Stamping Ground (16 page)

It was. “Drop your guns,” he told his men. When there was no response he repeated it, bellowing this time. Two Colts and a Springfield thumped the grassy ground.

“The belt gun too,” I said to the man who had discarded the rifle. He hesitated, then unbuckled the belt one-handed and let it fall. Hudspeth stared at it.

“Hey,” he said. “Is that a Smith American?” The trooper said it was. “I'll be damned!” He stepped forward, hugging his own Smith against his rib cage, and picked up the belt, which was loaded with cartridges.

“Get all of them while you're at it,” I told him.

“You won't make a mile.” The drillmaster's bawl had shrunk to a croak. Now that the decision had been made, the throbbing in the sergeant's hand must have been terrific. I risked a downward glance and felt a twinge of remorse. I hadn't meant to finish his army career. As far as a lifer like this was concerned, I supposed, I might just as well have killed him. I decided to let him have the last word. I was out of smart answers anyway.

The marshal came back carrying the discarded iron. I told him to unload the pieces and leave them there in a pile. We were carrying too much weight as it was, and I didn't want to leave the troopers unarmed in the middle of a fight. We were still on the same side, no matter how it looked. Hudspeth obeyed but retained the belt full of .44's.

I kept them covered while he and Jac, who had released the callow soldier, saddled up and stepped into leather. Behind us, the whooping and shooting continued, farther away now as the Indians were bottled up against the high southern rim of the lake bed. Bright yellow flames blossomed in scattered places as the tipis were set afire. Another ten or fifteen minutes and it would all be over for everyone but the buzzards. I leathered the five-shot, mounted, and together we broke into gallop and topped the western rise in the direction of the Missouri River. The troopers dived for their weapons, but by the time they had them loaded we were well out of range. Their popping was drowned out by the drumming of our mounts' hoofs.

We stopped at the river to water the horses and fill the buckskin bags Hudspeth had liberated from camp, then wheeled right and headed north. Ghost Shirt was still alive, no thanks to us. I had bunched my bedroll under his chin to keep his head up; the gash above his ear was bleeding again, but slower now. He was still out. I wondered if he would ever come to, and if he didn't, if Flood would still insist upon hanging him. I decided that he would. In the judge's case, the quality of mercy was strained through a sheet.

After a couple of hours of hard riding—tempered, of course, by the condition of our prisoner—we got off and led the horses to give them a rest. No one had spoken since leaving camp.

“Where to now?” asked the marshal. He seemed more out of sorts than usual, which was understandable after several miles on the back of a horse three sizes too small.

“The scenic route,” I replied. “In another few miles we'll swing east for three days or so and then north again. We can't take the chance of being spotted by whatever troopers might be left in Fort Yates, and if Dakota's like anywhere else there's too much civilization strung out along the river. It'll take us a hundred miles out of our way, but with any luck we'll be able to catch the train to
Bismarck and be there by the end of next week. Whenever that is.”

“That's one hell of a long ways to travel with a red-hot injun, even if he does live. Some of them Cheyenne got through back there, you know. And don't forget the army.”

“The Cheyenne will be too busy licking their wounds for some time, and the army's got its hands full. Worry about them later.”

“I got as much confidence in that as I do in Jac. He's the one said they wouldn't attack unless we was moving.”

Jac shrugged, both shoulders this time. His wound was coming along. “I did not expect infantry support.”

“Stop grousing,” I said. “You didn't think we'd capture Ghost Shirt in the first place.”

“Now the hard part begins.” Pere Jac's face was wooden.

The first words Ghost Shirt uttered upon coming to were English, and they weren't very nice.

We had set up camp in the shadow of the buttes along the edge of the plateau twenty-five miles northeast of the hollow where the battle had taken place. Jac and Hudspeth were breaking out the jerky and I had a hand under the Indian's head and a buckskin bag full of water in the other when his eyes opened without any fluttering and he spoke the words, which needn't be quoted here. I clucked my tongue.

“Shame on you. Is that any way to talk to someone who helped save your life?”

He said something else just as colorful. Apparently he had picked up quite a few of our quainter expressions during the time he had spent among us in his youth. But he didn't resist when I forced the neck of the water bag between his lips. He drank greedily. Then he closed his eyes again. I lowered his head gently onto the extra horse blanket I had folded beneath it. The even rise and fall of his
chest told me he was asleep, or doing a good imitation of it.

“He ought to eat,” grumbled the marshal. His jaw worked as he ground away at a piece of jerked meat. I shook my head.

“He needs rest more. When he's ready to eat, he'll eat. Besides, with his head in the condition it's in, he'd be lucky if he didn't break open the wound just chewing on this saddle leather.” I produced my own strip, looked at it, sighed, took a bite, sighed again, and put it away. I was hungry, but my teeth were still sore from the last meal. “I hate Dakota,” I said.

Pere Jac had finished his meal and was looking over his pony, grazing with the others at the end of their tethers on the other side of camp. He muttered an oath, the first I had ever heard from his lips.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Split hoof.” He was inspecting the pony's right front. “He has not yet begun to limp, but he will. If I get another day's ride out of him it will be a holy miracle.”

“That's what you get for not shoeing him,” said Hudspeth.

“Are there any settlements nearby?” I asked Jac.

He released the hoof and straightened. “A ranch, three miles the other side of the buttes. It belongs to an old Scot named Tyrone, or it did. It has been many years since I saw him. Perhaps he is dead.”

“Any horses?”

“He raises them, or used to. But he will charge an arm and a leg.”

“So long as he don't charge money,” put in the marshal. “We ain't got none of that to spare.”

“Get it up, both of you.” I got out my wallet and spread the bills on the ground. “Thirty-three dollars. See if you can sweeten it.”

Hudspeth carried a dilapidated billfold with a picture of Lola Montez on the back of an advertisement for chewing tobacco. Reluctantly he drew out a pair of ten-spots and six
ones and placed them next to mine. Neither of us was carrying pocket change because you don't go Indian-hunting with anything on you that jingles. I looked up at Pere Jac.

“No bills,” he said. “How about this?” He reached into the leather poke he carried and handed me a lump of yellow something the size of a tooth, which was exactly what it was. I recognized it as the loosened gold molar he had extracted from his mouth the night we had met in the métis camp. I hefted it in the palm of my hand.

“Quarter of an ounce, maybe a little more,” I judged. “Let's say nine dollars.”

“It cost me twelve.”

“Someone saw you coming. All right, that gives us sixty-eight dollars, enough to buy two good horses in Helena.”

“It won't buy us one from Tyrone.” He drew up the poke and returned it to his saddle bag.

“We'll worry about that tomorrow.”

Tomorrow was bleeding into the purple overhead like cheap red dye when I awoke to find Jac standing over me, moccasined feet spread apart and the muzzle of his Spencer dangling in front of my face. I thought,
You can't trust anyone
, pushed it away before it could blow off one of my best features, and drew the Deane-Adams, pointing it at his groin.

The movement startled him. He stepped back quickly and glanced down at me as if he'd forgotten I was there. He hadn't been watching me at all, but something far beyond me. The muzzle of the five-shot brought him back in a hurry. Without a word he raised his arm and pointed in the direction he'd been looking. That trick being as old as the rock that had been digging into the small of my back all night long, I didn't look right away but climbed out of my bedroll and took two steps backward, keeping him covered. Then I looked.

My first thought when I saw the curl of black smoke drifting up against the distant haze was that I had made a horse's ass of myself again. Then the significance of it hit
me and that didn't seem so important any more. A spot of bright yellow flickered at the base of the curl. The group of dark lumps clustered around it might have been rocks, but they weren't.

“How long?”

“I cannot say. I noticed it at first light.”

“Get Hudspeth up.”

“Too late. I'm up.”

I turned to my left. The marshal was standing next to his bedroll facing west, where the campfire was. No doubt about it, I'd been living too soft of late, sleeping too soundly. It didn't comfort me that I'd come off watch only three hours before. “Got your glass?”

He thrust it at me. “I reckon the injuns found the ammo in my saddle bags more interesting. But you won't see anything.”

“My eyes are ten years younger than yours.” I pointed the glass in the direction of the fire and twisted it. Behind me the sun had begun to top the buttes, casting their shadows just short of the other camp. When I had the flames in good and clear I shifted a little to the right. As I did so, one of the lumps stirred, cast something into the fire, and stood up. It was dressed in black. No, blue. It turned to look up at the buttes and sunlight glittered off the tiny, polished surface of what had to be a glass eye. I lowered the telescope.

“Shades of the U. S. Army,” I said.

“Harms?” suggested Hudspeth.

“Worse, if what Jed Hoxie told us is worth anything. Sergeant Burdett.”

“How many with him?” He took back the glass and trained it in that direction, as if the fresh knowledge might improve his vision.

“Eight or ten. Either they don't know we've got Ghost Shirt or Burdett talked the major out of loading him down with more men than he needed. I'm betting on the second.”

“How good you figure this guy is?”

“If he's good enough to have followed us this far, he's
good enough for us not to worry about trying to cover up our tracks from here on in. We'd just be wasting our time. He wants us to know he's there, or he wouldn't have lit that fire. He hopes we'll panic and make mistakes.”

While we had been talking, Pere Jac had begun to saddle the horses. “Speaking of wasting time,” he said pointedly. We took the hint and turned to break camp.

I walked over to where Ghost Shirt was lying with a blanket drawn up to his chin and watched his face for a second or two. His eyes were closed and his breathing was even. “Get up,” I said. “I know you're with us.” I nudged him gently in the ribs with the toe of my boot.

Something the size of a newborn calf came roaring up from beneath the blankets and struck me full in the chest, knocking me down hard on my back. I found myself looking up into a savage face with hatred in its eyes and a double row of sharp, curving teeth in a gaping mouth. The jaws closed on my right arm when I went for my gun. I tried to extract it and felt the flesh tearing away from the bone. Hot breath seared my face. My ears rang with the thing's frenzied snarling, which grew shriller as I fought to keep it from my throat. It shook my wrist like a dead snake. I had about given up the battle when something blurred across my vision, there was a loud thump followed by an earsplitting yelp of rage and pain, a name was called sharply, and suddenly the weight was gone from my chest.

“Are you all right, Page?” Pere Jac was standing over me, gripping his Spencer by the barrel like a club—which was an appropriate comparison, since that's what he had just used it for. Behind him, Hudspeth had his Smith & Wesson out to cover Ghost Shirt, who was on his feet now, and Custer, the yellow mongrel I'd seen him with back at the mission, who was at the Indian's side. The dog was scrubbing its head against the grass to clean the blood from the cut Jac had opened over its right eye. It was still snarling.

I got up, holding my torn wrist together with the other hand. Almost reluctantly, I peeled back the ragged sleeve
to inspect the damage. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, although it was bad enough. A good deal of meat had been exposed and rearranged, but as far as I could tell the muscle was intact. I tore a fresh strip from what was left of my shirttail and began to bind it up. Jac finished the job.

“All right,” I said, once the blood was out of sight. “Where'd the animal come from and how'd he get into camp? It wasn't during my watch.”

“Nor mine,” said Jac. “I never left this spot.”

We looked at Hudspeth. He fidgeted.

“It must of been after I stepped into them bushes.” He jerked his head toward a prairie rose bramble fifty yards away. There was no apology in his tone. “It was only a couple of minutes. Hell, a man's got to—”

“Damn smart dog, picking just that moment to sneak into camp.”

“He is smart.”

It was Ghost Shirt who had spoken. He was down on one knee beside the dog with his hand on its bleeding head. Not stroking it or patting it, just holding it there, the way he might handle anything else that belonged to him.

“He is trained to follow me at a distance and to join me at night in silence.” The commanding strain had not left his speech in spite of his captive state. Although he spoke without accent, the fact that he gave each syllable its proper value made it clear that for him English was a foreign tongue. “I did not train him to attack in my defense. That he does naturally.”