The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  “As can be.”

  “And you, Bishop?”

  “No problem. Put ’em down, collect the steers, and get back to the herd.”

  “Correct,” said Pickering, but he was stuck on Bishop’s first two words.

  No problem, eh?

  But problems and a risk of getting killed were all Bill Pickering could think about.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE AFTERNOON WAS waning, sunset’s first long shadows reaching out across the plains. After the best part of a day in transit, with miles between them and the herd they’d robbed, Tall Tree decided it was likely safe to stop and rest awhile.

  Not spend the night, perhaps, but time to build a small and smokeless fire from dried wood, sleep in shifts for two or three hours, with three men down and four awake to watch the longhorns constantly.

  And what about Iron Jacket?

  Tall Tree did not trust him, could not truly rest until his enemy was laid to rest.

  He felt uneasy doing that while they were on the run, armed white men theoretically pursuing them, but what choice did he have? As soon as Tall Tree dared to close his eyes, would Iron Jacket spring upon him, striking without honor in his urgency to lead the war party?

  He called the others to a halt, saying, “We stop here for a time. Two men sleep at a time, two hours each, the rest on watch.”

  “That leaves an odd man out,” Iron Jacket said.

  “I have allowed for that,” Tall Tree replied, drawing his cut-down saber from its sheath.

  “What does this mean?” Iron Jacket asked.

  “You plan to challenge me,” Tall Tree required. “There is no reason to delay it any longer.”

  He could see Iron Jacket was surprised by the exposure of his plan. Traitors, devoid of honor in their hearts, sometimes have difficulty realizing they, in turn, might be betrayed.

  “So be it.” As he spoke, Iron Jacket drew his knife and tomahawk, one in each hand. “Your time is at an end.”

  “Let us find out,” Tall Tree advised.

  Before his saber’s blade was shortened, it had measured three feet long, now half that, single-edged and sharpened almost to the keenness of a shaving razor. Its guard was made of brass, its handle wrapped with leather. Presently it weighed a little under two pounds on a white man’s scale. Tall Tree had practiced with it to achieve an expert’s skill.

  Iron Jacket gripped his weapons almost casually, turning to regard the other faces ringed around him. “And these five?” he asked.

  “Shall take no part,” Tall Tree assured him. “If you wonder whether they will follow you, should you emerge victorious, that is a question best asked later.”

  Iron Jacket frowned. “At least one of them has betrayed me,” he observed.

  “As any faithless traitor might expect,” Tall Tree replied. “Do you accept the challenge now, or will you leave us empty-handed?”

  “I accept, of course,” Iron Jacket said. “Let us begin.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT’S THEM,” BILL Pickering declared, and passed his spyglass off to Toby Bishop on his left. “No doubt.”

  Bishop confirmed it with a glance and passed the pocket telescope to Whit Melville, letting him have a turn.

  “You notice one man down?” Bishop asked Pickering.

  “Looks like they had some kind of falling-out,” the foreman said. “His chest’s stove in. One less of ’em for us to deal with.”

  “Fighting when they’re on the run?” asked Melville. “That make any sense to you?”

  “Don’t waste time figuring how Injuns think,” their foreman said. “We need to move before they all get mounted up again and turn it into a running fight.”

  That made good sense to Bishop. It seemed the raiders—painted like Comanches—weren’t aware of being watched so far. With Pickering and Melville, he was standing on a ridge of sorts with dusk falling behind them, stretching out its velvet shadows overland. Their horses stood downslope behind the three cowboys, waiting for whatever came next.

  “Snipe ’em from here?” Whit asked. “Or do you wanna ride on over there?”

  “We don’t want a long-distance fight running the longhorns all over creation,” Pickering replied. “Mount up and have your rifles ready when we’re closer in.”

  They were a hundred yards or so out from their targets presently, shaded by the oncoming night. None of the braves still on their feet had spotted them so far, but that could change at any second, hence the urgency for them to make their move while clinging to a vestige of surprise.

  Bishop swung into Compañero’s saddle, drew his Yellow Boy Winchester from its scabbard, weapon in his right hand, reins clutched in his left. Perhaps he was imagining the snowflake Appaloosa’s eagerness to run and meet the enemy. If so, Bishop was pleased to go with the illusion, taking it on faith.

  His two companions were aboard their horses now, all facing down the slope toward six red men and two dozen longhorns that belonged to Gavin Dixon. At a sign from Pickering they launched themselves downhill, no Rebel yells or premature gunshots, only the sound of hoofbeats over sod announcing their attack.

  Downrange, one of the warriors saw or heard them coming, barking something to the rest that put them all into defensive postures, five with guns in hand, the sixth holding a bow.

  “That tears it, boys!” said Pickering. Raising his Winchester and sighting down its barrel, left hand dangling his sorrel’s reins, he ordered, “Give ’em hell!”

  Bishop required no urging on that score. He squeezed the Yellow Boy’s trigger and felt its recoil buck against his shoulder as a puff of muzzle smoke obscured his chosen target. Riding through that tart gunpowder haze, he saw the Comanche he’d aimed for kneeling on the grass, a crimson stain marking his buckskin trousers, still fighting to aim the long gun in his hands.

  A muzzle flash and puff of smoke downrange, the distance from their adversaries lessened by one-third or more. The warrior’s bullet sizzled past on Bishop’s right, somewhere between himself and Pickering, missing them both.

  Bishop pumped his Winchester’s lever action and felt the empty cartridge casing it ejected clip his hat brim and deflect away as he was lining up another shot.

  “Hold still, you whoreson,” he muttered. “Just one more second now.”

  * * *

  * * *

  IRON JACKET’S HUNTING knife had grazed Tall Tree’s left shoulder as they struggled, just before the war chief’s saber plunged beneath his enemy’s breastbone and angled upward, skewering Iron Jacket’s heart. That thrust had frozen him in rigid death, his brain a second late in picking up the message, then transmitting it to slack-jawed face and folding legs.

  The fight, such as it was, had lasted barely fifteen seconds overall.

  When it was done, and Iron Jacket was laid out on the prairie grass, the other braves had whooped as one, congratulating Tall Tree on his victory. They likely would have done the same if Iron Jacket had defeated him instead, but on the face of it he had no reason to dispute their loyalty.

  Not yet.

  But they would all bear watching in the future, if their band remained intact to plan more escapades.

  He was about to call upon the five survivors to mount up, preparing to resume their southward march, when Someone Found looked past Tall Tree, pointed, and warned them all, “White eyes!”

  Tall Tree counted three horsemen, still outnumbered two to one by his raiders. Whether they had pursued his party from the scene of last night’s clash or simply turned up by coincidence, he could not say and did not care. If they were riders from the longhorn herd, they would attack. If not, while they might turn and flee, they could report his party’s presence to local authorities or hunters from the trail drive.

  Either way, the only safe white men were corpses.

 
Tall Tree did not have to tell his men that they should arm themselves. In seconds, Old Owl, Fire Maker, and Someone Found had seized their shoulder guns. Great Leaper had his long bow in hand, an arrow nocked. Tall Tree retrieved his own Sharps rifle from the ground and raised its ladder sight, cocking the hammer with his thumb.

  He did not feel the slash across his shoulder now, his full concentration focused on the three riders as they raced forward, drawing closer to his party and the steers they’d captured hours earlier.

  The next few moments would decide whether their effort was in vain, or if they would be granted further time to make their getaway after these three white men were dead. Through victory, his warriors would obtain more horses, firearms, and ammunition for the war Tall Tree had planned.

  They might not live to see it through, but each white man they killed was one less enemy for other members of their tribe to face in the months ahead.

  One of the horsemen fired a rifle shot and Tall Tree braced himself, in case his adversary had the proper range, but then he heard a wet smack to his right and Fire Maker dropped one knee, leg wounded. Gritting his teeth, Fire Maker raised his Springfield rifle, steadied it to aim as best he could, and was about to fire.

  Too late.

  Another bullet found him, punching through his forehead like a drill bit, lifting long hair on the back of his skull as it broke free and took flight with a fistful of his mangled brain. Fire Maker got his shot off then, wasted against the fading sky as he sprawled over backward, his blood spattering the grass.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE KILLING SHOT was Melville’s, from his Henry lever-action, either fired at Bishop’s wounded warrior by coincidence or consciously. In either case, they weren’t in competition, and Toby didn’t mind.

  Whatever thinned the odds against them suited him down to the ground.

  Instead of fussing over it, Bishop turned slightly in his saddle, picked another figure clad in buckskin, and triggered his second shot of the engagement. He scored yet another hit, surprising him a bit with Compañero at full gallop, but like his first hit, this one wasn’t a kill.

  The wounded brave staggered, recovered from it without falling down, and fired what sounded like a twelve-gauge coach gun from the hip.

  The range was wrong for buckshot, twice the recommended distance for effective shooting with a sawed-off scattergun. One pellet could have caused a fatal wound, each one of them roughly the size of a .33-caliber bullet, but they spread so fast and lost velocity so quickly that a man-sized target farther out than forty feet or so would likely get away with a painful peppering. Beyond that range it was unlikely that the triggerman would score a hit at all.

  Toss in a wound on top of everything, and Bishop guessed the shotgunner would have had trouble hitting a barn door.

  But others in the war party were armed with rifles, calibers impossible to guess from such a distance when he couldn’t get a clear look at their shooting irons. The sounds the weapons made when fired told Bishop they could close the intervening distance well enough—and one of them boomed out the telltale echo of a Sharps buffalo gun.

  That weapon, in an artist’s hands, could be a surefire killer well beyond six hundred yards; call it eight times their present distance. Luckily, whoever had the Sharps wasn’t in Buffalo Bill Cody’s class of marksmanship or anywhere close to it, though the heavy slug passed close enough for Bishop’s left ear to report its whistling passage.

  Another twenty yards or so and Toby planned to leap from Compañero’s saddle on the run, hoping he didn’t twist an ankle on touchdown, and close whatever space remained between him and his enemies on foot. A man could duck and hide better that way, without risking his animal to hostile fire, and shooting from a prone position had its own advantages.

  Stability for one. A smaller target profile for another, increasing his adversaries’ odds of nailing him.

  The fair fights, Toby knew from long experience, were those you walked away from without trailing too much blood.

  A few more seconds now, if no one shot him off his racing animal or framed the larger Appaloosa in their sights. Bishop refrained from triggering another shot as he closed in, scanning the hostile firing line and noting two of the red raiders were wounded now, a third loosing an arrow as his enemies got close enough for aiming well.

  And . . . now!

  He rolled out of his saddle, giving Compañero’s rump a slap with his free hand before dropping into a crouch on solid ground. In front of him, two lifeless bodies on the turf, one of them dead before Pickering’s riders spied their enemies. One of the five red men still on his feet was wounded, courtesy of Bishop’s second rifle shot, but all of them seemed fit to fight and anxious to get on with it.

  Particularly the one who held the stubby coach gun, swinging it around to find its mark on Bishop’s face.

  * * *

  * * *

  TALL TREE REGISTERED the sight and sound of Old Owl dying, shot down by the drover he had covered with his shotgun, proving too slow off the mark to fire its second barrel when he could have done some good for the Comanche side.

  The white man’s rifle bullet entered Old Owl’s throat above the so-called Adam’s apple, lifting Old Owl off his feet as if snagged by a giant’s fishhook from behind. His moccasins cleared grass before he came back down, his shoulders touching sod before his heels. Dying, he fired the shotgun blast that might have saved his life if he had been quicker with it, shattering one of his own feet with the buckshot charge.

  Tall Tree wondered if that meant he would be limping in his next life, in the Happy Hunting Ground.

  No matter.

  Tall Tree fumbled to reload his single-shot rifle but dropped the cartridge—two and one-half inches long, dull brass and lead, weighing just over one ounce—into the stubby grass between his feet. Instead of stooping to retrieve it, he reversed the rifle in his grip, clutching its thirty-four-inch barrel, wielding it as if it were a ten-pound war club.

  Three white men and little time to choose among them, so he picked the closest, shrieked a warbling battle cry, and swung the four-foot rifle at the cowboy’s head.

  The drover saw him coming, ducked, and Tall Tree missed his skull, the Sharps stock knocking off his high-crowned hat. Beneath it, Tall Tree glimpsed a tangled mass of sweaty auburn hair above a snarling face, teeth bared as if to grip and rend his larynx.

  And they call us animals, the war chief thought, before instinct took over in the struggle for his life.

  Somehow, he’d caught the cowboy by surprise, though not enough to brain him where he stood. Ducking and mouthing curses, the white man dropped his Henry rifle and was groping for a holstered pistol when Tall Tree collided with him, both men sprawling on the turf with the Comanche uppermost. His knee pinned down the white man’s arms, leaving him vulnerable, as Tall Tree leaned forward, pressing with his rifle’s hammer and breechblock against his adversary’s throat.

  It should not have taken much time to strangle him, with Tall Tree’s solid weight atop the Sharps. A few seconds at most, if he had time to—

  Something struck him in the ribs, a sharp kick with the pointed toe of someone’s boot, he thought, and Tall Tree toppled over to his left side, lost his purchase on one enemy, and saw another looming over him.

  The war chief kicked out with both feet and struck his enemy’s right shin, propelled him backward, limping, curses on his lips. Before he could recover with his rifle, Tall Tree vaulted to stand upright, snarling like a treed cougar, as he withdrew the cut-down army saber from its metal sheath.

  * * *

  * * *

  BILL PICKERING STAGGERED but didn’t let the wild kick to his right leg topple him, retreating from the brave who’d been intent on choking off Whit Melville’s life. A rifle shot behind him made the foreman jump, but since he felt no bullet’s impact, he ref
used to turn away from the red man, who’d drawn some hacking weapon with a curved blade from a scabbard at his hip.

  Was that a cavalryman’s saber?

  Yes, by God, it was!

  The size confused him for a second, until he realized the blade had been shortened for some reason, perhaps broken in battle and converted to a smaller—but still deadly—cutting implement.

  The thing to do was shoot immediately, not waste time playing the warrior’s game of combat hand to hand. Pickering took another backward step, shouldered his Winchester, and squeezed the trigger, but to no result.

  Cursing, he realized he’d failed to pump the rifle’s lever action after gunning down one of the swordsman’s fellow braves. The weapon’s hammer rested on a spent round in the firing chamber, useless to him as the empty Sharps had been to the red man intent on gutting him.

  Except the Winchester was a repeater, dammit, with a dozen rounds still nestled in the magazine beneath its barrel. All he had to do was pump its lever, point the weapon’s muzzle toward the foe leaping to reach him now, and fire point-blank into the chest beneath that buckskin shirt.

  If only he had time.

  Before Bill Pickering could prime his rifle for another shot, the red man was upon him, his bright saber blade descending toward the foreman’s face. Sharp as it looked to Pickering, he figured it would slice down through his hat’s crown, spit his skull, and lodge somewhere about eye level, killing him outright.

  Unless . . .

  He raised the rifle overhead reflexively, gripped in both hands and praying that he’d done it right, to keep the brave from chopping off a few of his fingers. The saber’s blade made a resounding crack on impact with his Winchester’s receiver, almost jarring it from his hands, but Pickering hung on for dear life—literally—and lashed out with his right foot.

  The bootheel missed his adversary’s private parts but struck his hip a solid blow, propelled the red man back a lurching step or two, just out of saber-swinging range.