Thunder Wagon (Wind River Book 2)

by James Reasoner

  Casebolt felt a surge of relief as he recognized Two Ponies' voice. "Yep, it's me, all right," he told the Shoshone chief. "Good to see you again, Two Ponies."

  "Get down and come into my lodge." Two Ponies looked past Casebolt at Climbs on Rocks and added something in Shoshone. He sounded annoyed.

  Climbs on Rocks replied in the same tongue, and Casebolt could tell that the warrior was trying to explain why he had jumped the deputy from Wind River.

  Two Ponies cut into the explanation with a curt sentence or two, then his tone softened slightly as he concluded by telling Climbs on Rocks to go get some sleep. Casebolt could follow that much of the conversation, at least.

  Several more Shoshones had come from their tepees to see what was going on, and at a command from Two Ponies, one of them took the reins of Casebolt's horse and said to the deputy, "I will care for your animal."

  "Why, thank you kindly," Casebolt said. "He's come quite a ways today."

  As the warrior led the horse away Two Ponies said to Casebolt, "Come inside. We will smoke the pipe of friendship."

  Casebolt's worries had eased considerably since his arrival at the Shoshone camp. Everything seemed peaceful here. None of the men he had seen had been painted for war, and the atmosphere in the camp was one of peace. Despite the touchiness exhibited by Climbs on Rocks, the Shoshones just didn't act like people who had brutally wiped out a family of settlers the night before.

  Two Ponies wore a buckskin shirt and leggings, and a single eagle feather stuck up at the back of his head. His hair was still dark and thick but beginning to be streaked with gray. As he and Casebolt entered the tepee he gestured for his guest to sit to the right of the fire in the center of the living space. A soft buffalo robe was spread there, and Casebolt sank down on it gratefully.

  Two Ponies went around the fire in the other direction and sat down to Casebolt's right. There were four women in the tepee, too, ranging in age from an adolescent girl to an elderly squaw with a face so wrinkled that her features were barely visible. The other two women were perhaps thirty. Both of them were quite handsome, and Casebolt knew they were Two Ponies' wives. The girl was his daughter, the old woman his mother. All of them were acquainted with Casebolt from his previous visits, but they kept silent and didn't greet him. Such was not their place.

  Two Ponies crossed his legs and slipped off the moccasins on his feet. Casebolt followed the tradition, removing his own boots but leaving his socks on as Two Ponies prepared the pipe for smoking. It was an exquisite piece of carving work, with decorative feathers and strips of fur tied to it. Two Ponies packed the bowl with tobacco from a small rawhide bag, then lit it with a glowing twig from the fire. When the tobacco was burning well, he blew smoke to the four winds and then passed the pipe to Casebolt.

  These rituals could be a mite tiresome, Casebolt thought, but he knew better than to try to bypass them.

  As he and Two Ponies smoked, the chief inquired as to his health, then told him what had occurred with the Shoshone since his last visit. Two Ponies concluded by saying, "I am sorry it was Climbs on Rocks who found you tonight, Billy Casebolt. He is the brother of my second wife and was not with our band when last you honored us with a visit."

  "Oh, that's all right, Two Ponies," Casebolt said. "I reckoned it was somethin' like that. He seemed a mite edgy, though. Is there trouble among the Shoshone?"

  Two Ponies sighed. "Only the trouble we have seen coming ever since the Thunder Wagon began rolling over the plains and into our hunting grounds. The Shoshone have no quarrel with the whites, but there are so many of them . . . and more come all the time now. We have sat on our horses and watched as the men built the iron road, and in our hearts we have known what would happen."

  Like most Indians, the Shoshones had at first regarded the railroad as something of a curiosity. When the Thunder Wagons—the locomotives—began arriving, the smoke and noise had spooked some of the watchers, who were convinced the things were alive and were some sort of flame-belching monsters.

  In some tribes, such as the Sioux and the Pawnee, the curiosity had rapidly turned to hostility as the Indians tried to halt what they considered encroachment on their territory.

  Casebolt knew the Shoshones had never taken that attitude. They maintained a sort of aloof neutrality, keeping an eye on the progress of the railroad without interfering with it.

  Such a stance had to be difficult for many of them, Casebolt realized, especially warriors such as Two Ponies, who were intelligent enough to know what the coming of the Thunder Wagon would mean to his people in the long run. Some of them, like Climbs on Rocks, were doubtless getting a little fed up with the white men and their never-ending advance.

  "We've got some trouble, too," Casebolt solemnly told Two Ponies. "A farm belonging to a family of settlers was attacked last night. The whole family was killed, even the little'uns, and the cabin was burned down." He paused for a second, then went on, "Some folks say the Shoshones are to blame."

  Two Ponies' strong-featured face hardened. "This is not true!" he declared. "My people have harmed no one. It must have been the Sioux, or some other tribe."

  "All I'm doin' is tellin' you what I've heard, Chief," Casebolt said. "Marshal Tyler rode out to that farm and said the raiders were ridin' unshod horses and wearin' moccasins."

  "That does not make them Shoshone," Two Ponies said stiffly.

  "That's sure enough true. But the Sioux ain't around here much anymore; most of 'em have moved over east a ways. And we're too far south for Blackfoot or Crow, 'less'n they're raidin' a long way from their home ground." Casebolt shrugged. "Folks who don't know you like I do just naturally figure the Shoshones must've done it."

  Two Ponies shook his head. "I know nothing of this. I have always been a friend to the white man, even though I know what his coming will one day mean to my people."

  "You don't have to remind me of that. You sure saved my bacon that time, and we've been pards ever since. That's why Marshal Tyler sent me out here to talk to you and see if maybe you could tell me what's goin' on around here."

  "I have told you what I know, Billy Casebolt— nothing."

  Casebolt sighed. "There's some folks want the army called in."

  He saw anger glitter in the chiefs dark eyes. "We have heard about the bluecoats you call the army. We have heard what happened at the place called Sand Creek. If the bluecoats come here, they will not find women and children waiting to be slaughtered. They will find warriors who will greet them with blood and death!"

  Casebolt grimaced and held up his hands. "Now just hold on, Two Ponies," he said. "Nobody's said anything about slaughterin' women and kids!" He felt sweat pop out on his forehead, and it wasn't because it was hot inside the tepee. "The marshal hasn't sent for the army. He doesn't want to. If I've got your word that the Shoshones didn't have anything to do with attackin' that farm, why, I can just ride back to Wind River and tell that to Marshal Tyler. Then he can try to find out who is responsible."

  Two Ponies looked a little mollified. "You tell this to Marshal Tyler. The Shoshone are still friends to the white man—even though it might be better for us if we were not. But we do not want the bluecoats coming here."

  "I'll sure tell him," Casebolt promised.

  The chief's severe expression eased. "Tonight, you will stay here as our guest. We have missed your stories, Billy Casebolt. None of our warriors tells such exciting tales." Two Ponies smiled slightly. "Perhaps none of them have enough . . . imagination."

  Casebolt frowned. "You sayin' you think I make up all the yarns I spin? Why, there ain't a word of any of my stories that ain't the gospel truth! You take that time me and Jim Bridger was cornered by the biggest damn mountain lion you ever did see. I swear, he was pert' near as tall as a mountain, and when he swished his tail, he knocked over a bunch of pine trees and cleared out a whole basin. Where he walked, his pawprints left holes in the ground so deep that boilin' water shot up out of the earth, and when he let out a roar it'd shak
e a feller right out of his boots . . ."

  Casebolt felt a little better as he continued spinning the tall tale. Now that he knew the Shoshones weren't responsible for the massacre at the Jessup farm, that would be welcome news back in Wind River.

  But the trouble had only been postponed, not settled, because the most important question of all still remained.

  If the Shoshones hadn't wiped out that family of sodbusters, then who had?

  Chapter 10

  Lon Rogers reined in and cuffed his hat back on his light brown hair. A frown creased his forehead as he looked out over the small valley in front of him. This was a side valley that ran off the main one where the Diamond S was located, and cattle frequently strayed up into it.

  Finding the strays and pushing them back out into the main valley was a time-consuming chore, and since the headquarters of the ranch was a good ten or twelve miles to the south, Kermit Sawyer had ordered his men to build a cabin up here so the hands whose responsibility it was to keep these side canyons cleaned out would have a place to stay.

  Beside Lon, Frenchy had also reined in, and he was frowning, too, as he said, "What do you make of that?"

  The cabin was about two hundred yards in front of them, just inside the mouth of the smaller canyon. There was a corral behind the cabin, but it was empty at the moment. No smoke curled from the stone chimney of the building, which had a deserted air about it.

  "Jess and Smalley are supposed to be up here," Lon said, stating what he and Frenchy already knew. Sawyer had sent them up here with some extra supplies for the two punchers, after all.

  "Yeah," Frenchy grunted, hitching his pinto into a cautious walk toward the cabin. "Could be they're up that little canyon somewhere, chousin' out some cows that wandered up there. But there's something about this setup that bothers me, Lon. Don't know what it is, yet, but it's there."

  Lon felt the same way. Despite his youth, he had spent his life on one frontier or another, and he had developed some of the same instincts that an older hand like Frenchy possessed. He walked his horse forward alongside the foreman, and as they drew closer to the cabin Lon realized what was wrong. He lifted a hand to point, but Frenchy had seen it, too.

  "Door's open," Frenchy said. "Jess and Smalley wouldn't have gone off and left it like that. There's still some bears around here, not to mention other sorts of varmints, and those boys wouldn't want any critters wanderin' into the cabin."

  "Look at that!" Lon exclaimed abruptly, indicating some tracks on the ground ahead of them. Both he and Frenchy reined in sharply so their horses' hooves wouldn't obliterate any of the sign.

  "Somebody moved some cows and hosses through here, headin' away from the cabin and out into the main valley," Frenchy mused. "Then they headed south. I'm a mite surprised we didn't run into 'em. It's a big country, however."

  Lon asked worriedly, "What's going on here, Frenchy? Jess and Smalley didn't leave those tracks."

  "Nope, I don't reckon they did." The foreman swung down from his saddle and squatted on his heels, still holding his reins as he studied the marks on the ground. After a moment he said grimly, "Looks like there were only a couple of shod horses—and a handful of unshod ones."

  Lon felt a chill go through him at those words. He knew what they meant. "We'd better get on to that cabin," he suggested anxiously.

  "Yeah." Frenchy mounted up and heeled his horse into a brisk trot. "Probably too late to do any good, but we got to try."

  The two riders broke into a gallop, heedless now of any tracks they might disturb. They had seen enough to have a pretty good idea of what had happened here. As they approached the cabin both men pulled rifles from saddle boots.

  "Stay on your hoss," Frenchy called to Lon as they hauled their mounts to a halt in front of the cabin. "I'm goin' in first."

  Lon wanted to be with the foreman, but he knew better than to go against a direct order from Frenchy. He sat tensely in his saddle as Frenchy ducked through the open doorway of the small, crudely built log cabin.

  There were no shots. Frenchy emerged a few minutes later with his lean face set in hard, angry lines. "Shot and scalped, both of 'em," he said. "Killed in their bunks. Looked like they never had a chance, damn it."

  Lon's stomach clenched and he felt sick. "What do we do now?"

  "Bury Jess and Smalley, then light a shuck for home. Mr. Sawyer's got to know about this as soon as possible."

  "You think Indians did it?"

  Frenchy looked at him. "Don't know who else could've. It was a small war party, judgin' from those tracks, but big enough. They killed Jess and Smalley, stole the remuda from the corral, and pushed the hosses and a bunch of cattle south. Likely swung around the town and went right back to their camp. Damn 'em!"

  "But Frenchy," Lon began, "we don't know—"

  "We know two friends of ours are dead, men I rode night herd with, many a time. And we know one more thing." Angrily, he reached in his saddlebags and pulled out a folding shovel to scrape a grave out of the hard ground. "Somebody's goin' to pay for this!"

  * * *

  Cole was in the Wind River Cafe having his lunch when the door was thrust open hurriedly and a man burst into the place. "Is the marshal here?" the man asked excitedly.

  Cole swiveled around on his stool. "Right here," he called. He recognized the man looking for him as Stan Brewster, one of the ticket clerks from the Union Pacific depot. "What's wrong, Stan?"

  "You'd best get over to the station, Marshal," Brewster replied, panting slightly as if he had been running around town looking for Cole— which was evidently what he had done. He continued, "I think there's about to be some bad trouble."

  Cole wanted to know what sort of trouble, but he figured he could find out quicker by heading for the depot rather than sitting there asking questions of the winded clerk. Digging a couple of coins out of his pocket, Cole tossed them on the counter, eyed his unfinished bowl of chili regretfully, and said, "So long, Rose," to the pretty, redheaded proprietor of the cafe.

  The depot was only three and a half blocks from the cafe. Cole's legs carried him quickly toward the big wood-and-stone building that served as the centerpiece of the settlement. Stan Brewster trotted along behind him, still breathing hard. Before Cole had covered even half the distance to the station, he heard angry shouts coming from that direction. He suppressed a sigh of weariness. What in blazes was happening now?

  The night had been hectic, with even more saloon fights than usual. Everyone was on edge, and the slightest provocation had caused fists to start flying. Cole had been forced to press Jeremiah Newton into service as a temporary, unofficial deputy to keep the fracases broken up.

  He hadn't slept, except for a few catnaps during lulls in the commotion, and he was bone-tired this morning. Luckily, things had quieted down a little since the sun came up, and Cole had hoped they would stay that way at least until Billy Casebolt got back. Casebolt was another worry. Cole was anxiously awaiting his deputy's return so that he would know Casebolt was all right.

  Cole tossed a question over his shoulder at Brewster. "What's going on down here?"

  "A bunch of those striking workers showed up a little while ago," the clerk answered breathlessly. "They said they'd heard General Dodge and Jack Casement sent for men to make them go back to work."

  Cole halted and looked around. "Hired guns, you mean?"

  "Well, sort of, I guess," Brewster said, his voice betraying his nervousness. "Not gunmen, necessarily, but men who know how to use fists and clubs."

  "Damn it," Cole said, softly but fervently. "When are these strong-arm men supposed to get here?"

  "The train from Rawlins is due any minute. Those strikers say they came to the station to meet it and run the UP's hard cases back where they came from."

  Once again, the trouble had escalated when Cole thought that such a thing wasn't possible. And the utterly ridiculous part about it was that the whole thing had started because of some stupid, groundless rumors.

&nbs
p; There were no Chinese coolies on their way to take the place of the Irish workers, but the way everybody was stirred up now, nobody was listening to reason anymore.

  Cole heard the faint, keening sound of a locomotive's whistle drifting into town from the east. The men gathered at the depot must have heard it, too, because the shouts from that direction grew louder and more angry. With his face set in grim lines, Cole started toward the station again, this time moving at a quick trot.

  He pushed through the doors of the building and saw that not only was the platform full of men, but the crowd had also spilled into the lobby. Every face was contorted with anger, and many of the men were gripping makeshift clubs. Cole saw several workers he recognized from his own time with the Union Pacific, but as their hostile gazes turned toward him he knew that none of them regarded him as a friend anymore. The badge pinned to his buckskin shirt had changed all that.

  Another familiar face caught Cole's eye as he paused just inside the lobby. Abner Langdon stood to one side, an anxious expression on his florid face. Over the shouting of the mob, Cole asked the saloonkeeper, "What are you doing here, Langdon?"

  "I followed these boys down here to try to talk some sense into them," Langdon replied. "Most of 'em were in my place when they got so riled up-"

  "What happened?"

  Langdon shook his head. "I'm not sure. They heard somewhere that the UP sent for men to make them go back to work. A lot of 'em had been drinking all night already, and that news went through them like a house afire. They were headed down here to the depot almost before I knew what was going on, and they stirred up all the men in the other saloons along the way."

  Cole had already figured out that there were more men here than could have fit into Langdon's tent. But Langdon was right about the way news spread in Wind River these days. All it took was a rumor—a hint of a rumor—and half the people in town seemed ready to raise hell and shove a chunk under the corner.