by Chuck Tyrell
Lean Bear inclined his head toward the old man and said something. The old man’s reaction said Lean Bear had thanked him.
The old man turned his obsidian eyes to Cat. “Néto’seho’soehe?” he said.
“Who you, he says,” Lean Bear said.
“Catherine de Merode,” she said. “Most people call me Cat.”
Lean Bear translated.
The old man’s eyebrows raised in question. “Cat?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes tame as a tabby, sometimes wild and strong as a . . .” she searched for the word “. . . as a puma.”
The old man nodded. E’peva’e. He took the wing from his waistband and repeated the little ceremony with which he’d greeted Lean Bear. I am waiting for the right moment to slip away. Why do they treat me as if I were one of them?
“Poeso,” he said.
“He say while you are Cheyenne, we call you Poeso. Meaning Cat.”
“Epeva’e,” the old man said.
Cat bowed her head to him. “Merci. Merci beaucoup. Thank you.” Until I can get away.
“Here,” Lean Bear said, waving a hand at the biggest teepee. But he made no effort to approach it.
“Your teepee?” Cat asked.
“No.”
“Who owns it?”
“Teepee b’long Jaya mother.”
“Jaya’s mother?”
Lean Bear nodded. “Her.” He still made no move toward the teepee.
Come to think of it, she’d not seen Jaya since they’d entered the tiny village—campsite might be a better word.
The door to the teepee was a piece of hide stretched onto a light oval frame. It was closed. And that ‘s what kept Lean Bear from the teepee. He’d said the structure belonged to Jaya’s mother. Nothing belonged to a woman in Europe. The estate in Belgium belonged to Cat’s father. Everything the family owned belonged to her father. Chances are he’ll even choose who I am to marry. Cat’s annoyance at the thought showed as two vertical lines between her eyebrows.
Lean Bear stood facing the teepee with arms folded and feet spread slightly more than shoulder-width apart.
“Why are we standing here?” Cat said.
“We wait.”
“Why?”
Lean Bear shrugged.
The door of the teepee opened, pushed out from the inside. Jaya stood in the opening. “Poeso,” she said. Then motioned with her hand. “Come.”
Cat glanced at Lean Bear. His eyes held a glint that might be humor.
“She speaks English,” Cat said.
“Little.”
“Come,” Jaya said again. She held the door open.
“”You go,” Lean Bear said.
“And you?”
“You go.”
Cat took a tentative step toward the teepee. Then she hesitated. She’d heard stories of how American Indian woman could be barbarous. How they beat and cut prisoners. How they howled and screeched, seeking blood. Something did not add up to the frightening stories she’d heard. No yelling or screaming. No loud talking. Nothing but a quiet village settled in a sunny dell. Cat nodded to herself and strode toward the open teepee doorway.
Jaya held the covering back so Cat could enter. “Welcome. Mother’s home.”
“Pleased.” Cat stepped inside, brushing past Jaya as she did. Lean Bear made no move.
Inside, the teepee was dim as dusk. As tapestries hung in the castles of Heidelberg and Weisbaden, covering the stone walls and adding warmth, so the interior of the teepee had what Cat could only think of as a liner, tied to the poles and hanging from an arm’s reach of a tall man down to the ground. In the very center of the oval teepee, a small pile of coals showed where fires burned as needed. An older woman sat on the far side of the little fire. She spoke.
“Sit.” Jaya said, indicating a place opposite the older woman.
Cat sat, cross-legged, like the woman. Her riding skirt got in the way, but Cat skillfully arranged it to allow her legs to cross without any show of limb or underwear.
The Jaya spoke a long string of English words. “Ma Ma look-see you. No hurt. No fight. See?”
Cat stiffened.
“No fight. Look. See.”
The older woman spoke again.
Jaya said, “Ma Ma think you may be hungry?”
“Does she want to feed me or examine me?”
“Food? Yes. Maybe?”
The woman spoke rather sharply.
Jaya said, “Teepee b’long Ma Ma. You visit. Ma Ma look-see. Ma Ma give food.”
Cat looked the older woman in the eye. “Thank you for inviting me into your home. I will try to relax.” She would not say she was afraid, but apprehensive she was. And it seemed the woman sitting across from her could sense her tension.
“Popeso.”
“I listen,” Cat said.
Jaya translated.
The older woman spoke, going on for a minute or two.
“Ma ma say once the People lived with comfort. Once there were many teepees. Once there were many woman. Work not so hard. Now the People dead. Some live. All run away. Work no easy.”
The woman across from Cat fell silent.
Cat did not speak, feeling her time would come later.
Jaya, too, sat in silence.
The Cat noticed the tears in the other woman’s eyes. She shut them, but a bit of moisture still escaped and formed droplets on her lower lashes.
She spoke.
“Pardon tear,” Jaya said. “Tear cannot change today. Cannot change tomorrow. Tear, no good. Woman must do. No tear.”
Cat still found no reason to speak. And she could not make sense of the lecture, if indeed that’s what it was.
“Moment,” Jaya said, after the older woman spoke one word.
The woman Cat had come to think of as Ma Ma stood and exited the teepee. She returned with a bowl heaped with what Cat assumed was from the kettle that hung over the fire outside.
“Eat,” Ma Ma said in English, thrusting the bowl in Cat’s direction.
The first rule of survival as far as Cat was concerned was to never refuse any food any time anywhere. “Thank you,” she said, and took the bowl. It came without a spoon, but the contents were mushy enough for her to slurp mouthful after mouthful over the edge of the bowl.
The bowl’s contents were not salty as she’d come to expect from the cooking at Ulrich’s hunting camp. Still, the concoction was more than just boiled meat. It also contained some kind of vegetable, something that looked like a turnip and some woody lumps that looked like chopped roots. It was delicious to Cat’s hungry tongue. Perhaps the old saw—hunger is the best seasoning—was true.
Cat tipped the bowl to get at the last bit of the stew. She inclined her head to Ma Ma, who once again sat across the little pile of coals from Cat. “Thank you, Ma Ma. The stew is delicious.”
“More?” Jaya asked.
“Thank you. Enough for now.” Cat’s second rule. Never be a burden to those showing generosity.
Ma Ma spoke, talking as much with her hands as with her mouth.
“Put your foot out,” Jaya said.
“What?”
“Put your foot out. Ma Ma look-see your boot.”
Cat shifted her weight so she could extend one foot, which was still clad in a riding boot that reached nearly to her knee.
Ma Ma snicked her tongue in what sounded like disapproval.
Cat started to pull her leg back. “Good cavalry boots,” she said.
Ma Ma shook her head. “No good,” she said. The woman surely knew more English than she let on. “Né’tó’estse!”
“Take off,” Jaya said.
“Why?”
“Ma Ma say. You do.” Jaya’s face was stern.
“I cannot.”
“You do.”
“Cannot.”
“Why?”
“No bootjack. Someone else must pull them off.”
“No good. Must do. You. Ma Ma say.” She pointed at the boot. “No good.”
Then she stepped around and took Cat’s boot by toe and heel. She pulled.
Cat slid forward.
Jaya got a stubborn look on her face. Still holding the heel and toe, she began to wiggle the boot as she pulled.
Cat relaxed her ankle and slowly the book began to come off.
Jaya planted her feet more firmly. Taking a big breath, she yanked. The boot came off and Jaya nearly fell. “Off,” she said, triumph in her voice.
“So what?”
Ma Ma now held a piece of rawhide. She slapped it against the sole of Cat’s sock-clad foot and quickly traced its shape with a cold coal. She spoke to Jaya.
“Off one more boot.”
Cat sighed. She folded her sock foot under her thigh and straightened her booted leg for Jaya to pull the boot off, which she did, with no more finesse than before. Still, it came off, and Ma Ma traced Cat’s other foot on the rawhide, too.
Ma Ma then rummaged in a box and returned with a pair of moccasins.
Wear moccasin. For small time.”
“I can wear my boots.”
“No. Wear moccasin.”
But I can’t run away in a pair of moccasins. Maybe. Cat didn’t argue anymore. She slipped her feet into the moccasins. It was like wearing bedroom slippers, but not as warm.
Ma Ma patted the pallet nearest the entrance. “For you,” he said, again in English.
“Come.” Jaya exited the teepee.
Cat had no alternative. She followed Jaya. The thin leather soles of the moccasins did little to protect her feet from bruising pebbles in the pathway.
Lean Bear stood exactly where he’d been when Jaya and Ma Ma led Cat into the teepee. Cat wondered if he had nothing to do. In Belgium, men sat around smoking and drinking port or cognac. Often, they were little interested in the food on the dinner table, preferring spirits instead. Cat began to see a different savage ... well, perhaps not even savage. She knew what soldiers did after battle, when a town was taken, how the womenfolk hid in cellars and storerooms under the eaves, hoping to escape the raping soldiery that wandered the streets, looking for loot and rapine sex.
Lean Bear didn’t seem like that. He’d made not a single move in her direction that would have warned that he had evil intent toward her. He didn’t even seem to hold the death of the warriors she’d killed against her. She struggled to understand these people who called themselves “Red.” Still, she often found Matt Stryker on her mind as she watched Lean Bear.
~*~
Stryker crossed the Yellowstone River just upstream of the cantonment, where Stephan Jenks ran a ferry. As the army at the cantonment consisted of foot soldiers, the ferry wasn’t built to float a troop of cavalry across all at once. But Jenks had ample room for Stryker, Walker, and the Missouri mule.
“Custer catched his death not too far upstream,” the ferryman said. “Injuns fought to a fare thee well that day. Surely did. Big Horn’s the second river coming in from the south. First one’s the Rosebud.”
“Heard about that fight on the Rosebud. Crazy Horse, wasn’t it?”
“It were. He’d got the Northern Cheyenne to throw in with his Lakotas when he went up against General Crook. The general, he had Crow and Shoshone too. Pert near two thousand Injuns and the general had himself about twelve hundred men. Looked nip and tuck there for a while, and Mr. Royall lost a bunch a good men.”
“You were there?”
“Naw. But the boys, they talk, and me, I listen.”
The ferry bumped the far shore, snuggling into a cutout in the bank that let wagons be offloaded, if necessary. Stryker, aboard Walker and leading the mule, left the boat and angled away from the river, taking a course that would bring him to the Musselshell River. He figured to go to Fort Benton, which was as far up the Missouri as a steamboat could go. He knew that Cheyenne moving north would steer shy of any white man town, but by the same token, mountain men and trappers would show up at Fort Benton to get rid of any pelts they’d gathered and tie on a banger with rotgut whiskey and wild women.
Walker ate up the miles, but Stryker still kept an eye on his back trail, just in case. Anyone looking to catch up with Stryker would have to move faster than usual, and when a man moves fast, it’s harder to keep to cover.
Movement or red tails in the sky and blue jays in the bush told Stryker someone tailed him. Some ten miles further along, Stryker came to a natural ambush spot, not that he’d ambush whoever followed his trail, but he did want to know who it was.
A cleft in the wall of a dry canyon gave Stryker a place to keep Walker and the mule out of sight. And the north side of the cleft ended in an upthrusting formation that would give him a lookout. He settled down to wait with his Sharps out of its sheath and loaded.
“Matt? Matthew Stryker?”
The hail came before Stryker saw anyone on the trail he’d come on. He said nothing.
“Matthew?”
Stryker cocked the Sharps, letting the click of its action ring out in the still mountain air.
“Now Matthew. Don’t you go shooting me. Don’t you know my voice?”
Stryker remained silent, though he knew now who was following him. Will Benson. Tricky, sneaky, ne’er-do-well, Will Benson.
“Matthew? I know you’re a watching. I can feel your eyes.”
Stryker sat motionless, carved into the stone that protected his lookout.
“I’m moving in, Matthew. Don’t you go and plink my ancient hide with that there buffalo gun you carry. Don’t you do it.”
Will wouldn’t be talking out loud if he knew there were Indians about. “Show your face, Will,” Stryker said in a natural voice. “Then I’ll decide whether to blow you to kingdom come, or not.”
Will Benson stepped out from behind a tall pine. He held his hands, not over his head, though, but up, with palms turned out.
“Why’re you following me, Will?”
“For safety, Matthew. Two’s better’n one when you’re in Injun country. Me? I’d like to make Fort Benton and catch a ride to St. Loo, myself.”
“And how’d you know it were me?”
“Matthew, Matthew. Nobody sits a horse like you. Now me, no one pays no attention to me, even when I’m no more’n a rod or two away. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes bad. Anyways, I seen you loading up that mule and right away I figured you was headed for faraway parts. And when I seen you cross the Yellowstone, I knew you was going north. So I come after you. Simple as that.”
Benson stood there like he wasn’t feeling sure if Stryker would let him move.
“Where’s your mount, Will?”
“Close by.”
“Get it. Meet ya on the trail in a few.”
Stryker retrieved Walker and the mule and made his way back to the faint trail he’d been following toward the Musselshell.
Will Benson waited, sitting astride a small, stringy, three-color paint that had “Indian” written all over it.
“Who’d ya steal the horse from, Will?”
“Never stole ’im. Damn Blackfeet were after my hair, I swear. One of ’em shot me big bay horse, so I shot him and took his pony. Fair exchange, I reckon.”
“They’ll be hunting your hair.”
“Have been for more years’n you can count, Matt Stryker. An’ I’m still around.”
“You hear anything about Cheyenne Indians headed north?”
“Plenty of ’em doing that.”
“Hear of any white woman captives?”
“Nah. But the Crow and the Blackfeet’re gearing up to hit them Cheyenne. Ain’t no love lost atwixt them.”
Stryker snicked Walker into motion. Montana was wide-open territory, and he had one small group of Cheyenne, led by Lean Bear, to find. Where Lean Bear was, he hoped Catherine de Merode would be also.
Chapter Nine
Crow warriors hit Lean Bear’s little camp just after dawn. They came horseback, and they came screeching and hollering.
Cat burst from Ma Ma’s teepee, taking half-a-dozen steps into the space be
tween the lodges.
“Poeso,” Jaya shouted.
Cat threw a glance at the Cheyenne woman and saw that she held a Winchester.
Jaya tossed the rifle to Cat. “Shoot,” she cried.
Cat caught the long gun. Its weight was familiar to her hand, but she had no time to think of it. The Crow warriors were riding in. Cat dropped to one knee and brought the rifle to her shoulder. She found a target and squeezed off a shot. A Crow warrior screamed and fell. Cat jacked a fresh cartridge into the Winchester. It felt just right. She shot another Crow. And another.
A warrior came thundering across the space between teepees, a war hatchet raised to kill this woman who dealt death from the barrel of her rifle. Then Lean Bear was on the horse behind the Crow. His left arm took the warrior across the eyes and pulled his head back, stretching his throat for Lean Bear’s knife. A slash. A gout of blood. Then Lean Bear was on the Crow’s horse alone. He screeched a victory cry, and a bullet knocked him off the horse.
Instantly, Cat was on her feet and running. A dozen steps and she planted herself astraddle Lean Bear as she jacked another shell into the Winchester. Without thinking, she used the rifle’s barrel to knock aside an arrow. Continuing the movement, she brought the Winchester into alignment and pulled the trigger. Another Crow warrior crashed from his horse, bounced when he hit the ground, then lay still, lifeless.
“Filthy savages,” Cat cried. “I am but a woman. Yet you fear to meet me face to face.”
The Crow, outnumbering the Cheyenne at least three, maybe four, to one, herded women and children toward the center of the little camp.
Cat stood guard over Lean Bear.
“Woman,” a Crow called. His hair stood high in the typical Crow pompadour. His face was red above the brows and black from brow line to cheekbones. Finger-width white stripes ran down his face from black stripe to jaw line—the Crow called on the magic of his forefathers to assist him on this raid.