Follow the Wind

by Don Coldsmith

  Lean Bull felt that it had been no more than luck which had enabled the strangers to retreat into the stream bed and make their defense. His mind refused to accept that it could have been good strategy and planning on the part of the young chief.

  He did have to admit to the bravery of the Hair-faces. He had been amazed at the charge of the old white-hair, shouting and swinging the long knife. The white-haired chief, it seemed, was experienced in battle.

  Lean Bull regretted deeply the loss of the black stallion. He had seen, from a distance, the animal go down and its rider pinned beneath. He was furious, as he had plainly told the entire party that the young chief, as well as the black horse, belonged to Lean Bull. The young warrior with ideas of his own had paid dearly for his initiative. The Head Splitters were still amazed at the efficiency of the strange short weapon used by the crossbowmen.

  Lean Bull had tried to reach the place where the young hair-face was unhorsed, but was unable to do so. Then the fight had swept away from the gully and it seemed impractical to make another attack.

  No matter. The strangers had lost men, too. At least three, he thought. The spearmen had been struck the hardest, because they had been in the thick of the defense while the others had scrambled for cover.

  Lean Bull glanced at the stars and estimated the time until Sun Boy’s awakening. The coming sun would see the end of the Hair-faces.

  He had carefully studied the terrain before darkness fell. The strangers’ position was secure against a small force. They could turn back attacks by Lean Bull’s war party. They could find cover behind the cutbank and water in the deeper holes of the creek bed. They had food and, if necessary, could eat their own horses. Such a group might hold out for many sleeps.

  But against a larger war party, they could not survive. The defenders could not meet an attack from both sides. There were simply not enough men.

  Lean Bull was tempted to divide his party and attack at dawn. Surely, he could overrun the position of the Hair-faces. Prudence held him back, however. He must make certain that the first attack was a success. He questioned whether his warriors would follow him in a second try.

  So, they must wait for reinforcements. He had sent word back to the tribe after the failure of surprise in the night camp. There were many aspiring young warriors who would be eager to follow the great Lean Bull into battle.

  He estimated that by noon, with Sun Boy’s torch overhead, he would have four times as many warriors as the little group in the gully. Then they would attack from both sides at once. It would soon be over.

  He rather hated to share the honors. Much better, had he been able to lead his party to victory without help. If there were only some way to force the defenders out into the open. There, Lean Bull and his horsemen could cut them to pieces almost at leisure. He had racked his brain, but could think of no possible means to accomplish this. The Hair-faces were firmly rooted in the confines of the stream bed.

  For a brief time, Lean Bull considered setting fire to the tall grass along the gully. A quick look, however, assured him that the growth was too green to burn. He would be forced to wait.

  So, Lean Bull reclined on his robe and fretted, waiting for two things to occur. The first would be the coming of the sun. This would enable him to scout more precisely the condition of the defenders and to determine how best to make the attack.

  Second, he must wait for the other warriors from the village. They would be already on the way, he realized. Some might travel through the night. So, the first of the reinforcements might arrive by midmorning. The main body would be present by noon and Lean Bull had already, in his mind, set this as the time for the final attack.

  He glanced again at the stars, watching the Seven Hunters swing around their lodge at the Real-star. Time was passing so slowly. Lean Bull was anxious to meet, in individual hand-to-hand combat, the young war chief who had embarrassed him. He was still smarting over the matter of the girl. She was not now available as the object of his vengeance. He would have to be content to vent his wrath on the other half of the pair who had shamed him. Lean Bull’s grasp tightened on the handle of his war club and his teeth clenched in rage. He must make certain that no one else reached the young hair-face first. Lean Bull alone must be the one to count honors in the defeat of the hair-faced young chief.

  He sighed deeply and rolled over. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, staring to the west.

  There, in the far distance, something was blotting out the starry sky. For some distance above the earth’s rim, a dense and growing blackness, deeper than the night’s dome, came mushrooming up, obscuring the twinkling lights of the stars.

  Even as Lean Bull watched, there was a flicker of orange heat lightning across the face of the cloud bank, next to the horizon. He almost laughed aloud. Again the orange shadow flitted across the blue-blackness of the storm front. This time he noted a tiny streak of real-fire, darting down and stabbing at the earth’s surface. Long moments later came the muted rumble of distant thunder, so soft that he would not even have been aware of it if he had not been watching the play of the lightning.

  Now he chuckled openly. He could not have planned it better. He had wished for a means to force the defenders up and out of the stream bed. Now, as if in answer to his wish, came one of the summer storms common to the prairie.

  Relaxed now, almost happy with anticipation, Lean Bull watched the storm sweep toward them. It might be his best ally now in the fulfilling of his revenge.

  26

  In the uncomfortable camp in the dry stream bed, Sanchez tossed miserably in his blankets. He was frightened. Things had become worse and worse, the further the expedition had gone. For the thousandth time, he cursed himself for his greed. How, by all that was holy, could he possibly have fabricated a tale that had brought this entire party to perish on the plains of this godforsaken continent?

  For, as nearly as he could see, perish they must. The lieutenant had already told them that the savages were only waiting for reinforcements. Then, sometime after dawn tomorrow, would come the assault. Probably from all sides, Cabeza had said.

  Sanchez was terrified at the thought that this would probably be the last sunrise of his miserable life. It made things no better that he was considered a hero since the fight. Try as he would to maintain his composure, he was certain that his terror would be apparent to all.

  He was a hero only by virtue of a freak accident. He could still not believe that he had actually picked up the weapon of the dead soldier, discharged it, and killed the attacking warrior. To the others, none of his protests seemed to make any difference. They could not realize his ineptness, his unreasoning, irrational behavior. They saw only the man who had, in an emergency, acted to save the life of their lieutenant.

  To be sure, Sanchez was enjoying their newfound friendship. He was being treated almost as an equal by the crossbowmen. He was basking in this new respect, but it, too, could become a problem. He would now be expected to perform in combat with a skill equal to his accidental achievement of the previous battle. This, Sanchez was certain, was an impossibility. He doubted that his two legs would even hold him up when the attack came.

  In the midst of all this troubled thought, Sanchez heard a far-off mutter of thunder. It was the darkest hour before the dawn, his mind was exhausted, and for some time the significance did not filter into his consciousness. Thunder rumbled again in the distance.

  Within minutes, the sound was closer—and each flash of lightning brighter and closer. Puffs of wind stirred the trees along the creek and a light rain began to fall.

  Up and down the creek bed, men scrambled for blankets and scraps of canvas to shelter their heads from the increasing downpour. Sanchez felt soaked to the skin. Water squished in his boots as he shifted uncomfortably in the dark.

  Perhaps because he was already so wet, he did not at first realize that the water was rising. There was a slight tug of current at his ankles, a subtle shifting of the sand and gravel beneath his boot
soles.

  Almost at the same instant, Sanchez heard a distant rushing and roaring sound. A man upstream shouted a warning, but the rush of water was upon them. Sanchez was nearly knocked from his feet. A horse splashed past him, lunging toward the higher ground. Frantically, he clutched what equipment fell to his hands and scrambled over the low bank.

  “Over here! Over here!” Cabeza was shouting.

  A flickering flash of lightning showed for an instant a cluster of men and horses, stumbling to join together for mutual defense. The next instant, all was darkness again. Sanchez started to run in that direction and collided with a frightened horse. Almost by reflex alone he grabbed at the animal’s dangling rope. The horse followed along with him.

  Another flashing lightning bolt showed him slightly off course. He had nearly stepped into the swollen creek. Ahead, Sanchez could hear the confusion of the main group, as sodden survivors clustered and clung together.

  It seemed an eternity before the dull gray daylight began to lighten the leaden overcast. The storm slowly moved on to the east, rumbling and flashing in the distance. The rain had stopped, except for a fine mist that seemed to hang in the air. Sanchez thought he had never been so thoroughly soaked. Somehow even the light drizzle now falling seemed wetter than the deluge that had produced the flash flood.

  The sodden little group of survivors huddled together on the stream bank. Any semblance of cover or concealment had now vanished under the rushing torrent behind them. Cabeza moved among the men, trying to take stock of the situation.

  Two men were missing, presumably drowned. Most of their equipment and part of their weapons had been swept away. Of the horses, only a scant half dozen remained.

  The most terrifying aspect, however, as the gray dawn slowly increased visibility, was their exposed position. The little group huddled on the higher of the stream banks. Water spread across the meadow on the opposite shore, rushing among the trees and rocks where they had found shelter. Here, in the open, was nothing. They could retreat only a few steps and their movement was blocked by the bank-high torrent.

  Cabeza pointed upstream. A few hundred paces away was a cluster of a half dozen scrubby trees. They were poorly seen in the dim light, but they offered the only possibility of cover of any sort on this side of the stream. The dripping survivors, like so many half-drowned rats, straggled in that direction.

  Before they had reached the trees, a trio of warriors made a mock rush at them. They stayed well out of weapon range. It seemed likely that they were merely scouts, probing to discover the extent of the storm’s damage to their intended quarry. Apparently satisfied, they withdrew.

  Sanchez glanced at the lieutenant, wondering if he had noticed the same thing that he, Sanchez, had. In his terror of the attacking force, he had realized that now the warriors could attack from only one direction. The flooded creek, while placing them in an exposed position, had also eliminated the possibility of a flanking attack from the other shore. A moment later, Sanchez assured himself that of course Cabeza knew this. It was his job to know. Furthermore, he saw, as they straggled into the tiny cluster of trees, that it was a natural site for a last-ditch defense.

  The little grove—some type of oaks, it seemed—was located on a point of land which jutted out into the creek bed. Undoubtedly, this very patch of tough, gnarled growth had helped to divert the course of the stream over the years. Soil held by a tangle of roots is more resistant to the erosive action of water. The result was this higher tongue of land, with the stream circling around it. By sheer good fortune, the flooded creek now gave protection in an arc that covered nearly two thirds of their perimeter. The point was far more defensible than it had originally seemed.

  Sanchez slumped in among the trees and dropped the oddly assorted equipment he carried to tie the horse to a tree. He was glad for respite from the threat of immediate death from the arrows or clubs of the Head Splitters. He felt almost secure for a moment as he sank down to rest, as near the protection of the creek’s rushing current as he could get. Let the others take positions near the attack point!

  He glanced behind him and wondered how long the water would run high. When the flood began to recede, they would again be vulnerable to attack from all sides.

  27

  Ramon Cabeza watched the sun struggle to break through the thinning cloud cover. Scraps of blue sky appeared for a short time, only to be overrun again by the shifting and overlapping patches of gray. The atmosphere was hot, steamy, and uncomfortable.

  In the heavy grass in front of their position, droplets of water sparkled like jewels in the occasional ray of sunlight which broke through. A misty haze of steam rose and hung over the little valley, unmoving in the still morning air. It lent an unreality to the distant figures of Lean Bull and his warriors. They moved about, squatted, or mounted to ride up and down the hill with arrogant pride. It was apparent that their purpose was to impress the defenders in the little cluster of trees.

  Cabeza was impressed. The situation had deteriorated so rapidly in the past two days that he could hardly believe it. The expedition had left the Head Splitters’ village in strength and confidence only two mornings ago. Now they were reduced to barely more than half strength, had lost all their supplies and most of their horses. They had hardly enough weapons to mount a defense of any sort when the final rush came. Cabeza hoped that the warriors of Lean Bull did not realize the helplessness of their victims’ plight.

  Not that it would make much difference. The Head Splitters could probably overrun the little party of travelers at any time, with no more men than they already had. But he was certain they were waiting for more warriors from the main camp. Then the assault would come. His main hope now was that his party would be able to show respectable strength in their own final defense.

  What was it his instructor at the Academy had once said?

  “When the situation becomes hopeless, to die well is the final insult to one’s enemy.”

  Something like that. Cadet Ramon Cabeza had not listened well. In his youthful exuberance, he had not for an instant believed that he would ever find himself in a situation that had become hopeless. That sort of thing was for others.

  Now he sat in the mud of the prairie near the center of the vast new continent, about to be overrun by savages. Poorly armed savages, at that, by modern standards. Their weapons were chipped from the stone of their hillsides, but he had been forced to respect their expertise. The warriors of Lean Bull had systematically whittled away at the strength of the expedition, until now they were reduced to a pitiful handful, poorly armed, with little leadership except for his own.

  Cabeza glanced over at Don Pedro Garcia. The old man was sleeping peacefully. In a brief conversation earlier, it had become more apparent that his mind had slipped yet further. With bright, burning enthusiasm, the old don had outlined strategy for the coming battle.

  “We must deploy a squadron of lancers,” he pointed at the distant ridge, “and then bring the artillery up behind. The dragoons can sweep up from the south, with the foot troops following!”

  Sound strategy, Cabeza had to admit. It fit the terrain perfectly and would put the enemy at a decided disadvantage. There was only one simple flaw in the plan. Merely that there was no squadron of lancers, no artillery or dragoons, and no foot troops. Merely the bedraggled handful of survivors on the muddy point of land in the bend of the flooded creek.

  He looked at Sanchez, who waved and smiled. Ah, Sanchez. The man had never openly admitted it, but Cabeza had long assumed that the other had no real knowledge of the prairie. He must have conceived this entire expedition for personal glorification and enrichment. How unfortunate that his folly had carried so many others along with him.

  Yet this same unlikely little man had shown unexpected strength. He had actually saved Cabeza’s life. His life had been saved twice in as many days, the lieutenant reflected moodily. The other time, it was the slim girl who had become such a part of his thoughts. He wondered where
she might be and if she had managed to return to her people. She would undoubtedly marry one of her own and raise children. They would be strong warriors, he had no doubt.

  Gloomily, he wondered if she would remember him. Would she ever tell her children of the hair-faced stranger who had entered her life for a short while?

  The girl, he had decided, was the key to Lean Bull’s determination. Originally, the Head Splitter may have been seeking to steal the goods and supplies of the travelers. Now it was more than that. It had become a personal thing, a vendetta to avenge what Lean Bull considered an affront to his dignity.

  Slowly, an idea began to dawn. Could it be that Lean Bull considered this a private matter, to the extent that he would accept a personal challenge? There was nothing to lose, Cabeza reflected. The little group was doomed anyway. Perhaps he could bargain for their lives. He was unfamiliar with native custom, but it might be worth a try. He turned to consult with Lizard.

  The interpreter was squatting near Sanchez, trying in vain to kindle a fire. It was hopeless, with all combustible material soaking wet, and the young native cast aside the sodden mess just as Cabeza approached.

  “Lizard,” he began, with signs and a mixture of Spanish and native words, “would the Head Splitter chief fight me instead of killing the whole group?”

  The interpreter shrugged.

  “Who knows? My people would. Of them, I do not know. You could ask them.”

  The parlay must be immediate, Cabeza thought. If the main party of warriors arrived, it would be much more difficult to negotiate. The sun had just succeeded in displacing the mist and cloud cover. There was now a light breeze beginning to stir the drying grasses when the young lieutenant of lancers rode out into the meadow. Lizard trotted at his side.

  There was a flurry of activity among the Head Splitters on the hill and Lean Bull swung up to his horse’s back, to walk slowly forward. Other warriors joined him, but the chief motioned them back. He pointed to one man and they advanced, side by side.