Cheyenne Saturday - Empty-Grave Extended Edition (7 page)

* * *

When Nathan Ellis saw the party of Cheyenne approach a draw beyond a small rise, he recognized the position. He stopped his roan and flanked out away from the rise, wary of being spotted by sentinels he knew would be watching. He dropped back to the east, rounded a swell and pulled the stallion down still. There before him, five miles away, were the buffalo, and beyond, shimmering like a mirage in the afternoon heat, was the railhead camp.

Moving back away from the draw and well west of the buffalo, Ellis dismounted and hobbled the roan. He removed his carbine and rawhide lariat and slung his canteen over his shoulder. Going fast and low in the belt-high grass, he angled off well west of the draw.

* * *

When Liza Reeves finally caught her snorting gray, she pulled the sand sticker from beneath the blanket and swung into the saddle, her face contorted with rage. She slapped the pony hard on the rump, cleared tent guys and stays in leaps that startled dogs and scattered chickens, and struck straight west.

She rode low in the saddle, head forward, braced against the stirrups and the motion of the gray. She moved to the north of the buffalo, cutting right across the railhead where the Johnny-Jacks were laying rail faster than it had ever been put down before in the entire world.

She knew Nathan Ellis had gone south of the herd and, ordinarily, she would have lifted the high dust in that direction herself, but her anger was working hand-in-hand with her obstinance. To hell with him, she thought, that smart rebel critter! I'll just ride north and cut back around the head of the buffalo, and have a look-see into that rise beyond.

Knowing the habits of her brother, knowing nearly as much about the trail as he did and completely dismissing the idea that anything could have happened to him, she tipped the edge of the herd and cut back toward the rise. As she approached, she noted that the buffalo, who were grazing all the while but moving nevertheless, had made a circuit away from the rise.

She pulled the gray down and stopped, stood in the saddle and smelled the air. She caught the faint tang of brush-wood smoke, and then searched for a visible sign.

She laughed suddenly. “Of course,” she said to herself. “Jake wouldn't make a fire anybody could see.”

She nudged the gray broomtail forward toward the rise, her nose catching stronger suggestions of smoke as she moved.

Liza was not so enthusiastic to see her brother as to throw caution to the winds. She was aware that the fire could just as easily have been made by Indians, but she did not believe they would cut out a buffalo from the herd and feast on him with the railhead moving so fast, nearer all the time. More likely, she reasoned, there wasn't a redskin in a thirty-mile reach of here. A big party with much medicine would hesitate before going after the buffalo so close to the railhead, and a small party simply wouldn't dare.

She slapped her knees against the gray's ribs and touched him with her wang reins. The animal spurted forward toward the rise.

* * *

Ellis snaked belly-down through the tall grass. Above him an old Cheyenne warrior, who had lost his hair many years before in some forgotten brush with another nation, sat cross-legged atop a round of grass-covered clay, an outcropping of the rise above the draw.

The brave's attention was pulled back into the draw itself and his sweeping search of the plains east to the buffalo and the railhead became less and less frequent. When Ellis smelled the brush smoke, he grinned to himself. The Cheyenne were taking their time with the buffalo and not eating it raw, but were roasting it instead.

The Cheyenne sentinel waved his arms and yelled something to the other brave beyond the round out of Ellis’s view. He was getting angry, Ellis thought, and hungry. Someone answered him, but the old brave did not reply. He swept his eyes around the plains and then turned his body around to address himself more fully to the activity in the draw.

Ellis drew his Bowie and clamped it between his teeth. He inched forward, bringing the lariat up and slipping the eye down to make a tight, eighteen-inch loop. He judged the Cheyenne to be about twenty feet away from him, pulled off that many coils, looped them in his left and hand waited.

The Cheyenne did not move. Ellis watched the high grass atop the round and when it began to waver a bit, he tightened up. The grass bent in a sudden hot gust of wind. Ellis jerked up and flew the lariat against the wind, up and out. It faltered and appeared to drop short. He was ready with the Bowie when the loop dropped neatly over the brave's head. He jerked hard and what little outcry the Indian made was carried away by the gust and not heard in the draw.

With quick strides, Ellis was beside the brave, who struggled in the grass against the rawhide lariat. Without hesitation, Ellis rammed the Bowie into the Indian's back. The knife struck bone and then slipped past and into the heart. The old warrior died without a sound.

Ellis pushed the grass aside to stare down into the draw. All of the remaining braves were hacking away at the dripping sides of beef, gesturing and talking rapidly. Further to one side Ellis spotted the spread-eagled form of Jake Reeves.

He moved back and to the higher point on the round, searching for the second sentinel he was sure would be placed farther to the east. He stopped some fifty yards farther up the rim of the draw, and waited.

He did not wait long. A garish face, old and seamed, peered up out of the grass and stared down into the draw at the other braves.

Ellis grinned.

Snaking his way back to the dead Cheyenne, the Texan removed a double curved Nez Percé bone bow the old warrior had probably received in a trade many years before, and slipped a feathered shaft from the fur quiver. Stringing the arrow, he tested the power of the bow and decided it would kill at fifty yards. Then he slipped away toward the farther end of the round.

The second sentinel did not show himself for nearly five minutes. All that time Ellis was inching forward. He was nearly forty yards away, still hidden by the plains grass, when the Indian showed himself. Ellis lifted up to one knee, pulled down on the powerful bow and sighted briefly on the Indian's chest.

The arrow sang eerily in the silence. A second later Ellis heard the dull thunk of the shaft finding its mark.

The moment he had shot the arrow, Ellis grabbed his carbine and moved toward the top of the round overlooking the draw. He did not expect the second Indian to die without a sound as conveniently as the first had, and he wanted to be in a commanding position above the feasting party below.

His luck held. The second Cheyenne made less noise than the sing of the arrow, and Ellis found himself overlooking the draw, where more than a dozen unsuspecting braves gorged themselves on buffalo meat.

Ellis's face tightened at the sight of Jake Reeves.

He threw down on the party and fired at a Cheyenne. The man dropped in his tracks, a good part of his head torn off. The others looked upward in stunned silence.

Ellis raised the carbine again. “Let the long beard go,” he said in his best Cheyenne. “Drop your weapons.” 

The Indians did not move. Ellis fired again. A second warrior dropped like a stone. The braves allowed their weapons to fall to the ground.

Two of them went to Jake Reeves and began to release him. The absence of Goose Face intensified the already growing suspicion in Ellis's mind that this was an advance party sent here—or left in the draw—for some savage reason of the renegade leader.

Ellis indicated that he wanted the scout put on a pony and brought up to the ridge of the rise. Jabbering among themselves, and looking up at the round where the sentinels should have been, the party slopped water into Jake's face and made efforts to bring him to. A horse was brought from the end of the draw and the scout was lifted, ungently, onto the animal's back. As one of the braves stepped forward to lead the broomtail up to Ellis, a bloodcurdling scream ripped the hot afternoon quiet.

Ellis spun around. On the round where he had slain the second sentinel, a brave held Liza Reeves by the hair with one hand and brandished a blade across her throat with the other.

 Even from this distance Ellis could make out the disfigured face of the Cheyenne and knew that it was Goose Face.

Chapter 5

IN BROKEN ENGLISH that was thick with the “K” sounds of the Cheyenne tongue, Goose Face screamed his threats across the rise. “She die! She die! You stop! She die!” Goose Face cried. Then, turning to the braves in the draw who stood transfixed at the quickness of events, the renegade leader ordered them up to Ellis. The tall Texan gripped the carbine tightly, knowing that if he fired or resisted, Liza Reeves would die instantly. She may die anyway, Ellis thought, but at the moment he had no choice.

“Shoot 'em! Shoot 'em! Liza Reeves shouted across to him “He'll kill me anyways!” Goose Face jerked her backward by the hair and slapped her hard across the face.

Ellis made his decision. He jerked up his carbine to take aim on the Cheyenne leader when half a dozen pairs of hands pulled at him from below. Ellis fought back violently, kicking, biting, wrenching, but it was futile. The braves overpowered him with brute strength. There was a violent pain in the back of his head and Ellis felt himself sinking willingly into the arms of the braves, and then came a blackness that was not penetrated even by the white-hot Nebraska sun.

* * *

When Goose Face had cut back to view the railhead and explore the reason for the explosion, he had lingered long enough to see a second rider in buckskin cutting to the north.

Goose Face had not hesitated. He had jerked his pony and pounded even further to the north, cut back beyond the buffalo, and drew up well west of the draw where he had left his stampede party. From deep in the high plains grass he had watched Ellis make his approach to the round and slay two of his braves. He was on his way to cut the tall Texan down from behind, when he sighted the woman. His crafty mind saw a ripe opportunity, and he circled the draw and came up behind Liza Reeves. His medicine was working well for him. The rider was a woman. Goose Face knew there was nothing the whites prized more than their squaws.

He squatted now in the hot sun before the three pegged and spread figures, wondering what advantage he could make out of their capture.

His horribly mutilated face had been painted dead white and two slashes of vermilion angled from his ears down to the gash of his mouth. His lower lip had been cut away and his bottom teeth were long and looked like fangs where the gums had dried and shrunk nearly to the roots.

He stood up. “Nothing has change,” he said to one of his braves. “And these whites will help us. Slay them and tie them to horses when you stampede the buffalo. They will run before the herd.”

“What advantage is that to us?” a buck asked.

Goose Face moved his head violently with annoyance. “When the long beards see the buffalo, they will send out riders and long knives to fire into the herd and turn them away from the trail of the smoking horse. If they see that whites are running before the herd, they will not shoot with such ease for fear of hitting them. They will not turn the buffalo. Then we attack in their confusion.”

He swung up onto his pony. “Slay them when the sun is there.” He pointed into the sky. “And lash them well to their horses.”

Goose Face whipped his pony out of the draw and pounded west and north to catch up with his main party.

Other sentinels were posted on the round and the remaining bucks continued to eat. They were more subdued now and never took their eyes from the three figures spread on the ground.

* * *

“Pssst!” Liza Reeves made a sound against her teeth, closing her eyes against the sun and turning her head a fraction of an inch at a time toward her right.

Ellis, five feet away from her, grunted softly. His head ached and he wanted desperately to touch it. He had awakened from a short nightmare in which a squaw was lifting his hair with a red-hot knife and gouging out his eyes with a heated tong.

“Can you see if they're still eatin'?” she asked so quietly that Ellis was not sure she had spoken. He flopped his head to one side and stared at her. She mouthed the words with her lips. He understood then and, groaning as if in pain, twisted his body as much as possible to glance over at the braves sitting beside their ponies. It was close to two o'clock and the sun was still high, though shadows were beginning to favor the eastern side of the broomtails.

“Yes,” he said in a whisper.

“How many close to me?”

“Three. About thirty feet away.” He kept his head turned the other way so that the bucks would think he was mumbling in unconscious pain.

“When they stop eatin', they might go to sleep,” she said hopefully. “I got my left hand loose—”

She stopped abruptly as she heard the soft footsteps of an approaching brave. She lay still.

The Indian squatted beside her and stared into her face. He did not touch her at first. He cocked his head from side to side examining her figure stretched in the dust. Slowly the brave extended his hand and stroked her cheek. He spoke to someone behind him and pulled her head to one side roughly and examined the thick mat of her hair.

The brave stood up and moved back to his pony and squatted in its shadow. He spoke to several others, softly, casually.

“One of 'em likes you,” Ellis said in a mumble of pain. 

“Which one?”

“The big one. I think he's after your hair.”

The brave got up from among his companions and moved back again toward Liza Reeves. He squatted beside her once more.

Liza Reeves opened her eyes and stared into his face. She smiled. It was not easy to keep her eyes open against the sun, but she stared at the brave, smiling, until his face wavered and danced, finally disappearing altogether in the tears that run from her eyes. But before she had been blinded by the sun, she had seen that the brave carried a Green River knife, a belt hatchet and a heavy Colt. It was not hers. She guessed it to be one taken from Ellis or from Jake.