The old bull raised his head and turned to stare at them, not actually seeing them but curious about the click. Then he dropped his head and continued nuzzling the long grass.
The other two braves moved quickly, strung arrows in curved bone bows and set themselves. At a signal that Ellis did not see, the armed brave stood up, took steady and careful aim and fired.
The bull raised his head unhurriedly and stared at the noise and at the standing man.
One of the braves rose and shot an arrow. The bull decided on the Indian with the gun and charged.
Quickly the third brave stood up and threw an arrow. He caught the bull in the right fore-flank, but the beast continued to come as if unharmed. Now Ellis saw the gaping wound in the buffalo's neck. The brave with the gun had tried for a brain shot behind the ear and had missed.
The first bowman ran in close, ten feet away from the charging beast, and fired an arrow at an angle designed to reach the heart.
He must have missed because the buffalo caught the brave with the gun in the belly with his horns and ripped him open. The Indian spun away, holding his spilling guts, and staggered several feet before he stopped, reeled and dropped in the grass.
The bull, head down, charged for the finish, but the bowmen had restrung. They moved in broadside and fired their shafts, again behind the flank and aiming for the heart.
The bull jerked sideways, stumbled cross-legged and nearly fell. Then, spread-legged, he charged again.
Ellis watched it all—the grim struggle of the bull and the plains Indians who had to kill him in order to live. He had seen it enacted a hundred times before. He found himself breathing hard, rooting for both sides at once—for the magnificent old bull, stupid with strength, and for the lithe, swift braves.
A second brave went down from the buffalo's charging horns, but the bull was weak and nearly gone. The third brave moved around to the other side of the animal to drive home a lance, and Ellis saw at once that it was a fatal mistake.
The brave steadied himself and raised the lance. The bull swung his head in a semi-circle, sweeping up, not to attack so much as to see where his adversary was. His horns caught the brave in the thigh, laying him open up to the hip. Even from the rise, Ellis could see the white of the exposed thigh bone.
The brave dropped the lance and fell back. Then, with tottering strength, the bull turned awkwardly and moved to gore the wounded Indian. He missed with his head and staggered forward. As he staggered, he pushed out a foreleg for balance. The hoof and six inches of the bull's shank disappeared into the chest cavity of the fallen brave. The brave screamed, pinned to the ground by the buffalo's hoof, and then he relaxed in death.
The buffalo spread his legs trying to keep his balance, and Ellis could see the knuckle joints quiver as the strength ebbed out of the huge black beast.
The bull sagged to his fore-joints, then rolled over on top of two of his attackers.
The whole encounter had lasted not more than three minutes.
Ellis lay perfectly still, to see if the gunshot would bring anyone, before returning to his pony. The animal had been well trained. It had not moved out of its tracks.
Riding over the crest of the sand spur, Ellis dropped down onto the plains and gentled his roan when the animal smelled the blood. Dismounting, Ellis examined each dead brave closely and confirmed what he had suspected. They were Cheyenne, all right, but their leggings and moccasins were very old and ragged. It had been a long time since these braves had returned to their lodges where their squaws would have new ones waiting for them.
Ellis looked around carefully for the ponies of the dead braves, but he saw nothing. That could only mean one thing: other braves would be returning for them. The attempted kill of the old bull, the biggest buffalo Ellis had ever seen, must have been planned, with riders dropping off their horses some distance away and coming up, downwind of the beast, on foot.
There was a moan, a low wail and Ellis spun around, his Colt ready. One of the braves was still alive. Ellis moved among them and saw that it was the first of the three, still holding his stomach. Ellis pulled his knife to cut the brave's throat as an act of mercy. Then he stopped short.
When the others came after these three, it would be plain that one of them had been slit, and not by the old bull. If Ellis had any hope of trailing the new arrivals back to Goose Face's camp, he would have to let this brave writhe in pain and die in agony out here on the plains.
In the distance he heard the cry of a wolf that had picked up the blood scent miles away. Ellis glanced around once more, and then swung into the saddle and loped slowly back up the sand spur, turning to see the plains grass sweep back over his roan's tracks and hiding them forever. Soothing his mount with soft words and caresses on the neck, Ellis got the big stallion to lie flat in the grass deep on the farther side of the rise, and stretched out, belly-down, himself.
His body stiffened against the piercing shrieks of the brave dying on the other side of the spur. Then he heard a low growl, and suddenly the blood-curdling howl of a wolf. He knew a plains jackal had committed the final coup on the disemboweled brave.
* * *
It was not long before the second party of braves arrived. Ellis heard them when they were still some distance away, on the opposite side of the spur. He could imagine them urging their ponies ahead to the scene and he listened for their voices to rise when they discovered the deaths.
He understood a great deal of what they said to each other, and they were as impressed with the size of the bull and with the obvious struggle of their slain comrades as they were with the fact that nothing lived. Their feelings for the slain Indians were genuine but short-lived. Soon Ellis heard them begin the skinning and quartering of the huge buffalo.
He judged it to be close to one in the afternoon when he heard them begin to move off. He waited, tense, and then, with a reassuring pat to the stallion, he snaked his way to the ridge of the spur. A band of eight, the spare ponies of the dead braves slung heavy with sides of dripping beef, moved off to the northeast. The guts, bones and hoofs were all that remained of the bull buffalo. The three slain braves were left to the wolves, vultures and maggots. They had not been buried. Only the renegade brave, who had broken away from all tribal culture, would leave another brave unprotected in death, especially in such an honorable death.
Wary of the wolves that were now growing in number and tearing at the remains of the buffalo and the dead men, Ellis moved back to his roan and swung into the saddle. He topped the spur and slowly, with great patience, began trailing after the Cheyenne party.
Chapter 4
JAKE REEVES had once been captured by the Blackfeet, along with an old trapper who put him wise to the contradictions of the Indian mind. “One minute,” the trapper said, “you'll find an Injun to be as wise as Solomon and the next minute caperin' 'round with a piece of lookin' glass like a ninny bitter. But there ain't nothin' a redskin likes to do more than show off. He loves to strut and dance and sing and make medicine, but when he's huntin' or out on a war party, he's dead serious. Best goddam fightin' man in the world, considerin' he usually ain't got nothin' but a hoss and a bow 'n' arrow, standin' up to his fight naked as a jay bird. And when he's fightin' he's already thinkin' how he's gonna dance and make medicine when he gets back to his lodge.
“And part of that palaver he's plannin' is torturing his captured enemy. He figures to kill you anyway, so he might as well have a little fun, and show off in the bargain. Now, if you stand up to it like a man, and take the torturin', it just makes him that much bigger in the eyes of the squaw and the other braves that he was able to capture a man as brave as you. On the other hand, if you give up and start whinin' and beggin', you're makin' a ridicule outa him, so he'll likely kill you for embarrasssin' him, 'cause capturin' a whinin' beggar ain't no coup. Now, boy, if they really got you, you ain't likely to get away, so the only chance you got is to work on his pride and the yes-and-no, because it is and it ain't part of the s
avage's make-up.
“When he comes to torture you, stand up to him. Don't be sassy 'cause he'll just ram a Green River in you and gut you. No, boy, you gotta play off the contradictions, the pride and man part of him against the little kid part of him. Now, how you do that is dependin' a whole hell of a lot on what particular Injun's got you. If you're lucky to be caught by a chief, or a medicine man, you stand a better chance ‘cause the whole shebang is watchin' him and he's gotta put on a good show. That's important, boy, puttin' on a good show.
“Killin' ain't no more than blowin' your nose to an Injun, so just killin' a captured enemy don't mean much. You have to make him look good. Now, you might be able to do it this way, boy. Listen good, ‘cause leastways you might have a chance.
“When he starts to give you a rassle, torturin' you one way or another, take it without battin' an eyelash. And then when he's struttin' before the women and the kids and the other braves, you have to indicate that it was luck that let him get you. See what I mean, boy? You gotta get across the idea that you'd like to just set the record straight—mind you, not challenge him, or call him a liar, ‘cause that'd be interpreted as beggin'. You just gotta ease it into his mind that the others watchin' don't believe his tale about how he got you. It ain't the others you gotta convince, it's him. Put it in his mind that they don't believe his story and, boy, you gotta chance to meet him with tommy-hawks, or bow ‘n’ arrow, or over the steel of a Green River blade. That's the only chance you got, boy, and if you whip him, ain't a nation of Injuns livin' that'd knife you in the back. I tell you, boy, it's the only chance you got.”
The boy Reeves, sixteen and strong as a bull, had nimbly maneuvered a giant Blackfoot brave that day into fighting a duel to the death with naked knives before the hoots and hussahs of the Blackfoot's village. Jake Reeves still wore the jagged pink scar along his upper belly where the brave's knife had narrowly missed a death lunge, and the boy fighter had successfully countered with his own knife, driving it up to the hilt into the Indian's stomach.
The old trapper had been burned to death at the stake, a victim of his own plan when his captor had simply dismissed the old man's suggestions that he was a coward, with a tomahawk blow between the eyes.
In later years, as he grew older and wiser in experience in the ways of the Indian mind, Jake Reeves had fought four such challenges and walked away from them. He became a friend to many tribes because of his reputation with a Green River blade and because of his honesty. He had carved out a special place for himself and for his sister in the heart of the Missouri country. The two of them became known as Big and Little Sand Sticker, because to hold one tightly was impossible without drawing blood.
But Goose Face was a bitter and wise brave. He had learned the white man's lesson of war simply and effectively. Take any advantage, offer no quarter and don't succumb to the cleverness of the white man's mind. When you have him, kill him. Don't talk, don't hesitate, just kill him. Jake Reeves's attempts to force Goose Face into personal combat before the other renegades had not worked. The young rebel savage had simply whacked Reeves on the head with his rifle and ordered him spread and pegged to the ground in the bottom of the draw.
The scout had been pinned to the ground since the night before. The sun had burned down on him since dawn and his tongue had swollen from thirst. He had listened to Goose Face’s plan to stampede the buffalo into the railhead, and attack from the east at the same time, and he knew that since it was Saturday the Johnny-Jacks would be dead drunk, to the man, crowding Watson's grog tents.
When Goose Face had split up the party, leaving twenty braves behind to stampede the herd, Reeves had hoped for one thing: that the remaining braves would not be able to resist taking one buffalo while they waited. It was the last thing Jake Reeves remembered before he fainted beneath the sun. One of the sentinels had spotted a huge bull—from the talk, the biggest ever seen—wandering away from the herd. Reeves had listened to them argue. Many were afraid of Goose Face and contended that they should remain in the draw until it was time to attack the railhead. Others insisted that they had a right to eat. Eventually a plan was decided on to take the single, huge buffalo. Lots were drawn to see who would go. Half of the stampede party rode out of the draw; it was then that Jake Reeves slid into unconsciousness.
He was still unconscious when the party returned talking of the fight that must have taken place between the giant bull and the three braves. It was from such stories that legends began and grew in the lodges of the plains people.
* * *
When Nathan Ellis saw the party of Cheyenne approach a draw beyond a small rise, he recognized the position. He stopped his roan and flanked out away from the rise, wary of being spotted by sentinels he knew would be watching. He dropped back to the east, rounded a swell and pulled the stallion down still. There before him, five miles away, were the buffalo, and beyond, shimmering like a mirage in the afternoon heat, was the railhead camp.
Moving back away from the draw and well west of the buffalo, Ellis dismounted and hobbled the roan. He removed his carbine and rawhide lariat and slung his canteen over his shoulder. Going fast and low in the belt-high grass, he angled off well west of the draw.
* * *
When Liza Reeves finally caught her snorting gray, she pulled the sand sticker from beneath the blanket and swung into the saddle, her face contorted with rage. She slapped the pony hard on the rump, cleared tent guys and stays in leaps that startled dogs and scattered chickens, and struck straight west.
She rode low in the saddle, head forward, braced against the stirrups and the motion of the gray. She moved to the north of the buffalo, cutting right across the railhead where the Johnny-Jacks were laying rail faster than it had ever been put down before in the entire world.
She knew Nathan Ellis had gone south of the herd and, ordinarily, she would have lifted the high dust in that direction herself, but her anger was working hand-in-hand with her obstinance. To hell with him, she thought, that smart rebel critter! I'll just ride north and cut back around the head of the buffalo, and have a look-see into that rise beyond.
Knowing the habits of her brother, knowing nearly as much about the trail as he did and completely dismissing the idea that anything could have happened to him, she tipped the edge of the herd and cut back toward the rise. As she approached, she noted that the buffalo, who were grazing all the while but moving nevertheless, had made a circuit away from the rise.
She pulled the gray down and stopped, stood in the saddle and smelled the air. She caught the faint tang of brush-wood smoke, and then searched for a visible sign.
She laughed suddenly. “Of course,” she said to herself. “Jake wouldn't make a fire anybody could see.”
She nudged the gray broomtail forward toward the rise, her nose catching stronger suggestions of smoke as she moved.
Liza was not so enthusiastic to see her brother as to throw caution to the winds. She was aware that the fire could just as easily have been made by Indians, but she did not believe they would cut out a buffalo from the herd and feast on him with the railhead moving so fast, nearer all the time. More likely, she reasoned, there wasn't a redskin in a thirty-mile reach of here. A big party with much medicine would hesitate before going after the buffalo so close to the railhead, and a small party simply wouldn't dare.
She slapped her knees against the gray's ribs and touched him with her wang reins. The animal spurted forward toward the rise.
* * *
Ellis snaked belly-down through the tall grass. Above him an old Cheyenne warrior, who had lost his hair many years before in some forgotten brush with another nation, sat cross-legged atop a round of grass-covered clay, an outcropping of the rise above the draw.
The brave's attention was pulled back into the draw itself and his sweeping search of the plains east to the buffalo and the railhead became less and less frequent. When Ellis smelled the brush smoke, he grinned to himself. The Cheyenne were taking their time with the buffalo
and not eating it raw, but were roasting it instead.
The Cheyenne sentinel waved his arms and yelled something to the other brave beyond the round out of Ellis’s view. He was getting angry, Ellis thought, and hungry. Someone answered him, but the old brave did not reply. He swept his eyes around the plains and then turned his body around to address himself more fully to the activity in the draw.
Ellis drew his Bowie and clamped it between his teeth. He inched forward, bringing the lariat up and slipping the eye down to make a tight, eighteen-inch loop. He judged the Cheyenne to be about twenty feet away from him, pulled off that many coils, looped them in his left and hand waited.
The Cheyenne did not move. Ellis watched the high grass atop the round and when it began to waver a bit, he tightened up. The grass bent in a sudden hot gust of wind. Ellis jerked up and flew the lariat against the wind, up and out. It faltered and appeared to drop short. He was ready with the Bowie when the loop dropped neatly over the brave's head. He jerked hard and what little outcry the Indian made was carried away by the gust and not heard in the draw.
With quick strides, Ellis was beside the brave, who struggled in the grass against the rawhide lariat. Without hesitation, Ellis rammed the Bowie into the Indian's back. The knife struck bone and then slipped past and into the heart. The old warrior died without a sound.
Ellis pushed the grass aside to stare down into the draw. All of the remaining braves were hacking away at the dripping sides of beef, gesturing and talking rapidly. Further to one side Ellis spotted the spread-eagled form of Jake Reeves.
He moved back and to the higher point on the round, searching for the second sentinel he was sure would be placed farther to the east. He stopped some fifty yards farther up the rim of the draw, and waited.
He did not wait long. A garish face, old and seamed, peered up out of the grass and stared down into the draw at the other braves.
Cheyenne Saturday - Empty-Grave Extended Edition Page 5
