The Holy Warrior (29 page)

They were a week past the Blue River when Sky cornered Chris and asked, “Will you teach me to shoot?”

Chris, who had just bent over to pick up his rifle, stopped abruptly with surprise. This was the first time his son had
asked him for anything since leaving the Pawnee camp, and though Chris felt it might be a sign of Sky’s acceptance, Chris knew better than to overreact. And so, swallowing the surge of joy that ran through him, he shrugged and said, “Do what I can.”

The two of them walked through the short grass without speaking. In an hour the wagons looked small in the distance, and Chris stopped. “Guess this is good enough. Got your rifle loaded?” For the next hour he tutored the boy in the art of long-range shooting. Sky had been too proud to ask for help, and he had picked up many bad habits. Still, he had a natural hunting ability; for once he had learned to follow the few simple techniques Chris showed him, Sky was able to send the slugs where he wanted them. His eyes glowed when he hit a white stone no bigger than his fist at one hundred yards.

Chris nodded. “That rifle’s a mite heavy for you now, Sky, but in a year you’ll be handling it like it was a straw.” He let his hand drop on the boy’s shoulder just for one instant. “You’ve got a good eye and a steady hand.”

Sky’s blue eyes dropped to the ground as he mumbled, “Thanks.”
Well, it’s a start,
Chris thought. Every day the boy would appear just as Chris got ready to go. “Want to hunt a mite?” Chris would ask. Sky would shrug carelessly, “Might as well.”

All of this did not go unnoticed. Missy sat beside Dove one time, watching with her as the man and boy went out together. “That’s good—isn’t it, Dove?”

“Yes,” Dove nodded, and gave a rare smile. “He is like his father.”

“He’s like both of you. Best looking boy I’ve ever seen. I... I’m glad he’s opening up to Chris.”

Caroline was walking along beside the last wagon, which Asa was driving, and she too had seen the pair leave. It pleased her so much that she kept her eyes fixed on them and did not notice the gopher hole in her path. She stepped into it and was thrown sharply to the ground with an intense cry of pain.
She called out, but the bawling of the oxen drowned her out. She tried to stand, failed, and fell again.

“Miss Caroline! You all right?”

She looked up to see Barney Sinclair’s homely face as he dropped to one knee beside her, his anxious eyes searching her face. In spite of the excruciating pain in her left ankle, she had to smile. “Well, Brother Sinclair, you finally did speak to me—even if I had to break my leg to get you to do it!”

Barney’s face burned, but he grinned. “I’m a bit gun-shy around ladies, fer a fact. Especially...”

“Especially what?”

“Well—especially... p-pretty ones!” he stammered, then added quickly to cover up his confusion, “We’re gettin’ left behind, Miss Caroline. Can you walk atall?”

“I—I don’t know, Barney—” She grasped his hands as he pulled her to her feet. “Let me hold on to you!” she said. Since her eyes were on her feet she did not see the expression of alarm that swept across his face as she held him tightly around the middle. “Don’t let me fall!” she cried out, forcing him to put his arm around her waist. She tried to walk, but each step on her left foot was agony, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

Seeing her white face, Sinclair stopped. “Here, this won’t do, Miss Caroline! Ain’t nobody seen you fall but me, I reckon. You set here and I’ll go git a wagon.”

“No!” Caroline’s terror of immense spaces attacked her with thoughts of wolves and creeping Indians. “Don’t leave me alone, Barney!”

“But, Miss Caroline...!” Barney protested. Watching the wagons rolling farther away, he came to a sudden decision. “Don’t want to be forward, but I got to git you to the wagons.”

“Barney!” Caroline cried out in alarm as he reached down and swooped her up in his arms. “Barney—you can’t carry me! I’m too heavy!”

“Heavy? Why, Miss Caroline—you don’t weigh near as much as a yearling calf, and I’ve packed them fer a mile many a
time.” In spite of himself he began to relax, laughing. “Don’t mean to compare you to a calf—but you sure are little!”

It was Caroline’s turn to blush, for he was holding her close, his arms under her legs and around her back. Caught in that awkward situation, she didn’t know what to do with her arms. Should she let them dangle or put them around his shoulder? With an embarrassed laugh she decided on the latter, saying, “I feel like a fool!”

He was walking at a fast pace, closing with the wagons, which were still fifty yards away, and both of them were painfully aware of their embrace. Caroline’s soft form in his arms was doing strange things to Barney’s mind. He could smell the faint odor of some delicious scent, lavender he thought, as the breeze caught her hair, brushing it against his lips. Her cheek was smoother than he had thought possible, and the curve of her lips more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen.

Caroline, too, was disturbed, bothered by the sensations that ran through her, and she was relieved when they reached her wagon. Keeping in step, Barney lifted her over the tailgate as easily as if she were a child. She bit her lip as the injured ankle took her weight, but she looked out at once, saying, “Thank you, Barney. I would have been terrified if I’d been left.” Impulsively, she put her hand out—and, just as impulsively, he took it. “You’re very strong!” she exclaimed.

He was walking along behind the wagon, oblivious to the fact that he was talking easily to an attractive woman for the first time in his life. Until now, his experience with women had been limited to dance-hall girls who left him cold with their bright smiles and empty eyes. Barney was well aware of his lack of good looks, and had learned to avoid rejection by not putting himself in situations where it was a risk, or by cutting himself down—beating them to the draw, so to speak.

“Well, fer a feller skinny as a snake, I reckon I’m fairly stout. Good thing, too, since I ain’t got much upstairs.”

Caroline replied indignantly, “Don’t talk like that, Barney! I’ve seen you fix things that no one else could. You play the
fiddle better than any man I ever heard. And Asa tells me you know the name of every flower and bird in the world.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. “Aw, Miss Caroline, a feller picks up stuff like that just by livin’, but I can’t...”

His mouth clamped shut and his ears turned red. Suddenly he bolted around the side of the wagon and was about to disappear, but she called out swiftly, “Barney—wait! Come back!” He stopped, looking back with an unhappy light in his eyes, and fell in behind the wagon again. “What is it you can’t do?”

Caroline was mystified at the misery in Barney’s face. Several times he would open his mouth to speak, only to shake his head and clamp his lips shut. Sweat covered his face, and she could see that his large hands were clenching and unclenching nervously. “Barney—what on earth is it? Nothing can be so awful!”

“Yes—yes, it is!” he gasped hoarsely, and he took his hat off and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He pulled the hat down firmly on his head, gritted his teeth, then said loudly: “I can’t read!”

“Why—Barney...!”

“Can’t read a sign to say what town it is. Can’t write no more than my name. Can’t read the Bible. That’s the worst of it—can’t even read the Word of God!”

Sinclair’s eyes were misty, and Caroline’s heart went out to him. She once again held out her hand and as he took it, blindly, she said, “Barney—I’ll teach you to read.”

“Oh, Miss Caroline, I couldn’t learn! I’m too old!”

“Nonsense!” Her voice was sharp but her eyes were warm. “When I fell down and you helped me up, did I say, ‘No, I’m too old’?”

“No—you said, ‘I’m too heavy.’ ”

“And I was wrong, wasn’t I? Are you too proud to sit under a woman’s teaching—is that it?”

He shook his head in protest. “No!”

“Then let me help you—as you’ve helped me.” Her voice
was soft and she saw the yearning in the homely face. “By the time we get to the Yellowstone, you’ll be reading the third chapter of John. I promise. Will you let me teach you?”

He dropped his head and drew his sleeve across his eyes. Then his hand tightened and he looked up with a mixture of wonder and joy on his face. “If you could teach me to read—maybe I could be a preacher someday. That’s what I really want more than anything else!”

Caroline looked at him intently, seeing not the quick-witted humorous outside that he showed the world, but the sensitive spirit lying beneath.

“We’ll start tonight after supper, Barney,” she said simply.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE PLATTE

From the Big Blue crossing, the trail ran north to meet the Platte, then turned west to follow its south bank. “Nebraska,” the Indians called it, meaning “flat and shallow,” while the French dubbed it with an equivalent word: the “Platte.” Both names did descriptive justice to the river’s broad band of flowing silt. Barney reckoned its measurements graphically: “My law, Chris—it’s a mile wide and an inch deep: too dirty to bathe in and too thick to drink!”

They saw Indians fairly often, but always at a distance. When Small asked Chris about the danger of an attack, he answered, “Not likely. This valley is in a kind of neutral ground between the Pawnees to the north and the Cheyennes to the south. But we better put out a guard from now on.”

Ring disagreed loudly. “No need of that. Not till we get to Pawnee country anyway.” He grinned wolfishly, adding, “Reckon the Pawnees will come callin’ for your hair, Winslow. I heard about how you took Black Elk’s woman—and he’s a bad ’un.”

“Not likely Black Elk will be this far south,” Chris shrugged. “He won’t know I’m here.” The answer, he saw, did not satisfy Small, but there was nothing else to say. “The big problem is water and grass—not Indians.”

Small looked at Turner. “I thought you said there was plenty of grass and water, Ring.”

“Told you we should have left a month ago, but you
wouldn’t listen,” Ring returned, putting his tough gaze on the smaller man.

The rebuke ruffled Small, and his face grew red. “It’s your job to provide for the wagon train, and you’ve not been doing too well since the buffalo thinned out. I suggest you bring in some antelope or deer.”

“They’ve skedaddled to the high country,” the trapper shrugged with an air of nonchalance. In truth, he was touchy about his failure to find game, and added roughly, “If I can’t get game, there ain’t none to be got. You say ‘amen’ to that, won’t you, Brother Winslow?”

Chris studied him, ignoring the taunt that always lay beneath Tanner’s words. He turned to Small. “Guess I can go bring in fresh meat today.”

“You sayin’ you’re a better man than me?” the big hunter bridled, his face tense. He was like a wild animal, flying into a fighting fury the instant he felt threatened.

Chris said evenly, holding Tanner’s eyes, “You’re just twisting your own tail, Ring.”

“I allus said you was more brag than do! Bet you my rifle against yours you don’t bag a deer or an antelope by sundown.”

“Wouldn’t care to bet.” They were standing slightly away from the morning fire, in full earshot of the rest of the party. Chris turned his back on Tanner and walked to his wagon. “Want to go, Sky?” he asked.

Sky nodded and picked up his own rifle; then Missy said impulsively, “Would I be in the way?”

“Come along. Be a change for you—but put a bonnet on.”

The three of them saddled and left, leading a packhorse, and Small grumbled, “That girl is too free in her ways. Not right for a single woman to go off like that with a married man!”

Caroline, seated beside Barney, was so absorbed in Barney that the remark went unnoticed. Barney had been eating with one hand and holding a reader in the other. Already
he had waded through several beginning readers that the Tennysons had furnished, and Caroline had been amazed at his progress. She was a natural teacher, was so absorbed with teaching that she did not realize how deep her interest in Barney Sinclair went. Missy had hinted at it once: “Better watch out, Caroline, or you’ll have a suitor.” Caroline had merely laughed, but sometimes when their hands touched as they held the same book, it sent a quick shock through her. It did not seem to occur to her that for the first time in her life she was spending long hours with a man she truly liked.

Barney looked up when Small commented about Missy, and said, “You notice how Rev. Small watches Missy?”

“Why—no, I haven’t.”

“He’s got a real case on her. Surprised he ain’t started courtin’ her.”

“It wouldn’t do him any good,” Caroline replied. “He’s too short, and besides...”

Barney had learned somehow of Missy’s engagement to Chris, and he nodded understandingly. “She’s a fine girl. None finer—’cept maybe her sister!”

Caroline giggled, something she was doing more often these days, and her eyes sparkled. “You’re going to be a dangerous man with the ladies, the way you talk, Barney!”

He grinned and stood up to stretch, pointing toward the tiny figures to the east. “Reckon we’ll have fresh meat tonight.”

“You think Chris can do it?”

“Why, Caroline, Christmas Winslow is all sorts of a feller! He ain’t much fer talk, but when he sets out to do a job, he’s stubborn as a blue-nosed mule!” He looked fondly across the plain to where the trio had disappeared in a line of willows that marked a small stream. “Yes, ma’am, I’d trust Chris to fill the smokehouse!”

Unaware of the attention they had drawn, the three reached the small stream. After tying the horses, Chris said, “Sky, I’m going to loaf and let you do all the work.”

Sky looked around at the empty space that fell away into the distance, and shook his head. “Nothing to shoot.”

Chris took his Green River knife and cut one of the skinny saplings growing beside the stream. He sharpened the end of it, then pulled a strip of red cloth from his pocket and tied it to the other end. Handing it to Sky, he pointed to an outcropping of rock half a mile away. “Go stick this flag in the ground over by that rise, then get behind that rock—and keep your head down.”

He gave no more instructions, but Sky obeyed, heading out at a trot. For a moment Chris watched his son with a pleased grin, then turned to Missy. “We might as well get comfortable, Missy. There’s a little shade over there on that bar.” They walked across the nearly dry bed, having to wade only about six feet across the shallow summer-shrunken stream, to a canopy of scrawny trees no more than eight feet high. Chris cleared the small rocks away under the trees, then sat down on a single large one and watched as Sky trotted out and set the flag. Missy eased herself down beside Chris.