Slater's Way

by Charles G. West

  Sawyer was a lean, wiry-looking fellow with a dark bushy mustache and long stringy hair, almost to his shoulders, protruding out from under a sweat-stained hat with a single feather stuck in the crown. Like Slater, he wore a buckskin shirt, but unlike Slater, he wore cavalry trousers and boots. It was hard to tell how old he was, but he was certainly older than Slater. So Slater was already thinking, if Sawyer was as experienced and expert as he seemed to think he was, there might be no need for both of them.

  I just might break off and return to Lame Elk’s village after all.

  This was in spite of the fact that he was confident that no man knew the Absarokas and the Beartooths better than he.

  While they waited for Russell to give the order to march, Sawyer openly eyeballed the new scout, seeming to find something about Slater amusing. “Looks like you got yourself a new shirt,” he finally commented. “Got them fancy little fringes on the sleeves. Cost you a pretty penny, I expect.” Slater didn’t answer, as it was not in the form of a question. But Sawyer was not ready to let it go. He was certain that Slater was trying to dress the part of an Indian, probably in hopes of impressing Russell. “You ever shoot that bow you got tied on your saddle? Or is that just for show—make you look more like an Injun?” He had not yet been told of the circumstances that brought Slater to be hired as a scout. Had he been, he might have saved himself from having to eat crow later on. “I’ve hunted with a bow a time or two,” Sawyer went on. “Maybe we could have us a contest.”

  Having heard enough of the man’s rambling nonsense, Slater gazed at him for a long moment with the stoic expression he usually wore. “You are a fool,” he said, turned the paint’s head away, and moved closer to the head of the column.

  “What . . . ?” Sawyer sputtered incredulously, trying desperately to think of what to say in return, only to blurt after him, “You could learn a helluva lot about scoutin’ from me, if you got sense enough to do like I tell ya.”

  Lieutenant Russell signaled for the scouts then, so he rode after Slater to the head of the column.

  “That trapper said he saw a Sioux war party at that spot on the Boulder River where the rocks form a natural bridge,” Russell said. He looked at Slater. “We were there before we had that skirmish with the war party we were following. This new bunch must have a camp somewhere in that same area, and according to the trapper, there was about twenty warriors. So that’s where we’ll start looking for them, at the natural bridge.”

  “Well, that ain’t hard to find,” Sawyer said. “I’ve seen that spot. We’d best ride straight east till we strike the Yellowstone. That’s about twenty miles—be a good place to rest the horses. Then we’ll cross the river and keep goin’ east till we strike the Boulder. We can do it in a day.”

  Russell looked at Slater to see if he had anything to say about that. Slater shrugged and said, “That’s as good a way as any to get to that spot.”

  Sawyer wasn’t finished, however. “Like I said, any fool can find that spot, but you’re wastin’ your time lookin’ for those Injuns up that river. I don’t know what that trapper saw, but from what I heard from Colonel Brackett, you give them Sioux a pretty good lickin’ on that river already. More’n likely, they found theirselves another spot to hole up between raids. Injuns don’t like to go back to the same place they lost as many men as they did there. They think that place is bad medicine for ’em. Another thing, them mountains is too hard to get in and out of. They’re most likely gonna find ’em a spot with a back door in case they’re got to retreat in a hurry.”

  Russell listened attentively, as Sawyer was a seasoned scout. Then he asked, “Where would you look for them, if not up the Boulder River?”

  “My guess would be farther east, over toward the Stillwater. The mountains are easier to get in and out of,” Sawyer said.

  Russell looked at Slater again. “Do you agree with that?”

  “No,” Slater said.

  Impatient with the somber scout’s reluctance to embellish on his answer, Russell asked, “Why not? What do you think?”

  “First thing,” Slater started, “I reckon that trapper musta known where he was when he saw that party of Lakota. And the Boulder is a lot closer than the Stillwater. There’s a lot of places in the Absarokas—the Beartooths, too—to set up a camp that’s hard to find. And there ain’t no reason to think those Lakota don’t know those mountains as well as anyone else.” He could think of several places he had found while hunting that would offer the secrecy and the protection the war party would be looking for.

  “I know some places,” he said to Russell, “maybe save some time if I scout ’em out first.”

  Russell thought it over for a few moments only, remembering how Slater had saved their bacon when that Sioux war party had them pinned down on the riverbank.

  “All right,” he decided, “we’ll head straight across and start our search on the Boulder.”

  Sawyer didn’t say anything, but shook his head to show his exasperation for the lieutenant’s decision.

  * * *

  While the cavalry detachment got under way, the Sioux war party they were hoping to find was celebrating another successful raid on an unfortunate settler’s family in the Yellowstone Valley. The scalped bodies of a farmer and his two sons lay in the cornfield where they had been surprised by the sudden appearance of a screaming horde of painted demons.

  The war chief, Man Looking Back, watched in smug satisfaction while many of his war party danced excitedly around the roaring fire that greedily consumed the newly built barn. The terrified screams of the milk cow trapped inside the burning barn added to the gleeful shouts of the warriors. Inside the log cabin, Iron Pony and Medicine Hat joined several others, ransacking the home for anything of value, no longer interested in the bodies of the woman and the small girl.

  “Wah!” Iron Pony exclaimed, venting his disgust for the celebration of the others over the slaughter of the white farmer and his family. “We waste our time on these little raids when we should attack our enemies, the Crows, before the winter sets in. We know there is a village of Crows somewhere on the Musselshell. That is where we should be going now, instead of these meaningless raids so close to the soldier fort.”

  Medicine Hat knew the agony that plagued Iron Pony. He was haunted by the image of the one they called White Crow, and the death of his brother, Black Arrow. For it was White Crow who had killed Black Arrow. Striped Otter had seen him do it. More than that, because of White Crow, the other men of his village would no longer ride with Iron Pony as war chief, thinking his medicine was no longer strong. Iron Pony was a proud man, and a fierce warrior, but their losses had been so great when White Crow appeared to avenge the massacre of the village of old people deep in the mountains. But Iron Pony could not find peace within himself until he had severed the head of White Crow.

  Still the cautious one, Medicine Hat said, “It’s a long ride to the Musselshell. What if White Crow is not with that village?”

  “Most of the Crow villages have gone to the white government’s reservation,” Iron Pony reasoned. “I don’t think White Crow would go to the reservation, so a good place to look for him would be with this village on the Musselshell.”

  “Man Looking Back said we would return to our village on the Big Horn after another raid or two,” Medicine Hat said. “I think all of our warriors will follow him. They are ready to go home now. It has been a good raid.”

  Iron Pony did not respond further, but the expression of frustration on his face was answer enough.

  They followed the others out of the house after knocking the stove over and piling the table and chairs on top of it, feeding the fire that it started in the middle of the floor. Soon it, like the barn, began to blaze, and Man Looking Back came up to stand beside them.

  “I think it would be a good thing to go back to our camp in the mountains,” he said to them, “and tomorrow
we will return to our village. There is more hunting to be done before the village is ready for the winter.”

  “What do the others say?” Iron Pony asked. “Maybe we should scout farther to the north to see if there are any more white settlers.” There were twenty warriors in the party. He hoped that perhaps not all of them wanted to go home.

  “Let them speak,” Man Looking Back said. “It is time to return to our people and prepare for the winter. Already it is late in the Moon of Colored Leaves. That is what I say.”

  When all the warriors gathered around Man Looking Back and Iron Pony, the matter was discussed, but everyone except Iron Pony was in favor of going back with Man Looking Back.

  Once again Iron Pony seethed with frustration when he remembered times past when the warriors would have followed him wherever he led them. He made no protest, however, and followed the others back to the Boulder River to return to their camp in the hidden canyon. The others might be faint of heart, but he was determined to go alone to find the Crow village, even more certain that he would find White Crow there.

  When they started back tomorrow, he would head north. He was confident of his ability to make his way up through Crow territory without being seen. He would find this village and he would wait until he could find this evil spirit alone. Then he would kill him.

  And when he returned to his village with White Crow’s head, his medicine would be twice as strong and they would never doubt him again.

  * * *

  It was late in the afternoon when the forty men of C Company, Second Cavalry struck the Boulder River and went into camp. A light snow, the first of the season, had fallen during the last few hours of the march, but there was no accumulation. The horses were watered and fed a ration of grain, including Slater’s horse.

  “Don’t go gettin’ used to this,” he said to the paint. “I don’t want you to get spoiled.”

  Once the horses were taken care of, Lieutenant Russell called Sergeant Bell and the scouts up for a conference to decide the best way to begin the search for the reported Sioux raiders.

  After Jeb Sawyer repeated his assertion that the raiders were nowhere near this side of the Absarokas, Slater suggested that he would like to scout a couple of canyons on the opposite side of the mountains that came down to the river.

  “I got an arrow in a mule deer not far from here and I chased it through a narrow pass to a pocket I never knew was there before. It was like a little canyon formed on a saddle between two mountains, and a dandy place to camp, so I stayed right there to butcher the deer. There was water from a nice stream and grass for my horse. It’d make a good place for a war party to camp.”

  “Shit,” Sawyer drawled, his tone thick with cynicism. “That’d be somethin’, all right. We just march right up and find ’em at the first place we looked.”

  Ignoring the sarcasm, Slater continued. “I’d wanna go across the river before it gets dark, and see if I can pick up any tracks. Sawyer might be right, they might not be anywhere close to here. But I can find out for sure.”

  “That sounds like a good idea to me,” Russell said. “Sawyer can go with you.”

  While the soldiers were building several fires to cook their supper, and Sergeant Bell was detailing the guards, the two scouts rode their horses up the river a short distance to an easier place to ford.

  Once across, they dismounted and went the rest of the way on foot. The horses had been used only in order to keep their masters’ feet dry. Slater found what he was looking for in a short time. There were many tracks of unshod horses, going in both directions on the trail that bordered the river, where it normally would have been unusual to find any tracks at all.

  Interested now, Sawyer knelt down and felt the tracks, paying attention to the firmness of the edges and how easily they crumbled to his touch.

  “Hard to say,” he allowed. “We ain’t really had no hard freezes yet, but we’ve had some nights that got pretty damn cold.” He crawled over to examine some more tracks, forgetting his skepticism. “Lookee these over here. These tracks was left earlier today.”

  “That’s what I figure,” Slater said, without going over to confirm it.

  “Ha,” Sawyer snorted. “They might as well have left us a note and said, ‘Here we are, fellers, we’re headin’ thisaway.”

  They followed the tracks for a couple hundred yards farther, where they came to a rocky area that went all the way to the water. It was impossible to see any tracks in the rocks.

  “This is it,” Slater said. “This is where they left the trail to go into that canyon.” He stood erect and gazed at a solid rock wall about fifty feet high.

  Sawyer took one quick look at the rock wall, dismissed that possibility, and kept walking. “Here they go,” he called out when he crossed the rocky field. “Tracks over here. They’re still on this trail.”

  Slater didn’t move. “No, they ain’t,” he insisted calmly. “This is where they turned off.”

  “Ha,” Sawyer blurted. “What’d they do, jump over that stone face? I’m tellin’ you, their tracks lead on up this trail.”

  “Go ahead and follow it, then,” Slater said. “I’m stayin’ right here.”

  Sawyer hesitated. Slater seemed pretty sure of himself. “I expect it wouldn’t be a very good idea to get too far up this trail. Might run right up on ’em.”

  “I doubt that,” Slater said. “My guess is they left tracks on up that trail so nobody would think they turned into the mountains right here. I expect it’ll disappear somewhere up ahead, maybe lead you in the water.”

  Sawyer considered that. It could be true. “How you figure they got over that rock cliff, if they went thattaway?”

  “They didn’t go over it,” Slater said. “They went around it. Come on and I’ll show you.” He walked to the side of the massive stone face, with Sawyer right behind him. Almost to the outer edge, where the stone ended against a rocky cliff, he stepped inside the rock.

  “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” Sawyer drawled. What appeared to be solid rock all the way to the edge was in fact a pocket, big enough for a man to lead a horse through. The illusion of a solid wall was made possible because of the stone inside the passage. Standing in front of it, only a few feet away, you would swear it was one solid piece.

  “I expect we’d best be more careful from here,” Slater cautioned. “When we get off this rock apron, we’ll be on the ground again, and then we can see if they went in here or not.”

  They followed the narrow passage to the back side of the rock to step out onto a game trail that wound around the mountain. It suddenly became as dark as night when they found themselves in a tunnel of spruce trees that shut off the fading light of day. They stopped to listen.

  Hearing nothing but the whisper of wind through the spruce needles, Sawyer whispered, “I’ve got a match. Maybe we can take a quick look at the ground for tracks.” Slater nodded. Sawyer struck the match on his belt buckle and it burst into light that seemed as bright as a railroad flair in the dark tunnel. They both searched the ground quickly before the short life of the match ended.

  “There,” Slater said, and pointed to a hoofprint on the floor of the passage where a horse had slid a hoof in the thick needles.

  “I reckon that’s sign enough,” Sawyer said, and blew out the match just before it burned down to his thumb. “How far does this trail go before you come to that canyon you said was back here?”

  “About a quarter of a mile,” Slater said.

  “If they’re in there, and it looks they might be,” Sawyer speculated, “then we’ve got ’em trapped. They have to come outta there in single file.”

  “They’ve got a back door,” Slater said. “It’s the way I carried that deer outta there. At the other end of that canyon, there’s a ravine that leads down to a creek at the foot of the mountain behind this one. So I reckon the lieutenant will wanna blo
ck both doors.”

  “Hot damn!” Sawyer whispered. “Let’s get back and tell him. He oughta be tickled to find out he’s got ’em boxed up like a birthday present.”

  “I expect we’d best move up this trail far enough to make sure they’re in here first,” Slater said.

  “Yeah, I reckon,” Sawyer said with some hesitation. “But I wouldn’t wanna get too close. I don’t cotton much to the idea of gettin’ chased back down this little trail in the dark. I ain’t that fast a runner.”

  Slater could not help noticing Sawyer’s abrupt change of manner. Gone was the sarcastic attitude he previously displayed. In fact, he was downright civil.

  “I’ll just move up this trail a little bit,” Slater said, “until I can see or hear ’em. Then I’ll hustle back down here and we’ll go back to tell the soldiers.”

  “Mind you don’t let ’em see you,” Sawyer said.

  “They won’t,” Slater assured him, and started up the narrow trail at a trot.

  Relying on his memory, he maintained that pace until reaching a place where the trail leveled off. Knowing it would drop down again into the canyon, he slowed to walk a few more yards before stopping when he heard the sound of voices. That was confirmation enough, but he inched his way a few yards more until he could see the campfires below to be doubly sure.

  Satisfied, he returned the way he had come.

  * * *

  As they expected, Russell was excited to hear the news. “By God, they couldn’t be in a better spot for us, could they? But we’ve got to strike ’em before they come outta there, and that means we’ve got to get into position tonight. We can’t afford to lose this advantage.” He looked anxiously at Slater. “Can you find their back door tonight, in the dark?”

  “I can.”

  “Good, good,” Russell proceeded excitedly, as he played out the ambush in his mind. “We’ll split the company up to watch both entrances to that canyon and wait for them to come out in the morning. Sergeant Bell, you’ll be in command of half the company, and I’ll lead the other half.”