by Judd Cole
From outside the shack, Omensetter’s voice called, “Look sharp, fellahs! Somebody’s comin’!”
“Shit,” Denton said, suddenly all business. “You two,” he said to Lumpy and the man named Noonan, “stay inside with the plews. Anybody comes through that door, you don’t know their face—bust caps. You, Bell, come on out with me.”
“It’s Carlson!” Omensetter added.
“Worse luck!” Denton said. “The hell’s he doing back so soon? He’s spozed to be sendin’ Injuns to the Happy Hunting Ground. If he’s been to the fort and heard about that last raid, we can stand by for a blast.”
Despite his bluff talk earlier, Denton feared Carlson’s temper and didn’t want him to know about that last strike just yet—not while this shack was full of plews. For one thing, Carlson would insist on dividing the profits up six ways himself—whereas Denton had plans to pull stakes and rabbit with the entire amount.
“All right,” Denton said, changing his plan. “We’ll all get the hell out of the shack now. We were just leaving, is all, after having us a little fun with a Mandan squaw, unnerstand? Let me do the talking.”
Carlson had ridden about halfway up the watershed clearing when he spotted Denton and his gang, just now mounting. He hailed them, roweling his mount and riding quickly up to meet them.
“There you are!” he said, clearly impatient from searching for them. “I’m glad I found you, but what’re you doing here? I told you not to come around here unless we had a job to pull.”
His words secretly reassured Denton. The officer must not have heard about that last raid yet.
“Ahh, you know how it is, Soldier Blue.” Denton winked. “Me’n the boys here, we was just plantin’ carrots in a little Mandan gal. She give all five of us a little fofaraw just for a half bottle of liquor. Too bad you wasn’t here, coulda drained your snake.”
Carlson wrinkled his face in disgust. The notoriously promiscuous Mandan women were known for being venereal-tainted. But obviously he had something more pressing on his mind than the morality of heathen women.
“The hell you doing in these parts?” Denton said. “I thought you was up in the Bear Paws giving grief to the red Arabs.”
Irritation sparked in Carlson’s eyes as Denton’s remark forced him to relive the humiliating debacle of that raid on the false Cheyenne camp. Badly shaken, encumbered by wounded, his unit had deployed back to their field camp at the Milk River. The wounded had been transported back to Fort Randall. But Carlson refused to ride back through those gates himself until that Cheyenne camp—and now, Matthew Hanchon—were reduced to a bad memory.
There was one serious problem: manpower.
The botched assault had resulted in a dozen deaths and as many wounded in the Army ranks. The men were demoralized and nervous about returning to finish the job when the unit wasn’t up to strength. But Carlson wasn’t about to return to Fort Randall and request replacements. That meant also explaining how he’d ended up with a dozen men dead yet no enemy scalps.
“I want to hire all five of you,” Carlson announced bluntly. “To help my unit kill Cheyennes. I’ll pay you in good color. You know I’m good for the dust. You helped me earn it.”
This took Denton by surprise, as did the sudden urgency of Carlson’s tone. He had been about to laugh at the crazy suggestion. Now he thought better of it.
Why not? he thought. Why the hell not? Clearly Carlson had not been back to the fort and didn’t want to return yet. The longer he put it off, the better for Denton. At least until that shack was empty again. Besides, this was a chance to make some more money while getting a little target practice in.
“Maybe. We talking rough weather ahead?” Denton asked.
“Only for the Cheyennes. For us, it’ll be a turkey shoot.”
“Well, if that’s so, how’s come you need us?”
“The more the merrier. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Denton studied the officer closely, noting the obsessed glaze to his eyes. This was a man on a personal vendetta. He wanted to kill some poor unlucky sonofabitch with a desire as intense as hell-thirst. He was so eager to kill him, in fact, that he was taking out insurance by adding mercenaries to his regulars.
Carlson pulled a fat chamois pouch out of his tunic. It was heavy with gold dust. “How about it? This one here’s got brothers back in my quarters.”
Denton stroked his chin, eyeing the gold. “What say, boys? Do we let daylight into some Innuns?”
One by one, they all nodded.
“Captain,” Denton said, “’pears to me you just enlisted five more Injun killers!”
~*~
The victory over the paleface soldiers was sweet and heartened Shoots Left Handed’s people. But the Cheyennes did not boast, as Indians do after a victory.
True, they had captured a few carbines and now had more rifles. But the false-camp ruse was only a way of adding a little length to the tether, not a decisive victory. The soldiers would be back, vengeance on their minds, and they would not fall for that trick again. Touch the Sky and Little Horse knew it as well as everyone else in the tribe. Next time the Bluecoat death company would know right where to attack, and the tipis wouldn’t be empty.
Despite this grim truth, Touch the Sky’s successful ploy had at least raised his status as a warrior in the eyes of the rest, if not as a shaman. Though they said little openly, Pawnee Killer, White Plume, Chief Shoots Left Handed, and the rest had decided that Arrow Keeper had picked a competent enough brave to send—only, the old man had erred in his judgment that the youth’s medicine was strong.
Therefore, intent on preparing for the battle of their lives, most of them ignored Touch the Sky when they realized he was once again invoking magic to protect the tribe.
The decision had come to Touch the Sky while talking with Little Horse in their tipi. They had returned from the raid on the false camp and Touch the Sky had applied a fresh willow-bark dressing to his friend’s wound.
“Brother,” Little Horse said, “I saw Carlson’s face during the attack. I swear by the sun and the earth I live on, it was like beholding the face of the Wendigo! He is crazy-by-thunder and lives to kill Cheyennes. Those guns that spit many bullets, the flaming arrows that explode—this power in the hands of such an insane hair-face frightens me.”
“There is no place to run now, buck, and as you say, this Carlson lives and breathes to make sure we do not. This next attack, it will be the last one needed.”
“We have renewed the Arrows,” Little Horse said. “We have left our sacrifices. There is no more medicine to help us, brother.”
But Touch the Sky was silent at this, recalling something Arrow Keeper had told him once during a sojourn to Medicine Lake. There was a special prayer-offering ceremony which was seldom invoked because it was so grueling for the shaman. It was known as the Iron Shirt Song, and its medicine was said to be the most powerful that a shaman could conjure up. If successful, it could turn enemy bullets to sand or make them fly wide.
Tragically, however, the price of failure was the death of the shaman. And very seldom—almost never, Arrow Keeper insisted—did the ceremony succeed. And even when it did succeed, this could only happen after great suffering on the part of the medicine man.
But it had come down to this, finally, and Touch the Sky realized: This was why Arrow Keeper had sent him. It was the ultimate test of his faith in Cheyenne magic, in the Cheyenne High Holy Ones. It was the ultimate test of his belief in himself as a shaman.
As Arrow Keeper had wisely foretold, it would not be just his skills as a warrior which would save them this time—if they were to be saved at all.
“Brother,” he said to Little Horse. “There is more medicine. But I tell you now, you will not like it. Do you have faith in me?”
“Will a she-grizzly fight hard for her cubs?”
“Good. You will need faith in me. Will you do what I tell you, no matter how hard your nature rebels against it? Will you swear this
thing on your honor?”
Despite his confidence in his friend, Little Horse hesitated before he finally nodded. This was serious business indeed. “I will, brother,” he said. “I have seen the mark on you, and I believe.”
“Good. Now hurry. The sentries at Milk River have flashed the warning. Carlson’s unit has taken to the Bear Paws again. And this time he is accompanied by the white dogs who ruined our tribe’s name.”
~*~
Little Horse soon deeply regretted his promise to cooperate with Touch the Sky.
First, following Touch the Sky’s instructions, they had gone to a remote spot just past camp in a thicket. There, Touch the Sky and Little Horse fashioned two poles out of saplings. The poles were extended between a pair of nearby tree forks, about a foot and a half above the ground.
Little Horse’s face grew grim when Touch the Sky stretched himself between the poles, face down, and instructed his friend to lash his wrists and ankles to the poles securely.
His back arched like a bow, Touch the Sky said, “Good work, brother. Now, see that pile of rocks over there?”
Little Horse nodded.
“Start piling them on my back. I will tell you when to stop.”
Little Horse hesitated, looking at him askance.
“Did you give your word or not?” Touch the Sky demanded. “Do as I say, buck!”
“Brother, this is—”
“Little Horse! If you love me as your brother, you will not say another word. You will do as I tell you, and know you act for the people.”
That settled it. One by one, Little Horse carried the rocks over and placed them on his friend’s back. When Touch the Sky’s breathing began to be forced, Little Horse stopped.
“More,” Touch the Sky told him. “Keep piling them on.”
The pain distorting Touch the Sky’s face also twisted Little Horse’s. Fighting back tears of pity and frustration, the game little warrior added rock after rock, until it seemed there was no place left to pile them.
He could not believe that his friend wasn’t crushed by now. Each breath Touch the Sky took cost him an agony of effort. A group of children had spotted the strange spectacle and raced back to tell the adults. They just shook their heads, too worried about the upcoming attack to care about more supernatural foolishness. Secretly, some of the braves resented this young fool for weakening himself this way—he would be useless in the fight.
“Brother,” Little Horse finally said, “I fear your back will break. Is that enough?”
Touch the Sky’s words seemed to be spoken through several layers of thick cloth, the pain was so intense. “Are there more on that pile?” He could not lift his head now to look.
“There are, brother.”
“Then pile them on, buck, pile them on!”
Chapter Fifteen
Carlson dropped back until he was riding abreast of the corporal named Ulrich.
“You’ve got a replacement on the Gatling? Someone to feed rounds into the hopper?”
“Yes, sir. Hank Jennings from the first squad. He’s a mite soft in the brain, I reckon, but he keeps a cool head when it comes down to the nut-cuttin’. It wasn’t easy, sir, finding a volunteer after what happened to ol’ Smitty. Him catchin’ a arrow flush in the eye like that, hell, the men figger it’s bad luck on this gun.”
“Yes, that was a bad break,” Carlson said vaguely, his mind on nothing but the pleasure of killing Matthew Hanchon.
“Hell, like I tell the boys, sir. It wasn’t the arrow in his eye what kilt ol’ Smitty. It was when the sumbitch poked through into his brain!”
Ulrich slapped at his saddle horn, laughing again at his own wit. Carlson, the son of a wealthy Virginia plantation owner, detested the man, knowing he was from hardscrabble trash back in Missouri. But he forced himself to smile anyway.
“Good man. Make that gun hum, and maybe there’ll be some sergeant’s stripes in it for you. I promise, this next attack will be just like the raid on the Blackfoot camp.”
Carlson had been forced to some tricky diplomacy since that defeat the other night. Morale was dangerously low at Fort Randall, due in large part to the poor leadership of Colonel Orrin Lofley. So Carlson had wisely avoided berating his men’s cowardice in retreating as they had.
Instead, he’d appealed to their sense of pride as the Indian-killing elite. Every newspaper in the country, he assured them, would soon be singing the praises of the First Mountain Company. Wiping out that Cheyenne camp would restore law and order to these parts—and faith in the U.S. Army.
The addition of the five hard-bitten civilian riders had also heartened the men—especially when Carlson spread the false rumor that they had ridden with the famous Indian fighter “Big Bat” Pourrier. To this rumor the first sergeant added another: that the plug-ugly sonofabitch with the bump on his neck was a famous writer, one writing a book on heroes of the American frontier.
Now Carlson sensed it going through the ranks: a collective, fire-breathing will to give these upstart Cheyennes a comeuppance they’d never forget. Men who had bolted a few nights earlier were now determined to return with Cheyenne ears and skulls as war trophies for their grand children.
Now, symbolizing the tight esprit de corps of the entire unit, the sergeant belted out a training chant familiar to all of them:
We’re marching off for Sitting Bull, and this is the way we go ... !
As one the entire unit responded:
Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army, oh!
Like a sinewy, many-headed death machine, the double columns wound their way steadily higher into the Bear Paw Mountains.
~*~
Little Horse refused to leave Touch the Sky’s side during the grueling sacrifice. He was afraid his friend would suffocate, the heap of rocks finally crushing his lungs.
But staying with him, seeing this unbelievably painful suffering, was as hard as leaving him.
“Brother,” he said at one point, “this has gone on long enough! Maiyun is stern, perhaps, but not cruel. He has heard your prayer by now. Now let me remove the rocks.”
Touch the Sky only shook his head, too short of air and strength to say anything. It felt like a huge stallion had plopped down on him. Each breath was a hard struggle and rattled in his throat like pebbles caught in a sluice gate. Otherwise, he might have told Little Horse that it was not a question of Maiyun hearing him—it was a question of deserving such powerful and direct attention from the Great Spirit that ruled infinity, not just Cheyennes. A shaman must suffer, Arrow Keeper had told him once, to be deserving.
While he waited, Little Horse tended to his battle rig. He cleaned and oiled his shotgun, and wiped every last grain of sand or speck of dirt off the few remaining shells. He pulled a whetstone from his possibles bag and sharpened the single edge of his knife. He used tightly stitched buckskin to reinforce a weak spot in his shield.
Throughout the squalid camp, the remaining braves were doing the same. Women, elders, children old enough to walk—all were armed with some kind of weapon, be it nothing but a pointed stick or a pouch filled with sharp rocks.
Pain was etched deep into Touch the Sky’s face, adding ten winters in age. His tautly corded shoulder muscles strained against the incredible weight of the rocks. Surely his back must break at any moment!
But behind it all, Arrow Keeper’s voice kept reminding him: The Iron Shirt magic was the most powerful medicine of all. A shaman, in contrast, was a mere speck of humanity. For those very reasons, the sacrifice to invoke the Iron Shirt protection must be almost superhuman.
As badly as he wanted this terrible pain to end, he must endure more for the sake of his people.
~*~
The sun was only a blushing afterthought on the western horizon. Carlson halted his men at the site of the first attack. The area was still covered with debris, mocking the soldiers’ failure.
“We rest here,” Carlson said. “We eat, we make our last equipment check. Then, well aft
er dark, we make our final movement to the camp. Any questions?”
No one had any. Denton and his men stood in a little group to one side, mildly amused at all the attention they were getting. Denton figured it was funny as all hell, how all the soldiers kept making sure Lumpy knew how to spell their names—hell, Lumpy couldn’t read or write his own name! But clearly they planned on impressing him with their killing power.
Carlson glanced overhead at the darkening dome of sky.
“Full moon tonight with plenty of stars. Moving in on them will be easy as rolling off a log. This time, count on it—you won’t be shooting at sticks and bushes.”
~*~
Well after dark, Little Horse’s voice cut through the wall of red, burning pain. His words were calm, completely devoid of fear.
“Brother, the outlying sentry has sounded the wolf howl. Our enemy is upon us. Soon comes the attack. Now the rocks come off whether you will it or no.”
At first Touch the Sky noticed no difference as his friend tossed the rocks away. Then, gradually, cramped muscles began to expand toward their normal shape. Little Horse knelt to untie the rawhide thongs which lashed his friend to the poles.
Touch the Sky’s first attempts to rise to his feet were pathetic. Little Horse thought of a new foal trying to struggle up from the ground.
“Brother,” Touch the Sky said finally, “I fear you will have to help me.”
Little Horse had wanted to help his friend, desperately. But a warrior’s pride was a delicate thing, and he knew it was better to let his friend try on his own first. Now, gently, he helped Touch the Sky to his feet. But still the brave could not straighten up completely nor walk except in a drunken shamble.
“Where are your weapons?” Touch the Sky asked him.
“I have given them to a brave who had none.”
“But how will you fight?”