Authors: Alan LeMay
Sometimes they had sighted a distant dust far back on their trail, losing them when they changed direction, picking them up again when they straightened out. They hadn’t seen it now for four days, but they didn’t fool themselves. Their destination was known, within limits, and they would be come for. Not that they had any thought of escape; they would turn on their accusers when their work was done—if they got it done. But they must work fast now with what horse flesh they had left.
The Elkhorn Country is a land of low ridges between its many dust-and-flood-water streams. You can’t see far, and what is worse, it is known as a medicine country full of dust drifts and sudden hazes. You can ride toward what looks like the smoke of many fires, and follow it as it recedes across the ridges, and finally lose it without finding any fire at all. Under war conditions this was a very slow-going job of riding indeed. Each swale had to be scouted from its high borders before you dared cut for sign; while you yourself could be scouted very easily, at any time or all the time, if the Indians you sought were at all wary of your approach.
Yet this whole complex was within three days military march from Fort Sill itself, at the pace the yellowlegs would ride now. No commander alive was likely to search his own doorstep with painful care, endlessly cordoning close to home, while the other columns were striking hundreds of miles into the fastnesses of the Staked Plains. Yellow Buckle had shown an unexampled craftiness in picking this hole-up in which to lie low, while the military storm blew over. Here he was almost certain to be by-passed in the first hours of the campaign, and thereafter could sit out the war unmolested, until the exhaustion of both sides brought peace. When the yellowlegs eventually went home, as they always did, his warriors and his ponies would be fresh and strong, ready for such a year of raids and victories as would make him legendary. By shrewdly setting aside the Comanche reliance upon speed and space, he had opened himself a way to become the all-time greatest war chief of the Comanches.
Would it have worked, except for a wobbly old man, whose dimming eyes saw no more glorious vision than that of a chair by a hot stove?
“We need a week there,” Mart said.
“We’re lucky if we’ve got two days.”
They didn’t like it. Like most prairie men, they had great belief in their abilities, but a total faith in their bad luck.
Then one day at daylight they got their break. It came as the result of a mistake, though of a kind no plainsman would own to; it could happen to anybody, and most it had happened to were dead. They had camped after dark, a long way past the place where they had built their cooking fire. Before that, though, they had studied the little valley very carefully in the last light, making sure they would bed down in the security of emptiness and space. They slept only after all reasonable precautions had been taken, with the skill of long-practiced men.
But as they broke out in the darkness before dawn, they rode at once upon the warm ashes of a fire where a single Indian had camped. They had been within less than a furlong of him all night.
He must have been a very tired Indian. Though they caught no glimpse of him, they knew they almost stepped on him, for they accidentally cut him off from his hobbled horse. They chased and roped the Indian pony, catching him very easily in so short a distance that Mart’s back was full of prickles in expectation of an arrow in it. None came, however. They retired to a bald swell commanding the situation, and lay flat to wait for better light.
Slowly the sun came up, cleared the horizon haze, and leveled clean sunlight across the uneven land.
“You think he’s took out on us?”
“I hope not,” Amos answered. “We need the bugger. We need him bad.”
An hour passed. “I figured he’d stalk us,” Mart said. “He must be stalking us. Some long way round. I can’t see him leaving without any try for the horses.”
“We got to wait him out.”
“Might be he figures to foller and try us tonight.”
“We got to wait him out anyway,” Amos said.
Still another hour, and the sun was high.
“I think it’s the odds,” Mart believed now. “We’re two to one. Till he gets one clean shot. Then it’s even.”
Amos said with sarcasm, “One of us can go away.”
“Yes,” Mart said. He got his boots from the aparejos, and changed them for the worn moccasins in which he had been scouting for many days.
“What’s that for?” Amos demanded.
“So’s he’ll hear me.”
“Hear you doing what? Kicking yourself in the head?”
“Look where I say.” Mart flattened to the ground beside Amos again. “Straight ahead, down by the crick, you see a little wilier.”
“He ain’t under that. Boughs don’t touch down.”
“No, and he ain’t up it neither—I can see through the leaves. Left of the wilier, you see a hundred-foot trip of saw grass about knee high. Left of that, a great long slew of buckbrush against the water. About belt deep. No way out of there without yielding a shot. I figure we got him pinned in there.”
“No way to comb him out if that’s where he is,” Amos said; but he studied the buckbrush a long time.
Mart got up, and took the canteens from the saddles.
“He’ll put an arrow through you so fast it’ll fall free on the far side, you go down to that crick!”
“Not without raising up, he won’t.”
“That’s a seventy-five yard shot from here— maybe more. I ain’t using you for bait on no such—”
“You never drew back from it before!” Mart went jauntily down the slope to the creek, swinging the canteens. Behind him he could hear Amos rumbling curses to himself for a while; then the morning was quiet except for the sound of his own boots.
He walked directly, unhurrying, to the point where the firm ground under the buckbrush mushed off into the shallow water at the saw-grass roots. He sloshed through ten yards of this muck, skirting the brush; and now his hackles crawled at the back of his neck, for he smelled Indian—a faint sunburnt smell of woodfires, of sage smoke, of long-used buffalo robes.
He came to the water, and stopped. Still standing straight up he floated the two canteens, letting them fill themselves at the end of their long slings. This was the time, as he stood motionless here, pretending to look at the water. He dared not look at the buckbrush, lest his own purpose be spoiled. But he let his head turn a little bit downstream, so that he could hold the buckbrush in the corner of his eye. He was certain nothing moved.
Amos’ bullet yowled so close to him it seemed Amos must have fired at his back, and a spout of water jumped in the river straight beyond. Mart threw himself backward, turning as he fell, so that he came down on his belly in the muck. He didn’t know how his six-gun came cocked into his hand, but it was there.
“Stay down!” Amos bellowed. “Hold still, damn it! I don’t think I got him!” Mart could hear him running down the slope, chambering a fresh cartridge with a metallic clank. He flattened, trying to suck himself into the mud, and for a few moments lay quiet, all things out of his hands.
Amos came splashing into the saw grass so close by that Mart thought he was coming directly to where Mart lay.
“Yes, I did,” Amos said. “Come looky this here!”
“Watch out for him!” Mart yelled. “Your bullet went in the crick!”
“I creased him across the back. Prettiest shot you ever see in your life!”
Mart got up then. Amos was standing less than six yards away, looking down into the grass. Two steps toward him and Mart could see part of the dark, naked body, prone in the saw grass. He stopped, and moved backward a little; he had no desire to see anything more. Amos reached for the Indian’s knife, and spun it into the creek.
“Get his bow,” Mart said.
“Bow, hell! This here’s a Spencer he’s got here.” Amos picked it up. “He threw down on you from fifteen feet!”
“I never even heard the safety click—”
“That’s what saved you. It’s still on.”
Amos threw the rifle after the knife, far out into the water.
“Is he in shape to talk?”
“He’ll talk, all right. Now get your horse, quick!”
“What?”
“There’s two Rangers coming up the crick. I got one quick sight of ’em at a mile—down by the far bend. Get on down there, and hold ’em off!”
“You mean fight?”
“No-no-no! Talk to ’em—say anything that comes in your head—”
“What if they try to arrest me?”
“Let ’em! Only keep ’em off me while I question this Comanch’!”
Mart ran for his horse.
No Rangers were in sight a mile down the creek when Mart got there. None at two miles, either. By this time he knew what had happened. He had been sent on a fool’s errand because Amos wanted to work on the Indian alone. He turned back, letting his horse loiter; and Amos met him at the half mile, coming downstream at a brisk trot. He looked grim, and very ugly, but satisfied with his results.
“He talked,” Mart assumed.
“Yeah. We know how to get to Yellow Buckle now. He’s got the girl Lije Powers saw, all right.”
“Far?”
“We’ll be there against night. And it’s a good thing. There’s a party of more than forty Rangers, with sixty-seventy Tonkawas along with ’em, on ‘the hill by the Beaver’—that’ll be old Camp Radziminski— and two companies of yellowlegs, by God, more’n a hundred of ’em, camped right alongside!”
“That’s no way possible! Your Indian lied.”
“He didn’t lie.” Amos seemed entirely certain. Mart saw now that a drop of fresh blood had trickled down the outside of Amos’ scalping-knife sheath.
“Where is he now?”
“In the crick. I weighted him down good with rocks.”
“I don’t understand this,” Mart said. He had learned to guess the general nature of the truth behind some kinds of Indian lies, but he could see through this story. “I never heard of Rangers and calvary working together before. Not in Indian territory, anyway. My guess is Sill sent out a patrol to chase the Rangers back.”
Amos shrugged. “Maybe so. But the Rangers will make a deal now—they’ll have to. Give the soldiers Yellow Buckle on a plate in return for not getting run back to Texas.”
“Bound to,” Mart said glumly, “I suppose.”
“Them yellowlegs come within an ace of leaving a big fat pocket of Comanch’ in their rear. Why, Yellow Buckle could have moved right into Fort Sill soon as Davidson marches! They’ll blow sky high once they see what they nearly done. They can hit that village in two days—tomorrow, if the Rangers set the pace. And no more Yellow Buckle! We got to get over there.”
They reset their saddles, and pressed on at a good long trot, loping one mile in three.
“There’s something I got to say,” Mart told Amos as they rode. “I want to ask one thing. If we find the village—”
“We’ll find it. And it’ll still be there. That one Comanche was the only scout they had out between them and Fort Sill.”
“I want to ask one thing—”
“Finding Yellow Buckle isn’t the hard part. Not now.” Amos seemed to sense a reason for putting Mart off from what he wanted to say. “Digging the girl out of that village is going to be the hard thing in what little time we got.”
“I know. Amos, will you do me one favor? When we find the village—Now, don’t go off half cocked. I want to walk in there alone.”
“You want—what?”
“I want to go in and talk to Yellow Buckle by myself.”
Amos did not speak for so long that Mart thought he was not going to answer him at all. “I had it in mind,” he said at last, “the other way round. Leave you stay back, so set you can get clear, if worst goes wrong. Whilst I walk in and test what their temper be.”
Mart shook his head. “I’m asking you. This one time—will you do it my way?”
Another silence before Amos asked, “Why?”
Mart had foreseen this moment, and worked it over in his mind a hundred times without thinking of any story that had a chance to work. “I got to tell you the truth. I see no other way.”
“You mean,” Amos said sardonically, “you’d come up with a lie now if you had one to suit.”
“That’s right. But I got no lie for this. It’s because I’m scared of something. Suppose this. Suppose some one Comanche stood in front of you. And you knew for certain in your own mind—he was the one killed Martha?”
Mart watched Amos’ face, gray, then darken. “Well?” Amos said.
“You’d kill him. And right there’d be the end of Debbie, and all hunting for Debbie. I know that as well as you.”
Amos said thickly, “Forget all this. And you best lay clear like I tell you, too—if you don’t want Yellow Buckle to get away clean! Because I’m going in.”
“I got to be with you, then. In hopes I can stop you when that minute comes.”
“You know what that would take?”
“Yes; I do know. I’ve known for a long time.”
Amos turned in the saddle to look at him. “I believe you’d do it,” he decided. “I believe you’d kill me in the bat of an eye if it come to that.”
Mart said nothing. They rode in silence for a furlong more.
“Oh, by the way,” Amos said. “I got something for you here. I believe you better have it now. If so happens you feel I got to be gunned down, you might’s well have some practical reason. One everybody’s liable to understand.”
He rummaged in various pockets, and finally found a bit of paper, grease-marked and worn at the folds. He opened it to see if it was the right one; and the wind whipped at it as he handed it to Mart. The writing upon it was in ink.
Now know all men: I, Amos Edwards, being of sound mind, and without any known blood kin, do will that upon my death my just debts do first be paid. Whereafter, all else I own, be it in property, money, livestock, or rights to range, shall go to my foster nephew Martin Pauley, in rightful token of the help he has been to me, in these the last days of my life.
A
MOS
E
DWARDS
Beside the signature was a squiggle representing a seal, and the signatures of the witnesses, Aaron Mathison and Laura E. Mathison. He didn’t know what the “E” stood for; he had never even known Laurie had a middle name. But he knew Amos had fixed him. This act of kindness, with living witnesses to it, could be Mart’s damnation if he had to turn on Amos. He held out the paper to Amos for him to take back.