Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “I’ll take a look around,” he said. “Better turn in, Cart. I’m going to push it tomorrow. I’m going to try to reach the rendezvous point ahead of time.” He bent over and rubbed out his cigar. “Webb just might need some help.”

  The stars came out, a coyote questioned the night, and Dr. Carter Hanlon stretched out on his back and looked up at the sky. He was tired, but it was a good tiredness, a weariness of the muscles and not of the nerves. A night’s rest and a breakfast, and he would be ready again.

  But Mellett’s doubts worried him. Charlie was not a man to speak as he had tonight unless he was genuinely upset. And Hanlon had been too long on the frontier to be skeptical about the intuitions of old Indian fighters. They knew when trouble was in the wind. He was thinking of that when he fell asleep.

  Mellett got to his feet and went over to the horses. He spoke to them softly, and then went on to where the sentry stood. After he had replied to the challenge they stood together for a few minutes.

  Keith was a lean, rather haggard young man with a wry sense of humor. He looked like a college professor, but as a matter of fact he had never gotten beyond the fifth grade. He was known in the troop as a particularly vicious rough-and-tumble fighter, and was one of the best rifle shots on the post. This was his fourth year in the cavalry, all of the time on the frontier. He liked Mellett—first, because he was a fighter; and second, because he was never reckless with his troops. The number of fights Mellett’s troop engaged in was as great as any other in the regiment, the percentage of casualties appreciably less.

  “Think we’ll have a fight this time, sir?” Keith asked.

  “Yes.”

  Keith glanced toward the Captain. “Will we meet the Colonel tomorrow, sir?”

  “If all goes well.”

  Mellett moved on, pausing with each of the guards for a few words. As he neared the last man, on the edge of the junipers, he thought he smelled tobacco smoke. The smell was faint, but tangible. Thomas was a new man, and very cocksure.

  “Private,” he said sternly, “there will be no smoking on guard duty. I believed I smelled tobacco smoke when I came up here. If I was sure, I should see you courtmartialed.”

  Then in a somewhat easier voice he said, “Don’t be a fool, man. A lighted match out here can be seen a long way off. If there was an Indian near you’d have lost your scalp.”

  Mellett moved on, going back through the junipers to camp. Before Mellett had his boots off, Private Thomas had lighted a cigarette. “Damned old fool!” he muttered. “That’s Army for you!”

  Red Wolf was a young warrior who had yet to take his first scalp. He had been lying under a low clump of sagebrush for more than an hour, and he had watched the glow of a cigarette. Almost ready to make his move, he had heard somebody approach, and had listened to the low murmur of voices. There was now no lighted cigarette to give him the exact location of the man he intended to kill.

  He waited again as he had waited before. After several minutes the glow of the cigarette appeared again. Lifting his bow, he put an arrow in place, waited an instant, and let his breath out easily. Then suddenly he lifted the bow and shot the arrow.

  He heard the thud of the arrow, and was moving before the man fell. His fingers touched the guard’s cheek, then seized his hair; but as the knife cut into the skin, the body beneath him convulsed suddenly and hands clawed up at him. He stabbed wildly and in a panic; once, twice, three times he thrust the knife deep, and only after the struggles ceased did he again go about removing the scalp.

  Once that was done, he stripped the body, took up the rifle and belt, and moved quickly and quietly away. Half a mile away his horse waited, tied in the deepest part of a thicket. He had been gone for an hour before the corporal of the guard found the dead man.

  “Bury his cigarette butts with him,” Dunivant said the next morning. “If I told him once, I told him twenty times.”

  Chapter 5

  *

  THERE WAS NO set pattern for the layout of a frontier army post. Only the earliest ones possessed any kind of a stockade. There was a central parade ground with the various buildings grouped about it to form a rectangle. Outside this, as if looking over the shoulders of the inner buildings, were others, in no sort of formation. Further away, about five hundred yards in this case, was Hog Town, as it was called.

  Along one side of the parade ground were the officers’ quarters, a row of frame, stone, or adobe houses that faced the enlisted men’s barracks across the way. At the north end, Headquarters, a T-shaped building of stone, looked down the length of the parade ground. To the east was the commissary storehouse, also built of stone; to the west the hospital.

  At the south of the parade ground was the long, low store of the sutler, or post trader; behind this the stables, corrals, and hay corrals. Behind the barracks were the blacksmith shop, laundry, and a varied assortment of small buildings.

  There was always a Hog Town at all the camps on the frontier. There a soldier could find whatever he wanted—women, gambling, and whiskey predominating. Operating the Hog Town here was Iron Dave Sproul, a man whose reputation had started far back along the line. Iron Dave was big, tough, and mean. He had operated such places in a dozen towns before this.

  Iron Dave had come off the streets of lower New York, had served a rugged apprenticeship as a prize fighter of sorts, a gang fighter and strong-arm man before coming west to what promised to be richer fields. As a boy in the streets he had had opportunities to study the origins of power, and more than that, the applications of power. He had also learned that more money was to be had, and less risk, by managing the fighter rather than fighting himself.

  At first he ran gambling houses and saloons, then owned some of each; but what he was looking for was the right man. What he wanted was a man through whom he could make money; and secondly, a man who would be a means to political power. He believed he had found both.

  Iron Dave, so-called because of his iron-hard fists, knew five Indian dialects and was an expert at sign language. He needed no interpreter in talking to Indians. He also knew where and how to dispense favors; and so during the course of his wandering from army post to army post he had given away a blanket here, a rifle there, and occasionally a bottle of whiskey. And he gave them to warriors.

  Making no outward show of friendship with the Indians, he still managed to become known among them as a friend. Finally, and discreetly, he began trading in whiskey and rifles, always selling to those he knew personally, always careful to let no other white man know of his activities.

  And then he met Medicine Dog.

  Medicine Dog was a man consumed by hatred for the white man, and particularly for the horse soldiers. He had been born of a Sioux warrior and a Bannock woman; his parents had come together in the vicinity of Bozeman when the Bannocks, numbering about five lodges, had drifted back to their ancient hunting grounds for a few weeks in the spring.

  Noted first for his skill at stealing horses, Medicine Dog had soon won a reputation as a great warrior. He had fought against Crook on the Rosebud, and participated in the Custer massacre, but these were only the latest of the many battles of which he was a veteran. After the Custer fight on the Little Big Horn, when some of the Sioux had fled to Canada, he had drifted westward to his mother’s people, the Bannocks. Within a few days he was associated with a group of malcontents eager to promote a fight with the white man.

  With three others, Medicine Dog had ridden to a rendezvous with Iron Dave Sproul, to trade for whiskey and guns. And Iron Dave recognized in the strange Indian those qualities of leadership with which a rare few are gifted.

  As the three Indians started away after completing their trade, and as Medicine Dog prepared to follow, Iron Dave called him back. Medicine Dog drew up, then slowly walked his horse back, his black eyes glittering.

  “You,” Iron Dave said, “some day big chief. You need guns, you come to me.”

  The Dog had merely looked at him, then turned and rode away
, but Iron Dave knew he had planted a seed.

  A month to the day, Iron Dave looked up from his desk to see Medicine Dog standing looking at some blankets for sale. It was the first time he had been in the trading post that Iron Dave then operated next to his saloon. After a while, the Indian went out and squatted by the edge of the porch.

  Iron Dave followed, seating himself on one of the chairs against the wall. He took out a cigar and lit it. Then he asked, “What do you want?”

  “Guns…for six men.”

  “All right.”

  The Dog turned his head. “Suppose I kill white man?”

  Iron Dave squatted on the ground, and with a forefinger he traced a brand in the dust. “My horses and my wagons are marked so,” he said, and glanced up at the Indian. “The rest are your business.”

  He gave Medicine Dog the guns, and fifty rounds of ammunition for each. That had been the beginning.

  A few weeks later, when word reached Iron Dave Sproul that an old competitor was planning to open a place across the street from his, Iron Dave got word to the Dog, and when the competitor’s wagons came north of Pyramid Lake they were attacked suddenly, the stock driven off, the wagons burned. And with the wagons several barrels of whiskey, the gaming tables, poker chips, cards, and other equipment.

  His occasional trips into the desert or mountains were easily explained. He was, he admitted, an amateur prospector. He did not profess to know much about ore, but he liked to prospect. Usually he brought back samples, which he discussed over the bar with miners or prospectors or soldiers.

  The fact that he usually drove a wagon or a buckboard he accounted for by commenting that, after all, he was a city boy. He would leave the burros to those who liked them. He preferred to travel in comfort. He usually drove into the Santa Rosas, and everybody knew there was ore there.

  His occasional gifts or sales to Medicine Dog enabled the Dog to become a big man among the Bannocks. He had rifles to spare, ammunition, and ponies. Moreover, Iron Dave, by a few carefully placed comments to other Bannocks, let them believe that the horse soldiers feared Medicine Dog. Gradually, Medicine Dog’s influence grew; from being a comparative outsider, he soon was sitting in council with the chiefs, and the young bucks gathered around him.

  At first Iron Dave was wary of his protégé, but as time went on he became more assured in his dealings with the Indian, and even a little contemptuous. After all, had he not practically created the Dog? Had he not built him into a position of influence?

  And Medicine Dog had proved a wily tactician. He wasted no men, he wasted no effort. The blows he struck were few but decisive. His “medicine” was good, and the feeling developed among the Indians that he was a chosen one, that with him victory was assured.

  His massacre of Webb and his patrol had been a complete success. Medicine Dog had moved on advance information. He knew how many men were with Webb and how they were armed, and he knew their intended route. The ambush had been a total victory. At the first volley from the Indians nine men fell, one of them being Webb, on whom four Indians had been directed to fire. Another among the first to fall was the only line sergeant in the troop.

  Into the plunging, struggling horses and the shouting cavalrymen, the Indians poured a deadly fire at almost point-blank range. Two more dropped. Another’s horse bolted into the ranks of the Indians, where the rider was pulled from the saddle and stabbed to death. The entire action required only fifteen minutes, and not an Indian was killed; only three were wounded.

  Medicine Dog knew all about Captain Mellett, and knew of his line of march, but he had no intention of meeting him in the field. Leaving behind a small force to harass Mellett, the Dog started for the post with the main body.

  The small group he left behind had definite orders. They were not to engage in a battle. They were to draw the soldiers’ fire, get them to expend ammunition. They were to steal or drive off their horses if possible, inflict what casualties they could. Medicine Dog wanted M Troop to return to the post a weary, bedraggled lot, needing ammunition, and exasperated at not having come to grips with the enemy.

  If all his plans went well, he hoped to be inside the post buildings, waiting for Mellett’s men to line up on the parade ground before the order to fall out.

  Medicine Dog aimed high. He wanted not only complete destruction of the force at the post, but the post itself. But the destruction of the post would wait until it had been thoroughly looted. With the arms and ammunition from the fort, he would gather a much larger force and move against Fort Halleck, or against Harney if that seemed easier at the moment.

  His force now numbered some two hundred warriors. When the news of his victories got out he would have a thousand, perhaps two thousand.

  One thing disturbed him, and it disturbed him because it did not fit…one of his braves, circling around after the fight with Colonel Webb and I Troop, found the tracks of a lone rider. Back-tracking, the Indian discovered that the rider had seen the bodies of the massacred troop. The Indian had lost the trail of the rider when he attempted to follow him.

  Who was the lone rider? Where had he gone? Was he enemy or friend? He rode a shod horse, but so did many Indians, now that some rode stolen or captured horses. The rider had walked his horse away from the massacre, and seemed to be in no hurry to get wherever he was going.

  No matter…Medicine Dog headed for the post, unaware that Major Frank Bell Paddock, with sixty men, was headed north, toward him.

  And also unaware that the post lay exposed and seemingly helpless, defended by no more than fourteen men.

  *

  A COOL WIND was blowing from the north, and the sky was cloudy. Riding beside Paddock was Hank Laban, fur trapper, buffalo hunter, and scout. He was a thin, angular man with a sour expression but a wry sense of humor. He had phrased his arguments against this march briefly and concisely, and when they were not acted upon he had saddled his fastest horse. There was, he told himself, a time for fighting and a time for running, and he wanted to be ready to run.

  “There’s been talk,” he said suddenly. “I caught me a whisper or two of some new Injun who’s cuttin’ a wide swath among the Bannocks. Seems like he took some scalps on the Little Big Horn an’ he’s been tellin’ the Bannocks how easy it was to kill white sodgers. I had a look for him but never could get a chance to see how he shaped up, but from what they say he’s one mean, smart Injun.”

  Paddock offered no comment. He was beginning to feel the saddle; that came from too much desk duty. There were always rumors, and he took no stock in them.

  “Buffalo Horn is the chief,” Pryor commented. “He’s said to be over in Oregon.”

  “Maybe.”

  Almost another mile had passed before Hank Laban ventured another comment. “Seems this here Injun has him a lot of rifles. All a warrior had to do is say he’ll ride along with him and he gets a new rifle with ammunition. I got no idea where he gets them…Medicine Dog, I mean.”

  Paddock looked at Laban. “Did you say Medicine Dog? He was supposed to be the one who hit those wagon trains a few months back.”

  “He’s a mean one,” Laban repeated.

  He rode away suddenly, without further comment, galloping on ahead, then slowing down to sweep back and forth hunting for Indian sign. He found none…although he did see the tracks of Kilrone’s horse, heading south for the fort.

  Laban had not met Kilrone, but by the time the column moved out, his arrival was common gossip around the post, and the word was that he had once been an officer in the army. Laban wondered about Kilrone, absently, without any real concentration of thought. What really disturbed him was the Dog, but he did not seem able to get his worries across to Paddock.

  Hank Laban knew enough about Indians to trust his instincts, and his every sense told him that Medicine Dog was a bad one. Paddock had been a fool to leave the post, but you don’t tell an army major he’s a fool…not if you want to work for the army; and Laban liked the salary, liked the easy living and the
available ammunition.

  He liked none of this. Charles Mellett was perfectly capable of taking care of himself with the number of men he had. Just the same, Laban knew he would rather be where he was than back at the post.

  Despite the gray day the air was clear, and he could see far off. But his eyes kept straying toward the rear, and he knew what he was looking for. He was expecting to see the smoke of burning buildings.

  At the noon halt, Laban squatted by the fire, holding a cup of coffee. “Major,” he said, “I ain’t one to interfere, but you’re on a wild-goose chase. You ain’t about to trap that Injun.”

  “I will be the judge of that,” Paddock replied brusquely.

  “Major,” Laban insisted, “he ain’t no common Injun, this here Medicine Dog. You ask me, he’s too smart to tackle Charlie Mellett. He’ll hit the post, sure as shootin’.”

  “With seventy-five soldiers waiting for him? That’s what he would expect. He certainly can’t know that we’ve marched out from the post.”

  “He’ll know. This Injun gets information right off. You can just bet that by this time he knows.”

  Information? But how? Doubt assailed Paddock. Almost at once he thought of Mary Tall Singer, Denise’s friend. After all, he argued, she was an Indian.

  Suppose Laban was right? Suppose Kilrone had been right? If this Indian, this Medicine Dog, should attack the post now there was no chance it could be successfully defended. Sergeant Ryerson was in command until Rybolt returned from Halleck, or one of the detachments returned. Ryerson was a good man…but he was ill.

  Barney Kilrone was there…or had he pulled out? For the first time in hours, Paddock thought of Denise. Suppose Barney took her away with him?

  Denise there at the fort.…He had not permitted himself to think of what could happen if the post was attacked. He had thought only of the trap he could spring on the hostiles, of the victory he could win, and of the probable results of that victory.