The Rider of Phantom Canyon

by Don Bendell

  Shortly after daybreak, Strongheart crawled into the saddle and headed toward the ranch. He saw a gulch that was filled with scrub oak and went right up and through the large stone wall around the ranch and would provide excellent cover for his approach. However, he did not want to go that way, because it was the most obvious. There were two smaller gulches, also filled with vegetation, and neither went all the way to the wall. He could safely leave Eagle there without worry of him being spotted and sneak most of the way to the wall, and would then have to carefully low-crawl on his stomach for maybe three hundred feet, using selective cover.

  Joshua Strongheart was now focused on the ranch below and the various activities going on; he was not watching his backtrail as carefully as he normally did. The follower was watching him with a small telescope and was now coming down off the mountain, following the same route Strongheart had used. However, his focus was on Strongheart, and he was not watching back up the mountain behind him, or he might have seen occasional glimpses of the second follower carefully putting the sneak on him. It took several hours for Joshua to get into position on the one draw so he could dismount, leave Eagle hidden out of sight in the trees, and move on by foot.

  He dismounted and removed his boots and tied them with a leather thong to his saddle horn. He carefully, quietly removed the large-roweled spurs with two jingle-bobs on each and slid them into his saddlebags while he retrieved his moccasins and an extra .45 Peacemaker, tucking it into his belt in the back. He strung his bow and slipped it and his mountain lion–hide quiver full of arrows over his head and shoulder, wearing both diagonally on his back. The tall Pinkerton moved forward, Lakota style, walking slowly, toe first, then the heel.

  He made no sound. With the quilled, soft-soled antelope-skin moccasins, Joshua could feel every pebble underfoot and would stop whenever his foot touched a stick. He would gingerly move his foot to another spot. When the undergrowth opened up, he would lie down on the ground, low-crawling forward, using his forearms and knees.

  Strongheart was now close enough to the large stone wall he could literally throw a rock and hit it. The perspective was certainly different at ground level. It was, he estimated, ten feet in height.

  The follower’s large horse, like Eagle, was also trained to ground-rein, so he left him in the trees, and the two horses sniffed each other’s noses, then calmly grazed in place, side by side. Removing his spurs, he pulled a pair of woolen socks over his boots, checked the bullets in his .44, and moved forward slowly, carefully. He had to close in to Joshua and hoped the wily Pinkerton agent would not spot him until he was almost upon him.

  The other follower already had moccasins on and held back in the trees, watching the first follower, then stealthily, slowly moved forward.

  Strongheart watched to his left, the north, and kept his eye on what looked like two legitimate cowhands roping, branding, and neutering bull calves. They also had a third cowhand, who was obviously another hired gun, not doing any work but sitting his horse, watching over the scene. Joshua pulled out his binoculars and observed the man for a while. With the two active cowhands, he knew he could sprint the last few yards and vault the ten feet up the wall and pull himself over. However, the gun hand was too watchful. Joshua had to figure out how to distract the man. He considered shooting a long, arching arrow and hoping when it struck it would make enough noise to distract him, but he knew he would have to aim at a spot so far away that the man would not even hear it strike.

  He concluded he would inch his way forward on his belly all the way to the wall, moving so slowly the shootist would not see him. Then he would, like a lizard, grab the rocks with fingers and hands and work his way up to the top of the wall. Carefully watching the gunman, he slowly started moving forward. He knew at that distance he would not be very noticeable unless he moved quickly. Like a snail, Joshua inched along. It took him over an hour just to move several paces.

  Reaching the wall, he started to lift himself up, ever so slowly, gripping with his fingers and the sides of his feet on the edges of stones. By now, the follower and the second follower were both in place in the trees watching, and both were amazed at his incredible strength to cling to the fingerholds in the rocks. It took a half an hour for Joshua to reach the top of the wall, then he had to slowly pull himself on top, where he lay perfectly still, all his muscles in his arms and legs shaking. He dared not move, though there could be people inside the compound below him watching him now or aiming guns at him. Joshua felt he had to simply take the risk and lie there until he recovered. Because he was in such excellent physical condition, it did not take long for him to do so.

  Then, ever so slowly, he turned his head toward the inside of the wall and saw the large house. There before him, he saw her, totally nude, her long, golden hair hanging down around both shoulders, and she was grinning. Helena Victoria was standing in a second-floor bedroom staring at Joshua, wearing nothing but a large smile on her face. She did nothing to hide her nakedness, and Strongheart knew he had to think and move more quickly than she. He had to move fast and get back up into the trees, as she would call down the hounds of hell on him.

  First she would have to put on a robe, at least, and he was already sprinting back toward the follower who was hidden in the treeline. The follower headed toward his horse as fast as he could move and vaulted into the saddle just as Joshua spotted him.

  Strongheart said, “What are you doing here, and how did you get here?”

  Scottie Middleton said, “I’ll tell you when we are safe!”

  Just then, Joshua heard a large bell clanging three times from the ranch compound. He knew instantly that it was a prearranged signal for help. He jumped up on Eagle, and they rode fast into the taller trees. The second follower was watching and was running fast ahead of them, retracing Joshua’s trail back up the mountain.

  Joshua was really puzzled at how Scottie had appeared and why. They rode well up into the trees and headed north along the front of the mountain range, following deer and elk trails at nine to ten thousand feet. Strongheart knew they could not push the horses like that, so he slowed Eagle to a walk for five minutes to cool him down, then finally stopped in an aspen grove and dismounted. Scottie followed suit.

  They pulled canteens off their horses and drank deeply.

  Joshua said, “Okay, tell me, Scottie, how did you find me, and why did you come after me?”

  Scottie said, “I will, Joshua, but shouldn’t we be running the horses farther? You know they have to have a lot of hands after us.”

  Strongheart said, “Maybe we should, but we need to let them have a blow and rest a little. They have been mainly staying down at five thousand feet. We are running them at twice the height. Sometimes, Scottie, you just have to give your horse a rest and stand and fight if you have to. Grab your rifle and make sure you have plenty of bullets.”

  With that, Joshua went over and grabbed his carbine, and Scottie grabbed his. They went back and sat down on logs. The other follower was catching up, but a hundred feet higher up the ridge.

  Scottie said, “You know that woman you mentioned, Helena Victoria? Her real name is Victoria Roberta Clinton. V. R. Clinton is a she, not a he.”

  Joshua was amazed and said, “I just saw her through the upstairs window when I was on top of that wall and wondered what her connection was there, but how do you know, Scottie?”

  “When I heard you and the sheriff talking about V. R. Clinton, I remembered Bernard Clinton at school,” Scottie said. “Everybody ignores him, because he is strange, but I have always been nice to him. When you made me go to school, I talked to Bernard outside and asked him if he lived in Westcliffe. He said he does, but he lives down in Cañon City during the weeks we have school. His ma has money, he said, lots of it, and she didn’t want him going to one of those one-room schoolhouses around Westcliffe. She sends him to Cañon City, and he stays with the Macons, Robesons, Adamics, or one o
f the main pioneer families. I can’t remember which, but it don’t matter.”

  Strongheart smiled, saying, “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you find out where she gets her money from?” Joshua asked.

  “No,” Scottie said.

  “She got it from Robert Hartwell,” a woman’s voice said above them. “She was his woman.”

  Scottie and Strongheart both spun and drew their weapons to see the exquisitely beautiful cousin of Strongheart standing behind a tree above them. A paint horse followed her, and she carried a carbine and, like Joshua, wore a bow and a quiver of arrows on her back diagonally. She wore a doeskin dress that did little to hide all the curves in her body. Scottie immediately thought that she was the most beautiful Injun woman he had ever seen, then revised his thinking. Her face was the prettiest face he had ever seen on any woman.

  Joshua holstered his pistol and said, “Cousin,” as she rushed forward and threw herself into his arms.

  He pushed her back and said, “I must be getting old or stupid. Both of you have put the sneak on me today. Scottie, this is my cousin Wiya Waste, which means ‘beautiful woman.’ Wiya Waste, this is my friend Scottie Middleton.”

  Scottie removed his hat and stammered, “A, um, pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  She giggled and said, “My, what a handsome young warrior you are. My cousin has told me much about you.”

  “He has?” Scottie said, very well pleased.

  He looked self-consciously at Joshua, who simply grinned.

  Strongheart then got grim-faced. “Wiya, you live many days north of here at the circle of my father and his brother’s wife, your mother. Why have you come here?”

  He said it that way so Scottie would understand their relationship.

  Wiya said, “I was told you seek V. R. Clinton, and I knew it was her. I cannot say her name good. Some of the chiefs learned this, that after you killed Hartwell, his woman took much money and came here. She has hair like the sun and long like a Lakota woman.”

  Joshua said, “You came all this way to tell me that?”

  She said, “Yes, and to tell you what I have learned about Thašúŋke Witkó.”

  Scottie said, “Huh?”

  Strongheart said, “I know how he was killed a few years ago. Is that what you mean?”

  Scottie interrupted. “What do those words mean?”

  Strongheart said, “Crazy Horse.”

  Scottie was excited. Just the name Crazy Horse sent many exciting images through his mind.

  “What do you mean, cousin?” Strongheart asked.

  “Crazy Horse was my father,” she said, smiling.

  “What?” he said. “How could that be?”

  She said, “You know my mother was young when I was born?”

  Joshua said, “Yes.”

  She went on. “Crazy Horse was young, too, and he and my mother loved each other, and he went away to fight with his own circle of teepees, the Oglala Lakota. Then, after he went away, I was born. My mother married your father’s brother, who I thought was my father.”

  Strongheart said, “We need to talk about all this later, but how do you know?”

  She said, “My mother, you know, has the coughing sickness now, and will soon die. She told me about it. . . . You are not my cousin, Joshua.”

  She looked at him, a hopeful look in her eyes, and moreso in her heart. She had loved this man since she was a little girl.

  Strongheart was amazed and walked over to Eagle, picking up his reins and saying, “We’ll talk later, but we need to get moving. I have many men after me by now, and I do not want to watch out for you two and try to stay alive at the same time. It does not work.”

  They mounted up and followed him as he zigzagged through the trees. Unfortunately, that took just enough time for some of the gun hands to catch up. A shot rang out and Joshua squeezed Eagle’s flanks, and they sprinted through the aspens, with Scottie and Wiya Waste close behind. More shots rang out behind them as they fled, but these were farther back. The aspens helped because they could only run on game trails used by deer and elk, with little fear of their pursuers spreading out behind them. They were running on the face of steep mountains with terrain rolling in and out of dips in gulches, and at a number of spots the horses leapt over fast-running, bubbling, churning whitewater glacial creeks roaring down the mountainside and spilling nature’s lifeblood out into numerous channels lacing the Wet Mountain Valley floor below. Strongheart could see the many buildings of Westcliffe and even Silver Cliff off to his right front out across the valley many miles away. In less than thirty years, the game trails they were on would be made into a 110-mile-long north-to-south trail along the Sangre de Cristo range all the way down into New Mexico, and it would be called the Rainbow Trail, which would become a tourist attraction for hikers for over a century to come. For now, Joshua was just grateful the elk and deer had made these natural game trails across the face of each mountain.

  He finally reined up and spun around to face the attackers, and then he saw what had happened. Wiya Waste was barely hanging on, holding her horse’s mane in a tight grip. A giant bloodstain covered the upper right front of her dress, where a bullet had hit her back low in the right shoulder and passed through her body just above her right breast, but had fortunately missed her lungs. Joshua immediately knew this, because he saw no frothy bright red blood or bubbles coming out.

  He called Scottie back and handed her reins to him, commanding, “Take her ahead and find us some boulders for cover.”

  She bravely forced a weak smile, but was barely awake. Scottie took off at a gallop, with her holding tight onto the mane of the paint mare. Strongheart faced their rear, his Colt Peacemaker in his right hand, carbine in the left.

  In a minute’s time, four riders appeared, rifles in their hands, but they were single file on the game trail. Joshua had pulled Eagle up with a large tree trunk along the trail between him and the pursuers. He aimed at the lead man, and his first shot went through the man’s neck and hit the rider behind him on the left side of his face, blowing that side of his head off. He flew off his horse like a rag doll, slamming hard into a tree trunk and onto the ground, a bloody, lifeless mess. The other man dropped his rifle and clutched at his bloody throat, blood gurgling up out of the bullet hole, as his horse ran wildly off the trail and under a large maple tree branch, which hit the dying man in the chest, sending him backward.

  Joshua knew that the accurate shooting and devastating results would play on the minds of his pursuers and make them more hesitant about coming after them too fast. He turned Eagle and took off after Scottie and Wiya Waste. Within ten minutes, he caught up and found that Scottie had indeed paid attention. He had made a camp amidst a large jumble of huge boulders, some the size of a small house. He had dismounted both horses and had Wiya lying on the ground with a clean cloth pressed against her wounds in both front and back.

  Joshua dropped down, grabbing the Lakota beauty, and said, “Good job, son. Get up on that rock with a rifle and keep watch. I think I held them off for a while.” He told Scottie not to look, and he carefully removed Wiya Waste’s dress, built a small fire very quickly and stuck the point of his knife blade in it, then retrieved clean bandaging from his saddlebags and a pair of snipe-nosed pliers, which in modern day are called needle-nosed pliers. He had started carrying them for just such an emergency. He also stuck these in the fire, and he washed her wounds with canteen water, then added whiskey from a small flask he also carried in his saddlebags for wounds.

  Upon cleaning her, he found that she’d had two bullets pass through the back of her shoulder. One tore through the front above her right breast, but the other stopped under the skin surface an inch higher and now created a large, angry bruise and a small lump under the skin where it had not broken through.

  Joshua handed her the
whiskey flask and said, “Take one quick swallow.”

  Then he stuck a green stick in her mouth and said, “Bite down!”

  She bit the stick and he asked, “Are you ready?”

  Eyes opened wide in fear, she nodded yes.

  Strongheart quickly and efficiently cut through the lump where the bullet pushed against her skin. She bit down hard and was clearly in pain, but did not make a sound. He grabbed the snipe-nosed pliers and reached into the bloody hole, grabbing the bullet and pulling it out the front. She clearly almost fainted from the pain and breathed very heavily, but never let out as much as a whimper.

  He then poured whiskey on the bloody wound and, following that, wrapped her shoulder and covered the wounds with bandaging. Wiya Waste spit out the stick and reached up with her arm and pulled Strongheart to her lips, kissing him fully. He kissed her back. Joshua quickly pulled her dress back on her and helped her stand. She still wore her porcupine-quilled moccasins, almost identical to Joshua’s. She had made his for him.

  “Can you ride?” he asked.

  She smiled, saying, “I am Lakota. I am the daughter of Crazy Horse, an Ogle Tanka Un of the Lakota.” (A term meaning “shirt wearer,” a war chief.)

  He grinned.

  He literally lifted her up and set her on her pinto mustang. Joshua vaulted into his own saddle, and Scottie, wanting to emulate the flash and dash of his mentor, jumped from the top of his boulder, landing in the saddle of his black Thoroughbred, Hero. They went up higher into the mountains, heading for the timberline to find a hideout and make camp. Joshua thought of the perfect place. They moved north fast, heading for Hermit Peak. Lake San Isabel was beneath it, right below the timberline, with heavy forest to the west and high, steep peaks all around it to the north, east, and south. They could hide in there, have plenty of game, fish, and make a good camp where a fire would not be seen. Their fire and camp could only be spotted from the steep, snowcapped slopes above them, and no horsemen were going to journey up there.