The four who had remained to ride herd on those hobbled mules, also given the day off from their mower-pulling chores, rode to a low ridge overlooking the green meadow. There they hobbled their horses and sat back in the shade of alder and aspen, chewing on grass stems and watching the lazy clouds drift across the summer sky.
Tony Addinger, Ed Gibson and Charlie White leaped to their feet beside Finn Burnett at the first shouts.
Around the brow of their hill raced two dozen or more warriors. Blankets and pieces of rawhide fluttered noisily in the breeze, intent on stampeding Leighton’s mules and horses. The animals struggled, but did not get far in their hobbles. In the meantime, the four teamsters plopped on their bellies, choosing targets among the swaying, prancing Sioux horsemen just down the slope.
First a pony dropped, spilling its rider. As he was quickly scooped up from the meadow, another warrior fell from his animal. Then a second as the white herders’ guns boomed rhythmically from the hillside. A gray cloud hung over their grassy position. Burnt powder stung Burnett’s nostrils as he reloaded his repeater and went back to work on the attackers.
“They had enough horse stealing, boys!” Sourdough Charlie White growled, watching twenty-odd warriors turn from their futile attempts at stampeding the mules.
“Shit! Looks like they’re fixing to run over us, don’t it!” big Ed Gibson shouted above the boom of the big rifles.
The four watched as the warriors circled the herd one last time, bunching more closely together as they tore through the hobbled mules and pointed their noses straight for the teamsters’ hillside.
From the direction of the post came the sound of gunfire. Then the brassy blast of a bugle.
“By God, will you look at that!” Burnett yelled, rising to one knee and pointing at the fort.
From the front gate poured a hodgepodge of soldiers scurrying pell-mell to the scene, having been alarmed by the sound of shots echoing from the meadow.
“Jesus!” Sourdough growled. “Ain’t that Bradley hisself, riding lead?”
“Damn if it ain’t!” Addinger shouted. “Now, how ’bout you getting back to watching that gulch down there, Charlie? Covering our backsides and shooting some of these red sonsabitches until Bradley’s army gets here … provided they get here while we still got our hair!”
“Will do, boy!” Charlie, a master shot, rolled back into the grass and took aim at the approaching mass of naked horsemen. “Another dead buck for Sourdough!” He then crawled off through the tall, dry grass so he could keep an eye peeled on the far side of the hill, where the gulch afforded perfect cover for the Sioux to creep close to the teamsters.
Finn smiled as he set his rifle to work once more, happy with the sight of Lieutenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley at the head of his relief column, clad only in his dressing gown and slippers, his regulation-issue pistol strapped at his hip and a carbine aloft in his hand. Gown tail flapping as he rode, Bradley had issued orders to pursue the enemy without saddles. He bare-bottom hammered the horse’s spine like an oak stair banister.
Behind Bradley pounded an unlikely assortment of soldiers, all of whom had leaped atop unsaddled mounts, gripping halters only as they sought to control their wide-eyed animals. Through the gate of Fort C.F. Smith blared the brassy tones of “Boots and Saddles” still, while those troopers left behind scurried to their posts along the walls.
“Lookee there!” Addinger hollered, and pointed with the muzzle of his rifle. “That red nigger’s started shooting our mules!”
“Son … of … a … bitch!” Gibson growled. “They can’t run ’em off … so, the bastards gonna shoot ’em!”
“Not if we got anything to say about it.” Burnett ground his left elbow into the dirt and raised the rear sight on his long-range Ballard buffalo gun. Squinting down the barrel for some idea of distance, he dragged a thumb across his tongue and raked the damp thumb over the front sight.
“Here’s to luck, boys!” he sighed, nuzzling his cheek against the stock.
He touched off the big-bore rifle, shoved a few inches back in the grass.
“By damn, you done it, Burnett!” Gibson screamed. “Got the bastard!”
Three more of the Sioux who had enjoyed themselves firing arrows into the mules scampered off round the brow of the hill from where they had appeared moments before.
“Goddamn!” Addinger screeched in pain.
An arrow pinned his ankle to the ground.
Another hissed out of the pale sky overhead, its iron head slamming into the ground near Gibson.
“Christ! We’re under attack!”
“Don’t move! Don’t move!” Burnett hollered. “Watch the sky.”
“I ain’t watching the sky!” Gibson yelled, up on his hands and knees, crabbing away. “Getting the hell out of here!”
Burnett was beside Addinger in a heartbeat. Yanking the arrow out of the ground before he broke off the tip and fletching both, he eased the short piece of bloody shaft from Addinger’s leg.
“Where the hell’s Sourdough!” Addinger screamed in pain and frustration. “Told him to watch our goddamned backsides.”
“I been watching your arse, son!” White hollered as he slid up in the dust and grass. “A fella’s gotta see what he’s shooting at, boy!”
Finn could tell the old man was as testy as a scalded cat.
“You didn’t see the bastards?”
“They can sit down there in them trees and brush, shooting their arrows into the air all day long, and I still can’t see ’em.”
Burnett realized the whistling missiles had tapered off. A moment later, as Bradley’s cavalry raced up the long slope, Finn thought he heard the pounding of hoofbeats and some wild yells disappearing up the valley.
“’Pears they’ve gone now,” Sourdough advised.
“No thanks to you,” Addinger hissed. “You’d got us all killed, watching our backsides, old man.”
Sourdough chuckled as he stood, leaning on his rifle, watching Burnett help Addinger to his feet. “Shame, ain’t it, Finn.”
“How’s that, Charlie?” Burnett asked.
“Tony here. Shame that arrow missed its mark.”
“Missed its mark?” Addinger shrieked angrily as he hobbled down the slope toward the soldiers.
“Couple more feet, way I figure it,” Charlie said with a chuckle and a brown stream spat into the grass. “Couple more feet and them red niggers had your fat ass skewered two ways of Sunday!”
Chapter 23
Roman Nose did not understand some of these white men in civilian clothes. Blue-shirted soldiers he understood. Understood them ever since he had watched a shouting, arrogant soldier kill an old chief near Fort Laramie twelve summers ago. Since that day Roman Nose had grown to manhood learning of the treachery of white soldiers. Now the Cheyenne war-chief found it hard to comprehend this crazy white man trudging along the road on foot below. Heading west. On his way to the white soldiers’ fort. Alone.
From the wooded heights above the road leading some two and a half miles back to Fort C.F. Smith, the young Cheyenne warrior watched the white man stop in the shade of some cottonwood at the side of the soldier road. The lone one sat down in the bright morning sun of this Moon of Black Cherries, wiping his brow and resting.
Those boxes he carries … perhaps they hold something important for the soldier fort.
Puzzled still, he had watched the white man with long hair the color of grass-when-winter-comes leave the white man camp of the grass cutters this morning, taking off up the road to the fort on foot. Leaving the hayfield and the other white men behind.
On foot and alone.
* * *
Webb Wood whipped off his floppy hat and swiped a dusty sleeve across his brow. Squinting into the bright sun, he tried to calculate how far he had come since leaving the hayfield corral. Figuring how far he had yet to walk until he reached the fort.
Something like another mile, perhaps. I’ll see the fort ’round the next hill.
“Damned heavy,” he wheezed.
Whiskey. Webb Wood always had whiskey at hand. A lonely man for most of his life. The whiskey had helped quell some of that loneliness. If whiskey didn’t draw other men to him, at least the whiskey had numbed the pain.
Webb recalled Seamus Donegan’s words during last night’s lamplit game of cards beneath the summer sky.
“Those Injins out there in those hills would delight in clipping your hair, Webb Wood. Closer than any barber back in Ohio.”
Wood had laughed easily, stroking his long reddish curls. “Don’t you worry none about me, Irishman.”
“I’ll worry, Wood,” Donegan had replied, more serious now. “My eyes have seen what the Sioux do to a man who goes out alone in this country—like that photographer I told you about, the one what traveled up from Fort Laramie with me last summer.”
“He was a friend?”
“Didn’t know him well,” Donegan answered. “But we got as close as any two men pinned down together at that bleeming Crazing Woman Crossing a year ago this month.”
Wood chuckled, nervously and without mirth. “But Seamus—with this hair of mine, the Indians will take me for a Mormon. And the Sioux aren’t about to tangle with a Mormon, now are they?”
Webb Wood gazed back up the road now, in the direction of the hay cutters’ corral. Wondering if he really had done the right thing. It was Sunday. Not a single hay train or supply wagon running between the corral and the fort all day. But he had hungered for some new company. Tiring of the same old talk from the same old mouths. Besides, he was anxious to start back to Fort Phil Kearny where he would rejoin Jennie.
Just this morning over breakfast, Seamus Donegan had again advised Wood against walking back to the fort under any circumstances, much less alone. But Webb Wood had long been a man driven by a strange, misguided sense of courage. During the recent rebellion in the South, he had cowered while other men fought and died.
Now that the hay cutters told him it was a blamed foolish thing for him to strike out alone, Wood considered himself a coward if he didn’t take the risk … and the road back to Fort C.F. Smith by himself. Besides, Jennie Wheatley waited at the end of the next ninety miles to Fort Phil Kearny.
A risk worth taking for any man. His tongue reminded him of sandpaper on the inside of his cheek.
* * *
When the white man removed his big, floppy hat, Roman Nose was reminded of withered, autumn-colored buffalo grass. Not all that many whites with hair that color had the Cheyenne war-chief seen in his short life.
He remembered one—a man who scouted for the army along the Platte River Road. This one with the long, blond hair on his shoulders reminded Roman Nose of blue-shirted soldiers riding into a Cheyenne camp at dawn one cold winter morning. Black Kettle’s camp along the Little Dried River two summers back.
Bloodied memories of Sand Creek rumbled like tainted meat in Roman Nose’s belly. Reminding him of the anger he felt for all white men who would attack a camp of women and children. For all white men who would defile the dead bodies of Cheyenne women. Or slash open the bodies of Cheyenne babies with their shining sabers.
“Let us see what he carries back to the soldiers’ dirt fort,” young Two Medicine suggested at his war-chief’s side.
“Yes,” Roman Nose answered. “I want to meet this one with the red hair. He who is brave enough to venture out alone from the white man’s camp along War-Man Creek.”
* * *
For some reason, Webb Wood sensed them sliding down the hills before he ever saw the shadows of their ponies and the fluttering of their feathers. His heart rose like a cold stone, high in his throat, pumping like a steam piston. Wood’s mouth was never so dry.
For a moment he stood fixed where he was, fighting with himself. Wondering what to do. Recognizing at last the same immobilizing fear that had swallowed him during the war. Knowing that this time he could not stand and let the tide wash over him. This time, he would not hide.
The hillsides stood bare of growth where no man could hide himself anyway. And the Bighorn … well, the river lay too far away. No cover around him worth a damn for a man to crouch behind and shoot back at the Indians. Even if he did have a gun.
In panic, Webb Wood reached for his belt. Then realized he had packed his pistol in the smaller case with his change of clothing and an extra pair of boots.
Back and forth his eyes darted to the dozen warriors loping easily down the road in his direction. Back and forth while he implored his struggling fingers to free the leather straps from their buckles on the clothing case. And still his heart hoped the warriors meant only to rob him of his clothing and … the whiskey.
They’re not racing in at me. Not the way Donegan said they charged down on him and Glover at the crossing. These savages don’t mean to kill me … they don’t mean to.
The .44-caliber revolver leaped into his palm as he whirled around at the first shout from the warriors. All feathers and fringe and scalplocks flitting upon the hot July breeze. He watched their mouths round and o-o-o as they hollered at him.
Suddenly Webb Wood realized his legs were carrying him away. Sprinting. Abandoning his travel-battered cases in the middle of the road.
Let them have the clothing and boots. My blessed whiskey. I want to live!
With the next thump of his heart, Wood recognized a single set of hoofbeats drawing behind him. He panted, his heart thundering in his ears. Closer and closer he heard that pony drawing. Closer and closer. At an easy lope.
I’m running as fast as I can!
His mouth burning and his chest heaving, Wood glanced over his shoulder. Seeing but one warrior approaching down the trail. Behind him the rest had dropped to the middle of the road and contented themselves in opening his leather cases.
He doesn’t want my bags—he wants to kill me! No! My gun—it’s my gun he wants!
Webb turned, threw up his hands to show he presented no danger. Staring the young warrior in the face for the first time.
Never so close before.
A Cheyenne war-chief, light shimmering in the black hair hung in a braid on one side of his face. On the other side of the warrior’s head hung a stuffed magpie. A warcharm. The Indian slowed, slipping his bow in the quiver at his back.
Wood felt better. Yes, it’s my pistol he wants. Give him the damn pistol and get to the fort. Just give him the damn pistol.
Without a word, the civilian flung the heavy pistol into the middle of the dusty road. Practically at the warrior’s feet. He watched the Indian rein up, stop, glance down at the pistol. Then gaze in his direction again. Wearing the wildest smile.
Wood felt an icy-cold splash down his spine, a cold he had never experienced. Then he whirled, bolting off again, straight down the road.
I wish I could remember that face … that smile … there’ll never be another like it. I’ll never see another—
* * *
Roman Nose heaved the axe with all the strength in his arm as he galloped up behind the white man with the winter-grass hair.
The blade caught the fleeing runner squarely between the shoulder blades. For two steps, then three, the white man stumbled, one arm flailing at the suffocatingly hot July air, grasping at nothing. The other arm dug frantically backward, scraping, grabbing, clawing for the axe buried deep in the muscle and bone and life of his body.
Now the Cheyenne warrior slowed his pony to a walk, following the stumbling white man, amused at the same time he was intrigued, wondering when the man would fall. The grass-haired man stopped, sighed loudly as his arms fell uselessly to their sides, then crumpled to his knees. His arms suddenly flailed toward the sky as he cried out. Then he tumbled forward, his face slapping the powdery, dry dust of the white-man road.
“You do not want his clothes?” Tw
o Medicine asked when he and the others rode up on Roman Nose and the white man’s body.
“No,” the war-chief replied, rising from the body, wiping his bloody knife across on his bare, brown leg. Then he stuffed the long, red-grass scalp beneath the bandoleer of bullets strapped across his naked chest. “You take the clothes, my young friend. You others may take the white man’s whiskey as well. I will not drink their evil water.” He sighed, smiling that wolf-slash grin of his. “I have all I need, Two Medicine.”
Roman Nose patted the blood-smeared scalp at his waist. “All that I want.”
Chapter 24
Pvt. Henry Ketcham swung his axe again, smiling. Thursday. July 27. Getting closer to Sunday, after all. Reason enough for any young man to celebrate.
Sunlight brightened gay patches of grass beneath the pine boughs where he and two others worked along the slope of Pine Island. Barely a half mile above the pine-slab blockhouse where the timber cutters always retreated in the event of an attack.
Too nice a morning for anything like an attack, Ketcham decided.
A little sun, a good breeze. A touch of summer coolness in the morning air that raised a tingle in his blood.
Ketcham stopped, let his axe slip, and wiped his brow. From his eyes he pushed hair the color of red buffalo grass when the frost comes. He listened to the shrill of the whistle atop the steam sawmill far down the valley at the Little Piney. Closer yet, he heard the ring of axe and the lusty laughter of a dozen more woodcutters about a hundred yards below him on the slope. Ketcham was stuffing the damp bandanna back in his trousers as the first war whoop echoed through the trees.
Shadows flitted through the shafts of sunlight on the slope below him. His other two companions shouted, urging him to hurry. He heard them running, crashing, wildly throwing themselves downhill to escape. Too late Ketcham understood their wild abandon.
More than a hundred warriors had slipped between him and the rest of the workers down the slope. Ketcham found himself cut off while the others scrambled toward the blockhouse. He darted to the left. Downhill. Shadows loomed out of the trees. He dropped his axe. Stumbled. Wheeled right. He’d take the long way down …
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