Next to Bub Murdock, Kenneth Kauley was perhaps the best friend I had through high school. He lived a half mile down the road from where I lived. Dad bought his mother's farm when it sold back in the early 70's. Kenneth lived exactly half way between our house and Grandpa Flick's house. Kenneth and I often played basketball together either at his place or at mine. For awhile, I dated his first cousin, Jean Whiteskunk.

Kenneth was the friend who first taught me how to say Cheyenne words. On one of those days, when we were in the 8th or 9th grade, we were walking between my house and his, preparing to have a good game of basketball. I had been after him for some time to teach me how to "talk Indian." For some strange reason I had the idea that when the Indian people were talking Cheyenne between themselves, they were talking about me. I figured they were saying things in "Indian" so that I wouldn't understand. I guess it was paranoia. I falsely imagined that they were telling jokes to one another about me while I wouldn't know the difference. Such was not the case, however, because Indian people just don't do that sort of thing.

As we walked down the road and as I kept begging Kenneth to teach me some Indian words, he bent over and picked up a Doublement gum wrapper. With a short pencil he had in his pocket, he phonetically scribbled some words on the gum wrapper. The words he taught me were, "Where are you going?" The letters which appeared on the gum wrapper were these... "Dusought-nee-ho-ost?" It is impossible to show how that is pronounced while writing it on paper because phonetic sounds written on paper cannot replace the audible sounds of the phrase. One would need to actually hear it in order to know how it is pronounced.

So I practiced saying the phrase over and over until I had it memorized. That evening I practiced it while I was milking the cows. I know those cows must've thought I was going mad because I know they'd never heard anything like what I was talking. Occasionally I would break out into sheer laughter that I was now learning how to "talk Indian." That was probably history's first case of "Mad Cow" disease...

The next day, I practiced saying the phrase to every Cheyenne kid in the school. They laughed at me like crazy. But I didn't let the laughter dissuade me from attempting to learn Cheyenne. After about two days of practicing how to say, "Where are you going?" I told Kenneth that I was ready for more. So he took a piece of notebook paper and phonetically scribbled another phrase for me. This phrase was simply, "What are you doing?" ("Nee-dun-shev?")

I promptly took that one to the cows and practiced it on them. I got no response. They didn't even laugh at me... But I now had increased my Cheyenne vocabulary by a full 100%. I knew two Indian language phrases. As I practiced saying both phrases over and over, I became fairly proficient at pronouncing them, but promptly forgot which phrase meant what. I realized I could pronounce the words but didn't know what I was saying. So it was back to square one.

The next day I had Kenneth help me to understand which phrase meant what. It was slow going in those first few days because I still hadn't understood the individual words in the phrases or their meanings. It was only when I began understanding the meanings of the individual words (i.e. separating the nouns from the verbs), that I began putting a system together for learning the dialect. When the Cheyenne kids realized that I was serious about learning their dialect, they all began helping me with the words and phrases.

Among those most helpful in my endeavor were: Danny Joe Blackhawk, Joe Osage, Frederic Hoffman, Joyce Fingernail, Edith Whiteman, Franklin Miles, Sammy Standingwater, his cousins Leona & Sharon Standingwater, Jean & Rosanna Whiteskunk, Roy & Jessie Howlingwater, Irene Hayes, and Cynthia Whiteskunk. I even acquired a Cheyenne Indian name. My given name in Cheyenne is "Blue Eagle" (Ododtiva-netz). It come from the fact that in 1959 I purchased a 1955 Ford which was blue. It was given to me by my Indian peers in a small ceremony at a Christmas party at Roy Howlingwater's house. Roy's mother, Emma, made me a pair of full beaded moccasins which had a blue eagle on each toe. By the way, Kenneth Kauley's Indian name is "Mhon'tava-honiah". It means "Black Stone."

For a while, I worked in Ben Cole's grocery store and the adults began getting into the act. They would identify grocery items and tell me the correct pronunciation of the specific items. Ben Cole himself could speak good Cheyenne and I learned some from him. I created a personal Cheyenne dictionary (which I still have) and my Cheyenne vocabulary grew substantially during the latter years of my high school experience. I continually added new words and phrases to my dictionary. The more I learned, the easier it became to learn. It was exciting to me that I was learning another dialect. Little did I know that by learning a new dialect, it was going to be very helpful to me in seminary. This was true because, having learned a new dialect, it was very easy for me to learn Greek and Hebrew when I got into studying the biblical languages. Believe it or not, Cheyenne has a lot of the same syntactical elements of Greek. It's a long way from Hebrew but quite similar to Greek in syntax.

Well, on with the story... Sometime during our sophomore year, Kenneth and I decided to go squirrel hunting in the woods on the river bottom below his house. At the time, the bottom was mostly covered in wooded areas. There were only patches of open cultivatable ground. We went prepared to not only kill our game, but we were going to eat our game on the spot. We only had one rifle, which was mine. Before we left on our hunt in the woods, we took turns practicing our aim by shattering some beer bottles from about fifty paces. Kenneth was a good shot. But he was even a better hunter in the sense of being able to locate the "big game" squirrels. We were hunting on his mother's land, which was the same place which my father bought in the early 70's. Kenneth knew those woods like the back of his hand.

After target practice, we set out on the hunt. We were equipped with my 22 rifle, his mother's skillet, some lard, some salt, and a few matches. Our game plan on this big game hunt was to seek and find the game, kill it, skin it on the spot, fry it on the spot, and devour it on the spot. It was going to be a fun hunting trip.

We entered the woods and almost immediately Kenneth spotted the big game in the trees. We stealthily approached the tree and the game hid on the opposite side of the tree trunk. Like a good Indian scout, Kenneth moved slowly around to the other side of the tree while I stood still. As he moved around the tree, the "big game" squirrel moved around to my side. I had only one round of ammunition in the chamber, of my big game 22 caliber. (What the heck... It was only a single shot rifle...)

When Kenneth stopped moving, he was standing exactly 180 degrees from where I was standing. The game, observing that the Indian scout below had ceased to move, came to a complete rest on my side of the tree in clear sight. All I had to do was take careful aim and fire my rifle straight into its back. My Dad always said that Davy Crockett only needed one shot to bring down his big game. I imagined myself, for a moment, to be Davy Crockett Flick. I took steady aim and fired. Forthwith, the game came tumbling out of the tall tree, landing not more than fifteen feet from where I was standing. It was like pot-shooting a duck on water. I had deadly aim on that day. Too bad for the big game there in the trees. He never knew what hit him. And I'm sure he never thought about being skinned and eaten on the spot.

Kenneth did the skinning and the butchering of the game. You may not be aware of this, but Kenneth spent many years as a butcher in a grocery store. He worked for about five or ten years at Trout's grocery, cutting meat and working in the meat market. He was flat good at that sort of thing.

While Kenneth was preparing our game for the big game cook-off, I gathered some dry wood and prepared the fire. After about 30 minutes, when the coals were hot and the fire was ready, we salted the game, put the lard in the skillet, and fried it. Kenneth did the cooking. I don't think I'd ever tasted anything better. However, it may have been just my imagination. As an afterthought, we both wished we had brought some flour to make gravy. But we had forgotten so that idea was out the window. When we finished our meal, on the spot where it fell, we washed the skillet in the river, headed back to Kenneth's house, and played a game of basketball to celebrate our accomplishment.