way from Chunky Gal to Roan Mountain. I mind the time Orrin got lost over to Huggins Hell and was plumb out of sight for three days.' 'I wasn't there then. I'd already slipped along the mountains and over the Ohio to join up with the Union.' 'Nolan went t'other way. He rode down to Richmond and joined the Confederacy. We had people on both sides.' 'It was that kind of a war,' I commented, and changed the subject. 'When we were talkin' about who'd been to the north, I clean forgot the drive I made right after the war. Went up the Bozeman Trail into Montana. I didn't stay no longer than to get myself turned around and headed back, although it was a different trail I rode on the return.
'It was on the way up I got my first taste of the Sioux. They're a rough lot, Tyrel.
Don't you take them light.' Tyrel chuckled suddenly. 'Tell? You mindful of an old friend of yours? The one we called Highpockets?' 'You mean Haney? Sure. Odd you should speak of him. Last time I heard tell of him, he was headed north.' 'Mind the time he went to the sing over at Wilson's Cove? He fell head over heels for some visitin' gal from down in the Sequatchie and went at it, knuckle and skull, with some big mule skinner.
'I remember he come back, and he got out what he used to call his
'ree-volver', and he said, 'That ol' boy's give me trouble, so I'm a gonna take my ol' ree-volver an' shoot some meat off his bones.' He done it, too.' We rounded up our steers in the almost flat bottom of that valley and let them graze on the stand of last year's grass. There was green showin' all about, but mostly what they could get at was cured on the stem. There was water a-plenty, and this seemed like a good time to rest up a mite.
Cap killed a buffalo, a three-year old cow, on the slope above the river, so we had fresh meat. The boys bunched the cattle for night, and Cap said, 'We'd best start lookin' for windy hills for campin'. The way I hear it, up north where there's all those rivers, lakes, and such, there's mosquitoes like you wouldn't believe. Eat a man alive, or a horse.' 'Mosquitoes?' I said. 'Hell, I've seen mosquitoes. Down on the Sulphur--' 'Not like the ones they have up north,' Cap said.
'You mind what I say, Tell. When you hear stories of them, you'll swear they're lies.
Well, they ain't. You leave a horse tied out all night and chances are he'll be dead by morning.' Me, I looked over at him, but he wasn't smiling. Whether he knew what he was talkin' about, I didn't know, but he wasn't funnin'.
He was downright serious.
There were mosquitoes there on the Pipestem, but we built a smudge, and it helped some.
Nobody talked much, but we lazed about the fire, takin' our turn at watching over the cattle.
The remuda we kept in close to camp where we could all more or less keep an eye on it.
What Indians wanted most of all was horses, and without them we'd be helpless.
A time or two, I walked out under the stars, away from the campfire and what talk there was, just to listen.
There was no sound but the cattle stirring a mite here and there, rising or lying down, chewing their cuds, occasionally standing up to graze a bit. It was still early.
Later, when I was a-horseback on the far side of the herd, I thought I caught a whiff of wood smoke that came from a different direction than our fire. Well, if they were riding in our shadow, they were no bother, and it was all right with us.
Gave a body a kind of re/l feeling, just knowing he wasn't alone out there.
This was a lovely valley, already turning green with springtime, but it was a valley in a great wide open country where we rode alone, where we had no friends, and if trouble came, we'd have to handle it all by our lonesome. There wasn't going to be anybody coming to help.
Not anybody at all.
Chapter IV
For two days, we rested where the Pipestem met the James, holding the cattle on the grass at the edge of the woods and gathering fallen limbs and dead brush for firewood.
'Pleasant place,' Tyrel said. 'I hate to leave.' Gilcrist glanced over at me. 'We pulling out?' 'Just before daybreak. Get a good night's sleep.' Gilcrist finished his coffee and got up.
'Come on, Ox, let's relieve mama's boy and the old man.' Tyrel glanced at me, and I shrugged. Lin straightened up from the fire, fork in hand. The Ox caught his expression. 'Something you don't like, yellow boy?' Lin merely glanced at him and returned to his work.
The Ox hesitated, glancing over at me where I sat with my coffee cup in my hands; then he went to his horse, mounted, and followed Gilcrist.
'If we weren't short-handed,' I said to Tyrel, 'he'd get his walkin' papers right now.' 'Sooner or later,' Tyrel agreed. Then he added, 'The other one fancies himself with a gun.' By first light, we were headed down the trail, climbing out of the valley and heading north. A few miles later, I began angling off to the northwest, and by sundown we had come up with the Pipestem again.
The herd was trail broke now, and the country was level to low, rolling hills. We saw no Indians or any tracks but those of buffalo or antelope. The following day, we put sixteen miles behind us.
Each night, just shy of sundown, Tyrel, Cap, or I would scout the country around.
Several times, we caught whiffs of smoke from another campfire, but we made no effort to seek them out.
Short of sundown on the third day, after our rest, I killed a buffalo, and the Ox came up to lend a hand. I never did see a buffalo skinned out faster or meat cut and trimmed any better. I said as much.
'Pa was a butcher, and I growed up with a knife in hand. Then I hunted buffalo on the southern plains.' 'Take only the best cuts,' I said, 'an' leave the rest.' He was bent over, knife in hand. He turned his head to look at me. 'Leave it? For varmints?' 'There's some Indians close by, and they're having a bad time of it. Leave some for them.' 'Injuns? Hell, let 'em rustle their own meat. What d'we care about Injuns?' 'They're hungry,' I said, 'and their best hunter is wounded and laid up.' Obviously, he believed me crazy. 'I never knew an' Injun worth the powder it took to kill him.' 'Back in the mountains,' I said, 'I knew quite a few. Generally speakin', they were good folks.
'We had trouble with them a time or two and they're good, tough fightin' men. I've also hunted and trapped with them, slept in their lodges. They are like everybody else. There's good an' bad amongst them.' We left some meat on the buffalo hide, and I stuck a branch in the ground and tied a wisp of grass to it. Not that they'd need help findin' it.
Come daylight, when we moved out with the cattle, I took a look, and every last bit of meat was gone, and the hide, also. I counted the tracks of a boy and two women. They'd have read the sign and would know that meat was left a-purpose.
With Cap ridin' point, the cattle strung out along the trail, and I rode drag. Tyrel was off scoutin' the country. Pipestem Creek was east of us now, and the country was getting a mite rougher. Maybe it was my imagination. Off on the horizon, far ahead and a hair to the west, I could see the top of a butte or hill.
By noontime, that butte was showing strong and clear.
It was several hundred feet high and covered with timber. When Tyrel came back to the drag, I rode ahead to talk to Cap.
'Heard of that place,' he said. 'They call it the Hawk's Nest. There's a spring up yonder--good water.' After a bit, he added, 'Big lake off to the north. Maybe a mite east. Devils Lake, they call it. Got its name, they say, from a party of Sioux who were returning victorious from a battle with the Chippewa.
Owanda, the Sioux medicine man, had warned them not to make the attack, but they were young bucks, eager for battle and reputation, and they didn't listen.
'Their folks were watching from the shore, saw them coming far out on the lake, and could tell from the scalps on the lifted lances that they'd been victorious.
'Well, some say that night came down. It had been dusk when they were sighted. Night came, but the war party didn't. That day to this, nobody's seen hide nor hair of them. Devils in the lake, the Injuns say.' 'Owanda must have been really big medicine after that,' I commented.
'You can bet he was. But the way I hear it, he was one of the most powerful of all medicine men.
Lot of stories about him. First I heard of him was from the Cheyenne.' Cap went on to his flank position, and I took over the point, riding well out in front, studying the country as we moved. Wherever possible, I held the herd down off the skyline. We didn't want to get in the bottoms and among the trees but at least as low as we could move while handling the cattle. There were Indians about, and if they did not know of us now, they would very
