Cheyenne Justice

by Charles G. West

  He dismounted and scanned the banks of the river and the trees on each side. There were no tipis, no people. But they had been there; the signs were abundant. Jason rode on down the slope to the river.

  It had been a sizable camp and Jason had no doubt that it was Sitting Bull’s people. From the looks of it, they had not been gone more than two or three days and, from the way the grass was grazed down, he guessed they had remained there for several weeks before packing up and leaving the valley, heading southwest. He stood near the center of the worn patches in the grass left by the tipis, feeling the presence of the Lakotas as if they were still there. Their spirit was still strong there and Jason could sense it. With the toe of his boot, he stirred the ashes of an old campfire, uncovering some charred bones. Antelope, he thought, or deer…but not buffalo. The bones were too small for that. It occurred to him that he had not seen any sign of the large herds of buffalo since leaving Lincoln. Only a few years before, it would have been damn near impossible to travel that distance without at least seeing sign of the huge animals.

  He looked around for only a few minutes more before stepping up in the saddle and starting out after the village. They weren’t hard to follow. The trail left by the many ponies and travois was close to one hundred yards wide through the valley, up the tablelands, and into the bluffs. There it was transformed into a deep, but not so wide, ribbon as it approached the hills. Jason urged White to increase the pace to a fast walk as he left the valley and the wild roses behind him. More than likely Sitting Bull was heading to another of his favorite campsites and the trail seemed to point toward the Big Horn valley. As he rode, he pondered his situation. He had no notion of a rescue plan even if he did find the girl. He figured he’d worry about that when he found the Sioux. The main thought in his mind at the moment was that he needed to find them and not vice versa. Unconsciously, he reached down to make sure his Winchester was riding easy in its sling.

  Since he estimated the village had at least a two-day start on him, he assumed they had already reached their new camp. The trail followed what he remembered to be an often-used Indian route between the river basins and, if they stayed on it, their destination would more likely be a little further south on the Little Horn. It had been a little more than two years since he had been in this country but the land was still fresh in his memory. Nothing had changed that he could see, except there seemed to be a lot less buffalo.

  He made good time that first day after leaving the Rosebud, and he figured that if he could do as well the next day he might catch up to the Lakotas by nightfall. As he anticipated, the village stuck to the common trail and headed for the Little Horn. He began to notice a reluctance in White to maintain the pace she had always been comfortable with before and he realized that he had been pushing her a little too much in an effort to catch up with Sitting Bull. She had had almost two weeks of solid, hard riding without more than a short rest each night. He looked back at his packhorse and her head was drooping a little and he felt a twinge of guilt for working his horses so hard.

  “Well, girl, I reckon Miss Langsforth will have to wait another day,” he said, and he reached down to pat White’s neck. He didn’t allow himself to speculate on whether or not that decision might mean prolonging the unfortunate young lady’s hardship. In his honest opinion, that lady’s fate had long ago been sealed. Either she was dead or a slave—one day wasn’t going to make much difference. But one day’s rest might mean the difference between life and death to his horses. If—and that was a big if—he was able to find the girl, he wanted his horses fresh and able to travel fast. When he reached the Lakotas’ last campsite before striking the Little Big Horn, he stopped to rest his horses.

  The campsite he selected was on a tiny stream, some two hundred yards down from the site where the village had camped. He found grass there and a few cottonwoods for concealment. He rested there all the next day. The following morning White was looking frisky again and didn’t object when Jason threw the saddle on her. After a quick study of the terrain around him he took to the trail once more.

  * * *

  There they were. From where he knelt on the ridge, he couldn’t see all of the lodges but he could tell that they extended for a long way around the bend in the river. There were more than two hundred lodges—of that he was certain. How many more he couldn’t say. “Enough Injuns to go around,” he muttered under his breath as he watched the busy village waking with the early-morning sun. It was time to make a decision.

  Since first sighting the wispy columns of smoke on the horizon while still several miles from the river, he had pondered the question. Should he watch the camp on the chance he would spot Abigail Langsforth and wait for an opportunity to make a quick rescue, hoping to escape with the girl? Maybe. On the other hand, he considered riding straight into camp under a flag of peace. Sitting Bull was said to be a reasonable and intelligent man. Maybe he would hear Jason’s request and permit him to take the girl peaceably. After all, Sitting Bull had sent word to the army that he was not at war with them. He just wanted them to leave him to hell alone. Jason would have to think through his options. He moved back down the ridge to the ravine where he had left the horses.

  After thinking it over for a moment or two, he decided that boldly riding into Sitting Bull’s camp might be a good way to get a behind full of lead. That decided, the next task was to find a good place to observe the camp in hopes of getting a glimpse of the girl. The next-best thing would be to catch sight of Nathan White Horse but he didn’t expect that to happen. With a camp full of Indians, he couldn’t see much chance of identifying one half-breed, especially from the top of a ridge a quarter of a mile away. But who knows? he thought. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

  It was going to be pretty risky trying to watch a Sioux village without having to manage two horses and Jason decided it would be too difficult to keep both horses hidden that close to the village. There was a lot of coming and going from the camp with hunting parties moving about. He would have to do his business on foot if he was to get close enough in the bluffs to see, even with the field glasses he had brought with him. So he retreated from the ridge and rode back into the hills until he found a deep ravine secluded enough to hide a horse. He left Thunder there and rode back toward the ridge. He selected a narrow gully that cut into the bluffs about a hundred yards from the spot he had picked to watch the camp. He dismounted and tied White’s reins to a bramble bush, then made his way on foot to his lookout. He glanced back at his horse to make sure she was all right. I reckon I can run a hundred yards quick enough if I have to, he thought. I’m damn sure I can if I’ve got a bunch of angry Sioux after my hide.

  He crawled into a shallow trench carved out of the bluffs between two rocks and checked the angle of the sun before taking out his field glasses. He didn’t want the sun to cause a reflection off of the glass. Satisfied he could not be seen from the village below, he settled in to watch.

  * * *

  The hours passed as he watched the village. Twice he moved to new positions in hopes of seeing more of the camp. With the field glasses, he scanned the banks of the river from side to side. There was a great deal of activity—hunters going and coming, women working at preparing skins and drying meat. A group of women crossed over to his side of the river to pick some berries. Once two hunters rode into camp from the north and carried on an excited conversation with some of the other men of the camp. Jason guessed they were bringing news of a large herd of deer or antelope, for most of the men in camp quickly gathered their weapons and horses and rode out to the north. But there was no white woman in the camp that he could see. It was a waste of time, he decided. It was then that he saw something he had hoped not to see.

  The day was spent. The sun started to sink behind the bluffs on the opposite side of the river. The hunting party that had left the camp in such a state of excitement earlier that afternoon had returned. Their hunt had been bountiful. He started to leave his position in a narrow gully when a bri
ght garment caught his eye. A young Lakota woman emerged from one of the lodges and came to the river’s edge to fill a water vessel. She wore a light dress, with a busy flowery pattern. She might have looked right at home on the streets of St. Louis had it not been for the beaded deerskin leggings she wore under the dress.

  Jason trained the field glasses on the girl as she knelt by the water’s edge. She was not a slight woman and the dress was still a loose fit. The previous owner of the garment must have been less than dainty indeed. Jason had not asked for a physical description of Abigail Langsforth but the dress looked like something he imagined she might wear. This was not a good sign. He continued to watch her as she turned to go back to her tipi. The dress was cinched tightly across the waist in back in order to make it fit.

  “I was afraid of that,” he murmured and rose to his feet, no longer concerned about being seen from the camp now that the shadows had deepened. It was the biggest probability from the start, he reminded himself. But his job was to try to find the young lady and, as yet, he had still not found her…or her body. That might be no longer possible. Who knows what they might have done with her? he thought. Still, he knew it was much more likely that she had been kept as a slave or that one of the men had taken her as a wife. “Damn,” he mumbled. “Looks like I’ve got no choice but to ride into that camp and take my chances on coming out alive.”

  He went back to the ravine to retrieve his horse. White greeted him with a snort and whinnied softly as Jason led her down to the water to drink. Cookfires began to glow in the Sioux camp as the darkness slowly settled in on the valley, and he could hear the muddled noises of many different voices as they drifted to him across the shallow water. Sounds of a peaceful camp, he thought. In only seconds, it seemed, the darkness enveloped the valley as if someone had blown out a lantern. I better go find my packhorse, he thought.

  He turned to leave but had not actually taken a step when he heard the sudden splashing of a horse fording the river from the far side. He froze. His hand on his rifle, he silently dropped to one knee and searched the darkness along the bank. There…out of the shadows…a horse and rider, making their way across—from the look of it, they were in a big hurry.

  Jason looked about him to see if there were others who might be closing in on him from behind. There was no one and he realized that he was not under attack. The rider had not seen him…still did not see him. In fact, the rider appeared to be doing the best he could not to be seen himself. It was an Indian—that much Jason could tell. Now, I wonder why he would want to cut out after dark, Jason pondered. His curiosity up, he decided to find out. He jumped on White and started down the river on a line to intercept the rider where he would come out of the water.

  White’s natural competitive instinct made her want to catch the horse splashing across the river, and Jason had to hold her back so as not to get to the point of interception too soon. He could just make out the dark form whipping his pony for more speed and the pony was doing the best he could to gain the other side of the river. Jason timed it to parallel the other horse just as it reached the riverbank. About thirty yards from the horse and rider, Jason pulled one leg out of the stirrup and crouched low on the other stirrup so that, in the darkness, it appeared White was a riderless horse. Jason figured, whether the man was running or not, no Indian was going to pass up a horse that practically landed in his lap. He was right.

  Startled at first, the rider jerked his pony sharply away from the charging horse that had so suddenly appeared out of the darkness. Then, seeing no rider, he kicked his pony hard and closed again with White. From almost under his horse’s belly, Jason could hear the man’s voice, trying to calm White. “Whoa, whoa.” He managed to get his hand on White’s bridle and gradually pulled both horses to a stop. Jason dropped silently to the ground and quickly moved around the horses. The Indian detected the movement behind him a split second before he found himself in midair, flailing helplessly.

  He landed hard on his back, not quite sure in the darkness what manner of animal had attacked him. Panic-stricken, he tried to roll over and get to his feet, but Jason was on him like an angry panther, knocking him over again and pinning him to the ground, his knife pressed against his throat. The Indian lay still, resigned to his death. He was truly surprised when it did not come right away.

  In the brief combat, Jason noticed that the man’s horse was a paint, and he was looking for a paint. Black Elk had said that Nathan White Horse rode a paint. He spoke in the Lakota tongue. “If you lay still, I won’t kill you.” He pressed the knife harder against the man’s throat.

  “All right! All right!” the man answered in English. “I ain’t moving.”

  Jason relaxed his hold a bit. “I’m betting your name’s Nathan White Horse.”

  His prisoner, still frightened but relieved to find he was still breathing, replied nervously. “How’d you know that? Who the hell are you, anyway?” He now realized his attacker was a white man. “Listen, I could just sing out one time and you’d have about two hundred Lakota warriors on your ass.”

  “Well, friend, you’d better sing it loud the first time because the second sound is gonna come from the gap I’m gonna cut in your throat.” He let Nathan feel the keen edge on his skinning knife as he drew a thin line of blood across his throat. Nathan stiffened but Jason held him. “Now, are we gonna have a peaceful little talk or am I gonna have to put a permanent smile across your gullet?”

  “A little talk. That’s all you want? A little talk? Then I go my way and you go yours?”

  “Information. That’s all I want.”

  “All right. Lemme up.”

  Jason covered him with his pistol while Nathan gathered himself together. He pulled the half-breed’s rifle out of the sling and then motioned for him to mount up. With Nathan leading, they rode downstream for about a mile before Jason directed him to a stand of willows.

  “Why did you bring me way down here if you just want to talk? Why didn’t you just kill me back there when you jumped me?” Nathan showed more irritation than fear at this point.

  “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it back there.” Jason replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Then why did you jump me?”

  “I told you. I just want some information.”

  “Well, goddamn, you could of just asked, couldn’t you? Where’d you learn a trick like that, anyway? Hiding behind your horse.”

  “From an Injun,” Jason replied. Weary of the half-breed’s incessant questioning, he ejected the cartridges from Nathan’s rifle and threw it back to him. “Now suppose you let me ask the questions.” He started to inquire about the girl but first asked, “Why were you sneaking out of that Lakota camp in the middle of the night? Are some of Sitting Bull’s warriors after your hide?”

  “Hell, no. They are my brothers. My mother was an Oglala.”

  Jason looked at his captive for a few moments, trying to figure him out. He seemed more white than Indian, at least in his language. It was strictly saloon style. “You were damn sure running from something.”

  Nathan seemed reluctant to explain but finally he admitted, “I was running from that damn woman.” When it was obvious his answer puzzled Jason, he expounded. “Abby,” he blurted. “That damn white woman.”

  Jason was kneeling on one knee in front of his captive, his rifle resting in his arms. “Abby? You mean Abigail Langsforth?” Nathan nodded yes. “Pardner, maybe you’d best explain that.”

  Nathan White Horse was reluctant to talk about it but, at Jason’s urging, he related his short history with the lady in question. “She came to me in town, outside the fort, and said she’d pay me to take her to see Sitting Bull. Well, I wasn’t about to turn down fifty dollars.”

  “And everything else she had after you got out on the trail,” Jason interrupted.

  Nathan shrugged. “Well, the thought might have occurred to me. But I never intended to do the woman no harm. What kind of crazy woman would want to go
out to Injun country anyway? I figured I might be able to sell her to some buck maybe. But there wasn’t no use to kill her. She was a strong-looking woman, oughta be a good worker. Well, she showed up the morning we was supposed to leave, all dressed up like a man—buckskin pants, mule skinner’s boots, and a wide-brim hat. And she was wearing a pistol on her hip. I shoulda knowed right then I’d cut a plug that was too tough to chew.”

  Jason settled back against a willow while Nathan went on. For his part, the half-breed appeared to forget that he was a captive; he just seemed glad to have the opportunity to vent his frustrations. Jason listened with amused fascination.

  Nathan continued. “The first night out, I decided I might as well see what’s what. So I waited till I figured she was asleep and then I snuck over to take a peek into that saddlebag she was using for a pillow. I hadn’t even got one hand on it good when she whacked me upside the head with that damn Colt Peacemaker of hers. And I’m half Oglala. Hell, I didn’t make a sound! Well, she set me straight as to how things were. She allowed as how she expected me to try to take advantage of a young girl like herself and she was prepared to defend her honor. She said she didn’t never sleep, and I swear, I believe her. I never seen her with her eyes closed. I told her, hell, I didn’t mean her no harm; I was just curious, that’s all.

  “Things kinda changed after that. After two or three days out, she started telling me about how she thought the Injuns was being treated poorly and she aimed to tell the world their side of things. Well, I told her I admired that. Before long, she was telling me how proud I oughta be fer being a Sioux. By the time we struck the Tongue, she was telling me what a fine-looking man I was and that she had took a shine to me. Well, that scared me plenty.”

  Jason couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad to me.”