Blue Boy had said nothing when he came back to camp this morning leading the mare. He’d dropped the reins at Lorna’s feet, and she knew he expected her to keep up. She caught herself more than once checking their back trail, calculating if the pony could outrun Blue Boy. The little horse would never be one for speed, and she’d dismissed the thought. Blue Boy apparently wasn’t worried. He had sent Black Dog and Jimmy Swallow up ahead to find Tucker, leaving her to ride alone. Either Blue Boy thought he could catch her should she bolt or that she had no desire to leave.
What she couldn’t dismiss was the thought of Tucker following, for it must be him trailing them and killing the warriors Blue Boy sent to stop him. She caught herself thinking more and more about him as the days passed, even as it seemed she was destined to live out her remaining years as the wife of a Lakota chieftain.
She remembered comparing Maynard Miles to Tucker whenever he came into the general store. Maynard was stable, having worked with her father to build up a string of mercantiles along the Missouri, while Tucker was much like most animals in this rugged and dangerous country—happiest when roaming the prairie and mountains. Maynard would be a steady provider, while Tucker’s meager income depended on the whim of the US Army. Maynard would teach their children proper manners and the ways of the gentleman, while Tucker would teach them the ways of the wilderness.
But for all Maynard’s fine attributes, she knew she didn’t love him. She loved Tucker, although not a single word had passed between them that suggested romance. Sure, he had brought her wildflowers that he’d picked from fields nearby. But then he often picked such flowers for the ladies at the Bucket of Blood. He had given her gems he found along the trail somewhere. And walking her home at night from dinner was just the gentlemanly thing to do, with all the rowdies and roustabouts working the docks. How often she had wished he would chance a kiss, or brush his hand across hers, or whisper special feelings for her. But he had not. And, looking back, she thought of Tucker as more timid schoolboy than the army scout with the nasty reputation as a wild gun hand.
And, looking at Blue Boy, she’d become more confused as the days wore on. She’d begun to feel stirrings—like a woman feels for a man—gradually appear as her days around him wore on. She began thinking of him not so much as her captor, but as her suitor; not as one who had abducted her from her room, but as a romantic conqueror claiming his prize.
She looked at his back, broad and rippling, until he turned his head, and she dropped her gaze. When he turned back, she chanced another look. He proudly sat the large dun gelding that seemed too small for him, despite being sixteen hands tall if it was an inch. He wasn’t at all like the savages she came to know over soldiers’ and cowboys’ talk in the store. He was not dirty or deceitful, not uncouth or uncaring. He was, she admitted to herself some days ago, an impressive man. He stood a head taller than Tucker, who was tall by western standards. Blue Boy’s hair hung about his powerful shoulders. She wondered about the deep scars and nicks across those shoulders and concluded they must have happened in battle. She even supposed—in another time, another place—she might be attracted to the leader of this band of renegades. What was left of them.
Sounds of horses approaching, riding hard and riding noisily, echoed off the shale rocks and boulders, and the riders came into view. Black Dog clutched the reins of Swallow’s paint as he rode beside the young warrior. Swallow lay slumped over his pony and bounced hard. Blood smeared the animal’s withers. Black Dog reined their horses in front of Blue Boy, who shielded his eyes from the dust their horses kicked up. Black Dog spoke Lakota and waved his arm in the direction they had come from. He gestured to Swallow, who clutched his stomach. Flies had gathered around fresh blood, and Black Dog swatted at them.
“We are in need of more strips of your petticoat,” Blue Boy said to Lorna.
She looked about for a place to drop her buckskins and tear off cloth. “Is Swallow hurt badly?”
“Bad,” Blue Boy said. “Black Dog says a bullet passed through his side.”
“Black Dog has been hit, too.”
Black Dog talked as he waved the air with his good arm.
“Just a few pellets from a white man who cannot even shoot his own shotgun well,” Blue Boy translated.
Lorna walked behind a boulder and dropped her trousers. When she emerged from behind the rock holding torn fabric, Blue Boy had eased Swallow onto the ground, while Black Dog cut his shirt away and dribbled water over the bullet wound. “What is happening?” she demanded. She had learned in recent days that she was immune from any abuse or anger from Blue Boy and had become quite bold with him. “What did Black Dog say?”
“Over there”—he gestured to the east—“several miles that way, some white men ambushed them.”
She drew in a quick breath. “Was it the one who has been killing your warriors?”
Blue Boy’s mouth drooped, and he looked away. “No. It is not He Who Follows that shot Swallow. Black Dog said it was the one—the leader of the white men—that we saw back in the river town.”
“Back in my town?” Lorna asked. “Who did you see back there? What happened that Black Dog would remember the man today?”
“It was white man’s business that night.”
She stepped closer and craned her neck up to look him in the eyes. “Tell me.”
Blue Boy sighed while he looked on at Black Dog dressing Swallow’s wound. “While we waited for . . . your light to go out of your room, two men came upon a sleeping drunk in the alley behind the saloon.”
“And?” she prodded when he’d stopped talking.
“One large man—but not as large as me, and he was fat. He wore a star. He bent to the sleeping man, who woke up, and they struggled. The fat man put a knife to the sleeping man’s neck. The smaller man yelled, but it was too late: the big man had already cut the drunk’s throat. The fat man went through the dead man’s pockets, while the other one watched for anyone coming. Then they left the dead man and found another drunk sleeping outside the saloon. They carried him to the jail.”
“And Black Dog is certain of this?”
Blue Boy nodded. “He thinks the one they carried to the jail is the one who shot him three days ago. He thinks it is He Who Follows.”
Lorna laughed. Her happiness transcended her discomfort from the days on the trail. “You’ve just cleared Tucker Ashley. This proves he didn’t murder that roustabout. Your testimony could . . .”
Blue Boy put his finger to her lips. “I care not for any white man. I did not care that night. I do not care now. The man they shut up in that jail will have to clear his name without me.” A broad smile crossed his face. “If he lives. The men who ambushed Black Dog and Swallow track He Who Follows.” He gestured across the prairie. “A mere wind’s breath over there. But we are close, I think. By the time of this honwe, this new moon, your man’s scalp lock will hang from my pony’s neck—along with the others who follow him.”
“And what of me?” she asked. “What will happen to me while you are off fighting these men?”
“What would you do,” he taunted, “if you were Blue Boy?”
“I would let me go.”
He laughed. “You would not. If you did that, I would warn the others. No, if you were me you would lash you to something—a boulder perhaps—where you would be safe from the battle. Yet not free to warn them.”
Lorna gestured around the barren prairie. She knew she would not survive long in this sun. “And Blue Boy would tie his . . . woman here to suffer?”
“There is shade ahead,” he answered simply and bent to Black Dog. They spoke for a moment as Black Dog finished wrapping Swallow’s stomach with Lorna’s petticoat. Blue Boy stood. “He will live to count coup on the wasicu.”
Black Dog stood and handed Lorna what was left of her petticoat.
“But he is only a boy,” Lorna blurted out. “How many more young men that you lead must die because you want to keep me?”
“Swa
llow is a warrior.” Blue Boy reached into his saddlebag. H came away with a small pouch and opened it. He shook powder onto a flat rock before he trickled water over it and began to mix the war paint. “For me to deny him the chance to kill his enemy would be worse than anything he would experience in battle.”
Blue Boy began to paint lightning bolts on his blackened face with silver tint. Lorna looked frantically around, and for a fleeting moment she once again considered escape. She needed to warn Tucker; to tell him the Indians hunted him. She needed to tell him Blue Boy had identified Philo Brown as the one who knifed the roustabout, while Aurand helped him carry Tucker to jail. But she also knew that wherever she fled to, the Indians would be on her. They might give her a brief start before tiring of the game and riding after her.
So Lorna dutifully sat her mare and waited until Swallow had been doctored. She fell in behind Blue Boy and the others as they rode away to fight Tucker. And those who hunted him.
Lorna watched Blue Boy ride his horse out of the shallow depression that had once been a creek and disappear over the next hill. She had struggled briefly when Black Dog secured her hands to the dead cottonwood root until she realized the leather thongs would not break. She settled onto the dried creek bed, shielded from much of the sun by large boulders. To her right lay whitened bones of some animal, buffalo or deer perhaps, and a coyote-picked backbone of some kind of fish. She strained to look over the bank when she spotted tracks of a wolf, maybe a coyote, and she wished Blue Boy were still here.
He had been brutally honest with her. He told her that Black Dog had picked up the tracks of her man no more than a mile from them. “By the time the moon rises, I will have his scalp hanging from my belt,” he told her. She canted her ear in the direction the warriors had ridden. In the stillness of the morning, she was certain she would be able to hear sounds of the upcoming battle.
Exhaustion overcame Lorna, and she stretched out her legs. She laid her head onto the cottonwood and slept. How long, she was uncertain. And she was uncertain when the distant rumbling of storm clouds to the west began to echo ominously off the shallow walls of the creek.
CHAPTER 37
* * *
Aurand looked at where the Indians fled through a boulder field as he squatted beside Philo. He stuffed fresh shells into his shotgun, and laid it on the ground beside him. He gathered kindling and started a fire for coffee. “Think they’ll be back?”
Aurand broke open the top of his .44, and spent cartridges popped out. He thumbed fresh ones into the cylinders before snapping the action closed. “They weren’t expecting us, and I think we peppered them pretty good. If I were them, I’d be off licking my wounds and forgetting about us.”
Philo broke off a piece of tobacco and stuffed the rest in his vest pocket. He bent and blew on the fire. “Indians don’t like to be caught short. Fast as we shot, they’re probably telling their pards back in camp there was a dozen of us.”
“I wounded one—might have killed him—so I’m not sure how much talking he’ll be doing.” Aurand stood and peeked around the boulder. The two Indians had been too busy looking at the ground, following sign, when they rode unawares toward him and Philo. And too late the raiding party ran into the ambush Aurand and Philo set. “I’m just wondering if Red put them onto us.”
Philo stood and turned his back to Aurand while he unbuttoned his trousers. “Not that one. He’d rather gnaw off a leg than help a Lakota.” Philo shook and buttoned up. “Although I am wondering how Red knew we were onto him.”
“That’s just what I asked myself,” Aurand said. “You and Con tracked with him the most. Got to be real friendly with the breed, I suspect. Suppose you tell me how he knew we were going to ventilate him once he rode back into camp.”
Philo looked up at Aurand. “You think I tipped him off that we were planning a surprise party for him?”
“All I know,” said Aurand, drawing his gun and holding it loosely beside his leg, “is that Red never came back to camp. Let us say it seems suspicious.”
Philo spat a stream of juice that hit the fire with a hiss as loud as any rattler. “Any time you want me to leave and go my own merry way—let you track Tucker your ownself—you let me know. In fact”—Philo stood and cradled his shotgun under his arm as he walked toward his horse—“I ought to do that anyways. Everyone who sticks around you on this little trip’s gotten killed.”
“Now you wouldn’t leave your old bud all by his lonesome out here.” Aurand cocked his gun and Philo froze. He turned slowly. “I was just supposing.” He held up the hand without the shotgun. “No reason to get all riled up for that. I want Tucker as much as you do.”
Aurand smiled and holstered his gun. “Then let’s see what those Indians were so interested in, studying the ground like they was doing.”
Philo slipped his shotgun into the saddle scabbard and untied his horse. Aurand took the reins of his grulla and fell in behind Philo as he studied the ground. Aurand wasn’t as certain as he’d been a moment ago that Philo wouldn’t cut and run. The fat man had always been happiest when he could ambush some unsuspecting trooper fleeing the army, or a hapless fool with some petty territorial warrant out for him passed out on the trail. But the odds had been even with those two Indians. And Philo wasn’t accustomed to even odds. Something in Aurand wanted to kill the man right here, in the Badlands, and blame it on those Sioux passing through. But right now he needed Philo. Even though he was no Red Sun, Philo was the only tracker he had at the moment.
Philo walked with his head bent toward the ground as he shuffled out of the boulder field toward where they first saw the Indians. “There!” Philo dropped to one knee and studied the tracks. “That’s the same track we come onto earlier. Except now they’re riding single file. And making no effort to hide it.” Philo stood and brushed dirt from his knees. “Shod horses, both. Gotta’ be Tucker and Worman. My guess is either they’re getting careless, or they figure there’s no chance anyone will still be on their trail.”
“It’s smart to rule out the first.” Aurand stood in the stirrups and shielded his eyes with his hat. “I doubt Tucker Ashley ever gets careless.” There were dozens of ideal ambush spots, countless chokepoints in the direction their tracks went. “We just got lucky Tucker was hurt the last time we got the drop on him.”
They followed the tracks for another half mile when Philo reined up short. He slipped the thong from the hammer of his pistol and pointed to tall boulders. The tracks led through them fifty yards ahead. “I don’t like those rocks up ahead, Aurand. I’m thinkin’ we ought to go around that bunch of boulders. Pick up their trail on the other side.”
“No, I think we should follow those tracks straight between them.”
“I’m telling you,” Philo said, “There’s more places among those rocks that they could wait for us. It wouldn’t be smart.”
“Duly noted,” Aurand said. “But we’re going straight through. You go first, and I’ll follow you.”
“You son-of-a—”
“Go on.” Aurand drew his pistol and pointed it at Philo. “We’re wasting daylight.”
CHAPTER 38
* * *
Jack checked that his Henry was loaded, then ran the loading tube out of the butt stock again. “You’ve checked that thing four times already,” Tucker said. “Put it down.”
Jack looked to Tucker, then to his rifle before setting it against the rocks he hid behind. “Guess I’m getting nervous. This waiting is killing me. You think they’ll find our tracks?”
Tucker caught himself checking Jess’s Spencer. Again. “We made tracks so plain even Aurand could follow them. But he’s got Philo with him, even if he can’t.”
“No other way, huh?”
Tucker thought of that. Since burying his knife in the back of that young Indian three days ago, he knew that the gauntlet had been thrown down for Blue Boy. And Blue Boy knew it, too. Revenge would cause him to come after Tucker and risk losing Lorna. “Only thing that’s
sure to attract Blue Boy is the sound of white men fighting.”
“If Blue Boy’s still within earshot,” Jack said.
“Then we have a gambler’s chance that he’ll hear the shooting when the time comes.” Tucker took a pull from his canteen before he passed it to Jack. “If he makes it to the Great Wall, the Badlands might as well be a thousand miles away for as much luck as we’d have finding him and Lorna.”
“We could try following them if this don’t work.” Jack wiped his mouth and handed the water back.
Tucker shook his head and looked out at the shimmering heat waves coming off the rocks, off the sandstone, forming odd shapes that made him do a double take. Men could walk straight at them in this mirage and blend in with the other shimmering shapes out there. “I’ve been into those Badlands before and had to turn back. The Lakota have been going in and out of there for centuries, and they know where the watering holes are any given time of year. They know which game they might run on to, and where to find grass for their ponies. White men don’t. No, if Blue Boy doesn’t answer this challenge and heads there instead, Lorna will just be lost to me.”
“I just hope Blue Boy and Aurand don’t get here at the same time.”
“So do I, Jackson.” Tucker used the side of a boulder to stand. His leg felt better, but it cramped easily, and he walked the knots out of his muscles. He looked off into the sandstone spires, some reaching higher than a telegraph pole. A dust devil kicked up fine dirt as it meandered its way across the ground and disappeared in the creek bed. Lorna was out there somewhere, and he worried on her. She had been raised in the sanitary environment of fine mid-western stock. She was the only person he knew who had been to a university. But she had been thrown into the middle of circumstances that would have killed most able men. And if he believed Red Sun when he trickled the lead shot onto the ground, she was still leaving clues.
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