The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  As he helped the old man down into the shadows of the narrow gorge that reminded him of a grave, Jack Stillwell prayed it would not be his.

  After sharing a few sips of murky water from a canteen, the two silently chewed on the burned strips of stringy horsemeat. Refreshed, and with the chill retreating as the sun climbed over the prairie, Jack inched himself to the edge of the coulee. Digging a place for his boot-toes and his elbows, he made himself comfortable.

  “You take first watch, Jack?” Trudeau whispered, yanking his blanket around his shoulders.

  “Yes, Pete. Take my blanket too. You come up later, when I get tired.”

  Almost immediately, the ebb and flow of heavy breathing rose quietly from beneath those two blankets. Jack inched himself onto a crumbling jut of outcrop at the side of the coulee and spread some of the dried weed-scrub apart. With the rising sun coming up over his right shoulder, Stillwell studied the northern prairie.

  They’ll come from that direction … once they find our tracks and figure out they weren’t moccasins …

  Stillwell was sure the Indians would find out. Last night his feet had started to bleed from the cactus thorns early enough. Likely the warriors would find the blood that had seeped from his stockings into his dusty footprints. Before he resigned himself to putting on his boots.

  Old Pete had told him he had better put on the boots or his battered feet would swell up so bad Jack never would get them on.

  Right now as his tired, gritty eyes scanned the horizon, Jack wagered he never would get those boots off his swollen, bleeding feet, not for the rest of his life.

  Jack stood watch, gazing at the far northern horizon, hoping his boots would last a long … long time.

  * * *

  He tossed in his sleep. The distant firing of many guns like a nightmare. Jack grew frightened, sensing he was back on the island again … and the long, painful walk with the thorns in his feet was the real nightmare.

  “Jack!” Trudeau whispered harshly again.

  Stillwell bolted upright, instantly awake and shivering with a cold sweat in the dank shade of the coulee.

  Then he recognized the distant rifle-fire. And realized it wasn’t a dream. All morning long the rumble of gunfire had echoed from the north while he stood watch. Then turned in when Trudeau climbed up to the brush to take over.

  For the first time since last night, his feet ached when he rocked his weight on them.

  “I give you a hand,” Pete said, stretching his arm out, helping Jack crawl slowly up the side of the coulee.

  “The boys are having another hot day of it.” Jack sighed as he settled beside the old man.

  “All morning … no stop,” Pete replied. “Sometimes more. Sometimes not. But the guns—they never stop.”

  “Was I talking in my sleep?”

  “No matter. Good you awake. Want you see that.”

  Stillwell followed Trudeau’s arm. “How long they been out there?”

  Pete calculated on the position of the sun, then shook his head. “Some time, boy. Coming on slow. Looking at the ground.”

  “We left tracks for them?”

  “Seems so.”

  “They’ll be riding down on us soon,” Jack whimpered, his fingers brushing the butt of the big Colt pistol protruding from his belt like a lamb’s hoof.

  In silence, they watched the dozen to fifteen warriors ride a short distance, then halt briefly, while one or two dropped to the ground, sniffing, feeling, pointing, and arguing. Then ride on. Back and forth across the northern stretch of prairie the war-party came. First indistinct little dots on the buckskin-colored tableland, like black sow-bugs streaming from an overturned buffalo-chip.

  Eventually they became well-defined horsemen, shimmering in the heat-waves boiling off the land.

  “Lemme have a bite of that,” Jack asked. He took the dark plug from Pete and ground off a corner with his teeth. “Thanks.”

  “Man always gets a last chew, boy.”

  Jack looked at the old man for a minute. “They come, I’m glad you’re here to die with me.”

  Old Pete smiled. Usually a sour, taciturn man, Stillwell was instantly struck by the fact that old Pete had smiled.

  “Me too, boy.” His face wrinkled back, gap-toothed. “I always liked you, from first day, Jack.”

  “Thanks,” he choked, pulling his pistol from his britches. “Y-you save a bullet for me … I’ll keep the last one for you. We’ll count off when it comes time.”

  The smile faded. “Awright, young’un. We count off together … when our time comes.”

  * * *

  As much lead as was flung over the island that long, insufferably hot day, the eighteenth of September, every bit of it was wasted by the warriors. They drew white blood but once. And then because C. B. Piatt didn’t keep his hindquarters down low enough when the sniping roared at its worst.

  Sharp Grover and John Donovan dragged Piatt into Forsyth’s pit, where they yanked down his britches and examined the ugly red furrow that had slashed across C. B.’s buttocks.

  “Dammit … just shut up!” Grover snapped, then chuckled as he thought about it. “Flesh-wound.” He crawled off to join Forsyth and McCall, turning to tell John Donovan, “Wrap Piatt’s ass with a bandage. I hate to see a growed man whimper like that.”

  “Damn you, Grover! Like to see you get your ass shot up.”

  “Just pour some water on it, Donovan … and get him to shut his mouth. If the Cheyenne can’t kill you, Piatt—I’ll bet the smell of these goddamned horses will.”

  “Awright, damn you!” Piatt growled as John Donovan dribbled cool water into the open, oozy furrow of angry flesh. “I s’pose I won’t be needing to sit a saddle for a few days anyhow.”

  “That’s more like it, Piatt,” Seamus Donegan cheered. “Just figure that you got time to get healed up in our beautiful, open-air infirmary the army’s so thoughtfully provided you.”

  Several of them shared a laugh at Piatt’s wound, and in time Piatt’s whining faded.

  The afternoon crawled on. As the sun rose, so did the big green flies and the growing stench that attracted them. The carcasses were decomposing even more rapidly this second day under a blazing sun.

  During a brief lull in the sniping, Sergeant McCall assigned a handful to harvest some thick willow-branches along the length of the island. These they jammed into the sides of the rifle-pits to provide modest shade for the wounded suffering most with the steamy heat of late summer on the high plains.

  A few of the men hovered round the critically wounded. Bathing their faces in the muddy, cool water that seeped into the bottom of Martin Burke’s central pit. Dr. Mooers and Louis Farley were by far the worst off. Then there were Tucker and Clarke and O’Donnell. Morton and Haley and Gilbert. By now most of them quietly moaned in pain only as their dressings were changed with more of the water and filthy rags.

  Young Hutch Farley slipped chunks of raw horsemeat between his father’s lips, letting the elder Farley suck on the sun-warmed juices to keep up his strength. Others slowly chewed on the raw strips, eventually grinding the stringy flesh enough to swallow it. No matter that it took a long time to get a bite down that way. They had nowhere to go, and nothing better to do.

  Dusk settled like a benevolent benediction on the island at the end of that long day. For many, it seemed this second day, Friday, had been all the longer than their first. Yesterday, at least, the scouts had been more active. Fighting off the swirling, circling horsemen, turning back the three massed charges, digging their rifle-pits, stripping meat from the carcasses, enthused over the pair who would leave for Wallace at midnight.

  But today, hope slipped a notch or two as they held out. Most men wondering what had become of Stillwell and Trudeau.

  “They made it,” Grover said.

  “How you so sure?” grumped sour-mouthed Joe Lane.

  He glared at Lane’s eyes, recognizing the fear there behind all the bluster. Sharp had seen enough of Lane’s
kind in the army. “If they’d caught Jack and old Pete, believe me—they’d send ’em back in here strapped to a pair of old ponies.”

  “Strapped over … a pair——”

  “Damn right,” Grover went on as more of the scouts moved up to overhear the conversation. “Them Cheyenne … Pawnee Killer’s Brule Sioux as well—they’d love to tell us if they caught our boys. Knowing damned well that it’d take the starch out of us to know Jack and Pete was caught.”

  Lane swallowed. “Hope them two … they make it.”

  Forsyth inched up on his elbow, his red eyes showing the extent of his edgy fatigue. “Best you pray on that, Lane.”

  “Never been much of a praying man,” Lane apologized.

  “Never too late to start,” John Donovan added quietly, moving up beside Forsyth when a young voice came out of the twilight, approaching their pit.

  “Who wants some plums?”

  They all turned to find Sigmund Shlesinger, sliding down into their burrow, carrying a bloodstained, three-buttoned, canvas haversack. Lane had his hand out. Others as well when Sharp Grover was in the middle of them, shoving the beggars off the youngster.

  “I think the wounded ought’n get first call on those plums,” Grover snarled.

  “I’m just as hungry as the next man!” Nichols growled.

  “You heard Sharp.” Seamus Donegan stood towering over them at the lip of the rifle-pit, the muzzle of his Henry repeater in a hand, as if he threatened to use it as a club. “The plums are for the wounded.”

  “Irishman’s right. Rest of you can forage for yourselves,” Billy McCall joined in.

  “Horsemeat again?”

  “That’s right,” McCall added. “Or you can eat them horseflies if you’ve a mind to.”

  “They’re big enough!” John Donovan roared. Most of the others laughed, breaking up and moving away into the growing dusk. The tension eased.

  “This is the biggest,” Shlesinger said, showing it proudly to Forsyth. “Brought it for you, Major.”

  He looked at it, then at the young Jew’s face. “Thanks, Slinger. I’d prefer you give it to the surgeon.”

  “Doc Mooers?”

  “He’s out right now. Comes and goes in fits … way he’s been hanging on. Lay that plum on his lips and squeeze a little taste into his mouth. It’ll be there when he comes to and can eat a bite.”

  “I’ll thank you for the surgeon, who can’t, Slinger.” Seamus Donovan knelt at the lip of the rifle-pit, watching the youth place the plum in Mooers’s lips.

  “I oughta thank you, Irishman. You and most of the others, you’re better shots.”

  Seamus smiled back, then turned away, watching the south riverbank, where the heaviest sniping had rattled all day.

  “I think the Irishman’s trying to say thank-you, Slinger … because each of us has been doing what we can to take care of the rest,” Grover explained as the light faded in the pit.

  The sky turned a deepening shade of blue, then purple, as the underbellies of a few clouds flamed over.

  “Nowhere else in the world you see that, Seamus.” Sharp squatted down beside Donegan.

  “Other places I’d rather be right now.”

  “Wouldn’t we all. But we’re here.”

  He sighed. “Trouble is, Sharp—I don’t know why I’m here now.”

  “Maybe you’ll be like the rest of us, gonna find out why—sooner or later.”

  Chapter 31

  “Sharp!”

  McCall called across the island late that afternoon of the eighteenth as the shadows lengthened.

  Seamus Donegan joined Grover in crabbing over to the sergeant’s position.

  “What you make of that?” the soldier asked.

  To the north on the ridges and along the riverbanks, a large gathering of Indians was moving slowly upstream, leading some two dozen ponies pulling travois.

  “I’ll be damned.” Grover sighed. “Travois, fellas. Dragging off their wounded. Or, their dead.”

  “That mean they’re giving up?” In McCall’s voice rose the hope of all.

  He shook his head. “Sorry, don’t think so, Billy. That bunch is just taking the travois back to their villages nearby. Chances were we would’ve bumped into their camps before noon yesterday … if they hadn’t jumped us first.”

  “Following that big trail way we were,” McCall replied.

  “Forsyth found what he wanted, didn’t he?” Donegan remarked. “Army sent him out here, looking for trouble … I’ll be damned if the army don’t always find it.”

  “C’mon, lemme buy you boys a drink.”

  Instantly Seamus grabbed hold of Grover’s dirty sleeve, yanking the scout around. “You got whiskey? Been holding out on me all this time?”

  Sharp snorted. “Leggo of me, you crazed Irishman. I ain’t got any whiskey for you. Only talking about the boot-water.”

  Slowly Donegan’s fingers released Grover’s arm. He felt silly, springing on the man like that. “No whiskey, eh? Go raising a fella’s hopes too. Sorry … I suppose it’s the sun getting to me——”

  “Sharp Grover!”

  “Over here, Major.”

  “Bring McCall with you,” Forsyth said. “Rest of you, gather round.”

  As Seamus hunkered down on the lip of the pit, cradling the Henry across his legs, a low blat of thunder rolled off the prairie.

  “More blasted rain tonight,” one of the men grumbled as they all made themselves a place surrounding the wounded.

  “I’ll damn well take the rain each night,” answered one of the wounded across the pit.

  “Better it than boiling in my own juices.”

  “We won’t be long, men,” Forsyth broke in. “I’m calling for two more volunteers.”

  “I’ll go, Major,” Chauncey Whitney chimed in.

  “All right, Chance.”

  “Two more, Major?”

  Forsyth gazed at his questioner. “Two more. Call it … a safety measure, fellas. To assure someone gets to Wallace.”

  “To be sure a relief column gets back here,” Seamus Donegan added. “Count me in, Major. I’ll volunteer.”

  “You can’t go, Donegan. I’ve made that clear.”

  “If Seamus can’t, by God, then Irish blood better go in his place,” A. J. Pliley stood and saluted smartly.

  Forsyth chuckled. “You’ll do nicely, Irishman.”

  “It’s settled?” Pliley asked, presenting his hand to Whitney. “We’re going?”

  “You two can leave about midnight … same as Stillwell and Trudeau.”

  “Damn right,” Whitney echoed. “It’ll be a foot-race. We’ll just see if that boy and the old man get there before us.”

  As some of the scouts clapped their approval, Forsyth went ahead with his meeting.

  “I want McCall to assign four of you to dig up the horse-meat we cooked and buried last night … to keep it sweet. Get yourselves two canteens and a haversack apiece for the meat. I’ll write another dispatch for Bankhead at Wallace for you to carry.”

  “Pistols for two, Major?” Pliley joked.

  “Aye, A. J. And let’s pray you don’t need them.”

  “We’ll make it, sir. The dirty brownskins ain’t caught up with Trudeau and the boy yet. Me and Chance will get through.”

  “Let’s all pray … in your own way … that Trudeau and young Jack did make it so far. Take a moment after dark comes down, each of you—and pray they make it through another night.”

  * * *

  Funny, ain’t it, how things come along and just sweep a fella up?

  Jack O’Neill considered it as he inched his pony along behind the two young warriors who plodded on foot, crouching over the prairie, testing the ground with their fingertips, sometimes the flats of their palms. Studying the sun-burnt grass. Resting an ear on the earth itself. Eyes scanning the far line of the prairie, where the umber land reached out and gripped the far sky.

  The two were the best trackers Two Crows’s band of Dog Sold
iers had to offer. And since sunup, the mulatto had been leading about ten others who were strung out behind him, all of them like his daddy’s dogs on the scent of coon, behind this pair of trackers.

  Following what turned out to be a faint set of tracks leading south from the island.

  “They know some of our tricks, Nibsi,” one of the young warriors had whispered as they set out from the river at sunrise. “One walks with blanket strips wrapped round his feet. The other … he is not barefoot … but, he does not walk in boots either.”

  As the morning hours wore on, Jack grew restive. He had come on this hunt for the sake of capture, perhaps some torture, then the killing of the escapees.

  Hoping for something like last night’s capture on the north bank of the river. The struggle with their prisoner, and the beating O’Neill was more than happy to give his new captive. He liked the Cheyenne idea about prisoners. A captive belonged to the man who had captured that prisoner.

  But this journey this morning had become … work.

  Boring, tedious, hot work. Plodding slowly, ever slowly across the baked, iron-hard ground the two white men had chosen to use for their journey south. And behind him all the while, he heard the faint cracks of the Indian rifles. The occasional booms of the big-bore soldier guns.

  At times O’Neill caught himself looking over his shoulder at the far northern rim of the prairie. Beyond it lay the river where the others fought and killed the white men.

  But he was here on this broad, never-ending expanse of tableland, under a sun threatening to boil his brains, with these young warriors who smiled grimly, and said nothing as they kept at their stalk.

  The gnats had come first, not long after the rising of the sun. Little red ones, buzzing round his hot face, intent on getting to his eyes, swimming in the beads of moisture that poked through every pore of his body. The earth-paint the warriors wore had long ago turned to a runny sap as their hot sweat melted the bear-grease and the colors ran like a rainbow caught upside down in a prairieland puddle after a summer shower.