of their village, we haven’t accomplished anything.”
“Seemed to me like none of the folks in town was all that happy about the way things is turnin’ out either,” Regret said.
“No, they weren’t very happy about it, were they?” Bellefontaine said. He drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment. “Davis, those men who were with you when you attacked the Indians a couple of weeks ago. Do you think you could get them to go with you to attack the village?”
Davis held out his hand. “Whoa now, Mr. Bellefontaine, there was only six of us done that. That ain’t near enough to attack a whole village.”
“You wouldn’t need too many, if you attacked in the middle of the night, when they were all asleep.”
“Even then, we would need more than six.”
“What about twenty? Would that be enough if you attacked the village in the middle of the night, when nobody was expecting it?”
Davis nodded. “Twenty might do it,” he said. “But I’m not sure I can come up with twenty men.”
“If I paid them one hundred dollars apiece?” Bellefontaine said. “And two hundred dollars to each of you?”
Davis smiled broadly, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “For a hundred dollars apiece, I can get twenty men for sure.”
Falcon and Coletrain’s platoon had come twenty miles up the Stinking Water River when they reached South Fork. Here, the water widened considerably to accommodate the two streams, and the men dismounted with the intention of having their lunch. The horses were watered, then ground-tethered in the grass so they could feed as well.
Just as they were settling down to their meal, someone shouted “Indians!” There were no more than half a dozen Indians, but their yelling, whooping and firing guns frightened the cavalry horses, causing them to pull away from their ground tethers and run away. Sergeant Major Coletrain and the others fired at the Indians, and the Indians retreated.
The soldiers stood there, holding smoking weapons in their hands, watching as the Indians rode away.
“What’ll we do now, Sarge? All our horses is gone,” one of the soldiers said.
“We’re goin’ to go get ’em,” Coletrain replied.
Within fifteen minutes, half the horses were retrieved, and the men were about to get mounted to go after the remaining horses when the Indians returned. This time there were at least two hundred of them, against Falcon, Coletrain, and no more than twenty soldiers. The cavalrymen had no choice but to retreat onto an island in the middle of the river. There they formed a defensive circle, the soldiers lying bellydown on the ground while Falcon and Coletrain were on their knees inside the circle.
Within the first five minutes all of the recovered horses were killed, along with one of the soldiers. Sergeant Major Coletrain had been hit twice, once in the right thigh and once in the left leg.
Mean to His Horses, who was easily identified by the red and white painted face, led his Indians in a second charge toward the cavalry. The Indians fired volley after volley, but the soldiers returned fire and, because they were in the prone position and the Indians were exposed, the soldiers got the better of it. When Mean to His Horses pulled his Indians back he left almost fifty of them behind, dead in the water or along the banks of the river.
“They’re gone!” one of the soldiers said.
“Not for long,” Coletrain replied, his voice strained with pain.
“How bad is it?” Falcon asked. “Your wounds, I mean.”
“I can’t rightly tell,” Coletrain said. “I guess you are going to have to take a look and let me know.”
Falcon used his knife to cut open Coletrain’s trousers so he could look at the wounds.
“Well, the one on your thigh isn’t that bad,” Falcon said. “Looks like it just caught the edge of it, left a crease, but there’s no bullet.”
“The other one?”
“It didn’t hit a bone, and it didn’t sever an artery that would cause you to lose a lot of blood, but the bullet is still inside, so it is going to need to come out.”
“Think you can get it out?”
“I can try, but it’s going to be hard with just a knife,” Falcon said.
“I got me some tweezers,” one of the other soldiers said.
“Tweezers? Yes, let me have those.”
The soldier reached into his knapsack and pulled them out. Falcon was pleased to see that there were at least six inches long.
“Good, I can use this. Get fire going, boil some water, and drop this in the water.”
“Colonel, you ain’t plannin’ on boilin’ that, then stickin’ it in Sarge while it’s still hot, are you?”
“Yes. I’ve read that if you boil the instruments a doctor uses it helps keep the wound from festering,” Falcon said.
“I don’t know, I ain’t never heard of such a thing,” the soldier said. “I know I wouldn’t want it stuck down in me if it was boilin’ hot.”
“Bates, do what the colonel says,” Coletrain said.
“All right, Sarge, you the one he’s goin’ to use it on, not me.”
