by Tim Champlin
CHAPTER 2
As though we were all shot from the same cannon, the four of us sprang as one to the backs of our ponies and dug our heels into their flanks. The ponies lunged away with renewed energy. We angled away from the Indians and toward the trees, riding hard. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the painted and feathered riders turn to head us off. I heard a couple of shots fired but paid no mind, since most Indians are notoriously poor shots, and it would have taken a mighty lucky shot or an expert marksman from a stable position to hit a moving target at this distance in the half-light.
Our lives literally depended on our reaching shelter first, with a few seconds to get ready to defend. But it looked as though they had the angle on us and would be on us before we could reach the trees. A shallow wash several yards wide suddenly loomed up under our ponies' hooves in the dusk. We had no time to turn, but rode right down through a spray of muddy water, our momentum carrying us up the other side and out.
The wash grew narrower and deeper as it neared the creek it fed, and the war party hit it some two hundred yards farther down. In their rush to head us off, the first few of the dozen or so riders were on it before they saw it, and tried to jump their ponies. The first two barely made it, their mounts almost falling as the ponies clawed for a foothold in the opposite muddy bank. Three more behind them, unable to check their rush or to jump clear of the forerunners, fell in a tangle of legs into the wash, throwing their riders. The rest of the Indians, expert horsemen that they were, turned their ponies sharply or brought them to a sliding stop, short of the declivity.
I saw all of this in two quick glances as we rode hellbent for cover.
This fortunate accident gave us the moment or so we needed to outrun them. Curt and Cathy hit the cottonwoods and willows first, Wiley and I only a couple of seconds behind. It was even darker under the trees, and we plunged blindly through, our ponies flopping about three feet down the bank into the water of the creek.
The shock of the cold water took my breath as I was thrown and went under, trying instinctively to keep a hold on my pony's hackamore. The current was swift, but the creek was only three to four feet deep with a gravel bottom. My mount jerked free and plunged away as I floundered to my feet.
"You two get downstream—fast!" Curt yelled. "Matt and I'll hold 'em off."
I yanked the rifle from my belt as the two of us struggled to shore. We scrambled up under the trees, shaking the water from our weapons.
"Thank God for sealed cartridges," Curt panted.
"Amen to that!"
We threw ourselves belly-down at the base of a huge cottonwood tree, and I levered a shell into the chamber.
The war party had gotten itself together, with the exception of two I could see on foot in the distance. The rest were pounding toward us, whooping.
I knew they couldn't see us in the gathering dusk under the trees, but they knew where we had gone in and they were closing in for the kill—or capture. But the way they were streaked and daubed with paint, I didn't think they were in any mood to take prisoners, unless they had a little entertaining torture in mind.
Curt had loaded my Colt before they jumped us, and I had crammed my magazine full as well, before we divided up the remaining shells. "Hold until you're sure of your first shot," Curt ordered. "You take one of 'em on the left and I'll take one on the right."
My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would jump out of my chest, and not just from exertion. As I propped my left elbow and sighted, my hands shook. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Curt bracing the revolver with both hands.
The ten riders were within sixty yards now, the feathers flying from their long black hair and from the tips of their repeating rifles. Damn the man who ever sold them such weapons! I thought, lining up a brave in my sights and drawing a long breath.
Fifty yards… forty yards… thirty yards.
"Now!" Curt's voice was low and clear.
Our guns roared as one. Two riders jerked and spun limply from their ponies. Before they hit the ground I had thrown the lever on my rifle and was squeezing off another shot. But I was too hasty, and missed. Cursing myself, I slammed another cartridge into the chamber. Before I could fire again, the band broke apart and began to spread out in either direction.
A pony suddenly went down, shot by Curt. The thrown rider was just rolling to his feet when the six-shooter roared again and the Sioux went down for good.
I fired again and saw one rider grab his arm as his pony swerved away. The attack was faltering. I fired twice more and missed. It was getting dark fast, and the moving targets were getting harder to hit. And the Sioux were now hanging to the offsides of their ponies, firing at us from under the ponies' necks. It was an exhibition of equestrian skill I had seen before, but still marveled at. The Plains Indians were very likely the best horsemen in the world. But I had no time to contemplate this theory. Bullets were whizzing over my head, ripping through the leaves. One or two lucky shots kicked rough bark from the cottonwood trunk a couple of feet from our heads.
I wormed my way forward to the edge of the undergrowth and strained to see if any of the attackers were trying to get into the tree line above or below us. But I couldn't see where most of them had gone. We had killed or disabled three and wounded one that I knew of. Three were afoot from their horses falling into the wash. Just then, I saw three of the Indians riding back to pick up their walking companions.
I pumped three more shots in the direction of the moving horsemen, but it was now so dark I would never know if I hit anything.
There was no answering fire.
"Come on, Matt." Curt's voice was low, a few feet behind me. "We've stung 'em pretty good. Let's get out of here while they're recouping." He was a man whom crisis made quiet. I didn't need any urging. Scrambling back, we waded into the stream, holding our weapons out of the water.
"Think they're slipping around to head us off?" I asked. "They sure disappeared quick."
"Maybe, but I doubt it. They don't like to fight in the dark. They'll probably collect their dead and retreat for now. We got at least three of them and wounded another. Those three who were afoot were temporarily out of action. They paid a high price for not getting at least one of us. By my count, that left only about five mounted warriors."
We were wading toward the middle of the stream, and the current tore at us, making it hard to keep our footing on the smooth pebbles and hard-packed clay bottom as the water rose above our waists. The stream was about a hundred feet wide, as near as I could judge. I couldn't see or hear anything of our ponies.
"Where'd Wiley and Cathy go?" I whispered hoarsely.
"Don't know. Hope they got downstream fast and far." He moved closer to me in the dark and spoke softly, even though the sound of rushing water probably drowned his voice from anyone on the bank. "Let's swim with this current—quietly. Cathy and Wiley can't be far ahead of us. And they may still have the ponies."
We were pretty well toward the middle of the stream by this time, and I was taking one last look around at the blackness when a Winchester exploded not twenty yards away and I felt the bullet yank at the sleeve of my shirt. My heart jumped, and I instinctively raised my rifle to fire, but Curt, always quick-thinking, grabbed the barrel and hissed into my ear. "No! They'll see the flash. Pretend we're hit. Let's go!"
He gave a realistic, agonized yell and splashed around, at the same time pulling me down and away into the current. I managed to jam the rifle back into my belt and pushed off the bottom into an easy sidestroke, swimming quietly with my eyes and nose barely above the surface, letting the cold, swift water do most of the work.
We swam this way for at least ten minutes, and no more shots came from the darkness. The lone rifle blast may have been a parting shot from some brave who had tried to slip up and count coup on us, not knowing we were already in the river. I don't know how he could have spotted us except, possibly, by our white faces and hands. Or else he just heard a little noise and fired a
t it. I prayed that these Sioux had a strong belief in the afterlife, especially in the notion that their souls would wander forever without rest and never find their way to happiness if they were killed in the darkness. My imagination peopled the blackness of the shoreline with countless savages, all thirsting for my blood. I urged my arms and legs to swim a little faster.
I estimated that the current was ripping along at a good five miles per hour. I was so keyed up it was difficult to judge time, but I guessed we swam this way. for at least thirty minutes, even though it seemed like hours. That would put us about two miles downstream from where we went into the river. Stuck through my belt, the ten-pound rifle was beginning to drag on me, but I wouldn't have parted from its reassuring weight for anything.
Curt was swimming slightly ahead of me, and without warning, he put his feet down and stood up. I piled into him, and we went down again splashing. We both floundered to our feet and stood there, the current sucking and gurgling around us.
"What's wrong?" I asked in a whisper.
"You see something over there near the bank?"
I strained my eyes and saw what looked like an irregular white spot, but I had no idea what it was. Even as I looked, the spot moved. My heart jumped.
"I think it's one of our ponies, standing in the water under the overhang," Curt said quietly, his mouth close to my ear. "One of ours had a white marking just back of the shoulders. I'm going to take a chance. Be ready to get underwater and swim hard." Then he moved away from me, and in a strong but guarded voice, called, "Wiley! Cathy!" There was no immediate answer, and I was ready to spring away. "Wiley! Cathy!" he called a little louder.
"Curt?" came a tentative query.
My breath came whistling out in an involuntary sigh as I recognized Wiley's voice. In a few seconds we were all reunited. They had managed to hang on to two of our four ponies. Since Curt didn't think we were out of danger yet, we walked, leading our ponies downstream another mile or so, keeping to the edge of the tree line on the south shore, opposite the side of the attack. Finally, he called a halt.
"Think this is far enough?"
"I wouldn't be satisfied until we were twenty or thirty miles away, but this'll have to do."
He led the ponies into a dense thicket of trees and undergrowth. A rising three-quarter moon cast a pale, patchy light on the leaves and revealed an open, grassy area between the brush and the riverbank.
"We'll camp here. We're all done in. We'd never make it if we tried to go any farther tonight. And I don't want daylight to catch us out in the open again like it did today. It wasn't our vigilance that saved us. We were just damned lucky., We'll have to be more careful from here on."
He looked around at us in the dark. Curt and I had lost our hats. The four of us were soaked and chilled to the bone. We were half dead on our feet from hunger and exhaustion.
"We'll have to have food," Curt said, as if thinking aloud.
"Hell, we haven't seen as much á a jackrabbit since we left Slim Buttes," Wiley Jenkins said. "Only sign of life I saw the whole way was a couple of buzzards and a hawk."
"How about some pony steaks?" I suggested.
"Just what I was thinking," Curt agreed. "We can walk to the Hills from here. I hate to lose one of our two remaining mounts, but we'll never make it, even with horses, if we don't get something to eat. Which one of these two is the weaker?"
"This one," Wiley answered.
"A bullet will be the quickest and most humane way," Curt Wilder said. When no one moved, he apparently interpreted this as a reluctance on our part to kill the animal, although I was just numb with fatigue. "I'll do it," he continued. "We'll just have to risk the Indians' hearing a shot. I think I can muffle it. We don't have a club or a knife big enough to do the job."
Without further hesitation, he took the reins of the weaker animal and led him away downriver. The rest of us stood there not saying a word. A few minutes later we heard a muffled boom, which I'm sure could not have been heard over a half-mile away, especially with the noise of the rushing water nearby.
I shook myself out of my lethargy and went to help him carve the meat with Wiley's short sheath knife. "We going to eat this raw?" I asked as we carried the steaks back to Wiley and Cathy.
"I've got some wax-coated matches I've been carrying for weeks," he answered. "Hope we can find something dry enough to burn."
We found some dead grass and leaves and enough twigs and driftwood to kindle a small fire. We fed the minute flame with sprigs of grass and tiny twigs. When the fire eventually began to feed on itself, the wood sizzled as the water boiled out. We took pains to build it in the midst of the thickest part of the damp undergrowth where it would not be visible, and made it only large enough to cook on. We whittled some forked green sticks and roasted the steaks over the fire. And even though we had no salt, no bread, no vegetables, nor coffee to go with it, I believe that was the most delicious meal I have ever eaten. It may have been my extreme hunger, but that pony meat surpassed in taste the best beef I'd ever had.
"By golly, my hat's off to you, Matt Tierney," Curt said, giving me a whiskery grin across the campfire.
"Why's that?" I asked, cutting off another bite of the tender, succulent pony meat and popping it between my teeth.
"When the chips are down in a fight, IT vote to have an Irishman on my side every time. You're a native son, born and reared, and you proved it just now."
"Aw, c'mon, now," I answered. "Everybody seems to have that image of us, just because we've been fighting off the damn English for a few hundred years. Actually, Ireland is known as the 'Land of Saints and Scholars.'"
"It's also known as the land of boozers and brawlers," Curt said, a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes. "And I'm glad to say it was the brawler part that was showing just now, or we probably wouldn't be sitting here eating and resting."
"I believe you've kissed the Blarney stone a time or two," I retorted, feeling my face reddening at his praise. "Actually, it was your sharp eye that kept us from walking into that ambush."
When we had all eaten as much as our shrunken stomachs would hold, We took turns wringing out our soaked clothing and attempting to dry it by propping our shirts on sticks near the flames. The wet cloth served as something of a screen and helped to create a small circle of steaming warmth.
Curt and I each had a watch, but both of them had stopped after their soak in the river. I judged it was about midnight before we roasted a little more of the meat and ate again.
I was using my half-dry shirttail to wipe off the breech of my rifle when Cathy stifled a yawn. A few seconds later her brother yawned mightily. Across the dying fire the conversation had lagged, and I noticed Curt's eyelids drooping. The food, the warmth, the relaxation of the tension, and the nearly two days with little sleep were doing their work.
"Think we need to post a guard?" I asked.
"Think any one of us could stay awake for more than ten minutes without someone to talk to?" Curt countered. "You're right," I said, grinning.
"I think we ought to picket that pony about fifty yards away in the dense brush. He might give us a warning if we need one. Frankly, if I know anything about the Sioux and Cheyenne, we won't be bothered again tonight. I think that was a chance meeting. They may have been on their way to join Crazy Horse in harassing the troops." He began scraping dirt on the remainder of our glowing fire. "Just be sure to sleep with your gun handy. How many shells have you got left? Let's divvy up." We counted out ten, divided them equally, and loaded our weapons.
Wiley took the pony some fifty yards upstream and tethered him so he could graze out of sight along the timbered bank, then came back and we all rolled near each other on the ground and were dead to the world Instantly. The whole Sioux nation could have come in yelling and screaming, and I probably wouldn't have awakened, I was so tired. Divine providence must have been watching over us that night, because we were not discovered or disturbed. In fact, my exhaustion was so complete and I slept so soundly
that I didn't even dream, which was unusual.
When I finally woke, I immediately tensed and slid my hand for the reassuring feel of my rifle. My hand closed on its cool metal on the ground about two feet from where I lay on my back. My irritated eyes were nearly stuck shut, and I couldn't see until I wiped them open with my other hand. I could feel the sun warming me here and there as it filtered through the foliage. I thought I heard the wind blowing, but as I rolled over and looked around, I realized it was only the rushing sound of the river a few yards away.
Curt was awake and sitting a few feet off, watching me. Wiley and Cathy were still asleep, lying huddled on the ground on the other side of our cold campfire.
"Morning," Curt greeted in a low voice. "Sorry I haven't got any coffee to offer you," he said with a grin.
"I sure could use some," I groaned, sitting up and stretching. "I feel like I've been run over by a team of oxen. Any sign of the hostiles?"
"None. But I think we should stay here and rest up today and travel at night."
"Yeah. I'm still dead tired." I glanced over at him. "And you don't look too pert yourself." His lean cheeks were covered by several days' worth of dark stubble, even though his eyes looked a little more rested and clear. He sat cross-legged on the ground, resting his elbows on his knees. His boots were coated with dried mud. In spite of our swim, the yellow cavalry stripes on the outside of his trouser legs were all but obliterated by weeks of grime and mud. His cavalry jacket was missing two or three buttons and had a ragged bullet hole in one sleeve where he had wrapped the muzzle of my Colt before shooting the pony. I noticed that his captain's shoulder bars were missing. Apparently, Major Zimmer had had them torn off when Curt was arrested and confined, even though, from what little I knew of army regulations, I thought this was technically illegal until a man was convicted. Or, for that matter, Curt might have done it himself, later. But I didn't want to bring up a sore subject, so I just said, indicating Cathy and Wiley, "I'm glad they're sleeping; they needed it." -
