The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Yes, sir!”

  * * *

  “Slinger! Front and center, boy!”

  Sigmund Shlesinger had long ago gotten used to his nickname. Last winter in Hays he was proud that some of the other mule-whackers and teamsters had given him that handle. It was a sign they had finally accepted him into their world, despite the fact that he was a Jew from New York City.

  “Yessir, Sergeant?” He crawled over, dragging his Spencer behind him.

  “Major wants me to pick three of our best shots to give a try at something. I’m rounding the marksmen up. Go report and I’ll be along shortly.”

  Shlesinger found Sharp Grover and the young Irishman already with Forsyth at the edge of the major’s pit, discussing the absence of warriors there at midday with the sun hung almost directly overhead. Only the nearby hills showed any sign of life. A few horsemen, sitting, unmoving. Waiting on something.

  Most startling of all was the movement of ponies beneath a growing cloud of dust from the ridges and knolls.

  “Women and children, Major,” Sharp Grover was explaining as Shlesinger came up.

  “They’re retreating?”

  “I don’t think they’re giving up yet,” Grover replied. “The warriors are going to stay.”

  “Just sending the squaws and children back to the villages,” Donegan said. “Probably in case the army comes up … they’ll have time to hold them off here while the camps tear down and scoot away.”

  “I’d like to see for myself,” Forsyth brooded. “But first, I want you boys to take care of that annoying bastard over there.”

  For the first time, young Shlesinger got a look at the reason he had been called there.

  “He’s been there for a few minutes, Slinger,” Forsyth explained, pointing out the lone, fat, and very fleshy Indian who danced and cavorted about on the far bank.

  Completely naked. No breechclout to cover his manhood. The naked warrior wheeled and shook his flesh, letting his ample belly wiggle, bent over repeatedly patting his buttocks and making obscene taunts at the white men.

  Young Shlesinger turned, grinning widely, ready to say something, when he found Forsyth far from smiling. Sigmund realized with the major’s condition, no man would be in a happy frame of mind.

  “Give Slinger that Springfield, Grover,” Forsyth ordered. “Maybe some of the Jew’s shooting will wipe that smug smile off that red bastard’s face. I want you to try as well, Donegan.”

  Grover passed to each man one of the three heavy, metal-banded Long-Tom infantry Springfield rifles the command had transported with them from Fort Hays. Sharp crouched with the third, flipping up the long-range leaf-sights.

  “That’s better’n twelve hundred yards,” Grover advised his fellow shooters.

  Like the army scout, Donegan chose to shoot from a sitting position, locking his elbows inside his knees. The third young rifleman plopped on his belly and spread his legs at an angle.

  “Hold high on him,” Forsyth hissed. “I want one of you to hit that fat, red bastard dancing out there like a trained monkey. Tell me when you’re ready … I’ll give the command to fire in volley.”

  Each of the three slammed their cartridge home in the breech.

  “Last notch, Seamus,” Grover suggested.

  He winked. “Won’t be your bullet hits him, Sharp. Me, or the boy will.”

  “You so damned sure?”

  “Your eyes just getting too old, Grover——”

  “I suppose your chatter means you’re ready.”

  “Anytime, Major,” Sharp said.

  “Fire!”

  Almost as one, the three rifles boomed their throaty roar. Immediately the three marksmen scrambled to their feet to peer over the muzzle-smoke. On the far riverbank, the fleshy, naked Indian leaped into the air, arms and legs thrashing in surprise.

  The fleshy, copper-skinned dancer landed in a heap, a small cloud of dust puffing round his naked body.

  “Hurrah!” a few of the spectators shouted.

  “Three cheers for Slinger!” someone else hollered.

  Donegan and Grover turned on the exuberant scouts, seeing Forsyth shaking his fist at the dead Indian’s retreating friends.

  Seamus looked at Grover, laughing. “How the hell they so sure Slinger hit him, ’stead of us?”

  “Remember me? I’m the one with bad eyes, you said!”

  Seamus nodded. “But I’m one divil of a good shot!”

  “I know … but I figure your hands only get steady when you’ve got a strong dose of some saddle-varnish under your belt!”

  All three had just begun to slap the others on the back when the willows on both sides of the stream erupted with the rattle of rifle-fire.

  The marksmen dived into the pits as the bullets whined overhead.

  Grover sat smiling at Donegan, like a cat with feathers in its whiskers.

  “What’s so funny, Grover?”

  “Just thinking myself how good would be a long draw on a tall-necked bottle of saddle-varnish right about now, my friend.”

  Chapter 33

  The brassy blare of a trumpet broke the hot stillness of that afternoon of the nineteenth, shattering Donegan’s painful, bittersweet memories of the auburn-haired Jennifer Wheatley.

  As the ragged notes of the tin horn floated over the hot valley, Seamus cursed himself once more for being a fool ever to fall for a woman. It had always been much safer to dance out of their lives, before chancing the woman would dance out of his. A broken piece of something deep inside of Seamus grew thankful for that shabby trumpet call as Grover came leaping into the pit, scurrying to the front lip with the Irishman.

  “That bloody renegade bugler,” Sharp growled.

  “One thing we know, Sharp—can’t be the Confederate,” Donegan added.

  “Whoever the sonuvabitch is … he’s my meat.” Grover inched over the lip and peered up the long stretch of riverbed bordering the narrow run of water.

  “He’s yours, Sharp—unless that bugler turns out to be the Confederate.”

  Grover smiled cruelly. “He ain’t, because the first bugle call we heard the first morning. But, I’d still give the bastard to you with pleasure, Irishman.”

  “What the devil’s going on up there, Grover?” called Forsyth from his pit. “They fixing to charge again?”

  “No, Major,” Sharp flung his voice over his shoulder. “By God, it’s a white flag!”

  “Where?” the major yelled.

  “Yonder … to the northeast.” Grover pointed. Heads turned.

  Making their appearance from a gap between some low bluffs to the northeast of the island came a half-dozen or so young warriors. One, wearing a good-sized bonnet of war-eagle feathers tipped with plumes and horse-hair tassels, rode out from the center of the bunch some twenty yards and stopped. The rest spread out behind the leader.

  “Don’t trust them bastards!” Sergeant McCall shouted.

  Forsyth inched himself up as much as he could. “Tell us how to play it, Grover. You want to honor that truce flag?”

  Sharp chewed on his lip, gazing into Donegan’s eyes.

  “You tell me what you need, Sharp,” Seamus whispered, patting the brass receiver on the Henry. “Both of us ready to help you.”

  Sharp looked back at the expectant faces of the scouts peering over the edges of their sandy burrows. “No, Major. No reason to trust this bunch.”

  “But, if they want to parley?”

  “They didn’t come to parley, Major,” Grover replied, snappish.

  “Is it Two Crows? He’s the leader of this bunch, ain’t——”

  “None of these bucks are old enough to be Two Crows, Major Forsyth. This bunch is fighters.”

  “Maybe Two Crows sent them to talk for him——”

  “The bastards only wanna get on the island and see how bad we’re chewed up, Major,” Donegan interrupted loudly.

  “You’ve had some firsthand experience in this, have you?” Forsyth sounded acerbic.
<
br />   “No me. But Bridger did, the day Black Horse’s Cheyenne come to visit Carrington at Fort Phil Kearny. To feel out the soldier fort’s defenses.”

  Grover nodded once, a grin come of certainty crossing his seamed face. “That’s the truth of it, Major. They’re wanting to see how bad off we are.”

  The entire delegation of warriors put their decorated ponies in slow motion, walking toward the island under the white flag tied to the end of a long lance. The traditional Cheyenne war weapon. And this one was decorated like all the rest—with brown and blond and red-haired scalps, fluttering on the hot, steamy breeze.

  “You best get them to stop before they get any closer, Major!” Grover hollered.

  “What the hell am I … Sergeant, order those Indians to halt where they are!”

  Scrambling over the lip of his rifle-pit, McCall hurried to the north side of the island, waving his arms and shouting, attempting to stop the horsemen.

  “Them young bucks must take us for fools,” a voice behind Donegan said.

  Seamus turned to find C. B. Piatt crawling up on his hands and knees, wincing with the pain of yesterday’s wound. Dragging his Spencer at Piatt’s heels crawled Sigmund Shlesinger.

  “They’ll get away with what they can, Piatt.”

  “If the major lets ’em get away with it,” Piatt hissed.

  “Damned fools!” Grover snapped, lumbering to his feet, kicking sand in three directions as he stomped from the pit to McCall’s side.

  He shouted his warning in throaty Cheyenne, for emphasis waving his own Spencer at the end of his arm.

  Whether they heard or not, whether they understood or not, the half-dozen kept on walking toward the riverbank and the sandy island. Waving their white flag on the end of that scalp-adorned lance. Grover grabbed McCall’s arm.

  “You best be looking for a hole to dive into, Sergeant. We’re their meat out here.”

  “Major wants ’em stopped——”

  “But they ain’t stopping for the major!” Plain as paint the strain sounded in Grover’s voice as he whirled on Forsyth’s pit. “You ready to do things my way, Major?”

  “Do it!”

  “Donegan!”

  “Over here, Sharp!”

  “Lay a round out there … right over the head of that one in the fancy bonnet.” Grover snagged McCall’s arm and both went scrambling arm in arm for a rifle-pit in the next breath.

  Seamus nestled his cheek along the stock of the Henry, peered down the blued steel of the barrel and fired.

  With the whine of the bullet splitting the air overhead, the horsemen stopped immediately, arguing excitedly among themselves and gesturing wildly. The bonneted one pulled out from the group and stopped again. He shouted.

  Grover hollered back in Cheyenne, then turned to Forsyth. “He wants to palaver with the soldier-chief, Major.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Sounds like Charlie Bent.”

  “Old man Bent’s son?” Forsyth muttered.

  “Owl Woman’s boy … the one what went back to the blanket.”

  “The one who went bad, what you mean,” McCall snarled.

  “He wants to palaver with you,” Grover advised. “I think the chiefs are trying to figure out if we’re in so bad shape they could ride over us … or maybe they should just fold their tents and get the hell out of here while they can lick their wounds.”

  “They’re still coming!” Donegan shouted.

  Grover and the rest watched the bonneted warrior leading the rest, the horsemen nearing the flat, sandy riverbed. Less than a hundred yards from the island now.

  “Some of you,” Grover shouted, “put a few rounds in the ground at their feet!”

  An abrupt, ragged volley roared, kicking up plumes of sand and dirt among the ponies’ hooves. A few reared, their riders gripping halters and manes to calm the frightened animals.

  The bonneted man ordered the others to stand their ground. Three wheeled and loped back to the gap in the bluffs. Two stayed with the leader, who put a hand to his mouth, hollering at the island.

  “Indian-talker! I speak some English.”

  “Speak your English from there, Charlie!”

  “You know who I am?”

  “We have met, Charlie Bent.”

  “Maybe I should have killed you when I had the chance … back then, no?”

  “You couldn’t do it back then—at Fort Lyon … and I’ll be damned if your bunch is gonna wipe us out now.”

  “Ha, Indian-talker! You have no chance. Today you die. Let us come on the island to talk … we may let you go. We talk, or Two Crows will send his warriors to crush you under their ponies.”

  “The joke’s on you, Charlie. We’ll fight you for a month of Sundays.”

  “Whiteman talks big. But his words are like pony-dung. No good to shoot in my guns … and sure no good to eat.”

  “If you and Two Crows want to try charging us again, Charlie Bent—then get ready to die. We have more bullets here than all your ponies could shit in a year!”

  “You will be begging me to eat my pony’s shit before this day…”

  Meanwhile, Grover had turned aside, not intending to hear any more of the young half-breed’s angry banter. “Donegan! Show that sonuvabitch what I think of his white flag!”

  “Kill ’im?”

  “Yes, goddammit!”

  “No!” Forsyth’s voice rose shrill, in command.

  Seamus watched the major and his chief of scouts glare at one another, neither budging. Realizing what toll the days of siege were taking on the relationships between these men.

  Sharp thought on it, eyes narrowing. “It’s up to the major, Seamus,” Grover stated with a flat sound to it. “One less Injun ain’t gonna hurt none——”

  “Donegan!”

  “Yeah, Major?”

  “Just run him off,” Forsyth ordered, a bit more quietly this time. “Like Sharp, I’m sick of hearing his greasy-mouthed bragging.”

  Donegan walked a series of four rounds in on the half-breed’s pony, causing the animal to rear. Bent brought the animal down, twice around in a tight circle, cursing the white men as his lance fluttered in the breeze. His two companions had long since scampered when Charlie Bent finally reined his pony about and slowly, deliberately, turned his backside on the island.

  He rose slightly, pulled his breechclout aside and patted the bared seam of his brown buttocks. Defiantly he inched his way toward the protective bluffs, showing that he was far from afraid of the white men.

  “He makes an inviting target, Major,” Seamus sputtered.

  “As much as any of us would like to see you blow that brown ass off, let him go,” Forsyth chuckled.

  “I’ll run up against him again someday,” Grover grumbled as he slid back into the steamy pit with Donegan.

  Overhead the sun had climbed halfway to mid-sky, along with the temperature of another hot day.

  “I’d like to be there when you do,” Seamus replied quietly. “You get your hands on Charlie Bent … and me, I’ll have these hands on the Confederate.”

  * * *

  The boy and the old man had reached a stream of sorts at the first blush of dawn that morning. Discovering at the same time that in the darkness they had walked within a few hundred yards of one of the hostile villages.

  With the sun’s bloody appearance out of the east, the pair was forced to hide themselves in the tall grasses bordering the stream at the edge of a small salt marsh. With hurried hand signals, Trudeau told Stillwell to make himself even smaller than they had their first day in the coulee. Being so close to the village, Pete whispered as they stretched out among the tall stalks in the boggy marsh, chances for discovery might prove even greater than before.

  No time to backtrack. No time to push on. They had run out of time, and darkness. And luck.

  Both dozed until full light, when voices awoke them. Old women and girls, headed their way, looking for squaw-wood for their morning cook-fires. Dogs barke
d in the nearby village, and old men shouted, gathering up their ponies. Still the white men stretched their luck a few more hours. And one went back to sleeping while the other kept a fitful watch on the village through that day.

  In the afternoon a handful of old men rode by at an unhurried pace, moseying north to the fighting. As they passed, Trudeau strained to overhear their conversation. When the old men were long over the horizon to the north, Pete whispered to his wide-eyed young partner.

  “Didn’t catch much talk. But … their village lost many.”

  Jack nodded. Knowing what a coup it would be for that grieving village to capture two of the island’s white men alive.

  Immediately he grew conscious of the big pistol gouging a hole in his gut. And realized that he would not let the Indians take him alive. He closed his eyes to sleep once more.

  Later as Jack lay on the soggy ground, at times pushing the tall stalks aside to peer at a part of the village, he listened to the old man’s soft snores. He glanced over his shoulder, finding Trudeau curled up like a child. So small. Pete’s deeply wrinkled face tranquil. He reminded Jack of his little brother for a moment in time.

  Then realized once more how close they both were to the precipice of terror.

  First one squaw in the village, then more, and finally it seemed the whole world was trilling. Keening. Chanting their shrill mourning until the eerie screech filled the summer blue overhead.

  Pete came awake suddenly, troubled with the singing. Hurrying with a rustle to Jack’s side.

  From the village poured a procession of the women, leading travois ponies and children and old men. All screaming their grief. For the rest of the afternoon into the falling of the sun, a noisy funeral was conducted on the prairie. Constructing the scaffolds from broken lodgepoles. Raising the dead warriors they had cleaned and painted and bound tightly in buffalo robes, then placed upon those rickety platforms.

  At sundown the last of the mourners left their dead for the village. And supper. And nightfall.

  Once the last vestige of blue had drained from the western sky, Pete signaled that they should leave. Up from the tall grasses of the marsh, into the shocking cold of the wide, shallow stream that would separate them from the village.