Tall Bull grew weary of the pointless fighting. He could not lure the soldiers out of the bluffs where his rifles could be used to advantage and he had already lost more warriors than he could afford to lose. Jason estimated it was about an hour past noon when his warriors suddenly ceased shooting and began to collect their dead. The troopers likewise ceased firing and all was quiet in the river bottom.
Jason warned Thad to remain still while the hostiles were preparing to withdraw. He noted that the squaws had already packed up their camp in preparation to flee while the fighting was still going on. He pulled himself up closer to the bank to get a better look. What he saw sent a surge down the length of his spine. There within easy rifle range stood the tall, smooth-muscled Cheyenne, Black Eagle, talking hurriedly to a group of warriors. Even as he lay there on his belly, watching the Cheyenne renegade, two Sioux warriors moved quickly down the bank and picked up the body of the hostile he had shot with his pistol.
Very slowly, so as not to rustle the leaves above him, he pulled his rifle up beside him. Bringing the stock up under his shoulder, he laid the barrel upon a little mound of sand before him. Black Eagle turned to say something to another man, presenting his back to Jason. It was an easy shot. He aimed the rifle at a point squarely between his shoulder blades and held it there, his finger tightening on the trigger. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Black Eagle had not moved. Goddammit! he thought, for he knew he could not take the shot. He couldn’t miss at that range but, in the quiet lull, it would be a death warrant for him and Thad too. Reluctantly, he took his finger off the trigger and watched as the last of the hostiles moved quickly by his brush hideout and crossed back over the river. In no time at all the entire village disappeared over the hills and the campsite was deserted.
Jason stood beneath the trees by the river, watching Thad Anderson being helped into the saddle. The young man absolutely refused to be dragged back to Laramie on a travois. He was a bit unsteady on his horse but he let it be known in no uncertain terms that he had left the post in the saddle and he intended to return the same way. The major was seated on his horse, overseeing the burning of anything that might be deemed useful that the Indians left behind. He was very content with himself and the day’s operation. He had severely punished the Sioux, killing an estimated half of the fighting men in Tall Bull’s camp. Tall Bull himself had escaped to the hills but he had been bested that day while holding a decided edge in weaponry. The army’s casualties were restricted to four dead and seven wounded, an unheard-of ratio. This campaign had to go a long way toward a field command.
Jason turned to discover Shorty Boyd approaching him from the other side of the river. He was leading Jason’s horse. Making his way through the water, he pulled up beside Jason and handed him the reins. “Well now, for a while there I thought I might have me a fine horse but I see you made it all right.”
Jason laughed. “Sorry to disappoint you, Shorty, but I’m much obliged for fetching ol’ Black here.”
“Where the hell were you, anyway? When I seen that thar horse come up with the saddle empty, I thought you’d gone under fer shore.”
Jason went on to explain where he and Thad had waited out the battle. Shorty shook his head and commented, “You were damn shore lucky, that’s all there is to that.”
“I reckon,” Jason replied.
* * *
There had been no thought toward pursuing the fleeing hostiles. Linebaugh counseled his officers briefly on the subject and all had agreed that it was better to take the victory and return to post with their troops intact. They were supplied with only enough provisions to make the march back anyway. A parlay with his scouts further convinced Linebaugh that he would not be wise to follow the hostiles out into the hills. They would run him until he was out of rations and grain and his horses were tired. Then they would cut him to pieces with their rifles. So, as soon as they were ready to ride, the troops started back to Fort Laramie. After some discussion with the major and Captain Blevins from H Troop, Jason and Shorty were left behind to follow Tall Bull’s band.
Jason had his private reasons for wanting to stay behind. Black Eagle was still with the band of Sioux and, if there was even a slim chance of catching him, he would go for it. He didn’t mention this reason to the major. To him he simply advised that it would be useful to know where Tall Bull was heading. As far as Shorty Boyd coming along, Jason was glad to have him. He didn’t know what Shorty’s reasons for wanting to come were but the little man impressed Jason as having the savvy to hold on to his scalp. In most cases, when he was traveling in hostile territory, Jason preferred to be alone. But, with Shorty, he guessed the veteran scout and mountain man could take care of himself and, like as not, watch Jason’s back for him.
There developed a mutual respect between the two scouts over the next few days. Shorty had always prided himself as being an expert judge of horseflesh and men, and he was not disappointed in his original assessment of Jason Coles. Though their thinking and instincts were dipped from the same trough, there could not be a greater contrast in physical appearance. Where Jason stood taller than most, with the clear eyes of a man not that far removed from his youth—Shorty couldn’t reach five feet three on his tiptoes and seemed to have a mark or wrinkle for every day he had spent in the wilderness, which was a considerable number. Jason teased that Shorty wasn’t much taller than his Winchester, but he knew the wiry little man was made from pure tempered steel.
The two scouts followed Tall Bull’s band at a safe distance for two days. The first day they had to lag far behind to avoid Tall Bull’s scouts who dropped back to warn their chief if the soldiers followed. There was no attempt to hide their trail. It would have been a useless endeavor at any rate, for a village that size could not disguise its trail. Occasionally they came upon various discarded items in a village’s normal travel, broken pots or moccasins beyond repair. Once, Shorty spied a rifle discarded beside the trail. He dismounted to retrieve it.
“Dang! Look at this, Jason. It’s a dang Henry repeating rifle, good as new.” He examined the weapon, turning it over from one side to the other. “Now what would make an Injun throw away a good rifle?” He threw it up to Jason, who was still mounted.
Jason looked it over. Noticing that there were several cartridges in the magazine, he tried the action. “Here’s the reason, it’s jammed.” It wasn’t unusual for that model rifle. A quick inspection confirmed his suspicions, the magazine was packed with dirt. “I traded a Henry once for a horse. It was a good rifle but it was bad for jamming. Dirt was always getting in this slot in the magazine. Another thing I didn’t like about it, the whole damn thing except the stock is made of iron. You do much shooting and the damn thing gets so hot you can’t hold it.” He threw the rifle back down to Shorty. “Clean that dirt out of it and it’ll work like new.”
Shorty tied the rifle onto the back of his saddle pack and they continued on their way, following the wide trail left by Tall Bull’s village. After each day’s travel, the two scouts would move in close to the Sioux camp after dark to watch the goings-on in the village. It was plain to see, from the war dances and councils held almost nightly, that something other than the normal search for food was occurring. And it was not a difficult thing to guess what that something was.
“There’s gonna be hell to pay somewhere,” Shorty observed. “And it ain’t gonna be far off.”
“Looks like,” Jason returned. During the past two days, Tall Bull’s band had been joined by small groups of Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, all fleeing the reservation. The village was already larger in number than it was when Major Linebaugh attacked it several days before.
It had been the norm for the past several years for many of the Indians to leave the reservations in summer to hunt. Most of the ones who stayed out all summer returned in winter when the hunting was hard and the game difficult to find. But this summer was going to be different. Both scouts could sense it in their bones. The govern
ment had flat out not lived up to its promises to the Indians and life on the reservation was poor and demeaning to a people of enormous pride and integrity. It was a simple equation to Jason Coles. Who could blame a man for wanting to be free to live as he chooses? The mystery as far as he was concerned was why had they stayed on the reservation this long? And now, here’s this big medicine man, Sitting Bull, squatting on his haunches up in the Big Horn country, calling all the Sioux and anyone else to come and join him. He’s never been to a reservation, never signed any treaty, and makes no bones about it. He’d rather die than live as a white man’s dog. It was little wonder that warriors were leaving the reservation to join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. There would be hell to pay.
“How long do you aim to follow this bunch?” Shorty finally asked one night as the two sat on a high ridge, watching the Sioux camp. Jason had never confided his special interest in tailing the village but Shorty was astute enough to pick up on Jason’s particular focus on the Cheyennes riding with Tall Bull. “It’s pretty plain to me that this bunch is on the way to join up with Sitting Bull. We could keep on following ’em right on up to the Yellowstone, I reckon, but then what are you planning to do? We’re so dang far up in Injun country now that my scalp’s starting to itch.”
In truth, Jason didn’t have a sensible answer. He had persisted in following the village the past couple of days for no other reason than he had been following them all the days before. He realized he was risking Shorty’s life as well as his own for the unlikely chance that he might have an opportunity to isolate Black Eagle and extract the vengeance he felt obligated to take. He was hanging on simply because he knew where Black Eagle was and he dearly hated to break off the hunt and let the savage disappear within the vast number of hostiles congregating near the headwaters of the Powder and the Tongue.
He turned and looked at Shorty. “I reckon you’re right. We ain’t accomplishing a damn thing but sticking our necks out.” He resigned himself to the fact that there comes a time when common sense has to prevail.
With the dawn, they started back down the Powder. Jason rode with the thought in his mind that if it was meant to be, he would get another opportunity to meet Black Eagle. To himself, he whispered, “I’m sorry, little Lark.”
Shorty, obviously relieved to be withdrawing from the center of so much Indian activity, led the way out the first day. “Danged if I ain’t glad to see the last of that thar bunch,” he said as Jason pulled up to ride beside him. “I was beginning to get skeered that you might have got fetched in the head.” Jason only grunted. Shorty, in better spirits now, went on. “When we get a little farther down the river, maybe we can take a chance to do a little hunting—God damn this hardtack!”
They decided that it made a lot more sense to ride straight back to Fort Fetterman instead of joining the troops at Laramie. Fetterman was closer to where they now were. Officially, Shorty was attached to Captain Blevins’ troop but Shorty, always of an independent mind, decided it was too much trouble to journey to Laramie just to make a report.
Three days into their return trip, Shorty got his opportunity to make meat when they happened upon a herd of antelope. He took one shot to drop a young buck and then they rode several miles to butcher it in case the shot might have been heard. In a shady stand of cottonwoods by a thin ribbon of water, they rested the horses and themselves and ate antelope. Then they left the river and struck out for Fetterman.
CHAPTER X
Black Eagle was furious. After the attack on Tall Bull’s camp, he had learned that Jason Coles had been with the soldiers. One of the Sioux warriors had told him this two days after they, along with his Cheyenne brothers, had escaped into the hills. He questioned everyone in the camp but no one could say they had seen Coles in the fight on the Powder. Possibly he was hidden in the bluffs across the river with the soldiers waiting in ambush. The Sioux warrior, Swift Runner, knew before the battle that Coles would be there. The white scout, Bone, had told him so. Bone had promised to warn them when the soldiers were going to attack but he did not keep his promise.
Black Eagle’s mind was obsessed with thoughts of the white scout who had taken Stone Hand’s life and had shamed him by displaying the Cheyenne legend’s head on a pole in the reservation. Too many of his people had softened to be petted by the white man like so many dogs awaiting a handful of food. They had forgotten the cunning and the power of Stone Hand . . . and the many scalps he had taken. But Black Eagle would not forget. He would avenge Stone Hand’s death and then he would find Stone Hand’s son and bring him back to the people where he belonged.
“Black Eagle.” Black Eagle looked up to see Swift Runner walking toward him. “Tall Bull wishes to speak with you.” Black Eagle grunted and rose to follow the Sioux warrior.
Upon seeing the Cheyenne approaching, Tall Bull came to meet him. “I have news that will interest you. I know how your hatred for the white scout Coles burns inside your heart. One of my scouts said he saw two white scouts and followed them. They were trailing our village. I think one of them may be this Jason Coles.”
Black Eagle’s heart immediately started pounding in his chest. “Where?” he demanded. “Where did he see him?”
Tall Bull replied calmly, “One day behind. He said he did not attack the scouts because they were well armed and he was not sure he could surprise them. They followed us to the mouth of this river basin and then they turned back. They are maybe two days back by this time.”
There was no time taken to make a decision. Black Eagle knew what he must do and he immediately gathered his weapons, and selecting his best pony, he rode out to pick up the trail where the Sioux scout had last seen the white scouts.
* * *
The few solitary structures of Fort Fetterman rose reluctantly on the horizon late in the afternoon. The faint traces of a dust cloud, drifting lazily on the evening breeze, told Jason that the retreat formation was either in progress or just finished.
“That’s a sorry-lookin’ sight, ain’t it?” Shorty commented dryly.
Jason understood what he meant. It was a rude assembly of tents and rough log buildings and the few Indian tipis on a somewhat barren plain. He didn’t answer Shorty but grunted in agreement.
Shorty went on, “Sorry as it is, though, I’m right glad to see it. I’d shore-God appreciate a drink of liquor. It’s been a while . . . and Singleton’s got some that’ll peel the inside of your throat fer you.”
Jason grunted again and nodded. “I reckon.” His thoughts were elsewhere but Shorty’s remarks reminded him that the money for the horses he sold the army should be there by now. And the boy—he should check on the boy—Bright Feather, or John as he was now called. In the year that the youngster had lived with him and Lark, he had started following Jason around as if he was his real daddy. He wondered if the child was content now, living with Wes and Ruth Woodcock. A small worm of guilt wiggled inside his brain. Maybe he should have felt more responsibility for the boy. Even though he was not his real father, he had taken him to raise, and he had grown kinda fond of the little fellow. But, without Lark, how could he take care of a baby?
What the hell, he thought, he’s a sight better off with the Woodcocks where he’s got a mother and two brothers—a sight better than knocking around with an army scout. I’ll visit the boy after I check in at headquarters, he decided.
“If you stand around here long enough, you’re liable to see most anything . . . except maybe a sailing ship.” Sergeant Woodcock stood outside the log headquarters building, hands on hips, watching the two riders approach.
“Wes,” Jason acknowledged and dismounted.
“Jason, what the hell are you doing here? We got word that B, D, and H Troops were back in Laramie but they didn’t say nothing about you two coming back here. Where’d you scrape up this ol’ buzzard anyway? I thought he was supposed to be with Captain Blevins.”
Shorty laughed and spit a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. “It’s these ol’ buzzards
like me what keeps you dang soldier boys out of trouble.”
Woodcock escorted the two scouts in to report to Colonel Fleming and stood to one side to hear Jason’s accounting of the fight on the Powder and how he happened to be back at Fetterman and not with Lieutenant Anderson. After the colonel heard Jason’s report, he listened to Shorty’s version of the encounter. Satisfied that the two versions complemented each other, he sat back and considered what he had just learned.
“I should have known better than to think a man like Simon Bone could be anything but a scoundrel. All those times he disappeared for weeks at a time—he was selling rifles to the hostiles.” He thought about this for a moment. “But what on earth was he trading them for? Furs?”
Jason answered, “He said gold.”
“Gold? Where in hell would the Indians get gold?”
“That’s easy. I figure it’s coming from the Black Hills. There’s been a lot of reports of miners getting killed by the Sioux in their sacred hunting grounds. My guess is someone told ’em they could buy rifles with that yellow dust—someone like Bone maybe—and they quit dumping it back in the streams.”
The colonel nodded in agreement. “You may be right. It’s easy enough to get rifles if you’re paying in gold. Well, at least they won’t get any more from that source.”
After leaving the colonel, Shorty said he had some business to attend to over in the Sioux camp outside the fort. Jason could easily guess what business Shorty had and, when he asked Jason if he wanted to accompany him, Jason declined the invitation.
“Thanks just the same, Shorty, but I reckon I’ll go over to see the boy.” As the little man rode away, Jason called out, “You better be careful you don’t lose your scalp over there.”
Shorty looked back, grinning, and took off his hat to expose a smooth, white skull. “Ain’t much chance of that.”
* * *
Jason sat on his horse for a few minutes and watched the children playing beside the cabin that was home for Wes and Ruth Woodcock. So intent were they in their game that they paid scant attention to the tall man on the horse. Theirs was a world filled with tall men on horses, one more was scarcely enough to take notice of. He could not help but smile at the little boy—so much younger than his two playmates. What, he wondered, would it be like to have kept the youngster with him. His common sense told him it would be impossible. Still, young John was a charmer. He had to give him that.
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