The Vigilante's Bride (22 page)

“Better bring your ropes and your rifles,” Luke said. “We’ve got to switch horses and get out of here.”

Red-skinned
cowboys
with braids and breezy, unbuttoned flies boosted six clumsy
Indians
onto Crow ponies for the ride back to the reservation. Wordlessly, the Crows watched the men from New Hope jounce bareback off into the night. When a heartfelt cussword floated back, they slapped their thighs and doubled over with laughter.

All except Little Turtle. The captain of the Dog Soldiers sighed and shook his head. Walking bowlegged, he limped back to the fire and sat down. His feet hurt.

The next morning Bugle’s nostrils flared wide and held. Once again, he rolled his eyes to the side. His rider was like a feather. Only the pressure of weight dead center in the middle of his back revealed the saddle held a man. The horse swung his head around. The stirrups flapped loose and empty at his sides, the rider’s legs dangling free.

Barely opening his lips, Bugle stretched his neck and nick-ered to Henry’s mare plodding beside him with lowered head. Peevishly, she flattened her ears and nipped at him. With a hop sideways he managed to get his muzzle away from her just in time. She was in a foul mood herself that morning. Someone had braided her tail.

Out on the range that night, Haldane stretched his long legs toward the fire and sipped his coffee, staring into the flames, going over in his mind the events that had followed an odd conversation with Axel. Funny, he thought, the way Axel had reined him in after the trip to Billings.

Granville Stuart showing up with his Committee and escorting Sullivan and Miss McCarthy home worried Axel as nothing else had.

The plan had been for him to pick Sullivan off on the range – from a distance, nice and clean – and then leave for Kansas.

But then Axel changed his mind, saying no just ten minutes after the sheriff had left. Tucker had made him nervous, all right. In fact, from what Haldane had seen, Bart Axel’s hands shook when the sheriff started nosing around Haldane’s big Appaloosa like he’d never seen a spotted horse before, talking about murder and attempted murder and what a coincidence it was that two of the three attempts on Sullivan’s life – the beating and the gunfight in town – had been by X-Bar-L hands. “And whose horse did you say this is, Mr. Axel?”

Absently, Haldane scratched the mat of straw-colored fuzz covering his arms and the backs of his hands. Never could tell about people. Haldane yawned and slung the dregs of his coffee into the fire. Spreading his bedroll, he rolled onto his side and was asleep in minutes.

The next morning they were packed and ready to head out when Wesley rode in fast. He’d been out scouting the New Hope party, making sure they were still back there. With Treasure Canyon coming up, losing them was the last thing Haldane wanted.

“Haldane,” Wesley called, jumping off his horse. “Something strange going on back there.”

“Like what?”

“They were eatin’ rabbits for breakfast.”

Haldane looked at him in surprise. “So Sullivan likes a little meat with his flapjacks. What’s strange about that?”

Wesley shook his head. “Weren’t no flapjacks. No coffee, neither. Just berries and rabbits on a stick.”

Haldane wrinkled his nose. The stink of rabbits cooking that early could make a man puke. “What’d you get that close for, anyway?”

“Figured I’d maybe pick up something we need to know. Then, just as it’s getting light, I see three of ’em go into the woods. They were back in five minutes, I swear, with a whole armful of dead rabbits – and I never heard a shot.”

“Look,” Haldane said, “I don’t care what they eat or
if
they eat.” He massaged his midsection. “I got a weak enough stomach as it is, and you ain’t making it one bit better.”

Wesley bristled. “I’m just doing my job. You don’t like it, you send someone else. And another thing – you know how Sullivan babies that big horse of his? Well, those horses were saddled and ready to go with daylight still an hour off. I bet they ain’t been unsaddled since yesterday.” With that, Wesley stomped off.

Haldane pursed his lips thoughtfully.
Saddled all night? Now
that
was strange.

CHAPTER
19

“They’ve spotted us, “ Axel said in a low voice, looking straight ahead.

Side by side, the two men rode through the Crow reservation ahead of the New Hope herd. From the moment they’d entered the ravine, both had been alert for Indians.

Uneasy in this barren landscape, Clete’s hand slid across and closed around his pistol. On both sides, menacing dark cliffs dropped like slate waterfalls to the canyon floor. Nothing but rock and stone and sagebrush, the eerie silence broken only by the clopping of their horses and the whispering of trapped wind as it funneled through the canyon. Clete’s eyes darted. Not an Indian in sight.

“I don’t see them,” he said.

“Didn’t see them the day you jumped Sullivan, either,” Axel said, “but they saw you. Most likely, what’s up there is a scouting party, wondering why we’re here, so forget about pulling your gun. If they meant to kill us, they would have by now.”

“How many are there?” Sweat beaded Wade’s forehead.

“Half a dozen. Probably more. Knowing Injuns, there’s probably three times that many up there. Play this one nice and easy, you hear? Because one way or another, we’re going through.” Axel rode silently for a minute, his mind working.

“Tell you what. Go back and stop the herd, let the cattle graze where they are. Maybe the best thing is to go see Black Otter himself.”

“Not me.”

“Then you better go on ahead.” Bart gave a nasty laugh.

“I’m going to call our red friends down, and I don’t think they like you.”

Clete jerked the reins. He had no desire to powwow with Crows, not then, not ever. Clucking his tongue, he kicked his horse into a trot back in the other direction to hold up the herd.

Axel squared his shoulders and sat tall in the saddle. He cupped his mouth and shouted up at the empty rocks above.

“Black Otter, where’s Black Otter?”

On the ridge above the canyon, Luke grabbed Tom Cos-grove’s shoulder and pushed him down. “Keep that yellow head of yours out of sight. He thinks we’re Crows.” Frowning, he turned to the young brave at his side. “Curly Bear, it seems Axel wants to see your chief.”

The brave nodded, then stepped into the open. Like most of the Crow men, Curly Bear was over six feet tall. In buckskins, silhouetted on top of the cliff, the big Indian was an impressive sight. He raised his arm. “Ho,” he called, pointing to a flat area near the end of the canyon.

By the time Axel got to the spot, Curly Bear was already there. Without a word, the Indian turned his pony and galloped over a small rise for the forest beyond, leaving Bart Axel sitting on his horse. Axel had no choice but to follow.

Curly Bear reached over and seized the bridle of Bart’s horse, slowing him to a walk through the camp. He stopped, indicating the large lodge on their right. On a tripod behind Black Otter’s lodge hung the chief ’s red and blue war shield, painted with zigzag lines and a running bear. Made of shrunken buffalo hide, it was handsome and smooth and tough enough to stop an arrow or a bullet.

Standing inside, Black Otter gestured an open hand toward the pile of soft buffalo robes across from him. Three other lesser chiefs sat cross-legged around the fire.

Now that he was there, face-to-face with Black Otter, Bart hesitated, unsure quite how to begin. The Crows looked at him silently, expressionless, yet he had the distinct impression they’d been expecting him, been waiting for him.

It had been years since he’d seen Black Otter. For some reason, he remembered him as being a smaller man, a younger man. Certainly not this imposing Absaroka chief with the beautiful manners, towering over him in a buffalo-horn headdress. Axel stared at the lethal pair of horns curving from a close-fitting feathered cap and wondered why this man who had pledged “everlasting friendship” with his white brothers was wearing a war bonnet.

Bronze skin across jutting cheekbones was pulled taut by a heavy jaw. Pinpoints of light from the fire glowed blood red in the black of his eyes.

Axel cleared his throat, reminding himself to be careful. Black Otter had been a ferocious fighter. The scar on his face was a monument to that. Underestimating this man would be a grievous mistake. This chief was no fool. Though he could neither read nor write English, he was a keen thinker, a pretty fair philosopher, and as vindictive as they came.

Crows never forgot a wrong, and that worried Axel. He remembered a white trader – a blustery, big-nosed giant of a man from Canada – who once tricked a River Crow chief out of three horses, three potbellied ponies. He had the good sense to leave the territory. Before he did, the Canadian compounded his misfortune by leaving the chief ’s daughter with a half-white baby to raise.

Seven years later they found him – or pieces of him – in Louisiana, minus his scalp. From the hole in his chest, where his heart should have been, stuck the handle of a Crow knife. Axel shuddered. Louisiana. Fifteen hundred miles away.

In Black Otter’s lodge, Bart glanced over at the hatchet-faced chief in the headdress facing him. The points of the curved buffalo horns gleamed like ice picks in the firelight.

He tucked his legs under him, imitating the chief. So far, no one had spoken a word to him. Protocol required Black Otter to speak first, but Bart was in a hurry.

“I’m driving a herd through your land,” he said.

Black Otter stared back coldly for a moment, then nodded for him to continue.

Pretending to be exasperated, Bart let his hands fall heavily in his lap and shook his head. “Now, mind you, Chief, we did not drive them here. Strangest thing I ever saw. I was taking my cows to Wyoming and something spooked them at the river junction – a snake, most likely.” Axel gave him an ingratiating smile. “I’ll pay you, of course, to let us through.”

After a long pause, Black Otter said, “The cows you driving, they New Hope cows. Why you drive New Hope cows to Wyoming?”

Axel blinked in surprise. “Why . . . ah . . . they’re mine. I bought them from New Hope.”

The chief stared at him. Slowly, he shook his head.

Axel’s mind raced to come up with something better. Then he remembered. The chief couldn’t read.

“Yes, they are. I got the paper right here says they’re mine.” Axel fished inside his jacket for a leather folder and took out a newspaper column – the advertisement he had placed for a bride months before. He shook it out importantly. “There,” he said, handing it to the chief, “you can see for yourself.”

Black Otter stared at the meaningless black marks on the paper for a full minute, then solemnly handed it back.

It worked. Bart tucked the clipping back inside the folder and made a great show of replacing it in his jacket. “I’d like your approval to drive my herd through. Just this once, I promise.”

Black Otter said nothing.

Axel held up two fingers. “I give you two cows to let us pass.”

The chief spoke to the other men seated around the fire – short, guttural sounds, deep in his throat. He grunted and shook his head. Holding up both fists, Black Otter snapped his fingers open.

Ten!
Bart Axel swore under his breath. He’d hoped to get away with one, perhaps two at the most. The fool Indian had been around whites too long.

“Ten, it is,” he growled. With a little bow he started to rise. He had to get back to Clete and the men and get those steers moving.

Black Otter reached over and grasped his arm, pushing Axel back down. “You give me paper say so.”

A sheen of perspiration broke out on Axel’s forehead. “But no one would doubt Black Otter,” he said.

“No paper, you no drive herd. Soldiers say we steal them.”

Axel sighed. That did it. He didn’t dare put anything in writing about those cows. Or did he? Black Otter wouldn’t know. Out came the leather folder again and a stub of a pencil. Axel scribbled on the back of an envelope, then signed his name with a flourish and a jab of the pencil. He handed the envelope to the chief, saying, “This is a legal bill of sale. It says that I, Bart Axel, give you ten cows in return for permission to cross your land.”

Black Otter turned the paper over in his hand and nodded. “Good. We will feast.”

Axel watched the chief rise, cross the dirt floor, and disappear into the long entryway leading outdoors. Apparently, the Indian had gone outside to get Axel an escort. It had been easier than he’d thought.

Axel looked around the earthen lodge. Over forty feet across, the floor had been dug out a few feet in from the walls, leaving a wide shelf for seats running around the outer edge. The air was thick and warm, not smoky at all. A constant current of fresh air drawn through the vestibule by the fire carried the haze up and out the smoke hole in the top.

Outside the lodge, Black Otter’s hand closed on his son’s shoulder as Two Leggings chased by, playing a game with his friends. He led him behind the lodge. Standing next to the tripod holding his shield, he handed the boy the envelope.

“Read this to me,” he said in Crow.

Two Leggings ran his finger under each word. He grinned and looked up at his father.

“It no say Iron Hair give me cows?” the chief asked.

His son shook his head.

“What it say?”

Two Leggings read aloud:

“When the moon comes up, and the sun goes down, Sullivan, the cowboy rides to town.

Bang! Bang! Sullivan, Sullivan!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Is silly song we sing in school to tease Light Eyes,” Two Leggings said and shrugged.

“As I thought. Iron Hair lies to me.” Black Otter stared at the paper and then back at Two Leggings. “Sullivan your friend. You not ever sing that song again.”

The wide forehead of the chief of all the Absarokas dug into deep lines, and an unforgiving bitterness settled around his mouth. The white man had made a fool of him. Three times he clapped his hands and shouted. Every brave within earshot ran to the chief. As Black Otter spoke, the men’s dark eyes began to shine. The chieflaid a finger across his lips and pointed to his lodge.

In minutes, dozens of braves with bows and arrows and spears and rifles slipped out of the village. Many of them squatted beside their ponies before they mounted, scooped their fingers through the black earth, and dragged broad dark stripes down both cheeks.

Fighting off a wave of nausea, Axel started to rise. “I must leave now,” he said. He felt a little green. Waving his hand, he refused another gourd full of pemmican. His mustache was oily and plastered around his mouth, with buffalo grease covering his lips and hands. The dried raw meat and crushed berries were glued together with layers of melted fat and marrow and then poured into animal bladders.

Axel shuddered. Nasty stuff. Only sheer willpower and a herd of cattle marooned in Indian territory had enabled him to swallow it and keep it down. And he wasn’t too sure about the latter. He averted his eyes from the heaping gourd. It made his insides churn just to look at it.

For nearly an hour, the men sat there, feasting, celebrating their agreement about the cows, Axel blatantly flattering the chief and pretending great interest in the Crow Nation, praising its “achievements,” as he called them, biding his time until he could leave and get the cattle moving south for Wyoming.

Black Otter munched his food with gusto and smiled at Axel. Four pretty girls in soft, fringed dresses and high moccasins padded around silently, waiting on them. For reasons Axel didn’t understand, the chief had kept him there in the lodge, talking, as if stalling for time.

Axel climbed unsteadily to his feet, determined to leave. “Let’s go get your cows, Chief,” he said.