by Judd Cole
Chapter Nine
Once again unexpected help came to the three Cheyennes in the form of Old Knobby.
Night had descended over the river and, as usual, the braves had pitched their camp on shore. They had been anxiously watching the anchored keelboat since the earlier meeting between Munro and Cries Yia Eya. But they were still without any plans as they waited for the next sign of trouble for Chief Bull Hump’s Dakota village. So far all had remained ominously quiet except for the rowdy, drunken singing from across the river at the camp of the Nose Talkers.
“Listen,” said Little Horse quietly, “someone approaches our camp!”
A heartbeat later all three youths had slipped back out of the circle of firelight, weapons at the ready. A figure glided closer from the surrounding shadows. Moments later, Old Knobby stood in the eerie orange glow of the fire.
“I swan, you boys faded quicker’n scat!” he said with a chuckle. “This hoss figgered to catch you with your clouts down. C’mon out now ’n’ let’s parley. There’s bad fixin’s on the spit.”
Touch the Sky spoke briefly to Little Horse, translating this, and they all joined Knobby around the fire.
“I tolt Munro and that pig-eyed Jackson I got the droppin’s bad when I et green chokecherries fir breakfast,” he explained. “They think that’s how’s come I’m beddin’ down ashore tonight. I doan ’spect it matters much no how. Them two is too busy layin’ big schemes to worry ’bout a toothless old fart sack like Knobby.”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling understood only some of Knobby’s talk. Quickly, while Touch the Sky translated for the other two, Knobby explained that he had managed to overhear some of their plans.
In a little over an hour, Munro and Jackson planned to leave the boat with several packhorses loaded with weapons and ammunition. They were meeting Cries Yia Eya at a secret place well back from the river and the rest of the tribe. Several key night sentries for the tribe were in on the plan and would not sound the alarm, though others were loyal to the tribe and would be avoided.
“The pint is,” said Knobby, “this Cries Yia Eya is a consequential brave, a real nabob ’mongst the hothead younger warriors. Any way you lay your sights, it’s gunna spell trouble for Bull Hump and the rest of the tribe. This child doan know the when and the where of it.”
Touch the Sky came to the same conclusion Old Knobby had already reached: Munro and Jackson would have to be followed tonight. But they were in unfamiliar terrain and the night was moonless. And both Munro and Jackson were experienced in the wilderness—they would carefully cover their back-trail and could not be too closely followed.
To make matters worse, Knobby now informed them that some of Munro’s militiamen were in the area.
“Sure as hell’s afire,” added the old mountain man, “if they sniff us out, our scalps’ll be danglin’ off their coup sticks. We best do some fancy night scoutin’, nazpaw? Doggone my buckskins for ever signin’ on this trip. This hoss’ll be glad when he’s quits with the whole shitaree.”
Touch the Sky was grateful to hear Old Knobby speak of “we.” Because of the taboo against fighting and traveling at night, Cheyenne warriors did not, unlike the Pawnee, become very proficient at nighttime scouting and tracking. He and Little Horse had managed well enough in Bighorn Falls, when they fought Hiram Steele’s thugs. But that had been on mostly open terrain long familiar to Touch the Sky. The country surrounding them now was rife with thick forests, steep cutbanks, rocky bluffs, and blind cliffs.
Old Knobby wasted no time in giving them their first lesson.
Near-total darkness like tonight, he explained, drastically changed appearances and apparent sizes of objects because details were obliterated. Rapid, safe movement was impossible unless the night scout learned to fill the details back in.
He pointed to a nearby tree that rose high into the sky. It looked much smaller than it would during daylight, he explained, because the new twigs at the tips of the branches couldn’t be seen. Such size and distance miscalculations could be fatal.
Don’t look at any one object too long, Knobby cautioned them, and remember that sounds are transmitted a much greater distance at night or in damp air. He also repeated the advice of Arrow Keeper and Black Elk: Smells could be a valuable warning, especially horse smells and the distinctive damp-earth odor from bodies of water.
He instructed them to get their weapons and equipment ready now. He also reminded them to make sure everything was ready and to hand while they were on the move—on a night this black they would have to rely on sense of touch instead of their eyes to find and adjust equipment.
When everything was ready, Knobby called them back to the fire one last time.
“If we get caught out by Munro or his raggedy-assed militia and hafta bust caps,” he said, “stay frosty ’n’ shoot plumb. Now, this child figgers we got mebbe a hour afore they leave the boat.”
They had to prepare, he said, by wrapping their heads in blankets or robes and remaining in total darkness until the whites left. Their pupils would become as big as watermelon seeds and thus gather from the night any stray bit of light.
They did as instructed. As he lay in pitch-black darkness waiting, Touch the Sky listened to the rapid, hollow thump of his heart. His isolated mind naturally turned to thoughts of Honey Eater.
She and the rest of the tribe should have returned to the Powder River camp by now. Some instinct deeper than language told him that right now, at this very moment, she was also thinking of him.
That thought consoled him somewhat whenever he thought about the danger they were about to face. But why did that nagging sixth sense, which Arrow Keeper insisted he must develop as a shaman, also keep painting another picture on his mind’s eye: the picture of an angry, jealous, murderously raging Black Elk?
~*~
As Knobby had predicted, about an hour later Munro and Jackson led their packhorses away from the Sioux Princess.
Knobby made his companions wait another quarter of an hour. Then he and the Cheyennes emerged from their self-imposed total darkness.
“It’s only embers now, but doan look at the fire,” Knobby cautioned them. “It’ll shrink your eyeballs back up.”
Touch the Sky was amazed. The clouded sky was completely empty of moon or stars. Yet he could clearly distinguish objects close at hand. Ever farther off, where before he had seen only the black shroud of night, he could distinguish the shapes of trees and hills.
“Write this on your pillow case,” Knobby instructed Touch the Sky as they set out. “When you’re scouting near enemies at night, never move until you’ve picked a landmark to aim for first. I know what direction they struck off in. So I’m a-drawin’ a bead on that-air stand of pines yonder, see it?”
Touch the Sky nodded and they set out. When they reached the pines, on a bluff beyond the river, Knobby halted them.
“First off, we need to know their gait. Iffen we move too fast, well end up on their hinders. Move too slow, they’ll meet us on their way home fir breakfast. And this is the safest time to light a match, now that we know they be well ahead of us.”
Knobby struck a sulphur match and soon located their tracks.
“Lookit here,” he said, grunting as he knelt. “These hoofprints is nigh to overlappin’. That shows them movin’ at a walk or a trot. Now a trot’s deeper, like these. So we best hump it some.”
They made good time at first, Old Knobby always moving them by predetermined bounds between landmarks. The heavily laden packhorses were tearing up divots of earth with their shod hooves. So now and then Knobby simply felt about in the darkness with his hands to make sure they were still on the trail.
After they had been on the move for nearly half an hour, he knelt again to listen to the ground.
“Doan put your ear right on the ground,” Old Knobby whispered to him when Touch the Sky too knelt down. “Else you’ll hear your own heart a-pumpin’, not the horses. Put it close to the ground.”
Faintly, like
a weak, slow drumbeat, Touch the Sky picked up the sound of iron-clad hooves.
“We’re nigh onto ’em,” cautioned Knobby. “Slow down. Wait till there’s natural sounds like the wind to cover our movement.”
Soon the sound of nickering horses ahead was carried to them on the wind. The four of them were moving up out of a long draw. Touch the Sky felt his pulse thudding in his palms as they grew nearer and nearer to some unknown danger.
With Knobby leading, the three youths crawled up a long, rocky slope above the draw. Now they could clearly hear the sound of voices, of impatient horses stamping the ground. They were downwind, so they didn’t need to worry about their smell spooking the horses.
Touch the Sky reached the edge of the bluff, and peered over. The sight below made ice run in his veins.
A fire had been built in the lee of a ridge, protected from the wind. Wes Munro and Cries Yia Eya stood beside a huge, flat boulder shaped remarkably like a table. The Cheyennes recognized this spot from their days in warrior training. It was called Council Rock, a place where Dakota headmen often met in outdoor council.
Jackson stood between his boss and Cries Yia Eya, both hands holding a piece of paper flat against the rock. The packhorses were picketed just behind them. Their panniers were still unloaded.
In a ring about the three men, still mounted, was a circle of at least thirty young braves—and the flickering tongues of firelight showed that their faces were painted for battle!
“You understand your end of the deal?” said Munro. Cries Yia Eya had learned some English during the year he’d spent as a guide for the Northwest Fur Trading Company. “In exchange for these weapons, and another generous payment every year, the Dakota tribe agrees to surrender rights to a tract of land that stretches from here . . .”
Munro pulled a second sheet of paper out from under the first and pointed. “From here, at the juncture of the Tongue and Medicine Creek, to here at the foothills of the Red Shale Mountains. You agree that your tribe will not hunt nor roam over this territory so long as this treaty is in effect.”
Urgently, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling nudged Touch the Sky. According to the Fort Laramie accord of 1851, the tract which Munro had just described ran through the heart of a great buffalo range owned jointly by the Sioux, the Arapaho, the Dakota, and the Cheyenne.
Below, Cries Yia Eya nodded impatiently.
“You also understand,” said Munro, “that you are acting as the legal agent for your tribe? Meaning, of course, that Bull Hump will either have to be in agreement with you or somehow removed from leadership?”
“Cries Yia Eya knows full well what the talking paper means,” said the bold warrior, his beadwork shirt glittering in the firelight. “He does not mince around the truth like a pony avoiding a snake. This paper is nothing. Give me and my braves our guns now and Bull Hump crosses over this very night!”
Munro nodded and Jackson grinned. Cries Yia Eya affixed his mark to the private treaty.
“My militiamen are waiting back near the river,” said Munro. “It’s best if you take care of this yourself. But if the fight goes bad for you, send a word-bringer back to my boat. I’ll signal with the cannon, and my boys will give you a hand.”
“The fight will not go bad,” Cries Yia Eya assured him. “Even now you are looking at the best warriors in the tribe. The rest are loyal to Bull Hump. They would rather dig turnips with the squaws than tread the warpath with men. Tonight Cries Yia Eya takes over his people!”
“All right, Chief,” said Munro, nodding with satisfaction. “First let’s break out the weapons and make sure your braves know how they operate. Then the next move is yours.”
Chapter Ten
Knobby and the three Cheyennes had seen and heard enough. At a high sign from the old man, they quickly retreated down the bluff. They hid inside a jagged erosion gully to counsel.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s grim face showed clearly that he had understood the slow, clearly spoken English. Touch the Sky quickly filled Little Horse in on the treachery afoot, though the sturdy little brave had guessed enough without words.
“What do we do?” Touch the Sky asked Knobby, despair clear in his tone. “Bull Hump’s village is still well downriver from here. Well never get there on foot in time to warn them.”
“Simmer down, sprout,” said Knobby. “If we hump it, there’s more time than you kallate. This hoss helped load them weapons. The pistols is all brand-spankin’ new Remingtons that was broke down for shipping. They got to be put together agin. Them Innuns ain’t never seed that model ’n’ won’t know sic ’em about the mechanism. Munro’ll hafta learn ’em how they work.
“Plus, the whole shitaree—the rifles too—is packed thick in oil to protect the workin’s from rust on the river. All that gun oil will hafta be cleaned off the firing pins ’n’ loading gates afore them irons will crack caps.”
Knobby’s calm voice had its effect on Touch the Sky. He too calmed down and began to think more clearly. He continued speaking in English to Knobby.
“We won’t have to worry about noise, so we can make good time back to the boat. You’ve got the horses grazing near the river. We can cut out three fast ponies and ride hard to the camp and warn Bull Hump. We might be able to beat the others.”
“That’s the gait!” said Knobby approvingly. “Now you’re roarin’ like a he-bear Cheyenne. This hoss by God wishes he could ride with you. But there’ll be trouble a-plenty as it is, comin’ up on a red village at night. Ye doan need no hair-face to draw down fire from the sentries.
“’Sides, the rheumatic has already got this old bag o’ bones stiff ’n’ tied up. A hard ride’ll crack his tailbone. C’mon, pards—time to make tracks back to the river!”
The three Cheyennes read it as a good omen—at least for now—when a full ivory moon suddenly emerged from the boiling mass of dark clouds. With the silver-white moonlight aiding them, they made the trip back to the river in good time.
Knobby cut a sorrel, a paint, and his favorite, the chestnut mare, from the ponies grazing the bunchgrass in a temporary rope corral. There were leather saddles aboard the Sioux Princess. But the three Cheyennes settled for bridles and reins.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Little Horse had used only buffalo-hair hackamores. Old Knobby had to show them how to slip the iron bits into the horses’ mouths. Though they said nothing, Touch the Sky could tell they were thinking the same thing—this was yet one more proof of the white man’s barbarous treatment of horses.
As they were about to set out, Touch the Sky ready to mount the chestnut, Old Knobby caught hold of his arm.
“Might be that your trail will cross with the others afore you git to Bull Hump’s camp. Or mebbe you’ll be caught in the lead when the renegades show up. So poke this last bit o’ advice into your sash.
“Like I said, that-air Cries Yia Eya is a mighty consequential brave. You knock the wind out o’ his sail, the whole fleet is dead in the water—you catch my drift?”
The younger braves following the rebellious sub chief drew their reckless courage from his example. If Cries Yia Eya were taken out of the picture, the others would have no leader in their traitorous uprising. Touch the Sky considered this a fatal weakness of the red man’s warrior code. He secretly believed that red men needed to be more like the Bluecoats on this point—white soldiers rigorously maintained a strict chain of command to ensure a leader in battle at all times, even if the original commander was killed or wounded. But when Indians lost a battle chief, too often they were quickly thereafter defeated.
Touch the Sky nodded. “I catch your drift. Thanks, Knobby.”
The hostler slapped him on the back. “Doan forget Munro’s gun-throwing militia is in this neck o’ the woods. Keep your powder dry, buck, and give ’em a war face! Good hunt in to all three o’ ye!”
Touch the Sky grabbed a handful of shaggy mane and swung up onto the pony, laying his rifle across its withers. Moments later the three braves, assisted by generous mo
onwash, were racing up the sloping bank of the river toward the open flats.
~*~
After so many long days cramped up on the boat, it made their blood sing to be on horseback again. The cool wind lifted their long, loose locks like black streamers, flying as one with the manes of the ponies. Touch the Sky drew strength from the feel of the chestnut’s powerful, tightly bunched muscles moving with fluid grace beneath him.
The mare too seemed glad for the hard run after so much inactivity. She responded only reluctantly when Touch the Sky drew in her reins as they neared the final rise overlooking the Dakota camp.
The brief exhilaration of the ride was behind him. Now there was only the worry cankering at him: Would they be in time to do anything useful? Or would Bull Hump be dead, and the camp under command of Cries Yia Eya?
They had already discussed their plan on the return trip to the Sioux Princess. Sentries would be ringing the camp, stationed in the encircling belt of cottonwood and pine trees which surrounded the village. Those loyal to Cries Yia Eya would be grouped at the north approach to camp—the route from Council Rock that his band would almost surely be taking. So the three Cheyennes approached now from the south.
It was not a night sentry’s main responsibility to fire on intruders, but rather to immediately rouse the tribe to possible danger. Nor, with full moonlight showing the Cheyennes’ identity, would Dakota sentries be likely to fire on their allies. Though of course, armed Cheyennes approaching at night were clearly violating normal customs and might well be up to no good. Some rebellious Dog Soldiers of the Southern Cheyennes had been known to sneak this far north on raiding missions. Even tribes normally friendly to each other had learned to be suspicious.
Still, they agreed the best plan was simply to ride boldly up and let the sentries rouse the village—this was exactly what they wanted to do anyway. The next step was to confer, as quickly as possible, with Chief Bull Hump.
Touch the Sky was grateful for the calm silence as they approached. At least the still night air was not yet disturbed by the sounds of attack.