Ride to Valor

by David Robbins

Shard grinned. “We can wait a few minutes for you to get done.”

  “Wait for what, sir?” James said to the captain.

  Pemberton folded his hands behind his back, as was his habit. “I need a liaison, Corporal, between the scouts and myself. They will be ranging far afield in search of the hostiles, and messages might have to be sent back and forth. You will carry them.”

  “Good God, sir,” James said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, why me, sir?” James was incredulous. He was hardly the best rider in the troop, and as for finding his way across the unending expanse of prairie alone—he almost shuddered at the prospect.

  “Because I picked you,” Pemberton said. “Because you happen to be one of the best shots we have and you’ve taken life before.”

  More than ever, James regretted that. He noticed that the Crows were amused by his reaction.

  Shard didn’t find it funny. “Is something the matter, trooper?”

  “It’s Corporal Doyle,” James said. “And yes, I don’t think I’m right for this.”

  “I say you are,” Captain Pemberton broke in, “and that ends the discussion. You’ll be ready to ride in fifteen minutes. Sergeant Heston will issue you extra ammunition. You’ll have to account for every cartridge, so don’t use them needlessly.”

  “Something else,” Shard said. “Bring one blanket and one blanket only. No pots or pans or anything that will clank and clatter as we ride.”

  “What will I cook with?” James asked.

  “Leave that to us,” Shard said.

  Captain Pemberton wriggled his fingers. “Off you go, Corporal.”

  Apprehension ate at James like an acid. Out on the prairie he would be easy pickings for the first war party they came across. The likelihood of his being killed was increased tenfold. He contemplated jumping onto his horse and riding like hell, but deserting would only land him on the gallows with hemp around his neck. He was finishing his coffee when his three friends joined him.

  “Good God.” Dorf said the same thing James had on hearing the news.

  “Lucky dog,” Cormac said. “You’ll tangle with those butchering devils before we do, I bet.”

  Newcomb didn’t help things by saying, “Don’t worry. If anything happens to you, I’ll get word to your sweet Peg.”

  22

  Life had thrown James into unusual circumstances, but these weren’t to his liking even a wee bit. Here he was, trailing after a noted scout and two stoic Crows, crossing the sea of rolling green in the crisp air of early morning, and wishing he was anywhere but where he was.

  Jack Shard rode like a hawk soaring on the wind, his head constantly turning this way and that, his eyes seeking signs that might spell the difference between life and death.

  The Crows, James noticed, didn’t seem half as alert, but they didn’t miss anything. When Shard snapped his head at distant moving sticks that turned out to be antelope, so did they. When Shard saw something on the ground that caused him to draw rein, the Crows saw it, too. They ignored him, which bothered him a little. These were the first Indians he had ever been close to and he would like to get to know them better. All he had had to go on to judge their kind were the terrible tales of mutilation and death he had heard over card games and campfires.

  At times the prairie was as flat as a floor and at other times the ground rose in rolling swells like the waves at the shore. Yellow and white butterflies danced among the wildflowers. Vultures soared in search of carrion. Long-eared rabbits fled from them in fantastic leaps.

  The sun was at its zenith, and they were in the middle of another long stretch of land as flat as a griddle-cake when Shard said a few words in what must be the Crow tongue and came to a stop and the Crows did likewise.

  James was glad. His legs and backside were sore. He was doing his best to ride well, but he couldn’t get the knack of sitting a saddle as straight and still as Shard and the Crows.

  He imagined that to them he must look like a goose trying to take wing.

  With a fluid quickness that James was to learn was characteristic of the man, Shard dismounted. He hitched at his holster and opened his saddlebags and pulled out a shiny brass tube. “Spyglass,” he said. “The secret to being a good scout.” He grinned and unfolded it.

  The Crows stood with their rifles in the crooks of their arms.

  James brushed dust from his uniform and stretched. “I still wish you had picked somebody else, sir.”

  Shard glanced at him. “You gnaw it like a bone, don’t you?”

  “Gnaw what?”

  “Life.” Shard raised the telescope to his right eye and swept the western horizon and then did the same to the north and the south. “We’re safe enough for the moment,” he said, and closed it.

  “You’re used to this, sir, and I’m not,” James said by way of defending his attitude.

  “Don’t sir me, Corporal Doyle,” Shard said, not unkindly. “I don’t hold rank. I’m on the army’s payroll, but I’m outside the army. Call me Jonathan, which is my given name, or call me Jack, which is my nickname, or call me by my last name, but don’t call me sir.”

  “Mr. Shard, then.”

  “You’re Irish,” Shard said, and chuckled.

  “What did you mean by outside the army?”

  “I mean I work for them but I don’t have to wear a uniform or drill all damn day or take orders except as they have to do with scouting.”

  “You like it that way?”

  “I am my own man and will not be imposed on,” Shard said. “And yes, I like being me more than I would like being you.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. What you men are doing is necessary. It takes guts to go up against an enemy who is better at living off this land than you will ever be if you lived here a hundred years.”

  “You sound like you admire them,” James observed.

  “I do,” the scout said. “I admire the hell out of the Indian. All Indians.”

  “I heard you lived with the Sioux.”

  Shard was watching a hawk or falcon dive and climb. “They call themselves the Lakota. Even that is not enough, as there are seven tribes. It was the Oglala who took me in when the Blackfeet had run me to a frazzle. Later on I lived with the Crows a spell.”

  “So you like Indians’ ways.”

  Shard turned. “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m trying to understand you, is all,” James said. “I’ve never known a scout and here I am with my life in your hands.”

  “Ah,” Shard said. “You’re smarter than most. I might even get to like you.”

  “I don’t see where I’m smarter than anybody,” James said.

  The scout opened the telescope again and scanned the land to the west and as he did he said, “Most of the—What did Pemberton call them? Liaisons? Most I have to work with don’t care much for me and don’t like my friends at all. They do as I say and hardly ever talk. You ask questions. You want to know the why of things and that’s good.”

  “It is?”

  Shard closed the spyglass and shoved it into his saddlebags. “Most folks, Corporal Doyle—”

  “James. You can call me James.”

  “—most folks, James, go through life with blinders on. They don’t see things as they are but as they think they are. And that’s bad.”

  This man wasn’t at all as James had expected. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Take the Indians,” Shard said. “Most whites hate them. The whites don’t know a damn thing about why the Indians live as they do and how the Indians think, but the whites think they do and hate them for thinking things they don’t think.”

  “If you say think one more time, my head will explode.”

  Shard laughed. “All I’m saying is that when you get to know the Indians like I know the Indians, you find out they’re people just like you and me.”

  James looked at the Crows. “They are?”

  “Where are my mann
ers?” Shard said, and placed his hand on one of them. The warrior wore his long black hair loose. At the back of his head a lot of short hairs stuck up, which explained what Shard said next. “The whites call my friend here Cowlick. His real name is Hissheiaxuhke . It means Red Fox.”

  “I’ll stick with Cowlick. That other is a tongue twister.”

  Shard rested his hand on the shoulder of the other Crow, who wore his hair in braids and had an unusually long knife on his left hip. “This here is Two Bears. He has the same name in Crow, only it’s Duupedaxpitchee.”

  “Good God.”

  Shard looked at the Crows. “What should we call our liaison?”

  “I have a name already,” James said.

  “Too soon,” Cowlick declared in English.

  “Call him Buffalo Shit,” Two Bears said.

  Laughing, Shard turned to James. “Don’t get mad. He likes to poke fun.”

  “I won’t answer to Buffalo Shit,” James said.

  Two Bears’s eyes crinkled and his lips twitched.

  “All right,” Shard said. “Enough rest for the horses. We have a lot of ground to cover.” He reached for his saddle horn, and paused. “And, James. From here on out it will be real dangerous. We can’t afford any mistakes, you hear? Not if you want to go on breathing.”

  “I surely do,” James said.

  23

  They hadn’t been under way half an hour when Shard again drew rein, vaulted down, and knelt. Cowlick and Two Bears joined him. They touched the ground and spoke in Crow and then roved about. Eventually Shard stopped and gazed to the south, his expression grim.

  “What?” James asked.

  “Ten Indians went by late yesterday.”

  “How do you know it’s Indians and not whites?”

  “White horses are nearly always shod.” Shard thoughtfully tapped his chin. “My guess is it’s hostiles making for the Arkansas River country. There’s a heap of settlers thereabouts ripe for the slaughter.”

  “How much killing can ten Indians do?”

  “You’d be surprised.” Shard mounted and waited for the Crows to climb back on. He looked at James and said, “Do I or don’t I?”

  “Do you what?” James said.

  “Send you back to the column to tell Pemberton or wait until we have more to report.” Shard wheeled his dun and tapped his heels. “I reckon we’ll wait yet.”

  James was relieved. He wasn’t looking forward to having to find D Troop in the midst of all that vast emptiness. He’d likely as not get lost and be a laughingstock, or dead.

  The scout and the Crows rode with determined purpose, pushing their mounts where before they had gone easy. The tracks were plain enough that even James could follow them.

  Presently they were in broken country crisscrossed by gullies with here and there low bluffs. They came on a ribbon of a stream and Shard halted so their horses could drink. He paced, his hand on his pearl-handled revolver.

  James was curious. “What kind is that?”

  “Eh?” Shard saw where he was looking and patted the pearl grips. “Don’t know your guns and you a soldier? It’s a Smith and Wesson. Some favor Colts or Remingtons. Me, I’m a Smith and Wesson man.”

  “It get you killed,” Two Bears said, grinning.

  Shard didn’t respond but James did. “Why do you say a thing like that?”

  “It pretty gun,” Two Bears said. “Indians like pretty guns. Kill to have one.”

  The tracks followed the stream and they followed the tracks. It meandered like a drunken snake in endless turns and loops. A charred circle marked where the war party had camped for the night.

  Shard didn’t stop. He had an urgency about him that was justified by gray tendrils in the southern sky. “Damn,” he said on spying them, and rode faster.

  James slung his Spencer in front of him and held it there.

  Where a gully widened into a hollow stood what was left of a cabin, the logs still smoldering, orange and red spots glowing like infernal eyes.

  They reined up and beheld it from a distance and Jack Shard said, “Settlers shouldn’t ought to be out this far. They’re asking for trouble.” He shucked a Sharps rifle from his saddle scabbard and nodded at the two Crows. Cowlick reined wide to the left and Two Bears wide to the right. “Doyle, you stick with me,” Shard said.

  James nodded. He hoped the hostiles were long gone. He wasn’t ready for Indian fighting.

  Jack Shard gigged his dun. He rose in the stirrups a couple of times and once he saw something that made him swear. “Have you got a strong stomach, Irish?”

  “I’ve never had cause to think I didn’t.”

  “You’re about to find out.”

  The first was a boy. He couldn’t have been more than twelve. The ruin they’d made of him was the ruin a crazed butcher would make of a cow. His neck was severed to where it was attached by a skin string. His scalp had been peeled back to the middle of his crown, but they hadn’t lifted the hair and the underside, speckled red and pink, had been pecked at by birds. The hostiles had amused themselves by cutting the flesh down to the ribs and letting the strips hang.

  One look and James had to turn away, his stomach trying to crawl out his throat. He dry heaved and spat the bitterest of bile and breathed. “God Almighty.”

  “I warned you,” Shard said.

  The next was the mother. She had been running after the boy but neither got far. She lay in a black pool, the surface shining like patent leather. Her body had drained dry and she was paler than snow. Rigor imprinted a ludicrous smile. They hadn’t molested her.

  The father had been nailed to what was left of one wall.

  His eyes were gone and his nose, a cavity crawling with flies and his mouth, was an insect hotel. They hadn’t turned him into a woman, but they had sliced it down the middle. His belly had also been slit and loopy coils hung to his feet and past, as if his intestines were trying to crawl off and escape the carnage.

  James heaved, and this time it wasn’t dry. He half thought the scout or the Crows would tease him, but they were silent and grim.

  Jack Shard was staring at the woman with her afterlife smile. “This is why.”

  Wiping his sleeve with his mouth, James sucked in deep breaths while looking at anything except the bodies. “Why what?”

  “I get asked why I do this,” Shard said. “Why, when I lived with Indians and admire them so much, do I hunt them for the army?” He nodded at the woman and at the boy and at the man. “This is why.”

  “Oh,” James said. He hadn’t thought to ask.

  “It’s a bad bunch we’re after,” Shard said. “Their hate won’t let them stop.” He pushed his hat back on his head and tiredly rubbed his eyes. “I should send you to tell the captain, but we have to move fast and there could be others.”

  “Other hostiles?”

  The scout nodded. “They like to break into small bands and spread out. They can kill and raze more that way.”

  “I’d hate to run into them by my lonesome,” James admitted.

  “By yourself or with the whole troop, it’s kill or be killed. They won’t show you a lick of mercy.”

  “I wasn’t expecting any,” James said.

  24

  A pair of wagons sat in the glare of the sun, the beds blackened. Both tongues were pointing at the sky as if in supplication. The horses had been taken. Scattered seed for planting had drawn birds to an avian feast. Except for the buzzards, the birds didn’t take notice of the bodies.

  At the approach of James and the scout and the Crows, the feasters took reluctant wing, squawking and cawing in protest.

  “Stay back if you want,” Jack Shard said.

  “No,” James responded. “I’ll see it the same as you.” He steeled himself, but he was flesh and blood and not made of metal and the first one churned his stomach to where he had to look away.

  All told, there were five, four men and a boy. The men had put up a fight. Two Bears found where a hostile had been
hit and leaked blood. That must have made the hostiles mad, because the butchery was twice the horror of those at the cabin. The hostiles seemed to have tried to outdo themselves in the ferocity of their mutilating.

  Jack Shard didn’t linger. At a wave of his arm, they rode to the south, smack on the tracks.

  James had been hanging back, but now he brought his mount up next to the dun. “Mind if I ask a question?”

  “You’re part of this party.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to expect we should have buried those people.”

  “We don’t have the time,” Shard said. “The sooner we catch up, the more lives we spare.”

  “There are ten of them and four of us,” James pointed out.

  “Fourteen of them.”

  “What?”

  “Did I forget to tell you?” Shard said apologetically. “Four more came in from the west and joined those we’ve been after.”

  “Hell,” James said. “That’s almost four to one. Shouldn’t we go get D Troop?”

  “You’re welcome to but I wouldn’t advise it,” Shard answered.

  “The captain will be mad. He gave specific orders.”

  “You’re mine to do with as I please, and I please to keep you by me for your own sake.”

  James was grateful and said so. As the afternoon waned his apprehension climbed. He imagined they would burst on the hostiles at any moment, but twilight fell and they still hadn’t caught up.

  Shard chose a high-walled wash for their camp. Cowlick kindled a small fire. Two Bears took a bow and arrows from out of his rolled-up blanket and disappeared for a while. When he reappeared he was carrying a dead rabbit. He dropped it at James’s feet and said, “You skin, Buffalo Shit.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Shard laughed. “Don’t take it personal. It’s his way.”

  James stared at the rabbit and confessed, “I’ve never skinned one before. How do I go about it?”

  All three regarded him as they might a new sort of animal with two heads or three legs.

  “You’ve never cut up a rabbit?” Jack Shard said skeptically.