‘What does he wish?
‘To be successful. If he had his way we would arrive at Greenbriar Canyon with the heads of Many Knives and his Shoshone murderers safely snaffled up in canvas bags in the wagons. He is most desirous of honor, my dear Rachel. That is what worries me. I am a believer in safety not in fire-breathing. That is why I am what I am. An aging Lieutenant and no hope of more.’
‘But I love you, Papa. More than life itself.’
He kissed her and she felt the warmth of his lips on her cheek.
‘Not more than life itself, my dovelet. That is a story put about by old women and fools. In the end it is life that matters.’
‘Mrs. Hetherington said that…’
‘Let her be hanged!’ he snapped, suddenly and surprisingly angry. ‘I am sorry for saying it in front of you, Rachel, but that woman is a bad-tempered, arrogant and unpleasant old witch!’
‘What about . . . about my honor, Papa?
He grinned, suddenly looking younger. The light of the nearby fire was reflected in his eyes.
‘Ah. That’s what she’s been on about. Shoot yourself first. Don’t let the red devils do … Well. Perhaps she’s right in a way. But don’t let her worry you with that talk, Rachel, my dear child. The Indians are not likely to hurt a white girt. Keep that always in your mind. If you live then there is always tomorrow. The dead see no more sunrises, do they?’
‘I suppose not, Papa,’ she’d replied, dutifully.
‘There. Then we are agreed, as should a father and daughter. But …’ he paused. ‘I wish that Hetherington would take more care of the skies.’
‘The skies?’
He’d looked around, making sure that nobody was close enough to overhear.
‘I am certain that there have been heavy falls of snow both ahead and behind. If the Shoshone should get around our rear, then we are cut off from withdrawal. There are a maze of narrow trails through these hills, known mainly to the Indians and a precious few white men.
‘Men like Mister Crow.’
‘Mrs. Hetherington., again,’ he sighed. ‘Yeah, I sure wish we had someone like that Crow along with us now. I never believed what they said he did.’
‘She said if she ever met him she would desire to spit in his face and then any decent man would shoot him down in the dirt like the dog he is.’
Her father had smiled again. ‘Regular tartar, ain’t she? But plenty of folks think that way about Crow. Me, I’m going to keep my mind open. Anyway, I guess it doesn’t much signify.’
‘Why?’
They both paused as one of the older women, a close friend of Martha Hetherington, walked by them, favoring them with a frosty bow.
‘Heard Crow was dead. Some ways out west of here. Run in with some Sioux. Or was it some Cheyenne on their northern hunting grounds? Either way, I guess he must be dead.’
‘Maybe he made it on out.’
‘Maybe, dovelet. I’d like to think so. If things turn out here like I fear, then we’d surely need a man like Crow.’
Using the tip of his saber in the crust of icy snow, Lieutenant Shannon explained to his only child why they were in some danger. The trail wound along for another day through mountains and along the edge of steep cliffs tumbling down to foaming rivers. Sometime about noon on the next day, already behind their schedule because of the worsening weather, they were due to reach the only open place on the journey. A plateau about three hundred yards across. The trail narrowed at both ends so that there was barely room for a single wagon to pass.
On the one side the plateau rose sheer to a cliff face two hundred feet high. On the other there was a crashing descent over steep scree and boulders to the icy waters of the Moorcock River. As he pointed out by two blows of the sword, the trail might easily be blocked and held by a few determined men. And then it would be a siege to wear down anyone trapped in that place.
‘Does the Captain know this?’
‘Yes. Of course. It is so elementary that even Hetherington cannot fail to see it. But this is such a tangled region with cross-trails that a man could be on top of a thousand Indians and not know it.’
Rachel slept badly that night, disturbed by the forebodings of her father and by the mumblings of Martha Hetherington.
Twice the older woman cried out in her sleep. Once saying: ‘No, Silas. You have not washed in hot water.’ And the second time: ‘Silas, I feel unwell tonight. Perhaps tomorrow.’
She wondered what Martha was thinking about.
Crow slept well. He had never been a man to sleep deeply. Nobody did who’d ever lived through Indian lands. The hills and plains were filled with the corpses of heavy sleepers.
With the stallion tethered to a boulder he simply lay in the lee of a cliff to keep the worst of the cold from himself. He used only two blankets, relying on the rest of his clothes to stop him from freezing to death.
Twice he’d seen signs of Shoshone activity in the last day. Smoke from a camp-fire in a place where it couldn’t have been soldiers or prospectors. And once the pattering of several unshod ponies on a trail that cut on the main path a hundred yards or so ahead of where he’d been. Another minute and Crow would have ridden smack into the middle of what could only have been a war-party.
Once again he thought about what the warriors he’d killed had said about there being a wagon train in the vicinity. Heading for Greenbriar Canyon. If it was true, then they must be somewhere close. Not that Crow had any wish at all to have anything to do with a load of soldiers’ wives and women.
Faintly in his sleep he could hear the distant sound of the river. The Moorcock. Sometime late morning on the morrow he’d be reaching the place where the trail opened up briefly above the river.
His last waking thought that night as the snow fell gently all around was that if he’d been Many Knives and he wanted to attack a wagon train, that plateau might be the place he’d choose.
Crow slept very well.
Chapter Five
The train stopped at a little after eleven on the next morning. Only a quarter of a mile away from the open plateau above the Moorcock. Captain Hetherington rode back through the main body of escorting troops, reining in before the wagon where Martha and Rachel sat facing inwards like a couple of cold and uncomfortable statues.
‘The O’Hanlons have not come back to report any danger,’ he called out. ‘So I am going forward with my men to clear out the defile ahead.’
‘Take care, my lion of valor,’ replied his wife.
Trooper Gilbert said nothing, contenting himself with the mute comment of another stream of tobacco juice that patterned holes in the covering of snow over the iron-hard ground.
‘We will gallop to the open region through the pass. Then on across and range a mile or so through the last part of the narrows to make sure there are none of the Shoshone coyotes to bother us.’
‘It will be good to be away from these gloomy passes, my hero,’ shouted Martha Hetherington, leaning out of the front of the Dougherty, nearly elbowing Rachel Shannon off her seat.
The girl thought that it would also be nice if they could speed on through the icy winds of the high country towards the comparative shelter of the haven of Greenbriar Canyon. Anything would be preferable to the hardship of the drudging days under the leaden sky.
‘And we will bring back meat for you all,’ called the Captain, spurring his horse to make it rear in what he out through the narrow slit in the lacing of the canvas, fondly imagined to be a heroic posture. Had his hat not fallen off and he had not been forced to hang on the animal’s mane, it would have been more of one. There was a muffled snort from behind Trooper Gilbert’s moustache, a sound quickly smothered with his gauntlet.
The truth was that they were already becoming short of food. They had planned to be well out of the hills a full day earlier. But the weather was conspiring against them. There was a little fresh meat, and some flour. Some biscuits. The solitary cow they had taken along had slipped on the ice two days ba
ck and Hetherington had shot it. Unfortunately the beast had collapsed near the edge of the trail and has lashed and kicked in its death throes so that it had slithered clear off down a hundred foot drop. The Captain had refused a request from his experienced Sergeant to climb on down and butcher some of the meat.
It had been an unpleasant incident and yet another happening that had cast a shroud of unhappiness over the women on the train.
Indeed, Mary-Lou Brittain had been taken poorly there was a fear that she would begin her labor there and then. But it had passed off.
So the wagons remained still and silent as Captain Hetherington rode back to join the column. Raising his gloved fist, and calling out the orders for them to move on.
‘Forward! Ho!’ repeated the Sergeant, and then the jingling of harness as they trotted on out of sight funneling down to single file as they reached the point where the trail narrowed.
As they vanished out of sight there was a violent gust of wind, Carrying larger flakes of snow that whirled about the mules’ faces, making the drivers blink and shake their heads.
Rachel had crawled to the back of the wagon to peer out through the narrow slit in the lacing of the canvas, simply to catch a glimpse of her father. Sitting tall and proud in the saddle. Waiting with his small detachment There of Troopers for the snow to ease so that he could follow s his orders and bring the train forward to the shelf of rock a little way ahead.
He noticed the movement at the rear of the Dougherty, and nodded his head in a stiff gesture. Rachel poked her gloved fingers through the gap and waved them. There were three soldiers there behind the first wagon, and the other pair in the rear escort were further back, at the end of the column.
One of the Troopers with her father was called Pete Nolan. A wiry man from a town in England, who had only arrived in America a few months earlier. She liked his bright eyes and funny way of talking. The words coming so quickly that she could hardly understand them. So different from the slow measured speech of her own native Virginia.
She noticed that he wasn’t looking in her direction. Standing in his stirrups, and staring back down the trail. Towards the rear of the Column. Turning to her father, as if asking a question.
Her father nodding.
Trooper Nolan heeling his horse away. Out of her vision. Disappearing into the snow flurries that were whisking in from the north. Rachel moved away from her vantage point, then returned to it once more. Feeling the biting teeth of the wind set in her skin. Pulling the hood further forward over her face.
‘Land o’Goshen!’ exclaimed Martha Hetherington in irritation.
‘What is it, Ma’am?’ Rachel asked.
‘This delay, Miss Shannon.’
‘Something seems to be amiss at the back of the wagons, Mrs. Hetherington.’
‘What?’
‘I think there’s something wrong.’
‘Where?’
‘I thought I saw Trooper Nolan moving off, Mrs. Hetherington,’ interrupted Gilbert.
‘My goodness. This is dreadful. It’s goin’ to be full dark before we get to that place by the river that my husband has told me of. And then where will we camp?’
‘I’m sure Papa knows what he’s doing,’ said Rachel Shannon.
‘Oh, do you, Missy?’ asked Martha, tartly. ‘Know all about the United States Cavalry, do we? I’ll hold my tongue when you’re around, Miss Shannon. Or your Papa, the Lieutenant! Wouldn’t do for a Jenny-come- lately like me to dare to speak in front of my olders and betters, would it now?’
The sarcasm was so heavily laid that it dripped from her thin lips like plaster from a mason’s trowel.
‘I believe I can see Trooper Nolan returning from the rear of the column, Ma’am,’ called Gilbert, standing up on the seat so that all the ladies could see were his le Sturdy thighs thrust into muddied boots. Rachel couldn't help noticing that the front of his breeches seemed to be stained around…the place where a man keeps that which makes him a man.
She averted her eyes.
Looking instead through the gap in the canvas of the wagon.
‘Aaaarrrgghh!! . . . Aaaiiieeeeee!!!’
It started as an unbelieving groan, deep in the girl’s throat, winding up into a full-blooded scream of naked terror.
The noise made every animal start and skitter, the mules beginning to tug on the reins, simply to get away from the banshee wail.
Trooper Gilbert looked around the edge of the wagon to see what horror could have produced that sort of noise from his young passenger.
When he saw it, his jaw gaped open and the plug of chewing tobacco dropped from his mouth into the trampled snow.
‘Holy Mary,’ he gasped, turning back and looking sideways at where Lieutenant Shannon was also staring towards the rear of the train, eyes wide in shock.
It was Trooper Nolan, as Gilbert had guessed. His horse galloping up on the left of the wagons, whinnying in pain and fear. Its flanks were spotted with blood and several arrows stood out against its brown skin.
Arrows that showed bright feathers at their ends.
Arrows that also decorated the body of Trooper Nolan, drooped over the pommel of the saddle, face buried in the horse’s mane, arms dangling either side of the crimson-flecked neck.
He was very dead.
At that first appalled glance, Rachel Shannon never considered which of the half dozen shafts had killed him. Possibly the one that stood out clear through his left eye, the feathered flight shaking with each pounding beat of the mount’s hooves. Or maybe the one that had entered beneath the soldier’s chin, angling up and sideways so that the bloody point emerged from the side of his throat, just behind the left ear. That one had ripped apart the throbbing artery in the neck and the whole of the left side of the uniform was sodden with dark blood that steamed in the bitterly cold air.
It could have been either.
Or the two through the chest.
Rachel lacked the experience of military life on the frontier to be able to tell anything more from the ghastly apparition than that they were attacked by Indians.
But her father and Trooper Gilbert were able to tell a great deal more.
The soldier guessed they were Shoshone and from the number and violence of the man’s wounds there had to be a party of them and they had to be damned close.
‘Get ‘em up and out!’ yelled Lieutenant Shannon, his mind going further ahead than that of the Trooper seeing the dreadful possibilities of what was happening to the train.
Already he could see his name and Hetherington’s linked with Bascom and Fetterman and Custer.
Going down into eternity with the albatross of fail tethered around his neck.
He realized that the Indians weren’t likely to have attacked Nolan on the spur of the moment. If they had. planned to hit the rear of the train at this point, then it was a thousand dollars to a pile of horse-shit that there’d be more of them up front. Aiming to pin the wagons down on that open plateau.
Even as he waved the wagons on forward, led by the wild-eyed Gilbert, Shannon was already starting to think about where Hetherington and the rest of the escort would be.
There were screams and a couple of shots from the rear of the train.
‘Circle them up on the plateau overlookin’ the river, Trooper!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll hold the back of the train, long as I can.’
Gilbert nodded grimly, already concentrating on holding the spooked team of mules. The scent of blood from the wounded horse and the dead man had terrified the and they were kicking and pulling every which way.
Shannon waved the tiny command with him, drawing his pistol clumsily, tugging off his gauntlet with his teeth and dropping it to the trail.
Rachel was still hanging on the back of the lead Dougherty, eyes frozen in horror and blind fear, her vision imprinted with the ghastly sight of Nolan’s corpse bristling with Indian arrows. Martha Hetherington had also screamed out as she glimpsed the dead soldier, and bad thrown herself down among the blan
kets, teeth chattering uncontrollably in fear.
The shouting and the screams. The noise of bullets and howling of savages. Somewhere… ahead of them?… was the noise of a bugle. Her father calling to his pitiful band to follow him.
Rachel watched from the rear flap as her father spurred by, not even sparing her a glance. Intent only on closing with the hostiles that threatened the women in the train. There was a great flurry of snow at that moment as he disappeared from her sight.
She could not know it but she was only to see her beloved father on one more occasion.
Crow was becoming seriously concerned.
After the massacre on the slopes above the Little Big Horn River earlier in the year he had ridden through a land teeming with Sioux and their many allies. That was
something he had expected.
But this activity by the Shoshone was not natural. To be gathered together in such numbers under Many Knives at a time of such threatening weather was not the way of the Shoshone.
Though the snow came and went intermittently, it was hard for him to make progress at the speed he wished. Time after time he was forced to walk his stallion through the muffling whiteness so that he could better hear warning of approaching Indians. Four separate occasions saw him lurking in dim side canyons while as many as thirty Shoshone filed silently past him, wrapped in buffalo cloaks, hooded against the cold.
Few of them with guns, but all carrying their bows in greased sheaths to protect them from damp. Once he even saw Many Knives himself. A dominating figure of near to six feet. Close enough for Crow to have blasted him with the scatter-gun. Close enough for Crow to have committed suicide by making a move or a sound. Only long minutes after the Shoshones had vanished would he remove the long rag tied tightly around the horse’s muzzle.
If all of them were after this wagon train of soldiers’ women, then Crow didn’t give much for the chances of the whites. After the Custer defeat, there were still many chiefs who believed that the time had now come for every Indian to unite and attack the invaders whenever they could. Many Knives was known to be a warlike leader of his people.
Worse Than Death Page 4