by Lauran Paine
“I’ve lived with Indians,” he said gruffly. “That’s how I got to know how they figure.”
She flushed beet red. “Go get on your horse. It’ll be dawn before long.”
“All right. One more kiss.”
“No. You’ll get tired of them.”
He snorted softly. “Funny thing about that. The more of ’em a man gets, the more of ’em he wants. Is it that way with women, too?”
“Yes.”
“Then bend down …”
“No! Go get on your horse!” Her face looked scarlet, and her eyes shone with a tawny, proud light.
“All right,” he said. “Later.”
They struck out along the high ridge, still heading north. She rode like his shadow, with a triumphant shade of a smile on her face.
Chapter Twelve
He didn’t stop until long after dawn, and by then they were swinging westward, with the sun on their backs, heading down a hogback of land that rose gently within the forest. The ground was crested, flinty, and shallow, and only junipers grew. The land dropped away in a miles-long, gradual slope until it flattened out over a great plain. He reined up where they could see the vast plain for miles on end, tilting westerly, with long shadows still on it. There were low-limbed junipers in a ragged way to hide them as they sat there, looking.
“Don’t see anything moving,” he said softly.
“Are we past them, Kit?”
He shook his head. “Nope. We’re just about parallel with the gap, Allie, but we’re about fifteen miles north of it. This ridge runs through the forest to the pass.”
“Fifteen miles,” she said in a stronger voice, “is a long way.”
“Seems that way,” he said noncommittally. “That plain down there, that’s the one that leads to the fort. Makes you feel sort of naked, thinking about crossing it, doesn’t it?”
She let her gaze roam over the bare expanse of land. There was something about all the openness that made her wince inwardly. An Indian could see two moving specks for miles out there. The forest at her back was like a friend.
“Isn’t there some way around it, Kit?”
He lifted his reins. “Afraid not, Allie. If we followed the forest, we’d be going almost north. It’d be safer, maybe, to follow it for a few days, then drop south again, but it’d delay us three or four more days. They can’t wait that long. Let’s go.”
He rode down the slope, utilizing all the cover he could, reluctant to ride out into the open to the very last. Wistfully, he looked at a southerly line of scattered trees. They weren’t on the way, but they weren’t too far off, either. The trouble was, there weren’t more than half a mile of them, then prairie again.
She followed him out into the grass. He didn’t glance back at her any more. Her horse was strong and willing and, so far, so was she.
They hardly spoke all morning. A corroding tension was in them both. Several times he would twist in the saddle and stare for minutes at a time at the towering peaks that marked the pass, where he knew Indian sentinels would be.
They rode all day and stopped only once. That was when Allie untied a cloth bundle behind her saddle and offered him food. He was surprised at her thoughtfulness. They ate standing up, while their horses grazed, then pushed on. He watched her for signs of fatigue, but they didn’t show until the following day, and then it might have been the late shadows of evening, but he knew it wasn’t. She didn’t ever say she was tired, though.
He wove his way among the little spit of trees they had seen from the hogback when they were leaving the forest. Finding a secluded spot he bedded her down, took his carbine, and squatted until late in the night, watching and listening. Once, he thought he heard horses. The sound never came again, so at dawn they pushed on, leaving the trees behind.
The land didn’t break until the fourth day, then it became a little uneven, as though warning the riders that rough country was ahead. Allie’s food was dwindling. Kit just shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter now, Allie. We can risk a shot if we have to.”
“We’re safe, aren’t we?” She was watching his face.
He didn’t look at her, and his answer was slow in coming. “I reckon so,” he said. “Ought to see Collins tomorrow.” She knew he had switched the subject to cheer her, but didn’t comment on it. It was hard, though, to keep from looking back.
Evening came gradually until the country finally lost its symmetrical sameness and turned into a series of serrated gullies and wrenched-up knobs that cast long, thin shadows. They were riding into the setting sun now, red and sulky-looking. He kept swinging his head, like a puzzled wolf. Turning it from side to side so his sun-pained eyes could watch the ambush country ahead.
They made their camp in a little dry wash near the pinnacle of a scrawny hillock. He made her lie down in his buffalo robe, took his carbine, and, toiling upward to the summit of the hill, squatted and froze, staring downward.
A soft contour, then another, then several, made his heart squeeze into a tight, hurting thing that quivered instead of beat. Unshod horse tracks and moccasin marks! An Indian had hunkered up there during the day, watching something. He looked out over the land. Nothing moved as far as he could see. The Indian could only have been watching one thing then—Allie and him.
With an oath, he flattened against the ground and studied the breaks all around them. There were a dozen places Indians could be hiding. He strained to see which way the buck had ridden when he had left the knoll. Northward in an angling way.
He went down and saddled up with swift, fretting motions, shook Allie awake, and put a finger over her mouth. She got up as silently as a ghost, her eyes wide and dark with unconcealed terror. His expression told her enough. They mounted and rode due south, Kit in the lead, his carbine laying athwart his lap, his head up, and his eyes on the fast-gathering darkness.
They were never sure when an erosion gully might erupt with riders, but they both clung to one thing. The darkness.
The night was deceivingly pleasant, warm, and refreshing. Then the moon came up. It was half full. Kit stared at it reproachfully. When they had needed night light, back at the wagons, they hadn’t gotten it. Now they did.
He looked back once, shortly after midnight, and saw how Allie was sitting like a brittle stick, straight and tight with fear. Even with peril this close, he couldn’t help but notice how statuesque, how handsome she was.
They labored up a long slope and stopped near the top. Kit left her holding the horses and crawled to the eminence, lay flat, and skylined the country roundabout for movement or silhouettes. There was nothing in front of them, and it puzzled him greatly. Unless the Indian had been a Ute or Pawnee, or some other friendly, where had he gone with his knowledge that two whites were riding for the fort?
He got up and started back down the hill, frowning. When he was very close, he got the start of his life. An Indian was stalking Allie in the moonlight. He was still a long ways off, but he was slithering from shadow to shadow. Kit dropped low and raised his carbine. No, there would be others about. He gripped the gun by the barrel and scuttled like a rabbit for a little miserly clump of wiry sage that grew bleakly amid the short grass of the hillside.
The Indian, fortunately, was bent on counting coup. He was going to show his prowess by creeping right up within arm’s reach of the girl. He would jump up and touch her with his hand—then shoot her. Kit could see the bow in his hand and the arrow held lightly by the same fingers. He couldn’t make out whether he was a Dakota or not. It didn’t matter.
Allie was standing with her weight on one foot. The horses, tired, were hangdog, heads low. The girl was watching the country behind them with no inkling at all that death was coming for her on hands and knees, with muddy black eyes and a thin, bloodless line for a mouth.
Kit moved only when the Indian did. He made his way deeper into the brus
h thicket, waiting. The buck would crawl that way to get close. The wait was murderous for the white man. The only person who showed no knowledge of the horror not fifty feet away was the victim. Kit’s hands were clammy on the carbine barrel. He scarcely breathed at all when the warrior came stealthily close to the brush clump.
Then he swung the carbine like a club, and a second before it struck, the Indian caught the wisp of movement and started to spring away. The gun butt missed his head but crashed with terrible force into his back, high up and between the shoulder blades. He crashed flat on the hillside and never moved.
Allie swung at the sound. Kit could see the hugeness of her eyes, even at that distance. The moon paled her face to a sickly whitish gray. The horses had their heads up, watching him get up on shaky legs, and bend over the Indian. Very deliberately, he squatted by the buck, took the arrow from his hand, plucked out his knife, and made two long, deep grooves down each side of the arrow. He then pricked his finger and let the blood flow along one groove, held it a moment to set the blood, then turned the arrow over, and, with spittle and black earth, filled in the other groove.
After that, he plunged the arrow deep into the dead Indian’s body and strode down where Allie was standing, without a backward glance.
“Hoppo,” he said shortly, and indicated what it meant by mounting his horse and reining southward. She followed.
The night kept its persistent ghostliness until he found another high ridge, but, thankfully, there were trees there again. He reined up and swung down, squatted, and stayed motionless for more than an hour. She stood beside him, holding their horses, saying nothing.
“There!”
He said it harshly, triumphantly, coming off his haunches with a smooth movement. He pointed his arm downward, along the drift of hillside where they had been an hour before.
“See ’em, Allie?”
“Yes.” Her voice was leaden (which was how she felt), in spite of an effort to keep it from sounding that way. “They’re Indians, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
The only way he had caught sight of them at first was because one of them had lit a pine-knot torch. It showed with a harsh brilliance against the dark bodies bending low over the dead Indian.
She looked at Kit’s face. It was wreathed in a savage smile. It shocked her. As weathered and bronzed as he was, and with the light so faint, he looked more Indian himself than he did white. “What are you smiling about, Kit?”
“They’re scairt, Allie. Look at ’em. See how they’re talking in sign language. It’s too far and too dark, but I’ll bet you they’re for going back, hell-bent for leather.”
“What did you do?”
He grunted in a pleased way, watching the dim, distant outlines. “I marked an arrow with the signs of the Comanches. If there’s one tribe the Dakotas don’t like to tangle with, it’s the Comanches. Comanches only come this far north on war parties, and when they come, they kill everything they see that moves. That’s what’s making them hesitate now.”
“Have they been following us?”
He nodded. “Yeah, since the day we came out into the open. I didn’t know it, though, until I went back up on the hill when we stopped. It was good. They were making a surround. I can imagine why.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, turning to their horses. “They know who it is who’s making the run. Me. In Dakota they call me Ohiyesa. They want Ohiyesa alive to lecture to a little before they go to work on him. Thank God for that, Allie. Otherwise, they’d’ve just plain shot us both and lifted our hair to show the people back at the wagons. Let’s go.”
They went straight west after that and didn’t slow up until dawn. By then Allie was over her fright, and he had never seen how badly her body shook at all. They were riding down a valley when she rode up beside him.
“What does hoppo mean, Kit?”
“It’s Dakota, Allie. Means … ‘let’s go’.”
“And … Ohiyesa … your Indian name, what does that mean?”
“Means … ‘The Winner’ in English. I got it for winning a foot race one time, years back.”
“It fits perfectly,” she said.
He turned and made a wry smile at her. He felt greasy with dirt and exhaustion and drained-away energy. “I’ll agree with you when we’re back at the wagon train with a herd of yellow legs … soldiers.”
Just before the sun rose, he was shaking his head sharply from time to time. There was a fuzziness to his vision and a lethargic numbness stealing through his veins. She watched him for a while before she spoke.
“Kit, you’ve got to rest.”
“Can’t yet, Allie. Not this close to Fort Collins.”
“Yes,” she said, reining up. “Look, there’s a bank of creek willows. Let’s go in there.” Without waiting, she turned her horse and made for the trees. He followed reluctantly, knowing he was very close to the end of his physical trail, but loathing himself, too, for giving out so close to safety.
“There,” she said, swinging down. “Wash in that creek and lie over there where the moss is. I’ll watch for them.”
He stood, holding to his saddle horn with one hand. His legs felt like they were filled with fluid instead of bone and muscle. “Allie, I hate this. You don’t know what to look for.”
“Movement,” she said. “It’s daylight now. They won’t get over that hill without my seeing them.”
He went to the creek like a drugged man, dropped to his knees, and knuckled cold water into his eyes. It didn’t help any. He washed hard, using fine sand for soap, then fell back on the moss and slept like a dead man.
The sun climbed higher. Twice he snored and she rolled him over. He didn’t awaken until the shadows were creeping out from under the willows, spreading in an exploratory way, cautiously westward.
“Kit. Kit, honey. Let’s go. Hoppo.”
He awoke by opening his eyes and not moving a muscle. She was bending over him. Her jet-black hair was combed and looked too perfect for the disheveled appearance of her clothing. Brush had made a ragged hemline and had torn the little rents in the front of her dress.
She had scrubbed her face, it appeared. He sat up, looking around them slowly, letting his eyes study every brush clump and rock, every hill and tree.
“They haven’t come, Kit.”
“Then the arrow must’ve scairt ’em worse than I hoped it would. Good.” He looked up into her face again. “You washed,” he said.
“I took a bath,” she said, rocking back on her haunches with a breathless smile.
“A bath?” He jumped up. “That’s a bad thing to do right now.”
“No, I watched. I took it in a place where I could see all around me.”
He laughed. “It must’ve been a pretty picture.”
She turned scarlet and stood up beside him. “The horses are rested, too. There’s lots of feed under these trees.”
He was looking at her in the same amused way. “Can I kiss you, now?”
She didn’t answer him. She just went closer and reached up and put both cool hands on his face and melted against him.
“You need a shave.”
He put both arms around her and held her to him without speaking or moving. She put her cool cheek against his face and the words tumbled like water from her.
“Kit … I’ve been afraid for so long … so long. I think I’m going to cry.”
“We’re almost there, Allie,” he said in a low, soft tone. “Just a little longer.”
“I want to wait,” she said, “only I don’t think I can.” Her body shook, and he tightened his grip a little. “And … Kit. You’ve aged so. You look thinner and older and tired. There’re lines around your eyes.” She drew in a big breath. “I won’t cry, Kit. I won’t cry.”
He held her out a little and bent his face toward her with
a gentleness he didn’t know was in him. She came up on her toes quickly, almost fiercely, and kissed him. Her lips were hot and the long, black lashes were just a little damp-looking. His blood ran riot, but he stood back and looked at her. The smoky film was in her eyes, a liquid softness, like gray clouds at evening.
“Hoppo, Allie.”
“All right.”
They followed the willow-lined creek for several miles, until it twisted in a tortured way, among broken gulches that seeped water into its main channel. Then Kit ran across an old buffalo trail, worn smooth and deep, and followed it at an angle up a side hill and across the top and down the other side, where more little breaks in the land confronted them. He knew the way from there, too, and when at last they saw what looked like a mirage far ahead, they were heading in a beeline straight for it.
“Is that Fort Collins?”
“Sure is.”
“It looks like a town, Kit.”
He turned and looked at her profile. She had a tiny little frown on her face. He smiled. “What’d you expect, a regular log fort? Collins has been growing for some time now. It wasn’t this big the last time I saw it, either, but you could tell it would be one day.”
Chapter Thirteen
They rode the last five miles side by side. Reaction set in, and Allie couldn’t remember ever feeling quite as ill and weary as she did when they began to scuff trodden dust on the outskirts of the place.
Kit thought that Fort Collins had changed much more than he would have guessed it might. It wasn’t altogether the new buildings, although there were plenty of those. Store fronts with the sap still oozing out of the green lumber and boxlike homes were thrown at random over the landscape. Big garbage piles were heaped at the rear of the town, and there were strong, springtime smells of sweaty horses.
It was more than that. There were people everywhere. The men in buckskin were a sprinkling now, a lost minority that belonged to a scene their blood made them a part of. In their hearts, they still belonged to the country as it had been—Indian country.