“I sure rue the day I brought White Bird here,” Barrone said gloomily. “A ’breed ain’t got no chance in this country. The whites won’t take ’em and neither will the Injuns unless they live the Injun way. And there’s no future in being an Injun. The Army’s gonna chase ’em this summer till their tails are dragging.” He wiped a hand across his mouth, then he said: “The thing is, I don’t want my kids living like Injuns and I ain’t gonna stand still for it.”
For an instant Staley was tempted to tell Barrone that he wanted to marry Tally. But this was not the time. He had to talk to Tally first.
He went on to the corral and saddled the buckskin, ignoring the boys. He mounted and said: “I’ll be by again sometime, Louie. So long.”
“So long,” Barrone said.
Staley rode south. When he looked back a few minutes later, he saw Barrone and his sons riding west. Staley did not look at them again until he reached the crest of the ridge. By that time the Barrone riders were three dots far up the valley.
Staley topped the ridge and rode far enough down the south slope to be hidden from Barrone and his boys. He dismounted, loosened the cinch, let the reins drag, then sprawled on the grass to wait for Tally.
Chapter Three
Tally came racing over the crest of the ridge. She rode a bay mare bareback, her calico dress pulled far up on her brown legs. She paused a moment, saw Staley, and came down the slope in a headlong run. She skidded to a stop and slid to the ground.
Staley got to his feet and grinned at her. He began: “Well, you sure …” And she threw herself at him. Her arms went tight around him, and she buried her face against his chest.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you,” she said in a muffled voice. “I wanted to, but I didn’t dare. They’d have killed you.”
“I got that notion,” he said.
She threw her head back and looked at him. “Take me away, Walt. I’ll go anywhere with you. I’ll do anything. I don’t care. Just take me away.”
Staley stood motionless. They had never done anything more than hold hands last summer and fall. He’d kissed her when he left, but it hadn’t been much of a kiss. Now she was gripping the front of his buckskin shirt, begging him to take her away. She hadn’t said a word about getting married. Maybe it didn’t make any difference.
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “There’s something we better talk about. I ain’t one to settle down. I ain’t one to work hard and save money, neither. I like to work a little here and a little there and drift around, maybe just sleep under the trees and fish and hunt and not work at all until I have to. I guess most folks would say I was just plain shiftless.”
“I don’t care,” Tally cried. “I told you I’d go anywhere and do anything. I can’t stay here any longer.”
“Why?”
She released her grip on his shirt, turned, and walked away. She wiped her eyes and for a moment she just stood, staring down the draw. Then she faced him. “I didn’t intend to throw myself at you, Walt. No man likes that, I guess, but you’re the only decent man I know. Every day since the weather warmed up a little I’ve been watching for you, and then when you did come, I couldn’t say a word to you.”
“I still don’t savvy why you can’t stay here,” Staley said. “You’ve kept house for your pa for two years. I don’t see …”
“Oh Walt, you know what’s happening. This is the summer of an Indian war. The Cheyennes are going right along with the Sioux, though they don’t have as good a reason to fight. I’m half Indian. I’m not ashamed of it, but I can’t and won’t live like an Indian. I lived with a white family when I went to school and I worked for my room and board. Pa paid a little, but most of it I earned. I know there’s something better than living like a squaw.”
“You ain’t living like a squaw,” Staley said. “I still don’t see …”
“You saw how my brothers are. They’re crazy, but they didn’t get that way by accident. They’re sick of living between two worlds. They say they’d rather be Indians and die like men than get kicked around the way ’breeds are, so they’re going to join a Cheyenne band. There’s a man named Big Elk they’ve been talking to. He’s been by here a dozen times in the last month.”
“Your pa said the Indians don’t stop and palaver like they used to when your mother was alive.”
“That’s right. But they do ride by, and Bill and Joe sneak out and talk to them. Pa doesn’t know that.” She came close again and laid her hands on Staley’s arms. “Walt, they’ve promised Big Elk he can have me. I told them I’d kill myself before I’d live with an Indian, but they just laugh at me. They say a squaw doesn’t have any choice. To them I’m a squaw. That’s why you’ve got to take me away.”
He stared thoughtfully at her. The boys might turn Indian. Half-breeds often found their true home among their red relatives. The Indian way of life with its freedom and adventure appealed to many young half-breeds. But for Joe and Bill to trade their sister off to an Indian as if she were a filly that belonged to them was another matter.
“Tally,” he said finally, “I don’t think they’ll do it. They’re just talking, that’s all. Your pa wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Pa!” She said the word with biting contempt. “He can’t stop them. He thinks he can still beat them like he’s always done, but he can’t any more. They’re men, and aren’t going to forget things he’s done like hitting Bill today. They hate him, Walt.”
“I got the idea they did,” he said.
“They’re going to kill him,” she said. “I don’t know when or how. I don’t think they know themselves. But when the time comes, they will.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t you see, Walt? You’ve got to take me away.”
“Did you tell Louie what you’ve told me? About them killing him?”
“I told him, Walt, but he doesn’t listen. I mean, he listens, but he doesn’t hear. He doesn’t think they’ll do anything. He says what you just said, that they’re only talking. He says when they get older and figure out that the ranch is going to be theirs someday, they’ll act different.”
Her fingers dug into his arms. “They won’t, Walt. He doesn’t even know his own boys.” Suddenly she seemed to wilt as if she had given up. “I shouldn’t be asking you to take me away. I don’t have any hold on you. It’s just that I thought you liked me a little.”
“I do,” he said quickly. “Today, while we were eating dinner, I thought that you were just the kind of woman I need for a wife.”
She smiled for the first time this day.
“I am a woman,” she said. “I’m seventeen, you know. I’d like to be your wife even if my skin isn’t white.”
“Tally, that doesn’t make any difference.”
She shook her head. “Don’t lie to me, Walt. It makes a lot of difference. Our children will be quarter Indian, and that’s enough to show. You’d be ashamed of them just like Pa’s ashamed of us. I’m his housekeeper. The boys ride for him. That’s all we are to him. He doesn’t pay us a nickel.”
“I don’t think he …” Staley stopped. He didn’t really know how Louie Barrone felt toward his children. Maybe Tally did. “Look. You go back to your place. All we can do is to hope nothing will happen for a while.”
“You mean you … you won’t take me?”
“Not today. I haven’t got a job, or money, or a place to take you. But just as soon as I can, I’ll come for you and we’ll get married, all fit and proper. I wouldn’t want it any other way, Tally.”
“I see,” she said listlessly, and turned away. “Good bye, Walt.”
He caught her by a shoulder and turned her back to face him. “You’ve got to believe me, Tally. I’ll come for you. I’d take you now if I had any place to leave you. But I don’t. I don’t even have any relatives.”
“I understand,” she said.
But he knew she d
idn’t. He pulled her to him and kissed her roughly.
“One more time, Tally … I will come for you.”
“I’ll be here,” she said. “I don’t have any other place to go.”
She ran to her mare, mounted, and rode away, head down. She was crying. He watched her until she dropped over the ridge. Then he turned to his buckskin and swung into the saddle.
It was a hell of a courtship, he told himself as he rode slowly down the slope. He knew less about white women than he did red ones, and Tally knew nothing about either white or red men. All she had was a woman’s intuition and the terrible fear that she would be turned over to an Indian brave.
He had almost reached the bottom of the valley when he noticed the tracks of a number of horses, unshod ones, headed south. He followed the tracks for a time. He found no flowing water in the creekbed in the bottom of the draw, but the dirt was soft.
Stepping down, he kneeled beside the tracks and studied them. There were eight braves in the party and he judged they had made these tracks before noon. If he hadn’t stopped at Barrone’s ranch for dinner, he might be dead by now.
He mounted and rode south, his gaze sweeping the ridge line south of him. He judged he was about fifteen miles from Fort Laramie. The chances looked better than good that the war party was between him and the fort, and he couldn’t go back to Barrone’s. What the hell should he do?
Then he remembered the Army hay camp on the north prong of Squaw Creek. It would be only three or four miles from here. He rode toward Squaw Creek.
Chapter Four
Staley reached the hay camp late in the afternoon, his shadow falling far behind him. Brown haystacks dotted the valley. He was riding directly into the sun, and even with his hat brim pulled low over his eyes, he could not see clearly very far ahead of him.
Suddenly two of the brown mounds on his right became log buildings, not haystacks. He reined toward them, and saw that one was the house where the soldiers lived, the other a stable. Several soldiers were lounging in front of the house, all standing up and watching him approach except one, who sat near the far end, leaning against the wall, whittling.
Staley dismounted and let the reins drag. He said, “Howdy,”and waited.
The soldier at the end of the building kept on whittling. The rest just stood and stared. Staley’s face turned red, but then another soldier appeared in the doorway, a young fellow about twenty-two or -three, well built and good-looking.
“Howdy,” the young soldier said. He held out his hand. “I’m Dave Allison.”
“Walt Staley.” He liked Allison’s handshake and the way his gray eyes met his own. He said: “I figured to spend the night here.”
“Glad to have you,” Allison said, motioning to one of the soldiers. “Staley, meet Johnny Morgan. He’s my bunky.”
“Howdy, Mister Staley.” Morgan came forward eagerly, hand extended.
This one was big, as tall as Allison and much heavier, but he bulged in the wrong places. He’s all blubber, Staley thought, and then he realized the soldier was young, hardly more than a boy. He might have muscles under that baby fat.
Staley shook hands with three others who moved forward indifferently—ordinary, run-of-the-mill soldiers who likely had joined the Army so they would not have to worry about where their next meal came from. Allison called them Al Cady, Ben Plunkett, and Nelse Luckel. They might as well have been Tom, Dick, and Harry. But Allison was different. So was the man sitting with his back to the wall.
“Put your horse in the corral,” Allison said. “You can mess with us. We can’t offer you much of a menu, but we’ve got plenty of what there is.”
“Ain’t you gonna introduce your new friend to me?” the sitting man asked.
He didn’t look up. He didn’t miss a stroke with his knife. Long feathery splinters floated to the ground. He had good muscle control, and Staley could not miss the hostility in his tone. This one was trouble.
Johnny Morgan looked scared. Cady, Plunkett, and Luckel wore sly grins, as if they expected a bit of entertainment.
“Well, Pete,” Allison said coolly, “I didn’t see any sense in introducing you. You’re never interested in anybody but yourself.”
The whittler laughed as he stood up and tossed away the stick. “Now that ain’t rightly true, Dave, and you know it. I’m interested in Madame Fifi’s girls, especially that purty little Christine … Oh, I’m sorry, Johnny. I keep forgetting how mushy you are about her. But, hell, I can’t help it if she likes me.”
Johnny Morgan’s face turned red. A pulse started to pound in his forehead. But he didn’t move. Staley glanced at Morgan, then at Pete, and decided that the fellow was a fighter as well as a bully. He was of only average height, but he had wide shoulders and thick arms, with a bullet head atop a short, corded neck. His face gave him away: cauliflower ears, flat nose, scars around his eyes and mouth, all the marks of dozens of fights that he had probably won because hitting him would be like slamming a fist into the wall of a house.
“All right, Pete,” Allison said. “I’ll introduce you. Pete Risdon, meet Walt Staley.”
Risdon held his pocket knife in his right hand, the long blade open. His pale blue eyes raked Staley’s tall body, from his battered hat with the Sioux bullet hole in the crown, then down his buckskin shirt and pants to his beaded moccasins.
“Howdy, Staley,” Risdon said with cold insolence. “You look like one of them plainsmen we hear about.”
“You might call me that,” Staley agreed. “You look like one of Uncle Sam’s soldiers who’s been eating hardtack so long his gut’s turned into one long, hard pipe.”
Risdon laughed delightedly. “That’s about it, mister. I’ve always wondered about you plainsmen. You been living with the Indians this winter?”
“That’s right,” Staley said. “I wintered with the Crows.”
“Let him alone, Pete,” Allison said. “He just got here. He’ll be riding along in the morning.”
“Maybe he’ll be riding along tonight,” Risdon said. “I don’t like plainsmen. They ruin the Indians. Live with ’em. Sleep with ’em. Eat with ’em. Make the redskins think they’re as good as we are.”
“Let him alone,” Allison said. “He’s staying tonight. You’re not running him off.”
Staley saw that this was between Risdon and Allison, a feud of long standing that had never come to a showdown. He watched Risdon turn his head just enough to look at Allison, caught the calculating glint in his pale eyes, and sensed that Risdon wasn’t at all sure he could take Allison. Not being sure, he hadn’t pushed the feud to a finish.
“Well, now, Dave,” Risdon said, “maybe we’d better let the corporal decide whether he stays or not.” Slowly Risdon’s head turned on his great neck until his gaze raked Staley again. “So you lived with the Crows. Had a squaw keep you warm all winter, huh?”
“He did better than you did,” Allison said. “I didn’t see any squaws keeping you warm.”
Risdon grinned. “Now that ain’t right, Dave boy. I could have got a squaw, but, hell, they stink. Of course a feller like Staley here wouldn’t notice ’cause he stinks so bad he couldn’t smell the squaw.”
Staley let out a yell that sounded like an Indian war whoop. He lunged at Risdon, yanking his knife from his scabbard before he completed his first step. He held it in front of him, hand weaving, sunlight glittering on the bright steel.
Risdon back pedaled. He dropped his pocket knife, stumbled over a chunk of dirt, and sprawled flat on his back. Staley dropped on him. His knees slammed into Risdon’s belly, driving the wind out of his lungs in a wheezy sigh.
Staley’s knife point pressed against Risdon’s throat hard enough to draw a trickle of blood. A man ran toward them from the stable, shouting: “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Stop him somebody! Allison, stop him!”
But neither Allison nor anybody
else moved to stop Staley. Blood trickled down Risdon’s neck. He froze, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
“I was aiming to gut him,” Staley said, “but maybe cutting his throat would be better.”
“No use dirtying up your knife, is there, Staley?” Allison asked.
The man from the stable tugged at Staley’s shoulder.
“I’m Corporal Jones,” he said. “Corporal Jones. Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him, I say.”
Staley rose and stepped to one side. “I didn’t see you come up, Corporal. I was busy with this leftover buffalo chip. What’s he good for?”
“He’s a good soldier,” Jones said. “He’s a good soldier.”
Risdon sat up, feeling his throat. He looked at his fingers and saw blood. “You bastard, you were going to kill me, weren’t you?”
“I will yet if you don’t learn to keep a civil tongue in your head,” Staley said.
“You know, Pete,” Allison said, “that was the nearest you’ll ever come to getting your throat cut until someone really does it.”
Risdon rubbed his neck and measured Staley carefully.
“Put your knife up, Staley. I’ll fight you with my fists.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” Staley said. “We ain’t kids having a brawl at recess back of the schoolhouse. If you want another go at me, pick up your knife.” He motioned to the pocket knife Risdon had dropped. “We’ll finish it right now.
Unexpectedly Risdon grinned. “Uhn-uh,” he grunted. “I’m satisfied to leave it lay this way. I’ll take care of your horse.”
He picked up his knife, closed the blade, and shoved the knife deep into his pocket. Then he took the buckskin’s reins and led him toward the stable.
“Is this how you make friends in the Army?” Staley asked Allison.
“It’s the way you make friends with Pete Risdon,” Allison said sourly. “If you can whip him, you’re his friend. If you can’t, he rubs your nose into the dirt.”
Summer Warpath Page 2
