“I knew you’d come,” Tally whispered. “I knew you would.”
“Sure you did,” Staley said senselessly. “Sure you did, girl.”
Then an equally senseless embarrassment set in. He let her go and turned to the others.
“Tally, this is my friend Dave Allison. The red-headed one in the derby is Pat O’Hara.”
She wiped her eyes, and sniffled a little and smiled.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said shyly.
Allison touched the brim of his dusty campaign hat and said: “It’s a pleasure, Miss Barrone.” O’Hara took off his derby and made a sweeping gesture as he bowed.
Allison had never seen Tally before. He had not heard Staley describe her, so he had only a mental picture of a dumpy squaw. She was anything but that. Tall and slender and blue-eyed, she had a figure any white woman would envy. She was very young, of course—seventeen if Allison remembered right—but he saw a mature, beautiful woman in that dusty calico dress.
“Big Elk and his band are around here somewhere,” Tally said, turning back to Staley. “My brothers are probably with him. I suppose they went to the hay camp because they thought I’d go there. They’ll be coming any time.”
She moistened her dry, cracked lips with the tip of her tongue. “There’s no use going to the hog ranch. I went there, but they wouldn’t let me in. The big woman that runs the place said she didn’t want any half-breeds in her house.”
“The bitch!” Staley said.
“What is she?” O’Hara demanded. “Some kind of an animal?”
“Yes,” Allison said. “That’s exactly what she is. But she does have a house and we may need her to keep the girls in line.”
“Maybe we can get to the fort,” Tally said.
Staley shook his head as he stared in the direction of the hay camp. “We don’t have time. There’s some dust yonder. We’d better ride.”
Staley stepped into the saddle. Tally swung up behind him, her skirt pulled high on her brown legs.
They watched the dust, taking it easy for a time because their horses were tired. But a few minutes later Staley said: “I guess they’ve spotted us. We better ride for it.”
The Indians were coming in on the road that led from the hay camp to Fort Laramie, and they were coming fast. Staley’s big buckskin gradually pulled ahead of Allison and O’Hara. Even with his double burden, the buckskin was the best horse of the three.
The hog ranch was directly ahead of them now, and Staley yelled: “Open up!” Allison’s horse was laboring. The animal would never make it. Allison pulled his rifle from the scabbard, and when the horse stumbled and fell, he jumped clear.
He yelled, “Go on! Go on!” and kneeled in the sagebrush. He took a careful bead on the lead Indian and squeezed off a shot. The brave threw up his hands and spilled off his horse. The others angled off the road into the sagebrush.
Allison ran toward the hog ranch, his legs churning. He heard a bullet whine past his ear. Another tugged at the crown of his hat. Staley and Tally had reached the front door and were pounding frantically on it. O’Hara had taken the buckskin’s reins and was heading toward the adobe corral. The Indians were coming in straight at the house, firing steadily—and still the front door of the hog ranch was closed.
When Allison reached the house, bullets were already slapping into the door and the wall. He yelled: “What’s the matter with you, Fifi? Open up! Christine, make her open the door!”
He heard Christine’s voice, shrill and deadly: “Open it or I’ll shoot you where you stand!”
And another girl’s voice: “If she misses, I’ll get you, Fifi. We need those men inside.”
O’Hara was coming from the adobe corral, running zigzag, his derby in his hand, his pipe in his mouth, and short legs pumping. The door swung open. Staley and Tally tumbled into the room, bullets snapping over their heads. Allison came next, diving to one side so he would have the protection of the wall, then O’Hara, scurrying on his hands and knees like a bug, shouting: “That crazy colored man out there won’t budge! Says he’s got to look after the horses!” The door slammed shut and one of the girls dropped the bar.
Staley and Allison whirled to the loopholes in the wall on each side of the door. Allison reloaded and fired, and Staley pulled the trigger of his repeater time after time. A shotgun boomed from the corral. Allison, loading again, saw Christine on the other side of Staley, firing a Winchester as fast as she could squeeze the trigger and lever shells into the chamber.
The Indians could not face fire as heavy as this. They broke and circled the house, yelling like devils and shooting under their horses’ necks.
Two horses went down, their riders running for cover. Some of the other horses had been hit, Allison thought. Then the leader, a big buck mounted on a paint pony, pulled out of the circle and drew the Indians back out of range.
Staley leaned his rifle against the wall. He said: “Tally, stay here.” Fifi stood, spraddle-legged, in front of the bar, girls on both sides of her. One of them, a bosomy blonde, kept saying between sobs: “Let them come in. They’re men. They won’t hurt us if we treat them like men.”
Staley strode toward Fifi. For a moment there was no sound except heavy breathing and the whisper of Staley’s moccasins on the floor. Then Fifi said: “Who the hell are you?”
He didn’t answer. He slapped her, and flesh made a cracking sound like the snapping of a dry stick.
“You bitch!” Staley said. “You wouldn’t let her in.”
He hit her again, and this time Fifi’s head thumped on the bar.
“You didn’t care whether the Indians murdered her or not,” he said.
“I was afraid to let anyone in,” Fifi whined. She flinched as Staley drew back his hand. “Who … who are you?”
“I’m Walt Staley and I’m giving the orders. Open the door, Dave. Shove her outside. Let her see how it feels out there in the open.”
The bosomy blonde was still crying. “They’re men,” she sobbed. “Only men. Let them come in and we’ll …”
“Shut up, Mabel,” Christine said.
Fifi leaned feebly against the bar, hands palm down on the polished surface, face pea-green with terror.
“Open the door, Dave,” Staley said, and dropped his right hand to the bone handle of his knife. “Open that door or I’ll let her guts out right here on the floor.”
Christine screamed: “No, Dave! You can’t do a thing like that!” But Allison lifted the bar and yanked the door open.
“Walk, you bitch,” Staley said. “Walk through that god-damned door or I’ll run this knife up your behind and twist it.”
Fifi drew a long, snuffling breath through her nose. She was biting her lower lip, biting until blood ran down her chin. And in that moment the bosomy blonde named Mabel bolted past her through the door. Mabel unbuttoned her blouse as she ran.
“You’re men!” she screamed. “Men! I know what men want!”
She pulled her blouse off and threw it to one side and held her hands out toward the Indians. One of them raised his rifle and fired. Mabel spilled forward on her face and lay still.
The echoes of the shot died. The dust that had been scuffed up by Mabel’s frantic feet slowly settled back to the dry earth. No one in the house said a word.
Christine closed and barred the door. She stood with her back against it, facing Staley. Allison went to her and put an arm around her. He said: “Walt, this is Christine. Fifi is her aunt.”
Staley wiped his face, then swung around to face Fifi. “Get us something to eat.” He walked to the loophole where he had left his rifle and studied the Indians. Fifi ran in her lumbering gait toward the kitchen. One by one, her girls followed her.
Christine put her face against Allison’s shirt and began to cry. He forced her head back and kissed her, but she pressed her face against
his chest again, nestling, crying softly. She didn’t move for a long time.
Chapter Thirty
For a time, Allison stood at the loophole beside the door watching the Indians. They seemed undecided about their next move. A band of ponies had been herded beside the road, but the Indians were just standing in a group, staring at the house.
The extra horses had probably belonged to Louie Barrone, Allison guessed, with perhaps some others stolen from the hay camp. The big brave who had led the attack stood a little apart from the other Indians, listening as they talked.
“What are they gabbing about, Walt?” Allison asked.
“Tally says that’s Big Elk standing to one side,” Staley said. “They’re arguing about the next move, probably. They want the horses in the corral, but they ain’t real anxious to pay the price of getting ’em. Big Elk wants Tally alive, and that makes a problem for everybody.”
Christine remained beside Allison, her arm around him. “Let’s get married,” he said, “the minute we get to Cheyenne.”
“Oh, Dave, it’s all I’ve lived for since you marched off with Company A.” She hesitated, then said: “You just got back in time. Fifi was planning on taking me to Cheyenne next week. I don’t know what I would have done, Dave. I just don’t know.”
“You aren’t worried about us?” he asked. “About our future?”
“Not one bit.”
He laughed softly. “Neither am I.”
“How long has it been since we ate?” O’Hara called across the room.
“We had breakfast,” Allison said.
“That was a week ago … damn it.”
“I’ll go see what they’re doing,” Christine said.
She disappeared into the kitchen and came back in a minute. “We don’t have any fresh meat,” she said. “Nero hasn’t been to the fort for a long time and he hasn’t had much luck hunting, so we’re having stew made out of bacon and potatoes and onions.”
She pressed against Allison, putting her mouth close to his ear. “That friend of yours, the one in buckskin. He’s a savage, isn’t he?”
“I guess you could call him that,” Allison admitted. “But he wants to marry the Barrone girl and he thought he’d lost her. It’s a wonder he didn’t, with Fifi turning her away from the door.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Christine said. She glanced at Staley, who was watching the Indians through a loophole. “He looks half Indian himself. Maybe that’s why he scared Fifi so.”
Allison grinned. “He sure had her buffaloed, all right. If that crazy Mabel hadn’t run out and got herself killed …”
“They’re coming again!” Staley yelled. “Fifi, get your girls to the loopholes and start ’em shooting.”
Fifi lumbered in from the kitchen. “Huh?” she said.
“Maybe they aim to burn us out,” Staley said. “Or make a try for the horses. I dunno. But get your girls to shooting so they’ll know how many guns we got.”
“The girls can’t hit nothing,” Fifi said. “Nobody but Christine can.”
“Get ’em to shooting, damn it!” Staley roared. “That’s what counts. Let ’em hear lots of guns.”
Fifi gathered her quivering bulk together.
“Sadie, get into the back bedroom. Laura, you stay in the kitchen. The rest of you come out here.”
Allison watched the Indians. Big Elk was on his paint, giving orders. Suddenly they wheeled toward the house, Big Elk taking the lead as his braves followed him into the circle again.
Christine ran to the loophole she had used before. She slipped the barrel of her rifle through the hole and waited. The Indians began to yell, making obscene gestures, slapping themselves on the rump, waving their guns defiantly above their heads.
They made a savage and terrifying spectacle. All were stark naked except for moccasins, breechclouts, and headgear made of horns and bright feathers. Their painted faces made them even more terrifying, and Allison was not surprised when one of the girls on the other side of Christine went down in a dead faint, her rifle clattering to the floor.
“Pick it up, Tally,” Staley ordered. “Everybody start shooting when they do.”
Tally ran to the girl and pulled her away from the wall. She picked up the rifle and poked the barrel through the loophole. From the bedroom Sadie screeched: “Fifi, how do you shoot this damned thing?”
“Pull the hammer back!” Fifi shouted. She headed for the bedroom. “And then pull the trigger, you stupid …”
“My God,” Staley said.
Outside, the Indians tightened the circle. Each brave dropped to the far side of his pony and began to shoot, holding to the pony’s neck with one hand and riding with one leg over the horse.
Allison squeezed off a shot at one of the horses but failed to bring him down. He yanked the rifle out of the loophole, thinking soberly that there wasn’t much of the Indian to shoot at. As he reloaded, a bullet came through the hole and slapped into the wall on the far side of the room. It would have killed him if he hadn’t stepped to one side before loading.
Laura staggered through the kitchen door, holding her shoulder. “I pulled the trigger and the damned thing …”
“Hold it hard against your shoulder!” Fifi bawled. “Get the hell back into that kitchen!”
A moment later O’Hara, who had been firing his carbine as rapidly as he could, had his pipe shot out of his mouth. He swore and said it was the only pipe he had and how in hell was he going to get a smoke. Allison, reloading and firing, fought down an impulse to laugh. If he laughed, he might not stop. He had seen hysteria cases do that.
Now and then Allison heard the boom of Nero’s shotgun from the adobe corral. He wouldn’t be hitting anybody, but it was a good thing to let the Indians know someone was there. Once a brave took his pony out of line and rode straight at the corral gate. Again the shotgun boomed, and the brave wheeled and cut back into the circle.
Tally and Christine were firing steadily. The girl who had fainted had crawled across the room and was lying behind the bar. The others seemed to be spending most of their time trying to reload between shots.
Fifi went to the bar and picked up a bottle of whiskey. She raised it toward her mouth. A stray bullet shattered the bottle. She stared at the jagged glass in her hand and then, very carefully, she lowered herself to the floor and stayed there, motionless.
Big Elk shouted an order. A moment later all of the Indians were out of range. Staley put his rifle down. He saw Fifi and laughed.
“You’d better get her back to Cheyenne,” he said to Christine. “She don’t belong in Indian country.”
“Neither do I,” Christine said sharply. “Are they going to let us alone now?”
“I think so,” Staley said. “They had to try us out one more time, maybe make us use up our ammunition. But being as we didn’t run out, they ain’t likely to hit us again. Burn us out, maybe, but not till it’s dark.”
“I’m about out of shells,” Allison said.
“So am I,” O’Hara said.
Christine leaned her rifle against the wall. “Fifi was too tight to buy much of a supply, so maybe the Indians will get us cheap the next time.” She nodded at Tally. “Let’s go see if the stew’s done.”
They disappeared into the kitchen, the other girls straggling after them. Fifi blinked and looked around. She put her hand down on a piece of broken glass and cut a finger and began to curse.
“Get up,” Staley said. “Get into the kitchen. I’m sick of looking at you.”
She staggered to her feet and blundered out of sight. Staley said: “Dave, how could a hog like that raise a girl as nice as Christine is?”
“It beats me,” Allison said.
“It’s simple enough,” O’Hara said. “If a kid hates one way of life enough, he grows up just the opposite.”
Allison frow
ned, puzzled. Then he grinned.
“You mean she does,” he said happily.
Chapter
Thirty-One
The sun was almost down when Christine and Tally brought plates of stew and steaming coffee from the kitchen. Allison and O’Hara ate at the table, but Staley squatted near the door, getting up occasionally to glance through the loophole. After the last attack, the Indians had remained on the other side of the road out of rifle range.
An overcast had been working across the sky from Laramie Peak far to the west. The night should be black enough for the Indians to succeed in firing the house. They would hide in the sagebrush, and when the occupants fled from the burning building, they would be picked off in the light from the flames. Or, if the Indians failed to fire the house, the whites would use up their ammunition and die indoors.
Staley knew it was up to him or Dave Allison to leave the house after dark and do something—anything—that would stop the Indians.
After he thought about it for a time, he elected himself. Allison was a good man, but too heavy-footed to be out there in the darkness, trying to out-Indian the Indians. Allison would just get himself killed.
Tally had not left Staley’s side since she had helped cook dinner, but they had done little talking. Staley figured she didn’t want to live through the terror of her flight again, but she ought to know about her father. When he finished eating, and Christine had taken the plates and cups back into the kitchen, he said: “About Louie, Tally. We found him in the barn. He was dead.”
Tally nodded wearily. “I knew it was going to happen. I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. He never listened to me.”
She paused, staring blankly across the room.
“Bill and Joe ran away from home soon after you left. They went with Big Elk’s band and fought with the Sioux on the Rosebud. Then they came back and had a terrible quarrel with Pa. He threatened to kill them. He said if Big Elk or any of the Cheyennes showed up around our place, he’d kill both them and my brothers.”
Summer Warpath Page 14
