by J. T. Edson
Which same, from past experience, told Killem that Calamity had tied on one of her still rare benders and carried a whisky-head to show for it. Yet she addressed Eileen in a friendly manner.
‘Go to hell and pour your own, you idle slut,’ Eileen replied, but not in her usual tone; and she poured out a cup of coffee before Calamity reached her.
Killem wondered if he ought to go back to bed and see if he had got up that morning. Anyway, he thought, nothing more could surprise— At that point he saw Molly hobble up from the river sporting as fine a brace of shiners as he had ever seen and a nose to match them—and showing much the same hung-over symptoms as the other two.
‘Who gave you them eyes?’ he gasped, long past, politeness and western waiting to be told about private affairs.
‘Nobody,’ Molly replied. ‘I had to fight like hell for them.’
That was when Killem decided to call it a day. Turning, he slouched away from the girls and met Muldoon coming with more puzzlement and news. Apparently Russian Olga was hobbling round her fire, looking like her face had been tromped by a mule and mean-mouthing her friends like she toted a hell of a sore head which did not come from a bout of fist-fighting.
‘Reckon Calem might know anything about it?’ asked Muldoon.
‘I reckon she might at that,’ agreed Killem.
‘You mean that Calam went and took Olga on and never told all her good friends, so let us miss it?’
‘From what I just saw,’ Killem replied in a dazed manner, ‘you don’t know the half of what we must have missed—and neither do I.’
The previous evening the four girls sneaked unseen back to camp and into Calamity’s wagon. Being the only one at least acceptably attired, Calamity visited the Johnson wagon, keeping in the shadows, and collected a change of clothing for Molly, saying the blonde would be staying with her for the night. In doing so, Calamity kept her face out of sight and Molly’s aunt did not even know that her favourite niece had been acting in a most unladylike and unschoolteacherlike manner.
On her return, Calamity produced steaks—to be applied externally to bruised eyes—and completed the deflation of Eileen’s Boston ego. Nobody could even attempt to maintain frigid superiority when sat on the floor of a wagon wearing the tattered remnants of a cheap dress and holding a steak to either eye. Calamity produced a jug containing, she claimed, a cure for what ailed them. It worked. Neither Eileen nor Molly had ever tasted raw home-brewed whisky until that night and did not know its deadly power. Luckily, the freighters had been invited to the Army lines for a meal or they might have heard some remarkable confessions from Calamity’s wagon as the four girls got quietly, happily, but completely drunk.
Molly had quoted Professor Strubacher, said to hell with him and gone to sleep, leaving Eileen telling Calamity and Olga about her best friend who she hated like the devil hates holy water and wished had been in the clearing. At which point Eileen joined Molly. Half an hour later Olga, having told Calamity the story of her life, joined the majority of the party and Calamity decided not to bother sleeping under the wagon that night.
In the very early dawn the girls recovered. Olga returned to her outfit and the other three crept to the river to bathe their stiff, aching bodies and compare headaches. Any intention Eileen might have possessed about returning to her old behaviour departed in the hangover. It never returned.
Speculation ran rife through the wagon train when word and sight of the four girls’ appearance went among the travellers. The four participants maintained silence over the affair and appeared to be on the best of terms. Nobody ever did really discover what had happened the previous evening and two days later they left the woodland to start crossing the Great Plains. The change of scenery and conditions took interest away from the cause of the girls’ injuries.
A week later an informal gathering of the leading members of the train met around Killem’s fire after the day’s journey was over. Killem. the wagonmaster, Beau Resin and both Army officers stood by the fire drinking coffee handed out by Eileen and Calamity, when a scared-looking youngster dashed into camp.
‘Injuns!’ he howled, pointing back up a rolling slope above the camp.
Bigelow dropped his cup and swung around, his right hand going to the flap of his holster.
‘Easy, Cap’n,’ Resin said calmly. ‘I been watching ‘em for the past ten minutes.’
‘Te—!’ Bigelow squawked, and no other word could describe the sound. ‘Then why didn’t you say something?’
‘Figger they was watching, not fighting.’
Every eye turned towards the top of the rim a good half mile away from the edge of the camp. Even as they watched the group of Indians on top grew larger until they numbered around fifty, all braves and wearing war-paint with arms to match.
This was the moment Bigelow had been waiting for— hoping for, too, maybe. A successful encounter with a band of Indians would greatly enhance his chance of obtaining a transfer to a fighting regiment and out of the dreary limbo of being a shiny-butt. Ever since leaving Fort Connel he had been preparing his strategy for such a moment and presented his subordinate with plans for almost every conceivable circumstance. He would have arranged practice circle-forming and other drills for the travellers, but found the idea met with a point-blank refusal when he put it to the wagonmaster.
Some confusion showed among the travellers as they watched the Indians gather on the rim. Weapons were caught up and women and children sent scuttling to the safety of the wagons. In a bull-voiced bellow that rang around the camp, the wagonmaster ordered that there be no shooting; beating Bigelow to the command by a good thirty seconds.
Bigelow used the breath drawn to give the no-shooting order to snap a command to the young lieutenant at his side.
‘Mr. Grade, parade the troop twenty yards outside the circle and facing the hostiles.’
The tall, slim lieutenant threw an appealing glance at Bigelow, then relayed the order to Muldoon as the sergeant brought up the men. Not so well-disciplined, Muldoon growled out a startled curse, but long training caused him to obey orders.
‘On the double, mister!’ Bigelow barked. ‘We’ll impress them with our numbers. Mr. Resin, would you come and act as interpreter, please?’
‘Reckon so; but—’
Whatever Resin wished to ‘but’ over did not get said. Bigelow led off his men, filing through the wagons and out of the circle to halt a single line facing towards the Indians. The young captain glanced at the line of blue-clad troopers, each extra-well armed if one counted the sabre he wore in addition to his Army Colt and the Springfield carbine, and decided they would impress the Indians. In that he was right. He impressed the watching braves with the inadequacy of numbers of his force and also with his own inexperience.
Calamity, Eileen and Killem followed the soldiers to the edge of the wagon circle and stood watching. Turning her head, Calamity exchanged a knowing glance with Killem. While not setting themselves up as great minds—which invariably think alike—Calamity and Killem had the same thought in mind; neither of them cared for Captain Wade H. Bigelow’s version of tactics.
‘What are they, Mr Resin?’ asked Bigelow, maintaining his pose of the cool, calm and polite officer in a crisis.
‘Fox, Owl and Pony Lodge Cheyenne,’ the scout replied. ‘I don’t like Cheyenne war lodges any time and even less when they’re all mixed together. You watch ‘em good, Cap’n.’
‘They’re under a white flag,’ answered Bigelow, pointing towards a war-bonnet chief who rode out of the party holding a flapping piece of white cloth on the tip of his buffalo lance.
‘Which same’s another I don’t like. Injuns in general and Cheyenne in particular don’t put no trust in white flags after what Yeller-Hair Custer done to Black Kettle’s village on the Washita back in ‘68.’
A flush of annoyance crept on to Bigelow’s face at the scout’s flat-spoken condemnation of a man the captain regarded as the beau ideal of cavalry leaders. Bigelow tend
ed to regard the Washita business in the light of brilliant strategy on the part of the ‘Boy General,’ George Armstrong Custer, instead of, as it had been, a bloody, treacherous massacre of innocents.
‘We’ll respect their flag of truce!’ he snapped.
‘Sir—!’ croaked the lieutenant.
‘Call them in, Mr. Resin!’ Bigelow barked, ignoring the possible warning.
‘What in hell’s he doing?’ asked Calamity.
‘Inviting the Indians to come in for a truce,’ Eileen replied.
‘Like hell!’ spat Calamity. ‘Boston, that officer-boy’s ‘going to get us ‘all massacred way he’s going on.’
All the Indians rode slowly down the slope, following the flag of truce with an apparent trust in its protective powers that worried Beau Resin more than he cared to admit even to himself. With each approaching pony-stride, Resin’s worry increased; those Cheyenne brave-hearts had a feller among them who could read military character and had a shrewd idea of the kind of man they dealt with.
‘Hey great soldier-coat chief!’ yelled the, war-bonneted flag-of-truce hearer in passable English. ‘We good Injuns, make peace with white brother. We come into your camp, trade with your people.’
‘Certainly!’
‘Not on your scalp-taking lives!’
Bigelow and Resin spoke at the same moment. Swinging towards to tall scout, Bigelow let out an angry hiss. ‘I’m in command here!’
‘Then for gawd’s sake command right!’ Resin snapped back. ‘Didn’t they teach you nothing at West Point?’
Just what might have come of the exchange had the two men been left to their own devices is uncertain for at about that moment Calamity and Eileen took a hand in the matter.
While watching the approach of the Indians, Calamity let out a blistering string of curses which might have made Eileen blush a few days back but that now merely made her inquire what caused the profanity.
‘What the hell’s he doing letting them red-sticks come down like that?’ asked Calamity.
‘Answering their flag of truce,’ Eileen replied.
‘I don’t like it,’ Calamity stated. ‘Happen they come much closer, they’ll be in the camp!’
From the way Calamity emphasised the last three words, having Indians—even apparently peaceful and under a flag of truce—in the camp struck her as being mighty undesirable. Yet Eileen knew that the objection did not stem from mere racial prejudice; for Calamity treated all races and creeds to the same cheerful, friendly open-handed courtesy, unless they riled her. So there must be some deep-seated reason for her objection to allowing the Indians to enter the camp.
‘Why not?’ asked Eileen.
‘And you’re Vint Tradle’s wife?’ Calamity answered.
‘So they tell me, but we don’t have many hostile Indians in Boston.’
‘Likely. One thing you never want to forget, Boston, gal. Feed an Injun, give him some presents—but never, never let him come into your camp. That way you’ll stay alive long enough to go home and whup that Back Bay dame you told us about.’
‘I see,’ said Eileen.
‘But ole shiny-butt don’t,’ Calamity growled as the shouted conversation between the men reached their ears. ‘Land-sakes. don’t let him do i—Hey, where in hell are you going, Boston?’
Eileen had strode determinedly between two of the wagons and headed across the open towards the soldiers. After throwing a startled glance at Killem, Calamity went after her friend, more out of curiosity than for any other reason.
Just as Bigelow opened his mouth to give permission for the Indians to enter the camp, he heard a cool feminine voice at his side,
‘Captain Bigelow, may I speak to you?’
Now whatever faults Eileen Tradle might have shown in the early days of their acquaintance, stupidity had not been one of them. So Bigelow found himself staring in some surprise to see her committing the apparent folly of leaving the wagon circle and approaching him at such a time.
‘Not now, Bo—Mrs Tradle!’ he answered. ‘Return to the—’
‘Right now!’
Although a bachelor, Bigelow knew enough about women to recognise the futility of arguing with one when her voice held that tone. He glanced at the Indians who had come to a halt, threw an imploring look towards Resin who ignored him, then walked towards Eileen as she drew away from the men. Showing surprising tact, Calamity moved clear of the other girl and waited to see what Eileen aimed to do.
‘Wade,’ Eileen said in a voice pitched low enough for his ears alone. ‘I know you are in command and don’t wish to interfere, even if that’s just what I’m doing, but Vint wrote me more than once on the matter of never allowing Indians to enter one’s camp. Of course, the safety of the train is your responsibility and I don’t wish to impose—’
Bigelow sucked in a long deep breath and thought fast. All too well he knew that Eileen’s husband was known and respected as a real smart Indian-fighter and had won his promotion in the field for untangling the mess a glory-hunting fool led a battalion into. Even the Army scouts, who would give few officers credit for being able to breathe air in and blow it out again, had high regard for Vinton Tradle’s Indian fighting skill and knowledge of the hostile’s ways. Advice, even at second-hand, from such a source was not to be lightly ignored.
‘Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Tradle,’ he said stiffly.
‘Let your brace slip, Wade,’ she smiled. ‘It was Boston when you wanted another cup of my coffee.’
Marvelling at the Calamity-wrought change in the formerly snooty Mrs. Tradle, Bigelow returned to his men. Above them the Indians were getting restless and the war-bonnet chief called out another request to be allowed to come down and trade.
‘How about it, Mr. Grade?’ Bigelow asked.
‘Keep them out, sir,’ the lieutenant answered immediately and Muldoon could not hold down his mutter of agreement.
‘Hey, soldier-coat chief!’ yelled the flag-bearer. ‘You let us come in and smoke-um peace-pipe?’
‘Where’s your chief to light it?’ Resin yelled back.
‘I am chief!’
‘I mean where’s your big chief!’ Resin countered. ‘Where’s Sand Runner?’ and without turning, he spoke over his shoulder. ‘Calam, Boston, get the hell back to the wagons. Cap’n, get set to fight or run. If she’s due, she’ll pop real soon.’
‘The hell’s being got,’ Calamity replied, taking Eileen’s arm and heading at an unladylike run towards the safety of the wagon circle.
Up the slope considerable consternation showed among the assembled Cheyenne brave-hearts. They came posing as friendly Indians and if there be one certain thing in the world, it was that Sand Runner had never been anything like friendly to the white men. So none of the Indians offered to reply, but sat their suddenly restless horses and cast sheepish glances at each other. The flag of truce lowered, but the expected attack did not come and Resin pressed his advantage.
‘What’s wrong?’ he bellowed. ‘I thought I spoke with Cheyenne brave-hearts who do not hide true words. Or am I wrong, are these before me Crows, Ankara, Pawnees, or,’ he paused and gave the conventional spit to one side before mentioning the lowest of the Plains Indians low, ‘Osages?’
The insult brought results. While the war-bonnet chief had been to mission school and knew the value of lying and deceit, none of his party had received the benefits of a white brother’s education. One of the braves jumped his paint horse from among his lodge brothers and waved his buffalo lance over his head. He was a tall young buck wearing three eagle feathers in his hair and sporting as his war-medicine a U.S. cavalry blouse, its front smothered with dried blood from the lance-thrust which smashed through the chest of the original wearer. Such a brave had a high pride in his tribal honour.
‘Know you that Sand Runner is over there beyond the hills behind your camp and waiting for the time!’ he announced. An exclamation of annoyance left the war-bonnet chief’s lips for, as has been mentioned, he b
ore the results of white man’s education and knew that, despite tribal traditions of truthfulness even to an enemy, there were times when a good lie licked the pants off telling the truth. However, the rest of the party gave out their deep-grunted, old-time Cheyenne approval for the young brave’s spirited and honest reply.
‘How many brave-hearts ride with him?’ called Resin,
Bigelow fidgeted at the apparently pointless delay in negotiations. Just as he opened his mouth to insert a comment designed to bring the subject to a conclusion, he heard a whisper that contained a thick Irish brogue in his right ear.
‘With the Cap’n’s permission, sir. I’d not be interfering was I him. It might sound long-winded, but we’ll learn plenty from them red varmints afore we’re through.’
‘What do we do while this goes on then, Sergeant?’ Bigelow inquired over his shoulder and trying to avoid showing his mouth working.
‘Stand and look dignified, sir, which if yez’ll pardon me for saying, you should be pretty good at.’
A smile flickered to Bigelow’s lips, one of some pride, for never before had Muldoon treated him with anything but strictly Manual of Field Regulations military courtesy, although the sergeant often made unmilitary comments to the shave-tail lieutenant. Bigelow remembered a lecture from his West Point days on the subject of officer—senior non-com relationship. It appeared that he was winning the burly sergeant’s respect and he hoped he could live up to Muldoon’s high standards. One way to do that was to take advice when given it by reliable sources and he had already proven capable of doing that.
‘You talk well, white brother!’ boomed the war-bonnet chief before any of his men answered Resin’s question. ‘Are you Indian?’
Like the white man, the Indian believed that Indian blood made a man full native stock, but unlike the white man allowed the Indian blood made its owner a mite more trustworthy than the forked-tongued pale-faces.
‘I lived three years with them after the big war of the white men to the east,’ Resin replied.
