The setting sun turned the low-hanging clouds on the western horizon magenta and crimson, and silver gray shadows slid down the hillsides, bleaching the colors from the valley where they had stopped. Jessica barely noticed the sounds behind her as the men set up camp. Experienced from years of living in the open, they went about their individual tasks with speed and efficiency, glancing now and then at the young woman sitting lost in thought on the huge roan stallion.
It's strange what shapes the clouds take, she mused silently. The center of that one looks almost like a horseman.
Staring at the sun sent dots dancing before her gaze and she blinked, then rubbed at her eyes. In that brief instant the last visible inch of sun slipped behind the hilltop, leaving a band of fire in its wake. Jessica searched for the strangely shaped cloud, but it had vanished with the disappearing sun.
"Jes, you better get down and stretch your legs before they grow attached to that there saddle."
Jessica glanced down at the wizened man limping toward her. If anyone needed a break from the saddle, it would be Ned. His stove-up leg had to be paining him after the constant days on horseback, though he'd die before complaining.
Jessica smiled at the plucky little man, then slid from the saddle. "We're getting close, Ned. I can feel it."
Glancing around to make sure none of the hands stood within earshot, Ned lowered his voice before he spoke. "I hope you're right, Jes. The boys are gettin' awful uneasy 'bout bein' this close to Indian territory and that old battle site."
"You don't have to remind me of that, Ned, since I've been listening to their mutters all day, too. But the Indians have been under control for years."
"Maybe so," Ned agreed with a nod. "But there's a few of us can remember when that weren't the case. And the closer we get to that there Little Big Horn battlefield, the stronger those memories and the thoughts of ghosts prowling the valley get. Some folks say the spirits of men killed a violent death linger around where they died."
Jessica shrugged impatiently and pulled her hat off to shake her hair free. She wasn't about to get into another of their seemingly endless disputes — not with her goal so close. Turning slightly away from Ned, her eyes again fell on the line of hilltops stretching out before her. In the fast fading light, their silhouettes softened into indistinct impressions, while somewhere in the distance a howling coyote set her stallion to shifting restlessly.
Ned studied the slender woman beside him as he waited to see what effect his words would have. Even in the dim light the sable hair glowed with luster and a full day under the hat hadn't matted the glossy tendrils — but her profile showed him a chin lifted in stubborn defiance under full lips tinged with pinkness. Behind him, a man put a match to the kindling of the fire, and when Jessica faced him again, Ned could see the flames reflected in the golden specks of her brown eyes.
"That battle took place almost seventeen years ago, Ned," she said with a barely concealed intolerance, forgetting almost at once her vow of a second before. "The Sioux and Cheyenne are peaceful now."
Ned spat a wad of tobacco juice to the side. "I ain't sayin' they ain't. I was just tryin' to point out that there's a bad atmosphere lingers around places like that. Spooky, it is, knowin' 'bout all those deaths happening so near."
"Don't tell me you believe in ghosts, Ned!"
"'Course not! But you better keep somethin' else in mind, too. Those Indians might think they have some sort of claim on that gold that's supposed to be buried around here. Custer rode onto land the Indians had been told was theirs. I'll bet you that one of these days the tribes are gonna demand some sort of satisfaction for all those broken treaties. And I've known an Indian or two in my life. They've got an awful strong belief in the spirits protectin' what they think's theirs."
"Sounds to me like you've got a leaning toward believing in ghosts, whether you admit it or not. But...." Jessica held up a hand to thwart Ned's denial. "But I realize that a lot of people might think they have a claim to that gold, Ned, even the government. You know as well as I do, though, that by now that gold belongs to whoever finds it."
"It was an Army payroll, Jes."
"We discussed all this before we left Wyoming, Ned. The Army ought to have done something about tracing it if they were that interested! That gold's going to help me build the ranch back up to what it was before my father died!"
"You gotta find it first."
Ned almost regretted his flat words when Jessica's eyes filled with the familiar pain as she recalled the reason for their journey. But, Lordy, someone had to at least try to make her understand how much danger she could be placing herself in.
"I'll find it, Ned," Jessica said in a ravaged voice. "I have to. That spring blizzard wiped out almost all of the few cattle we had left."
She took a deep breath and a spurt of temper chased away a little of her distress. "And Mr. Olson already told me he wouldn't risk any of his damned bank's money on a woman running a spread. He made me so blasted mad, I almost spit in his face!"
"Knowin' you, it's a wonder you didn't," Ned said with a chuckle as he decided to drop the argument — at least for now. They both needed their rest this evening and he wouldn't gain a thing by pushing Jessica just then. He well knew how quickly that stubborn streak of hers could flare into mutinous defiance, though he had to admit the last couple years had tempered it under a slowly growing maturity.
The coyote yipped again and another one joined in. A second later a third animal added his voice to the song. Echoes rebounded from the hillsides around them, the reverberating sounds making it impossible to determine how many animals actually surrounded them.
Jessica looked at Ned to see his head cocked and a frown on his face. "What's wrong, Ned? It's just coyotes."
"Couple of them don't sound right. Could be there's some human coyotes out there."
The picture of the strange cloud flashed in Jessica's mind. "Ned," she said. "I thought I saw someone on a horse just at sunset, but it was gone so fast I decided I'd imagined it."
A rifle bullet spat dirt at Jessica's feet. Ned's shoulder hit her in the side, knocking her to the valley floor even as the sound of the shot followed a split second later. With a strength she wouldn't have thought him possible of in saner moments, Ned immediately pulled her back up into a crouch and they ran toward the sheltering rocks at the foot of the west hillside.
Behind them, pandemonium reigned among the horses rearing and plunging against the lead ropes tied to the picket line as a barrage of shots followed the first one. Jessica's stallion — still untied — disappeared from the camp site.
As suddenly as they had begun, the shots ceased and a death-like silence descended. Jessica squirmed out from under Ned's protective body and huddled beside him as Ned slowly raised his head to peer through a crack in the rock. Breath drawn and heart pounding, she steeled herself as they waited for the sounds of further attack. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes in an unconscious effort to shut out the blood-soaked scene she imagined Ned would see in the camp site. They had been completely out in the open. How many of her men would Ned see lying out there?
A long moment later, Ned eased himself down beside Jessica and hawked his wad of tobacco from where it lodged halfway down his throat.
"Guess that was your horseman, Jes," he said quietly after he cleared his voice to speak. "Along with a bunch of his friends."
"Where...where are the men?"
"They're all right here with us in these rocks," Ned assured her. "Nobody was hit."
Relief shot through Jessica. "But all those shots!"
"Shhhh, Jes. We haven't heard anyone leave yet."
"What reason would anyone have to attack us, Ned?" Jessica asked in a softer voice. "We're not threatening anyone and we sure as heck aren't packing any valuables."
"Could be they're just tryin' to warn us off."
Jessica watched Ned shift around so he could peer over the rock again. In the dim light, she saw him wince in pain.
>
"Ned, your leg. You've hurt it again."
"Naw, Jes. It's just a touch stiff. Hush now while I try and figure out what to do next."
"What ya' think, Ned?" Jessica heard a voice call in a hoarse whisper from behind a nearby rock.
"Did any of the boys manage to grab their rifles, Patches?" Ned returned in a low voice.
"Yeah, all of them, I think," Patches replied. "They ain't been far from their guns all day."
"Wish I'd of grabbed mine," Ned muttered under his breath.
"I've got my derringer, Ned, but it won't do any good at this distance. And we're not going to just sit here and wait for them to come closer." Jessica eased herself around until she could see over the edge of the rock. "Patches," she ordered in a low voice. "Send a couple of the men up that slope while the rest of you cover them."
Patches poked his grizzled face around the rock sheltering him, and Jessica drew in an angry gasp when she realized he was looking at Ned to confirm her order. After Ned nodded slightly, Patches ducked back from sight and Jessica heard a murmured conversation. A second later two shadows moved from behind their protective rocks.
"When this is over, we're going to have a talk with those men about who gives orders around here, Ned," Jessica said in a grim voice.
Ned ignored her and Jessica concentrated on the slope as she watched the two men slip from cover to cover, seeking to make their way up the embankment and flush the attackers from hiding. Two well placed shots sent both men scrambling back down the hill again. Jessica's men immediately fired at the flashes from the attacker's rifle, and she ducked back down, flattening herself against the rock as loud reports from the rifles intermingled with ricochets of bullets.
Beside Jessica, Ned determinedly kept watch, face thrust close to the crack in the rock and fingers flexing unconsciously for his missing rifle. "Something's wrong here," he muttered when no answering fire sounded from the top of the hill.
"Tell the men to stop firing, Patches!" he called. "We're wasting ammo!"
No sooner did the men comply than a chilling cry split the air, echoing from hilltop to hilltop and sending a cascade of goosebumps down every spine. A thunder of hooves followed and a huge paint stallion galloped out onto the top of the ridge above them. Immediately the men fired at the rider, their shots sounding almost like the report from a single rifle.
The rider vanished behind the ridge top without giving a sign that even one of the men's bullets had made contact. A second later, an eerie, mocking laughter echoed through the silence left behind his disappearance. The sound of the laughter covered up the returning hoofbeats and the rider appeared to materialize again out of thin air.
The paint reared defiantly and the rider on its back shook his rifle over his head, mocking them. Echoes of the laughter faded as another cry left the rider's lips, this one a laughing disparagement of the men's ineffective aim. The stallion dropped back to earth, floating along the gathering mist of the ridge top for a second before disappearing again beneath the horizon. A moment later, the sound of its lone hoofbeats mingled into the rumble of several more sets of hooves joining its flight.
"Shoot, damn it!" Jessica realized Ned was standing above her, screaming the words over and over. "Damn it, why in the hell didn't you keep shootin'?"
"Don't, Ned." Jessica forced herself to shake off her own stunned amazement and stood up to lay a hand on his arm. "It's no use now. They're gone."
Ned grabbed his hat from his head and flung it into the dirt. His angry eyes watched the men creep out timidly from the shelter of their rocks and he turned his furious gaze on Patches.
"Damn it, Patches, what's wrong with you?" he shouted.
"I didn't see you shooting neither, Ned," Patches returned in a voice laced with fear. "'Sides, we'd've been wasting our bullets, like you said before. Can't hit a ghost."
"A ghost?" Ned snorted. "That wasn't no ghost. That was a plain flesh and blood man on a horse! And I didn't have my damned rifle! If I'd of had it, I'd of shown you that was no ghost!"
"Then why didn't any of our bullets hit him, huh?" Patches asked. "Wasn't no way we could have all missed him."
"Stop it, both of you," Jessica said firmly. "Whoever was out there's gone now and it's too dark to try to follow. I want two men up on that ridge on guard tonight, just in case the attackers do try to return. The rest of you finish setting camp up and get something to eat started."
"But Jes...."
"I mean it, Ned. Arguing won't get us anywhere at this point. We can discuss it as soon as we get something in our stomachs. Oh no! Ned, where's Cinnabar?"
"Last I seen of him, he was hightailing it up toward the top of that north ridge, Miss Jes," Patches answered her. "Guess he wasn't tied before the shootin' started."
"That horse of yours will be all right, Jes," Ned soothed.
"You can't be sure of that, Ned. You and Patches saddle back up and I'll take one of the pack horses. We have to find him."
"Hold on a second, Jes." Ned reached for her arm and led her a distance away from the men. "Look," he said, keeping both their backs to the men. "It's foolish to go wandering around out there in the dark after what just happened. That stallion won't go far. Hell, you raised him from a wild colt and ain't too many people can even get close to him. He'll probably be standing right there in the picket line in the morning."
"What you're really trying to tell me is that there's probably not a one of those scared, namby pamby hands standing back there who will leave this camp site with us to help search. Isn't that right?"
Ned's deep sigh was Jessica's only answer, and she tried to control the anger stealing through her, losing the battle almost immediately.
"And what about you, Ned?" she asked in a scornful voice. "Is your buried belief in ghosts coming through?"
"Now, Jes. All I'm trying to say is that right now ain't the time to go pushing those hands into any showdown. You're right — they're scared. And whoever was up on that ridge planned it just that way. He made sure we didn't know how many men he had with him, so we wouldn't be stupid enough to come after them."
Someone behind them cleared his voice with a soft harumph. "Uh...Ned."
Jessica whirled and faced the cowhand. "What is it, Rusty?" she demanded, her anger giving a sharp edge to the authority in her voice.
Rusty glanced behind him to make sure Patches was still standing there. "Well, Miss Jes, seems like one of our pack horses run off, too. The one with our food on it."
"That tears it!" Jessica said in exasperation. "If you men think I'm going to bed down here with an empty stomach, you've got another think coming. Who tied that horse and left the knot loose enough so it could get away when that shooting started?"
Patches stepped forward. "I did, Miss Jes. But I tied that rope strong. Only way that horse could've got away would've been to break that picket rope. And it's still tied tight."
Patches's words gave Jessica pause. Though he was older than most of the rest of the men, he still maintained his status as her top hand. If Patches said he tied that rope, that darn rope was tied.
"Then how did the horse get loose?" she asked in exasperation. "Do you have any explanation, Patches?"
"I think someone slipped in here and took it," Patches said with a nervous shrug of his shoulders.
"Or somethin'," Rusty muttered.
"I suppose you mean a ghost, Rusty," Jessica flared, ignoring the calming hand Ned laid on her arm.
"Didn't you notice what the rest of us did?" Patches asked, directing his words at Ned. "The other hands are all muttering about it. They only saw three bullets ever hit the ground — that one near Miss Jes's feet and the two fired at the men trying to climb that hill. Rest of them shots never even kicked up a puff of dirt or nicked a rock."
"Yeah," Ned admitted. "But there's got to be some reason for it. Could be they shot in the air — just wanted to scare us."
"Then how come we didn't see no more than three flashes from rifles — even thoug
h it sounded like at least a dozen men was shootin' at us?" Rusty broke in. "Huh, Ned? How come?"
With an effort, Jessica kept her jaw from dropping open. As Ned shook his head in bewilderment beside her, she briefly played the scene of a few minutes ago over in her mind. Rusty and Patches were right — and try as she might, she couldn't come up with an explanation any more than Ned could.
"The only way we're going to get to the bottom of this is to wait until morning and go out and read the sign," Ned said reasonably. "Right now, let's get back over there and see what we can dig up among us out of our saddlebags for grub. Most of you boys carry a little something to snack on when we're riding all day, don't you?"
Rusty and Patches nodded a reluctant agreement and fell in behind Ned as he moved back toward the fire. Jessica took a step after them, then hesitated as she glanced around her. The men all had their saddlebags, but hers were on Cinnabar, and Uncle Pete's map was still hidden in the lining. She didn't really suppose it mattered much about losing the map — on the off chance something like that might happen, she had memorized it before she even left Wyoming. And without the note, left behind with the other few mementos of her uncle, she doubted anyone could make sense of the scrawls on the map.
But she had stowed at least two apples in her bags, along with a sandwich made from leftovers of their noon meal, wrapped in her extra bandanna. More than once, Ned's wife, Mattie, had shaken her head over Jessica's hearty appetite, but her active life never allowed so much as an extra ounce to settle on her slender hips.
In the dim light, Jessica thought she could make out a faint path rising along the hillside beside her. If she walked to the top, she could whistle for her stallion. Ringing out across the hilltops, the sound would cover more area.
Hesitating for another second, Jessica looked over toward the campfire. The glow from the fire clearly showed her the men gathered there, occupied with digging through their gear. Behind them, the light from a nearly full moon crept over the horizon. The moon would give her enough light to see by, instead of having to call attention to herself by going for a lantern. Ned would probably insist on sending at least half the men with her, and she'd had about all she could stomach of their whining for one day. She'd enjoy a few moments to herself.
Montana Surrender Page 2
