The Overlords & the Wild Ones

by Matt Braun

  Twilight settled over the land as she dished out the meal. The fire was like a beacon in the night, and they gathered around with tin plates and mugs of steaming coffee. She thought the scene was curiously atavistic, not unlike a primordial tribe, hunkered before a fire, sharing the end of another day. Three days on the trail had already toughened them, and though her father and Chester religiously shaved every morning, they appeared somehow leaner and harder. Every time she looked in her little vanity mirror, she got a fright. She was afraid the harsh plains sun would freckle her nose.

  “Westerners do like their beans,” Fontaine said, holding a bean to the firelight on the tines of his fork. “I’ve always found it amusing that they call them whistleberries.”

  “Oh, Papa,” Lillian said, shocked. “That’s disgusting.”

  “A natural function of the body, my dear. Beans produce wind.”

  “I really don’t care to discuss it.”

  Lillian was still embarrassed by aspects of life on the trail. A call of nature required that she hunt down thick brush or hide behind a tree. Even then, she thought there was scarcely any privacy. She always felt exposed.

  “Your modesty becomes you,” Fontaine said understandingly. “In fact, it provides a lesson for us all. We mustn’t allow ourselves to be coarsened by the demands of nomadic travel.”

  Chester laughed. “Buffalo jerky and beans are coarse all right. I’d give anything for a good steak.”

  “Capital idea!” Fontaine said. “The land fairly teams with wildlife. I’ll set out on a hunt tomorrow.”

  Lillian was alarmed. Her father knew virtually nothing about hunting and even less about negotiating his way on the plains. She had visions of him becoming hopelessly lost on the sea of grass.

  “Do you think that’s wise, Papa?” she asked uneasily. “Shouldn’t we stay together?”

  “Have no fear,” Fontaine said with a bold air. “I shan’t stray too far from the river. Besides, I have my trusty compass.”

  Chester looked worried. “Lillian has a point. If we were separated somehow, we might never get back together. I can do without fresh meat.”

  “Nonsense,” Fontaine said stubbornly. “You concern yourselves for no reason. The matter is settled.”

  Later, after the horses were picketed, they spread their bedrolls around the fire. Chester took the first shift of guarding the camp, stationed with his rifle near the buckboard. Fontaine would relieve him in two hours, and they would alternate shifts throughout the night. Neither of them would hear of Lillian standing guard. She was, after all, a girl.

  Lillian was less offended than amused. They seemed to have forgotten that she’d killed a Kiowa warrior on the Santa Fe Trail last fall. But then, male vanity was as prevalent in the Fontaine family as any other. She was to be protected simply because she was a woman. Or in their minds, still a girl.

  She snuggled into her bedroll. The sky was purest indigo, flecked with stars scattered about the heavens like shards of ice. She stared up at the Big Dipper, filled with wonder that they were here, roughing it on the plains, sleeping on the ground. Her father their scout and hunter.

  She thought her mother would have been beyond laughter.

  Fontaine rode out of camp at false dawn. He reined the bloodbay gelding north, toward a distant copse of trees bordering a tributary creek. He reasoned that deer would water there before sunrise.

  Chester and Lillian, following his instructions, were to continue westward along the banks of the Arkansas. Fontaine was still touched by their concern for his welfare but nonetheless determined that plains travel was largely an exercise of the intellect. He planned to have his deer and rejoin them long before midday.

  Hunting, he told himself, was a matter of intellect as well. He recalled reading somewhere—possibly Thoreau—that deer were by nature nocturnal creatures. So it made sense, after a night of foraging, they would water before bedding down for the day. He felt confident a fat buck awaited him even now at the creek.

  The tree line was farther than he’d estimated. He reminded himself again that the vastness of the plains was deceptive; everything was more distant than it appeared to the eye. The sun burst free from the edge of the earth, a blinding globe of vermilion, just as he rode into the shade of the trees. He dismounted, tying the gelding to a stout limb. He moved into the shadows with the Henry repeater.

  Fontaine was immensely pleased with himself. He’d taken equestrian lessons many years ago, and the rhythm of it had come back to him after a day or so in the saddle. He was armed with a rifle that shot true and perfectly capable of navigating across the vistas of open grassland. Everything considered, he felt the dime-novel exploits of Buffalo Bill and his ilk were greatly overrated, more myth than fact. Any man with a modicum of intelligence could become a plainsman, and the same was true of a hunter. All he needed was to spot—

  A buck stepped out of the shadows across the creek, some fifty yards upstream. Streamers of sunlight filtered through the trees, glinting on antlers as the buck lowered his nose to the water. Fontaine thumbed the hammer on his rifle, slowly tucking the butt into his shoulder. His arms were shaking with excitement, and it took him a moment to steady the sights. He recalled a conversation with Cimarron Jordan, about the cleanest way to kill an animal. He aimed slightly behind the foreleg.

  The gunshot reverberated like a kettledrum. The buck jerked back from the water, then whirled about and bounded off through the trees. Fontaine was too astounded to move, roundly cursing himself for having missed the shot. Before he could lever another cartridge into the chamber, the buck disappeared into a thicket far upstream. He lowered the rifle, still baffled by his poor marksmanship and struck by a vagrant, if somewhat unsavory, thought. There would be no fresh meat in the pot tonight.

  The thud of hoofbeats sounded off to the east. Fontaine wondered if a herd of buffalo was headed his way, and in the next instant the notion was dispelled. Five Indians, drawn by the gunshot, topped the rise that sloped down to the creek and reined to a halt. Their eyes found him almost immediately, and for a moment he felt paralyzed, rooted to the ground. Then they gigged their ponies, whooping and screeching as they tore down the slope, and he scrambled to unhitch his horse. He flung himself into the saddle.

  The Indians splashed across the creek. Fontaine had perhaps a hundred yards’ head start, and he booted his horse hard in the ribs. The gelding responded, stretching out into a dead gallop, and he thanked the gods he’d bought a spirited mount. A quick glance over his shoulder brought reassurance that he was extending his lead, and he bent low in the saddle. Something fried the air past his ear, and a split second later he heard the report of a rifle from far behind. He thundered southwest toward the river.

  Some twenty minutes into the chase Fontaine had widened the gap to a quarter-mile. He silently offered up a prayer that the gelding had stamina as well as speed, for if he faltered now all was lost. Then, as he rounded a bend in the river, he saw the buckboard not far ahead. Chester and Lillian turned in the seat as he pounded closer, and by the expression on their faces, he knew they’d seen the Indians. He frantically motioned them toward the riverbank.

  “Get down!” he shouted. “Take cover!”

  Chester sawed on the reins. He whipped the team off the grassy prairie and brought the buckboard to a skidding halt where a brush-choked overhang sheltered the streambed. He jumped to the ground, rifle in hand, as Lillian hopped out on the other side with the shotgun. Fontaine reined the gelding to a dust-smothered stop and vaulted from the saddle. His eyes were wild.

  “Open fire!” he ordered. “Don’t let them overrun us!”

  The Indians galloped toward them at a full charge. The sight of a white woman and a buckboard full of supplies merely galvanized them to action. Fontaine and Chester commenced firing, working the levers on their rifles in a rolling staccato roar. The breakneck speed of the ponies made it difficult to center on a target, and none of their shots took effect. The warriors clearly intended to o
verrun their position.

  Lillian finally joined the fight. After a struggle to cock both hammers on the shotgun, she found it required all her strength to raise the heavy weapon. She brought it to shoulder level, trying to steady the long barrels, and accidentally tripped both triggers. The shotgun boomed, the double hammers dropping almost simultaneously, and a hail of buckshot sizzled into the charging Indians. The brutal kick of the recoil knocked Lillian off her feet.

  A warrior flung out his arms and toppled dead from his pony. The others swerved aside as buckshot simmered through their ranks like angry hornets. Their charge was broken not ten feet from the overhang, and Fontaine and Chester continued to blast away with their Henry repeaters. None of the slugs found a mark, but the Indians retreated to a stand of cottonwoods some thirty yards from the riverbank. They dismounted in the cover of the tree line.

  “Help your sister,” Fontaine said sharply. “I’ll keep an eye on the red devils.”

  Lillian lay sprawled on the rocky shoreline. Her shoulder throbbed and her head ached, and there was a loud ringing in her ears. Chester lifted her off the ground and set her on her feet, supporting her until she recovered her balance. He grinned at her.

  “You got one!”

  “I did?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  A gunshot from the trees sent a slug whizzing over their heads. They ducked beneath the overhang and quickly crouched beside their father. Fontaine gave them a doleful look.

  “There are four left,” he said. “They have only one rifle, but that is sufficient to keep us pinned down. I fear we’re in for a siege.”

  “A siege?” Chester questioned. “You don’t think they’ll rush us again?”

  “Not until nightfall,” Fontaine remarked. “I daresay they are wary of Lillian’s shotgun. You saved the day, my dear.”

  Lillian was still dazed. “Will they come after us tonight, Papa?”

  “Yes, I believe they will. Chester, reload your sister’s shotgun. We’ll have need of our artillery.”

  Fontaine bent low behind the buckboard and tied his gelding to a wheel rim. He knew the Indians were as interested in their horses as in their scalps. A live horse was of equal value as a dead man.

  He thought they were in for a long night.

  CHAPTER 12

  A BALL of orange flame rose over the eastern horizon. The heat of the sun slowly burned off a pallid mist that hung across the river. Somewhere in the distance a bird twittered, then fell silent.

  The clearing between the riverbank and the cottonwoods was ghostly still. Fontaine was crouched at the right of the overhang, with Lillian in the middle and Chester at the opposite end. Lillian’s shoulder was sore and bruised, and Chester had relieved her of the shotgun. She was now armed with a Henry repeater.

  They were exhausted. Three times in the course of the night the Indians had attempted to infiltrate their position. Twice, using stealth and the cover of darkness, the warriors had crept in from the flanks. The last time had been an abortive assault from the river, floating downstream and trying to take them from behind. They had fought off every attack.

  A starlit sky proved to be their salvation. The light was murky but nonetheless adequate to discern movement and form. Fontaine’s instructions were to fire at the first sign of danger, and Lillian and Chester, their nerves on edge, were alert to the slightest sound. Accuracy was difficult in the dim light, and yet it did nothing to hamper volley after volley of rapid fire. The Indians beat a hasty retreat in the face of flying lead.

  The horses reared and pitched with every skirmish. But Chester, exhibiting foresight long before darkness fell, had secured the team to thick, ancient roots jutting out from the overhang. The bloodbay gelding, tied to the near wheel of the buckboard, kicked and squealed with a ferocity that threatened to snap the reins. Still, with the coming of daylight, the horses dozed off standing up, as if calmed by the relative quiet. The only sound was a bird that twittered now and again.

  Fontaine removed his hat. He cautiously edged his head around the side of the overhang and peered across the clearing. He saw no movement in the stand of cottonwoods and wondered if the Indians had pulled out under cover of darkness. His eyes narrowed as he realized that, sometime during the night they had recovered the body of the warrior killed by Lillian. A spurt of smoke blossomed from the tree line and a slug kicked dirt in his face. He jerked his head back.

  “How depressing,” he said with a mild attempt at humor. “Our friends are a determined lot.”

  Chester grunted. “Hope we killed some of them last night.”

  “I rather doubt it, my boy. Unless they still had us outnumbered, I suspect they would have given up the fight.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Well, it is somewhat like a game of cat and mouse, isn’t it? We have no option but to wait them out.”

  “Some option,” Chester said dourly. “We could be here forever.”

  “Isn’t there another way, Papa?” Lillian asked. “I dread the thought of another night like last night.”

  Fontaine smiled. “My dear, you are the only soldier among us. Chet and I have yet to kill our first savage.”

  “I can’t say I’m proud of it. Besides, it was an accident with that stupid old shotgun anyway. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my shoulder.”

  “Or your derriere,” Chester added with a sly grin. “You hit the ground so hard the earth shook.”

  Lillian was too tired to bandy words. Her face was smudged with dirt and the smoke of gunpowder, and stray locks of hair spilled down over her forehead. She was scared to death and felt as though she hadn’t slept in a week. She wondered if they would live to see Denver.

  Fontaine stuck his rifle around the edge of the overhang and fired. He turned back to them with a crafty smile. “A reminder for our friends,” he said. “We musn’t let them think we’re not alert.”

  “I don’t feel very alert,” Lillian said. “I honestly believe I could close my eyes and go to sleep right now.”

  “Excellent idea, my dear. We need to be fresh for tonight’s war of wits. You and Chet try to catch a nap. I’ll keep watch for a while.”

  “You must be exhausted, too, Papa.”

  “On the contrary, I’ve never felt more—”

  A herd of horses thundered around the bend in the river. At first glance, Fontaine estimated there were fifty or more, their manes streaming in the wind. Then, looking closer, he was never more heartened in his life. There were six men driving the horses. Six white men.

  The four remaining Indians exploded out of the cottonwoods. They whipped their ponies, galloping north from the river, clearly no less startled by the sudden appearance of the herd. Several of the drovers pulled their pistols, jolted by the sight of Indians, and prepared to open fire. A man on a magnificent roan stallion raised his hand.

  “Hold off!” he bellowed. “You’ll spook the gawddamn herd!”

  The men obediently holstered their pistols. They circled the herd and brought the horses to a milling standstill. One of them gestured off at the fleeing Indians.

  “Them there’s Comanche,” he said in a puzzled voice. “Think they was fixin’ to jump us, Rufe?”

  “Tend to doubt it,” the one named Rufe said. “Not the way they’re hightailin’ it outta here.”

  “Then what the blue-billy hell was they doin’ here?”

  Fontaine stepped around the overhang. Lillian and Chester followed him, all of them still armed. The six men stared at them as though a flock of doves had burst from a magician’s hat. Fontaine nodded to the man named Rufe, the one who appeared to be the leader. He smiled amiably.

  “Those heathens”—he motioned casually at the fast-departing Indians—“were here attempting to collect our scalps. You gentlemen arrived in the very nick of time.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Alistair Fontaine. May I present my daughter, Lillian, and my son, Chester. And whom do I have the honor of addressing?”


  “The name’s Rufe Stroud.”

  “Well, sir,” Fontaine said, the rifle nestled in the crook of his arm. “Never have I been more delighted to see anyone, Mr. Stroud. You are a welcome sight indeed.”

  Stroud squinted. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

  “We are on our way to Denver.”

  “You picked a helluva way to get there. Them Comanche would’ve roasted you alive.”

  “All too true,” Fontaine conceded. “You are, in every sense of the word, our deliverance.”

  “Mebbe so,” Stroud said. “You folks on foot, are you?”

  “Our buckboard is there on the riverbank.”

  One of the men rode to the overhang for a look. He turned in the saddle to Stroud. “Buckboard and three horses, Rufe. Got a bay gelding that’s purty nice.”

  Stroud nodded. “I’m a mite curious,” he said to Fontaine. “Why’re you headed to Denver?”

  “We are actors,” Fontaine said in his best baritone. “We plan to play the Alcazar Theater.”

  “Your girl an actor, too?”

  “Yes indeed, a fine actress. And a singer of exceptional merit, I might add.”

  “That a fact?”

  Lillian felt uncomfortable under his stare. Fontaine smiled amicably. “From the size of your herd, I take it you are a horse rancher, Mr. Stroud.”

  “You take it wrong,” Stroud said. “I’m a horse thief.”

  “I beg you pardon?”

  “Drop them guns.”

  The men pulled their pistols as though on command. Fontaine looked at them, suddenly aware he was in the company of desperadoes. He dropped his rifle on the ground, nodding to Lillian and Chester, who quickly followed his lead. Then, ever so slowly, he fished the Colt .32 revolver from his jacket pocket and tossed it on the ground. He looked at Stroud.