Brothers of the Buffalo Page 10

  They’d now perambulated all the way around the camp and were starting on a second round. The coyote—or Indian—out there in the dark had not howled again. As they reached the tethered horses, Blaze nickered softly. Wash patted the big animal once as they walked past.

  “Love that horse, don’t you, son?” Sergeant Brown’s rough voice softened.

  “Yessir, I surely do. He’s a fine animal.”

  “Umm-hmmm. When I first joined up, you should have seen the horses they give us. What you would expect a white man to give a darky. They was all cast-offs from Custer’s 7th, knock-kneed, spavined, bony, and old. All about on their last legs. But we took care of them steeds. Nursed ’em back to health and rode ’em with pride. That was why they allowed us better horses every year. And now we even able to match every troop to horses of the same color, like our black ones for D Troop.”

  “Yessir.”

  Sergeant Brown put a big hand on his shoulder. “Son, you do talk better than most, but you are not uppity. Good with horses, real good. And you are a decent shot, too. Make ever’ bullet count on the firing range. Hit dead center ever’ time. Saw how you shot that rabid wolf. Now you say all you want is to be a soldier, even though old Sergeant Brown still sees you doing something more with your life. Think you can shoot that good in a real fight?”

  “I can try, sir,” Wash said, standing up as straight as he could and squaring his shoulders.

  “Ever fire a Sharps?” the sergeant asked, slapping the butt of the long gun he had slung over his shoulder. “I confisticated this one off of a buffalo hunter las’ month.”

  “Yessir,” Wash said. Which was true. He’d had the chance back in St. Louis at the barracks. Though its kick was that of a mule and had bruised his shoulder, he had placed a hole in the center of a paper target set at 500 yards.

  “Hmm. Then let’s see how good a soldier you can be,” the sergeant said, walking away until he disappeared into the night.

  Wash thought him gone, but then Brown’s voice came back out of the darkness. “Soon as there’s light, you report to me.”

  The place they had chosen to conceal themselves was high on a small hill. The soldier camp was to the southwest. The camp of the horse thieves was farther down the trail to the northeast. Their hiding spot was at the head of the little box canyon into which they had driven the stolen Cheyenne herd. By moving only a little, they could see into one camp or the other.

  Perhaps, Wolf thought, we might slip in on foot before the sun rises. We might free some of our horses.

  He shook his head. They could be silent going in. But coming out, the sound of horse’s hooves on the hard ground would be loud. It would surely waken some of the sleeping thieves.

  “We could cut some of their throats,” Dirty Face suggested.

  He was only half joking. Wolf shook his head no.

  The thought of killing sleeping enemies bothered him. And to try such a thing when there were so many enemies would be foolhardy.

  Courage makes a name for a man, Pawnee Killer had said. But behaving fearlessly does not mean acting like a fool. It does not mean risking the lives of those who follow you.

  My friend, Wolf thought, might do something foolhardy on his own. But he is not alone. I am the leader. His safety is more important than my own.

  “We wait. Watch both sides.”

  “Ah.” Dirty Face did not look happy, but he nodded.

  “Good. Just because those soldiers were sent to help us, it does not mean they won’t shoot us.”

  The night passed slowly. The two young men waited. They could see the soldier camp below them.

  Maybe, Wolf thought, these soldiers will behave wisely. Maybe they will take back our horses.

  The ve’hoes were off to a good start. Their scouts had located the rustlers. But they had waited. They had quietly set up camp before the horse thieves knew they were close. They had made no fires to give themselves away. And now, as the sun began to peer over the hills, they were doing something else. They were sending out two small parties, one to each side of the box canyon. Each party was made up of three people, one Indian scout and two black white men.

  Dirty Face tapped Wolf’s arm. He pointed with his chin toward the party to their left.

  “Long gun.”

  One of the black white soldiers was carrying a Sharps rifle. Wolf recognized that man. Easy to do so. He was the smallest bluecoat Wolf had ever seen.

  Our paths cross again, Wolf thought.

  The first time had been along the Washita. Wolf tugged at the bandanna around his neck and smiled. The second was when the ve’hoe soldiers rode into the Cheyenne camp. The little black white man had ridden well. His legs were short, but he had cinched his stirrups up high.

  If I stood next to him, Wolf thought, his head would reach the middle of my chest.

  The two groups of flankers were taking their time. Sun had now lifted the width of three more fingers above the horizon. Finally the men stopped. Good places. The ve’hoes could now look down into the thieves’ camp.

  In the camp below, some of the rustlers were awake. Smoke rose from their cooking fires. They were making breakfast. The air was so clear that Wolf could see smiles on the bearded faces of Jack and his men. They had no idea there were enemies above them.

  Dirty Face grinned. “Soon?”

  Wolf nodded. The soldiers had just called down into the rustlers’ canyon. The wind was blowing away from him. So he had not heard the soldiers’ voices. But the thieves in the camp below had heard whatever was shouted at them. Their complacent grins had been replaced by looks of surprise. One of the bearded men had spilled his coffee over his chest. Another had kicked his foot into the pot of beans hung above the fire. Others were scrambling to grab their guns.

  Perhaps the words shouted at them had been a command to surrender. They were not surrendering. Wolf heard the pop of a rifle over the wind. Then another, as smoke exploded from the barrels of the rustlers’ guns. But they were firing wildly. Nowhere near the two flanking parties of soldiers and scouts.

  “Ahh,” Dirty Face said. “Good show.”

  The shots being fired by the rustlers were now doing damage. But it was to their own camp. One horse thief blew the heel off another’s boot. That man, as he went sprawling, fired off a shot that knocked down one of their own horses. Only the big man that Wolf took as their leader, Jack, was not panicking. The head horse thief was sighting his rifle in the direction of the first party of blue soldiers. Wolf turned to look at the second group of flankers. It was the one that included his little Buffalo Soldier. The small man was on his belly. He was looking down the sights of that long gun. A little spurt of flame burst from the barrel.

  The shot was well-aimed. The heavy bullet knocked Jack’s gun from his grasp. Wolf’s keen vision showed him that it took something else. Some of the rustler’s fingers on his right hand were gone. Jack dropped to his knees, clutching his hand. The other six men dropped their weapons. A third party of ve’hoe soldiers rode into the camp, their weapons pointed at the thieves. All the rustlers except Jack—who was moaning on the ground—raised their hands. The fight was over.

  Dirty Face and Wolf backed down the hill toward their two horses. The blue soldiers had done well. Now all the two young Cheyennes needed was to ride back to report what they’d seen.

  Dirty Face looked up at the sky. He raised one eyebrow.

  Wolf nodded to him. He saw the shape and movement of the clouds. He saw the changing color of the sky to the north. Hard weather would be coming in soon. It was warm now. But after another sunrise or two the land would be covered by Winter Man’s blanket.

  They mounted and began to ride. They went down a draw and over another hill. Side by side, they started to pass through a narrow gap.

  Dirty Face reached back to grasp Wolf’s wrist. “Look!” Dirty Face said. His voice was excited.

  Wolf saw it. Another box canyon was just ahead of them. Its mouth was closed by a rough fence made of
brush and logs. The wind blew out of the canyon as they approached. The sharp smells of sweat and dung floated on that breeze.

  This is good, Wolf thought.

  It was better than good. He and Dirty Face slid off their ponies. They looked over the brush wall. There inside were horses. Many horses. Horses that they did not know. The small canyon was full of Indian ponies. They were not the ones that had been stolen from the Cheyennes. The rustlers had probably taken them from the other tribal nations around them. Wolf counted. At least two hundred fine horses!

  Dirty Face grabbed Wolf. He hugged him hard. “Yes,” he yelled.

  “Yes!” Wolf shouted, hugging his friend back.

  We are acting like crazy people, Wolf thought as they laughed and jumped up and down and rolled on the ground. It is right that we should. How our people will welcome us when we drive these new horses into our camp!

  They got up and dusted themselves off. They climbed over the brush fence. They walked into the canyon. Horses circled around them as they walked.

  “Look,” Dirty Face said. “There’s more.”

  “More horses?”

  “No. There.”

  Wolf looked. Next to one of the steep walls of the narrow canyon was an outcrop of rock. It had formed a protective roof. Beneath it was a big wagon. As they walked over to it, the sharp odor coming from it made their eyes water. The wagon was loaded with casks and boxes covered with crisscross marks. Bad medicine. Whiskey.

  Wolf ran a hand over one of the kegs. It was moist from the strong liquid inside. He pulled back his wet palm and licked his hand. His tongue burned. He climbed up on the wagon and, using his knife, pried open one of the wooden crates. Inside were black bottles. Each was in a nest of straw. Each was filled with that fiery liquid.

  Wolf looked down at Dirty Face. “Poison for our people,” he said.

  Dirty Face nodded. He made the sign for fire.

  They gathered dry brush and piled it around the wagon. Wolf took flint from his pouch. He used the steel of his knife to strike it.

  As they drove the horse herd from the canyon, a voice roared hot behind them. It was the voice of the fire they had started. That fire would consume the wagon and its load of death.

  Sweet Medicine told the People,

  those new people will bring new animals

  with them,

  animals with no spirit, unlike our buffalo.

  They will bring great sickness

  and a kind of drink that will make you all crazy.

  I am sad because my heart is heavy.

  I chose foolishly for I wished to be handsome.

  Now I must die and leave you, my People.

  You will forget my words,

  You will leave the old ways.

  You will drink their drink and you will be crazy.

  You will take up the ways of those

  from far away.

  You will tear up the earth and you will grow weak.

  Sweet Medicine looked around at the People.

  But perhaps some of you will remember

  my words.

  You will still do honor to the Sacred Arrows.

  You will still be faithful to our old ways.

  You will still speak often of all that I told you.

  If you do this, then you will be strong.

  If you do this, the People will survive.

  And then Sweet Medicine died.

  TRADE

  “The Indian,” Lieutenant Pratt said, “may be made to be just as civilized as the negro.”

  Wash nodded, even though he was not sure if the lieutenant was speaking directly to him or just saying his thoughts out loud as he seemed prone to do.

  Never met a man liked to hear his own voice more than our lieutenant, Wash thought, pulling his coat tighter around himself as the lieutenant continued on into the officers’ quarters and shut the door behind him, leaving Wash outside on duty. It was a bitter day, just as unpleasantly cold as it had been unbearably hot mere days before. On the Great Plains, he’d learned, a man could never tell what the weather would be from one day to the next. A week ago, when they got back from taking the rustlers briefly into custody and returning the stolen horses, every man had been sweating.

  Briefly into custody because every mother’s son of them, Jack included—now known as Three Finger Jack—had been released by a sympathetic judge after being turned over to civilian authority. And as for sympathetic, one might just as well substitute the words easily bribed.

  “All that riding and dust eating and sweating and for what?” Wash had asked. “Just to set them free to rustle again?”

  Josh had shrugged his shoulders at Wash’s complaint. “Just the way it is out here,” he said. “Our job is to catch ’em, not be judge nor jury. But maybe next time they will come across a hanging judge and it will be a different story.”

  Wash blew into his hands to try to warm them. Twenty below zero and heavy blowing snow everywhere. He stomped his feet, the rough boards of the porch cracking with frost as he did so.

  This weather turned faster than a squirrel running around a tree.

  The door opened again and Lieutenant Pratt came out, the kind of smile on his face that Wash had come to recognize.

  Oh my, we are about to be sent out again.

  And indeed they were.

  Whiskey dealers. That was who they were after this time. As they rode through the increasingly deep snow, Wash stayed close to Lieutenant Pratt—on the leeward side so that he was partially sheltered from the wind by the huge buffalo coat worn by the tall white officer. It had not been his choice to remain at Pratt’s side, but a direct order from Sergeant Brown.

  “Private Vance, you are to stay close to the lieutenant. Seems to have taken a liking to having you listen to him talk.” Sergeant Brown had grinned. “Better you than me, boy.”

  But at the moment the fact that the lieutenant was serving as a windbreak made the fact that he hardly ever shut his mouth more than bearable. Plus, even though it took Pratt a hundred words to

  say what most could express in a sentence, most of what he said made sense. It was, Wash had to admit, educating. And right now that education was about Indians and alcohol.

  “Our Indians will trade anything they own for that whiskey. They will give over all of their buffalo robes for a few bottles. A whole string of horses for a single keg. It does not matter if such uneven trading leaves them with nothing to keep them warm or take care of their families. All that matters is getting the firewater. But the trouble does not end with making our Indians poor.”

  Pratt looked over and down at Wash. Though his collar was turned up and his face was so fully wrapped in a scarf that only his eyes were visible below the brim of his cap, Wash had still heard every word and had an answer ready.

  “Why not, Lieutenant, sir?” he said.

  Pratt pressed his lips together and nodded like a schoolteacher pleased that his class was paying attention. “The barrels of rotgut those unscrupulous traders peddle to the Cheyennes might as well be gunpowder. As a matter of fact, actual gunpowder is sometimes mixed in to give the drink more of a kick after the traders have watered it down. When our poor Indians begin drinking whiskey, it is much like starting a prairie fire that may burn in any direction. With whiskey in their bellies and an angry confusion in their minds, they may attack anyone who crosses their path and have been known to murder their best friends and family members.”

  Pratt paused again, in part for emphasis and also because the gust of wind that had just swept over them was too strong for even his stentorian voice to be heard over it. But as soon as the wintry blast had passed, he took up his lecture again.

  “No, it is not even over when the Indians sober up. For they then must find some way to get new horses so as they can go buffalo hunting and get new robes and meat and whatnot. Thus they go raiding the other tribes or the white folks to get their mounts. And at that juncture they are also usually better equipped for raiding after tra
ding with those whiskey sellers. For the other items those traders offer in ample supply to our Indians are guns and ammunition.”

  Wash nodded, thinking back to the words spoken by the Indian agent, Mr. John Miles, who had given them this errand to apprehend the miscreant whiskey traders and sent along with them one Mr. Hoag, an Indian superintendent, to do the official arresting.

  “Thou must do your best,” Agent Miles had said to their party as they set out. “I have been told that there are now more than half a dozen of those pestilential whiskey ranches set up, just south of the Kansas border within the reservation line. Those men who sell that whiskey to our Indians are the cause of most of our troubles.”

  That might be so, Wash thought, but as he hunched his shoulders against yet another blast of wind that bit like a wolf, it seemed that most of their trouble right now was this weather. Fifteen degrees below zero, heading straight into the teeth of a blue norther’. A blue norther’, he’d learned, was the name for a wind that roars down from arctic regions. So hard, so cold, so full of snow that the air looks blue. And if a man was fool enough to stand out in it for more than a few minutes, he would soon be blue himself.

  Wash reached up a gloved hand to tap his brow and brush his face to break off the ice that had formed on his eyebrows and eyelashes. Otherwise, his eyes might freeze shut, even with a lined hood and a woolen scarf like the one he had pulled over much of his face.

  Thanks to Lieutenant Pratt, always one for planning ahead, they were all as well dressed as anyone could be for such an expedition. Every man had on double underwear and buffalo-lined overshoes, beaver caps with earflaps, and beaver gloves with long wrists nearly up to their elbows. However, Wash had quickly discovered, sitting on a horse you grow twice as cold as when walking on your own feet. As they plodded along, he leaned forward to get as close as he could to the body heat coming up from Blaze. Three hours after dawn now, though you would hardly know the sun was in the sky. It showed as no more than a small glow off to the east.