Cheyenne splendor, p.38
Cheyenne Splendor, page 38
The Lincoln assassination left even further tragedies yet to unfold. When John Wilkes Booth stabbed Major Rathbone as the brave officer attempted to disarm the actor, Rathbone’s blood splashed Miss Harris’ lovely satin dress. The major survived and later married Clara Harris, but Rathbone could not rid himself of guilt because he had not saved the president. Nor could his wife bring herself to either destroy or clean and wear that dress again. She finally had it walled up in a closet. Over the years, the self-tormented major began to go insane.
Christmas Eve morning of 1883, Rathbone shot his wife to death and attempted to commit suicide with a knife. He survived and was sent to an insane asylum where he lived another twenty-eight years. The year before his death, the couple’s son broke through the walled-up closet to retrieve the dress that had been hanging there forty-five years. He burned it as “cursed.” That son, Henry Riggs Rathbone, became a U.S. congressman and was instrumental in urging the government to restore Ford’s Theater as an important historical site.
You have heard, of course, that Mary Todd Lincoln gradually lost her mind and became such an embarrassment to her only living son, Robert, that he had her temporarily committed to an asylum in 1875.
Another player who ended up in an insane asylum was Boston Corbett, the police officer credited with killing John Wilkes Booth. In his later years, Corbett went berserk and tried to wipe out the Kansas legislature with two pistols.
Doctor Mudd, who was guilty of nothing but treating John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg, was eventually released from prison because he had helped battle an epidemic of yellow fever in jail. However, the dour prediction, “Your name is Mudd,” has become part of our folklore for the unlucky.
While it is ironic, John Wilkes Booth was actually standing close enough to Lincoln to have killed him during the inauguration. Because he was a celebrity, a legislator’s daughter had given Booth tickets to the ceremony.
American Indians fought for both sides in the Civil War; however, only in one battle were American Indians fighting on both sides and against each other; the Battle of Honey Springs in eastern Indian Territory during 1863, won by the Union. This was also one of the first battles using African-American soldiers, the 1st Kansas Infantry. In case you are interested, the very last Confederate general to surrender several months after the war officially ended was a Cherokee, General Stand Watie, in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
I am always glad to hear from readers. You may write me c/o Zebra Books, and they will forward your letter. I’ll send a newsletter and an autographed book mark to those who include a stamped, self-addressed #10 envelope. For those of you in foreign countries, please remember the U.S. government will not allow me to use your foreign postage, so please buy postal vouchers at your post office that I can exchange for American stamps.
What story am I going to tell next? One of the saddest and most heroic chapters of America’s Indian past is that of the Nez Percé tribe. Native to the great Northwest and known for their fine Appaloosa horses, they had always lived at peace with the whites—until settlers began to want their land. Trouble escalated when gold was discovered in the area. Then greedy whites clamored to move the Nez Percé to reservations, and the valiant warriors refused. What happened next is one of the most gallant and heartbreaking stories of American history as a handful of Nez Percé held the whole United States Army at bay during four months of 1877. Led by Chief Joseph, they decided to fight their way across fifteen hundred miles of the Pacific Northwest to cross the border into the safety of Canada. They hoped they could link up with Sitting Bull’s Lakota (Sioux) who had retreated north after Custer was wiped out at the Little Big Horn the previous year.
Some of you may recall Springtime, the tempestuous Indian girl who was murdered in HALF-BREED’S BRIDE. The heroine of my next book is a mixed-blood cousin of Springtime’s. Our heroine’s been raised back east and returns to the West to work as a teacher among the Nez Percé.
Remember that Iron Knife owns a fine Appaloosa stallion, Spotted Blanket, given to him by a grateful Nez Percé chief for saving his young son’s life many years before? That son is all grown up now, tall, darkly handsome, and a warrior riding with Chief Joseph. He’s too savage and untamed for our civilized teacher, and he resents her bringing her white ways to his people. Both of them are about to be swept up in a great adventure as the Nez Percé fight their way across the untamed frontier, attempting to reach Canada.
I promise you a three-hankie love story as we ride with this warrior and his love, as free as the wild north wind blowing from the vast reaches of the Canadian wilderness. Look for this #13 novel of my Panorama of the Old West series, a Zebra Super Release, tentatively titled WARRIOR’S SONG and set for early summer of 1995.
Hahoo naa ne-mehotatse,
Georgina Gentry
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Copyright © 1994 by Lynne Murphy
ISBN: 978-0-8217-4741-4
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Georgina Gentry, Cheyenne Splendor
