Chapter 1 -
Luke Black-Elk
The small heart-shaped bauble glowed faintly as it hung suspended from Eva Steel´s thin wrist,
sprinkling her dance pole in a soft golden glow. "Dance pole" she´d correct people. "I´m a dancer. Stripping´s for carpenters and meat cutters". The musky velvet walls of "The Northern Neon" flickered in the light her golden heart gave off, creating serpentine shadows off her beautiful contorting body.
Suddenly a man leaps onto her stage from the tables , hands open and thirsty for a lust-quenching squeeze. He´s met by an equally fast bouncer who clotheslines the man with a massively muscular fore arm. Luke Black-Elk stands over the crumpled drunk, watching as he contorts writhing in pain on the stage clutching his throat. Eva picks up her silk robe and stands behind Luke. He grabs the man up by the seat of his pants and collar and tosses him off stage like a bail of hay. The man flies head first into the middle of a hot poker game, smashing the table in two as he lands.
The drunk slowly raises his head, blood and teeth now pouring out of his mouth. He slowly turns onto his back amid the broken table, shards of glass, whiskey and poker chips :
"I´m gonna kill you!!!" he gurgles, spitting out a gob of blood.
Drunk reaches for a gun pocketed in his snake skin boot but Luke´s bowie knife flies across the room like steel lightning pinning the man´s hand to the hardboard floor clean. Instantly the room is filled with screams , the screech of sliding chairs and the sound of breaking glass as everyone makes a desperate dash for the exit out into the howling blizzard.
Luke slowly walks up to the drunk, now screaming like a madman from the pain . Black-Elk ties back his long jet black hair and slowly bends to unlodge his knife from the boards. Cleaning the blood off the blade on his shirt sleeve he utters.
"You tell your boss I ain´t ever gonna sell"
Luke Black-Elk
The small heart-shaped bauble glowed faintly as it hung suspended from Eva Steel´s thin wrist,
sprinkling her dance pole in a soft golden glow. "Dance pole" she´d correct people. "I´m a dancer. Stripping´s for carpenters and meat cutters". The musky velvet walls of "The Northern Neon" flickered in the light her golden heart gave off, creating serpentine shadows off her beautiful contorting body.
Suddenly a man leaps onto her stage from the tables , hands open and thirsty for a lust-quenching squeeze. He´s met by an equally fast bouncer who clotheslines the man with a massively muscular fore arm. Luke Black-Elk stands over the crumpled drunk, watching as he contorts writhing in pain on the stage clutching his throat. Eva picks up her silk robe and stands behind Luke. He grabs the man up by the seat of his pants and collar and tosses him off stage like a bail of hay. The man flies head first into the middle of a hot poker game, smashing the table in two as he lands.
The drunk slowly raises his head, blood and teeth now pouring out of his mouth. He slowly turns onto his back amid the broken table, shards of glass, whiskey and poker chips :
"I´m gonna kill you!!!" he gurgles, spitting out a gob of blood.
Drunk reaches for a gun pocketed in his snake skin boot but Luke´s bowie knife flies across the room like steel lightning pinning the man´s hand to the hardboard floor clean. Instantly the room is filled with screams , the screech of sliding chairs and the sound of breaking glass as everyone makes a desperate dash for the exit out into the howling blizzard.
Luke slowly walks up to the drunk, now screaming like a madman from the pain . Black-Elk ties back his long jet black hair and slowly bends to unlodge his knife from the boards. Cleaning the blood off the blade on his shirt sleeve he utters.
"You tell your boss I ain´t ever gonna sell"
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" It wasn't that Eva was moody or anything like that" Lucille reassured detective Lt. Rob Racine, RCMP.
" No, she just wasn't used to being out of touch with people and things that she was accustomed to in the cities." - She lights another in a long string of cigarettes sitting in an old beat up couch in what they call The Fantasy Room at the "Lucky Stud". " Wood Buffalo ain´t exactly Reno y´know!" She stops for second , opens her eyes wide in amazement "Hey Lieutenant! That rhymes!!! ¨Wood Buffalo, ain´t Reno...Y´know!!!!¨" Let´s out hysterical laughter. A loud voice
form down the hall
"Shut up in there!!! I´m trying ta count!!!"
"Oh be quiet ya ol fart!!!" yells back Lucille. "Bosses...pffff! the world would be such a better place"
Lt. Racine taps his little notebook impatiently.
"Oh right! Sorry Lieuteant...where was I ? Oh yeah ! Luke Black Elk was the opposite. He kind of liked the loneliness. Ya ask me ? It was that Cree blood. Howz the saying go again ? "You can get a Cree out of the prarie but not the other way around". As a matter of fact, now that I think about it they were a pretty strange couple to hit it off the way they did." - she looks at her watch.
" Lucille!!!! ya got 2 minutes ta get yer butt out there..." booms her bosses voice form the room.
" Ooops!!!gotta go Mr. officer".
She stands up. Pauses. Looks at detective as she crushes her cigarette almost resentfully in a heart-shaped ash tray.
"And when you got seven months to spend alone with another man, you gotta be sure of each other. And she thought she was. Really!!!" She fixes her hair as she looks at her jaded reflection in a small broken wall mirror. " Y´know somethin´? The day The Northern Neon burned down, we all stood outside in the snow watching" She still recalls the embers glowing and the wisps of smoke rising into the cold Arctic sky. " And nobody did nuthin´"
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Ty Macleod came over the mountains to this valley a long time ago - he and his wife. He didn't come here smooth and easy the way most folks did - No, all Ty and his wife had was a beat up Ford pick up with a couple of spare tires in the back. It took them a long time to get to Wood Buffalo - a summer and a winter creakin' along mile after mile, day after day - lookin' - lookin' all the time for a place - to make a home ... When at last they found the Clear Water valley and Ty dug into the ground and made his first house here out of the stones and dirt. He made the walls thick, and that was a good thing, because hardly before he was done, the winds started coming up ... Winds and snow and sleet that do more than tear at a man's house - they tear at his heart and when he's tired and trail-worn and hungry - like hell-bent vultures, they come for his life...
Pretty soon pump-jacks would be springing up like fungus across the prairie. And the mighty roar of industry.
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"In hunting the buffalo the Cree are wild with excitement, but no scene or incident seems to have such a maddening effect upon them as when the buffalo are succesfuly driven into the pound.(...) The herd once in the pund, a scene of diabolical butchery and excitement begins; men , women and children climb on the fence and shoot arrows or thrust spears at the bewilered buffalo, with shouts, screams and yells horrible to hear. "- Henry Youle Hind 1856
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The winter prairie sun slowly burned itself out disappearing below the Southern horizon. Henry Hind had travelled 2500 miles on foot with his assistant Simon Dawson. They were both a long way from Trinity College. A long way from a warm meal and a soft bed. The British Geographical Society had sent Henry a letter ast year explaining the need to "properly asses
the economic value of the Western territories for her majesty the Queen". He was the man for the job. A geographer, cartographer , educated at Cambridge and hired as headmaster at Trinity College. Henry slowly scanned the horizon.The prarie landscape lay buried under a thick blanket of snow stretching to infinity. Henry checked his map and compass. "Simon, Fort Chipewyan should be on the other side of those hills!" The Scotsman was sitting in the snow resting "Bloody ´boot time!!! I coon´t feel me feet Henry!!!" . John Palliser had been down this way 2 years ago. His expedition had never been found. Victim of the violence that was slowly creeping West with expansion.
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"there would come a time, when the fish would die in the streams, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know it would all but cease to exist. There would come a time when the "keepers of the legend, stories, culture rituals, and myths, and all the Ancient Tribal Customs" would be needed to restore us to health. They would be mankinds’ key to survival " - Eyes of Fire - Cree Oracle (1846)
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Sprinting across the prairie was always easy for Snowbird. Her long legs never failed to fling her farther and faster across the grassy plains of her home. Nestled on the foothills of the Caribou mountains, her village sat on the prairie flat lands known as the Chipewyan lands. Snowbird looked up at the sky, squinting, wrinkling her nose as she shielded her eyes from the bright sun. It was unusualy warm and sunny that day; not a cloud in the sky. She loved the way the sunlight sprinkled down through the clouds and bathed the fields in golden showers of brilliance. She imagined she was a mighty Cree warrior of the old lands as she ran pretending to dodge imaginary arrows shot from the bows of imaginary enemies. She ran with lightning speed across the plain, dodging this way and that to avoid fallen limbs and leaping over low places. She blended quite easily into her surroundings, even at such a fast sprint. Her tanned leather boots made no sound on the tall prairie grass and her long hair waved behind her like the tail of a deer. As she drew closer to the Hawkmoon River, she began to slow down, coming to a fast paced walk. Hoping to spend a few minutes in the warm sun, she slowly came to a rest comfortably on the grassy floor of a secluded clearing. Snowbird listened to the prairie whisper to her in the rustling of the grass, the chirping of birds, the crytsal chime of the Hawkmoon river.
Her peace was suddenly shattered by the sound of violent thunder ripping across the prairie. Confused, she stands up like a bolt.
- There is no rain falling, nor dark clouds in the sky. How ? - she thougt to herself.
Snowbird would learn to recognize the sound of gunshots soon enough.
