“Any mail for Braithwaite?” he inquired of the clerk.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Braithwaite. Looks like company business, most of it. There is a note from someone, can’t hardly make it out. Done with a pencil stub, most likely. Here you are, sir.”
Braithwaite took the small bundle and sorted it in order of importance. The grubby, smeared envelope with the personal letter he saved for the privacy of his home. First, though, he had to stand the boys a drink to celebrate their good fortune.
The wagons and livestock had brought them a bit over five thousand dollars to divide. Not a princely sum, the colonel thought to himself, yet enough to excite the greed of his charges. Gold and silver coin had been in excess of fifteen thousand. A better kitty to portion out. He sighed and walked to the saloon.
“Drink up, boys. The first one is on me,” he told his lieutenants when he joined them at the bar. “We did all right. Never a problem. You’ve got tonight to raise hell in, tomorrow to get well. The day after I want to talk with you about our next enterprise. Ah, barman ...” he directed to the bardog in the white apron. “A bottle of your best.”
Later, in the privacy of his sanctum, Chester Braithwaite slit the worn and wrinkled envelope with a pen knife. The message inside made his blood boil.
Colonel, this is to advise you that the boy you let those Injuns have was Jeremy Stark, the son of your old enemy. Griffin Stark is here at Outpost Number 9 at this time. He is preparing to make a swing through Cheyenne country.
The other man you asked to keep an eye out for is at Outpost Number 11. Stark plans to go there after a wide circle of the friendlies on the reservations. Yer offer of money for this information is appreciated.
Yer friend, Powder Keg
Jeremy Stark. Damn all Indians, Braithwaite swore. He’d had the tool in his grasp to bring Stark to his knees and he’d let it slip away to some savage. He would have to find the child, kill the brat, and send Stark the head. Yes. That would be sweet indeed. Or hold the little beast hostage until Stark came to him. Hmm. That might be good, too. He walked to the sideboard and poured himself a double brandy. Somehow that course of action seemed incomplete.
His superiors in the Consortium wanted something decisive. A disaster of such proportions that it would insure army retaliation against the savages and open new land to a quick grab by the agents of Treadwell and the others. Armed with the information he had, what could he come up with? Pondering, Braithwaite sat down in his overstuffed chair to reread the letter.
“He says he does not tell lies,” the grizzled interpreter told Griff Stark. “He says that there are no captives, grown or children, in this camp.”
Griffin Stark, Ansel Thorson, and Beaver Jack Lane stood in front of a tall, white-covered lodge in a Cheyenne village of roughly seventy population. The old chief who addressed them had, the frontiersman explained, charge of all dealings between this band and the whites. A political leader in effect. Their conversation had been cordial enough until mention of captives arose. The old man grew vehement. He shook his fist at the sky and proclaimed his people’s innocence. Griff tended to believe him.
They had visited three other such villages and received similar answers, despite several obviously blond-haired children running naked and playing with other youngsters of the band. Surreptitiously, Griff had satisfied himself that none of them were Jeremy. They all had blue eyes. Every one of them also jabbered the Cheyenne language with the easy fluency of the native boys. He had seen none in this camp, so his impatience grew for them to be on their way.
“The chief says, you stay and they feast you. Good buffalo stew, roast ribs, plenty good to eat.”
“We’d better be getting on our way. It’s a long ride to that next band.”
“It wouldn’t be polite, Major. We can stay the night. Get an early start.” Then he added in a quiet aside. “That’ll give ’em a chance to send off a rider to warn of our coming without being rude by doing it in front of us.”
Griff nodded his approval, then muttered to Ansel. “Plains diplomacy gives me a pain.”
“Ja,, sure. And I know just the place it hurts you.”
“The white men raiding that train would have killed Jeremy to prevent any witnesses talking. He has to be with some of the Cheyenne involved.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see. Ja, sure.”
Late that night, after the feasting had ended, Griff lay in a guest lodge, comfortable under a heavy buffalo robe. Already in August the nights grew chill this far north. He had nearly drifted off to sleep when a soft scraping at the door flap jolted him to alertness. A moment passed and a slight figure stepped into the tepee. A pale nimbus of braided blond hair showed against the frosted starlight outside. Griff made out the shape of a pair of small moccasins, a narrow loincloth. A slender boy, bare body dark from long exposure to the sun, squatted near Griff’s head.
“My … my name is Jamie Walters,” he began in English made rusty from lack of use. “The Kit Fox Clan took me six summers ago from a wagon train. I was seven then.”
“The same age as my son is now.” Excitement mounted. Here, perhaps, was a clue. “Have you seen him? A boy with nearly white hair, black eyes, about so big?” Griff rose on one elbow to hold out his hand in example.
“No,” the boy who had been Jamie Walters replied without hesitation. “Not in this camp.”
“What about other bands? He would be new, something to talk about.”
“No. I have heard nothing.”
“You’re a captive,” Griff countered. “Can’t you understand why I want to find my son? Don’t you want to escape?”
“I am not a captive. This is my home. I … hid when you came, like always.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I ... I came … to … to say I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here. To be Cheyenne.”
Griff could hardly believe it. “You like it here?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Please don’t make me go back. My maw and paw are dead and there’s no one else. Here I got family, a name, three ponies all my own. With you whites … I would be an orphan. Please let me stay. Don’t tell Stone Belly that I came to you.”
The child’s concern and sincerity impressed Griff. Alone, after he assured the boy that he would not reveal anything to the chief or to other whites, Griff thought with sudden horror. Oh, God. It could happen so easily to Jeremy.
“Good morning, boys and girls. This is the first Monday in September and that means the start of school. I am your new teacher, Miss Carmichael. I want to get to know all of your names as quickly as possible.”
“Won’t make no difference,” a lanky adolescent in the back of the room sneered. “You won’t be here that long. None of the others were.”
The class tittered.
“You. Stand up, young man. What is your name?” Jennifer snapped back.
“Charles Owens. What’s your first name, cutie? You look like just my style.”
“Come forward, Charles Owens.”
Owens stood hip-shot, arms and legs akimbo. He made no effort to comply.
“I said, ‘Come forward!’ you overgrown delinquent!” Jennifer growled menacingly. The rest of the class could see her command in stark, bold letters, emblazoned on their minds.
Charles Owens sauntered to the front of the room, still cocksure he controlled the situation.
“Bend over my desk,” Jennifer ordered.
“Won’t do no good. You can’t hurt me. Little bitty thing like you. Sure.” He positioned himself.
Whap! The first blow fell with whistling speed. Not the familiar pointy and disciplinary rod of the schoolmarm, but a sturdy, braided leather riding crop, the one Griff Stark had made for her, landed on Charles’ buttocks.
“Yeow!”
Again it fell. And a third time.
“Let that be a warning to you, Charles Owen. If you ever, ever, speak insolently to me again, you will receive ten stripes. Now return to your seat and behave yourself.
“Now, children,” Jennifer began, unruffled in voice and demeanor, “let’s begin with the first row on the left.”
“Griff! Griff Stark! Damn my eyes, I don’t believe it,” Damien Carmichael yelled in overwhelming joy.
“Careful, Captain,” Griff drawled. “You have an example to set for your men.”
“Not … not when my best friend arrives here, looking like a regular mountain man, with a reputation as a hotshot field commander and Indian fighter.”
“It wasn’t that much,” Griff countered, cheeks aflame at the praise. “It’s just that I didn’t want to get myself, or anyone else, killed because of that boneheaded Mr. Dumbjohn right out of the Academy.”
“Come in, come on in the office. I’ve got a bottle of passable whiskey and two clean glasses. Tell me all about what’s been happening.”
Their reunion lasted long into the night. After a meal prepared by his executive officer’s wife, they returned to Damien’s whiskey and quiet words in the dimly lighted office. Cigars came out of Griff’s pack and they puffed them contentedly. At last the trivial and serious gossip of the frontier posts had gone the rounds. Griff sensed Damien’s expectancy and jumped into the breach.
“I came to find Jeremy. He was with a wagon train, Evan and my sister were heading to Oregon. Evan and Julie were killed. The train was attacked by Indians and renegade whites.”
“White men? We had a dispatch about that, but I tended to discount it.”
“Ansel Thorson went on back to Fort Laramie. He’s ridden with me most of the way. He’s the one who figured it out. Scouted for the army for ten years. I take his word for it. Anyway, Jeremy was taken away alive. The Cheyenne renegades have him. I’ve been searching camps. So far no luck. But he’s there, Damien. I know he is.”
Damien bent low, massaging his ankle, then looked up at his friend. “Storm coming. Two, three days at the most. That game ankle of mine always warns me. It’s getting late. We can talk about all of this later? Tomorrow fine with you? I imagine you would like some help from the army? That might not be so easy to arrange. Of course, if you were to stay over the winter … We make visits to all the camps, check on food supplies, make sure the bucks are staying on the reservation. Cool the hotheads. If you were here, you could ride along. That is, if you signed up as a civilian scout you could.”
“Really? That would be perfect. We can talk over arrangements in the morning. Goodnight, Damien.”
Early the next morning, with mists rising from the nearby creek bed, a quavering scream ripped from a sentry’s throat. A quivering Cheyenne arrow transfixed his chest. He fell from his position above the main gate and struck the ground with a sodden sound and the crisp reports of breaking bones. Outpost Number Eleven was under attack.
“Corporal of the Guard, Post Number Two. Hostiles attacking the post from three sides!” Griffin Stark ran from his assigned quarters, adjusting his suspenders with one hand, his Starr revolver in the other.
Chapter Thirteen
CHESTER BRAITHWAITE STOOD on the spongy ground in a thinned-out stand of lodge-pole pines on a hill a mile’s distance from Outpost Eleven. So far everything had gone well. Better even than he had expected.
He had conceived the idea weeks ago. On the same night he read the message from his informer, the suttler at Outpost Nine. If he could eliminate two of the Consortium’s major enemies in one blow, and at the same time create a disaster of incredible proportions, then he would be assured of some sort of promotion. His image of the reaction in Washington when news arrived that an outpost had been attacked by the Cheyenne and an entire company massacred sent his imagination soaring. The Treadwells and the big money men in New York would have their Indian war, all right. And their chance to move in and claim the newly ‘pacified’ lands. With a little planning, it would work without a hitch. And so far it had. A smile of contentment, unseen in the predawn blackness spread his thin lips and exposed yellowed, uneven teeth. He started at the sound of an approaching horse.
“Well, Leo?” he inquired of his trusted lieutenant.
“Wire’s cut. We took out a mile of it in one place, three pole lengths two other places, like you said to do.”
“Excellent. I think we can begin. Tell Burns His Saddle to move his men into position. You know, teaching these savages to fight in something vaguely resembling a proper military unit has been the biggest challenge I’ve had so far.”
“You did a good job, Boss,” Leo responded. “Ain’t never seen red sticks act like this. By now they’d a been whoopin’ it up and poundin’ the drums.”
“And alert our unsuspecting blue bellies to their danger. Here’s to the New Confederacy, Leo.”
“Horseshit! Here’s to us makin’ a lot of money.”
Silently, Burns His Saddle’s mixed bag of Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho approached the outpost, leading their mounts, the hoofs padded in layers of grass in deerskin boots to muffle the sound. Braithwaite stood on the edge of the groove, anxious and unable to show it. A pale band of frosty white showed in the east, but sunrise was still a good half-hour away. He only hoped the savages could contain their blood lust until the proper moment.
Time slid tormentingly by. Bright rose replaced the stark white and Braithwaite could discern slight movement in the pool of darkness below. Any time now.
As the fat red disc of the sun crept above the horizon, a terrible scream came from the battlements of the sod-walled outpost. The attack had begun.
Shots started to crackle from the cavalry carbines as the sentries in the guard towers engaged the enemy who had suddenly risen from the tall grass, swung legs over their ponies, and raced toward the sleeping outpost. Damien Carmichael ran from his quarters, one hand fumbling with the buttons of his uniform jacket, while the other opened the flap of his service holster. Griffin Stark made the wall ahead of him.
“What’s the situation, Corporal?” Griff asked the guard mount N.C.O.
“About forty, fifty hostiles out there, sir. And … goddamn it, there’s white men with ’em.”
The trumpeter sounded the alarm and the men of Company C spilled out of their barracks, arms at the ready. A stray slug found one of them and he fell, moaning, to be left to the cook and his helpers who served as medical orderlies during combat.
Damien stopped beside his friend. He lifted a pair of field glasses from around his neck and examined their attackers. “Nearly as many whites as Indians out there. You and your friend Thorson were right, Griff. There’s renegades fighting with those braves.”
“Telegraph line’s down, sir,” the telegrapher corporal rushed up to Damien to report.
“Shit!” Damien exploded, then returned the man’s salute. “That stands to reason. They do it every time.”
Arrows and bullets showered the wall, zipped past to thud into the parade ground.
“Damn,” Damien swore. “If they had moved in a bit earlier, some of those savages could have come over the wall and we’d never know until too late. Sergeant,” he called down to the company first sergeant. “Have the men wheel that salute gun up here. And bring some canisters of grape along. And plenty of powder.”
“Yes, sir. On the double, sir.”
Five men ran to the small twelve-pounder cannon that sat at the foot of the flag pole. They attached stout lengths of rope to the metal ‘O’ rings along the trail and began to run with it toward the wall. A howling wave of Indians surged up to the face of the outpost and broke to both sides, a cloud of arrows launched over at the defenders.
A slug smacked into a private some ten feet from Damien. Griff borrowed the corporal’s field glasses and peered into the lightening dawn. “The whites out there are using their heads. They are laying back and giving covering fire. How much of something like this can you take?”
“Not much. We have maybe a week’s su
pply of food, plenty of water; ammunition is up to regulation, but that’s only a hundred-fifty rounds per man. There’s probably twenty charges for the cannon. We do have something new. It’s just arrived, still in the crate. But it could turn the battle to our advantage.”
“What is it, man?” Griff asked as he crouched low to avoid the whizzing arrows and moaning balls of the enemy.
“A Gatling gun. I don’t have a crew trained for it yet.”
“I can run it. We captured a couple from the Yankees and I figured them out.”
“Get to it, then. Break it out, get it assembled and up on the wall.”
Griff grinned at him. “Right away.”
As Griff left the parapet along the front wall, the cannon negotiated the final foot of the dirt ramp and rolled into place.
“Cannoneer,” Damien commanded. “Load a round of grapeshot and fire into the midst of the next charge.”
“Right away, sir,” came the cheery reply.
Burns His Saddle vibrated with the thrill of battle. The Pony Soldiers could not fight locked up in their dirt lodge. The bluecoat men on the top of the buildings that formed one side of the wall died like grasshoppers in a fire, exposed to the long-range bullets of Breat’watte’s men. It was as the white warrior told him it would be. He raised his befeathered and scalp-decorated war lance over his head and howled for another charge.
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