Renegade Justice

by Judd Cole

  “Quickly!” said Little Horse. “There is a stream close by. I saw a place where we might hide when I was leading my pony out. But it means we must risk leaving the rifles here with your pony.”

  “Stay at close intervals!” they heard Carlson shout behind them. “Dismount at the tree line and tether your horses. Then fix bayonets. Well move through the trees on foot. Search thoroughly, and probe your steel into that brush! These are dangerous bucks, so shoot on sight!”

  The two Cheyennes reached the stream and waded through it, crossing on the opposite bank toward a huge tree. Its huge, shaggy network of roots had been exposed where the stream had eaten away the dirt beneath it. This left a slight hollow tucked up under the bank of the stream.

  The chilly water was dark with spring soil runoff. They ducked under and, one at a time, helping each other, squeezed through the narrow opening beneath the tree roots. They were barely able to secrete their heads and shoulders into the slight opening, the rest of their bodies hidden by the murky water.

  At first they could hear nothing but the steady rush of the water all around them. But their keen ears soon detected the sounds of the thorough search as they grew steadily louder. Heavy leather boots stomped through the undergrowth, bayonets sliced into the bushes and brambles and deadfalls.

  “Brother,” said Little Horse, speaking directly into his friend’s ear in a voice just above a whisper, “our enemy is upon us! My knife is in my hand, and I see yours is ready also. If we are meant to die, let it be like warriors, right here, right now, with the death song on our lips and our blades seeking warm vitals! I swear to you I will fall on my own knife before I let them take me prisoner!”

  “I swear this thing to you too. By the four directions, I swear they will never lock you in the soldier house while I have breath in me.”

  They fell silent as the sounds of searching grew closer. Heavy, uneven splashes told them soldiers had entered the stream nearby.

  “You, Davis!” shouted Carlson’s voice, so close that Touch the Sky jerked in surprise. “Afraid to get your feet wet, soldier? Check up under that tree. They might have a cache there.”

  More splashing, much nearer now. Touch the Sky tried to pull as much of his body as possible up under the bank. After what seemed an unbearably long time, the splashing ceased as the Bluecoat left the water. Touch the Sky expelled a long sigh of relief.

  The next moment, a sharp bayonet with a blood gutter tooled into it just missed his left eye by inches when it probed through the thin layer of dirt above them.

  Another thrust, another, each further away from his face.

  The soldier added a fourth and final jab, this one slicing deep through Little Horse’s right shoulder on its way back out.

  Little Horse hissed at the sudden, fiery pain which took him by surprise, but otherwise made no sound or movement to give them away. A minute later they heard the searching noises grow dimmer again as the squad advanced toward the other side of the tree line.

  They knew they must wait for the Bluecoats to return and remount, moving further downridge. Little Horse ducked lower in the cold water, slowing the loss of blood from his wound.

  After the patrol had finally moved further east, the fugitives gratefully escaped from the cramped hiding place. Touch the Sky retrieved their weapons and the obedient dun and quickly hobbled her before he led Little Horse’s pony back into the trees. Then he gouged out balsam sap and packed it into his friend’s wound before binding it with soft strips of red willow bark.

  “The Bluecoat officer is more determined than I thought,” said Touch the Sky. “This wound is clean, though it has sliced deep. Your arm will be stiff.”

  “I can still hold this weapon,” Little Horse said, hoisting the scattergun to prove his words. “And good thing. After this thing today, I see that battles are coming.”

  A sharp lance of guilt passed through Touch the Sky. He had not told his friend exactly why the Bluecoat officer was so determined. He had not explained that Carlson was not just tracking down two renegade Cheyennes—that in fact he was after one particular Cheyenne who’d had the gall to kiss a white woman. Was it fair that he place his friend’s life in danger over such a personal battle?

  As they cautiously rode back to their camp, Touch the Sky tried briefly to speak of this. But Little Horse silenced him.

  “Brother, if a snake crawls into my tipi, I do not ask whether it is seeking food or warmth. I know only that a snake is in my tipi. It does not matter to me why this Bluecoat seeks to put you under. All these things you tell me lead to one truth which you may place in your sash: Your greatest crime is being a Cheyenne!”

  He spoke straight-arrow, and Touch the Sky fell silent. Their enemies surrounded them, and now it was time to forget words and listen to the language of nature. They had fooled the Bluecoats today, true. But neither Cheyenne felt like boasting or celebrating their great skill, as warriors often do after a victory.

  The Bluecoats would be back. And even now, with each step their ponies took, they grew closer to Hiram Steele’s property and a second enemy even more ruthless than the Bluecoats.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Truth to tell,” said Abe Winslow, “I ain’t seed hide nor hair of these red varmints that got you all consternated.”

  “They’re out there,” said Hiram Steele. “Sure as gumption, they’re out there. That was no bear that spooked those mustangs the other night.”

  “By hell, it sounded pure-dee bear, and this hoss has let daylight into more than one. You yourself say that shavetail lieutenant and his men have combed this area and can’t find sign of them.”

  “There’s only two,” said Steele. “That makes it easier to hide.”

  Winslow absently scratched at his pockmarked face. He stood just inside the door of Steele’s house, slouched beaver in his hand. Removing his hat was not a mark of respect toward Steele. It was nervousness—the only solid buildings the former mountain man turned outlaw had been inside in twenty years were trading posts and jail-houses.

  “Two,” said Winslow. “And what tribe did you say they was?”

  “I didn’t, but it’s Cheyenne.”

  This news did not set well with Winslow. Frowning, he said, “You didn’t say nothing about no Cheyennes when we talked terms.”

  “They weren’t around then.”

  “Well, they are now. And I’ll tell you straight from the shoulder, me and my men have already had our bellyful of fighting Cheyennes.”

  “No need to get skittish,” said Steele. “There’s only two of them, and they’ve barely got their growth.”

  This information made Winslow cock his head with sudden interest. “Young bucks, you say?”

  “Yes, why?”

  Winslow was silent for several moments, lost in reflection. “Young, you say. What do they look like?”

  Something in the hardcase’s tone alerted Steele. The rancher shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Look like? Hell, all Indians look alike to me.”

  “Then you ain’t never stood a Pawnee next to a Flathead! Is one of the bucks tall for an Indian?”

  Steele’s eyes cut impatiently away. “The hell, you think I measure every renegade that rides through this valley?”

  Winslow sniffed a rat here. He despised Hiram Steele and all other men, farmers or ranchers, who pounded their stake in one spot and worked it for life. But money talks and bullshit walks, was Winslow’s motto, and Steele paid up every week in gold nuggets.

  Still, this talk about young Cheyenne bucks cankered at him. He had seen what a handful of them did to Henri Lagace’s mountain stronghold, from which Winslow had been lucky to escape with his topknot still attached.

  “I’ll tell you straight right now,” he said. “When the men find out we’re huggin’ with Cheyennes, they’ll want more money.”

  “Show me their dead bodies, and there’ll be more money. Plenty more.”

  Steele walked to the front window and pushed the curtain aside. Beyond
the main yard, several of his regular hands were erecting a big new pole corral.

  “Whether it’s bears or Indians,” said Steele, “this next raid won’t be stopped. I’ll see to that. And when I set my mind to something, you can call it as good as done.”

  Only one sleep after they avoided the Bluecoat search party, the two Cheyennes spotted new signs of possible trouble.

  A new pole corral was going up, yet there was no sign that Steele’s wranglers were planning to ride out after wild mustangs. A corral this large could only mean that Steele planned to acquire a large number of horses soon.

  “Steele’s fed up with the penny-ante game,” said John Hanchon that night when Touch the Sky and Little Horse visited the house and told him about the new corral. “He’s going to raise the stakes sky high this next time, and drive us out. That corral is for my horses—there’s not another good herd of wild mustangs between here and the Niobrara River, and Steele knows that.”

  Later, in the shelter of their brush lean-to, Touch the Sky lay on his back and watched the stars through the entrance hole. He thought again about the worry lines permanently etched into his parents’ faces. And he thought about Hiram Steele, who drove him out of this territory for no other crime than being an Indian.

  “Brother,” he said to Little Horse in the cool darkness, “I am weary of always waiting for our enemy to act before we know their plans. This new corral, I must learn their plans for it.”

  “I have ears for this,” said Little Horse. “But how? Will you turn into a bird and fly among them, listening?”

  “Only Arrow Keeper’s big medicine might turn me into a bird. But yes, I will go among them and listen.”

  He heard Little Horse sit up in his robe. His voice was low with seriousness when he said, “Brother, have you gone Wendigo? They will spit you and roast you over the embers.”

  “I will sneak up on the lodge where the men sleep,” said Touch the Sky. “Whites always foolishly wag their tongues. Perhaps I will learn more about this corral, learn when and how they will attack my father’s ranch. Black Elk was right, a warrior must always own the element of surprise.”

  Little Horse was silent for many heartbeats. Touch the Sky was right about surprise, of course. But this was a dangerous move, this plan to enter the vipers’ nest.

  “I agree,” Little Horse finally said. “But I must go with you.”

  “I have no ears for this talk! But think, it is I who understand the paleface tongue. It will be easier for one to sneak in than two.”

  “It is no use, brother. You will reverse the wind before you change Little Horse’s mind. I go with you. Now let us talk about this thing.”

  Touch the Sky could tell, from his friend’s tone, that he meant what he said. So the two friends counseled in earnest, glad at last for this clear course of action.

  Little Horse reminded him: This mission would take place after the fall of darkness, that eternal foe of the Cheyennes. This was bad medicine. It meant they could not kill nor even attack an enemy without staining the tribe’s sacred Medicine Arrows forever. Therefore, he argued, they must prepare an elaborate defense tomorrow, during the day. A defense designed to delay their enemies, should they be forced to flee, without requiring them to actually fight except as a last resort.

  The next morning they selected a shallow, rocky basin as their emergency escape route. It lay directly behind the bunkhouse, separated from the pine log building by a meadow and a line of low hills. That afternoon a sudden thunder squall darkened the area and sent all the hands seeking shelter. The Cheyennes took advantage of the bad weather to prepare their escape. They worked well into the evening, chewing on jerked beef and dried plums to ease the gnawing in their bellies.

  Touch the Sky had already studied the bunkhouse carefully, one evening when he and Little Horse had sneaked close to the main yard to estimate the number of men working for Steele. He knew that there was one window, just around the front corner from the doorway. It was covered with oiled paper, but one corner had torn out leaving an opening the size of a fist.

  “I will be able to hear them,” said Touch the Sky as they prepared to approach the yard. “But I will be exposed in the moonlight on a side the sentry can see clearly. You must remain back behind near the corral as my lookout. If the sentry approaches, sound the owl hoot.”

  Little Horse agreed in a nod. Their danger was extreme because they had both decided to leave all weapons except their throwing axes back at camp as a gesture of assurance to Maiyun, the Good Supernatural, that they would not attack after dark as did the treacherous Pawnees. Their axes would be hidden at the edge of the rocky basin. If trapped or captured before they reached the basin, they had no defense.

  Although the cream-colored moonlight exposed them, it also made for an easy journey on foot down from their campsite to the outlying pastures of the Steele spread. The two Cheyennes waited for occasional scuds of clouds to sweep in front of the moon. Then they would race closer to the bunkhouse, staying low to the ground and keeping their faces down as much as possible to cut reflection or glare from their eyes.

  At the far corner of the last corral, Touch the Sky gripped his friend’s arm and squeezed it. Little Horse nodded. For a long moment, crouched in the shadow of the corral poles, they felt united in their common goal of defeating their enemy. Every sense was alive, alert, and the copper taste of fear was mixed with the sweet, thrilling scent of victory for their people.

  “Wait here, brother,” whispered Little Horse. “I hear the sentry.”

  The smaller Cheyenne’s keen ears proved right again. It was a full ten heartbeats before Touch the Sky heard the wrangler’s mount approaching from the opposite side of the yard. The man made a pass around the bunkhouse and the main house, throwing a long, eerie shadow in the stark moonlight. Then he swung out toward the outlying sheds and pens.

  “Slide easy like that paleface’s shadow,” said Little Horse, “and leave one ear listening for the owl, brother! And remember, you carry no weapons!”

  Touch the Sky searched the yard one final time. Then he rose in a crouch and crossed the open expanse between the corral and the corner of the bunkhouse. He flattened himself against the building and inched closer to the opening in the oiled paper. A yellow beam of lantern light shot out like a stray shaft of sunlight.

  He could hear the mournful twang of a Jew’s harp. Snatches of conversation escaped through the hole like bugs.

  “God strike me dead now if it ain’t the truth! I did so meet the Queen of England!”

  “Why prove up a homestead jist to see the gum’ment boys give it all back to the Innuns?”

  “You ask this white nigger, I won’t poke no redheaded woman. They got a bush down there like a prickly pear.”

  Touch the Sky was about to find a more comfortable position, ready to settle in for a long wait. At that moment a hound trotted around the corner and spotted him.

  A growl bubbled low in its throat.

  The next moment it began a furious barking.

  “The hell?” shouted somebody inside the bunkhouse. “Who goes out there?”

  The door banged open and Touch the Sky sprang toward the corral.

  “Fly like the wind, brother!” he said to Little Horse.

  “Over there by the corral!” a man shouted. “Two of em, see?”

  A couple of men had grabbed weapons as they ran outside. They opened fire. Slugs whanged past the Cheyennes’ ears. Several men gave chase on foot while others raced for their stalled horses.

  “Do not run in a straight line, brother!” said Little Horse. “It makes an easy target!”

  They zigzagged across the open meadow and into the low hills, bullets nipping at their heels all the way. Now they could hear the ominous pounding of shod hooves as the first mounted wranglers gave chase.

  Touch the Sky looked over his shoulder and recognized the sentry leading the group. He was closing fast, not bothering to draw his sidearm. Clearly he meant to move into
killing range first before he wasted a cap.

  They could hear their enemies’ horses snorting now. They put on a final burst of speed and reached the edge of the rock-strewn basin.

  Touch the Sky was first to reach the boulder behind which they’d stashed their axes. The sentry gave sharp spur to his mount, surging even closer as the two Cheyennes stopped to face him.

  “No blood!” Little Horse shouted as Touch the Sky cocked his arm. The tall Cheyenne unleashed the double-bladed throwing axe. It spun end over end and sliced clean through one of the latigos of the sentry’s saddle. The cinch immediately broke and the saddle slid quickly around, tossing the rider clear.

  “Quickly!” said Touch the Sky. “Remember the route!”

  They raced along the trail they had prepared earlier. Now bullets ricocheted from boulders as more riders closed in.

  Suddenly, a horse crashed to the ground, its legs entwined in leather ropes the Cheyennes had strung there earlier.

  Another rider bore down on them, close enough now to draw steel. He was drawing a bead on Touch the Sky’s back when he raised one hand to swipe at an obstructing branch.

  There was a noise like a whip cracking as his swipe released the powerfully bent branch the Cheyennes had rigged earlier. The force easily lifted him from the saddle and knocked him off his horse backwards. His spine snapped like old wood when he landed square on a jagged-edged boulder.

  Enough men had gone down to slow the charge to a standstill. The two Cheyennes took refuge in a prearranged spot, a narrow cleft between one wall of the basin and a huge slab of slate.

  “All right, men!” said Winslow’s gravelly voice. “Steele was right after all! We got Cheyennes on the warpath agin us! That’s enough for tonight. Round up the horses and tend to the wounded.”

  “What about Myers?” said one of the men. “His back is snapped clean. He’s gone beaver.”

  The well-hidden Cheyenne warriors watched, in the stark light of the moon, as Winslow walked back to the spot where the wrangler named Myers had fallen. Without a word he drew his pistol and put a bullet in the man’s brain.