Galilahi and the General

Her lover and her falsely accused of butchering a family, Galilahi exercises a plan to prove their innocence, and reunite with her family.

  

   Tying her long, jet-black hair in a pony-tail and smudging white paint under her brunette eyes, Galilahi stood in a wide crevice on a slope, camouflaged by tall bushes and fallen pine trees. She swiped blood from under her straight-edge nose as she watched the coffee-colored and ivory horses trot into town below. Men dressed in navy-blue uniforms and rabbit skin hats dismounted them. Silver revolvers holstered at their sides and rifles strapped over their shoulders. The lawmen tied their horses to a hitching rail and strolled into a two-story white building with a porch supported by four thick pillars. Galilahi assumed it was the court house. Two, one hefty guy and another average size guarded the entrance. They’d been hunting the countryside for her, and any other of her people that remained.

 

  Burgundy, yellow and sky-blue wood buildings lined on both sides of the road in a t-shape. Auburn dust stirred through the ragged dirt street and leaves rattled as a cool breeze whistled through. Only two roads led in and out of the city between mammoth, smoky and hunter-green mountains. Just across the road from it was a pale, cherry brick building with a sign that said jail. Her lover, Adahy, was being held there, accused of slaughtering a white family in the hills. And she wore a bounty on her as his accomplice. They’d never think to look for her so close by.

 

  Galilahi looked at one of a dozen splintered, wooden shacks at the outskirts of the settlement where the people she loved most"her two sisters, father and mother lived. They all believed since she chose to refuse the government’s change and runaway with Adahy, she was as capable as he was of murdering that family. And the mere thought alone slowed her heartbeat. It stole the breaths out of her. She hasn’t talked with them since they joined the white man’s rule, and rebuked her for living the only life her lover and she knew growing up as a Cherokee Indian. It wasn’t one that intimidated them to be confined to a society’s’ belief and morals, but one that allowed her to think freely.  

 

  She dipped her chin to her breasts as she held a pink and turquoise necklace in her fingers. Her mother crafted it from corn husk and deerskin, and her father made the bear claw choker. He told her it stood for strength. But it was long ago when they’d given her the gifts. She gazed at the silent community down the slope. I’ll walk down there cry my innocence to my family, and prove Adahy and I had nothing to do with the murder of that poor family.  But will they listen to a female, a person with dark skin, and to someone who’d fought them in order to live the life her people had lived for ages? 

 

 To think Adahy and she would ever be capable of such a horrible sin--the slaying of defenseless people--sent chills crawling up her spine. Galilahi regretted not waiting with her boyfriend near the murder scene. Maybe if she had stayed they could’ve stopped it and ran off into the night before the army showed. Or at least she’d be with him in confinement waiting for mother Earth to plant the two of them beneath its soil and blossom into another life. The white man would do anything to dominate the land over the Cherokee: genocide, holding food supplies, burning homes, and framing them of a massacre only the devil--if he or she existed--would be capable of.

 

 Her tribe, including her entire family enslaved themselves to the white man’s way of life, rebuked from their freedom of choice, belief and the right to live as their ancestors did the way they had in the very terrain they were laborers for men who frowned on their very color.

 

  She looked beside her at the flabby white man slumping against a boulder on the craggy ground, his hands shackled behind his spine in his own chains and mouth gagged with a violet bandana. His bushy, gray-beard smeared crimson and right cheek discolored from where she hit him with the handle of his own gun. It was the man who called himself a general. He reeked of sweat and body odor, and his rough hands were blotched with the brown Earth. Galilahi would trade his life for Adahy’s. But whenever would the white lawmen believe a ‘yellow-hide’ over a military general? They’d try to shoot her. But she had it planned: The few dozen of her surviving tribe supported her as they hid scattered among the foggy peaks. Plus, they wouldn’t risk her shooting the general in the back of his skull.   

 

  The sun turned to the color of fire as it cast a shadow over the town. She secured a knife to the side of her tan, elk-skin slacks and gripped the general’s revolver in her right hand. Being fixed on using knives, spears and bows as weapons, the pistol was very foreign to her. But how difficult could it be to shoot someone at close range. Galilahi looked at the fleshy, gray-bearded man. His bulbous nose flared as he glowered at her. Maybe he knew he was about to lose everything he had: control, his hidden wicked identity and people’s respect. He was important, important enough to trade for Adahy, especially after they learned he had nothing to do with the murders. In a mass of cruelty and ignorance, there had to exist one or two rational minded men. Galilahi’s family would see the truth, as well as the virtue in her lover.

 

 Pointing the revolver at the general’s chest with her eyes hardened, she said, “You will tell your people the truth, what you ordered your soldiers to do. You’ll tell them the man they have is innocent of killing those people. And they will free him and I will free you.” The general scowled at her like she was a beast from some alien world, undeserving of any chance of humanity. “Do you understand?” she asked. He looked at her. She grabbed the bear-jaw handle of her blade, whipped it out and pressed the shrill end into his dense chest as he moaned. “If not, I’ll be forced to shoot you dead with your own pistol,” she snarled. “And disappear before any of the lawmen have a chance to shoot me. And don’t forget, my people are watching from every direction of town with bows and arrows, and rifles.  She dug the pointy end of the blade in deeper as blood streamed out. “Do you understand?” she raised her voice. Grunting, he nodded nervously. Galilahi felt her blood boiling, and a sick, frigid feeling flooded through her body. She wanted to kill the man. But she released the pressure of the blade and stuffed it into the side pocket in her pants. Never had she been so tempted of dark actions. It was like a seed had grown inside her into an evil spirit, and she wanted to skin the flesh off his bones. She watched all, but three of the sheriffs exit the white mansion, straddle their horses and gallop into the narrow valley out of town. The others ambled into the jail house where they were doing know telling what to Adahy.

 

  A bone-colored moon grinned down on her as she crept into a narrow valley of twigs and tall cedar trees toward the town, with the gun aimed at the general’s back. He shuffled, stumbling over the rooted ground like a scared drunker. The reek of tobacco invaded her nostrils as she squatted behind a big wagon next to the city. A ruckus of hollering drunks and carnival music came from the salon. A black stallion shat in front of it. Everything else was dead silent. Buttery lights glowed from street post on each corner and a few lanterns shined at the buildings’ windows. In a moment she’d give a signal to her small, but strong and loyal tribe to fire flaming arrows into the street. Galilahi would then bargain. She imagined her family gazing at her with acceptance instead of frowning with disapproval, and her future husband liberated as the right monster hung for those murders. A timber constructed platform stood in the austerity of the city with the hanging rope. She thought they may as well find another cord if her plan failed. But it couldn’t

 

 Turning and staring up at the slope on both sides of town, Galilahi raised her right hand in a fist.

 

  The sky blazed with bright, orange arrows before they pierced the ground between the buildings. Galilahi stepped out of the brush at the edge of the street pushing the general forward. “I need the sheriff,” she shouted, removing the bandana from the general’s mouth. He was almost hyperventilating. People paced out of their homes"their mouths hung open and eyes wide looking at her. And the sheriff with his long blond hair slicked down to his shoulders and furry crude around his mouth stepped out gaping at her. His hand slid to his pistol.

 

“Do you know where the hell you are?” the sheriff asked.

 

She wasn’t dealing with questions with obvious answers. “Sheriff, you should listen to what the general has to say.”

 

“Don’t be stupid lady.” The sheriff grabbed the gun from his holster.

 

“Drop your gun and tell anyone else who’s stupid enough to draw theirs that I have dozens of my people aiming arrows and rifles at them, and you sheriff.”

 

 “You’re already in enough trouble.” The sheriff dropped his pistol on the soil. “Killing a general. Well, now.” He scoffed shaking his head. “That’s beyond punishable"”

 

“You all aim to kill me like the rest of my people and the man in that cell, guilty or not.”

 

“An innocent family was killed,” the sheriff said, his chin jutting out. “Someone has to answer.”

 

“Tell him, tell the town the truth,” Galilahi demanded, poking the general in his back with the pistol. “Don’t make the wrong man suffer for what you and your army did.”

 

 Galilahi looked to the left as some of her people crowded the streets. She barely recognized them garbed in the white man’s clothing: dark slacks and button down casual shirts, and their hairs trimmed. They looked like adult children forced to dress in church clothes. Her attention was captured as two rednecks to the right pulled their revolvers.

 

“Stand down damn it! The sheriff threw his hand out at them. “Stand down!”  

 

“I’d listen to him if you all care about this man and don’t want spears stabbed through your chests.” Galilahi pressed the pistol’s barrel to the back of the general’s head, finger on the trigger. “Now tell these people the truth,” she yelled, her voice reverberating through town, so all the folks and the spirit of the mountains would hear. “Tell them another guiltless man is going to hang for your crimes. Tell them!”

 

The general looked to his right and to his left. He sucked in wind and exhaled. “Now ya’ll,” he stuttered. He cleared his throat. “Ya’ll jus might have the wrong man.”

 

The sheriff frowned. “The wrong man? That Indian?” The other two deputies eyed dipped their heads staring at her with their eyebrows gathering in like they were ready for a shoot-out.

 

“Ya’ll gonna need to let em go.” The general slurred through his grubby beard and busted lip.

 

“General, he’s accused of slaughtering an innocent family,” the sheriff replied. “We caught em near the scene. Saw his tracks. We can’t allow this savage yellow hide go.”

 

The general held his head down shaking it. He looked at the sheriff. “Now listen, here ya’ll. That Indian ain’t had nuttin to do with those people gettin killed.”

 

Galilahi gazed at her father as he moved toward her, his eyes softening. Her mother stood behind him, clasping her hands and staring at her with her mouth downturned. Suddenly, her body grew warm again, and her heart raced, not because of fear, but something magical she felt. She returned her attention back to the general.

 

“Tell them,” she threatened with the gun.

 

“I did gaw-dang it!” the general fussed. “Ya’ll’re gonna need to let the injun go, hear? He’s ain’t no more guilty than any of us.”

 

“No, tell them,” Galilahi repeated. “Or die a coward.”

 

 The general paused. “I"” She could feel and hear his breaths grow heavier. “I ordered my men to kill that family.” He bowed his head as he sagged to his knees. I’m the man ya’ll’re wantin sheriff. I ordered those people to be killed,” the general bellowed.