by Dean Owen
Like a swarm of maddened hornets, the Cheyenne attackers broke up the tent city. The stench of powder, scorched flesh and burning canvas filled the air.
The defense was dug in now. The whites were not going to die easily, at least not without taking their toll of the attackers. But Goose Face, seeing that his men were being cut to ribbons, rode directly to a cookfire and lit a buffalo-grease-soaked torch. He screamed his orders to the remaining braves, who followed him, dipped their torches into the fire and sailed them at the tops of the largest tents.
In a matter of minutes, twenty tents were blazing furiously, and thick, black columns of smoke were billowing to the twilight sky. With another scream, Goose Face signaled his men to retreat. Followed by less than ten of his original party, the white-masked warrior whipped his pony to the south and west, after the buffalo. Behind him, he left over a hundred dead, two hundred wounded, a raging fire and destruction on a scale equal to the bloodiest of the fights between the white and red men on the western plains.
* * * *
The furious heat, the searing flames that consumed the canvas tents in minutes, were not the concern of Nathan Ellis. The Texan had wrapped his raw palm in a bandanna and fought back against the attackers with pure violence. Not since the war had this tall man felt such rage fill his throat. Twice he had sighted on Goose Face himself, and twice he had pulled a hammer down on a dead cartridge.
The moment Ellis saw Goose Face stoop to light his torch and order the others to follow, the Texan had known the Indian was about to withdraw. He ran to a frightened horse hobbled to a tent stake and, yelling to Kelly, who had fought beside him during the whole attack, was astride the animal when the Cheyenne leader broke away from the fight.
Kelly saw it, too, and shouting for Johnny-Jacks to follow him, began jerking at snorting horses and leaping for the bridles of those who bolted from the roaring fires.
The Indians were about three thousand yards away when a party of five white men broke from the scatter of tents. Ellis’s face was grim, streaked with sweat and blood. As he pounded after the small band of surviving Cheyenne, Ellis knew he would not stop until he had killed Goose Face. His mind was filled with scenes of horror he would not forget until the day he died. Without realizing it, he had pulled ahead of the others and was now five hundred yards closer to the Indians, but the ponies of the braves were stronger and gradually they pulled away from the pursuing enemy.
They rode at dead heat for an hour. They rode until their horses were white with lather and trembling from the beat of their hearts. The white men were forced to slow down and watch the dust of the braves gradually disappear into the ridge country of the South Platte.
Kelly pulled up to a stop. “We’ll never get him now,” he said. He nodded to the western sky. The red had disappeared from the heavens and the plains twilight, short-lived and false, was on them. “It’ll be dark before you know it. We’d better get back to the railhead and see what we can do.”
“I ain’t turnin’ back, Mr. Kelly,” a soft voice said behind him. Kelly turned to see a grime-covered Slocum.
“I’m goin’ to get that Injun,” Ellis said flatly. “Tonight, or tomorrow, or next week or next month—if it takes me the rest of my goddam life—I ain’t stoppin’ till I get me that Injun.”
Slocum nudged his horse and walked it beside Ellis. “Well, you got yourself a pardner.”
“You goin’ back, Kelly?” Ellis asked.
“I don’t want to,” Kelly said, looking ahead into the distance. “But there’s repair work to be done. Monday morning at sunup, the Johnny-Jacks will be puttin’ down rail or I’ll know the reason why.”
Ellis exploded. “You no-good goddam Irish bastard!” he roared. “Men, women and children have been killed today. Good men, fine women and their children—and that heathen Injun is the reason—and all you can think of is buildin’ a railroad!”
Kelly met Ellis’s gaze. “Mr. Ellis,” he said heavily, “there ain’t nothin’ this side of hell goin’ to stop this railroad from gettin’ built. A hundred—two hundred—a thousand! What does it mean when—”
Ellis jerked his pony around. “Let’s go,” he said to Slocum.
Kelly and the others watched the two riders ride out into the black of the onrushing night.
“They don’t need us,” Kelly said. “We’d just be in the way.” He pulled his pony around. “Let’s get back, you muckrakers!” he bellowed. “We’ve got work to do before we can start buildin’ our railroad Monday mornin’.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“How you gonna trail them Indians in the dark, Mr. Ellis?”
Ellis did not reply. He extended his hand sideways and found Slocum’s arm. He pressed it tightly.
It was close to nine p.m. Ellis thought his body would break from fatigue. His back ached, his head ached and his eyes burned from his stretch in the sun earlier that day. His left hand was useless to him and he held it inside his shirt. For a long time now he had been biting down on a lead bullet, fighting back the agony in his body. He could not remember ever being so tired or so full of pain in so many places at one time in his life.
For more than two hours they had been heading due south, hitting the ridge country, listening to the plains wolves howl. There wasn’t any moon and Ellis breathed a prayer of thanks for that. The ponies were tired, but Ellis was glad to be riding in a saddle again after spending so much time bareback on a broomtail. The grass was not as high out here as back near the railhead and he was grateful for that, too. Goose Face could not lie in wait too easily and ambush them along the trail.
For some time now, Slocum had been insistent in his question. Ellis, in spite of his pain, had to grin at the young Southerner who could not understand how Ellis was trailing the Cheyenne party in the dark. He had not had a chance to tell Slocum that there was no trail to follow in the black night, but that he was riding south to a place at which he felt sure Goose Face would stop. Even after a war party, Ellis knew that the Cheyenne would be reluctant to travel all night. It had been just as tough a day for Goose Face as it had been for Ellis in certain respects, and the tall Texan knew that the broomtails the Cheyenne were riding would be just as tired as his own. Somewhere up ahead, Ellis remembered, there was a small creek that fed into the Platte. He was not as familiar with the country as he would have liked to be at the moment, but in his early-morning scout he had spotted the signs of gulleys and dry washes and small gulches running off in a varied pattern, but in the same general direction.
Ellis was staking time and his life on the chance that Goose Face and his men would be camped near that creek, somewhere ahead of them, out there in the darkness.
A little further on they hit an eight-foot dry wash and dropped into it. Their horses’ hoofs were soundless in the powdery sand bed and the further they moved south, angling a little to the west now, the wider the bed became. Ellis began to sniff the air and watch the head of his animal closely. He knew the horses would catch the scent of water before he would and from then on, they would have to move with extreme caution.
They had been riding for another twenty minutes when Ellis felt his pony twist its head slightly and stir beneath him. He pulled back and touched Slocum on the arm. “We leave the horses here,” he said. “There’s a creek up ahead.”
“You know this country?”
“The horses smelled water. I’m bettin’ Goose Face is camped somewhere along that creek.”
Slocum grunted, and both men eased out of the saddle. “Check your guns,” Ellis said.
“I only got two.”
“That’s all you can shoot at one time, ain’t it?”
“Not when I get mad,” Slocum said seriously. “I’m a hell of a man with guns when I get mad.”
“You’ll have plenty of time for that later, if Goose Face is where I think he is.”
Ellis checked his own Colt and an
Army rifle he had used during the attack on the camp. He slung a bandoleer of cartridges over his shoulder, noted that half of them were gone and turned to Slocum. “You got a knife?”
“An old Spanish hog-sticker. You figure you’ll need to do some cuttin’? I’m hell with a man when I gotta use my hog-sticker.”
In the dark Ellis felt Slocum press the blade into his hand. He drew in a breath. It was nearly eighteen inches long, double-edged and perfectly balanced. “Can you throw that thing?”
“Sink it ten inches in anything I can see.”
“You might not be able to see very well.”
“Anything I can smell, too.”
They hobbled the horses to the roots of a brush thicket and began to move down the bed of the wash.
* * * *
Goose Face knew that there were riders behind him. Until the last light of the day, he had watched his trail carefully for signs of dust and, though the rise was smaller, indicating that some of the riders had turned back, he knew at nightfall that he was still being pursued.
He was unmoved. It would just mean more white blood to spill into the plains sands. He made his camp carefully on the north side of the creek, ordered his men to rest, staked out the horses and posted guards. Though the remaining braves were both angry and sorry that their band had been reduced, they knew that they had slain many long beards and, though tired, they ate jerky and recited their many coups counted that day.
Goose Face stretched out on the bank of the creek and stared at the stars. That he had lost so many of his men did not mean anything to him. That he himself had escaped death held no meaning for him either. He had been reduced to a life dedicated to killing the long beards by the mutilation of his face. Among his own men there were many who could not stand to look at his face. And the one time he had tried to take a squaw into a willow-reed bed by the water, she had bitten him on the arm and fled.
He lay, flat, his body relaxing, his mind on the riders who were following him. He got up without a sound, not looking at the other braves, took his bow and half a dozen arrows, his knife and his tomahawk and slipped quietly downstream.
He moved a hundred feet and stopped to listen. Then he moved on another hundred feet before cutting up the bank through a thicket of brush and out onto the open plains. He stopped dead still and listened to the wind.
He heard nothing.
He moved on without a sound and made a wide circle around the outer edge of his camp, stopping frequently to listen. When he was near the creek again, he heard a noise. He froze into absolute stillness, holding his breath and listening to the wind.
He heard it again, to his left.
He dropped to the ground and began to crawl back toward the creek.
* * * *
Ellis and Slocum sat hunched in the middle of a thicket and watched the Indians across the creek, vaguely visible in the starlight.
They had crossed the water a thousand yards below the camp, and had heard the movements of the Indian ponies. Working their way up carefully and slowly, they were now in a position to watch the camp from across the river.
“I can see every one of ’em,” Slocum whispered.
“Wait until they go to sleep.”
“Where you think them guards will be?”
“Closer to the horses,” Ellis said. “They’ll not only watch for us, but keep wolves away from the ponies… How many braves can you see from here?”
Slocum counted under his breath. “I make out eight.”
“Any of them with a face painted white?”
“Nope.”
“He could have washed his face,” Ellis said, but he didn’t believe it.
“How long we gonna sit here watchin’ them jokers eat? Why don’t we just cut down on ’em? I could get half a dozen before they could wet their britches.”
Goose Face must be among them, Ellis thought. He’s just as tired as they are and he’s got guards posted. “I think,” Ellis said quietly, pulling the Army rifle up to his shoulder, “that we’d better take what we’ve got and leave the rest till later.”
“Now you’re talkin’, man,” Slocum said. “Let’s divide these Injuns up evenly. See that bunch over to one side—looks like five or six of them sittin’ cross-legged eatin’? Well, them’s mine.”
Ellis agreed and sighted on the remaining braves who were seated closer to the edge of the water.
“Fire slow and straight,” Slocum said under his breath. “Learned a lot in the great conflict between the states, but I learned most about killin’ men. Shoot straight and aim well. That way you don’t waste bullets, besides which you don’t usually get a second shot at the same fellow.”
“I don’t know how we lost the war with you fightin’ for us,” Ellis said dryly.
“I got into the fracas just a little late. Things was already turned bad by then.”
“All right,” Ellis said. “On the count of three.” He paused. Then, “One—two—three!”
Slocum proved himself a dead shot, and he followed his own rule of taking aim slowly and shooting straight. Across the creek the Indians leaped up, shouting, and made the mistake that sealed their doom. They scrambled for their guns instead of seeking cover.
There was method and a deadly neat accuracy to Ellis’s and Slocum’s shots. Four of Slocum’s Indians were shot in the head, a fifth in the heart, and the sixth right between the eyes.
Ellis had used three more shots to get his four Indians, but they were just as dead.
When the echoes were gone, they heard the pounding of hoofs. It was the posted guard making his escape.
“Goddam if this wasn’t like takin’ care of the little animals Paw used to send me out after. Used to whale the tar outa me if I messed up a squirrel with a gut shot—”
There was the heavy, sickening thunk of an arrow sinking into flesh, and Slocum slumped forward without a sound, a Cheyenne arrow quivering in the base of his skull.
Ellis dropped to the ground and crawled as fast as he could toward the water. He splashed along the shore, found an opening in the brush and moved up cautiously toward the high edge of the bank nearer the open plains.
There was a bloodcurdling scream. And then another, and a crashing through the underbrush back where Ellis had left Slocum. Ellis fired rapidly into the brush and then charged back in again, the rifle empty, the Colt bucking in his right hand.
He stumbled to where Slocum lay and with a curse felt the bloody, raw head of the dead man Goose Face had scalped.
Goose Face screamed again. “I kill you, too! I kill you, too!”
Ellis shoved the Colt into his holster and searched around Slocum’s body for the knife. He found it. “Goose Face!” he bellowed. ‘I’m goin’ to’ kill you with my bare hands! You hear! I’m goin’ to take your hair! And your ears, Goose Face!”
“You die!” Goose Face screamed. “You come, you die, too!”
* * * *
The two men were silent, both of them straining their ears against the sighing breeze and examining the rustle of the grass and brush. They listened to the murmur of the water in the creek and each waited for the other to make the move that would betray his position.
Goose Face gripped his bow. He had three shafts left and the advantage was all his, he knew. A hundred things were on his side. Things like a lifetime of silent, panther-like movement on the plains, a lifetime of listening to the south winds blowing up from the west Texas and Kansas plains, an intuition grounded to the stalking hunt.
Goose Face strung an arrow. He lay in the deep grass beyond the edge of the creek. He had gone there when he retired from the thicket, placing his back to the plains and watching for the shadow of his foe to rise against the star-studded sky. He would catch any movement, if not by sight, then by sound. There were a hundred messages for him to read if the white man did more than breathe.
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He lay still and listened. The breeze sighed and wafted the leaves on the cottonwood near the creek. An old she wolf howled and even the whimper of her whelp touched the ears of the savage lying in wait with the practiced patience of the hunter.
* * * *
Nathan Ellis’s hand pained him so much that he had to stifle a cry of agony. He lay belly-down in the soft dry sand in the bottom of a bed that was still warm from the afternoon heat. His breath was heavy and labored and all the more difficult as he tried to control it. He knew that his enemy was deadly and brave, arrogant and reckless, and fighting in his own country. Ellis was conscious that all the advantages were on the side of the savage somewhere out ahead of him in the darkness.
His left hand would not close, but he did not really need it. His right hand was curled around the butt of his Colt, and, rammed down into the holster, its naked point skying away from his leg, was Slocum’s hog-sticker.
The Indian, Ellis knew, would stalk him like a hunter. He would follow all the rules of the plainsman in the hunt for the beast. But Ellis was not a dumb thing to be out-witted. He would not bolt from fear and try to overcome his enemy with brute strength. If Goose Face was going to hunt him like an animal, then Ellis must do everything the animal would do—until the moment when the hunter exposed himself in that split second before the kill. In that second, Ellis’s cunning as a thinking man would make the difference.
The stars seemed to be no higher than the ceiling of his adobe house on the Texas Colorado. He felt that if he stood up he could pluck one of them right out of the heavens and have for his own a piece of the universe that even now made transitions of day and night, life and death, seem insignificant.
He wanted to sleep more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, but he had to stay awake.
How to stay awake!
Pain, he thought. I’ll use pain. Ellis moved so carefully that not even the sand below him was disturbed. He held up his left hand and little by little began to make a fist over the raw palm.
