When she saw them approaching, she stepped out on the front porch and waited, hands on her hips, as if getting set to deliver a good scolding. When they were within hearing distance, she sang out, “Jason Coles! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, letting poor folks think you’re dead.”
“Ruth,” was Jason’s simple greeting, tipping his hat respectfully.
“I don’t think I even want to know how you come by that Injun baby.”
“He ain’t Injun,” Jason replied.
She realized at that moment that the dark stains on Jason’s shirt were dried blood. “Looks like you been in another scrape.”
“Yessum, I reckon. Wes said you might take a look at it for me. I’d be obliged . . . it’s a mite sore.”
She shook her head impatiently. “My goodness gracious. Well, get off your horse and come on in the house. Here,” she said, reaching for the boy, “give him to me.” She gave the child a good looking over. “What were you planning to do? Starve the poor little feller to death?”
* * *
Ruth Woodcock had plenty of experience patching up her husband and her two sons; Jeremy, six, and Lemuel, four. She had seen knife wounds before as well as gunshot wounds. After she had fixed something for the child to eat, she cleaned Jason’s wound and put a clean bandage on it.
“One of my next jobs is gonna be to clean up that youngun,” she stated, looking at Bright Feather now sitting contently in a corner of the room. “Jason, what in the world are you doing with a baby?”
Ruth and Wes listened intently while Jason told them of how he happened to become Bright Feather’s stepfather. He told them of the Osage girl he had taken to his valley and the abandoned white baby she had adopted as her own. There were deep lines of compassion on Ruth Woodcock’s face when Jason related how he had come back to the valley to find Lark murdered and the baby stolen.
Ruth gazed at her own two sons for a few moments, deep in thought. They were sitting quietly at the table, listening to the adults talk. No one noticed the tear that formed in her eye as she let her thoughts wander back to the baby she had lost. Her baby would have been about the age of this little one. The thought of it tugged at her heart, reminding her how much she had wanted that baby. After a moment more, she made up her mind. “Jason, what are you planning to do now? I mean about the child?”
“I don’t know for sure, Ruth. I do know I’ve got some unfinished business with Black Eagle. Maybe I’ll go back to scouting after that. But the boy . . . I don’t know. I reckon I can find an Injun woman to take care of him while I’m here.”
“No such a’thing, Jason Coles. You trying to make a sure-nough Indian out of him? You leave that boy here with me. You ain’t fit to raise a child and he’ll get along fine with my two boys.” She turned to Jeremy. “Ain’t that right, honey?”
The youngster smiled brightly. “Yessum. We’ll take care of him.”
“Good, it’s settled then,” Ruth said and she reached over and patted her son on the head.
In truth, Jason was relieved somewhat. He knew the boy needed a mother, but he felt it only prudent and polite to protest. “Ah, no, Ruth. I can’t ask you to do that.” He turned to her husband. “Wes, I couldn’t burden you with—”
Ruth cut him off. “Wes ain’t got nothing to say about it. It ain’t no burden on him anyway. I’m the one that says whether it’s a burden or not and I say it ain’t.” She walked over and picked Bright Feather up and gave him a huge hug. Then she set him down between her two sons and said, “Boys, say hello to your new brother.” They both beamed happily.
“Ruth, I don’t know what to say.” He looked from her back to her husband. The sergeant grinned back at him. A worrisome problem was solved for Jason for he really had had no notion on what he was going to do with a baby. “I’m obliged,” he offered humbly.
Ruth, looking very satisfied with the business just concluded, stood looking over her new charge with a critical eye. “Well, we’re gonna have to give you a good scrubbing, Mr. . . .” She looked over at Jason. “What did you say his name was?”
“Lark named him Bright Feather. He doesn’t have a Christian name.”
“We can’t have people calling him Bright Feather.” She thought for a minute. “We’ll call him John. That all right with you, Jason?”
Jason couldn’t help but grin. “I think it’s perfect.”
“All right, then. Come on, boys, and help me give your new brother a bath.”
Leaving Ruth and the children in the kitchen, Jason and Wes walked out on the front porch. Satisfied that they were out of earshot of Ruth, Jason put the question to Wes straight. “Wes, I didn’t figure to saddle you with another youngun. Are you sure this is all right with you?”
“Hell yes, Jason. Listen, man, you ain’t been around for a couple of years so you wouldn’t have no way of knowing. Ruth lost a baby about a year and a half ago and it like to kilt her. You coming along right now with that little tyke was like a blessing. I saw the light in her eyes when you said he didn’t have no mama. Don’t give it another thought. We’re in your debt.”
Wes stepped down onto the dirt of the parade ground. “Now I reckon I’d better get back to the Orderly Room. What are you gonna do now?”
“I got to take care of my horses first.”
“That’s a fine-looking string of horses. You gonna try to keep all of ’em?”
Jason scratched his head, thinking. “No. . . . To tell you the truth, I need to sell most of ’em to get myself a new grubstake.”
“Why don’t you come with me and talk to the colonel? You serious about going back to scouting? I’d bet he’d sign you up in a minute.”
“All right, but first I’ll set the horses to graze and hobble ’em,” Jason said. “Who is the commanding officer here now?”
“Colonel Fleming,” Wes answered.
Jason nodded. He remembered Colonel Marcus Fleming. He had known him briefly when they were both at Fort Laramie. From what he could remember, Fleming was a sensible man. He wouldn’t object to working for him if he was offered a job. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see you over there as soon as I tend to the horses.”
* * *
Colonel Marcus Fleming sat behind his desk, thumbing through the latest letters and dispatches that had been brought in that morning from Laramie. There were several addressed to him from the Department of the Platte headquarters in Omaha, all routine matters except one. That one brought a frown to his face. “Where the hell am I going to get the extra men?” he mumbled.
“Sir?” Sergeant Woodcock asked, thinking the colonel had addressed him.
“Nothing, Sergeant, I was just talking to myself.” He then went on to complain. “This message from Omaha . . . I guess General Sheridan is putting his spurs into everybody out here. This is another directive from General Ord. He’s ordering us to increase our patrols. He wants all the little groups of hostiles rounded up and brought to the reservation.”
“We’re doing about the best we can now, sir,” Woodcock replied.
Fleming didn’t answer but he knew what Woodcock said was close to the truth. There wasn’t much additional he could do to increase patrols. If his regiment was at full strength, he could send out more patrols. But it was not. Add to that the fact that over half of the men in the regiment were foreigners, immigrants who could barely understand their officers’ orders. The balance of the regiment was liberally spiced with former Confederate soldiers from the War Between the States as well as misfits from the Union forces.
To attempt to maintain peace with this ragtag assortment of troops was absurd. When he let his mind dwell on it, he could sometimes work himself up to the point of angry frustration. Just last week, a patrol of twenty troopers and one officer ran up on a party of no more than a dozen Sioux renegades. Since his soldiers were still armed with single-shot breech-loading rifles, they were forced to retreat before the smaller force of hostiles because more than half of the Sioux were carrying repeating Henry rif
les. When was the War Department going to wake up to the fact that the enemy was, in many cases, better armed than the U.S. Army? A few of the men had even bought Winchesters with their own money. He didn’t blame them. He himself owned a Winchester seventy-three and a Colt single action forty-five.
Sergeant-Major Woodcock stuck his head around the partition that separated the Orderly Room from Colonel Fleming’s desk. “Here he comes now, Sir.”
The colonel slid his chair back, stood up, and waited to greet Jason. “Coles,” he acknowledged, extending his hand. “It’s good to see you.”
Jason shook the outstretched hand. “Colonel Fleming.”
Woodcock ambled in behind Jason and leaned up against the partition. While they were shaking hands, he said, “Jason’s available to go back to scouting, Sir.” He glanced at Jason. “Ain’t that right, Jason?”
Jason shrugged. “Well, I reckon.” Looking at the colonel, he added, “That is, if you need any more scouts.”
Colonel Fleming smiled for the first time that day. “Oh, I need a good scout all right. I just finished reading a message from Omaha telling me to put out more patrols. I’ve got four civilian scouts and about twenty Indians, Crow and Pawnee mostly, a few Sioux, none of ’em I completely trust. When I heard you had ridden in, I was hoping you were looking for work. Sergeant Woodcock can pick you up on the payroll starting tomorrow.”
“Well, it’s done then. I appreciate it.” Jason started to leave, then paused. “There is one thing more. I need a grubstake. I’ve got a string of the finest horses in these parts. I’d like to sell seven of ’em.”
Fleming was interested. “Sergeant Woodcock mentioned that. Said you had some Appaloosas. Is that right?” Jason nodded yes. “I’m authorized to purchase horses when I need them so I think we can take them off your hands. Matter of fact, I’d like to pick out one of them for myself.”
Jason left the colonel’s office feeling like he had his feet set firm in the stirrups again. The next morning, after Colonel Fleming selected his personal mount, the Appaloosas were left with Sergeant Ott Swenson to have U.S. branded on their hides. In a way it generated a slight feeling of regret in Jason’s mind. It was like an official end of a dream he had harbored for many years, to raise a herd of the finest horseflesh in the territory. The feeling lasted for only a few minutes, however, replaced by an older and more familiar feeling of freedom with the whole of the western frontier as home instead of one secluded valley in Colorado territory. He had a voucher in his pocket that would give him a sizable line of credit at the sutler’s till the rest of his money for the horses came from Omaha, and he was back to doing what he knew best.
CHAPTER IV
Simon Bone was a bear of a man with a face full of coarse black whiskers that stood out from his face like a porcupine’s quills. He was partial to chewing tobacco, as evidenced by two permanent brown streaks from the corners of his mouth down crusted twin troughs in his beard. Dressed mountain man style, he wore buckskin trousers and a fringed buckskin shirt that had grown almost black with grease, dirt, and smoke. No man had ever seen Bone without his heavy cartridge belt and a Colt Peacemaker stuck, handle forward, on one side. His bellowing voice was as loud as he was big, causing many a man to back quietly away when Bone was in a drinking mood, which was most of his waking hours. The only thing wider than Bone’s shoulders was his mean streak and that was why Jason Coles had no use for the man.
Jason understood and respected a man who turned savage in battle but he couldn’t abide a man who was just plumb mean when there was no call for it. He didn’t like to be around the man. For that reason, Jason almost decided to turn around and come back later. He didn’t have to enter the building to know Bone was there; he heard his booming voice as soon as he was within twenty yards of the door. He considered it a moment but, since the sutler had the only place a man could get a drink and he hadn’t had a drink in quite some time, he decided to go on in. I’m probably gonna have to shoot that son of a bitch before it’s over, he thought.
Jason had no fear of Bone or any other mortal man. It was just that he had his mind set on a quiet drink or two before he rolled up in his blankets. His shoulder, though not quite as tender as before, was throbbing a little and he thought a drink might help him rest.
He paused in the doorway for a few moments to look the room over before he walked in. It was Bone at the bar all right, no mistaking that mountain of dirty buckskin, and from the volume of his voice, he appeared to have a pretty good start on a rip-roaring drunk. That usually meant somebody was going to get hurt before the night was over. Matching Bone, drink for drink, were a couple of troopers, no doubt two of the few soldiers on the post with any money left. It was the end of the month and the paymaster had not arrived from Laramie. Consequently, there was no one else at the bar.
Jason walked in and went to the counter on the opposite side of the building where the sutler stocked his general merchandise. Bone was in the middle of some wild tale about his exploits in the Oklahoma territory, so engrossed in his own narrative that he paid no attention to the tall scout. The sutler walked over behind the counter.
“Howdy. Can I help you?”
“Howdy,” Jason returned and handed him the voucher from Colonel Fleming. “I’m gonna be needing some things. I’d be obliged if you’d run me a credit and I’ll pick ’em up when I need ’em. Right now I reckon I just need a drink of whiskey, something that ain’t too green if you got it.”
“Yessir, I can shore fix you right up, anything you need.” He looked over the voucher Jason had given him and seemed satisfied that it was as good as cash. “My name’s Harvey Singleton. This here’s my store.” He stuck his hand out.
Jason shook it. “Jason Coles,” he said.
The conversation at the bar went dead silent. One of the soldiers started to say something but Bone held up one huge hand in front of his face to silence him. He turned slowly around until he faced Jason and the sutler, the look in his eye pure hatred. Aware of the sudden silence, Jason looked toward the bar.
“Jason Coles,” Bone rumbled softly, his voice just above a whisper. “Jason Coles,” he repeated, this time a bit louder. “Well, I’ll be damned and go to hell.” Without thinking, his hand reached up and slowly rubbed his eye. “Feller told me he saw somebody ride in this afternoon that looked like you but I didn’t put no stock in it ’cause I heard you was dead. And here you be, bigger’n life. Now, why don’t that just tickle me to death?”
Jason met the big man’s stare for a few seconds, then, without replying to Bone, looked back at Singleton. “I reckon I’ll take that drink now, Mr. Singleton.” He walked past Bone and the troopers to the far end of the bar. Singleton moved from the counter back to the bar and poured his drink.
Bone turned, keeping his steady gaze on Jason as he walked past him, a sinister grin parting the dirty whiskers that all but hid his mouth. “Singleton, you’ll serve damn near anybody in here, won’t you?” Jason ignored him, as did Singleton. Bone did not intend to be ignored. For the first time, he noticed the bandage under Jason’s shirt and his eyes lit up with the discovery. “Looks like you run into a little trouble. What happened? That little Injun wife of your’n catch you diddlin’ with the livestock?” He laughed at his own wit, nudging the soldier standing next to him. “Mr. Coles here is one of them squaw men. Ain’t that right, Jason?”
Both of the troopers laughed with Bone while staring at Jason through a drunken haze. They figured right away that Bone was going to provide some real entertainment for them with this trail-weary stranger. It was to be their initial introduction to Jason Coles.
The look in his eye was like cold steel. He glanced at one of the troopers and then the other, silencing them both with no more than his gaze. There was something there that told them this was a man they did not want trouble with. One soldier stood between Bone and Jason and he backed out of the way as Jason walked unhurriedly up to Bone, stopping almost in his face.
Harvey Single
ton, silently watching the trouble developing up to that point, suddenly saw the possibility that his establishment might be about to sustain some considerable damage. These were two sizable men and might be about like a grizzly and a mountain lion having a tussle in his store. He decided it prudent to make an effort to head off the trouble.
“Here now, boys. No sense in gittin’ all riled up. Bone here don’t mean nothin’. Do you, Bone?” Bone didn’t answer. He was too intent on keeping his eye on Jason, who was almost nose to nose with him. It didn’t look good. The two soldiers backed out of the way to give them room. “Come on, boys. We don’t want the Officer of the Day down here to close my bar up. That’s what’ll happen if there’s trouble . . . and you won’t have no place to get a drink.”
“Back outta my face, Injun lover, or I’m gonna break your back for you,” Bone snarled. He glanced down at Jason’s wounded shoulder for an instant before locking on to his gaze again. He liked the odds.
Singleton was close to panic. “Come on, boys. Bone . . . Mr. Coles . . . Why don’t you two settle down. Have a drink on it. Lookee here, drinks on the house.” He quickly grabbed the bottle and filled two glasses. “Whaddaya say? Have a drink on me.”
A hint of a smile appeared on Jason’s face. “Why not? Sure, I’ll have a drink with this piece of horseshit.” He picked up the glass and casually tossed the contents in Bone’s face.
Bone roared when the alcohol stung his eyes and immediately reached for his pistol. Jason moved like lightning but it was so fluid that it looked almost casual. By the time one of Bone’s huge paws had touched the handle of his pistol, the barrel of Jason’s forty-four was resting neatly under the huge man’s chin.
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