Captain Jameson said, “Colonel, perhaps we should give some consideration to their story. We haven’t actually seen for ourselves what the situation is—”
“I know what the situation is, Captain,” Ledbetter snapped. “I ordered this campaign in order to locate Hanging Dog’s camp and pacify him and his followers. Their camp has been located. The next step is to subjugate the hostiles or, failing that, exterminate them like the vermin they are.”
Nathan was so torn between wonderment and rage that it was all he could do to stand there and gaze at Ledbetter’s serene arrogance. The colonel had made up his mind to attack the village, that was obvious, and nothing was going to turn him aside from that goal. At the same time, Ledbetter knew he couldn’t have the full amount of glory accrue to himself unless he defeated the notorious war chief Hanging Dog, so in the colonel’s mind, Hanging Dog had to be there in the village in order for him to achieve his goal. It was simple.
Utterly wrong, but simple.
“Colonel, you’re right. You’ve got to get this column moving immediately, but you need to head back to the fort. Hanging Dog won’t get his hands on those guns until later today, which means he probably won’t attack the fort until tomorrow morning. If you push the column as hard as you can—”
Ledbetter ignored Nathan’s heartfelt plea and barked, “You have your orders, Captain Jameson. Carry them out.”
Red Buffalo tried to get through to him. “Colonel, Stark is right. You may not be able to stop Hanging Dog from attacking the fort, but you can get there in time to keep him from wiping everyone out. I know the men who were left there will put up a fight—”
“Mister Red Buffalo,” Ledbetter interrupted again, “you will prepare to lead us back to the hostiles’ encampment right away. We’ll waste no time in dealing with the savages and teaching them the lesson they so richly deserve.”
Red Buffalo frowned and stood straighter. “Colonel, you’re wrong. If you persist in this course, you’re dooming everyone back at the fort to an ugly death. When word of this gets out, your career will be ruined. You’ll be a pariah—”
“Silence!” Ledbetter roared. “Captain, place these two men under arrest and send for Mister Bucher. He’s a competent scout, I’m sure he can follow the trail to the Sioux village.”
Jameson frowned and shifted his feet uneasily on the dirt. “Colonel, with all due respect, sir, I don’t see any reason why Stark and the Crow would lie about this—”
“Because they’re obstinate!” Ledbetter shouted. He wasn’t going to let anyone finish a sentence. “Stark is ... is a Rebel, and Red Buffalo is a savage himself! Lying is second nature to them, Captain, you know that. I’m not sure what they hope to gain with this mad story about gunrunning and an attack on the fort, but I’m not going to be deceived by it. This campaign will achieve its end, by God!”
Jameson tried one last time. “Colonel—”
“You have your orders, Captain!” Ledbetter bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Carry them out!”
With a sigh, Jameson rested a hand on the closed flap of his holster and started to turn toward Nathan and Red Buffalo. “Gentlemen—”
Stark didn’t let him finish, either. He swung a hard, fast right that caught Jameson on the jaw and knocked him against the tent’s sidewall.
“Guards!” the colonel roared.
Nathan’s first impulse was to hurdle the table, grab Ledbetter by his fat neck, and choke the life out of the crazy bastard ... but something more important had to be done, and he knew it.
The private who was on duty right outside the tent rushed in, eyes wide in shock at the commotion that had broken out. Red Buffalo was waiting for him. He drove a left into the soldier’s face, rocking the young man’s head back and making his eyes roll up in their sockets. At the same time, Red Buffalo’s right hand closed around the guard’s Springfield and jerked the rifle out of his grasp. The guard stumbled and sat down hard.
With Jameson and the guard both momentarily stunned, that left only Colonel Ledbetter to try to stop Nathan and Red Buffalo. The officer stood there sputtering and red-faced with rage. He didn’t come out from behind the table, though.
Nathan and Red Buffalo glanced at each other. Nathan read agreement in the Crow’s eyes. They would never convince Ledbetter to head back to the fort in time. Nor would Jameson or Lucas defy his orders and take over the column.
The only thing the two scouts could do was try to reach Fort Randall before Hanging Dog did and warn the soldiers there about the attack. With even a little time to prepare, they might be able to hold off the Sioux, at least for a while. In order to do that, Nathan and Red Buffalo would need fresh horses.
They dashed out of Colonel Ledbetter’s tent and Nathan practically ran into Doc Lightner. The surgeon reached out and closed his hand around Nathan’s arm in an urgent grip.
“Doc, let me go!” Nathan said as he tried to pull away.
“Stark, wait! I heard you were back and came to make sure you were all right. I was outside the tent and overheard everything you and Red Buffalo had to say. Are you going back to the fort?”
“Damn right.”
“Then I’m coming with you. I’ll be needed there more than I am here!”
Nathan didn’t want to waste time arguing, and anyway, Lightner was probably right. Nathan jerked his head toward the horse herd. “Come on!”
The three men ran past startled soldiers and noncoms, but without orders, no one tried to stop them. They reached the picketed horses, some of which were already saddled in preparation for the column to move out shortly. The hostlers were saddling the others.
Lightner grabbed the reins of one of the saddled mounts. “This is my horse.” That fact was obvious from the black medical bag tied to the saddle. “He’s sturdy and fast and won’t slow us down. I don’t know about the others.”
Nathan had a good eye for horseflesh and so did Red Buffalo. Each of them selected a mount from among those already saddled, and untied the reins.
One of the hostlers ran toward them, calling, “Hey! What are you fellas doin’? Nobody’s given the order to mount up—”
Nathan, Red Buffalo, and Lightner were already swinging into the saddles.
As they yanked the horses around, Colonel Ledbetter finally stumbled out of his tent and shouted, “Stop them! Stop those men! Shoot them!”
No one immediately obeyed those commands, especially the last one. The idea of shooting at the post surgeon and two civilian scouts was so unexpected, the soldiers failed to grasp it at first.
Nathan, Red Buffalo, and Lightner jammed their heels into the horses’ flanks and sent them leaping away from the rest of the herd. Finally, as they thundered down the slope, guns began a sporadic popping behind them. None of the bullets came close. It was possible the soldiers were shooting wild on purpose, unwilling to kill men they had all along thought of as allies.
Lightner bounced a little in the saddle and hung on to his hat with one hand while he gripped the reins in the other. His face was pale and drawn. He wasn’t used to galloping, and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to being shot at by fellow members of the United States Army. “I hope you’re right about this!” he called over the pounding hoofbeats. “Otherwise I’ll be court-martialed!”
“I don’t reckon a court-martial would be enough to satisfy the colonel!” Nathan replied. “He’ll want to string us all up and strip the hide off of us, inch by inch!”
* * *
The four young men had been working in the stables since before dawn, mucking out stalls and feeding the horses. Matoskah had been forking clean straw into one of the stalls, but he stopped and leaned on the pitchfork with a worried frown on his face. It was the same sort of expression he had been wearing most of the time for the past several days.
Hotah, his best friend, came up and poked him on the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked in the Sioux tongue. “You’ve been moping around, not doing your work, and making it harder
on the rest of us.”
“My mind and my heart are both heavy,” Matoskah answered. He had kept what he knew to himself while he tried to figure out what to do about it, but the weight of it was beginning to wear him down. He needed to share the burden with someone.
But not Hotah. Although he considered the other young man to be his brother, Matoskah knew that Hotah could not be relied upon. He was boastful, and he panicked easily. Sad to say, Matoskah would not have wanted to go into battle with Hotah at his side.
“What’s heavy is that pitchfork with a pile of straw on it, and that’s why you don’t want to use it,” Hotah said. “You don’t fool me, Billy. Living around these white men has weakened you.”
Matoskah bristled. He had gotten used to the soldiers calling him Billy, and he didn’t mind when Miss Delia used the name. But the scorn he heard in Hotah’s voice angered him. So did the contempt for the whites implicit in his friend’s tone.
“The soldiers have not treated us badly,” he said. “Some whites would have killed us out of hand when they found us, rather than taking us in and giving us food and a place to live.”
Hotah sneered. “Better that they had killed us. We would have fought them and would have died as Sioux warriors should die, but not before we killed some of them.”
“We were children. We could not have counted coup on any of them, let alone killed them. You are a fool, Hotah.”
Hotah glared at him. “Someday the white men will be gone. This fort will lie in ruins, rotting away until it is like the white men were never here. And when that day comes, I will ride with our true people once more, proud and free, lords of the plains.”
Hotah’s grandiose bragging annoyed Matoskah, but what he said about the fort being empty and falling into ruins stirred the worry inside the young man. The boastful prediction might come true a lot sooner than Hotah expected ... unless someone acted to prevent that from happening.
Matoskah shoved the pitchfork into Hotah’s hands, who grasped the wooden handle without thinking. Then as Matoskah turned away, Hotah exclaimed, “Wait! What are you doing?”
“What I should have done before now,” Matoskah said over his shoulder as he stalked out of the stable.
* * *
Every morning, Delia always enjoyed the time before the children arrived, when she could sit in the classroom inside the chapel and think about what the day would bring. She loved the children—their laughter, their smiling faces, their sheer innocence and exuberance in life—even though being around them was an always sharp reminder of the son and daughter she had lost. Her young ones were gone, but others in the world needed her.
When she had first seen Nathan Stark at the fort, for a second an almost forgotten hope had flared to life inside her ... the hope that someday she might have more children of her own. She remembered the fondness she had felt for Nathan, the sense that somewhere inside him was a good man, buried under all those layers of hate and bitterness. If she could just peel away those layers and reach the man he truly was, no telling what might happen.
Unfortunately, those efforts hadn’t accomplished much. And he was gone again, somewhere out in the wilderness trying to track down the Sioux so there could be more killing, more death that wouldn’t solve anything.
Delia swallowed hard as she moved some of the books on her desk. Her good feelings and looking forward to the day had almost evaporated. She had to learn not to allow herself to dwell on the things she couldn’t change.
A tentative footstep made her look up.
One of the Sioux youngsters who worked in the stable stood just inside the classroom door. His unkempt, raven-black hair hung around his face. He wore cast-off army trousers and a buckskin shirt. He was clearly nervous and kept swallowing.
Delia smiled as she recognized him. She didn’t teach the Indian youths in the classroom, but she had helped all of them learn to speak better English since she had been at Fort Randall. She had tried to communicate to them some sense of the bigger world that was out there, too, not just the plains and the mountains to which they were accustomed. Most of them accepted her help only grudgingly and remained sullen, but not this one. He had seemed eager to learn.
“Good morning, Billy,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Miss Delia.” He came a step farther into the room, then hesitated and looked around, like a wild animal with the urge to bolt.
“It’s all right,” she told him. “You can come closer to the desk. No one is going to hurt you.”
Billy swallowed again, harder than before. The sound was almost a gulp. “I have to tell you something, Miss Delia.”
“Anything, Billy. You know that.”
“A few evenings ago, I ... I was out in the woods, east of the stables. I like to go there ... to get away from the fort ... to listen to the animals ...”
Delia nodded. “I understand. Everyone needs a bit of peace and quiet and privacy sometimes. You certainly don’t get much of that around the fort!”
“Yeah, I, uh, guess that’s right, ma’am. Anyway ... while I was out there ... some other fellas came out there, too. One by one, but they met and talked. It was a ... rendezvous, I guess you’d call it.”
“Men from the fort, you mean?” Delia asked with a faint frown. She didn’t understand why Billy would be upset about such a thing. From what he had said so far, it seemed harmless enough to her.
But then he blurted out, “Yes, ma’am. Two of the sergeants and . . . and Mister Bucher, the scout ... and they were talking about selling guns to Hanging Dog! They’re gonna deliver a whole bunch of Winchesters to him, Miss Delia, and even though they didn’t say anything about it, I just know he’s going to take them and attack the fort! ”
CHAPTER 34
Nathan and Red Buffalo kept an eye on their back trail, but no dust rose into the sky to signify that Colonel Ledbetter had sent pursuers after them. That didn’t come as a complete surprise to Nathan. No matter how furious the colonel was about his orders being defied, he wouldn’t want to split his forces. Probably wouldn’t want to spare even a small patrol to go after the “renegade” scouts, as Ledbetter would think of them. To the colonel’s way of thinking, he would need all of his men to insure his glorious victory over Hanging Dog and the Sioux.
Though all the while, Hanging Dog and his warriors would be at the fort, trying to slaughter everyone there.
After they had ridden several miles, the three men pulled their horses to a walk. They had a long way to go and couldn’t afford to ride the animals into the ground. As the day went on, they would have to stop several times to let the horses rest.
Though each of those delays were necessary, they were going to gnaw viciously at them, Nathan knew. Otherwise the horses would collapse, he and his companions would be left afoot with no chance at all of reaching the fort in time to warn the people.
While they were proceeding at a slower pace, Doc Lightner looked over at Red Buffalo and said, “My God, man, what did they do to your face? Those burns should be treated.”
“Later, Doc,” the Crow scout said. “No time for that now.”
“But burns like that are going to leave scars.”
“So he’ll be uglier than he is now,” Nathan said, “but only a little. When skin’s that red to start with, it can’t get much worse.”
“Captain Stark, that’s not at all appropriate—”
“It’s all right, Doc,” Red Buffalo interrupted. “I’m used to this white man’s feeble insults.”
“Still, there’s no need for it.” Lightner frowned. “Oh, I see. That’s your odd way of showing affection for each other.”
Nathan and Red Buffalo glared at the surgeon.
Nathan said, “You couldn’t be more wrong, Doc. I mean every word of it.”
“He does,” Red Buffalo agreed. “He is a cruel, vicious man, more badger than human. In fact, he looks a bit like a badger, wouldn’t you say?”
“He did risk his life to save you,” Lightner
pointed out.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Nathan said.
The doctor just sighed and shook his head, as if to say that he couldn’t figure out his two companions and wasn’t going to waste any more effort trying.
After a few more minutes of walking the horses, they pushed the mounts back into a ground-eating lope.
Nathan pointed out, “We didn’t have a chance to grab any supplies. It’s gonna be a long, hungry ride back to the fort.”
“Since this is my horse, I have some jerky in my saddlebags,” Lightner said. “I’ll be happy to share it, although it’s not really enough for all of us. Better than nothing, though.”
“You don’t happen to have any cartridges for that Springfield Red Buffalo’s carrying, do you?”
Lightner shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Might as well throw that rifle away,” Nathan told Red Buffalo. “It’s just weighing you down.”
“I will if it becomes apparent I need to,” the Crow replied. “But for now, there’s one shot in it.” He chuckled. “You never know when one shot might come in handy.”
Nathan sighed. “I reckon not. And you can use it as a club when it’s empty. I know you savages are primitive enough you like your war clubs.”
“As long as I’m using it to break open the right heads,” Red Buffalo said.
* * *
Colonel Ledbetter had left Lieutenant Marcus Allingham in command at the fort. Allingham was a tall, thin young man with sandy hair and a straggling mustache that he labored to grow without much success. He had been born in England, but his parents had moved to the States when Marcus was six years old. He still had a trace of a British accent, especially when excited. Although regarded as a competent junior officer, he had never been under fire. And although he fully expected to rise in the ranks, he harbored some lingering doubts about his own abilities. He would never admit that to anyone, but he looked forward to the day when he would finally find out just what sort of mettle he actually possessed.
Nathan Stark, Army Scout Page 23