Cheyenne Justice

by Charles G. West

  Chapter XVII

  Lieutenant Page Jeffers pulled his horse up to a halt and signaled the patrol behind him. Sergeant Roy Ryman rode up beside the lieutenant and waited for the scout approaching at a gallop, riding hard to meet the column.

  “He shore seems in a helluva hurry,” Ryman offered in his usual dry monotone.

  Jeffers did not reply but continued to watch the rider intently, looking past the scout, half expecting to see a horde of savages chasing the man. The scout, a half-breed Crow named John Bramble, did not usually spook very easily, so Jeffers could only guess what he had seen that caused such excitement. In a few minutes’ time, Bramble was beside him. He pulled his horse up so suddenly that the animal’s hooves slid to a stop.

  “Lieutenant!” he almost yelled, though no more than two yards separated them. “They’s about two hundred Injuns on t’other side of that rise! And they’re heading this a’way!”

  Jeffers’s reaction was one of confusion. What could it mean? A concentration of hostiles that large within this distance of the fort? Bramble didn’t stick around to do much scouting after first discovering them, so he wasn’t sure if it was a war party or not. He just knew there were a helluva lot of them. Jeffers thought for a moment. His troop numbered thirty-five men, and he didn’t have any intention of confronting two hundred Cheyennes with thirty-five troopers. But he had to attempt to find out what their intentions were.

  “All right,” he finally said, “let’s ride up there until we can get a look at them.” In the back of his mind, he was considering the possibility of gross exaggeration by the half-breed scout. There was also the possibility that it was a band coming in to the reservation now that winter wasn’t too far away.

  A fifteen-minute march to the top of the rise brought more questions than answers to the lieutenant. Spread out across the valley, a great throng of Indians approached at a walk. Bramble had not exaggerated. “Damn!” Jeffers uttered. “Sergeant, better pull back before they see us.”

  “They done seen us, sir.” He pointed to a lone Indian scout about a half mile off to the side and parallel to the column. “There’s another’n on the other side.”

  “Damn. Well, in that case. I guess we’d better stand fast and act like we aren’t afraid of them.” He glanced over at Ryman. “But when I give the order, you better have the men ready to ride like hell.” Ryman nodded.

  “Cheyenne,” Bramble stated as the band continued their unhurried approach. “Them’s Two Moon’s bunch.” He hesitated a moment more before adding, “And they ain’t painted for war.”

  Jeffers decided to wait a little longer before ordering his troop back to the fort. By the time the Cheyennes reached the foot of the long rise, Jeffers could see that there was a horse pulling a travois in the middle of the throng. It was flanked by two warriors on ponies, one of whom Bramble identified as Two Moon. Jeffers was uncertain what he should do, but there seemed to be no aggressive intent on the part of the Indians. They vastly outnumbered his troop of cavalry, but they showed no signs of mounting an attack.

  The Indians stopped at the foot of the slope and Two Moon and the warrior on the other side of the travois rode on to the front of the band. Two Moon led the horse with the travois on a line behind his horse. He held up a white flag and continued up the rise toward the waiting soldiers.

  “Everybody just sit easy,” Jeffers said as he watched the Indians approach. He prodded his horse forward a few yards to meet the Cheyenne chief. His curiosity at a peak, he craned his neck in an effort to see what or who was on the travois. It wasn’t until the Indians were right before him that he could see what appeared to be the body of a man, covered by a blanket.

  Two Moon raised his hand to the cavalry commander and, in his broken English, he stated, “You take. Big warrior, big medicine.” After his simple speech, he did not wait for a response, but dropped the lead line on the horse and abruptly turned and rode back to his warriors. He did not stop when he reached the ranks of braves waiting for him, but rode straight through and the warriors silently wheeled their ponies and followed in behind him.

  Lieutenant Jeffers sat, astonished by the curious episode with the Cheyenne chief. He looked at Ryman and saw that he was just as mystified as he was. They made no move toward the body on the travois until the band of Cheyennes had almost disappeared back over the rise. Once Jeffers was sure Two Moon was not going to reassemble on the far side of the rise and mount an attack, he stepped down from his horse and went to the travois. Sergeant Ryman was a step behind him.

  Jeffers reached down and pulled the blanket away to discover the prone figure of the white scout who had routed the Arapahos that had ambushed his patrol on the Tongue River. He lay still, his eyes closed, his rifle by his side. It appeared that the Cheyennes had attempted to treat several wounds on his body, for they were bound with cloth.

  Ryman remembered the name. “Jason Coles,” he said. “They musta thought he was something special.” He pointed to a solitary eagle feather tied in his hair.

  “Jason Coles,” Jeffers repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “Every time I see that man, he looks like a ghost.”

  “They shore shot him full of holes,” Ryman said. “I reckon we can take him back to the fort to bury him.”

  The body on the travois stirred and his eyelids fluttered open. “I’d be obliged if you didn’t bury me quite yet. I may be pretty much stove up, but I ain’t gone under yet.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Ryman blurted and stepped back startled. Then he laughed at himself. “Hell, man, we thought you was dead. You shore as hell look dead.”

  “There was a time, a few days back, when I thought I was. But I reckon I’ll make it.”

  Lieutenant Jeffers ordered the patrol to turn around and return to Camp Carson, detailing one of the troopers to take charge of the travois carrying Jason. Even though they had been ordered to make a sweep that extended fifty miles farther, he could think of no more important task than transporting Jason Coles back for medical care. The man had damn sure earned that.

  Don’t miss the first book

  in Charles West’s new western

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  Wind River

  Chapter I

  “Now what the hell’s ailing you, Sadie?” Squint Peterson dug his heels into the belly of his balky old mule. “You been cranky all morning.”

  The mule had been restless all morning, more so than usual. She was naturally bad-tempered anyway, so much so that Squint had named her after an ill-tempered prostitute who had accommodated him at the rendezvous in the summer of ’39. He grinned as the thought of that particular union came to mind. It was his first and last rendezvous. He hadn’t been much more than a kid, fifteen years old. He had spent the winter trapping on the Yellowstone with his Uncle Bris. In fact, it was his Uncle Bris who introduced him to Sadie with instructions to “Rub the peach fuzz offen him.” He laughed when he recalled his introduction to “the sins of the flesh.” She rubbed it off all right, but not without a gracious plenty moaning. The poor woman had whined and complained the whole time he was trying to satisfy his needs.

  “You’da thought she was the Queen of Sheba,” he announced aloud. When he concentrated on it, he could still see her screwed-up expression when he removed his buckskin britches, revealing long underwear that had not seen the light of day for at least two months before that night. The abrupt biological release that followed cost him two prime beaver pelts. She had wanted two more, since he hadn’t washed before coming to her tent, but he lied that two were all he had left. He might have been green as a willow switch and rutty as a springtime buck, but he wasn’t about to let go of his hard-earned plews for one go-round on a puffy-faced old whore. She reluctantly admitted him to what she referred to as her paradise, the memory of which lingered with him long after he had journeyed back down the south fork of the Powder. As a matter of fact, he had not been able to rid himself of t
he last of those memories until that winter’s first freeze, when he submerged his buckskins, with him still in them, in an icy mountain stream. He almost froze himself to death, but it got rid of the stubborn body lice.

  “Matter of fact,” he told the mule, “that was about the last real rendezvous they had.” He shook his head in amazement when he thought about it. “Twenty-four…no, twenty-six years ago…. Damn! Has it been that long?” It was hard to imagine he had spent that many years roaming around these mountains, and still had his hair. There had been a couple of times when the threat of Indian trouble had influenced him to head back to civilization for a while, but it never lasted. The longest was a period when he had tried his hand at being a lawman. Two years of that was enough to drive any man back to the mountains.

  He shifted in the saddle a little to ease the ache in his back. It caused him to ponder his chosen way of life and the future it offered. He liked it best in the mountains, but he wondered if he wasn’t approaching the age where his senses might start to lose their keen edge. And he knew that when you lost that edge, you usually lost your scalp along with it. The thought of his hair decorating the lance of some Sioux warrior didn’t serve to overly frighten him. He just didn’t like the idea of being bested by anyone when it came to surviving by one’s wits. There were a few gray hairs showing up in his beard already, but he could still cut sign quick as most Indians and shoot better than any man he’d met so far. He had to admit, however, that it was getting easier to thread a needle if he held it at arm’s length, a fact that accounted for several briar rips in his buckskins that needed repair. Maybe he should give more thought to moving out of hostile country. Maybe it was time to move on to Oregon, a big territory. Squint needed a big country. He was a big man and he needed room to stretch out. Well, he decided, I reckon I got a few years yet before I’m ready to turn toes-up.

  “Sadie, git!” he admonished and stuck his heels in her again. She seemed reluctant to step across the narrow gully that had been formed by the recent snow and runoff. Had he not been thinking of a prostitute at rendezvous, he might have been more alert to the mule’s skittishness. As it was, he was taken completely by surprise.

  He found himself in midair before he had time to realize what had happened. At first he thought he had been attacked by a mountain lion or a bear. He landed on his back, his assailant on top of him. The force of his contact with the hard ground knocked the wind out of him. By then he realized his attacker was a man and, in spite of the pain in his lungs, he struggled to defend himself from the thrust of the knife as it sought a vulnerable spot. There was no time for conscious thought. He fought totally by reflex, sparring with the arm that held the knife, while pushing against the man’s neck with his other hand. He could hear the man grunt as he strained to gain advantage. Finally his assailant tore himself from Squint’s grasp on his neck and raised his knife hand for one desperate thrust. Squint managed to catch his wrist in his hand and block the assault. There was one final attempt to free himself and then the strength seemed to suddenly drain from the man’s arm like water from a busted water bag and Squint realized that he was in complete control. His assailant had given up the fight.

  Squint quickly rolled over on top of the man, pinning him to the ground while he fought to regain his breath. His initial thought, as soon as he could breathe again, was to dispatch the red-skinned son of a bitch—for he could now identify him as an Indian—straight to hell. As furious as he was at having been attacked, he was almost equally angry for letting himself be taken like that, like a damn green tenderfoot.

  There seemed to be little resistance from his adversary as he shook the knife loose from the Indian’s hand. When he stuck the point against his throat, the man made no effort to defend himself. This lack of resistance caused him to hesitate and, since the man no longer seemed an immediate threat, Squint paused to consider what manner of being he was about to send to the great beyond.

  “Why, hell, you ain’t no more than a boy.” He sat back on his heels, still astraddle the Indian. “And a pretty damn scrawny one at that.”

  There was no response from the boy. His eyes, dull and lifeless, appeared to focus on some faraway object. It was obvious to Squint that he was prepared to die. In fact, he looked like he was two-thirds gone already. It was evident that he had mustered all his strength for that one desperate attack, and when it failed, it had drained him. Moments before, when they had struggled for possession of the knife, Squint could have killed him without thinking twice about it. Now, as the boy lay helpless beneath him, he was reluctant to dispatch him.

  “What the hell did you jump me for?” Squint demanded, not expecting an answer for he spoke in English, even though he could converse a little in several Indian dialects. It was a little late for caution but he stood up and looked around to make sure the boy had acted alone. At the same time he kept an eye on his assailant, still lying there. Satisfied that he was in no danger of attack from another quarter, he turned his full attention to his captive. It occurred to him that the boy wasn’t dressed too well for the chilly weather that had descended upon the valley for the past few weeks, wearing only a buckskin shirt and leggings. It was then that he noticed the dark crusted spot in the shoulder of the shirt.

  “Damn, boy, looks like you been shot or something.” This might explain the boy’s apparent weakness. “Better let me take a look at that.”

  When he started to open the shirt over the wound, the boy recoiled in pain and made one feeble effort to resist.

  “If I was gonna hurt you, I’da done kilt you,” Squint grunted as he brushed the boy’s hand aside.

  The wound was bad. From the look of it, Squint guessed it was a bullet wound, and from the way it was all inflamed and swollen, the bullet was still in it.

  “I tell you what,” Squint decided, “that thing looks like it’s festering and I’m gonna have to dig it out of there.”

  If he had any objection, the boy didn’t register it. He didn’t have any fight left in him and offered no resistance when Squint took his arms and pulled him up so he could heft him onto his shoulder.

  “Boy, you ain’t got no weight to you a’tall.” He marveled that the lad had been able to summon enough force to knock him off his mule. When he realized how light he was, Squint couldn’t help but feel a little sheepish that he had allowed himself to be taken so easily.

  “Whoa, Sadie. Hold still.” He spoke softly in an effort to calm the mule. Sadie still seemed a mite dered anew if he was just wasting his time. Maybe it would be more humane to simply leave the poor kid in peace and not complicate his dying. Still, he thought, the boy was obviously unconscious. The only sign of life was an occasional babble of some kind that Squint was unable to make out. It sounded like Cheyenne—he couldn’t say for sure. At any rate, the boy was out of his head so it didn’t figure to make much difference whether Squint dug the bullet out or not. The boy wouldn’t feel it anyway, so he might just as well operate on him.

  He took his skinning knife and cut the boy’s shirt away, leaving the wound exposed for him to work on. It looked bad, swollen to the point that it looked like it was ready to bust open on its own accord, like a huge boil. He could see a dark blue spot in the center that had to be the bullet. It appeared to be just beneath the surface. Squint’s experience with bullet wounds told him that it would be a lot deeper than it looked. He watched the boy’s face as he stoned a keen edge on the already sharp skinning knife. There was still no sign of consciousness.

  “Let’s get it done,” he sighed and wiped the blade of the knife on his leggings. “You’re damned lucky you ain’t awake for this.”

  Once resigned to the task, Squint didn’t waste any time on gentleness. Human hide was tough and he sank the knife deep into the boy’s shoulder at the top of the wound and then cut straight down across the entire swollen area. The boy stiffened perceptibly, but made no sound. Almost at once, thick, yellow pus oozed from the incision and Squint recoiled when the acrid smell of rot
ting flesh assaulted his nostrils.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed and backed away for a moment before continuing. He cleaned the wound as best he could with a square of cloth. Squeezing the cloth out in a pan of water he had placed near the fire to warm, he wiped away the rest of the pus. The wound was still weeping, but now it was mostly blood. He probed in the wound for the bullet, but found that he had to cut deeper to expose it. The wound was becoming a bloody, pulpy mess and it was difficult to see the piece of lead he was groping for. Still, he was determined to dig it out. After inflicting this amount of damage on the boy’s shoulder, he couldn’t quit without retrieving the bullet. Finally, he felt the blade tick the piece of metal and, with the knife point, he worked at it until he had gotten it free of the surrounding flesh. After rinsing it with water, he held it up to examine it.

  “That shore ain’t no musket ball,” he announced. It was a slug from a breech-loading rifle. “Army Spencer, more likely.” Squint’s interest was one of idle speculation. He wasn’t really concerned with how the boy had come to get himself shot. Now that he had extracted the bullet, he concerned himself with the wound.

  From the look of it, and certainly from the smell of it, there was a great deal of rotten flesh around the edges of the wound. Little wonder the boy’s so sick, he thought. It can’t do him much good to have all that rot around that open wound. He pondered his next move for a moment or two before deciding to proceed with the cauterization. He remembered seeing a medicine man in Wounded Elk’s camp treat a lance wound that had festered about as bad as this one. He had stuck a handful of maggots right on the wound and let them eat away the rotten flesh. Squint didn’t have any maggots. Even if he did, he figured that burning it away with a hot knife was better than maggots anyway.

  Again, there was little response from the wounded boy when Squint applied the red-hot skinning knife—just a mild convulsive tremor before falling limp again. Since the response was so slight, Squint took his time and thoroughly seared the flesh over the entire wound, the smell of infection now masked by the odor of burning flesh. The surgery complete, he sat back on his haunches to examine his work. The boy was breathing steadily. The thought crossed Squint’s mind that the boy might fool him and pull through. It was, after all, a shoulder wound. If he had been gut shot, his chances wouldn’t be worth much. It would probably depend on the boy’s constitution, and how badly he wanted to live. Time would tell. Squint had done all he knew to do for him.