Men were shooting, many men, at the charging Indian. It seemed incredible that they didn’t kill him, but the truth was, a head-on horse and man is not much target, and the outlaws had bunched up too close in their fear. Each man’s horse jostled the others, and their bullets went wide.
Then there was a scream from behind him, on the other side of the bunch, and Dan Younge turned his head. A horse was rearing high there, and the moonlight caught his neck for a moment and sparkled brightly on what must be blood.
Another one-man charge, and it seemed to have worked. The horse, still screaming, went down, and there was a human shout and then a Shoshone yell that sounded triumphant.
The bunch broke then, each man for himself, each horse, in truth, carrying a commandless rider out of there, away from that spot where horses screamed and died and the smells were the bad ones of human blood and gunpowder.
Dan Younge let Ranger take him out. He wasn’t sure he could have stopped the horse. He was glad to get away from the renegades before they saw who he was.
But then he saw the Shoshone fanning out of their circle, and he realized that they had been using tactics. They had risked two men to break up the bunched renegades and, now outnumbering the whites, had every chance of running them down and slaughtering them, knife to back.
There were two Indians riding after each of the men who had burst out of the grouped stand. Two Indians riding, each with a knife, some with the knife held in their rein hands, and their long spears held aloft in the other hand.
Dan Younge pulled up. Though he was unmistakably overdressed for an Indian, perhaps by not fleeing he could get himself identified as the friend and guide of the Shoshone, instead of as enemy.
The little moon went behind a cloud, then, and he groaned. He whipped off his hat, surest sign of a white man, and made his horse hold still. But it wasn’t easy; men aren’t built neither to run from danger or fight it.
Ranger fidgeted as horses flew by him.
Then the moon came out again, and a voice came from a galloping figure: “That’s that damned gambler,” and a bullet was fired from the figure’s gun. It sounded like Sydnor; it had Sydnor’s bulk. The gallop caused it to miss.
Whoever it was, the fat man went another fifty feet and then two Shoshone were on him, their light weight and saddleless ponies giving them speed. A knife and a spear rose and fell, and the big figure went out of the saddle.
An Indian pulled up and dropped down, and the other went in, his bloody spear shining, to look for more blood.
The dismounted Indian was using his knife, and now he stood, braced a foot against the downed white man and tugged. The Shoshone were scalping.
He must have expected that, but he was shocked anyway. Those men on the ground were of his own race, and he had caused this to happen to them.
Another horse loped by him, pulled up, came back. A voice said: “Dan,” without emphasis.
It was Phyllis Sydnor. She was riding side-saddle—though most Rock Spring women contented themselves with a boy’s saddle and a split skirt—and in the bad light, she looked immaculate, dressed for a St. Louis Boulevard. She said, “What are you doing here?”
He heard his voice grow heavily sardonic; his old tone with his ladies. “Admiring my handiwork. I’m in the position of guide, counselor, and dearest friend to our copper skinned brethren.”
“My God, Dan.”
“And you, dear lady?”
“Lieutenant Beer let me go back to my husband. He…we thought we’d be better making a run for it. I guess we were wrong.”
Dan Younge said, “Unless I’m much mistaken, yonder lies your husband. I’d not bother to look at him. He’s balder than usual.”
She said: “Dan—if you’re the Indians’ friend—”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but instead rode nearer, dropped a hand on his bridle hand. He said, “Take your glove off, you’ll be more effective that way. I’m afraid we’ve altered your plans. If my allies and I hadn’t shown up, by now you’d be queen of the carnival in the malapie. You knew that, didn’t you? Those miners were not planning to put you on an alabaster pedestal.”
The breeze was blowing, and bringing with it the most horrible kinds of sounds. Sounds of Shoshone war whoops, sounds of slaughtered horses screaming, sounds of men dying, and not stoically. But Phyllis Sydnor sat her horse, and seemed to show no interest in the world around her. She managed, from her clumsy side seat, to keep the restive animal quiet, and was quiet herself. She said, “I have never had any trouble getting what I needed from men, and I expected no trouble from the outlaws that I would not have welcomed as preferable to certain death in Rock Spring.”
“That’s as true as you’ve ever talked.”
“It’s as near death as I’ve ever been.”
He shifted his weight, and his horse sidestepped and took him away from her hand. Hooves drummed towards them, and she said, “You’re sure the Indians are your friends?”
He said, “No,” or thought he did. He was busy wheeling his horse. Two dark figures bored down on them at a gallop, and he clenched White Buffalo’s knife.
But it was White Buffalo and Nate Allen, Bowlegs. The latter said, “So you’re still alive, gambler?”
Dan Younge said: “I stood still. Your boys seemed to prefer a moving target.”
Nate Allen said, “You’re a cool one.”
“You took coup on a fat man,” White Buffalo said. “Here.”
He fumbled at his belt, and held out something. Dan Younge took a quick look and said, “White Buffalo is a good friend. I give him my coup to remember me by.”
White Buffalo said, “Got four already.”
“Take one more and be my brother,” Dan Younge said. So it had been a fat man he had killed, at the beginning of the battle. Well, it hadn’t been Sydnor.
The fighting was widely scattered now, far from them, in little scattered knots. Any screams that could be heard at this distance were probably those of horses.
“What now?” Nate Allen asked. He and White Buffalo had been eyeing the lady out of their slanted eyes; but neither had mentioned her.
“Clean up,” Dan Younge said. “Wipe those renegades off the prairie… Did you see a man with a star, a sheriff, with them?”
This was too much for White Buffalo; he asked something in Shoshone. Nate Allen answered, and then turned to Dan Younge. “Kills-no-deer got him. He’s got the badge twisted in his horse’s mane.”
Dan Younge said, “Good. Tomorrow, come into town. Not more than five men, maybe you two and a young chief and two old chiefs… We’ll make a peace treaty.”
He held out the knife White Buffalo had given him. “Here, and thanks.”
“Keep it, brother.” White Buffalo watched while Dan picked up his reins, turned his horse’s head towards town. “What of the woman, Black Suit?”
“Keep her, brother.”
Phyllis Sydnor let out a yelp. White Buffalo said, “I do not use white women.”
Dan Younge said, “All right, lady. Back into town with me. Unless you want her, Nate.”
“Too old,” Nate Allen said. “I got me a squaw and I’m living peaceful. I aim to keep it that way.”
Dan Younge said, “Come on, then. I suppose you own Sydnor’s store now.”
“There’s not much in it,” Phyllis said. “He sold a lot of stock to the miners… I suppose the Indians have it now.”
“Sue them,” Dan Younge said.
“He got gold for it,” Phyllis Sydnor said.
Dan Younge snorted. “Come on. That wasn’t very bright of him. If he hadn’t had their gold on him, he might have had a chance in the malapie—if we’d let you get there.”
The lady said, “It’s on him, in a money belt.”
Dan Younge swore. “All right, lady,” he said. “We’re three men here, and
you can do anything with men; you told me so. So what you can do with us is we will let you go search your dead husband, but we won’t help you. He fell right over there.”
She stared at him a moment, and then she rode away, elegant on her side saddle, her long skirt sweeping down the side of her horse.
“If she gets down,” Dan Younge said, “I’ll be damned if I see how she’s going to get up again in that rig.”
Nate Allen said, “You’re a tough one, gambler.”
“She helped in making me that way.”
White Buffalo said: “We don’t make so much of our women.”
They watched her, walking her horse towards Sydnor’s corpse. The distant cries were dying out now; perhaps all the miners were dead. More likely the Shoshone were getting glutted with their kill, were suffering the reaction of normally peaceful people after a fight.
An occasional pony was coming back to them, its rider jumping down now and then to loot a corpse.
Phyllis Sydnor stopped by her husband, and was agile sliding down the side of her horse. She knelt there.
Two Indians, bearing lances, drifted their ponies up out of a roll in the prairie. At first it looked as though their aimless course would make them miss the Sydnors, living and dead, but first one and then the other of the lancers turned that way.
Dan Younge picked up his reins and swung his spurred boots. But Nate Allen on one side and White Buffalo on the other caught his reins. “They kill you, too,” White Buffalo said, “Now, when they are on warpath.”
And Nate Allen said, “You’re not so tough, gambler,” and held on hard to Dan’s horse while Dan struggled to break loose. Somehow White Buffalo had taken back the knife of brotherhood he had given Dan Younge; there was nothing the gambler could do.
There was no noise on the prairie. The lances lifted and sunk and the Indians rode on, almost negligently, sated with killing. They didn’t even bother to take what would have been a notable scalp.
“We’ll take you to the edge of town,” Nate Allen said. “An’ see you don’t do nothing foolish.”
So Dan Younge went back to Rock Spring. And Ellen Lea. And respectability.
The 7th Western Novel Page 73
