House of Purple Cedar. Tim Tingle

Zeke, who had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday. I saw my grandparents trade glances to hear Zeke talk so brave.

      The older folks just let the young ones go on with their blustery talk. Even when they called for guns and warring, Amafo kept his hat low and sipped his coffee. Their words, he knew, would fall like hot embers on a coldwater lake. But other words, spoken by elders, caught Amafo’s attention—and Pokoni’s as well.

      Mister Pope, a neighbor and a good man for shoeing horses, said, “Maybe we all should stay here, camp out here. We’d be here to protect your family. They wouldn’t dare try anything if we was all here.”

      “I’ve got nothing to do that cain’t wait. I’ll be glad to,” someone said.

      “We’ll all be here if any trouble comes,” Mister Pope said. “I’ll drive into town tomorrow and buy enough ammunition for us all. Shells, gunpowder. We’ll divey it up and reckon the money later. I’ll keep good account of everything.”

      Hearing this, Amafo lifted his hat and looked at Pokoni. Pokoni filled a coffee cup to overflowing and crossed the room to hand it to Mister Pope.

      “Here’s a fresh cup for you,” she said. Mister Pope took the cup without looking at it and promptly spilled it on himself.

      “Yow,” he hollered, dropping the cup and splashing hot coffee all over his britches. His wife ran to his aid. In the laughter that followed, everyone seemed to forget his idea of a makeshift army, an invitation to trouble. Truth was, our yard was already overrun with an army, the army of Colonel Tobias Mingo.

      Colonel Mingo

      Forty-eight children, Colonel Mingo’s Army, gathered in the woods east of the house. A highly-respected veteran, Colonel Mingo had fought with a Confederate calvary brigade during the Civil War. The day following a fierce battle, he had lost his left arm to a Yankee sharpshooter as he crouched over a pan of frying ham.

      He spent several months after the amputation recuperating from typhoid fever at the Veterans Hospital in Talahina. Colonel Mingo’s left sleeve now hung limp at his side. It flopped when he moved, like happy laundry bobbing on a clothesline.

      During Choctaw gatherings, Mingo’s assigned duty was to keep the children safe. Though soft-hearted, he served his duty with a military bearing that appealed to the older children. Overlooking a few hundred lost teeth, a dozen broken arms and legs, two snakebites and fifty bee stings—he was moderately successful.

      Knowing this night was likely to stretch into morning, Colonel Mingo supervised the building of a small campfire. He began by settling himself against the trunk of a two-hundred-year-old oak. My talking tree, he called it.

      He then appointed seven of the older children—never the same children, but always seven—to be his officers. Colonel Mingo not only built the fire following this chain of command, he conducted the entire evening’s affairs through these seven officers.

      “Let’s begin by getting us some wood. Will, Mary, Ken, Arch, you folks get enough kindling and small branches to get it started. Nita, Boyd, Samuel, you folks start gathering logs, ’bout two, three-foot long logs.”

      “Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” the officers yelled, scattering into the woods. Colonel Mingo pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filling the bowl and pressing the tobacco down lightly with his thumb. Cupping his hand over the bowl, he struck a match on the sole of his boot and lit his pipe. Soft puffs of sweet, aromatic tobacco smoke filled the clearing. His officers soon returned with the wood.

      “Small wood over there, logs over here,” he said, waving his right hand in one direction and pointing in the other. “Keep the center clear for now. Good job, officers. Keep it up. Gonna need a lot more wood than that. Let’s get going, everybody but Samuel and Will.”

      “Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” the remaining five yelled on their way to the woods.

      “Will, scratch out a circle on the ground with your boot heel, right there in the center of the clearing. Make it ’bout big around as a washtub.”

      “Yessir!” said Will.

      “Samuel, find us some stones. You and Will are gonna build us a fire circle, one we can use every time we come to this clearing. So build it good.”

      “Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” they said in unison.

      “If you want to pick you out some helpers, some of these other children might be big enough to help out. But you got to keep a watch out for ’em. Make sure they don’t step on a snake or get covered all over with ants.”

      Soon most of the children were involved, gathering stones or firewood.

      “Girls,” Colonel Mingo said, “you’ll find buckets on the wall of the chicken coop. Fill ’em up with red clay from the creek bed. That clay will be the mortar for our stone fire circle.”

      “Yessir,” sang the young ladies, dashing to the chicken coop.

      In less than an hour, the fire circle was built and enough wood for a week of winters was stacked at the edge of the clearing. Soon everyone found their own listening spot, where they would spend the next several hours till they drifted off to sleep.

      “Samuel,” Colonel Mingo said, “I want you to take this match and light the fire. Notice which way the wind is blowing. Put your back to it soes it don’t blow out the flame. Git your kindling just how you want it, and git real close to the fire ’fore you strike that match, ’cause you only got one.”

      Samuel was tall like his father—Brother Willis—and thin like his mother. He almost never smiled. Samuel listened intently to Colonel Mingo, then nodded and furrowed his brow to let everyone know he realized the seriousness of the situation.

      He picked up a handful of dried leaves and tossed them in the air, watching which way the wind carried them. Then he stacked dried kindling at the base of the logs. He struck a match and held it to the kindling. The sticks burst into flame, but Samuel stayed with the fire till a small log caught fire.

      Seeing the firelight fill the clearing, a tiny three-year-old started clapping, but the seven officers shooshed her. Colonel Mingo turned his slow gaze to the children. He waited till the embers were popping lazy-like and the flames burned low—yellow and blue hypnotizing flickers.

      Some children sat cross-legged, some leaned against a nearby hackberry stump. A few rolled fat logs close to the fire to use as pillows, folding their hands behind their heads. Everyone drew close, for Colonel Mingo always told his stories in a barely heard sleep-if-you-want-to voice.

      And they drew close for another reason. Safety in numbers, for Colonel Mingo always began his stories with the same warning.

      “Now you children know there’s no reason to be scaired ’bout anything I tell you. None of these creatures is still living. And if they are still living, they aren’t living in these woods. And if they are still living in these woods, they’re probably asleep by now anyway. But just in case they’re not asleep, we outta be reeeeel quiet, ’specially if you hear something in the woods, something maybe prowling around attracted by the fire. In fact, maybe we should put the fire out.”

      “No!” screamed a dozen voices.

      “Well, now,” Colonel Mingo said, “if anything was asleep in the woods, I ’spect it’s awake by now.”

      Colonel Mingo paused to puff on his pipe. A pink glow rose from the pipe bowl and tiny clouds of smoke floated around his face. With every eye watching him, Colonel Mingo set his pipe against a stone, sipped his coffee, and waited for the night sounds to take over. They floated down from the trees, fluttering sounds of winged creatures taking flight and the soft whistling of pine trees tilting with the wind. The distant croaking of frogs washed up from the creek.

      Colonel Mingo lifted his eyebrows. His eyes grew wide and he turned his head slowly, ever so slowly, as if he’d heard something but didn’t want it to know he was there.

      “I’m scared,” came a wee voice from