Cheyenne Justice

by Charles G. West

  He decided it best to leave the wound open to the air that night. He could put some grease on it and bandage it in the morning. The night air would probably do it some good, and this time of year, there wasn’t any problem with flies getting into it. He rigged up a bed for the boy and covered him with a deer hide. Night was settling in over the mountains by then and Squint decided he had taken care of the boy as best he could for one day. If his patient woke up in the morning, he would see about feeding him. If he didn’t, he would bury him.

  * * *

  The boy was strong. He was still among the living when the sun rose high enough for the first rays to filter over the mountain and illuminate the delicate crystals of frost that had formed on the grass floor of Squint’s camp. Squint yawned and shivered involuntarily as he stood at the edge of the clearing and emptied his bladder, absentmindedly watching the stream formed by his warm urine on the frost.

  Cold, he thought. I hate being cold.

  He glanced back over his shoulder at the still form of the Indian boy. He had checked on him as soon as he was awake and, although the boy still seemed to be asleep, he appeared to be breathing easily. His fever might even be broken. Squint couldn’t tell for sure. “I reckon I better put some wood on the fire and see about getting us something to eat.”

  As he picked a few sticks of wood from his pile, he pondered his options now that he had taken on an invalid. He was still not sure the boy was going to make it. If he did, then Squint would have some decisions to make as to what he should do with him. He wasn’t even sure the boy wouldn’t attack him again when he got strong enough. “Hell,” he muttered as he balanced a stick of firewood across the load already on his arm, “I might have to nurse him back to health just so I can cut his throat.”

  He stirred up the coals, all that was left of the fire, until he worked up a flame. Then he laid some small sticks on it until they caught well enough to start up the larger pieces. He had a pretty good-size wood pile and, if the winter was not too severe, it should probably last him through. He didn’t like to go out looking for firewood in the deep snow. As he stared into the growing flame, feeling its warmth on his face, he couldn’t help but remember how he had sweated when he had cut the wood last summer. It had been a chore and Squint was not one to appreciate chores. “But, when you got yourself a year-round camp,” he muttered, “you have to do things like cutting firewood and drying jerky.” It was almost like homesteading. And the wood had to be hauled in by mule from the other side of the mountain because Squint was afraid he might give away the location of his camp by cutting wood close by.

  A groan from the boy pulled his attention from the fire and he turned to look at his patient. The boy, still asleep apparently, muttered several words that Squint couldn’t make out. But they were words. Squint was sure of that. They weren’t just grunts. He still thought it sounded like Cheyenne. He bent low over the boy in an effort to hear what he was mumbling. As he did, the boy opened his eyes and he and Squint stared at each other for a long second. There was a strangeness in the boy’s gaze that confounded Squint. Finally he sat back and announced, “Dang if you ain’t the first blue-eyed Cheyenne I ever saw.”

  The boy answered, his voice weak but clear, “I ain’t Cheyenne. I’m Arapaho.”

  This served to startle Squint more than a little, not because of the boy’s apparent lucidness, but because he had answered in English.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Squint gazed at the wounded boy in disbelief. “Well, I’ll be…” he repeated, never finishing the statement. He simply stared at the boy for a long while. Finally he blurted, “Well, what the hell did you try to bushwhack me for?”

  There followed a long pause, during which the boy gazed intently at the grizzled mountain man hovering over him like some great bear about to devour him. There had been a moment of alarm when he first opened his eyes to find the man staring down at him, a moment when he wasn’t sure what was in store for him. But he quickly decided the bear intended no harm and he answered, “I thought you was a soldier.”

  Squint considered this for a moment before replying, “Well, any fool can see I ain’t.” He was trying to make up his mind about the boy. Based on his remark, he wasn’t sure whether he was a good Indian or a bad one. He didn’t know many Indians who did like soldiers, so he couldn’t blame him for that. He had to admit that, since living in the mountains for most of the last twenty years, he wasn’t sure he liked soldiers himself, and that went for settlers and prospectors, and railroads, and everybody else who was so damn hell-bent on civilizing the territory. He couldn’t help but get riled up whenever he thought about it. If the damn-government would just live up to their own treaties and leave the Indians alone, then there wouldn’t be all this trouble that had been heating up over the last two summers. Now it had gotten so the Sioux were out to get any white man they saw, no matter whether he’d done them harm or not. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Cheyenne, the Arapaho…in fact, all the tribes on the plains were pushed about as far as they were going to be pushed. There was going to be all-out war and he was likely to be caught in the middle of it. Realizing his mind was wandering from the situation at hand, Squint brought his attention back to his patient.

  “Can you eat somethin’ now?”

  The boy nodded. His eyes betrayed the fact that the offer was met with some enthusiasm. It was not lost on Squint.

  “I bet you ain’t et for a spell,” he said, “from the look of you.”

  Squint sat back and watched as the boy devoured half of a cold snow hare that he had cooked the day before. The other half had been Squint’s supper. He had planned to eat it for breakfast himself but it was disappearing fast. It was apparent to him that the boy had not eaten for quite some time, small wonder he was so weak. Since one half of a rabbit wasn’t much nourishment for a healthy young buck, much less one that was half dead, Squint dipped into his precious supply of baking soda and mixed up a little batter for pan bread. His pan bread wasn’t the best in the territory but, by Squint’s standards, it was passable. He poured the batter into a frying pan and set it on some coals at the edge of the fire to let it rise. When he thought it was ready, he pushed it closer to the fire to let it bake. The boy’s eyes followed his every move. When the bread was done, he flipped it out and tore it in half. The boy didn’t hesitate to accept the half extended toward him.

  “You don’t waste a lot of time chewing, do you? Just sort of choke it down like a dog.”

  The boy did not answer, but continued to stare at his benefactor. When he was finished, he indicated that he needed to relieve himself and Squint helped him to his feet. He almost fell when the sudden movement sent a stab of pain through his shoulder and Squint had to grab him to keep him upright. He seemed none too steady and Squint offered to help him over to the edge of the clearing, but the boy refused. He made it clear that he needed no help when taking care of nature’s demands.

  “You a might modest, ain’t you?” Squint teased. He stood back and watched the boy stagger toward the woodpile. “Hold on to the woodpile for support. If you fall in your business, holler and I’ll come pick you up.” The boy made no response. Squint’s attempt at humor was lost on him.

  While the boy went about his toilet, Squint busied himself getting some jerky from a knapsack. Since the boy had done away with the rabbit, he would have to satisfy his hunger with cold jerky. Busying himself with the knapsack, he pretended to take no notice of the boy but, in fact, he was studying him intently out of the corner of his eye. The kid looked Arapaho right enough but, when he dropped his leggings, he sure had a pale behind. And pale behind and blue eyes sure as hell didn’t add up to any Arapaho he’d ever seen. Squint returned to the fire and made himself comfortable. He watched the boy as he slowly made his way back to the fire and gingerly lowered himself to a sitting position. Once settled, he pulled his shirt away to examine his wound.

  “It don’t look too pretty, but it ought to heal up right proper,” Squin
t offered in the way of explanation. The boy continued to stare at the fair-sized hole in his shoulder, already beginning to form a thin film of scab.

  “Did you have to use an axe?”

  He blurted it out so suddenly that it startled Squint and he couldn’t help but laugh at the boy’s tone. He fished around in the pocket of his shirt and came up with a small lead ball. “Well, first I had to dig this out of you.” He threw the bullet to the boy. “Then I had to burn the wound to keep it from going rotten. Like I said, it ain’t pretty, but it’ll be all right.”

  “You damn sure made a mess of it.”

  “If I had’na, you’da been a one-armed Arapaho and that’s a fact.”

  The boy stared at Squint for a long minute while he evaluated the huge man’s statement. Deciding that Squint had done what was best for him, he said, “I reckon I ought to thank you.”

  “You don’t have to if it causes you pain,” Squint replied sarcastically. The boy didn’t reply, but shrugged his shoulders, wincing with the pain the movement caused.

  They sat in silence for a long while, the boy obviously uncomfortable with the situation he found himself in, until Squint decided it was long past time for some introductions, as well as a general understanding as to what their relationship was going to be. He broke the silence.

  “My name’s Squint Peterson. What’s yours?”

  “Little Wolf.”

  Squint considered this momentarily. “Little Wolf,” he repeated and paused again. “I mean, what’s your real name? Your Christian name? Do you remember it?”

  The boy hesitated, obviously reluctant to admit to owning one. The intense expression on Squint’s face told him that he knew he wasn’t a blood Arapaho. A frown creased his face as he replied. “I remember,” he said softly. “It was Robert…Robert Allred.”

  “Well, Robert, or Little Wolf, whatever you want to call yourself, where are your folks?” He didn’t wait for an answer before adding, “How long you been Arapaho?”

  The boy thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t know. I lost track. I think this is the fourth winter, maybe the fifth, I ain’t sure.”

  “Boy, where are your folks? You been living with the Arapaho for four or five years?”

  “I been living with the Cheyenne. My father is Arapaho.”

  That would explain why Squint was certain the boy had been mumbling in Cheyenne when he was delirious the night before. The Cheyenne and Arapaho were longtime allies and quite often lived together. Squint continued to prod him for information. “Tell me how you come to get shot.”

  “Soldiers,” the boy replied in Cheyenne, his eyes narrowed as he spit the word out.

  “Soldiers?” Squint echoed. He knew that Cheyenne word well enough. He waited for further explanation, but the boy offered no more.

  It was apparent that his guest had no use for the military, but Squint still had no way of knowing what he might have done to get himself shot. In his years in the mountains, Squint had occasionally run into white men who had taken up with a tribe of Indians. Most of them were a pretty sorry lot, as far as he was concerned. Some were hiding out from the law back East. Some were just living with an Indian woman temporarily. A few simply preferred the Indian way of life. Squint himself had considered wintering with the Shoshones, but decided he’d rather go it alone. He looked long and hard at the boy, trying to see inside his heart. He could see no meanness in the blue eyes that now gazed absently into the fire. For the third time, he asked, “Where are your folks? I don’t mean your Injun folks. I mean your white folks.”

  “Dead.”

  Squint studied the boy’s expressionless face for a moment. “How? How long?” It was obvious the boy wasn’t much of a talker, but Squint was determined to get the whole story out of him so he kept prodding him with questions until finally he wore him down and he began to talk. It was difficult at first and slow in coming but, once he started, the whole story came out.