The Yellowstone Kelly Novels

by Bowen, Peter

  When he was healed he went right back out, and he come on the Sioux when they wasn’t expecting him and stole his horse back without killing none of them, so he was respected by them Sioux anyway, who called him Takes-Horse-Back.

  Lou was about six-six and Mulligan was a good two foot shorter and me in the middle we looked like a rafter line with hats.

  We was each riding one horse and leading another and I had a pair of the A-rab/Thoroughbreds I favor for covering country in a mighty big hurry. Blue Fox would likely head east, where the rest of the Cheyennes was, though he could go north to the Sioux. But east seemed likeliest and we banked on that, and at first light if we stayed hard after him, I could maybe cut south and ride like hell and get up ahead of him and wait.

  Mulligan’s gift for tracking was damn near uncanny, and he found a spot where Blue Fox had rested a bit and damned if there warn’t a bloody handprint on a rock. So Mulligan had done better than wound him a little.

  He’d come down to the rolling Plains and he’d need water if he lost blood. There was water east and some north, but it was a ways off.

  I switched my saddle to my other mount and nodded to Lou and Mulligan and I headed south four miles or so and then cut east, keeping mostly to the buffalo trails. They are good engineers, them buffalo, and if they make a trail a horse likes it fine.

  Toward dawn I cut the tracks of Masoud and his bunch, easy to see, since an elephant leaves a real emphatic trail. I come on a grizzly uneasily sniffing a huge pile of elephant shit, trying to figure out what the hell animal left this mass. The bear was so engrossed he didn’t bother to notice me and I went by and on, figuring I’d go another hour and then find a good lie and wait. I had a Sharps .45-120 and telescopic sight hung under my left leg and I could hit a man at a mile and kill him.

  I found what I was looking for, a hill with a stony summit for cover, even had a few little scrubby cedars sticking out of the rocks, and a good view of five or six trails headed east.

  I hid my horses in a handy spot, there was a sort of barn of stone with a spring at the upper end, just sheer walls and no roof. I put nose bags on them with some grain a moment and when they’d eaten it I let them drink and then I saddled the one back up, if I had to fly after Blue Fox every moment could count much.

  I waited. He could be laid up back a ways and Mulligan and Lou could flush him, send him my way, or he could just be moving slow and cautious, even backtracking to throw pursuit off.

  Minutes crawled by. The sun was at my back, and I had good light and a clear view, as far as I could see, and I knew Blue Fox would maybe not even cross in front of me.

  Or maybe he would.

  After about ten hours which was probably only one I about half heard something, the wind was from the north, it sounded like ... a big drum.

  Then there was movement far off, maybe ten miles away, and I put my spyglass on it and there was those goddamned elephants, headed right down toward me, and I could see that damned fool Cody out front on his prancing white horse, like he was leading a goddamned parade.

  I looked back and there was Blue Fox, riding hard, on the farthest trail I could see. I cursed and run to my horse, he was too far away for a sure shot, running like he was.

  I come down off that hill, hoping my spare mount would up and follow, and I headed straight for where I had seen Blue Fox head, allowing for time to connect.

  When I finally got there and up on a hill I could see him headed north, right toward Cody and them damn elephants, and off to my left about two miles away was Lou and Mulligan, and they was following close on his tracks.

  Mrs. Kelly’s son Luther was using words she would have been very disappointed to hear me utter.

  I came up on a ridgetop at the same time Mulligan did and I stood up in my stirrups and motioned the way Blue Fox had gone and Mulligan peeled off north like that, a line that would cut Blue Fox’s. Mulligan wasn’t no bigger than a jockey anyway, and his horse hardly noticed the little man on him. I am big and mine was going a little soft, not bad, mind you, but I could play him out in five miles and when I looked back the other one wasn’t there.

  I let my horse have his head and he plunged down the hill and up the other side, running flat out like he knew what was wanted, and when I crested the next long rise I could see Blue Fox maybe a mile ahead, tucked down over his pony’s neck and making all speed.

  Time I got up to the top of the next rise Blue Fox had slowed and he was going up the side of one of them chimneys stick up here and there out of the Plains in Wyoming, and what he was headed for was his very own castle. We could wait him out, but he could slip away in the dark, or we could charge, and he’d get some of us.

  I recognized the chimney. I’d been hung up there once and there was even a little spring up there, plenty for a man and a horse, and a sort of slit in the rock to hide his mount in.

  Mulligan saw it, too, and Blue Fox would be there before we could do a damned thing. Lou was north and I seen him slow and turn toward us.

  They spread out to cover the rock Blue Fox was setting on, and I unlimbered the buffalo rifle and put the telescope crosshairs just above the rim and waited on him showing his face. Trouble was the slug was so slow and the distance so great he could pull his head out of the way when he saw the smoke from the barrel.

  I could slip up there at night, and likely get my throat cut.

  Mulligan would be a better bet, but the feller atop had all the advantages.

  Well, there we was. I heard the rest of Masoud’s music now, drums, flutes, and tubas and cymbals, oh, hell they was horns of some sort.

  Then I remembered them cannon and Prussians I saw tagging along behind Masoud’s unlikely force.

  I rode on over to Lou and told him I would be going to get some help and he nodded and spat and never took his eye off the sights of his Sharps. Mulligan was in the grass someplace, your guess as good as mine.

  My horse was a little tired but would come back I didn’t work him too hard, and we wasn’t a long ways up the trail when the other one come running up to us, neighing pleasure at our reunion.

  I could see that ass Cody up ahead, and he waved his hat.

  I moseyed on up to Bill.

  “I got to have a word with Masoud,” I says.

  Cody wheeled round and led me to the biggest elephant.

  26

  I STOOD ON THE small porch provided by the top flunk on the human pyramid Masoud used to get on and off his freshly painted pinto elephant. The brute stood calmly, farting like half a hurricane, while I explained that I sure could use his Krupp cannon and Pickelhaubes to blast that bastard Blue Fox off the top of his turret.

  Masoud nodded and clapped his hands and the giant chamberlain come on up, stomping hard on the backs of the flunks, which I thought was about how things had been wherever they come from for about the last five thousand years. I tried to step light, but the chamberlain was in a snit and the flunks paid. He probably had one skinned alive back home if he woke up feeling crotchety.

  The Krauts was sitting like lumps around their beloved cannon, and most everything in the pack train was dusty, but them cannon was tenderly covered with linen. It was getting on hot, but the Germans had their tunics buttoned up right to the throat. I went up to the oldest and ugliest, a feller so scarred he looked like he’d chased a fart through a keg of nails, and I asks if he speaks English.

  Ja.

  Well, then, would he mind awfully blasting the top of yon rock a while. There was a ... FROG! ... up there.

  “Ein Frog?” he says, and licked his chops.

  Nothing he’d like better than blowing a goddamned Frenchy to bits of a Sunday morning. It was Sunday, that vagrant thought flashed through my mind.

  The big ugly bastard barked and screamed orders and the horses pulled the cannon off to a vantage and in minutes they was uncovered, unlimbered, and setting there gleaming meanly. They was steel cannon, and I had never seen one before, other than the breech with the Krupp stamp on
it I had peeked at in Laramie. The shells looked like bullets, only about a thousand times the size.

  All the while as I talked and arranged this either Lou’s or Mulligan’s buffalo gun boomed, keeping Blue Fox’s head down whilst I arranged to take his goddamned head right off.

  Them Krauts was thorough, carefully taking sights and doing delicate adjustments on the cannon, and then Scarface barked and the gunners stood to attention and he jerked the lanyards and the shells burst just below the lip of the rock and a big cloud of dust and minced stone shot up.

  The Krauts fiddled a little and fired again and this time the shells missed, going on over and landing off toward poor Lou, who I hoped they missed.

  Fiddle fiddle.

  They really had the range now and they sent a half-dozen shells spang on top of the rock and I seen a reddish tint to a dust cloud and thought that perhaps Blue Fox was maybe blown to bits and it made me feel all warm and happy inside.

  Then the big scarred Kraut bowed to me and waved grandly at the dust cloud on top of the rock and they began to clean their popguns, tenderly removing the breechblocks so they could swab out the bores.

  I rode on over toward the rock and I could see Mulligan and Lou, who was minus his hat, and they waved to me and then Lou shook his fist in the direction of the gunners.

  Well, at least they’d missed.

  Time we got up to the top most of the dust had settled and it was an amazing sight. I passed a horse hoof on the way up and that was all we found of the nag. The top of the rock was all chewed and blasted and barren and there was piles of rubble everywhere. Nothing could have lived through that, I was sure.

  We looked around real careful, all standing up there sort of congratulating ourselves, and then we all laughed and shook hands.

  I’d have felt better we found a little bitty piece of Blue Fox, but if he’d been hit direct there wouldn’t be nothing left much and it would have been sticky and therefore all covered in dust and hard to spot.

  So we goes back down to our horses and mounts up and waves gaily at Masoud and Company. Buffalo Bill come riding over.

  “Wonderful marksmanship!” he bellers. “Them Krauts is a credit to Krauts!”

  Bill made me wonder he was going to run for office. Well, he was just the sort of pompous gasbag would fit right in back in Washington.

  Bill had been beaming but then of a sudden he got all embarrassed-lookin’ and he leaned over and whispered.

  “Say, Luther,” he says. “Them foss-siles? I ... heh heh ... well, got a little drunk and seems I ...”

  A little drunk for Bill was a solid month and why the hell he never woke up in Shanghai with a bad case of the horrors and no idea how he got there I purely don’t know.

  “And you been leading Masoud and his mob around and no damn idea where you was?” I says.

  “Things,” says Bill, “are a little blurry, you know how it is.”

  I laughed. I roared. Cody looked at me angry for a minute and then he looked so miserable I felt sorry for him.

  Thing about Bill is he looks so damn good, the long-haired ninnie. The costume, the steely eye, the bullshit—poor Masoud had been guided by a feller was blacked out and runnin’ on forty-rod. Damn wonder he hadn’t blundered into the Sioux, who took a real dim view of Cody, what with his buffalo killing. The buffalo was bread, clothes, homes, farms, and families to the Indians, and they damn well knew what would happen to them when the buffalo was gone.

  “The foss-siles,” I says, “is due west, and you’ll have to find your own patch. Cope’s hopping around there and so is that Marsh feller.”

  Bill brightened considerable.

  “West!” he says.

  And he rode off. I waved to Masoud up there on his pinto elephant and then me and Mulligan and Lou made tracks back toward Cope’s camp.

  It was a damned relief to have Blue Fox blasted into mincemeat, and I could rest a little easier.

  Our spare horses had got lonely and caught up with us and we haltered them and put ropes on them and on the way we come along some antelope, and they was staring at a piece of cloth flapping from a tree limb, like they will, and so we each shot one, counting down so our guns fired all at once. We gutted the antelope and hung them on the spare horses and we went on, with some fine camp meat. I was going to try and supply the cooks without shooting a single buffalo, since Red Cloud had warned me I had to eat what I killed.

  We come to the camp late, a little after dark, since we had rode hell-for-leather on the way out and come back at a brisk trot. We hung the antelope up on the meat pole and went our ways.

  Alys was glad to see me. She worried about me, that girl, if I was going to be killed she proposed to do it. She’d had some water heated and I sat in her folding bathtub soaking off the dust and sipping whiskey.

  I was bone tired and fell asleep and she woke me and I got dry and got into the robes and fell asleep. I had bad dreams all night and in them Blue Fox was killing Alys in many different ways and all I could do was watch, since I couldn’t move, you know how it is with them dreams, things fly around you but you’re helpless.

  Once I must have screamed because Alys lit a lamp and she shook me till I was woke up and then she held me and stroked my forehead but I woke up again anyway, so often I finally gave up and got dressed and went out. There was high thin clouds made the sliver of moon all wispy and strange and suddenly the coyotes started singing their hunting song so I knew it would be dawn in less than an hour, it was the time when the creatures of the night are headed home to sleep through the sun and the creatures of the day are hoping they’ll be missed.

  I hadn’t seen Sir Henry at all, but now I was dressed he drifted out of the shadows, all dressed in black with his pale face smeared with soot, and he nodded once to me and we shook hands, his thin black-leather gloves was cold and smooth. He always wore them ’cept when he was playin’ cards. The moonlight picked up faint lines on the butts of his revolvers, too many to count quick but I knew they was the tally of the men Sir Henry had killed. Rumor was that enough money and he’d kill anybody, lying in wait with his Creedmore, one of them Sharps guns has a barrel that is accidentally perfectly true. They can’t make them that way but sometimes it happens. His had an ivory stock, all hollowed out for lightness, and rubbed down to brown with a stain. The barrel was four foot long, a single-shot, but with one of them you don’t need but the one shot anyway.

  Alys come out and said Cope was through here and we were to go on the next day, up about twenty miles to where Jake had found a mess of old bones.

  I had one of them surges of feeling, that I had had enough of this farce, wandering the open and digging up things been asleep for millions of years, so some crooks was professors could get all famous.

  “Let’s just up and quit and go,” I says. “You don’t need this. I hate it.”

  “You need some rest, Luther,” says Alys, not responding.

  You are tired, little boy, come take your nap.

  I kicked at a rock and strode away, enraged, but of course she was right, and that made it hurt more.

  27

  JAKE WAS UP AT the next place, guarding it till Cope could haul up his wagon train. We hadn’t seen anyone else, save poor old Masoud, following Cody’s blind staggers in wide circles. I rode out to range the country and see if there was signs of Indians, I didn’t expect any trouble from them, which is not the same as not getting some. Chiefs like Red Cloud could keep a rein on the young warriors if they was near, but like any other boys the farther they was from Papa, the more rotten they behaved. And Red Cloud knew ’em and he’d use that fact for his own purposes. He was a deep man, and the only Indian ever to win a war with the whites and quit while he was ahead, not that it did him any good in the end. He lived way too long and saw too much sorrow, and felt it was his fault the hearts of his people were broken.

  I’d been told twenty miles, but you never know in this country, and when I asked and got told it was maybe a six-hour ride I
thought Jake and his rocks was closer. So I headed that way, high up on the rises to the west and I was on one of them when I heard a big gun boom and it was where Jake was supposed to be so I jabbed my horse into a gallop and went to help him.

  When the gunfire got close I did a quiet sneak up behind some rocks to take a look-see and figure what to do.

  What I saw was enough to make me stomp on my hat except I had need of it, and no spare.

  Jake was pinned down behind some boulders had fallen off this cliff, and there was three galoots potting at him and one of them was sneaking around so he could shoot Jake in the back.

  He was going to be there pretty quick so I took my rifle out and I screwed the little rods in to hold the barrel up front and then I took a bead on the bastard and checked the wind and fired a round which come close enough to his right foot so he danced some. He moved back toward the other fellers right quick, and I suddenly recognized him—he was ol’ Whinny Bucks, a half-breed Cherokee and what-all who was a scout mostly hung around Cheyenne. So I knew these was Marsh’s boys.

  It was happening like I was afraid it would.

  Disinterested science had got down to the fine art of bushwhacking, and I was damned I was going to fight a war with fellers I’d known, over these fat rich bastards and their goddamned bones.

  Money’s the root of all evil, ’tis said, and it blooms funny, too. Cope and Marsh and their goddamned crooked-pinky teas and bought journalists.