The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Best you make yourself as small as you can, young Seamus,” Liam whispered. “See that fella what just rode atop that hill?”

  “I do, Uncle.”

  “Looks like the ball is set to open now, O’Roarke!” Grover hissed.

  Liam nodded, never taking his eyes off his nephew. “That big one—horns on his head and the feathers falling down his back and off the side of the pretty war-pony of his—he’s the one gonna get things started to make things hard on us.”

  “Hard on us?” Seamus squeaked. “What the divil can that one h’athen do to us them others already ain’t?”

  Liam grinned. Then hid his teeth behind a determined grimace and gazed at the top of the hill, where the big warrior had disappeared as quickly as he had come to appraise the island.

  “Likely, Nephew—that was Roman Nose. Better that it were the divil hisself.”

  * * *

  For those early hours of that morning, the great war-chief had remained behind in his lonely lodge in the Cheyenne village while the others went out to attack the white man’s camp. Now with most everyone deserting the village to watch the show, old ones and the women as well as young boys, Roman Nose sensed a long silence settle over the great circle of buffalo-hide lodges.

  He had sent the warriors on to the battle at dawn, telling them he would come after he had made peace with his medicine. So he had spent much of the morning here, desperate to find some way of propitiating his spirit-helpers, to repair the cracks in his theology.

  In the background he listened to the faint staccato of gunfire rattling many miles away down the creek.

  Closer still, the war-chief heard the snuffling of camp-dogs raiding abandoned kettles left simmering over fires gone cold hours ago. Snarling, angry dogs, fighting over the spoils in this abandoned camp. Outside his lodge, the dog fight tumbled against the buffalo-hides. Then he listened as the mongrels suddenly darted away across the hard earth.

  Two horses coming, he decided. Their pounding hooves skidded to a stop before his dark, stifling lodge, growing hot beneath the climbing of the sun toward mid-sky. He heard the ponies blow from their hard ride, come here from the fight to this deserted village.

  “Does the great Roman Nose cower in the dark when there are whitemen to butcher like captured calves?”

  It was White Contrary’s voice. Once a friend. His voice now cut with a cruel edge.

  “Roman Nose!”

  A second voice. Two Crows. Arguing quietly with Two Crows.

  “Roman Nose—come to the fight with us now. Our warriors need you to lead us!” Two Crows pleaded to the lodge.

  “I don’t know why they need a coward like you, Roman Nose!” White Contrary shouted. “Better that the men of the Shahiyena slaughter these whitemen without a leader … than be shamed by a war-chief who hides in the darkness of his lodge.”

  For the great Cheyenne war-chief, that warrior instinct running hot in his blood proved too strong.

  One foot he planted outside the doorway, sensing the hot breeze that snarled his long breechclout reaching past his knees. Then he rose to full height outside his lodge, breathing deep and swelling his chest. He could see it in their eyes as he had moved into the light of mid-morning, saw them recognize the cruel determination in his own eyes on either side of that sharp, angular nose.

  “You come here to shame an old friend?” he said quietly to the mounted warrior before him.

  White Contrary had painted his face, the upper half black and the lower half striped in yellow. Two Crows wore his medicine-paint: the lower half of red ocher beneath four spreading wings to represent the two crows of his medicine dreams. Roman Nose wore no face-paint.

  “I come here to bring you to the fight,” White Contrary explained arrogantly. “Whatever it may take.”

  Two Crows’s pony pranced as its rider studied both proud warriors, not certain of what blood might be spilled here in the silence of this abandoned village.

  “Come, Roman Nose. The fight does not go well.”

  “The whitemen escaped?”

  Two Crows shook his head. He saw White Contrary draw himself up in anger, his thin lips made thinner by the way he pressed them together.

  “No, they have not run away. We have them circled on a long strip of sand in the river.”

  “I have heard much firing this morning.”

  “And surely you have heard many brave warriors dying as well!” White Contrary spat on the ground.

  “If I go, old friends—it will be my own blood that dries on the sand of that riverbed.”

  “You trust too much to an old woman’s medicine!”

  He turned full on White Contrary, startling Two Crows with its suddenness. “For many winters I have trusted my medicine! And many were the times I raised the hair of the whiteman for trusting in it.”

  “An old woman cannot ruin the medicine of a powerful war-chief,” White Contrary snorted, his head falling backward in loud laughter.

  “Perhaps you are right, White Contrary,” he finally said after a painful silence, his low voice very quiet now. “But there is no time to properly heal my medicine in the proscribed ceremony.”

  “If not healing your medicine, Roman Nose—what is it you have been doing all morning in the darkness of your smokeless lodge?”

  “Praying, Two Crows.”

  He stepped behind his lodge, where he took up the rawhide tether for his war-pony where it stood picketed on some good grass. Returning immediately to the others, the war-chief removed the famous buffalo-horned bonnet from the tripod in front of his lodge. Nudging it down upon his huge head, he swept himself atop his pony, allowing the long, double-tail of golden eagle feathers to sweep across the pony’s flanks, just brushing the ground. His feet hung loose as he stared back at Two Crows.

  “Praying that before I must die as commanded by the Powers Above … praying that I will have a chance to kill the tall, gray-eyed whiteman I am destined to meet on that strip of sand in the middle of that river.”

  Chapter 19

  John Donovan watched the stocky, square-jawed Major Sandy Forsyth prop himself up against the side of his narrow rifle-pit, painfully swallowing down the torment of his wounds.

  One of the lucky ones, Donovan thought to himself. Figured I was lucky to get this chance to ride with the major. Lots more like me … farmers or hunters … all wanted to come have a go to even the score against these red bastards.

  But, I figured I was lucky the major picked me to ride with him.

  Donovan didn’t believe a bit of it now as they all waited for the charge. The men on the island could hear them beyond the first bend in the river. Up there, the warriors shouted, sang, and chanted. Noisy. Working themselves up for it.

  Another crazy blast on that army bugle raised the hair on the back of his neck.

  Upstream it echoed. Beyond the far bend where a man couldn’t tell what was going on. Just that the horsemen, hundreds and hundreds of them, had disappeared there minutes ago. Then a handful of feathered bastards had crowned a nearby hill, gazing down as if studying the defenders on the island. A moment ago they too slipped out of sight.

  Likely to join up with the rest now that they’ve given us a looking over … seeing how many of us can still hold a rifle.

  Donovan looked the island over himself. Already close to half were dead or wounded from the first skirmishes. Still, some of the wounded were holding weapons now—what with talk of the charge coming.

  Nearby a few of the men muttered among themselves. Old man Trudeau was even cursing at his Spencer in French, again and again jamming a loading tube into his Spencer. In a far pit, young Hutch Farley hovered over his badly wounded father, quietly reciting by rote those foreign words his mother had taught him long ago and far away when he was but a knee-hugger.

  “Our Father, which art in heaven…”

  Donovan felt the bile scorch the back of his throat. Better that it comes now, he figured. The waiting will be the death of me if it don’t
.

  “Hold your fire when they come, boys!” Forsyth hollered.

  He had raised himself on his elbows at the side of his pit to give the command, his voice weak, yet clear as the bright sky overhead. “I’ll give the command to fire by volley.”

  “Aim low, fellas,” Sergeant McCall added. “That way—you don’t get a redskin, least you knock a horse down for good measure.”

  Donovan scraped up John Wilson’s revolver and carbine, dragging them near. He discovered a pair of young eyes staring at him in wonder.

  “What you looking at, Jew-boy?”

  Sigmund Shlesinger swallowed, found out. “I … I——”

  “It don’t matter.” Donovan came close to an apology, sorry already for his words. “Wilson don’t need ’em anyway, not now.”

  “I suppose he don’t,” answered the youngster. Shlesinger turned away sheepishly.

  “And us still alive,” Donovan said, trying out a weak smile. “Up to us to make every shot worth at least one Injun.”

  * * *

  “Have you not seen enough, Roman Nose?” White Contrary goaded the war-chief once more.

  Down below, the fighting had all but stopped.

  Instead of reacting immediately to White Contrary’s prodding, the huge, bronzed war-chief stayed on his haunches, huddled in the grass of the hilltop as he looked down on the island.

  On either side of the river, the banks stood slightly higher than the sandy island itself, giving the Sioux and Cheyenne snipers a good field of fire. They forced the white men to stay hidden for the most part, down in their pits and behind the bodies of their dead animals. Roman Nose could tell the warriors were milling about on the creekbanks now, having heard he had arrived. Now the anxious hundreds waited to learn what the war-chief would do to break the stalemate.

  “That place where the whitemen gather will soon smell of rotting horses, Two Crows,” he said quietly, holding out his hand. “Hand me my pouch, old friend.”

  White Contrary snorted. “You smoke here? Hah! While your warriors are spilling their blood below your feet, you prepare your pipe? Perhaps the great Roman Nose figures that by the time he finishes his pipe, the brave ones fighting below will win the fight for him … and he will not have to ride into battle.”

  Tangle Hair glared at the loudmouthed White Contrary. “Yesterday, the Sioux woman who cooked a meal for us destroyed the powerful war medicine of——”

  “We have all heard the story, old man!” White Contrary snarled, his eyes never leaving Roman Nose.

  How he hungers to have my place among our people, Roman Nose brooded to himself as his eyes followed Two Crows from his pony.

  Two Crows handed his old friend the small pouch, watching Roman Nose open and pull forth the vial of bear grease and the ground-earth paints. The old man said, “Roman Nose has never let others do his fighting for him, White Contrary. Not even those with tongues like the magpies.”

  White Contrary started to lunge for the old warrior, but Roman Nose bolted to his feet, all six-foot-three of him, barring the way.

  “White Contrary would do well to argue with the whitemen who are killing so many of us this day … and not pick a fight he cannot win,” The Nose said, settling once more on his haunches, pulling a small hand mirror from the pouch.

  “Here sits the powerful Roman Nose, the man that we depend on, sitting behind this hill. He is the man that makes it easy for his men in any battle, leaving his warriors without his medicine.”

  “Even a Cheyenne without medicine is stronger than a Sioux with the strongest magic.”

  Slowly, carefully, as prescribed by his spirit helpers in his visions, Roman Nose applied the great streaks of ox-blood across his eyes, yellow ocher across his cheeks. A black smear down his chin. The colors he had worn into so many battles. In winter near the white soldiers’ fort at the Piney Woods when he had captured himself a Springfield rifle. In summer heat, when he and others attacked the tiny corral of white men at the edge of the meadow where they cut the hay for the soldier fort on the Bighorn River.

  “Do you listen, Roman Nose?” White Contrary went on. “Do you not see your men falling down there? Two fell just as I came up this hill to see what kept you from our fight. All those young ones fighting down there feel that they belong to the great Roman Nose. They will do anything that you tell them, throwing their bodies away if you command it. But here you sit, behind this hill!”

  Now come another summer fight, brooded Roman Nose in silence. His sweat beading on his face beneath the high sun. Dampness mixing readily with the gummy bear grease and dry pigment in the palm of his hand as he finished painting his face, then circled that summer’s fresh, pale pucker-scars on his chest from the sundance on the banks of the Beaver.

  The day he realized his vision was come at last. Roman Nose stood, his eyes finding the big mulatto among the group.

  “Nibsi!”

  “Uncle!” Jack O’Neill drew close. “It is you these warriors need now!”

  “Our medicine man will ride on one side of me, leading the charge. You will ride on the other side … so that you will see the face of the man you are to find.”

  “The one I am to kill for you, Roman Nose.”

  He smiled, those big, white teeth gleaming in the sun of this bloody day. “No, Nibsi. The face of the one you must kill for you!”

  “Aiyeee-yi-yi-yi!” Jack O’Neill hollered, thumping his bare chest, his cry answered by the rest of those war-chiefs who clustered round Roman Nose when he first arrived at the hilltop.

  “Come, my brothers.” The big one took up the reins to his chestnut and leaped aboard. O’Neill tossed him the old soldier Springfield from the fight of the Hundred-in-the-Hand.

  Roman Nose tightened the horsehair surcingle twice round his legs, lashing himself to his pony. Then smoothed the brilliant scarlet silk sash he tied at his waist. A gift from the white treaty-talkers at the Fort Ellsworth peace conference summers ago.

  One last time he shook out the long trail of war-eagle feathers and herons’ plumes.

  “You chiefs will watch Roman Nose die this day—as a warrior. See to it our people win a great victory to ease the long journey of my shattered body to the other side. May this be a victory washed in my blood!”

  * * *

  “Sweet Mither of God!”

  He had seen the two thousand massed in the valley of the Peno after Fetterman had marched eighty men to the slaughter behind Lodge Trail Ridge.

  A summer later he had watched the hundreds charge and circle, charge and circle the little corral at the edge of the hayfield near the Bighorn River.

  Yet nothing had prepared Seamus Donegan for the sight of Roman Nose leading his horsemen round the far bend upstream, charging into view only seconds after the scouts heard the thunder of the two thousand hooves.

  From bank to bank the front row stretched some sixty warriors strong. Behind them, row upon galloping row. Feathers fluttering on the breeze and they came on. Scalp-locks tied to rifle-barrels catching the wind. Loose hair and braids and roached hair plastered with grease, standing as a challenge to any scalp-taker.

  Ponies painted with magic symbols, scalp-locks pendant from lower jaws, every tail bound up for war in red ribbon and trade-cloth. Bows and repeaters and old Springfield muzzle-loaders, brandished aloft as they came on in a colorful show, held in check by the presence of the greatest war-chief on the Central Plains.

  “Just look at him, will you?” Fred Beecher whispered, his voice rife with unconcealed admiration.

  “Roman Nose makes a pretty impressive sight, lad,” O’Roarke whispered at Donegan’s ear.

  “Think I’ve seen that bastird somewhere before,” Seamus replied, the long, wide scar at his back burning. He glanced over his shoulder, sure he would find the Confederate. Instead, only the wide, disbelieving eyes of every scout still able to hold a rifle.

  “Don’t fire till the major gives the order, boys!” McCall shouted. “Like taking on cavalry, it is.�
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  The rifle-fire from the creekbanks increased in fiery intensity. It was plain the snipers intended to force the scouts to keep their heads down under the deadly barrage of lead hail. Yet, Seamus knew their only chance lay in being able to keep their heads up and meet the charge.

  “Wait!” Forsyth hollered behind them. “Get down, Curry!”

  There was a rustling behind him, then silence once more. Seamus was certain he heard someone praying quietly off to his left. Then the voice was washed over with the growing crescendo of pounding hooves bearing down on this little unprotected heap of sand and spring-washed gravel in a riverbed called the Arickaree.

  Suddenly the rattle of all rifle-fire from the banks withered away. And in its place was the first of the wild cries from the women and old ones on the surrounding hills. Instantly, the eerie blood-song rose in volume, a swelling chorus enough to chill any man still conscious on that island. Black smoke from the silenced Indian rifles drifted lazily across the hot riverbed as more rows of horsemen followed Roman Nose downstream.

  “Get down, Major!” Lieutenant Beecher yelled.

  “They can pick you off from the bank, sir!”

  That time it was McCall hollering from somewhere behind Donegan. He did not turn around to see. Seamus kept his eyes on the advancing phalanx of brown-skinned cavalry.

  “Aim and hold!”

  Forsyth’s order heeded, each man rested the Spencer’s front blade on a warrior in the front line. And Donegan wondered when the major would give the order. He was used to riding with the cavalry, charging down on the fortified positions. Not like this. Infantry work, he thought now. Burrowed like moles in this sand, waiting for them to ride over us.

  “Hold it! Hold it!” Beecher was hollering as well, moving now, his voice inching closer, the sound of his boots scraping sand coming closer as well.

  Seamus felt himself ready to scream … this waiting. But suddenly took hope in the thought that these men were not green, pants-wetting youngsters in for their first fight. Most had faced guns before, if not Indians. His breathing grew shallow as he realized most of these already bore scars, as did he, from other long, long days.