Flight of the Hawk: The Plains

by W. Michael Gear

  “I would trade her for that aitta he carries,” Dark Horse said casually, not signing. Perhaps in hopes of getting Gray Bear’s reaction before making sure Cunningham understood. “The Taipo can always take her and go back to the Great River to get another.”

  Gray Bear kept his expression neutral. “I don’t think Cunningham would trade his aitta for a woman.”

  The Taipo, who’d followed better than he let on, said, “Kai. No trade.”

  Dark Horse grinned. “Maybe you should take her for a couple of days. Put her in your lodge. Let her cook and keep your blankets warm. Then we can discuss this.”

  As Cunningham was considering this, Five Strikes appeared, his lathered horse splashing across the Pia’ogwe. The warrior, dressed in tailored deer hide, a buffalo cape over his shoulders, rode with his rifle held ready. The expression on his face looked even more grim than usual as he trotted up.

  Gray Bear rose, remembering the protestations as he demanded that his men take turns scouting the backtrail. It was, some had declared, winter. Any raiding parties would have returned to their villages.

  “What did you see?” Gray Bear demanded.

  Five Strikes worked his mouth, his eyes hard as he reined his brown-and-white-spotted horse in. “Taikwahni, you remember those Pa’kiani? The ones who killed our people? The ones we left on Pretty River? They follow our trail.” He jerked his head back the way he’d come. “Maybe fifteen of them. Same group. They still have some of the horses they took from us on the other side of the Red Fir Mountains. I figure they will camp on the Bad Water tonight. They will see our village by midday tomorrow at the latest.”

  Gray Bear nodded, his heart dropping like a stone in his chest.

  “Pa’kiani?” Dark Horse wondered. “At this time of year?”

  “How do you want to do this?” Cunningham asked. “Way I see it, with Dark Horse’s men, we’ve got close to twenty.”

  Gray Bear raised a hand to still any further comment. Chewing his lips, he thought about it. Considered the Pa’kiani’s guns. Thought about his own men, how they’d never fought with guns before.

  Glancing from Dark Horse to Cunningham, he said, “I think this camp is looking a bit shabby. Too colorless. I want our peoples to winter in the Ainga’honobita ogwebe.”

  “Do what?” Cunningham asked.

  “These Pa’kiani,” Dark Horse said, “They’ll just follow us over the pass, down into Red Canyon’s Creek.”

  Gray Bear nodded, a grim smile on his lips. “My friend, for whatever reason, these Pa’kiani have dedicated themselves to destroying us. Maybe it’s because Kestrel Wing drove an arrow into the war chief’s shoulder, maybe because we were kind enough to leave them a full camp of meat on the Pretty River. Who knows? But if we fight them here, meet them man to man, we will kill a great many of them. They will kill a great many of ours. I’m tired of having to cut off my hair.”

  “You have guns!” Dark Horse cried.

  Gray Bear smiled. “That’s why we’re running.”

  CHAPTER 36

  McKeever was riding alongside Stone Otter as he and the Arapaho crested the gentle summit of a long ridge and faced squarely into the west wind. It batted at his elk hide jacket, pulled at his long red hair, and caused him to squint.

  To the north rose the mass of the Big Horn Mountains, the slopes nothing like the near sheer wall he’d seen farther to the north, but gentler, rising hill after hill to a line of low peaks.

  The western horizon vanished in a series of broken ridges, the country rumpled, irregular, and cut with drainages. To McKeever’s mind, God might have taken a piece of paper and wadded it into a tight ball, then tried unsuccessfully to flatten it out again to achieve this kind of landscape.

  To the southeast, the familiar long, east-west trending mountain lay dark on the horizon. Broken land, buttes, and sandstone hogbacks extended west into a low range of sage and juniper-studded hills to his immediate south.

  From their windswept vantage point, the view was remarkable.

  McTavish and Aird, along with Wasichu, rode up beside them, the packhorses blowing from the climb.

  “Dear God,” McTavish said through a weary exhale, the wind whipping the words away, “there’s just more empty nothing.”

  “Doesn’t it ever end?” Joseph Aird asked. “How in the name of the almighty are we ever supposed to find this traitor out here? Look at this! He could be anywhere.”

  “Ye’ve a lack of faith, laddie,” McKeever told him. “According to Stone Otter, there be a . . .” He didn’t finish, following Stone Otter’s finger as the man pointed off to the south.

  Red Bear Man and Wide Crane had split off that morning, Red Bear Man to the south, Wide Crane to the north. Each of the Arapaho was cutting for sign, any evidence of Tylor’s party passing.

  Stone Otter had assured McKeever that Tylor would not have crossed the Big Horns, not with the snows as deep as they would be atop the passes. Instead—so the Arapaho claimed—Tylor’s party would skirt the southern flank of the mountains. Take the easier path on the way to whatever Shoshoni winter camp his band might be allied with.

  Following Stone Otter’s finger, he could see Red Bear Man atop his black-maned, dark-brown horse. And with him came yet another rider on a red horse. Even over the distance there was no mistaking: The second man was another Arapaho, his fringed winter coat blowing in the wind, his hair whipping.

  “Who do ye reckon?” McKeever wondered as he tucked his coat more tightly against the wind.

  “Hinon’ei,” Stone Otter told him. Then, through signs, added, “Black Lightning’s scout.”

  “Aye,” McKeever said. “From the village ye said was wintering on the Platte.”

  They waited as Red Bear Man and the Arapaho scout climbed to their position.

  Stone Otter rode forward, calling a greeting, laughing. The men clasped hands, chatting amiably in their heavily aspirated tongue.

  “Ye catch any of that?” McKeever asked Wasichu as he leaned on his saddlebow and tilted his head away from the wind.

  “Talk too fast,” Wasichu said. “No signing.”

  “What now?” McTavish asked as he shared a meaningful glace with Aird.

  That was one of the laddie’s weaknesses. He’d do anything to protect the younger man. Sell his soul. The shite thought he was responsible for the boy.

  Day by day, the two South West lads had grown ever more owly.

  I’d hate to have to kill ye, laddies, so please, don’t make me.

  McKeever wasn’t sure how it would play out in the end. Once Tylor’s head was his, the fastest way back to St. Louis would be via the Upper Missouri. If Robert Dickson had dispatched as many agents to the tribes as McTavish insisted he had, the river might well be British by the time Fenway was back on its shores. In that case, he’d need McTavish’s blessing. If, however, the river remained in American hands, he could offer up the British spies to Lisa, fair trade for passage back down the river.

  Be a shame to have to kill McTavish and Aird and lose that leverage.

  Now the Arapaho turned, the three riding back to where Mc-Keever waited.

  Stone Otter began signing and talking, Wasichu translating, “Black Lightning’s village is on the Platte in a bend in the river below the Black Mountain. They are watching and waiting. A party of Ni’otho, white men, have come from the west. There are seven of them. On foot. They have built a lodge of logs at the Red Buttes.”

  “White men?” McKeever wondered.

  “Probably Pacific Fur Company. Astorians,” McTavish said. “Wilson Price Hunt, perhaps? He came upriver last year. Last we heard, he left the Missouri and followed the Grand River west. Disappeared into the mountains headed for the mouth of the Columbia. But that was with a lot more men.”

  “These are your friends?” Stone Otter asked in signs, his face like a stone mask.

  “Enemies,” McKeever signed back. “Americans.”

  “Hi’theti,” Good. Stone Otter signed, “Black Li
ghtning is waiting. The Americans will starve. Then the Arapaho will have their guns, the things they carry.”

  The scout said something.

  Stone Otter, through signs, asked, “You would like to come with us? You have three good guns. You could lure the Ni’otho out. Then you could spend the winter with Black Lightning’s band.”

  “Aye.” And no doubt come spring, we’d be scalped and the Arapaho would have yet another three guns, including that fine Philip Bond rifle McTavish carries.

  Still, what if one of the men was Tylor? No telling but that the man could have run into a party of whites. While the man McKeever had known on the Missouri had kept to himself, he was still a social sort. The kind who read books, liked to talk. Had been right close to Baptiste Latoulipe. Maybe the wilderness hadn’t turned out to be as inviting as Tylor had hoped?

  Would it hurt to see? To ride down and at least scout out the whites? If they’d put up a log cabin to overwinter, it might be worth knowing who they were and what they were about.

  “How far to the Ni’otho?”

  “Two days’ ride.” Stone Otter pointed almost straight south. “Red Buttes there. On Platte.”

  “A’ho!” The cry carried on the wind.

  McKeever turned, staring north, searching the sage-blanketed ridge with its dips and rises until . . . Yes. There. Wide Crane’s buff-colored horse could be seen picking its way through the sagebrush. The man was coming at a fast clip.

  “Do these white men at Red Buttes have trade goods?” Mc-Keever asked.

  The question was proffered to the scout, who answered back, “No, they only have what they can carry on their backs and one old broken horse that is not worth the effort to steal.”

  By this time, Wide Crane was close enough to wave, calling, “Beni’i’ho!” over and over.

  “What is that?” McTavish asked, his wary gaze flicking from one Arapaho to the next.

  “Wide Crane is shouting, ‘I have found him,’ ” Wasichu translated. “He thinks he has found Tylor.”

  McKeever grinned, a feeling of warmth spreading through the chill the wind had imparted to his chest. “Now, see, laddie? It’s just like I told ye. A mon’s gotta have a little faith.”

  And to think he’d been so close to turning his steps south. He’d have missed Tylor completely.

  CHAPTER 37

  It came down to one horseshoe. That was all the evidence. In Dawson McTavish’s eyes, that made it about as flimsy as a pasteboard house. Hardly the thing to bet an entire venture on.

  By the time Black Lightning’s scout had departed, and Wide Crane had led them back to the narrow saddle at the base of the mountain, night had fallen, cold, windy, and bleak. They’d had to lay out camp in the sagebrush. Unsheltered from the wind.

  Had Dawson and Joseph not rolled their blankets together, he was sure they’d have frozen. Nor was there so much as a chance for a fire. The wind blew it away even as they got it going.

  Chalk it up to one of the most miserable nights he’d ever spent.

  Shivering, blowing in his hands to warm them, morning was just as wretched. Breakfast consisted of raw and stringy sun-jerked meat cut from a mule deer’s carcass that Red Bear Man had killed a couple of days earlier. Thirst was slaked from crusted snowdrifts where the tall sage was shadowed from the weak winter sun.

  Nevertheless, the line of tracks—made by four horses—led down into the headwaters of what Stone Otter called the Bad Water River.

  From the Arapaho’s careful inspection of the tracks, it was determined that two of the horses were ridden, and two, including the horse with the single right rear shoe, were pack animals.

  Dawson wasn’t sure how a person could tell, but having at least a modicum of ability as a tracker back in his home country, he assumed that the Arapaho were a lot better at the task than he was.

  Clouds were building in the west and north just beyond the Big Horns. The wind—cold to begin with—just got colder as Red Bear Man led the way, following the tracks down into the drainage that emptied off to the west.

  “Man and woman!” Wasichu translated Red Bear Man’s call as the Arapaho pulled up and leaped off his horse to point at the ground.

  There, in the sage, could be seen the scuffed tracks where a woman in moccasins had stepped down from her horse, squatted, and urinated. And a little beyond, a man had dismounted and spattered his water a pace beyond his moccasins.

  “Look!” Again Wasichu translated. “Snake. See the seam down the middle of the sole?”

  “Where’s the mon’s boots?” McKeever muttered where he sat his horse, his rifle across the saddle before him.

  “You knew him,” Dawson said. “What kind of shape were his boots in to start with?”

  “Aye, good thought, laddie. They was as worn oot as could be. Soles was splitting from the uppers. He must have traded fer moccasins.”

  “Or we’re following two Snake Indians on a wild hare’s chase,” Joseph muttered.

  “What aboot the horseshoe, laddie? Wasichu? Ye ever heard of a Snake Indian shoeing a horse?”

  “Why only one?” Dawson asked skeptically.

  “Only one to last this far from the river.” McKeever was staring off down the valley. “Wasichu, ask Red Bear Man how long?”

  The Arapaho pinched the urine-damp dirt, rubbing it between his fingers. “Dirt is frozen. Slightly dried.”

  “Last night,” Stone Otter declared.

  “We’re close,” McKeever said, his voice almost a hallowed whisper. “I’ve got ye, laddie.”

  McTavish resettled on his horse, easing his cold feet in the stirrups. He glanced up at the darkening sky, then stared down the long valley where it cut west at the base of the mountains. In the distance—like teeth across the storm-black western horizon—rose yet another mountain range, its high and snow-capped peaks eating at the storm clouds like some giant saw.

  “Shoshoni owns those mountains,” Wasichu told him, seeing where his gaze was focused. “According to the Arapaho, if we have to go that far, we probably won’t come back alive.”

  “Then let’s hope we don’t have to,” Dawson replied fervently. “Let’s hope that these tracks really belong to this Tylor, and that he and this woman traveling with him have decided to hole up and wait out this storm.”

  “And hope that we can catch them before it hits,” Joseph agreed, as he blew into his hands. “Otherwise, if we get caught in the open like we did last night? We’re going to end up so frozen the wolves will have to chew on us for years to get a full meal.”

  Dawson wanted it over. Damn it, he could feel the end coming. And somehow, he had to keep Joseph safe. Get the both of them out of this mess he’d caused.

  CHAPTER 38

  Gray Bear rode along the line as his people climbed up out of the Wind River’s basin, their way following the ancient trail that led up through a narrow valley in the Mumbich’ogwe untoyabi, or, in Shoshoni, the Owl Creek’s Mountains. The stone-littered drainage they rode up offered one of the few easily ascendible trails to a low pass that pierced the Owl Creeks’ southern flank.

  That didn’t lessen the seriousness of the situation. Moving a winter camp at a moment’s notice was a chancy thing. Especially with the storm that was brewing in the north. Each and every one of them knew the risks. From the wind, the feel of the air, this could either be a passing squall, or could be the forefront of a massive snowfall, howling blizzard, and subsequent drop in temperature that the people called, “the deep cold.” The kind of cold where horses froze on their feet, where a man could spit, and have it crackle into a ball the instant it hit the ground.

  Speed was everything. The people needed to make it over the summit and then down the other side to Red Canyon Creek in time to reach the springs where water, shelter, and fuel could be found. The lodges had to be set up, the supplies stored, and the horses attended to before the full wrath of the storm hit.

  As Moon Walker carried Gray Bear down the line of worried people, the taikwahni
called encouragement. “Hey, mother! You’re doing fine.” “Pine Nut, you look like First Woman with all those little children clinging to that horse of yours.” “Hey, Red Bird, summit’s not far.” “Just a little bit of a climb, and then we’ll be on the other side.”

  He kept his voice cheery as he sought to infect them with his optimism. But all it took was a glance overhead at the low black clouds scudding low across the slopes. Or the uncertainty of what was coming up the trail behind them.

  What was it about this band of Blackfeet? Why were they so driven? They’d harried Three Feathers’s original hunting expedition, essentially driven them out of the Powder River Basin, then doggedly pursued them down east of the Black Hills. After that victory a normal party of Blackfeet would have taken their captured horses, prisoners, and scalps back north. Would have celebrated their power, danced, and dispersed the captives and plunder among the people in their camp.

  Instead, for whatever reason, most of the warriors had been prowling north of the Black Hills, as if hunting specifically for Gray Bear’s band, anticipating their return from the east.

  “That’s it,” Gray Bear called as Otter Tail chided Single Cup to keep moving. “Keep together. We’ll make a warm and secure camp on the other side. Just a little longer.”

  He reined Moon Walker around, giving heel to the stubby horse, urging him up a deer trail that climbed through the sage to the rocky ridge top on the eastern side. From there he could look back in the fading light. The view was of the drainages, feather-patterned as they ran down from the foothills, across the basin, and became creeks that fed into the Pia’ogwe. The Big River’s course could be seen where the dark line of cottonwood trees stood out against the pale sage and buff-colored buttes and ridges.

  Back there, Five Strikes and the warrior known as Flat Finger were using their knowledge of the country to spy on the Blackfeet. Everything depended on what the enemy did next.