The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue, Trish Hanan [interesting books to read txt] 📗

could say.
Sean held his son and rode Sir William up to Stone’s store to pick up some dill for the potatoes for dinner. For some reason squirrels had carried off all the dill Julie had planted in the herb garden and she was furious and wanted him to shoot all the squirrels that came near the house. He had told her he hadn’t enough bullets to do that, it would take millions to kill all the squirrels on the Ridge and that hadn’t calmed her down so he had taken his three month old son and rode down the slope to buy her some more.
“Hey, Sean, pretty baby boy you’ve got there, hello Kalin,” Ben gushed as the two Donoghues entered the store. All the women rushed over to say hello to the baby who looked like he enjoyed the attention. Sean grinned at Ben. All you had to do was show up with a baby and he was a woman magnet.
“I don’t know why they’re fussing over a little half-breed,” Betty Simpson who used to be Betty Vernon spat. Her friend Patty Taylor looked at her with surprise.
“How can you call that adorable little baby that awful name, what’s wrong with you, Betty?” she asked her. Todd who was behind them knew the answer.
“She’s mad because Sean never gave her a second glance and married Julie instead of her, she’s just full of pure spite, that’s what’s wrong with her, Patty,” he informed her and he glared at Betty who glared back at him.
“I don’t know why he had to bring those filthy Indians to our valley anyway, we were better off without them,” Betty said and lifted her nose in the air. Todd snorted.
“Maybe you need to go back to Hamish where you belong, lass, because with that attitude you don’t belong on the Ridge with the rest of us,” he said and Patty nodded. Betty stormed out of the store. But she was joined by a few others and they eyed the Indians as second class citizens even though their constitution gave them equal rights.
They marched to Mike O’Brien’s office and demanded that the Indian children be sent to a separate school than their children and a separate Church be built for them and that all of their houses be moved to the far side of the valley away from the white houses. Mike laughed at their requests.
“If you people are so unhappy about living with the Malweenahs then I suggest that you move off the Ridge,” he told them. “If fact, move out of the country because the Malweenahs are free to live anywhere in Anamylia that they want and they are beginning to and the people are fine with it. And if they’re not, well that’s just too damned bad. That’s what equal rights means. It means the Indians have the same rights as the white people, so learn to live with it or move to a country that doesn’t have any people of color. I wouldn’t suggest Topanga because the people there are darker than the Indians. Ennis is out also because the Malweenahs have been moving there for years. Might I suggest Hamish?” he sneered at them and kicked them out of his office.
When Sean heard about the little committee he retaliated by going to the Malweenah Valley and bringing back five thousand Indians and spreading them all over the Ridges. He even brought back a dozen families of Topangans who had decided to stay in Anamylia after the revolution. They settled on O’Brien’s Ridge and were welcomed just as warmly as anyone else who came to the mountains. Betty and her little group were furious. They hated Sean Donoghue more than they had hated the Hamish.
“Just because he won the war he thinks he can do anything he wants,” her husband Vern Vernon spat. The others nodded. They were meeting in secret at his house. They were a small group only a dozen but they were joined by a dozen or so on every Ridge. Not everyone was happy to see Indians and Topangans living amongst them.
“Those dark people belong in the valley, what’s wrong with them living there and us living here?” Morris Townsend asked in a reasonable tone. Everyone nodded.
“Now they’re spread out all over the Ridges and we’ll never get rid of them, maybe we should move to their damned valley,” Herb Yonkers suggested and they all laughed. Betty sighed.
“Well, you can put dresses on them and pants and shirts but underneath they’re all filthy savages at heart,” she sneered and they all agreed. But they left their little meeting with no solution to their problem just another evening of making fun of the dark people and bitching about the high and mighty Sean Donoghue.
Fall came and Sean took young Sean hunting for deer. They had to go deep in the forest because of all the hunters but were nowhere near Keetik territory when Sean shot a big male buck right between the eyes as he leaped away. The other Sean was very impressed with the shooting; they had been almost two hundred feet away.
“Nice shot, Granddad,” he shouted as they raced to the buck. Sean laughed and they both reached it at the same time. The buck was definitely dead. He patted his grandson on his back and pulled out his hunting knife. Then he noticed movement behind them to the left and turned around. Five Keetik warriors stood there looking at them.
“Sean, is your rifle still loaded and ready to fire?” he asked him calmly. Young Sean turned around and saw the Indians. One was lifting his bow up. Sean loaded his rifle quickly as the younger man quickly lifted his up, aimed and fired. A hole appeared on the Keetik’s forehead and he fell over. The other Indians gasped with shock and looked at the while men with awe. Sean lifted his rifle up and fired it. A second Indian fell over dead. The remaining three Indians took off running. Young Sean fired and one fell over, a bullet had hit him square in the back of his head blowing it apart.
When it was over Young Sean’s face was a little gray but he had remained calm through the whole thing which was the important thing so Sean patted him on his back.
“You did good, lad, now help me with the bodies,” he instructed and they lined the bodies up against three trees and Sean calmly chopped their heads off and laid them at their feet. Young Sean was confused by this.
“Why’d you do this, Granddad?” he asked him. Sean grinned at him.
“Indians are real superstitious, lad, if you do this whenever you kill one of these Keetiks then they’ll think some kind of an evil spirit has invaded these woods and won’t come back,” he explained. “Maybe they’ll leave us alone. It worked sixty years ago, I don’t know if it’ll work this time, but it can’t hurt to try it. We don’t want to be running into them every time we hunt.” Young Sean grinned and they took their deer and went home.
When Sean told the brothers what he had done they laughed and agreed with him. Julie told him that now the spirits of the dead Keetiks couldn’t enter the happy hunting grounds and would wander the earth forever. The Keetiks would definitely stay out of those woods when they found the bodies like that, they wouldn’t want it to happen to them.
“You have a powerful spirit, Sean,” she told him as they got ready for bed. “Our son will grow up to be a mighty warrior.” He grinned and pulled her on top of him.
“Would you like to be on top tonight, darling?” he teased her just to watch her blush. She grinned.
“I think you like me to be on top,” she remarked. He reached up to cup her ample breasts. She moaned as he teased her dark brown nipples.
“It does leave my hands free for other things,” he murmured and she decided that yes she did want to be on top. She bent her face down so they could kiss too. She should have gotten married years ago.
Sean put out a warning to everyone about running into the Keetiks so that anyone hunting in the forest could watch out for them but a week later Todd came to the house with a worried look on his face and two crying women in his wagon. Sean looked at the women and sighed.
“Who went hunting and hasn’t come home?” he asked before Todd could say a word. Todd looked grim.
“Bill Patterson and Dwight Evans,” he replied. Sean nodded and said that there was nothing they could do in the dark but first thing in the morning they would send out search party, to have the people in front of his house at daybreak. Todd nodded and took the women home.
Danny looked at Julie with surprise.
“I thought you said the Keetiks wouldn’t come back to these woods,” he said. She shrugged.
“With Keetiks you never know, they are very strange people,” Julie told them. Sean nodded and held her close.
The next day he divided the men into two groups, one to search the woods for the missing men and one to surround the Ridge and protect the women and children. He didn’t want a war party using this as an excuse to sneak in a grab someone. Everyone thought this was a good idea.
“You’re a very clever man, General,” Mike O’Brien told him as they headed out. Sean grinned.
“I’ve heard that said about me before, Mike,” he remarked. A gunshot an hour later came from the northwest. Everyone rushed over there. Three men were holding one who wanted to fight a Malweenah who had found the bodies of the two men.
“Look what they did to them the filthy Indian bastards!” the man shouted as Mike and Sean approached. Sean took one look at the bodies and shook his head.
“Fred Walton did nothing to these bodies except find them,” Sean informed them. “He’s a Malweenah and a peaceful Indian, they don’t kill anyone and they certainly don’t eat the hearts of their victims. This was done by Keetiks,” he said firmly. Mike nodded.
“Sean and Sean told us all about the Keetiks they ran into the other day,” he yelled so everyone could hear him. “You were warned to watch out for Keetiks in the forest, this is what happens when you don’t listen to General Donoghue.” Everyone looked at Sean.
“From now on we hunt in groups of four,” Sean instructed. They all nodded and began to wrap the bodies in the blankets that Sean had brought. He had known when the men had shown up missing that it wasn’t going to be a happy ending. The man who had gone crazy apologized to Fred and they hugged. A few men wept openly for their friends.
“We’re going to have to talk with the other Ridges and see what kind of Keetik problems they’ve been having,” Sean suggested to Mike as they walked back to the Ridge. “If the Indians are starting to move west, maybe their enemies are pushing them and we’ve got a real problem on our hands.” Mike nodded.
They had a funeral the next day for the