Behind him, the loud tones of the fire bell began to peal out as Flint rang it.
The two buffalo hunters reached the edge of town at the same time Bill did. Dust swirled around them as they reined in. McGinty struggled to bring his horse under control. He sagged forward in the saddle with an arrow sticking out of his back.
“The Pawnee are close behind us, Marshal!” Costigan yelled as he leaped to the ground. He turned and reached up to grab McGinty as the smaller man started to topple out of the saddle.
“Take him to the mercantile,” Bill said. “My wife can get that arrow out of him and patch him up.”
He hoped Eden could manage that. He didn’t suppose she had ever removed an arrow from anybody before.
But there was always a first time for everything, as the old saying went.
This was his first Indian attack, after all.
Grunting with the effort of carrying his friend, Costigan hurried toward the mercantile. Bill looked around the street and saw at least a dozen men running for positions behind the barrel barricades.
That false alarm when the buffalo hunters arrived in Redemption had proven to be good practice, Bill thought. Although the citizens looked upset and scared, they weren’t panicking.
He tilted his head toward the roofs where the guards were posted and saw Ramsey and the other men in place with their rifles ready. That was another good sign.
Not only that, but Colonel Bledsoe and the members of his party were coming on the run from their camp at the other end of town. Gus Meade and his teamsters and bullwhackers, tough men each and every one, appeared as well, ready to take part in Redemption’s defense.
They might have a chance to get through this, Bill told himself. It all depended on how big that war party was.
Unfortunately, judging from the size of the dust cloud the Pawnee ponies were kicking up, the answer was pretty damned big.
Judge Dunaway was at one of the barricades, clutching a shotgun. Bill raised his voice to be heard over the hubbub in the street and addressed the men at his barricade.
“Judge Dunaway is in charge at this position,” he told them. “Everybody hold your fire until he gives the word.”
Dunaway nodded. “We won’t let you down, Marshal.”
Bill put Josiah Hartnett in command at another barricade and motioned for Mordecai Flint to take over at a third pile of barrels. Confident that this line of defense was in good hands, Bill hurried on down the street to check on the other preparations.
He glanced at the dust cloud. It was closer now. The Indians were still charging across the prairie at breakneck speed.
He stopped in at the mercantile long enough to see that Costigan had placed McGinty facedown on the counter at the rear of the store, where Eden was working to try to remove the arrow from the buffalo hunter’s back.
Costigan and Perry Monroe were at the front of the store, rifles in hand.
“Why don’t you stay here, Mr. Costigan?” Bill suggested. “That way you can watch over your friend.”
And over my wife and her father, too, he thought.
Costigan nodded. “I’ll do that.”
It made Bill feel a little better to know that a reliable man would be here to protect Eden. He wished he could stay and do that himself, but he would be needed elsewhere and his duty to the town came first, whether he liked it or not.
“They’re almost here, Marshal!” somebody yelled from the street.
Bill turned his head toward his wife just as Eden raised hers from her work on the wounded man. Their eyes met for a second, and while a moment like that could never be enough, it was better than nothing. Eden gave him a determined nod.
Bill smiled at her, then he was gone, hurrying along the street toward the western edge of the settlement.
Something was different now, he realized immediately. Something had changed in the last few minutes, and as he gazed toward the west, he realized what it was.
The dust cloud had thinned somewhat, and it no longer appeared to be coming closer.
Flint waved him over to the barricade where the deputy had taken charge.
“They’ve stopped!” Flint said. “I think they’re just sittin’ out there!”
That was what it looked like to Bill, too, but he wanted to be sure.
“I’m goin’ up on top of the bank to get a better look,” he told Flint. “Stay here.”
By the time Bill reached the top of the ladder in the alley, Phillip Ramsey had put his rifle down again and taken up the field glasses. He stood peering through them with one foot up on the short wall at the edge of the roof.
Excitedly, he turned toward Bill, extended the glasses, and said, “You need to take a look at this, Marshal.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Bill said.
He took the glasses and squinted through them. More of the dust had blown away, so his vision was only partially obscured by it as he focused the lenses on the riders who had come to a halt several hundred yards from the edge of town.
His heart thumped as the painted faces of the Pawnee warriors sprang out at him with sharp-edged clarity. He saw the claw necklaces some of them wore, the eagle feathers that stuck up from hair slick with animal grease, the lances with feathers and beads and strips of rawhide tied to them. Every face was set in grim, determined lines.
Slowly, Bill turned so he could scan the ranks with the glasses. He tried to make a rough count but gave up when he reached two hundred.
According to what Captain Stone had told them, this was a much larger party than the one that had been reported leaving the reservation. Either those numbers had been wrong to start with or else Spotted Dog and the men with him had joined up with other renegades to form this war party.
“What are they doing?” Phillip Ramsey asked.
“They’re just…sitting there,” Bill said, his tone edged with disbelief.
“I thought they were attacking the town.”
“So did I. But they’re just sitting there,” Bill said again.
Not all of them. Bill stiffened as he caught a glimpse of movement through the lenses. He focused again and saw one man riding forward, away from the others and toward the settlement.
This warrior wasn’t any bigger than the others, but he carried himself with such haughty pride that he seemed larger. His craggy face was lined with age. He wore several feathers in his hair instead of just one, and the front of his buckskin shirt was decorated with beads. Bill realized after a moment that the beads were sewn on in a pattern that formed the head of a buffalo.
He had a hunch he was looking at Chief Spotted Dog, the leader of these Pawnee.
And there was only one reason he could think of why Spotted Dog would be riding alone toward the settlement like that.
Bill tossed the field glasses back to Ramsey and cupped his hands around his mouth. He leaned over the wall and shouted, “Mordecai! Josiah! Judge Dunaway! Hold your fire! Nobody shoot! Hold your fire!”
Ramsey called, “What’s going on?” as Bill ran toward the ladder, but there was no time to explain. Bill rattled down the rungs in a hurry. When he reached the ground he ran toward the barricades at the western edge of town.
Redemption was utterly silent, but the air of tension that gripped the town was so thick it was stifling. Bill knew it wouldn’t take much to break that tension. A single shot would be enough to start the killing, and there was no way of knowing if it would stop before everyone was dead.
Flint hurried to meet Bill. “What the hell’s that redskin doin’?” he asked.
“It looks to me like he wants to parley,” Bill said. “I don’t know of any other reason he’d ride in alone like that.”
“He stopped!” Judge Dunaway called from the other side of the street.
Bill looked and saw that the judge was right. The lone warrior had brought his pony to a halt about halfway between the line of Pawnee and the edge of town. That was just further evidence his hunch was right, Bill thought.
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nbsp; He took a deep breath and said, “I’m goin’ out there.”
Flint shook his head. “You can’t do that. If those varmints jump you, you’re a goner.”
“We may all be goners if we don’t talk to that fella. If I go out there by myself, they won’t have any reason to get spooked.” Bill looked around for Hartnett. “Josiah, can you go saddle my horse and bring him to me?”
“I agree with Deputy Flint,” Hartnett said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Y’all put me in charge of defending this town. That’s what I’m tryin’ to do. Now go saddle my horse, Josiah.”
Bill wasn’t sure where the tone of command in his voice had come from. He wasn’t even sure he liked it. But he had to do what he thought was best, and this was it.
Hartnett gave him a grudging nod. “All right. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
The liveryman trotted off. Flint asked, “What’re you gonna do now, Marshal?”
“I figure that’s Spotted Dog his own self,” Bill said. “I want him to get a good look at me before I ride out there to meet him.”
Before the others could argue, he strode out into the middle of the street and then walked toward the waiting Indians, stopping when he was just past the edge of town. He hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and waited there. Across a distance of a hundred yards or so, he and Spotted Dog stared at each other.
Bill hoped the war chief didn’t think he was being defiant and daring the Pawnee to attack.
The four minutes that it took Hartnett to get back with his horse were some of the longest minutes Bill had ever spent in his life. When he finally heard the thud of hoofbeats behind him, he didn’t turn around. He waited until Hartnett led the horse up beside him and handed him the reins.
“They haven’t budged, have they?”
“Nope,” Bill said. “I’m hopin’ that’s a good sign.”
He put his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. He was about to nudge the horse into a walk when Hartnett said, “Bill…you don’t happen to speak Pawnee, do you?”
Bill managed to keep himself from saying, Oh, hell, but he thought it. He swallowed and said, “We’ll have to hope ol’ Spotted Dog savvies English. He lived on a reservation for a while, so he might.”
“Yeah. We can hope.”
Hartnett didn’t sound convinced.
Bill heeled his mount into motion. He didn’t get in any hurry as he rode toward the chief. He kept both hands in plain sight so Spotted Dog wouldn’t think he was reaching for his Colt.
Bill had considered leaving the revolver behind, but the Pawnee chief carried a lance, so he thought it was all right for him to be armed, too. They would meet on equal terms.
The closer he came, the harder his heart pounded. He forced himself to take deep, regular breaths. It wouldn’t be good for this war chief to know how scared he really was.
When less than twenty feet separated him from the Indian, Bill reined his horse to a stop. He figured it would be a good idea for him to be sure who he was talking to, and also to find out right away if the man spoke English. He said, “You are the war chief known as Spotted Dog?”
“I am,” the man replied in a deep, guttural, but understandable voice. “And you are a cripple!”
The scornful words lashed at Bill. Spotted Dog had keen eyes for an older man. He had noticed Bill’s limp.
Bill wasn’t going to let it bother him. He said, “I’m the marshal of Redemption, and that’s all that matters here. What do you want of me and my people?”
The phrase came out easily. He hadn’t realized until just now how much he really thought of the citizens of Redemption as “his people.”
“There are evil men among you,” Spotted Dog snapped. “Murderers. We want them.”
Bill frowned for a second, then tried not to let the war chief see that he was confused.
“There are no murderers among us,” he said.
Then he thought about what had happened to Aaron Wetherby, and he realized he was probably wrong.
But how in blazes had this Pawnee chief known about that?
He realized a moment later that Spotted Dog wasn’t talking about Aaron. The chief said, “We pursued them here. They murdered our young men who were hunting buffalo in peace. Slaughtered them as if they were animals.”
Bill breathed a little harder. Spotted Dog had to be talking about Bledsoe and the rest of the buffalo hunters. They’d said all along that the Pawnee were behind them.
“I don’t know anything about that. But you and your men have murdered, too. You raided ranches and attacked a train west of here.”
This time it was Spotted Dog’s turn to look a little confused, and even more angry.
“We raided no ranches,” he declared. “We attacked no train.”
“You left the reservation.”
Spotted Dog nodded. “We did this so my people could go on one last hunt, so our young men could know what it was like when the Pawnee lived free in this land!” Bitterness crept into his voice. “Now our young men know only death.”
Bill felt a stirring of horror inside him. He had no reason to believe what Spotted Dog was saying…except that the chief’s words carried the ring of truth. He knew how people could get carried away where Indians were concerned. He had seen it with his own eyes. Maybe the reports were wrong.
“The cavalry says you raided those ranches.”
“We watered our horses, that is all. Men shot at us, so we left.”
Bill could see how that could get blown up into an Indian attack by panicky settlers. He asked, “What about the train?”
“We rode alongside the steel rails while one of the iron horses passed by. Nothing happened.”
If Spotted Dog was telling the truth, the only crime committed by the Pawnee was leaving the reservation without permission. And they had done that in an attempt to recapture for a short time the past glory of their people.
“What about the buffalo hunters?”
A bleak look settled over Spotted Dog’s rugged features. “One boy escaped the massacre. He told us how the hunters killed all the others. Our young men were few. They could not have harmed anyone.”
Bill wasn’t so sure about that, but he knew he’d have to talk to Bledsoe and maybe some of the other men to get to the bottom of this.
“What do you want, Chief?”
“Give us the men who killed our children,” Spotted Dog said with pain in his voice. “Give them to us, and we will leave the rest of you in peace.”
Bill had no intention of turning Bledsoe and the others over to the Pawnee, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to stall a little more.
“If we do that, you’ll go back to the reservation?”
“We cannot do that. We fought with the yellowlegs when they tried to stop us from seeking justice for our young men. They are all dead now.” A faraway tone entered Spotted Dog’s voice. “And so are we. It has gone too far. More soldiers will come. There are too many of you white men. You are like ants on the carcass of a dead animal. You bite and bite and bite until there is nothing left. There will be nothing left of us.” He squared his shoulders. “But before that day, we will have justice for our murdered young men. That is the only way you can save your town. Go back and tell them that.” Spotted Dog pulled his pony around. “You have until the sun is one hand above the horizon! No longer!”
Chapter 26
Bill turned and rode back to the settlement at a deliberate pace, restraining the urge to kick his horse into a gallop. When he got there, dozens of tense, armed men surrounded him.
“What’d that painted varmint want?” Flint asked as Bill dismounted.
Bill didn’t answer the deputy’s question. Instead he looked at Bledsoe and said, “Colonel, I need to talk to you in private. Now.”
He knew from the way that Bledsoe turned pale and got an angry, stubborn expression on his face that there was something to what Spotted Dog had said about the massacre.
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sp; Bledsoe was going to try to brazen his way through it, though. He said, “I don’t know any reason we should do that, Marshal.”
“I do,” Bill snapped. “Because I said so. Come with me.” He remembered where Ward Costigan was and thought it might be a good idea to get him in on the conversation, too. “We’ll talk at the mercantile.”
He headed in that direction without looking back to see if Bledsoe was following him.
A moment later the colonel came up alongside him. Even with Bill’s limp, Bledsoe’s shorter legs had to move fast to keep up with the marshal’s determined stride.
“Listen, I don’t know what that savage told you,” Bledsoe said, “but it was a lie. You know you can’t trust anything those redskins say.”
“We’ll talk about it when we get to the store,” Bill said.
Costigan stepped out onto the porch and loading dock as Bill and Bledsoe came up the steps. “You went out and parleyed with the Pawnee?” the tall, lean buffalo hunter asked.
Bill nodded. “I talked to Spotted Dog. He had some pretty interesting things to say.”
“Lies, I tell you!” Bledsoe blustered.
His reaction just convinced Bill more than ever that the Pawnee war chief had told the truth.
“Inside.”
Costigan and Bledsoe followed him. At the rear of the store, Dave McGinty was sitting up on the counter with bandages wrapped thickly around his left shoulder, covering the arrow wound on his back. He was pale but looked stronger than he had earlier.
Eden hurried up the aisle between the shelves to meet Bill. She put a hand on his arm and asked, “You’re all right?”
He nodded. “For now. Looks like you did a good job on McGinty.”
“The arrow didn’t penetrate too deeply. He lost some blood when I cut it out…” Eden was pale, too, and Bill figured that had been ordeal for her, as well. “But I think Mr. McGinty will be all right.”
“What’s goin’ on out there?” McGinty asked. “The Pawnee ain’t attackin’ the town?”
“Not yet.” Bill looked at Bledsoe again. “Spotted Dog has given us until an hour or so before sundown to turn over the hombres who slaughtered the young braves from his band.”
Hunters Page 19