Blood on the Plains (A Cheyenne Western Book 5)

by Judd Cole

  The flat report startled everyone into silence.

  “You men on shore!” he called out. “Tonight it’s good liquor and it’s compliments of the Overland Company! Come aboard and broach a keg in friendship!”

  A rousing cheer greeted this and men began hurrying onto the boarding ramp.

  “There’s also entertainment tonight!” shouted Munro. “We’ve captured three Cheyenne savages that tried to slit our throats while we slept!”

  This brought another cheer and a few shouted oaths. The current Apache and Comanche uprisings to the south had paralyzed Texas and the Arizona Territory and spread fear far north. Now all was pandemonium as more of the hardcase militiamen joined the knot boarding.

  It was one of Danford’s men, having crossed to the pen to admire some of the horseflesh, who first saw it—the rapid sweep of flames just now engulfing the stern!

  “Sweet Jesus Christ!” he said to himself. Then, almost as an afterthought, he yelled as loud as he could, “Fire!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lying trapped on the deck, Touch the Sky felt the mood change from hostility to panic.

  “Fire!” someone shouted again. The deck shook and vibrated under him as the men rushed toward the stern. The same stiff breeze that had filled the square sail all afternoon now wafted the first billowing clouds of harsh smoke to Touch the Sky’s nostrils.

  The boat pitched wildly at anchor as the horses panicked, rearing up, leaping up out of the shallow pen and forcing men to jump overboard to get out of their way.

  “What’s on the spit, tadpole?” a familiar voice suddenly said in his ear.

  “Knobby!”

  “Boy, you better hump it like a hound with his ass afire,” said the old-timer grimly as he sliced his Bowie through the rawhide thongs binding Touch the Sky. “That-air blaze I set ain’t gonna burn forever.”

  Knobby leaped across to free Wolf Who Hunts Smiling as Touch the Sky, body protesting in pain, sat up and quickly rubbed some life back into his dead, swollen limbs. Knobby must have ducked into the cabin first: Their weapons lay piled on the deck nearby.

  “Shove that cut rawhide in your legging sash,” said Knobby. “No need the others findin’ it quick and knowin’ how you was sprung.”

  “What about Little Horse?”

  “Doan be a bigger fool ’n God made you, sprout! Lookit! Twixt that-air smashed knee and that bash he took on the brain-pan, he ain’t goin nowheres. You two jist rabbit for help or all three of ye’re as good as planted!”

  Old Knobby was right and Touch the Sky knew it. The old man had just risked his life for them, and he still had a lot to explain to Munro. Either they insisted on taking Little Horse, and died now trying to get him ashore, or they ran hard and lived to fight another day, perhaps saving Little Horse. It wasn’t much of a choice, nor was there time to debate—already the flames were under control. Any second now someone would glance forward and see them.

  Wolf Who Hunts Smiling too stumbled a few times trying to take a first step on his numb limbs.

  “This hoss is dust,” said Knobby, heading back toward the hubbub at the rear. “Keep your powder dry, lads!”

  In a moment he had disappeared in the confusion. Touch the Sky was casting a last, regretful glance at Little Horse when Wolf Who Hunts Smiling urged in his ear, “Into the river, buck, and cry for your friend later!”

  They leaped off the prow, stiff muscles screaming in pain, and sliced into the cool river water. Behind them, horses still nickered in fright and greasy black smoke clouds still darkened the twilight sky. No one had seen them leap. They decided to strike for the opposite, more heavily wooded bank.

  They had not quite reached the middle of the river when Hays Jackson’s voice roared, “What in tarnal hell? The Innuns’re loose!”

  “There!” someone else shouted. “There, in the river, see ’em?”

  “Put at ’em, boys!” yelled Fargo Danford. “It’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel!”

  The sun was down, but there was still plenty of light for aiming. A terrific volley of rifle and pistol fire churned the water into foam all around the two fleeing Cheyennes. Touch the Sky took a quick breath and swam deep, his chest scraping river bottom. The deadly hail of lead followed him down, making hollow pinging noises underwater.

  He lost track of Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. His lungs were soon bursting for air, but Touch the Sky refused to surface again until he struck the opposite bank. His head emerged at the same moment as his comrade’s. They scuttled up out of the water like wading birds fleeing from a snake, bullets still humming past their ears and zwipping through the tall bunchgrass.

  There was a savage explosion from the starboard gunnel as someone fired a blunderbuss. The eight-ounce ball whistled between Touch the Sky’s legs and plowed into the bank, kicking up a geyser of dirt and grass. Another blunderbuss fired, and a sapling just beside Wolf Who Hunts Smiling snapped in two.

  Bullets nipping at their heels, they finally reached the protection of the trees. But now they could hear the sounds of pursuit as their white enemies, mounted on horseback, began fording the Tongue.

  Anyone watching the two youths move would have thought they were old men tied up with stiff joints. Feeling had still not returned to Touch the Sky’s swollen feet, and Hays Jackson’s brutal kicks had left his rib cage a mass of tender bruises. Each deep breath felt like a spike being stomped into him.

  But the sounds of deadly pursuit, not far behind them, turned those clumsy feet into wings. Unencumbered by horses, they were able to penetrate the thickets and brambles that riders would have to bypass. By the time darkness had finally settled in, the sounds of the chase had given way to the usual nocturnal chorus of the forest.

  “I am for traveling through the night,” said Touch the Sky. “It is all downriver to our camp. We follow the Tongue to Bear Creek, then to the Powder.”

  “I have ears for this,” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. “We can hollow out a canoe from one of these soft logs. We must return to camp, alert the council, then join the war party which must intercept the keelboat and destroy those white devils.”

  “And save Little Horse and Knobby,” added Touch the Sky.

  “Little Horse will be dead,” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling flatly. “Nor do I think the old hair-face will still be above the ground. The whites will soon guess that he helped us.”

  “This one has helped you more than once,” said Touch the Sky, “yet you say you hate all whites.”

  “He is a warrior to be respected. He knows even more than my cousin Black Elk about the warrior arts. But never forget that for all we have seen the hair-face do, there is even more we did not see. He has scalped red men in his youth—I have seen the scar on his head, his cold eye and steady hand when the battle is on! You have seen trouble, but never have you been forced as I have to watch while Bluecoats cut your father down like cattle, laughing and congratulating themselves and paying off bets on the kill!”

  For once Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had not spoken merely to taunt him. But almost as if sensing he had shown too much feeling, the younger brave now spoke in his usual, arrogant tone. It was another reminder of the battle looming between them, a reminder that their two ambitions took vastly different forms.

  “Put your friends out of your mind. This leaves more room to nurture vengeance after we return. Those stinking dogs lifted their legs and made water on me! I will lead the young warriors in their first combat. We shall kill so many that Arrow Keeper will have to declare a Scalp Dance to give thanks! Little Horse and the brave old hairy-faced one shall be avenged many times over.”

  Still, as the two Cheyennes began desperately whittling the center out of a cottonwood log to make a hasty dugout, Touch the Sky clung to hope for his two friends.

  ~*~

  “Alert the bands all up and down the river,” said Wes Munro. “Watch the land routes and post sentries along the water. And make the order clear: Shoot to kill. These are dangerous braves.”
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  Fargo Danford merely nodded, too disgusted to muster the usual false congeniality toward his employer. He had promised his boys a big shebang tonight, and now Munro was closing down the show.

  “I’ll put the word out,” he said. “But say, who can blame ’em if they ain’t too keen for it? They was promised top-shelf liquor. Now they’re sent off without any.”

  Munro was quiet after this, staring out across the dark silence of the river. He, Hays Jackson, and Fargo Danford stood just outside the cabin of the Sioux Princess. Most of the men had gone ashore to their old camp, sent by Munro in his rage after the escape.

  Now he had cooled off enough to know it was dangerous to push it with these men.

  “You’re right,” he told Danford. “They can take the liquor with them. Just leave me in peace on the boat.”

  “Say! That’s mighty white of you, Wes. I’ll see to it personal that them two Cheyenne whelps get kilt. What about the one that’s left?”

  “Leave him. He’s unconscious now anyway. He might draw the other ones back. Just make sure you alert the rest of the bands. I want that Powder River camp watched. The first sign of a war party forming, all the militia will rendezvous at the boat.”

  “Got ’er,” said Danford.

  Danford’s boot heels were still drumming on the boarding ramp when Munro turned to Jackson.

  “How do you figure that fire got set?”

  Jackson’s face was a blur in the darkness, but Munro could smell him plain enough. He stepped carefully upwind of his lackey.

  “One of the horses kicked over a coal-oil lamp, mebbe?”

  “Maybe. But where was the old man when the fire broke out?” said Munro. “I saw him later, returning from this direction.”

  “I catch your drift,” said Jackson. “The old fart lit it hisself, then cut the bucks loose.”

  “That’s what I’d wager,” said Munro.

  “Pus-gut old sonofabitch.”

  Both men stood in the slanted shadow cast by the cabin, watching Knobby measure out grain for tomorrow’s feed.

  “He’s been in this right from the jump,” said Munro with sudden conviction. “He knew the tall buck from before. He must have sneaked ashore during that ceremony, met with him. It’s been that old codger all along.”

  “Like he told us, he’s got his rifle to hand. He’s expectin’ us.”

  Munro nodded. “But he’ll drink himself to sleep like he always does. Just be patient.”

  ~*~

  Old Knobby did get drunk, as usual. But he also took extra precautions when he fell asleep.

  Instead of his usual bedroll on deck, he made a crude shakedown bed right in the middle of the pen amongst the horses. He knew from long years of experience that horses would avoid stepping on humans. Curled up around his Kentucky over-and-under, he drifted off to sleep hidden behind a score of milling horses.

  Sometime late in the night, one of the horses nickered. The old mountain man sat up, instantly wide awake.

  There was a loud, menacing click as he cocked the hammers. The river was silent except for the low hum of insects, the gentle lapping of the water against the hull. A clear night sky had been dotted wide with blazing stars.

  “Come on, then,” he said softly into the horse-fragrant darkness around him. “Ol’ Patsy Plumb here has got a kiss fir ye.”

  Another horse nickered, several moved nervously. Knobby kept his head down below their bellies, watching for legs wearing pants.

  Suddenly he heard a soft plop as something was thrown in among the animals. There was a slither of movement in the corner of his eye, an abrupt stirring among the horses. Then Knobby saw, in a stray patch of moonlight on the deck, that it was a fat brown river snake that had been tossed into the pen.

  The snake panicked at all the dangerous hooves. The horses were equally panicked by the sudden presence of a reptile. They reared back all around it, leaving Knobby exposed in his crude pallet.

  A light suddenly flared inside the cabin, and Knobby swung his rifle in that direction, distracted.

  That was when Jackson stepped up behind him and slugged him hard on the side of the head with the belaying pin.

  The flintlock clattered to the deck. Knobby gave one surprised grunt before he sprawled over on top of it.

  Jackson kicked him several times for good measure.

  “Drag him up here,” said Wes Munro quietly from the cabin. “Stake him out next to the Indian. A man likes to be surrounded by his friends when he’s dying.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Touch the Sky and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling quickly discovered that death now lurked at every turn in the river, behind every deadfall.

  They finished hollowing out their dugout while the Grandmother Star still blazed brightly in the north. They lugged the canoe down to the river and slipped into the quick-moving current. For the rest of that night they made good time. Only an occasional embarrass or beaver dam slowed them down.

  By sunrise they were exhausted and hungry. They stashed the dugout in a thicket and killed a pair of rabbits. Spitting them on the same arrows that killed them, they risked a small fire and roasted them. After feasting on tender rabbit meat and cold river water, they forced themselves to move well downriver from that spot in case their smoke had been spotted. Then they crawled into a cedar copse and slept until the sun’s warmth signaled mid-morning.

  Almost immediately after they took to the river again, they encountered danger.

  The Tongue had narrowed as it passed through a rock canyon. The banks rose steep and craggy on both sides, slippery, deep-seamed rock carved out through countless eons. They steered the canoe with crude paddles they had fashioned out of squares of bark lashed tight to willow branches. Several boulders, made dangerous by the speed of the current, lay just beneath the frothing surface of the river. These hidden dangers required all their concentration.

  Neither of them saw the telltale glint high overhead as sunlight caught the brass butt plate of a Sharps percussion carbine. Word of their escape was rapidly being relayed downriver. Marksmen were being positioned at key points.

  The churning of the river was deafening in this constricted, rock-lined gorge. The two Cheyennes never heard the report of the carbine.

  A narrow water spout shot up just in front of Touch the Sky’s paddle. Another. His curiosity was deepening into a sense of danger when a bullet thwacked into the front of their dugout, chipping bark into his eyes.

  “Jump!” shouted Touch the Sky.

  He flew out one side of the dugout, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling the other, just as the next shot embedded itself where Touch the Sky had been sitting.

  They were forced to trust their weapons to the dugout. Once again the two Cheyennes swam deep, surfacing only when their lungs ached hard for air. They continued swimming deep until they reached a flat, peaceful stretch of forest well past the small canyon.

  “Look!” Touch the Sky pointed.

  The dugout had become wedged between two boulders. Several bullets were embedded in it. But none had penetrated under the waterline. Their rifles would have to be dried off some, but were still safely stowed along with their bows and fox-skin quivers filled with arrows.

  “Buck,” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, “we are alive only because Maiyun chose to smile on us. We must be more vigilant. Word of our escape precedes us by land.”

  Touch the Sky nodded. Again the rigorous warrior training first taught to them by Black Elk came into crucial play. By day and by night the two Cheyennes moved swiftly, silently, stopping only during the day to snatch a few hours’ rest. Often they took turns fitfully napping in the dugout

  They looked like the walking wounded after a terrible and long battle campaign. Deep pouches of exhaustion formed under their eyes. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s jaw was still bruised and swollen, as were Touch the Sky’s ribs. Raw scars circled their wrists and ankles like bloody bracelets, the legacy of the rawhide thongs.

  Despite their exhaustion, they re
mained ever alert for the warnings of frightened shore birds and the angry scolding which jays reserved for intruders. Their new vigilance was rewarded: Twice they were able to spot hidden marksmen before they themselves were sighted.

  They eluded the first one, hidden in a deadfall where Bear Creek joined the Tongue, by lugging their dugout ashore and laboriously carrying it around his position. But this was time-consuming, exhausting work, especially in their present condition.

  “The next one we see,” vowed Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, “will taste the edge of my knife! At this pace we will be in the cold moons before we reach our village.”

  “We cannot kill all of them,” said Touch the Sky. “Nor outwit so many. Travel on the river is too dangerous and slow. We need horses.”

  “As long as you are wishing,” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, mocking him, “why not wish for wings so we might simply fly back? Just how do you plan to get these horses? With shamanism?”

  “There are ways without magic,” said Touch the Sky. His constant worries about Little Horse and Knobby made him desperate to cover more ground more quickly. “You are too quick to rush in fighting, when using your brain would be better.”

  “And you,” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, “are too quick to make clever plans like a woman when a warrior’s rash courage is the best plan.”

  “When it is time to close for the kill,” said Touch the Sky, “I think of nothing but finding my enemy’s warm vitals. But until that time forces itself, I put the welfare of my tribe before personal glory.”

  “So you say now. This is not what you told the white pig Munro when you begged him to loosen your bonds. Then you were ready to play the turncoat Ute for him!”

  Anger sent hot blood into Touch the Sky’s face. He had been lying to buy time, and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had to know that. But now their dugout was nearing a wide bend and Touch the Sky bit back his retort. The militiamen liked to wait at such places. It was time to leave words behind and rely on his senses.