Frontier Feud

by Max Brand

  “As soon as no one is in sight, we start,” said Rusty to Tenney. “We ride softly for a little while, so that the hooves of the horses will not make a great sound. When we are seen, we whip hard.”

  Tenney nodded. Standing Bull lifted his great arm higher than Rusty’s head.

  “We are about to die, brother,” he said. “But the happy days we have spent together will be waiting for us in the hunting grounds.—Farewell!”

  It seemed to Rusty, as he looked at the huge man, that the worst pain of death had already gone past him. But his throat was filled so that he could only mutter a formless word. Then, since the white patrol was out of sight, he jogged his horse forward at a dog-trot.

  Watched by only two pairs of eyes, and their departure undetected by the rest of the Cheyennes, Tenney and Rusty left the camp behind them. The moon was very bright over their heads. To right and left they saw no danger; so they quickened their horses to a lope that set the ground swinging back in regular pulsations beneath them.

  If only there had been a gulley, or one of those dry draws which the spring rains cut here and there into the plains, they might quickly have been out of all danger of pursuit; but the moon seemed brighter than the sun at midday, and the plains stretched away with hardly a ripple, a becalmed, a frozen ocean.

  Tenney’s voice, low, hurried, struck suddenly into Rusty’s mind.

  “They’re coming!—Run, Rusty!”

  Red Hawk heard the pounding of the hooves at that instant. Behind, and to the right, he saw five riders streaking through the moonlight. Behind and to the left, the other patrol of four was racing toward him. Big Bill Tenney already had his horse at full speed, and Rusty’s pony followed without urging. They drew away.

  Looking back, Tenney marked the way the patrols had bunched together, making one streaming body behind them, and he laughed.

  “They’ll never catch us, Rusty. We’re leavin’ ’em behind—”

  In the midst of his exultation he was jerked out of Rusty’s sight. Horse and man toppled headlong as the poor mustang put its foot in a hole in the ground.

  Rusty, with a cry of despair, rounded his own pony back to the spot, but it was only to see the fallen horse clumsily trying to rise on three legs, while big Bill Tenney remained senseless, face down on the ground. His head was twisted sharply to the side, as though his neck was broken.

  There was no doubt in Rusty’s mind that that was the case, and as he wheeled the pony near the spot he cried out with a great pang of loss. He threw up a hand into the bright arc of the moon, calling:

  “Sweet Medicine, have mercy on his spirit! Take him to the Cheyenne Happy Hunting Grounds. Let him ride with us again in the buffalo hunt!”

  Behind him, he heard the deep, united shout of the pursuit, and he allowed his nervous horse to dash away again over the prairie. When he glanced back, he saw that two men had paused beside the fallen body of Bill Tenney. But seven more kept on the chase without interruption.

  They were well mounted. It was not for nothing that Major Marston hand-picked the horses that were kept at the fort. Out of every ten Indian ponies, he bought for the government only the best one of the lot. He chose them for size and conformation and proved speed, and now all seven of the troopers were keeping fairly close to the quarry. To Red Hawk, accustomed to the immense sweep of the White Horse, it seemed as though his mount were bogging up and down, unable to leave a single spot.

  Then he saw that the enemy were gradually closing in on him. They came up close enough to open fire, and now and then a chance shot purred in the air close to his head.

  But the cavalrymen were not wasting their efforts in this manner; they merely fired often enough to keep his nerves on edge.

  A short half-hour from the camp, it was perfectly clear to Rusty Sabin that he was lost, for his mustang’s head had begun to bob. And now, at the very moment when his cause was already lost, his way was blocked by a dry draw that clove a winding way across the prairie, with ten-foot sides as straight as a masonry wall!

  He had to turn, groaning, as he did so, to ride up the edge of that ditch. But before he had gone two jumps, a big caliber carbine bullet smashed into the mustang with a heavy, chugging sound. The poor beast swerved in its agony, and leaped blindly straight into the draw.

  CHAPTER 30

  Rusty had wit and quickness enough to shake his feet out of the stirrups. Then came the shock of the impact that knocked him headlong. It was a rolling fall, or he would have been knocked witless. As it was, he got dizzily to his feet and staggered around the next bend of the great ditch.

  Above him he heard the loud yelling of the cavalry. He could see the heads and shoulders of two galloping riders, as he sank down behind a bush that thrust out from the side of the bank. Sounds of scattering gravel told him that the men had found a way down into the draw. Then, with a mighty crunching of small rocks under foot, three riders hurtled past him.

  The noise diminished in that direction; it grew up again, and thundered past him. They had only to give one fixed look to the little bush that half sheltered him with its scattering leaves, in order to discover his place of hiding. But they went on past, leaving a thin reek of horse sweat in the air. And Rusty heard a voice thundering:

  “Back the other way! He’s not up here.”

  Then the storm of hoofbeats roared away.

  And so Rusty stepped from his concealment and ran for a minute or so over the stones of the draw. He climbed the northern bank, but from its top he could see nothing. The horsemen were totally swallowed in the depths of the little ravine. Then he stood up and began to swing straight north with that long, reaching, effortless stride which only Indian runners or Finns know how to use.

  If only a darkening cloud would blow before the face of the moon! He had thought he was ready to die; but Tenney, Standing Bull, his father, Maisry, the White Horse—all that he had lost—began to seem small compared with the sweetness of bare life itself!

  But there was not a cloud in the sky, and the brilliance of the moon drowned all the stars near it and made thin the glittering of the little specks of light along the horizon.

  Far off to the right, he saw a small, dark figure moving. That was one of the riders, sent to scout for the fugitive. He stared behind him to the left, still running. There, in spite of the joggling of his head, he could make out another dim shape.

  Would it be wiser to cast himself flat on the ground and try to escape detection in that manner? No—for if the cavalry had started its search so systematically, they would cut for sign all across the ground, and the grass was hardly longer than the nap of a deep velvet. Hiding would be impossible.

  A sudden uproar to his right startled him. Then, out of a shallow depression a quarter of a mile away, he saw the source of the thundering. A great herd of horses had been startled by the approach of the first rider that Rusty had spotted. It was veering straight across the line of Rusty’s flight, and in its midst he saw a shining shape, like the foam on the crest of a great dark wave.—The White Horse!

  Then, as he ran, he shouted. He headed straight on toward the running mass. There might be danger in that. Wild or half wild horses that will flee from a mounted man will often despise a man on foot. But the gleam of the great white stallion had maddened him.

  A great shoulder of the flying herd poured down at him, perceived him, veered suddenly away. He yelled at the pitch of his voice; but the noise of the beating hooves, and of the squealing, grunting horses, utterly drowned the sound.

  He tried to whistle, as he stood fast; but for an instant his panting made that impossible. Then, looking wildly about him, he saw the rider from his left cutting straight toward him, with head lowered to jockey his horse into fuller speed.

  Once more, Rusty tried to form his lips to send the familiar signal shrilling through the moonlight toward the stallion, and this time the blast went out with a thin, high quaver which seemed utterly futile against the roar of the herd.

  But an ear ke
ener by far than that of any human being had marked the sound. Red Hawk saw the lofty head of the stallion veer through the flying crowd of horses; and as he whistled again, the mighty shape emerged from the herd like the moon from among swiftly blowing clouds. It stood there for an instant, head high, glorious of front, with the tail bent aside by the wind. Then, with a rush, the White Horse came at him—headlong. His hooves skidded over the turf as he swung himself in beside his master. And in another moment Rusty was on the familiar, sleek-muscled round of the stallion’s back.

  He wound one hand into the mane. Behind him, he saw the cavalrymen riding erect, heard them shouting with amazement. Off to the right came the second pursuer at the full bend of his pony. But Rusty laughed like a madman now. They might as well try to catch him as try to catch the far-flinging thunderbolts from heaven. It seemed to him that the White Horse could outdistance even a bullet in full flight.

  He shouted, and instantly the stallion was plunging deep into the sweeping masses of the herd, a river of horse flesh that streamed about Rusty. Here and there, the broken end of a lariat tossed wildly in the air; a sign that Indians had once owned all of these horses which the stallion had reclaimed for the wilderness. And by the grace of fortune, Indians would once again sit on their backs.

  In the meantime, the rush of the herd left the manhunters far to the rear. From the high back of the White Horse, Rusty could see the cavalrymen pull up their horses and sit and gaze.

  He let the herd pour on for a half-hour or more. Then, gradually, he sent the stallion up into the lead. There was no bridle to control the monster, but no bridle was needed. All he had to do was to speak—or to pull on the mane, as on reins connected with the sharpest of controlling bits. The mere sway of his body or the pressure of his knees would guide the White Horse.

  All the while, as he drifted the big fellow up and down across the face of the herd, he could feel the ecstasy of that reunion springing through the great body of the stallion. Gradually it was slowed, then halted. After that, by degrees, Rusty began to range the herd on the back-march. He worked them slowly, because he knew that the main point would be the moment of pouring them into the Cheyenne camp. He had no means of warning the tribe of the treasure that he was bringing. And it would be only with a rush that he could hope to send the mass of mustangs flying through the white patrols.

  And once they were started at such a pace, might not their momentum carry them out again on the other side, and so flinging away across the prairie again?—Or, before he came near the camp, would the outpost of the white soldiers see him and plunge in at the horses, scattering them?

  He knew how those chances lay; but he could only go on, keeping the horses ranging to hold the herd compact. Thought of the wailing of the Cheyenne women filled his mind like a wind.

  CHAPTER 31

  Bill Tenney did not have a broken neck, however. He almost wished that had been the case, when he found himself in the hands of two cavalrymen, with his hands tied behind his back. They drove him before them; and one of them, with a drawn saber pricked him in the back if he went slower than their pleasure.

  “The major’s gonna be right glad to see you!” they kept telling him.

  And the major was “right glad,” indeed. Joy, rather than anxiety was what had kept him from sleeping that night. For with his patrols posted, he had not the slightest doubt that the game was in his hands. If the Cheyennes had had their horses, he would have been in a bad pickle, to be sure; for it was plain, the moment he had sight of the camp, that it contained many times more than the three score warriors that Blue Bird had told him of. He would have put it down as a village capable of sending out two or three hundred fighting men, numbers enough to make his retreat to the fort a desperately dangerous affair. But he was confident that since the men were on foot, the soul was gone out of them.

  There was also the lamenting of the women to make the soldiery savage with confidence and to pass like the sweetest music into Major Marston’s soul. As he listened to it, it inspired him. The bleating of sheep would not have been more delightful to the ear of a hungry mountain lion. He could not resist leaving his tent and walking restlessly up and down, all his nerves a-tingle.

  He had rushed an Indian camp more than once. He knew what it meant to spit human bodies with a straight sword-thrust. He knew what it meant to bring down the sword in a great overhand sweep, until the edge closed through flesh and shuddered home against bone.

  The thing to do was to make a clean sweep. The “soft” men he had carefully weeded out of his command. The men who remained were chosen cutthroats. They were the riff-raff of the frontier—thieves, sharpsters, mankillers whom he had gathered up and of whom he had robbed the gallows to fill out the numbers of his command. If there were a few honorable natures remaining, they would be carried away by the example of the rest, when it came to the final pinch.

  And he expected to kill man, woman and child, when he stormed the Cheyenne camp.

  First, however, there would be long, sweet days of peace and plenty in the soldier lines, while the Indians gradually starved. The red men had neither the skill nor the nerves to endure a siege. Their ammunition would soon be spent. And their hearts would wither faster than their bodies. Every day, they would send out deputations begging for terms. The women would come screaming for mercy.

  But the major would drive them back again. He hated the Indians, one and all, with the hatred of a conqueror. Above all, he saw ways of torturing this “battle” into the fairest flower of his fame.

  No wonder that the major, filled with these prospects, was still awake when the first fruits of his victory were brought to him in the person of the escaped thief, Bill Tenney.

  The major was sitting at his little portable desk, drawing up a first draft of the long lie which he would write to Washington. The light from the small lantern was not bright, but his eager mind did not need comfort at a time like this, when his shoulders were already being weighted with the insignia of a general. For after such a deed had been reported, it could not be long before the statesmen who chewed tobacco in the capital city would reward him with that which he desired.

  Then he heard the footfalls, the knock at the door and—

  “Night patrol with a prisoner, sir!”

  He looked up with a smile and commanded the party to enter. A corporal and a private came in, with Bill Tenney driven before them.

  The major did not continue to smile. The joy he felt was too savage and too deep for mere smiling. Instead, the corners of his mouth began to twitch just a little, and his eyes burned bright.

  “Ah! My old friend Tenney?” said he.

  Tenney said nothing. He could only wish that the fall from the pony had been fatal to him. The death that the major gave him would be a masterpiece of consummate torment, of that he was certain. But as he had faced the same prospect in the Cheyenne camp, so he was able to face it now.

  “There was a couple of ’em bolted out of the camp. This here was one, sir,” said the corporal. “We took after ’em—Number One and Two Patrols. This here come a cropper when his horse busted its leg. The other one went on. But the boys was closin’ up on him, the last I seen.”

  “Well done!” said the major, heartily. “This is the sort of service that’s easily remembered. I won’t let you two get out of my mind in a hurry. We’re going to have the bones of that camp to chew on, before many days, and I’ll see that you two have some with marrow in ’em.”

  The corporal saluted. The private could only grin like an ape.

  “Now, Tenney,” said the major, “tell me where you were heading with your friend—and who the other fellow was. How was it that the Indians let the pair of you go off on two of their precious few horses?”

  “Why,” said Tenney, finding his tongue with amazing ease, “there wasn’t no trouble about that. Him that I rode off with—they’d give him their hearts in their hands, if he as much as asked ’em for their blood.”

  “Is he thei
r chief? You mean to say that their chief was running away from trouble in the pinch?” demanded the major.

  “Him? I ain’t talkin’ about their chief. Standin’ Bull is considerable man, but he ain’t the first man in that outfit!”

  A cold thought struck through the breast of the major.

  “Do you mean, by any chance, Rusty Sabin—that rat of a refugee from justice?” demanded the major.

  “Him is what I mean.”

  The major turned white about the mouth. It would be the undoing of the sweetest half of his plans, if Rusty should escape from him. For if ever he came to meet Maisry again, one look between them would undo all of Major Marston’s plots and the counterplots.

  “You mean to say,” he thundered suddenly, “that just as I’m closing my hand over the camp, the man I want the most is squeezed out of it?”

  “They’ll get him,” declared the corporal. “They was sure closin’ up on him, sir, when I last seen ’em!”

  “Why didn’t you go on?” shouted the major. “When you knew the chief prize was right ahead of you, why did you stop for this poor fool?”

  “We didn’t know it was Rusty Sabin, sir. Besides, we was detailed by the sergeant.”

  “Damn the sergeant!—Are you sure they were closing on him?”

  “They sure was closin’ on him, sir!”

  “If they don’t bring him back, God help their souls!” said Major Marston.

  He turned his attention suddenly back on Tenney.

  “Where were the pair of you headed?” he demanded.

  “Across the plains,” said Tenney.

  “Where were you headed?” snapped the major again.

  To Tenney, it was as though the pain of the whip had again eaten into his back. He remembered the lie just in time to speak it.

  “There’s another outfit of Cheyennes lyin’ off there, somewheres,” he said. “Spotted Antelope—or somebody like that.”