They had not gotten out of sight of the camp when Braxton lost consciousness and slid off his horse. Will pulled up sharply and leaped off his horse to help him. The impact with the ground caused the wound in Braxton’s shoulder to bleed, oozing shiny red as the moonlight reflected from it. “Damn,” Will swore. In his haste to escape the camp, he had not realized Braxton had been shot. He had dismissed the crusty shirt as the result of many beatings. This put a different light on his plans for flight. Braxton was obviously in serious condition, no doubt from a great loss of blood. He was in no shape to run. “Damn,” Will swore solemnly again, while he decided what to do. He had planned to simply make a run for Fort Dodge, figuring that if they were chased, the hostiles would not risk riding past the Smoky Hill for fear of encountering army troops again. And since they had been successful in stealing away from the Cheyenne camp, their lead would be insurmountable. Now all that had changed. Maybe the Cheyenne would not chase after them, but Will had to assume they would, if only to recover the horse. He was tempted to tie Bradley across the saddle and make a run for it, anyway, but knew it would probably kill him. “Damn,” he swore for the third time while he thought of his options. Finally, he decided on what he believed to be his best chance.
“Come on, Bradley,” he said as he pulled the confused lieutenant to his feet. “I’m gonna put you on this horse again, and you hang on good and tight. If you can stay on for just an hour or so, I’ll let you rest, and we’ll see what we can do about that wound and maybe get you somethin’ to eat. All right?”
“I’ll try,” Bradley mumbled. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Try, hell,” Will responded, “stay on that horse. Think about Sarah. By God, if I had somebody like Sarah Lawton waitin’ for me, I’d damn sure make it back if I had to crawl all the way.”
Braxton was too weary to recognize the honest envy in Will’s statement. “How far back are the troops?” he asked.
“Troops?” Will replied brusquely. “I’m all the troops you’ve got. I’m your whole damn cavalry, so you’d better hope I know what I’m doin’.”
Braxton was clearly shocked, but too weak to question why the regiment had not seen fit to come to his rescue. Later, after regaining some of his strength, he would express his indignation at having been abandoned. But for now his mind was in too much of a fog.
After getting Braxton settled securely in the saddle, Will turned the horses away from the initial course south, and headed back toward the Saline River, angling to strike the river at a point downstream from the camp from which they had just escaped. Once they reached the river, he guided the horses into water up to the stirrups and walked them slowly downriver, hoping Bradley didn’t fall off and that the horses didn’t churn up too much sand and pebbles from the river bottom. After about three quarters of a mile they left the river and climbed up in the bluffs. The bluffs were not more than ten feet high at this point, but the climb almost caused Bradley to fall out of the saddle again. Will caught him with a hand on his shoulder and encouraged him to gut it out for just a little longer while he looked for a place to hide.
When they came across a deep ravine that dropped from the prairie, through a stand of cottonwoods, to the river, Will declared it to be as good as they were likely to find. Looking at the lieutenant hugging his horse’s neck, he figured Braxton wasn’t going to make it much farther, anyway. “Lemme get you settled,” he said as he helped Braxton down. “Then I’ll see to the horses. After that, I’ll see if there’s anything I can do for that bullet wound.” Braxton didn’t reply, but looked as if he didn’t care what happened anymore. Will stood glaring down at him for a moment before warning, “Don’t you go checkin’ out on me, dammit. I ain’t haulin’ no damn corpse back to Sarah Lawton.”
Gambling on the probability that no one in the Cheyenne camp was likely to check on their prisoner in the middle of the night, Will unsaddled the horses and prepared to stay the night. He built a small fire in a crevice of the ravine, but he didn’t want to risk frying some of the bacon in his saddlebag for fear some sharp-nosed hostile might smell it on the wind. But he provided coffee and deer jerky to help his patient regain some of his strength. He had made his camp a hell of a lot closer to the party of Cheyenne than he would have cared to, but that simple fact might be reason to believe they wouldn’t think to look for him that close. Plans to head straight back to Fort Dodge had been abandoned due to Bradley’s condition. Fort Hays was a good bit closer than Dodge and it was the reason he had brought them back to the river. The task now was to see if Bradley was strong enough to make the two-day trip. If he could rest enough for the balance of that night, they would follow the Saline east in the morning. If he can’t ride in the morning . . . He didn’t finish the thought, because the alternative held little hope.
Chapter 11
Bloody Hand was furious. How could the soldier have cut his bonds and slipped out of the camp, even then stealing a horse? The lieutenant looked too weak to walk, so someone came into their camp to free him. Who then? It was not the soldiers. This much was certain. And without any evidence to support his suspicions, he somehow knew it was the one white man who always seemed to appear to plague him—Okohome, the coyote. Impatient to prove his suspicions, he carefully inspected the ground where the soldier had been bound, searching for tracks that did not belong. It proved to be a hopeless endeavor, for there were too many tracks, and none that left the imprint of a boot. How could the coyote walk through the camp without leaving a footprint? Was his medicine that strong? Had Bloody Hand been more observant upon the few times he had seen Will, he might have noticed that the white coyote wore moccasins and not boots.
Determined to find him, he told Brave Elk that he would not go with them as they continued their journey to the Arapaho village. “Why do you care?” Brave Elk responded. “All that has happened is that the wounded soldier is gone and we lost one of the soldier horses. No one in our camp was hurt. Get this annoying white man out of your mind. It is making you crazy.”
The look in Bloody Hand’s eyes told his friend that such talk was useless. “His medicine is strong, but I will find him and I will kill him. Then I will take his medicine.”
“If his medicine is strong enough to let him walk without leaving footprints, how will you track him?”
“The soldier must leave tracks,” Bloody Hand answered impatiently. “Maybe the coyote’s horse is a medicine horse, too. But the soldier horse is not. I will follow his tracks.”
Brave Elk shook his head in frustration, but understood Bloody Hand’s obsession with this white man who seemed to appear almost everywhere unexpectedly. “I will tell the others to go on without us,” he finally said. “I will go with you to help you find this ghost.”
“I need no help,” Bloody Hand replied. “You must go with the others.”
Brave Elk shrugged off the comment. “I am your friend. We have always fought side by side. I will go with you.”
Although the two warriors began their search as soon as the rest of the camp started north toward the Solomon River, it was late in the afternoon before Bloody Hand found the tracks that he decided were the right ones. It was an almost impossible task to sort out any pattern from the faint prints barely discernible in the tall grass where the horses had grazed. But as the sun sank lower in the western sky, Bloody Hand found a series of prints that, upon closer inspection, proved to be the tracks of two horses moving toward the river. They had evidently walked together, straight toward the bank, as if being led.
“He must have led his own horse into the herd, so he could hide behind it and not frighten the other ponies,” Bloody Hand said, excited now and eager to follow.
“Here!” Brave Elk exclaimed and pointed to a set of distinct tracks leading into the water. “This is where he crossed.” He stood waiting for his friend to come inspect the tracks. When Bloody Hand hurried to the spot, a patient smile spread across Brave Elk’s face. “Maybe the coyote’s pony is not a magic pony,” he
said, pointing to the two sets of hoofprints. “And maybe the coyote’s medicine is not as strong as we thought,” he added, pointing to a clear moccasin print at the edge of the water. It was obvious then why Will’s tracks were lost amid the many moccasin tracks surrounding the place where the soldier had been tied.
Eager to start after the coyote and the soldier, the two Cheyenne crossed over the river and found the tracks on the other side. They led back to a point directly opposite their camp. “He left the horses here while he walked into the village and freed the soldier,” Bloody Hand said. Then, turning to follow the trail with his eyes, he pointed to the south. “Come, we will overtake them before they reach the Smoky Hill.” Brave Elk harbored some doubt regarding that possibility, since their quarry had such a head start, but he did not voice his thoughts, knowing that his friend was feverish with the sickness of revenge. Both warriors were astonished, however, when after only a distance of about one hundred yards, the trail stopped and turned back toward the river.
“Maybe it is not his trail,” Brave Elk said, but Bloody Hand insisted that it was and that it was just another of the confounding things the coyote did.
Carefully following the trail, they found themselves at the riverbank, some distance downstream from their camp. “He wanted us to think he had gone back to the Smoky Hill,” Brave Elk said. When there were no tracks to be found on the other side of the river, it was obvious to them that Will had kept the horses in the water to lose anyone trying to follow. By now it was already getting dark under the trees that flanked the river. And although difficult for him to admit, Bloody Hand reluctantly agreed to give up the chase until morning. They would need sharp eyes to see where the coyote had left the water.
They had not gotten far since starting out that morning. Will assigned some of the blame for it on his insistence to get Braxton up on his horse early in order to put some distance between them and the Cheyenne camp. Braxton obviously needed more time to regain some strength, but Will assured him that time was the one thing they didn’t have, depending on how good those warriors were at discovering their trail. “Maybe they won’t see that we turned back, but we didn’t take a helluva lot of time tryin’ to cover our trail in the dark last night.”
So now, a little past noon, they had only covered about ten miles, a point where Will decided it time to leave the Saline and head more to the southeast if they were to strike Fort Hays. Instead of going on, however, Will realized he was going to have to stop there to let Braxton rest, so he picked a spot near a plum thicket on the riverbank. A hole had been formed by the water when it was high in the spring that provided a natural redoubt, and he figured if he had to, he could hold off a good-sized war party with his rifle.
After hobbling Braxton’s horse, he built a small fire and broke out his battered old coffeepot again. While it was boiling, he took a look at Braxton’s wound. He had bandaged it with a piece of cloth from what was left of an old shirt that had seen its day and was retained for this purpose. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Like hell,” Braxton replied weakly.
Will had no notion as to what he should do for the wounded man. Braxton seemed to have a fever, for he was sweating profusely and was barely able to hold his head up. Maybe the bullet was causing his fever. Will had known more than one person who was still carrying a lead slug in their arm or leg, but maybe there was something about the one in Braxton’s shoulder that was causing the problem. “Maybe I oughta try to dig that slug outta your shoulder,” he suggested.
His suggestion got an immediate response from the patient. “Hell, no,” he responded. “I need a doctor. If you go digging around in there, you’ll probably make it worse.”
His forceful response surprised Will. “Well, you ain’t as near dead as I thought you were,” he replied. “But we’re gonna have to do somethin’ to cover more distance than we did today.” He paused for a moment to think about their situation. “I’ll see if I can’t find somethin’ to give you a little nourishment. I can’t take a chance on shootin’ anythin’, but I saw a couple of good-sized turtles on that far bank. Maybe I can catch one of ’em for supper.” He got up to leave, then paused and looked back at Braxton. “If some food and another night’s rest don’t fix you up, I’m gonna dig that bullet outta you. And if that doesn’t work, I reckon I’ll have to shoot you and pack you back to Fort Hays.” The lieutenant didn’t appreciate the humor, but he refrained from responding.
True to his word, Will managed to catch a couple of turtles, and soon had them rotating over the fire on a green plum branch for a spit. He pulled Braxton up to a sitting position and handed him a chunk of the roasted meat. The lieutenant eyed it suspiciously, but his hunger got the best of him and he took a small bite. “Ain’t bad eatin’, is it?” Will asked with a smile, amused by the officer’s fastidiousness. “Eat it; turtle’s the best thing you can eat for a bullet wound,” he stated with no idea whether it was good or harmful.
“It could use a little salt,” Braxton replied, and took another bite.
Will laughed. “If I’d known you were gonna be so picky about your food, I’da come after you in a chuck wagon.”
Braxton studied the rangy scout who had risked his life to rescue him when his own company and regiment had deemed it unwise to remain in the area. To be honest, he could not understand Will’s motive for coming after him. It was an unstated fact that the two men did not like each other, and Braxton was clearly irritated by the scout’s apparent friendship with his intended. He would have thought that Will would have been the last person to try to rescue him. The fact that Emma obviously adored Will was another burr under Braxton’s saddle. Although there was some reluctance involved, he knew that he was remiss in not having at least acknowledged Will’s heroic efforts to save him. “I guess I’m overdue in expressing my thanks for getting me out of that camp,” he managed.
His declaration of thanks was met with a knowing smile from Will, and he offered another chunk of the roasting meat, which the lieutenant accepted a little more eagerly this time. “Not at all,” Will said. He had a pretty good idea how painful it was for Braxton to thank him. He felt it unnecessary to tell him that he had done it for Sarah and certainly not for him, for he was sure the lieutenant knew it. Yes, sir, he thought, if it wasn’t for the fact that Sarah wants you, I’d be back in Fort Dodge with the rest of the regiment and probably getting ready to head back to Camp Supply. To Braxton, he said, “If our luck holds out, maybe those Injuns won’t figure out we’re headin’ for Fort Hays, and I’ll get you to the doctor by tomorrow night.”
The two Cheyenne warriors worked their way along the river, one on each side, searching for the place where the white men had left the water. They had ridden less than a mile from the place where the horses entered the water when they found tracks climbing up the north bank. A short ride brought them to the deep gully where the remains of a fire were discovered. Realizing that the coyote had made his camp so close to the Cheyenne camp only served to intensify Bloody Hand’s anger. Brave Elk suggested that maybe the reason they had made camp so close was due to the condition of the soldier. “I think that maybe this coyote had to stop to rest the soldier,” he said. “If he is too weak to travel, then maybe they are not a full day ahead of us as we thought.” Brave Elk’s reasoning made sense to Bloody Hand and served to increase his fever to waste no more time. “I think,” Brave Elk continued, “that the coyote changed his mind and is now heading to the soldier fort at Big Creek.”
“I agree,” Bloody Hand said, but even guessing where Will was heading, they were still forced to follow his tracks. There was no established trail to Fort Hays from where they now stood, so they had to find the place where the coyote left the Saline and turned south to strike Big Creek. They could move faster, however, galloping over long stretches along the river, then slowing to confirm that they were still on the trail before another sprint. The sun was directly overhead when they came to the place where the tracks crossed over to
the other side of the Saline, then angled to the southeast. Coming upon some horse droppings on the opposite bank, they dismounted to examine them. They were fresh, still warm, and Bloody Hand knew that they had caught them. “We must be careful now,” he said, respectful of the coyote’s rifle.
No more than two or three miles ahead of the two Cheyenne warriors, Will Cason stood beside a shallow stream that fed into the river he had just recently left behind. Walking back to the edge of the willow trees, he looked behind him at the open expanse of grass between the stream and a line of rolling hills. There was no sign of anyone following their trail, but that fact was not sufficient to give him peace of mind. He went back then and studied the prone figure of Braxton Bradley and tried to decide what to do. The lieutenant was feverish again and seemed to be getting worse. This past leg of the journey, from the river to this point, had lasted only a couple of miles before Braxton slid off his horse again. Will had little choice but to let him rest. He supposed this was as good a place as any to stop for a while. The stream was thick with willows, chokecherries, and gooseberry bushes, offering ample seclusion.
War Cry Page 17