Winter Rain

by Terry C. Johnston

  The sleeper came up startled, lunging for the pistol at his side as he blinked his eyes at the huge man hulking over him.

  “Strickler, it’s your colonel.” He put a finger to his lips and motioned the man to follow.

  Jubilee arose and moved off, knowing Oran Strickler would not fail to follow. Satisfied when he heard the sound of blankets coming off and the creak of cold leather boots scrunching across the sandy soil behind him.

  When he had stopped among the cottonwood and turned, Usher hissed, “I have come to trust you as much as any of these.”

  The man hawked up some night-gather in his throat, flung it into the darkness, then replied, “I been with you from the very start, Colonel. I was riding along with the same wagon train when we was took.”

  “You got as much stake in all of this as I, don’t you, brother Strickler.” Usher could tell just what effect that endearing term had on the man. It had quickly softened the harsh night edges of the Danite’s face.

  “Perhaps—like you say—it is time for a change in Deseret. The American government, its army sent out to aim its guns down on us—something should’ve been done long ago.”

  Usher placed a hand on the tall, thin man’s shoulder. “We need only to show the many others in Zion the error of Brigham’s ways. Was a time I would have followed Brigham through the fires of hell.”

  “We done that, Colonel. And we’re on our way back again, by damned!”

  He snorted, then threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there, on our backtrail—we all know we’ve got that sodbuster following us.”

  “The woman’s husband.”

  “He’s not her husband!” Usher snapped, then composed himself a bit. “She’s mine by rights of all divine law now. By rights of time, by rights of angelic purpose, by right of might.”

  “But don’t it bother you that this sonofabitch just keeps coming on when he ought’n to know better, Colonel?”

  Usher chuckled softly, the breath before his face steamy in the cold. “It will bother me much less when that man is taken care of—for good and all time.”

  He nodded. “That where I come in, is it, sir?”

  “That’s right, my brother.” He reached overhead and snapped a narrow twig from a branch. This he waved in an arc across their Muddy Creek camp. “Take three with you. No—make it five more. And ride back the way we came. Likely he is this side of the pass by now.”

  “Somewhere between South Pass and the Green, I’d lay a wager on.”

  “No money required. Only the man’s blood.”

  “We’ll go in the morning.”

  Jubilee shook his head. “No. I want you to find your five and go now. Saddle up, draw your rations for how long you calculate you’ll be gone—and leave now.”

  Oran Strickler swallowed hard. Then scratched at the thick, unshaved growth across his dirty cheek. “You want me bring you something back?”

  “If you can do it.”

  He waited for Usher to elaborate. When the colonel did not, Strickler asked, “What you want? His scalp? His balls? Maybeso his whole head, eh?”

  Usher draped a big arm over Stickler’s shoulder. “No. If you can, I want you to help me reunite the sodbuster with the woman. For just a few minutes, I want to be able to look into both their faces and see the looks they will give one another, how they will regard me—before I kill him. Slowly. Slowly.”

  “You … you figure on killing him right in front of his … uh, the woman?” Strickler corrected himself.

  “Yes. As simple as that,” Usher replied. “Now. You have your orders. Bring him to me alive. Do not—on pain of death—do not return to me without this sodbuster alive.”

  Strickler swallowed again, turned, and disappeared back into the dim glow of the dying fires. Usher listened to the snoring, the footsteps halting here, then there, listened to the unintelligible, whispered voices, heard the faintest betrayal of the rolling of blankets and the shuffling of bodies out of camp toward the horses. Into the darkness. And it grew quiet once more around Jubilee Usher.

  Deathly quiet.

  He had chosen the right man. And Oran Strickler would choose his men just as wisely, Jubilee felt certain.

  Just as certain that one day he would sit in the Prophet’s chair at the center of Zion, leader of God’s chosen people.

  His only doubt lay with her. By watching with her own eyes the killing of her husband by Jubilee’s hand—would she give up all hope of rescue, all hope of returning to that sodbuster and their former life together?

  Only then would she relent and give herself totally, irrevocably, irretrievably over to Jubilee Usher.

  9

  Moon of Black Calves 1868

  FAR, FAR AWAY on the distant edge of the awakening land a thin smear of gray bubbled along the horizon like marrow scum risen to the top of blood soup brought to the boil.

  High-Backed Bull and Bad Tongue had led the others around the base of the bluffs and ridges in this rugged, naked country heaved up with dark monoliths and black blottings against the paling, starlit sky that wheeled nonstop overhead in the land’s incessant crawl toward the coming day of blood on the sand by the Plum River. Once they had stopped to water the ponies, watchful not to let the animals have too much, only enough to slake their thirst. Then the horsemen crossed to the north bank of the river on foot, remounted, and set out again to the east.

  The big bear among the stars lay but a hand’s width from the horizon when Bull touched Bad Tongue’s arm and signaled the rest to halt behind them. He sniffed at the air.

  “Smell,” Bull whispered.

  The rest drew the cold, high desert air into their noses noiselessly.

  The Brule said, “Fire.”

  He nodded to Bad Tongue. “The breeze has come around out of the south.” Bull pointed. “Beyond those ridges, we will find them.”

  “The big American horses,” Bad Tongue growled in his poor Cheyenne.

  “The half-a-hundred who have dared follow our camps,” Bull corrected. “The half-a-hundred who will lose their scalps for it.”

  “Do not spill your own blood on this ground,” Bad Tongue admonished. “So anxious to spill the white man’s are you.”

  Bull snorted derisively. “The rest of you can go get what you want now. And I will ride in for what I came for.”

  Bad Tongue clamped a hand on the Shahiyena’s arm to stay the Dog Soldier. “Porcupine and Roman Nose—any war chief would say for one or two of us to spy on the white man’s camp first before riding in blind.”

  Bull gazed at the starlit face of the Brule and could find no reason to dispute the Lakota’s fighting wisdom. “All right. You and me.”

  “On foot.”

  Bull nodded and slid from his pony, handing the rawhide rein to Starving Elk. He strode off without waiting for Bad Tongue, nor did he look back. He only heard the warrior off to his left.

  At the crest of the second ridge, the odor of burning embers, of fried meat, the wind-carried fragrance of fresh horse droppings, all became so strong that they bellied to the side of the slope rather than crawl directly at the top. There below, a matter of a few flights of an arrow, lay the eerie reddish glow of the white man’s camp. From time to time dark shadows blotted the crimson into the black of the prairie momentarily until the glowing embers of their old fires reappeared. Perhaps they were the enemy’s pickets moving back and forth between the warriors and the distant fire pits. Perhaps some of the bigger shadows were animals.

  A snuffle, then another, was heard in the middle distance. Most of the animals were actually grazing closer to them than High-Backed Bull had expected: off to his right hand and just below the base of the high bluff that overlooked the white man’s camp. He smiled, tapping Bad Tongue in their mutual silence—then pointed down to the main body of the herd as one of the mules released a caustic, metallic bray. There came an uneasy shuffling of hooves before all fell silent again.

  “There is one guard I can see,” Bad Tongue whispe
red. “That means there will be at least two.”

  Bull agreed. “At least one you cannot see.” He pushed himself backward until he was behind the edge of the slope and got to his feet. “Now the rest of you can go steal your big American horses.”

  Bad Tongue raised himself before the Shahiyena. “And you—you can take advantage of our noise, High-Backed Bull. Looking for scalps to take.”

  In silence they hurried back to the rest, coming out of the darkness as the gray boiling back in the east broadened, stretching into a more definitive line that strung itself from north to south. Full darkness would not last much longer. It was time to strike.

  He mounted while Bad Tongue explained the position of the horse herd to the rest. Bull looked at the two brothers. While they listened to the Brule, their eyes were nonetheless on High-Backed Bull. He waited until Bad Tongue finished his clipped instructions, then nodded at Starving Elk.

  “You and Little Hawk—go with the Burnt Thigh. Help them run off the horses.”

  “Where are you going?” Starving Elk asked, his voice a pitch higher in the starlit darkness.

  “I will meet you across the river. On the south side when you have started the horses and mules, driving them back to our camp.”

  He would wait for no more questions. Bull reined away abruptly, moving east along the base of the sharp-sloped ridge. Without any thought other than instinct, he decided to race into the white man’s camp, charging among the half-a-hundred from the east, as the rest raced into the herd. That way, he considered, the white men would have their attention on the west when he came lunging up their backs. No doubt he would be backlit by the sun’s coming—but High-Backed Bull calculated that the surprise he would create would be more than enough to outweigh that danger to himself.

  At the first break in the bony ridges that reeked of alkali, the Shahiyena brought himself up short, finding that he had not come east far enough to begin his attack. Instead, Bull found himself still to the west of the crimson fire pits and those few shadows moving against the pale, red lights. Still, he was closer to the enemy camp now than before—able for the first time to make out clearly the black mounds of sleeping men curled in their blanket cocoons across the gray ground.

  He reined about and urged the pony on east.

  It was then that his ears brought him the sound of muted voices from the camp, brought him the first hint of pony hooves hammering the cold night wind that tortured this high desert land.

  Bull smiled and hurried his pony toward the graying east just as the night split with the bellow of a white man, a warning from the far side of camp where Bad Tongue and the others would be making their attack.

  “There’s one of the sonsabitches!”

  Unprepared that the rest should be discovered, Bull was forced to bring his pony around sharply, sawing the rawhide rein so savagely, he nearly spilled the pony. On the far side of the crimson fire pits and the dark mounds erupting from the ground, a white man had bolted to his feet, throwing a rifle to his shoulder.

  “Don’t shoot!” another hollered, up and sprinting for the first shadow.

  Bull sensed his heart rise to his throat, the blood’s fiery cadence hammering in his ears as he sat there atop his pawing animal, the wind grown strong in his face, the light coming up on his left shoulder, and the camp below him exploding into life. More of the mounds stirred. Harsh, whispered voices exchanged words among those who had been gathered feet to the fires only moments before, abruptly brought to life as the hammer of hooves on the sunbaked prairie brought its sunrise song to the unsuspecting white men.

  Then the riders broke over the last rise. In the space of a moment, all was a furious blur, like a reflection on the surface of a wind-chapped pond. Bull saw them against the horizon in the graying light, more like wisps of shadow, like curls of greasy smoke from some creosote-soaked sagewood fire—black and mobile, stark and streaking between the carbonite earth they moved across and the starry sky that served as their only backdrop.

  One after another each shadowy form raced fluid as spring water off a midstream boulder, sliding down the high ground on horseback, feathers in a breeze-whipped spray clustered at each warrior’s head as the eight emerged from the top of that far knoll. The sky oozed red of a sudden, smothering the gray of night, coming the dusty crimson of sunrise. Below the riders as those horsemen drove their animals down the long slope, beginning to screech at the top of their lungs, the valley of the Plum River lay drenched in bloody gray light.

  “Here come the rest of ’em!” came a shout from among those at the far side of the white man’s camp.

  Bull watched two more of the enemy bolt into motion as if they had been shot out of a gun. The curses of those coming awake of a sudden were now lost among the pounding of footsteps and the hammering of unshod pony hooves distinct on the cold morning wind.

  The war cries cracked the air like fragmented shards of thunder, distant but drawing closer with every beat of a man’s heart.

  “They’re after the horses, men!” a high-pitched voice cried out from among those on the west.

  For Bull it was time to ride.

  That same voice again hurled itself over the throbbing camp, men and animals startled into motion, curses and orders and shouts and cries of confusion creating pure bedlam.

  “Turn out! The bastards are after our horses. Turn out! Get hold of the—”

  For Bull the white war chief’s last few words were drowned under the onrush of the pony thieves. Bad Tongue and his Brule, along with Starving Elk and Little Hawk, all tore into the west side of the white man’s camp, every last throat of theirs shouting and shrieking. They flapped blankets and rattled dried buffalo hides, one of the Lakota beating on that small drum, the rest blowing on eagle wing-bone whistles they carried about their necks—making noise enough for twice their number.

  A new voice bawled as Bull tore into the camp unheard for the deafening racket. “Get your asses up and moving, boys! Indians!”

  “Turn out, men!” someone else ordered, a tall, thin one suddenly in the midst of the camp a heartbeat later.

  It was he that Bull chose for his first ride-down on that sandy ground, as the figures ahead of him dropped to their knees, throwing rifles to their shoulders, spitting bright, blinding orange flame from the muzzles, a noise no louder than the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

  White men—and he had his pick of them as he leapt the pony over a mound of baggage.

  “I dropped that bastard!” someone yelled far ahead across the camp.

  Then of a sudden the first of the white men turned, finding the lone warrior among them, the stone club at the end of his arm swinging in a red-orange, dizzying blur out of the coming sunlight.

  “Jesus-God! The Injuns behind us too!”

  Ahead of him the white men dived this way and that, some struggling to control their rearing horses as he rode them down. Again and again he swung the iron-studded war club, driving it at any target: white enemy, his horses and mules.

  Across camp, on the west, one of the red horsemen trembled, then toppled from his pony onto the gray, unforgiving plain, where he was lost in the darkness of the grassy sage.

  “Less’n a dozen of the bastards!”

  “Hold those horses! Hold those—”

  Bull’s throat hurt with the cry he bellowed at the white men—unable to remember when he had started to holler, knowing he had never stopped once he had begun that charge into their camp.

  “Goddammit—shoot when you got something to shoot at!”

  Bad Tongue and the rest of the warriors were rushing toward Bull, having reached the far western edge of the fire-dotted camp itself, having spooked the big horses and the braying mules.

  Screeching horsemen rattled their rawhide and blew their shrieking, frightening death whistles, joining the whinnying horses and brass-lunged pack animals, along with the sporadic gunshots from the pickets—that entire camp thundered into instant pandemonium. Every white man had
come to his feet and gone among the animals, furiously pulling at hobbles and reins. Likely some of the white enemy had lashed their horses to their belts through the night rather than trust to picket pins. As Bull charged among them screeching his war song, some of the white men waved pistols at him, seeming unsure of their shots as others stomped at the coals of their fires to kill the bloody backlight.

  His pony collided against a big American horse, almost going down, High-Backed Bull nearly unhorsed as the pony careened sideways, then regained its legs. He whirled about, sawing the single rein.

  “Get the sonofabitch!”

  A bullet whistled past, close enough to call out his name with its high-pitched whisper. He sensed the heat of its passing flight. Surrounded for the moment by the animals yanked and prodded, rearing and snorting, High-Backed Bull pounded his heels against the pony’s flanks as more of the blurred shadows closed in on him.

  Horses yanked their handlers about like grass-filled antelope-skin dolls, legs and arms flung akimbo. A white man scampered by, vainly clinging to the reins of his horse that succeeded in dragging its owner through a glowing fire pit. The ground around the yelping white man erupted into a shower of red-orange pricks of light.

  In the sudden swirl of blinding motion as the cursing men closed in on Bull, one of their big horses bucked, knocking aside a white man holding another two of the animals … and into that sudden aperture the warrior shot as quickly as the owl snatches up a den mouse in its claw.

  His leap through the breach blinded him momentarily. Gunfire roared in his ears, the bright, flaming blasts of the enemy’s guns both blinding him, then lighting his way through the camp as he raced to join the others. Rattling hides and crying out their yipping, brave war songs, the eight swept off the western horizon between the river and those low, inky bluffs north of that camp—come ablaze in sunrise’s crimson-tinged whirl of noise and the clatter of hooves.

  He pulled among the horsemen with his next ragged breath—his throat hurting from the strain of his cries. Bad Tongue had turned them all at the bank of the shallow river, leaping their ponies into the water, sand erupting in billowing cascades, droplet diamonds splaying from every flying hoof like scarlet mica chips in their crossing at the west end of a narrow sandbar. At its far end stood a lone cottonwood, perhaps no taller than a man.