by Dean Owen
“And outtalk me, just like any other woman,” Ellis said with a grin. “You don’t interest me, lady. And I’ll tell you why. When I get me a woman, she ain’t only got to wear dresses and act like she was a woman, but she’s got to look at me like I was the one and only man in the world.”
“Whew! We sure doin’ a lot of confessin’ in this here wallow. But then, I guess it comes natural with a Texan who rides high on a horse and carries a Colt low.”
“I just like to wear my gun handy.”
“Too handy. It’s killin’ handy.”
“Ain’t no use talkin’ about it anymore,” Ellis said, somehow a little angry. “I just as soon nuzzle up to a she-bear as try and make shine with you.”
Liza tossed her head. “I’d make you forget your ma, boy,” she said confidently. “I warn’t raised with the Injuns with their free-lovin’ ideas with my eyes closed.”
“Sure.” Ellis nodded. “I figured you’d know a lot—”
“And I ain’t been touched, neither!” Liza said flatly. “I’m one hundred percent woman and the man that gits me is gonna know it, too.”
An arrow whistled through the silence of the plains and narrowly missed the opening above the dead pony. The shaft buried itself deep in the animal’s rump and quivered there.
Ellis jerked up the carbine and dropped flat to the ground. A second arrow sailed through the air and landed short. A third found the opening, but, by this time, Liza Reeves was down flat on the ground beside Ellis and the shaft dug its way into the rear of the cut harmlessly.
“Watch where they’re comin’ from,” Ellis said squinting. “Try to figure out their position.”
Hugging the dead horse as closely as possible, Liza Reeves twisted around to find a view of her half of the opening, and, in doing so, had to press her belly, hips and thighs up against Ellis. The Texan gulped and grinned, looking down at her.
“You just keep your mind on business, cowboy,” she said.
Three arrows sang through the air; all of them were well aimed and landed in a six-inch circle just below the edge of the pony’s back.
“They clustered together straight out,” Liza said. “I seen all three of them comin’.”
“Same here,” Ellis replied. “We’ll let them throw three more, then I got an idea.”
As if the Cheyenne had heard, three more shafts whistled over the sump, a little higher than the last three, missing the horse altogether and skimming over the top to bury deep in the rear wall of the cut.
“Next volley, you let out a scream.”
They waited.
A single arrow, well aimed and moving so fast that they could hardly hear it, skimmed over the top of the horse and sank ten inches into the wall of the cut. Liza let out a blood-curdling scream and began to moan.
“Keep it up,” Ellis hissed.
Liza screamed again, this time cutting it off abruptly.
Ellis yelled hoarsely, “Liza—Liza—Liiizzzaaaaa!” He cursed viciously at the Cheyenne for killin’ her.
“Stick your leg out beyond the edge of the horse. Make ’em think they got you,” Ellis whispered. “They wouldn’t shoot at a dead leg.”
Liza snaked her bad leg out. If they were going to shoot at her, might as well be the one already bunged up, she reasoned.
Ellis began to cry. He wailed and carried on, cursing the Indians he knew were listening.
He slipped the Colt over to Liza. “Get yourself in a position to shoot when they show themselves. And woman, you better make your braggin’ come true. You gonna get just about three seconds to plug them braves before they send other arrows into our bodies for good measure.”
“You gonna play dead?”
Ellis nodded. “I’m gonna yell, then slump across the top of this hoss, even drop my rifle outside to make ’em think they really got me. More’n likely they’ll move in with their bows strung ready to fly that safety arrow, but they’ll move in to do it. That’s when you gotta throw lead fast and straight.”
“All right, I kin see the whole sump now,” Liza said, inching her way down to where she had the gun free. She checked the Colt and held it covered by the horse’s broomtail that flowed out on the ground.
Three arrows sang over the sump. Two of them dug into the pony and a third thunked into the back of the cut. Ellis let out a death-rattling groan and began to cough and curse. He slumped forward over the dead pony, fully exposed to the sump and the Cheyenne. He dropped his rifle into the dry dust.
He remained still, his skin crawling at the thought of Cheyenne arrows sinking into his head and back. Then he heard Liza cock the Colt. He fought hard against an impulse to drop back behind the pony, but he remained still. His face was dry, bone-dry, where only a few minutes before he had been soaked in sweat.
He heard the rustle of plains grass. Then the Colt barked three times so fast that Ellis could hardly believe the shots came from the same gun.
He jerked up straight, threw himself over the pony and grabbed the rifle. On one knee, he pumped slugs into the three Cheyenne, the force of the bullets hurling the braves back against the crust of the wallow.
The reverberating echoes of the shots were still rolling across the grass when Ellis, joined by Liza, examined the dead bucks.
Liza slipped the Colt into Ellis’s holster and stood looking at the Indians. “Mister,” she said slowly, “it took lots of guts to play dead in full view of three Cheyenne with arrows strung in their bows.”
“I’ll go get the horses,” Ellis said. He moved away quickly.
When Ellis returned with the three ponies, Liza Reeves had stripped down to the flesh and was preparing to put on a pair of a dead Indian’s breeches. As naked as the day she was born, she looked up startled to find Ellis holding the head ropes of the broomtails and grinning at her.
“Turn your head, God damn it!” she said.
“Woman,” Ellis said in a heavy drawl, “I just killed more Cheyenne than I ever thought I’d have to—in a fair contest. You don’t scare me. And God damn it, I’m lookin’!”
Even from across the sump, Ellis could see Liza Reeves’s face turn red beneath the deep tan. Her eyes flashed, but she didn’t say another word. Ellis swung to the back of a pony and watched her dress, openly, brazenly, his eyes travelling from the long thighs to the hips, from the firm belly to the full breasts. A hell of a lot of woman, he said to himself. A regular goddam dream of a woman.
Belted and snug in the breeches, Liza pulled on an ornamental vest and laced it up the front to cover her bare bosom. She picked up a bow and slung a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. Limping against the wound in her thigh, she swung up on a pony.
“We’d better light out fast,” Ellis said, cutting south to avoid the draw. “Unless we can get help from the camp to come back and clean out those other Cheyenne, there’s goin’ to be hell to pay with a herd of buffalo stampedin’ through the tents.”
“Let’s go,” Liza Reeves said tersely.
Trailing the third pony, they moved off to the south and east, riding hard in the late afternoon sun.
CHAPTER SIX
At one o’clock Liam Kelly began to fret, searching the plains to the west. By this time the Johnny-Jacks had laid four miles of rails, faster than it had ever been put down before. Kelly rode a borrowed horse to the railhead now, ignoring the Jehus’ carts hauling the rails.
By two o’clock Kelly really began to worry. He rode back to the tent city, hoping with all his might that Ellis and Jake and Liza Reeves had returned safely with news that his fears were unfounded. He pounded up to a stop before his tent and threw the neck rope to the crippled Jehu who came out to greet him with a grin. “They show up yet, boy?” he demanded.
“Not yet, Mr. Kelly.”
“Never mind the horse, lad,” Kelly said. “Get over to Watson’s and see if they’ve stopped the
re for a drink. Then come find me at the general’s.”
The boy nodded and hobbled away as quickly as he could on the make-shift crutch. Kelly turned toward the general’s tent.
“General’s moved to his caboose, Kelly,” Billy Brighton told him. The ex-major was sweating over a drafting board. “Any word from Jake, or from Miss Reeves? Or from the cowboy?”
“Not a sign of them,” Kelly said.
Brighton pursed his lips. “You better get over and tell the general. That detachment of soldiers that came down on the pay train’s due to return to Omaha tonight. And some of the regulars with the camp are going back on leaves, the replacements coming in next week. If there’s anything coming up, we’re going to be mighty short-handed.”
Kelly hurried out of the engineers’ tent, half ran to the rails, flagged a Jehu and climbed aboard. Flying down the side of the rails with a load of cross ties, Kelly was deposited outside the general’s caboose and climbed aboard.
One half of the car was given over to sleeping and living quarters for the man in charge of putting through the Union Pacific. The other half resembled a small arsenal, littered with drafting boards, rolls of surveyors’ maps and engineering gear of every kind.
The congressmen were still bending the general’s ear when Kelly swung up on the car and pushed in.
He caught the general’s eye. The general knew at a glance that his big roving bucko was worried. He bent a finger at Kelly and moved away from the others and into his private quarters.
The door closed behind them and he turned to face the big man. “What is it, Kelly?”
“No word, General,” Kelly said heavily. “Still nothin’ specific. I sent a scout out ’fore noon and he was trailed by that young woman, Jake Reeves’s sister. I haven’t heard from either of them. Nor Jake, either. I don’t like it, General.”
The general closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Want me to send out a detachment of soldiers?”
Kelly shook his head. “No, sir, but Major Brighton just told me the pay train guards and some regulars were headed back to Omaha tonight on the return supply train. If we could keep them in camp, it might help—in case anythin’ happens.”
“If anything happens, Kelly,” the general said. He pointed to the door. “There are three congressmen outside, and every one of them is intent on hamstringing this whole operation. They hated President Lincoln’s guts and they’d just love to go back to Washington and raise hell. I can’t go into the whole political-financial intrigue of the building of this railroad now, Kelly, but unless you can give me concrete assurances that Goose Face and a war party is in the area, I can’t ask the detachment of regulars going home on leave—or the specials who came out on the pay train—to stay. It all adds up to money, Kelly. Those congressmen outside would like nothing better than to go back and raise hell with Andy Johnson for going ahead with Lincoln’s plan of building a Continental railroad.”
“There’d be a lot more hell to pay, sir,” Kelly said angrily, “if that renegade devil swooped down on us, and only half of our soldiers—”
“Soldiers! My God, Kelly, do you realize that nearly a fifth of the men working on this road are ex-soldiers! And we have the guns and ammunition to tear Goose Face and any war party to bits.”
“I want to avoid an attack altogether, sir. I’ll see if I can’t get somebody else to ride out as scout—”
“I’ll give you six men,” the general said. “I’ll put them directly under you.”
Kelly nodded, his jaw tight. “All right, General.”
* * * *
The soldiers, mounted, listened impatiently to Kelly instructing the Sergeant. To a man, they thought Kelly crazy as a loon for suggesting that a party of a hundred or so Indians would dare to attack the railhead. They were annoyed at being ordered out on a hot afternoon to ride in search of a scout who had probably taken a jug of Watson’s whisky along with him and was sleeping off a drunk, or to trail after a cowboy and a leather-tough plains girl with a hot eye for each other.
“I want you to split up into three parties,” Kelly ordered. “Ride north and south of the buffalo, with one of you going in a wide circle well out from the others. The two scouts and the girl are out there somewhere, and even if you don’t see any Cheyenne, I want you to bring them back in.”
Surly and ill-tempered, the troopers turned their horses west and out of camp, in no hurry to ride hard across the baking plains grass. Kelly watched them leave, wishing under his breath that he could crack their heads together. There was nothing for him to do now but wait. No, he would not just sit around. He would go out to the railhead and keep the Johnny-Jacks moving. Kelly did not have to be told that there was fire in the air that hot Saturday afternoon, and that the Johnny-Jacks were pounding their way to more track footage laid in a single day than had ever been put down before. He swung his big frame into the saddle of his borrowed horse and galloped out to the railhead.
* * * *
Goose Face sat under the shade of a cottonwood tree and tore at a fresh liver just taken from the warm body of a buffalo calf. Around him, hardly visible in a grove of trees well east of the rail camp, his small army of dedicated white-haters waited with him.
The Cheyenne leader bit into the liver and let the warm blood run down his chin and drip onto his bare chest. His eyes studied the middle distance, his gaze moody and thoughtful. It had not always been like this for the young renegade.
Goose Face’s mind drifted back to the time when he was but a child in the tepee, Curling into a buffalo robe on the cold winter nights and staring into the fire. His father, a tall handsome brave with many coups, would stroke his knife on a stone and speak softly to his mother. The young boy would listen to stories of battles with the Sioux to the west and north, and of running engagements with the Arapaho and Crow. And tales of the great hunts when braves from all the lodges would follow the chief down into the great plains for buffalo.
The young boy liked it best when the hunters returned, their horses laden with dripping beef and thick bloody stacks of buffalo hides. The squaws in every lodge would turn out to greet the bucks and a big feast would follow. Then the squaws would begin preparing the robes for new tepee skins, removing the old ones that were then smoked and dried soft for making moccasins and leggings for the brave hunters.
Soft-and-Running-Deer had waited impatiently for the day when he would become a brave and sit with the other braves in the council and make wise decisions. He worked hard under his father’s guiding hand, learning to read trail signs, to ride a pony, to make shafts for his bow, to hunt buffalo on the plains, and to hunt in the forests and the streams of the Dakotas when parties would forage north.
The eighteen-year-old Cheyenne leader remembered the maid Many Blossoms, who had grown up with him and for whom he had fought his first fight with knives when he was only fourteen. He had sworn that when he returned from his first single hunt, with the hair of an enemy, thereby declared a true brave of the Cheyenne ready to take his place at the councils, he would take Many Blossoms for his squaw. His father, Buffalo Eye, and the father of the maid, Big Moon, both had looked favorably on this. And the girl herself had shown that she desired the young son of Buffalo Eye.
The fight had been with an older, heavier and more experienced Cheyenne who had offered many robes and other gifts to the father of Many Blossoms in exchange for the young girl. Soft-and-Running-Deer had promised as many robes and as many gifts—in time—and the father of Many Blossoms had accepted his promise, but the decision had to be fought out between the young growing buck and the seasoned brave.
They had met alone on the plains, both riding out to a deserted place and facing each other over knives and tomahawks. Their fight had lasted two hours and, in the end, Soft-and-Running-Deer returned with seventeen knife wounds and the hair of his enemy. At fourteen he had been made a full brave. He sat
in the councils and respect was paid him when the chief himself listened as he recounted his one coup before the tribe.
On advice from his father, Buffalo Eye, the young brave had delayed taking Many Blossoms as his squaw until he had paid for her, fulfilling his debt of buffalo robes and other gifts to the maid’s father.
As his eyes studied the distant fires of the railhead camp in the sinking afternoon sun, Goose Face remembered that he had just finished paying off his debt to Big Moon for the maid when the long knives had struck their village. He had seen his mother, his father, and Many Blossoms shot to death before he himself had been cut down by one of the soldiers.
The scene of horror filled the young renegade’s eyes as if it were happening that instant.
He dropped the calf liver and jerked up straight. He screamed, throwing his head back, and let the fury of his hate escape from his throat. He began to dance. He writhed and jerked, brandishing his knife in one hand and his carbine in the other. Soon other members of his party began to dance, too, one brave beating out the deadening rhythm on a hollow log. They coursed around into a rough circle and screamed and shook their bodies, and let their hate for the white men take possession of them completely.
By four-thirty, when the shadows reached long across the plains, the Johnny-Jacks had laid nearly seven miles of track.
By four-thirty the detachment of soldiers sent out by Liam Kelly had formed up in the draw where Liza had performed her own personal massacre on the Cheyenne, and were cut down by the remaining braves. The soldiers fought back valiantly, but the Cheyenne were angry and their arrows were straight and heavily bowed. The soldiers died without killing one of the enemy.
At four-thirty Ellis and Liza Reeves stopped in the protection of overgrown prairie grass to attend to Liza’s leg. It was beginning to pain badly, and had continued to bleed. Ellis started a fire with gunpowder taken from precious cartridges and heated the Green River knife. While Liza bit down hard on the lead of a cartridge, he cauterized the wound, fighting his own rising gorge as the stench of burning flesh reached his nostrils.
