The Tall Men (7 page)

The rising wind was behind Ben, whipping out of the northeast, driving hard past him, full toward the grove. He did not hear the firing until he was breaking clear of Ludlow’s Bend, almost atop the Timpas Creek timber. He had had sense enough to drop the black down below the river bluffs as he approached the camp. It was all that saved him from riding right up the rumps of the Sioux ponies.

With the flat, wind-buffeted report of the first rifle shot, he was off the big horse like a cat.

Ka-dih must still have been watching over his quarter-bred grandson for he had placed in the precise spot where Ben slid the black to a halt a heavy stand of riverbank willows. Tying the horse, and not worrying about him winding the Indian ponies, since the near gale force of the wind was dead away from the willows, he ran crouching forward to the edge of the leafless thicket.

The first look was all a man needed to show him he had bitten off a Texas-sized mouthful.

Up the streambed perhaps a hundred yards, directly opposite the grove and not over fifty paces from it, the hostiles were bedded in against the river bank. They had a clear field of fire into the little camp, impeded only by the outer fringe of trees and the hastily barricaded slatbed wagons. The return fire from the grove could only serve to prevent a frontal charge, since the red attackers were quite
comfortable behind five solid feet of yellow Arkansas bank clay. The hostiles, never in their conception of prairie warfare willing to accept casualties for no reason, could afford to take their time.

They were taking it.

There were nine of them, Ben counted; all dressed in the knee length, buffalo hide boots and wolfskin coats which were the standard Plains Indian winter garb. They were bareheaded, of course, some wearing copper braid ornaments, some only an eagle feather or two. Five of them had muzzle-loading trade muskets, the other four, only war bows or short buffalo lances. From the stark lack of feathers or other foofooraw in their attire, a man drew one quick conclusion. These boys were in business. They were not out to make social conquests.

Ben, accustomed as he was to the short, broadbodied physiques of the southern tribes, was at once struck with the size of the northern nomads. He had heard the Sioux were a tall people, but not
how
tall. There wasn’t a buck up that riverbed that would go half a hand under six feet, and several of them towered well over the two-yard mark.

Recovering from the first unpleasantness of having ridden, but for the sake of a lucky bend in the river, into this nest of six-foot red hornets, Ben’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

In the huddle of the Sioux ponies, standing rumpsto-wind beyond their darkfaced masters, he now counted ten mounts. With the belated correction, his scalp squeezed in and his hand tightened on the breech of his Henry carbine.

Somewhere out yonder, or maybe handclose in the willows around him, he had a missing Indian.

The thought had only formed, when he found him.

Upstream, beyond the entrenched Sioux, the left bank of the Arkansas built into a considerable bluff. Atop this prominence, silhouetted against the sleeting gray of the winter sky, stood the tenth Indian.

Unless the distance fooled you, he was not as tall as the others. He was dressed in black wolfskins from head to foot, with the scarlet slash of a Three Point Hudson’s Bay blanket shrouding his narrow shoulders and trailing to the snows behind him. And, by God, unless you didn’t know as much about Plains Indians as you thought you did—which right now wasn’t half as much as you
wished
you did—what he was doing up there, was praying!

But there could be no misreading the ramrod stiffness of his posture, nor the stock-still, outstretched appeal of the suppliant arms. To Ben, suddenly, there was something sinister about that Indian. Something about his black furs and his rail-thin motionlessness that got into a man like the other nine put together hadn’t done.

He shrugged off the chill, blaming the cut of the north wind for it. At least there was one thing damn certain about that religious redskin. If he was praying, it wasn’t for peace. When an Indian did that, his gun was always placed on the ground in front of him. In the upraised hands of this black-robed brother reposed a Henry Repeating Rifle as short and sweet and ugly as the one now getting sweated in his own shrinking grasp.

Well, no matter. Nine working at war and one praying for it, or not. A man knew what he had to do. And what he had to do was get through them and into that emigrant camp.

He had seven shots in the Henry. If he couldn’t get five of those bucks with that seven rounds, at
that peashooter range of not over a hundred yards, he was in the wrong business. Naturally, after that, the ball was over and the band could go home. The rest of them would be falling in on him like a rotten roof, and a man would have to figure his chances lay somewhere between how fast he could get back to the black and how slow the Sioux could scramble for their ponies. There wasn’t any use trying to guess it past there. He would only get the shakes and spoil his aim.

Ben got on his belly, moved his elbows around in the snow until he found firm ground under both of them. He wedged himself down solid, cheeked the Henry, lined up the first buck and squeezed off.

It was a head shot. The Indian never moved. He just buckled a little in the knees, eased gently forward into the bank, was out of the fight for keeps. He got two others through the body in as many seconds, then his luck and their surprise ran out together.

A freakish gust of wind boiled up the groundsnow between him and his running targets, obscuring the Sioux for a full five seconds. In that time they had made it to their ponies and were vaulting up on them. The air was still dancing with blown snow as he levered the last four shots into them.

A man feels things with his rifle. If he
knows
it. Ben knew that Henry from bent foresight to battered buttplate. He was just as sure his past four shots were wasted as he was certain his first three were center-ring, meat-in-the-pot, solid.

Going for the black, he shifted the empty carbine to his left hand, whipped out the Kwahadi knife with his right. It was too long after lunch to be fussing with tied reins. He went aboard the gelding like a charging grizzly swarming over a crippled buffalo
heifer. The Kwahadi blade slashed, the San Saba “Heeyahhh!” echoed hoarsely, and the race was on.

For the first forty jumps he guided the black with his knees, using his hands for a few other things that needed to be done before spring set in. Like transferring the knife to his clenched teeth, ramming the useless Henry into its saddle boot, sheathing the blade, refilling its vacated hand with a comforting fistful of case-hardened steel backstrap, worn grip screws, and well used walnut.

With the Colt out and ready for argument, a man felt better.

Even good enough for a twist in the saddle and an over-the-shoulder look at what he had behind him in the way of late afternoon callers.

Those boys were well mounted and making the most of the fact. They rode nearly as good as Kwahadis, which was to say the best in the Indian world, and had bigger, stronger horses under them than you generally saw with Kiowas or Comanches.

Well, if it was a horse race they wanted, they had picked a pretty good pony to beat. The black was a halfblood Spanish Arab from the best
caballaje
in Old Sonora. He was sixteen hands of horse and bred by a people who had been doing nothing else since they had dabbed a
riata
on the first of Cortez’s wandering, Old World purebreds. He could go a distance at a quarter-mile clip or a furlong in fifteen seconds flat, and not be looking up the crupper of any Indian scrub anywhere in between.

And right about now those big Sioux ponies were giving him as tight a chance as a white man would ever appreciate, to prove it.

Ben rode the race the only way he saw it.

He let them get close enough up on him so that
they could not cut across on him when he made his swing, then shot the black up the riverbank and headed him for the grove. Once up the bluff, he opened him out and let him run. Halfway to the grove he had his lead stretched to two hundred yards and was easing back in the saddle.

He didn’t ease very far back. Once again he had sudden cause to remember the tenth Indian. That buzzard in the black furs had gotten down off his blufftop and back to his mount just in nice time to see Ben make his swing for the grove. And to spur his fast steeldust pony across the open flat to cut him off.

Ben cursed, flattened the black’s belly to the snow. That red devil had him. All he could do was run for it and hope to Ka-dih he didn’t get winged with a rifle slug on the way. His own Colt was useless at the range and the Sioux had at least one hundred yards to lever that Henry into him before he could get up to where the handgun would hold and hit.

He cursed again, wondering why in God’s name those flat-hat fools in the grove didn’t open up and give him cover. The wonder was father to the wish. No more had he cursed, than somebody from the camp began cutting down on the Sioux horseman with a repeating rifle. Even as the hidden rifleman fired, Ben had time for a last angry thought. What the hell were the rest of them doing in there? They had all had guns, he had made sure of that before he left, even if he didn’t recall the repeater that was letting off now being among those guns.

Anger as quickly gave way to admiration.

Whoever was handling that repeater had his eye flat down the barrel and knew how to hold on an incoming bird. He saw the snow fly close in under
the racing feet of the Sioux pony on the first three shots, the mushrooming spurts beginning ten feet in front of the steeldust and walking dead into him. The fourth shot centered the pony, drilling him from brisket to breadbasket and dropping him, dead floundering, in his flying tracks. His rider rolled free, unhurt, leapt to his feet, ran doubled over for the shelter of his dying pony’s belly.

Seconds later, the black was crashing Ben through the fringe trees, into the center of the emigrant camp. He was out of the saddle on the first slide, pumping fresh brass into the Henry as he ran toward the bunched wagons and the fur-clad figure of the lone rifleman beneath them.

The next instant he was diving between the wheels and dropping beside him, his whole attention riveted on the dead pony out toward the river. He snapped three shots, all he had had time to load, at the trapped Indian, making him dive back behind his fallen mount, abandoning any immediate plans he had for rejoining his henchmen in their retreat to the Arkansas redoubt.

“Cover the bastard!” he rasped to his companion. “I’m empty!”

“The
bastard,
brother,” said the overcoated marksman quietly, “is covered. Load away.”

Ben gasped. He twisted around on his propping elbow. He met and dropped his mouth open to the familiar, white-toothed flash of the cynical smile.

It was Nella Torneau.

With the main force of the Sioux once more behind the banks of the Arkansas and pinned there by his and Nella’s rifles, Ben had time to get his answer to the lack of fire from the emigrant camp. The place was a shambles. What his first-chance glance around it didn’t tell him, the low voice of Nella Torneau did.

“They showed up about an hour ahead of you, mister,” she said. “They rode straight in and stopped their ponies about fifty yards out. That brave in the black skins is their leader. He put his rifle under his leg and held up both hands,
real peaceful.”

Ben chucked his head. This girl knew a thing or three about Indians. A man could tell it by the way she twisted her pretty lips around that “real peaceful,” like it was powdered with alum or straight saleratus. He let her go on, wanting her to get shut of it, knowing she’d feel better when she had.

“He jabbered in Injun for a spell. It wasn’t Caddo or Comanche. I couldn’t make it out, and of course none of my folks knew a Kiowa from a Kwahadi.”

Ben looked at her, wondering at her easy use of the southern tribe names. “Sioux,” he said. “Northern Oglala.”

She nodded, hurrying on. “Anyway, after a bit he gave up and said something to one of his little friends, big, darkfaced buck wearing a handful of black feathers. This one had been to school, a Reservation Injun for sure. He let us know in something
that was aimed at being English, and missed it pretty wide, that they meant us no harm and only wanted to come in and get warm; and to maybe share a cut or two of our mulemeat.

“Not knowing them, and all, my folks wanted to let them come along in. Right about there, my friend,” she straightened her mouth with the short nod, “is where yours truly headed for the wagons.”

“It figgers,” grunted Ben. “Go on.”

“I dug Baby, here, out of my bedroll and took over the meeting.” With the reference, she patted the beautifully engraved little Henry Repeater, giving Ben only time to wonder where she had gotten such a gun and what she was doing toting it in her personals, before concluding with a wry smile. “I reckon I raised hell and put a good-sized chunk under it. My folks folded and the big buck with the black feathers did likewise. At least he did after I’d thrown two shots under his pony’s belly.”

At this, Ben scowled. Damn the flat-hat fools. There was one thing they never learned. That was never to let any Indian outfit, made no difference how friendly they let on, come into your camp. Give them food, blankets, tobacco, anything you had—but never camp room.

“Where was you raised?” he said quietly to Nella Torneau.

“East Texas, mister. The Trinity River brakes.”

He nodded, threw a shot toward the riverbank, narrowly missing a careless Oglala head. “You seen your share of red-guts, I allow.”

“And more. My daddy had a little ranch outside Cold-spring down in San Jacinto County.”

“Know it,” Ben said “My pap drove cattle from
down that way before the war. Your pap runnin’ cows?”

“He was.
He let a bunch of Caddo bucks into the house one day. I wasn’t but three or four at the time—”

Again Ben nodded. In the old days Texas was full of Indian orphans. “I reckon I’ve heard the rest of it,” he said. “What’d the Sioux do jest now, when you called ’em?”

“Threw in, like I said,” she shrugged. “But holding a kicker like Injuns always do. They pulled around, went maybe ten yards toward the river, spun back and came for us.” She gestured, indicating the fringe of the grove to their left. “I got two,” she said.

Ben’s eyes, following her direction, widened. Past the trees in the snow, already partly buried by the drifting wind, lay two paint ponies. From beneath the drift mounding one of them, a buffalo hide boot protruded stiffly. Ten feet from the other a third, smaller drift was growing. From it protruded not only a boot but two red hands and the distorted half of a darkskinned face.

“I’m one up on you,” was all he said. “I got three.”

“It leaves seven,” said Nella.

“Agin two,” agreed Ben.

“Three,” corrected the girl. “Jed Bates is still alive.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Upstairs.” She poked the wagonbed above them with the Henry muzzle. “I got him bedded down in there after he was hit. He was still shooting up to a few minutes ago.”

“Bad hit for sure?”

“For sure. Arrow. Still in him. Clean through both lungs, six inches out the far side.”

“He’s done then.”

“And lucky,” said Nella, hardfaced.

“How was it with the others?” asked Ben gently.

“Bliss and Johnson and Miz Bates got it easy all down in the first rush. They got clean into us before I got my two and they pulled out. On the way they caught Tom Hudgkins with a lance. Miz Bliss and Tom’s wife got crazy. Ran out to where they’d gotten Tom. That skinny devil with the red blanket cut back and got them both. Clubbed them down, first, then shot them on the ground. I was empty, he got off before I could bring down on him.”

“That quick, eh girl?”

“No more than a minute, start to finish.”

“Reckon I better have a look at Bates,” said Ben. “Watch the river. And don’t let that son back of that down pony so much as take a deep breath, you hear? We got him right where we’re goin’ to be needin’ him.”

“For what?” said Nella bitterly.

“I allow you’ll see,” muttered Ben, moving for the wagon’s tailgate. “The bastards have took the first pot but they’ve played their red ace into a fair bad hole."

As the afternoon wore on, Ben’s red ace began to look less comforting. He had figured the Indian wouldn’t stand the intense cold of the pre-blizzard frost for more than a couple of hours. Would shortly be in the mood to make a deal for his freedom. But twilight was coming down and the Sioux hadn’t peeped.

There had been a short, shouted conversation between him and his followers back of the riverbank, once the trapped brave saw the white riflemen meant
to keep him pinned to his dead pony. After that the hours fled silently, with no sight or sound from any of the waiting Sioux. With dusk shrouding the grove and the snow at last beginning, Ben knew he had stretched his bluff for more than it was worth.

But weak or not, a man had to play his hand the way he held it. Ben played his by stepping suddenly out beyond the edge of the grove, calling to the braves behind the riverbank. As he did, he placed his rifle carefully on the ground before him, showing he meant to talk peace.

Shortly, the tall brave came up out of the riverbed, his black feathers slanting, flat out, on the drive of the bitter wind. He kept his gun in his hand but made no move to use it. In his guttural, thick-tongued English, he inquired of Ben what inspiration was stirring the white brother’s imagination.

Ben told him. The white brother would allow the red-blanket brave to leave his dead pony and go free. In return he and the brave white squaw would expect the same courtesy, in addition to a twenty-minute start and the loan of one of the mules. The other four longears and the fine shelter of the white man’s wagons would be generously left to the red brother.

The black feathered brave politely submitted that he was no fool. Let the white brother know that ten minutes after he arrived, their leader had opened the belly of his pony with his scalping knife and crawled into its warm paunch, had been since, and still was, quite comfortable. The snow was coming now, the darkness not far behind it. With such cover the red brother would take his chances of getting those mules and that fine, warm camp by his own devices. Was this all understandable to the white brother?

Ben admitted that it was, adding that when they came in to take the camp, they had better bring their best war charms with them. Some of them would be needing them for the long ride into the Land of the Shadows.

The big brave shouted back that now indeed everybody understood everybody. He was turning to drop back over the riverbank when the Sioux behind the dead pony called out to him. He stood listening to his leader’s instructions for a moment, shouted once more to Ben.

Red blanket wanted to know the name of the white brother in the grove. He saluted him as a brave warrior, and thought he must have some red blood in him by the way he fought and talked. He would like to know what name to remember him by, what tribe to credit for his courage.

Ben thought a moment, knowing they had him where the neckhair grew short. And knowing that barring more luck than any two white people could hope to hold in the face of seven stormbound, starving Sioux, he and the girl had maybe twenty minutes between them and that yellow sign he’d seen on that buffalo skull. The thought to the contrary, the grin which suddenly twisted his wide mouth was as quick and crazy as any Clint had ever managed.

“Sat-kan!”
he shouted back to the brave. In Kwahadi it meant just about the pungent value he presently placed on Ben Allison’s future—horse dung. And was as good a name as any other, present company considered.

“And your people?” called the tall Sioux.

By now, Ben was feeling the wildness that was in him. The dark streak he had always shared with Clint. That he had fought down all his life, and fought
it so hard down that not even Clint knew he had it in him. That feeling that grew in a man’s guts, low and cold and swift, when he knew he was backed into a one-way corner and had to kill his way out of it.

He stepped forward, over his rifle, the vacant, meaningless grin flashing darkly. Leaning down, he drew a ten-foot line in the snow, marking it with a broad series of wavering curves, like the track of a diamondback in deep dust. “The Snake That Travels Backwards!” he shouted to the watching Indian.
“The Tshaoh!”

“The Tshaoh!” echoed the big brave, clearly impressed.

“The Enemy People!”

“That’s right, you Throat Cutter bastard!” yelled Ben, still grinning.
“The Comanche!”

Stepping back, he picked up his rifle, waved it airily at the brave. “What’s your skinny friend in the Three Point blanket call hisse’f? Jest for the hell of it now,” he added. “Seein’s we’re all gittin’ so goddam cozy.”

“Tashunka Witko!” shouted the brave defiantly. “Remember it when you die.”

There would come a time when Ben would indeed remember that name. At the particular moment he was not quite ready to lie down and roll over, and he had never heard of Tashunka Witko.

“You’ve got a big mouth, brother!” With the return yell, he slipped back into the cottonwoods. “Let’s see you fill it with somethin’ worse than wind for a change!”

When he rejoined Nella, the wild grin was long gone, the pale eyes narrowed seriously.

“What the hell was
that
all about?” queried the gaunt-faced girl. “You can sure talk when you want
to, mister. I never heard such a mess of nothing in my life.
Now
where are we?”

“They’re funny” explained Ben quickly. “You give ’em a good fight, they think you’re great. No matter they mean to take your hair for your trouble.”

“Well,” said Nella caustically, “you’ve played your little red ace and had it called, flat. What do we do next? Pray for a long sunset and two troops of Union Calvalry?”

“Pray for ten minues of good shootin’ light,” grunted Ben abruptly. “And throw some of that leftover mulemeat in my hoss’s saddlebag.”

“You can’t mean to run for it, mister! We wouldn’t get out of the trees.”

“Mebbe I cain’t,” said Ben. “Nonetheless, I do. Jest the damn minute the snow’s heavy enough to cover our backsides on the way out, you hear? That’ll be likely about twenty seconds before they hit into us from all four sides. Git that meat into them saddlebags, goddam it. And rustle your blanket roll out’n the wagon and lace it on back of the saddle.”

Nella started out from under the wagon, moving quickly now, in wordless, whitefaced obedience. Suddenly she stopped.

“What about him?” she gestured toward the wagonbed above.

“He’s all took care of,” said Ben. “Git goin’.”

Nella looked at him narrowly. “Wait up, mister,” she demanded, face going hard again. “I thought you said we couldn’t move him and that to pull the arrow out would kill him.”

“That’s right,” Ben rasped.

“I’ll not leave him!” cried Nella defiantly. “He goes, or I stay.”

“He’s a’ready gone, ma’am—” He softened it a little, seeing how it struck into her.

“Thank God,” she breathed after a moment. Then, quietly. “Jed was a good man, he was good to me. And everybody. He just didn’t know Injuns—”

“He sure didn’t,” said Ben.

“I’ll get the meat and the blankets,” Nella murmured. He saw the white teeth bite into the tremble of the full lip. “And thanks, mister, for seeing to Jed. I’m beholden to you that he went easy.”

“Not quite, Miss Nella.”

The soft, sharp way Ben said it brought her around, low voiced and staring.

“What do you mean—?”

Ben pumped two shots into the dead pony out beyond the grove, threw another three into the darkness now rolling toward them from the river bank. He levered the last empty out, already reloading as he rolled to his feet and faced the girl.

“Nobody.” he said hoarsely, “goes easy agin a broadhead buffler arrer pulled out through his lungs, barbs backwards.”