Action at Beecher Island: A Novel

by Brown, Dee

  “In a few minutes it will be dark,” Two Crows said. “Let the young men strip themselves and carry Roman Nose to the squaws on the hills.”

  After a while the young braves formed a procession, the forward ones carrying their wounded leader on their shoulders, the others following in single file, beating on skin drums and chanting a death song.

  “Why did you tell them to perform the death ceremonies?” Spotted Wolf asked.

  For a minute or so Two Crows was silent. “Roman Nose spoke to me with his eyes,” he said then. “He knows he has lost the power of his legs forever. If he lives he will sit all his days in a tepee like a helpless old woman. He has told himself to die.”

  They watched the slow-moving procession cross the river. When it vanished in the twilight, Two Crows went with Spotted Wolf and other Cheyenne leaders to meet with the Sioux. After a short discussion in the darkness they agreed to continue the siege of the island until the white scouts were all killed.

  “We must make certain that none escape to go and bring bluecoat soldiers,” Pawnee Killer said.

  “None shall escape,” declared Two Crows.

  “The Sioux people are camped on the west bank,” Pawnee Killer continued. “We will guard this side of the island.”

  “Then the Cheyennes will guard the east bank,” Two Crows said.

  After the parley ended, Two Crows and Spotted Wolf decided to go on the island and try to recover the bodies of two Dog Soldiers who had been killed there. One was Two Crows’ nephew, White Thunder, and the other was Weasel Bear. Black Moon, Bear Feathers, and Cloud Chief offered to go with them.

  “Be very careful when you go through the grass,” Two Crows warned them. “It is dry and makes a crackling sound and the white men will shoot at any noise they hear in the dark.” He led the way, slowly and cautiously. As they were creeping along, scattered out and going very slowly, two shots came from in front of them. A bullet cut across Bear Feathers’ right shoulder, and he hugged the ground close to Two Crows. “Go back,” Two Crows told him.

  “No, it is only a flesh wound,” Bear Feathers whispered. “I will stay here and keep watch for you.” The others continued to creep up to the place where they believed Weasel Bear and White Thunder had been killed.

  Although they moved as carefully as possible, two more shots came from the pit, close in front of them. One of the bullets hit the shield which Two Crows had tied on his back, and the force almost turned him over. The other bullet grazed Black Moon’s shoulder. “It is nothing,” he said. “Look hard in the darkness there. Do you see Weasel Bear and White Thunder lying in front of that rifle pit?”

  “I see them,” Two Crows answered.

  Spotted Wolf who had been guarding the rear now came forward to help, but he moved the grass and the two white men in the pit fixed again. One of the bullets hit Cloud Chief in the arm. Spotted Wolf crawled closer. “How much farther ahead are they?” he asked.

  Two Crows replied: “They are right over there ahead of us, only a little way.” After waiting a while, he gave a signal, very softly, and they crawled up fast through the grass. The white men shot twice again, but the bullets went over them.

  Weasel Bear and White Thunder were lying almost side by side. Two Crows turned White Thunder over on his back. He was rigid in death.

  “Look at Weasel Bear,” Spotted Wolf whispered. “He is not dead. I can feel his body move; he is still breathing.”

  Two Crows bent over and whispered in his ear: “Are you still alive, Weasel Bear?”

  “Yes, I am badly wounded; I cannot move.”

  “We are trying to get White Thunder away from here, and when we get him away we will come back and try to get you.”

  Weasel Bear answered slowly: “I am badly wounded through the hips and cannot move myself.”

  With a rope halter which Cloud Chief had brought along they passed a noose around the feet of White Thunder and pulled it tight. While the other men dragged White Thunder away, Two Crows and Spotted Wolf remained near Weasel Bear. A drizzling rain had begun falling.

  Again the white men fired at sounds in the grass. They fired several times, but no one was hit. After White Thunder’s body had been removed from the island, several other Cheyennes came to help rescue Weasel Bear. They moved very carefully along the trail that had been beaten down, and no more shots were fired at them.

  Two Crows took the rope and got up to Weasel Bear. “We have come for you now,” he whispered.

  Weasel Bear said: “That is good. I am glad of it. I feel all right except that I cannot move my legs.”

  Two Crows looped the rope about Weasel Bear’s feet, and they pulled him away slowly and carefully, making no sounds. At the river bank, some young warriors lifted him on their shoulders to carry him up the bluffs to the medicine men.

  “I am very tired,” Two Crows said. “I will sleep a little while, and then afterwards I will help with guarding the island.” He rode his mustang into a ravine where he found a plum shrub to shelter him from the rain. He stretched out on the ground and fell asleep.

  When he awoke it was very dark. The drizzle had stopped falling, and a strong wind blew against his face. He could hear the monotonous beat of drums and the wailing of mourners on the bluffs.

  He mounted and rode out on the riverbed, searching for his friends. A few yards off he heard some Sioux arguing excitedly among themselves. One of them was Running Elk, who was down in the sand feeling for tracks in the darkness. “A young brave came and told me he was sure that one of the white scouts passed him in this dry river,” Running Elk explained. “He said he smelled cooked meat and the odor of a white man.”

  Two Crows dismounted. “Have you found tracks?” he asked.

  “Only a moccasin track and one whose feet were wrapped in blankets. They are going toward the island.”

  Two Crows felt the sand prints with his fingers. “These white enemies know our ways,” he said. “They may have walked backwards to fool us.”

  “If this is so, we must find them,” Running Elk said. “They will bring soldiers to fight us.”

  “I will call together the best trackers among the Dog Soldiers,” Two Crows promised, and turned to mount the mustang. “Soon the sun will rise, and if white men are anywhere on the prairie we will find them.”

  As the sky brightened, Two Crows led his party far out, riding the crests of ridges and making a big circle. They scoured ravines and hollows, but found no sign of any white men.

  They were two or three miles from the island when they heard firing in volleys. With a loud cry, Two Crows led the Dog Soldiers back in a fast gallop. By the time they reached the riverbed, the shooting had stopped. He saw Running Elk with a party of Sioux carrying dead and wounded on their ponies, and he rode over to find out what had happened.

  Running Elk was angry and grieving at the same time. “It was some of our foolish young men,” he explained. “When the sun rose they could see no sign of the white men on the island, no smoke, no sounds. They thought the white men had all escaped during the night. They rode up, about twenty of them, and dismounted recklessly, running forward to pick up the enemy’s trail. They were surprised when the white men began shooting at them.”

  Two Crows sighed. “We cannot fight these men by rushing upon them,” he said. “They are too deep in their holes. We must creep up on them through the grass in the old way, and make them shoot at us until all their powder is gone. Then we will kill them.”

  For most of that day, Two Crows fought in this way, tantalizing his enemies by rustling the grass near their pits, by showing himself for the wink of an eye, and dodging away. The white men, however, were sparing of their bullets, and would shoot only when a good target was offered. Too many of them knew all the tricks of the Indians. Two Crows fired several bullets at one of them, a young man whose head would bob out of his pit and then disappear. Two or three times the white scouts had cheered the young man for drawing fire. He was the one they called Slinger.

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  Sigmund Schlesinger

  September 18

  A COYOTE HOWLING FAR out on the prairie awakened Sigmund Schlesinger. Remembering suddenly where he was, he raised up and saw Martin Burke’s friendly face grinning at him from an adjoining pit. “Quiet as a tomb, laddy boy,” Burke remarked. “No redskins this day.”

  “Maybe they’ve gone,” Schlesinger said.

  “Don’t lay any bets on that,” a voice drawled from the opposite pit. Sharp Grover was peering out at the river where mist swirls lifted to the clearing sky. “Here comes a bunch of wild bucks now.”

  Schlesinger stood upright, his carbine ready, and in a minute saw about twenty Indians splashing their ponies through the shallows. They were moving at a slow trot, the leaders riding with heads high as if looking for something.

  “Hot-headed young Sioux,” Grover said. “They think we’ve vamoosed. Can’t see us in these deep pits.”

  When the Indians reached the end of the island, about half of them dismounted and began searching the hard sand. To Schlesinger they appeared to be younger even than he, very young boys, but their faces and naked torsos were painted for battle.

  Suddenly from across the ring of pits a single carbine shot rang out. Grover swore, then shouted: “Hold your fire till they get closer!” At the sound of firing, the mounted Sioux charged forward to screen those on foot. “Don’t let them ride over us!” Grover warned. They came zigzagging in, but a rattle of carbines quickly scattered them.

  “Got one!” Burke cried.

  George Oakes, who shared Burke’s pit, was standing up, rubbing his eyes. “They won’t let a fellow get a wink of sleep,” he complained.

  “We would’ve cleaned ’em out,” Grover declared, “if somebody hadn’t got edgy and fired too soon.”

  Schlesinger reloaded his carbine and was reaching for his canteen when Sergeant McCall appeared in the connecting trench. “Have a good rest, Slinger?”

  “If you can call two hours sleep a good rest, Sergeant.”

  McCall’s face was lined with weariness, but he managed a smile. “You went off guard at three o’clock. I’m assigning you to help feed the wounded. The major says to heat some water. It’ll have to substitute for coffee.”

  For the next hour Schlesinger was busy boiling water and warming strips of horsemeat. He selected the tenderest pieces for the wounded men who lay side by side in a deep wide pit. Major Forsyth, who was resting on a piece of canvas which Grover had stretched over a pole frame, refused to eat until the wounded scouts had been served. He obviously was in severe pain, but affected a jaunty air when Schlesinger offered him a canteen of hot water and a strip of meat. “Can’t beat army rations, can you, Slinger?”

  “Better than some of that tinned stuff they fed us in the contractor camps out of Hays, sir.”

  Forsyth’s sudden laugh changed to a racking cough; he closed his eyes in a grimace of pain. “You have a way of looking at the brighter side, lad. I like that.” He took a swallow of hot water. “Go ahead and eat. You haven’t had a bite of breakfast, have you?”

  Schlesinger began chewing on a strip of meat. Without salt it was almost tasteless, but at least it satisfied his hunger. “I hope my friend Jack Stilwell made it through with Trudeau,” he said. “There’s no way we can know, is there for a time?”

  Forsyth shifted his shoulders uneasily on the canvas. “No way at all, Slinger. If the hostiles caught them last night, I think they’d have let us know that in some fiendish way.”

  A bugle call sounded from across the river, bringing Forsyth suddenly upright, his head lifted high. “That blasted renegade bugler again!” he cried. The notes were repeated. Forsyth frowned, then shouted: “McCall! Grover!”

  Head down and trailing his carbine, Grover darted out of a connecting trench. “Bunch of Cheyennes to the east, Major. They’ve put up a white flag.”

  Schlesinger turned in the direction of Grover’s pointing finger. Five dismounted Cheyennes were standing on the river bank. A feather-bonneted warrior at center was holding a lance tipped with a fluttering white cloth. The bugle sounded three short notes and the five Indians moved forward into the dry riverbed.

  “Shall we honor their truce flag?” Sergeant McCall asked.

  Major Forsyth shook his head slowly. “I see no point in it.”

  McCall looked puzzled. “Perhaps they want to recover dead and wounded, sir.”

  A scoffing sound came from Grover’s throat. “They’ve had all night to do that. All they want is to see how many of us are left alive in these pits.”

  Schlesinger watched the white flag moving closer. Evidently the five Indians were confident the scouts would not fire upon them.

  “Order them to halt, Sergeant,” Forsyth said calmly.

  McCall leaped upon the rim of the pit, waving his arms and shouting at the warriors not to approach. From down the line, George Oakes’ voice shrilled: “Tell ’em we’re too old to be fooled by that trick, McCall.”

  Keeping his carbine balanced, Grover jumped nimbly up beside the sergeant and shouted several words in Cheyenne. The warriors pretended not to understand, and kept moving steadily forward; the lance bearer waved the white cloth from side to side.

  “Schlesinger,” Forsyth said firmly, “fire a warning shot over their heads!”

  “Yes, sir.” Schlesinger sighted on the white cloth, and then fired above it. The Cheyennes halted immediately. McCall and Grover dropped back into the pit.

  Off to the right of the truce party, Schlesinger saw a single Indian appear on a sand knoll. “Two Crows!” he cried, swinging his carbine.

  “Hold your fire,” Grover said, and then megaphoned his hands, shouting in Cheyenne.

  Still boldly exposing himself, Two Crows replied. When Grover answered in an insulting tone of voice, Two Crows suddenly disappeared, and the five warriors in the truce party scattered into the grass. A few shots were exchanged, and again quietness settled over the island.

  “What did you say to him, Mr. Grover?” Schlesinger asked. Sharp’s stern mouth twisted in a slight smile. “Two Crows said if we didn’t honor his truce party they would charge us because they knew we had only a handful of cartridges. I told him to send on his bucks, that each man of us would give them a hatful of cartridges. I reckon he believed me.”

  Soon after Schlesinger returned to his pit, the hostiles renewed the fighting. They seldom showed themselves, but would fire suddenly from the brush or from long range positions.

  From above a tree trunk that had been uprooted and left half-buried in the river channel, Schlesinger noticed a recurrent drift of blue powder smoke. “Hey, Burke,” he called, “I think there’s a sharpshooter behind that log.”

  “We’ll see.” The Irishman put his pancake sailor hat on the end of his carbine and lifted it slowly. Instead of a bullet, an arrow zipped out of the underbrush, sending the hat spinning. George Oakes laughed, but Burke valued his sailor hat highly and he began shouting insults at the Indians.

  Determined to force the sharpshooter behind the uprooted tree to show himself, Schlesinger made a loophole in the sandy edge of his pit and carefully lined up his carbine on the target. Then instead of lifting his hat as Burke had done, he jumped high, exposing his head and shoulders for a second or two. After repeating this maneuver several times, he drew a shower of arrows from a group of Indians who were dug in behind cover of a knoll.

  The arrows knocked down part of his parapet, and he scooped up a hatful of sand to repair it. This time a bullet screamed into the hill of sand. He ducked, squinted through his loophole, and saw blue smoke drifting again above the log. Once again he leaped, and this time he was certain he saw movement through the knotted roots at the end of the log. He emptied his carbine at the target.

  George Oakes was yelling at him—something about saving his powder—and then Oakes let out a real yell: “Ow-eee!” A moment later Schlesinger heard Burke’s raucous laughter. “Haw! Haw! Haw! Look at Oakes with a Cheyenne arrow stuck i
n his hind end!”

  “Pull it out, you blasted Irisher!” Oakes shouted.

  “It’s only stuck in your pants,” Burke said soothingly. “Barely scratched your skin.”

  The slight wounding of Oakes and the banter between him and Burke eased the tension of the morning. Not long afterward several Indians on the bluff mounted and began moving off, dragging travois behind the rear horses. Schlesinger asked Grover if they were leaving the fight.

  “Mostly old men and women,” the scout replied. “Carrying off wounded to their village. The bucks won’t give up this fight yet awhile, boy.”

  By noon the sun was burning hot, and the slaughtered horses and mules that circled the pits began to swell and decompose. “If the Indians don’t drive us out by tomorrow,” Burke remarked, “the stench of dead animals will.”

  The afternoon passed slowly, with only an occasional scattered shot from the Indians. One by one they seemed to be leaving the island to gather on the hills along the east bank of the river. Grover watched them from his pit, his eyes scanning the darkening horizon. “Powwow,” he said tersely. “They won’t bother us no more today.”

  All through the late afternoon, Schlesinger had been hungrily observing a few ripened plums on a bush several yards from his pit. At dusk he crawled out cautiously, gathering handfuls of the fruit, filling his pockets.

  When he returned George Oakes gave a loud cheer for him. Schlesinger offered Oakes a plum. “I gathered them for the wounded,” he explained.

  “My scratch hardly qualifies me.” Oakes grinned. “Slinger, you may have been a greenhorn when you joined on with us,” he added seriously, “but when the chips are down you’re right there with us thick or thin.”

  The wounded men thanked Schlesinger heartily for the plums; that is, all except Dr. Mooers who was still delirious. Schlesinger bent down and placed a plum on the doctor’s lips, then presented the remainder to Major Forsyth.

  “Slinger,” the major said in a voice grown husky from weariness, “I well remember how reluctant I was to sign you on as one of my scouts. I figured you to be a city tenderfooter from the East. Let me say to you now—and I shan’t call you ‘boy’ or ‘lad’ ever again—you’ve proved yourself to be a gallant soldier among brave men.”