by Lauran Paine
“Fires, Mister Butler?”
“Kit. Folks just call me Kit. Yeah, if you folks’ll always remember to make your supper fires early and douse ’em when the darkness comes, you won’t get potshot from beyond the circle.”
He walked away from Burgess and sought out Reaves. The emigrant’s face was rested-looking and Kit suspected that he had crawled into a wagon and slept away the afternoon. “Reaves, go among the men and pick out about fifty who can stay awake for six hours and post ’em beyond the circle about a quarter of a mile.”
“Sure, Kit.” Reaves turned away.
“Wait a minute. Tell them not to come back to the wagons even when their six-hour stint is up. Stay out there and I’ll send out the relief. They can sleep right beside the men who come out to relieve ’em. Understand?”
“Sure.”
Kit watched the women and girls making cooking fires. The smell was good, and it got better when the scent of food arose. He saw Allie beckoning to him and went over. She was standing beside a shorter, plump woman, who she introduced as her mother. The older woman studied Kit’s lean, tall frame and tired face with a close and inscrutable look, then she asked him to eat with them.
“Thanks, ma’am, but my pardner’s making—”
“I’ll get Lige,” Allie said swiftly, with the same crafty look of amusement in her eyes that her father had worn. She moved away. He swung quickly and caught up with her. They walked among the throng of people side-by-side.
“What’s so funny to everyone, Allie?”
“What do you mean?” She was looking at him with mock inquiry.
“You know cussed well what I mean. Lige came from eating at your wagon with a grin fit to bust. A little while ago I talked to your paw and he was laughing at me, too. Now you … you look like you’re pretty tickled, too.”
“I’ll tell you after we eat.”
She wouldn’t be drawn out, either, until after all five had eaten heartily. Then she smiled boldly to him across the fire, and he asked her if she’d like to walk a little with him. No one spoke at the fire until after they were gone, then Lige held the Burgesses attention with tales of the Indians. Lige was doing his clumsy best, as he had done at noon.
“All right, Allie. What’s it all about?”
She stopped where fewer people were and where the horses and cattle were cropping the tall grass, and she burst into laughter. He had never seen her so amused, and stood by darkly, waiting for an explanation. “When you’re ready, ma’am,” he said stiffly.
“Lige is wonderful,” she said with the laughter making her eyes shine. “If you knew Dad better, you’d appreciate it more.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“Well, you know how he feels about slavery. After his talk with you this afternoon, he wasn’t thoroughly satisfied about your slavery leanings. When Lige came riding up, Dad asked him about you. That’s what was so funny. Even Dad started to laugh after Lige had gone, and all of us have been convulsed all afternoon.”
“What’d that doggoned Lige say?” Kit asked uncomfortably.
“He told Dad you didn’t own slaves, never had, and were dead set against slavery. Then he enlarged on it to the extent of telling Dad how you’d always helped down-trodden people, were a pillar of virtue, a wonderful person, and probably the only man he’d ever known who could scalp an Indian on a dead run without dismounting from your horse. That you could crawl into a teepee and crush a skull and crawl away again without arousing anyone, and that you’d make probably the best son-in-law on the whole frontier.”
Kit groaned and ground his teeth together.
Allie was still laughing inwardly. “Oh, Kit, you’ve no idea how glamorous he made you. So wonderful at things that made my mother’s hair stand straight up. But he did it with classical enthusiasm, never once thinking he might be horrifying his audience.” She could see the anguish on his face and reached out a little and touched his sleeve. “I want you to promise me something, Kit.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No.”
“Yes. You must. After all, Kit, he was doing the best he could to help you in the way that seemed most plausible to him. You just can’t say anything to him about it.”
“Why can’t I?” he demanded in anguish.
“Because he thinks he was a great help to you. Don’t hurt his feelings, Kit.”
“Dammit, how about mine!”
“And don’t swear!”
“Excuse me.”
“He actually did make Dad and Mother interested in you, and they think Lige is just wonderful. Especially Dad. He puts almost as much store on loyalty like Lige’s as he does on antislavery.”
Kit slumped a little, staring back up where the shadows were growing dense and little red flickers showed the dying cooking fires. “And I’ll give you odds,” he said disgustedly, “that the old devil’s sitting up there right now, telling your folks how he’s lifted the hair of a dozen Blackfeet or Snakes.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Allie said softly, watching his profile. “It ought to show you something, Kit.”
He turned and looked straight at her. “What?”
“That emigrants don’t understand your kind any more than you understand them. You think they’re fools and stupid and worse, and they think mountain men are savages, no better than Indians.”
“We’ve had to live like the Indians, Allie.”
She nodded gently. “I can see that, but the others can’t. Not yet.” She cocked her head a little at him. “Have you found that emigrant men can fight, yet?”
“Sure. We found that out right after Powers got killed.”
“Right after you showed them what to do, you mean,” she said. “Well, they’ve also come to discover that mountain men have reasons for being as hard and brutal as they are. It’s the land … the environment, Kit. By the time we reach Fort Collins the emigrants, as you call them, will understand you and Lige, too.”
“Maybe,” he said. “It won’t matter, Allie. If we reach Fort Collins, that’ll be the end of the trek for Lige and me. You folks’ll go on and maybe you’ll tell your grandchildren about the savage white scouts you had on this passage. That’s based on a big if.”
“They didn’t bother us this afternoon, Kit.”
“Sure not,” he said. “They’ve probably pulled out and gone up to the gap to get ready for us when we try to go through.”
“We could send out men …”
“We don’t have enough, Allie. Listen, they could make up two war parties, put one in the gap, and have the other one just standing by, watching. That’s what I think they’re up to. If we go into the pass, they’ll go up there and roll boulders down on us, shoot fire arrows, kill the animals, and bottle us up in there. After that it’d be murder.” His eyes were dry and hot-looking.
“Or, they can put one war party up there, and wait for me to guess that’s what they’re up to and lead men away from the wagons to chase them out of the pass. You see? After I’d ride out with the men, the other party’d slip in and overwhelm the wagon train. Pretty simple that way, isn’t it?”
“Are they that clever?”
He made an annoyed sound and glowered at her. “They’re every doggoned bit as clever as we are. Because their hide’s red doesn’t mean they aren’t plenty savvy, Allie. By now you ought to know that. You’ve seen their strategy enough.”
She turned slowly and walked over where a great, gaunt outline became a Conestoga wagon. She leaned back against it. The late moon was up a little, stronger than it had been in a long time. It showed the deep blue shadows in her ebony hair and the lighter blue circles under her eyes.
He followed along morosely, reached up, and knuckled his hat back with a weary gesture. The horses watched them drowsily, full and contented-looking. Most of the cattle and oxen were lying down, chewing their cuds pla
cidly.
“Then how are you going to get us through the pass, Kit?”
He looked back at her with a troubled glance. “How? I don’t know. I’ve got an idea, but it’s pretty cussed weak.”
“What is it?”
He shrugged, lost in the exhausted maze of his mind, feeling dreary and dirty and drawn-out almost to the limits of his strength.
“Find another pass?”
“There isn’t another one, Allie,” he said. “North about two hundred miles there’s Rapaho Gap. We’d have to go back the way we came in here, then cut smack dab across the heartland of Dakota country.” He lifted his glance and held it on her liquid gray eyes. “We’d draw every cussed hostile Dakota down on us within two days. It’d be suicide.”
“It looks to me like we already have most of the savages in the West around us.”
He laughed shortly, harshly. “That’s only the men of war from two bands. The Dakotas are about the biggest, strongest tribe of Indians in the high country. They can put three or four thousand darned good warriors in the field in a matter of a couple of weeks. No, it may look bad to you, Allie, but it could be a heap worse.”
“What’s your plan, Kit?” She waited. When he didn’t answer right away, she said: “I have a lot of faith in you. We all have.”
“I wish you didn’t have,” he said brusquely. “Allie—”
“Kit … I … tell me what you think we ought to do.”
He stood motionlessly looking at her. His jaw muscles rippled softly. For some reason she wouldn’t let him get past arm’s length. It angered him. “We ought to fly over the pass,” he said, turning away, “or go back.”
She watched him stride with his long, springing step back up toward the dying fires. She followed slowly, not once losing sight of his figure until he dropped down at her parents’ fire beside Lige. She came up moments later and took her place, avoiding his eyes.
Lige sighed and let his conversation die. He looked up at his partner, seeing the deep resentment, the near anger in his blue glance, and dropped his head with a small, uneasy scowl.
Reuben Burgess poured coffee into a tin cup, dented and battered, and handed it to Kit. “What do you think our chances would be, Kit,” he asked, “if we sent a strong party ahead to Fort Collins?”
“About the same as a snowball in hell,” Kit answered bluntly.
Lige looked up, shocked. Burgess’ eyes widened and Allie flushed with displeasure. Only Mrs. Burgess didn’t appear to be horrified. “Why?” she asked, just as bluntly, almost challengingly.
“In the first place, ma’am,” Kit said, “in order to get through, you’d have to send at least a hundred men. We don’t have that many. In the second place, the Dakotas’ll be watching every move we make from now on. Their last good chance lies at the pass. If we get past them there, they can still worry us, but their best chance to wipe us out is up ahead. In the third place, for all your men are learning, they’d make too much noise and wouldn’t know how to get through.”
“All right,” Mrs. Burgess said matter-of-factly. “Is there a way out of this barrier we’re up against? You certainly didn’t lead us this far without thinking of some way to get beyond the pass.”
Before Kit could answer, a gun exploded south of them with a startling smash of noise. Kit and Lige jumped up as if they were coiled springs. Men began to yell and hurry toward the sound.
Running, the scouts arrived ahead of the others. A tall, wild-eyed youth was standing beside a dead Indian. His face was as gray as dirty snow. Kit caught him by the arm as Lige lunged past heading for the wagon.
“What happened?”
“I dunno for sure. I was goin’ to the wagon to fetch out my bedroll and I heard this owl cry. It sounded like it warn’t more’n fifty feet from the wagon. Reckon I was sort of keyed-up, anyway. I was standin’ there, lookin’ out into the night when I heard this second owl call, right inside our danged wagon. I knew it was an Injun … hell, no owl’d be in there. I was goin’ forward when I seen this buck come slippin’ out over the tailgate. I shot him.”
“Kit!”
He dropped the boy’s arm and looked up. “What’s in there, Lige?”
Lige dropped to the ground and walked over beside him. “They sure come close that time. Went and poured the coal oil out of a lantern all over everything.” He nudged the limp Dakota with his foot.
“Must’ve been all set to fire her up when the lad here come along, and the buck out in the grass called a warning.”
People were standing with hanging jaws, looking from Lige and Kit to the dead Dakota. Kit kneeled and rolled the Indian over. The bullet had pierced his lungs, evidently at close range, too. Kit started to arise. The night was as still and tense as the people in front of him.
From just beyond the wagon circle a man called out in a terrible voice, in Dakota: “You will go no farther, white people. You will go no farther!”
The emigrant men surged forward. Kit threw out his arms. “Let him go. If you go out there, you might run into ten more of ’em.”
“They’re awful slippery,” Lige said placatingly.
The men milled closer around the fallen warrior. The women were white-faced. Kit turned to the lad. “Go get a blanket or something to cover him up.” He swung back and saw Red Houston, puffy-eyed as though he had been asleep. “Red, round up some of your crew and bury this feller.”
He and Lige walked back through the moving emigrants. The lad who had shot the Indian caught up with them. “What about the wagon?” he asked. “Hadn’t a body best stay in there tonight?”
Kit shook his head. “No, just tell your folks to clean up the mess and get the oil-soaked stuff out of there.” He started on. “Lige, I reckon that’ll put ’em on their toes for a while.”
“Yeah. You go roll in for a while, Kit. I’ll see to the change of guard and whatnot.”
Chapter Eleven
Kit went down the wagons until he found their little camp with its half-finished fire hole, unrolled his buffalo robe, kicked off his boots and hat, and rolled up into it. He was asleep almost before he had closed his eyes.
Lige went among the people telling the men to get rested. He used the older boys as guards, too, stationing them under the wagons all around the circle. He didn’t think there was much danger now, but after what had happened he knew the emigrants wouldn’t feel like sleeping anyway, so he used them to double up on the guarding wherever he could, with the solitary exception of the fighting men. These he insisted get some sleep.
The night was balmy. A lot of people who had stolen snatches of rest during the day were huddling around the dead fires. Some wore coats and blankets around their shoulders. Others, younger, needed no covering beyond what they wore. At the Burgess fire, Lige dropped wearily down. He could see the latent fear in their faces.
“Pretty close at that,” he said quietly. “Cussed guards … well, they’re slippery all right. I guess a man hadn’t ought to blame ’em too hard, at that. I’ve had them slide past me in the night, not five feet away.” He picked up a charred stick and poked aimlessly at the fire. “If they’d’ve fired that wagon, there’d’ve been the devil to pay for sure.”
“What was it?” Burgess asked. “One of the young roosters?”
“Yeah. A hotblood. There’s always a few that’ll risk being killed in the dark for a chance to count a big coup.” Lige smiled tightly. “It’d’ve been quite a coup at that, if he’d brung it off.”
“Do you think they might try it again,” Mrs. Burgess asked, hugging a black shawl to her plump shoulders, “or others might come?”
“I doubt it,” Lige said slowly, dropping the stick and looking fully at Allie, as though his mind was on something else. “It’ll show ’em we’re awake. They’ll take heed, I figure.”
Allie saw Lige’s stare and wondered about it. She shifted her position
a little before she spoke. “Lige? Why won’t Kit tell us what he’s got in mind?”
“Well, I reckon, ma’am, because he hasn’t got anything in mind. The boy’s plumb wore to a frazzle. Don’t know as I’ve ever seen him look so weary, and, by golly, I’ve seen him go a long time on less’n he’s getting here, too.”
“It’s the weight of responsibility,” Reuben Burgess said.
“Might be,” Lige acknowledged, not fully understanding what the words meant. “Might be. I think it’s just too danged many hours of fighting and no sleep, myself.”
“He must have something in his mind, Lige,” Allie said softly, watching the older man closely.
Lige shrugged. “Might at that, ma’am, but I don’t think so. I know him pretty well, and if he did have some scheme a-cooking, he’d’ve told me, I think.”
They fell into a long silence for a while, then Reuben Burgess spoke while combing his beard with hooked fingers. “Do you think there’s a way to go through that gap?”
Lige looked into the fire before he answered. “I can’t see it, if there is, I’ll tell you that.”
Allie said vehemently, “The way Kit explained it, we can’t go back … so we’ll just have to go ahead.”
Lige looked at her lazily. “You got any ideas, Miss Allie?” he asked in a dry drawl.
She shook her head. “Couldn’t we make peace with—?”
“After killing around thirty of ’em? Not a chance in the world. Not a single chance in the whole cussed world, ma’am.”
Allie’s eyes widened. She stared at Lige without making a sound, then, very abruptly, she got up, dusted her skirt, and turned away.
“Where you going, honey?” Reuben called after her.
“I’ve got an idea, Dad. I’ll be right back.”
They watched her until the shadows swallowed her, then Lige lay low on one elbow and smiled softly, warmly. “She’s got grit, that gal,” he said. “He couldn’t do no better anywhere, I don’t think.”