by Dean Owen
He squatted now in the hot sun before the three pegged and spread figures, wondering what advantage he could make out of their capture.
His horribly mutilated face had been painted dead white and two slashes of vermilion angled from his ears down to the gash of his mouth. His lower lip had been cut away and his bottom teeth were long and looked like fangs where the gum had dried and shrunk nearly to the roots.
He stood up. “Nothing has changed,” he said to one of his braves. “And these whites will help us. Slay them and tie them to horses when you stampede the buffalo. They will run before the herd.”
“What advantage is that to us?” a buck asked.
Goose Face moved his head violently with annoyance. “When the long beards see the buffalo, they will send out riders and long knives to fire into the herd and turn them away from the trail of the smoking horse. If they see that whites are running before the herd, they will not shoot with such ease for fear of hitting them. They will not turn the buffalo. Then we attack in their confusion.” He swung up onto his pony. “Slay them when the sun is there.” He pointed into the sky. “And lash them well to their horses.”
Goose Face whipped his pony out of the draw and pounded west and north to catch up with his main party.
Other sentinels were posted on the round and the remaining bucks continued to eat. They were more subdued now and never took their eyes from the three figures spread on the ground.
* * * *
“Pssst!” Liza Reeves made a sound against her teeth, closing her eyes against the sun and turning her head a fraction of an inch at a time toward her right.
Ellis, five feet away from her, grunted softly. His head ached and he wanted desperately to touch it. He had awakened from a short nightmare in which a squaw was lifting his hair with a red-hot knife and gouging out his eyes with a heated tong.
“Can you see if they’re still eatin’?” she asked so quietly that Ellis was not sure she had spoken. He flopped his head to one side and stared at her. She mouthed the words with her lips. He understood then and, groaning as if in pain, twisted his body as much as possible to glance over at the braves sitting beside their ponies. It was close to two o’clock and the sun was still high, though shadows were beginning to favor the eastern side of the broomtails. “Yes,” he said in a whisper.
“How many close to me?”
“Three. About thirty feet away.” He kept his head turned the other way so that the bucks would think he was mumbling in unconscious pain.
“When they stop eatin’, they might go to sleep,” she said hopefully. “I got my left hand loose—”
She stopped abruptly as she heard the soft footsteps of an approaching brave. She lay still.
The Indian squatted beside her and stared into her face. He did not touch her at first. He cocked his head from side to side examining her figure stretched in the dust. Slowly the brave extended his hand and stroked her cheek. He spoke to someone behind him and pulled her head to one side roughly and examined the thick mat of her hair.
The brave stood up and moved back to his pony and squatted in its shadow. He spoke to several others, softly, casually.
“One of ’em likes you,” Ellis said in a mumble of pain.
“Which one?”
“The big one. I think he’s after your hair.”
The brave got up from among his companions and moved back again toward Liza Reeves. He squatted beside her once more.
Liza Reeves opened her eyes and stared into his face. She smiled. It was not easy to keep her eyes open against the sun, but she stared at the brave, smiling, until his face wavered and danced, finally disappearing altogether in the tears that ran from her eyes. But before she had been blinded by the sun, she had seen that the brave carried a Green River knife, a belt hatchet and a heavy Colt. It was not hers. She guessed it to be one taken from Ellis or from Jake.
She opened her eyes and looked up at the brave. She moaned and began moving her hips. Her eyes full on the Indian, she made sounds in her throat and writhed in the dust in unmistakable signs of passion that went beyond any language barrier.
The brave spoke to her. He began to grin, and turned to speak to his companions, who laughed and got up to come and watch the fun.
The brave pulled the buckskin belt from around Liza Reeves’s waist and jerked at her leather blouse. He slit the top of her trousers with his knife and tore the leather away from her body.
The braves laughed and commented on the whiteness of Liza’s body and urged the brave on.
She had not stopped twisting and writhing her hips in the dust and moaning with passion. She held her eyes tight against the sun and pulled her hand through the leather thongs that held it, to a point where it could be pulled out easily.
The brave dropped on top of her to the loud cheers and laughter of the other braves.
Liza’s hand pulled free from the pegged thong in the ground and slipped to the brave’s belt. She had the Colt out and shoved it against the Indian’s belly. The brave had not let his full weight down upon her when she fired, the force of the bullet throwing him away from her.
Liza shot the three braves standing beside her before they realized what had happened. The others were well up the draw, which gave her just enough time to grab the blade from the first brave and slash at her bound right hand. She did not have time to cut her feet free. She snatched up the Colt again and fired twice, killing two braves bearing down on her with knives.
Fifty feet away, a brave saw what was happening and dropped to his knee. He strung an arrow and pulled down on her. She ducked behind one of the dead bodies and grabbed the knife. The arrow sank into the dead man, going clear through him and burying its head an inch in Liza’s shoulder. The Indian strung a second arrow and stood up to advance more closely. Liza pushed the dead brave to one side and let go with the knife. The heavy Green River blade whistled through the air and caught the buck in the throat. He sank back, jerking at the knife, and began to cough.
Liza grabbed the belt hatchet and chopped her leg thongs away from the pegs. Free now, she ran toward the horses and found what she was looking for—Ellis’s carbine that lay in the dust where one of the Indians had dropped it.
The remaining members of the stampede party had moved to the top of the draw and were now slinging arrows at her. Liza tried to keep behind the pony, but the animal was frightened and jumped away. An arrow caught it in the rump and it screamed with pain.
Liza leveled the carbine at the beast’s head and fired. The animal staggered and dropped. Liza forted up behind it and began firing coolly and methodically at the Indians on top of the draw.
“Get me free, God damn it!” Ellis roared.
“I will! I will!” Liza shouted, and went on shooting.
Ellis’s yell drew attention away from Liza, and one of the braves steadied an arrow at Jake. The arrow sang in the air and buried itself in the scout’s head. Liza turned in time to see her brother die without a sound.
Enraged, she stood up and, still firing at the group on top of the draw, ran to Ellis’s side. Arrows sailed around her, and one buried itself in the fleshy part of her thigh, but she continued, slashing at the thongs that bound Ellis’s right hand. Freeing the hand, she dropped the knife to let him finish cutting himself loose and began to fire more carefully.
The braves were a little more cautious now that Liza had killed the one who had stood up briefly to release his shaft. She kept moving at a half-run back and forth across the bottom of the draw, scanning the top of the rise and firing only when one of the braves dared to attempt to loose a shaft.
Ellis was free now and had gathered in the discarded Colt where Liza had dropped it. He reloaded and shouted for her to withdraw toward the west end of the draw where most of the horses were tethered.
They half ran, half staggered toward the horses, Ellis hardly able to see throug
h the glare of the naked burning sun.
The braves followed them along the top of the rise and continued to sling arrows down on them indiscriminately. Three broomtails were hit. The animals screamed and bucked against their halters and kicked out in pain.
Ellis threw the Colt to Liza and grabbed the carbine in order to reload. Still firing at the braves who were trying to circle around them, Liza slashed at the rawhide that held the horses. She swung up on the back of the nearest and shouted at Ellis. “Let’s go!”
The tall Texan leaped on the back of a pony and then they kicked their mounts hard in the flanks and sent them racing down the draw over the dead braves. The remaining horses, free of their restraint, galloped alongside of them.
The two riders struck straight to the west at a dead gallop. Behind them, the Cheyenne were scurrying after their ponies, and three were already riding out after them.
* * * *
They had a lead of about half a mile on the pursuing Cheyenne when Liza Reeves’s horse stumbled and threw her hard to the ground.
Ellis pulled his pony in and returned to Liza’s side. She had lost a lot of blood from the shoulder wound and the arrow was still imbedded in her thigh. The Cheyenne were riding harder now. Liza’s pony was dead; its heart had burst. Ellis pulled her up in his arms and helped her to his pony’s back, then swung up behind her.
The Cheyenne were only a thousand yards away now and he could hear them yelling. He spurred the broomtail with a vicious kick in the ribs and sent the exhausted beast at full gallop across the grass, eyes searching for some place where they could stop and make a stand.
There were only three of them, but with an injured Liza on his hands, three Cheyenne born and raised in the high-grass buffalo country were more than enough to contend with. He had his belt of cartridges and the carbine and a Colt. But what he needed most now was a place to fort up and protect his rear.
He urged the slowing pony on to greater speed, but the added weight and the full gallop from the draw had taken a heavy toll of the long-maned pinto. The Cheyenne were within seven hundred yards.
The pony fought its way to the top of a ridge, an out-cropping of the sand-hill country of the South Platte, and Ellis saw his stand.
A dried-out pit now in the late June summer, Ellis could see that it was a buffalo wallow and sump when the water was high with the spring rains. Wind, erosion and constant usage by the buffalo had carved out a six-foot overhang, beneath the ridge that was squared off in such a manner as to provide protection on three sides and a full view of the plains in front.
He glanced back at the Cheyenne, who saw that he was making for the wallow, and heard them yelling and screaming.
He pushed his pony to the limit and pounded across the dry bed. He slammed to a stop, jerking Liza Reeves down after him, and shoved her in to the back of the overhang.
Still holding the pony by the head rope, Ellis turned to fire at the pursuing braves over the back of the beast, but saw they had pulled to a stop just beyond his range.
And he saw that he would never leave the wallow alive unless he managed in some way to kill the Indians.
He pulled the pony into position and fired a bullet behind the animal’s ear. The beast dropped like a stone across the mouth of the cut and Ellis crouched behind it. He steadied the carbine across the dead animal’s belly, pulled out the Colt, checked to make sure it was loaded and put it on the ground beside him. The Cheyenne were nowhere to be seen. Ellis guessed that they had circled the wallow and were examining his position from the rear to see if there was any way to reach him from there. Ellis knew that there wasn’t, and for a moment he turned his attention to Liza Reeves.
“Stop gaping at my nakedness and get this shaft outa my leg,” she said strongly. Her face was a little drawn beneath the heavy sunburn, but her voice was steady. She handed him the Green River knife she had taken from the dead brave and turned her head away.
On close examination, Ellis saw that the Cheyenne arrow had not penetrated too deeply, only about an inch below the curve of the thigh. The arrowhead had broken off in their flight, and the Texan quickly shaved the shaft to a point to ease the withdrawal.
“This is going to hurt like hell, woman.”
“Just pull it out and stop your yammering,” she said tartly.
Ellis glanced back at the open sump, and, seeing no sign of the Cheyenne, pulled the shaft out of her thigh. He massaged the wound to make it bleed, and then stripped off his shirt.
“You tend to the savages,” she said. “I’ll bind this thing up.”
“How about your shoulder?”
“That one’s all right. It’s already dried up in its own blood.”
She tore the shirt into several strips and bound her leg tightly. Then she began to bend it at the knee to keep the circulation going and to work out the soreness that was sure to come to the injured muscle.
“We’re in a hell of a situation,” Ellis said, turning his attention to the face of the cut.
“Ain’t near’s bad as we was back in that draw,” she said quietly. “I guess there wasn’t too much I coulda done for ol’ Jake no way. He looked pretty gone already. I’m glad they didn’t put an arrow in his innards, so he’d lie there and suffer.”
Ellis turned. “I never saw anything like it in my life,” he said reverently. “You got more Goddam grit in your craw, woman, than any company of Georgia Confeds.”
“Turn your head, God damn it,” Liza Reeves said angrily. “Lookin’ at my nakedness when you have to is one thing, but I’m tryin’ to make a skitter-cover outa this shirt and I don’t want you watchin’ me tie it on.”
Ellis could not help but grin. He swept the plains for signs of grass moving unnaturally or against the breath of the wind. He saw nothing, heard nothing.
“All right, you kin look now,” Liza said. She had pulled the shirt around her thighs as a diaper and tied the sleeves around her waist.
“As I was sayin’,” Ellis began, “you fought like a damned wildcat—”
Her eyes flashed. “Whatcha want me to do? They was gonna kill us, warn’t they? You heard what that chile said about stampedin’ the bluffer into the camp with us leadin’ the shebang—”
She stopped short. “So that’s what that youngun has in his mind! I thought they was mighty few Goddam Cheyenne in that draw. And then him ridin’ off like that.”
Ellis nodded grimly. “Probably goin’ to stampede the herd, and then attack from the north or east durin’ the confusion.”
Liza Reeves massaged her thigh. Her face twisted in a grimace of pain. “Ain’t goin’ to be any easier with all them laborin’ men gettin’ drunk on their pay tonight, neither.”
“And we’re pinned down tighter than a cinch strap on a sweatin’ mule,” Ellis said tightly. “How do you feel?”
“Like fightin’,” she said. “We ain’t goin’ to last long in this wallow. I’m already about to perish to death from thirst.”
Ellis turned back to sweep the crust of the sump and, beyond it, the wavering plains grass. It was a sure bet the Cheyenne were behind them and they would be planning. It wasn’t likely they would rush them again, sweeping past on their ponies. They would try trickery.
“What would you do,” Liza asked, as though she were reading his mind, “if you had two fellows holed up like this? How would you figure it?”
Ellis scratched his chin. “With me bein’ a Cheyenne, I’d be pretty good with bow ’n’ arrow. I think I’d get over yonder in the high grass over the crust of the wallow hole and fire them shafts—”
“That’s all right,” Liza said. “Where would you put your horses?”
“I wouldn’t put them in back ’cause a stray arrow might get one,” Ellis said thoughtfully. “I think I’d hobble them farther east. Where I could keep my eye on them.”
“Then let’s just wait until w
e see if that’s what they’re gonna do,” Liza Reeves said and continued to massage her leg.
Ellis watched her, really seeing for the first time her thigh and the full swell of her hard little belly and her rump and the tilt of her breasts against the rough buckskin blouse. He swallowed hard. She was a hell of a lot of woman.
He jerked his head away and stared out over the sump. “You said you was thirsty. I could plug a hole in this pony’s vein and get a little blood for you.”
She didn’t answer.
“Then you ain’t very thirsty,” he said.
“I seen the way you looked at me then,” Liza Reeves said, her eyes flashing. “Don’t get no ideas about me.”
Ellis flushed. Then he grinned and stared brazenly at her half nudity. “Woman,” he said, “there ain’t nothin’ this side of hell that would keep me from takin’ you if I wanted to.”
“You just try it and see, cowboy,” she said.
“What you got against men?” Ellis asked thoughtfully.
“Nothin’. I guess when I find me a man I’m goin’ to have a henhouse full of kids.”
“But—”
“But hell! It’s gotta be legal. And he’s got to be a hell of a lot more man than I’ve seen around lately.” She sniffed and continued to massage her leg.
“Like as not I could fill the bill,” Ellis said, his eyes searching the grass that showed no sign of the Cheyenne that he knew were out there somewhere.
“What makes you think you’d do for me?” Liza snapped.
“I know it—and you know it,” Ellis said confidently.
Liza Reeves tossed her head. “God a’mighty! You’re the last man on earth I’d give up to. I’d outshoot you—outhunt you—outrun you—”
