by Judd Cole
“Brother,” Swift Canoe said to Wolf Who Hunts Smiling late in the afternoon as their shadows lengthened behind them in the dust haze, “you have seen me count coup and kill my enemies. But look out there, nothing covers the land! Your cousin trained us, and Black Elk is no warrior to fool with. But I fear he is leading us into certain death. He has no plan. In his jealous rage to keep Touch the Sky from Honey Eater, he is leading us straight into the belly of the beast. We will soon be spotted, if we have not been already.”
Swift Canoe was not known for always grasping truth firmly by the tail. But Wolf Who Hunts Smiling nodded at these words, knowing he was right. They had paused to wait, resting their ponies, while Black Elk climbed atop a jumble of rocks to scout the terrain.
“There was a time,” he told Swift Canoe, “when I considered Black Elk the best warrior in our tribe. But he has spent too much time thinking about Touch the Sky rutting with his squaw, and now jealousy has tangled him. A war leader cannot lead his men in the red heat of emotion against these southern tribes. They are cool killers who smile as they slice an enemy’s throat in his sleep.”
“What can we do?”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s furtive eyes cut to Black Elk, still carefully studying the terrain between their present position and the huge, gaping maw of the Blanco.
“I will speak words with him. But remember, buck. Jealous or not, Black Elk can rise up on his hind legs and make the he-bear roar with the best of them. And he can read signs we cannot even find. I will speak to him, but I will speak carefully. He is in no mood for trifling.”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling untethered his pure black pony and rode across the dust flat to counsel with Black Elk. Each step his pony took sent up a pale white cloud. His cousin was just then climbing down from the rocks as he rode up.
“Black Elk, I would speak with you.”
“And so you will,” his older cousin said, “but not right now.”
Black Elk nodded off to the right, toward the northeast. “There is a deep arroyo in that direction. And right now there is a Comanche hiding in it, hoping we do not spot him! I am keen for him, cousin. We are the fighting Cheyenne! Ride like the wind! These ugly, bowlegged cricket-eaters love to torture their captives—now we will play turnabout. We will put him over the fire and get information from him about their plans for the captives.”
Black Elk leaped on his pony. In a moment his rifle was out of its scabbard, his black locks streaming out straight behind him.
“Hi-ya!” he screamed. “Hi-ya hii-ya!”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling too took up the war cry, raising his streamered lance high and digging his knees into his pony’s flanks. The others, seeing and hearing the commotion, also leaped on their ponies and fell in behind them.
Hooves thundered across the plain as they drew closer to the arroyo.
“He is mine, cousin!” Black Elk shouted. “I want him alive!”
The hidden Comanche had decided to run for it. In a flying leap, his magnificent buckskin pony rose from the arroyo. The Comanche broke for the southwest and the Blanco Canyon, cutting away from them diagonally.
“There he goes!” Black Elk shouted triumphantly. “Now he is ours!”
Black Elk raised his rifle and settled it in the hollow of his shoulder, planning to fire a quick snap-shot and knock the Comanche’s horse out from under him. But what happened next caught all of the Cheyenne pursuers by complete surprise and shocked them into disbelief.
They already knew that the Comanches were the undisputed champions of the plains horsemen. But the display this brave now put on made their jaws drop in slack amazement. While he fled, bouncing with effortless ease atop his pony, not even seeming to hang on, he spun easily around to face them. Then he unleashed a deadly volley of arrows, all while riding backwards.
One after the other they came, as if ten men were firing. He drew new fire-hardened arrows from his quiver and strung them, then fired them, in one smooth, continuous movement. At least ten arrows were launched before Black Elk fired his first shot, missing by a wide margin as he was forced to duck for his life. An arrow thwapped into Black Elk’s bone breastplate, and another suddenly caught Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s horse a glancing blow that nonetheless spooked her out of control.
Screaming at the fiery agony, the Bull Whip named Hawk Feather clutched at his belly, trying to dislodge the Comanche arrow that had just pierced it. Another dropped out of the chase when an arrow punched into his thigh.
Incredibly, the flurry did not cease. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was still trying to regain control of his frightened horse. Black Elk had halted and now actually reversed, fleeing back out of range. It had all happened so quickly the Cheyennes had not even had time to swing down into their classic defensive riding posture, hugging the pony’s neck to present a small target.
Hawk Feather lay on the ground now, writhing in agony. While Battle Sash, his troop brother, tended to him, Black Elk grimly watched the trailing dust cloud as the Comanche fled to safety.
“It is useless to follow him,” he said bitterly. “We will never get close enough for a shot. This is no time to have a pony killed. I wish now that we had cut extras from the herd before we left.”
“That is the brave whom River of Winds spoke of,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. “And I remember him now from the final attack during the hunt, when they lured us away from camp so the rest could steal our women and children. Did you see the roadrunner skin tied to his pony’s tail? The Comanches believe this bird brings them luck. That is how I remember him. That, and did you see that he carries two quivers, he needs so many arrows?”
“All I see,” Black Elk said, “is that he will soon return safely to the canyon. And now the Kiowas and Comanches will know we are out here, if they do not already. What about Hawk Feather—can he ride?”
Battle Sash, who had broken the arrow shaft and pushed the point through, nodded. “If he goes easy, he can make it back to camp.”
Black Elk said, “Then we are four instead of five. But brothers, hear me well. Now that we are found out, it is useless to stay cowered out here in this dead waste, making clear targets for all who would shoot. Now I think we would do better to make for the canyon—now, while they expect us to flee back toward our camp. River of Winds said there are trees, boulders, natural hiding places. True it is we will be in our enemy’s teeth. But sometimes that is the safest place to be.”
Black Elk was also thinking something else: Touch the Sky and his small band could not be far behind them. If the Kiowas and Comanches did send a war party out, they might very well mistake Touch the Sky’s group for this one the lone warrior had just given the slip. Not only would that take Black Elk’s worst enemy out of the picture, it would lull the Kiowa-Comanche bands into a false sense of security.
“Look!” Swift Canoe said.
Black Elk stared where he pointed. A spiral dust cloud approached from the south, the direction of the hunt camp.
“Here comes the mighty shaman now,” Black Elk said. “Say nothing to his group about what just happened here. We will say that we were attacked by renegade Apaches. Let the haughty pretend Cheyenne approach the canyon and ride into a deathtrap!”
~*~
About the time that Touch the Sky’s band came in sight of Black Elk’s, Victorio Grayeyes suddenly woke up from a long sleep like death.
Pain exploded in bright orange star wheels when the Apache tried to sit up. Groaning, he lifted one hand slowly and felt the huge, hard, swollen lump covering the back of his skull.
Then the cobwebs of sleep cleared, and memory returned in all its brutal force.
With it came the first, faint traces of the decaying smell of death. He didn’t know how long he had lain there, dead to the world. But it must have been at least several days, judging from the sickly-sweet stink.
Why was he even still alive? He remembered now that one of the soldiers had been ordered to check his body. Then, touching the dry, matted blood covering t
he back of his skull, he realized what must have happened. The soldier had mistaken all the blood, caused when Victorio slipped on wet shale and struck his head hard, for a bullet to the brain.
With a supreme effort that made dark lines dance across his vision, he managed to sit up and pull himself out of the fissure. Though it was unlikely, he must check to see if anyone else had miraculously survived the surprise raid on the cave. Then there were graves to be dug.
His mother and father and others in his clan lay dead, killed in their blankets. Despite the pain of loss inside, so great it felt like a hot knife twisting into his guts, Victorio bore his suffering as Apaches always did: in stoic silence. But the determined set of his jaw hinted at another truth about Apaches: that they held a grudge until it screamed.
After he dug the graves, he told himself, when he had eaten and rested, it would be time to go in search of Delshay and Josefa—and of course his turncoat cousin who had led the soldiers here, Juan Aragon.
~*~
“Brother,” Little Horse said, “this thing bothers me. It is not your fault that Honey Eater and the others were taken. Even your enemies, who accuse you of everything from spying for the whites to scaring away the buffalo with your stink, have not made this charge against you.”
“It happened while I was in command. That is enough. When we routed that first band of Comanches and Kiowas, and the herd forced several of them over a cliff, I was sure that we had stopped the rear attack on the camp.”
“So was I, buck! So were the others present. Like you, we were keen to join the battle, thinking the noncombatants safe. If you were wrong, then so were we all.”
Touch the Sky nodded. “I have ears for that. We all were wrong. They lured us into a running battle, and the second force we should have routed attacked the camp at will. There can be no excuses, we were wrong, and those we should have protected are now doing the hurt dance.”
The others listened respectfully. This was spoken by a leader who did not single out warriors to blame—they were a tribe, and as a group the tribe’s warriors had failed in their most important function. They had been too intent on covering themselves in glory and adding scalps to their coup sticks, and should have kept calmer heads and thought more like their stealthy enemy.
“But this fox has learned to recognize poisoned bait,” Touch the Sky said. “Let Black Elk worry about his pride. We are concerned only with the safety of our women and children who are still alive. You have sworn to follow me for this battle. Good. Then place these words in your sashes. There will be no scalps taken, no race to count first coup. We move in shadows and let the wind cover our noise. We strike out of the sun. When all seems lost, we must become our enemy.”
Touch the Sky startled himself with these last words, words spoken by the spirit of Chief Yellow Bear during the youth’s vision at Medicine Lake. But a bigger surprise lay ahead: Tangle Hair was riding scout and turned around to report that Black Elk’s band was apparently waiting for them.
“Draw your weapons,” Touch the Sky said, “and watch their eyes, especially Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. They have the numbers over us and may go for us. Let them know we will fall on their bones.”
“A man is down!” Tangle Hair called back now. “It’s Hawk Feather. And Battle Sash has a wounded thigh.”
Touch the Sky immediately felt hot blood rising into his face. “It is as I feared. Black Elk, who once led men into battle with the wisdom of a cunning fox, now shows less brains than a rabbit! He has alerted the enemy! Keep your weapons to hand, and watch their eyes.”
Touch the Sky rode up first, Tangle Hair, Little Horse, and Two Twists riding abreast just behind him, covering him. But their tribal enemies did not seem bent on another fight, apparently having just lost one.
“Are you content now?” Touch the Sky demanded of Black Elk. “You swore to save Honey Eater, and this is a fine start. Now we have lost the element of surprise.”
“You have been visiting with the mushroom soldiers,” Black Elk retorted. “We were jumped by Apaches hiding in that arroyo. No Kiowas or Comanches have seen us.”
Touch the Sky, never letting his eyes leave his enemies too long, glanced at the piece of broken arrow lying in the dust beside the supine brave Hawk Feather. It was lighter than the green pine of the Cheyenne arrows—osage, he guessed, or maybe dogwood. Comanches used osage, but so did Apaches.
“Apaches, you say?” He stared at Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. “They rode off, and this hot-blooded warrior did not pursue them?”
“Our mission is to save our women and children,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said, his dark eyes snapping sparks. “I will kill Apaches some other time.”
“I welcome this newfound dedication to the tribe. But know this, even as we speak we might be under observation from enemy scouts. We certainly will be if either of our bands proceeds much closer in daylight. I ask you—I beg you, for the sake of the prisoners—do not advance further until nightfall.”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe exchanged secret glances, amused by Touch the Sky’s urgent need to believe the enemy had not been alerted. Clearly, a surprise lay in store for him and his little ragtag band, which included a boy still on mother’s milk! Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s keen, furtive eyes missed nothing—they also noticed the jealousy raging in Black Elk’s eyes as he too understood the reason for Touch the Sky’s concern: Honey Eater.
“Begging should come naturally to a white man’s dog,” Black Elk said. “But rest easy, Woman Face. We will wait until night.”
“Insult me freely,” Touch the Sky said before he whirled his chestnut back around. “Call me what you will. One of us will kill the other yet, Black Elk. But for now we both want the same thing. Do we forget our hatred long enough to join forces and save the others?”
Black Elk did not hesitate the space of a heartbeat. “No! As I said, I will wait until dark to move. But all of them, buck, including Honey Eater, will die a dog’s death before I team up with you! You are a squaw-stealing dog who openly pants to put on the old moccasin with my wife. But I swear I will eat your warm liver before you bull my squaw!”
Chapter Seven
Tom Riley secured his horse in the post stables, rubbing her down and slipping a nose bag of oats on her before stalling her for the night. Then he crossed the parade square, heading toward his quarters in a long row of single-story adobe huts behind the headquarters building.
“Captain.”
He turned around in the darkness to confront the Papago Indian scout named Rain Dancer. Riley, who was in charge of a platoon of cavalry soldiers, had sent Rain Dancer out for a routine scout of the nearby Llano Estacado. There had been recent reports of large movements of Comanche and Kiowa, the two tribes Riley and his men had been ordered to prevent from raiding supply trains bound for Fort Union near Silverton.
“You’re back,” Riley said. “How do things look out there?”
“No large war party. The Comanches under Iron Eyes are back in the Blanco Canyon camp. The Kiowa Hairy Wolf and his men are with them. They have prisoners. A word-bringer has been sent to Over the River.”
“That means they have prisoners to sell the Comancheros,” said Riley. The young officer did not approve of the illegal slave trading. But so long as it involved only Indians, his orders were to ignore it.
“Arapaho prisoners?” he asked.
Rain Dancer shook his head. He was plump and short, and twin braids trailed down from under his Army hat. “Cheyennes.”
“Cheyennes? This far south?”
Riley looked thoughtful for a moment. He had originally been stationed farther north at Fort Bates near Bighorn Falls in the Wyoming Territory, near the heart of the Cheyenne hunting grounds. If Cheyennes had come this far south, they must be on a buffalo hunt.
“Not just Cheyenne prisoners,” Rain Dancer said. “I have also seen two small bands of Cheyenne warriors. They are moving separately across the Llano. Clearly they mean to rescue the prisoners.”
Again Riley looked thoughtful. The young officer was in his twenties, a towhead with a perpetual sunburn that stopped at the brim of his hat. A former enlisted man, he had been breveted to his present rank as the result of superior performance.
“What do the leaders of these two bands look like?” he asked.
“I could not get too close on the Llano. But one is taller and broader in the shoulders than any Cheyenne I have ever seen. At first I was sure he must be an Apache.”
Now Riley’s thoughtful look had grown sharply curious. “Tall? A young buck?”
Rain Dancer nodded.
Now Riley was silent a long time, thinking. He thought about the youth, once named Matthew Hanchon, who had returned to his white parents to help them fight Hiram Steele, the greedy rancher who was trying to drive the Hanchons from their new mustang spread. Riley had met the youth and respected him. When the officer learned that his colleague, Lieutenant Seth Carlson, was in cahoots with Steele, he had decided to secretly help the Hanchon boy. Together they had defeated Steele and Carlson.
Could this be the same youth? The tall Cheyenne now called Touch the Sky?
Riley made up his mind. Lately he and his men had been patrolling north of the Llano. Now it was time to swing closer and keep an eye on things.
“Prepare to ride out with me in the morning,” he told Rain Dancer. “I want to take a look at things on the Llano.”
~*~
“By now,” Black Elk told the others in his band, “the Comanche brave we chased off will have reached the Blanco Canyon and alerted the rest. If they are not riding out to meet us, they will be poised for our arrival. Only, it will not be us they encounter—we will let Touch the Sky ride into the teeth of the enemy.”
Full dark had descended over the Llano Estacado. Black Elk and his band had sheltered in the same arroyo from which they had routed the Comanche spy. Touch the Sky and his group had taken cover behind the jumble of rocks which Black Elk had climbed earlier to scout the terrain. The wind howled in steady shrieks which forced the braves to raise their voices to be heard. Hawk Feather’s wound had been packed in moist tobacco and wrapped with doeskin. Then he had been sent back to camp. Now there were four in the band.