“Republican,” Pete whispered as they hunkered down in the grass, gazing one last time at the fire-lit village behind them. “South Fork.”
Jack tried to make sense of it. It felt as if they had been walking across this tableland in the dark forever. At least for two nights already. So here they were, at the start of their third night’s journey. And no closer to Fort Wallace than the south fork?
Pete tried to smile, sensing in the growing darkness the youngster’s gloom. “We can hurry now, like the antelope. Come, Jack. It’s cold.”
With the deepening twilight they left the river behind, scurrying north. At times they trotted. Other times they walked until they regained their strength to trot again. Pointing their noses south by southeast.
And with each gust of cruel wind shifting out of the north that hinted of snow and freezing rain, the pair watched their breath-smoke puff in huge tissues from their gaping mouths.
The cold, cold air stung Stillwell’s lungs as he ran into the darkness for his life.
And every time he began to tire, young Jack forced himself onward behind the old man, forced himself to recall the keening cries of the squaws over their dead.
Chapter 34
“Where’s Whitney?” Forsyth demanded of John Donovan as he eyed Allison J. Pliley suspiciously.
Donovan shrugged his shoulders as he and Pliley slid down into the major’s pit. “Said he didn’t wanna come tonight.”
“Second thoughts?” The major’s eyes came back to Donovan.
John felt the accusation in Forsyth’s glare, then relaxed when he realized he did not stand accused. “Maybe so, Major. Said he’s better off staying to fight here with the rest of you.”
“And you?” Forsyth’s mouth curved up in a wry grin. “You figure you’ll take your chances out there again?”
“Them two have had two nights and two whole days, Major.” John sought a way of explaining. “The old man and Stillwell ain’t been brought back dead yet. I figure I could go alone and beat ’em to Wallace by myself.”
“That’s out of the question,” Forsyth replied, quickly eyeing Pliley again. “I want pairs sent out. Two men can watch each other’s backsides. No, you’ll have to choose someone to go with you, A. J.”
Donovan glanced sheepishly at Pliley. Both shrugged.
Pliley admitted, “I told Donovan he could go with me, sir.”
“You sure he didn’t sweet-talk you into taking him, A. J.?”
Pliley grinned. “No, sir. Donovan, he’s a talker, for sure … but, if Chance don’t go … I suppose Donovan wants a try.”
“We’ll make it, sir,” Donovan replied, patting the haversack. “Got our meat … what there is of the foul-tasting stuff. And canteens.”
“Pistols?”
His head bobbed quickly, anxious to get started. After sundown the western sky had filled with angry gray clouds scudding across the high land. Pushed along in their path by a harsh, wintry wind. “We’re set.”
“Not quite,” Forsyth said. He shoved a cold hand beneath his blanket, inside his coat and shirt, from where he pulled his small, leather-covered memoranda book. “I wrote this to Colonel Bankhead earlier today.” Forsyth tore free two sheets of the loose paper on which he had penciled his scrawl:
To Colonel Bankhead, or Commanding Officer
Fort Wallace:
I sent you two messengers on the night of the 17th instant, informing you of my critical situation. If the others have not arrived, then hasten at once to my assistance. I have eight badly wounded and ten slightly wounded men to take in, and every animal I had was killed, save seven, which the Indians stampeded. Lieutenant Beecher is dead, and Acting-Assistant-Surgeon Mooers probably cannot live the night out. He was hit in the head Thursday, and has spoken but one rational word since. I am wounded in two places—in the right thigh and my left leg broken below the knee. The Cheyennes alone number four hundred and fifty or more. Mr. Grover says they never fought so before. They were splendidly armed with Spencer and Henry rifles. We killed at least thirty-five of them, and wounded many more, besides killing and wounding a quantity of their stock. I am on a little island, and have plenty of ammunition left. We are living on mule and horse meat, and are entirely out of rations. If it was not for so many wounded, I would come in, and take the chances of whipping them if attacked. They are evidently sick of the bargain.
I had two of the members of my company killed on the 17th—namely William Wilson and George W. Culver. You had better start with no less than seventy-five men, and bring all the wagons and ambulances you can spare. Bring a six-pound howitzer with you. I can hold out here for six days longer if absolutely necessary, but please lose no time.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
GEORGE A. FORSYTH
U.S. Army,
Commanding Company Scouts
P.S.—My surgeon having been mortally wounded, none of my wounded have had their wounds dressed yet, so please bring a surgeon with you.
“Like you wrote for Jack?”
Forsyth nodded. “For the most part. One of you two will make it to Wallace.”
Donovan held his hand out. “Major, I’ll see you soon.”
Forsyth smiled warmly as he shuddered with the flush of fever despite the chilling breeze. “We’ll count on that, Donovan.”
Both messengers shook hands round with most of the others, then squatted to remove their boots like the pair gone two nights before. With their blankets wrapped about them to ward off the growing cold, Donovan and Pliley hurried to the far end of the island, where they disappeared into the misty darkness.
Overhead the snow-filled clouds bled over the sliver of moon, nearly blotting out all the starshine. From the sky oozed a cold drizzle, quickly turning to a freezing rain as Forsyth’s messengers disappeared into the murky wall of chilling darkness.
* * *
McCall awoke with a start, sensing the damp blankets grown heavy for some reason. The quiet that greeted his ears proved almost suffocating after the roar and rattle of the rifles for the past three days.
Days …
His mind quickly calculated them.
Seventeenth … we came here to the island. Eighteenth … Trudeau and the boy left. Nineteenth … Donovan escapes, his second try …
He sat up, shaking the wet one-inch layer of snow off his blanket. A cold wind cut over the island in the night-black just relinquishing itself to the gray of pre-dawn. All was still, and cold. Like the beginning of time. Then he remembered.
It’s the twentieth … our fourth goddamned day.
Billy McCall rolled out of his blanket, kicked the kinks out of his cold bones, rubbing his hands, blowing into them as he gazed over the other wet and snowy humps in the pit.
Trudeau ought to have the boy at Wallace by sometime early today. Donovan and Pliley right behind——
McCall dropped to his knees, listening to the coming of dawn. Not really the bird that called far downstream. Nor the gentle, almost unheard ripple of the river over its sandy bed. Something was different. Then he knew. That something drawing him across the rifle-pit, near Forsyth’s sleeping form.
When he knew, he gently shook the major, the cold snow a shock to his bare hands. Forsyth roused himself quickly, coming up from his deep sleep with eyes moving and lips pressed in a granite line of pain when both legs reminded him of their wounds.
“What is it, Mc——”
“The surgeon, Major.”
Forsyth jerked, startled. Gazing at the blanketed form beside him while McCall pulled the snowy shroud back. The sergeant held an ear over Mooers’s face, listening.
After a long time at it he raised his head, shook it. “He’s dead, sir.”
“God have mercy on his soul,” Forsyth whispered. “The pain he was … I’m glad it’s a Sunday that the Lord takes him——”
“Don’t worry about this one getting in the Gates of Heaven, sir,” McCall said as he lifted the uneaten plum from John Mooers’s lips.
“The doc was a saint.”
Forsyth wagged his head. “Why is it so many times the good men are the first to go?”
“Like Beecher.”
“Now Mooers. Give me the plum, Billy. The little Jew laid it there sometime back.”
“Slinger?”
“Yeah. Hoping Mooers would eat it.”
He nodded once. “Good lad. It’s been tough on the young ones like him, seeing this kind of sudden death … this slow death as well.”
“Young Hutch Farley’s holding up, keeping his pa together body and soul.”
“And Morton—dear God. With a bullet gone in one eye and out the side of his head. Hanging on and talking all the time.”
“Most of the men been talking, Major.”
Forsyth’s eyes narrowed. “What about, Billy?”
“You, sir. That’s why all of ’em are standing tall. They decided that first night to stand tall for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes, sir. You … what with your three wounds and all … still in command here—putting up a fight of it against these red devils. Making a damned fight of it against the pain you’re in.”
He drew in a long breath, reminded. “Well, Billy. That makes me damned proud to know that the men look up to me——”
“They admire you the way you’ve hung on, sir.” As he said it, McCall gazed up, hearing the big-winged honkers overhead. Somewhere high above the clouds that squatted like pewter toadstools over the land.
Forsyth listened to that beautiful sound as well in the darkness.
“Heading south, Billy.”
“Yessir. Like Donovan and Pliley. God bless ’em.”
“Amen, Sergeant McCall. God bless ’em—like that old man and the boy.”
* * *
In what gray light was shed from the stingy sky, Jack Stillwell and the old man huddled over Forsyth’s map, forming a windbreak of their bodies as it rattled in their shivering hands.
“I can’t make out where we’d be,” Stillwell groaned, wanting to cry with the cold, gazing up from the map and looking across the rolling tableland. To keep from looking at the old man.
Pierre Trudeau stabbed at the map with a gnarled finger. “Damn things anyway, Jack. Forget it and come on. We’ll make the Denver Road soon enough this day.”
“How can you be sure?” Jack wanted to whimper. “We could be miles off.”
“Time now to lemme take you on in,” Pete said quietly. “You get us here this far. Look. See that over there?”
Stillwell did look. But saw nothing spectacular. Much less a landmark.
“We get close to Goose Creek, boy.” He helped Jack fold the map quickly. “C’mon now. We keep walking.”
“Yes,” he agreed. One thing certain about it, moving would keep them warmer. “No sign of Injuns now. Don’t have to hide.”
“Sun comes up under the clouds, we both feel warmer. Walk now, Jack.”
Stillwell set off again, renewed by Trudeau’s enthusiasm. Yet he knew it was nothing more than a patina hiding the old man’s flagging strength. Step by step they hurried, south by southeast, with the smell of something close to home in old Pete’s nostrils bringing him on while the sun rose red, then orange, beneath the dark clouds roiling across the snowswept land.
From time to time, one or the other of the messengers turned, looking back over their shoulders like escaping prisoners. Knowing they were followed. Not knowing when they would be caught.
After the sun disappeared into the clouds, the drizzle returned, softening the dusting of snow. Tiny pockets of snow-melt hugged every stand of bunch-grass and outcrop of silver sage. Soaking their boots, making Jack’s swollen, bleeding feet even more miserable. And in trying to put his mind on something other than the pain of every step, Stillwell noticed the horizon behind him.
He stopped, not sure. Then rubbed his eyes again, thinking he could be fooled as the overcast light reflected off the pools and snow-pockets dotting the prairie. Trudeau stopped as well, wondering what had caused Jack to turn.
“Indians, Pete,” he whispered, choking the words out as the old man hurried to his side.
Four, perhaps five. Now they could count six. A half-dozen horsemen breaking the northern horizon on the rolling grassland. Close enough to recognize the long hair tossed in the cold wind. Their blankets and robes troubled as they came on. Steadily … ever on.
“Get down!” Trudeau hissed.
Jack did not delay. Knowing that the warriors might be following their tracks. But that if he and Pete stood contrasted against the rolling prairie’s skyline, even a one-eyed, rheumy old Indian would have no trouble spotting the white men.
“There!” Jack ordered, eyeing a clump of tall sunflower stalks and weeds some forty feet away.
They crawled, raking hands and legs against the prickly pear cactus. With every yard, Jack winced, needles driven deep into his hide. As they crabbed into the tall weeds that might provide a little shelter, the pair stumbled on a soggy buffalo-wallow. Here in the late summer, with little rain come the last three months, the wallow was for the most part parched. Yet in the last day some snow-melt and rain had been captured in its muddy center.
Still, what captured Stillwell’s attention lay across the wallow in a stand of weeds well fertilized with the decomposing carcass of an old bull buffalo.
He tapped Trudeau. And there was no further need to explain.
Both men crawled directly across the muddy alkali-wallow to the dried carcass. From the looks of it, the bull had died there more than a year past. Four seasons on these high plains had already taken their toll, along with the predators. Enough hide clung to the bleaching rib-cage to provide some concealment. What was even better was that the carnivorous cousins of this prairie, both wolf and coyote, had feasted on the bull, fairly scouring out the dried, rotted carcass.
Trudeau stopped short, his eyes swimming, his face gone pale.
Stillwell hissed. “C’mon, old man. Get in here with me. It don’t smell too bad.”
“Not the buffalo, not bad smell…” Pete explained, barely getting his words out just before his stomach tried to lurch. Nothing came up but some bile.
Jack reached out of the ribby shadows and grabbed Trudeau, dragging the old man into the sanctuary of the decaying beast with him.
Minutes passed. And still more came and went. Then, Jack heard them talking, their voices carried on the wind, then other words forced away in a powerful, brutally cold gust. It was not the same tongue he had heard near the Sioux village. Stillwell figured these must be Cheyenne Dog Soldiers.
The sort who never gave up.
He glanced at Trudeau in the shadows, back out of the wind. Eyes closed, swallowing hard to keep his stomach down.
And just as Jack was congratulating himself for finding this carcass, he had something a little more immediate to worry about than those Cheyenne warriors slowly approaching the wallow.
His mind raced, wanting to turn immediately and look for himself. But instead, something inside him told him to do it slowly. The old man’s ragged breathing sounded too loud. Gagging on his own bile. And the hammering of Jack’s heart, pounding in his ears like the pony hooves drawing closer and closer. The mournful, keening wind slicing through the old hide and bleaching ribs of the carcass …
Yet none of it so loud that he could not hear that unmistakable sound that brought fear to every plainsman’s heart, and turned some to water. It was a warning that made many a lesser man soil his pants.
Turning slowly, biting his lip to keep from cursing his damned luck, Jack spotted first the whirring buttons at the tip of the tail. Rattler buds.
The high weeds gave the snake the perfect protection for hunting, and the mid-morning light on the dried-up wallow had made for a welcome place where the rattler warmed himself, waiting for the sun. Instead this day, in had crawled two men to interrupt its lazy slumber. Yet, to the cold-blooded rattler, the bodies of those two humans would prove far warmer than lying in thi
s wallow, waiting for the clouds to part.
He swallowed, listening behind him now as the grasses rustled and the pieces of voices came over the prairie again. The ponies were coming on.
Ever so slowly he put his hand in his pocket, taking out the last of the black plug of Virginia burley Trudeau had purchased weeks ago at Hays. Jack stuffed what there was onto his tongue and chewed as he had never chewed before, watching the rattler flick its tongue, baring fangs with a hiss. Coil and uncoil slightly as it inched forward for a strike. Inching forward a bit more, then recoiling with a noisy rattle … set to spring——
Jack let fly a long stream of brown juice, hitting the rattler as it sank back onto its coils to leap.
The tobacco splattered into the snake’s eyes and mouth, stinging. Immediately the rattler fell from its coil and retreated into the weeds less than six feet away.
Jack sent another spray into the grass. Then grinned when he heard the angry hiss tell him he had struck pay-dirt once more, speeding the rattler on its way.
“Good trick, boy. Saw you was good shooting your gun at the island.”
He turned quickly, surprised to see Trudeau watching the whole thing.
“Yeah,” he whispered, pulling himself back in the carcass with the old man and making himself small once more. “I missed that snake … he’d have me for dinner.”
“Snake … or Dog Soldiers. Take your pick.”
“I’ll take the Dog Soldiers any day,” Jack replied, putting a finger to his lips as the ponies drew closer, then stopped. He judged them to be no farther than a hundred feet away.
The moments dragged by as they listened to the warriors arguing. Then the grass rustled again beneath the wind. But no voices as the sounds faded.
“They go,” Pete whispered after a few minutes, his breath rank with stomach acid.
“We’ll wait,” Jack said, weary to the bone. “Get a little rest. Then we go on.”
Stillwell closed his eyes too, welcoming the sleep and the mournful hiss of the wind through the buffalo’s ribs. Then Trudeau whispered at his ear.
“You shoot good with ’baccy juice too, boy.”
The Stalkers Page 31