by John Benteen
Kills Twice straightened up. “It wasn’t pretty. Not only warriors killed by those Hotchkiss guns and cavalry carbines. There were women, little children, little babies. It was something Slits-the-Throat never forgot. And that was when he joined the others out in the Stronghold.”
“The Stronghold?”
“A place in the Badlands where the cavalry couldn’t reach ’em. They almost spent the winter there—except for once or twice when they struck back. Once they damned near wiped out the Seventh—had ’em surrounded. It might have been Little Big Horn all over again, if a bunch of black soldiers—Buffalo Soldiers, we called ’em—hadn’t saved Colonel Forsyth’s bacon. My brother was in on that, too—he counted coup. You know what that means?”
“I know,” Fargo said grimly.
“He got two white soldiers. Crept up behind ’em in a snowstorm, cut their throats. That’s how he got his name. Anyhow, since Wounded Knee, he’ll have nothin’ to do with white men. He’d rather starve first. Not that he will, of course. He’s more likely to get rich—if the white men don’t rub him out.”
“Why would they want to rub him out?”
Kills Twice’s mouth twisted in a bitter grin. “Because, like I said, he’s making money. Even after they put us on reservations, the whites still wanted our land, so they passed a law takin’ most of it out of tribal ownership, allotting every Indian a quarter section. Then they could lease range rights from the poor dumb savages for the cost of a bottle of booze, maybe buy it later on or take it for taxes. That happened to a lot of people, but not my brother. By God, he kept his land, and he leased my father’s and mine, too, and all the others he could get his hands on, just like a white man. Now he’s got a big chunk of leased range the white ranchers would love to get their claws on, and he’s runnin’ cattle on it and makin’ money just like a white. He’s a success, and that scared the white plumb to death. They’re afraid other Sioux’ll follow his example and they’ll lose more of their cheap leased range. So they’ve tried to bushwhack him two or three times, which doesn’t make him love the Wasichu any better, you understand?”
“I understand.”
Kills Twice moved the bubbling coffee pot off the coals. “Where we had our fallin’ out was, we needed money and Jim Hackett offered to loan it to us. I trusted Hackett, and my brother didn’t. He wasn’t about to git under obligation to any white man. We argued, and I dropped out of the operation—way it was goin’ then, it wouldn’t support us both anyhow—and went to work for Mr. Hackett. Since then, we ain’t been speakin’. He thinks mission school ruined me, that I’m not a real Sioux anymore.”
“He should’a seen you throw that knife, pull that gun—”
“He knows what I can do. Like I said, he taught me. There was a general once, Crook was his name, he beat us sometimes and we beat him good once on the Rosebud, just before Little Big Horn. But he said somethin’ my brother never forgot—If the Indian had ever learned what the back sight on a rifle was for, the white man would never have taken the West. He taught himself to shoot and fight white man’s style, and made me learn, too. He said he wasn’t ever goin’ up against a white with any disadvantage.”
“He’s a real die-hard,” said Fargo.
“Yeah. Well, they got a church at Wounded Knee now. You go up there some time. The mass grave they buried Big Foot’s band in is right behind it in the cemetery. You take a look at that some time, you’ll know why he’s a die-hard. Now. Supper’s ready. Come and eat.” And, as if he felt he had already said too much, revealed more than was fitting to a stranger, Kills Twice fell silent and stayed so throughout the evening. Fargo stood his watch, wakened Kills Twice, and morning came without incident and the herd moved on.
Because of the heat, they made little better time the next day, but the same heat would have killed horses in a stock car, and Fargo did not begrudge the slowness of their pace.
Still, he wished they could have pushed harder; he was jumpy, in a hurry to be well out of reach of any attack from the Badlands across the river. His scouting was even more thorough, but this was rough, though fertile country, and no one man could cover ground enough to be sure of finding potential bushwhackers. There were too many places from which they could strike. Toward mid-afternoon, as the terrain became even rougher, he decided to change his tactics. Today, tonight and tomorrow were the crucial times. Better to stay closer to the herd, make sure that if someone struck it, they came up against two first-class fighting men simultaneously—and that Billy Kills Twice was first-class he had no doubt.
Slithering off a big outcrop of rock like a lizard, he cased his field glasses, mounted his tall sorrel gelding. The herd was perhaps two miles behind him, and he swung the horse, gigged it with his spurs. Something was moving in him, a sixth sense, and he wanted to reach those horses as quickly as possible. Just about now they should be traversing an open valley, safe for the moment, but ahead they’d have to move through a narrow canyon that offered too many opportunities ...
His galloping horse had covered half the distance when it happened—the shattering of the afternoon by the thunder of many guns.
Fargo cursed, brought up his rifle, rammed spurs home again. The horse stretched itself, pounding up a ridge. The bastards! he thought as he heard Billy Kills Twice yell his name, the sound drowned by the crackle of rifle fire, the cough of pistols. The sons of bitches! They’d outfoxed him, let him pass through many a likely spot for ambush, then moved in at the least likely one when he’d gone too far ahead. He raked the horse again, clamped reins in his teeth, drew the Colt, passed it to his left hand, and with the rifle in his right hand crested the ridge; and then he could see it all below him as the sorrel raced down the slope.
The riders had moved in from both sides, a dozen of them on either flank. The Army remounts stampeded down the valley. Behind them, Billy Kills Twice’s mount, shot out from under him, was a dun blot on the valley floor, and the Indian himself, sheltered behind it, was firing steadily, first in one direction, then the other, with the ancient Winchester. Even as Fargo watched, one of the raiders on the westward side toppled from his saddle, and as Kills Twice turned, fired eastward toward the other flank, an attacker’s horse went down.
Fargo reined in the sorrel so hard it reared, had hit the dirt before its front hooves touched the ground. Kills Twice was doomed under that double assault unless he took pressure off him. What was needed now was accurate rifle fire, and no man could lay that down from a running horse. Fargo dropped to one knee, lined the Winchester on the raiders coming from the east. It was long range for a carbine, but every second counted. He tracked a man racing across the valley, took a lead, held high and fired. Even as the gun kicked, the rider twisted from the saddle, foot hung in stirrup, bouncing grotesquely as his horse raced on.
And they knew he was here now, and that was what he wanted. Fargo swung the gun, fired again, again, and knocked another man from saddle and dropped the horse of a third, all on the eastern flank, where Kills Twice was most exposed. Meanwhile, he saw, the Indian had dropped another on the west.
And now, with their attention drawn to him, the men on the east spread out, reined around, and then they were pounding up the valley in a ragged line, firing as they came. Half, Fargo saw, wore dirty khaki, the others were in range clothes. Anyhow, they all made good targets, but so did he, and he threw himself flat on the slope, hearing the sudden slap of lead passing too close for comfort.
Coolly, methodically, as if he were on a rifle range, he called his shots, hosing lead from the Winchester carbine until it clicked on empty. Two more men went down, and now the range was closing and bullets made their ugly whine around him, and there was no time to reload the carbine. Jumping up, he rammed it in the saddle boot, and even as he swung up on the jittery, snorting horse that nevertheless had stood ground-reined through the battle, he unslung the sawed-off Fox. With reins in his teeth again, Colt in left hand, shotgun in the right, he raced his mount down the slope to meet them, firing
the revolver as he went. He saw one man fall, head turning almost to spray under the impact of the .38 hollow-point, but then the Colt, too, clicked on empty. Fargo rammed it in his belt, hooked a knee around the saddle horn, clamped his left hand in his horse’s mane, swung beneath the animal’s neck, Indian style, as lead whined and snapped around him.
The range was closing quickly, the line of riders bearing down on him. He waited a heartbeat longer as his own horse pounded toward them, then fired the right barrel of the Fox. Its open bore sprayed an ever-widening lethal blast of buckshot straight toward a pair of riders bunched up too closely. It was as if they and their mounts had run into a stone hard wall, wholly invisible. Screams of men and horses mingled as, in the full blast of the charge, their mounts went down. Fargo’s own horse jerked aside; he found another target, fired the other barrel, and a raider on the right went hurtling from the saddle, nearly chopped to pieces. Then they killed Fargo’s horse.
He felt it jerk as bullets hit it, and even as it was going down unlatched his knee, rolled clear. He hit hard, whole body loose as he could make it, and even slightly stunned, was rolling as he landed, hand gouging shotgun rounds from loops, thumb breaking the Fox’s breech. Slugs plowed into the ground around him as he came up, the shotgun snapping closed. A rider loomed over him, Colt lined, and Fargo fired point-blank. The bullet slapped past his ear as a bearded face, a khaki chest, turned red, and then the empty-saddled horse was pounding by. Whirling, he sought another target, using only one hand on the gun, the other pulling more shells from the bandolier.
But they were sheering off, what was left of them. He fired the second barrel, heard a man howl, and then someone yelled: “Back! Back, goddammit!” Even as he crammed another pair of shells into the chamber, riders turned their mounts. In that gained instant, Fargo ran.
He’d already seen it on his right, a deep, grassed-over gouge in the valley floor, an ancient buffalo wallow, carved out by the rolling humps of bulls long since vanished. Long legs pumped as, firing across his body, he ran for it, sailed headlong into its shelter. Dust puffed from its rim as the retreating eastern band of raiders hurled a few more shots, withdrawing out of the Fox’s range. That respite gave him time not only to reload the shotgun but to cram rounds into the Colt’s chambers. Then, on his side of the valley, the gunfire tapered off, as the attackers raced after the stampeding horse herd. But to the west, the shooting still went on.
Fargo sucked in breath, raised his head, peered across the wallow’s rim. For the moment he was safe as the remnant of the bunch he’d fought chased the frightened geldings. But two hundred yards away, behind his dead mount, Billy Kills Twice was doomed, and there was nothing Fargo could do to help him save snap off six futile rounds of .38’s in hope of drawing their attention to himself.
The men out there did not take the bait. One, bareheaded, blond, wearing a red shirt, mounted on a gray horse, seemed to be the leader, a hulking giant who, if Fargo had only had a rifle, would have been an easy target. With yells and hand signals, he directed the remaining six or eight men, his deep voice carrying clearly across the valley. “Don’t give him time to reload! Circle! Move in!”
Cursing, Fargo watched. He saw Kills Twice throw aside the empty rifle, sheath his six-gun, with no time to reload either weapon. Then he heard a strange, wild, gobbling sound, high pitched, spine-chilling, as the raiders encircled Billy Kills Twice. It was nothing he had ever heard before—but it had in its day struck fear into many hearts, that warwhooping of the Sioux.
“Billy!” Fargo screamed, and fired the shotgun, hoping to divert the raiders, but it was too late. Kills Twice was on his feet, the only weapon he had left gleaming in his hand—the Bowie. He jumped the carcass of the dead horse, ran toward the nearest rider.
That man fired at him point-blank; Kills Twice stumbled, came up again, braced himself and threw the knife. It glittered as it whirled end over end, burying itself deep in the checkered flannel shirt of the man who had already shot the Indian.
And then they cut Kills Twice down. Half a dozen bullets plowed into his lean body. He jerked this way and that, like a puppet on a string worked by an inept marionette artist. He fell, scrambled up, tried with his bare hands to charge another man, and more lead slammed home, and at last he fell backwards, sprawled, and for him it was over.
Fargo grunted something deep in his chest, reloaded all his weapons. “All right, you bastards!” he roared, blind with sudden rage, all caution gone. “Come on, goddam you! Come and get me!”
The riders whirled their mounts, as if to accept the challenge. The blond man in the red shirt bawled: “No! Dammit, don’t go near that shotgun! We got what we want! After the horses!” He lined a rifle—Fargo thought it was a Krag—loosed a magazine of slugs. They pumped dirt all around the wallow as Fargo dropped back to safety. Then Red-shirt spurred his horse and led the others down the valley, after the remounts, careful to swing wide of Fargo’s hiding place. Turning, he watched them vanish down the valley, disappear. Taking the chance, he left the wallow, dashed to a fallen horse and sprawled rider, snatched up a carbine exactly like his own. Hastily he loaded it, ready if they returned. Across the valley, a couple of riderless horses vanished over the ridge; otherwise, everything was still.
There was no help for it; he had to use this time. When and if they came back looking for him, he must not be here. Keeping low, zigzagging in case they had planted a sniper behind to watch for this, he surged up out of the wallow, legged it up the ridge, made it safely to the cover of a thin scattering of juniper. From there he worked deep into a clump of lodgepole pines that clothed the ridge-crest, pines he had scouted only a few hours ago, and in them he went to ground. Unless they were fools, they would not, he knew, face that shotgun again with him on the high ground and in this kind of cover. But that was damned thin consolation. He had lost the horses—and, what was worse, lost Billy Kills Twice. Lying on the pine needles, feeling the hammering of his heart subside as he waited for darkness, his lips curled back in something like a wolf’s snarl. One thing was certain—he was a long way from being through with this outfit called the Badlands gang as yet. They had a massive debt to pay, especially that hulking red-shirted bastard—and, by God, he was going to make them pay it ... in blood.
Four
They had left wounded men behind, and through the rest of the heat-simmering afternoon, their cries drifted up to Fargo’s hiding place. He yearned to go down to them—not to help, but to question them; but that would well be suicide. There was no telling when a strong detail might return, catch him in the open. Mostly they only moaned in anguish, but he could make out the words one kept yelling over and over: “Schmidt! God damn you, Schmidt, where are you?” Then darkness fell. Somewhere not far away, a lobo wolf gave an ululating howl. Coyotes began their yapping. The scavengers were moving in. Waiting in the pines, Fargo’s mouth twisted. Before next daylight, the wolves and coyotes would be at the helpless men down there. He felt no pity; only readied himself. Now that it was dark, he could go back to the valley, wring some information out of them. Apparently they had been abandoned by their comrades. He was just about to leave his cover, start down the slope, when he heard the riders, four of them as nearly as he could judge, were returning to the valley.
Four against one; his hand stroked the shotgun. At close range, those odds would not be too long. But he himself would have to move as silently as a wolf. Rising, he started to edge from cover. Then he froze as the first shot rang out.
Before its echoes died, the man who’d called for Schmidt began to yell. “Thompson! Hassler! What the hell—?”
The voices came clearly through the night. One said harshly: “Shut up, Klein. Schmidt’s orders. You can’t ride, so—”
“No! Dammit, you can’t do this, you can’t—”
The words were cut short by another gunshot. Three more followed in rapid succession, and another order. “All right, strip the bodies, get all the guns and ammo, any money. We can’t afford
to waste nothin’.”
So they had shot their own wounded. Noiselessly, keeping to the shadows, Fargo eased down the hill. But it took too long, he was too late. He was still a couple of hundred yards away, any targets invisible in darkness, when somebody called: “Hassler. We got everything we can find without any light.”
“No lights; that big bastard with the sawed-off might be around somewhere. Okay, that’s it. Mount and ride.” Then they were drumming out, headed toward the east. Fargo spat disgustedly. He’d missed his chance. But he had three names, at least. Thompson, Hassler—and Schmidt, apparently the leader. One of the dead was Klein. Mostly Germans, all right. And hungry for money, guns and horses. Maybe Donna Clyman was right. Maybe they were gearing up for large scale guerrilla warfare. Maybe even arming the Indians; if there were more like Kills Twice’s brother, Slits-the-Throat ...
He sucked in breath. Well, he’d make sense of all that later. Right now, there was something he had to do, and in a hurry, before the carrion eaters gathered. The coast was clear, no need for caution, and he loped down into the valley, worked his way across it to where the Indian had fallen. Cautiously he struck a match to make sure he had the right body; then he hoisted the bullet-ridden corpse to his shoulder, climbed back up the ridge to the pines. Panting, he put it down, then lay down near it, shotgun cradled in his arm, and, the night so hot no blankets were needed, fell asleep. When daylight came, he was already up. Leaving the body where it lay, he went into the valley once more; the coyotes and wolves had been busy in the night; now the vultures already gathered to finish what they’d begun. Fargo searched every body, stripping them of papers, possessions—anything the detail the night before had missed. They had not missed much, had taken every weapon, all ammo, even the saddles off the dead horses. But there was one they had not been able to free, and its lariat was still on it. Fargo unlatched that, and the blanket roll behind the cantle. He carried them back up the hill. Climbing a sturdy pine with half the rope cut into lengths, he lashed together a rude platform in its branches. With the rest of the rope, he pulled Billy Kills Twice’s body up, spread it on the platform, wrapped it in a blanket, tied it in place. He was no expert on old-fashioned Indian burials, but it was the best he could do right now for Kills Twice. When he was finished, he dropped back to the ground, surveyed the valley carefully. All was clear.