Trouble Trail

by J. T. Edson

  Holding their horses at an easy pace that retained a reserve of energy in case it should be needed, they rode on. Although Calamity and Muldoon kept their eyes open, neither saw any sign of the Cheyenne camp-fires, which surprised them for more than one Indian encampment had been betrayed by the red glow rising from it. Then, topping a rise and looking down towards the wooded area, they caught the glimpse of a faint red flicker among the trees. Whoever picked the location for the Cheyenne camp knew his business. A raiding party might have ridden by the area a dozen and more times without seeing the tree-masked fires.

  On riding closer, they could hear voices raised in war chants. At last Resin raised his hand, bringing the others to a halt.

  ‘This’s as far as we take the hosses,’ he said. ‘Paddy, stay here and keep ‘em quiet. Me n’n Calam’ll go in on foot. If you hear us yell for you, come like a bat out of hell.’

  ‘Huh huh!’ grunted Muldoon and took an obvious precaution. ‘Where at’s their hoss herd?’

  ‘With the camp, on the other side of that stream that runs through the wood and out beyond the trees. You’ll have no trouble from them.’

  Being gregarious beasts, horses were inclined to signal to any others of their kind that they located. A stray horse whinnying would be likely to attract the attention of the Cheyenne horse herd and one of Muldoon’s duties was to make sure his horses did not sound an alarm.

  ‘Good luck, the pair of yez.’

  ‘Thanks, Paddy,’ replied Calam, suddenly throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. ‘I’ll tell you now, I never intended to marry you, so you didn’t need to shy away from me like a rope-burned hoss all these weeks.’

  ‘Me father told me never to take chances with women, and according to me troop, he stayed a bachelor all his life,’ answered Muldoon, gripping Resin’s hand after being released by Calamity. ‘I’ll be right here when you comes back.’

  ‘We’ll let you know, happen they get us,’ promised Resin. ‘See you around.’

  Side by side Resin and the girl faded into the darkness, moving on silent feet. They entered the wood and moved through with all the care possible, although from the noise rising from the camp excessive caution might not be needed. At last Calamity and Resin reached the banks of the stream and moved along it.

  ‘He’s in a tipi just about here,’ Resin said, halting by a tree on which he had carved a blaze in the bark and pointing straight towards the camp. ‘Only it’s on the inner circle, facing towards that danged council fire.’

  ‘From the sound of that pow-wow there’ll not be many folks missing from it,’ Calamity replied. ‘We could sneak through the camp, cut our way in the back—’

  ‘And what if there’s a guard in the tipi?’

  ‘You got a right smart point there. Sand Runner got the full tribe along?’

  ‘Only bucks and a handful of young gals to keep his boys happy.’

  ‘Other tipis ought to be empty then. Or if anybody’s being kept happy in ‘em, they won’t notice us tippy-toeing by. Or don’t Injuns get kept happy same way we do?’

  Resin’s teeth glowed white in the darkness as he grinned at the girl. ‘You got a low ‘n’ vulgar mind, Calam, gal.’

  ‘I’m loving with it.’

  ‘Happen we get out of this alive, gal,’ the scout whispered, ‘I’ll—’

  Whatever he aimed to do did not get said. They had waded through the stream while talking and both froze on the other shore as they saw a torch flickering in the hand of an approaching Indian. Swiftly and silently Calamity and Resin took cover, two hands holding knives; guns making far too much noise for dealing with such a situation.

  The torch-bearer came into sight; a girl wearing Bigelow’s campaign hat on her head, the braids of her hair trailing from under its crown, and with his blouse on over her doeskin dress, carrying a pinewood torch in one hand, a pitcher in the other. Clearly she was coming down to the stream to collect water. The sight of the girl’s dress, particularly the hat and hair, gave Calamity an idea. Sheathing the knife, she turned to Resin and whispered:

  ‘I’ll take her.’

  ‘Do it fast and quiet, these Injun gals are tough.’

  While the girl might have been tough and capable of giving Calamity a hard and rowdy fight, she did not have the chance. There was no time to think of fair play or giving the other girl an even break. Calamity timed her move just right and watching it, Resin had to admit he could not have done better.

  In dealing with the girl, Calamity used her head—literally. She hurled herself forward as the Indian approached, ramming her head in a vicious butt full into the pit of the other girl’s stomach. So suddenly and unexpectedly did the attack come that the Indian could not scream or even think before Calamity’s head caught her in the belly, dropping her in a doubled-over, winded heap, the hat flying from her head and the torch and pitcher falling from her hands as she went down. Calamity followed the girl down, digging fingers into her hair and flipping her on to her back, then dropping to kneel astride her. Drawing up the girl’s head, Calamity brought around her other fist, driving it into the girl’s jaw. One blow was all Calamity needed and the Indian girl went limp, then flopped to the ground. Seeing no further action would be needed, Calamity rose to her feet.

  ‘What now?’ breathed Resin, catching up the torch and tossing it into the water, then scuffing out the blazing ground it left.

  ‘Got me a right fool notion,’ Calamity answered, dragging the girl into a sitting position and starting to remove Bigelow’s jacket.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘How can we find out if there’s a guard in Wade’s tipi. I aim to go in and look; dressed like a squaw—this one.’

  While he claimed that it took plenty to surprise him, Resin could not hold down his startled grunt.

  ‘How’d you mean, gal?’

  ‘Easy enough. I’m fixing to wear her clothes, walk around the side of the tipi and through its door. You be waiting out back and when I signal you’ll know you can come in. Now turn your back while I undress her,’

  ‘Spoilsport,’ grinned the scout.

  ‘Likely, only I hate competition, as Eileen would say.’

  Calamity found little difficulty in undressing the other girl, for an Indian’s doeskin dress was simply made and its wearer never bothered with underclothing. Dropping the naked, still unconscious body back to the ground, Calamity looked at the dress. A further thought came to her and she drew the Green River knife. Bending, she slashed off the girl’s two hair braids over their fastenings. Then yet another thought came, the solution of which ought to please Resin.

  ‘Cut the legs of my pants off over the knee,’ she ordered. ‘Move it. The squaw’s stirring and we want her hawg-tied afore she wakes.’

  Working fast, Resin slit Calamity’s pants legs up the seams, then around the leg maybe a mite higher than was necessary. One could not blame him for that. However, he wasted no time in admiring the view, but turned to make a start at tying up their prisoner, using the trouser legs as rope and his own bandana as a gag.

  ‘Sure hope she’s not loused out with seam-squirrels like most Injuns,’ Calamity stated as she drew the dress on over her clothes. ‘And stop looking like you’re enjoying your work, damn you.’

  ‘Me, honey?’ replied the scout, just as quietly as Calamity. ‘Now do you reckon I’d enjoy hawg-tying a gal?’

  ‘Likely,’ Calamity sniffed, putting on Bigelow’s jacket over the dress.

  After slitting the dress to allow access to the knife or Colt, Calamity donned the campaign hat and thrust the two severed braids into position so they hung down from under it in a nearly natural manner.

  ‘Legs are a mite pale,’ Resin told her, having completed the securing of the Indian girl. ‘Happen you keep to the shadows, it might work. You scared?’

  ‘As hell.’

  ‘And me. Let’s go.’

  Carrying the pitcher. Calamity headed towards the camp, Resin drifting on silent feet behind
her. On entering the rough cluster of tipis which surrounded the open circle around the council fire, Calamity and Resin decided their guess had been correct, that all the camp were attending the pow-wow. At last they reached a buffalo-hide tipi on the very inner edge of the cluster and came to a halt.

  ‘This’s the one,’ Resin breathed in Calamity’s ear.

  ‘I’ll go ‘round the front and in,’ she replied no louder. ‘Reckon boys and gals do in heaven, Beau?’

  ‘Happen things go wrong. gal. we stand a fair chance of finding out, if you get there first, stay clear of them boy angels.’

  ‘First gal angel looks two ways at you get’s hand-scalped and wing-plucked.’ Calamity warned and sucked in a deep breath. ‘See you, Beau, one place or the other.’

  Lifting the pitcher on to her shoulder so it hid her face, Calamity walked around the curve of the tent and into the fire light’s glow. This was the moment of truth, the supreme testing time for her simple disguise. In seconds, Calamity would be into the tent—or well on the way to being dead.

  Somehow, illogically, perhaps. Calamity did not expect to be detected. So far luck had gone their way. The finding of the camp; the capture of the girl; the fact that this was a raiding party and did not have married squaws, children or dogs that might not have been at the council fire and so could have seen the intruders and raised the alarm; all those things seemed to be good omens to Calamity. Even the very fact that Wade H. Bigelow still lived might point to destiny not wishing him to die yet awhile.

  Yes; one way and another Calamity reckoned luck was on their side. Which, while comforting, did not make the long—it seemed hellish long to Calamity—walk around the side of the tipi and to its door through the fire-light any the shorter or more pleasant.

  Her eyes flickered to the council fire and the Indians gathered around it. At any second one of them might turn and see her, but none did. Every Cheyenne eye stayed on the war-bonnet chief with the yellow-ochre-covered face and the Dragoon Colt in his waistband. Sand Runner stood addressing them, but Calamity did not know enough Cheyenne to understand his message to his assembled people.

  The entrance to the tipi lay ahead, four strides, three, two—she was there! Now Calamity would really see how her luck was going. If there should be a guard in the tent, she must silence him before he could give any outcry. Lowering the pitcher, she slid the Green River knife from it and ducked into the tipi.

  Clad in his shirt, pants and boots, Bigelow lay in the centre of the tipi. He was trussed like a fowl for cooking—no Indian ever gave a prisoner a chance to slide free of his bonds—and his face showed the suffering the tight cords caused him. But, and this was most important, he had the tipi to himself. Clearly the Cheyenne figured that he could not escape and so did not bother to guard him.

  ‘Hold it down, Wade, boy!’ Calamity breathed, crossing the tipi and kicking its rear side.

  Much to his amazement, Bigelow saw a knife blade drive through the tipi side near where Calamity kicked, cutting downwards. Even before Resin made his entrance, Calamity was slashing Bigelow’s bonds.

  ‘Want a gag, Wade?’ Resin asked. ‘It’ll hurt like hell when the blood starts flowing again.’

  Weakly Bigelow shook his head. He might have been a damned fool to get into this mess in the first place, but he reckoned he could show courage. Within seconds of the circulation starting normal pumping Bigelow began to wish he had taken the gag. However, he gritted his teeth and held down the moans which welled in him. Calamity knelt by him, chafing his limbs, soothing him and whispering encouragement of a profane and uncomplimentary nature.

  ‘We’ll stay on a spell,’ Resin told the other two, seeing Bigelow would be in no shape to travel anyway. ‘Likely nobody’Il bother you for a spell. They been at you yet?’

  ‘No. Sand Runner’s girl-friend helped herself to my hat and jacket, as you seem to know. The rest of my belongings are there. The war-bonnet chief who acted as Sand Runner’s interpreter insisted they were left and returned with me. He and Sand Runner don’t get on very well.’

  ‘Bear Trailer’s a Cheyenne of the old school, even if he’s been to mission school,’ Resin explained, moving to the door and cautiously peering out. ‘He—’

  ‘What is it—’ Calamity breathed, moving to Resin’s side and listening to Sand Runner’s voice.

  ‘He’s asking where Fire-Rose is. That’ll be the gal we caught. Calam, gal, it looks like old Ka-Dih done stopped siding us.’

  Any moment now the search for the missing girl would begin. Once she was found, it was unlikely to take Sand Runner long to figure out why she had been caught and hog-tied.

  ‘Get your gun, Wade,’ Resin ordered and the captain crawled to where his weapon belt lay.

  A yell went up from among the Cheyenne and one pointed off into the darkness. For a horrible, shocking moment Calamity and Resin thought that the Indian girl had escaped from her bonds. Then they realised that the man did not point in any direction from which the girl might be expected to come. Sick and sore as she was likely to be, the girl would have headed straight for the camp, not swung around in a half circle.

  Hooves clattered, shod hooves as a clink of steel striking a rock told the listeners, harness leather creaked and wheels rumbled. The sound told a grim story to Calamity and Resin, range-wise in such matters. While an Indian might ride a stolen or captured shod horse until its shoes fell off, he would never bother to shoe one; once in a while the Indian might even use a white man’s saddle; but he never troubled to harness a horse to a wagon.

  So who came towards the Cheyenne’s hidden camp in a wagon?

  One thing was for sure. The visitor appeared to be expected, or at least friendly, for the Cheyenne showed no fear, only eager anticipation.

  A two-horse, light wagon entered the camp, passing from the trees through the tipi circle, by where Calamity, Resin and Bigelow crouched watching and came to a halt just beyond the entrance to their hiding place. In passing, the wagon’s driver gave Calamity’s party a chance to study him. He was a tall, bulky, bearded man wearing buckskins and having the appearance of a hide-hunter. Yet he did not make his money shooting buffalo; such a man would never be welcomed into an Indian camp.

  ‘Howdy, Sandy Runner,’ the man greeted, standing up and lifting a small keg from the box at his side. ‘Got you a fine selection of rifles, bullets, powder and lead.’

  ‘A lousy renegade!’ Bigelow hissed, fortunately being drowned out by the mumble of anticipation which rose from the watching Cheyenne.

  Before the young officer could burst from the tent, Resin had caught him by the arm and held him.

  ‘Not yet, Wade, happen you want to get back to Molly.’

  Despite his professed disinclination to meet and speak with white people, Sand Runner rose and advanced to greet the renegade.

  ‘They’d best be good rifles this time, Bernstein.’

  ‘You got the money for them?’

  ‘We’ll have it tomorrow,’ promised Sand Runner, speaking in good and remarkably accent-free English.

  Fact being he appeared to handle the English language with greater facility than he spoke Cheyenne. At that moment everything became clear to Resin; the reason for Sand Runner’s apparent un-Indian ways and mannerisms; his reluctance to meet white people; the repeated requests for money; all were now explained.

  Sand Runner was a white man!

  Maybe a deserter from the Army, fleeing from some real or imagined injustice; perhaps a criminal on the run from the law; perhaps; even an ideologist who regarded the Indians as down-trodden martyrs. Whatever the reason, in some way he had become adopted by the Cheyenne and risen to war chief by virtue of his fighting prowess and skill in the arts of killing the hated white brother.

  Not that any of the watching trio wasted time in trying to decide why a white man should turn against his own people in such a manner; being more concerned with thoughts of escape—if possible after destroying the wagon-load of firearms and ammunition.r />
  Jumping from the wagon, the bearded man slouched towards the fire, carrying the keg in his arms.

  ‘I’ll see you made comfortable for the night,’ Sand Runner told him. ‘Got some cute lil gals. Hey, where in hell’s Fire Rose?’

  ‘Forget her and have a snort of redeye,’ growled the renegade. ‘I’ll throw in the first barrel free, just to give your boys the taste,’

  ‘Do that. And when they’re good and likkered, I want to see my bank account book to make sure you paid in the last money I sent east.’

  ‘It’s in the wagon. I’ll get it for you. Anybody’d think you didn’t trust me, or something.’

  ‘I don’t. Come on, let’s open the barrel.’

  ‘This’s our chance,’ Resin hissed as the two men returned to the fire and opened the top of the keg. With the prospect of free whisky, none of the Indians were likely to take their eyes away from the liquor’s owner and container.

  ‘Let me go first,’ Calamity suggested.

  Before either of the men could confirm or deny the request, Calamity slipped from the tipi and to the rear of the wagon. The canopy at the rear had been lashed down, but the Green River knife made nothing of the securing ropes and she quickly lifted the cover to look inside. Despite having a pair of good, fast and powerful horses harnessed to it, the wagon did not carry a heavy load. Which did not entirely surprise Calamity. A man following the dishonourable business of trading whisky and guns to the Indians never loaded his wagon to the extent of slowing it down and rendering it incapable of outrunning pursuit.

  Swinging up into the wagon, Calamity removed the hat, jacket and dress, then crept towards the box. Just as she expected, the bearded man’s whip lay upon the seat and the reins curled around the canopy’s forward support. A faint scuffling sound behind her heralded the arrival of Bigelow and he crept forward to the girl’s side, crouching down by her, his eyes following the direction of her nod. Deftly he drew his Colt and checked it was still loaded and capped in four chambers. A couple of minutes dragged by before Resin saw his chance and ran to the wagon, climbing in and crouching by the other two.