by Will DuRey
‘There are signs of a scuffle here,’ he told the officer, ‘and I think there was a woman involved.’
‘A woman?’ echoed O’Malley. Wes drew O’Malley’s attention to some smaller footprints.
‘Whoever made those was a lot lighter than everyone else.’
‘Could it be a boy?’
Wes studied them closely, noted the shape and style of the heelprint.
‘I don’t think so.’ Then, to prove his conclusion wasn’t based on one clue alone, he pointed across the trail. ‘Over here.’
He moved forward and indicated an area at the side of the trail.
‘Looks as though the scuffle ended up on the ground here, and judging by the area that’s been disturbed I’d say the one on his back was wearing a dress. That being the case I’d suggest she was a passenger.’ He looked at O’Malley and grinned. ‘I’ve heard of female bandits before but I’ve never heard of one holding up a stagecoach wearing a dress.’
‘Sergeant,’ Captain O’Malley shouted. ‘See if there’s any luggage under the flap.’ He spoke next to Wes Gray. ‘I have no orders to pursue anybody,’ he said. ‘That’s a job for the local law officer, or Wells Fargo themselves. Let’s get these bodies into the stagecoach. When the horses are rested we’ll return to the fort.’
‘Sir,’ called the sergeant, ‘there are some trunks here.’
While O’Malley investigated the luggage Wes gave the area a thorough examination. He found hoofprints where the outlaws had waited in ambush and also signs of their departure over the high bluffs. When he’d done he returned to the coach to find the captain in a state of great agitation. One of the trunks was open and O’Malley held two small framed photographs.
‘We must find her,’ he said to the sergeant. ‘Mount up and scour the hills.’
The captain’s sudden decision surprised the sergeant.
‘Sir?’ His single word conveyed the sense that the order was improper.
‘Are you questioning me, Sergeant?’
Seeking a good cause that would justify his apparent reluctance to obey a command the sergeant said:
‘There aren’t enough of us, sir. We can’t go in different directions, anyone who came across the robbers would be sure to be outnumbered. Like you told Mr Gray, it’s not our job.’
O’Malley’s anger flared. ‘I’ll decide what is our job.’
Wes Gray, confused by the captain’s agitation, asked for an explanation.
‘The girl,’ said O’Malley. ‘It’s Ellie. Ellie Rogers. My fiancée.’ He handed Wes the photographs. One showed the head and shoulders of a smiling young girl. The other was a photograph of O’Malley himself. ‘I’ve got to find her.’
‘No,’ said Wes. ‘You’ve got to get back to Laramie and defuse the rumours of a Sioux uprising.’
‘I can’t abandon Ellie.’ Then, almost as though he were talking to himself, he added, ‘What on earth was she doing here.’ In distracted fashion, the young officer peered inside the coach, almost as though he expected to see Ellie sitting in a corner, her presence overlooked by the sergeant who had reached the vehicle first.
He turned away, his face red with anger. Then he slapped his gloves on the palm of his hand as if he’d arrived at an important decision. He strode towards his horse, placed a hand on the saddle, raised a foot to the stirrup. Then he paused. His desire to pursue the men who had kidnapped his fiancée was obvious to every man present.
From his reconnaissance of the scene Wes had detected that three men were involved in the robbery. He also knew that one had ridden away carrying extra weight. It didn’t take much detective work to assume that that additional burden had been Ellie. He had found the line of their departure, eastwards, towards the North Platte, and he was anxious to start after them knowing that once they reached and crossed that river it would be difficult for anyone to track them.
That, however, was information he chose to keep from Captain O’Malley. Instead, he pointed in the direction in which the robbers had gone and used the minimum of words to describe his intentions before climbing into the saddle.
‘There are three of them, riding that way. They are already a day ahead. I’ll travel faster alone. I’ll do what I can to bring her back.’
Reluctant to leave the task of finding Ellie to another, Captain O’Malley stepped forward to grab at Red’s bridle. The sergeant moved more quickly, putting himself between the officer and the horse. He held O’Malley’s angry glare, knowing that his action might be interpreted as insubordination. But the look in his eyes was one of sympathy, as though he was telling the captain that he understood his distress, that he would want to react in the same way, but would also want a good friend to stop him and guide him to do his duty.
‘It’s for the best, sir,’ he said, keeping his voice low so that his words didn’t carry to the rest of the troopers. ‘Wes Gray can follow tracks better than most Indians. If your lady can be brought back he’s the one to do it.’
Without waiting for further orders he set about supervising the men in preparation for the journey back to Fort Laramie.
For Wes Gray the trail was easy to follow. The flattened path where the grass had been broken down by galloping horses was clear to see on the rising ground. The robbers, it seemed, were disdainful of pursuit. Either they believed that the telltale signs of their passing would have disappeared before any posse could be put into the field, or they were confident that they would be untraceable once they reached the numerous valleys and streams that ran down to the North Platte.
He’d covered little more than a mile when he pulled Red into a walk and ambled a few strides off the trail. A mild breeze was blowing, shifting the leaves of the trees, the grass on the hillside and the slender branches of the ground shrubs. In one of the shrubs something else moved. Wes knew by its colour that it was man-made. He hung low in the saddle and scooped the object free of the fronds on which it was snagged. It was an old, grey hat that had gone soft with age. Wes examined it but it had no identifying marks. He tucked it under the tie strings of his blanket roll to stop it blowing away and tapped his heels against Red’s flanks, instructing him to pick up speed again.
An hour later he dismounted to rest Red and to check the tracks he was following. For a while now he had seen the imprints of one horse become more pronounced, proof that the one carrying double was tiring in its effort to keep up with the others. Shadows were lengthening and the heat of the day was beginning to diminish. Wes checked the eastern horizon and decided he had little more than an hour of daylight left. He could clearly see the direction the robbers had taken; a path of beaten-down grass disappeared around the side of a hillock.
‘Come on, boy,’ he said to the horse as he clambered back on board, ‘let’s get as far as we can tonight.’ With an obvious trail to follow, he pushed Red hard.
As dusk approached they breasted a ridge that looked down on a broad stream. The tracks he was trailing were still discernible but Wes knew that if the robbers had taken the precaution of riding a little way along in the water, only time and luck would permit him to find them again. He drew his rifle and slowly rode down to the water’s edge. This, he knew, was a good place to camp for the night but it paid to advance carefully: someone else might have the same idea.
He saw the body on the grassy slope. Two arrows protruded from its back, their shafts snapped off and discarded. Peering round, Wes checked for movement in the surrounding bushes. All was still. Nightjars sang and fluttered somewhere near. A good sign. Wes climbed down from his horse and approached the dead man.
The body had been stripped, scalped and mutilated. He collected the broken arrow shafts and examined them. There was no mistaking their origin. Shoshone. Making the most of the diminishing light he tried to piece together what had happened. The three riders he was pursuing had stopped here, then had been attacked by Shoshones. Unshod ponies had come across the river. There had been an exchange of fire, a fact indicated by the spent shells that were scat
tered on the ground a short distance from the body. If any Indians had been killed it seemed logical to assume that their comrades had been back to collect the bodies. Two shod and several unshod horses had gone back up the bank. The likelihood was that two of the robbers had survived the initial charge and made a break for freedom pursued by the Shoshone. The question that bothered Wes was: what had happened to the girl?
Near the body he found a rawhide strip which was knotted in the middle but had been cut with a sharp blade. Wes surmised it had been used to bind something, possibly the girl’s hands, but there was no other sign of her. What, he wondered, had happened to her after the attack? Had she escaped and wandered away and was now lost in the hills? Or had the Shoshone taken her? A white woman was a prize worth capturing, a slave to take back to the village, a creature to perform every menial task the womenfolk demanded. But if the Shoshone had taken her, why cut away her bindings?
Wes re-examined the body. Without clothes there was no way of knowing the man’s identity. He gazed at the face. There was something familiar about it but Wes knew he had never seen it before. Wes had no means by which to transport the body back to civilization for a proper burial, nor the inclination to return to Laramie until he’d searched longer for the girl. Travelling light, he was devoid of a suitable tool with which to dig a grave, so he set about gathering rocks to pile on top of the corpse. This was the best he could do to prevent it being devoured by carrion-eating birds and scavenging animals. As he was lifting rocks from the river bed he suddenly realized that he was not alone.
They were Sioux. Six of them, motionless astride motionless ponies. Their faces were painted, half-red, half-black, with a broad band of yellow crossing each face from cheek to cheek. War paint. Wes placed the last rock on the mound he had made over the body, then removed his hat and wiped his sleeve over his brow. When he had replaced his hat he held up his hand in the traditional greeting sign and began to walk towards the group. If they were here to make war against him they would have killed him before he had known they were there. One of them, a muscular brave astride a brown piebald pony, moved slowly forward to meet him. There was something familiar about the brave, something familiar in the way he sat his horse, but the paint on his face made his features difficult to recognize. Using a mix of Sioux words, Arapaho words and sign language Wes held a conversation with him.
‘I am Medicine Feather, brother of the Arapaho.’
‘Wiyaka Wakan is known to the people of the Ogallalah.’
‘I’m looking for a white woman who was taken from a coach by bad men. She was here when the white men fought Shoshone raiders.’
‘We are hunting Shoshone. Last night they raided our village and stole ponies. Kicking Bear, our chief, was killed.’
Wes was saddened by the news. Kicking Bear had always stood against war with the white men and a new chief might lead his village in a different direction.
‘I have smoked a pipe with Kicking Bear,’ Wes said. ‘He was a great man.’
The Indian nodded.
Wes asked, ‘Who is now chief of the Ogallalah?’
‘Mila Luhtah, Red Knife, who is young and wise.’
‘I hope he leads his people in the way of peace.’
‘There will never be peace with the Shoshone. They are dogs. When we catch them we will kill them.’
An idea flashed into the scout’s mind. If he rode with these Sioux warriors he might be able to rescue Ellie Rogers when they caught up with the Shoshones. He told the Sioux brave what he had seen the previous day.
‘The Shoshones split into two groups in the Valley Where Two Waters Fall. Perhaps they plan to meet there before returning to their own country.’
‘A-hey,’ yelled the warrior. ‘It is good. If we ride hard we can catch them.’
‘I wish to ride with you,’ said Wes. ‘As you want your ponies so I want the woman I seek.’
Then the Sioux brave surprised him.
‘The Shoshone do not have the woman,’ he said.
‘How do you know? Where is she?’ Wes feared the brave’s words meant that Ellie was dead, that her discarded body had been discovered by some tribespeople. He was astonished by the response.
‘The Shoshone do not have the woman. We saw her when she was a prisoner of some white men. One had hair on his face the colour of your horse. Later we heard the sounds of fighting and we found her here alone. I took her to the lodge of my sister. She is well.’
‘Your sister?’
‘You know her. She is the squaw of your friend.’
‘Apo Hopa! Apo Hopa is your sister?’ Wes recalled the day he had watched the band of Sioux from the hayloft of Jim Taylor’s barn. This was the brave whom Jim suspected of trying to lure Sky away. He was her brother, watching over her to see that she was well.
‘Yes, I am her brother.’ He continued speaking and his next words held another surprise for Wes.
‘We have met before, Medicine Feather. You and I have smoked a pipe together.’
Wes looked closely at him; his features were typical of the Sioux people but perhaps there was something about the shape of his eyes that made him think he should remember the brave.
Lightly, the Indian sprang from his pony and squatted beside Wes.
‘A-hey,’ he said. He filled his hands with dust and threw it up so that it came down over his head.’
Wes grinned and followed suit.
‘A-hey,’ he said. He heard the laughter of the other warriors who had remained further up the hillside.
‘You gave me my name,’ Sky’s brother told Wes. ‘Now I am called Throws The Dust.’
After the Sioux had ridden away and with darkness fast approaching, Wes decided to make camp for the night. Even though he was sure the Shoshones were not close by, he chose to camp without a fire. There was a suitable spot halfway between the river and the ridge, sheltered and secluded among a clutch of pines. He picketed Red close by and fed him oats and water from his hat before chewing a chunk of jerked beef for his own supper.
As he spread out his bedroll he heard the rustle in the trees. Red had picked up the sound a moment earlier, giving a little warning snicker to the scout. Wes drew his six-gun and pressed himself against a tree, silently watching and listening.
Another movement sounded, this time more distinct. Wes discounted Indians; they wouldn’t be so clumsy. Again a noise, louder this time, and he wished he’d picked up his rifle. Perhaps it was a grizzly bear: this was their domain. But he knew Red would have been spooked if it were a grizzly. Instead he was standing calmly, unconcerned by whatever or whoever was approaching.
There came a final crackle of twigs underfoot and a scratching of leaves and branches, and a dun-coloured horse emerged from the deeper reaches of the little wood. It was saddled but riderless and it stopped, shyly, when it saw Red. Wes left his hiding-place, reholstered his gun and took hold of its bridle. The horse was trembling from withers to hindquarters.
‘Tired and hungry, are you?’ Wes spoke gently. ‘I guess that was your owner I’ve just finished burying.’ He unsaddled the horse and ground-tied him beside Red before feeding him with oats and water. ‘Perhaps something in these saddle-bags will tell us the name of that fella.’
There wasn’t much in the saddle-bags: some items of clothing, ammunition, a harmonica and a leather billfold. Wes checked its contents; there were a handful of dollar notes and a single folded document. The document declared that the bearer, Clement Jonson Butler, had on the twenty-third day of September, 1865, renounced the Confederate Army and sworn an Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America. It was his end-of-war discharge paper.
The next morning, knowing that Ellie Rogers was safe, Wes followed the trail of the fleeing robbers. With the reins of Clem Butler’s horse fastened to his saddle horn, he soon came across the long-grass battle scene marked by the scavenger-scarred body of a dead saddle horse. Wes dismounted, removed his hat and scratched his head. He studied the signs of battle and, other
than the fact that it had begun at the river, everything up to the defeat of the Indians coincided with the story related by the two men who had reached Laramie. Which, if they were the men who had been involved in this fight, meant that they were also the men who had robbed the stage, murdered the driver and guard and kidnapped Ellie Rogers.
However, they had claimed that both of their horses were killed in the battle; whereas before him was distinct evidence that one of the horses had left the scene unharmed. The men had also ridden into Laramie on Sioux ponies, yet all the evidence here pointed to a Shoshone war party. Even without Throws The Dust’s testimony Wes knew that Shoshone and Sioux would never fight side by side.
So had there been two similar battles with two white men winning out against a superior number of Indians? It seemed unlikely, and if the survivors of this battle weren’t the two men in Laramie where were they now? What was clear to Wes was that they hadn’t gone back to help Clement Jonson Butler or Ellie Rogers. Perhaps they’d considered them dead before they’d made a run for it. Wes pulled the arrow from the belly of the dead horse and wrapped it inside the grey hat. This arrow, too, was Shoshone, evidence that the Sioux had not been involved in the fight.
Wes decided not to fetch Ellie Rogers from Jim Taylor’s cabin. He was content to report her situation to the army. Colonel Flint, no doubt, would dispatch Captain O’Malley to the Mildwater Valley homestead for a reunion with his girl. Instead, he followed the trail of the single horse, considering it his duty to track down the remaining robbers even though he knew that Caleb Dodge would soon require him to help with the crossing at the Platte River. Not only were they robbers, but killers and kidnappers, too.
He came across the second dead horse with its broken leg and bullet in the brain as he neared the end of the long-grass country. His suspicion that the two men in Laramie were the men he was following hardened; those suspicions were occupying his thoughts as he entered the rolling hill land that led back to Laramie.
