Wagon Train West

by Lauran Paine

  “How?” Powers asked dully. “These people aren’t Indians. They’re farmers.”

  Kit’s eyes glowed with a steady, bright intentness. “Listen, Powers. In country like this you work with nature … you don’t change her. If it takes fighting and working to stay alive, then you fight and work, or you don’t stay alive. It’s damned simple. You get these people around your council fire and tell them what’s got to be done. They either do it or they don’t. If they don’t …” Kit made a knife-slashing gesture over his throat. It was a ruthless reminder of what had happened to the dead man.

  Powers sat slumped. He was lost in thought. He didn’t look up when Lige joined them and hunkered closely beside Kit and spoke Dakota in a low tone.

  “Kit, they’re going to make trouble. They’ve been talking. They say we could have prevented that killing. They even say we might be working with the Indians.”

  Kit listened in silence. He raised his head and cast another long look at the restless emigrant men who were gazing at them, now with faces twisted and ugly. He looked beyond them to the towering escarpment where the Dakota had waylaid the youth. Up above where the pine forest lay, a gray, oily mist was rising from the warming earth, hovering over the purple darkness of the endless trees like a fallen bit of sky. The presence of disaster and tragedy was in the dazzlingly clear air, with its shimmering distances made magically close. All the trouble didn’t lie beyond the ragged circle of thirty Conestogas; it was here as well. Behind Powers, walking now, at least fifty men strode toward them with cruel, vengeful, tensed faces.

  The knot of men came unsteadily, but they came. Kit uncoiled his legs and stood up. He was close beside the shorter, broader figure of Lige Turner. Powers looked up quickly, read their faces, and got up clumsily, with a low sound in his throat like a threatening mastiff. He turned when the emigrant men stopped a scant five feet away.

  “What’s the meaning of this?”

  The dead man’s father, his lips a blue bloodless line and his eyes like old ashes wet with dark rain, stared unseeing past the wagon boss, at Kit and Lige. “Those men … they done that a-purpose. We want ’em.” There was a strong, deep ringing to the voice.

  Kit’s voice was a two-edged knife when he spoke. “I didn’t know that would happen. No one could have foreseen that. Listen to me. You’ve been told for five weeks now that you were going into Sioux country. You’ve been told what would happen if you didn’t keep vigilance all the time. Well, you’re far enough from help now, so the Dakotas can hit you. From now on your lives won’t be worth any more than that fellow’s life was if you don’t form up a fighting force of your own and keep a watch as sharp as an Indian would.”

  “You two scoundrels are with the heathen!” a fiery-faced, hot-eyed man said, taking a resolute step forward.

  Lige made a trilling, Indian sound of warning. Kit could sense the older man’s bunching of muscle. He put a hand out and touched Lige’s arm. “Hold it,” he said, then he stared at the emigrant who had spoken. His voice was soft and ironic.

  “Only a damned fool would say a thing like that. Do you think the Dakotas, or Sioux as you call ’em, would choose between one white man’s scalp and another? If you do, you’re pretty damned ignorant about Indians. They wouldn’t, not now. They’re fighting a war against all white men. You know that, too. You heard it at Independence, and all along the trail, every time we passed other trains.”

  The gray-faced man was beyond reason. He had cause to be. The sight of his son, hairless, his throat a gaping scarlet hole, left him with but one vivid thought frozen into his stunned mind … death. He gathered himself and rocked forward on his toes. Lige caught the slight movement easily, and Kit did, too. He spoke with an icy hardness to his words.

  “I reckon, boys, you’re set on trouble. I’d sort of like that, maybe.” His hand was resting like a talon on his pistol butt. He went on evenly and clearly. “You’re worse than a herd of fools. Well, it’d sort of please me to blow a few of your gutless bellies past your backbones. I never had much patience with men who wouldn’t learn out here. Go ahead … make your rush. We’ll go to hell together.”

  “A lot of us,” Lige said, smiling. “The ones Kit leaves, I’ll salivate. Come on, you cussed lard bellies. What we leave the damned Indians can have. When they get through with you, you’ll wish to hell we’d done it with bullets.”

  The men stopped as though they had run against a wall. They shuffled their feet. None of the unpleasantness had gone out of their faces, though. They were just uncertain, lacking leadership. Powers stood, wide-legged, facing them. He hadn’t said a word. Now he did, his bull-bass voice rumbling with strong passion.

  “Don’t think this’ll help us any, you fools? Whatever you think of these men, we need ’em. I’m convinced they know their trade.”

  The red-faced man spoke swiftly, bitterly. “So do their friends the Injuns,” he said.

  Powers looked down at the emigrant with a flash of fury. “Shut your mouth, Reaves, or I’ll let you do the scouting.”

  Powers saw the short man’s suddenly pale look. He smiled cruelly. “Fact is … from now on, you go out with Turner and Butler every time they ride, damn you. If you find they’re meeting Injuns out there, you can come back and tell us. After that, we’ll know how to deal with ’em.” He looked at the other men. Their first rush of blood was cooling. It showed in their faces and in the bewildered, worried look in their eyes. “Any of the rest of you want to be scouts, too?” He gave them no chance to answer. He had the advantage and knew it. He pushed on relentlessly. “As long as I’m wagon boss, we’ll have no mutinies. We’re bad off … Kit’ll tell you that. We’ve got to hang together.”

  When Powers stopped speaking, the silence was oppressive. Kit hooked his thumbs in the gun belt around his middle and watched the faces. He smiled in a thin, contemptuous way. It was the first time he had ever heard Powers use his given name. It was significant. He looked around at Lige and was surprised to see Lige’s big pistol out and cocked, belly-high. Speaking low, he told Lige to holster it. The old mountain man looked murderous. He put up the gun, though, and relaxed a little.

  Kit faced the emigrants. “Powers and I have talked. I want the best fifty men among you to make into a war party.” He was aware of the wagon boss’ questioning glance and ignored it. “You’re going to have to fight, and it won’t be long. I want to whip us up a little army of our own. We don’t want anyone who’s too Dutch-headed to learn and obey orders. We want the best riflemen among you and the best riders. If you’ll work with Lige and me in this, I think you’ll more’n likely make it through to Fort Collins. If not … I don’t know.”

  “Just how cussed strong are these Indians, anyway?” a man asked in a complaining, garrulous way.

  “Banded together, they could mount a thousand warriors and more. By individual bands and war parties, I reckon they’d have no trouble mustering a hundred or two hundred men of war.”

  A stunned silence settled. The murderous mood was broken by Kit’s words. He drew grim satisfaction from their worried faces.

  “There’s another thing. We’re in a circle here. They don’t like to fight sieges or ride against men who are behind bulwarks. They’re out there, waiting. Now, you can break your circle and head out, or you can stay here and wait.”

  Powers was looking at Kit intently. He appeared very worried. “But hell, we dasn’t stay here. We’ve got to make time.”

  Kit shrugged. “Then strike camp and string ’em out. But if you do, make up a war party of your own, because I’ll lay you a bet they’re waiting for you to break the circle.”

  “You think they’ll attack when we’re all strung out?”

  “I do.” Kit turned to Lige. “What d’you say, pardner?” Lige didn’t speak. He just nodded his head in a bleak and moribund way that was very eloquent.

  The emigrants spoke in low tones among them
selves. It was as though at least half of them were embarrassed over their behavior. Others said nothing, keeping hard and suspicious stares on the two scouts. Powers bent to listen to a skinny, angular man with a great, long, hickory-stocked Pennsylvania rifle that reached to his shoulder. Kit let his breath out softly, so it would make no sound, and his inner feeling of contempt for these farmers was leavened a little with a hard sort of pity. They were like sheep, like children lost in a great forest, hating the trees, and wanting to fight them without seeing it was hopeless.

  Lige tugged at his elbow. “Have ’em pool their powder and ball, then divvy it up.”

  Powers turned with a dark, resolute look. “We’ll string ’em out,” he said. “The men are willing for you to choose among ’em who you reckon’ll be best for the war party.” He turned with a self-conscious frown and waved a thick arm. “Spread out, boys. Get in lines so’s Kit can see you.”

  Kit made the interview brief. He asked the same questions of every man he sized up as promising. “Is your horse strong? Have you plenty of bullets? Is there someone else who can tool your wagon?”

  Those who answered affirmatively he sent after their bullets and horses. The rest he dismissed without a word, then he went over where the wagon boss and Lige were standing. Powers looked forbidding. His small eyes were grimly fixed on the dragging steps and drooping head of the dead youth’s father. He shook himself slightly when Kit spoke.

  “Don’t break up the circle until I’ve got riders out.”

  For a moment Powers said nothing, then he looked up into Kit’s face. “Are you sure? It’s hard to believe they’d attack a train of thirty wagons.”

  Lige was leaning on his rifle, chewing tobacco. He spat with a sharp, explosive sound. “Sure? You can’t be sure of nothing here. I’ll tell you this, though. The good Lord’s been protecting all of us this far. They could’ve struck any time up to now.”

  “At night,” Powers said, with fear and dread thick in the words.

  “No, Dakotas hardly ever fight at night. Oh, a few rambunctious young bucks might try a coup or two, but no Dakota war party’ll hit you at night. They don’t believe a man ought to get killed in the dark. They think he’ll have to stumble around in the dark all the rest of eternity and be unable to find his way to the Sand Hills.”

  “Sand Hills?” Power repeated questioningly.

  “Their heaven,” Kit said. “They call it Odi Maka Cantewaste. Means Happy Hunting Ground, or the Great Sand Hills.”

  The three of them stood watching the activity, none speaking. The emigrants were striking camp. Women and children were stowing iron pots and steel tripods into the big wagons. There was a bustle of motion that stirred up dust. It hung in the air with a hot, acrid odor. Men fumbled at horse and oxen harness, big oaken neck yokes, and chain tugs, sweat-stiff bellybands and britchings. Some dogs, lean and sly eyed, ran among the confusion.

  Someone called out sharply to Powers. He walked away, leaving the scouts alone in their watchful, slouching stance. Lige spat again and shook his head like a wounded buffalo bull.

  “Like children,” he said softly. “Like danged children. Look, here comes your army. Well, they look better on a horse anyway.” He straightened up as Kit watched the straggling riders cross the wagon circle. “I’ll fetch our critters.”

  Kit’s eyes flickered appraisingly over the men. There were over fifty of them, closer to sixty-five. They carried every manner of gun from large-bore buffalo rifles to the slim, almost fragile-looking Kentucky and Pennsylvania muskets. The division was about equal between muzzleloaders and breechloaders. Some men had pistols jammed into their waistbands while others had shell belts around them. Almost all of them had bowie knives. Well, it could be worse. If they’d fight at all, the Indians might get a bellyful.

  He didn’t speak to any of them until Lige came back with their horses. He mounted and leaned on the flat Texas horn of his A-fork saddle. “This is how the Indians do it,” he said, “and we’re going to do it the same way. Lige’ll take half of you and ride on one side of the wagons. I’ll take the other half and ride on the opposite side. We’ll detail about ten men to ride behind the train and send about five to ride up ahead, strung out, so the word can be passed quickly back if the farthest scout sees anything.” He paused, waiting for questions, his eyes roaming over their faces.

  “Now then, if anything happens too fast for you to send back word, or if you’ve got to signal for anything, shoot into the air once. Aside from that there’s to be no shooting at all. And remember this. If one of you goes to sleep on the march, you can be responsible for the scalping—and worse—of every person in this train.” He swung toward Lige and rolled his head sideways toward the emigrant men. “Pick what you want, Lige. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He rode carefully through the turmoil until he found the wagon boss. “You ready to roll them, Powers?”

  “Whenever you think we ought to.”

  Kit nodded curtly. “The only thing that’ll make your farmers into fighters now is experience. They’re ready, and so am I. String ’em out when you want.”

  He reined back and rode to where Lige had divided the mounted men. He could hear Lige laying into them in a hard, flat tone that was almost snarling with its suppressed hostility. He smiled to himself. Lige was like an Indian; he rarely forgave and never forgot.

  Chapter Two

  The sound rose of drovers calling to their teams and spans. With it went the thicker, sturdier sounds of the great wagons creaking out of the protective circle. Horses whinnied and oxen lowed. Men shouted encouragement to their beasts and one another, and the thick dust churned beneath the steel tires.

  Kit waved to Lige and beckoned to the riders, who were a little apart, waiting. They filed out of the broken circle on opposite sides. Kit rode clear of the stinging dust with its strong smells and swung leisurely westward, watching the train form into a long, spaced serpentine, with the loose stock driven a little to one side and to the rear.

  The sounds gradually settled into a dirge of constancy, made up of many small complaints from wheels and creaking tailgates, from the rattling clank of chain tugs to the fluted echoes of men with long goad poles, yelling to their animals.

  Lige, north of the train, waved his hat. Kit waved back, then ran a hard glance over the men closest to him. He called three out and sent them up ahead of the train. They were the frontal scouts—the feelers. Lige sent three more. Kit watched them loping in a swinging arc until they came together, then he sat there watching to see if they would do as he had told them. They did. Two stayed back in front of the lead wagon and the others strung out farther afield and ahead. He felt satisfied so far, but it didn’t show in his face.

  The land stretched new and clear as a diamond around them. There was no trail. Where the big wheels ground into the earth, they were marking out twin ruts that would remain to guide others long after their passing was a memory. Following the long valleys, they hoped to avoid the narrow passes and the forests where immense trees, as closely packed as hairs on the head, would balk them.

  Kit knew this country, but in a general way—in the way that a man on a horse would know it. To a mounted man, it offered no serious obstacle. To these grinding behemoths with their hind wheels taller than a man afoot, it offered a hundred insurmountable obstacles: forests, cliffs, spring-swollen rivers, and uncharted miles of sameness where the grass was stirrup high to a mounted man. And Dakotas—men like White Shield Owner and High Backbone—these were called “hump” warriors, and they were as fierce and courageous, as brutal and clever, as any white man who would meet them. They were fanatics like There Is a Burning Sky and Big Eagle (he of the perpetual squint and weak, failing eyesight).

  Kit thought of the times he had laughed and hunted with Dakotas, of the times he had hidden in dread from them. Of all the things he had ever done, what he was doing now was the most foolhardy. At lea
st, in the trapping days when the Indians had been stirred up, the mountain men had discreetly laid low and waited it out. Not any more.

  Emigrants came streaming endlessly. They choked the trails and dammed up the highways with their wagons and herds. They overran the frontier settlements and burst out like blind mice, tooling westward into the face of—they didn’t know what. It was a crazy, irrational thing, but they did it, and those who hung back shook their heads. When the tales of disaster and bloodcurdling tragedy came filtering back, there were always legions who nodded and said, “I knew it’d happen. I told you so, consarn ’em, the idjits.”

  Kit thought the things he had often thought and kept his eyes—like an Indian’s—far-roving, never still, prying and suspicious, and always moving. The hours went by, and the sun hesitated overhead. Powers rode out to him and reined in alongside. His face was oily with sweat, his eyes troubled under the low brim of his hat.

  “Dast we stop for nooning?”

  Kit shook his head. It pleased him a little, too. As Lige had said, these people didn’t know what hardship really was. “No.” Just that and no more. He might have been on the verge of saying more. Instead of speaking, though, he stiffened suddenly.

  From one of the coves that led into the shadowy gloom of the forested slope westward, riders were coming. They were a long way off, possibly a mile, but no one who had trained himself so that even in sleep he was inwardly coiled like a tight spring would ever mistake identifying them—Dakotas!

  “Powers, alert the people,” he said softly. Then he reined away and rode up beside a tall, gaunt man with a flinty look in his weathered face. “Ride around to the other party. Tell them there are Sioux up ahead. Ride, dammit!”

  In shock, the emigrant shot a startled glance at Kit’s face. He saw enough, although he hadn’t seen any Indians. He rode swiftly, making an ungainly caricature on a big horse. Kit went back over to where Powers was squinting, leaning forward a little in his anxiety. The wagon boss’ hand was white where it held the saddle horn, gripping the leather-covered wood. Kit stared hard at the distant, vague images pouring down across their path far ahead. He saw the forward scouts reel back and break over into a headlong race back toward the wagons. They seemed to move with maddening slowness. He wondered that the Indians hadn’t fired on the scouts. There was something contemptuous in the silent way they filed down across the trail ahead.