The Western Megapack - 25 Classic Western Stories

by Various Writers

  * * * *

  By the time he reached the rendezvous, his moccasins were falling apart. The sinew lacings were wet, and the seams were gaping open, and he knew dully that his feet were bleeding, but he kept moving. Then a shadow rose up out of the snow and said softly, “Grandfather?”

  “Ai.”

  It was Little Knife, shivering with the cold, but with his bow strung, and an arrow on the string.

  Two Bears asked, “The horses?”

  Little Knife pointed with his chin. “Across the draw.”

  “And the young men?”

  “They are here. With-Two-Tails killed a deer. They saw the camp, and wanted to fight the Long Knives, but Bright Wolf made them wait. Have you seen Yellow Ear?”

  Two Bears said stolidly, “Yellow Ear is dead. The Long Knives have captured four of the women.” He turned away from his grandson and trudged on to the little fire, which did not show ten feet away, for the women had built a screen of boughs around it.

  As he came out of the darkness of blowing snow, the rest of them pulled aside to give him room to hunker down by the fire. One of the women silently brought him a piece of meat, and another pulled the split moccasins from his feet and put on another pair from the pack of goods she had saved. They were too big, but that was all right. His feet swelled almost visibly as the warmth of the fire touched them. He moved back a little, and pulled a corner of his worn blanket to cover them from the heat. He wolfed the meat down quickly.

  * * * *

  The young men drifted over from other tiny, hidden fires and when he was finished eating, one of them said almost harshly, “Uncle, we take the war-trail against the Long Knives at daylight.”

  “No,” said Two Bears. “We will stay hidden from the Long Knives until they go away. We can have no more killing. It was the killing of the black trader that brought them here.”

  The young man, Eager Hunter, said quickly, “The black trader made us drunk and stole our horses. He is the one who fired the first shot. We took back our horses. We are not children, Uncle. We are men.”

  “There will be no more killing,” repeated Two Bears. “We are too weak. If you are killed or captured, your families will die. And there are not many left. No, we will not fight.”

  Eager Hunter spun on his heel, and walked lithely away. Two Bears watched his strong young shoulders, proud and square under the deer-hide robe, and sighed. He knew. He remembered his own vaunting strength of youth. He remembered the time when the Crows and the Arapahoes frightened their children with the name of Two Bears. The griping of shamed anger was in him, for he knew it was better that a man die in battle, with his face turned to the enemy, than to die of hunger. But the old days were gone.

  If the buffalo came back.... If the Long Knives stayed to their forts and left the Indian in peace.... He did not sleep well.

  There was no meat left in the morning. A few scraps for the youngest of the children, a scant handful of hoarded pemmican for the young men. One of the women brought Two Bears a horn of soup, the liquid in which the meat had been boiled for the children. It was warm, and made a strengthening glow in his stomach, for all it was a mouthful.

  The young men, six of them, ranging in years from 18 summers to 30, were catching up their ponies, making ready for the day’s hunt. Two Bears walked out to them.

  “Hunt into the hills,” he said. “Do not shoot your guns. The Long Knives will hear. We will meet across Broken Leg Woman creek. We will make many trails for the Long Knives to follow. Perhaps they will go back.” He wondered how long Burden Frazee could fool the leader of the Long Knives...then dismissed the thought. His brother Burden Frazee—Buffalo Man—must conduct himself as a man with the Long Knives. He could not expect too much help from him.

  And even as he turned away from the young men, the shot cracked in the brush across from the camp. A sharp, barking shot, from a cavalry carbine. Two Bears broke into a shambling trot toward the sound, fighting the hampering depth of the snow.

  * * * *

  Captain Quarles hadn’t put an end to it by night. Burden Frazee scouted conscientiously, following always the heaviest trail of the horse herd, it being obvious even to the red-necked recruit that escorted him that he could not follow the single trails that split off at intervals. And, as Burden knew it would, the horse trail suddenly fanned out as dusk approached, and when the troop caught up to them there were twelve different trails, fanning out in as many directions. Captain Quarles, tight-lipped, surveyed it in silence, then ordered night camp made.

  He called Burden over to his fire after dark and demanded gruffly, “Any idea where they are, Frazee?”

  Frazee put his two thumb’s together and put both hands out before, him with the fingers spread like spokes of a wheel. “Sure,” he said dryly. “They went thataway. Take your pick.”

  The captain stared at him hotly for a long moment. “You’ll have something to answer to when we end this,” he said, then dismissed the scout abruptly.

  The troopers moved stiffly and slowly for reveille. They were numbed and sullen from the cold, and their fingers made hard work of working their stiff leather in saddling. Some of them hadn’t slept at all, and even with night-long tending, some of them had trouble keeping a fire.

  Frazee, who had spent a quite comfortable night with one small bull robe and a blanket, and no fire at all, cut a sardonic eye at their slow fumbling efforts and grinned faintly under his grizzled beard.

  Captain Quarles was sharp with the sergeant, who blistered the troopers, but even so, it was a drooping troop that finally lined out, and Frazee knew that this troop, outfitted as they were with the best of heavy winter woolens, had put in a harder night than the ragged, ill-fed Indians with Two Bears. Somehow, that gave him satisfaction.

  Frazee rode ahead, cutting a wide sweeping circle, taking the lashing of the snow-laden wind with fatalistic patience, almost enjoying the obvious misery of his escort, who, though he was outfitted much better and was at least twenty years younger than the scout, was obviously suffering from the vicious weather.

  His first circle netted him nothing. The trails showed no signs of gathering again. He looked back once, and saw that Quarles was putting outriders out on the flank, and then Frazee took another wide swing out through the brush, and the wind really opened up, and cut visibility down to mere feet. The trails were disappearing under the shifting snow. Then, far off to the side, he heard the flat, businesslike crack of an Army carbine, and a second later, the deep bellowing answer of a smoothbore musket, loaded with coarse trade powder and an ill fitting ball. He kicked his mount around and rode at the sound, with his escort floundering in his wake. With a dismal certainty, he knew that Captain Quarles had blundered into contact with the Indians.

  * * * *

  Two Bears ran, hampered by the snow, and then one of the young men, Eager Hunter, came by him on a plunging pony, his belted blanket billowing behind, and even as Eager Hunter was hidden by the swirling wind-borne snow, his ancient musket bellowed out at the unseen Long Knife.

  Two Bears plunged on, pausing only to string his sinew-backed elkhorn bow. and then suddenly his grandson Little Knife was beside him, riding one horse and leading another.

  “Here, Grandfather,” cried Little Knife, tossing the lead rope to Two Bears, and he too was swallowed up in the snow.

  Two Bears swung up, saw the other young men come driving up, their ponies taking the snow in plunging leaps, and then he put his own mount at the firing ahead. He passed the women, scrambling with their packs, and yelled at them to fall back to where the ponies had been held, and heard the firing pick up. He unconsciously started his war song, heard Bright Wolf’s shrill gobbling yell ahead, and rode into battle—and felt years sliding off his back as he rode.

  The Long Knives were in a clumsy tangle, the bundled-up troopers fighting their mounts, swinging their heads wildly, as the young men drove out of the snow-curtain to fire and to dodge again into invisibility. Bright Wolf loomed up alongsi
de Two Bears, and his cracked voice screamed, “With me, young men, with me!” And he leaned over his pony’s neck and started a headlong charge straight into the troopers.

  Two Bears clamped his teeth on the single thong that directed his mount, fitted an arrow to the bow string, and rode with Bright Wolf, shoulder to shoulder. A trooper loomed out of the shifting haze, high and square in the saddle, his mouth gaping as he yelled, and Two Bears loosed his shaft, saw it straighten him up, saw the trooper reel half out of the saddle, and then he saw the big man, the one with the markings on his shoulders.

  He was yelling commands, in a great roaring voice, a short gun balanced in his right hand, and troopers were gathering on him, a hard, compact knot, a tough nut to crack if they got set, and Two Bears altered his course to ride straight at them. He rode between two troopers, felt his pony lurch as it struck shoulders with one of the big bay cavalry mounts, and then the big leader loomed up before him, and Two Bears felt the scorch of exploded gunpowder on his face, and he swung the bow to count coup, striking with the bow as if it were a stick; not to kill the man, but to count a first coup. To strike an enemy in battle, without wounding or killing him, was a greater honor than a man could gain in any other way.

  The bow struck the man across the face, with the wiry strength of Two Bears’ arm behind it, and he saw the man spill out of the saddle, caught a quick frozen glimpse of the man’s gaping mouth, his nose queerly askew where the elkhorn bow had struck; but he saw no fear in the man. Amazement, yes, and anger, and a bulldog determination, but no fear; and Two Bears knew he had found an enemy worthy of the battle. Then his pony had carried him through and past the knot of troopers, and the blanket of snow was swinging to hide him.

  The young men and Bright Wolf were looming up around him, their faces set, eyes glittering with the heat of battle, the ponies breathing hard, with little spurting clouds of moisture springing from their nostrils, and Two Bears yelled again, whirled his pony and led them back into the milling throng of troopers.

  The big leader was swinging back into the saddle, and the troopers were pulled into a semblance of line now, and their carbines made a sudden unanimous roaring. Bright Wolf pitched off at Two Bears’ elbow, and his place was taken by Little Knife, who rode clinging low to his pony’s neck, his shrill young piping sounding above the deadly voices of the trooper’s guns. He straightened up suddenly, whipped an arrow back to the limit of the bow, and turned it loose. A trooper surged up high in his saddle and toppled over, the arrow thrust out stiffly from his chest. Then the carbines roared in unison again, and a somersaulting pony tumbled against Two Bears’ mount, drove it staggering to the side and the charge was suddenly broken. Two Bears swung wide and into the sheltering curtain of snow with the ragged remnants of his little band.

  They split up then, every man for himself, darting out into visibility long enough to fire a shot or an arrow, wheeling back, out of sight. They had to make a longer run of it soon, for the troopers were falling back, not in retreat, but withdrawing slowly, keeping up a shattering fire, making them pay for every shot. Two Bears made one sally, felt the numbing shock of lead hitting him, the ripping tear of the slug as it tore a finger-wide furrow across his back as he turned, and when they gathered again, not a man of them was without his mark.

  His anxious eyes saw Little Knife, his grandson, with a double wound in his upper arm, where a bullet had gone completely through. It was not bleeding much. The blood froze almost as soon as it welled out. Then he caught sight of his blood brother, Burden Frazee.

  The scout came plunging out of the snow veil to join the troopers as Two Bears made another drive at them. He saw Buffalo Man riding shortstirruped like an Indian, his buckskins covered with a blanket that had a hole cut in the center so that his head came through it, and the ends belted to his waist like a poncho, and he saw him swing up his long deadly rifle.

  With essential Indian fatalism, Two Bears knew that it was his time. Frazee was his brother—but he was a white man. He was a warrior with the Long Knives—and a man must fight with his own people. And as the black mouth of the gun came on him, Two Bears had a suddenly tired thought, “It is a brave one that kills me for he is my brother.”

  He straightened himself in that instant, to face death as bravely as it was sent, and then the gaping mouth of the rifle swept by him, even as it spat its long tongue of flame, and the pony suddenly went down under him, and somersaulted, and threw him so hard that even the cushioning snow did not save him. A great fiery pinwheel spun before his eyes, and then was blotted out.

  He came awake as someone lifted his head, and for an instant he almost groaned at the knife-like stab of pain as the movement pulled the frozen wound open on his back. Then he struggled up to a sitting position. Little Knife was standing before him with the lead rope of his pony in one hand, the other arm dangling stiffly from the double wound.

  “My Grandfather,” said Little Knife, “the Long Knives are going away.” Two Bears shook his head. It felt thick and heavy.

  “What did you say, my son?”

  Little Knife’s young face was smiling. “They go, Grandfather! The young men are following, but they are going back on their own trail. We beat them, Grandfather!”

  Two Bears staggered to his feet. He slowly tramped through the beaten snow to the trampled area of the fight. The wind had stopped, and the heavy feathery flakes drifted down silently. His pony lay yonder, with a little steam rising as the snow struck its still warm hide. Yonder lay Bright Wolf, already filmed over with the white veil, Eager Hunter lay a few feet away, half under his dead pony, neither of them ever to move again Another of the young men sat braced against a sapling, methodically and stoically binding a bandage of moss and buckskin about a gashed thigh. Another dead pony lay back-to-back with a big cavalry horse on the far side of the trampled spot.

  Two Bears took a long breath, and let it out.

  “Yes, my grandson,” he said quietly and bitterly, “we have beaten them—for now.”

  But he knew how little they had won. They would have to move—all of them. The women, and the young ones; the wounded and the sick and the hungry. The snow was piling up, but they would have to go higher; through the pass, across the mountains, on into the dubious shelter of the high valleys beyond. Perhaps they would find game, perhaps not. Only the Spirit above could say.

  But the Long Knives would be back—they always came back. Perhaps not this winter; perhaps not next summer—but they would be back. He sighed, and the age came on him again.

  “Yes, my grandson,” he said, “we have beaten them for now.”

  * * * *

  Far down his own back-trail, Captain Quarles reformed his troop. Burden Frazee came in out of the hampering snow and reported, “They’ve give it up, Cap’n. I don’t think they’ll tackle us again.”

  Captain Quarles’ smoldering anger roared out of him.

  “A dirty, stinking bunch of savages!” he roared. “A miserable, stinking bunch of half-starved animals drove us back!” His eyes glinted savagely from their blackened and swollen sockets, past the flattened bridge of his smashed nose. He touched it, and the broken bones gritted, and he swore violently. His eyes glared a baleful promise at the sergeant. “This troop will be more than a bunch of left-handed clowns when they take the field again, Sergeant,” he said. Then he wheeled on Frazee.

  “And as for you....” he began.

  Frazee kneed his pony around to face the captain. He grinned as a wolf grins and his eyes came hard and icy blue on Quarles. Somehow, in the movement, his gun muzzle came to bear on the captain’s belt buckle.

  “What about me, Cap’n?”

  Quarles mouth opened to roar an order to his sergeant and then something in those icy eyes closed his lips without a sound.

  “That’s fine,” said Frazee, still so softly that the captain alone caught his words. “Let me make my talk, and then you kin yell iff’n you want.

  “Now let’s size this thing up and see how th
e stick floats. Yer tail’s in a sling, Cap’n. You got wounded men, and sick men, and you’re about out of supplies. You got damn nigh two weeks’ hard marchin’ to git back to the fort. If I ride a hundred feet out’n this camp, your whole damn army’ll never ketch me in your natcherl lives. An’ I’m not sure you kin even find your way back to the fort.”

  Quarles started as if to wheel away, but a twitch of the gun muzzle halted him, glowering.

  “Open your ears, Cap’n, let a little of this soak in. Two Bears had you whipped. You know why? Cause he ain’t fightin’ for no uniform, and no book of rules, he’s fightin’ for his life, and his people’s life. Iff’n I hadn’t shot his horse out from under him, there’d have been a lot of blue-coats to bury back there. He’s off your back, for now, Cap’n, and he’ll stay off, unless he’s jumped again. I done you a good turn, this day, and I don’t aim to take no dirt off’n your stick about it.

  “Now, I’m layin’ it right in your hands, Cap’n. Iff’n you want to take your lickin’, and go home, I’ll stick with you, and git you through. But iff’n you don’t, I’m ridin’ out of here, and to hell with you. Take your pick.”

  Captain Quarles eyes blazed for a moment, and his hand went unconsciously to his broken nose, then fell away. His eyes bored into Frazee’s, and he studied the mountain man for a long minute. He read the brutal truth in the man’s eyes.

  “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

  The guide’s mouth quirked slightly. “Not beyond savin’, Cap’n,” he said quietly. “You’re green. You’re too full of the Army. But you ain’t no coward, and you ain’t a fool, really. When you learn somethin’ besides regulations and squads right and left, you’ll be plenty man. But you’re still workin’ with the idee that them Cheyennes ain’t men. Git that out of your head, and let it soak in that they’ve got feelin’s and pride like a natcherl man, and you’ll do. Old Two Bears seen it in you. He never would have struck coup on a coward. He’d have killed you, first shot, and hung your scalp out for the jaybirds.