by Judd Cole
“’Pears to me,” said the young lieutenant, “he’s got more starch in his collar than you credit him with. He stood up to that raid good enough last Sunday.”
“He’s small potatoes,” insisted Steele. “Besides, it takes plenty of help to run a mustang spread. Even if Hanchon does have enough sand in him to stick it out, it’s getting hard for him to feed and pay help. Ain’t too many men want to put their bacon in the fire for three hots and a cot. This new bunch I hired on, they ain’t wranglers. These are hard-bitten men who’d rather risk getting shot to doing honest work. One man killed won’t stop them.”
“That shines right,” agreed Carlson. “But Tom Riley worries me. He’s thick with the Hanchons and that freckle-faced sprout that was friends with their Injun boy.”
“Has this Riley got friends at the fort?”
“Nobody that counts. But he can be mule-headed and he’s often on maneuvers with the new recruits. He could easy poke around enough to find out it’s your men that’s been raiding the Hanchon spread.”
Steele shrugged. “Then let him. Finding out something ain’t the same as proving it. Just keep an eye on him. He starts causing us any trouble, we’ll make him regret it. Won’t be the first green officer that got knocked out from under his hat by a bullet out here on the frontier.”
Carlson sensed that the moment was right to bring up the topic he was aching to mention.
“And I’m just the man to do it,” he said. “I don’t like the way he looks at Kristen.”
Steele’s brows rose at the mention of his daughter. “Kristen? Where the hell does he know her from?”
“Why, from the Hanchons, I reckon.”
“The Hanchons? She’s got orders from me to have nothing to do with them. I made sure of that when I drove their redskin buck off.”
Carlson’s habitual sneer twisted into a frown. “I was just coming to that. It’s none of my mix, you being her father and all. But I was going to mention to you that she shouldn’t be visiting their spread. She was out there when your men raided.”
Steele’s eyes turned smoky with rage. His voice was dangerously quiet when he said, “She was out there? You know that?”
“Riley and the Robinson boy both told me. Besides being dangerous for her, it doesn’t look good for me. Career officers don’t hitch up with women who hobnob with Injun lovers. Not if they want to keep their commission.”
Carlson didn’t bother to add the fact that much of the resentment smoldering in his words now was because of the sound thrashing Matthew Hanchon had given him a year ago—when Carlson had threatened to ruin Hanchon’s contract with Fort Bates if the Cheyenne didn’t clear out for good.
“You say you got your C.O.believing there’s Injun trouble?”
Carlson nodded.
“I’m thinking,” said Steele, “that the U.S. Army ought to maybe post a sentry, just as a courtesy to the Hanchons. Maybe on top Thompson’s Bluff.”
Carlson thought about it and nodded again. “I could authorize that on my own.” He knew full well that Steele too had Kristen in mind, not renegade Indians.
Steele paced once around the room, his hobnail boots echoing on the planks. Then, without a word, he went out front of the house and banged the triangle three times—the signal for summoning Kristen to the house.
She was daydreaming in a sheltered copse south of the house when Kristen heard her father’s signal. For a moment she was tempted to pretend she hadn’t heard it. The morning’s chores were finished and she just wanted to go on listening to the sweet song of the meadowlarks, to the angry jay scolding her from a coarse-barked cottonwood nearby.
But reluctantly she decided to obey her father’s summons. Slowly she emerged from the copse, the secret spot where she and Matthew used to meet. At the same moment, she watched a doe with a fawn break from a thicket down near the river. It had been a hard winter in the high country, and deer had come down into the lower valleys to escape the snow. How, she wondered, had the winter been for Matthew? Was he even still alive?
She was halfway back to the house when she saw a quick-darting prairie falcon swoop down on an unsuspecting squirrel. Kristen shivered when the squirrel suddenly chittered in fright that quickly turned to pain. It made her again recall that awful day when her father and the hired hand Boone Wilson had likewise pounced on her and Matthew in the copse. Never would she forget how she had been forced to lie to save Matthew’s life—how she had looked him right in the eye and told him she never wanted to see him again. Something had died inside of him on that day; soon after, he had left to join the Cheyenne Indians.
Corey had told her a little bit about Matthew’s new life since then. And though Corey had said nothing about what happened to Boone Wilson, she couldn’t help wondering—could it have been Matthew who left the bullying, murderous Indian-hater dead and scalped in the road?
As she neared the house, she noted a hired hand repairing the broken tongue of a wagon. Another was splitting stove lengths with a wedge; still others worked green horses in the pole corral. Her gentle piebald, too lazy to require picketing, drank from the rain barrel at one corner of the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary to explain her father’s summons.
Again, for a moment, she thought of the new men her father had recently hired. These were not the usual types who showed up willing to “earn their breakfast,” as her father put it. They were mean, dirty, lazy men who looked out at the world from lidded eyes and surly faces. What good were they on a mustang spread?
Then she lost that thought when she spotted Seth Carlson’s handsome cavalry black, reins looped over the tie-rail. Her pulse quickened in nervous anticipation.
A moment later the officer himself emerged from the house and mounted.
Kristen ducked behind the corner of an outbuilding so he wouldn’t spot her. Ever since Matthew had been run off, Carlson had been coming around more and more. Why he spent so much time secretly conferring with her father, she didn’t know. But the arrogant young officer had made it clear he wanted to marry her. Kristen had already decided she would run away before she would let that happen.
She lifted the latch string and opened the door. A moment later she cried out in surprise and pain as her father met her at the door with a vicious slap to the face.
“The hell you mean by defying me, girl?”
The stinging blow left her ears ringing and brought tears leaping to her eyelashes. “What do you mean?”
Another hard slap left her dizzy. Moments later he had her pressed against the back of the door, her arms pinioned.
“Don’t play the larks with me, girl, I’m warning you! I’m talking about you sneaking around behind my back to visit the Hanchons.”
“I only wanted to see their new place.”
“I don’t care what you wanted! I won’t brook defiance, you hear me?”
“But Father! I—”
She cried out in fright when he snarled like a rabid animal and threw her hard to the floor.
“Shut your cake-hole, girl, and listen to me! Don’t have nothing more to do with the Hanchons or their redskin boy. No daughter of mine gives the time of day to Injun-lovers. You hear me?”
He towered over her, frightening in his rage. Kristen wanted to tell him he was all wrong about the Hanchons and Matthew. She wanted to tell him that this was wrong, unfair. But she knew protest was useless. When he was in a rage like this, all she could do was humor him.
“Yes, Father.”
“I mean it. You don’t have anything more to do with any of that bunch. It’s bad enough my men saw my own daughter kissing that redskin pup of theirs. Your mother and I raised you decent.”
Kristen wished she had the courage to ask if his “decency” had included that Sunday raid on the Hanchon spread. But wisely, she bit back her retort.
“Yes, Father,” she repeated. But suddenly, even as she spoke, Kristen knew she would have to defy her father. For one thing, she would have to warn the Hanchons. Whatev
er Seth Carlson and her father were up to, it meant that John and Sarah Hanchon were in for a world of grief.
And, if he was foolish enough to return again, so was Matthew.
At 0700 hours sharp, Brevet Officer Tom Riley conducted morning roll call and inspection of his platoon of new recruits. His hat in one hand, he was about to knock smartly on the door of the Regimental Headquarters Office to make his morning report.
The door was not quite closed. He hesitated, recognizing the voice which easily carried through the one-inch gap between the jamb and the door. Seth Carlson.
“We have evidence, sir, that it was renegade Cheyennes who attacked the Hanchon spread. They first robbed a mining camp near the Crazy Woman Fork of the Sweetwater, stealing white men’s clothing, weapons, and shod horses. Then they attacked the Hanchons dressed as white men, apparently planning to steal horses.”
Riley’s jaw dropped open in astonishment. He leaned closer and pressed one eye to the gap.
“Renegade Cheyennes?” said Major Bruce Harding, regimental commander. “According to the last scouting report, all the Cheyennes in the territory are camped up near the Powder.”
“Yes, sir, they were. But we think this is a small band of warriors in the Dog Soldier Society. That’s one of the Cheyennes’ military societies, led by a younger warrior who’s rebelled against their peace leader.”
Riley watched Major Harding lean back in his chair. He was a small, neat, worried-looking man who constantly rubbed one knuckle across his mustache, smoothing it. He did so now as he stared at the huge territorial map covering one wall.
“How do you know,” said Harding, “that the redskins who robbed the miners also attacked the Hanchons?”
“One of the Injuns was shot and dropped his rifle. It was an old Kentucky over-and-under, carved with the initials of one of the miners.”
Riley couldn’t believe his ears! Carlson had shown absolutely no interest in investigating the attack when he and Corey reported it. Now he was making up a pack of lies about it. Carlson knew damn good and well that the Cheyenne Dog Soldier Society had not been active anywhere north of the Platte River for at least two years. But he also knew that Harding was ignorant and incompetent, a West Point graduate who had never commanded a garrison before Fort Bates.
Riley, his face flushing warm with angry blood, was about to push the door open and storm into the C.O.’s office.
Then he realized: If he did that, Carlson would know that someone had spotted his hand before he played it. Why warn him now, thought Riley, when I can wait and see exactly what he’s up to? Besides, Major Harding was a staunch Indian-hater. Why should he believe a temporary recruit-platoon commander over his own adjutant?
“I expected this kind of trouble,” said Harding. “I say the government must either fish or cut bait. Either give this damn territory to the savages, and make sure they stay here, or take it for the white man. But Washington and the Indian-lovers in Congress have tied my hands. We are technically at peace with the red nations, so any type of organized offensive campaign is out of the question.”
“Yes, sir,” said Carlson. “But we are authorized to mount small troop movements. It might be a good idea to keep Tom Riley’s trainees camped further north of here, closer to the Indian hunting grounds. That way they can observe the Cheyennes and establish a military presence as a reminder. We can also step up patrols closer to the fort.”
Harding, smoothing his mustache, approved this with a nod. “This new trouble will also put some teeth into my request to Washington for more troops.”
Harding thought of something else. “If we step up patrols, well need more remounts. Can Steele provide them?”
Carlson nodded. “Yes, sir. I spoke with him recently, and he informed me that he has a corral full of fresh-broke mustangs. Top-notch horseflesh.”
So that’s the gait, thought Riley. Carlson and Steele were feeding at the same trough! That explained the “Indian menace.” This way, Carlson got Riley out of the picture so Steele’s men could freely raid the Hanchon spread. And not only did that story allow Steele to secretly ruin John Hanchon. False reports about “Indian scares” were common because they stirred up settlers. Stirred-up settlers meant more soldiers, and thus, more lucrative contracts to opportunists like Steele for supplying them. Major Harding was perfect for their scheme. He considered Indians heathens without morality, an obstacle to Puritan progress.
Besides, Harding had a brother in the St. Louis settlements, a master gunsmith who was making a small fortune by arming the spirit of Westward expansion.
Riley made up his mind right then and there— he was sending a letter by guard mail to the territorial commander at Fort Laramie. The lieutenant colonel in charge of that garrison had a reputation, scorned by many of his fellow soldiers, for negotiating with red men rather than simply hunting them down.
“Sir,” said Carlson, “I agree that we should either fish or cut bait. It won’t do much good to increase patrols if the men are still restricted from returning fire.”
His meaning was clear to Harding. The C.O.debated for a long moment, one knuckle worrying his mustache.
“As a purely practical matter,” said Harding, “it’s safe to assume that any Cheyennes caught in this area are up to no good, right?”
Carlson nodded. “They’re either killing or thieving, sir. There’s no other reason for them to be this far south.”
Harding nodded again. Then he said, “Send the company clerk in when you leave, Lieutenant. Until these attacks subside, I’m authorizing an emergency shoot-to-kill order against the Cheyenne tribe.”
Chapter Four
At last the tall grass finally gave way to the short grass prairie. Now Touch the Sky and Corey turned due south toward the Tongue River valley and the river-bend settlement of Bighorn Falls.
Touch the Sky had left two magnificent ponies back with the Cheyenne herds—a beautiful spotted gray, the prize for counting first coup on a Crow brave, and a swift, powerful cavalry sorrel. This last was his by right of killing the white whiskey trader, Henri Lagace, in fair combat. But Touch the Sky was saving both of these ponies as part of the bride-price he hoped to offer for Honey Eater. Instead, he now rode the pony he trusted most, the spirited dun Arrow Keeper had given him.
They avoided wagon tracks and the new forts with their loopholed gun towers and squared-off walls of cottonwood logs. Only the discipline of a blooded warrior kept Touch the Sky from thinking of this familiar route as a journey “home”— home to big trouble with his old enemy Hiram Steele. Nor did he allow himself to worry about what they must be saying about him back at Yellow Bear’s camp.
Instead, he obeyed the teachings of Arrow Keeper and Black Elk. He tried to keep his mind free of any worry or thoughts except awareness of the present. He kept his attention focused on the helpful language of nature.
Thus, he immediately worried about it when a startled sparrow hawk suddenly flew off from a tangled deadfall well ahead, where the sloping wall of the valley crowded the game trail they were following.
Touch the Sky gave the high sign to Corey, halting him. The young Cheyenne only needed to pat his pony’s neck once and she stopped—already troubled by whatever sense of danger had alerted Touch the Sky. She laid her ears back, snorting something to Corey’s big gelding.
Touch the Sky warned Corey with his eyes not to move. Then he slid to the ground silently and hobbled his pony. Unsheathing his obsidian knife, he clutched it at the ready in his teeth. He had recently fashioned a strong new bow from oak and shaped and feathered a quiverful of arrows. He slid one of the arrows out and strung it. The shaft was made from dead pine, the point hardened in fire.
His moccasined feet moved silently as he neared the deadfall. His heart throbbed in his palms, but he concentrated, watching for the slightest movement. His arm drew the arrow back a few inches, tightening the buffalo-sinew bowstring.
A few heartbeats later, the sharp stone tip of a streamered lance thrust
forth out of the deadfall and stopped just short of skewering the hollow of his throat.
“You just died without singing the death song, careless Cheyenne warrior!”
Recognizing the voice before he saw a face, Touch the Sky lowered his bow and took the knife from his teeth so he could speak.
“Little Horse!”
His friend, permitting himself a grin of triumph, emerged from the tangle of brush.
“Good thing for you and Firetop I only counted coup, brother. If I were a lice-eating Pawnee, your scalps would be dangling from my clout.”
“Good thing that few lice-eaters strike as silently as you. But what are you doing this far from camp?”
Little Horse was small but his compact body was powerful and sure in its movements. Like Touch the Sky he wore a leather band around his left wrist for protection from the slap of his bowstring. He circled around behind the deadfall and retrieved his pony.
“I am going with you and Firetop,” he said. “I asked Arrow Keeper why you rode off. He explained this thing with your white parents. I told him you and Firetop should not face these paleface dogs alone. He agreed and gave me permission to join you. I caught up with you this morning, then passed you by riding hard above the rim of the valley.”
“You have already saved my life once from white dogs. This is my battle and you owe me nothing. Ride back to our people, brother.”
Little Horse stubbornly shook his head. “True it is, I saved your life in the paleface camp. But who saved Honey Eater from them? Who stood up to a night of torture that would have killed or broken a lesser brave? Who courageously sang the death song and prepared to ram an arrow down his own throat rather than help an enemy? And when the scar-face who sold devil water and slaughtered our people escaped, who trailed him across the plains and killed him?
“You are a true Cheyenne warrior, and your medicine is strong! We are brothers. Our blood is one. Therefore, our battles are one. And if we fall, we will fall as one. Not on the ground, brother, but on the bones of our enemies!”