morning as orders came down to saddle up: not much fun singing songs of flag and country, without firing off a round or two in celebration.
Flag and country—these sentiments seemed about as far away for these youngsters at this moment as the Oriental silk trade would seem to an old Rocky Mountain beaver trapper.
As he finished saddling and dropped the stirrup over the cinch, Shad Sweete heard his name called out and turned to find Cody reining his big buckskin to a halt.
“Where we riding off to today, Bill?” he asked, gazing up at the young scout.
“Ain’t
“The German?”
Cody nodded.
“Sounds like Carr’s got different work lined out for you.”
“Wants me to keep this column’s nose pointed north. Figures that’s where the Cheyenne are.” Cody gazed off into the distance. “They’re out there somewhere.”
Shad stuffed a moccasin in a stirrup and lifted his immense frame into the saddle. “We’ll find them, Bill. That, or them Injuns find us first.”
“Either way—Carr will get his fight.”
“I see it through the same keyhole as you, Bill,” Shad agreed. “Carr wants a fight of it—to show what this outfit’s made of.”
“Can’t blame the man—especially after Custer’s had him all the opportunity to write his own name in glory.”
“Keep your eyes on the skyline today, Cody,” Shad said, nudging heels into his mount and easing away. “I smell Injuns on the wind.”
A Nebraska resident like the North brothers, Gustavus W. Becher had come to America from Germany less than nine years before. He had immediately joined the Union Army and proved himself a capable leader. In his late thirties, Becher was now one of Major Frank North’s white officers, commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned immediate command over fifty of the Pawnee battalion. He and the gray-headed plainsman in greasy buckskins would be the only white men riding along with the Pawnee on this important probe into the country west of Carr’s line of march.
“Goot mornin’, Mr. Sweete,” Becher called out in his thick accent. “Glad to have you along.” He turned to the Pawnee sergeant nearby, telling him in his inimitable German-clipped Pawnee tongue to mount the troops.
Becher turned back to the plainsman. “You care to ride vit’ me, Mr. Sweete?”
“Be a pleasure. Lieutenant.”
The German’s smile formed little more than a straight line at his lips. “Let’s go find some Injians for General Carr, vat say?”
It wasn’t long before the rising sun made its full and glorious presence known at the horizon. As it climbed higher into the heavens, the heat bubbled around them and the ground radiated like a glowing skillet beneath the riders feeling their way up Rock Creek from the Republican River, probing north by west through that morning as the distance shimmered in mirage.
“Man can boil in his own juices out here, Lieutenant,” Shad said.
“This country is like a frying pan, yes.”
“Maybeso like a griddle.”
“Fry you from the bottom and the top.”
After a short rest at midmorning to water their horses and let the animals blow, Becher ordered the Pawnee back into the saddle until noon, when the lieutenant signaled another halt to rest both men and animals. Here they were still miles from the next creek to cross, so each man had to settle for jerky, washing it down with what he still had in his canteen.
As he settled to a squat beside Becher, Sweete could read the strain at the corners of the man’s eyes, in the way the lieutenant held his mouth. That normally implacable German stoicism was beginning to crack under the weight of not finding the smallest hoofprint or camp fire that could belong to the enemy Major Carr wanted more than most anything.
“Vat do you make of it, Mr. Sweete?”
Shad just shrugged. “If they’re out there, Lieutenant—we’ll run across sign soon enough.”
“Better sooner than later, eh?”
“You want to make a fight of it, I see.”
Becher chewed on some of his dried meat before answering. “If there is to be the fight of it vit’ these Cheyenne that every man says there vill be—then I vant it to come soon. Better that it come sooner than later … no goot v’en the soldiers grow veary of the chase.”
“Did you chase the enemy much during the war?”
Staring at his dirty boots, the lieutenant nodded. “Yes. Chase and vait. Chase and vait some more. Then we finally fight. V’en we did—many … many men died. Then we chased some more.”
Shad cleared his throat, sucked down some warm water from the canteen, and swiped a hand across his lips. “S’pose I agree with you then, Lieutenant. If there’s bound to be a fight with Cheyenne Dog Soldiers—better that we go ahead and get it over with.”
After some twenty minutes Shad had them back in the saddle, this time pointing the trackers due north toward Frenchman’s Fork, feeling their way into that sandhill country that rolled in broken rumples west into Colorado Territory—an endless, vaulting monotony of tableland shimmering beneath the summer’s highest, hottest sun, baking grass and sand, man and beast, in its unmerciful crucible.
To break some of the monotony, the old beaver man told Becher he would outride the left flank for a while, keeping the main column of Pawnee in sight. For the next two hours he kept his horse pointed north for Frenchman’s Fork, enjoying the solitude. The hotter the humming air grew, the more Shad drifted into a hypnotic reverie, dreaming on the high, cool, beckoning places to the west. Off yonder would be North Park, Middle Park, and the Bayou Salade—where OI’ Bill Williams himself claimed he would reincarnate as an elk bull with one lopsided antler just so all of his
Shad thought it strange to hear gunfire—knowing that most every old hivernant of the mountains would know which bull was really Ol’ Bill—
—then Sweete realized it wasn’t his daydream. Real shots crackled off to his right. More than four hundred yards to the east Becher was instantly in the thick of it—the lead of his column caught by surprise in the rolling land that had hidden the enemy until the moment of attack.
Shad could make out Becher’s German-laced Pawnee. Could hear the Pawnee’s shrill war songs.
And behind it all arose the unmistakably deadly wail of eagle wing-bone whistles and the war cries of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers.
As Sweete pounded his heels against the horse’s tired flanks, he watched the fifty Pawnee split themselves into three squads, sending horse holders to the rear more than fifty yards.
Dropping to their knees as the full brunt of the onrushing wave washed toward them across the sunburned grass belly-high on the rolling sandhills, North’s trackers prepared to make their stand. Shad dismounted near them quickly, leaving his horse behind, and huffed the last of it on foot.
“How many you t’ink, Mr. Sweete?” Becher hollered as the racket of throats and gunfire grew in volume.
“Hundred. Maybe more, Lieutenant.”
“Count them, by dam’t! I vant to make an accurate report to General Carr.” Becher ripped open the reloading door in the stock of his Spencer and drove home a full Blakeslee reloading tube. “Und v’en you’re done counting, you can fire at vill, Mr. Sweete. Any time you like!”
“Give me something to hit—and I’ll do just that!” Shad snapped back at the German.
He was waiting for the enemy to close on them, while the lieutenant and the Pawnee fired at the Cheyenne horsemen still more than three hundred yards off to the north, but coming rapidly. Bright, glittering sunlight bounced off their weapons and war paint and shields and greased scalp locks. Two bunches of them each made a sweeping arc back against the other just out of rifle range.
“This bunch knew ve vere here?” Becher asked.
Shad shook his head, still waiting, watching. Looking over the distant riders as best he could. Wondering …
