Beneath a Dakota Cross

by Stephen A. Bly

  Fortune squatted in front of the fireplace and shoved several sticks into the flames. “I saw ’em. They said they couldn’t give us any salt, no matter what the trade.”

  “We might could make it to January, but we’ll never last to March,” Big River reminded them.

  “We keep wadin’ in that creek, we’ll all die of pneumonia long before January.” Brazos turned his back to the flames, and felt his pant leg beginning to warm. “We’re breakin’ ice ever’ mornin’ now. One of these days we’ll have to shut it down for the winter.”

  Yapper Jim broke off a hunk of stale bread and waved it around as he talked. “How can we quit when we’re pannin’ a hundred dollars a day out of No. 14 Below Discovery?”

  “Not to mention Quiet Jim clearin’ twenty dollars a day on sawed boards,” Big River pondered.

  Brazos rotated his stream-soaked pants and now faced the fireplace. “What about a couple of us makin’ a run for supplies?”

  Yapper Jim pushed his long-handled shirtsleeves up to his elbows. “Two can’t get through the Sioux.”

  “We snuck into these hills following the draws and arroyos. Maybe we can slip out to the north the same way,” Brazos proposed. “We could divide the gold—leave half with those who stay, and half with those who go.”

  “That way, when the fools goin’ for supplies get themselves scalped,” Yapper blurted out, “the ones back here still have some gold.”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Brazos continued. “Those who go for supplies can try to make it back in here before the snow flies. The ones that are left will have fewer mouths to feed. With any wild game at all, they should be able to survive most of the winter, even if the others get bushwhacked.”

  “I ain’t really interested in survivin’ most of the winter,” Quiet Jim reflected. “I was countin’ on survivin’ all of the winter.”

  Grass Edwards leaned back against the wall as he ran a cleaning stick with a rag tied to it down the barrel of his pistol. “It don’t make sense for all of us to sit in here hoardin’ gold, then starve to death.”

  “I say for them that leave, take all the gold,” Big River Frank suggested. “We don’t need any gold here in Deadwood.”

  “But what if they get scalped, like Brazos said?” Yapper protested.

  “Then we lost a whole lot more than some gold. The more we send out, the more supplies and equipment we can bring in. The more we bring in, the more gold we dig next spring,” Big River Frank proposed.

  “Who is it that tries to make it out?” Yapper quizzed, as he continued his stroll across the room.

  “Brazos ought to be one,” Big River insisted. “He’s the best shot among us. Besides, he’s got his boy, Robert, out at Fort Abe Lincoln.”

  Quiet Jim rubbed his full beard. “Being the sawyer, I better stay to keep sawin’ boards as long we can.”

  Brazos could feel his pant legs growing ice cold again. He returned to the fireplace. “Who do you want to stay in the pit with you?”

  Yapper Jim waved his arms. “Me, of course. Ain’t no one can work that bottom cut like me.”

  Quiet Jim concurred. “I do enjoy the silence.”

  “What silence?” Yapper Jim demanded.

  Quiet Jim didn’t crack a smile. “With all that sawdust tumblin’ down, Yapper has to keep his mouth closed.”

  “Laugh all you want to, but I’d just as soon stay. Don’t feel much like gettin’ scalped anyways,” Yapper pouted.

  “Grass knows more about buyin’ minin’ equipment than I do,” Big River suggested. “I reckon that means I stay.”

  “Do you think we’ll have time to go down to Cheyenne?” Grass Edwards asked.

  “Nope. We’ll make a run straight for Fort Pierre. It’s the closest place, providin’ we don’t get lost,” Brazos said.

  “Speakin’ of lost,” Yapper Jim tugged his suspenders down over his shoulders and let them hang towards the ground. “Did you see that notice posted on Muckle’s cabin? They’re searchin’ for some man who’s lost in the hills.”

  “What’s his name?” Brazos asked.

  “Vince somethin’ or other.”

  Grass Edwards jumped to his feet. “Vince Milan! That’s my sweet Jamie Sue’s brother! Is she still in Cheyenne?”

  “It said to contact her in Fort Pierre,” Yapper said.

  Grass Edwards began to prowl the room. “My Jamie Sue’s in Fort Pierre? Why, in a week or so, she could be in my arms.”

  “I would surmise that Jamie Sue has a little somethin’ to say about it,” Brazos teased.

  “She won’t be able to resist me, boys. You ain’t never seen me when I turn on my charm.” Grass Edwards’s smile seemed wider than his ears.

  By 10:00 the next morning, Brazos and Grass Edwards had ridden past the lowest claim in the district. They tried to follow Whitewood Creek out of the mountains, but found its steep gulches so checkered with dead trees and abandoned beaver dams that they slowly climbed the pine-sloped hill on the north, and picked their way through the tree line for two more days.

  On the third day out, they broke through the pines into the great plains of Dakota Territory.

  Grass Edwards waited as Brazos rode up alongside him. “Look at that … prairie as far as the eye can see. I’ve been in them gulches so long I forgot what it was like to look out over a quarter mile at a time. It’s goin’ to be mighty tough takin’ freight back in this way.”

  “Quiet Jim said if the ground froze up, they’d try to log off some trees along the trail. Maybe it will be a little easier on the return.”

  “You plannin’ on droppin’ down there and followin’ the north fork of the Cheyenne River?” Grass quizzed.

  “Nope.”

  “But it looks like it’s the easiest grade, now that we’ve gotten out of the hills.”

  “Too easy. It will be the trail everyone takes.”

  “But there ain’t no one around. What ‘ever’one’ you talkin’ about?”

  “Cheyenne and Sioux,” Brazos said.

  “Where?”

  “If we could see them, it would be too late. Let’s head northeast through that white, crusty-looking land.”

  Grass Edwards cupped his hands and blew warm breath into them. “Fortune, you’re just gettin’ senile in your old age. There ain’t nothin’ out there! I’ll bet there ain’t a stalk of Elymus canadensis for twenty miles. There won’t be any water in there, no feed, not a scrap of firewood, and no trees to hide behind. No one in his right mind would ride through that.”

  “Good.” Brazos retied his black bandanna around his neck, then glanced at Grass. “That way no one will bother us.”

  By nightfall they had crossed the north fork of the Cheyenne River and made a cold camp at the base of a small gorge that led down to a dry creekbed. For the last two hours of the day they had seen nothing but the crusted rolling prairie of baked-hard, white alkaline dirt. As the clouds piled up above them, the north wind increased, swirling with it the flour-fine white dust.

  Hats pulled low, bandannas over their noses, covered in white dust, they crowded near the base of the small cliff, trying to block the wind. They picketed one horse on each side of them, facing south. Sitting beside each other, their backs against the dirt, they pulled Brazos’s canvas bedroll tarp partially over their heads. Carbines tucked in their laps, huddling close, they tried to drink a little water from their canteens.

  “This surely is a lovely camp, Fortune.”

  “Thank you,” Brazos said.

  “Ah, but you was right. Not one Sioux followed us in here. Boy, we sure are smart. The wind blows away our tracks and no one on the face of the earth knows we’re here. Wherever we are.”

  “It could be worse,” Brazos added.

  “Worse? How can it be worse?”

  Brazos pointed to the evening sky. “It could rain.”

  “What’s wrong with rain? That would clear the air of this dust.”

  “This alkali turns to a gumbo in a heavy rain
. It would be so slick and sticky, we couldn’t ride ten feet without boggin’ down.”

  “You figure we ought to keep ridin’ tonight?”

  “Nope. We’d probably just circle around with all these clouds above.”

  “You plan on sleepin’ sittin’ just like this?”

  “Nope. I don’t plan on sleepin’. Me and sleep don’t do too good.”

  About midnight it began to snow.

  Tiny flakes dropped like crumbs off a boardinghouse table for about fifteen minutes, then a blast of frigid wind followed. Finally, the clouds disappeared, and a blanket of Dakota stars covered the coal-black night sky.

  “Brazos, are you awake?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ain’t that something the way them stars light up the snow? It’s almost like daylight. Not that the color of the badlands is any different. They was white with alkali. But at least now the air is clean.”

  “When the snows melts it’s going to get real gummy,” Brazos reported. “And if we wait for the gumbo to dry, it will be another dust storm and we still won’t have water or wood.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we take off right now,” Brazos said.

  “That’s mighty fine with me.” Edwards stood up and stretched his legs. “Gives me the feelin’ I’m walkin’ on the moon.”

  Both men pulled the blinders off their horses and yanked the girths down tight. Brazos waited in the saddle for Grass Edwards to mount up.

  “Brazos, do you figure there’s people livin’ on the moon? I read this here book one time about moon people.”

  “I don’t know, Grass. The Lord created the sun and the moon for light for the earth. It says that in Genesis. You’d think he’d have mentioned people up there.”

  “I reckon the Almighty can do anything he wants.”

  “If he ever needs some people to live on the moon,” Brazos offered, “I’d be tickled to recommend a few.”

  The night got so cold that Brazos clutched his carbine in his lap by the wooden stock, not the metal receiver. Even then his gloved fingers ached. They rode straight east, but the cold wind that pushed the clouds away continued to blow from the north.

  “I have half a mind to turn around in the saddle and ride backwards,” Grass called out. “That way my right side can freeze on equal basis with my left.”

  “I have been thinkin’ about breakin’ out the bedroll and pullin’ it over my head,” Brazos said.

  “It will make us look like squaws.”

  “If they stay warm when they ride at night, they’re smarter than we are,” Brazos added.

  Hats tied over their ears, wool blankets hanging down from their heads like shawls during fiesta, the two plodded through the night.

  Right before daylight, Grass Edwards tried clapping his gloved hands to restore circulation to them. The noise startled his horse. He broke into a series of bucks that landed Edwards in the dirt.

  Real dirt.

  “Brazos, do you see this?” Edwards yanked a plant out of the ground and waved it up at Fortune. “Do you know what this is?”

  “A dried weed?”

  “It’s Distichlis spicata, that’s what it is … inland saltgrass. That means we made it to the edge of the badlands!”

  Brazos tugged the blanket off his shoulders and rolled it up. “Well, I think we better find some water.”

  As the sun rose over the flat eastern horizon, sage and grass appeared as scattered clumps in the gently rolling, treeless prairie. The only evidence left of the light snow was the clean air and dustless ground. Cresting a long, steep incline, the prairie dropped off into a ribbon of yellow-leafed cottonwood trees running north and south.

  “There’s a creek down there.” Edwards pointed to the tree row.

  “Or at least a mud hole.”

  The trickle of water in the creek was no more than two feet wide, mostly clear, and very cold. A four-foot-wide patch of Canadian wild rye, brown and with full head, banded the creek. The horses grazed and drank as the men filled their canteens and built a small fire to boil coffee.

  “It’s a wonder there ain’t a band of Sioux and Cheyenne camped here,” Grass said, squatting next to the fire.

  “The creek’s too small, and there isn’t any game. Besides that, there’s not enough protection from the wind and blowing snow. Not exactly the kind of place I’d want to winter,” Brazos replied.

  A movement in the leaf-shedding cottonwoods startled them. Brazos lifted the Sharps carbine to his shoulder. Grass yanked his revolver off his belt. Both men followed the noise through the brush, looking down the sight of their guns.

  A thin, hatless man staggered into the open space on the other side of the creek. He clutched a bloody rag held tightly to his chest. “Thank God, you’re here!” he groaned, then collapsed into the short, dry grass.

  “You check on him. I’ll see if there’s more,” Brazos ordered as he leaped the creek and scrambled towards the brush, his carbine cocked. He found no trace of any others and jogged back to a kneeling Grass Edwards, who was giving the injured man a drink from his canteen. “How is he?”

  Water dribbled down the man’s unshaved face, as he squinted in pain. “I’m fumed, boys. Don’t mind me. It’s them Sioux you have to watch out for!”

  “Where are they?” Grass quizzed.

  “North of here.”

  “North? We thought they were south.”

  “So did I. I figured on makin’ a run to Fort Pierre, but they ambushed me yesterday evening just east of here. I hid out in a buffalo wallow all night and finally had the strength to make it to the creek.”

  “Were there others with you?” Brazos plied. “This is a dangerous trail by yourself.”

  “I should have knowed better. But I was in a hurry. Are you two goin’ to Fort Pierre?” The man’s narrow gray eyes searched wildly around the camp.

  “If we can avoid the Sioux,” Brazos said.

  “You got to do a favor for me.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Take my poke to my sister who’s waitin’ for me in Fort Pierre.”

  Grass Edwards gently gave him another drink of water. “A poke?”

  “You two are carryin’ gold out of the hills, ain’t ya?” he asked.

  “Maybe …” Grass answered.

  “That’s what I figured. I knew I could trust a couple of miners like myself.”

  “Where’s your gold?” Grass asked.

  “I cached it right before the fight with the Indians. About a mile east of here, I piled up three rocks as a marker, in the clearing in the middle of the boulders.”

  Brazos studied the man. This might be the first mortally wounded man I’ve seen who didn’t sweat. “We haven’t seen a boulder since we left the Black Hills.”

  “There’s some just east of here. You got to go get my poke and take it to my sister in Fort Pierre.” The blood on his bandage had already dried.

  “How will we find your sister?” Edwards asked.

  The wounded man pointed to his coat pocket. Grass removed a yellowed handbill, slowly opening it up. “Jamie Sue! My word, man, are you Vincent Milan?” Grass choked.

  “You’ve got to go tell her what happened and give her the money,” the man gasped.

  “We’ll do it!” Grass promised.

  “Let me look at that wound, partner,” Brazos said.

  “Cain’t move my hand,” Milan protested. “It’s keeping my guts from spillin’, boys. Just let me die peaceful in the grass, knowin’ my bones will be buried and my sister will get my gold.”

  “Grass, you go get his gold and bring it back here. I’ll stay here and take care of him,” Brazos suggested.

  “No!” the man insisted with a clear, strong voice. “You’d both better go. Those Sioux might be hiding near those boulders. It would be safer for you to go together.”

  “He’s got a point about that,” Grass concurred.

  Brazos stood up, then looked down at the man. “W
e can’t go off and leave you here.”

  “The only thing that will bring rest to my soul is that I know you have my poke in hand.”

  Grass Edwards stepped across the stream and retrieved the ­horses.

  “We’ll leave you a canteen,” Brazos offered.

  “Thank ya … and when you come back … bury me deep. But hurry … you’ve got to find that gold before them savages do.”

  As they trotted east, both men kept their guns cocked. Their eyes scanned the horizon.

  “My dearest Jamie Sue’s brother. This is providential, Brazos! I reckon she’ll be a-grievin’ when you tell her about her brother’s death,” Grass called out.

  “Me tell her? She’s your sweet Jamie Sue.”

  “I figure you can do the tellin’, and I’ll do the comfortin’. Look, there’s the boulders, jist like Milan said. I wonder if the Sioux is in them rocks?”

  “I don’t know why they should be. They stole his horse, gun, and saddle. Milan was wrong to think the Indians would steal his gold. They have no use for it.”

  “I was thinkin’ the same thing,” Grass said.

  “It’s a wonder they didn’t steal his boots and clothes.”

  “He must’ve got away before they stripped him. I’m going to get that gold for my Jamie Sue.” Grass spurred his horse into the boulders.

  Brazos hesitated, then followed.

  In a clearing, about twenty feet across, Grass Edwards leaped down and walked his horse towards a small pile of stones. “This must be it!”

  Brazos’s hand was still on the receiver of his carbine that lay across his lap, when he heard a hammer cock only a few feet behind his head.

  “Oh, there’s gold in here all right, boys, but it’s in your pokes, not that ground,” a deep voice boomed.

  Brazos cocked the big hammer on his Sharps but let it lay in his lap.

  A man in a black long coat stepped from behind the rocks, a Smith & Wesson pistol pointed at Grass Edwards on his knees by the pile of rocks. Brazos couldn’t tell if there were one or two men behind him. He didn’t turn around to look.

  “Well, I’ll be …” Grass dropped his hand to the grip of his revolver.

  “Don’t try it, boys,” the voice behind Brazos insisted. “We’ve got the drop on you, and you know it.”