Herne rolled over on to his side, his hand pulling the worn end of thin blanket above his shoulder. Underneath him the straw of the mattress was uneven and coarse. In that second between sleeping and waking there was someone lying there beside him but it passed and he knew it had been a dream.
Again.
Louise.
How long did it take to forget a young wife?
Six years was not enough.
Herne forced his eyes open. The beginnings of daylight slid weakly between the cracks between the boards and filtered through the rough sacking that was tacked over the window.
He rubbed his eyes, stretched, coughed.
He thought of Rachel Fairfax. That last fall in Powderville she had looked at him with her green eyes and touched him with her warm hand and said for him to ride back. As different from Louise as chalk was from cheese. Older. More rounded. Bolder. Come back, she had said and instead Herne had ridden away from the newly forming snow line and on into the Dakotas.
His fortieth year.
Alone.
His horse and his gun: that was the way it was.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and before his feet could touch the floor his senses sang with a new alertness. He inclined his head, listened. Yes, there it was again. Like a giant cat he stood and stepped towards the head of the bed, slid the Colt .45 from its holster. Waited: tense: nerves on a hair trigger.
The dirt outside the shack shifted once more. Most men would not have noticed—but most men weren’t Herne. Whoever it was was doing his damnedest to move as quietly as he could and he was doing pretty damned well.
Herne held his thumb tight against the hammer of his pistol, not cocking it for fear whoever was outside would hear the triple click. Shadow filled in the small spaces between the planking of the wall alongside the door.
Herne lifted his gun arm.
The wooden latch lifted.
Slow as a snake in sunshine the door eased back.
‘In!’
Herne kicked the door back and leaped into the space, jamming the barrel of the Colt forward.
‘Inside! Fast!’
He grabbed the man’s buckskin shirt with his free hand and dragged him into the shack, throwing him back against the side wall.
‘The gun! Drop it!’
The short-barreled Colt Peacemaker hit the ground and spun in a slow circle.
‘Now talk fast!’
The man ran his tongue round his bewhiskered mouth a couple of times, never taking his eyes off the gun in Herne’s hand. Then he nodded slowly and said in a husky voice: ‘You sure you don’t want t’pull your pants on over them long Johns first? Man’s likely to catch himself a cold this hour of the day otherwise.’
‘Say your business an’ I’ll attend to mine.’
The man set his head to one side, as if sizing Herne up. He seemed less worried at being held at the end of Herne’s Colt than he had any right.
‘Maybe they’s the same. Your business an’ mine, that is.’
‘That ain’t likely.’ Herne snapped shortly.
‘You’re Herne, ain’t you? Jed Herne?’
‘Maybe.’
‘The one some folks call Herne the Hunter?’
‘So?’
‘So you’re the one they sent me in to get.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Tenth Cavalry at Fort Rice.’
A nerve started to tick at the side of Herne’s left temple.
‘Keep talkin’.’
‘You sure you don’t want to get dressed? It...’
Herne took half a pace forward: ‘I said, talk!’
‘Okay.’ He brushed the stray hairs of his drooping grayish mustache from his upper lip. ‘Got a job for you. That is, unless you’re already on somebody’s pay roll.’
‘I’m listenin’.’
‘You worked as a scout for the army agin the Apache some years back, didn’t you? Ran into Micky Free?’
‘What of it?’
The man shrugged. ‘Words gets passed around. Names stick in the back of the mind. Month or so back I heard tell you was in the Dakotas. Somethin’ to do with some hold-up gang. When the Tenth needed another man fast, I suggested your name.’ He wrinkled his face, narrowing his eyes. ‘Here I am.’
Herne released the hammer of the Colt, but kept the gun pointing straight at the man’s chest.
‘Seems a strange way to ask a man if’n he wants a job. Sneakin’ up on him before he’s likely awake with a gun in your hand.’
The man grinned: ‘Wanted to check if you was as good as they said you was. You hadn’t heard me then you wouldn’t have been no good with no Oglala Sioux.’
Herne looked at him closely. The skin above his beard and mustache was deeply tanned and weather-beaten, like the cracked rind of a fruit. He was four or so inches less than six feet and didn’t seem to weigh more than a hundred and forty, fifty pounds. Herne set him at nearer fifty than forty years of age.
‘Name’s Carey.’
He put out his hand and after a moment’s hesitation, Herne shifted his Colt across and reached out his own right hand. Carey’s fingers were thin and strong: it was like grasping strips of sun-dried leather.
‘Okay,’ said Herne. ‘Guess now I’ll get those pants on.’
~*~
Carey was even older than Herne had guessed. Five years the wrong side of fifty. In the warmer weather it didn’t show, but when the cold snap set in and bit into his bones, you could hear his joints creaking clear across the stockade. He’d been working as a trapper and buffalo hunter, off and on as a scout for the army, ever since he was a mere boy. At no time had he met up with Herne the Hunter before, always missing him by a season or a hundred odd miles. But Carey knew Micky Free; Tom Horn and Al Seiber; he had known Kit Carson out in California.
Now he was getting past the more difficult and dangerous sides of his job. Come the following spring he reckoned the army would let him go. And Carey didn’t blame them. Time was when he could have got all the way into that shack and patted Herne on the head while the big man was still sleeping.
But that time had long passed.
Which was why the Camp Commander at Fort Rice had sent him to fetch Herne.
Carey sat across from Jed Herne in the McGibbons’ dining-room and chewed on the stringy ham, half of his teeth missing from his head. Herne sat opposite him and pushed a piece of com bread across his plate, sopping up the yolk of the eggs.
The dark-skinned waitress had blushed when Herne had come in, mumbled her thanks and hurried back to the kitchen. McGibbon, whose startled face had shown itself at the door the previous day, came out and told Herne that their breakfast was on the house but he didn’t seem all that pleased with what had happened.
He couldn’t afford to be—the army accounted for more than half of what little trade he had.
There was no one else in the dining-room.
‘That Chance,’ said Carey with his mouth still half-full of ham, ‘he’s meaner than a bear that’s walked into a swarm of bees. An’ that’s when he’s sober. From what you say he’d got a few under his belt.’
‘He had.’
‘Well,’ Carey paused to finger a particle of meat from between his teeth, ‘ordinarily I’d advise any man who crossed Chance Lattimer to keep well clear. But I guess you can take care of yourself. ’Sides, you ain’t goin’ to be at the Fort for long.’
Herne pushed the last wedge of bread into his mouth and picked up his coffee cup. ‘Fill me in.’
‘Band of Sioux. Oglala. Jumped the reservation south of here. Wakpala Agency. On the banks of the Missouri. Headed north. ’Bout twenty braves, women an’ a few kids.’
‘Hostile?’
‘Hell, no! Least, not yet they ain’t. There was the usual stuff ’bout supplies bein’ kept from ’em an’ sold to whites on the cheap. You know how it is.’
Herne nodded, both hands round his cup.
‘This chief. Morning Cloud. He said they weren’t staying for the white men to steal their food from under their noses. Led ’em out.’
‘An’ what now?’
‘Seems he’s changed his mind. Says he’ll lead ’em back.’
Herne raised an eyebrow: ‘Just like that?’
‘Commander at the Fort, rode out an’ talked him into it. Along with fifty or so men. Now Morning Cloud and his bunch are camped outside the stockade, waitin’ on an escort back.’ He pointed a bent finger at Herne. ‘That’s where you come in.’
Herne drained his cup. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Seems most things. Or maybe the Commander just wants to keep me around the Fort for reasons he ain’t said yet. But he wants someone to ride down with a detachment of cavalry, take the Indians in.’
‘That all?’
‘Yeah.’
Herne eased back in his chair. ‘Sure don’t seem like much of a job.’
Carey wiped his sleeve across his mouth and belched: ‘Sure don’t.’
~*~
The Fort lay in an area of flat plain north of the Cannonball river and west of the Missouri. The original outer stockade wall now only stood on two sides. A smaller, inner stockade surrounded the officers’ quarters and the post trader’s compound. The stables, barracks and guardhouse were unbounded to the east.
Herne followed Carey past the edge of the outer stockade, glancing over at the huddle of makeshift tenting which the army had erected for the Indians. They rode past the long barrack rooms of logs chinked with a mixture of sand and mud and lime and the open-fronted stables. A platoon of men were drilling in the square in front of the adobe-walled officers’ quarters.
The sun was burning as strongly as the day before and the men looked hot enough to drop. The officer’s commands fell flat on the dull, heavy air. From inside one of the buildings back to the right came the off-key notes of someone practicing a bugle call.
Carey dismounted and looped the end of his animal’s rein round the hitching pole in front of the doorway. Two sentries stood guard on either side of the door, looking bored.
‘Let’s go see the man,’ said Carey as Herne climbed down from the saddle.
Herne followed him into the partial shade of the adobe building, turning left and stopping outside a flat wooden door. Carey knocked and waited for a reply.
A young Lieutenant opened the door and looked at Carey and Herne. He was in his early twenties and his uniform looked as if it had that morning been delivered from a tailor in Washington. His neat mustache had recently been clipped; every hair was in place. Every button gleamed.
Herne noticed Carey look at the man as though he had slithered out from under a stone.
The Lieutenant marched away, boots sounding clipped on the floor. Carey walked through the open door and Herne followed him.
Colonel Phillip M. Bradley looked up from behind his desk. He was a sallow-cheeked man with a slight cast in his right eye. His lips were no more than a suggestion of the thinnest of lines beneath his nose. His mid-brown hair was receding at the temples and jutted out behind his ears.
The top buttons of his coat were unfastened and an elongated Adam’s apple hung over a white collarless shirt. The silver oak leaves on his epaulettes were dull and slightly tarnished.
The disfigured eye blinked.
‘You Herne?’ His voice sounded tired, as if he had been sitting there behind that desk or others like it for too long. It wouldn’t be long before he would be joining Carey in retirement and the young Lieutenant from West Point who had just left would be pushing for his post
‘Yes.’
Colonel Bradley hesitated, as if wondering whether the abrupt sound of Herne’s reply was worth a reprimand. But he let it pass.
‘You’ve served the United States army as a civilian scout before?’
‘Yes, Colonel. Forts Craig and Stanton, east of the Rio Grande.’
‘I know where the military installations of the Department of Texas are situated,’ the Colonel interrupted irritably.
Herne glanced at Carey, who looked away.
‘Fort Bowie, too. Under Major...’
Bradley waved Herne silent with a hand that was surprisingly smooth-looking and white. ‘Carey here’s told you what’s required?’
Herne nodded.
‘Lieutenant Patten will be in charge of the escorting party.’
It was Carey’s turn to glance at Herne and nod backwards in the direction of the door.
‘He’s newly stationed here from West Point and it will be good experience for him. Patten is heading for the top, a promising officer—at least…’ Bradley pushed some papers across his desk. ‘… he’s well-connected.’ The Colonel coughed hollowly into the back of one of his white hands. ‘But he hasn’t had experience with Indians. Of course, most of my men have, not with the Sioux but with the Apache. Like yourself, I daresay.’
Colonel Bradley looked up at Herne. ‘I shall expect you to help the Lieutenant in any way you can. Act as a liaison between him and the Indians if necessary. Above all make sure they get back to the agency peaceably.’
He spread his hands on the desk. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
Herne waited a couple of seconds. Then: ‘Yes, Colonel. You make yourself clear.’
‘Right. Carey will take care of your horse, find you a bunk. You can draw army ammunition if you wish. The Lieutenant will want to leave at first light.’ The hand waved dismissal. ‘That’s all.’
Herne turned on his heels and walked out with Carey following.
‘You don’t seem to think much of the star rating from West Point,’ observed Herne a few minutes later as they were unsaddling their mounts.
Carey hawked and spat on to the dusty ground where the ball of yellowish spittle rolled and clung to the thin dirt. ‘He may be awful good at polishing his buttons and buckles an’ passin’ examinations an’ marchin’ at the front of some fool parade, but I wouldn’t trust that boy t’catch my shit if’n he was standing underneath my ass!’
Herne lifted the saddle clear and set it on the ground. ‘Well, that sounds just fine. No wonder you was pleased to fetch me ’stead of goin’ yourself.’
Carey chuckled and spat some more.
‘Unless you got any objections, I reckon I’ll wander round to where they Sioux are camped. Have a word with Chief Morning Cloud.’
‘Suit yourself. But that’s what I’d do.’
Herne grinned. ‘Guess it must be okay, then. You want to come along?’
Carey shook his head. ‘Not me. I’ll take a rest out of this damned sun. You’re on the army payroll now, you’d best earn some money.’
Herne nodded and stroked a hand along his horse’s neck.
~*~
Morning Cloud sat cross-legged on the ground. His face was dark brown, almost wizened; his black hair was parted at the center and held down at the sides. He wore a buckskin shirt, the long collar and sleeves of which were decorated with a pattern of colored beads arranged into bars and boxes. The hair at the edges of the shirt had been left uncut. His breech cloth was decorated with alternating strips of colored material, red and green and blue and at its center a buffalo’s head had been worked in amber beads.
Beneath the breech cloth the Chief wore buckskin leggings and a pair of moccasins with the hair side turned outwards.
‘You are Chief Morning Cloud, renowned for wisdom amongst the Oglala Sioux.’
The Chief motioned for Herne to sit opposite him. He called to one of his braves, who returned with a long stemmed pipe, already lit. Morning Cloud drew on the pipe, letting the smoke drift slowly away and up towards the unrelieved blue of the sky.
He passed the pipe across to Herne, who accepted it with a small bow of the head. The bowl of the pipe was wide and deep, shaped into the form of a running buffalo; the horns, eyes and mouth were carved with perfect clarity.
‘My name is Herne. Among my people I am known as Herne the Hunter.’
The Chief nodded his head once. ‘My own people have for many seasons been known as hunters. Now there is nothing left for us to hunt. Nowhere for us to ride. The white man fences us in like cattle. Makes us live in cabins, in tents of canvas. Now we are hunters no longer. We are men of straw only.’
‘I know this and am sorry for it.’
Morning Cloud looked deep into Herne’s face. ‘I believe it to be so. But you, what do you hunt? The buffalo? The Indian?’
Herne hesitated, passed back the pipe. ‘I have hunted both,’ he agreed ‘I have hunted the Apache. He is a brave and clever warrior.’
‘That is true. And so is the Sioux.’
‘I know it. And none more so than the Oglala.’
Morning Cloud gave the single nod of his head again. ‘You are not hunting us now?’ he asked.
‘No. I am to lead you back to Wakpala, to the reservation.’
‘So,’ said Morning Cloud resignedly. ‘Back to the white man’s prison, where we will be starved and cheated once more.’
‘But you have given your word. You have agreed to take your people back in peace.’
The Chief drew on the pipe and passed it back to Herne. ‘I agreed to this because the leader of the soldiers showed me how strong he was. If I had ridden on all of my people would have been killed. So we go back.’ He gazed up at the sky. ‘Soon I shall die myself. It is of little matter.’
‘Morning Cloud will live many moons yet.’
The lie hung between them like smoke.
‘Did the Colonel say nothing about your treatment at the Agency?’ asked Herne.
‘He promised we would receive the food and blankets that were sent to us. But the white man’s promise is hollow. It comes only from the tongue, not the heart.’
Morning Cloud placed his fist on the left side of his shirt.
‘My promises to you are not hollow,’ said Herne. ‘I will ride with you. If your people are peaceful, nothing shall harm you. You have my word.’
The Chief looked at Herne but he was not seeing him. He was seeing a morning long past when he had been young and the grass had been fresh and green and buffalo had roamed the plains in vast herds.
For several minutes the two men sat in silence. From one of the tents a young child set up an agitated cry and then was silenced. The smell of wood smoke drifted by Herne’s nose. He could hear horses being ridden at the other side of the stockade.
When Morning Cloud spoke it was as if from a dream of another world. ‘You have given your word. I give mine. We shall ride with you in peace.’
Herne stood up. There were half a dozen young Sioux watching him from thirty yards away. A young squaw who was heavy with child sat before one of the tents, pounding grain inside a wooden bowl.
‘We shall leave with the rising of the sun.’
He turned slowly away and walked along the stockade, past its edge and back into the Fort.