Ride to Valor

by David Robbins

“I’ve never cut up anything. I was raised in the city.”

  “That’s plumb pitiful. Here. Let me show you.”

  Shard drew his bowie and gave James a lesson in rabbit carving. First he slit the hind legs down the middle on the inside and then the front legs, and then he cut down the center of the belly from the throat to near the bobbed tail. “Do this right and it’s like peeling an orange or one of those bananas.”

  He demonstrated.

  After the hideous slaughter at the wagons and the cabin, James found the rabbit-cutting practically pleasant. He chopped up the meat and Cowlick skewered pieces on sticks.

  The aroma set James’s mouth to watering. He hadn’t eaten all day, and he was famished. He was fit to drool by the time the meat was done and tore into it with relish. Chewing lustily, he said, “I didn’t think I’d have much of an appetite after today, but I was wrong.”

  Jack Shard had his back propped on his saddle and was filling a pipe with tobacco. “We get used to things.”

  “I’ll never get used to that,” James said. Those butchered bodies would infest his nightmares for weeks and months to come.

  To change the subject he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that dime novel.”

  Shard groaned.

  Two Bears chuckled.

  “A friend of mine named Newcomb read it, and he said that in it you shot the eye out of a wolf at half a mile away.”

  “That was the writer’s doing,” the scout said. “They exaggerate something awful.”

  “So you never killed a grizzly with your bare hands?”

  Shard snorted.

  “Or ran a gauntlet of a hundred braves?”

  “I’d be chopped to bits.”

  “Or fell in love with a Pawnee princess?” That was all James could remember.

  Shard lost his smile and swallowed some coffee. “I was in love once but she wasn’t a Pawnee. She was Oglala. As pretty as a rose and as sweet as sugar. I’d be with her now except she was bit by a rattlesnake while her and some other Oglala gals were picking berries. They tried to save her but the snake bit her in the neck as she was bending down and I guess the venom was too close to her heart.”

  “I’m sorry,” James said.

  “It was like having my own cut out.”

  James was surprised the man would make such an admission.

  “Damn all rattlers, anyway,” Shard said vehemently.

  “I haven’t seen any yet.”

  “You do, give a holler. I have killed close to forty since that day and aim to kill a thousand more.” Shard put down his tin cup, opened his saddlebags, and pulled out a bottle. He opened it, poured a little in with his coffee, and held the bottle out. “Want some? It’s brandy.”

  It had been so long since James tasted liquor of any kind, his mouth puckered. But he replied, “No, thanks.” It wouldn’t do for him to lose his senses with hostiles about.

  The Crows, though, were more than happy to pour some into their cups.

  Shard raised the bottle to the stars. “To Chickadee,” he said, and took a long swig.

  “I hope to be married within a year, myself,” James mentioned.

  “She a good woman?”

  James didn’t have to think about it. “The best. And honest to the bone.”

  “Find a woman who sees your faults and wants you anyway, and she’s the one,” Shard said. “What’s her name?”

  “Peg.”

  “To Peg,” Shard said, and treated himself to another drink straight from the bottle.

  “Don’t get drunk on me,” James said. “Anything happens to you, I wouldn’t last two days.”

  “The Crows will look after you.”

  “Would they really?” James said, smiling at Cowlick and Two Bears.

  Shard addressed them in their tongue and they looked at James and laughed.

  “Any hurt to him,” Two Bears said, pointing at Jack Shard, “Buffalo Shit on his own.”

  25

  The next day they didn’t come across a single body or spy any smoke until the middle of the afternoon when Shard raised a finger to black specks soaring on the air currents to the southwest. “More buzzards.”

  Atop a low ridge they lay on their bellies and looked down on a farm. The house had been burned, but the barn was still standing. A body was sprawled in a pool of scarlet near a pump and a man with his britches down around his ankles was crumpled near the outhouse. From the barn came sounds, voices and tiny mews that a stricken kitten might make. Beside the barn were two horses without saddles.

  “We’re in luck,” Shard said. “A pair of them are still here. We need to take at least one alive.”

  More mewing prickled the hairs at the nape of James’s neck.

  “What’s doing that?”

  “Stay here with the horses,” Shard said, and snaked down the slope. Cowlick snaked left, Two Bears right.

  James glanced over his shoulder at their horses and off across the prairie. Nothing stirred, but that was no guarantee.

  He fingered his Spencer and looked down—the scout and the Crows had vanished. He looked for ripples in the high grass, but they might as well be invisible. It was spooky.

  The mewing went on. In a tree by the house, a blue jay flitted and shrieked. A cat that might have run the jay off if it was alive lay at the base of the tree, cleaved nearly in two by a tomahawk or a knife.

  The sun was warm on James’s back. A rock was poking him and he shifted position. He glanced over his shoulder again. The prairie was still empty. When he looked down, Jack Shard was at the barn, sidling toward the front.

  Out of the grass reared Two Bears. In quick bounds he was at the scout’s side.

  Cowlick rose at the rear of the barn.

  James tensed.

  Shard was at the corner. He went on around, Two Bears right after him. They had their rifles to their shoulders.

  This is it, James thought. He saw them duck inside and held his breath, but nothing happened. Seconds pregnant with suspense passed like turtles. Then there was a yip and a shot and a commotion as of men struggling hand to hand and unexpectedly a near-naked painted warrior hurtled out of the barn and flew toward the low ridge.

  James kept expecting Shard or Two Bears to fly out in pursuit or for Cowlick to come running, but none of them did and the warrior reached the ridge and sped up it. In a state of mild shock, James marked the swarthy visage and the sleek muscles and especially the bloody tomahawk in the warrior’s hand. The hostile was looking back and not up.

  James stood. He aimed the Spencer. He would dearly love to shoot, but Shard had said they needed one alive so he bawled, “Stop where you are!”

  The warrior didn’t stop; he charged. Uttering a fierce war whoop, he raised the tomahawk.

  “Stop, damn you!” James shouted, feeling foolish, and curled his finger to the trigger. He squeezed, thinking the hostile was as good as dead, but in his excitement he’d forgotten to thumb back the hammer.

  Screeching, the warrior was on him. James raised the Spencer as the tomahawk arced, and warded off a blow that would have split his skull. He swung the stock at the Indian’s face, but the renegade ducked and slashed the tomahawk at his gut. James jerked back and felt the slightest scrape along his shirt. He rammed the stock at the warrior’s throat only to have the hostile sidestep. Then his hand was on the wrist holding the tomahawk and the other’s hand was on the Spencer. They grappled. James was strong but so was the Indian. They spun one way and then the other. Somewhere someone was hollering. The warrior hooked a foot behind James and pushed. James went down, pulling the hostile after him. They rolled back and forth, the warrior hissing and grunting. James drove a knee up and in but connected with the hostile’s thigh.

  A deft flip of the warrior’s arms and James was on his back. A knee slammed into his belly. The tomahawk swished and scraped his neck.

  In the heat of the hostile’s hate, his face was clouded with bloodlust.

  James got his leg agai
nst the warrior’s chest, and shoved. The warrior fell back and rolled to regain his feet, but he was at the edge of the slope and his moccasins slipped from under him and he fell. He didn’t tumble far. Jack Shard and Two Bears pounced and the grass thrashed and when they stood, they each had an arm.

  The warrior was purple with rage. He thrashed and bucked and even tried to bite.

  “We have him!” Shard gloated.

  His heart hammering, James wheezed between gasps, “Took you long enough.”

  26

  The mewing came from a human throat.

  She lay curled on her side in a stall, her knees to her chest and an arm over her face. She wouldn’t stop quaking. They hadn’t taken knives or tomahawks to her, but her dress was torn and they had done other things.

  James stood uncomfortably at the head of the stall while Jack Shard and the Crows bound the captured hostile’s wrists and ankles. “Miss?” he said softly but got no response.

  The scout came over. He squatted and gently touched her foot. “Ma’am? It’s all right now. You’re safe.”

  The mewing finally stopped. A brown eyeball peered at them over the arm and a voice husky with raw emotion said, “Go away.”

  “Didn’t you hear me, ma’am?” Shard said. “You’re safe. You can get up if you want.”

  “I’m tainted.”

  “You’re what?” James said, and Shard cast an annoyed glance at him.

  “Tainted,” the woman said. “They . . . they . . .” She stopped, unable to say the rest.

  Shard said softly, “Lie here and rest. We’ll tend to business and let you know when it’s time to go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” the woman said.

  “You can’t stay here alone,” Shard told her. “Corporal Doyle will escort you to the column. The soldiers will protect and look after you.”

  “No, they won’t do any such thing.” The eye dipped under the arm and she resumed her quaking.

  Shard motioned for James to step away. “We’ll leave her be awhile. For some women, what she’s been through is worse than being killed.”

  Shard went over to the Crows and their prisoner. He addressed the warrior in an Indian tongue. The warrior glared defiantly. Shard addressed him again and the warrior barked a savage reply. “Hold him down,” Shard said to the Crows.

  The captive fought them, but the Crows were too strong and got him on his back with Cowlick holding down one arm and leg and Two Bears holding down the others. Their combined weight was too much. All the captive could do was growl epithets.

  Jack Shard leaned his Sharps against a post and drew his bowie. He said something and held the knife to the sunlight.

  “What are you planning to do?” James asked.

  “We need information,” Shard said.

  “You’re not going to torture him.”

  “We need information,” Shard said again.

  “The army doesn’t do things like that,” James said.

  “We need to know how many there are and any plans they’ve made,” Shard explained. “I’ve asked nice and this Kiowa won’t say, so now I’ll ask the hard way.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “Go watch over the woman.” Shard bent to the Kiowa and his bowie descended.

  James turned his back. He heard a squishy sound but he didn’t look. He moved to the stall the woman was in and leaned against it. He wished he could plug his ears. Funny, he told himself. All those years in Five Points, all the fights he had been in as a Blue Shirt. He thought he was tough. He thought he’d seen everything. But that couldn’t compare to this. The blood spilled in a clash with another gang was nothing to the blood spilled in war. This was so much worse, so . . . vile. He swallowed, and was conscious that the woman’s brown eye was peering at him over her arm. To take his mind off Shard and the Kiowa, he asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?”

  “What are they doing to that Injun?”

  “Questioning him,” James said.

  “That one is sticking him. I can see it from here.”

  “Don’t look,” James said.

  “Would they let me help?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Give me a knife. I’ll get him to talk. After what he did, I surely will make him.”

  “It’s not fit,” James said.

  “What ain’t? A woman carving on a heathen son of a bitch who violated her? Mister, I’ll skin him alive for you and cut out his eyes and chop off any other parts you say.”

  “Jack Shard is handling it, ma’am.”

  She raised her head. Her face was smudged and her eyes were almost wild. “Ask him if he’ll let me.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Ask him, consarn you. I have a right. No one has a better right than me.”

  James used to think he knew people. He turned, and it was as appalling as he had known it would be. That the Kiowa hadn’t cried out was a wonderment. Shard was holding a severed finger and letting blood drip on the warrior’s face. “The woman wants to know if you’ll let her cut on him. She says it’s her right.”

  “Bring her over.”

  James reached down to help her stand, but she had heard and was on her feet and past him, her face aglow with fierce anticipation.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” Shard asked.

  “Anderson,” she said. “Harriet Anderson. My husband was Samuel Anderson. That’s him out by the outhouse.” She extended a hand. “Give me that pigsticker and step back, if you would.”

  “We need information.”

  “I savvy, mister,” Mrs. Anderson said.

  “You won’t cut the Crows?” Shard said. “They’re friends of mine and on the army payroll, same as me.”

  “It’s him who done it to me,” Mrs. Anderson said, pointing at the Kiowa. “Him and those others.”

  “Did any of them say anything to you?”

  “Just Injun talk. I didn’t understand a lick of it.” She impatiently crooked her fingers. “The knife.”

  Shard reversed his grip and gave it to her, hilt first. “Whatever you do, don’t—” He got no further.

  With a swift movement, Harriet Anderson thrust the big knife into the Kiowa’s belly, stabbing up and in and wrenching. The Kiowa stiffened and blood spurted from his mouth, and he was gone.

  “Dang it, ma’am,” Shard said, and went to grab her wrist. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

  Mrs. Anderson jerked back, yanking on the bowie, and stood with the red blade pointed at her own belly and both of her hands on the hilt. “I’ve been soiled.”

  “Don’t,” Shard said.

  “I’ll never be me again.”

  “That’s foolish talk. No one will ever know.”

  “I will,” she said, and plunged the knife into her body.

  Shard lunged, but the blade was all the way in before he could reach her. He looped an arm around her waist and she looked at him with a thin smile and scarlet trickling down her dress.

  “I can rest in peace now,” she said, and her body melted.

  Shard swore and lowered her to the ground and swiped at a patch of blood on his buckskins. “Can’t nothing go right today?”

  27

  The barn buffered them from the night wind. Borne with the wind were the keening yips of coyotes and now and again the ululating howl of a wolf. Other than that it was quiet save for the crackling of their fire. Cowlick had found a piglet wandering in the field and killed it, and the Crows and Jack Shard were eating their fill.

  James had no appetite. He had his elbows on his crossed legs and his chin in his hands and was morosely gazing into the flames.

  Shard stopped chewing to ask with his mouth full, “What’s the matter with you, Doyle? You sick?”

  “How can you eat?”

  “I’m hungry. You should try some. We don’t often get roast pig.”

  “And Mrs. Anderson?”

  “We’d share with her if she was alive, but she ain’t. What�
�s your point?”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” James said. “All the killing? And the other?”

  Shard was about to take another bite, but he lowered the chunk of pork. “People have been killing other people since there have been people. You never heard of Cain and Abel?”

  “What you did today, what those hostiles did.” James stopped and frowned and shook his head.

  “You better get used to it. There’s a lot of this goes on,” the scout said. “On both sides.”

  “Surely not.”

  “Where have you been keeping yourself? In a hidey-hole? Don’t you remember Chivington?”

  “Who?”

  “Colonel Chivington and eight hundred bluecoats attacked a village of mostly women and children and pretty near wiped them out. Back in ’sixty-four, it was. Blew them to bits with cannon fire and then bashed out their brains. Little babies were torn from their mothers’ arms and smashed on the rocks.”

  James bowed his head.

  “They got hold of a chief, White Antelope his name was. They cut off his nose and ears and scalped him. One soldier sliced off his nuts and made a tobacco pouch. It was in all the newspapers.”

  James hadn’t paid much attention to the news back in Five Points. He hadn’t cared one whit about what went on in the rest of the world.

  “When it comes to blame, white and red have plenty to share,” Shard went on. “All the hate is to blame. Whites hate the red man for being red, and the red man hates whites for being white.”

  “White-eyes stupid shits,” Two Bears said.

  Shard laughed.

  Cowlick made a comment in Crow and all three of them chortled.

  James got up and walked from the fire. He breathed deep of the cool air and listened to a coyote. A shooting star blazed the heavens. He had to stop being so squeamish, he told himself. He’d been strong enough to survive in Five Points; he could survive this. He had to survive it. There was Peg, and their future.

  From out of the night came a swift pat-pat-pat. He turned, or tried to, and a heavy body slammed into him. The impact knocked him off his feet. He was on his back and a painted warrior was raising a knife before he could collect his wits.