Bloody Hills

by Charles G. West

  With the mountains behind them, and rolling hills before them, Clay was still concerned that they might be followed. With that thought in mind, he built a small campfire up against the bank of a gully in order to keep the flames hidden. If they were being trailed, there was no sense in lighting a beacon for someone to guide on. One more day’s ride, and he figured they would be out of harm’s way, but for this night, caution would be the rule.

  Rachael was tired, but with a willing spirit she took on some of the chores of making camp. Clay was pleased to see her progress, so he didn’t protest when she insisted that she could help with their supper. While she filled the coffeepot from the stream, he took care of the horses. That night, after the last of the venison was eaten, she retired to her blanket, weary but content. As was his habit, he took a wide circle around their camp to have a look around. Over the ridge to his left, a full moon peeked over the fringe of ponderosa pines. It was not a welcome sight. He would have preferred a moonless night. When he returned to the fire, Rachael was already deep in sleep.

  Spreading his blanket at the mouth of the gully, he positioned himself so he could hear any suspicious sounds during the night. After long years of making countless camps while deep in hostile territory, he had acquired the necessary ability to sleep with an ear tuned to the sounds of the forests or plains around him. The night passed peaceful enough except for once when he was jolted upright by a sudden cry from Rachael. Scrambling out of his blanket, rifle in hand, he sprang to her side only to find she had simply cried out in her sleep, reliving some horrible memory in her dreams. Relieved to find they were not under attack, he stood at the mouth of the gully for a few minutes, searching the moonlit meadow beyond the stream. Judging by the moon, now nearly nestling in the treetops of a distant hill, he figured it to be only a couple of hours until dawn. He returned to his blanket.

  Less than a hundred yards away, Two Kills paused suddenly to listen. What sounded like a woman’s voice crying out had stopped him in his tracks. Was it a woman’s voice? It could have been the cry of a wild-cat. Whichever, he felt certain now that he had heard something, and it seemed to have come from the far side of the low ridge he was kneeling upon. He wondered if any of the others had heard it.

  Red Bull and half of the war party were temporarily halted near the mouth of the canyon. Led by Little Deer, the other half continued on, hoping to get ahead of the white ghost before morning light. The tracks through the dry soil of the canyon floor had stood out plainly in the bright moonlight, and the war party had been able to move rapidly in pursuit of the white ghost. Reaching the end of the canyon, however, they had lost the trail, just when they sensed they were close. Two Kills and several others had been sent out as scouts in hopes of sighting Wanigi Ska’s campfire. His heart beat faster with the excitement that he may have been the one who found the white ghost. He thought at first to ride back immediately to alert Red Bull. But on second thought, he decided it important to confirm his discovery, so he got to his feet and led his pony in the direction from which the sound had come.

  Making his way carefully down through the pines and the frequent outcroppings of rocks, Two Kills finally reached an open meadow, bathed in the fading light of the moon. Thinking it risky to cross the open expanse, he paused there in the cover of the trees while he surveyed the base of the opposite ridge. Behind him, his pony suddenly became aware of the presence of strange horses as the slight breeze shifted with the hint of the coming daybreak. Not quick enough to stifle the pony’s greeting nicker, Two Kills choked off any further greetings with a hand firmly clamped on the pony’s muzzle. It was not quick enough to prevent an answering nicker from the trees on the other side of the meadow. Two Kills jerked his head back to locate the source of the sound. Squinting hard in an effort to peer into the darkness of the pines, he detected movement near the mouth of a gully that cut into the base of the ridge. Continuing to stare at the spot, he was rewarded by a glimpse of a horse in the shadows. His heart beating rapidly now, he shifted his focus back to the gully, and he was certain he had found Wanigi Ska.

  There was a decision to be made. Red Bull, his war chief, had claimed the right to kill the white ghost, and it was a right that Two Kills respected. Wanigi Ska had taken the life of Red Bull’s wife’s brother. Weighing heavily against his duty to ride back to summon the war party were the thoughts of respect any warrior would earn as a result of capturing or killing the illusive white ghost. He pictured his triumphant return to the village after such an accomplishment. It was tempting. Certain that Wanigi Ska was camped in the gully, he could make his way across the meadow and corner the white ghost in the narrow confines of the gully. It was his one chance to distinguish himself as a warrior. He decided to take it. Leaving his horse tied to the branch of a tree, he moved silently down to the edge of the meadow.

  On the far side of the little meadow, Clay was, alert to the presence of danger. Ever vigilant, he had heard the greeting nicker of the Indian pony. After a quick glance to see that Rachael was sound asleep, he crawled up to the very brim of the gully’s mouth, his rifle cocked and ready. The sound had come from the trees on the other side of the moonlit meadow, and he scanned the shadowy tree line from right to left, searching for any movement that would betray an enemy’s presence. He didn’t have to wait long.

  After several minutes had passed since first hearing the horses, Clay detected a shadow emerging from the pines. He watched as the shadow made its way to the edge of the meadow. Crouching behind a waist-high boulder, the figure was obviously hesitating to move across the moonlit expanse. Clay waited, watching to see if others would follow the lone warrior. After several long moments, Clay realized that there was but one warrior, probably a scout for the main party. At that point, he regretted the fact that his bow was back by his saddle. He might have been able to stop the lone warrior silently with an arrow before he made it halfway across the meadow. Nothing to do about it now, he thought, placed his rifle aside and reached for the war ax he always carried. Pressing his body against the side of the gully, he waited in the shadows.

  With no sign of movement from the mouth of the gully, Two Kills readied himself to attack. Counting on the element of surprise, he sprang up from behind the boulder and raced across the grassy clearing, his rifle before him. With his heart pounding as a result of both the physical effort and his growing excitement, he sprinted across the moonlit expanse. There was no sign of opposition. Confident that he had gained the surprise he had hoped for, he charged into the shadowy mouth of the gully. The deep silence was abruptly shattered by his piercing cry of pain as the lethal bite of the war ax sank into his chest, crushing his breastbone and slamming him to the ground. The fatal blow caused him to squeeze the trigger of his rifle, and the sharp crack of the Remington ripped the silent fabric of the night, bringing Rachael screaming out of her blanket. Well that was silent enough, Clay thought facetiously.

  “It’s all right,” Clay called to the frightened woman, as he struggled to subdue the dying warrior long enough to finish him with his knife. “You’re all right. It’s over.” When he felt the warrior’s final shudder before death claimed him, Clay got to his feet, and admonished Rachael to hurry. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here, and I mean right now!”

  Seeing the dead Indian lying before her, Rachael needed no further encouragement. Snatching up her blankets, she ran to help Clay saddle the horses. Within a few minutes’ time, they were in the saddle, and she was following the tall scout as he led them through the shadows along the edge of the clearing. Her heart pounded with fear so strong that it threatened to choke her as she kept her eyes riveted upon the broad shoulders of the rider before her, afraid to look behind to see what fury might be upon them.

  They rode halfway around the meadow, keeping in the shadow of the trees until they reached the point where the stream turned toward the eastern ridge. Upon reaching the stream, Clay guided the horses into the water, and rode down the middle of it, reining them back when t
hey began to slip and stumble upon the slippery rocks that lined the bottom. Slowing to a walk, he continued downstream until the stream turned again to wind around a stand of willows. Leaving the water here, he urged the gray for more speed as they loped over the open end of the valley, toward the safety of a tree-covered hill on the far side. With nothing but the sound of the horses grunting, and the solid thumping of their hooves upon the grass, Rachael bent forward in the saddle, expecting any minute to hear the terrifying war cries of a horde of savage warriors behind her. Not until she reached the trees at the base of the hill, where Clay reined up to wait for her, did she dare to look behind her. Relieved to see no one following in the narrow valley they had just crossed, she pulled up beside Clay.

  “You all right?” he asked. Still breathless, she nodded rapidly. He glanced overhead. “It’ll be daylight in less than an hour.” As if hearing his words, the moon suddenly dropped behind the hills to the far west, and the night darkened slightly. “We’ll cross over to the other side of this hill, and maybe lose that fellow’s friends before they can pick up our trail again.” He had planned to follow the valley out of the hills, but he would now have to find another route. With hostiles this close behind them, he deemed it critical to lose them before reaching the open plains. He didn’t fancy a race for life across open country. “We’re all right for the time being,” he said, not at all sure of his words, but feeling the necessity to encourage her. He could only hope that they had not been encircled by the war party. There was no way he could know for sure before daylight. The foremost thought in his mind now was to find a place to hide before then.

  * * *

  Stone Man had been scouting along the westernmost in the series of ridges that framed the narrow valley when he heard the rifle shot. Recognizing the sound of the Remington that Two Kills had taken from the body of one of the miners in the stockade, he was sure his brother warrior had found the white man they searched for. Anxious to join him, Stone Man headed straight over the ridge in the direction from which the sound had come. There was only that one shot, and since he could definitely recognize it to be from the Remington, he could guess that Two Kills had killed the man thought to be Wanigi Ska. The white ghost’s death would be a disappointment for Red Bull, since it had not come by his hand, but it would bring great honor to Two Kills.

  Descending through the thick forest of ponderosas, almost to the floor of the valley, Stone Man stopped short when he found Two Kills’s pony tied to a tree limb. At almost the same instant, he was surprised by the shadowy forms of two riders, emerging from the darkness, only to reenter the cover of the trees as they loped away on the far side of an open meadow. Immediately alert to the prospect that his friend had been slain, Stone Man moved quickly to parallel the flight of the two riders, trying to keep pace with them on his side of the meadow. When he reached a point that was even with the turn in the stream, he remained hidden while he watched the riders enter the water, and continue downstream. When they had disappeared from his view, he paused to consider the situation, and whether or not he should ride back to inform Red Bull. From the direction the shadowy riders departed in, he guessed that they intended to leave the hills. If he took the time to go back for the others, they might never find the white ghost again. There was clearly no choice in the matter, he rode across the clearing and followed. Some distance behind him, Red Bull and the main war party—as well as the other scouts—were converging upon the gully where Clay and Rachael had spent the night. Guided by the sound of Two Kills’s rifle shot, they moved through the silent hills in the fading moonlight.

  * * *

  Morning found the white man and woman confronted with the steep wall of a box canyon. Clay reined up and waited for Rachael to come alongside. “We’ve got to find another way around that hill,” he said. In the gray light of dawn, he had chosen what appeared to be a passage between two sizable hills, only to discover the cliffs on either side of him now. In answer to Rachael’s worried frown, he added, “We’ll just have to go back a-ways where the slope ain’t quite so steep, and climb over.” Without a word, she turned her horse, and waited for him to lead out.

  Retracing their steps, he followed the passage back to a point beyond the cliff, his eyes searching carefully. He had no notion if the war party was hot on their trail, or if he had been successful in losing them. There were other concerns on his mind as well. The horses had not had water since the night before. And while that was not of immediate importance, there was a strong possibility that he and Rachael might have to make a run for it if they were sighted by the war party. If that were the case, he wanted to make sure the horses were watered beforehand.

  As soon as the terrain allowed, he guided his pony up the slope, letting him weave his way through the trees that covered the lower half of the hill. The packhorse trailed behind him on a rope. Rachael followed the packhorse. They crested the hill just as the sun peered over the eastern horizon. Clay stopped to let Rachael catch up again.

  “Yonder’s the way we need to go,” he said, pointing in a direction slightly southwest. “Just in case somethin’ happens to me, when you get outta these hills, head for that butte yonder, and keep goin’ till you reach the Platte.” Then he smiled at her as if that would never happen. Nevertheless, she responded with a decided look of alarm. “I’m just sayin’ in case somethin’ happens, that’s all.” He hated to add to her fears, but he thought it necessary for her to know which way to run if it came to that. He nudged the gray, and led off down the other side of the hill, hoping to find water at the bottom.

  * * *

  Following as best he could in the early-morning light, Stone Man came to the point where the trail was split by the shoulders of a high hill. Having often hunted in the area, he knew the trail to the left led to a box canyon, so he took the narrow passage to his right, knowing it eventually wound around to a wide valley on the other side of the long line of hills.

  The sun was high in the eastern sky by the time Stone Man reached the valley. Nervous concern began to take hold in his mind as he stood looking out over the wide expanse. The floor of the valley was carpeted with spring grass and wildflowers, and dotted with occasional boulders that somehow looked misplaced, as if Wakan’ tanka had casually tossed them like so many plum stones in a game of chance. Toward the southern end of the valley, a group of antelope grazed peacefully, an indication to Stone Man that no one had passed through recently. There was no sign of the shadows he had followed, and he had been unable to find even one track of horse or man in the narrow passage between the hills to this point. Had he been misled by the medicine of Wanigi Ska? Were the vague figures he had seen leaving the gulch nothing more than shadows after all? Maybe the white ghost had not intended to leave the mountains at all, as Stone Man had assumed. Maybe he had turned back toward the higher ground instead of following the pass to this broad valley. But that trail would have led him to a box canyon, he thought, assuming again that if it were, indeed, a spirit he followed, Wanigi Ska would know that.

  Perplexed, and feeling that he had possibly been duped by the phantom scout, he decided to return to report his unusual experience to the others. He wheeled his pony and started back toward the pass at a fast lope, just in time to encounter the white scout leading a packhorse and another rider down through the trees on the hill. Both men saw each other at the same time, and both acted on pure reflex, firing their weapons in almost one single blast. Neither man hit his mark in the confusion of the moment. Stone Man slid over to the opposite side of his pony, clinging to the pony’s mane and using the animal’s neck for cover, continuing to fire his pistol with one hand under the horse’s neck. Clay yelled for Rachael to stay back as the Indian’s shots scattered wildly through the pines. Then he urged the gray for speed as he raced along the edge of the trees in an effort to cut off the fleeing warrior’s escape.

  Clay cleared the forest and dropped in behind the galloping Indian pony, constantly urging the gray for more speed. He could ill aff
ord to permit the Lakota scout to return to his chief with news of the white man’s location. Racing along the narrow trail, Stone Man righted himself on his pony’s back when Clay fell in behind him. With no time to reload his pistol, and knowing it was now a race for life, he lay low on his pony’s neck, and flailed the animal mercilessly. Once the gray reached out in full stride, Clay felt he had a platform stable enough to get off an accurate shot. Raising his rifle to his shoulder, he held it with one hand while he aimed it at the Indian’s back. At the last second, he dropped the reins with his other hand and took hold of the rifle to steady it. Squeezing the trigger, he fired, cocked the rifle and fired again. Both Indian and pony went down, tumbling head over heels amid a cloud of flying gravel and dirt.

  So close behind, the gray was forced to veer to avoid piling onto the fallen pony and rider, and was several yards past them by the time Clay could pull it to a halt. Ready to fire again if necessary, Clay wheeled the gray around, his rifle trained on the fallen warrior. He soon realized that Stone Man was no longer a threat to him. Struggling for breath through the heavy flow of blood that filled his throat, the Lakota warrior crawled only a few feet from his fallen horse before dropping to the ground dead.

  Clay dismounted and walked up to the body to make sure the warrior’s suffering was ended. Then he was distracted by the tortured grunt of the Indian’s pony as the animal tried in vain to regain its feet. Clay had not intended to shoot the horse, both of his shots had caught the warrior square in the back. But the distance had been so small that both rounds had passed through Stone Man’s body and into the horse’s neck. Clay could not tell how serious the wounds were, but the pony was obviously suffering greatly, so he put one more bullet into its brain.

  Returning to the edge of the valley, he found Rachael standing, seemingly dazed, beside a wounded horse. In the wild hail of pistol shots, the packhorse had been hit behind the ear, and Rachael was trying to stop the thin trickle of blood that trailed down the animal’s neck. Although still on its feet, the horse stood with its head down, its muzzle almost touching the ground. The stony glaze in the horse’s eyes told Clay that it was done for. When he approached it, the horse suddenly dropped on its knees, remained there for several long seconds before rolling over on its side. Emitting low groans, and with its eyes staring wide, it lay dying. Clay helped it along its final journey with his rifle.