Cheyenne Saturday - Empty-Grave Extended Edition (12 page)

“I only got two.” 

“That's all you can shoot at one time, ain't it?” 

“Not when I get mad,” Slocum said seriously.” I'm a hell of a man with guns when I get mad.” 

“You'll have plenty of time for that later, if Goose Face is where I think he is.”

Ellis checked his own Colt and an Army rifle he had used during the attack on the camp. He slung a bandoleer of cartridges over his shoulder, noted that half of them were gone and turned to Slocum. “You got a knife?”

“An old Spanish hog-sticker. You figure you'll need to do some cuttin'? I'm hell with a man when I gotta use my hog-sticker.”

In the dark Ellis felt Slocum press the blade into his hand. He drew in a breath. It was nearly eighteen inches long, double-edged and perfectly balanced. “Can you throw that thing?”

“Sink it ten inches in anything I can see.”

“You might not be able to see very well.”

“Anything I can smell, too.”

They hobbled the horses to the roots of a brush thicket and began to move down the bed of the wash.

 * * *

Goose Face knew that there were riders behind him. Until the last light of the day, he had watched his trail carefully for signs of dust and, though the rise was smaller, indicating that some of the riders had turned back, he knew at nightfall that he was still being pursued.

He was unmoved. It would just mean more white blood to spill into the plains sands. He made his camp carefully on the north side of the creek, ordered his men to rest, staked out the horses and posted guards. Though the remaining braves were both angry and sorry that their band had been reduced, they knew that they had slain many long beards and, though tired, they ate jerky and recited their many coups counted that day.

Goose Face stretched out on the bank of the creek and stared at the stars. That he had lost so many of his men did not mean anything to him. That he himself had escaped death held no meaning for him either. He had been reduced to a life dedicated to killing the long beards by the mutilation of his face. Among his own men there were many who could not stand to look at his face. And the one time he had tried to take a squaw into a willow-reed bed by the water, she had bitten him on the arm and fled.

He lay, flat, his body relaxing, his mind on the riders who were following him. He got up without a sound, not looking at the other braves, took his bow and half a dozen arrows, his knife and his tomahawk and slipped quietly downstream.

He moved a hundred feet and stopped to listen. Then he moved on another hundred feet before cutting up the bank through a thicket of brush and out onto the open plains. He stopped dead still and listened to the wind.

He heard nothing.

He moved on without a sound and made a wide circle around the outer edge of his camp, stopping frequently to listen. When he was near the creek again, he heard a noise. He froze into absolute stillness, holding his breath and listening to the wind.

He heard it again, to his left.

He dropped to the ground and began to crawl back toward the creek.

* * *

Ellis and Slocum sat hunched in the middle of a thicket and watched the Indians across the creek, vaguely visible in the starlight.

They had crossed the water a thousand yards below the camp, and had heard the movements of the Indian ponies. Working their way up carefully and slowly, they were now in a position to watch the camp from across the river.

“I can see every one of 'em.” Slocum whispered.

“Wait until they go to sleep.”

“Where you think them guards will be?” 

“Closer to the horses,” Ellis said. “They'll not only watch for us, but keep wolves away from the ponies.” 

“How many braves can you see from here?” 

Slocum counted under his breath. “I make out eight.” 

“Any of them with a face painted white?” 

“Nope.” 

“He could have washed his face,” Ellis said, but he didn't believe it.

“How long we gonna sit here watchin' them jokers eat? Why don't we just cut down on ‘em? I could get half a dozen before they could wet their britches.” 

Goose Face must be among them, Ellis thought. He's just as tired as they are and he's got guards posted. “I think,” Ellis said quietly, pulling the Army rifle up to his shoulder, “that we'd better take what we've got and leave the rest till later.” 

“Now you're talkin', man,” Slocum said. “Let's divide these Injuns up evenly. See that bunch over to one side—looks like five or six of them sittin' cross-legged eatin'? Well, them's mine.” 

Ellis agreed and sighted on the remaining braves who were seated closer to the edge of the water.

“Fire slow and straight,” Slocum said under his breath. “Learned a lot in the great conflict between the states, but I learned most about killin' men. Shoot straight and aim well. That way you don't waste bullets, besides which you don't usually get a second shot at the same fellow.” 

“I don't know how we lost the war with you fightin' for us,” Ellis said dryly.

“I got into the fracus just a little late. Things was already turned bad by then.” 

“All right,” Ellis said. “On the count of three.” He paused. Then, “One—two—three!” 

Slocum proved himself a dead shot, and he followed his own rule of taking aim slowly and shooting straight. Across the creek the Indians leaped up, shouting, and made the mistake that sealed their doom. They scrambled for their guns instead of seeking cover.

There was method and a deadly neat accuracy to Ellis's and Slocum's shots. Four of Slocum's Indians were shot in the head, a fifth in the heart, and the sixth right between the eyes.

Ellis had used three more shots to get his four Indians, but they were just as dead.

When the echoes were gone, they heard the pounding of hoofs. It was the posted guard making his escape.

“Goddam if this wasn't like takin' care of the little animals Paw used to send me out after. Used to whale the tar outa me if I messed up a squirrel with a gut shot—”

There was a heavy, sickening thunk of an arrow sinking into flesh, and Slocum slumped forward without a sound, a Cheyenne shaft quivering in the base of his skull.

Ellis dropped to the ground and crawled as fast as he could toward the water. He splashed along the shore, found an opening in the brush and moved up cautiously toward the high edge of the bank nearer the open plains.

There was a bloodcurdling scream. And then another, and a crashing through the underbrush back where Ellis had left Slocum. Ellis fired rapidly into the brush and then charged back in again, the rifle empty, the Colt bucking in his right hand.

He stumbled to where Slocum lay and with a curse felt the bloody, raw head of the dead man Goose Face had scalped.

Goose Face screamed again. “I kill you, too! I kill you, too!”

Ellis shoved the Colt into his holster and searched around Slocum's body for the knife. He found it. “Goose Face!” he bellowed. “I'm goin' to kill you with my bare hands! You hear! I'm goin' to take your hair! And your ears, Goose Face!”

“You die!” Goose Face screamed. “You come, you die, too!”

* * *

The two men were silent, both of them straining their ears against the sighing breeze and examining the rustle of the grass and brush. They listened to the murmur of the water in the creek and each waited for the other to make the move that would betray his position.

Goose Face gripped his bow. He had three shafts left and the advantage was all his, he knew. A lifetime of silent panther like movement on the plains; a lifetime of listening to the south winds blowing up from the west Texas and Kansas plains; an intuition grounded to the stalking hunt.

Goose Face strung an arrow. He lay in the deep grass beyond the edge of the creek. He had gone there when he retired from the thicket, placing his back to the plains and watching for the shadow of his foe to rise against the star-studded sky. He would catch any movement, if not by sight, then by sound. There were a hundred messages for him to read if the white man did more than breathe. 

He lay still and listened. The breeze sighed and wafted the leaves on the cottonwood near the creek. An old she-wolf howled and even the whimper of her whelp touched the ears of the savage lying in wait with the practiced patience of the hunter.

* * *

Nathan Ellis's hand pained him so much that he had to stifle a cry of agony. He lay belly-down in the soft dry sand in the bottom of a bed that was still warm from the afternoon heat. His breath was heavy and labored and all the more difficult as he tried to control it. He knew that his enemy was deadly and brave, arrogant and reckless, and fighting in his own country. Ellis was conscious that all the advantages were on the side of the savage somewhere out ahead of him in the darkness.

His left hand would not close, but he did not really need it. His right hand curled around the butt of his Colt. He rammed Slocum’s hog-sticker into the empty holster—the blade’s naked point just shying away from his leg.

The Indian, Ellis knew, would stalk him like a hunter. He would follow all the rules of the plainsman in the hunt for the beast. But Ellis was not a dumb thing to be outwitted. He would not bolt from fear or try to overcome his enemy with brute strength. If Goose Face was going to hunt him like an animal, then Ellis knew he must do everything an animal would do—until the moment the hunter exposed himself in that split second before the kill. In that second, Ellis's cunning as a thinking man would make the difference.

The stars seemed to be no higher than the ceiling of his adobe house on the Texas Colorado. He felt that if he stood up he could pluck one of them right out of the heavens and have for his own a piece of the universe that even now made transitions of day and night, life and death, seem insignificant.

He wanted to sleep more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, but he had to stay awake.

How to stay awake!

Pain, he thought. I'll use pain. Ellis moved so carefully that not even the sand below him was disturbed. He held up his left hand and little by little began to make a fist over the raw palm.

The pain jolted clear up to his elbow and on past to his shoulder. It jarred him and his whole attention was focused on releasing the pressure of the fist and stopping the pain.

At last he opened his hand and he was awake.

There was movement up ahead. He jerked the Colt up and listened.

Ellis had forgotten about his breathing in those few seconds during which he closed his fist. In those seconds the south breeze had carried his position to Goose Face and now the savage made ready to use his knowledge.

He would have to do a reckless thing, but he felt confident now. He released the tension on the bowstring and held the shaft on cock with his forehand around the bow. With his free hand he pulled out his tomahawk and waited again for the breathing, just to make sure.

He heard nothing. Had he been wrong?

There! He heard it again. Without hesitation, Goose Face threw the tomahawk where he thought the foe should be and tensed. The whanged, colored threads of buffalo hide strung to the handle of the weapon whistled through the air. He was ready with the bow, shaft drawn.

The tomahawk landed and he heard the enemy groan, but was it a second late? Did the foe realize that it would be better to make a sound at that moment and seemingly betray his position while staying well hidden?

No, the man had been hit. Goose Face jerked up and threw the arrow.

There was a pure red, then a yellow flash of light to the right of where he had thrown his shaft.

Then something plunged into his body, something hot and fiery that burned his chest. Too late, Goose Face knew he had made a mistake. He had been beaten. But had he taken the white with him? Had the shaft also burned into the chest of the white?

 His mouth was full of sand and Goose Face realized that he was screaming and clawing at the red-hot thing that had torn into his chest. He opened his eyes.

The white stood over him. Fuzzily, Goose Face looked for the shaft in the white's body. He saw nothing. 

The white grabbed his head roughly. Goose Face screamed.

Ellis pulled the hog-sticker from his holster and yanked the hair of Goose Face back away from the forehead. He slit the skin and peeled the scalp back from the white mask, down which tears of anger, hate, fatigue and finality were flowing.

Ellis stood up and looked down at Goose Face's dead body. If he had not seen the white mask a second before he heard the bowstring, Ellis would be the one losing his hair. It had appeared like a bodiless specter against the black sky and Nathan Ellis had fired at it out of sudden, uncontrollable fear—fear of the unknown rather than fear of the savage Cheyenne, Soft-and-Running-Deer, known to the world as Goose Face.

* * *

With the body of Slocum jack-knifed across the back of his horse, Ellis climbed into the saddle and spurred his pony gently. “Let's go, hoss,” he whispered.

The animal dug its way out of the gully they had followed earlier and Ellis headed it in the direction of the faint glow on the northeastern horizon of the plains. The blaze of a thousand lanterns and camp fires of the railhead settlement guided him in the moonless night.

The dark, lustrous hair of Goose Face trailed from his stirrup.

Chapter 9

THERE WERE SECTIONS of the tent community that did not bounce back with brawling jocosity. Amid the ashes were men, women and children, numb to the tragedy that had befallen them. A few had lost everything: family and all worldly goods. But in the grog tents men and women with no responsibilities but to themselves drank and fought and recounted the terror of the stampede and the brutal attack by Goose Face.

The fire had been quickly isolated and stamped out, a good fifth of the camp had been burned.

Jeremy Watson's tents had not been touched. His stock of whisky was intact and at midnight—after the general emergency was over and nothing left to do but bury the dead and clean up the mess—the lanterns were lit and the maw of his big tent opened to the Johnny-Jacks. The weary men pushed and shoved their way to the front of the plank bar and paid four and five dollars a pint for whisky ladled out of the earthen crocks. Side by side, men and women tried to forget the massacre.