19
BULL SWORE HE saw him. Saw the man who had fathered him among the Shaved-Heads.
As he rode away with the rest, more than a hundred in all, High-Backed Bull twisted to look over his shoulder at the disappearing figures behind him among the sandy hills. The Shaved-Heads were standing now, still in their three bands. Others hurriedly led their big American horses to those who had held the Shahiyena at bay during the heat of the battle. And near the center were clearly two white men.
He could tell by the hair hiding their faces.
That bigger one—how many men of his size could there be on these plains? How many wore what appeared to be greasy buckskins? That low-crowned hat with its wide, floppy brim slightly upturned in the front …
“Leave them be,” Porcupine said as he came alongside Bull, the whole of the raiding party urging their ponies into an easy lope upon seeing the Shaved-Heads were not going to pursue. Though he did not ask it, Porcupine’s face registered some question. “We will fight them another day, my friend.”
“When?” Bull asked, glancing one last time over his shoulder, hoping for another glimpse of the tall white man across the shimmering, misshapen distance.
“Three families will mourn tonight,” Porcupine said. “Think first of the sadness that will visit our village. Only when the men have cut their braids, when the women have bloodied themselves and wailed can we take up the path of these soldiers and their Shaved-Head wolves come sniffing on our backtrail.”
“When!” Bull snapped angrily, turning on Porcupine so suddenly, he flung sweat from his painted brow. “How long?”
Porcupine’s eyes narrowed as he measured the young warrior riding beside him. “You are Shahiyena. And you ask me that question? Control the fire in your heart and think of your people. You are a Dog Soldier. Do not let me find you fighting this battle by yourself.”
Sensing the sting of something heating its way through him with the war chief’s words, Bull finally nodded. “Two days. Yes?”
He nodded at the younger warrior. “Two days, Bull.”
“Then we can ride to attack again?”
“Two days and we will ride to avenge the death of three of our own. We are Hotamitanyo.”
“We know the yellow-leg soldiers are coming—why won’t Tall Bull or White Horse fight them in force?”
“If the day is right—we will attack the soldier column. Until then—we will be content to steal their horses, to harass the Shaved-Heads who guide the soldiers and watch for our chance to frighten the ones who drive their supply wagons.”
“We can make the day right here and now, Porcupine. We can—”
“Wait two days, Bull. Those who have lost must have their grief, shed their blood.”
“And what of us who carry a vow? What of us who have sworn to drench ourselves in another’s blood?”
For two marches following Becher’s scrap with the war party, Major Carr kept his cavalry doggedly plodding north by west along the Republican River, without deviation. Then yesterday a platoon of North’s Pawnee had come upon a scatter of footprints near the edge of an abandoned enemy encampment. They had called Major North and Shad Sweete over.
“We can’t be sure, can we, Mr. Sweete?” Frank North asked.
Shad had shrugged. “S’pose not, Major.”
“I’m for waiting.”
“Waiting?”
“To tell the general. Wait till we have more proof. Till we got more of something solid to show him. Just from this”—and North’s hand had pointed down to the windblown scatter of running tracks— “I don’t think any of us can say for sure.”
That was the indecision of yesterday. But this morning, they found their proof.
Telltale footprints that North showed to Carr.
Sweete had watched the effect those tiny impressions in the hardened sand had on the major. What he and the Pawnee had come across were not moccasin tracks—but instead the prints of a woman’s slim boot. Carr had knelt over them, reaching out with a fingertip as if to measure the depth the tiny heel had made in the soil. Maybe even to measure the terror the woman must have experienced as the village hastily packed up to flee his oncoming troops.
“It raised the hair on the back of my neck too, Shad.”
Sweete turned from staring hypnotically at the fire to find Bill Cody settling beside him. “What got your hackles up?”
“Thinking about them white women held captive by that bunch.”
“Does Carr know there’s two sets of them tracks?”
Cody nodded once. Staring into the fire, he answered, “I suppose he does know.”
“I saw for myself the look on the man’s face. He wants that village bad, Bill.”
“How can you blame him, Shad? Them bloody Cheyenne. No telling what them bucks been doing to them Christian women—” Cody broke it off, realizing his mistake with the old plainsman. “I’m sorry, Shad. Just running off at the mouth like I do a’times. You and your family … didn’t mean nothing by it—”
“No offense taken, Bill.”
Cody stared contritely at the ground. “Just that when I looked at them boot prints—made me think on my own Lulu. Thank God she’s safe back in St. Lou. Glad as hell she ain’t out here to get caught up in this war.”
Shad poked at the fire a moment before saying, “You know damned well who those women are, Bill. We all do. Know who their husbands are. Ain’t a man can move his white woman out here to this country that he don’t know what chance he’s taking with ’em. Go ahead and tell me that ain’t why you keep your woman safe back to St. Louie.”
Nodding, Cody replied, “I know it’s gotta be Tom Alderdice’s wife. And the other—Weichel—the German woman. Yes. Safer for Lulu back there.”
Shad emptied his cup of lukewarm coffee. “Carr’s not bound to stop this column for much of anything now that he’s got a scent in his nose to follow. Damn well that he should too—’cause if we don’t catch this bunch of outlaw renegades now, we likely never will.”
“Naw. We can follow ’em wherever they go, Shad. Look: we come upon sign of ’em after all this time—we can do it again.”
With an emphatic shake of his head. “You listen, Bill Cody—that bunch of red renegades gone and wheeled off to the north now!” He pointed into the deepening gloom of night. “Making for the Laramie Plains. From there, it’s only a frog jump over to the Black Hills. That’s sacred ground to them Cheyenne. For the Lakota too, for that matter. This bunch gets up there to say their prayers near the big medicine of their Bear Butte—why, we’ll likely never see trace of them two women again.”
Cody contemplated that for a moment before saying, “You figure we ought to tell the general he’s gonna have to hump up and get his outfit high behind—or he ain’t got a chance at catching that village?”
“If Carr don’t push this bunch of worn-out men and broke-down horses even harder than he’s been doing already … yes, we ain’t got the chance of a horse fart in a winter wind to find them—”
Keening yips and howls abruptly resonated in the middistance of that summer night. Cheyenne war cries.
Shad’s hand was filled with the Spencer, and he sprang to his feet with Cody, both of them sprinting toward the hammer of oncoming hoofbeats, that staccato drumbeat flooding off the hills beyond the dull, starlit splotches of tents in North’s Pawnee camp.
They both had taken no more than a matter of steps when the Pawnee camp exploded with noise and the glare of gunfire in the night. Yellow flashes streaked the great indigo blackness as the muzzles of the trackers’ pistols erupted. He could make out the voices of the North brothers shouting orders, hear the curses of other white officers, among them Becher’s distinctive German—then it was all smothered under the racket of more gunfire and
