“I’ve got to believe we will. I’ve still got scores to settle.”
“Aren’t there more important things in life than that?”
“For most people, I reckon.”
“But not for Nathan Stark?”
“Maybe someday.”
* * *
He knelt at one of the windows with a Springfield he had picked up from the floor where it lay next to a dead soldier. Nathan had scavenged the unlucky trooper’s extra rounds, too, and they were lined up on the windowsill, ready for him to load them as he needed to.
The sun was up. Black smoke billowed into the sky here and there from the buildings the Sioux had torched, but so far the savages hadn’t wreaked much destruction. Most of the fort was intact because the Sioux were using the buildings for cover as they continued attacking the chapel. The closest structures were officers’ quarters and one of the enlisted men’s barracks. Most of Hanging Dog’s forces were concentrated there. A smaller group had encircled the other side of the chapel to keep everyone pinned inside . . . not that anyone behind those thick stone walls actually wanted to venture out.
Nathan had his cheek resting against the Springfield’s stock as he watched intently over the loaded rifle’s sights. When he saw one of the attackers pop into view for a second, he squeezed the trigger. The Springfield cracked and bucked back against his shoulder. The Sioux warrior jumped and then flopped out into the open, half his head blown away by the powerful .45-70 round.
Nathan had killed half a dozen attackers over the past couple hours as the siege continued, but that wasn’t nearly enough. In the beginning, Hanging Dog’s forces had outnumbered the defenders slightly more than three to one, and Nathan doubted if they had whittled down those odds very much. A dozen soldiers were dead or wounded badly enough to be out of action.
No women or children had been hurt so far, at least that he knew of. He opened the trapdoor mechanism of the Springfield’s breech and slipped another of the long, sharp-pointed cartridges into the rifle.
A sound made him look over. He saw that Billy had crawled up to the window.
The youngster dropped another dozen cartridges onto the floor next to Nathan and explained, “Doc put us to work resupplying ammunition.”
“You and your friends?”
“That’s right.”
“Are any of them hurt?”
Billy shook his head. “Not so far. When they got here from the stables, during the preparations for battle, some of the soldiers didn’t want to let them in. But Doc made them.”
Nathan nodded. “Good.”
“You trust us, even though we are Sioux?”
“I know that you’re men who walk between worlds,” he said, using the Indian phrase for those who were red but lived with the hated whites. “Betraying us now wouldn’t do you any good. You’d always be tainted where Hanging Dog is concerned. He’d kill you without blinking. ”
“Yes, and all of us know it. Fate has given us a bitter brew to drink.”
“At least you’re alive to drink it,” Nathan said. “Thanks for the ammunition.”
Billy nodded and crawled away. Nathan went back to keeping his eyes open for another Sioux to kill.
* * *
By the middle of the day, it was hot enough inside the chapel that the defenders were all drenched in sweat. A little breeze came through the broken windows, but not enough to cool things down or disperse the clouds of powder smoke that hung in the air, stinging the eyes and nose of everyone. Billy and his friends crawled around the sanctuary offering canteens to the men. Nobody seemed to care anymore that they were Sioux. They were just the boys with the water.
Red Buffalo went over to the window where Nathan was posted. “I will take your spot for a few minutes,” the Crow offered. “Sit down and rest.”
“Was a time I’d have said I didn’t need any help from a stinking redskin,” Nathan replied as he turned and sank down gratefully with his back against the stone wall. “Today is not one of those days.”
Red Buffalo laughed as he slid his Springfield over the windowsill. “You have learned that weariness is sometimes more powerful than hate.”
“I’m tired, all right. Plumb worn out. And honest enough to say that you haven’t given me any reason to hate you.”
“What about my red skin?”
“I won’t ever like it, mind you ... but you’re not a bad sort, for a filthy savage.”
“And I have known worse white men. Not many, you understand, but a few.”
“Like Bucher and Dockery and McCall.”
“Yes,” Red Buffalo agreed. “Those three, without a doubt.”
Nathan looked over at the other side of the room where Jake Farrow knelt at one of the windows with a rifle, potting away at the Sioux on the west side of the chapel. The sutler had been in the thick of the fight right from the start. Of course, even if he was involved in the gunrunning, his life was still in danger just like everybody else’s. Once Hanging Dog had gotten what he wanted, he hadn’t hesitated to betray his partners, so it made sense that Farrow would fight.
Nathan still had the nagging feeling that Farrow hadn’t known a damned thing about the attack or the gunrunning. If they survived, Nathan intended to get to the bottom of that. He already had a vague idea stirring in the back of his brain.
“Nathan!” Red Buffalo’s voice was sharp. “Listen!”
Nathan listened for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t hear anything except guns.”
“No, it’s there, I tell you. A bugle!”
Nathan grunted. “You’re just wishing for things now. I don’t—” He stopped and drew in a breath as the distant, brassy tones reached his ear. “Well, son of a bitch.”
If Colonel Ledbetter had ridden down on the Sioux camp the day before, as he had been bound and determined to do, even he would have realized he’d been wrong . . . and that meant what Nathan and Red Buffalo had told him more than likely was right. The thing to do then was to head back to the fort as quickly as possible. That was the only way for Ledbetter to salvage any glory from the fiasco. Nathan had been counting on the colonel’s vanity and ambition to make him do the right thing, even if it was for the wrong reason.
As the familiar strains of “Charge!” from the bugle grew louder, Nathan knew his hunch had been right.
“They’re running!” Red Buffalo exclaimed. “Hanging Dog wants to get out of here before he’s trapped, but it’s too late!”
Nathan got up hurriedly and knelt at the window beside the Crow scout. He saw the Sioux fleeing across the parade ground. Bringing the Springfield to his shoulder, he drew a bead on one of them and pressed the trigger. The rifle boomed. Nathan saw his target pitch forward on his face as the slug smashed into his back between the shoulder blades.
For several moments, Nathan and Red Buffalo reloaded and fired again and again, as many times as they could before the Sioux were out of sight. They dropped more of Hanging Dog’s warriors, and Nathan felt a fierce exultation with each of the savages who fell. Maybe, just maybe, it didn’t make sense to hate all Indians equally ... but he figured it was just fine to hate these raiders who had intended to slaughter everyone in the fort, women and children included.
Soldiers on horseback swept around the northern end of the fort to cut off Hanging Dog’s escape route. The men of Companies G and H might not be cavalry, but they rode down the Sioux anyway. Some of them dismounted and formed ranks, and their devastating rifle fire scythed through the scattering remainder of the war party. Some of the Indians would get away, Nathan had no doubt of that, but it would be a long time before they tried to attack a fort again, especially if Hanging Dog was one of those killed. Without his leadership, this threat to peace along the frontier would evaporate ... at least for a while.
Inside the chapel, the soldiers whooped and congratulated each other on surviving. Lightner and Lieutenant Allingham tried to maintain order and discipline, but it wasn’t easy when the men had come so close to deat
h.
Nathan stood up, sighed, and leaned the empty Springfield against the wall next to the window. “Finally used that bullet of yours, eh?” he said as Red Buffalo set his rifle aside, too.
“That was gone a long time ago,” Red Buffalo said. “I gave it to one of the Sioux.”
“Generous man.” Nathan started walking across the sanctuary.
“Where are you going?” Red Buffalo asked as he came up alongside. “Shouldn’t you check on Mrs. Blaine?”
“Yeah, but there’s one more thing I need to do first.”
He walked toward Jake Farrow. Noah Crimmens was there with the sutler, looking pale and drawn but relieved. Nathan had seen Crimmens huddled in a corner several times during the battle, obviously frightened. He was a clerk, not a fighting man.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.
Farrow grinned at Nathan. “Glad to see you came through it alive, Stark.”
“Yes, I am, too,” Crimmens said, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.
“We were lucky, all of us.” Nathan’s gaze tracked over to Crimmens. “But you’re the luckiest one of all, Noah.”
“I ... I don’t understand why you’d say that, Nathan.”
“Well, it seems like fate would’ve had a bullet with your name on it today, since it was you who supplied those rifles to Hanging Dog. You didn’t know he was gonna double-cross you and attack the fort before you had a chance to slip off and head back east with the money you made betraying everybody who trusted you.”
Crimmens’ eyes widened while Nathan was talking, until they seemed about to bulge out of their sockets. Everyone else around was listening intently, including Farrow, Doc Lightner, and Lieutenant Allingham.
“What?” Crimmens ventured. “That’s crazy talk! I didn’t—How in the world would I even go about doing such a thing?”
“You handled the paperwork on all the freight your boss brought in. It would have been easy enough for you to account for extra rifles, make it look like you took delivery of them when really the men you hired turned them over to Hanging Dog instead. To make it work, though, you had to know everything the army was doing in these parts, and that’s why you had to bring Bucher, McCall, and Dockery in on the scheme. We know all about it now, Noah. A witness heard McCall admit before he died that you were behind the whole thing.”
That was an outright lie. Delia hadn’t heard McCall say anything about Crimmens ... but the clerk didn’t know that. From the way Crimmens’ face suddenly twisted with hatred and rage, Nathan knew his shot in the dark had found its target.
“You son of a—!” Crimmens cried as his hand darted under his coat and came out holding a small pistol. “You’ve ruined everything!”
Crimmens had drawn first, but that didn’t matter. Nathan’s hand flashed to his Colt. He was no gunslinger, but his shot was faster—and more accurate. The slug crashed into Crimmens’ narrow chest and flung him back against the stone wall behind him. His gun popped, but the bullet went into the plank floor at his feet. He hung where he was for a second, his mouth opening and closing and his throat working, then he slid down to a sitting position and died. His head slumped forward over his chest.
“Sorry,” Nathan muttered to a staring Doc Lightner. He holstered the Colt. “Figured if I pushed him a mite, he’d confess. Didn’t really expect him to put up a fight.”
Lightner regained his composure. “I’d say what just happened is as good as a confession, Captain Stark. You’ll need to make a full report about this to Colonel Ledbetter, though.”
“You reckon he’ll believe me this time?” Nathan asked, smiling faintly.
“He’ll believe you. He won’t have much choice.”
Red Buffalo put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Somebody’s looking for you.”
Nathan didn’t shrug it off, as he would have a couple weeks earlier. Looking around, he saw Delia coming toward him across the sanctuary with a smile on her face, and hurried to meet her.
CHAPTER 39
Colonel Ledbetter, for all his flaws, had proven to be a halfway decent tactician in his first major engagement with the hostiles. He had split his forces, encircled the enemy, and inflicted devastating losses. The Sioux suffered more than two hundred killed and another fifty wounded and/or captured. Only a couple dozen escaped. Hanging Dog’s body was found among the dead.
The story of the battle would be featured in Harper’s Illustrated Weekly, that was certain.
There had been fifteen fatalities among the defenders of Fort Randall, a fact that probably wouldn’t be mentioned prominently in journalistic accounts. In addition, nine men from the column under Colonel Ledbetter’s command had been killed in the fighting. One of them was Sergeant Jeremiah Dockery, originally from Tennessee.
Fate might have spared Noah Crimmens—momentarily—but it hadn’t been that kind to Dockery.
Of Dietrich Bucher, the German scout attached to the column, there was no sign. Somewhere amidst all the bloody commotion, Bucher had slipped away, and his whereabouts were unknown. That bothered Nathan, but there was nothing he could do about it.
* * *
Several days after the battle, Nathan showed up at the chapel to walk Delia back to her house after her class was dismissed for the day. The building’s broken windows were boarded up until they could be replaced. Men were already at work rebuilding the guardhouse and the other buildings that had been burned. The sound of hammering floated over the prairie as Nathan and Delia strolled, arm in arm.
“The racket of progress,” he commented.
Delia laughed. “I hear the colonel called you in again today.”
Nathan laughed. “Yeah. Poor varmint can’t figure out what to do with me. He hates my guts, but too many people know that if Moses and Doc and I hadn’t done what we did, things might’ve turned out a whole lot different.”
“And much worse. You saved the lives of everyone here, Nathan.”
“Just doing my job.”
“With an Indian partner.” She smiled. “I noticed that you call him Moses now. If I were to invite the two of you to dinner again, would you still be at each other’s throats?”
“I wouldn’t bet against it. We may have to work together. That doesn’t make us friends.”
“Small steps,” she said as she squeezed his arm.
He shrugged. Let her think what she wanted to. It wasn’t going to change things.
“So what is Colonel Ledbetter going to do with you?” Delia went on.
“He’d planned on asking the War Department to fire me or at least send me somewhere else. But since that might look bad now, he says he’s stuck with me. He’s not much fonder of Moses, but for the time being, we’re going to keep on working together. Until Cullen gets back, anyway.”
“What will happen then?”
“I reckon we’ll find out,” Nathan said. “Right now, I’m more interested in finding out what you’ve got planned for supper tonight. You are planning on asking me, aren’t you?”
Delia laughed. “You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you, Nathan Stark?”
Nathan just smiled. He was less sure about a lot of things than he had been at any time during the past fifteen years ... but nobody had to know that.
He wished he knew, though, why he had a sudden prickling on the back of his neck as he and Delia walked on toward her house.
* * *
Half a mile away, bellied down at the crest of a small rise, Dietrich Bucher peered over the sights of a Sharps Big Fifty buffalo rifle and adjusted them slightly for windage and distance. The German’s eyes were keen enough to pick out the two figures strolling unconcernedly across the parade ground.
Stark might believe he could come in and ruin everything, cost Bucher a lot of money, and ruin his reputation, all without paying any price for what he had done. The verdammt American was about to find out that wasn’t true. The Sharps was perfectly capable of making the shot, especially in the hands of an expert such as D
ietrich Bucher. He centered the sights on the tiny shape that was the back of Nathan Stark’s head.
Concentrating so much on the killing shot he was about to make, he never heard the grass whisper under moccasin-shod feet. Never knew that anyone else was around until fingers tangled in his thick dark hair and jerked his head up. Bucher barely had time to feel the razor-sharp blade being drawn across his throat, biting deep, before his life began to wash away on a red tide.
* * *
The killer rolled the dying man onto his back. Consciousness was fading fast in the man’s eyes, but the killer wanted him to know why.
Black Sun smiled coldly, shook his head, and said, “Mine.”
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Not many men get a second chance at life. But thanks to a chief U.S. marshal who needs their help, the bank-robbing duo of Jimmy “Slash” Braddock and Melvin “Pecos Kid” Baker are on the right side of the law. As unofficial marshals, they’ve agreed to pick up three prisoners from a Milestown jail and escort them to Denver. Sounds easy enough—until they learn who the prisoners are: an unholy trio of sadistic cutthroat killers known as Talon, “Hellraisin’ ” Frank, and the Sioux called Black Pot. And they’ve managed to escape before Slash and Pecos even show up ...
It gets worse. The three convicts have turned Milestown into their own savage slayground. Drinking, killing, ravaging—and worse—they’re painting the town red with blood and burning it to the ground. Slash and Pecos manage to stop them in the nick of time. But getting these three to Denver is another story—because the trio’s leader has offered a thousand-dollar bounty to anyone who can kill Slash and Pecos ... This is going to be one wicked ride that Slash and Pecos will never forget—if they live to tell about it ...
Nathan Stark, Army Scout Page 27
