by Chuck Tyrell
“Jaya,” Lean Bear said. “Good warrior woman.”
“She fights?”
“She wins.”
Cat leaned to peer around Lean Bear’s broad back. The woman was yet too far away for Cat to read her face, but she rode proudly, with shoulders thrown back and chin lifted as if she were a princess. Cat had seen that pose many times among the royalty of Belgium and Prussia. “Chief’s daughter?” she asked.
“No.”
“Hmmm.”
By now, the woman called Jaya was less than fifty feet away. Cat could see that her face was square-jawed and strong, with a thin-lipped mouth and eyes as hard as iron. The leather dress she wore had beadwork across the front above her breasts and fringes of black hair along the outer seams of the sleeves. The bottom half bunched around her hips as she rode astride, and she had leather leggings much like the ones Lean Bear wore. She thrust moccasined feet into rawhide-covered stirrups, again, much like those of Lean Bear.
Jaya stopped.
Lean Bear stopped.
Cat slid off Lean Bear’s horse. He no longer tethered her, so her hands and feet were free.
Jaya said something to Lean Bear.
Cat looked at him.
“She say who are you?” he said. Then he spoke Cheyenne to Jaya.
Cat stepped forward to stand at the shoulder of Lean Bear’s horse. She gave the woman a regal stare. “I am Catherine de Merode, princess of the realm, Kingdom of Belgium,” she said.
The woman looked at Lean Bear. He said something, and she snorted.
Cat kept her head high and her demeanor royal. This was no time to break and run.
Jaya reached out as if to touch Cat’s cheek with an inquisitive forefinger. Cat slapped her hand aside, catching it in the palm of her left hand. She twisted, and the pain drove Jaya to her knees. Cat put her right hand against the elbow of the arm with the inquisitive finger. “If she touches me again, I will break her arm. Both of them, if need be,” Cat said. Without taking her eyes from Jaya, she spoke to Lean Bear. “Tell her what I said.”
Lean Bear said nothing.
Cat applied more pressure. Jaya gasped. “Tell her,” Cat said.
Lean Bear spoke. Jaya nodded. “Let go,” the Dog Soldier said. “She meant you no hurt.”
“Cheyenne killed all of my people,” Cat snarled. “I cannot trust you not to kill me.”
The Cheyenne laughed. “Lean Bear say no kill Cat woman. Lean Bear not white man. Lean Bear not lie.”
Cat must have loosened her hold on Jaya without realizing it, because one instant the Cheyenne woman knelt on the ground and the next she crouched before Cat with a slim knife in her hand. Instantly, Cat went into a savate defensive stance. “Tell Jaya I will not kill her today,” Cat said.
Lean Bear spoke.
Jaya barked a laugh of disbelief. She flourished the knife and snarled something. She remained in a crouch. Cat could tell she was familiar with knife fighting, but she knew nothing of savate, of course.
Lean Bear lifted his left leg over his horse’s neck and slid to the ground next to Cat. He spoke sharply to Jaya, who took an involuntary step backward, shaking her head.
Lean Bear barked at her again.
She shook her head, but put the knife away.
“I don’t need you to fight my battles,” Cat said.
“Now is not the time to fight,” Lean Bear said. “Now is the time to move, go north, away from blue-coat soldiers.”
Cat watched Jaya as an owl would watch a mouse, but Indian woman only retrieved the reins of the three-color paint. She led the horse to Cat. “For you,” she said in English.
“You speak English!”
“No.” Jaya held the reins out to Cat.
“Jaya bring one horse for you, Cat woman. Now we ride faster. Come.”
Cat snatched the reins from Jaya and led the three-color away.
“Stop,” Lean Bear said. “Now.” He leaped aboard his horse and reined him toward Cat and the three-color. “Get on.”
“He doesn’t know me yet.”
“He will obey. Get on. We go.”
Jaya had already ridden back the way she came. Lean Bear weaved a hand in her direction. “Follow,” he said.
Cat took another minute or two to make friends with the horse. He seemed gentle and perhaps a bit long in the tooth. He stood patiently while she scrambled up onto his back. She slipped her boots into the rawhide stirrups. A little short, but rideable.
“Follow,” Lean Bear said again. This time he didn’t wait, but urged his pony after Jaya, who was nearly out of sight.
Cat clapped her heels to the three-color’s ribs. “Go,” she said. The horse went, but not nearly as fast as she wanted him to go. She gigged him again, and he sped up, slightly.
Lean Bear didn’t even look over his shoulder to see if Cat was following. Is this the time? Is this when I should make a break for freedom?
Cat dug her heels into the three-color’s ribs. “Giddap,” she said, imitating what she’d heard teamsters shout to urge their horses onward. The three-color may have upped his speed, and he may not have. Cat couldn’t tell. At least he didn’t seem to fall any farther behind.
The route they took went through woods and arroyos, but Cat could still see the vast mountains that dominated the skyline to the west. Then, instead of crossing one small creek, Jaya followed it, staying near the south bank. Lean Bear followed. Cat followed. The other warrior seemed to have disappeared.
Jaya and Lean Bear pulled up beside a pool at the bottom of a twenty-foot waterfall. The water coming over the fall did not cause a great roar, it merely dribbled down a basalt facing into the clear pool. The dell was surrounded by sycamores and occasional oaks, but had a small meadow of perhaps a dozen acres. Cat’s three-color immediately began cropping at the grass. Jaya spoke to Lean Bear, loud enough for Cat to hear, if she but understood the Cheyenne language.
Lean Bear nodded ascent to whatever Jaya said, and she rode away.
“Where does she go?” Cat asked.
Lean Bear scribed a circle in the air with his index finger, then lifted his hand to his brow as if shading his eyes from sunlight.
“Around? Searching?”
Lean Bear repeated the signs.
“Riding around. Looking.” Then Cat knew. Intuitively, she knew. “Scouting,” she said.
Lean Bear nodded. “Water,” he said, stretching his hand out toward the pool. “You drink. Horse drink. We go.” He dismounted and led his horse to the downstream end of the pool. While the horse drank, Lean Bear scooped water in his cupped hand, drinking while watching his surroundings.
Cat sat the three-color without moving. Always keeping Lean Bear within her peripheral vision, she also inspected the surrounding area. Except for sycamore, which Stryker had told her, and oaks, which she knew from the forests of Belgium, she could not name the kinds of trees. Some were tall and regal. Others were shorter and scrubby. Some wore the needles of the evergreen. Others had the broad deciduous leaves.
After Lean Bear finished and led his horse away, Cat copied him, even kneeling at the water’s edge, scooping the cool, fresh-tasting water into her cupped hand, and bringing it to her mouth to drink.
She stood to lead the three-color after Lean Bear, and Jaya was there. “Stay alert, Catherine. And stay alive.” She spoke only to herself.
Lean Bear sat his horse with an impatient look on his face. “Come,” he said.
The three-color stood patiently while Cat mounted, jumping up to put herself belly down across the pad-saddle, the swinging around until she could get her left leg on one side of the animal and her right leg on the other. The amount of time it took embarrassed her.
“We go.” Lean Bear gigged his horse into the trees east of the meadow.
Jaya was gone again.
Cat reined her three-color after Lean Bear. He led a zigzag way that brought them to the top of the scarp that caused the waterfall.
What had been a running stream below
the falls was a broad wetland above. Birds covered the placid water visible between hammocks of grass and stands of rushes. Cat could not name each kind of bird she saw, but knew which were ducks, which were geese, which were mud hens, and which were herons. All lived on the wetland, apparently. She’d never seen anything like it, not even in the Black Forest of Germany.
Jaya led them around the edges of the wetland, keeping the high hills and ridges to her right. Cat noticed the same kind of sawtooth ridges on the far side as well. She heard a sharp report, almost like gunfire, but Lean Bear paid no attention. Ct searched the area from which the sound came. Nothing. No sign of human movement.
Lean Bear dropped back. “What?”
“Something. Did you hear the gunshot?”
“Gunshot? Ha!”
“What is funny?”
“Cat woman.”
“And why am I funny?”
“The sound was beaver.”
Cat knew of beaver, of course. Its fur made the felt so prized by gentlemen for their hats. But she’d never seen one. “Where?”
“Somewhere. Gone now.”
“Gone where?”
Lean Bear urged his horse ahead without answering, leaving Cat to puzzle about beavers.
A sharp headland jutted from the hills almost into the wetland. A barely visible trail went around its foot. Lean Bear reined his mount to a stop some yards from the narrow trail. Cat pulled up behind him.
“Wait.”
Cat waited.
A rider came from behind the headland. Jaya.
Lean Bear sat his horse with expressionless face until Jaya rode up.
She said one word. Lean Bear grunted. Cat sat on her three-color horse. It was neither the time nor the place for escape.
Jaya turned her paint and went back the way she came.
“Come,” Lean Bear said. He snicked at his horse and followed Jaya.
Cat reined her three-color—she’d already come to think of the gentle horse as her own—and followed.
The area on the far side of the headland was flat and covered mostly with grass. Scrubby trees lined the creek, which was now confined into a rather narrow stream. Three teepees formed a triangle around a central cooking fire. An iron pot hung from a wooden tripod. Even at this distance, Cat could smell the food.
Lean Bear drew up and waited for Cat. “Home,” he said. “For a small time.”
~*~
Stryker kept the Big Horns to his left and crossed three streams—Crazy Woman and Clear Creeks on the Powder river system, then south fork of the Tongue. Once across the Tongue River, he turned to follow it to the Tongue River Cantonment, Col. Miles’s headquarters in the fight against the northern plains Indians.
Even with the Walker horse’s fast pace, Stryker didn’t reach the cantonment until mid-afternoon of the third day. The Crow’s body was not in the best possible condition, to say the least.
Bounded by the Yellowstone River to the north and the Tongue to the south, the only approach to the cantonment was from the southwest. Stryker rode the Walker horse with the loose-jointed posture of a man who’d spent a good part of his life in the saddle. No one challenged him, so he reined the Walker to a stop in front of a log structure with a sign that read: 5th Regiment of Infantry, Col. Nelson A. Miles commanding.”
Stryker dismounted and tied the Walker to the hitching rail. Before he could slap the dust from his clothes, the door crashed open and a barrel-shaped man with sergeant major stripes clomped onto the porch. “And who’ll ya be an’ what’ll ya be wanting?”
“Good day to you too, Sarn’t Major.”
“Matt? Matt Stryker?”
“None other.”
“Last I heard, you was at Fort Laramie.”
“I was.”
“So what brings you all the way to the cantonment?”
“Brought one of your scouts in.”
The sergeant major heaved his bulk down the steps. “Gimme a look-see.”
Stryker untied the rope that kept the Crow wrapped. The body farted. “Been a little more’n three days,” Stryker said. He pulled the blanket away from the body.
“Johnny Dogleg. How come you to shoot him?”
“He come sneaking into my Cheyenne friend’s camp with some of his buddies, I suspect. He wasn’t wearing no cavalry or army headgear, neither. Has he been missing here, d’ya know?”
“Scouts don’t line up for roll call, Stryker. You know that.”
“Figure I could see the colonel?”
“Don’t see what not.” The sergeant major opened the door for Stryker to enter.
Inside, the room spread across the width of the building and went on for about half its depth. But instead of a lounge where officers and wives could relax before a roaring fire, much of the space was taken up by a table. A map lay across the table, and painted wooden blocks, some blue, some red, some white, and some black, sat in disarray on the map.
The sergeant major strode across the room and rapped on a door. “Mr. Matthew Stryker to see the colonel, if you please, sir.”
Stryker couldn’t hear the reply, but the sergeant major turned and beckoned. “Go on in, Matthew. I’ll get your horses and that dead Injun took care of.”
A voice boomed from inside the colonel’s room. “What dead Indian?”
Stryker stepped in. “That’s what I wanted to speak with you about, colonel,” he said.
Matt Stryker had seen Nelson Miles only once before, and that was when Miles had hounded the Kiowa and Comanche and Southern Cheyenne along the Red River in ’75 and ’76. The tribes ended up on reservations, and Nelson Miles got command of the Military Department of Missouri. His order of the day, clean up after the mess Autie Custer made of the 7th Regiment of Cavalry. Miles still wore his handlebar moustache, though his sideburns were now nearly white.
“What dead Indian?” Miles repeated.
“I had to shoot one of your Crow scouts, general. And I brought him back here so’s you’d know what happened.”
“None of the 5th is out,” Miles said.
“Figured that.”
“So why’d you have to kill the Crow?”
“I’m out trying to find a woman that was taken by Cheyenne.”
Miles stood. “A woman?”
“I’d’ve thought you’d’ve heard, general. I reckon you heard about the von Waldburg hunting party?”
“That prissy Prussian officer that came looking to shoot every wild beast in the American West?”
“Yes, general, that’s the one.”
“Has he done well, then?”
“No, sir. Cheyenne Dog Soldiers wiped his party out. Not quite a week ago.”
“Damn!”
“Yes, sir. Three women with the party were not amongst the bodies, so I figured that Dog Soldiers carried them off.”
“Three?”
“Yes, sir. One is some kind of royalty. Says her pa is a prince in Belgium. The other two’re enlisted wives, them what does laundry for the troops.”
“What does all this have to do with a dead Crow scout?”
“Yes, sir. Well, sir. I happen to know the Belgian woman. So I come out to find her.”
“Did you?”
“No, sir. I found out that a Northern Cheyenne called Lean Bear had her. He’s headed north. Most likely Canada.”
“I’ll ask just once more, Stryker. What’s that got to do with you killing my Crow scout?”
“I worked my way north, sir, looking for sign of Cat—that’s the Belgian woman, Catherine de Merode—looking for some sign of her, when I run across a bunch, well, more like a family, of Cheyenne. They treated me proper and I ate of their food. So when Crow raiders hit the camp, I naturally sided with Hook and his family.”
“Hook?”
“That’s my name for him. You might know him by another one.”
“Cheyennes were with the red savages that wiped out George Custer,” Miles said. A frown pulled the corners of his mouth down beneath the handlebar mousta
che. “My job is to break the Northern Plains tribes—Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne—and get ’em onto reservations.”
“The Cheyenne look to be scattering, a bunch headed north to Royal Mountie country.”
“Well, we showed Crazy Horse how a regiment of infantry, my 5th, could make mincemeat of his mounted savages. Hit him at Wolf Mountain right after the turn of the year. Cold as Hell frozen over. We beat them. Hands down.”
“Yes, general. I heard of that fight.”
“They ran. Ran like hell. And my 5th, those boys were set up to hold on until the storm gave out. Some fight, Stryker, some fight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ahem, well, the 5th Infantry is here to clean up after those unable to carry the fight to the Red Man. I will do so.”
“I’m sure you will, general. Would you mind if I leave the cantonment now, sir?”
Miles waved a hand in dismissal. “But don’t take it as permission to shoot my Crow scouts any time you wish, Stryker.”
“No, sir. I’m looking for a missing woman. That’s all.”
Miles turned his back.
“By your leave, sir,” Stryker said. He strode from the colonel’s office, more determined than ever to find Catherine de Merode.
Chapter Eight
Home, Lean Bear had said. Three conical dwellings—Cat had heard them called teepees—each leaning slightly as if a bit off balance. All of the tents Cat had seen in Europe and America were white or some semblance of that color, and they were made of canvas. The conical dwellings of Lean Bear’s “home” were not cloth, yet they were painted with graphic designs. Each teepee had a broad stripe of light blue running around it from the bottom, which was pegged to the ground. Above the broad blue bottom border, one teepee wore an orange ball that reminded Cat of a sun rising over a misty dell. Each teepee showed individual designs, but where obviously of the same group; perhaps the same family.
No one shouted or whooped as Lean Bear’s little party entered the camp. Still, everyone, or it appeared to Cat that everyone in camp came out to greet Lean Bear. An old man, supported by the rider who’d disappeared as they neared the camp, raised his right hand as he came near Lean Bear. The hand held the wing of a large bird, not black, so it wouldn’t be crow or vulture. Gray, with tinges of brown. The old man swept the wing up one side of Lean Bear and down the other, muttering words Cat could not understand. He slipped the wing into his waistband and took a leather pouch decorated with beads and little ivory-colored tubes. The old man dipped a forefinger into the bag and brought it out covered with yellow powder. The yellow finger made a stripe across Lean Bear’s brow, then down the bridge of his nose.