by Judd Cole
“But cousin, what about us?” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. “How do we get into that canyon without being spotted?”
“A herd divided weakens itself, cousin. Under cover of this darkness, the others will soon advance closer to the canyon unaware that their arrival is expected. Using night’s cloak to cover us, we follow them. When the enemy attacks them, count upon it, they will put up a good fight. I hate Touch the Sky, but he is a warrior, and Little Horse and Tangle Hair can fight like ten men.
“This bloody fight will keep the enemy engaged. It is then, when their attention is elsewhere, that we will move into the cover of the canyon. But we must avoid the fight or even being seen.”
Suddenly, above the mating-wolf howl of the wind, they heard the Bull Whip named Battle Sash loose a whistle. He was on sentry duty between their position and the jumble of rocks.
“There is the signal,” Black Elk said. “They are moving out. Prepare to ride, brothers, and remember. Glide like a shadow. We will stay well behind them until they meet the enemy, then we make our move.”
~*~
All through the night Touch the Sky pushed his band across the treacherous Llano, orienting himself by the Grandmother Star to the north.
More than ever before Touch the Sky now realized the importance of not being observed before they reached the safety of that canyon. There was simply no place to run if they were attacked, nor were their numbers enough to stand and hold. But something had to be done. Every day that passed was one more day that Honey Eater and the rest spent in misery and terror—and brought them one day closer to being sold, perhaps to disappear in unknown lands where Touch the Sky could never find them again.
They rode fast under cover of a clouded sky that gave off little moonlight. He no longer worried about where Black Elk was. His only goal now was to reach that canyon under cover of night, elude the sentries and herd guards, and get into position close enough to obtain some information on the prisoners and their whereabouts.
Finally, as the eastern sky began to take on the first roseate hues of morning, they topped a long rise and Touch the Sky halted his band. A slight difference in the darkness out ahead of them told his night-trained eye that a vast opening lay before them—the Blanco Canyon.
As the moon began to peek out from behind a scud of clouds, Touch the Sky warned his men to move further down off the ridge so they would not be skylined.
“Now we are in the belly of the beast,” he warned the others. “From here, wrap the ponies’ hooves in rawhide to muffle them. And lead the ponies, do not ride them. Secure any gear on your pony which might give off a noise. And whatever you do, do not let the wind get behind you or the horse herds will alert our enemy. Even now this area must be ringed with sentries. If we are seen, count upon it, be prepared to sing the death song.”
He thought of something else. “Before we move out, transfer your rigging and gear to the remounts. If we must run for it, at least we will have the freshest ponies.”
They made their final preparations, then fanned out. Step by slow step Touch the Sky advanced toward the rim of the canyon, trying to use whatever depressions and hummocks he could find for cover. It seemed ominously quiet, as if not a soul stirred below in the wide canyon.
The wind had fallen silent. In the stillness, Touch the Sky winced when his chestnut pony, smelling the herds and the river below, nickered.
They moved steadily closer. Now the edge was so near that Touch the Sky could feel the subtle change in temperature that always marked a deep canyon. Elation began to hum in his blood. Only a few more paces and they would be on their way down. Cheyennes were excellent at taking cover and could operate for days unseen in the shelter of thickets and shrubs.
Abruptly, he heard the loud, fast clicking of a lizard. He thought nothing of it until another lizard answered the signal. What happened only a few heartbeats later shocked all the Cheyenne braves into frightened immobility.
The Comanches and Kiowas loved to mock their enemies in battle. One of them had captured a bugle during a skirmish with Bluecoats. Alerted by Big Tree’s report, they had been fully aware when Touch the Sky’s band approached so quietly. Now the Comanche bugler suddenly blasted the rousing cavalry charge known as “Boots and Saddles,” the bugle notes frighteningly amplified against the stillness of the night.
Yipping their battle cries, the enemy poured up from the canyon and leaped out onto the plains, racing straight at the startled Cheyennes.
“Fly like the wind!” Touch the Sky shouted to his companions.
Now he gave silent thanks to Maiyun for granting him the foresight to insist on remounts. All four Cheyennes mounted their ponies in running leaps and turned them away from the attack, heading back in the direction they had just come.
Fortunately, though their enemies had sufficient handguns, they were short on rifles and ammunition for them. Now a deadly hail of arrows filled the air all around them as they began a desperate running battle—the style of fighting which the Cheyennes had originally developed.
An arrow flew past Touch the Sky’s head so close he felt a hot wire of pain crease his ear. He glimpsed Little Horse on his left and Two Twists and Tangle Hair on his right, all bent low over the necks of their ponies as they drove them on. Behind them, rolling thunder welled closer as their enemy gained on them.
“Hi-ya!” Touch the Sky urged his mount, lashing her with the buffalo-hair reins. “Hi-ya hii-ya!”
Behind him, the bugle notes mocked them, bringing the promise of an agonizing death closer and closer.
~*~
Black Elk’s band had tracked Touch the Sky’s all night, staying well back and far to the right of them. Now they too sprang into action at the sound of the bugle notes. Only they ran in the opposite direction—right toward the Blanco.
As Black Elk had predicted, the enemy’s attention was focused on the other Cheyennes. And a good thing, he realized. Their own mounts were nearly exhausted and dehydrated. Had they been forced to flee like Touch the Sky’s group, they would have been sent under by now.
But as things worked out, they reached the brim of the canyon unchallenged and unobserved.
“Quickly!” Black Elk said triumphantly. “Make for cover.”
He was elated. Not only had they finally slipped into the formidable Blanco Canyon, considered an impregnable fortress—but soon his worst enemy would be roasting over a blazing fire, and with luck Black Elk could even watch him die.
~*~
As the sun burst forth from her birthplace in the east, Touch the Sky’s little group were grimly living up to their nickname, the fighting Cheyenne.
Thanks to their reasonably fresh ponies, they were able to execute the classic Cheyenne fighting strategy: They fled hard until their pursuers’ horses started to falter, then suddenly whirled and fired on them. In this they were also aided by the range of their long arms, which easily dropped the enemy ponies.
Time after time, when death was apparently about to envelope them, Touch the Sky screamed the command and they whirled, firing another volley.
“One bullet, one enemy!” he screamed repeatedly, calming the less-experienced Two Twists and reminding the youth that each shot had to count. At one point, when several enemy riders were about to converge on Two Twists, Little Horse suddenly rode into their midst with all four barrels of his flintlock shotgun loaded. He fired and rotated, fired and rotated, blasting horses and Indians into eternity.
Slowly, as they advanced across the plains, a trail of dead ponies, Kiowas, and Comanches gave silent testimony to the skill of these northern warriors. But the more that dropped, the more determined the rest became to seize these hated enemies.
The Cheyenne ponies were beginning to falter, and the warriors’ gun barrels were smoking hot, ammunition was low. Worst of all, the new day’s light showed no hope of shelter in any direction. Soon their horses would play out and they would have to sing the death song, killing each other to avoid certain torture.
“Look!”
The sturdy little warrior pointed to the east. There, flying over the horizon, was a detachment of Bluecoat pony soldiers, an American flag snapping and fluttering in the wind. The soldiers ignored the smaller band of Cheyennes, giving chase to the larger battle party. They would stop before actually entering the canyon, of course. But their presence above would keep the Kiowas and Comanches below.
“Never,” Touch the Sky told the others, “did I think I would be relieved to see Bluecoats!”
He was too far away to recognize the officer leading them as his old friend Tom Riley. Nor was this any time for rejoicing. They were still stuck in the middle of hostile territory, unable to penetrate that canyon. Honey Eater and the others were no closer to freedom. And where was Black Elk’s band?
They had eluded death this time only by a miracle. And miracles never happened twice in a row. Nor was there any proof those blue-bloused pony soldiers might not soon ride against his band.
“Brothers,” Little Horse said as they veered west from the direction of the attack, “did any of you spot the fleet-shooting Comanche called Big Tree? I could not.”
“Count upon it,” Touch the Sky said. “He was not in the attack. When trouble threatens this close to the hive, Big Tree is kept in the canyon. But be patient, you shall meet him soon, brother, because the canyon is where we are headed!”
Chapter Eight
“It was their own hotheaded foolishness which warned us,” said Hairy Wolf, leader of the Kiowas from Medicine Lodge Creek. “Now I think the Cheyenne warriors who dashed at us like summer-drunk colts will be lurking about in the darkness. We should give them something to listen to. Something to remind them of what they have brought upon their own people.”
“Well said, Kaitsenko warrior,” Iron Eyes said. “We cannot afford to waste another Cheyenne. But Stone Mountain was scouting the north rim of the Blanco and captured a Caddo woman. Though she is young, she is fat and has been scarred by pox and is worth nothing to Aragon. We will put her to the coals and let her screams accompany our Cheyennes into sleep. If we cut out her tongue first, she will not be able to speak her language and they will never know she is not one of theirs.”
Iron Eyes paused before adding, “This one thing troubles me. When Big Tree rode in to tell us a Cheyenne band was on the way, he did not say the tall young bear-caller was among them. I asked him when we returned, and he said the youthful shaman was not one of them. Yet you saw him too! Could it be that these northern dogs, who foolishly treat their women better than their horses, have played our own trick upon us?”
Hairy Wolf did not have to ask what trick he meant. By dividing into two bands and letting one serve as a lure, the Kiowas and Comanches had made off with their valuable prize of many women and children. Now Iron Eyes was suggesting the Cheyenne too might have just tricked them—meaning that instead of only lurking up on the plains, Cheyennes might be within the Blanco Canyon walls right now.
Iron Eyes stepped outside of the mesquite hut and stared out at the canyon with the deep-brown eyes characteristic of the Quohada Comanche. He had a sun-darkened, oval face. His hair was shorter than Hairy Wolf’s, parted exactly in the center and worn just long enough to brush behind his ears.
His eyes again studied the single trail into the canyon, a narrow and rock-strewn path which descended by a series of sharp cutbanks. Blanco Canyon was the largest single break dividing the Staked Plain, so of course it could be entered elsewhere on horseback. But that would mean many more hard miles across treeless, bone-dry wasteland. And although the fertile canyon, divided by the Rio de Lagrimas or River of Tears, provided much cover, it was also heavily patrolled by mounted guards for the magnificent pony herds, the best on all the plains.
Hairy Wolf saw where he looked and nodded at his smaller companion. “We are tipping lances with Cheyennes, so anything is possible. I will speak to Big Tree and the other guards, warning them. Aragon will be here soon. With luck, the prisoners will be gone soon.”
Iron Eyes said, “Speaking of Big Tree. Have you noticed how he watches the Cheyenne girl? How he taunts her in her own tongue, making her face flame red?”
“I have noticed this thing, Quohada. But he is your man. You know him better. Will he go for her?”
“Perhaps,” Iron Eyes said, “perhaps not. Thanks to us he lives better than the rest. But when he looks at the bob-tailed beauty, his loins burst into flame. He knows that you and I have set her off until an arrangement can be made between us. We are war leaders, he respects that. But you understand, Big Tree has done much for us and has a certain right.”
“If he must demand his rights,” Hairy Wolf said, “let it be with another of the girls. There are several fine ones besides her.”
Iron Eyes nodded. “I will tell him this.”
“Brother,” Hairy Wolf said, meeting his companion firmly in the eye, “I have not yet visited her.”
Iron Eyes did not look away. “Nor have I. Do you hint that I have?”
“Of course not, brother. But any man would want to.”
“Yes,” Iron Eyes agreed, watching his friend shrewdly. “Any man would.”
“However,” Hairy Wolf said, “we have raised our lances together in battle many times. A mere thing worth less than a good horse would not make us fight like dogs over a scrap of meat.”
“Well spoken, Kaitsenko. Besides, if the men see us going to her, we will never keep them from the rest of them.”
“Good. We think as one. But I warn you, speak to Big Tree. I fear we may have asked the cat to guard the bird.”
~*~
Honey Eater’s misery was complete.
She had been isolated in a mesquite-branch jacal with a fierce warrior—usually the Comanche called Big Tree, who spoke Cheyenne—always just outside the single entrance. She was completely cut off from Singing Bird and the rest. The only sign of them was an occasional cry from the jacal where the children were gathered together. Her eyes were swollen and red, now almost tearless, from so much crying.
She told herself, again, that she must stop this useless sobbing and look for a plan of action.
Was she not a Cheyenne woman? Was her tribe not known throughout the Great Plains as the Fighting Cheyenne? In her heart she knew that her tribe would not desert them. But neither would Chief Gray Thunder or the soldier troop leaders be willing to risk the entire tribe to save these prisoners. She could not merely wait and wring her hands, hoping for rescue. If she saw even the slightest chance of escaping and aiding the others, she must take it.
She told herself again that she must use every possible weapon. And she had already noticed how the two war leaders jealously watched each other when near her. Honey Eater would never disgrace herself, but she would risk much for her tribe.
The two war leaders made her shudder in fearful disgust. The Comanche had a hard, pinched face and eyes made mean from witnessing too much killing and brutality. The Kiowa, though much more handsome, was even more repugnant to her—perhaps because when his eyes went over her, they felt like brutal fingers inspecting meat.
But though both of them frightened and disgusted her, she was even more fearful of Big Tree. In his eyes was the same mad glint of those who had gone Wendigo.
She glanced warily toward the open doorway again. His legs were visible, as was part of his highly feared osage bow. Honey Eater turned away, but without meaning to, once again she found herself staring at a clump of scalps which had been cured, then dyed bright green, vermillion, and yellow and hung from the ceiling with a roadrunner skin.
Big Tree’s voice abruptly startled her.
“I wonder which will be the first one to come visit with our pretty prisoner?” he said in slow but clear Cheyenne. “Hairy Wolf or Iron Eyes
?”
As always she said nothing. But he did not expect her to speak. He knew she could understand him.
“The Mexicans down in the south country, they say, ‘Give the land to those who work it!’ I have ears for this. And I say, give the women to those who guard them.”
He laughed, but still she held her silence.
“You know, bob-tailed one, I have wondered a thing. These bucks who ride to save you. I wonder if the one I killed, the tall brave with the broad shoulders, was your husband?”
He had glanced inside as he said these words. A sly smile split his face when he saw her face drain white. Then he had guessed correctly! He decided to keep up the lie a bit, just for sport.
“He died hard, little one! My lance punched into him so hard that pink froth blew from his mouth. I carved out his eyes, and—”
“I have no ears for this!” she cried out, the first words she had spoken since begging for Singing Bird’s life.
Big Tree laughed again, watching a Comanche buck lead the Caddo woman toward the half-circle of grass before Iron Eyes’ jacal, where fire pits had been dug and stakes driven into the ground to facilitate torture sessions. His prisoner could not see her.
“You have no ears?” Big Tree said. “Good. Your god has smiled on you, then. Because once the sun goes to her resting place, one of your Cheyenne sisters will be making much noise.”
~*~
The Bluecoats had continued north, around the rim of the Blanco and toward Fort Union, after their enemy retreated into the safety of the canyon. Clearly, thought Touch the Sky, they had been concerned only with discouraging a large war party. Still, he was curious—he had seen Indian scouts with the palefaces, and they had probably identified the Cheyennes for their superiors. Why didn’t the soldiers investigate armed Cheyennes so far from their legal hunting grounds?