by Judd Cole
More tears welled in her eyes as she thought of the stone in front of Touch the Sky’s tipi—the piece of smooth white marble he had placed there as a symbol of his love. When that stone melts, he had assured her, so too will my love for you. There was a time when, by custom, she would check that stone each night when he was away from camp. And always, she found it intact.
But no longer. Black Elk had caught her kneeling before it and come within a cat’s whisker of killing her. Now she could only think about it.
Outside, the big, mean warrior called Angry Bull raised his voice in sudden laughter.
I must watch and listen, Honey Eater told herself again.
She had already made up her mind when Touch the Sky rescued her from the Comanches and Kiowas in Blanco Canyon: Their two lives were one now. And though she would be banished forever, she would kill her own husband before she let him kill Touch the Sky.
Chapter Seven
Not sure if Little Horse was dead or alive, Touch the Sky grabbed him even as he slumped from his pony.
His face crumpling under the effort, Touch the Sky managed to haul his friend over onto his pony with him. But by now Carlson had recovered his battle wits. His next round flew past Touch the Sky’s ear with a hum like an angry hornet. He felt a sharp tug on his fox-skin quiver as a third shot passed through it.
More shots rang out, further away, and Touch the Sky realized that the fake Cheyennes were opening fire on their quarry at the way station.
Balancing his friend awkwardly with one arm, Touch the Sky finally pointed his Sharps in his free arm and snapped off a round toward Carlson. The situation was desperate: his first priority was Little Horse. Touch the Sky owed his very life to his loyal friend. So long as there was a chance that the vital force still beat inside him, the first obligation was to get Little Horse to safety.
Touch the Sky knew this without thinking, the way a she-grizzly fights for her cubs. So he also knew that Carlson had to be stopped from pursuit. And since Touch the Sky couldn’t guarantee a killing hit with a one-handed shot, that meant he must do something repugnant to a Cheyenne and aim for Carlson’s horse.
He dropped the big cavalry sorrel with a shot to the chest. Touch the Sky had the satisfaction of watching his old nemesis plunge to the ground hard, his hat flying off like a can lid—the second time he had dropped him unceremoniously from horseback.
Carlson! Even as he raced back down the road, leading Little Horse’s pony, he found it hard to believe. And yet, it also made perfect sense. Now the young brave understood why Cheyennes were being blamed for the attacks. Carlson was again waging his one-man campaign against the tribe he hated most.
Touch the Sky was concerned with finding a place to shelter as soon as possible. Now and then a gout of blood spurted from the ugly, puckered flesh of Little Horse’s wound. It had to be stopped, and soon. Otherwise, Little Horse was dead—if he wasn’t already.
Touch the Sky couldn’t tell how the raid was going. The shooting behind him had finally stopped. He raced through a sharp dogleg bend in the road, then spotted a thick pine copse well back from the road. Making sure they were out of sight from the others, he nudged his pony off the trail.
Every moment counted now, and Touch the Sky’s mouth was set in its grim, determined slit. His movements were fast, sure, efficient. First, he gently laid his friend down on a thick carpet of pine needles. At least the bleeding had slowed. Still not sure yet if Little Horse was dead or alive, he quickly hobbled their ponies out of sight from the road.
Finally, he returned to Little Horse’s side and knelt down near him.
It was time to find out if his best friend still belonged to the living or had crossed over to the Land of Ghosts.
He held his face impassive. But Touch the Sky’s lips trembled imperceptibly as he lay his ear on Little Horse’s chest, less than a hand’s-breadth from the wound.
Nothing.
Just a cold, hard wall of dead muscle. His Cheyenne brother had kept his vow to protect Touch the Sky’s life with his own.
Touch the Sky’s next breath snagged in his throat. His face went sweaty and numb.
A moment later, he felt it: a faint pulse in Little Horse’s chest, weak as a baby bird’s.
Weak, but Little Horse still clung to life!
“This is not a good day to die, brother!” Touch the Sky whispered. “You have not yet bounced your son on your knee.”
Now there was no tribal crisis, no danger to Touch the Sky—every effort of his being was directed at saving his friend. First he raced down to the nearby Milk River and filled his watertight legging sash. He returned and washed the wound carefully.
Now came the hard part: removing the slug and cauterizing the wound, a process Touch the Sky had learned from Old Knobby, the former mountain man. He took the flint and steel from his possibles bag and gathered kindling for a small fire. When he had it blazing, using old, dry wood to cut the smoke, he unsheathed his knife and heated the obsidian blade.
Probing carefully but quickly, using just the sharp point, he managed to locate the slug quickly. Little Horse flinched, but never regained consciousness, as Touch the Sky removed the .52-caliber carbine slug. Next he heated the entire side of his blade until it glowed. When, all at once, he pressed it against the wound, the stink of singed flesh assaulted Touch the Sky’s nostrils. Little Horse jerked violently, arching his back like a bow. But he neither cried out nor regained awareness.
Finally, Touch the Sky packed the wound with gunpowder and balsam. Soft strips of willow bark served as a dressing.
Touch the Sky tensed, making sure there was a ball behind the loading gate of his Sharps, when he heard hooves pounding past on the road. Then he realized it was probably Carlson and his thieving “Indian” cohorts, fleeing with whatever booty they had stolen.
The situation was bleak, bordering on hopeless. Another attack would now be blamed on Cheyennes; Shoots Left Handed’s band was on the verge of being annihilated; and Little Horse lay balanced on the feather edge between life and death.
And behind all of it, Seth Carlson. The same corrupt, vicious, Indian-hating officer who helped to ruin his life as Matthew Hanchon, who tried to destroy his white parents’ livelihood.
He glanced at his friend and told himself he would have to move him soon. It wasn’t safe here this close to a road. Yet moving him in this condition might, well kill him even though the bullet was out.
One way or the other, it had to be done.
Touch the Sky said a brief prayer to Maiyun, the Good Supernatural. Then he went to fetch the ponies.
~*~
“Things went badly,” Pawnee Killer reported to Chief Shoots Left Handed. “Very badly.”
The battle leader craned his neck to read the signals being flashed to him from the sentry in the rimrock above. He, in turn, was in communication with another sentry in clear view of the Milk River Road.
“The raid was not prevented. A white man was wounded. The youth Little Horse appears to be dead. Touch the Sky was forced to flee with his body. They are nowhere in sight now.”
Pawnee Killer fell silent. Goes Ahead’s widow was still sewing her husband’s moccasins for the final journey, and now this new trouble.
He met his chief’s glance. Shoots Left Handed’s milky eye stared blindly back.
“This Touch the Sky,” Pawnee Killer said. “I like him well enough. He carries himself like a man and seems to talk one way only. But Father, was Arrow Keeper right to send him?”
“His medicine is said to be strong. You have heard the stories: how his medicine can summon insane white men from the forest, enraged grizzly bears from the mountains.”
Pawnee Killer nodded. “I have heard the stories, yes. But I also have eyes to see. I see that only moments after Touch the Sky renewed the Arrows, Goes Ahead was found murdered. Then he rode off to stop a raid. Now, once again, we are blamed for the raid. And now his friend Little Horse is apparently dead. If this is strong medicine, I
would be spared such magic.”
Shoots Left Handed said nothing for a long while. His good eye gazed out past the series of swayback ridges, toward the snowy peaks of the Bear Paws.
“I know Arrow Keeper, buck. If he sent these two braves, they were the right ones to send. Sometimes, we must wait for the flames to abate before we may read the embers.”
Pawnee Killer cast a troubled glance back toward the spot where an intruder had killed Goes Ahead.
“As you say, Father. But even now we may be in the sights of Bluecoat rifles. Sometimes, when the flames abate, the destruction is so complete there is nothing left to read.”
~*~
The journey back to Shoots Left Handed’s high-altitude camp was an agony for Touch the Sky.
Eyes and ears constantly alert to attack, he nonetheless kept a close watch on Little Horse. Touch the Sky had lashed him tight to his pony with buffalo-hair ropes. But each jounce in the trail, each stumble by the pony, caused Touch the Sky to wince.
Attack now, by Piegans or hair-mouth soldiers or vigilantes, would surely be fatal. But they managed to traverse the long series of ridges without incident.
Little was said when Touch the Sky rode into camp with his fallen comrade. Though no one aimed accusing eyes or words at him, he knew they had serious doubts by now about his medicine. But Touch the Sky cared little right now about their doubts. His best friend lay dying, the victim of a bullet intended for him.
Two braves helped him move Little Horse into the tipi he shared with Touch the Sky. Then began the long vigil.
Touch the Sky knew the immediate problem was sustenance for Little Horse. He had lost much blood, nor was there any nourishment in the destitute camp. Yet he would quickly die without something to replenish his system.
That night, when another pony was slaughtered to feed the people, Touch the Sky asked for a little blood and a few of the bones. He cracked the bones open on a rock and dug out the nutritious marrow with the point of his knife. He boiled this and the blood together in a potion. Then, painstakingly, using a bit of buffalo horn as a spoon, he fed it to Little Horn in tiny sips. Though the brave remained unconscious, his swallowing reflex worked.
That night, as was the custom with serious illness or injury, Touch the Sky stayed wide awake and recited the ancient cure songs he had learned from Arrow Keeper. All night long, the wind howled like the Wendigo while hungry babes cried. Finally, as the first rose-colored trace of dawn painted the eastern sky, Little Horse’s eyes snapped open.
There was a long silence while they looked at each other.
“Brother,” Little Horse said in a weak but clear voice, “I think you have saved my life.”
“I hope so, Cheyenne, for you have certainly saved mine before.”
“The pretend Cheyennes?”
Touch the Sky shook his head. “They got away.”
“And now that Bluecoat is back. This Seth Carlson. I was sure we faced him for the last time in Bighorn Falls.”
Already, Little Horse’s eyelids were drooping with the effort of speaking.
“Sleep, buck,” Touch the Sky told him. “Sleep long. You will need your strength. The battle has not even begun.”
Chapter Eight
“Just remember, Carlson. The shit rolls downhill. That’s not my cherished personal philosophy, Captain. That’s the way the Chain of Command works. If I get thumped on from above, I thump on those below me. And I assure you, I am being thumped on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t believe it! Two raids, practically back to back. Carlson, I was willing to overlook your miserable conduct and proficiency reports from Fort Bates. I happen to know the man who commanded your regiment there. Bruce Harding is a good enough clerk. As a soldier, he isn’t worth the powder it would take to blow him to hell.”
“My sentiments too, sir. He—”
Colonel Orrin Lofley frowned, nervously fingering his red goatee. “I’m not finished, Carlson, you’re out of line! As I was saying, I was willing to overlook all that. But two raids mounted by a small group of renegades, back to back, and what’s your battle plan? Has your company even pulled up its picket pins yet?”
“It’s posted in the morning report, sir. My company deploys at 0500 tomorrow.”
“Don’t give me the smart side of your tongue, Soldier Blue. I know damn good and well when you deploy. That’s why I called you in here. Those special weapons I requisitioned have arrived from Fort Union. Your men can pick them up at the armory after you sign the receiving orders.”
Carlson felt a smile tugging at his lips. Since Matthew Hanchon and his stocky little companion had obviously thrown in with Shoots Left Handed’s band, that was good news indeed. Anything was good news if it increased the chances of killing Hanchon.
“Very good, sir. I’m sure they’ll be an efficient addition to the unit.”
“They damn well better be.”
Lofley shut up before he embarrassed himself. But Carlson knew he was thinking about that fiasco with the Hunkpapas—the infamous operation where twenty-five thousand rounds of ammunition scored five kills, all women and children.
Lofley was even more agitated than usual, Carlson noted. Thanks to the newspapers making merry at his expense, humiliation had become Colonel Lofley’s constant companion. Lofley confirmed all this with his next remark.
“I can’t even look my own wife in the eye, Carlson. Her lying there in bed, so sore from a redskin bullet she can’t move. And what does the horseshit-for-brains chaplain give her as reading material to pass the time? The Bible? Hell, no! He gives her the newspapers, full of scathing articles written by cowardly little scribblers who have to squat to piss. Articles about the supposed buffoon she married!”
Hell, Carlson thought, even a blind hog will occasionally root up an acorn. Why can’t the newspapers be right now and then?
But he wisely held his tongue while Lofley wrapped up his tirade. “We’re just goddamn lucky nobody got killed this time. But the paper-collar newspaper boys are reminding everybody over and over just how many gold double eagles were heisted. Carlson, you’ve got a history of fighting Cheyennes. I know that some tribes in the Southwest have learned about currency from the Mexicans. But since when does the Cheyenne tribe suddenly place such a value on white man’s gold?”
This question was uncomfortable and made heat rise into Carlson’s face. He realized, again, that his little scheme was played out. Ironically, Lofley hadn’t asked that question until he’d read it in the very newspapers he hated so passionately.
“That’s a puzzler, sir, it is. But the Cheyenne is a wily Indian with no lack of brains. They’ve found some use for that gold.”
“Speaking of wily Cheyennes. Did you send Rough Feather back out as I ordered?”
“Yes, sir. As soon as I had his map and crystal-clear directions. He’s been ordered to watch the camp constantly. If they move, he’s to blaze a trail and follow.”
“I see you ordered the band to remain in garrison for the deployment instead of marching out with you. No music?”
“That’s right, sir. No music, no bugles, no flags. Just weapons and ammunition, all packed on the men themselves. The lack of fanfare is to remind the men of the mountain company’s single mission—to kill Indians.”
Lofley thought about that, fingering his goatee some more. Then he approved it with a nod.
“I mean it, Carlson. Don’t let this explode in our faces while the eyes of the entire goddamn country are on us. When you do reach this camp, do not take all damn day in a complicated West Point maneuver. The longer it drags on, the more chance for something to go wrong.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Carlson assured him. “Nothing can go wrong. It’ll be fast, it’ll be efficient, and I guarantee, there won’t be any Cheyennes left to report to the reservation.”
~*~
“But why did Arrow Keeper send just us?” Little Horse said. “Without boasting, brother, I can agree he sent two of the tri
be’s best warriors. And perhaps, with luck and skill, two good braves might indeed stop these make-believe Cheyenne raiders. But buck, from all the sign we have read, the jaws of a death trap are already closing on this camp. Two braves are merely two more to die with the others.”
Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the tipi’s smoke hole and the open flap of the entrance. Little Horse still lay resting in his buffalo-fur sleeping robe. His voice, like his body, was still weak. But the crisis had passed, and once again the sturdy little warrior had eluded Death’s black lance.
“I too have given much thought to this thing,” Touch the Sky said. “Arrow Keeper has entered the frosted years, truly. But brother, his mind is as keen as the blade of my ax. He has a plan.”
“I have never known him to be without one, surely. But what kind of plan? Brother, you have eyes to see! These Cheyennes have reached the end of their tether. There is no place left to run, nor are they strong enough to flee if they could.”
Touch the Sky nodded. “I know, brother, I know. You think that perhaps this time Arrow Keeper made us wade in before he measured the depths? Perhaps. Even the wisest owl can fall from its tree. But I do not believe Arrow Keeper sent us merely to furnish targets for the Bluecoat bullets. This time I do not think our battle skills were foremost in his mind.”
Little Horse’s forehead wrinkled in curiosity. He studied his tall young friend closely. Little Horse was among the few in Gray Thunder’s tribe who had noticed the mark buried past Touch the Sky’s hairline: a mulberry-colored birthmark in the perfect shape of an arrowhead. The traditional mark of the warrior. But such a sign also marked vision seekers and those whose medicine was strong.
“You mean, brother,” he said slowly, “you think the hand of the Supernatural is in this thing?”
