“Easy, boy…easy.” Jason approached the Indian pony slowly and deliberately, but the paint eyed him suspiciously. It was plain to Jason that the horse was more than a little nervous about the stranger’s advance. “Easy now. I know my smell ain’t what you’re used to, but if I can live with it, I reckon you can.” The horse started to back around a tree, but the short reins caught on a low branch. Jason moved up to him and took hold of the bridle. The paint tried to jerk his head away but Jason held it firm. He stroked the horse’s head and neck for a few minutes, letting the animal get used to his smell. Then he untangled the reins and started to climb on his back, but the pony sidestepped away from him. “I reckon I better climb on Indian style,” he said and went around to the other side of the horse. Most Indians mounted from the right side. He jumped up on his back. The paint was skittish at first and bucked halfheartedly a couple of times, then settled down and accepted his burden.
Jason was not worried about losing the trail of the lone surviving Cheyenne—he would have very little trouble following a trail left by that many horses. He had lost most of the afternoon tracking the paint and hated to lose more time, but there were things he would need for an extended chase. He rode back to the site of the battle and collected the rifles and ammunition from the bodies near the ravine. He took the Winchester 74 that Hungry Wolf had carried and hid it with the others in a hastily devised cache at the head of a small gully. The Winchester got special attention. He wrapped it carefully in a piece of hide the Indian had used for a saddle blanket. That done, he stood up and took a careful look around him to burn the spot into his memory. He might one day pass this way again. Ordinarily, he would not have left the weapons, which included a serviceable Henry repeating rifle, but he was already far behind the Cheyenne and he didn’t want to load the paint down any more than he had to.
He pulled his saddle from White’s carcass and took the Indian saddle off the paint. The pony protested when Jason threw his saddle blanket on his back but Jason calmed the horse down and he stood still for the saddle. He took what ammunition and supplies he thought the horse could manage and started out after the Cheyenne. Walking the pony along the bluffs, he passed a deep gully that ran all the way down to the water. There he found Nathan White Horse’s body. Jason gazed down at the man, insignificant in life, now even less significant in death. “Well, I reckon I’d a waited a long time for you to come back.” He felt no responsibility for the dead half-breed and no inclination to bother to bury his body. “I reckon you ain’t ever been of much use to anybody while you were alive. Maybe you can at least feed the buzzards now.”
Lame Otter’s trail led off to the north, up the river. Jason had figured the Indian would be hightailing it back to Two Moon’s camp with Abby and the horses, but the trail led in the opposite direction. He figured the Cheyenne intended to enter the river at some point and try to backtrack on him. He considered crossing the river and heading straight for Two Moon’s camp in hopes of cutting the Indian off. But if he was wrong, he would lose even more time. Indians were not all that predictable, so he decided it best to stay on the trail.
Jason had walked into Two Moon’s camp before, when he returned the medicine arrows, and had been allowed to walk out again. But that was before he had killed eleven of Two Moon’s warriors. He didn’t think it wise to try it again. He would trail Abby and, if she was in the village, he would just have to figure a way to get her out. He felt an urgency to rescue the young lady, but in the back of his mind he couldn’t help but feel that Abby could take care of herself. In fact, she might be more than those unsuspecting Cheyennes could handle. He kicked the paint lightly and the horse responded immediately.
Chapter VII
At first afraid she was going to be bounced off the horse’s back, she tried to hold on as best she could, squeezing her legs and arms against the animal’s flanks. Her hands were tied together, as were her ankles, so it became more and more difficult to stay on the galloping horse. At last her captor decided he had put a safe distance between them and the white scout behind them and he slowed the horses to a fast walk. It was less difficult to hang on now but, since she had been thrown across the saddle on her belly, the ride was extremely uncomfortable. The horse had an aggravating gait that pounded on her bladder and she began to feel an urgent need for relief. With each bounce of the saddle, she got madder and madder. When she had first come to, after being whacked in the head with a rifle butt, her head had felt like it might be cracked. Now the urgency in her bladder made her forget the ache in her head. Finally, she could take it no more.
“Hey, you red son of a bitch! Let me off this damn horse!”
Startled, Lame Otter looked back at his captive but made no move to do as she had directed.
“Stop, dammit!” Abby bellowed at the top of her lungs.
Lame Otter was confused by the woman’s tone. Not understanding a word of her ranting, or the blistering curses being hurled in his direction, he simply looked at her in astonishment. Surely, he thought, the woman must be crazy. He began to question the wisdom of capturing her. Maybe he should have left her with the white scout.
While Lame Otter was entertaining thoughts of abandoning his prisoner, Abby was becoming more and more desperate to relieve her bladder of its pressure. When the stoic Indian made no move to halt the horses in the face of her threats and curses, she decided she had to take the initiative. “You ignorant savage!” she screamed and threw her arms back while kicking the horse in the side with her knees, throwing herself backward. She landed hard on the seat of her pants and rolled several times, heels over head, before coming to rest in the knee-high grass.
Lame Otter pulled up hard on his horse’s reins and wheeled around to stare open mouthed at the antics of this strange woman. While she staggered to her feet, he walked his pony back to stand before her, still staring, astonished.
Her face flushed with anger as she tried to make her need known to the Cheyenne. “Dammit, I’ve got to wet,” she blurted. When he gave no indication of comprehending, she demanded, between clinched teeth, “Don’t you understand a damn word of English?” Met with another puzzled look, she tried to make him understand with gestures.
This further confused Lame Otter. The woman was surely crazy, possessed by an evil spirit possibly. Maybe it would be best to shoot her before she broke free of her bonds and possibly turned into a crow or an eagle and flew away. Now she was making squatting gestures and making hissing noises with her mouth. He cocked his rifle. Then suddenly he understood. The woman had to relieve herself. He nodded solemnly to himself, relieved by his enlightenment. Then he nodded to Abby to let her know that he understood.
She stood there and waited patiently for a few moments while Lame Otter smiled at her benevolently. When he made no move to dismount, she gestured toward her tied ankles. “Well?” she demanded.
Again the puzzled expression returned to his face but just for a moment. Ah, he thought, she cannot release her water with her ankles tied together. He dismounted at once and cut her ankles loose. She shoved her hands up in front of his face and demanded. “Cut!” He hesitated, reluctant to free the crazy woman’s hands. “Cut!” she repeated. He cut. Then he backed away a few steps, his rifle ready.
“How the hell can I pee if I can’t use my hands to get my pants down?” she growled as she hurriedly fumbled with her buttons. “Well, turn around!” When he did not understand, she made gestures until he did and dutifully turned his back on her. Mercifully, her tortured bladder emptied itself in the grass while her captor stood obediently with his back to her. If I still had my pistol and I wasn’t about to burst, she thought, I’d shoot your dumb ass.
When she was finished, she hitched up her trousers and walked over to her horse. Lame Otter moved quickly to face her. Picking up the rope, he started to tie her hands again. “No!” she barked and pushed him away. Taking a step backward to maintain his balance, he raised the rifle and pointed it at her face. She stared him down with a look
of defiance that all but unnerved him. “If I’ve got to go with you, you ignorant savage, I’ll sit in the saddle.” With that, she climbed on the horse and looked down at the confused Indian with a look of impatience.
Lame Otter did not move for a long moment as he studied the odd girl seated on the horse. This woman was the strangest white person he had ever come in contact with. Abby sat in the saddle, now looking straight ahead, a no-nonsense expression fixed on her face. Having thought the matter over, he walked around behind her and, taking his rifle by the barrel, used it for a club to knock her off the horse. While she writhed in pain on the ground, he calmly tied her hands and feet again. When he was done, he hoisted her up over the saddle once more, mumbling, “Crazy woman…heavy.”
* * *
Although Lame Otter permitted the horses to walk, he held them to a fast pace, one that would eat up some distance. He glanced over his shoulder often to search his backtrail. In his brief exposure to Jason Coles, he had come to respect the white scout’s medicine. Added to that was a nervous discomfort at having the crazy woman behind him, even though she was securely bound. She kept up a steady stream of curses as she was bounced along. So absorbed was he in his backtrail that he failed to see the two men sitting on their horses in the shadows of a deep coulee, watching the approaching Indian.
He was abreast of the head of the coulee when his pony caught the scent of the two strange horses. The warning was too late and Lame Otter was forced to jerk back hard on the reins to avoid a collision with the other horses as they suddenly charged up from the shadows.
“Well, dang, lookee here. Where you goin’, Lame Otter?”
Lame Otter, stunned by the sudden emergence of the two horsemen, thought first of flight but, in the next instant he recognized the two white men and his immediate fear was dissolved. However, since he knew the men for what they were, he was not ready to discard all caution. He nodded to them as they pulled up to flank him.
“Looks like you been doin some raidin’.”
The man who spoke was Jack Pike, known to the Cheyenne and Sioux as Black Hat. An army deserter, Pike moved among the free Indian bands, trading guns and whisky when he could get away with it. Lame Otter knew that Pike and his partner, a man called Selvey, were not to be trusted. Were it not for the fact that they were a seemingly unending source of rifles and ammunition, Two Moon would have had them killed long ago.
“I might be in the mood to do a little trading myself.” Pike grinned, exposing a jagged row of teeth, stained brown from tobacco juice. He leered at the trussed-up woman draped across the saddle of one of the horses Lame Otter led. “What you got there? I thought, when I first seen you coming, you had a dead man, but that there’s a woman, ain’t it? A white woman at that.”
Lame Otter tried to explain that he had a scout on his trail and he didn’t have time to stop to parley, but Pike insisted that they had watched him coming for two or three miles and no one had showed up behind him yet.
“He will come,” Lame Otter insisted.
“Who’s tailin’ you? Soldiers?”
“Jason Coles.”
This caught Pike’s attention. “Coles.” he repeated. Pike had never encountered Jason Coles personally, but he had crossed his trail a few times and it almost always left dead people behind. But reputation or not, Jack Pike had never met a man he feared and he knew for damn sure there was never a meaner man born than Jack Pike. If he could talk, there was a dead lieutenant with a hole in the back of his head who could tell you how foolish it was to cross Jack Pike. Pike laughed every time he thought about it—the army thought the officer had caught a round from an Indian. “Coles, huh,” he said again. “Well, ain’t it lucky you run into your friends. Me and Selvey will take care of you. Won’t we, Selvey?” The man called Selvey responded with an animated nodding of his head and a foolish grin splitting his fat cheeks.
Lame Otter was not at ease with the situation he had ridden into. Pike and Selvey were not to be trusted. Still, they depended on trade with the Cheyenne people and they came to their villages as friends. Maybe it would be good to have their help against the white scout.
“Come on,” Pike continued. “Let’s sit down over here in the shade and talk for a while. Hell, if Coles is chasing you, he ain’t nowhere in sight. You might of lost him.”
Up to that point, Abby had held her tongue. When it was apparent that the two strangers were white men, although of questionable character, she finally yelled out. “Tell that damn Indian to cut me loose!”
This brought a startled laugh from Pike. “Ha! Listen to that, Selvey. What you got there, Lame Otter?” He got down off his horse. “I think ol’ Lame Otter done trapped hisself a bitch coyote.” He walked over to examine the Indian’s captive. Grabbing a handful of Abby’s hair, he jerked her head up so he could take a good look at her. “Ha!” he barked into her face and, dropping her head again, walked around to the other side of the horse. With no more emotion than if he was checking a horse’s hoof, he laid a rough hand on her bottom, which was offered up to him in a vulnerable posture. Her reaction was swift but not quick enough to catch him as she tried to kick out at him. “Huh,” he grunted, amused by her reaction. “Yessir, she’s a woman all right, and a right sassy one, I’m thinkin’.”
“You son of a bitch,” Abby snarled. “You keep your damn dirty hands off of me!” She was sore, tired, and indignant, and she was determined not to show any sign of weakness no matter what. But she sensed an inherit evil in this man Pike. He was a far more serious concern than Lame Otter and one who would stand for no nonsense. She hoped the Indian would part company with these two with no delay.
“Let’s have a look at you, honey.” With that, Pike grabbed the back of Abby’s shirt and pulled her off of the horse. Lame Otter started to move to protest but Selvey stayed him with a firm hand on his arm, smiling to assure him everything was all right. Abby landed on her feet but could not maintain her balance and went over on her backside.
“Damn you,” she spat at him.
Pike laughed. “She’s shore got spunk, ain’t she?” He motioned Lame Otter over to him. “This here’s your lucky day, Lame Otter. I could use a woman with that kind of grit and I’ve got something that’d be mighty handy for you.” He turned to his sidekick. “Selvey, get that Sharps outta the pack and show it to our friend here.” It only took Selvey a matter of minutes before he returned, handing the rifle to Pike. “This here is just what you need, a genuine breech-loading Sharps buffler rifle. I bet they ain’t another one in your village. With this, you can knock a buffler down while them other bucks are still trying to git in range.” He handed the rifle to Lame Otter. “This and fifty rounds of ammunition for the woman.”
Lame Otter took the rifle, his eyes wide with astonishment. This was a good trade and one that took him by surprise. A Sharps buffalo gun and fifty bullets for one troublesome woman? He would be a fool to pass that up. He feared the woman anyway. It would be good to be rid of her and he would be spared the superstitious dread he would have felt if he decided to kill her. He gazed into the smiling face of Jack Pike, wondering why his offer was so generous. Not willing to give Pike time to reconsider, he quickly said, “We trade.” Then, since the traders were obviously in such a benevolent frame of mind, he sought to take further advantage. “You trade for horses too?”
Pike’s smile widened. “Yeah, I’ll take the horses too. Selvey, show him what we got to trade.”
Facing Pike, Lame Otter could not see the broad smile on Selvey’s face as he stepped up close behind the Indian. All Abby heard was a short gasp as Selvey buried his long skinning knife under Lame Otter’s rib cage. Her head started spinning and she had to look down at the ground to keep everything from going black before her eyes. Although she did not see Lame Otter’s final moments, she could hear the Indian’s gasps as Pike held him up while Selvey withdrew his knife and plunged it in his side again. She fought to keep from fainting as Pike, laughing as he worked his own knife, lifted
the dying Indian’s scalp.
Abby struggled to maintain control of her emotions. Going to pieces at this point would certainly not help her situation and might possibly make it worse. She was left to pull herself together for a few minutes while Pike and Selvey occupied themselves with an inventory of their ill-gotten gains. To make matters even more horrible, Lame Otter did not die well. His murderers did not even glance in his direction after they had relieved him of his weapons, leaving him to writhe in pain as his last breaths slowly subsided. She wondered that they did not at least put him out of his misery but she held her tongue, afraid to call their attention back to her.
When they had finished looking over their new horses and rummaging through Nathan White Horse’s saddlebags, it was time to consider the woman. She steeled herself as they approached.
“Well, now, missy,” Pike started, his evil face twisted with a crooked smile, “I reckon you’ll be grateful for me rescuing you from that Injun.” He reached down with his skinning knife and cut the rope binding her ankles. As he did so, he realized the blade was still bloody from Lame Otter’s scalp and he paused to clean it on Abby’s trouser leg. Then he stepped back to evaluate his prize. After a moment’s pause, he said, “You ain’t no raving beauty, are you?”
“You can go straight to hell.”
Pike laughed. “In due time, I reckon. I ain’t even shore why I wanted you, now that I got a good look atcha. I might have to git a mite more rutty yet.”
Selvey drooled as he leered at the girl sitting on the ground at Pike’s feet. Abby unconsciously pulled her legs back together. “I’m rutty ’nuff, Pike. I don’t need to wait.”
Cheyenne Justice Page 10