Dakota Skies

by Paul Lederer

  Henry stepped from the box stiffly and took off his hat to wipe his brow. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he said, as I swung down from Dodger and walked up to meet him.

  He did look tired out, but I told him, ‘You’d put a younger man to shame.’

  ‘Maybe, but I could use some sleep, Miles. You care to drive for a while?’

  ‘That kind of defeats the purpose of me being out watching our backtrail, Henry. It’ll have to be one of the others.’

  ‘There’s only the two women,’ he said, looking toward the rear of the wagon where Brian Adair stood, rubbing his leg with his single hand. ‘The kid there, that Regina, was telling me the last twenty miles how she could drive twice as better’n I can. Shall we let her try?’

  I glanced at the young blond girl, her cheeks flushed, the dawn light painting highlights in her golden hair. ‘Why not?’ I shrugged. ‘We know she can handle a two-horse team. I don’t think Della is up to it.’

  ‘The girl don’t seem to like you much,’ Henry said.

  ‘I can’t do a thing about that. A lot of people don’t like me.’ I stood deep in thought, watching the young girl, the one-armed man and Della. They were a strange little family group, I thought. Almost as if she could feel my eyes on her, Regina lifted her head and returned my gaze. She strode toward us, her white blouse pressed against her breasts, her divided buckskin skirt swishing against her ankles, her blue eyes hard.

  ‘Isn’t it time we started again?’ Regina asked.

  ‘It is. Think you can handle the team?’

  Her eyes grew mocking. ‘I can handle about anything, mister.’

  ‘All right then. Spell Henry, let him get a few hours’ sleep.’ I told her, ‘Drift a little westward. The ground’s rougher, but we want to stay away from the buffalo herd.’

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. I was getting tired of her confrontational tone, but I explained simply.

  ‘As far as we know there are no Indians around, but there could be. With winter coming on, this might be their last chance for a buffalo hunt. We don’t need to be in the vicinity of the herd.’

  She looked at me for a long time, nodded her understanding and walked back toward the wagon, pulling her fringed gloves on. Henry Coughlin glanced at me, half-smiled and started that way himself. I mounted my black horse and waited to see them on their way. Brian Adair’s face was set in a scowl as he perched on the tailgate of the wagon. Della looked at me as if she would like to have talked to me, as if there was something that needed saying, but then, lifting her skirts, she climbed up onto the wagon box to sit beside her sister.

  No sooner was Della aboard than Regina snapped the reins and the four-horse team lumbered into motion. I shook my head. The wind was becoming colder, shifting my horse’s mane and tail; the land was an endless progression of grassy hummocks. It was a sterile land and a lonely one. I didn’t like what was going on around me. Much of it did not feel quite right, although I didn’t know what it was that was making me jumpy.

  No matter – I could take three more days of it, for Della’s sake. I turned the black slightly northward and began to search our backtrail for approaching riders.

  I hadn’t seen the two men following since the night before. Maybe I had been wrong about them as well. My biggest concern was Tom DeFord, of course. When he came, if he did, he wouldn’t come alone, and he would not leave peacefully.

  I made my way along the rim of a coulee, some twenty feet deep and twice as wide. The bottom of the depression was clotted with thickets of gray willow brush, with an occasional sycamore growing there. I could smell water, but saw none flowing. The wind continued to rise, flattening the long grass. In the northern distances I could see cold gray stacks of approaching rainclouds. I hoped we could reach Steubenville before the heavy winds pushed the storm over us.

  I didn’t even see them coming.

  My attention had been on the backtrail, watching the horizon for any sign of approaching riders. The two mounted men rode at me from out of the coulee bottom, guns at the ready. It was more than foolish of me; it was inexcusable to have been caught unaware like that. As an old army scout I had seen entire bands of Indians on horseback rise up from one of these deep draws cut into the plains, seeming to appear onto the flat surrounding prairie as from out of the earth itself.

  I spun Dodger, but the black horse reared, startled by the rush of the charging men. Before I could settle my pony, let alone level my rifle on them, they had sided me with their horses, grabbing the black’s bridle, clubbing my Winchester from my hand.

  ‘All right!’ One of them, a stocky man with deep-set eyes shouted at me, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Who?’ I was rubbing my wrist where the other one, a narrow-built man with a crooked mouth had cracked it with the muzzle of his pistol.

  ‘Who, he asks! Swing down, friend,’ the stocky man said and I obliged, having little choice. I stood facing them as they dismounted to stand before me, each angry looking, trail dusty; each with a rifle in his hand and a Colt revolver on his hip.

  ‘We’ll brook no hindrance,’ the stocky man said. My eyes narrowed a little at this odd phrasing. Simultaneously I was looking past them toward the wagon, now long vanished on the plains.

  ‘Tell us where Brian Adair is and you might come out of this alive.’

  Adair? It was Della’s brother they were hunting. Why? I hesitated too long in answering. The narrow man kicked me behind the knee, buckling my leg and I went down on my back, hard. He hovered over me with the stock of his rifle raised menacingly as if he would bring it down against my face.

  Who were these two men? I held up a hand and they let me sit up. The narrow-built man stepped away, his chest heaving with emotion. He was angry enough to do about anything. The stocky man with the tiny eyes was calmer and seemed to be the one in charge.

  ‘I’d talk if I was you, son. Lazarus here has a hair trigger if you haven’t noticed.’

  ‘What does this man, Adair, look like?’ I asked, trying to stall.

  ‘You don’t know him?’

  ‘Not by that name,’ I lied. I repeated my question, ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Lean, tall. Only has one arm. You were seen leaving Deadwood with him,’ the man named Lazarus said with menace.

  ‘That one!’ I said, as if finally understanding. ‘He gave us five dollars to smuggle him out of town. He said someone was looking for him.’

  The two glanced doubtfully at each other. Lazarus said, ‘He’s in that wagon still, Barry.’

  ‘Is that so?’ the stocky man asked me.

  ‘What wagon?’

  Lazarus had run out of patience. He kicked me in the ribs and I felt a bone crack. My breath rushed out of me and hot pain took its place. I lay on my back, holding my ribcage. The men in the alley behind the stable had almost broken my ribs. Lazarus had done it properly. I could feel the jagged pain of broken bone. I thought he was going to finish the job, but the man called Barry held him back, placing a gloved hand on his arm.

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ he told his partner. Then to me, ‘You said someone was looking for Adair, someone he was afraid of meeting. Who was it?’

  I was tired of lying. ‘A man named Tom DeFord,’ I said, managing to sit up again, holding my ribs with both arms. Astonishingly, they laughed. Both of them. My hair was in my eyes; I had a broken rib. I was sitting on the cold prairie earth with a colder wind blowing. And they were laughing.

  ‘You’re either a fool or a damned liar,’ Barry said.

  I didn’t know how to respond. There was something happening here that I didn’t understand. Lazarus was hovering over me, his mouth set in a mean little grin. I thought he would like nothing more than to kick me again. My face must have shown both pain and incomprehension.

  ‘You damned fool,’ Barry said. ‘Adair and DeFord run with the same gang. They’ve been together off and on since the war. Whenever opportunity shines, you’ll find ’em riding side by side.’

  ‘You’
re wrong,’ I said, shaking my head painfully. ‘I happen to know that Adair was a prisoner in Andersonville. That Tom DeFord was a prison guard there.’

  Lazarus laughed again; Barry did not. ‘Mister,’ he said, ‘you’re right on both counts. But Adair survived Andersonville when a lot of others didn’t. Do you know how? He was a snitch for the prison officials. He was the one who tipped them off when some of the Union prisoners had an escape planned, which man had wealthy family back home that might be blackmailed out of money if they promised to release him or grant him privileges. That was Brian Adair. That’s how he survived two years in Andersonville. He and Tom DeFord ran a lucrative business from that cold prison.’

  ‘Adair lost an arm there through maltreatment,’ I objected and again Lazarus laughed. Barry just shook his head heavily as if I was the dumbest thing he had run across in a long time.

  ‘Brian Adair lost his arm long before they caught him and shipped him to Andersonville. He was wounded in battle – running the wrong way during a cavalry charge at Bull Run. One of his own officers shot at him as he tried his best to desert.’

  It was too much to take in all at once. They were wild stories these strangers off the plains were carrying. I looked up at my attackers and asked them, ‘Who are you, anyway? How do you know that any of this is true?’

  ‘Mister,’ Barry told me in a ragged voice, ‘we were there. We were at Andersonville. We survived, but a lot of our friends, fellow soldiers, didn’t because of these two.’

  ‘We got to catch up with that wagon,’ Lazarus said worriedly.

  ‘Wait.’ Barry stroked his whiskered chin thoughtfully. ‘Something’s going on here. Did you say DeFord was in Deadwood too?’

  I nodded, watching Barry’s brow furrow as he considered that. ‘They’re up to something, then. But what?’

  He looked at me again, but I was not going to say a word about Della’s gold, although it seemed almost certain – if these two were telling the truth – that DeFord and Brian Adair were in cahoots, planning on stealing the woman’s life savings from her. Her own brother! Or adopted brother, it made no difference. I shrugged as if I had no more information to give these two and since they had already decided that I was nothing but a fool, they didn’t try to extract more from me.

  ‘DeFord will be on the trail,’ Lazarus said. He did not look concerned, however. These two had ridden with a sense of violent purpose for a long while. Now they had stumbled over not a half of their quarry, but both men. ‘And he’ll not be coming alone.’

  ‘We’re not riding alone either,’ Barry said grimly. ‘We’ve a thousand ghosts to give us strength.’

  Abruptly, without a sign between them or another word, they turned away and swung into their saddles. As I watched, they collected the reins to my black pony as well and started on – slowly, determinedly, making their way southward.

  When they were gone I rolled over onto hands and knees and staggered to my feet, each small movement causing jagged pain to tear through my ribcage. I stood watching the long prairie, the buffalo grass shifting in the rising wind, the cold storm clouds creeping in from the north to shadow the long plains. Then, afoot, without a weapon save the bowie knife hanging at the back of my belt, I began my plodding way south. I had already let Della down. She had trusted her life savings to me, trusted me to guide her and her sister to Steubenville and a new life. I had done nothing to justify her faith in me.

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to keep trying, no matter what it cost.

  The day dragged on as I staggered forward throughout the afternoon, the land growing darker as the clouds porched over the land. I saw no hoofprints, no wagon-wheel ruts, no sign of habitation. The buffalo had passed on; the only living thing I saw was a badger I startled in passing. We gave each other wide berth.

  Behind me, to the north, I heard the ominous rumble of distant thunder. My ribs ached, my legs were growing leaden, and I was shivering in my cotton shirt and short leather jacket. My buffalo coat had been tied behind the saddle on the black horse’s back.

  Isolation became a heavy weight, and the wind was so cutting cold that it nearly numbed the fire in my broken rib. The sky went black although it was hours before sundown and the snow began to drift down in wind-tossed flakes which gathered into waves of obscuring swirls and then to heavy clumps. I was going to freeze to death. It came on me with sudden realization. I was on the open prairie without shelter, without warm clothing. My boots were already ankle-deep in new snow – black snow, wind-drifted snow.

  Then, for a moment I believed that I saw the tracks of a heavy wagon, and I turned my face into the biting wind and followed them, but the darkness and the falling snow erased them. My reality became only swirling coldness, dark skies and pummeling wind.

  I nearly fell over the sad heap in my progress. I stopped, pressing my hat to my skull, bent low and recognized the hummock for what it was. A human form, inert, smothered beneath new-fallen snow. Some obscure instinct told me that it was the body of a woman that I had found – or perhaps it was the slimness of the cold blue protruding fingers which had clawed at the snow in a vain attempt to rise. I thought, ‘They have killed Della for her little purse of gold.’

  I was only half right. Pawing away at the snow I found the hem of a skirt, a woman’s long boot. I touched the flesh and found it warm and began to dig more furiously. It was a woman, but not Della. I sat her up in my arms and looked into the colorless face of Regina Adair. I slapped her face – hard – and did it again until her blue eyes blinked open, stared at me in stunned confusion and then heated with anger.

  Her left hand reached out and dug through the snow for a weapon I recognized as Henry Coughlin’s side-hammer Sharps .45-70 rifle. His initials were carved deeply into the walnut stock. I twisted the gun out of her weak grasp before she could create any mischief with it.

  ‘I hate you,’ I heard the young woman whisper, and I swept her up into my arms and started for the coulee bottom where the wind at least would be cut by the twenty-foot high banks, and the driving snow might prove less furious in its assault. I started down the slope through the willow brush, slipped, half-fell and then skidded headlong to the snowy ground, tumbling over Regina’s body as we cart-wheeled through the leafless willow and sumac.

  Cursing, I picked her up again, shouldering her in a fireman’s carry. She kicked her feet in protest, but there was more anger than strength in it. I continued on. Not far ahead I had seen a smudge of darkness against the white banks of the coulee. I took it for a cave, of which there were many, and proved to be right. I splashed across the snaking, shallow rill in the coulee bottom and clambered up the sandy bank beyond to enter the shallowest of caves, no more than twelve feet deep with a ceiling rising no more than that, and, panting for breath, crouched and laid the woman down against the cold gravel floor of the hollow.

  Regina reached up for me, but I saw her intent and yanked the Sharps rifle away.

  ‘Don’t fight with me,’ I said hoarsely. ‘You may not like it, but I’m the one who’s going to keep you alive.’

  She sat up, glared at me and then fell back against the ground, the fight out of her. I scraped together what driftwood there was littering the cave floor. Some of it was already half-charred. Someone, Indians perhaps, had used this tiny shelter before. The walls were smoke-streaked and one corner of the floor was leveled out, seemingly by human hands.

  I gathered the wood together, crouched and struck a match from the waterproof cylinder we all carried in those times – only a madman would attempt life on the plains without a means of making fire. I am many things, but not quite that mad.

  The fire started slowly, a wisp, a curlicue of smoke, a pathetic, hopeful little lick of reddish-gold flame and then the wood caught and held, as I crouched near to the bushel-basket of fire; it was enough to shake the ice from trembling bones. Exhausted, I sagged beside it and watched the young woman across the fire from me. I wanted to ask her questions, but it was not the time. I
wished I had a blanket to cover her with, but I had none.

  We were abandoned by events and isolated in a fierce wilderness. The storm brooded, rumbled and slashed at the skies with terrible lightning. I felt alone, impotent and my unease gradually was turning to fear. I picked up Henry Coughlin’s rough-used rifle and checked it over carefully. I had the rifle and my bowie knife still. It wasn’t much, but it was a comfort. I didn’t know what to expect now – from Tom DeFord or Brian Adair, or from the two men on their trail: Lazarus and Barry; but the first man to threaten me or the little blond girl sleeping deeply beside the fire was going to pay a terrible price if it came down to it. Henry’s old buffalo gun could tear a terrible hole through a man. And if all that was left after the ammunition was expended turned out to be my razor-edged bowie … well, a knife is a weapon you don’t miss with in close quarters.

  I could see the constant snow beyond the mouth of the cave. I watched it fall in sheets, in blankets, in squalls. From time to time I heard the small woman murmur in her troubled sleep, clenching her hands into tiny fists. It was cold, very cold, but the smoky fire was warm if I sat near enough to it and with the buffalo gun across my lap, I found my head nodding heavily and sometime before dawn my chin sagged onto my chest and I could no longer fight off the comfort of sleep.

  When I awoke again, the sky was bright and the big bore of the .45-70 was staring me in the face.

  FIVE

  The fierceness in the blond girl’s eyes was startling. Her hair was unpinned, trailing across her shoulders. I was struck again by how small her hands seemed. Her slender finger crooked over the curved steel of the Sharps rifle’s trigger looked sturdy enough to tug it back, however. She stood in dark silhouette against the sparkling blue-white glare of the morning beyond the cave mouth. Her lip did not tremble, her grip on the gun did not waver.