He could have easily shot the one hostile he had seen, but had he done so, the other five would have undoubtedly escaped because he couldn’t really see them. And there was no guarantee he could outrun them back to the place where he left his horse. So as cautiously as he had come up, he backed slowly away. He was almost back to his horse before it occurred to him why the Indian was squatting on the side of the hill.
CHAPTER 3
“Maybe when we kill these white men, they will have some more of those beans you like, Crooked Leg,” Kills Two Bears called out again. His remarks were once again met with laughter from the other four sitting around the fire. “Maybe you can eat some of these berries now,” he said, referring to the thicket of serviceberry bushes that lined a tiny spring that ran through the pocket.
“Augh,” Crooked Leg groaned painfully and called back. “Spotted Pony ate from the same pot. Why is he not in pain?” Spotted Pony had dipped into the pot of meat and beans they had found outside the shack where they killed the white man. It had obviously been left there for some time, but the taste was not rancid. So Crooked Leg had finished it off when the others had declined to chance it. To make matters worse, he had chided them about their dainty appetites. Now he was paying for his playful sarcasm as his insides churned in an effort to process the spoiled mixture of beans and rabbit.
On a more serious note, Spotted Pony, who was Kills Two Bears’s brother, was moved to speculate, “If he does not rid his belly of the white man’s dirty food by the time it becomes dark, we will have to leave him here. He will be of no use to us.”
Kills Two Bears shrugged indifferently. “We can attack the white man without him. We have counted no more than four men the whole time we have been watching the house and barn. Two women and two small children are the only others. I think we could have easily killed them all already, instead of waiting for darkness.”
“What you say is true,” Buffalo Heart replied. The oldest of the six warriors, he was always the most practical and patient of the young Sioux. “But it will be easier to strike after dark when the white men are inside eating and we will be less likely to be shot. Our plan is good and if Crooked Leg is still unable to ride, it will still be easy to kill them all.” Their plan was simple. If there was any lookout watching the ranch, he would be killed. Then they would sneak in and let the horses out of the corral. When the white men ran out to save their horses, it would be a simple thing to shoot them down with warriors positioned at the front and back doors of the house, as well as the door of the bunkhouse. “It will be a simple matter to kill the woman and the children then and burn the house.” He was also conscious of the glory they would earn by stealing the many horses in that corral.
Crooked Leg stumbled back to the campfire and slumped down on the ground. “It is your turn to go back up to watch the house,” Running Bird said to him. “Many Scalps has been watching the house for a long time. Can you do it?”
“I can do it,” Crooked Leg mumbled, but suddenly held his stomach when he tried to get up, trying not to retch.
“I will do it,” Buffalo Heart said, this time with some degree of disgust in his tone. He rose to his feet. “It will still be a little while before the sun goes down. Maybe you will be well enough to join us by then.”
* * *
Lieutenant Conner walked to meet Hawk when he rode back up the ridge, eager to hear what he had discovered. “Yep,” Hawk said, answering his question before it was asked. He threw a leg over and stepped down from his horse. “They’re sittin’ up there in those hills. Couldn’t be much else on their minds but attackin’ that ranch. Just waitin’ for dark, I expect.” Conner nodded. “Did you decide how you’re gonna go after ’em?” Hawk asked.
“I’m still thinking about it,” Conner said. “Are there any more of them than we figured?” He was hampered by the open prairie land between where his soldiers now stood on this ridge and the ranch house by the river. He would prefer to have been hidden at the ranch so as to surprise the hostiles when they attacked, but there was no way to ride from this ridge to the ranch house without being seen. Perhaps Major Brisbin would prefer that he should take no chances on endangering civilian lives and advise him to march his patrol directly to the ranch right now. Their mere presence would frighten away a raiding party of six warriors, but Conner was set on stopping the hostiles from preying on anyone else and not just scaring them away.
“Six warriors with eight horses,” Hawk said, answering Conner’s question. “One of ’em with a case of the shits”—he paused—“a warrior, not a horse.”
Conner puzzled over Hawk’s remark for only a second, his mind still churning over his best plan of action. “Johnson,” he commanded, “get the men ready to mount up. Check your weapons, fully loaded and ready to fire. We’re gonna move outta here in fifteen minutes. Johnson immediately obeyed and when he ran to carry out the order, Conner turned back to Hawk. “I’m not waiting till dark to give those devils a chance to sneak in there and lob a few fire arrows into that man’s roof. How close do you think we could get before they discovered us, if we went the way you did?”
“Don’t know, Lieutenant. Right on top of ’em if they don’t set a lookout on that end of the hills. If they do, they’ll likely spot you when you’re about a hundred yards from that last hill. You’d play hell catchin’ ’em then. But like I said, they didn’t have anybody watchin’ their backs when I went up there.”
Conner hesitated a moment. “Well, we’ll just roll the dice and hope we’re lucky. I’m going after them while they’re still lying around in those hills. Now tell me how to catch them napping.”
Using a stick to draw a diagram on the ground, Hawk tried to show him how the fourth hill in the chain stood up higher than those on either side. He indicated the ravine where the ponies were and the approximate location of the pocket where the Indians had built a fire. “I ain’t sure exactly how that pocket lays out,” he said. “Because of that buck squattin’ above it on the hill, I couldn’t get close enough to see down into it.”
Not happy about being left out of the planning of the attack, Nestor felt compelled to remark. “It woulda been a helluva lot better if you’da scouted the front side of that hill, too, so we could cover the front door and the back door.”
“Too bad you weren’t with me, Nestor,” Hawk couldn’t resist replying. “I coulda given you that job. Or I coulda just hollered, ‘Hey, look at me, Injuns. I’m scoutin’ your little hideout.’ That woulda done just as much good.”
“Why, you smart-mouth son of a bitch,” Nestor retorted. “You’re gettin’ a little too big for your britches. Somebody needs to trim your wick for you.”
“You, I suppose,” Hawk shot back.
“That’s enough, damn it!” Conner ordered before it progressed beyond name-calling. “I’m trying to mount an attack on a hostile Indian party. I don’t have time for any schoolyard catfights between my scouts. If you two want to cut each other’s throat, you’ll have to wait till we get back to Ellis. Then if you still wanna do it, why, hell, we’ll all gather around to watch the fight. But until then, you’ll behave yourselves and take my orders, or I’ll see you never scout for another army patrol again. Is that understood?” He glared at each of them until he got a simple “yes, sir” from both of them. “Now, Mr. Hawk, let’s go over that layout again.”
“Yessir,” Hawk slurred. “Like I said, it’s gonna depend on whether or not we can move your men up the backside of that hill before they know we’re behind ’em. If we do, we’ll be above ’em in that little pocket they’re holed up in and they won’t have any choice—either surrender or get shot.”
“All right, let’s get started and hope for the best,” Conner said. Then he turned and barked, “Johnson!”
“Yes, sir,” Johnson replied. With no need to wait for the order, he immediately went to get the men mounted, and the patrol was under way. Hawk thought he could feel Nestor’s eyes on his back as he passed by him on his way to take th
e point. He had no real desire to fight the belligerent scout. He would be happy just to avoid him in the future.
* * *
“Someone is coming from the house!” Buffalo Heart exclaimed, immediately alerting the warriors sitting by the fire. Scrambling at once to grab their weapons, all of them, including the suffering Crooked Leg, ran to follow Buffalo Heart back to the lookout point at the top of the hill. “See!” he said excitedly, and pointed to a pair of riders leaving the barn and heading toward them.
“They are coming right at us,” Spotted Pony declared as the two riders held their horses on a line that would take them to the foot of the very hill the warriors stood on. “If they don’t turn soon, they will ride right up to our feet.” The warriors watched anxiously, waiting to see if their plans for a surprise night attack were going to be ruined. “If they keep coming, we will have to kill them and that will alert everyone else there of the danger.”
“And that will ruin our plan to steal the horses and burn the house,” Kills Two Bears finished for him. “I say we should get to our ponies now and kill these two.”
“If we do that, then we might as well go ahead and attack the house,” Running Bird said. “Maybe they will not have time to defend themselves.” The prospects of gaining a sizable herd of horses and killing everyone at the ranch, having suddenly been compromised, there was now confusion among the warriors.
“They are still some distance yet,” Buffalo Heart said when the riders were a good two hundred yards away. “Maybe they will turn and go in another direction. If they do, then all is well. Our plan will not change. But I think we must get our ponies and be ready to kill them if they come to this hill.” His words were met with nods of agreement, for no one could offer a better strategy. It was a disappointing change to their original plan, but they could at least kill two of the white settlers. “Then we can make one sweep through the buildings and maybe catch some of them outside before they have time to run for their weapons.”
“One of them is a woman,” Many Scalps announced. He had never taken his eyes off the approaching riders while the discussion of what to do went on.
“Good,” Spotted Pony said. “That will make it easier.” They hurried to ready their horses.
* * *
The six Sioux warriors were not the only ones who spotted the two riders leaving the barn. The column of soldiers making their way along the shallow draw caught sight of them, too, as they approached the eastern end of the hills. Nestor was the first to spot them. “Well, look at them damn fools,” he said, as if they should know the hostiles were in the hills.
“Oh, good Lord, no!” Lieutenant Conner exclaimed, and signaled for the column to halt. He motioned for Hawk to fall back to talk.
“Damn” was all Hawk could say upon first seeing what Conner was pointing to. This unexpected development would effectively change everything and definitely defeat Conner’s intention of preventing any contact between the ranch and the Sioux raiders.
“We’re going to have to abort our original plan to catch those hostiles by surprise,” Conner said. “I’m gonna have to swing the column around and get between those people and the hostiles. That will probably cause the Indians to sneak away on the backside of these hills, but I don’t want to risk the lives of those two people.”
Hawk was thinking fast. It looked like Conner was right, unless something else might work. “There might be another way to keep those folks from gettin’ shot and maybe keep the Indians from runnin’.” Conner was all ears, anxious as he was to inflict punishment upon the Sioux raiders, so Hawk continued. “I can cut that pair off before they get a hundred yards from the hill. I’m thinkin’ there’s a good chance those Indians won’t think anything suspicious about one person meeting those two and then riding off in another direction. It sure as hell shouldn’t spook ’em and cause ’em to run.”
Conner hesitated while he considered it, then said, “You’d be putting yourself out there in the open in easy range of a rifle.”
“I know, but I think these bucks are hopin’ to wait till dark, so they can score a big raid,” Hawk said. When Conner hesitated again, reluctant to put him in harm’s way, Hawk reminded him, “They’re gettin’ closer.”
“All right, go,” Conner said. “I’ll hold the column here at the foot of the hill in case we have to come quickly.” Hawk was off at once.
Rascal responded to the task as Hawk expected of him, but the pair of riders from the ranch were closer to fifty yards from the face of the hill when they saw him riding to intercept them. Puzzled, they pulled up to wait for him. “Howdy, folks,” he greeted them as casually as he could affect when he realized one of them was a woman. “I’m gonna need you folks to turn and ride with me back toward the house.”
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked, suspicious of the stranger.
“I ain’t got time to introduce myself,” Hawk replied. “There’s a column of cavalry behind me and they’re hopin’ I can keep you from ridin’ into a Sioux war party hidin’ on that hill in front of you. So I’d be much obliged if you’d just trust me and we’ll ride off together real easy-like, so those Indians don’t think we know they’re there and we’re runnin’.”
“Listen to him, John,” the woman instructed when her husband hesitated, then she turned her horse. She had made a quick judgment and could see no dishonesty in the rugged man’s face. Her husband immediately followed suit and the three of them casually loped off together.
On horseback now, and gathered in the cover of the trees at the base of the hill, the six warriors watched with anticipation of a sudden engagement, only to hold up when the lone rider had suddenly appeared. A man, tall in the saddle, wearing a buckskin shirt and a flat-crowned hat with a feather stuck in the hatband, appeared to be an acquaintance of the two he met. “Where did he come from?” Buffalo Heart asked.
“There may be more,” Running Bird said, “maybe on the other side of these hills.”
Suddenly a cloud of uneasiness descended upon the war party, prompting Spotted Pony to say, “I think someone had better scout the hill behind us. You might be right, there may be more where that one came from. I will go.” He turned his horse and started back up the hill, not waiting for anyone else to join him.
When he reached the top, he started out along the tops of the other hills as fast as he could until he made his way back to the easternmost hilltop. The man with the feather had come from that direction, so he sought to scout the plains beyond the line of hills. He was about to descend to the band of pines that circled the base of the one he was now on, but was stopped by the sight of something moving in the trees. Reacting automatically, he reined his horse to a stop and jumped off his back. Anxious to see what had caught his eye, he quickly made his way down through the trees until he could see a little better. The sight that met his eye almost made him grunt in surprise. There, on the other side of the trees, he saw a column of mounted soldiers, waiting no doubt for him and his friends to make their move. Very slowly, he backed away until reaching his horse. Then he led the pony back up to the top of the hill before jumping on his back and racing back to tell the others.
“What did you find?” Buffalo Heart exclaimed when Spotted Pony’s horse slid to a stop just short of plowing into the other horses gathered there.
“Soldiers!” Spotted Pony blurted. “They are hiding behind the hill, waiting for us to attack the man and woman. They hope to trap us, I think!” His report ignited an explosion of excited voices, all wanting to be heard at once.
“Hear me!” Buffalo Heart raised his voice. “I don’t think the soldiers knew the man and the woman were going to ride to this place. And that is why they sent the man to turn them away. I think the soldiers were hoping to attack us from behind. We must decide what to do.” When they quieted down to hear him speak, he asked, “How many soldiers are there?” Spotted Pony told him there were fifteen plus an officer and a guide. “And Feather In His Hat,” Buffalo Heart said, reminding t
hem of the man who had intercepted the couple. “I think that is too many for us to fight, but that is just what I think.”
“Buffalo Heart is right,” Crooked Leg said, his gut still churning violently. “My belly won’t let my eyes see without spinning everything around.
“Maybe so,” Kills Two Bears spoke up. “But I don’t want to give up without taking one white life. We are out of food and I had thought we would get food here at this place.”
“There are too many,” Running Bird said. “I agree with Buffalo Heart. It is best to leave this ambush the soldiers have made. I also think Kills Two Bears is right. I, too, don’t want to run without killing at least one white man. So I say let us ride out this side of the hill while the soldiers hide on the other side. There are two white men and one woman still between us and the house. We can kill them and head for the river, long before the soldiers can come after us.”
His suggestion was met with quick approval, especially in their pressing position. “There is only one man now,” Many Scalps announced, his eye still on the three riders. “The man and the woman are returning to the house, but Feather In His Hat has turned around and is coming back.”
“No matter,” Buffalo Heart said. “Feather In His Hat has big medicine, I think. To kill him will be a great thing for us all.” When his words were met with nods of approval, he said, “We go, then. It will be a good day after all.”
Hell Hath No Fury Page 4