The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  Last winter while he was still with the white man, Jack O’Neill had started to let his hair grow, since it remained under his old hat most of the time. And after he had been captured and taken in by Two Crows’s band, O’Neill had amused himself in realizing there was no longer any need to trim his nappy hair, just because that was the way of the white man and expected of the black man too.

  Even though his daddy had been a white man, some of those things white men did no longer made any sense to him.

  So Jack had let his hair grow. Not that it was all that long now. Just that it had become wild as it grew. Scattering at all directions in wild, black sprigs reminding him of frost-burnt sunflower stalks. Yet, the way the Cheyenne women admired his head of hair had caused him some pride, even though his daddy had time and again warned him against pride.

  O’Neill enjoyed the way the women liked to run their fingers through the coarse, thick sprigs of his wild, nappy hair after he had rutted with them like a randy stud down on spring-grass.

  He watched the two trackers ahead of him whispering to each other, pointing out on the prairie, then back north. Arguing, he figured. Though he had no notion what they could be arguing about. Jack ran a pink palm over his damp face, once more marveling at the smoothness of his skin.

  One young squaw had exercised an insatiable hunger for O’Neill. And it had been she who had talked him into plucking his facial hair, like all powerful Cheyenne warriors. Like Roman Nose himself.

  No beard, no mustache, no whiskers at all. Not even eyebrows. Every hair plucked by the young one with her healthy appetite for the mulatto, plucked one at a time between bone tweezers until Jack’s face was as soft as … well as soft as the squaw’s bare breasts as she arched her back up to him every time he drove his coffee-colored flesh into her moistness——

  It was a pleasant thought, a diverting one, but a thought he was forced to forget as the two trackers motioned him and the others forward. And as he urged the pony across the hard ground, Jack sensed something strange and out of place. He could not put his finger on it.

  Wondering on the odd feeling, O’Neill gazed over the pale, summer sky the color of cream skimmed from the milk back at his daddy’s home.

  His eyes quickly roamed the flat tableland, from east to south to west. Nothing raised itself from the horizon to indicate the two white men heading south. Yet he was drawn to a rough stand of some tall weeds several hundred yards ahead.

  Something troubled him as he drew up by the two trackers.

  “We must go on!” one of them argued, his face flushed with anger. “We have the trail——”

  “We are going on,” O’Neill agreed, gazing at the far copse of weed and growing peeved himself with this silly delay, with these young warriors.

  “Nibsi, listen!” demanded the other tracker, flinging his arm behind them all. Pointing to the north.

  O’Neill turned, bareback on his pony. It took but a moment for the mulatto to realize what it had been the very world around him had been trying to say in the last few minutes. Telling him something was wrong.

  They no longer heard the gunfire from the river. Now he realized it had been many, many minutes since he had heard any of the Indian rifles crack. Or the soldier guns boom.

  “They have killed all the soldiers!” one yelled.

  “No, not until we find these two and kill them … then all will be killed!” argued the other.

  “Be quiet, my friends!” Jack shouted in his loudest Cheyenne, his eyes straining south across the prairie for some sign of the white men. Eyes drawn to that stand of tall weed. His ears nonetheless strained to hear something from the north.

  “Nibsi,” said one older warrior as he edged his pony beside the mulatto, “the soldiers have not been killed. The firing died off slowly, the way a beaver dams a stream. The whitemen are not dead … what I fear most is that the old chiefs are giving up the fight.”

  O’Neill’s eyes narrowed, sweat beading and burning them. “Give up the fight?”

  “Perhaps they ride away!” another warrior cursed. “Like cowards.”

  “Why do you say this?” O’Neill demanded, suddenly afraid of losing his own private battle, of denying Roman Nose his victory over the tall, gray-eyed white man.

  “The chiefs, they talked long last night while we were out searching the river with you,” the older warrior explained. “My woman told me their hearts were turning sour on the fight.”

  “They cannot give up this fight!” Jack roared, yanking the rein harshly, bringing his pony around. “We go!”

  “Aiyee-yi-yiiii!” some of the young warriors hollered, anxious to be done with this hot, dusty work of tracking.

  Jack knew they wanted to be back at the fighting, with the chance to count coup and steal guns, galloping over the white men in glory.

  He too had grown tired of this stalking. Let someone else come chase the two who had escaped the island. He too wanted to take charge of the fight now if the old ones were giving up.

  “The Dog Soldiers will never ride away from this fight!” The older warrior laughed, throwing his head back.

  “Yes!” cried another. “Lead us, Nibsi. Show us the power and medicine that Roman Nose passed on to you when he crossed over!”

  “Nibsi! NIBSI! NIBSI!”

  * * *

  It had been one thing to face that warrior charge roaring down the riverbed from beneath the overhanging, grassy bank when you had fifty other men with you. But to Jack Stillwell, it had been a horse of a completely different color when he found himself waiting from their frost-blacked stand of weed-brush for the big, nappy-haired warrior to lead his bunch along their trail.

  “I’d swear that’s one’s a darkie,” Jack had whispered as he squinted at the leader.

  “Hang on, young Jack. You can find out for yourself shortly.”

  Jack chewed and spat. “Likely you’re right. Seems I’ll be shaking hands with the black bastard here shortly.”

  Then as suddenly as the horsemen had appeared on the prairie, the band of stalkers stopped, then turned away, making a slow loop to the east, and back to the north, where they disappeared over the shimmering horizon.

  Stillwell had slid back down to the bottom of the dark, airless hollow to roll himself atop the blankets. No more did he need warmth. Now he needed only to keep that sun hung at mid-sky from basting him in his own juices as he tried to sleep. He was fretful through his nap. Then stood watch while the old frontiersman slept some more.

  In the middle of the afternoon, Stillwell heard a spate of gunfire rattle, then slacken, from the north. He brooded sourly that he and old Pete had not really made it that far in their first night. Too much cornering, back and forth, covering their tracks, trying to locate hard ground where their tracks would not show as readily.

  He climbed down into the coulee again as the sun slid into the western quadrant, to try some more shut-eye in the lengthening shadows. But try as he might, the echo of some renewed rifle-fire in the late afternoon kept him from sleeping.

  “Means the rest is still holding on,” Stillwell whispered as he crawled to edge of the coulee to join Trudeau.

  “They all strong,” Pierre said in his troubled accent. “They hold on.”

  “And every one of ’em counting on us, Pete.”

  “Look there.”

  Jack gazed at the western horizon, watching the jumble of roiling thunderheads boiling off the far mountains, rolling onto the plains.

  “We’ll have rain again tonight,” Stillwell said.

  “Is good,” Pete said. “We go when it gets dark.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “You walk all right?”

  “Yes,” Jack lied. “I’ll be all right, Pete.”

  “Your feet, they——”

  “Forget about my feet.” He cut the old man off. “We … we’ll go when it gets dark.”

  Chapter 32

  “Major?”

  Forsyth blinked his eyes open in the inky g
ray light of pre-dawn. He dragged a tongue across his chapped lips. “Who is it?”

  “Me, sir. A. J. Pliley,” he answered, feeling as if he ought to apologize. “Sorry I woke you, Major.”

  Forsyth inched up a bit, then grimaced with the pain in his legs. “What the hell are you doing here, Pliley?” he snapped.

  “They had the island pretty well——”

  “For the past two nights you were so damned anxious to get off the island, I figured you’d stay off.”

  Pliley felt chastised, pursing his lips to keep from snapping back at the soldier. But he knew it was the major’s pain talking. The way with some men the whiskey does all their talking for them. With Sandy Forsyth being one of the most straight-ahead army commanders ever sat a saddle, A. J. figured the major wasn’t really chewing him out. Only the pain of the major’s wounds.

  “Me and Pliley tried, Major,” Chauncey Whitney explained. “We left here ’bout eleven last night and laid out there, trying this direction, then that.”

  “What time is it now?” Forsyth asked, watching Sergeant McCall creep up to join their circle.

  McCall pulled his watch from its pocket, quickly to his ear, then held it near the dull, red glow of the coals in the firepit.

  “Little after three, Major.”

  “Four hours we tried,” Whitney apologized.

  Forsyth sank back against the side of his pit, pulling the blanket under his chin once more as he shivered without control.

  Pliley tried to explain again. “I figure after the old man and the boy got off, and them red bastards found their tracks—they got bound and determined not to let any of the rest of us get off this island.”

  “Way I figure too, Major,” Whitney replied.

  “All right,” Forsyth said weakly. “You two get some shut-eye now. It’ll be too light to sneak off the island in a few minutes. You’ll have to try again tonight. Sergeant, get these men something to eat before they turn in.”

  “G’night, Major.”

  “You and Chance did well enough to get back here with your hair, A. J.”

  Pliley snorted quietly, chuckling in the darkness as Forsyth’s eyes closed in pain. “I knew you really needed me here, Major. Just to keep your spirits up for another hot day of it.”

  * * *

  “Sharp said you wanted to see me, Major?”

  “Sit a moment, Donegan,” Forsyth offered, patting the sand beside him. The morning sun had yet to heat the rifle-pits into steamy bowls where the men simmered in their own juices. Ever since dawn, the sun had crawled into a partly cloudy sky, which made not as hot as the two previous days.

  At first light this nineteenth day of September, the Indians had once more opened up on the island, but this time many fired from their own trenches and rifle-pits. The Cheyenne and Sioux appeared to be digging in for a long haul of it.

  There came but one concerted attack, and that a half-hearted one the scouts quickly repulsed. Following the brief flurry of excitement, things settled back down into the routine of Indian sniping: constant gunfire rattling overhead while the scouts stayed burrowed in their pits. Listening to the drums and shrieks and chants.

  Along with the cursing moans of the wounded. Some tossed and cursed in fitful sleep. Others murmured quietly in their private delirium. With no laudanum, each man struggled alone and lonely with his pain.

  A bullet sang overhead. A few more rattled from the opposite bank.

  “They aren’t trying very hard this morning, sir,” Sergeant McCall said as he rose to his knees. “If you two will excuse me, I’m going to see about killing me some more Indians.”

  “Always did dread sitting with an officer,” Seamus declared, grinning as he plopped beside Forsyth, watching McCall crab off so the two of them could have privacy. Something else that made him a bit uneasy. “Seemed they always had something in mind for me—only time they wanted to talk.”

  “You’re wrong about me, Donegan. Because this time, I only want to talk. Care for some of McCall’s rib-eye?”

  “Horsemeat? I’ll pass on it for now,” Seamus answered. “What have you on your mind, Major?”

  “Grover told me you went through Liam’s belongings yesterday.”

  Instantly he felt guarded. “He’s me uncle. Them were his private effects. And, being his next of kin … they belong to me as well.”

  “Sit back down, Mr. Donegan. I’m not questioning your right to Liam’s effects at all. Dammit, sit down.”

  Donegan finally crouched again beside Forsyth.

  “I only want to know if he carried any papers on him. Letters, dispatches … the sort of thing that might be——”

  “Official … army business?”

  “No,” Forsyth answered. “Something that might give some insight into what Liam did, or was witness to, in Deseret City.”

  Donegan’s brow knitted. “No,” he answered quietly. “Didn’t find a thing like that in his bags.”

  “You check his pockets?”

  “Made me feel like a sham undertaker, it did, Major. Stuffing me hands down his pockets, digging round in his vest and all,” Seamus explained. “But, no papers.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Only thing like that I found in his bags was a book.”

  “Book?”

  He nodded. “A novel, Major. Englishman. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.”

  “You read, Donegan?”

  “Aye. And that’s a story in itself. A woman in Boston taught me.”

  “Your mother?”

  He laughed easily. “By the saints, no. The woman taught me to read … she entertained gentlemen callers, Major. In one of the finest establishments in Boston Town.”

  “That’s all you found in Liam’s things?”

  “Besides two shirts, some stockings, and the rest——”

  “I understand,” Forsyth replied, turning slightly as he brushed at the maggots squirming in his thigh wound. His eyes apologized to the Irishman. “Sorry, Donegan. I keep the flies out much as I can. But still some manage to sneak through to lay their eggs. This broken leg’s the worst.”

  He pulled back the blanket he had over the leg, revealing the two oozing wounds. Besides a faint odor of decay that rose from the angry, purplish holes, they both appeared alive with small, crawling white slivers, wriggling like fresh-cooked rice.

  “Can’t reach it,” Forsyth began. “If I could, I’d——”

  “No reason to apologize, Major. I’ll get them for you, you’d like.”

  “If … if you don’t mind, Donegan. I’d be in your debt.”

  “I didn’t keep Liam alive,” he said with a grim smile, gazing at the soldier’s pain-etched face as he set to work picking the slippery maggots from each of the major’s three wounds. “Let’s see what we can do to keep you in command of this outfit.”

  His head fell back as a wave of pain slapped Forsyth hard. “Last night … I think it was last night … I swear I heard some geese going overhead. Honking.”

  “I heard ’em too, Major,” Donegan replied.

  “Good,” he replied, gritting his teeth. “Afraid I was beginning to … to see or even hear things.”

  “Damned early for the season, i’ t’was.”

  Forsyth chewed on his thoughts as the Irishman continued his work on the wounds. “Seamus, I figure it bodes an early winter … a cold winter … those geese do.” He fell silent, keeping his head turned to the overcast sky, his eyes averted from the infected wounds. “W-we’ve been whipped on … pretty bad, haven’t we, Irishman?”

  “But we ain’t been whipped, Major.”

  “T-trouble is…” Forsyth gasped as the pain washed over him. “I’m beginning to have some fear.”

  “You, Major?”

  “Don’t tell the others, Donegan … but I’m afraid what the Cheyenne and Sioux weren’t able to do … that thirst and hunger and … hopelessness will finish us off.”

  * * *

  Later that morning Grover turned his n
ose up at McCall’s offer of a charred strip of horsemeat. “No, thanks, Sergeant.”

  “We buried it the first night, Sharp,” Major Forsyth explained. “Hoping it would stay sweet a bit longer than it has.”

  “Care for some yourself, Major?” McCall asked.

  “I’ll pass as well, Sergeant.”

  “Afraid it’s all gone bad, sir. I’m sure it’s these horses making the wolves howl all round us at night.”

  Grover nodded. “The stench has brought in every wolf and coyote in this part of the country. They get bold enough, hungry enough—they’ll come on the island for the high-meat.”

  “We have coffee,” Forsyth said. “But for the want of salt. What we could do with this rotting horsemeat——”

  “What’d you say?” Grover interrupted.

  “The rotting horsemeat——”

  “No.” Grover stopped him. “About salt?” He got up on his knees excitedly.

  “Yes,” Forsyth said apprehensively. “If we had some salt. You have some cached away in your bags, Sharp?”

  “No, sir. But something just jumped through my mind that might be about as good.” He looked at McCall. “Billy, what’d you do with that keg of extra powder we had along? It get to the island?”

  “With the rest of the ammunition boxes on the two mules,” McCall answered, finding Grover’s enthusiasm contagious. “Why?”

  He turned to Forsyth. “Major, at the rate our men are firing, we won’t come close to running out of cartridges for at least six, maybe eight, days.”

  “Yes … tell us what you got on your mind.”

  “Major, the gunpowder’s made with saltpeter.” Grover watched it strike the major’s imagination, brightening Forsyth’s pain-pale face.

  “And the saltpeter is a damned good substitute for…” The Major turned to McCall, suddenly excited. “Billy, get that keg and bust it open. Call the men in. Get them sprinkling the gunpowder on the best meat we can cut off the carcasses now. Sprinkle the meat we already cooked and buried in the gum-ponchos.”

  “Yes, sir,” McCall replied as he turned to go.

  “Tell the others what we’re doing too,” Forsyth advised. “A little good news like this will go a long way to brightening the flagging spirits of them all.”