You have sealed our death! The soldiers will kill us all when they see what you have done!” Spotted Pony, Blackbird’s brother-in-law, was beside himself. He stared down at the bloody corpse of the little army scout. The dead man’s eyes were open wide as if staring into eternity, the ugly gash under his chin was hanging open in a grisly grin. Spotted Pony looked frantically from the smirking face of Black Eagle to his sobbing sister-in-law, not knowing what to do, knowing that this deed of treachery could not be undone. Black Eagle was a mad dog to kill an army scout right under the protective wing of the soldier chief, Fleming.
“Enough!” Black Eagle hissed. “You talk like a woman. What has become of the once mighty Lakota? To whine over the death of an enemy. It is time to crawl out from under the white man’s boot.” Black Eagle was not pleased. Man Who Sings’ wife had told him that the white scout often came to their camp to be with Blackbird, a Sioux woman. She said he was there that night. He had assumed she referred to the white scout who haunted his every thought, Jason Coles. Instead, he came to find this insignificant little bald man. Shorty died as much a result of Black Eagle’s frustration as an act of revenge.
“We are not on the warpath. We are at peace with the soldiers here. Now there will be blood flowing. You have killed us all with your hatred.” Spotted Pony looked around him as if expecting retaliation from the soldiers at any second.
“You make me sick with your cowardly talk.” Black Eagle placed the toe of his moccasin under Shorty’s shoulder and rolled the body halfway over before letting it drop back down to its original position. “Is this who you fear? Look at this pitiful little man. He doesn’t even have a scalp. I’ll have to cut off his face hair.”
Man Who Sings, awakened by the quarreling voices outside his tipi, came out to see what was going on. Seeing his nephew, Black Eagle, standing with some people outside one of the Lakota tipis, he knew that whatever was going on was not good. He threw a blanket over his shoulders and hurried over to investigate.
“Black Eagle, what have you done?” He then saw the body lying at Black Eagle’s feet and his question was answered for him.
Spotted Pony spoke. “Your nephew has killed an army scout right here in our camp. We must pack up our tipis and leave this place before the soldiers find him.”
“I have killed a white dog,” Black Eagle growled between clenched teeth. “And if this cowardly Lakota doesn’t stop whining about it, I may add his scalp to my lance.” He held the still bloody knife up in front of his face, turning it over from side to side for Spotted Pony to see.
“You must not talk such talk,” Man Who Sings scolded. “The Cheyenne and the Lakota are brothers and it is a sin to make war on our brothers.” He turned to Spotted Pony. “I apologize for my nephew’s rude behavior.” Turning back to Black Eagle, he said, “We are at peace with the soldiers.” Seeing Black Eagle’s scowl, he held up his hand to silence the fiery young warrior. “Look about you. We are few. We have women and children. We cannot run and we cannot fight. We have no choice but to seek peace. What you have done is wrong. You have endangered all these people here. Now I will tell you what you must do. Take this man’s body away from here and hide it across the river. Bring the white baby back and leave him where the soldiers can find him. Then leave this country and go to join the others who would still fight. Leave us in peace.”
Black Eagle listened to his uncle’s words impatiently. He looked around him at the small gathering of tipis and considered what Spotted Pony had said. Finally he spoke, but not without a trace of contempt in his voice. “I will leave you. I will take this rotting carcass with me.” That was all he offered. With very little effort, he bent down and picked the little man up and hefted him over his shoulder. One final moment to glare at the worried handful of people standing in the early morning darkness and he turned and walked to his horse, Shorty’s lifeless body draped over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
* * *
Jason was up before the sun. He saddled Black and led him over to H Troop’s bivouac area to look for Shorty. He had halfway expected the wiry little scout to wake him this morning but, since he hadn’t, Jason assumed he must have found Blackbird especially accommodating. He checked Shorty’s tent and, when he found it empty, decided to go to the mess tent and have some breakfast. Shorty was probably there.
“Morning, Jason.”
“Morning,” Jason returned Sergeant Blanchard’s greeting.
“You want some breakfast?” the mess sergeant asked.
Jason shook his head no. “I’ll take a cup of that coffee and a couple of biscuits though.” He watched Blanchard pour coffee from a large metal pot. “Have you seen Shorty Boyd?”
“Not this morning.” He picked up two biscuits and handed them to Jason.
“Much obliged,” Jason said and walked over and sat down against the side of the storage shed to eat his simple breakfast. Shorty must have found paradise over in the Indian camp. He’s pretty damn feisty for a man his age. More power to him, Jason thought, sipping his coffee from the hot tin cup. Still it irritated him a little too. He liked to get started early in the morning and Shorty knew he was waiting to hear what he had found out from Blackbird.
“Jason Coles,” he heard someone call and he looked up to see Sergeant Woodcock’s clerk, Bates, walking in the direction of the mess tent.
“Over here,” Jason called out and Bates immediately turned toward him.
“Mr. Coles, Sergeant Woodcock told me to fetch you right away.”
“Well, you found me. I’ll be along.” Jason downed the last of the coffee and got to his feet. Still chewing the last mouthful of biscuit, he handed the cup back to one of the mess attendants. “Much obliged,” he mumbled and led Black after Bates, who was by then almost back to the Orderly Room.
Wes Woodcock stood just inside the door, talking to Bates, when Jason walked up and dropped Black’s reins by the hitching rail. As soon as he saw the scout, he came outside to meet him. “Jason, I want to show you something. Come on.” He brushed by him and rounded the corner of the building, heading toward the rear. Jason, puzzled, followed without asking any questions. When he walked around behind the building, he found Wes standing there facing him. “What do you make of this?” he said, pointing up at the roof. Jason looked where he was pointing. There, imbedded in the roof of the building, he saw an arrow with what appeared to be a piece of fur hanging from the shaft.
“Looks like an arrow,” Jason casually stated the obvious.
“Dammit, I know it’s an arrow, but what the hell’s it doing there? It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“Hell, Wes, I don’t know. I’ll take a look at it.” He went back to get his horse. The headquarters building was nothing more than a log shack and the roof wasn’t very high off the ground but the arrow was too high for a man to reach, even a man of Jason’s height. Seated on Black, he could just barely reach it. He pulled it out of the roof and examined the grisly strip of flesh, covered with gray hair.
Wes must have read the alarm in Jason’s eyes. “Jason, what is it? What does it mean?”
Jason’s voice was low and hard as steel. “I’ll tell you what it is,” he said, turning the arrow over to look at the markings. “It’s a message from Black Eagle . . . and it says, Shorty Boyd ain’t coming back.” The message said something more that Jason did not tell Wes. It was an invitation, a personal invitation to Jason Coles to come after him if he dared, and a warning that he would be hunted as well as the hunter.
“What?” Woodcock was confused. How could it say all that?
Jason’s mind was reeling. The thought impacted upon his brain that it was his doing that sent Shorty to that camp last night. “Dammit to hell,” he muttered, barely above a whisper.
“What?” Wes asked, thinking Jason said something to him. When the scout did not answer, he pressed, “Dammit, Jason, what is it?”
“Shorty,” Jason replied, offering no more explanation. He was aware of the sergeant’s insistent questions but h
is mind was occupied with other more urgent thoughts. He was angry with a sick feeling deep inside. He had not known Shorty Boyd very long but he had come to like the fiery little army scout and he would sorely miss him. He didn’t need any more reasons to kill Black Eagle, he had a gracious plenty as it was, but his desire to stop this bloodthirsty savage was now coming to a boil. He second-guessed himself at this point. Had he recently become too methodical and patient in his tracking of the renegade? When he considered what he had been given to work with, and gave it honest thought, he couldn’t see how he could have acted any differently. It wouldn’t have done any good for him to go galloping all over the territory with the cavalry, looking behind every bunch of sagebrush, hoping to flush Black Eagle. He and Shorty had not been sure of Black Eagle’s exact location but they had been damn sure where he wasn’t—and that was between Fort Fetterman and the Powder—where the army insisted on looking.
All these thoughts raced through Jason’s mind in a matter of seconds. Time was important now. There was no doubt in his mind that Shorty was dead and that Black Eagle was his killer. The morbid calling card, left on the arrow shaft, was still soft and probably sliced from Shorty’s face only hours ago. Black Eagle was long gone by now but maybe this time there was a definite trail to follow. Jason climbed in the saddle and wheeled Black around.
“Where you going?” Wes demanded.
“To the Indian camp,” was Jason’s simple reply.
* * *
Jason rode through the Indian camp, past the group of Cheyenne lodges. He crossed the shallow gully to the lower flat where the larger gathering of Sioux had set up their tipis. The camp seemed more quiet than ever and only a few solemn faces looked up at the tall white scout on the dark Appaloosa. There were almost no men in evidence. Jason felt the whole camp was on edge, waiting for his reaction to the crime they all knew had been committed.
Having never set foot in the camp before, Jason had no idea which tipi belonged to Blackbird’s sister. With Black at a slow walk, he looked from one side to the other at sullen faces of women as they paused in their chores to watch him pass. He found it unnecessary to ask where the tipi was for there, at the east end of the camp, he found it—at least he found the spot where it had been. The circle, where the grass was still matted down and dying, was still clearly defined. They had obviously left during the night or the early morning hours. The cookfire was still smoldering with little flicks of flame nipping at the butts of charred branches.
Jason dismounted and examined the ground where the tipi had been set up. Looking all around the area, he could find no signs of a struggle. If there was a fight, there was no sign of it now. Then he looked at the remains of the fire. The unburned butt ends of limbs were spread in a larger circle than Jason thought necessary for the usual cookfire. The original fire circle was evident by a dark patch of charred earth and ashes. Someone had decided they needed a bigger fire and added some larger limbs.
He was aware now that he had begun to attract an audience. Evidently reassured since he didn’t ride in with guns blazing, a few of the close neighbors of Spotted Pony stood a few paces away, watching the white scout. He figured it to be a waste of time but he asked if anyone saw the white man who was there last night. No one had. As he looked from one blank face to the next, a man walked through the gully that separated the two camps and came to stand almost within two paces of Jason. He was Cheyenne. Jason asked him if he knew the white man they called Little Thunder. He shook his head, no, and continued to stand next to the burned-out fire. Jason had to walk around him to examine the other side of the fire.
Jason picked up a stick and began poking around in the remains of the fire. He was curious about the reason for building up the fire. From the look of it, someone had already stirred up the ashes for some reason. With the stick, he stirred deeper in the ashes. He uncovered what appeared to be charred remnants of heavy cloth. He kept digging until he pulled up a piece of material about the size of his hand. It was too heavy to be clothing and a part of the pattern had been spared. At once he realized it to be part of a blanket—someone had burned a blanket. That was likely the reason for making a bigger fire, so the blanket would burn up.
Jason was beginning to complete the picture. There was no struggle because Shorty had probably been murdered while he slept. An immediate thought was that Shorty must have been pretty nigh tuckered out for someone to slip up on a man who could come out of a deep sleep at the sound of a crow walking across the grass. It all fit. They burned the blanket because it had Shorty’s blood all over it.
He sat back on his heels and glanced up at the silent Cheyenne warrior, still watching placidly. “How are you called?” Jason asked. The man didn’t answer at once and Jason started to repeat the question. Then the man answered him. Jason translated the name to mean Man Who Sings. “Well, Man Who Sings, did you see the Cheyenne warrior Black Eagle here last night?”
“No,” he replied.
“Do you know Black Eagle?”
“No.”
Jason studied the face of the Cheyenne for a moment before speaking again. “Well, Man Who Sings, you’re one helluva warrior. According to what I’ve been told, Black Eagle is your nephew. You don’t know your own nephew?” The only reaction from the Indian was a shrug of his shoulders.
Disgusted, Jason turned his attention back to the fire. He didn’t expect anyone to volunteer any information anyway. They all knew what had happened. Spotted Pony, his wife, and Blackbird, in fear of retaliation, had packed up and left. He knew he could easily overtake them but he was not convinced it would help him much to question them. He already knew how Shorty died, he was more interested in picking up Black Eagle’s trail.
He glanced back at Man Who Sings, his gaze dropping to the man’s feet. You ol’ son of a bitch, he thought, for he noticed that the ground under Man Who Sings’ feet was spread with fresh dirt. “Step aside,” he said, pointing to the man’s left. Man Who Sings pretended he did not understand. “Step aside,” he demanded, this time in Cheyenne. He dropped his hand on the handle of his forty-four for emphasis. Man Who Sings moved to the side, his expression never changing from the blank stare he had fixed on his face.
With his stick, he brushed the loose dirt aside until he uncovered a small dark stain on the firm ground. It was no bigger than a dinner plate, probably dripped off the blanket when he was moved. “That pretty much paints the picture, don’t it?” He was talking to a stoic Man Who Sings, not expecting an answer. “Black Eagle sneaked up on him like a damn weasel and murdered him in his sleep. Now the only thing I don’t know is where is poor old Shorty’s body. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me that, would you? I didn’t think so.” He got to his feet.
“We are at peace here,” Man Who Sings said. “We do not make war on the whites.”
Jason stood looking into the man’s eyes for a long time, thinking about what he had just uncovered. As angry as he was, he still thought he had a notion of the Indian’s predicament. “I know who’s responsible for this. Black Eagle is the man I’m after. But you know, if I don’t catch Black Eagle, I might be of a notion to come back here and nail your behind.”
* * *
Jason didn’t waste any more time. He didn’t take the time to inform Sergeant Woodcock of his intentions because he didn’t want the trail to get any colder than it was right then. He had another reason for not reporting back to Colonel Fleming. They would find out soon enough when Wes figured he’d better send somebody over there to find out what Jason had learned. Then the colonel would sure as hell detach a patrol to search for the renegade. Jason wanted to be well ahead of that patrol. As long as it was just him on his trail, Black Eagle would stand and fight. Jason feared that if a cavalry troop showed up, the hostile might deem it best to run.
Leading his horse, he worked back and forth across the east and southern sections of prairie leading up to the camp until he struck the tracks he was searching for—two ponies leaving the village—both hor
ses carrying riders. Jason knew that one of the riders was a dead man, draped across his saddle. He stayed on the trail, making good time until he reached the river. Black Eagle would no doubt be more cautious on the other side.
After fording the river, Jason had to choose which direction to search for the place where Black Eagle came out. Since he was leading a horse with Shorty’s body on it, Jason figured Black Eagle would elect to drift downstream, making it easier to manage the horses. When Black pulled up out of the water and onto the other bank, Jason turned him to the east and started searching for Black Eagle’s tracks.
He searched farther and farther downstream without finding any sign. He was beginning to wonder if he had missed the trail and, after more than a mile of tracking downstream, he had to conclude that he had guessed wrong. The renegade was ornery enough, or smart enough, to buck the current and swim the horses upstream. Jason knew Black Eagle wouldn’t go far upstream before coming out but he had to retrace his tracks back to the place where he and Black crossed. Time lost, he thought as he backtracked, carefully looking for sign even though he had already scouted that mile.
Less than a quarter mile upstream from his crossing, he found what he was looking for. Black Eagle was clever. He had attempted to find a spot where he could leave the river without leaving a trail and he almost did. At a bend of the river, there was a rocky area where a stream emptied into the river. The mouth of the stream was strewn with large rocks and Black Eagle had led the horses out onto the larger rocks and carefully led them up the tiny stream until he came to a shallow, grassy bank where the horses’ hooves wouldn’t dig into the soil. It would have been easy to miss the trail but Jason covered the rocky streambed carefully. It looked like the place he would have picked so he was extra careful in his search. The Indian almost got away with it for Jason was about to move on upstream when he found the sign he was looking for. One large rock had shifted under the weight of the horses and rocked back into place, leaving a slight ridge of sand around one side of it.
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