by Dean Owen
Simpson and Garrity still flanked the opening to the tent when Ellis came up to it. Simpson stood up and hooked his thumbs lightly over his gunbelt. “Stay right where you are, big boy. You ain’t allowed.”
Ellis stopped in his tracks. “You figurin’ on stoppin’ me?”
“I’m going to try,” Simpson said loudly. “If you get past me, Garrity will take over, and there’s nine more inside just like us. Now you figure it out.”
Ellis’s hand moved to his thigh and came up full of Colt, hammer back and rock-steady. Simpson had not even unhooked his thumbs. He stared at Ellis in amazement and raised his hands. Without being told to, Garrity raised his hands too. “I ain’t interested in the odds,” Ellis said coolly. “Just information. Is a man named Lefty Hayes inside?”
“Lefty?” Simpson glanced at Garrity. “Whatcha want with Lefty?”
“Answer the question!” Ellis rapped out.
“Lefty ain’t here, mister,” Garrity said. “He rode on west last week to Green River, but he’s expected back tonight.”
“Is he tellin’ me the truth?” Ellis demanded of Simpson.
“That’s the truth. You got a hassle with Lefty?”
“I have.”
“You going to have a shoot-out?”
“If he’ll stand up and face me, we will.” Ellis’s voice was hard.
“Lefty’ll do that, mister. Yes sir, if you’ll just gimme your name, I’ll tell Lefty you was lookin’ for him.”
“The name don’t matter,” Ellis said, putting his Colt away. “Just say Sky Rock. He’ll know.”
“Sky Rock. I’ll sure tell him,” Simpson said interestedly, and the moment that Nathan Ellis turned away, the two men hurried inside the tent and searched out Jeremy Watson.
* * * *
Liza Reeves strode up to Kelly. With a toss of her head she dismissed his thanks for her help during the past terrible moments. “When you figure you’ll be ridin’ out to look for Jake?”
Kelly pointed to the sweating men laboring to repair the track. “I can’t leave now, miss.”
“Then I’ll go,” Liza said with decision. “I don’t figure it’s likely that Jake ran into any trouble, mind you. It’s just that I ain’t seen him in a year and a half and I’m outa patience waitin’.”
“I wouldn’t, if I was in your place, miss,” Kelly said. “Of course, I haven’t had too much experience with Indians. But what little I’ve had’s taught me to be mighty wary.”
“You don’t need to fear none for me, mister. I don’t guess Jake did much talkin’ ’bout me, or you’d know I was raised with a doll made outa Cheyenne hair and cut my teeth on a Sioux arrowhead.” Her eyes glowed. “I got me some Sioux when they raided our place and orphaned me and Jake. Ol’ Jake got a lot of ’em too. We was buryin’ Sioux for two weeks afterward.” Then she added, “Jake was fourteen and me nine.”
“Where was that?”
“Up in the headwaters of the Little Missouri.”
“And you live up there alone?”
“I got me a coupla crippled-up Sioux that live with me. We sorta adopted each other when our folks was killed. Jake lit out when he was a youngun, wanted to go fight in the war for the Yankees. Then when he come back, he couldn’t be satisfied with trappin’ and huntin’ any more. And it didn’t look like he was gonna get him a woman that’d come live up there with him, so he came back down to Omaha and that’s where he hooked up with you, I reckon.” Her eyes wandered to the buffalo. “So I guess I’ll just get my horse and spread out west yonder till I find him.” She nodded. “I’m hungry for a talk with ol’ Jake.”
Kelly thought he saw concern in her eyes. “I had intended asking the general to send out a squad of troopers,” he lied.
Liza snorted. “And what would they see? They’d raise enough dust out yonder to warn the gophers they was comin’.”
“Well, I can’t stop you, Miss Reeves. And I can’t give you any information about where your brother might be at this time. The survey engineers and graders returned early this mornin’ and said they saw a fire about thirty miles west of the railhead. Thought it might be Jake.”
“At night?” Liza asked quickly.
“Yes, I guess so.”
Her eyes flashed. “Then it wasn’t Jake,” she said tonelessly. “He’d know better than to set a fire on the plains. Any good scout would know that. Give his position and presence away. I better get out and start huntin’.” She was turning to leave just as Nathan Ellis strode up.
“My man won’t be around until tonight, Kelly,” he said, watching Liza. “So I guess I’ll just take a little look out there beyond that buffalo a ways. If Goose Face is around here, I’d like to have a try at him. Him and his party killed two good friends of mine.”
“I’ll ride with you,” Liza said.
“Where can I get a good pony, Kelly?” Ellis ignored her. “I don’t like to ride scout unless I got an animal that can run for me.”
“Take mine, lad. The Jehu in my tent will give you what you need,” Kelly said eagerly. “And consider yourself on the payroll of the Union Pacific Railroad, as of this minute.”
“You heard what I said,” Liza Reeves insisted. “I said I was ridin’ with you.”
Ellis turned his back on her and drawled to Kelly, “I don’t want no pay. I ain’t got much to do until Lefty shows up tonight, anyhow, and if I can help get Goose Face, why, I’d consider that a good turn all around.”
Kelly’s eyes began to twinkle as he saw how Liza Reeves flushed with anger.
“You got any objections to my ridin’ with you?” she demanded.
“Why no, ma’am,” Ellis said elaborately. “If you got a good animal under you and want to keep me company, why, I’d welcome it.”
“I got the best critter outa the whole Dakotas.”
“I guess you have got a good walkin’ horse.” Ellis grinned. “Trottin’ down from the Missouri country like you did.”
“Walkin horse!” Liza Reeves exploded. “My critter will run dog-legged anything you could straddle!”
“Now I’d like to see somethin’ that swift, wouldn’t you, Mr. Kelly?”
Kelly indicated that he wanted none of it, and turned his attention to the laboring Johnny-Jacks and bellowed a command.
“You figure to let me see this spirited horse before we ride outa camp?”
Liza Reeves stamped off in the direction of Kelly’s tent. Ellis followed with a wink at the grinning Irishman.
Kelly’s Jehu had saddled a big roan stallion for Ellis and now the tall Texan followed a very angry Liza Reeves.
“There he is,” Liza said, pointing to a sturdy gray.
Ellis frowned, and then shrugged. “Well, ma’am, it’s a horse.”
Liza Reeves clenched her teeth and strode to her horse and slapped its flank. Without glancing at Ellis, she threw the brightly colored saddle blanket across the gray’s back, swung the heavy saddle up and reached under the animal’s belly for the cinch straps.
“You better let me pull that up for you, miss,” Ellis said agreeably.
“I can do it,” she grunted.
Ellis elbowed his way closer to the horse and took the cinch strap from her. He pulled and forked it in. “There you are.”
He turned to the stallion and swung lightly into the saddle. “Let’s go,” he said, and turned his mount west through the tents.
Liza Reeves swung into the saddle and lightly put her spurs to the gray. The gray bucked straight up, twisted, and threw her into the mud. Liza looked at her horse as if the beast had suddenly gone mad. She remounted, and as soon as her weight settled on the gray’s back, it bucked with all four legs and threw her again.
She rose, wary now, and tried to coax the gray closer so that she could reach the reins. Then she saw the sand Sticker on the underside of the blanket.
“That no-good, low-down, crawlin’ Texan!” Liza Reeves said hoarsely. “I’ll get him—”
And she tried, with the help of the grinning Jehu, to calm her snorting gray.
* * * *
By now Goose Face had maneuvered to the north of the railhead with his party, and, like the good warrior he was, had cut back to the south alone to check the position of the buffalo herd and the progress of the railhead, and to learn the reason for the explosion earlier.
He saw the devastation caused by the powder car, and he saw the quick work being done to repair it. Then something else caught his eye. A lone rider had struck to the west, riding hard and fast across the flat grass country, his big roan kicking up the dust and leaving a trail high and heavy in the noonday sun.
His second group of braves would take care of that rider, Goose Face thought confidently, and swung his pony back toward his main group. Nothing had changed. The long beards would die in great numbers on their Sad-a-day feast, and he, Soft-and-Running-Deer, would repay in part for the slaughter of his people on the edges of Sandy Creek.
CHAPTER THREE
Once well away from the railhead, Ellis swung south of the great herd of buffalo and loped steadily down in the direction of the ridge country of the South Platte. He rode with his head bowed before the high sun, legs loose and out of the stirrups. Now and then he swung a leg over the saddlehorn as a rider does who has covered a great distance, or is in no hurry to make time across the summer-hot plains.
All the while he scanned the horizon for signs of life—Cheyenne life—turning occasionally to cover his trail, eyes steady for the dust cloud that would indicate another rider.
He topped a rise and dropped into a draw, got off his pony and sat cross-legged in its shadow. He rolled a cigarette and stared moodily before him, his short, breech-loading carbine across his lap.
He finished the cigarette, stood up and remounted. He pulled the roan back up the dry wash bed and moved on up to a swell of sand hills and stared back over his trail from the railhead. He watched the rim of the horizon for ten minutes, scanning a full circle, then abruptly whipped the stallion around with a jerk and pounded back into the draw and toward the buffalo herd, but well west of it now. The roan’s hoofs kicked up dust in a high, billowing cloud, but Ellis didn’t care, for he knew that there was nothing behind him.
* * * *
As a boy Ellis had drifted with the buffalo hunters up from the Texas Panhandle, and he knew the simple greed of the Cheyenne when in close proximity to buffalo. Indeed, the desire for a bloody cut of under-belly from a young buffalo calf, or a chunk from the small hump behind the beast’s neck, was known to any man who had ever cut the spine of a buffalo and butchered him on the spot. Ellis was counting on the nearness of the herd to draw the followers of Goose Face out into the open, if they were near. If there were a hundred and twenty of them, Ellis reasoned, there would be some mighty hungry Indians staring down at the herd. And Goose Face would have to be a mighty tough Cheyenne with much strong medicine to keep them from trying for the bloody guts of an eighteen-hundred-pound bull animal. For when the buffalo was near and in great quantities, the plains Indians had food, clothing and shelter. They did not plant corn as did the tribes to the east that lived near the Missouri. Many of the western nomadic tribes believed the greatest medicine was the skin of a white buffalo. With this powerful culture working on his side, Ellis was sure that, one way or another, the Cheyenne following Goose Face would ride against the herd, or work downwind of it and try for a straggler with arrow or rifle.
Nathan Ellis had loved this big country since the first day he had stood in stupefaction and awe before the eight-hundred-foot height of Scotts Bluff hanging over the Platte. Here was country a boy could love, in which he could grow into a man feeling part of it, and watch his children grow into men. Often Nathan Ellis found himself in sympathy with the red men who had had this great world all to themselves, as a garden of paradise to range over and live in. No wonder they fell back on the bitterest savagery to resist having it wrested from them.
Ellis had ridden in a wide semi-circle, appreciative of Kelly’s strong, tireless roan, when he stopped, suddenly, with a sharp tug at the hand lines.
He stood in the middle of a flat bed of grass that brushed the belly of the stallion, about three thousand yards away from the nearest sand spur. “Steady, hoss,” he said softly, patting the animal on the neck. “Somethin’s stirrin’ round here.”
The roan settled, though Ellis felt the animal quiver along the spine. He strained his ears to pick up some sound, but could hear nothing.
He kneed the animal in the ribs gently and clucked his tongue, head and eyes moving constantly. The grass rippled around the roan’s shanks, and then Ellis slipped out of the saddle and moved expertly and quickly in the direction of a sandy hillock. At five hundred yards from the rise, he dropped to his knees and went forward on all fours, slinking the carbine alongside of him. All but hidden in the tall, swaying grass, he inched to the top of the spur.
Parting the grass with the barrel of his carbine, Ellis lay flat on his belly and grinned down at the scene below him. Three Cheyenne were spread downwind of a huge buffalo bull and were now making signs as to how they should attack. One of them had a muzzle loader with a barrel nearly four feet long and was hurriedly dumping powder into the pan. The other Indians watched the armed brave pull the hammer back gently. Ellis could see them holding their breaths when the cocking broke the silence.
The old bull raised his head and turned to stare at them, not actually seeing them, but curious about the click. Then he dropped his head and continued nuzzling the long grass.
The other two braves moved quickly, strung arrows in curved bone bows and set themselves. At a signal that Ellis did not see, the armed brave stood up, took steady and careful aim and fired.
The bull raised his head unhurriedly and stared at the noise and at the Standing man.
One of the braves rose and shot an arrow. The bull decided on the Indian with the gun and charged.
Quickly the third brave stood up and threw an arrow. He caught the bull in the right foreflank, but the beast continued to come as if unharmed. Now Ellis saw the gaping wound in the buffalo’s neck. The brave with the gun had tried for a brain shot behind the ear and had missed.
The first bowman ran in close, ten feet away from the charging beast, and fired an arrow at an angle designed to reach the heart.
He must have missed because the buffalo caught the brave with the gun in the belly with his horns and ripped him open. The Indian spun away, holding his spilling guts, and staggered several feet before he stopped, reeled and dropped in the grass.
The bull, head down, charged for the finish, but the bowmen had restrung. They moved in broadside and fired their shafts, again behind the flank and aiming for the heart.
The bull jerked sideways, stumbled cross-legged and nearly fell. Then, spread-legged, he charged again.
Ellis watched it all—the grim struggle of the bull and the plains Indians who had to kill him in order to live. He had seen it enacted a hundred times before. He found himself breathing hard, rooting for both sides at once—for the magnificent old bull, stupid with strength, and for the lithe, swift braves.
A second brave went down from the buffalo’s charging horns, but the bull was weak and nearly gone. The third brave moved around to the other side of the animal to drive home a lance, and Ellis saw at once that it was a fatal mistake.
The brave steadied himself and raised the lance. The bull swung his head in a semi-circle, sweeping up, not to attack so much as to see where his adversary was. His horns caught the brave in the thigh, laying him open up to the hip. Even from the rise, Ellis could see the white of the exposed thigh bone.
The brave dropped the lance and fell back. Then, with tottering strength, the bull turned awkwardly and moved to gore the wounded I
ndian. He missed with his head and staggered forward. As he staggered, he pushed out a foreleg for balance. The hoof and six inches of the bull’s shank disappeared into the chest cavity of the fallen brave. The brave screamed, pinned to the ground by the buffalo’s hoof, and then he relaxed in death.
The buffalo spread his legs trying to keep his balance, and Ellis could see the knuckle joints quiver as the strength ebbed out of the huge black beast.
The bull sagged to his forejoints, then rolled over on top of two of his attackers.
The whole encounter had lasted not more than three minutes.
Ellis lay perfectly still to see if the gunshot would bring anyone, before returning to his pony. The animal had been well trained. It had not moved out of its tracks.
Riding over the crest of the sand spur, Ellis dropped down onto the plains and gentled his roan when the animal smelled the blood. Dismounting, Ellis examined each dead brave closely and confirmed what he had suspected. They were Cheyenne, all right, but their leggings and moccasins were very old and ragged. It had been a long time since these braves had returned to their lodges where their squaws would have new ones waiting for them.
Ellis looked around carefully for the ponies of the dead braves, but he saw nothing. That could only mean one thing: other braves would be returning for them. The attempted kill of the old bull, the biggest buffalo Ellis had ever seen, must have been planned, with riders dropping off their horses some distance away and coming up, down-wind of the beast, on foot.
There was a moan, a low wail and Ellis spun around, his Colt ready. One of the braves was still alive. Ellis moved among them and saw that it was the first of the three, still holding his stomach. Ellis pulled his knife to cut the brave’s throat as an act of mercy. Then he stopped short.
When the others came after these three, it would be plain that one of them had been slit, and not by the old bull. If Ellis had any hope of trailing the new arrivals back to Goose Face’s camp, he would have to let this brave writhe in pain and die in agony out here on the plains.