Winchester 1886 (9 page)

Jimmy was already tightening the cinch on his saddle. He shrugged. “Not that far. I can't leave you here.” He looked over the horse's back. “Unless you want to ride with me.”

“After Danny Waco?” Dehner McIntyre laughed without humor. “I reckon not, Marshal. No hard feelings?”

“'Course not.” Jimmy moved around the roan and offered a hand to help the gambler to his feet. Actually, he preferred riding alone.

McIntyre grunted, his face masking in pain as Jimmy pulled him up and helped him to the colt.

Once Jimmy was in the saddle, he kicked his foot out of the stirrup, lowered his hand, and again assisted the gambler, pulling him up and onto the roan's back.

“Reckon those bluecoats will catch up with that buck?” McIntyre asked.

“Most likely. And some will live to regret it.”

Jimmy kicked the colt into a walk.

McIntyre's arms wrapped tightly around Jimmy's stomach. “Where do you start looking for Waco?”

Jimmy could answer only with a shrug.

“Well, Marshal, I don't know if it'll help or not, but I did hear something at that poker table in Caldwell. It doesn't narrow down your search a whole lot, but one of Waco's minions said something about Nebraska.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

 

The place along what the pale eyes called the Smoky Hill River reminded him of home. It was not the Dragoons of Arizona Territory, but the Monument Rocks jutted out of the Kansas plains. Not mountains, and certainly no trees, but the land offered some cover. It was where he would make his final stand. Where he could fight the bluecoats. He could make the Long Knives, and all of the indaaligande
,
remember the name Yuyutsu.

Eager to Fight.

In less than a week, he had covered more than one hundred miles. Afoot. He had not gone south by southwest, thinking that would be the way the pale eyes would expect him to go. He had followed the Arkansas and Pawnee rivers, then turned north—not south—and made his way across the fields of winter wheat and prairie grass. He had killed an antelope along the North Fork of the Walnut with the rifle he had taken off the indaaligande with the ugly pants. Three times, he had considered killing other pale eyes between the Arkansas and the Smoky Hill. Miserable farmers who lived in homes made from the sod.

Yet what honor could be found in killing people like that? The women had been dirty as the men, and fat as the sows that waddled around the wretched homes. There would be no glory,

Ah, but killing bluecoats?
That
the pale eyes would remember.
That
would bring him honor and glory, for at least one of the men following him knew how to trail. That man was better than even some of the Apaches Yuyutsu had known before Geronimo had surrendered, and Yuyutsu and his people had been sent off to rot in the Florida prison.

The sun had begun to sink, turning the chalk buttes and arches from white to gold. Still, he could see the dust. Let the bluecoats come.

He worked the lever of the big Winchester '86 slowly, enjoying the sound of the mechanical clicks as the massive brass cartridge fed into the chamber. All around him was the flatness of Kansas. A man could seemingly stare from one end of the earth to the other—except at the place the indaaligande called Monument Rocks.

Formations of chalk—buttes and arches, nubs, crumbling ruins, and some that stretched as high as seventy feet—shot out of the prairie without rhyme and with little reason. Some close together, others far, far apart. The problem, of course, was that once the protection of the chalk fortress was behind him, Kansas would offer no protection from a bluecoat's long gun.

Yuyutsu, on the other hand, did not care. It was where he would die.

Summer and fall had beaten the grass into brown, and the skies were darkening into a deep blue. He had positioned himself against one of the taller monuments, one with a large opening, more a door than a window, long and angular, which gave him a view of the country to the southeast. He could see the slanting, flat-topped butte four hundred yards off. After that, there was little to be seen, except for some smaller chalk rocks to the west, another three or four hundred yards in the distance. Then nothing . . . except for the dust.

Placing the Winchester on his thighs, he pushed up the rear sight, then pressed his fingers gently on the metal, and raised the crossbar up to the numeral five. Five hundred yards. He checked the sun.

Yuyutsu waited.

Over the past few days, he had counted twelve riders and did not think any of the bluecoats would have quit chasing him. Bluecoats did not often quit, and these fools would soon regret that. Of the soldiers, he respected only one, but he did not know which one it was.

A few times, he had backtracked, then lay in the grass and waited for the bluecoats, blind to the ways of the Apache, to ride past. The first time, he figured he was done with worrying about the soldiers, but they had surprised him. They had picked up his trail.

At first, he had blamed himself for that, but when the soldiers found him again, he knew one of them had the eyes, the skills, of an Apache.

After that, it had become something of a game. He would lose the men trailing him, and they would find him again. Once it had taken the bluecoats a whole day to rediscover him. This last time, it had been less than three hours.

He was done playing with the bluecoats. Yuyutsu had not eaten in two days, and he was hungry. The soldiers would have food in their saddlebags. If not, he would eat one of their horses.

The dust grew closer, but Yuyutsu did not lift the heavy rifle. He did empty the box of shells, and spread out the brass cartridges beside him. He did not have that many rounds, but he figured he had enough.

A moment later, he heard the sound of hoofs loping across western Kansas. He worked up enough saliva in his mouth and swallowed, ran his tongue over his dried lips, and looked through the hole in the rock, carefully, not letting the soldiers see him. One, he figured, had a pair of binoculars. A few times, he had seen the sun reflect off the glass lenses, but he did not see that now.

It was time. Yuyutsu lifted the rifle, pressing the barrel against the chalk, feeling the crescent-shaped stock slip against his shoulder. He sucked in a deep breath, held it, slowly exhaled, and watched the soldiers ride past the butte.

The leader of the bluecoats raised his hand, and the soldiers stopped. Some let their horses drop their weary heads and graze on what little grass they could find. Others stretched in the saddles, kicking free of their stirrups, rubbing their backs. Most found their canteens and slaked their thirsts.

When the leader lowered his hand, he turned and began talking to another bluecoat, one with a bearded face and battered hat. They were too far away for Yuyutsu to hear what they said and their voices didn't carry.

His eyes swept across the men, wondering. He saw no one who forked his horse like an Indian, who looked like an Indian. So whomever the tracker was had to be a pale eye. A bluecoat. Yuyutsu had been almost certain that one of those men had to be an Indian.

He brought down the rifle, and lowered the sight to four hundred yards. The barrel went back up, rubbing against the chalk, but making no noise. He made himself relax, closed his left eye, and drew a bead on one of the bluecoats.

No
, he told himself,
not him
.

He swung the barrel to one drinking water.
Let him drink.

Another mopped his face with a yellow neckerchief.

He came back to the man the leader was talking to. He inhaled, exhaled, and looked at the bluecoat leader, trying to decide.

I am like your pale eyes god,
he told himself.
I choose who lives. I choose who dies.

Smiling, he found his target, and pulled the trigger.

 

 

“What is this place, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Troy Henderson asked.

“Chalk pyramids,” Sergeant Sean O'Donnell answered, remembering at the last minute to include, “sir.”

“Look like tombstones, don't they?” one of the troopers said with a laugh.

“Might be where you gets buried, Andy,” came from another.

O'Donnell decided not to tell the soldiers to shut their traps. Instead, he told the lieutenant, “Monument Rocks, some folks called them. Heard some fellow at Riley once say they were something like eighty million years old.”

“That's almost as old as you is, ain't it, Sarge?” Trooper Andy Preston said with a snigger.

Henderson turned in the saddle to stare down the trooper, but Sean O'Donnell didn't care what Andy Preston said. He was a good soldier, that Preston. Unlike Second Lieutenant Troy Henderson and most of the other boys who'd been assigned to this duty.

O'Donnell pushed up the brim of his hat, and looked across the plains. The sun would be down within the hour. After that, it would be too dark to follow the Apache runaway. If the green lieutenant would have obliged a sergeant major who'd been in this man's Army for twenty-nine years, O'Donnell would have simply said, “Good riddance, John York. Enjoy your walk to Arizona or New Mexico or Mexico or Canada or hell.”

But the Army and Lieutenant Troy Henderson would never do anything like that. Anything that made sense.

The way Sean O'Donnell saw things, this pup of an Apache hadn't killed anyone—and he had had plenty of chances, seeing all those lone farms spread out across the plains. He hadn't even managed to kill the one person he had tried to kill, that lucky gambler they had found at Pawnee Rock less than a week ago. Let the boy go his own way. By Jehovah, the boy had grit, gumption, and guts. And some strong legs and tough feet to make it this far.

He wouldn't hurt anybody—not likely—unless Lieutenant Troy Henderson kept pushing. Then, there would be trouble.

And death. Plenty of death.

O'Donnell felt a shiver run up his spine. He hadn't felt anything like that since '65 when he had first seen the elephant. He'd been riding with the blue at Sailor's Creek in Virginia, just a few days and a few miles before General Lee had met General Grant to call things quits at Appomattox Court House. That would've been his luck, he remembered thinking, to get killed that close to the end of the war.

A similar thought pressed through his consciousness. He planned on retiring in three months.

“Sergeant Major!” Lieutenant Henderson barked.

Turning, O'Donnell listened to the lieutenant. At least, he tried to.

“You sure that Apache is heading this way?”

O'Donnell's head moved up and down. “He crossed the river, sir. He's been making his way this direction for some time.” He pointed toward the rising pieces of chalk off in the distance.

In the fading light, Monument Rocks did look eerily like enlarged tombstones.

“No reason he'd stop now.”

“No reason he'd continue, either, Sergeant.” Lieutenant Henderson reached into his saddlebag and drew out a bottle of whiskey. He drank greedily and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Yes, sir. Sergeant Major Sean O'Donnell had to admit that a kid like Troy Henderson would find himself promoted to general the way he hit that bottle.

“You said he was bound for Arizona, Sergeant.” Henderson corked the bottle, but instead of returning it to his saddlebag, slipped it inside his tunic. “Might I remind you—
again
—that we have been heading northwest for quite a while.”

“That's right, sir.”

O'Donnell thought for a moment, then added with a grin, “Maybe his compass is broke.”

That got a roar of laughter and approval from the boys, and a reddening face and scowl from Troy Henderson.

“Let's ride!” the lieutenant barked.

Gripping the reins steady, O'Donnell kept his horse from following the lieutenant's bay. “I'm not so sure I'd do that, sir.”

Henderson reined in, turned around, glaring. “And why not?”

O'Donnell pointed by tilting his head and hat toward the chalk fortresses. “My guess, sir, is that that boy's lying in those rocks. Waiting.”

“If he wanted to ambush us, Sergeant Major, he could have done that a day or more ago and saved us and our mounts saddle sores.”

“Where, sir?”

“Where . . . what?”

O'Donnell didn't bother looking at the lieutenant anymore. He studied the rocks, hoping to see the sinking sunlight reflect off that barrel he knew had to be sighting down on the boys right about now. “Where would he ambush us, sir?” Again, he gestured toward the landmarks that jutted out of the plains. “Here he has cover. Plenty of it.”

In what was going on thirty years, Sean O'Donnell had seen a lot of riding in the cavalry, most of it—practically all of it since the end of the Rebellion—in the west. Most of it on what folks back east called the Great American Desert.

“We are twelve men, Sergeant. He is a boy in his teens.”

“He's an Apache, Lieutenant,” O'Donnell reminded his commanding officer.

“Correct you are, Sergeant Major. He is an Apache. And we are soldiers. And as I told that tin-horn gambler and cowardly marshal, I will not be responsible for another Wounded Knee. The last Indian uprising won't be cited in history books with historians pointing their yellow fingers at me.”

O'Donnell kept looking, staring. He could feel fear, not just sweat, running down his spine. He wet his lips. He didn't agree with Lieutenant Henderson on many points. First, he didn't think that deputy marshal was a coward. Not by a long shot. And Wounded Knee wasn't on his mind. “I'm thinking more of the Fetterman massacre.”

“How's that, Sergeant?”

O'Donnell almost grinned. “Little bit before your time, sir.”

Over in Wyoming, shortly after the War of the Rebellion, an Army officer named Fetterman had disobeyed orders and led something like eighty men to death at the hands of the Sioux Indians.

“I don't see nothin',” Andy Preston said.

“I don't, either. That's what troubles me.” O'Donnell made one final plea. “Sun'll be down directly, Lieutenant. We can camp here. Got this big rock for shelter. Protect our horses.” He nodded toward the next growth of pyramids. “That's four hundred yards we'd have to cross.”

“Sergeant Major,” the lieutenant snapped, “I fear that you are becoming yellow—this close to your retirement. There is nothing out there to stop the United States Army except for a snot-nosed—”