Backed to the Wall

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Enough!” Blue Boy hunched over and stroked his horse’s withers as he spoke to Black Dog. “Whoever that man is, he has killed many of us. If we do not avenge the deaths of the others, their dishonor will rest on our heads.”

  Black Dog sat tall on his pony, his arm in his sling, looking as if he cared little for the outcome of their conversation. “He Who Follows does so to free her.” He pointed to Lorna. “It is for that reason you want him dead. She has the white man in her heart. Killing him will never release her to you.”

  Blue Boy looked at Lorna. Even after a hard week on the trail, she still carried her defiant look as she sat the pony in front of Swallow. “In time, she will come to love the life of being a war chief’s woman. In time she will grow to think only of me. Not of He Who Follows. Now go and eat. It may be the last meal you have for some time.”

  Blue Boy sat his dun on a high hill overlooking a shallow valley leading northeast. His stomach growled, yet he ignored it. There were other things on his mind as he studied the terrain. They were close to the Badlands. How close, he was never sure, for they were unlike any other mountains. His people thought of them as mountains growing into Mother Earth. They did not rise up like the Shining Mountains of the Arapaho, or the majestic peaks of the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. The Badlands offered stone fingers and granite and shale as the only warning to their harshness. Travelers rode into those mountains at their peril, and many did not return. The sunken mountains came upon unsuspecting travelers as suddenly as the frequent flash floods down her valleys. Perhaps Black Dog was right. Perhaps he should forget He Who Follows and ride into the safety of the Badlands with his woman.

  He turned to watch the others seated around a fire roasting rabbits and a quail Swallow had killed. He wondered if he were doing the right thing as a leader of his band. What band he had left. But if he fled to the safety of the Great Wall now, his people would tell how he had pursued the white man. And had allowed him to live even after he had killed so many of Blue Boy’s warriors.

  He left them and rode along the hillside. He had gone not a hundred yards when he topped a hill, and suddenly the Badlands loomed before him. He reined his horse to a stop as he sucked in a breath. He knew they had been close, yet he always reacted the same way when he saw them and the Wall that protected the Lakota. The Great Wall lay scooped out of the earth before him. Hundred-foot spires jutted up from the ground that seemed to be peppered with the white man’s popcorn: pea-size clumps of dried gumbo that would trip a horse up and kill its rider on the way down.

  He recalled old men telling stories as they warmed their hands by the fire in the center of their winter lodge. They told of vast herds of tatanka being driven over the cliffs of the Great Wall to their deaths. Those buffalo had given their life so that the Lakota Oyate, the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota Nation, should live and flourish.

  His thoughts drifted to the French trappers, and to the raid White Swan had led four summers ago, the man still dangerous in his old age. Those warriors relentlessly dogged the trappers as they picked their way down the long and treacherous, steeply winding, narrow trail. The Frenchmen had lost two of their party to falls from the trail, and two more from lack of water. White Swan’s Miniconjou had caught them halfway across the barren desert at the floor of the Badlands. “Les mauvaises terres à traverser,” they cried. “Bad lands to travel”—right before they met their deaths at the hands of White Swan’s Lakota.

  Blue Boy knew from growing up around the white man that most could not endure a trip across that sunken desert. Wherever he looked, he saw the shimmering waves of mirages of false hopes, rivers and ponds that did not exist except in the mind’s eye. A land wicked enough to confuse even the best of men.

  He continued to gaze across that familiar land and felt that special serenity found only in visions. Peace could come to him and Lorna. They could live the natural life of the Lakota. Only there followed a white man who tugged at the shirtsleeves of Blue Boy’s elusive peace. Black Dog was right, of course. His friend often displayed wisdom possessed by those much older than he. It was true that Lorna slowed them down and that he could not free her. He had taken her as a hunter takes a prize elk, something to display above the smoke hole of the lodge. And it was true that if they ran for the Wall now, they could evade He Who Follows.

  Blue Boy sighed deeply and turned his horse around toward his camp. He knew what he must do.

  Blue Boy rode east into the bright sun. He had said his morning prayers, thanking the four winds and Mother Earth and the sky. And he thanked Wakan Tanka that there were no clouds to mask the shadows of the white man’s tracks. He studied the ground, while the others walked behind him, not wanting to disturb sign left by He Who Follows.

  At a fetid stream trickling from yesterday’s storm, the white man had dismounted. He had led his horse while he walked around. He had limped around the clearing on a foot he favored, even dragging his lame leg across the ground at times. Blue Boy said a silent prayer that the man would live long enough to feel Blue Boy’s blade enter his chest.

  Blue Boy had watched Lorna out of the corner of his eye most of the morning as she rode with Jimmy Swallow. She seemed to know that they had turned back to hunt her man. She hadn’t even glanced Blue Boy’s way since they mounted up after their meal. During the night, she had hobbled their ponies with the strings she had taken from her boots. A vain attempt, she had admitted, meant to slow them down. And one that had cost them only as long as it took to slice the boot strings off the ponies’ legs.

  Blue Boy turned his attention back to the white man’s tracks, when he stopped abruptly. He dismounted and squatted next to where a second track impressed itself over the tracks of He Who Follows. Black Dog rode up to where Blue Boy knelt. “Another begins to follow the woman’s man.”

  “And riding hard.” Blue Boy motioned to tracks going in the direction of He Who Follows, as distinct as if he had put up little sign posts along the way. “At this rate, we will catch up to him within hours.”

  “Unless this new hunter finds him first,” Black Dog said.

  Blue Boy felt rage well up inside him. He hadn’t come this far, and taken his band away from the sanctuary of the Badlands, to be thwarted by someone out to kill the man. His man.

  CHAPTER 31

  * * *

  As Tucker rode to the ridge overlooking Medicine Root Creek, his leg began to stiffen. He grabbed the saddle horn tightly and lowered himself gingerly to the ground to stretch his muscles. Any other time in his life, he would have dismounted fifty yards back and low-crawled to the ridge. But his strength was slow in returning, and he wasn’t sure he could have crawled that far. He needed rest, he knew. But he also knew he was on to Blue Boy’s tracks, and rest wasn’t an option.

  Simon Cady’s shot that killed Jess Hammond would alert the Indians, he was certain, if they were still within the sound of the gunshots. Sending the young warrior back to Blue Boy with a knife stuck in his back would be the last straw. Blue Boy had to be hunting him. And Lorna would be with Blue Boy.

  Tucker needed a place to make a stand. He constantly checked his back trail these last few miles. Even though he had made no attempt to cover his tracks, he hadn’t seen the Indians, and that worried him. How many warriors did Blue Boy have left? Tucker had killed four, but how many more rode with him? Did he have enough to send other braves to kill him while Blue Boy fled with Lorna to the Badlands? Tucker pushed the thought from his mind. The knife in the back had been a challenge Blue Boy would not leave for the others to settle.

  Tucker continued searching the valley that lay some miles to the east of the Badlands, a desolate country that could be every bit the killer a desert is. Unless you knew where to ride safely, the ledge you rode on might well fall away with the weight of your horse. You had to know where the few pools were secreted amongst the rocks, and how to forage for what food lay buried in the ground. The Lakota knew that. Tucker had ventured into the Badlands some years ago on a scouting
mission. He had only gone a day’s ride when he turned back. His report to the army had been brief: do not send your troops in there after fleeing Lakota.

  Tucker watched until he was satisfied no one waited for him below before he mounted. He nudged Jess’s horse down the shale hillside. The gelding jarred him as it tried to get its footing. Tucker had become spoiled riding mules over the years he had been out West. Ben’s boxy feet were better at maneuvering tight places and slippery ground than were horses’ hooves. Even Indian ponies. Often Tucker would let Ben have his head, and the mule would take the logical path to the bottom. He’d always known better than Tucker which route to take. And on this steep descent, he missed Ben even more.

  A sage hen gave flight, roused from her sanctuary behind sparse brush, and the horse bucked, then bucked again when a doe antelope burst from a hidden arroyo. Tucker fought to keep the horse under control. Ben would have never been bothered by the grouse or the pronghorn. And neither would other mules Tucker had ridden.

  He got the horse under control and coaxed it down the steep embankment. The horse had almost made a mistake and bolted with the antelope and the sage hen. And Tucker hadn’t spotted them in time, and that had been his mistake. Right now—expecting Blue Boy’s warriors to come riding down on him—he could afford few mistakes. But he was almighty tired and hurting from his leg wound, from cracked ribs from his fight with Jess, and from festering cactus spines still embedded in his leg. A mistake at the wrong time now could cost him his life. And Lorna’s.

  When he reached the bottom of the valley sheltering Medicine Root Creek, the horse hunched again and headed for the trickle of brackish water. Tucker coaxed the gelding toward a dead cottonwood lying along the muddy bank beside the puddle. While the horse drank, Tucker stepped out of the saddle and onto the log. The pain in his leg jarred him, yet it had diminished from yesterday. He silently thanked Red Sun for the Crow’s medicine.

  Tucker knelt upstream from the horse and used his hand to scoop the stagnant water into his hand. He thought only of the water and dismissed the putrid odor as he drank from his hand, then another and another. He put his bandana over the canteen spout to filter out the silt and filled it. It would have to do until he found fresh water. If he didn’t and had to drink from the canteen . . . the thought repelled him. But Lorna being with Blue Boy and his band repelled him even more.

  Suddenly, the horse jerked its head up, turning his ears, testing the air. Tucker long ago learned that a horse was every bit as good as a dog on the trail for alerting a man of trouble. He studied the gelding. Something had concerned it. Was it another pronghorn or sage hen? Tucker hoped so, but he also knew the horse had alerted to something that didn’t belong. It had alerted to men.

  Tucker slipped the thong from his gun and checked the loads—the first time since he’d taken Jess’s gun and ridden away from Aurand’s camp, and that worried him, too. He should have checked the gun at his first opportunity. His leg was causing him to make more mistakes he couldn’t afford, with Lorna’s life in the balance.

  Tucker belly-slid over the creek bank toward a dry dirt wall. He breathed out of the side of his mouth, careful not to dispel any dirt and reveal his position. He looked in the direction the horse had looked. Nothing.

  He shielded his hand to the sun, but saw nothing except . . . a small tendril of smoke arose from the direction he had ridden. He strained to see more, but the smoke had blown away as quickly as it had crossed Tucker’s sight. Indians often broke from the trail long enough to eat in mid-mornings. But Indians—especially Blue Boy’s band—wouldn’t grow careless enough to start a fire that failed to dissipate its smoke. Still, he remembered the bones found at the side of the trail when hunting Blue Boy. Someone in his band had been careless then. And they might—with a week of hard riding and evading and fighting—be making more mistakes in their exhaustion. Such as failing to capture their smoke.

  He watched the horse. It had returned to watering, and Tucker was confident whatever had spooked it was now gone.

  He stood and shuffled toward the horse. Time to move.

  Tucker grabbed onto the saddle horn when a branch broke behind him. Then another.

  He drew the gun and pivoted behind him. His leg buckled. He fell to the ground, and his leg hit hard on a rock.

  The pain shot higher, more intense than before, his head swimming like a Badlands mirage. His vision faded as he tried to focus on a lone figure approaching him. The blur lasted only a moment before he went unconscious.

  CHAPTER 32

  * * *

  Red Sun rode his mare up to where Aurand and Philo had stopped for the morning. They sat in front of flickering flames watching a sage hen cook over coals. Red stepped down from his pony at the edge of the camp and walked the rest of the way. “You want to find Tucker Ashley?”

  Aurand prodded the meat with his knife. “Damned fool thing to say. If I didn’t want him, I wouldn’t have started this little outing a week ago.”

  “Then I’d put out that fire. Tucker’s just savvy enough to see it. And he might find you first.”

  “But the meat’s not done yet.” Philo squatted in front of the fire and dug a knife out of his pocket. His swollen lip had blackened, and his eye remained matted shut from the mob’s beating in Cowtown. “What do you want us to eat—raw meat?”

  “Suit yourself,” Red said. “Not me who wants to find Ashley.”

  Aurand tossed a cup of coffee onto the fire. It crackled and hissed in protest and went dead a moment later.

  “What the—”

  “Red’s right,” Aurand said. “We don’t want Tucker spotting it.”

  “You believing that old man?” Philo reached over and gathered fresh firewood from a pile.

  “Red’s been right all the other times.” Aurand kicked the pile of branches on the ground beside Philo. “I said we can eat the meat raw if we need to. Anything to catch that bastard.” He turned to Red. “What did you figure out?”

  Red tipped his canteen over his head before taking a deep drink. Philo reached over, but Red jerked the canteen back. “Where’d you get fresh water?” Philo asked.

  “Where did you get fresh water?” Aurand repeated.

  Red chin-pointed down into a long valley a mile away. “There is a spring down thataway. I got to cutting sign for Tucker, when I ran into Indian tracks . . .”

  “How many?”

  “Three ponies,” Red answered. “Or I should say two unshod ponies and one white man’s horse. They got the woman with them riding along with a brave. They are looking for Tucker, too, I figure, but I do not believe they have picked up his scent yet.”

  “And you have?”

  Red bit off a plug of tobacco. He ignored Philo’s outstretched hand and pocketed the plug. “It will not be long before they find his tracks. Tucker is making no effort to hide them.” He laughed. “Even Philo could follow his sign.”

  “So you picked up Tucker’s tracks?”

  “I did.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you follow him?” Aurand said. “Wing him or cripple him long enough and come get us?”

  Red’s eyes narrowed, ringed by deep lines. “You know our arrangement—I find them for you. I do not fire a shot. That is your job.”

  Aurand nodded. Since hiring Red to track army deserters from Ft. Sully, and the occasional robber dumb enough to get caught, Red had proved just what he claimed: that he was the best tracker—Indian or white man—in the territory. “I’m no fighter,” he told Aurand that first day when he’d hired Red. “I am a lover,” Red had announced through a grin that spanned few teeth. Sadie at the Cowtown saloon could attest to that.

  “How far?” Aurand asked as he watched Philo brush coffee and dirt off the half-cooked bird.

  Red looked in the direction he had ridden from. “We might be able to catch him by tonight, the morning at the latest. That is, if Blue Boy does not find him first.”

  Philo stuffed his mouth with a chunk of half-raw meat.
“At least there’s only three Indians after Tucker.”

  “And the woman’s bound to slow them down,” Aurand added.

  “You are forgetting,” Red said, spitting a string of juice five feet over that just missed a lizard scurrying to the safety of a rock crevice, “that one of those Lakota is Blue Boy.”

  Philo shrugged. “So we kill him if we get the chance.”

  Red shook his head. “Has nothing I said this past week penetrated your thick skull? Blue Boy is credited with a hundred enemy killed. And that is just other Indians. Hard telling how many settlers and soldiers he has murdered.” Red looked to his back trail once again. “That is the last man I want to meet on a moonless night.”

  CHAPTER 33

  * * *

  Tucker gradually became aware of a figure moving about. He kept his eyes closed, kept a stillness about him that might mean his life. A fire flickered close. Sparks of dry kindling crackled close to him. He lay on his side that covered an empty holster, and his wounded leg was propped up on a bedroll.

  He cracked an eye. The campfire was mere feet from him, and a figure moved in the light’s periphery ten feet away. Tucker opened his eyes just as the man moved toward him. Tucker’s head snapped up. He struggled to stand, but gentle hands eased him back down.

  “Easy, Tuck. You ain’t going nowheres.” Jack’s grin told Tucker that—at least for now—he was safe.

  “I thought you were dead,” Tucker said. He rolled over. “Strung up in Cowtown. How’d you get here?”

  “Whoa,” Jack said. “Let’s get something in your gullet before I answer any questions.”

  Jack helped Tucker sit and propped a saddle behind his back. Jack took meat off the fire and sliced it before dropping it into a metal plate and handing it to Tucker. He eyed it suspiciously. “Coyote?”