“Are you sure?” Blue Boy asked.
Paints His Horses nodded. “The larger of the two discovered our campfire. I do not know how, but he dug around and found the bones from our meal.”
“How is this so? We made certain we buried deep . . .” Blue Boy looked over at Black Dog. “Who did I tell to bury the campfire when we were finished?”
Black Dog ran dirt through his fingers to clean them of rabbit fat. “Hawk,” he answered.
Blue Boy felt his anger rise. He snapped a large twig between his fingers. “Hawk needs a lesson . . .”
Paints His Horses laid his hand on Blue Boy’s arm. “Hawk is young. He made a mistake. Have you never made a mistake in life?”
Sounds of the woman approaching the fire caused Blue Boy to pause. He motioned her closer and gave her a piece of roasted meat. She wanted to talk about him. Wanted to know more. Any other time he would be flattered. Any other time he would welcome the attention. But right now, two men might be on their trail, and he needed to think.
When the woman sat on a cottonwood log Blue Boy turned back to Paints His Horses and whispered. As if the woman understood Lakota. “Why would white men want to follow us? As far as those two men are concerned, we are but a hunting party passing through.”
“Perhaps there is a reason.” Paints His Horses reached inside his shirt and held out a piece of cloth. Black Dog took it and waited until Lorna turned her head away before he passed it to Blue Boy.
“Perhaps Hawk was right,” Black Dog said and held up his hand when Blue Boy started to speak. “He might be right in that this woman slows us down. On purpose. She leaves pieces of her cloth so that others can follow easily.”
Paints His Horses grabbed a wild onion and bit into it. Juice dribbled down his stubble of gray whiskers. “We could have been at the safety of the Wall by now if not for her.”
Blue Boy thought that over. They might not have been able to make the Badlands by now, but they would have been far closer riding alone. What he knew for certain was these men who follow needed to be stopped. “Where are the white men now?”
Paints His Horses waved his hand around the prairie. “They hide their tracks like we should. They are trail wise those two. But they are out there.”
“Bring in Hawk and Wild Wind,” Blue Boy told Paints his Horses. “Take Hawk and ride our back trail. I want those men dead by the time the sun sets.”
Paints His Horses grinned. “We will have two fresh scalps when we ride back in tonight.”
Blue Boy watched as the old warrior rode into the shimmering mirage in search of Hawk, and Blue Boy wondered if he were up to the task. Black Dog laid his hand on Blue Boy’s arm as if he could read his friend’s mind. “Paints His Horses will be all right.”
“I was not worried about him.”
“Of course you were.” Black Dog grinned. “You think because he is old that he is not up to the task of killing two white men.”
Blue Boy hesitated.
“Paints His Horses was fighting the wasicu before any of us were born. He will do good.”
Black Dog left for the bushes, and Blue Boy sat on a rock watching Lorna heap more driftwood onto their roaring fire. He looked at her differently now after learning what Paints His Horses showed him. She was clever, that one, even if she wasn’t as strong as a Lakota woman. The tearing of her dress to leave as a sign was brilliant. And as for her over-feeding the fire so men following might see it, Blue Boy would soon extinguish it. He would remember her cleverness, and he would watch her closely in the days to follow.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
Aurand Forester stuffed a pepperbox .36 into his saddle bags. He was tossing in an extra box of .44 Henry cartridges for his rifle and .44 Russian rounds for his pistols when the door to the marshal’s office opened.
“I would like a word, Marshal . . .”
“Don’t have time,” Aurand said, not looking up from his packing chore. “Got a man to hunt.”
“Precisely why I am here.”
Aurand closed the bags with the “Confederate States of America” stamp branded on the outside. He headed for the door that was blocked by a man taller than he and forty pounds heavier. The deep crow’s-feet under his eyes and his leathered face put him in his late fifties, perhaps early sixties. His gray hair peppered with white flowed down in a neat cascade over the collar of his deerskin shirt, which was sweat stained to the color of yellow phlegm. “I wish to speak with you about the man you hunt.”
Aurand eyed the stranger warily. “What’s Tucker Ashley to you? Unless you’re the man who helped him escape.”
The man waved the air in dismissal as he sat on the edge of Aurand’s desk. He shook out a package of rolled cigarettes and offered Aurand one.
“Been a long time since I had a factory smoke,” Aurand said.
The man lit it with a lucifer he’d grabbed from a pocket inside his buckskins.
“Like I asked, what’s Tucker to you?”
“Nothing. Find and kill the rascal. And good hunting. Who I am concerned with is the missing woman.”
The man unfolded a “Wanted” flier and laid it on Aurand’s desk. A thousand dollars had been offered for Lorna Moore’s return by her father.
Aurand handed the flier back. “Still don’t see the connection to the man I’m hunting.”
The stranger blew interlacing smoke rings upward. “I understand the man you’re after and this Miss Moore were friendly. Perhaps close acquaintances even.”
“I don’t get your drift.”
“My drift, Marshal Forester, is that it was mighty coincidental that she disappeared about the same time your man escaped. Perhaps this young lady helped in his brazen jailbreak.”
“And you think she might be with Tucker?”
The man shrugged and dropped his cigarette butt on the dirt floor. He snubbed it out with the toe of his moccasin. “We may be able to help one another.”
“Look, Mister . . .”
The man remained silent.
“Tucker went one way by the tracks we cut, but nothing indicated Lorna went with him. I understand her father and she have had somewhat of a falling-out recently, if you believe the partner, Maynard Miles.”
“What I do not believe in, Marshal, are coincidences.”
The door burst open, and Philo Brown stumbled into the office. He half-ran across the room to the rack of rifles locked beside the desk when he froze. His jaw dropped, and he backed up. When he hit the wall, he stood, shaking, as he pointed at the stranger. “Simon Cady,” he breathed.
Cady tipped his hat. “I am at a disadvantage. You are?”
“Philo Brown.”
“Ah, yes. I thought I recognized you. The very bad cheating gambler.”
“You’re Simon Cady?” Aurand’s hand inched under his vest toward his gun.
“No need for that, Marshal.” Cady nodded to Aurand’s gun hand. “I am quite harmless.”
“Harmless until we turn our backs.” Philo had gathered courage enough to talk, though his eyes never left Cady as he moved beside Aurand. “You’re looking at the bounty hunter who brings all his wanted men in over their saddles. He’s a damned back-shooter.”
“Mr. Brown,”—Cady picked his words carefully—“I have killed no one who did not wish to kill me. And every man I bring in has ‘dead or alive’ pasted across his poster. You are a testament to the fact I don’t kill everyone who harms me.” He turned to Aurand and smiled. “Mr. Brown sought to cheat me in a game of poker in Hays City some years ago. I caught him.” He looked at Philo. “But all I did was . . . educate Mr. Brown on the merits of playing honestly.”
“If by educate you mean that beating you gave me.”
“Mr. Brown,” Cady said, shaking his head, “that might have been the only education you ever got in your miserable life.”
Aurand edged closer to the door. If there was to be gun play in his office, he wanted space to maneuver. “Let me get this straight: you’re wor
king on the bounty of Lorna Moore?”
“I am.”
“And are you going to shoot her in the back as well?”
Cady tilted his head back and laughed. His curly hair bounced on his thick shoulders. “Heavens, no. When I bring her back, she will be as safe as when she was tending store.”
“So you are proposing we combine our resources?” Aurand asked.
“That is just what I propose.”
“I don’t deal with back-shooters.”
Cady’s smile left him. “If my sources are correct, Marshal Forester, you are the back-shooter among us. But then, wasn’t everyone who raided with Bloody Bill Anderson during the war a back-shooter?”
“I think I have heard enough from you for one day.” Aurand pulled his vest back, exposing his hand that rested on a pistol riding high on his belt.
Cady held up his hands as if to surrender. “You’ve got the best of me, Marshal. But remember my words: wherever Tucker Ashley fled to is where Lorna Moore will be.”
As Cady headed for the door, he kept his eyes on Aurand and Philo. He stopped in front of a wall with “Wanted” posters tacked to it and snatched the top poster. He took out spectacles and held the poster at arm’s length. “White male wanted in a series of stage holdups,” he read aloud, “between Billings and Miles City last month.” He looked over the “Wanted” poster at Aurand. “Says here the man is early- to mid-thirties. Six foot two or three, and weighs between two-forty and two-fifty. Murdered a stage guard in one instance. A passenger in another.” He folded the poster and stuffed it down his buckskin shirt. “You won’t mind me taking this poster and making an honest living, Marshal?”
“If you call bounty hunting an honest living,” Aurand said. “Take it and find that man if you want. Or Lorna Moore. Anyone. But just stay out of my way.”
Cady smiled. “Why, Marshal, I always stay out of the way of the law.”
The door shut, and Philo slumped against the desk. He leaned on it to steady himself as he worked his way around to the chair. “You do know who you just talked to?”
Aurand shrugged. “Damned bounty hunter.”
“Damned murderer.”
“I got no time to worry about Simon Cady. Where’s Jess?”
Philo looked at the empty spot where the “Wanted” poster had hung a moment ago. “Somewhere between Billings and Miles City, as of last month. I wired his room in Pierre to meet us on the way.”
CHAPTER 9
* * *
Blue Boy cut a piece of charred rear-quarter meat and handed it across the fire to Lorna. The flames flared up now and again in time with the wind that seemed to always blow from the west on the prairie, bringing a mini-blizzard of dried cottonwood pods mixed with fine dust. Some white fluff fell on Lorna, and she brushed it from her hair. “I cannot eat this. It would be like eating my . . . pet Schnauzer.”
“It is coyote,” Blue Boy said. “And it gave its life so we may live. Eat. It may be the last meal for some time.”
“I saw pronghorns this morning,” Lorna argued. “What is wrong with eating them?”
“They must be shot,” Blue Boy explained slowly, as if educating a child. “It takes a long stalk to get within arrow range, and we have no time . . .”
“You have rifles.”
“We have rifles for fighting. And we have no desire to have anyone hear our shots.” He tore off a piece and ate it. “And coyotes can be called easily within range of our arrows.”
“How is it you speak such good English?”
“The meat.” He motioned. “Eat and I will answer your questions.”
Lorna took the skewer and began eating while Blue Boy turned to Black Dog and asked in Lakota, “Have you heard anything from Paints his Horses or Hawk?”
Black Dog continued staring at their back trail. “Nothing. They should have been here hours ago. Do you wish for me to drop back and find them?”
Blue Boy considered that. Black Dog’s suggestion was good tactics: following their back trail until he learned about the others was wise. But he must reach the Wall with Lorna at all costs. “No. We will leave soon. I have to believe they can kill the two white men who follow us.”
Blue Boy turned his attention back to Lorna. Where yesterday she had nibbled tiny pieces of meat when she ate, she now tore at the chunk of coyote with a vengeance. She ate noisily, chewing the sinewy meat and swallowing hard. She became aware that Blue Boy watched her, and she stopped, her grace returning as she took tiny bites once again. “What do you intend doing with me, sell me?”
Blue Boy laughed. “We do not sell our mothers. Or our fathers. Or any other loved ones.”
“So I am a loved one now?”
Blue Boy felt his face flush, and he turned away. “Do not talk of such things.”
“All right,” she said. “But I deserve an explanation of just what your intentions are for me.”
He nodded and sat cross-legged in front of her. “You are correct in deserving an explanation.” He gathered his courage; it was time to tell her. “You will belong to me as soon as we reach the safety of my lodge.” He nodded to the west. “On the other side of the Great Wall you will be mine.”
“What if I do not want to be yours?”
He had never considered that she would not accept her new life. “With the Lakota, all is beauty: the air and sky, and everything else Wakan Tanka has given us. We do not abuse such things. We do not destroy them for the sake of gold-colored rock imbedded in Mother Earth. We live within ourselves and take only what we need. This is beauty. You will grow to accept the Lakota way.”
She finished the meat and dabbed at her mouth with the sleeve of her blouse. She stuck the bone in the dirt, and it protruded from the ground several inches. So that anyone passing by could see it. Before they broke camp, Blue Boy would retrieve it and bury it properly. In case those who followed made it past his warriors. He glanced at their back trail, hoping to see Hawk and Paints His Horses ride in with fresh scalp locks.
“How is it that you speak good English?” Lorna pressed.
Blue Boy sighed. She would have to know this in time. “My father was Lakota. He took my mother, who was white, in a raid outside Omaha. When a trapper after the beaver murdered my father, my mother was released to go where she wished, and she wished to live with her relatives in Minnesota.” He nibbled at the meat—not because he was hungry, but because it helped him gather his thoughts. “I was a child when we moved there, and I attended a white man’s school.”
“You must have fit in.”
He waited for an explanation.
“You look white, with your fair complexion. Blue eyes.”
Blue Boy nodded. “Even with that I did not fit in. The other boys knew I was ieska. A half-breed. They teased me ruthlessly.”
“Somehow, I cannot imagine you being teased.”
Blue Boy frowned. “Until I was twelve or thirteen. Then my growth took off, and the others wanted nothing to do with taunting me then.” He tossed the wooden skewer in the fire. The fat left on the stick crackled with the heat. “I stayed around Minnesota. Hiring out to farms. Never wanting to be a part of my father’s side until . . .” He looked away, thoughts still painful even after all these years. “During your war between your states, some of the Santee Sioux took up arms against the whites. The Indian traders were corrupt. They withheld annuities owed the Santee. Many whites were killed.” He looked away. “And Mother with them. None of the Santee knew she had a Lakota son, or they might have spared her.”
Lorna laid her hand gently on his arm. “Must have been painful for you.”
He nodded. “Up to a point. Then rage overcame my grief, and I took up arms with the others. When the soldiers caught us, I was locked up along with the Santee who started the killing.” He shrugged her hand off. “And the day after Christmas that year, they hanged thirty-eight warriors. The largest mass hanging in the history of your country.”
“I heard of that in college,” Lorna said. “B
ut you survived.”
Blue Boy looked at their back trail. Still nothing of Hawk and Paints his Horses. “The soldiers sent me and many others away to prison. But they released us two years later. I guess they didn’t want the expense of feeding us while your war was still going on.”
“Why come back here? It sounds as if you could have hired out to farms anywhere.”
Blue Boy stared at the woman. Had she not understood anything he had told her? “Because I do not choose to live in your world, where there is so much senseless killing. Misery.”
Her face reddened. “You Sioux kill your share—”
“Not over a card game or over a drunk woman or a mere slip of an angry tongue. We kill when it is necessary. That is why I chose to live Lakota. And, in time, you will, too.”
He stood and walked to where Black Dog sat talking with Jimmy Swallow and motioned to him. “I have need of your spare breech pants and your shirt. For the woman.”
Swallow looked past Blue Boy at Lorna staring into the fire. “I have only my fringed set with me. They are the finest I have. My mother herself softened the deer. They fit me so well, so fine. If I should be called to the council fire . . .”
“And they will look good on the woman, too.” He laid his hand on Swallow’s shoulder. “I would not ask if it was not necessary.”
Swallow nodded and walked to his pony tethered to a clump of cactus. He opened his saddlebags, took out his folded set of deerskin clothes, and walked back to Blue Boy.
Blue Boy thanked Swallow and handed the clothes to Lorna. “There is that bunch of dead cottonwood.” He chin-pointed toward the river. “Go over there. Put these on, and give me your dress.”
“I will not,” Lorna answered hastily.
“Do you wish that Swallow help you change your clothes? Or Black Dog?” He nodded to Wild Wind. “How about him . . . ?”
“No!” Lorna said. “But why?”
“You have been leaving pieces of cloth torn from your dress for those who follow us—”
“So someone is on our trail,” Lorna blurted out. “Who? What do they look like? Have you seen them?”
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