Wagon Train West

by Lauran Paine

  Kit’s mouth hardened beneath the slanting shade of his hat brim. “Dammit, Powers, go warn your people!”

  Suddenly he felt the bone-crushing grip of the older man on his arm. Startled, he half turned. Powers’ face was twisted with an expression of fascination and dread. He released Kit’s arm and pointed wordlessly, staring. Kit swore at him. Then Powers overcame his alarm and wheeled away, spurring his horse needlessly. Kit sat back then, staring coldly at the streaming men of war, a tumult of fierce satisfaction hammering through his veins. Now they’d find out whether frontiersmen thought they saw or smelled Indians where there weren’t any.

  Lige came riding like the wind. He cut flashingly between two wagons, ignoring the indignant shouts of the drovers, and slammed his horse into a sliding halt beside Kit.

  “Did you tell ’em to corral?”

  “Not yet. They’re up to something, Lige. If it was simply to fight, they’d’ve hit us hard before this.”

  Lige’s eyes narrowed, looking at the far distant horsemen. His jaw muscles rippled excitedly. Riders careening down the length of the train diverted his attention for a moment. He smiled savagely, gloatingly.

  “Owgh! Now they’re getting scairt to death, Kit. Look at ’em.”

  Kit did. He saw several men loping toward him. Powers was in the lead. He growled in annoyance, “They go from one extreme to the other, Lige. Better get back over to your lads. I’ll have Powers corral the wagons pretty quick.”

  Lige was reluctant. “Pass me word of what’s up, Kit.”

  Kit nodded, and Lige trotted back the way he had come. The swirl of riders brought dust with them. Kit looked at Powers when the wagon boss was close. “You’d best corral ’em now, I reckon.” He said it quietly, and several of the emigrant men drew a thin measure of confidence from his calmness. Powers sent a man back with the order, then faced Kit again.

  “The forward scouts say there’re a hundred of ’em.”

  Kit looked back. The Indians, closer now, were unmoving, presenting a long single rank of warriors blocking the progress of the train. They stretched from the forest on one side of the long, narrow valley to the trees on the other side. There were at least a hundred of them. He squinted, riding slowly with the emigrants on both sides of him, silent and watchful.

  Powers spoke in a charged, sharp way. “A hundred guns! Lord!”

  “Damn their guns,” Kit snorted. “They’re lined out like that to tell you that you can’t go a step farther across Dakota territory. You’re lucky. There must be a wise head among ’em. They’re being made to warn you first … fight you second. Well, what’ll I tell ’em? You’re going on or turning back?”

  The men said nothing. Kit turned irritably toward the wagon boss, scowling. “Well?”

  “We’ve got to go on, Kit,” Powers said in a subdued, strained voice.

  Kit looked at the other men. They were just as awed and just as determined as Powers was. He drew in a deep breath that was like bitterroot in his throat.

  “Then you’re going to have one hell of a fight with them. Mark that down and remember it.”

  They continued to ride after the train had stopped. The thin voices of women and children came softly over the valley to them from the wagons. Kit swung for a look at Lige’s men. They were converging, as he and his party were, toward the front of the inward-swinging lead wagon. There was need now for cessation of thinking. From now on he would have to move and speak like an Indian, with instinct and native shrewdness, with wile and diplomacy and eloquent gestures, for no Indian used words where sign language served better. He knew their ways well. Once the war leader, Hump, had said, “In all this land there is no white man whose blood is like our blood … but Ohiyesa.”

  Kit thought back to that with a cold smile. Ohiyesa—The Winner—his Dakota name. Time would tell whether he was a winner or not.

  Chapter Three

  The Dakotas were startling—the way the golden sun struck the line of motionless horsemen. Kit reined up when the two groups, his and Lige’s, converged like a spearhead where the front wagon had been. Powers sat erect, just looking. Lige was moving his jaws rhythmically, his leathery face riveted on the nearest Indian.

  Kit studied the symbols, the zigzag marks on faces, the drawings daubed brilliantly on horses, the tall coupsticks and lances. “Oglalas,” he said aloud to no one in particular. “The fightingest Dakotas there are. Goddamn!”

  As though brought back to the present by Kit’s blasphemy, the wagon boss spoke without looking around. “There’s a lot of them,” he said needlessly.

  Lige grunted. It was a habit he had acquired from these same Indians. “Kit, look there. The old fellow riding toward us.”

  Kit watched three men detach themselves from the long rank of barbaric warriors and ride forward at a walk. He also heard Powers say something under his breath and turned. “You stay here. Send a man back to the wagons with orders for no one to make a hostile move, then you stay up here and watch. Keep the boys here pacified. One wrong move and all hell’s going to bust loose. Come on, Lige.”

  He rode as slowly as the Dakotas were doing, with as much dignity as he could summon. His mind was dark with unbidden thoughts, for if the emigrants wouldn’t turn back, and the Dakotas refused to let them go on—there was going to be war.

  The Indians stopped and only one kept coming. He wasn’t a tall, bronzed warrior. Instead, he was a small, stocky figure in a chalk-white fringed war shirt and with a buffalo-horn bonnet on his aged head. His face was creased with years and exposure and his eyes were deep in his head—black, obsidian eyes, as level and impassive as the dark cliffs that lay behind them.

  Kit spoke softly with a ringing sound. “White Shield Owner, Lige, sure as I’m a foot tall.”

  The Indian stopped a hundred feet away, leaned a little, then sat back again. He looked doubtful until Kit was closer, then he looked incredulous, disbelieving. “Ohiyesa,” he said sharply in his native tongue. “Ohiyesa and Spitter.”

  “White Shield Owner.”

  The old chieftain stared for a long time, then he slid off his horse and squatted on the ground. Lige and Kit did the same. The coal-black eyes were thoughtful. “Are you the leader of these white people?”

  “No,” Kit said, “just their guide.”

  “They can’t come any farther, Ohiyesa. This is sacred ground.”

  “They aren’t going to stop, White Shield Owner. They are going as far as the setting sun.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the old Indian said stubbornly. “They must turn back. Ohiyesa, I’ve had a hard time keeping the men of war back. You know me. I don’t think what is happening will ever be settled with guns and arrows. You’ve heard me say this before. But I can’t hold the young men much longer. Only until after we have spoken, Ohiyesa. After that, I can do nothing. Make them go back.”

  Kit crossed his legs under him. “White Shield Owner, you know me. I speak with a strong heart. I don’t lie.”

  “Owgh,” White Shield Owner grunted dourly. “You are our brother … but I can’t stop the fighting men.”

  “Let the emigrants give you some horses, some whoa-haws, some powder and shot for your muzzleloaders, or some bullets for your soldier guns. Let them pay for crossing, but let them go by. They won’t burn the grass or spoil the creeks.”

  White Shield Owner looked glumly, adamantly at Kit. “It cannot be, Ohiyesa. For two days now we have argued. For two days I have stood almost alone against them. They said I was too old to lead them, that I was a lover of whites, that the white men sent out the first soldiers, and now we will send out the second.”

  “There is no hope, White Shield Owner?”

  “Hope? Yes. I can make the warriors leave them alone if they go back and don’t wait too long. I can promise you that.”

  “Then,” Kit said sadly, “my heart is on the ground.” He wat
ched the old Indian’s face. White Shield Owner stared hard at him for a long moment before he spoke, then he smiled.

  “We are brothers. My brother’s bullet won’t hurt as much as a stranger’s. If we must fight, then it has been decided long ago that it must be so … but we are still brothers.”

  “We don’t have to fight,” Kit said.

  The Dakota chieftain stood up. Kit and Lige got up too. The Indian looked fondly at Kit. “It is written in our hearts, Ohiyesa,” he said. “It has been decided. I have often thought that it might be this way between me and the white men I have hunted and raided and laughed with. Our paths are different, as our hides are.”

  Kit said nothing. In his mind was a pinprick of pain, as though he were seeing an old friend, and a close one, for the last time. There was no way he could make the Indian see his side of it, and the emigrants had signified their determination. He struggled to show the same acceptance White Shield Owner showed. It was hard to do. He felt more sympathy for the Dakotas than he felt for the emigrants.

  “You don’t speak?”

  “What can I say?”

  White Shield Owner inclined his head once approvingly. “You are right. If we can’t tell one another the truth without a forked tongue, then it is better to say nothing.” He looked past Kit to the encircled wagons. His dark gaze was appraising and melancholy at the same time, as though there were two planes to his thoughts. “They can’t be made to go back?”

  “No.”

  There were lines gouged deep on each side of the Indian’s prominent nose. His mouth showed bitterness, but strangely his eyes held an odd gentleness. “Dina sica,” he said softly, still looking at the thirty wagons drawn up for defense. “Dina sica.”

  Kit repeated it, then said it in English. “No good … no good.”

  White Shield Owner turned and sprang onto his horse and held the single rein of his war bridle, looking down at the lean scout. “The men of war have a head for fighting only. It is so with both races. It is no good, Ohiyesa.”

  “Someday there will be peace,” Kit said, raising his arm and pointing vaguely. “Over there.”

  White Shield Owner followed the symbol of the raised arm to the far, purpling distance. He understood and smiled dryly. “Yes, over there … someday. I am sorry.” He turned and rode slowly back where the two warriors waited, his head low on his chest.

  Kit rode back with Lige. He fought against the depth of melancholy that surged through him. It was useless; the grip of poignancy was too strong; the roots went too deep.

  Lige was a profile, nothing else. A profile of hardship scored with experiences rarely pleasant. He was looking straight ahead at the big circle with the animals and people inside, watching them ride back. “Damn,” he said suddenly, fiercely, “I wish I’d never left the Indians.”

  When they got back, Powers and several other men came to see them. Kit faced them with his cloudy glance. “They won’t let you pass. If you won’t turn back, then you’ll have to fight ’em.”

  “Couldn’t you bribe the old devil?” a man asked.

  Kit turned, saw the dark rush of rusty color under Lige’s skin. He handed Lige his reins and motioned. Lige led the horses away with a fiery look, but he said nothing.

  Kit turned back and shook his head. “You can’t bribe them. They do a thing for principle or they don’t do it, but there’s no way around what they make their minds up to.”

  Powers was looking steadily at Kit. “But we’re outnumbered,” he said in a protesting way.

  “Then go back.”

  “We’ve come too far. Besides, if we went back, it wouldn’t help. We’d run into them on another route.”

  It was true, and Kit knew it was. The red man’s domain was an invaded country. Every fighting buck, even the disabled, was rallying, spreading terror and devastation the length of their land. Fighting with every cruelty they knew—and every brutality they could imagine—to throw back the white tide that was rolling onward, like locusts.

  He turned away from the staring faces with a feeling of deep resentment for his own race. The dust was settling with its strong animal odors. He walked to an isolated part of the big circle where some horses drowsed, unmindful of any danger, and until he stopped and gazed at the animals, enjoying their disregard of him, he wasn’t conscious of the girl petting a black mare. She was looking straight at him.

  “You’re the scout, aren’t you?”

  He saw how black her hair was, like an Indian’s. There were deep blue shadows in it. “I’m one of the scouts,” he said, nodding.

  “Those filthy red devils,” she spat out violently.

  It brought him up short. He looked back at her a second time. She was pretty. In fact, she was very pretty. Full-bodied, with the cloth of her long dress drawn tightly over her flank, and the shape of her face well-molded—with large smoky eyes, a pert nose with a small saddle of freckles over its bridge, and a rich mouth over a jutting jaw—made that way now with the fierceness that was in her.

  “They aren’t filthy,” he said with a little spirit.

  Her eyes went through him. “Aren’t they? They’re like animals. You saw what they did this morning. You know what they do to captive women.”

  He began to shake his head in a harassed way as he always did when he met this same colossal ignorance of Indians. “Lady,” he said with terrible patience, “they don’t … do that … to white women. They make them slaves, kill them, or ransom them, but all that other … that’s lies. White man lies. Sure, maybe some buck likes some one white woman, he might attack her, but Dakotas aren’t at all like you’ve been told they are.”

  “You!” she said with a flood of anger. “You are defending them! They’re filthy animals and that’s all they are!”

  “Not defending ’em, lady. I’m trying to explain them is all.” He was rooted to the spot, watching the fury engulf her until her body almost shook. “There’s never only one side to a fight … never.”

  “How about that boy this morning? What about the terrible tortures they inflict on people? What about their sickening pagan rites and their eating of raw meat and drinking warm blood?” She made a sound of deep repugnance.

  “Lady, I just talked to an old Indian I’ve known for seven years. He said the whites sent out the first soldiers and the Indians sent out the second soldiers. That puts it pretty well, I think. This is their country, you know. They were here thousands of years before we were.”

  “This is America!”

  “Well, I reckon it is. But only to us … not to the Indians. They say it is theirs. They’ve been here a long time.”

  “You agree with them?” Her gray glance was withering. He looked into it and squirmed inwardly from the scorn there, but he answered truthfully.

  “Yes, in a lot of ways, I do.”

  “You must be a good friend to them.”

  “I understand them, lady,” he said. “When I see a bronco Indian, I kill him, if I can. That’s the way it is out here. You kill him, or he’ll kill you.”

  “What chance did that boy have this morning?”

  Kit frowned and returned her stare with one just as level and unfriendly, only in his gaze there was no open hostility such as she showed. “None. He didn’t have a chance in the world. He might have thought he did when he rode out there, but he didn’t. He was no more a match for an Indian in Indian country than any of the rest of these people.”

  “What had he ever done to a Sioux … tell me that?”

  “He probably hadn’t even seen a Sioux before,” Kit said, “but other whites have. They’ve shot them on sight for the past ten years. That’s all that matters to the Sioux. The whites are all against them. Then they are all against the whites!”

  “You make it sound like civilized warfare.”

  He grinned at that. “I didn’t know there was such a thing,
” he said dryly. “Any warfare I’ve ever seen hasn’t been what I’d call civilized. Lady, no one knows who fired the first shot now. All we know is that it was fired. Does that make sense to you?”

  “But we can’t treat them like human beings. They aren’t.”

  His irritation returned swiftly. “I don’t see how you can say that. You’ve never sat down with them, listened to them talk, seen them laugh and play pranks on one another.”

  “They’re heathens!”

  Kit shook his head at her. “No, they have a god … I’m not sure he isn’t the same God we’re supposed to believe in, either.”

  She lapsed into silence, looking at him. The black mare was drowsing in the late afternoon sun with her eyes half-closed and her head hanging. He thought it made a picture like that—the nice mare and the girl’s arm thrown across her withers; the smoke gray of her eyes and the fullness of her body; the slight, fading frown on her forehead and the little, defiant droop to the outer corners of her full lips.

  “Will they let us go on?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Her eyes clouded over again swiftly. “Then … what?”

  “Why, I reckon we either go back or fight past them.”

  She regarded his stoical calmness with a puzzled look.

  “You aren’t worried?”

  “Worried? Sure I’m worried, but I’m here and alone. I can’t begin to ride all the way back. Alone, I can’t go ahead either.”