“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?”
July was already eight days old.
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 thundering hooves. Sleeping scouts and sleep-deprived pickets were suddenly jarred into a battle for their lives.
Frank North emerged from the shadowy flit of light and darkness as some of the trackers doused fires and pulled down tents. As a backdrop the tents and fires made a perfect target of a man. One of the Pawnee lumbered past, away from the fight and muttering angrily.
“Was that Mad Bear?” Cody asked the major.
North nodded, staring after the Pawnee.
Shad asked, “Where’s he bound for?”
“The horses hobbled back there on the line. Likely he’s going to mount up,” North replied with a shrug.
“Better stop that one from going out there on his own, Major,” Shad advised.
“I’d sooner try to stop a Cheyenne charge with a buffalo-tail flyswatter, Mr. Sweete!”
“Not that much firing from the Cheyenne,” Cody said. “Can’t be that many of ’em rushing camp.”
“Shit—you know better’n that, Bilclass="underline" could be a whole passel of ’em waiting out there in the dark for any of us to follow,” Shad replied. “Draw a few of the cocky ones right out there and swallow them up like nighthawks.”
Without needing any more advice, North flung his voice into the dark, shouting in Pawnee at Mad Bear, ordering the tracker back from his pursuit.
“Anyone hit in your camp, Major?” Cody asked.
North shook his head. “My tent got shot up. Looks to be all the damage right now. Those bastards came right past my tent, slinging lead into it. Lute’s tent too. Then the sonsabitches were gone. Raced right out of camp and headed for the remuda to chivy our horses.”
“Doesn’t sound like they got a one of your animals—for all their trouble,” Cody said.
“We had every one hobbled and cross-lined on my order,” North said proudly.
Luther North suddenly took form out of the confusion, grumbling. “Frank—this shit is beginning to sour my milk.”
“What’s bothering you, little brother?”
“Twice now we been hit by these bastards—at night.”
Cody nodded. “The army doesn’t figure Injuns are supposed to attack at night.”
Luther wagged his head, angry. “And now Mad Bear’s gone after ’em.”
“Sonofabitch,” Frank growled. “I tried to stop him.”
“Me too,” Luther replied. “Didn’t do no good, though. He just rode off shouting at me how he was worth a half-dozen flea-bitten Cheyenne on the worst day of his life—”