“Must have been a ford downstream,” I said. “They went on down the north side of the river, and forded and came back.”
“Bring the animals up,” Cole said.
“Mule, too?”
“Yep.”
I turned and went. It took a little to maneuver three horses and a mule through the trees quietly, but the sound of the river helped cover our sounds. When I got back, the Indians were in the camp, all of them armed. Most of them with Winchesters. All of them sitting their horses, looking silently down at the three men around the campfire. Cole had retreated a few yards back, in among the trees. Three of them detached from the main body and walked their horses over to the brush where Ring and Allie were. They looked down solemnly for a while and then one of them said something to the other two and all three laughed. The first rider was carrying an old Sharps rifle, that must have killed the buffalo we found. He gestured Ring and Allie should join the others. Ring bent over and picked up his pants. He looked silently back at the Indian with the Sharps rifle as he slowly slid one leg on, then the other, and buttoned them up. Allie bent down to pick up her dress, and the Indian leaned from his saddle, with the rifle in one hand, steady on Ring, and took the dress away and flung it into the river. When Ring had finished buttoning, he gestured again with the rifle, toward the campfire. One of the other Indians jumped down from his horse and picked up one of Allie’s undergarments. He tied it carefully onto his lance and jumped back up astride the horse and waved the lance triumphantly over his head. All of the Indians laughed. I was pretty sure they were Kiowas. Ring and Allie walked to the fire. Allie stood naked in the middle of four white men and maybe a dozen bucks.
“We’ll watch a bit, see if they got bad intentions.”
“And if they do?”
“We’ll shoot a couple,” Cole said, “many as we can ’fore they scatter.”
“What about the whites?” I said.
“They’ll run for the tree cover,” Cole said. “Ring and Mackie will both know.”
“And then what?”
“And then we’ll see,” Cole said. “Make sure them horses is tied secure ’fore we shoot.”
I did, and then went back to him. Bragg was holding the whiskey. One of the Indians leaned out of his saddle and took the bottle from Bragg’s hands and raised it to his mouth and drank some and passed the bottle to the buck next to him.
“Any of you bucks speak English,” Bragg said.
The Indian with the Sharps rifle turned his horse toward where Bragg was standing and put the muzzle of the rifle against Bragg’s forehead, then put his hand to his own mouth and made a silencing gesture. Bragg stood frozen. Four of the Indians dismounted and began going through the Shelton party’s belongings.
I whispered to Cole, “We start shooting, they’ll scatter.”
“They won’t charge us.”
“Indians ain’t stupid. They can’t see us. They don’t know how many we are. They’ll scatter and regroup on the other side of that rise.”
“And they won’t just run off,” Cole said.
“No,” I said. “There’s a lot of stuff here they want. Probably includin’ Allie. They’ll settle in behind the rise, see what’s what.”
Cole and I looked for a moment at the low hill half a mile from the river.
“Don’t think they ain’t good fighters,” I said. “They can ride like hell, and they can shoot, and they ain’t afraid to die. Buck with the Sharps rifle probably runs things.”
“We let ’em take what they want,” Cole said. “ ’Cept Allie.”
I nodded, which was a waste of time. Cole wasn’t looking at me. He was studying the Indians, who were collecting the weapons and the whiskey. They loaded these and some foodstuffs into two big bags on a pack animal, then they gathered the horses. Sharps Rifle said something to one of the horse gatherers, and he nodded and saddled one of the horses. The rest were herded to the back of the group, ready to be driven ahead of them when they left. The saddle horse was handed to Sharps Rifle. He took the lead in one hand and, holding the rifle in the other, moved his horse with the pressure of his knees away from Bragg and stopped him in front of Allie. He jerked his head at the horse.
“No,” she said.
Standing naked among all the men, her body looked small and white. The Indian gestured with his rifle. Allie seemed to get smaller; she stepped back as if to shield herself behind Ring Shelton. He didn’t move. He simply watched the Indian. Sharps Rifle said something again, and two Indians jumped down. One of them tossed a blanket around Allie’s shoulders. She clutched it around her as if it were armor. Then the two Indians picked her up and put her on the horse.
“Shoot the packhorse,” Cole said. “We’ll need the weapons.”
Then he raised the Winchester and shot Allie’s horse out from under her. Before the animal had floundered down, he had shot the Indian with the Sharps rifle in the middle of the chest. I killed the pack animal and put a bullet into the Indian who’d been holding it. The rest flattened themselves over their horses’ necks, and hanging down on the side away from the gunfire drove them in a flat-out run toward the low hill. Cole and I each managed to knock down another horse, but in both cases the rider was up and behind another Indian before the horse had died.
The Shelton horses, waiting to be driven, had spooked and were strung out at a gallop along the river, straight west. The Shelton brothers dove flat behind the dead packhorse. Mackie pulled a knife from his boot and cut the pack bags loose. Bragg and the other man came at a dead run toward us in the woods. Allie struggled away from her dead horse and followed them, hanging on to her blanket. Mackie took one pack bag and Ring took the other, and they sprinted for the woods as well. The Indians didn’t shoot; they were heading for the hill. There’d be plenty of time to kill us, if the Indians decided they could.
The Indians went behind the rise, out of sight. Mackie cut open the pack bags, and he and Ring got their guns out, rifles and sidearms. Bragg and the fourth man got theirs out as well. When this was done, Ring straightened and looked at us.
“Knew you’d be after us,” Ring said.
Cole nodded.
“Kiowa?” Cole said to Ring.
“Think so. They got them funny little shields,” Ring said. “How many horses you got?”
“Three and a pack mule,” Cole said.
Ring looked at me.
“Everett,” he said.
Mackie nodded at me.
Allie was crouched near us with her blanket around her. Bragg had flattened out on the ground with a Winchester, facing toward the hill where the Indians had gone.
“This here’s my cousin Russell,” Ring said. “Russell can shoot a little.”
Russell nodded, looking off toward where the Indians had vanished behind the rise. He was a small, wiry man with a big Adam’s apple and not much hair.
“First thing,” Cole said. “While we got them hostiles to deal with, it ain’t a good idea for us to be shootin’ each other.”
“There’s a town we was heading for, ’bout two days’ ride,” Ring said. “Without pushing the horses, I say we put our troubles aside until the day after we get there.”
“Your word?” Cole said.
“My word.”
Cole nodded.
“Everett?” he said.
“Twenty-four hours?”
Ring nodded.
“Fine,” I said.
“Okay,” Cole said. “Mackie, you got any clothes in there to cover Allie up?”
