Winter Rain

by Terry C. Johnston

  As he settled to a squat beside Becher, Sweete could read the strain at the corners of the man’s eyes, in the way the lieutenant held his mouth. That normally implacable German stoicism was beginning to crack under the weight of not finding the smallest hoofprint or camp fire that could belong to the enemy Major Carr wanted more than most anything.

  “Vat do you make of it, Mr. Sweete?”

  Shad just shrugged. “If they’re out there, Lieutenant—we’ll run across sign soon enough.”

  “Better sooner than later, eh?”

  “You want to make a fight of it, I see.”

  Becher chewed on some of his dried meat before answering. “If there is to be the fight of it vit’ these Cheyenne that every man says there vill be—then I vant it to come soon. Better that it come sooner than later … no goot v’en the soldiers grow veary of the chase.”

  “Did you chase the enemy much during the war?”

  Staring at his dirty boots, the lieutenant nodded. “Yes. Chase and vait. Chase and vait some more. Then we finally fight. V’en we did—many … many men died. Then we chased some more.”

  Shad cleared his throat, sucked down some warm water from the canteen, and swiped a hand across his lips. “S’pose I agree with you then, Lieutenant. If there’s bound to be a fight with Cheyenne Dog Soldiers—better that we go ahead and get it over with.”

  After some twenty minutes Shad had them back in the saddle, this time pointing the trackers due north toward Frenchman’s Fork, feeling their way into that sandhill country that rolled in broken rumples west into Colorado Territory—an endless, vaulting monotony of tableland shimmering beneath the summer’s highest, hottest sun, baking grass and sand, man and beast, in its unmerciful crucible.

  To break some of the monotony, the old beaver man told Becher he would outride the left flank for a while, keeping the main column of Pawnee in sight. For the next two hours he kept his horse pointed north for Frenchman’s Fork, enjoying the solitude. The hotter the humming air grew, the more Shad drifted into a hypnotic reverie, dreaming on the high, cool, beckoning places to the west. Off yonder would be North Park, Middle Park, and the Bayou Salade—where OI’ Bill Williams himself claimed he would reincarnate as an elk bull with one lopsided antler just so all of his compañeros would recognize their old trapping partner.

  Shad thought it strange to hear gunfire—knowing that most every old hivernant of the mountains would know which bull was really Ol’ Bill—

  —then Sweete realized it wasn’t his daydream. Real shots crackled off to his right. More than four hundred yards to the east Becher was instantly in the thick of it—the lead of his column caught by surprise in the rolling land that had hidden the enemy until the moment of attack.

  Shad could make out Becher’s German-laced Pawnee. Could hear the Pawnee’s shrill war songs.

  And behind it all arose the unmistakably deadly wail of eagle wing-bone whistles and the war cries of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers.

  As Sweete pounded his heels against the horse’s tired flanks, he watched the fifty Pawnee split themselves into three squads, sending horse holders to the rear more than fifty yards.

  Dropping to their knees as the full brunt of the onrushing wave washed toward them across the sunburned grass belly-high on the rolling sandhills, North’s trackers prepared to make their stand. Shad dismounted near them quickly, leaving his horse behind, and huffed the last of it on foot.

  “How many you t’ink, Mr. Sweete?” Becher hollered as the racket of throats and gunfire grew in volume.

  “Hundred. Maybe more, Lieutenant.”

  “Count them, by dam’t! I vant to make an accurate report to General Carr.” Becher ripped open the reloading door in the stock of his Spencer and drove home a full Blakeslee reloading tube. “Und v’en you’re done counting, you can fire at vill, Mr. Sweete. Any time you like!”

  “Give me something to hit—and I’ll do just that!” Shad snapped back at the German.

  He was waiting for the enemy to close on them, while the lieutenant and the Pawnee fired at the Cheyenne horsemen still more than three hundred yards off to the north, but coming rapidly. Bright, glittering sunlight bounced off their weapons and war paint and shields and greased scalp locks. Two bunches of them each made a sweeping arc back against the other just out of rifle range.

  “This bunch knew ve vere here?” Becher asked.

  Shad shook his head, still waiting, watching. Looking over the distant riders as best he could. Wondering …

  “No—they likely didn’t have an idea one of finding us here. Just bumped into us, I’d lay.”

  “Dam’t well look ready to fight, they do—this bunch not looking for us, Mr. Sweete.”

  “You’re right on that count, Lieutenant. This bunch does look all dressed up for a scrap, don’t they?”

  With each side-to-side sweep of the double arc, the near-naked horsemen drew a few yards closer, and closer, then closer still. Yet, for all the lead fired and as hot as things were growing, two, and two only, of the Cheyenne lay motionless on the slope of the grassy hillside. Again and again the horsemen probed the Pawnee squads, jabbing here and there, feinting a full frontal charge of it before pulling back. Yet, as daring as the Cheyenne were becoming, there was little the frustrated Pawnee could do but watch the enemy horsemen ride in close, then drop to the far side of their ponies as they swept magnificently along the Pawnee flanks.

  If Dog Soldiers were good at anything, they were good at taunting their enemy before they came in for the kill. And in this case, the Cheyenne were old, old enemies of the Pawnee.

  “Mr. Sweete!” Becher hollered, his voice near cracking in volume as he hurled his shrill call over the tumult of gunfire, death songs from the horsemen sweeping past, and deafening war cries from the Pawnee trackers themselves.

  Shad crabbed over and did his best to shrink his big frame down in the dry, stunted grass. “Lot of noise to it. And damn if they don’t put on a pretty show—their parade too.” He watched the look of incredulous confusion cross the soldier’s face.

  “I vas getting ready to ask you v’at you t’ought the odds vere that ve vould be overv’helm’t,” Becher said sourly.

  “They ain’t working up much steam, Lieutenant,” Shad said, tearing the grin off his face when he found the soldier in no mood to make light of their situation.

  “Vat the hell that mean?”

  “Means them horsemen likely break off soon.”

  Becher eyed him severely. “You expect me to believe that? After they already lost two of their number? Vat makes you so sure they von’t do everyt’ing to run right over us?”

  Shad chewed his tongue a moment to keep from snapping at the German. “Lookee here, Lieutenant. I wasn’t told to come along to help you with the Pawnee—you got things well in hand there. I thought I come along to help tell you about the enemy. If you don’t want my—”

  “Just speak your piece, Mr. Sweete.”

  He drew himself up a bit, then gazed back at Becher. “To them Dog Soldiers—these odds ain’t near good enough in their favor. Besides, Lieutenant—them warriors really are just as surprised as we are. Shit, I figure they already found out they can’t run us over, like you figure they’ll do to us. So my bet is them Cheyenne gonna pull on back, ride off to fight another day.”

  Becher’s eyes quickly swept over his three squads, as if to assess some of the growing commotion among the trackers. “I just pray to Gott you’re right, Mr. Sweete. From vat I see—ve’re in trouble already as it stan’ts. These men don’t ha’f enough ammunition vit’ us to make a stan’ting fight of it.”

  Shad only nodded and fell silent, thinking a prayer might not be so bad a thing, after all. Yanking up the flap to his sizable leather possibles pouch he had hanging over his shoulder, he was reassured to find the three extra Blakeslee loading tubes for his Spencer rifle inside. Through his many years trapping the high streams of the Rocky Mountain west, Sweete had carried greased patches and huge molded balls
of Galena lead along with vent picks and flints and repair tools for the three flintlock rifles he had packed up one side of the Shining Mountains and down the other across two decades of chasing castoreum. But no more were there the two powder horns hung from that pouch’s wide strap.

  None of that heavy truck did he carry these days, abandoning the bulky trappings of that bygone era—powder, ball, and patch. Still, he never quite shook the feeling of being naked without the pouch—its continued comfort beneath his right arm served to remind him of just how far man had advanced during the bloodletting of the Civil War in learning how better to kill his fellow man.

  No more was it a matter of taking one shot—reloading—and shooting again, all within the space of a minute. Now a good marksman could efficiently empty a handful of saddles at a respectable range in the same time another man reloaded a muzzle loader for his second shot. Yet as Shad brought back the hammer on the Spencer and started to nestle the rifle into the crease of his shoulder, the old trapper stopped, squinted, then shielded the high light from his eyes with a hand.

  He was studying the heaving, galloping ponies a little closer, the clay paint dabbed and smeared across their necks and flanks: crude hieroglyphics and potent symbols. Shad strained his old eyes across that shimmering distance to make out the face paint and hair fobs of the onrushing horsemen. For a moment he thought … then could not be sure with the glimmering cascade of sand and hoof.

  From the start Bull had grown straight and strong as a lodgepole pine. Back in his youth the boy had already shown the ropy muscle of the deer in his powerful legs, the rippling muscle in his arms like that under the hide of a mountain lion. Maybe that was Bull atop that blaze-faced gelding dotted with crimson hailstones … maybe not. But—even at this distance, he told himself, wouldn’t a father recognize—

  In a swirl of sand the two files of horsemen racing down their flanks suddenly sprang themselves back atop their ponies like a child’s string toy and performed a pretty arc back against one another as they swept noisily away from the Pawnee.

  “What’d I tell you?” Shad roared at the lieutenant when the two swirling columns scattered over the far slopes to the north, leaving Becher’s Pawnee behind to hurl their angry oaths at only the summer sky.

  “By Gott, ve did it! Three of them dead by my count, Mr. Sweete.”

  “Them Pawnee of your’n did it, Lieutenant,” Shad admitted. “Wouldn’t believed it had I ain’t seen it with my own eyes—them Injun trackers fighting like white men. By damned this bunch stood and took the best them Dog Soldiers had to dish out. Beehelzebub! But I was feared they would bolt and go to horse to mix it up when the Cheyenne rushed us.”

  “To horse?”

  “Yep. Only natural for a Injun to want to fight from horseback. Brought up that way. And, after all—these Pawnee is first, last, and always will be Injuns, Lieutenant.”

  Becher rose from the grassy sand to signal in his three squads. Horse holders huffed up with their mule-eyed mounts as Shad once more grew aware of the heat beating at the back of his neck. Up and down his neck he dragged the greasy, smoke-stained folds of a huge black bandanna, resplendent with a splash of red Taos roses, pushing aside the shoulder-length waves of iron-flecked hair.

  “V’ere you t’ink ve are now, Mr. Sweete?” Becher asked, dragging a sleeve down his nose where a drop of sweat clung like a translucent pendant. “Colorado Territory alrea’ty?”

  Sweete peered off to the northwest. “If we ain’t—we’re damned close, Lieutenant. Don’t really make a bit of difference to the general, does it? I figure all that’s important to Carr now is that he has a trail to follow. And a hot one to boot.”

  Taking the reins to his mount from a Pawnee horse holder, Becher said, “Goot. Ve ride back now to bring up the main column.”

  “As hard and long as Carr’s been pushing his soldiers, I’ll wager the general’s gonna be damned pleased to hear about us getting run at by these Dog Soldiers.”

  Becher nodded, smiling. “Very please’t, I t’ink. So vat is special to these Dog Soldiers? Vat makes these bunch so important to us?”

  With a knowing gaze on the hills where the horsemen had disappeared, Sweete replied, “Because when you get jumped by Dog Soldiers, you get hit by the best the Cheyenne nation can throw at you. The baddest, bloodiest red outlaws as ever forked a pony.”

  Swelling his chest with unabashed pride, the lieutenant grinned. “Vell, then, Mr. Sweete. No more do ve snoop our noses around on this gottforsaken groun’t vit’out any sign. Goot size war party like this—painted and feat’ered—they vere out for no goot. And now Carr’s got them!”

  “Out for no good is right as rain. Them Cheyenne are letting the wolf loose, I’d say.”

  The German smiled even wider, smoke-stained teeth like varnished pine shavings. “Let’s get these Pawnees back to Major North—so I can tell General Carr ve got Cheyenne wolves to track now!”

  19

  Moon of Cherries Blackening 1869

  BULL SWORE HE saw him. Saw the man who had fathered him among the Shaved-Heads.

  As he rode away with the rest, more than a hundred in all, High-Backed Bull twisted to look over his shoulder at the disappearing figures behind him among the sandy hills. The Shaved-Heads were standing now, still in their three bands. Others hurriedly led their big American horses to those who had held the Shahiyena at bay during the heat of the battle. And near the center were clearly two white men.

  He could tell by the hair hiding their faces.

  That bigger one—how many men of his size could there be on these plains? How many wore what appeared to be greasy buckskins? That low-crowned hat with its wide, floppy brim slightly upturned in the front …

  “Leave them be,” Porcupine said as he came alongside Bull, the whole of the raiding party urging their ponies into an easy lope upon seeing the Shaved-Heads were not going to pursue. Though he did not ask it, Porcupine’s face registered some question. “We will fight them another day, my friend.”

  “When?” Bull asked, glancing one last time over his shoulder, hoping for another glimpse of the tall white man across the shimmering, misshapen distance.

  “Three families will mourn tonight,” Porcupine said. “Think first of the sadness that will visit our village. Only when the men have cut their braids, when the women have bloodied themselves and wailed can we take up the path of these soldiers and their Shaved-Head wolves come sniffing on our backtrail.”

  “When!” Bull snapped angrily, turning on Porcupine so suddenly, he flung sweat from his painted brow. “How long?”

  Porcupine’s eyes narrowed as he measured the young warrior riding beside him. “You are Shahiyena. And you ask me that question? Control the fire in your heart and think of your people. You are a Dog Soldier. Do not let me find you fighting this battle by yourself.”

  Sensing the sting of something heating its way through him with the war chief’s words, Bull finally nodded. “Two days. Yes?”

  He nodded at the younger warrior. “Two days, Bull.”

  “Then we can ride to attack again?”

  “Two days and we will ride to avenge the death of three of our own. We are Hotamitanyo.”

  “We know the yellow-leg soldiers are coming—why won’t Tall Bull or White Horse fight them in force?”

  “If the day is right—we will attack the soldier column. Until then—we will be content to steal their horses, to harass the Shaved-Heads who guide the soldiers and watch for our chance to frighten the ones who drive their supply wagons.”

  “We can make the day right here and now, Porcupine. We can—”

  “Wait two days, Bull. Those who have lost must have their grief, shed their blood.”

  “And what of us who carry a vow? What of us who have sworn to drench ourselves in another’s blood?”

  July was already eight days old.

  For two marches following Becher’s scrap with the war party, Major Carr kept his cavalry doggedly plodding north by w
est along the Republican River, without deviation. Then yesterday a platoon of North’s Pawnee had come upon a scatter of footprints near the edge of an abandoned enemy encampment. They had called Major North and Shad Sweete over.

  “We can’t be sure, can we, Mr. Sweete?” Frank North asked.

  Shad had shrugged. “S’pose not, Major.”

  “I’m for waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “To tell the general. Wait till we have more proof. Till we got more of something solid to show him. Just from this”—and North’s hand had pointed down to the windblown scatter of running tracks— “I don’t think any of us can say for sure.”

  That was the indecision of yesterday. But this morning, they found their proof.

  Telltale footprints that North showed to Carr.

  Sweete had watched the effect those tiny impressions in the hardened sand had on the major. What he and the Pawnee had come across were not moccasin tracks—but instead the prints of a woman’s slim boot. Carr had knelt over them, reaching out with a fingertip as if to measure the depth the tiny heel had made in the soil. Maybe even to measure the terror the woman must have experienced as the village hastily packed up to flee his oncoming troops.

  “It raised the hair on the back of my neck too, Shad.”

  Sweete turned from staring hypnotically at the fire to find Bill Cody settling beside him. “What got your hackles up?”

  “Thinking about them white women held captive by that bunch.”

  “Does Carr know there’s two sets of them tracks?”

  Cody nodded once. Staring into the fire, he answered, “I suppose he does know.”

  “I saw for myself the look on the man’s face. He wants that village bad, Bill.”

  “How can you blame him, Shad? Them bloody Cheyenne. No telling what them bucks been doing to them Christian women—” Cody broke it off, realizing his mistake with the old plainsman. “I’m sorry, Shad. Just running off at the mouth like I do a’times. You and your family … didn’t mean nothing by it—”