The Red Hills (6 page)

And over it all was the dust.

After the bitter winter the spring had brought the relief of warmth and green life. But that had passed. The weather in the Dakotas was notorious. Folks said that when you weren't freezing to death you were roasting instead.

'Column... Halt!!!' yelled Menges, holding up a gauntleted fist for the signal. Crow had noticed that there wasn't much talking. Normally a Cavalry patrol like this would have been singing and joking. Joking that the officers either tactfully ignored or joined in with. But not here. For nearly the whole journey they had ridden on in total silence. Crow had spurred his stallion forwards and talked briefly with the tail pair of Troopers, Stotter and Baxter. Trying to find out how things were. But they didn't talk much to him. Answering his questions with a yes or a no. All the time keeping their heads turned to the front to watch and make sure that Menges wasn't about to come galloping down on them from out of a pillar of dust.

'You men don't say much,' Crow commented.

'Sir?' said Stotter, the younger of the two.

'Keep your mouths shut, don't you? Like all the men in this unit.'

'Guess so, Sir,' muttered Baxter. 'Captain says that gossip gives us away to Indians.'

'Jesus,' grinned Crow, wiping away the mask of sand from his mouth and eyes. 'Comin' in like this he might as well have bands and bugles and drums. Every Sioux for fifty miles around'll know where we're goin' and what we aim to do there.'

'Don't that make the plan kind of .?..' Stotter's mouth closed and the words ran away into the heat of the day.

'Dangerous? Yes, I figure you could say that, Trooper. But maybe the Captain knows something we don't.'

Both men finally turned from the front to look at him, their eyes rimmed with dust, sweat staining the armpits and bellies of their blue shirts.

Neither of them framed the question that hung on both their lips and Crow shook his head in disgust. 'Yeah, maybe,' he said quietly, letting the stallion ease its way back to the rear of the patrol.

At a little after three Menges halted the column again and called Crow forwards with Sergeant McLaglen, both men joining him where he lay stretched out in the shade of a clump of bushes, his shirt open to the navel, panting in the warm sun.

'Nearly there,' he said, motioning for them to sit down.

'The camp, Sir?' asked McLaglen, taking a swig of water from his canteen and spitting it out where it puddle the dust into mud for a moment until it vanished back into dust again.

'Right, Sergeant. We're goin' to hit those red bastards where it really hurts. Should be mainly women and brats there. We can wipe them out. In and out, fast.' He drew his forty-five caliber Colt and stabbed at the air with it in illustration. 'In... and... out...'

'All of us, Sir?' asked Crow.

'I'm not a fool, Mister, and don't try to make me so in front of the Sergeant. Of course there'll be back-up. And you will be it. Take four troopers.'

'Four?' Crow wasn't able to hide his surprise. Four men was worse than useless.

There was a long silence and Crow knew that he'd said the wrong thing: A small lizard darted forwards and scampered into the shade of his left boot, nestling for a moment in the coolness. His face without expression Crow shifted his foot bringing down the heel on the frail little creature, crushing it. Snapping the thin bones and pulping it into the dirt.

Menges spoke slowly, face flushed, eyes flicking from side to side, not looking directly at Crow.

'You questionin' my order, Mister?'

'No Sir. Just checkin' to make sure I heard you right when you said you wanted the back-up to be just me and four Troopers. That was what you said, Sir?'

McLaglen coughed nervously and picked up a couple of pebbles tossing them from hand to hand. The Captain lay back and stared up at the blue bowl of the sky rolling on over them. Crow noticed that Menges's fingers were working and knotting, right hand against left. As though they were fighting against each other.

Tour, Mister Crow?'

'That's what you said, Captain.'

'Then that's what I meant. You agree?' Crow didn't answer. Menges shifted his gaze to McLaglen who also looked away. 'Well, I guess you don't disagree. You stay here with four men. Rear four of the column. I'm goin' in with the rest and we're goin' to hit that camp with just about everythin' we got.'

'How will I know whether you need me and my relief force... Sir?' asked Crow, exposing yet another gap in the planning.

'What?' Crow opened his mouth to repeat what he said but Menges sat up and waved an irritable finger at him. 'I heard you, Mister. I'm not deaf. If you get word from me to come then you come. I'll send you a galloper. Otherwise stay where you are and prepare to cover us if we need to move out fast and hard. Clear?'

'I'm not to follow you in unless you send me word?'

'You read me good, Mister Crow. Glad about that. Good to know you're fightin' keen to get at the Sioux. Even though I'm sure you'd be happier back with my wife at the camp.'

With that parting shot he dismissed them, the Sergeant walking off with Crow, barely able to contain his anger, stalking stiff-legged like a puma looking for a fight.

'Why didn't you bust the son of a bitch in the mouth, Sir?' he asked, as soon as they were out of earshot of Menges. 'I'd have backed your word. Or simply gunned him down. Nobody would have spoken against you, except maybe some of the ass-lickers like Simpson. We could have settled with him at the same time.'

Crow shook his head. 'I heard someone say lately about there bein' a time to love and a time to kill. Somethin' like that. I'm a patient man, Sergeant.'

'Seems to me that it goes beyond patience...' said McLaglen, turning his back deliberately.

Crow didn't raise his voice. 'You act like that with me, Sergeant, and when the time comes, and it will, then you'll be up there for an accountin' like the Captain.'

McLaglen turned again, hand dropping to his pistol in its covered holster. 'I don't take to that kind of threat,
Sir.'

The Sergeant didn't see quite how it happened but there was a blur of movement and the sawn-down scatter-gun was in Crow's right hand, the hammers clicking back.

Both barrels gaping at him like twin railroad tunnels.

The veteran had faced death a few times in his long career in the Cavalry. A drunk had sliced through his neck with a broken bottle back in Fort Reno, just missing the pulsing arteries under the ear. There had been a Shoshone war-lance back in 'fifty-four. A whore in Dallas who'd shot him in the top of the leg with an over-and-under derringer, aiming at his groin and just missing him. Lots of brushes with the wings of the angel of death.

But he knew that this was about as close as he'd ever stood to having the toes of his boots hanging over the edge of his grave. He felt very cold in the afternoon heat.

'Jesus, Crow,' he breathed, letting his fingers move from the butt of his own gun. 'I didn't mean nothin' by it...'

Crow shook his head, eyes chips of obsidian in the hollows of his face. 'There's cemeteries all across this land peopled by men who didn't mean nothin' by it,' he said, thumbing back on the hammers, sliding the gun back into the greased holster.

The column rode on a few minutes later, leaving Crow with Stotter and Baxter. And two other Troopers, call Cantwell and Clynes. Sitting their mounts and watching the dust move on across the grasslands, heading north to where Menges said he'd seen the camp of the Indians. There was nothing to do but sit and wait. Crow ordered the men to dismount and then personally checked all of their rifles and pistols, getting Clynes and Stotter to clean their handguns while they sat in the shade of some bushes.

Waiting.

A thousand feet above them there was a dot circling in the sky. Crow lay back, feeling the warmth of the grass striking through the clammy cold of his damp shirt, deciding that the bird was an eagle, flying southwards from the Canadian winter. He watched it as it rose and fell, great wings stretched out, riding a current of warm air.

Crow envied it the freedom, wondering whether maybe life in the Cavalry wasn't the answer to the problems that tore at his mind, creeping into his waking hours and sliding unbidden into his sleep. There had to be a solution to what he should do with his life. For years it had been Crow's thought that the Cavalry was the best way of using his strange skills and murderous moods. Channeling them into a kind of usefulness.

But lately it hadn't felt that way anymore. The angers rose in him, despite his attempts to deny them. It would only be a matter of time before it all happened again.

And it would start.

The running.

Hiding.

Killing.

No friends.

No enemies.

Alive.

They heard the first sound of shooting some seventy minutes after Menges and the sixteen men with him had vanished out of sight over the heat-shimmering horizon.

Crow sat up and took out the gold hunter, flicking open the gleaming case and checking the time.

'Hour and ten,' he said quietly. 'Mount up, men and let's get ready to move out.'

'Didn't the Captain say we was to wait for a galloper, Sir?' asked Baxter.

'Yes. But the man who lives is the one who covers the chances, best he can. If n the Oglala come over that nearest rise there at the charge, we got about eighty, ninety seconds to get movin' and keep them off. Man could waste half that and more just getting up in the damned saddle. You understand me, Trooper?'

The question was gently put, but Baxter flinched as if he'd been slapped.

'Sorry, Sir.'

'Some folks'd say "forget it", Trooper. I'm not one of those folks. I say remember it. Make sure your brain's done the work before you set your mouth flappin'.'

The five men sat quietly, listening to the distant crackle of rifle fire. It didn't sound very much like volleys of shooting from the Springfield rifles of their comrades. Crow was able, even at that distance, to pick out the sound of an occasional Winchester, and even the heavier noise of old muzzle-loaders. It was well-known that few of the Plains Indians had firearms. Perhaps as few as one in fifty.

But the more warlike the tribe, the more guns they had.

The local Oglala, under Crazy Horse, were very warlike indeed and it was reasonable to assume that they would have plenty of guns.

It was difficult to know what to do. If Crow stayed where he was it was quite possible that Menges and his whole command might be wiped out over the brow of the distant hill. With four men there wouldn't be a lot he could do.

But he had to try.

Cursing Menges under his breath for leaving him with such vague and useless orders, Crow stood in the stirrups.

The ridge ahead of him was about six hundred yards away, sloping gently upwards. From their position it was impossible to see over it. Somewhere beyond Menges and the rest of the small command were trapped. Crow didn't doubt that for a moment. He knew enough about the tactics of the Sioux to be sure that Crazy Horse or one of his lieutenants had set this one up and the Captain had gone blundering into it.

'Forward, ho!' he yelled heeling the stallion onwards, waving to the four Troopers to spread out on either side of him. 'Draw your pistols! Don't fire until I tell you!' The Cavalry holsters were clumsy and often stiff to open. In this sort of terrain the Indians could be on top of you and feathering half a dozen arrows into your body before you even drew your pistol. The shooting was still continuing ahead of them. That meant a sizable Sioux attack.

Crow wondered whether the Indians would be aware that he was around with his relief party, small though it was. He guessed that probably they would know.

Crow guessed right.

As they neared the top of the ridge, the Sioux appeared over the top. Crow's quick count made it around twenty of them. He didn't have much choice, drawing his scattergun.

'Charge!!!!'

'Fire at will!' Crow yelled, spurring his horse on towards the waiting Sioux. And they
were
mainly Sioux. Oglala. Crazy Horse's people. Painted and dressed for war, greeting the appearance of the tiny handful of pony soldiers galloping towards them with whoops and yelps of delight, scenting easy pickings.

'Get through 'em! Don't stop! Empty those guns and then draw your sabers! At 'em!!!'

It was rare for the soldiers to have to actually fight while still mounted. Normally they would slip from the saddles and every fourth man would be detailed to take charge of four horses while his comrades poured in a withering fire.

But this was not the case for Crow and his men. There were enough Oglala warriors to sweep right over them if they tried to dismount.

Seeing that they outnumbered the whites by four or five to one, the Indians didn't hesitate, racing towards them in a loose band, bunching up behind their leader. Crow's lips peeled back from his teeth in a mirthless grin at the sight.

One of the greatest strengths of the Sioux and the rest of the Plains Indians was their courage and their desire for the honor of striking the first blow against their most bitterly hated enemies. Yet it was also one of their greatest weaknesses.

In their wish to count coup by touching the whites, the braves frequently got in each other's way, making themselves easier targets for the Cavalry and rendering their own fire-power much less effective.

And that was what was happening.

Instead of being presented with a strung-out line of Indians, able to surround and swamp his own small command, Crow faced a helter-skelter mob, screaming and waving bows. One man nearly went down in the jostle, his pony stepping into a prairie dog's hole and lurching sideways sending the charge into even worse confusion.

Crow rarely permitted himself the luxury of opening the pages of the past but when he considered the group fights that he'd been involved in, it was always surprising how they became a fragmented mass of memories. It was as if the mirror of the scene had been shattered and all the myriad shards collected together in a jumble, each with a tiny piece of the truth imprinted on it, yet with no way of regaining a clear picture of what happened.