you have on the note he wrote when you almost got suspended last month.”

  “Which I happen to have right here!”

  I dug around in my backpack. I knew it was in there somewhere. By the time I found it, an idea had hatched in my mind. It was an idea that was perfect for computer lab. Where do these moments of brilliance come from? For some reason, I failed to see the trouble it could cause me.

  That afternoon in computer lab I waited for just the right moment. It came while the teacher was busy helping someone with a question. I placed the stationery on the lab’s scanner and scanned it into the lab’s computer. Then, when the teacher was busy putting a new cartridge in another printer, I scanned the principal’s signature into the computer. The final step was to put both files on my flash drive. When this was done, I gave Jesse the thumbs-up sign. We were good to go.

  “What’s with the thumbs up, Daniel?” the teacher asked. He took me by surprise.

  “Are you pretending to be the emperor of Rome? And now you’re going to allow the gladiator to live?”

  “No, Mr. Saunders.” I had to think fast. “Jesse and I had a little bet about who could finish this software problem first. I won.” I laughed nervously and glanced at Jesse.

  “Oh, I see.” I don’t think he really believed me. But another student asked a question just then and saved me. I sighed with great relief and held up the flash drive to show Jesse.

  When school was out for the day, I had Jesse scout up ahead to see if there was any sign of Willy. After peeking out the front doors, he signaled back that the coast was clear. I bolted for the school bus. My unpleasant meeting with Willy was postponed for at least another day.

  I was what they call a “latchkey” kid. I always got home from school before Mom and Bill got home from work, so I had a key to let myself into the house. This gave me plenty of time to complete the day’s mission.

  I took the flash drive out of my backpack and put it in my computer. Then I copied the two files I’d scanned at school onto my hard drive. Next, I sat down to write the letter I’d been thinking about on the bus.

  “Dear Parents and Teachers,” the letter began. “I am sorry to announce that school will be closed tomorrow, Wednesday, May 14, due to faulty electrical wiring that was just discovered. This problem must be taken care of as soon as possible so that no one gets hurt. I hope this isn’t a problem on such short notice, but it don’t really matter. We have to do it anyway.”

  Then I merged the three documents—the letter, the stationery, and the signature—to create my final masterpiece. This is good, I thought, and emailed a copy to Jesse. I printed out fifty copies of the letter and stuffed them into my school backpack.

  The mechanical voice in my computer said, “You’ve got mail.” It was from Jesse.

  “You’ve outdone yourself this time,” his message said. “You should be in the hacker’s hall of fame. Jesse :-)”

  The next morning, Jesse and I secretly passed out the letter among the students. While I distracted the school secretary, Jesse put copies of the letter in the teachers’ mailboxes. By noon, the whole school was buzzing with talk of getting a day off.

  But, of course, this didn’t last long. Just before the lunch bell, Mr. Rippleton came on the school speaker system and announced that school would be open as usual on Wednesday after all.

  “I believe I know who the culprit is who started this rumor. He will be dealt with speedily,” Mr. Rippleton ended the announcement. Uh-oh.

  I wa
s immediately summoned to the principal’s office. Mr. Saunders, the computer teacher, was there, too. Mr. Rippleton was furious. He held a copy of letter tightly in his hand. He paced back and forth. He couldn’t believe that one of his students could do such a thing.

  “I hope this isn’t a problem on such short notice, but it don’t really matter,” he read out loud from the letter.

  “In addition to everything else you’ve done wrong, Mr. Wind, your grammar stinks. It should read ‘but it doesn’t really matter.’” The principal paced some more.

  “You’ve outdone yourself this time, mister,” he continued. That sounded better when Jesse said it yesterday. “This is the act of a borderline criminal.”

  I had to think fast. Again.

  “But Mr. Rippleton,” I protested, “it was just a class assignment that got out of hand. I didn’t know it was going to get passed out all over school.”

  “Is this true, Mr. Saunders?” the principal asked.

  Mr. Saunders look puzzled. I jumped in just as the computer teacher was about to speak.

  “You see, the assignment was to show that we knew how to use the lab’s new scanner and scanning software,” I said, making up a story as I went along. “I took it one step further, for extra credit, to show that I’d learned our new graphics software, too. I was going to turn the assignment in to Mr. Saunders tomorrow when I have computer lab.”

  I looked at Mr. Saunders, hoping he would buy it.

  “Well, Mr. Saunders, are you buying any of this?”

  The computer teacher studied the letter, then studied me. I sat still.

  “Actually, Mr. Rippleton,” the teacher finally said, “this is the best piece of student work I’ve seen in a long time. It shows advanced computer skills along with critical thinking skills. Daniel will receive an A+ on this assignment.”

  The principal stared at my teacher for a long minute. Then he rolled his eyes back in his head.

  “All right,” Rippleton said. I could tell he was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to punish me again.

  “You’ve slipped through my fingers this time, young man. But remember, you’re on my most wanted list. I’m watching you. Everyone back to class.” He stomped into his office and slammed the door.