Chapter Eight
“ You’re the injun expert,” Hudspeth informed me sourly. “What do we do now?”
I played for time, studying the doll-size figures on horseback in the center of the magnified circle. Short of a Great Southwestern desert after a brief rain, when everything is in blossom and the sagebrush looks like it’s on fire, there’s nothing more colorful than a large group of Plains Indians girded for war. Many of them half naked, the rest wearing fringed and beaded vests or jackets or the remnants of blue cavalry tunics with the sleeves cut off, the warriors had painted their skin red and black and yellow and white and decorated themselves with shells and beads and the claws and teeth of various predators. The braves from the mission were all armed with rifles, the others with only an occasional firearm among the lances, clubs, and bows and arrows, all of which were lowered as a gesture of peace and good faith.
They wore buckskin leggings and wolf pelts and summer moccasins with fringes that dangled below the bellies of their mounts. Coup sticks trailing eagle feathers and the traditional Cheyenne and Sioux symbols of strength and virility, fashioned of leather and polished wood and rattling at the ends of buckhide thongs knotted to the buffalo bone cross-pieces, stuck up at crazy angles above the heads of the warriors holding them. Here and there the white bulb of a bleached human skull decorated the top of a pike.
One Indian—he who had ridden out alone to greet the leader of the newcomers—wore neither paint nor decoration. Naked to the waist, he was attired only in leggings, moccasins, and a breechclout of what looked like faded red burlap, dyed by a squaw’s patient hand. It was the only splash of color on his person. He rode bareback astride a muscular roan with a white blaze and stockings, whose full sides suggested grain and not grass feeding—hardly an Indian pony. A couple of hundred yards closer and I might have been able to make out the army brand on its sleek rump. The rider was built thick about the chest and upper arms, and his nut-brown flesh glistened with grease or sweat or both. He wore his black hair long. That was as much as I could tell about him from my vantage point. He didn’t look much like a god, but then I’m no authority.
The other chief was decked out in fine buckskins and a feathered headdress whose tail descended below his waist and rested on the back of one of those hide-stripping wooden saddles with which some savages insisted upon torturing their mounts. Strips of ermine dangled in front of his ears, and when he turned once to gesture with a long, fringed arm over the Indians at his back the sunlight shone on a row of polished stones in the headband. It was a sight that kings and Russian grand dukes came halfway around the world to see, only to return home in disappointment when they didn’t. Somehow, though, in the presence of the other’s unadorned simplicity, the visitor’s splendor came off as pompous and a shade ludicrous. I passed the telescope to Pere Jac.
“The one in the headdress. Recognize him?”
The métis was unfamiliar with the instrument. Carefully he placed it against his right eye, waved it back and forth a little, settled down finally, and sat motionless for about a minute. Then he returned the glass to me.
“His name is Many Ponies,” he said. “He used to trade with the métis before the wars. Some of the Miniconjou Sioux elected to follow him at the time of the breakup following Custer’s death. The last I heard of him he was in Canada.”
“He’s back.”
Jac went on. “Tall Dog, also a Miniconjou, is there as well. I was told he had retired to the Standing Rock reservation. Also Broken Jaw, a Cheyenne warrior, and Blood on His Lance, who was a sub-chief under the great Oglala Crazy Horse. The others I do not know.”
“That’s all right. That’s enough.”
“So what do we do?” repeated the marshal.
“Why ask me?” I swung the glass back to him. The movement startled him. He jumped, then grabbed the instrument with both hands. “You’re the ramrod in this outfit.”
“You’ve fought injuns. I never been closer to one than a cigar store.”
“I shot at a few. That’s not the same as fighting them.”
“It’s close enough for me.”
“While we are arguing,” Pere Jac put in, “I suggest that we get down behind this hill before they see us against the horizon.”
“Congratulations,” I told him. “You just became our new Indian expert.”
We wheeled our horses and withdrew below the crest of the rise. There we dismounted and squatted to confer, holding onto the animals’ reins in the absence of a place to tether them. We kept our voices low, which was ridiculous, considering the distance that separated us from the Indians at the mission. Fear does strange things to people.
“It is obvious that one of us must go back for the soldiers while the rest remain here to keep an eye on the Indians.” Jac took out his stubby pipe and sucked air through it noisily. “The question is, which of us shall it be?”
We exchanged glances for a while, but no one seemed inclined to volunteer. There was no telling what kind of reception awaited the one who returned to the fort alone. Ghost Shirt, however, was something on which we could count. At length the métis shrugged and plucked a handful of stiff new grass from the ground at his feet. He spent some time sorting through the blades, decided on three, discarded the others, then made a show of clearing his throat, like the foreman of a jury milking his moment in the sun before delivering the verdict.
“We will draw straws. The holder of the short straw will go.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it.”
“Why not?” Hudspeth demanded. “It seems fair enough.”
“That’s why I don’t like it.”
Jac shuffled the bits of stubble in such a way that we couldn’t see what he was doing, and held out a fist from the top of which the ends barely protruded.
Hudspeth selected the first one and held it up. It was about two inches long. His breath came out in a sigh.
I stared at the two remaining until the breed began to show signs of impatience—which, taking into account his natural stoic disposition, should give some idea of how long I stalled. I took a deep breath and plucked out the one on the right. It fell just short of an inch.
We looked at Jac. He was enjoying his role. He kept us in suspense for as long as was prudent, and when Hudspeth’s nose began to flush he opened his fist. A straw an inch and a half long lay in the hollow of his palm.
“I told you I didn’t like it.” I threw down the evidence and got up to remount. “I’ll be back when I can.” The bay grunted in protest when I swung a leg over its back, as if it knew where we were going.
“Just a minute.” Hudspeth took hold of the bit chain. “If you bring the army and they help us catch Ghost Shirt, how are we going to get him away from them to hang in Bismarck?”
I leaned forward and, taking his wrist between thumb and forefinger, removed his hand from the bit. “You worry too much,” I said. “We’ll never live to see Bismarck again anyway.”
“Good luck, Page.” Pere Jac’s expression was blank.
I could see he really meant it, so I choked back the response I had all set, nodded curtly, and laid down tracks east.
The rain in Dakota, I learned, doesn’t stop during the wet season. It just moves on, leaving the places where it’s been to dry and cake and the crops to wither while it washes away what’s left of the green that’s already given up waiting for it elsewhere. The storm that had hit us after leaving Fort Ransom was in the north now, a black crescent on the skyline looking like the charred fringe of a towel left too close to the fire, dumping water over the higher country up around Fargo. The prehistoric lake bed that stretched from the Drift Prairie to the Red River took the runoff and channeled it into the James River. At that point the lazy stream we had crossed a couple of hours earlier became a snarling torrent forty feet wide at its narrowest point and swift enough to sweep downriver a horse and rider faster than a man can curse. I no longer recognized it.
I wasted half a day riding up and
down in search of a place to cross. A mile north of the spot where we’d come over, the river broadened into a lake, which was no good at all, and the farther south I rode the swifter grew the current. It was late afternoon when I gave up and turned back toward the mission, and damned near sundown before I galloped up the rise where I’d left my companions.
At least I thought it was where I’d left them. Those swells all looked alike when there was no one there. I called their names a couple of times, being careful to keep my voice from carrying as far as the mission. When after two or three minutes there was no answer, I rode to the top of the hill and looked around. There was the mission on the skyline, looking to be about the same distance away as it had been that morning. There was no sign of life on any of the other hills in the area. I turned and cantered back below the crest for a second look.
It was the spot, all right. Dismounting, I saw that the ground was chewed up where our horses had stood fidgeting and pawing the earth while we squatted talking, and in a bare spot I saw the pointed toe of a footprint that could only have been made by one of Hudspeth’s fancy Mexican boots. As I bent over to study it, something cold and slimy slithered up my spine. I mounted again and spurred the bay back to the crest. What I saw there made me reach back automatically to grip the butt of my revolver.
On the ridge about three hundred yards away, a solitary rider sat facing me astride a roan horse with no saddle. The figure’s hair hung down in plaits on either side of its naked chest. It was holding a rifle upright with the butt resting upon one thigh; a cloth of some sort drooping from its barrel and stirring ever so slightly in the minimal breeze. I was only dimly aware that this was Pere Jac’s beloved calico shirt. The Indian looked as if he had been there for hours, which was impossible, since I’d just looked in that direction a few minutes before and seen nothing. The slimy thing crawled back down my backbone.
“Page Murdock.” Warped and distorted by distance, the unfamiliar voice was felt rather than heard, stroking my eardrums in such a way that it set my teeth on edge. “You have the choice of dying in the mission with your friends or dying out here alone. I await your answer.”
Chapter Nine
I waited until the words died away before, slowly, as if a sudden movement might spook my game, I squeaked my Winchester from its scabbard and raised it to my shoulder. Ghost Shirt didn’t stir. I wondered if he thought his flag of truce might save him, or if he really believed-he was indestructible. If so, his brilliance was overrated. Allowing for distance and the updraft from the hills that rolled between us, I drew a bead on a point just above his left shoulder and took a deep breath, half of which I planned to let out before I squeezed the trigger. Still he didn’t move.
But something did.
Thirty feet in front of my nose, the ground heaved and spewed up a dozen black-faced braves on horseback. They exploded over the crest of the next ridge, teeth bared white—or as close to white as Indians’ teeth got—against the ebony goo they had smeared over themselves from hairline to breechclout, Spencer repeaters braced one-armed against their biceps in that impossible-to-hit-anything way they had. At that range, however, they couldn’t all miss. They were all over me in two blinks, stabbing the bay’s bit before it could rear, snatching the carbine out of my hands, jerking my Deane-Adams from its holster. I was overpowered by the stench of hot sweat and bad grease, of lathered horseflesh and paint. No hands reached for me. They didn’t have to. I was ringed in.
They were Cheyenne. One, a brave with a nose like a razor and a lightning-streak of yellow slashing diagonally across his blackened features, wore one of those human-finger necklaces for which the tribe was notorious, its macabre pendants brown and wrinkled and shrunken so that the nails stood out like claws. They didn’t look as if they had ever strung a bow or braided beads into a horse’s mane or, to put an even grimmer face on it, drawn a needle through an embroidery hoop or followed a passage in a family Bible. Interspersed among these were tiny medicine bags that looked to have been fashioned from human flesh. The ornament carried strong medicine, too strong for an ordinary warrior. But there was only one chief in Ghost Shirt’s crowd, so he must have been no more than a sub-chief or a brave who had proved himself in many battles. Possibly a medicine man. In any case, he seemed to be the leader of this band, as my Winchester was turned over to him without hesitation by the Indian who had seized it. He eyed it lovingly, passed a hand over the engraving on the action, then, decisively, thrust his own dusty Spencer into the hands of the brave nearest him and tucked the carbine under his arm. He grunted a terse order. The point of a broad-bladed knife was thrust inside my left nostril and hands rooted around inside my saddle bags. At length my cartridge boxes were produced and tossed to the ranking warrior. The sharp scent of steel tickled the hairs inside my nose. I controlled myself with an effort. A sneeze now could have cost me a substantial amount of blood, to say nothing of what a startled Indian might do. Not that I was going to live long enough to see the last of the sun, wallowing now in a blood-red pool behind the fortress on the distant ridge.
Another order was given in guttural Cheyenne and my horse began moving with no encouragement from me. In a mass we struck out toward the mission. I glanced in that direction, but Ghost Shirt was no longer there. Having served his purpose as bait, he had left the situation in the hands of his subordinates and returned to his stronghold. Such confidence in the obedience of his warriors bordered on arrogance.
Up close, the wall of the mission turned out to be constructed of weathered stone, tightly mortared and forming a barrier nearly twenty feet high around the buildings inside. Three decades or more ago it had served as a place of refuge for the settlers who had dwelled nearby in farmhouses long since reduced to their foundations by fire and the elements. A few pulls on the great bell that swung in the central tower and the Mormons would come streaming in for protection from Indians, blizzards, or religious persecution, three of the many dangers they had learned to live with in order to uphold their creed. I wondered which of the three had brought an end to it all in this lonely quarter, or if they had simply thrown everything over to join Brigham Young’s exodus to Utah. Whatever the reason, only this fire-blackened, bullet-chipped fortress remained as a monument to the brotherly existence they preached.
The gate was made of logs bound and pegged together vertically, all but petrified with age. It swung open in one piece to admit us, then was secured by a handful of Indians who lowered another log into steel cleats on either side of the opening, much as at Fort Ransom. The ground inside the enclosure had been pounded over the years into a dust fine as face powder and loosened by the activity of the present occupants to form a layer two inches deep. It puffed up around the horses’ fetlocks in reddish clouds that drifted across the compound like gunsmoke across a busy battlefield. Fresh rope ladders hung from the catwalks on all four walls, atop which Sioux and Cheyenne sentries stood watching me, their eyes hostile slits in faces dried and cracked beyond their years by constant exposure to sun, wind, and grit.
There were women and children in the compound, which surprised me, although there was no reason it should have. Sex and age were of little consequence among a people for whom hardship and danger were a way of life. It didn’t matter to the children running naked, their ribs showing beneath their brown hides, that there was a war on, nor to the stout squaws who hardly glanced at me as they sat cross-legged in the hot sun chewing on large squares of buckskin to make soft leggings for their braves or lugged clay pots of water and baskets of dried buffalo chips to their cooking fires. They were doing the work their mothers and grandmothers had done before them, all the way back to when the Earth-Shaker fashioned the first woman out of clay to mate with and free the first brave for hunting and making weapons.
Except for the stone bell tower, now in the early stages of decay, the structures inside the compound were made of less sturdy stuff than the wall. Soddies mostly, with here and there a long, low adobe building scattered among them, its
thatched roof sagging in the middle like a Conestoga wagon, they were ramshackle affairs slapped together more for shelter during the hours of sleep than for actual living purposes, and had begun falling apart twenty years before. Cones of buffalo hide strewn about the grounds offered mute testimony to some Indians’ contempt for the white man’s idea of quarters.
The foundation of the tower—which, if the weatherbeaten wooden cross pegged into the mortar on the front of it was any indication, had once been the mission chapel—was square, sunk below the ground, and entered by means of a shallow flight of earthen steps leading down to a low plank door. Rough hands yanked me from my horse and half-carried, half-dragged me to the top of the steps. Teetering on the edge, I was patted all over for hidden weapons, relieved of the knife I carried in my right boot, and shoved head first down the stairwell. I sailed through the air just long enough to experience that eerie weightless sensation you get when falling in a dream, then, suddenly, slammed into a great blank wall of nothing.
Someday, when they build a home for retired lawmen, they’ll have to provide a row of chairs in which those fortunate few who survive the profession may sit while they stare at the wall. I had scarcely gotten rid of the headache I’d acquired last winter when a wife-murderer I’d been escorting back to Helena had parted my hair with a rock during an unguarded moment, and now, as I swam to consciousness through a pool of thick, multicolored glue, I wondered why Grant and Lee were fighting the Battle of the Wilderness, complete with thundering twelve-pounders and rattling musketry, all over again inside my skull.
I was flat on my back on what had to be the hardest stone floor this side of Yuma prison. My first act, after the necessary vomiting, was to raise a gentle hand to the top of my head to see if anything was leaking out. A white-hot bolt of pure pain shot straight down to my toes when the tip of my index finger stroked a lump the size of a cobblestone in a nest of matted, sticky hair. After that I quit. At least this time my skull was in one piece. That was a relief, even if whatever was locked up inside it was pounding to get out. Nobody ever told me if we’re allowed more than one cracked head to a lifetime.
Stamping Ground Page 8
