your horses?”
“Them really Sioux?” asked one of the group.
“Ain’t no goddamned Snakes gonna steal horses from us!” Walker snorted.
“Likely they was more of that same bunch we run onto,” Scratch told them. “They been sniffing round here for the better part of a week, ever since we rode in here.”
“How many you see?” Sweete inquired of one of the disgusted men returning from upstream.
“Three dozen.”
But another man argued, “More’n that. Goddamned well more’n that.”
“We’d give ’em a good fight—they come back to take their whupping,” Newell grumbled.
“They ain’t,” Thompson cried as he stomped up to the group. “Appears they run off least a hundred fifty head of prime stock. Mine and yours all, boys.”
“You figger to go after them horses?” Meek challenged.
The trader looked over the group, then turned to Meek. “I’ll take some of these fellas with me. You can lead ’nother bunch if you take a mind to, Joe. Maybeso we can trap them redbellies between us.”
“If’n they don’t outrun us, Philip,” Newell observed.
“You giving up a’fore you start, Doc?” the trader snarled.
“No, I’ll go with Meek’s group—”
“Any the rest of you don’t figger you got the balls to go tracking them Sioux, you best stay back here with Craig and Sinclair to mind the post,” Thompson flung his challenge at them all. “As for me, I’m gonna get them horses back, ’long with some Sioux ha’r hanging from my belt!”
Scratch and Shad volunteered to ride with Joe Meek, the first band after the thieves. Once they pushed through that narrow portal of the Vermillion, it was plain to see how carefully the Sioux had planned their escape. From that point all the way to the distant foothills, the raiders could push the horses flat-out with little to stand in their way. The Sioux had a good start on them, and it would take more than luck and skill to ever catch up with the thieves.
Still, a man had to try.
They rode down the rest of that day and on into the night, knowing full well the Sioux weren’t going to stop until they were assured no one was dogging their backtrail. Dawn came, and the trappers’ animals were showing need of rest and water. At the next trickle they found at the bottom of a creekbed, the trappers grabbed a little of both before moving on.
“Joe!” Bass hollered late that second afternoon. “Pull up top of that hill so we can palaver!”
Their horses snorted as the rest of the avengers came to a halt around them.
“What you got on your mind, Titus?”
He asked, “Is it as plain to you boys as it is to me that we ain’t gonna catch them Injuns?”
Meek and some of the others squinted into the distance at the wide trail they were following. They hadn’t seen the horses or the thieves since sundown the day before.
Joe looked over the others, many of whom hung their heads wearily. He eventually said, “I s’pose we ain’t.”
“And what if we did?” Titus asked. “Count the heads here—then remember how many riders them Sioux had.”
“Where is Thompson’s bunch, anyways?” Carson growled, turning in the saddle to look down their backtrail.
Shad spoke up. “They ain’t ever gonna have a chance of cutting off the Sioux with us if they ain’t caught up with us by now.”
“Maybeso we ought go on,” Meek suggested, but no more than halfheartedly.
“We do that, Joe,” Scratch said, wagging his head, “pushing our own horses so damned hard—we’re like’ to lose the ones we got a’fore we ever do turn back to the post.”
“Bass is right,” Sweete declared. “’Member them two carcasses we come across already?”
“Them were my horses the bastards run into the ground!” Carson squealed. “Sure wanna get me their hair for killing my horses!”
Shrugging, Meek said, “I see it the way Scratch’s stick floats. We can keep on chasing them horse thieves and kill what horses we got under us to do it … or we can take our lumps and mosey on back to the fort ’thout losing any more.”
The bunch grumbled, but no one said a thing against turning around. No one really had to because the choices were clear. Continue the chase and fight the overwhelming odds that they would lose what they still had, or head for Fort Davy Crockett. As much as it stung to turn around, Bass figured those horses weren’t worth all of those men dying out there.
“Sure sours my milk to give up,” Scratch admitted. “But I got my family at the fort. If I go and run the legs out from under this here horse, chances are good I won’t get back there to see ’em.”
Many of the others had squaws and children waiting in the shadows of the fort walls too. Grudgingly, they agreed.
“Keep your eyes peeled on the way back,” Sweete suggested. “Sing out if’n you spot sign of Thompson’s bunch.”
But they didn’t. Not even a dust cloud. And none of them heard anything that night as they made camp astride the trail left behind by the stolen herd. Nor did they see anything of the others throughout the next day. Meek’s dozen riders reached the walls of Fort Davy Crockett late the next day, surprised to find that no word had come in from Thompson’s group.
Then a week passed. And another. Finally more than a month of waiting and wondering ground by, and most of the trappers figured on the worst. Even Philip Thompson’s Ute squaw had completed mourning her dead husband and was in the process of taking up with one of Joe Walker’s men when word of Thompson’s men reached Fort Davy Crockett.
“Sinclair!” shouted a man, bursting into Prewett Sinclair’s trading room late one afternoon early that winter of thirty-nine. “You better come out and talk with these Snakes.”
“Visitors? Tell ’em they can send two in here at a time to trade—”
“They don’t wanna trade,” the man interrupted Sinclair. “This bunch is ’bout as edgy as a pouch full of scalded cats.”
Sinclair glanced about the smoke-filled room. “Any of you know Snake?”
“Used to know a little,” Bass admitted. “Spent some time healing up in a Snake lodge long time back.”
Walker set his cup down on the plank table. “With what I learned from that woman of mine, I figger I can help you on what Scratch don’t know.”
“You boys give it a try for me?” Sinclair asked. “See what’s got this bunch so riled?”
Sinclair, Sweete, and a half-dozen others followed Scratch and Walker out the gate to find more than twenty warriors arrayed in a wide front some twenty yards from the fort wall. Every one of the horsemen had their weapons in view and their shields uncovered. That was a bad sign in any language.
Scratching at his memory to recall what he could of the Shoshone tongue, Bass called out, “Who leads this group?”
“I do,” a man called out as he urged his horse forward a few yards and came to a halt. Two others came up and stopped a yard behind him. “I am Rain.”
“The trader invites Rain and his warriors to trade,” Walker explained. “Two warriors can come in the wood lodge at a time—”
“I am not here to trade with Sinclair.”
“You know the trader?” Walker asked.
“Yes, I have come here often,” Rain replied. “My people always thought he was a good man.”
“No more?”
Rain shook his head. “Sinclair’s friend stole horses from us.”
Walker and Bass looked at one another, both bewildered. “Who is this friend stole your horses?”
“The one with the pointed chin,” Rain answered.
“What’s he saying?” Sinclair asked.
Bass shushed Sinclair as Walker continued. “This one with the pointed chin—you’re sure he stole horses from
