by Judd Cole
The next moment a rifle spoke its piece, and a gout of blood and brain erupted from the knife-wielding Comanche’s skull. A heartbeat later, a throwing ax split open the rib cage of the second one.
And then there was another moment of intense pain, a flash of red, filmy confusion before Touch the Sky briefly passed out. When he came to again, he was lying in mercifully cool grass. Arrow Keeper, young Two Twists, and another of the junior warriors leaned anxiously over him.
“When I found Calf Woman boiling coffee,” Arrow Keeper told his young apprentice, “it was easy enough to learn from her that Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe had been playing the foxes. They will pay for this, little brother. I have already sent a runner ahead to the hunt, commanding the soldiers to arrest them. I went to Gray Thunder. It was he who issued this order to free you immediately.”
Wincing, but forcing himself to sit up, Touch the Sky said, “Father, do not arrest Wolf Who Hunts Smiling yet! He is too good a fighter, and warriors will be needed. Those two Comanches came up out of the canyons. I fear our enemies have used them for some graver purpose too.”
~*~
When the mirror signal was flashed by one of the Comanches down in the canyon, Hairy Wolf’s main band launched a direct attack on the Cheyenne camp.
Cries of “Remember Wolf Creek!” echoed through the riders as their well-trained mounts raised spiraling whirlwinds of alkali dust. As intended, they were almost immediately spotted by the Cheyenne sentries. They, in turn, flashed signals to the warriors engaged in the hunt, urgently summoning them back.
Below in the canyon, Iron Eyes had decided on the added precaution of dividing his braves into two groups. They would ride up separately and approach the camp behind the hunters from two different directions. Once the battle had begun forward of camp, they would strike quickly while the foolish Cheyenne were preoccupied in counting coup.
~*~
Touch the Sky heard the first wolf howls of alarm from the junior warriors even as he was returning to camp, Arrow Keeper and Two Twists helping him walk.
Now they could hear the attacking enemy as they approached, see the swirling dust on the horizon to the east. Soon the main body of Cheyenne hunters rode hard from the west to meet the fight before it could reach the camp.
As Little Horse flashed by, long, loose black locks streaming in the wind, Touch the Sky desperately signaled him to stop. At the same moment he stopped young Two Twists as the youth prepared to mount and join the defending force.
“We must ride back toward the herd,” he shouted to his friends above the din of the riders. “I fear the slave-takers have cleverly tricked us by using the canyons! This attack to the east, it is a diversion!”
He nearly cried out at the protesting pain in his chest when he swung up onto his gray and pushed her hard to the west, toward the river valley and the now-stampeding herd. But his suspicions were soon confirmed: All three Cheyennes saw it when a score of well-armed braves streamed up out of the canyon ahead of them, heading east toward the camp.
Touch the Sky made only one fatal mistake: He assumed this was the entire force. In fact it was only half of Iron Eyes’ men.
His mind was preoccupied with a greater problem: As the sounds of a fierce battle rose behind them, where the two main forces were closing for the kill, he had to decide how three Cheyennes were going to stop twenty braves from reaching the women and children.
One possible answer came to him when he saw the band maneuver itself between a sharp cliff and the last fragment of the panicked buffalo herd. Truly, the Cheyenne were too few to stop the slave-takers—but perhaps a few hundred charging buffalo could literally send them under.
He desperately signaled his companions and they nodded agreement. They fired their rifles, whistled, and shouted their shrill war cry to turn the buffalo. The furious bulls constantly tried to gore his pony as Touch the Sky recklessly, desperately pushed the gray right up tight against them.
Realizing the Comanches were about to burst out into the open, Touch the Sky made a final, dangerous effort. Linked to his pony only by a handful of mane, he swung his entire body free and lashed out hard with both feet full into the bearded face of the biggest bull.
After the hard impact, his legs flew down into the unbroken sea of shaggy fur and he felt himself trapped tight between two of the animals. Then, even as the momentarily intimidated bull veered sharply toward the cliff, Touch the Sky made a supreme effort to outwrestle death and won—he wrenched his upper body hard, and a moment later he was bouncing freely on the back of his pony.
The buffalo barely avoided the cliff as they swerved. Nearly half of Iron Eyes’ band were not so lucky. The inexorable weight of the herd literally swept them, screaming, over the edge to a hard death on the flint and rock rubble below. This unnerved the others, who turned and fled back into the canyon on foot when their ponies panicked, several of them leaping over the cliff to death.
Touch the Sky, Little Horse, and Two Twists all raised high their lances in victory. But there was no time to celebrate now. As one, they let out their war cry and raced to join the main battle east of camp.
From the canyon brim, Iron Eyes and the remaining force of twenty had watched once again as the young medicine man defeated sure death and routed their companions. But clearly he was not infallible—look now how he rode to join the feint! These Northerners had a good deal to learn about the art of war as fought by those who had driven out the Spaniards.
He had just shed good Comanche blood. Now his tribe would pay dearly. Scalps were worthless things, good only for a bit of decoration in a war lodge. It was the living who were valuable. The Northern tribes were averse to slave-taking, but why? What more logical way to literally profit from revenge?
And the Cheyenne women, were they not the best and the cleanest on the Plains? Until marriage they wore a knotted-rope chastity belt, and any man who touched that belt would never smoke the common pipe again. With the dripping diseases so common, they brought top prices from the Comancheros who delivered them to their new owners.
Iron Eyes had heard the scouts speaking about this slender maiden with the cropped hair—how she was as proud as she was beautiful. The Comancheros would not miss a few bites off of a juicy steak. Before she was sold, the Comanche men would teach this beauty about pride.
Chapter Sixteen
The battle turned out to be less fierce than it sounded.
At first Touch the Sky rejoiced when he saw the attackers fighting a retreating battle. Most of the gunshots he, Little Horse, and Two Twists had heard were from Comanche pistols. Though good Colt cavalry guns, ideal for close combat, they were ineffective at longer ranges. The Comanches were used to firing them just to make noise, in the same way that they again sounded their captured Bluecoat bugle. And like most Southern Plains tribes they were spendthrifts with ammunition. The next raid would always provide.
The Cheyennes, however, along with their cousins the Sioux, had learned bitter lessons from the blue-dressed palefaces about conserving ammunition and powder. They were also much better equipped this year with rifles. Many of the enemy’s bullets and arrows had fallen short, and the attackers did not seem keen for combat with knives and battle-axes—though once an agile Comanche brave turned around to face a Cheyenne pursuer and managed to stun his pony with a vicious blow of his stone skull-cracker.
Despite the Comanche superiority on horseback, the Cheyennes had developed an evasive riding style which impressed their enemy. When within range of enemy bullets, they clung by their feet to the pony’s neck, then tucked their body down so that the enemy saw only their feet and occasionally a face glimpsing at them from under the pony’s head. They could even shoot accurately from this position, a fact which a taunting Kiowa soon discovered when he flew dead from his horse.
But overall, Touch the Sky noticed, the combined bands were content to lead their pursuers and avoid any battlefield heroics. It began to look more and more like a feint, not a bat
tle. They were being drawn further and further east, away from camp.
Away from camp!
Trade rifles cracked from behind them, the plain but sturdy British guns favored by the Indians of Gray Thunder’s tribe. Touch the Sky’s eyes met Little Horse’s. In that horrible moment, both braves suddenly realized their mistake.
When they whirled their ponies back toward camp, Two Twists joined them. Spotted Tail, Tangle Hair, and a few other Bowstrings had also heard the shots, and now the small band raced west in a skirmish line, the red streamers of their lances flying straight out in the wind.
More rifles cracked from the direction of camp; they could hear the shrill cries of the marauders even above the pounding of their galloping ponies. But all Touch the Sky could do was remember Honey Eater from the night of the Arrow Renewal, when she had looked so regally beautiful in her finery—so beautiful that even her stubbed hair could not mar her perfection.
Now he realized he had made a fatal mistake in judgment—that first band rising out of the canyon had not been the entire second force of warriors. He had shown further bad judgment when he led his friends in joining this sham attack instead of remaining at the camp.
This time he could not blame Black Elk or Wolf Who Hunts Smiling or any of his enemies. His carelessness had placed Honey Eater and the rest in danger too terrible to comprehend.
Desperately he dug his heels harder and harder into his pony’s flanks. The shots from camp were less frequent now. But the first scream of a Cheyenne woman reached Touch the Sky’s ears, and he cried out to Maiyun to please give them just a little more time.
~*~
Arrow Keeper too had watched the main battle turn into a rout by the Cheyenne braves. This was clearly not going to be another bloody Wolf Creek battle. But he knew better than to rejoice too early. His vision had clearly shown blood on the Arrows—not the literal blood of battle perhaps, but possibly a symbol of great suffering and loss for the tribe.
He had watched Touch the Sky fly past with the others to join the battle. Chief Gray Thunder too had ridden in the fight, though the Headmen would not let him leave the last line of riders. Arrow Keeper was accompanied by the elders, the women, and the children. Sure the tribe was momentarily safe, even the last of Two Twists’ junior warriors had joined the main battle, eager for their first coup feather.
With their eyes fixed to the battle due east, those left in camp did not notice Iron Eyes and his force until they were swooping into the camp behind them and an old man shouted the alarm.
Their speed and agility were incredible. Arrow Keeper watched a Comanche brave lean far away from his pony and expertly scoop up a small child who was running toward a tipi, screaming. Another bore down on a young woman of about sixteen winters and whisked her up onto the horse with him. He tapped her with his skull-cracker to subdue her fierce fighting.
Arrow Keeper lifted the .34-caliber British trade rifle he was carrying and fired, but his aim was off and his bullet flew wide. Besides, the Comanches moved so quickly it was nearly impossible to draw a good bead on them.
Instead, he gathered up two small children and broke for the cover of a tipi, tossing them inside. He rushed back out and encountered an old woman too stunned to move. The Comanches were not kidnapping elders, but already they had shot a few. She too he pushed to safety inside the tipi, ordering her to hold the children still.
Despite the lightning speed of the surprise assault, many in camp fought fiercely. One Comanche had been knocked soundly from his horse when a woman from the Eagle Clan swung on him with a wooden war club. But he leaped back on top of his spotted pony, whirled it around, and smashed the woman’s skull so hard with his stone-cracker that Arrow Keeper heard the bone split like a walnut shell. A moment later the shrieking, drunk Comanche had scooped up a screaming girl.
He ripped off her clothing as he raced back toward the canyon, exulting in fierce, high-pitched cries. Arrow Keeper lunged toward a fallen elder and picked up another rifle. He hoped to at least drop the enemy’s horse and give the girl a chance to escape on foot. But as he sighted on the Comanche’s horse, another Comanche flew past closer at hand and kicked the old man hard in the skull with his stiff cavalry boot. Arrow Keeper dropped as if he’d been pole axed.
Miraculously, Honey Eater had been missed in all the excitement. Now the main body of Comanche raiders was heading back for the canyon escape route, clutching captured children and young women. But Iron Eyes, still full of the scouts’ report, had remained behind just to spot her. And now, despite the swirling dust, he lived up to his name, catching sight of a beautiful girl as she herded some crying children toward a tipi.
He wore spurs of Mexican silver. Now he gave sharp rowel tips to his horse, bearing down on the girl. His pistol cracked once and a boy was knocked to the ground, blood squirting in a high arc from a hole over his right ear. He fired again and a little girl screamed piteously when the slug lodged in her groin.
Honey Eater watched both children die before her eyes. She swept the others behind her and started to run, herding them like a prairie hen with chicks fleeing before a windstorm. The ground pounded behind her, and a child looked back and screamed, his eyes like huge black watermelon seeds in his fright.
Honey Eater too started to turn her head. A moment later she felt strong hands grip her under both arms and swing her up onto horseback.
Her suicide knife was already in her hand, but now it wasn’t meant for her—not so long as a fight with child-killers was possible. She lashed out hard over one shoulder, slashing the Comanche war leader s face and almost breaking free of his grip.
Again she drew back her arm to cut him. A heartbeat later the steel butt of his pistol slammed into her temple, and she went slack.
~*~
The rest rode back to grim news: six elders and children had been slain, a dozen more wounded. More than twenty women and children were missing. Pursuit was out of the question—their ponies were exhausted from the double exertion of the hunt and the running battle. Nor could any strangers ever hope to outrun such excellent horsemen in their own country. One scout, River of Winds, was sent to follow them and blaze a trail.
And there could be no question what fate awaited the captives. Some would be tortured, no doubt, but not enough to mar their looks. They were intended for lives of degradation and slavery among Mexicans and palefaces.
An emergency council would be meeting even before the butchering and skinning of the kill and the return to their permanent summer camp on the Powder. But though he would attend like all the other warriors, Touch the Sky’s mind was made up.
He was on his own now.
A door deep down inside of him had closed, finally and permanently, on any hope of conciliating his enemies to avoid sullying the Arrows. Cooperation with the likes of Black Elk, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, and Swift Canoe was impossible. Now he was for any one of them who dared cross him, and this new readiness to kill was clear in his eyes, which ran from no man.
His carelessness had allowed Honey Eater and the others to be taken. Little Horse and Two Twists constantly reminded him that they too had failed to look for a second band of Comanche. But Touch the Sky could not shake his sense of guilt, his sense that this time he had truly failed the tribe.
“Black Elk thunders to his troop brothers,” Little Horse said as they met for the upcoming council. “He boasts that no Comanche or Kiowa dog will rut on his wife, that he will string their hides from his lodgepole the way they hang up roadrunner skins. At one time I admired him, brother. I thought he was straight-arrow, but I see now that he holds himself above the Arrows as does his cousin.”
But it was Arrow Keeper who saw the situation as clearly as Touch the Sky did. He took his assistant aside before the meeting of the Headmen and warriors.
“You know,” he said, “that the crisis is coming to a head? That you will soon be forced to kill or be killed even within your own tribe?”
Touch the Sky nodded. But with Hone
y Eater a prisoner, her fate at this very moment unknown, revenge against his tribal enemies was a remote thought.
“You have done your best to avoid it. Now, they have beaten you, tried to kill you for an elk, and tricked you into setting up a pole. You have atoned one time too many for the fact that you were raised by palefaces.”
“Truly, Father. But I’m done with apologies and shame. I no more chose my place than that red-tailed hawk there by the river chose his. And Father, we both know that in Black Elk’s case it is not my past with white men which makes him keen to kill me.”
It was Arrow Keepers turn to nod. The entire right side of his face was swollen and bruised from the kick which had knocked him out during the raid.
“You have tried the peace road. Now your mind is swollen with thoughts of rescuing Honey Eater and the others. In your distraction, your enemies will move against you again. Do you see that it is time, once again, to separate yourself from the tribe? That this thing must be done yourself?”
Touch the Sky had already concluded the same thing. He would listen to the council, would show no disrespect. But from here on out, he rode alone and followed no man unless he chose to. They had marked him as an outsider, punished him as one. Then so be it. He would act like one.
His heart was in an agony of loss over Honey Eater. But in that same heart he vowed silently that between them was a genuine love which gave him, not Black Elk, a husbands right and obligation.
If others would ride with him, fine. If not, he would ride alone. He belonged to no clan, no soldier society, and was said to have the stink which scared away the buffalo. But who among them could also say he feared any warrior?
Yes, he had a husband’s right and a warrior’s pride and strength and courage. He would track his enemies into the very heart of their stronghold. One way or another he would rescue Honey Eater and the others. And any man who interfered—including any Cheyenne—would be killed.