It was no trick to follow the large band of Sioux warriors as they made their way back to their village, a village Trace guessed to be located somewhere on the Powder River. They wasted little time, evidently intent upon returning to their women and children. They were not overly cautious, either—not even employing rear scouts to alert the band of any enemies that might be following. As a result, Trace was able to tail the band a little closer than he expected.
Sioux scouts weren’t the only riders he was watching for. He could not be sure that White Eagle wasn’t trailing the war party, too. He wouldn’t expect an eleven-year-old Snake boy to know the country—probably never having been as far east as the Bighorns. But then again, the kid appeared to be pretty smart, and he certainly had the spunk. He just might be determined enough to find the Sioux war party.
Trace would have made a more intense search for the boy if not for the fact that he had seen the white man in the Indians’ camp. He could not permit Blue Water’s killer to ride out of his sight, so he felt he had no choice but to follow the Sioux and hope he got to the white man before White Eagle attempted to.
Fearing no danger deep in their own territory, the Sioux, now led by Strong Bow, did not travel far the first day, making camp on the Belle Fourche with plenty of daylight left. There being little cover for concealment, Trace was forced to do most of his scouting of the camp on his belly, crawling through the grass. He managed to make a complete circle around the camp before darkness settled in, constantly searching for the white man in the black hat—but to no avail. There was no sign of the thin-faced white man anywhere. Trace began to experience a nagging fear that the man had parted with his Sioux friends somewhere back along the trail. But how could he have turned off the trail without being seen by Trace? Unless, Trace realized, he had left the camp before the Sioux even started for the Powder River country. The more he thought about it, the more worried he became. He had to be sure, though. He couldn’t go riding all over the territory like a horse without a halter, hoping to stumble upon the white man. He had to know for sure that the man he searched for was no longer with the Sioux, so he decided to ride on ahead of the Indians and wait for them to start out in the morning. The trail they were taking to the Powder was fairly obvious, used quite often by many bands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. He would find a spot where he could watch the whole band as it filed by. If the white man was still with them, Trace would surely see him.
The place he picked was a narrow draw the trail passed through as it led up from the Belle Fourche. Perched high up on the side of the draw, Trace waited, lying close to the ground behind a screen of spindly scrubs. By the time the morning sun had begun to ingest the night chill, the advance scouts were already approaching the draw. Invisible to the unsuspecting warriors plodding below him, Trace looked hard at every man that passed. When the last few riders left the draw, rising to the plain beyond, Trace had the sinking feeling that he had wasted a whole day’s tracking. There was no white man with the Indians.
Knowing that the man he hunted had evidently left the Sioux camp before it moved—and angry with himself for not discovering it when it happened—Trace lost no time in backtracking. As soon as it was safe, he left his hiding place and went back to the other side of the hill where his horse was hobbled. There was a strong sense of urgency about him as he urged the paint along. The possibility that he might never find the boy or the man who killed Blue Water weighed heavily on his mind. It was a big country—it could swallow up an eleven-year-old boy—and make a white man in a black hat damned hard to find.
With no clue to start with, there was nothing Trace could do but scout around the site of the Sioux camp back at the foot of the ridge. It didn’t help to know that he was relying heavily on pure luck, since there were hundreds of tracks left by the comings and goings of the Sioux warriors. But having no choice, and unwilling to give up, he began a careful study of the many trails around the former campsite.
He spent an entire morning studying various tracks. They told him many things—here, a warrior tied his favorite pony near his bedroll, instead of with the pony herd; here, a dozen hunters rode out to get meat; here, they returned, their ponies loaded with meat; here, a large party galloped through the camp—the tracks told him many things—but they did not tell him where a white man in a black hat rode out of the camp.
Resigned to the fact that he was getting nowhere, he paused to spend some serious speculation on the white man’s thinking.
Who could say where a man might decide to go? He thought back to where he had watched the camp from the ridge. If a lone rider had left the camp, heading for Fort Laramie, he would have passed close to the very ridge where Trace sat. Anyone riding off to the north or east would have also been seen easily from his position.
Perplexed for a moment, Trace rode halfway back up the ridge, almost to the exact spot he had watched from, and looked back over the abandoned campsite. The only part of the camp that could not be seen from high up on the ridge was the western edge, where the stream took a turn back to the north. The brush and trees were thick there, close to the water. It would have been possible for someone to slip down across the stream without being seen. It was a long shot, but he had run out of options. So he rode back down the ridge and began a careful search of the creekbank.
As before, he discovered many tracks leading back and forth to the camp, as well as several common paths worn through the brush. There were no clues that held any meaning, beyond the accounts of a typical campsite. He was about to determine his search a waste of time, when he crossed over the last little path to the stream and almost stepped in some evidence of some warrior’s successful bowel movement. He stepped to the side just in time to avoid fouling his moccasin. “Damn!” he uttered in disgust, and started to return to the path. Something stopped him, and he turned to take another look.
It was obvious that the man who had squatted here had made his way carefully through the brush to perform his toilet. The thing that caught Trace’s eye were the tracks leading away from the spot. There were broken branches and deep prints, like a man makes running. Why would a man squat, finish his business, then go charging straight through thick brush like a wild man? Had something scared him? Trace found no tracks that would support that thought. Deeply curious now, Trace made his way through the brush and small trees, following the tracks as they crossed the path and entered the bushes on the other side. Either something was after him, or he was after something, Trace thought. A few yards farther and he came to a spot where the brush was flattened, showing signs of a struggle, answering the question as to whether or not the man was chasing or being chased.
A thorough search of the area provided Trace with enough signs to construct a picture of what had happened there. The warrior performing his toilet had suddenly sighted an enemy of some kind and had immediately charged him, evidently overpowering his adversary. From the tracks nearby, it appeared that there had been a pony tied close to the path. Trace could imagine someone waiting in ambush, probably for a rider coming down the path. Whoever it was had been very careful about leaving any footprints. Trace could find none. The horses were a different matter, however, for he found various sets of hoofprints leading from the path. One of the horses was shod, no doubt a stolen army mount.
His scouting made him curious, but it offered no help to solve the puzzle. It told him nothing beyond the fact that someone had jumped someone else. He stood up and looked around him, exasperated, ready to admit that he had been whipped. Then he saw it. It was a plain, undecorated arrow lodged in a tree limb high up the trunk. It was the very plainness of the arrow that struck him—no designs, no tribal markings that he could see from the ground. He was aware of an increase in his pulse as he led his pony under the tree. By standing on his pony’s back, he could just reach the arrow. It only took a glance when he had it in his hand to know that it was his own. He had made it himself, fashioned the razor-sharp stone point, inserted the three black feathers to make it spin true. White Eagle had been the person lying in ambush!
Once again, the dire sense of urgency returned, and Trace scouted the area in the brush again, this time concentrating more on the downstream side. After studying numerous footprints leading to and from the water, he finally found the confirmation he searched for—one small moccasin print leading up from the stream toward the spot behind the berry bushes. The boy had led his horse into the brush. Scouting the place where White Eagle had been attacked, Trace was relieved to find no sign of blood. Maybe White Eagle was captured, not killed. He would hope for that, and assume it to be so. Although he had a vague picture of what had taken place there, there were too many unanswered questions for him to be certain. For lack of better evidence, he had to guess that White Eagle had made an attempt on someone’s life. Trace had to assume that it was the white man the boy had left to find. There were many tracks around the stream, but the only set that Trace could definitely follow were the prints from the shod horse.
There was still not much to go on, but Trace followed the shod horse from the stream, back to the camp. It took some time, but he was able to find the place where the horse was tethered while the owner slept nearby. From the small shallow holes in the ground, Trace determined that the owner of the horse had constructed one of the tentlike beds that Trace had seen from the top of the ridge. More like something a white man would fix for himself, Trace thought, and he became more and more convinced that he had found the trail of the man who had killed Blue Water—and now had captured his son. He was determined to follow the trail of the shod horse, wherever it led from that spot.
* * *
“Stop tormentin’ that young’un for a minute and git me some firewood,” Booth Dalton fumed. If Booth would let him, Charlie would pick at the Shoshoni boy until he killed him. Now the half-breed half-wit was entertaining himself by yanking on a rope tied around the boy’s neck. “This meat’ll be done in a minute or two, anyway.” This last statement seemed to catch Charlie’s attention and he dropped the rope, leaving it tied around White Eagle’s neck. Trussed up like a hog heading to market, the boy offered no threat of escape. Charlie favored him with a leering smile before he turned to fetch some more dead limbs for the fire. White Eagle met his stare defiantly, causing Charlie to chuckle delightedly.
“When you gon’ let me have him, Booth? Nobody’s gonna trade you anything for that little rat.” He looked back at White Eagle, and grinned, “Lemme skin him.”
Booth cocked his head to the side, gazing at White Eagle, a smirk upon his face. “How ’bout that, boy? You want me to let ol’ Charlie skin you? I will, by God, if you try to run away again.” The smirk faded from his face, replaced by anger at the boy’s blank expression. “Cain’t you speak no American, dammit?” Booth barked. When that, too, was met with no reaction from the boy, he growled to Charlie, “Tell him what I said . . . ’bout runnin’ away.”
White Eagle listened to Charlie’s translation of Booth’s warning. Through Charlie’s limited knowledge of Shoshoni and sign language, the boy got the meaning of Booth’s threat, but it did nothing to dampen his desire to escape. The blocky half-breed was dangerous; White Eagle knew Charlie would like nothing better than to amuse himself by torturing him. The white man wanted him alive for some other reason. White Eagle guessed that he wanted to make him a slave. Whatever the reason, the boy decided not to give Booth any trouble until he saw a real opportunity to strike. Then, he was as determined as ever to kill the man who had murdered his mother.
“Leave him be, Charlie. He’ll be worth somethin’ to the Gros Ventres,” Booth finally said. “That young’un might have had a Snake mama, but he looks more white than Injun. I’m thinkin’ we can pass him off as pure white, captured by the Snakes. Them Gros Ventres like white children.”
Booth had expressed his intention to visit the Gros Ventres a couple of times already, and it appeared he was serious about it. Charlie had hoped Booth would change his mind. He didn’t care for the idea of traveling into Gros Ventre country. Masquerading among the Sioux as a Sioux himself was bad enough. The Gros Ventres had an even stronger dislike for Flatheads. Besides, it was getting late in the year to be traveling that far north. It already felt like snow in the mountains—it was time to be holing up for winter.
“Gros Ventres already going to winter camps—maybe Missouri River, maybe Milk River. Too far north.” He turned to point toward the mountains, hoping to influence Booth’s thinking. “Too many mountains to cross.”
Booth’s thin lips slid back into a wry smile. “You ain’t afraid of a little snow, are you, Charlie?” Then just as quickly, the smile faded and he stated, “We’re goin’.”
* * *
White Eagle rode his spotted gray pony behind Booth Dalton’s large black horse with the U.S. brand burned in its rump. Sitting straight and defiant, his hands tied to a rawhide rope attached to Booth’s saddle, he swayed back and forth with the pony’s gentle walk. Behind him rode Charlie White Bull, leading two packhorses. They had traveled that way for two days, keeping the peaks of the Bighorns on their left, crossing the Powder River and going on until striking the Tongue.
The weather had suddenly turned colder, and already there was snow on the mountaintops. The boy would not complain, but he was secretly thankful when, after a cold day’s ride, Booth pulled a buffalo robe from one of the packs and placed it around White Eagle’s shoulders. “Gotta keep the merchandise from freezin’,” he said and winked at Charlie White Bull. The robe would serve to keep him warm as well as provide him with a bed at night.
After reaching the Tongue River, Booth followed it toward its confluence with the Yellowstone. It seemed that every mile they rode toward the north, the weather got colder and colder. And with it, Charlie complained more and more.
“Quit your griping,” Booth told him. “Look at that kid there—he ain’t complainin.’”
Charlie snorted his displeasure. “He cain’t complain. If he complains, I’ll cut his tongue out.” Never passing up an opportunity to harass the boy, he said, “Maybe I’d eat his tongue. I et a woman’s tongue one time, smoked it over a hot fire till it was plumb black—tasted like buffalo tongue.”
White Eagle gave no indication that he had heard Charlie’s ramblings. He was determined to give the simpleminded half-breed no satisfaction. The boy was not afraid. He was disappointed that his attempt on Booth’s life had been unsuccessful, but if they decided to kill him, he would die like a Shoshoni warrior, with no crying and no pleading for mercy. Even at his young age, life was not so precious to him that he would choose an existence as a slave over death. His one regret at this point was that he had not fought to the death with the other Shoshoni warriors when the Sioux attacked Broken Arm’s camp.
As one day piled upon the next, and they made their way north, White Eagle spent the long day’s ride thinking about the people he might never see again, and his Shoshoni family who were now all dead. Plodding along behind Booth Dalton’s black army mount, he would allow a tiny bit of regret to creep into his thoughts, wondering if he should have gone with Trace. It was a decision he could not question, he reminded himself, as it was his duty to avenge the murders of his mother and grandfather.
Thoughts of escape never left his mind for very long, but Booth and Charlie kept such a close eye on him that there had been no opportunity. And at night, he was always tied securely. Near the end of his first day of captivity, he had tried to make a run for his life while crossing the Powder. Thinking the rope that bound his hands was looped loosely around Booth’s saddlehorn, White Eagle kicked his pony hard when he was in the middle of the current, yanking at the rope at the same time. The pony responded as he was bade, jerking away downstream. But the rope was tied more securely than White Eagle suspected. As a result, the boy was wrenched from his pony’s back and landed in the chilled waters of the river.
Instead of anger, Booth’s reaction to the attempted escape was amusement—especially when he saw the predicament in which the boy’s action had placed him. To teach White Eagle a lesson, Booth turned the big black stallion’s head upstream and plunged along in the shallow water, dragging the flailing, sputtering boy behind him. Charlie had joined in the fun, splashing along behind Booth, packhorses in tow, yelling and laughing. Before the two had satisfied their impulsive entertainment, White Eagle had been dragged, half-drowned, for over a quarter of a mile in the cold water. The boy had decided after that experience that he would bide his time, waiting for a more promising opportunity. Without knowing it, Booth had purchased some valuable time for himself with his own cruel amusement at White Eagle’s expense. The extended time spent in the shallow waters of the river effectively covered his trail.
A full day before reaching the mouth of the river, the morning clouds tumbled over the Bighorns, heavy and gray. Before noon, the first snowflakes began to fall. By evening, when the Yellowstone was first sighted, there was a half foot of snow on the ground and the storm had intensified, causing the travelers to seek shelter for the night.
* * *
A day and a half behind and to the east of the two renegades and their Shoshoni captive, Trace McCall looked up at the leaden skies, cursing the timing of the first real snow of the season. He had followed the trail left by five horses—one of which was shod—until it led to a crossing of the Powder River. There the trail ended. He scoured the banks of the river on both sides, looking for the point where they had left the water, but he could find no tracks for a hundred yards in either direction.
With no earthly notion as to the possible destination of the party he followed, he could not even hazard a guess on which way to search—upstream or down. For no particular reason, he decided to ride downstream, and after about two miles’ ride, he came upon a crossing where many horses had forded the river. Intermingled with the hundreds of other hoofprints, he found several prints from shod horses. It was obviously a frequently used crossing, and it was possible that White Eagle’s captors had crossed there, too. However, a few minutes’ study told him that the tracks were too old to be the horses he was looking for.
Disappointed and discouraged, he had crossed over to the other side of the river and turned back upstream, searching the bank carefully. Ignoring the feeling of urgency to catch up with the white man on the heavy army mount, he forced himself to take his time so as not to overlook any sign. It had seemed apparent to him that the man he followed had taken great pains to hide his trail. For what reason, Trace had no clue. He was certain the man could not be aware of Trace’s existence. The fact that he had slipped out of the Sioux camp unobserved might have indicated that he was possibly covering his trail so his Sioux friends couldn’t follow him. A renegade like that, maybe he was just in the habit of covering his trail—Trace could only guess. The fact of the matter was that the man was increasing the distance between them with every hour Trace spent searching these riverbanks.
He had worked his way back to the point where he had first lost the trail when darkness caught him and he was forced to make camp. He didn’t spend a great deal of time looking for a campsite, since he felt certain there was no one but him within miles. Settling for the first spot that offered plenty of grass for his horses, he made a fire beside a fallen tree, using the trunk to shelter him from a cold wind that had risen at sundown. After a supper of buffalo jerky and coffee—with plenty of wood to feed his fire—he settled in for the night.
The first sight that met his eyes when he awakened the next morning was his paint pony, gazing forlornly at him, a white frosting of snow covering the pony’s ears and mane. Dammit it to hell, he thought, as he threw back the heavy buffalo robe and peered up at the sky. Looking around him, he was dismayed to find a blanket of snow already covering the riverbank. He got to his feet and shook the snow from his hair, scanning the silent cottonwoods along the bank, their leaves still and muffled by huge wet flakes as big as silver dollars floating down from the gray ceiling.
A feeling of despair swept through him as he stood there contemplating the impossible task now presented to him. How could he hope to find the trail under the snow? At that moment, he was stung by a reality that he was reluctant to admit—he had been beaten. His heart filled with remorse. He sat down by the fire thinking about the boy and what it must be like for him. Those thoughts served to rekindle his intense passion to avenge the murder of the boy’s mother, causing a deep frustration such as he had never known.
With a morbid feeling that he was now reduced to stumbling around in a trackless world of white, hoping to chance upon the party he searched for, he nevertheless broke camp and started upstream. With no trail to follow, he had to rely on lucky guesses. And since any tracks that he might have found were now hidden under the snow, he found it difficult to feel lucky. With any direction as good as another at this point, he decided to follow the Powder north, hoping that the white man had done the same. Still determined, he urged his horses on. Looking back over the way he had come, he noticed that the falling snow was already beginning to cover his own trail.
* * *
“Damn, Booth, I told you snow was coming.” Charlie White Bull pulled his robe over his head as he hunched over in the saddle. “We’ll freeze our balls off if we don’t git outta this cold.”
“Well, where the hell are we gonna git outten it?” Booth shot back impatiently. He was as cold as Charlie and tired of hearing the half-breed complain about it. “We cain’t just flop down in the snow and wait for spring, dammit. We got to keep movin’ till we find someplace to hole up.” What Booth hoped to find was a friendly tribe in winter camp, some group of Indians that wasn’t acquainted with his reputation.