the field littered with baggage torn from the travois and backs of packhorses.
It was now a race. The trail-weary ponies of the Cheyenne versus the army horses the Pawnee rode.
For better than twelve miles the scouts followed the warriors covering the retreat of their village, gaining little of the ground between them. Disappointed, North ordered a halt just past sundown. The command’s horses were all but done in. Lathered and weak-kneed, the mounts quickly obeyed their riders when asked to slow the pace and turn about.
“How many we kill, Hook?”
Jonah quickly asked his men for an accounting.
“Near as they can count, seven—maybe eight.”
“Along with all the camp plunder we can carry off,” Murie commented.
“Or burn,” Hook added.
“That’s the idea, Sergeant. We’ll burn what we can’t carry back.” A grim smile creased North’s dusty, sweat- stained face.
“Don’t forget the prisoners,” Hook reminded the officers.
“The old woman and girl?”
“Them and a boy—maybe ten years old.” Hook looked over his shoulder, watching a half dozen of the scouts bringing the three prisoners up.
At separate times during the wild chase that afternoon, each of the Cheyenne captives had fallen from a pony and been captured by a swarm of Pawnee. A young girl no more than eight years old. An old woman, her well- seamed face still haughty and arrogant in the midst of the Pawnee calling for her death. And the ten-year-old boy. Jonah looked at his dirty face, the wide brown eyes—remembering that Jeremiah would have been ten years old this past summer. He had not seen his son since …
Since Jeremiah was five years old.
That hurt more than any bullet smashing through his insides. The thought was as cold as any pain could be. As he stared at the Cheyenne child, he wondered if he would ever know his son, if he would even recognize Jeremiah after so long a time.
“Tell the men we’re riding back toward that stand of trees, yonder,” North explained. “We won’t go any farther tonight to make camp. But we will send back ten men to guard the camp plunder. With instructions to abandon it if the Cheyenne double back to reclaim it.”
“I don’t figure they will, Major,” Jonah said. “Those Cheyenne have had their fill for one day.”
Even if none of them were his own, the old chief did not like having to look over his people and see so many without so much.
They had to leave most of what they owned behind when they ran into the Pawnee at Plum Creek. Turkey Leg’s band had been on their way to a second raid on the smoking wagons of the white man here in the Moon of Scarlet Plums when the Pawnee bumped into them.
So now, instead of being richer for the raid, they were poor. Huddled beneath the cold prairie night sky, gathered like beggars around their fires they would keep going until sunup. No lodges. Few blankets to go around. The little ones crying in hunger and the old ones in need of comfort. Remembering the old days before the white man and his soldiers and their great smoking wagons came to this land thick with buffalo.
Now the buffalo refused to cross the great, endless iron tracks.
Seven women keened loudly at the edge of camp, refusing to join the rest at the modest warmth of the small fires. Instead they mourned the loss of their men in the old way, outside the village circle—slashing themselves, cutting off hunks of hair, chopping off the tips of fingers, and wailing.
The seven would not stop with the rising of the moon, Turkey Leg knew. The keening would echo from the hills all night and into the morrow. He felt like mourning himself.
Spotted Wolf had been wounded. At first it had worried them all that the war leader had been shot through the body by a Pawnee bullet. But though the wound was painful, Spotted Wolf claimed he would be able to mount his pony come morning. He lay now on a blanket by one of the fires with his two wives in attendance, drinking water from a horn spoon. He complained of much thirst.
It was not a good sign, Turkey Leg knew.
The sound of hooves drew his attention onto the starlit prairie. Four, perhaps five, riders. They came on, past the outer guards, past the herders keeping watch on the last riches still claimed by Turkey Leg’s band—their ponies.
“Turkey Leg! We have news!”
He watched the young warrior dismount even before his pony was at a complete stop. “Porcupine!”
The warrior strode into the firelight. “Yes. We scouted our backtrail. The scalped-heads do not follow us,” Porcupine explained, using the Cheyenne term for the Pawnee, indicating their practice of shaving most of the hair from their heads.
“It is good, for we have little left to lose,” Turkey Leg replied. “Tell me of the three who are missing.”
Porcupine shook his head. “We found no sign.”
“No bodies? Didn’t you call out for them?”
“We looked carefully. We called out for the three by name. All six of us called into the darkness. There was no answer from the prairie night.”
The old man felt hollow again where there had been a moment of hope. Three of his people were not accounted for when they finally stopped to build their little fires long after sundown, here in the dark. Yes, here in the dark—the despair seemed to weigh that much more on the chief.
“I was afraid we would find their bodies,” Turkey Leg said quietly, careful that no one should overhear.
“It is better, I keep telling myself,” Porcupine replied. “Better that we found no bodies. The scalped-heads have not killed the three and left their bodies to rot on the prairie.”
“How far back did the scalped-heads ride this night?”
He pointed. “We saw the red light from their fires. A few have gone back farther—back to where we left our belongings.”
“I want to know what they take and what they leave behind when they go in the morning, Porcupine,” the chief ordered. “But more important, I want you to send some of your warriors to look over the main camp of these who scout for the white man.”
Porcupine gazed steadily into the chief’s eyes. He had a grin on his face. “You want to know if the scalped- heads have captured our people?”
“Yes—the girl, the boy, and the old woman.”
“Your mother?”
Turkey Leg gazed at the ground. It was where his heart rested, cold and on the ground. “Yes. My mother fell from her horse in the chase. She cannot see, for the Grandfather Above has put the milky flesh over her eyes. She cannot hold tight to the pony reins, for her old hands are seized with spasms of pain. They are hands that once held me as a child, hands that taught me to walk. Hands that never begged anything of any person—much less her own son.”
“I will find out if the scalped-heads have the three, Turkey Leg. Will you—” He paused a moment, thoughtful before he asked the question. “Will you trade our prisoners to gain the release of our people?”
“You already know the answer to your question, young one.” The old warrior sighed, the cold inside him no warmer. “These scalped-heads must not ever know they have captured the mother of Turkey Leg.”
37
HE HAD NEVER truly lost his wonder at it—how this wide and rolling land did its best to swallow a man, especially at night.
Not much of a moon to speak of overhead. But a generous sprinkling of stars well scattered in the dark dome
