by Judd Cole
“Wait here, little brother,” Arrow Keeper said, rising with a popping of stiff kneecaps. “I must speak with someone.”
His mind a riot of troubled thoughts, Arrow Keeper headed across the central camp clearing toward Touch the Sky’s tipi. He pulled up short when he viewed the tense scene which awaited him. Touch the Sky and Little Horse stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Touch the Sky’s tipi. Facing them, hands on their knives, were Black Elk, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, and Swift Canoe.
“Cousin, I for one am weary of this bloodless sparring,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was saying, moving a step closer. “This make-believe Cheyenne would rut with your squaw! I say we make maggot fodder of him now!”
There was a quicksilver glint in the firelight when Wolf Who Hunts Smiling slid the polished obsidian blade of his knife from its sheath. His companions too drew their weapons.
“Then close the gap!” Touch the Sky said, his knife leaping into his fist.
Little Horse too drew his blade. “I am for you!”
“Hold! I command it in the name of the Arrows!”
Arrow Keeper’s voice was cracked and old, but carried the stern authority of age and wisdom. All five braves stared at him. One glance at the scene had convinced Arrow Keeper that his decision to send Touch the Sky north was the right one.
“You three,” he said, his hatchet-sharp profile directed at Black Elk and his companions. “Return to your clan circles!”
But Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s blood was up to kill this white man’s Indian who had cost him his coup feathers. More and more he had been openly challenging Arrow Keeper’s authority.
“This old one has grown doting in his frosted years!” he said scornfully. “His brain is soft with age.”
Black Elk, however, recalled the many times that Arrow Keeper’s medicine had blessed his war bonnet and shield.
“Cease this unmanly disrespect, cousin, and do as your Cheyenne elder commanded! In good time we will settle with Woman Face.”
After they had left, Arrow Keeper turned to Touch the Sky and Little Horse.
“You two. Ready your battle rigs and equip yourselves for a long ride. But keep your preparations secret. I want no one in the tribe to know that I have sent you north on a dangerous mission.”
Chapter Two
The Milk River Stage and Freighting Line operated the only stagecoach service between the Bear Paw Mountains of northern Montana and Fort Buford in the remote Dakota Territory.
The desolate stretch between Fort Randall and Birch Coulee was especially treacherous. In the higher elevations, rock slides occasionally wiped out the wagon road; below on the plains, sudden downpours could mire the wheels up to the axles in minutes. There was also the constant threat of Indian attack.
Jeanette Lofley knew all of this very well because her husband, Colonel Orrin Lofley, was the commanding officer at lonely Fort Randall. He had finally agreed, reluctantly, to send for her despite the considerable dangers of the long journey in this far-north country. The War Department had recently notified him he was being kept at Fort Randall for another two years. Upon learning this, Jeanette told him bluntly she would rather be a widow than an Army wife. It was she who’d insisted on her leaving Michigan to join him.
But now, watching the seamed bottom of a steep canyon slide by just a few feet to the right of their narrow, twisting trail, she missed the placid shores of Lake Erie.
She was a pretty, dark-haired woman of perhaps thirty, her pale and serious face still unlined. She shared the six-passenger coach with a portly, bald-headed major named Carmichael— an administrative officer returning to Fort Randall after temporary duty in the Dakota region—and two civilian cattlemen headed for the railroad spur at Milk River.
“We’re nosing into the rough stretch now,” said one of the cattlemen, a lanky, rawboned man named Legget. “This next twenty miles is where the last two attacks took place.”
“What gripes me,” said Starret, his companion, “is how the Army buckles under to the Indian lovers in Congress. They just sit back and let the redskins rule the roost hereabouts. Blackfeet, Mandans, now Cheyennes. My wranglers know this north country. They ain’t too eager to push beef through it. I have to double their wages once we cross the Yellowstone.”
The officer named Carmichael frowned. “It’s no use to blame the Army. You can blame that goddamned—excuse me, ma’am—you can blame the Fort Laramie Treaty. That’s what ties the Army’s hands hereabouts. According to that treaty, whites are to punish white criminals, Indians are to punish Indian criminals. The Army has no legal jurisdiction against aboriginals on the road through Indian country. That’s why Colonel Lofley can’t even send out a detachment to protect his own wife.”
“Blamed fool treaty,” Legget said.
“I’ll grant that, sir. The Army doesn’t like it either. You can thank the Quakers back East for it, what with all their Noble Red Man and brotherly love claptrap.”
“What’s that?” Starret said, craning his neck out the window on his side.
Legget paled a bit, then stuck his head out too. “Where?”
Starret caught Jeanette’s eye and winked. “Oh, I reckon it’s just a stand of trees. I thought maybe it was a group of Indians.”
Starret chuckled as his friend frowned and shot him a disgusted look. “Don’t be playing the larks with me like that, Jim. It ain’t funny.”
“Well anyway,” Carmichael said, again letting his gaze fall to the creamy white skin at the neck of Jeanette’s shirtwaist. “Even if the colonel couldn’t provide a detachment of guards, he did the next best thing. The man riding shotgun is named Jay Maddox, and he’s a sharpshooter from Fort Randall. He can shatter a shaving mirror at five hundred yards, shooting over his shoulder.”
Jeanette gripped the pleated leather armrest as the stage shifted to climb a steep incline. She heard the steady jangle of the traces, the driver cursing the team and lashing them with his light sisal whip. The coach was equipped with iron springs and leather braces, but still jolted and bounced roughly on the rock-strewn trail. Behind, the boot was stuffed with luggage. Overhead, the iron-reinforced security box was lashed tight to the roof. It contained a gold shipment bound for the huge trading post at Pike’s Fork.
By standing agreement, the only people who knew when such shipments were coming were the traders at Pike’s Fork, Colonel Lofley and his immediate staff, and the men at the stage line. Despite recent Indian attacks, it was generally believed that red men this far north had no concept yet of the value of gold. The colonel had explained all this carefully to Jeanette. But still she glanced nervously to right and left, suspicious of every cloud shadow or hidden gulch.
“No need to fret, ma’am,” Major Carmichael said deferentially, taking her slim white hand between his own pudgy fists to pat it reassuringly. “Young Corporal Maddox is the pride of the Army. And as you can see, I’m armed too. You’re well protected.”
Legget opened his linsey suit coat to reveal a six-shot pin-fire revolver in a leather holster over his right hip.
“Made for me special-order in Philadelphia,” he boasted. “There’s a fold-away knife blade under the barrel. You can—”
“What the hell?” Starret said, his face stiffening with fear as he stared toward the rimrock overhead.
“Jim,” Legget said, “Don’t wear it out. I like your barroom josh as well as the next fellow. But there’s a lady with us now, and you—”
Jeanette watched Starret flinch violently. A moment later she heard an insignificant little popping sound. Not until Starret flopped back in his seat, a neat hole in the middle of his forehead, did she realize the popping sound was gunfire sounding a heartbeat after the slug’s impact.
“Good God a-gorry!” Legget said, even as a geyser of blood spurted from his friend’s forehead and splashed Legget’s coat.
“Hi-ya! Hiii-ya!”
Hearing the fierce, shrill cries from without, Major Carmichael shouted, “That’s the Cheyenne w
ar cry! Christ on a crutch, we’re being attacked by Cheyennes!”
Now it was clear to all that the Indians had picked a perfect place to attack from above. The stagecoach was halfway up a steep rise, the team laboring in the traces. Perpendicular walls of smooth mica on both sides of the trail kept the passengers from getting a clear aim from inside.
“Gee up!” the frightened driver called out, lashing his team to a frenzy. “Haw, gee up!”
More gunfire sounded from above, and Jeanette heard the slugs thwacking into the japanned wood of the coach. She heard the sharp, precision crack of Maddox’s carbine, once, twice; then abruptly his weapon fell silent and a body slumped past the window. Jeanette watched, horrified, as the seriously wounded young sharpshooter lost his hold on the box and fell directly in the path of the right front wheel. It snapped his spine like a dry twig, the coach momentarily jolting as it rolled over him.
Another flurry of slugs, and she heard the driver cry out. Major Carmichael, his soft face as pale as alkali dust, made no move to draw his Army .44. Legget had his pin-fire revolver in his hand but could spot no target.
“We’re being attacked!” Carmichael repeated uselessly, almost blubbering. “Cheyennes! We’re being attacked! Maddox is dead, we’re being attacked—”
“Shut up, you fat, white-livered coward and draw steel!” Legget growled. “Ma’am, you get the hell down!”
His warning came too late. The next flurry of slugs ripped into the leather seats, and Jeanette felt a white-hot crease of pain in her left side.
“She’s been hit!” Legget shouted to Carmichael even as Jeanette almost fainted. “Tend to her!”
But the blubbering major ignored her. “Maddox is dead!” he said. “Oh, sweet Jesus, Maddox is dead, Cheyennes killed him!”
~*~
“You talk too damn much,” Woodrow Denton said.
The man he spoke to was called Lumpy because of a huge goiter distending the side of his neck.
“The hell you mean, Woody? I swear by the twin balls o’ Napoleon I ain’t opened my mouth onc’t since we vamoosed with the swag!”
“I mean during the holdup, you fool. You’re spozed to be an Indian. Indians don’t talk so damn much.”
Denton, Lumpy, and four other men nearly filled the single room of a run-down shack. It was hidden high on a remote ridge well behind Fort Randall. One of the men was a cavalry captain in full field uniform. The rest were all dressed as Northern Cheyenne braves. Their authentic masquerade included horse-hair “braids” and skin darkened by berry juice.
“What the hell,” Lumpy told his leader. “Don’t I toss in plenty of Cheyenne words? Anyway, it was your big idea, seein’ as how I can palaver a little Cheyenne, that I should do the talking.”
“You’re spozed to sound like a Cheyenne that speaks a little English. That means plenty of grunts and baby talk. Hell, soon as you opened your mouth that woman stared at you like she twigged the whole game.”
“She didn’t twig a damn thing. She had other problems,” Lumpy said. “Hell, she was bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”
When he heard this, the cavalry officer’s jaw slacked open in astonished disbelief. He had been perched on the edge of a deal table, portioning out piles of gold dust while the others spoke. Now he slowly laid down a chamois pouch he was filling and rose from the table. He was big and powerfully built, with blunt features and a permanent sneer of cold command.
“You shot Jeanette Lofley?” Captain Seth Carlson demanded. “It wasn’t enough you killed the guard and a passenger? One of you idiotic, horseshit-for-brains morons also shot the Old Man’s wife?”
“Don’t get all your pennies in a bunch,” Denton said. “It was an accident, is all. We had to spray ’em good with lead before the driver and all the passengers would throw down their irons. She just got in front of a stray round, is all.”
“Is all? You fools! I’m the one in charge of the new mountain company. These Indians are my direct responsibility. Why do you think I know about all the shipments? You know damn well the treaty outlaws military patrols along the wagon road, but not elsewhere. Until now the Old Man’s been more or less content with my progress in hunting down Shoots Left Handed’s band. Now that you’ve shot his wife, he’s going to want Cheyenne guts for garters. Did you kill her?”
Denton shrugged, looking ridiculous now that he had removed his bonnet and fake braids. The berry dye stopped where his bald white head took over.
“Hard to tell. I couldn’t see if she was gut-shot or caught one in the cage.”
Everyone there knew what he meant. A gut shot would bleed internally. This far from civilization, such wounds were often fatal. A shot to the rib cage bled less and was usually easier to survive.
“If she dies,” Carlson said, “you can put this down in your book—our little gold mine has just run dry. Lofley knows he doesn’t stand a chance of making the general’s list, so he’s not exactly champing at the bit to fight savages. But he dotes on his wife. Even if she doesn’t die, he won’t rest until every Cheyenne in this region has been hunted down. That means more pressure on me.”
“What I don’t get,” Denton said, “is why it’s so all-fired important to you to pin this on Cheyennes? Most of them are concentrated down around the Powder and the Rosebud. It’d be more sensible-like to hang it on Blackfeet or Mandans. Then you could just kill off a few to show their scalps to your boss, tell him you got the renegades.”
Carlson frowned impatiently. “Think about it. There’s thousands of Blackfeet in this area, fewer than two hundred Cheyennes. What happens if you’re a Blackfoot warrior and you hear somebody is dressing up like your tribe to rob whites? You go on the warpath. This Cheyenne band is too weak.”
All this was true. But neither Denton nor any of the hardcases riding for him knew the secret history of Carlson’s one-man war against the Cheyenne nation. Indeed, they knew nothing of the humiliating debacle which had sent him to this godforsaken outpost.
It had begun years earlier, at Fort Bates in the Wyoming Territory. While still a shavetail lieutenant, he had fallen in love with Kristen, daughter of the wealthy mustang rancher Hiram Steele. Then he had discovered, about the same time Hiram did, that Kristen was meeting secretly with Matthew Hanchon—a full-blooded Cheyenne in spite of his white name.
Enraged, Hiram Steele ordered one of his wranglers to savagely beat Hanchon. And Hanchon was warned he would be killed if he ever met with the girl again. But Carlson took no chances. He looked the youth up on his own and warned him: Either Matthew left the territory for good, or his white parents’ lucrative contract with Fort Bates went to another mercantile.
The plan worked. Then everything went to hell in a hay wagon. Hiram Steele went on to drive the Hanchons out of their mercantile business. When they sold out and started a mustang spread, Steele decided to run them off with Carlson’s help. What they hadn’t counted on was Matthew Hanchon’s return as a Cheyenne warrior.
Even now, just thinking about what had happened made Carlson’s face flush warm with shame and anger. Hanchon had humiliated him at every turn! While attacking the buck on the open plains, the officer’s horse had stepped into a prairie-dog hole and thrown Carlson ass-over-applecart in front of all his men. Then the buck and his renegade companion had whipped Carlson and three men from the dragoons, thwarting the effort to drive the Hanchons from their spread. Worse yet, a subsequent investigation had turned up Carlson’s falsified reconnaissance reports designed to create an “Indian menace.” As punishment, he’d been sent to this northern hellhole where, in winter, piss froze before it hit the ground.
Denton had watched Carlson’s face closely. Now he shook his head and said, “Whatever you say, trooper. ’Pears to me, though, you’re nursin’ a grudge agin the Cheyenne.”
“Well, iffen he is,” Lumpy said, fingering his goiter and eagerly watching Carlson fill another pouch with gold dust, “he’s got a perfect job for grinding axes.”
Carlson commanded a
new mountain company which represented the U.S. Army’s latest Indian-fighting strategy. Hitherto the Army had tried to engage the savages in combat on the plains. But this had proved suicidal. By warm weather the new grass left Indian ponies strong and agile, and they could cover up to seventy miles a day relying on water holes known only to them. Once they fled into the mountains, there was no finding them. The Army’s response was to equip smaller, lighter, faster units for high-altitude fighting and hunt the Indians down, concentrating massive firepower on them and exterminating them without allowing surrender or taking prisoners.
“Maybe he has,” Denton said, “but so far ol’ Shoots Left Handed has slipped through his fingers slicker ’n grease through a goose, ain’t that the straight?”
Denton’s mocking tone irritated Carlson. The man looked like a sinister clown, his face painted dark beneath the fish-belly white of his pate. He was scum, and Carlson would gladly air him in a minute if he weren’t so useful. And one glance around at his filthy companions, all hardcases on the prod, reminded him that only Denton could control these animals.
“So far he has,” Carlson admitted. “But time is a bird, my friend, and the bird is on the wing.”
Chapter Three
For three full sleeps Touch the Sky and Little Horse rode hard, bearing north toward the Always Star and the Land of the Grandmother.
The sacred Black Hills constantly behind their left shoulder, they forded the Little Bighorn, the Bighorn, and the Yellowstone. Following Arrow Keeper’s urgent instructions, they pushed their mounts to the limits of endurance. Cottonwood groves and open, rolling plains slowly gave way to towering evergreen forests and deep coulees still moist with snow runoff. Fortunately, water and lush grass were plentiful. On the third day, the Bear Paw Mountains loomed up on the distant horizon.