Wagon Train West

by Lauran Paine

  The sergeant rode on by without a sound. Kit watched him go, then Forrester was speaking again. “If they’re afoot, we stand the best chance I’ve ever run across of making them surrender. That’d be the best thing that ever happened out here. Be a hell of a blow to Indian pride and morale.”

  Kit watched Allie ride up and spoke before she could. “We’re waiting for a scout, Allie. Just a little while longer.” He saw Forrester’s questioning glance. “Her father and mother are down there.”

  “Oh.” Forrester shot the girl a quick look, then drew his reins through one hand with the fingers of the other hand. It was an old story to him, but he didn’t like it any better now than he had the first time he had seen an escapee looking at the remains of the mutilated dead. There was a better-than-even chance here, though.

  He looked up impatiently, and Kit dismounted, picked up a pine twig, smoothed away the needles, and drew a dust sketch. “This is the train. This is the shape of the valley where it is. These are the trees south of ’em. The Dakotas’ll be around here.” He looked up at the captain. “You understand?”

  Forrester nodded, then he turned and beckoned to three soldiers who were watching him from a respectful distance. “Come up here a minute, boys. There … see that map? Well, we’re going to come down out of the trees about there.” Kit drew a crooked line with his twig. “As soon as we’re in the open, you split the men up. Half will go south … ride like the devil too, so you can be sure to cut the hostiles off from retreat into the forest. The rest of us will complete the surround.”

  “One thing,” Kit said quietly. “They are fighting down there. Don’t let yourselves be killed by the emigrants. Stay back far enough to be out of gun range.”

  “That’s right,” Forrester agreed. “And watch me for signals. If the hostiles give up … fine. If they don’t … slaughter ’em.”

  Kit snapped the twig and got up with a granite look. He turned toward his horse and raised his glance just before he stepped up. Allie was looking at him. Their eyes met and held. He knew what she was thinking and broke the spell when he sprang up and settled into the saddle.

  The red-faced sergeant came back. His shirt was black with sweat, and his eyes shone like blue glass. “I’d call ’em maybe a hundred and fifty strong, Captain.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Looks like a siege, only I don’t see but maybe six, maybe eight riders. Rest of ’em’s afoot, crawling around in the grass. If we could find their horse herd—”

  “That’s already been done. The emigrants stampeded them.”

  “Oh,” the sergeant said, then he cleared his throat. “Sir, they’re Dakotas, all right. And it looks like the wagon train’s about done, too.”

  Kit’s blood chilled. “What do you mean?”

  The ice-chip eyes swung a little. “They ain’t doing much firing from inside the circle. About four-to-one, I’d say. One emigrant firing for about every four hostiles that fire. Low rate of fire power.”

  Kit lifted his reins and flung a hot glance at Captain Forrester. “Let’s go.”

  The men mounted to the accompaniment of moving horses. There was a rustling, sometimes sharply made, where riders brushed against or rode over wiry little pines and firs. Kit looked around anxiously at Allie, then he leaned a little toward Captain Forrester.

  “Can you detail some men to guard her?”

  “Sure. We could leave her up here.”

  Kit shook his head quickly. “No. If they break through us, they’ll make for the forest like wolves. She’ll have to go along, but if you could put four or five men around her and sort of tell them to keep her back out of range, it’d be best.”

  Forrester beckoned up a downy-faced lad not over eighteen. “Corporal, detail yourself and four men to look after the young lady. Keep her clear of danger and don’t let anything happen to her. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They were riding swiftly downward now. The little sounds of gunfire came more persistently. Interspersed among them was an occasional shout, high and distant, like the scream of a hawk in the pale, burnished sky overhead.

  The trees began to thicken again when they were past the shallow, flinty, hardpan earth. Kit urged his horse ahead of the captain in impatience. He wound among the trees like a snake. The cavalry horse was good at it, as though he had had much experience doing it.

  When the last belt of trees grew thin, Kit was urging his horse into a shambling trot. The animal ducked and bobbed, and suddenly another horse broke over into a clearing made by a deadfall, and Kit looked around. It was Allie, her skirt streaming and her face pale.

  “Kit, let me go with you.”

  “No,” he said sharply. “There’s a guard detail to ride with you. Honey, don’t get close to where the shooting will be.”

  She saw the excitement, the roiled fierceness in his expression, and knew it was useless to plead. She reined up her horse and a wave of sweat-darkened blue shirts swung around her. He caught a last glimpse of her scowling darkly at a worried-looking young corporal who had swooped down from behind with a squad of men and surrounded her.

  Forrester called out. He reined up scant feet from the clear slope that emptied down into the valley. The captain clanked up, and Kit noticed he had a big dragoon pistol in his right hand. The brass ring in the butt of the weapon—for a lanyard—made an unnecessarily loud noise of a sudden.

  “Butler, you stay with me. I want someone handy who knows the lay of the land so I’ll be able to signal.”

  Kit nodded and swung his horse out into the open beside the officer. The troopers erupted from the shadowy covert like blue pebbles catapulted by an unseen hand.

  Kit swung for a look behind them as they all broke out upon the valley floor. The mounted Indians they had seen from the ridge were specks against the sun-splashed distance. For a long moment they seemed to continue their way toward the gap, then, as Kit watched, they stopped. He grinned wolfishly. If they rode back as fast as they could, they’d still be cut off from their companions.

  He twisted forward and had to slit his eyes against the unaccustomed smash of the dazzling sunshine. Up ahead, possibly two miles, was the shimmering outline of the wagon circle. There was a gray haziness hanging over it. His heart beat wildly. Lige would be lying under a wagon up there with fear like a solid ball of gristle under his heart. He had seen Lige like that before. The more frightened and desperate he became, the more adamant and forbidding his face got, until it was set in a stony look of unconquerable defiance. He would be looking like that now.

  Forrester waved his pistol-bearing hand, arm’s length, overhead. The soldiers began to fan out across the long, narrow valley. Several of them raised the yell. Kit smiled inwardly in a harsh, bleak way. These were the regulars—the best fighting soldiers on the frontier. They were worth ten soldiers with unfaded, bright new uniforms. They were, in fact, the only fighting white men on the frontier—aside from the old scouts and mountain men—who were a match, man for man, with the mighty and terrible Dakotas.

  Someone sang out a rolling, singsong order. Kit looked to his right, where the cry had come from. The soldiers on that side began to swing inward a little, like a giant hook with the pointed end bent, so as to cut off the Dakotas’ retreat toward the forest.

  He rode with the hot wind streaming past, jetting the water out of the corners of his eyes, looking for Allie and the little knot of men who would be guarding her. They were far back, loping their horses to keep a good distance, not too close. He thought she was looking at him and threw up an arm. Instantly she waved back. Then Forrester was shouting something. Kit couldn’t make it out, but he hurriedly looked forward again.

  They had been seen.

  The Dakotas were jumping up out of the grass as if they were being jerked with strong ropes. He threw back his head and let off the keening scream of a fighting cougar.
The soldiers nearest to him looked with jerky, bulging eyes at him. He was smiling when he reached for his handgun, palmed it, and cried out again. That time the sound carried, and the Dakotas recognized it. They answered back with their own war cries until the troopers took it up, and the day was ridged and tortured with ululating howls.

  A little ahead of the charging, strung-out, thin rank of soldiers were two guidon bearers. The little pennants whipped and sawed crazily. They looked out of place except for the ten-inch-long steel lance tips that glistened cruelly above them as the bearers set their lances and lowered them like Dakota lance bearers.

  Forrester roared in a powerful voice into the bedlam that was increasing. Others heard and understood and passed his order down the line until a distant officer flagged back, understanding. Then the racing line south, scudding across the open country between the forest and the wagon train, bent still farther inward, like a fishhook, and until that extra spurt of speed showed the soldier strategy, the Indians didn’t understand what was happening. When they did, finally, a great, trembling howl went up.

  Kit watched them break and race wildly to get across the closing gap before the soldiers did. It was a futile, almost pathetic race, men against horses. The culmination was brought to a vivid climax when the troopers were close enough to shoot.

  The sounds were small and telescoped by distance, but Kit could see the wreaths of dirty smoke and the speeding bodies go end over end in violent convulsions. Then the fishhook was completed and only Kit’s upper wing of the line remained out of range. His, and the curving center.

  By then, as though reminded of something temporarily forgotten, the Dakotas left off screaming and running and threw themselves down in the grass, or kneeled, and opened up on the troopers with a scattering, uneven volley of gunfire.

  Forrester cried out an order that was lost in a smashing fusillade. Kit could see him cursing, but he couldn’t hear a word, then the officer was waving his arm again, signaling. Almost immediately, the blue line was riding in an eye-stinging, dirty, gray fog of black powder smoke. Kit cursed then, too. He couldn’t see anything ahead of him to shoot at.

  He stood in his stirrups, straining, unmindful of the soldiers, until he heard Forrester’s roar again, then he turned and found himself riding far in advance of the line. Forrester had drawn his men back and was flashing signals for them to complete the encircling maneuver.

  An Indian leaped up out of the grass and called out derisively to Kit. He let off an arrow that rose and fell, then whirred past Kit’s head. His horse was swinging low, turning, when Kit fired back. He missed, too. The Indian made an obscene gesture that Kit returned with one of contempt, then he trotted his horse back to the soldiers, whose initial charge had been completed. Though both sides were beyond accurate firing range, they were within bullet-carrying distance all right, so that they dueled back and forth without damage, while Forrester reined up and leaned over to spit dust, clear his throat, and turn to Kit with a calm and sweating countenance.

  “The damned fools didn’t even run for it, Butler.”

  Kit shrugged.“They knew they couldn’t make it, Captain.”

  “Your friends in the train seem pretty tickled.”

  Kit turned his horse and hauled him up. The animal’s breathing rocked him with quick contractions of its lungs.

  The emigrants were standing up and waving sheets, blankets, clothing—anything handy. Their yells were faint and hoarse and Kit tried to figure which one was Lige. He couldn’t, for the simple reason that Lige was lying under a wagon with his head down between his arms and his old rifle slanted downward, the barrel’s end in the stained and beaten dust. He didn’t move.

  “Who’s that big black devil there with no shirt on? The one walking around among the bucks? You know him?”

  Kit looked and answered softly. “You ought to. You said you had him bottled up on the Rosebud one time.”

  “Big Eagle? I’ll be damned.” Forrester sat motionlessly, watching Big Eagle strolling as scornfully as though he were perfectly safe among the men of war.

  “You will be if he gets his hands on you,” Kit said dryly. “They’ve quit shooting.”

  Forrester threw up his arm and wigwagged. Gradually the gunfire stopped. He turned to Kit with an ugly smile. “Now what? Make council?”

  “Up to them,” Kit said, relaxing, watching, and waiting.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The strange silence lasted for a long two minutes. Kit was straining to identify White Shield Owner among the Dakotas. He couldn’t find him, but Big Eagle had completed his long stroll among the fighting men and had come back to the middle of the line.

  Abruptly a fully painted and richly garbed warrior leaped up with a terrific scream. Every eye, Indian and white, was fixed on him. Captain Forrester said something, but it was lost in the frenzied dancing the strange warrior broke into, punctuated by wild cries.

  “Hayoka,” Kit said.

  Forrester was watching the savage with a puzzled look. He reined over, closer beside Kit, and bent his beetling, puzzled stare upon the Indians. They were becoming more and more excited as the dancer convoluted.

  “What in the devil is wrong with him, Butler?”

  Kit didn’t answer right away. He twisted and looked backward. Far behind the line of soldiers was the bunched-up party of mounted Dakotas. They were craning toward their comrades, cut off from them by over two hundred stationary soldiers in blue, with wide yellow stripes down their dragoon britches.

  He swept the landscape for sign of Allie and found her south of the main line and back a few hundred yards, her escort warily watching both front and rear.

  “Butler! Dammit! What’s the crazy fool doing?”

  Kit turned and looked at the warriors again. The frantic dancer was moving backward, not forward, as he danced. He mimicked a warrior firing his arrows. Every dance step, every motion was a series of contrary movements.

  Kit looked up and down the line and reassured himself that the troopers were alert, then he leaned toward the perspiring officer and spoke.

  “That’s a hayoka, Captain. In our language we’d call it Thunder Dreamer. They’re very sacred.”

  “What a hell of a time to dance,” Forrester said impatiently.

  “No,” Kit disagreed with a wag of his head. “When he’s through dancing, they’re going to charge us.”

  Forrester’s head swung rapidly. “Are you sure?”

  Kit inclined his head toward the hayoka. “Look for yourself. They do everything backward in their ceremonials. That one’s imitating a man of war. He’s showing that his power is great and his prophecy good. He’s telling them they’ve got to breach your lines … that’s what the running backward means … fighting past you and running for the trees.”

  Forrester looked angrily back at the dancing Indian, then he swung his head up and down the line. Before he spoke, though, Kit interrupted his thoughts.

  “Those mounted bucks are behind us. You’d better detail some men to watch them. As soon as the fight starts, they’ll try to rake your rear.”

  Forrester called up an officer and told him how to neutralize the mounted Indians, then he swung back toward Kit. His face was beet red and his eyes shone darkly. “I’ve been around them a lot, Butler, but I never saw one of those chaps before.”

  “I don’t reckon you have,” Kit said, without looking away from the dancer. “You’ve got to live with ’em to see hayoka ceremonials.”

  He grunted and jutted his chin.

  “It’ll be over in a few minutes. He’s running down, getting tired. When it’s over, they’ll charge you.”

  “We won’t wait,” Forrester said, wheeling his horse and loping down the line.

  Kit watched him spit out orders then ride in a fast gallop up the northern perimeter of his huge half circle.

  He worried about Allie
and rode through the soldiers to where she was.

  The young-looking corporal greeted him with an uncertain smile and a significant nod toward the distant mounted Dakotas. “We’re liable to be between hell and high water, Mister Butler.”

  “You will be,” Kit said, “if Forrester’s detail doesn’t turn those riders back. Or at least hold ’em where they are.”

  “Oh. He’s sending a detachment to take them out. We didn’t know that.”

  “Watch them just the same. That’s where most of your danger is. The bucks down in front will try to fight through the circle. I don’t think they’ll make it entirely, but a few may. Your job is here, not fighting Dakotas. If some get past, let ’em go, and stay well out of range of ’em.”

  Allie spurred up where he was talking with the corporal. Her glowing gray eyes had a penetrating clarity to them. He had an idea that imminent action did that to her, as it did to a man, making her see things twice as clearly as she would ordinarily see them.

  “Kit, are they going to fight? Can’t you talk to them …?”

  A great roar went up, and Kit turned his head swiftly. The Dakotas were bounding up out of the grass like grasshoppers. They were charging straight at the troopers. He looked for Forrester and saw him, his hat gone and his right arm wigwagging fiercely. The troopers, with a thunderous cry of their own, threw their horses into a headlong plunge toward the dismounted Indians.

  He had to fight down a macabre fascination long enough to look back at the mounted men of war. A streamer of blue-clad dragoons were whipping out in a much smaller semicircle from the original line, penning them in. The Indians were milling excitedly, as though willing to take on the troopers but lacking any decisive leadership. That was what Kit had been watching for. Now he was certain. He touched the corporal’s arm.

  “Watch her, pardner. When it’s all over, stay with the soldiers, either way. If they retreat or go to the wagons, you stay right in among ’em.”