Wagon Train West

by Lauran Paine

  “All right. The first thing is this. You follow me. Wherever I go, dammit, you follow. No questions, no hanging back. Just follow. The second thing is this … don’t—I don’t care a damn what you think privately—but don’t fire a shot until I tell you to. Agreed?”

  The men spoke clearly in agreement, when a tousled youth with ice-chip eyes of very clear blue spoke up. “Will they be back?”

  “Be back?” Kit said. “They’ll be back before you know it, and this time you’ll think they’re going on by like they did before … only they won’t. This time, if you fight like you did last time, they’ll breach the circle. After that, that hair of yours’ll hang from a war bridle like a curb strap, or from a lance or coupstick. This time will tell the tale … but even after they come this second time, the fight’ll be one hell of a long way from over. Now go over where Lige is and check your guns and ammunition with him.”

  The men stepped out briskly. Kit stayed back and watched them. He tingled pleasantly with a feeling he had never known before.

  “Here’s something for you … General.”

  “Allie?”

  She was holding out something wrapped in a piece of clean white cloth. He took it and laid back the cloth. “A loaf of white bread. White-flour bread. Well, I’ll be—”

  “Please.” She winced. “You really do swear too much.”

  “Me? Why, I hardly ever swear.”

  “Every time I’ve been around you, it seemed to me you swore.”

  “Well, like I told you, I’m scairt. Anyway, if you think I swear, you ought to hear Lige.”

  “I know,” she said quickly, color high under each eye. “I just gave him a loaf and walked away.”

  He tore the loaf in two, smelled it, and started to eat.

  The tingling sensation became a depth of satisfaction so strong and overwhelming he sighed and squatted. She looked down at him with a hint of amusement. “Can’t you just lean on something like most white men? Do you always have to squat or sit on the ground like an Indian?”

  “Excuse me.” He got up, blushing, walked to the nearest wagon, and leaned on it. She had washed her face and swept back the ebony wealth of her hair in a severe, parted way. A small red ribbon held the long residue. It fell like a midnight cascade down her back. The bread almost choked him the way his throat tightened up. “Allie? You wouldn’t like it if an Indian lover talked sweet to you, would you?”

  “No,” she said bluntly, giving him stare for stare until his look fell away, crestfallen.

  “Well … thought I’d ask,” he mumbled.

  “Everyone else is working, Mister—”

  “Kit.”

  “Why don’t you and I?”

  “Did you talk to the womenfolk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you could make things ready for the wounded. Get lard and goose grease and poultices and suchlike ready.”

  “I did that right after the skirmish.”

  “Oh.” He ate more bread, at a loss.

  She swung swiftly toward him and smiled. It was like the sun coming after a gray rain. “Maybe,” she said very fast, so that each word followed on the tail of the former word. “Maybe after this is all over.” Then she walked swiftly back up toward the place where emigrant women were pooling resources and rolling bandages.

  He stood frowning, chewing slowly and thoughtfully. Maybe what? It didn’t make sense.

  Lige came over with a harassed look. He was clutching his half-eaten bread in a grimy paw. “They got enough shot to last three, four days, even the way they shoot. I give ’em hell about that over-shooting.” He turned and squatted beside Kit on the ground and looked up, where the men were making barricades. “Funny thing, ain’t it? I never thought they had it in ’em, Kit.”

  “I reckon anyone’ll fight like a grizzly when they’ve got to, Lige.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant I didn’t know they’d ever get the hang of how to fight Indians.”

  Kit gulped the last of his bread and swept away the crumbs with a brisk gesture. “They haven’t fought ’em yet. They look like they’ll make out all right, but you can’t ever tell. Not right up until White Shield Owner’s bucks come straight at them. If they break, we’re done for.”

  Lige ate placidly, grunting around a mouthful. “Owgh. It’ll scare the tarnation out of ’em when they see that. Did you warn ’em about a charge?”

  “No. What for? They’ll see one soon enough. Why scare ’em ahead of time? Anyway, I’ve picked thirty or so of the hardest-looking bucks among them. I’m betting on them to turn back a big charge, Lige.”

  “Where do you want me?”

  “Sort of go among ’em, Lige. Keep them from showing themselves. I think when they get excited they’ll be a little careless about that. Move among ’em and keep ’em fighting. Watch they don’t get drawn out of the circle, too.”

  Kit moved away, stopped a few feet off, turned and frowned at Lige. “Why don’t you lean on things, Lige, like a white man does,” he said, “instead of always squatting like a cussed Indian?” Then he went to the nearest wagon tongue, vaulted over it, and strode swiftly across the grass beyond.

  Lige got up like he’d been sitting on a snake. He turned in a bewildered way and regarded the ground, then glanced over where Kit had disappeared and frowned. Blood rushed angrily into his face. “Well, I’ll be double-damned,” he said indignantly.

  Chapter Six

  Beyond the wagons there was a smear of dead Indian horses, here and there. Of dead warriors, Kit counted four. It made him shake his head. Easily a hundred rounds fired and four dead hostiles. He felt like swearing, but didn’t.

  A long way off, there was the telltale dust to show where the Indians were. He walked out boldly for a half a mile before he saw three mounted Indians, sentinels, watching the wagon train. He studied them carefully, keeping track of the distance back, then he squatted and narrowed his eyes against the distance, trying to guess what the Dakotas were doing.

  Men were walking horses, leading them up and down, limbering their best war horses. He grunted to himself. There would be another attack before long.

  The dazzling sunlight shone off metal, far up the valley. He studied the sun. It was hardly noon. He got up and started back with his long, springing stride. There would be another attack today.

  The circle looked strong from where he was. He took especial notice of the undersides of the big Conestogas. There wasn’t much daylight visible. He kept an eye on the Dakota sentinels but they seemed disinclined to try and get close enough to fight him.

  Back inside the circle, he hunted up his handpicked riflemen and took them to the west side of the circle, rousted out the men who were already there, and sent his own men under in their places. “Remember what I told you now. Don’t shoot, no matter what, until I give you the order.”

  “Where’ll you be?” a man asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. When I want you to fire, I’ll let you know.”

  Lige came over with a disagreeable look. “Say, Kit, about that squatting on the—”

  “Kit!”

  He spun without seeking the man who had called him. Lige ran briskly beside him. They went to the nearest gap between wagons and looked for what a sentinel had seen.

  The Indians were coming back, only they were trotting, not running their horses. “Talk,” Lige said. “Council.” Kit nodded in silence, watching. Someone fired a gun. With a sizzling oath, Lige turned wrathfully and went hurrying up the line to find the man. It was silent after that, so silent Kit heard someone walking up behind him. Irritably he turned. It was Allie Burgess.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then turned back. “See the one out in front with the white war shirt on? That’s White Shield Owner.”

  “The
ir leader?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he the one you talked to before?”

  “Yes, I’ve known Shield a long time. He’s one of—”

  “They’re stopping, Kit.”

  He saw them go through the same maneuver they had gone through before. He bent and rested one hand on the wagon tongue. “You stay here, and if Lige comes back tell him … by God … to shoot the next idiot that fires a gun.”

  “Where are you going?” Her smoke-gray eyes were like agate, clear and sharp and very wide.

  “Council. They want to talk.”

  “They’ll kill you. Kit … no!”

  He leaped the tongue and threw her an annoyed look. “Don’t be a … a … woman,” he said, then started forward, where the resplendent figure was sitting his horse, waiting.

  There was a taller, younger, more massive and powerfully built war leader beside White Shield Owner. Kit didn’t recognize him until they were close, then he knew him by the squinting, intensely peering look he wore. Big Eagle.

  His heart sank. Big Eagle didn’t belong to White Shield Owner’s band. That meant—he groaned—the smoke signal the night before had been answered. There were two bands out there now.

  “How kola, mita koda,” Big Eagle called in a booming voice. “Wasichu, mita koda!”

  Kit grinned, but it was an effort. He had sense enough not to wear so palpably false a smile, and let it die. “How are you, my friend?” he called back, echoing what the big warrior had said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Owgh! White Shield Owner told me you were here. What kind of a fool are you, anyway? Those wasichus are doomed. White Shield Owner still has over ninety men of war. I brought another eighty.”

  They all squatted. Beyond the war leader and White Shield Owner—who was a peace leader (although thirty years before, he had been a great fighter)—were row upon row of painted, decorated, and heavily armed ozuye we’ tawatas.

  “Big Eagle, hear me. Your medicine is strong. Your heart is as good as White Shield Owner’s heart. Let the wasichus pass through. What can they hurt? What harm do they do?”

  “Owgh! It can’t be, Ohiyesa,” the rumbling voice said slowly. “They have no right here. I could slit every throat among them myself. We are fighting a hard war, koda.”

  “You can’t win it,” Kit said firmly.

  Big Eagle’s squinted eyes watered continually. It gave him a fishy expression. “We are winning it.”

  “But for how long, Big Eagle? I told you that two years ago, when we were hunting. The white people are too many.”

  “They are your people.”

  “Yes, but I’m not blind. I see the wrong, but I am only one man. There isn’t anything I can do.”

  White Shield Owner leaned forward and rested his forearms on his upper legs. “Have they lost many, Ohiyesa?”

  “More than they should have,” Kit admitted candidly.

  “Then they aren’t as good at fighting as we are,” Big Eagle said.

  Kit shrugged. “I don’t think so, either. That doesn’t matter, Big Eagle. If you kill five, twenty more spring up in their place. If you run off fifty of their horses, the next band brings a hundred in their place. You know this is true.”

  “What should we do, then?” Big Eagle asked angrily. “Should we bow our heads like old women? Pull the blanket over our heads and make a death chant? No! It is better that we die strong and free than live weak and in slavery.”

  “You wouldn’t be slaves, Big Eagle.”

  “No? The white man makes the black man his slave. Why wouldn’t he treat the red men the same way? No, Ohiyesa, we will fight. There is no other way. We have always fought. Everything fights. There is no such thing as peace. It is a vision … nothing more. Why are men born lean of flank like a cougar and deep of chest like a bear? To fight! The strong live off the weak. If you whip me, Ohiyesa, or if your race whips my race, someday there will come another man stronger than you. Another race stronger than your race. It is always like that. That is life. It was decided long ago that men should live like that.”

  Big Eagle’s moist, weak eyes shone with an inner fierceness. His nostrils expanded like an angry stallion’s nostrils. Kit could see how worked up he was. He remained silent, not out of fear but because he couldn’t find it in his heart, truthfully, to disagree.

  White Shield Owner bent farther forward. His old face was wrinkled, and yet a light showed in it. “Owgh!” he grunted. “It is as he says, Ohiyesa. You know it as well as I do.”

  “You don’t believe in war,” Ohiyesa reminded the old chieftain.

  “In fighting, yes. In this kind of a war, no. This is annihilation, Ohiyesa. For one or the other it is extermination. I don’t believe in that, but in fighting … yes.”

  It was too abstract for Kit. He went back to the original conversation. “For the people down there in the wagon train, this is survival. By fighting them you weaken the Oglalas, not the whites.”

  Big Eagle waved a brawny arm wide, in a great circle. “If these pass, then there will be whites behind us as well as in front, Ohiyesa. We will be surrounded. After that, we will be crowded. After that … wiped out. Take them back. When White Shield Owner told me you were with them, I wanted to talk to you. The warriors don’t want to talk. They say kill you, too. You are white. You are now our enemy. All whites are our enemies. I said no. You and I are old friends. We have ridden side by side against the Snakes. We are brothers. Take them out of this country, Ohiyesa.”

  When Big Eagle said the last sentence, his tone dropped. It indicated the council was at an end. Kit wanted to say a hundred things. He had lived with these men. Their life had been his for years.

  He said nothing. There was no way to bridge the abyss. He got up very slowly and watched them stand. He could see in their faces that they knew already what his answer was. Then he shook his head.

  “I can’t.”

  There was no look of enmity in any of the three faces. Kit turned and started back. His heart was like lead. He felt as though something great and strong and warm had been taken bodily out of him.

  He didn’t look back until he was within the circle again, where the people, silent, thronged around him, staring. Lige alone understood. He made a path through them. Wooden-faced, Kit walked far to the north end of the circle and told Lige what had been said. Some of his own brooding melancholy showed in Lige’s face. They stood apart for a while, watching the emigrants break up into little groups, talking, then Kit shoved upright and jerked his head.

  “Let’s go, Lige. The past’s ended. I don’t reckon I’ll ever hate seeing anything pass again, as much as I do those days.”

  They went back among the emigrants. The sun was hot and just a little off-center. A hundred questions were asked. Kit answered every one as best he could with great patience, then the men went back to their barricades, and Kit was left standing beside Allie.

  She saw the pain in the background of his eyes. “You do like them, don’t you?”

  “Yes. It’s hard not to. You don’t know, Allie. You’ll never know. It’s all past now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  “You won’t be in a little while. There are two bands out there now. Not just White Shield Owner’s band, but another band under Big Eagle.”

  “More warriors?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

  He answered, looking moodily at the people hurrying busily around the compound, not wanting to see her face.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Kit.”

  “It could be worse,” he said savagely. “It could be five bands.”

  He walked over where the men were getting settled. There was perspiration running along his ribs under his shirt. It tickled. “You’re fighting for survival now, fellows. Not victory … survival.”

  “Kit!”

>   He knew from the urgency in Lige’s voice what it was, but he didn’t move any faster. At the break between the wagons he saw them coming. Slowly, horses at a walk, an awesome wall of them, nearly two hundred strong, the craftiest, most-courageous men of war on the plains.

  He saw the war honors braided into their hair and into the foretops, manes, and tails of their horses. Every man was a coup-counting, seasoned, fighting Indian. Behind him were seventy-odd emigrant men with no knowledge of what they faced and even less experience as fighters.

  He turned, shot Lige a sardonic smile, and spoke. “There’s the end of the trail, old horse. Take a long look.”

  “Owgh! Don’t like the looks of Dakotas from in front … never did.”

  A bronze figure, naked to the waist, with the sun glancing off his greased skin like old gold, walked forward with a redstone pipe in one hand, a naked knife in the other. He stopped his horse with knee pressure, raised the calumet high so that it shone bloodred, and cried out a lashing harangue. Then he threw the peace pipe down with terrible violence. It broke into a dozen pieces. The warrior ranks behind the speaker howled in thunderous approval.

  Next, the war leader lifted the knife and stormed at the watching white people in his keening chant and flung the knife, too. It spun end over end and stuck quivering amid the ruin of the stone pipe.

  Kit waited for no more. He turned and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Get back where you belong, dammit!”

  The people reacted as though he had struck them. Their faces were pale but their eyes burned. The men were grimmer, more silent now than they had been since he had first ridden out of Independence with their train.

  “What did he say?”

  Her smoke-gray eyes were dry and unmoving on his face. He scowled at her. “Tell you another day, Allie. Get into a wagon and lie flat. Cover up and stay put. They’re coming now. It’s all over but the shooting.”

  Chapter Seven

  When the Dakotas came, they were bunched up. Kit watched them in the pall of terrible silence that drenched the countryside. He saw the big buck with the naked chest ride out in front. He could tell from the tvibluta (sign talk) gestures that the warriors were being split into two attacking groups. His heart sank when he saw the men of war ride off slowly, a little apart, and stop. Behind them was what he had feared there might be. A solid rank of no less than sixty rock-hard, veteran shock troops.