There were three of them. Riding abreast along the track. Their ponies filling the width of the canyon from side to side. As they saw the lone white man they reined in slowly, with much pushing and muttering. The singing tailed off into drunken laughter.
Crow immediately knew that there could be trouble. Bad trouble.
Three Indians were all right. Three drunken Indians were a lot less all right. Three drunken Shoshone warriors, none of them looking more than twenty years old, wearing paint, meant about as little all right as it was possible to get.
The four of them sat and looked at each other for a few moments in the speeding darkness. Crow considered drawing the Purdey and blasting through them. They were a little out of range for the sawn-down weapon— still thirty or forty feet off—and he also had no way of knowing whether there might not be another dozen or more braves just around the next bend of the trail.
It was time to play it very softly and carefully.
‘Ho, white man in black!’ called out the center rider, waving a Seventy-three Winchester. It was ornamented with brass studs all along the butt in a circular pattern.
‘Ho, young chief of Shoshone,’ replied Crow, using English. He had a working knowledge of most of the Indian tongues but it was a talent that was often more useful to him by its concealment.
‘Not chief, white man whose head is so high that it removes snow from clouds. Chief is Many Knives.’
‘I have heard of him as a brave leader whose young men are quick as lions and brave as eagles that rise to cover the sun.’
They were heeling their ponies in closer to him, making it easier for Crow to make out details of what they were wearing and carrying.
The chinking revealed that the young man on the right had a dozen bottles slung across the blanket on his pony’s back, their necks tied with thongs of rawhide.
That explained the drunken merriment and their apparent good humor towards him.
But it also left the question unanswered about where they’d got the whisky.
‘You scout for wagons?’
‘I scout for pony-soldiers.’
‘Many?’
Crow nodded. ‘Many hands.’
The Indians muttered among themselves and Crow immediately noticed a change in the atmosphere.
‘We think you do not speak straight man alone in black. We know there are many soldiers in place called Greenbriar Canyon by you. Build fort for long cold. But others come in carts. Women. More soldiers. None at all in way you come.’
Crow considered the position. If what they said was true, the Shoshone knew the Cavalry were establishing a winter camp back west in Greenbriar Canyon. It had been used before. And this news of the wagons and women sounded ominous. For them to have that degree of-knowledge meant a large war-party must be loose in the region. Under Many Knives who was notorious for his hatred of the whites.
‘There are many of you?’ he asked.
‘We are part of many. So many the grains of sand are less. But we are together. Together we have done good work for our people. We will be sung of when we return to our camp.’
So they were alone.
The gap between Crow and the Shoshone had closed to about twenty feet. Both sides watching the other warily. Hands were near guns.
The light was failing and the three men were little more than silhouettes against the pale rocks to a normal eye. But Crow’s eyes were highly-tuned to dim light and he could now see more of the three young men.
They wore breeches and shirts. But one had blue trousers with a yellow stripe down the leg. Another wore a blue shirt with a dark stain across the chest. One had a golden bandana, identical to Crow’s, tied around his neck.
And they carried clothing across their ponies. Dresses in flowered calico and cottons. Ribbons. A rag doll dangled from the belt of the center man. Round the neck of the young warrior on the left hung a hand-tinted daguerreotype of a woman and three little children. But it was difficult to see it clearly because of the drying blood stains all over it.
‘It is far?’
‘To the camp?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps I could share your fire.’
There was a great bellow of high-pitched laughter from the Indian on the left and his pinto started at the sudden noise, skittering a few steps back, half-turning. So that Crow was able to see that the warrior had taken a bunch of scalps. Two that were short. Men’s scalps. Red hair clotted with black blood. And longer hair. Yellow in the poor light. The hair of women or female children.
From that moment on Crow knew that this confrontation could have but one ending.
‘You would come with us?’ called the brave, bringing his pony forwards into line with the others. So that all three were again bunched close together.
‘I would be warmed by the fire of the Shoshone,’ Crow shouted back.
‘He would be well-burned,’ said one brave to another in their own tongue.’
‘And you would meet our women, white man?’ mocked the warrior in the middle.
‘I could not live with such an honor,’ Crow replied, knowing that if he could lull them into thinking they were dealing with a foolish innocent riding alone then his chances would be better.
He’d once met the notorious gunman, Jed Herne. The one they called Herne the Hunter, and they’d killed a brace of bottles together down near Nogales. They’d talked about setting people off guard. Herne had said: ‘Ain’t nobody scared of a fool,’ and he was right. The Indians thought Crow was a naive idiot and they were confident they could take him easily.
‘Our squaws would show you a fine welcome,’ said the Shoshone turning to grin at his fellows. Crow believed him. The torture and butchering of helpless captives was always handed over to the women of the tribe. They did it well. Slowly and well. With needles and probes and knives and fire. The Shoshone squaws would truly have been delighted to have welcomed Crow to their lodges.
‘We like your horse, man with voice soft as snow on water.’
‘I too like it, young man who makes war on children and women,’ replied Crow.
Simultaneously drawing the Purdey from the greased holster, the clicking of the hammers being thumbed back as loud as thunder in the stunning silence.
‘What do you mean, white man?’ asked the warrior riding in the middle, making no move for his own gun. Crow noticed how swiftly all three of the Shoshone had sobered up.
‘I mean that you murdering sons of bitches have just killed some white folks.’
‘We found the hair on the frail,’ said the man on the left.
‘We think Oglala took it. And killed two of the pony-soldiers,’ he added.
Crow couldn’t have given a sweet damn about the fate of the soldiers or the women. Or even the children. They weren’t his concern. His sole concern was the continuing health and well-being of the man called Crow. Everything else was incidental to that. If he hadn’t needed to ride on past the Indians he would have let them pass unhindered, despite the clear evidence of what they had done.
‘You bastards lie the whole damned time. But I don’t have time to worry about that. I want to get on by. I’m not goin’ to kill you. Throw down those guns. Quick or I’ll blow you all apart!’
The twin barrels of the snub gun gaped at the three young bucks like doorways to eternity and they all dropped their rifles to the dirt.
‘Now I’m goin’ to sit here real easy and you ride on past me. Hands on your ponies’ necks. And keep on movin’ if you want to keep on livin’.’
‘It shames us, white man,’ spat the center warrior, peering at Crow through the darkness.
‘You can come on back for the guns after I’ve gone,’ he replied.
‘You will shoot us?’
‘No. Why would I do that?’
‘We do not believe words of white men.’
‘Come on, son, Not all of us have those forked tongues your shamans always talk about. Now move your asses,
before I waste all three of you!’
The Shoshone heeled their ponies slowly forwards, keeping close to each other, while Crow backed the stallion against the wall of the canyon. Holding the scatter- gun cradled in his arms, finger on the triggers.
‘What is your name, white man who speaks truth?’ asked the leading brave as they came level with Crow, not more than six feet away.
‘It doesn’t signify,’ he replied.
‘Why?’
‘Dead men don’t need names to remember,’ Crow said, squeezing both triggers on the Purdey at once, bracing himself against the vicious kick of the ten-gauge.
In the confined space of the cold ravine the noise of the double explosion was shattering. There was a twin gout of flame and Crow felt the gun kick against his wrist and arm. Seeing the flash of the black powder bright in the dimness, the three Indians disappearing in the eruption of smoke.
The lethal hail of lead shot came bursting from the scatter-gun at almost point-blank range. Starring out and ripping into the three young braves. The leader received the worst of it. Crow bad aimed for the top of their chests, so that the shot spread enough to hit them and open them up from belly to skull.
The Shoshone never knew what had happened. By the time their brains got the message of the gun going off, they were all dying. Their bodies torn to shreds of flayed skin and shards of splintered bone by the impact of the powerful scatter-gun.
One fell with eyes pulped into bloody jelly by the shot, his face a mask of blood.
A second was hit mainly in the throat. Slicing through his neck above the yellow bandana. Opening up the carotid artery and covering the stone walls behind with a spray of pattering crimson.
The middle warrior was virtually cut in half. His head was cut off the trunk and rolled in the dirt, so soaked in blood that it wasn’t even recognizable as anything that had once been human.
All three of the Shoshone toppled from their ponies, blown away by the force and shock of the attack. The shot also wounded the animals, dappling their flanks with bright spots of blood. Sending them kicking and whinnying off down the canyon, past Crow, towards the pale glow of the western horizon.
Immediately he’d pulled the triggers Crow holstered the smoking Purdey, drawing the Peacemaker from the back of his belt, finding it awkward under the heavy coat Thumbing back on the hammer, staring down at the shattered forms at his stallion’s hooves, writhing and twitching in the last agonies of dying.
‘Be a waste of bullets,’ he said to nobody in particular, seeing there wasn’t any need to shoot again. His horse shied away from the stench of the blood, steaming in the cold of the evening. But it had been Crow’s mount for long enough to be totally used to the crack of firearms and the screams of wounded men.
In a few seconds the residual movements stopped and the three corpses were still. The only sound the hissing of blood on the sand and boulders around.
Crow holstered his pistol and set his stallion’s head towards the east. Eager to find shelter of some sort from the cold of the Dakota night.
Then there was that mention of women on a wagon train, watched by the large Shoshone war-party. That sounded interesting, thought Crow, as he rode on into the blackness.
Chapter Four
The snow began to fall in earnest round about noon on the next day.
Starting with a few scattered flakes, carried along on the rising wind. Nothing that settled, or even stayed long enough for anyone to be certain it wasn’t just the previous night’s heavy frost blowing off exposed boulders. Then there were longer flurries. Lasting three or four minutes, unsettling the soldiers’ horses, making the mules lower their heads and turn stubborn on the up-grades.
The sky cleared about eleven, showing enough patches of blue sky to cheer up some of the women.
To ease the animals they were all walking for an hour, except Mary-Lou Brittain, better than eight months gone in her first child-bearing. She reclined inelegantly in the rear of the leading wagon, a pile of blankets making her seem even more bulky than she really was.
Rachel Shannon was feeling better. It was a great relief to get out of the Dougherty and away from the chilling disapproval of the snobbish Martha Hetherington. The driver, Trooper Gilbert, was also pleased to see the Captain’s wife out of the rig for a spell.
They had paused at about ten for a mug of steaming black coffee all round, and some of the women had use the opportunity to retreat behind some mesquite to answer a call of nature. Martha among them. While she was gone, Trooper Gilbert had spat in the dirt, wiping hi long, brown-stained moustache with the back of his sleeve.
‘That woman, Miss Shannon,’ he said.
‘Mrs. Hetherington, Trooper?’ the girl had replied cautiously.
‘Yes. That one.’
‘What of her?’
‘Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Shannon, but she has the charm of a prairie rattler and the warmth of a block of winter ice.’
‘Trooper!’ Rachel had been shocked. And also frightened that Martha Hetherington might have heard such dreadful words. She was quite capable of ordering a soldier to be tied out to a wagon-wheel for a night, eve in such bitter temperatures.
‘It’s true. I just wished you to know that none of us, common soldiers like her. Nor the Captain, neither. He a strutting little coxcomb who will yet lead us all to our deaths with his ignorance.’
Just then Mrs. Hetherington had reappeared and taken the girl to task for passing the time with an ordinary trooper. The soldier had spat again and said nothing.
The first night out on the trail had been freezing cold and there had been something of a disaster when a poll snapped in the cooking tent. Bringing down the canvas on top of the red-hot stove, there had been an instant blaze and three of the men had been burned trying to put it out. The Captain had sent them back to the temporary fort with a couple of soldiers as escort.
Soon after they had gone, all in the train had heard the crackle of shots. It had not lasted long and the Captain had ridden up and down reassuring everyone that it had been a brush with a couple of warriors who had obviously been beaten off. But the incident had cast a pall of gloom over the party.
To pass the time, Rachel Shannon had taken it on herself to check through the inventory for her own part of the wagon. Mentally ticking off each item as she read it out. Recalling exactly in which trunk or box it had been packed a day or so earlier.
She had seen the stuff that some of the wives of the officers carried with them. It was a simple truth that the higher the man’s rank, the more his ladles carried.
This was the result of the Army practice known as “bumping”. Something that was common on every post throughout the United States Cavalry.
It was easy to understand.
Also called “ranking-out” it meant that when a new officer arrived at a fort, he took over the quarters of the officer immediately below him in rank and seniority. Who moved out the man below him. And so on and so on, right down the line to the most junior.
It was undoubtedly becoming colder. The pieces of cooked meat that they’d brought with them from the fort had been so hard in the morning that she’d needed to ask the driver to take a small hatchet and break them up for her. The bread had become so tough that it was almost impossible to slice and they were reduced to tearing chunks off it.
The train carried very little food with it. Enough f or the first couple of days, to see them through the worst of the mountains. Then Hetherington had made it clear there would be no problem in hunting and getting ample supplies of fresh meat.
During the night the water hung from the axles had also frozen. Hot coffee only took a matter of a couple of minutes to turn to brown slush in the mugs.
Though the women and the few children on the train were all wearing their warmest beaver cloaks and fur boots, it was impossible to get warm. For wagon trips in the middle of winter the Doughertys would have been insulated with wooden paneling. There would even hay been small iron stoves
built into each rig.
But nobody had thought that October—even late October—would produce such bitter weather.
The previous night Rachel Shannon had sat with the others around one of the camp fires. Rather than spend their time in hunting, the entire patrol were forced to scavenge for wood. No easy task among the steep draws and canyons of the Territory.
As each small fire was lit, so the travelers would crowd in around it. First the heat would melt away the snow revealing a circle of wet ground. Then the cold would come creeping back in again, and turn the water to ice, surrounding every fire with a glittering area of polished glass.
The wagon was made less comfortable than it might have been thanks to Martha Hetherington’s insistence of bringing her harmonium along with her. It was a heavy instrument, made in Woodstock, Ontario, with several ivory stops. As the trail lurched on ahead of the rig, so the pedal-organ wheezed and groaned with every bump. Sending out a vague scent of musty churches that seemed to spread through the wagon and taint ever thin with the sickly smell.
By the third night they were nearly through the highs hills. There had been several moderate falls of snow and the mules were battling for a footing on the icy boulders. Each morning the dull clouds seemed to hang even lower over the trail. Rachel had overheard a conversation between a top Sergeant and the Captain, arguing about their plans.
That evening she had managed to snatch a few private words with her father and had asked him what was happening to the train.
He’d smoothed down a wet curl off her forehead and smiled reassuringly.
‘Don’t fret, my dear little daughter. Everything is going swimmingly well and we shall soon be over halfway to our destination.’
But Rachel knew her father.
Knew the lines that tightened around his eyes and mouth when he thought she wasn’t looking. Lieutenant Shannon was a worried man, though he tried to hide it.
‘What is it, Papa? We’re not lost, are we? Surely not?’
‘No. Of course we are not.’
‘Then why...?’
‘Am I concerned? Because I cannot agree with the thoughts of our commanding officer, Captain Hetherington, on what we should do.’
Worse Than Death Page 3
