Rowdy stuck his big head across the bar, his furious eyes on the barkeep and his big teeth bared.
“Jesus Christ!” the man yelled. “What does he want from me?”
“Give him a bucket of beer,” Bodine told the badly frightened man. “That’ll calm him down.”
Rowdy stuck his head into the bucket of beer and drank noisily while Stutterin’ Smith sat at the table and shook his head in disbelief.
“You and Rowdy finish your drinks, Stutterin’,” Bodine told the Montana gunhand. “And then me and Rowdy will go our way and you can take these two-bit friends of yours back to Cutter and give them to Tom Thomas. With my compliments.”
Stutterin’ sighed. “I reckon I can do t . . . t . . . that.”
“I reckon you better do that.”
Rowdy belched and used his nose to shove the empty bucket off the bar. The barkeep jumped as the bucket clattered to the floor.
“Git that big ugly son of a bitch outta here!” he hollered.
Rowdy turned his back to the man and broke wind.
* * *
True to his word, Bodine did not stop at his parents’ ranch. He rode straight to his spread and began helping his few hands get ready for what was seemingly going to be a bad winter along the Powder. For a week he did nothing except move cattle from the higher graze and chop firewood, stacking it alongside the cabin.
At the beginning of his second week back home, as the winds were beginning to hold a sharp edge to them, his father rode down from his place on the Crazy Woman, accompanied by several of his hands. For with the Indian situation as it was, it was not safe to ride alone.
Over coffee, Bodine’s father asked, “You and Two Wolves ridin’ on opposite sides of the creek, boy?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I took one look at that woman he brought over to be the new schoolteacher and voted against her at the meetin’.”
“And? . . .”
“The others liked her. She’s the new teacher at the school.”
Bodine shook his head in disgust. “Something about that woman raises my hackles, Dad. I just don’t trust her.”
“Your ma said the same thing. But there’s nothing we can do about it. She was chosen.”
“And Two Wolves is in love.” It was not a question.
“Head over hocks. And I don’t think that woman gives two hoots in hell for him. She’s playin’ a game with him, son. Battin’ her eyes at that lieutenant while Two Wolves does all the work around her little place over by the school. And one of my men seen Tom Thomas come courtin’ her.”
“Does Two Wolves know that?”
“No. I don’t think so. Enough about that, boy. What’s this about a bounty on your head and this gunfight you was in over at the trading post?”
Bodine brought him up to date.
His father listened and then slowly nodded his head. “Well, you and me are alone in our thinking about Tom Thomas, son. The other ranchers like him; think he hung the moon and stars. And they don’t like it ’cause you whipped him.”
Bodine shrugged his indifference and then smiled at the irony of it. “You mean, Dad, the ranchers and farmers are now accepting Two Wolves as a neighbor, but rejecting me?” Bodine laughed out loud. “Well, at least something good came of it.”
His father was less than amused. “Tom Thomas is sayin’ that Two Wolves came to his senses and accepted his white side while you seem to be leanin’ toward the Indians. That ain’t good, boy.”
“They’ll either get over it, or they won’t, Dad. Hell, Dad, Two Wolves and Lieutenant Gerry and Miss Kelly can verify that I killed Indians during that fight at the creek. What’s the matter with these people around here?”
“Many of them are jealous, boy. You and me, we’ve got the biggest spreads in North Wyoming. Together, we control over half a million acres, near as I can figure. That makes a certain type of person edgy. There’s a lot of minerals on our range, Matt. We got good water and good graze. I figure that when the Indian trouble is over, we’re gonna have to fight some of our neighbors, son.”
Bodine’s gaze was hard and bleak. “The Cheyenne have a saying that might fit those neighbors, Dad.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a good day to die.”
Chapter 17
Before the snows came and the icy winds would blow, Bodine saddled Rowdy early one morning and leading two pack horses, he set out for the settlement that was only a couple of years away from being officially named Sheridan.
As he rode, Bodine mused over why this land was and had been in so much conflict; why were the Indians and the whites killing each other over land that really not many on either side wanted to live in? This particular part of Wyoming did not contain enough agricultural land to support a great many settlers. And the buffalo were rapidly being killed off, so it was not such a desirable place for large numbers of red or white.
On his way to the settlement, Bodine would pass the ghosts that wandered the long silent battlefields of the Wagon Box fight, and the Fetterman slaughter, where back in ’66 Crazy Horse and Red Cloud trapped and killed Captain Fetterman and his entire command of 79 officers and enlisted men and two civilian scouts. One third of Fort Phil Kearney’s garrison.
No, Bodine knew the current wars were not over control of territory—the Indians really didn’t want it. Wyoming just happened to be where the disputes between the red and the white person’s way of life were being settled. And settled they would be—Bodine knew that. There was no way the Indians could win the overall war. They would win some battles, but lose the war.
And perhaps that was as it was meant to be by the Creator of all things. Far be it for Bodine to attempt to second-guess God.
Bodine crossed the Crazy Woman just as it stopped its almost direct southerly flow and began a gentle curve toward the southern tip of the Bighorns. As Bodine rode through the ash and box-elders and toward the rolling hills that, come spring, would have grass clear up to the stirrups, he tensed as Rowdy’s ears came to attention. Rowdy suddenly whinnied and Bodine threw himself out of the saddle, taking his Winchester with him as he hit the ground arid rolled just as a bullet sang over the now empty saddle.
Bodine grabbed the reins and pulled Rowdy and the pack-horses back toward the banks of the Crazy Woman. He slid down the bank and the horses followed. Bodine quickly built himself a little fort out of old, fallen logs and scooped up dirt. He had water, he had food, he had plenty of ammunition, and the horses were safe. Now all he had to do was wait.
Was it Indians or some of Tom Thomas’s men? He’d bet on the latter. He settled down to wait them out.
* * *
Two Wolves had left Terri the night before—after a heated argument about Bodine—left in a rage before he lost complete control and belted the woman. He had been raised a Cheyenne, and Cheyenne men were none too gentle in keeping a woman in her place. But all that was behind him now, and he had to keep it behind him.
Two Wolves, or Sam, as Terri and the other whites in the area had taken to calling him, had ridden long into the night until coming to the Crazy Woman. There, he had made his camp. He had lingered long over coffee and jerky for breakfast and then just saddled up and started wandering, following the Crazy Woman south.
His thoughts were many and jumbled. He felt he truly loved the schoolteacher; had fallen head over boots in love with a woman for the first time in his life. He also felt, with a sour sense of Bodine’s saying: I told you so, that Terri was using him. He knew Terri was playing Lieutenant Gerry for the fool, and rumors had reached his ears that Tom Thomas was slipping through her back door late at night, enjoying her perfumed favors.
The ruthlessness of his thoughts upon hearing those rumors jarred Two Wolves right down to his toenails, and he realized that he truly was only a few steps away from what many claimed him to be: a savage.
But was it not normal among men—red or white or yellow or whatever—to behave possessively and sometimes i
rrationally when affairs of the heart are concerned?
Two Wolves thought so.
But what sort of game was Terri playing? How did she hope to gain by it?
Damn! but he missed Bodine. Missed the close comradeship they had shared over the years. How long had it been since they’d sat and talked? Weeks. But they both had stiff necks, Two Wolves reluctantly admitted, and neither man was given to apologizing.
Two Wolves rode slowly, following the Crazy Woman south.
* * *
Bodine had located the positions of two of his ambushers, confirming in his mind that they were not Indians. He would not have been able to spot them so quickly had they been warriors.
Bodine shifted positions and reared the hammer back on his Winchester, laying some .44s around the area where he’d spotted one man. He smiled as he heard the yell; but it wasn’t a yell of pain, more like a man very much surprised. He ducked down behind the river bank as the lead was returned. The rifle fire hit nothing, but it did confirm the number of men Bodine was facing. He figured six of them, and they had him in a pretty tight hole. At least for now. Come dark he could slip out easily. But he would have to be very alert and watch behind him. If they boxed him in, that could mean his death.
Bodine waited and watched from behind his hastily built fort.
Two Wolves thought he heard gunfire, but he couldn’t be sure. He sat his horse for a moment and listened. Nothing. Just as he was about to swing west, away from the river, the gunfire came again, very faint, but very real. One rifle would bark, then a half dozen or more would reply.
Somebody was in trouble. A fight with Indians? Maybe. But somehow Two Wolves doubted it. Indians would not waste that much ammunition. Two Wolves urged his horse on, but very slowly.
A bullet had tossed sand and pebbles into Bodine’s face, not doing any damage except to anger the man. They were getting his range now, and he could expect conditions to worsen from this point on. He guessed the rumors to be true about Thomas upping the ante on his head. He had heard amounts ranging from five thousand dollars to ten thousand. The man sure knew how to hate.
Bodine decided to take the offensive. The horses had water and enough graze to keep them happy for a time. What he didn’t want was for some stray or deliberate bullet to kill one of them, especially Rowdy. If that happened, Bodine knew how to make dying a terribly hard and long process for the man or men responsible.
And he was not above doing it.
Bodine left his makeshift fort and started up-river, hugging the bank as he worked his way toward a stand of trees that would enable him to leave the river and get into the thin timber where the gunmen were hiding, tossing lead at him.
* * *
Two Wolves had crossed the Crazy Woman twice, trying to determine which side of the river the gunfire was coming from. He finally decided the gunfire was coming from the north side of the river, just about where the Crazy Woman curved toward the west. He moved away from the river to stay in the rolling hills. That move, he hoped, would put him above the heavier gunfire that was coming from those half dozen or so who had the lone man pinned down. Then he would decide whether to help or not.
Bodine had made the thin timber and had spotted two of his ambushers just as Two Wolves, on foot now, and above the attackers, had caught a glimpse of Rowdy. Two Wolves smiled thinly and squatted down, trying to determine how best he could help his ornery blood brother.
Bodine sighted a man in, took up the slack on the trigger, and let the rifle bang. The slug struck the man in the belly and his scream reverberated around the rolling hills as his numbed fingers lost their grip on the rifle and the man pitched forward, beginning what was to be a hard death under the hard, thin sunlight of the Wyoming fall.
Two Wolves leveled his Winchester and shot an ambusher through the neck, the heavy slug almost taking the man’s head off. The slug cut the spinal cord and the man slumped bonelessly to the ground.
Two Wolves cupped one hand to the side of his mouth and called a meadow lark’s lilt. Bodine smiled and returned the call.
One of the attackers, sensing the battle was going sour, tried to make it to his horse. Two slugs, one from below and one from above, cut him down, the .44s taking the man in the back and the side.
Another tried to snake his way to the horses. Two Wolves nailed him before he’d gone ten yards, the bullet breaking the man’s leg. He lay on the cold ground and yowled his pain.
“We yield!” The call came from the hills. “I’m layin’ down my rifle and standin’ up.”
“Me, too!” the last man yelled.
Both men stood up, weaponless, their hands held in the air.
Bodine and Two Wolves gathered up all the weapons while the prisoners, both of them sullen-faced and silent, sat on the cold ground, their hands behind their heads, watching as Bodine and Two Wolves stripped the bodies of the dead and the man with the broken leg and then they were tied into and over the saddles. Then they watched as the two remaining horses were stripped of their saddles.
“Now you two stand up and peel down to your wherewith-alls,” Bodine told them.
“Do what?”
“Strip!” Bodine told the man. “Buck-assed naked and do it quick!”
“I ain’t a gonna do it!” one of the men said.
Bodine hit him in the mouth with the butt of his Winchester, smashing the man’s lips and knocking out teeth.
“Now what do you have to say?” Bodine asked.
“Awright, awright!” the man spoke through bloody lips.
The two men slowly began to peel until they stood naked and shivering in the cold winds.
“Ain’t you even gonna let us have no boots?”
“Nope. Now get on your horses and ride.”
“Bareback and with us nekked?” the second man squalled. “Man, that ain’t decent!”
“Neither are you,” Bodine told him. “Now get on your horses and ride out.”
“Man, they’s Injuns out there! They find us like this and we’re in for a bad time of it.”
“That is my hope.” Bodine smiled at him. “We’ll probably hear the story of you boys riding in when we get to the settlement. Now get out of here.”
Cursing, the men rode out, leading the horses carrying the dead and wounded behind them. Bodine and Two Wolves walked back to the river’s edge.
Bodine turned to face Two Wolves.
Two Wolves lifted his chin and said, with a very haughty tone, “I have saved your life, and a life saved is a life owed. Now we are even.”
“You didn’t save jack-crap, Sam. So get off your throne, King.”
“Bah! They would have killed you had I not arrived in time to rescue you.”
“Why . . . you pompous jackass! If I wasn’t in a hurry to get to the settlement, I’ve a good notion to whip your butt and knock some sense into your head.”
“Not on your best day, Bodine.”
Bodine unbuckled his gunbelt and laid it on a log. Two Wolves did the same. As he was straightening up, Bodine hit him in the mouth with an uppercut that stood Two Wolves up on his toes. Bodine followed that with a hard, straight left to the belly.
Two Wolves hit the ground and rolled, coming up fast and with a fistful of sand, which he tossed in Bodine’s eyes. With Bodine momentarily blinded by the sand, Two Wolves busted him in the mouth with a hard fist and then brought a left around that landed solidly against Bodine’s jaw.
Bodine went down and grabbed Two Wolves’ ankles, spilling him to the sand. The men wrestled for position, and with neither able to get the upper hand, the men fought on their knees in the damp sand until Two Wolves connected with a hard right to Bodine’s jaw, knocking him back.
Two Wolves jumped at him and Bodine put up a boot, catching Two Wolves in the chest and propelling him on over his head, Two Wolves landing on his belly in the sand.
Bodine scrambled to his boots just as Two Wolves was getting up on his hands and knees and jumped on Two Wolves’ back, riding him bac
k down to the sand, his brother’s head in a hammerlock.
Two Wolves bit down on Bodine’s finger and Bodine yelled in pain, loosening his grip on Two Wolves’ head. Two Wolves broke free and grabbed Bodine, throwing him to the ground. Bodine kicked his brother on the knee and Two Wolves staggered back as Bodine lurched to his feet.
Then the two went at it, standing toe to toe and slugging it out.
On a hill above the river, a band of Sioux sat their ponies and watched the men fight. They had been out hunting for food and the hunt had been good, and they were pleased, so they had let the naked gunhands ride on, thinking it a funny sight.
“What a terrible sight to see,” Fat Bear said. “Brothers fighting like mortal enemies.”
Wolf Going Away shook his head in disgust. “What do you suppose they are fighting about?”
“I think Two Wolves has gone crazy since Medicine Horse ordered him to adopt the white man’s ways. They are a very strange people, you know.”
“You son of a bitch!” Bodine’s yell drifted up to the Indians.
Standing Alone shook his head and clucked his tongue in displeasure at the oath.
“Jealous bastard!” Two Wolves yelled at Bodine just a split second before he knocked Bodine on his butt in the sand.
Bull Bear looked at the others in the band. “Jealous?” he questioned. “Of what? What does one brother have that the other wants?”
Bodine got up and knocked Two Wolves down, then stepped back, catching his breath.
Standing Alone observed, “They are not fighting to really hurt the other. That is my belief.”
“This is sad, seeing two brothers fight like this,” Fat Bear said. “I wish for us to end it.” He heeled his horse forward, the others following.
Bodine and Two Wolves were flailing away at each other when the hunting party rode up and into them, the horses’ shoulders knocking the two young men sprawling.
“Stop this!” Fat Bear shouted. “I will have no more of this.”
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