“That would not be easy in the daylight,” Lame Foot said.
“What you say is true,” Walking Fox countered. “But there are enough old beds where the buildings were burned that if a man is a skillful scout, there is a good chance he could find the horses. And without their horses, they would be at our mercy. I am such a man.”
Red Shirt nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he said. It had occurred to him, but he had discarded the idea because the fort behind Carson was just as open as that expanse before them now. Maybe Walking Fox was right. Maybe there were enough old beds to use for cover. He tried to picture the beds Walking Fox spoke of, knowing he was referring to some old foundations where buildings had once stood. “It is possible,” Red Shirt said, “but it would be dangerous, and would take a man who could move quickly and carefully.”
“I am such a man,” Walking Fox repeated, drawing his shoulders back proudly.
“Yes,” Red Shirt said, “you are such a man. Go, then, and we will keep them pinned down from here.”
“I will go with you,” Cut Hand offered, “to help with their horses.”
Red Shirt smiled. “It’s a good plan. Cut back near the forks of the creek and come up the other side. Me and Lame Foot will keep ’em busy.”
* * *
With no sign of anyone coming up from the other side of the parade ground, Carson took the time to drag a couple of charred timbers over to lay on top of his doorsill in an effort to build a higher barricade for him and his rifle. The sun was starting its daily climb into the prairie sky. It made him wonder if Nancy and Frank had a canteen of water with them. If not, they might get mighty thirsty if the siege lasted all day. He thought of Frank then, and the tragic killing of his brother, and wondered if he had been in any way to blame. Maybe he should have routinely been scouting their back trail each night to make sure no one was following them. It had never occurred to him to do so. Then he wondered if it was Red Shirt who was shooting at them. If it is, he thought, he sure got himself some help awful fast. But the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed to him. These and other thoughts raced through his mind, and it occurred to him then that he had definitely assumed the responsibility for seeing Frank and Nancy safely to their destination in Montana. Thinking of the long day of waiting before them, he wondered if he should take the canteen from his saddle and sneak back to them. “Hell, I don’t know,” he mumbled, realizing that he didn’t like the role as the person in charge. Further thoughts were curtailed for the moment when a slight movement near the old officers’ row caught his eye.
Immediately back in the moment, he laid his rifle across one of the timbers he had dragged into position and strained to see what had prompted him to become alert. There was nothing for several minutes, causing him to believe it had been the wind blowing the sage that had grown up along the old palisade wall. He was about to shift his gaze to scan the empty parade ground again when he saw them. First one, then a second figure crawled from behind the scorched rubble of a building to take cover behind the ruins of a house that had stood next door. His instinct had been right on. They were making a play for the horses.
He quickly checked his rifle to make sure it was ready to fire, then shifted his focus back to the ruins of what appeared to have been a row of small buildings. With his rifle aimed at the space between the houses, waiting for the two to appear, he cautioned himself not to fire until they had made their way a little closer. In a second, they reappeared, and he could definitely identify them as Indians, and it was obvious that they planned to gain the protection of the pile of burned lumber that had once been a large building of some sort. From there, it was a distance of perhaps fifty yards of open ground to the horses gathered behind him. Although he had a shot, he told himself not to take it, not sure if he would be able to get a clear shot at both stalkers. And he needed to get both, because now that he had seen that only two had circled around behind them, he was sure it was a very small party of Indians. If he could kill both of these two, it might discourage the others from pressing their losses and maybe convince them that they had chosen the wrong camp to attack. So he waited.
After what seemed to him to be an unusually long wait, the two warriors evidently decided to make their move. Only one of them appeared from behind the pile of rubble, however. He ran in a crouched lope across the open space, covering about half the distance to the horses when the other warrior followed him. Carson didn’t take time to puzzle over the interval between the two. Maybe it was to determine if there was anyone watching the horses. Whatever the reason, it meant Carson’s reactions were going to be tested if he was to kill both warriors, so he flattened himself as best he could behind his charred breastworks, hoping the first warrior could not see him.
Walking Fox loped past the timbers piled low across the burned-out sill at a distance of perhaps fifteen yards, never noticing the man lying flat behind them. Carson waited until he had run past; then he slowly raised his rifle to sight in on Cut Hand, who was still only a few feet from the protection of the ruined building. Taking careful aim, he squeezed the trigger. When the Winchester fired, he didn’t wait to see Cut Hand fall, instead reversing his position at once to bear down on Walking Fox, who spun around at the sound of the gunshot. The Winchester spoke again, slamming a slug against the Lakota’s chest before he could raise his carbine to fire. It had happened so fast that Carson did not remember cocking the rifle between the first and second shot.
Back under the bluff on the other side of the fort, Red Shirt cursed, for the two shots he heard were unmistakably from a Winchester rifle, and they were the only shots heard. There were none from the old single-shot rifle Cut Hand carried, or the Spencer carbine he had given Walking Fox. “Damn him,” he spat, knowing that Carson had gotten both of them. His frustration with the young man was beyond control, so much so that he rose and fired half a dozen reckless shots at the corner where Frank and Nancy had taken refuge. Two answering shots prompted him to duck down again.
Like Red Shirt, Lame Foot realized the two shots they had first heard were not from the weapons his two friends carried, but he had not come to the same conclusion that caused Red Shirt to curse. “Maybe they were not able to get to the horses,” he said. “Maybe we will have to wait until night. Then we can slip in, kill them, and take the horses.”
“Walking Fox and Cut Hand are dead!” Red Shirt spat back at him. He knew it to be true, just as sure as if he had witnessed the shooting. “That damn coyote pup does not miss with that rifle of his. He was sent here to devil me!” Oblivious of Lame Foot’s questioning stare, Red Shirt fumed on. “I had him once, tied to a tree. I set him free to let him ride with me, and the devil turned on me. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“Maybe they not dead,” Lame Foot insisted, not ready to concede to Carson’s invincibility, in spite of Red Shirt’s ranting.
“They’re dead,” Red Shirt pronounced emphatically.
“I go see,” Lame Foot said, not at all happy with Red Shirt’s lack of concern for his friends’ fate. It had been several minutes now with still no sound of shots from the Lakota warriors. “I go see,” he repeated.
“You ain’t gonna find nothin’ but two dead Injuns,” Red Shirt called after him as Lame Foot scrambled back down the bluff to follow the same path his friends had taken. He needed to kill someone so badly that he was tempted to raise his rifle and shoot Lame Foot in the back. He still hasn’t won yet, he thought, referring to Carson Ryan. Lame Foot and I can still keep them pinned down with me in the front and him in the back.
* * *
Carson remained where he was, watching the parade ground to make sure there were no other raiders trying to close in on them. He felt sure Frank and Nancy were probably nervous, wondering about the two shots he had taken. When he heard the barrage of rifle shots from below the bluff, and the shots fired in response, he wanted to run back to supp
ort them, but he stayed a few minutes longer before deeming it safe to abandon his post even briefly.
“We were wondering,” Frank said when Carson crawled in beside them.
“Two of ’em tried for the horses,” Carson said. “I got both of ’em. I heard a lot of shootin’ from back here. What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” Frank replied. “One of them just took a notion to pop up and blaze away. We both took a shot at him, but I don’t think we hit him.”
“I know we didn’t,” Nancy added.
“I got a feelin’ there ain’t but two or three of ’em left, and I’m hopin’ they might decide to give up on us since they just lost two. If you can hang on here for a while longer, I’ll go back to make sure there ain’t nobody else tryin’ to get behind us. If there ain’t, we might be able to slip out the back and find a better place to hole up.” He paused. “Is that all right with you?” They both nodded enthusiastically, more than ready to abandon Fort Phil Kearny. “All right, then, I’ll go back to the horses.”
The first thing he noticed when he returned to his makeshift breastworks was that the body of the foremost Indian had been moved several yards. Possibly Walking Fox had not been dead and tried to drag himself back, but the thing that puzzled him most was the fact that the carbine he had carried was missing. He looked back at the other body and it appeared to be in the same place it had fallen. He paused only a moment to consider the risk, then decided there were no others behind the rubble of the large building, so he went out in the open parade ground where the body lay. There were footprints around the body and back toward the ruins where the other body lay. He didn’t hesitate to follow them, certain that the Indian who had left the tracks was in full retreat. When he got past the remains of the back palisades, he stopped. The tracks went on down toward the fork of the Little Piney Creek. It was a sign to him that it was his party’s chance to slip out the back of the fort, so he immediately turned around and went back to Nancy and Frank.
* * *
Red Shirt had been right, and Lame Foot thought about how certain the half-breed had been that Cut Hand and Walking Fox were dead. From the beginning of their chance meeting with Red Shirt, Lame Foot had been the one who had uneasy feelings about joining the notorious renegade. The death of his two friends told him that Red Shirt’s medicine was bad, and they should not have gone with him to hunt this white devil with the medicine gun. Lame Foot believed now that Red Shirt knew this man, Carson, would kill his friends, otherwise he would have warned them not to go after the horses. So he decided to leave before he, too, was sacrificed to the medicine gun.
His first thought had been to recover Cut Hand’s and Walking Fox’s bodies, since the white man had gone when he found them. But he soon realized that he could not carry both bodies without the horses, so he returned to the fork of the creek where they had tied the horses. He had a change of heart when he got there, thinking that he should forget the bodies and save himself from more of Red Shirt’s bad medicine. He decided it was also wrong to leave all the horses with Red Shirt, so he jumped on his pony, took the reins of their horses, and rode out to the south, leaving Red Shirt to deal with his own fate.
Farther up the bluff, Red Shirt paused suddenly to listen. Someone was stealing the horses! In a panic, he backed away from the edge of the bluff and raced down toward the creek in time to see Lame Foot galloping away, leading two horses. Enraged to think he had run out on him, he raised his rifle and fired, but Lame Foot was not an easy target as he rode behind the high bushes on the bank of the creek. It was only then that Red Shirt realized that his horses were still there. That was still not enough to quell Red Shirt’s anger. He sprinted toward the horse and was in the saddle within a few minutes’ time, flailing the blue roan mercilessly as he set out after Lame Foot.
Above him, running through the ruins of the fort, Carson arrived at the edge of the plateau just in time to see their assailant ride away. “Red Shirt!” he exclaimed when he saw the black horse that had once belonged to Luther Moody. The evil half-breed was still stalking them. For a moment, he was torn between two choices: go after Red Shirt immediately or get Nancy and Frank away to a better place to defend themselves. This was the second time he had tangled with Red Shirt, and the second time Red Shirt had suffered the loss of men. The half-breed was not likely to accept his defeat and call it a day. Carson knew it was simply a matter of time before it had to be settled between them. He looked back at Frank, who had taken a few steps out from the charred timbers, and now stood watching him, waiting to be told what to do. He was clearly unable to make sensible decisions yet, so Carson again felt the responsibility for the couple’s welfare and quickly made his decision.
“Frank!” he yelled. “Get Nancy ready to ride. We’ve got to get out of here now while we’ve got the chance. Sooner or later that son of a bitch is gonna try to get on our trail again, so we need to put as much distance between us and him as we can.”
“Right!” Frank yelled back, then hesitated. “Jonah. What about Jonah?”
“We’ll put him on his horse and take him with us,” Carson answered. “When we get to a safe place, we’ll bury him there. All right?”
“All right,” Nancy answered for her husband. “Come on, Frank.” They ran toward the ruins where Carson had left the horses.
Carson watched them for a brief second before turning back to look in the direction he had last seen Red Shirt. He was distracted then by the sound of a horse’s whinny, and his attention was called to a lone packhorse standing near the edge of the creek below the bluffs. Red Shirt had galloped away in such a fury that he hadn’t spent the time to take it with him. The mental image of the furious murderer caused Carson to make sure he didn’t lose any more time himself. He paused another moment to decide, however, then ran down to the forks of the creek and untied the packhorse. An extra horse could afford them the advantage of distributing the load on their packhorses, not only lightening the load, but speeding up their flight as well.
Red Shirt had even added to their convenience by leaving the packsaddle on the horse. Carson did not bother to search through the packs, but there was a sack of grain he was glad to find. He kept it and dropped the other packs to the ground, but one item caught his eye. Strapped to one of the packs, a small wooden rod about five feet long with wisps of various shades of hair had fallen from the pack strap to land at the edge of the water—Red Shirt’s scalp stick. Carson picked it up with a gnawing feeling of disgust when he remembered the half-breed adding Luther Moody’s and his posse man’s scalps to his coveted trophy. In a moment of anger, he propped one end of it on the ground and stomped it with his foot, breaking it in two. Then as a sign for the savage, he stuck the two broken halves in the sandy shore. With that small feeling of satisfaction, he led the horse back up to the fort.
Frank and Nancy were working frantically to make sure everything was ready to travel, and when Carson arrived with the extra horse, he found them struggling with Jonah’s body. “Here,” Carson said to Nancy, and handed her the lead rope on the packhorse. She stood back then and watched while Carson and her husband loaded her brother-in-law across his horse. Once the corpse was settled, Carson took a length of rope from the saddle to make sure Jonah stayed put after telling a teary-eyed Frank to go shift some of the packs to the spare horse.
When all was ready, they said good-bye to the ruins of Fort Phil Kearny with no regrets in leaving. Carson led them across the western branch of Little Piney Creek and set a course for the Big Horn Mountains. He could not estimate how much time they had before Red Shirt would pick up their trail, but he figured their best chance of losing him was to leave the Bozeman Trail and take to the mountains.
Chapter 7
Carson set a fast pace toward the mountains with two of the packhorses trailing behind his bay gelding. Nancy led the other packhorse and followed, with Frank bringing up the rear, leading his brother’s horse. Wa
tching Carson sitting tall in the saddle ahead, Nancy found it hard to believe that he was so young. His coolness under pressure and his ability to assess the situation, then take charge of it, were nothing short of a godsend when she and Frank had been plainly devastated. She forgave Frank his moments of indecision, for she could hardly blame him when seeing his brother struck down so suddenly. She was not so compassionate for her own actions, however. She had held Jonah in high esteem and certainly had fond feelings for Frank’s older brother, but she had always prided herself in her ability to respond strongly to any test of will or strength. She had a feeling that she had better not have any more of those moments of indecision, because they were not out of danger yet. She looked beyond the tall young man to the mountains where they hoped to find refuge. They had been riding toward the lofty, foreboding peaks for what seemed like hours, yet they seemed to be no closer than they had been when they first crossed the river. Then they followed a narrow valley through the hills and came out to find the mountain suddenly looming right before them.
Carson let up on the bay and allowed the horse to set its own pace for a while as he rode parallel to the base of the mountains. When he came to a wide stream coming down from the slopes above, he stopped and told Nancy and Frank what he wanted them to do. “Ride straight into the water, like you were goin’ straight across. Make sure those horses you’re leadin’ go straight after you. Then when you get all of ’em in the middle, turn downstream and stay in the water. Don’t let ’em leave any prints on the banks. Just do like I do.”
“You mean turn upstream, don’t you?” Nancy asked. “I thought we were trying to get to the mountains.”
“We are,” Carson replied. “I’m just hopin’ we can buy us a little more time. If Red Shirt follows us this far, he might figure we’re tryin’ to hide in the mountains. He’ll see we never crossed over the stream, and know we’re tryin’ to hide our trail. If we’re lucky, he’ll ride the stream up into the mountains, lookin’ for the place we came out of the water. It’d be a whole lot easier if we weren’t leadin’ horses, but if we’re careful, we can do it without leavin’ tracks.” He gave his horse a nudge and entered the water. He had to ride almost to the other side before the two packhorses were both in the water, but after that there was no problem in leading them downstream. Nancy and Frank followed his example and all the horses filed after him.
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