George stood by the door, frantically wondering what to do. He didn’t want to hurt the man, and if the stationmaster became too suspicious, he might report George’s visit to the Army officers and the schedule might be changed.
A match flared in the darkness and the stationmaster touched it to the wick of a chimney lamp. The wick took and its soft light filled the room. George saw that papers not only covered the table and desktop, but lay in stacks on the floor and protruded from behind cupboard doors. Pages peeked out of drawers and a small pile of them lay underneath the uneven leg of one of the chairs.
“There, now,” the short man said as he sat down behind the desk. “What was it you wanted to know?”
George cleared his throat. “Quite a lot of papers here,” he said, stalling for time while he tried to come up with the best approach.
The stationmaster blew air and shook his head. “You don’t know the half of it. It’s the Army. Eventually, the railroad will be privately owned, but until it is, it belongs to the U.S. Army, and the Army loves paper.”
“So I’ve learned,” George said, remembering his days as an engineer for the Army.
“Ah,” the small man said. “So you’ve experienced it yourself.”
“Yes, sir. First-hand. I know what it is to be swamped in forms and reports.”
The stationmaster sighed. “They don’t pay me enough to do this job. But I digress. You wanted some information. A schedule, wasn’t it?” He began lifting the corners of pages and looking through the papers on his desk.
“Actually, I was hoping you’d be able to tell me about a particular shipment.”
“Shipment?” He paused in his search. “What do you mean?”
George could tell that he was approaching a delicate subject. He hooked his thumbs in the vest pockets. A lump in his coat’s inside pocket reminded him of the nugget that he carried there, and his mind latched onto the seed of an idea. “Yes,” he said. “There is an important shipment due in the next month or so. A very important shipment. The men at the fort are quite excited about it. New equipment. New supplies. New weapons...” He let his voice trail off.
The stationmaster’s brow contracted. “But that information is secret. They shouldn’t be telling you about it. Nor shall I. Why do you want to know, anyway? I should report this to the colonel.”
George held up a hand to calm him. “Just a minute. Don’t go off half-cocked. Hear me out, please.”
The stationmaster scowled but waited. George dragged over the other chair and the stack of papers for its uneven leg.
“Now here’s what I’m planning,” he said as he sat. “I want to open a shop here in town.”
The stationmaster laughed. “You? You’re joking.”
“I know I don’t look the part of the entrepreneur. I had some unfortunate luck on my way here and ran afoul of some rather unsavory fellows. They stole my money and left me senseless in a ditch.”
“Oh, my,” the man said, never thinking for a moment that George would lie.
“I still had my ticket, though, so I decided to continue onward. My partner, you see, back in Chicago, is expecting me to begin preparations.”
“But what can you do?” the stationmaster asked. “They stole your money.”
“My money, indeed,” George said, reaching into his coat pocket. He took out the gold nugget and laid it on the paper-covered desk. “But not my wealth.”
The man’s eyes widened, his brown irises encircled by white. “Oh...Oh, my. I see.” He reached for it, drawn like a drunk to liquor, but stopped and looked up at George. “May I?”
“Be my guest,” George said, and smiled as the stationmaster picked up the nugget and gasped at its weight.
“Now as to this store,” George continued. “We intend to supply the soldier as well as the settler with whatever they might require for their protection. Everything a man might need for the proper care and maintenance of his armaments. You know what I mean: holsters, rifle bags, ammunition, even weapons for the civilians. Surely you can see why knowing how the soldiers will be equipped is so very important to my inventory plans.”
The stationmaster looked up from his inspection of the nugget. “Yes. I can see that. Surely. Say, is this solid?”
“Indeed it is. And surely you can see how knowing when these new rifles are to arrive is crucial to the timing of my proposed operation.”
“Oh, absolutely. This is an enormous piece of gold.”
And I have more like it,” George said. The stationmaster looked up in surprise. “It is how I will be financing my operation,” he explained.
“Oh, my,” the stationmaster breathed.
“And, of course, I will be extremely appreciative to those who assist me in starting this endeavor.”
“Oh, of course,” the man said, and then he blinked, his eyes large behind his lenses. “Oh,” he said again, and put the nugget down at arm’s length on the cluttered desktop. “I see.”
“So,” George said slowly. He pushed the nugget back toward the stationmaster. “If you could see a way to supply me with the information I requested, I assure you it would make all the difference to my plans.”
“Well, I...” The small man sunk back into his chair, his eyes still staring at the nugget. It glowed in the lamplight, throbbing with each flicker of the wick’s flame. “I suppose...” He licked his lips and his brow was beaded with sudden sweat.
“What harm?” George whispered. “I get a jump on the competition. You get a well-deserved raise in salary.”
A secret smile crept onto the stationmaster’s face. “When you put it that way,” he said hesitantly.
“Go on,” George urged. “What harm?”
“What harm, indeed?” the man said. He snatched up the nugget and giggled as he held it close to his chest. Then he began rifling through the papers on his desk. “Arms shipment, you said. I know the copy of that requisition is around here somewhere.” He began to open drawers one at a time, and on the third one exclaimed aloud. “Here it is.” He sat up, a handful of folded papers in his hand. He opened the papers flat on the desktop and pressed out the crease with a knuckle. George noticed that the fingers that gripped the nugget were white.
“Yes, this is it,” the stationmaster said, reading down the lines. “Cases of Winchesters, rounds of ammunition. Dry goods, flour, beans, salt pork, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Good,” George said. “When is it due?”
The man flipped forward to the last page. “October, he said. “Supplies for the winter garrisons.”
“What day in October?”
“Hmm? Oh. The, um, the ninth. The shipment is due here on the morning train on the ninth of October.” He looked up at George. “Does that give you enough time?”
“Let me see,” George said, pretending to calculate. He had no idea what day it was and hoped the stationmaster would fill him in. “Today is the...”
“The seventh of September. That gives you about four weeks. Not a lot of time.”
George grimaced. “Well, I may be selling my wares from under a tent, but I think we can make do. I can’t thank you enough for your help.”
The stationmaster grinned and held up the fist that was clenched around the nugget. “Oh, but you have!”
George held out his hand and the stationmaster shook it with true fervor. “Will you be staying in town?”
“Oh, no,” George said. “I plan to visit some of the folks out on the land, the civilians. To see what needs they might have.”
“Well, be careful,” the stationmaster said. “The plains are crawling with wild Indians.”
George frowned. “You don’t say.” Secretly, though, he wished it could only be that easy.
Chapter 10
Autumn, A.D. 1888
Beyond the Sudden River
Alliance Territory
Teeth bared, Storm Arriving rode into the rain, his head low along his whistler’s back. His three companions kept pace. Up in the clouds, the
thunder beings struck steel to flint. The day went white as lightning flashed and drums rolled out thunder across the land. Storm Arriving’s gritted teeth became a ferocious grin.
Back, behind his riders, twenty bluecoats pursued them. Storm Arriving could hear their shouts above the storm’s din. He looked forward again, searching for the mark.
“There,” he shouted, pointing to a coral-berry bush with a long forked branch. “This way.”
He swung his whistler around the shrub as he turned to the right. His men whooped as they passed it. Storm Arriving heard the small yips of squirrels-that-bark-like-dogs as they rode around the rodent’s village of burrows and holes. He looked back. The bluecoats had veered to the right as well, but their course would take them to the inside of the coral-berry bush.
Across the squirrel-dog village.
“Prepare!” The men reached back and slipped rifles out from under their seat pads. The bluecoats neared the squirrel-dogs.
“Now!”
The group of four stopped and wheeled. Rifles ready, they aimed. The bluecoats saw the challenge and rode to meet it.
The first rider was halfway into the squirrel-dog village when his horse found a burrow. His mount’s leg sank and snapped off below the knee, pitching horse and rider to the rain-slick grass. Another horse fell, man and animal screaming. A third stumbled. Others reined in and the riders behind them piled up on their rear.
“Fire,” Storm Arriving shouted.
The four Kit Fox fired. Bullets tore into the group of bluecoats, ripping through flesh and bone, knocking men from their saddles. The Kit Fox fired twenty shots before the enemy thought to return fire. By then it was too late; only six bluecoats remained. They turned to flee.
“Split up!” Storm Arriving ordered and the men took off in pairs, flanking the retreating bluecoats. The vé’hó’e soldiers rode in a panic. Their horses’ eyes rolled white as they looked back at the larger whistlers gaining on them. The Kit Fox raised their weapons, steadied their mounts, and fired. It took very little time to finish the fight.
When it was over, they returned to kill the wounded and search for anything of use or value. The four Kit Fox were silent as they collected weapons, ammunition, trinkets, blankets. Storm Arriving glanced at his fellows as they went about their tasks in the easing rain.
There was no celebration, no joy. Their jaws were set and tense, their eyes deep and narrow. Their motions were efficient, but filled with fatigue. It had taken them half a moon to draw out these bluecoats from their fort. They had only been able to do so by burning families from their homes and letting some survive to run for help. Only then had the bluecoats come out.
Half a moon to kill twenty vé’hó’e. Storm Arriving frowned as he took the cartridge belt from a dead man. With new forts being built and the iron hardback bringing more vé’hó’e every day, they could never hope to keep them all out.
Not for the first time, he thought: This is no way to fight a war.
A distant shout sent the four Kit Fox down onto the wet grass, rifles in hand. Storm Arriving did not want them all to get caught in a group, so with signs he asked two men to creep to the right while he and the fourth soldier headed left. The four Kit Fox crawled away from one another, trying to use the grass and the subtleties of the land to hide their movement.
Storm Arriving heard a second shout. He turned to his companion.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” the other said. “It sounded like ‘I see you.’”
Storm Arriving cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted at the sky. “Who are you?”
The answer was weaker than the first shouts. “...friend of the People.”
“Stay down,” he told the other Kit Fox. Then he levered a cartridge into his rifle and stood, aiming.
The man, a vé’ho’e, stood a quarter mile off, waving a coat over his head.
“Great spirits of the world,” Storm Arriving said and waved back. “One Who Flies!”
He saw his friend’s smile, even through the drizzle. Then One Who Flies dropped his coat, put a hand to his head, and collapsed.
The Kit Fox ran to him. Storm Arriving reached him first. The former bluecoat was thin, his cheeks sunken beneath the auburn stubble of his beard. His clothes—vé’ho’e clothes—were torn and ragged. His feet were bare. His skin was cut and scraped and bruised, but when his eyes fluttered open and he saw his friend, he smiled.
“Merci à Dieu,” he said, thanking the spirits in the Trader’s tongue. But then his face turned serious. “I must talk with Two Roads,” he said. “And the other warchiefs. We have seventeen days. We can make everything right. Seventeen days.” Then his eyes rolled up into his head again and he fell as limp as a deerhide doll.
“Get the whistlers,” Storm Arriving said. “We have seventeen days.”
“Until what?” one of the men asked.
“I don’t know. But I don’t think we should wait until he wakes to start moving, do you?”
One Who Flies slipped in and out of consciousness as they traveled. When he was awake, Storm Arriving made sure he ate some food and drank some water, and his lapses quickly grew to be more like sleep. In his waking moments, he told of their betrayal, and of his failure to get the new weapons from the vé’hó’e up in the Grandmother Land.
“But Speaks While Leaving,” he said. “She has given us another chance. The nugget she found, the nugget that began it all. We have another chance.”
He told them of the iron hardback and the shipment of weapons bound for the bluecoats. Storm Arriving understood the importance of the opportunity, and he urged One Who Flies to ride. Eventually, he did, and they sped across the prairie. When they reached Two Roads, the warchief’s decision was clear and immediate.
“The People have already separated for the autumn,” he said. “Send riders to every band, to every society. Gather the soldiers. Gather everyone you can.”
They had eight days left.
The next day they were riding out again. One Who Flies was still light-headed and weak, but insisted on coming with Storm Arriving and the fifty other riders that accompanied Two Roads. To aid in retrieving the hoped-for weapons, each man rode with two spare whistlers instead of one.
The bluecoats had placed their forts fairly close to one another, so no matter where they attacked the iron hardback, the bluecoats would always be within a few hours’ ride. More important was the fact that, according to the information One Who Flies supplied, the only place for them to attack the transport was between the river and the first of the bluecoat forts. That stretch of the iron road was the oldest and the fort was the best supplied. To their benefit was the fact that it was also the longest distance between forts, and for that Storm Arriving was thankful. Apart from surprise, speed would be their best weapon. He knew they would have the former, but could only pray for the latter.
They rode for three days, stopping little—only for a bite of food or to let the animals catch their breath. They reached the northern shore of the Sudden River at midday and stopped in a forest of beech and walnut trees. Two Roads prepared to make camp, and the men followed his example. One Who Flies became concerned, his eyebrows attempting to meet one another over the bridge of his nose.
“Why are we stopping?” he asked. “It’s only noon and we still have nearly a hundred miles to travel.”
Storm Arriving untied the bundle from his whistler’s back. “Two Roads will not admit it,” he said, “but he does not want to do this alone. Word was sent to the other bands, and we wait for others to join up with us.”
He sat down and pointed across the muddy river. “I have spent most of the year out there. Riding patrols. Fighting bluecoats. Trying to send the vé’hó’e home.” He sighed. “That is not our land anymore. Two Roads knows this. He has heard our reports, and so he will wait and hope more soldiers will be able to join us.”
One Who Flies stared out through the trees and across the river. The land rose slightly on the far s
ide—as it did behind them—hiding the expanse of the prairie.
“You say it is not your land anymore. Whose is it then? Theirs?”
“No. It is not theirs.”
“But you don’t think it is yours, either.”
“No,” Storm Arriving said. “It does not feel that way.”
“Have you given up, then?”
Storm Arriving snorted. “I would not be here if I had.” He noticed that in this talk One Who Flies spoke of “theirs” and “yours,” but did not include himself in either group. “What about you?” he asked. “Where is your land, One Who Flies?”
He saw the former bluecoat’s shoulders stiffen at the question. He just stood there at the edge of the trees, arms folded across his chest as he looked across the mumbling waters.
“I have no land,” he finally said.
Storm Arriving reached into his belongings and pulled out a small parfleche. He stood and walked up beside One Who Flies. Unrolling the packet, he took a strip of dried buffalo meat and offered it to One Who Flies. His friend accepted it with a sign of thanks and they stood quietly for a time, chewing in silence. The meat tasted of sunshine and sweet summer grass, and it reminded Storm Arriving of home and family.
“If you have no land,” he said to One Who Flies. “Why do you fight so hard for ours?” He glanced over and saw a great sadness in the other’s face.
“It is the right thing to do,” he said.
“You have no other reason?”
“No.”
“The bluecoats...don’t they fight because they think it is the right thing to do?”
One Who Flies looked over at Storm Arriving—not as a challenge, but a look of serious attention. “Men only fight for things they believe in or for things they truly want.”
Storm Arriving avoided the gaze of One Who Flies. He took another bite of meat and stared across the river as his friend had been doing. “And what is it that you believe in? What makes you fight for us?” he asked.
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