The Hound of Tooty River

Time and traditions seldom play fair with the truth, and the veracity of the Toivo story cannot be proven. This narrative has been orally passed down from one generation to the next for over a hundred years in a family of known embellishers. The man who introduced my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother is legend in our household, and rightly so. The compilation of many narratives may have been exaggerated into fiction by now – or maybe not. Regardless, lessons abound in the events of good people living in hard times in hard places.
The wind coming across the prairies of the Dakota Territories can growl like the meanest of wolves and during the winter, the frost can bite just as badly. Of those willfully bitten were thousands of hardy immigrants claiming the American promise of cheap land and an honest chance at prosperity for themselves and their progeny. They headed north and west away from the Civil War ravaged lands and flooded through the Dakota Territory. The Fort Rice area, situated on the western bank of the Missouri River, saw their share of these hard working poor. Hundreds of these newly coined Americans took advantage of the Lincoln administration’s loosened policies for settling the West.
There was safety in proximity of the fort. The small percentage of immigrants that did not continue west were afforded protection courtesy of what the locals called “Galvanized Yankees.” These steeled uniformed men were the captured Confederate soldiers that choose to pledge their loyalty to the Union Army. They had no home to go to and decided to risk their fates on the frontier rather than in a Union prisoner camp.
Life in these newly built forts along the steamship routes was rough. In its inaugural year, Fort Rice suffered seven casualties from skirmishes with the Indians and over seventy deaths from sickness. Life outside the fort was also brutal, but there was a decent opportunity for the immigrants to make a living wage. The fort needed provisions. These families found a steady wage by providing daily vittles to the quartermaster sergeant. Over time, a small community of hard working and good-hearted people built homes north of the fort proper. Others, those who provided for the “less honorable” needs of the soldiers, seemed content to remain on the steamers. The music was lively, the beds were warm, and winning poker hands at tables full of gullible soldiers was commonly available.
Into this quest for a new life in this wide and windy land came Aina and Paavo with their babies Terry and Tommy. Their actual Finnish surname, an unpronounceable gaggle of tongue-twisting characters, has forever been lost. It was not their difficult name, but having identical twin boys that halted this family from wandering any further west. The howl of the summer wind would give way to a growl in the winter. With the babies, they needed the steady income and protection from the Indians that Fort Rice could provide. Prior settlers had already claimed all the tillable river bottomland. Nevertheless some forested and rocky land tucked against the bluffs north of the fort did not inconvenience their chickens one bit; in fact, they thrived.
Hard work, disease, and accidents depressed the life expectancy of sodbusters. More often than not, these hardy souls were buried long before they could hold their own grandchildren. Sadly, Aina and Paavo were discovering that rule. There were other good reasons to stay near Fort Rice, but primarily it was Aina’s slow recovery from child bearing that kept them from moving farther west. Bad health again kept them from continuing westward the spring following the twin’s birth. Then the following year came even more reasons, and still more the following year. After three cycles of Dakota weather, Aina and Paavo decided that by either fate or fortune, they, their boys, and their chickens were planted. This unanticipated tract of Promised Land was now called home. This homestead was not what they had dreamed of when they turned their faces west, but that small section of woods and ravine up against the western bluff of the Missouri River valley had their revised surname on it.
While their history is important, this story is not about Aina and Paavo, but their twin sons Tommy and Terry. Like others, Aina and Paavo never enjoyed the pleasure of blessing their own grandchildren. Terry and Tommy were just sixteen when Paavo first got seriously ill, and the following spring Aina died. These young men had learned everything about raising chickens there was to know. They had both walked the five miles through town and to the fort so many times that they could do it blindfolded. Selling eggs worked out well until the fort was decommissioned in 1878. Earning a living from selling eggs and chickens now depended on the needs of the steamboat cooks and the folks in the small town a mile north of the old stockade.
As it is with many brothers, it should not be assumed that they got along. Terry was a restless boy wanting adventure, and Tommy, well, he just wasn’t quite right. He was a slow learner and dependable, but he was extremely gullible. Taking advantage of these traits, Terry would send him into town every day because he could always talk him into it. But real reason was because Terry had developed a real hatred of chickens. Tommy’s honest face and sweet spirit found paying customers who would not give Terry the time of day, even if they needed eggs. Besides that, if Tommy earned a quarter, he would return home with a quarter’s worth of supplies and the right change. Terry, quite the opposite, could not leave a coin in his pocket long enough to buy provisions. There was always somebody on the steamship ready to help him put down a losing wager on the riverboat’s gambling tables.
The howl of the wind began to call Terry south before the next winter arrived. One day he left without a trace, most likely as a deck hand on a steamship heading down river to Independence, Missouri. Tommy missed him, but never really decided why. He only knew Terry was a blood relative, and he ought to miss him. Aina had taught him that.
Tommy never liked horses because he could never establish who was the boss. To complicate things, he would always have in one hand a live chicken in a bag and the day’s harvest of eggs in the other. Just thinking of trying to mount a horse while trying to balance his load was more than his mind could manage. No, walking was his fate, and for him there was never a good enough reason to be in a hurry. In Fort Rice it was commonly known that when Tommy put his earnings into his porous pockets the coins would fall to the floor before he got out of the buyer’s house. If it were not for several kind women customers doing some quick stitching, he could lose a week’s wages before he would have even noticed. If a coin was found in the street, any passersby first assumed it had once belonged to Tommy.
Unlike Tommy, who would be homebound for the rest of his life, Terry had found his way westward. He had liked working on cattle drives in Oklahoma and Kansas, but that was only seasonal work. Worse, that work did not come through on the “get rich quick” promise he had made to himself. Thinking of wealth occupied this thoughts during the days while riding hours in the saddle and his nights dreaming under the stars.
Terry eventually found his way out to Virginia City, Nevada to get his share of the silver found in the Comstock Lode. And Terry did get his share, several times. He also lost it several times too, along with the loosening of a few teeth in bar fights. The coroner stayed busy during those dangerous boom years. Out of the eighty men that died while Terry lived in Virginia City, he only could recollect that four of them passed of natural causes. Eventually two things chased Terry out of town.