THE MEAL WAS surprisingly good, venison steaks with sweet potatoes and wild corn, followed by squash drenched in some kind of sweet sauce. It was served by an Indian woman Braddock treated with a casually proprietary air. The trader had reverted back to his high-flown mode of speech, and kept up a steady flow of conversation as they ate. Mostly it was local gossip, interspersed with false-sounding promises to convert a section of the trading post to a chapel so that Father Bartholomew should have a permanent building in which to preach his innocent gospel. It all sounded false to Azul, but the preacher appeared to take the trader at his word, discussing the spiritual condition of the ragged mob outside the walls with the fervency of a man blinded to the underside of human nature.
In the course of the discussion Azul learned a good deal of the condition of the territory. The few Arapaho still left in Wyoming were mostly peaceful, but since the Custer fight there had been groups of Sioux and Cheyenne drifting into the area. Some had settled around the post, presumably giving up the dream of freedom built by Sitting Bull and Red Cloud and the young war-chief, Crazy Horse, in favor of the relative security of becoming trading post Indians.
Others had established camps in the surrounding hills, preferring to retain their independence – albeit curtailed – and trade with Braddock. Others remained war-like. Driven from their ancestral hunting grounds first by the miners and then by the Army, they had come south to escape the Cavalry sweeps designed to clear the northern hills of hostiles. They raided isolated homesteads and solitary wagons. Their presence justified – according to Braddock – the fort-like appearance of the trading post.
Azul listened, glancing at the traps and mining tools hung along the wall and wondering how much Braddock had contributed to the hostilities.
He kept the thought to himself, more concerned with getting back his horse than with picking over the scabs of the past.
The meal ended. Braddock told the Indian woman to bring coffee and brandy. Rachel excused herself and left for her room. Soon after, Bartholomew followed her. The trader tilted the brandy bottle over his own glass, then passed it to Azul. The half-breed ignored it.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
Braddock stood up, taking the bottle and the glass with him: ‘Come with me.’
They went out through the kitchen, where the Indian woman was scouring pans with placid determination, and into an adjoining building. It was smaller than the saloon-cum-store, but far more comfortable. The windows were hidden behind thick blankets and a spill of buffalo hides covered the floor. There was a big fireplace built into one corner, three massive leather seats facing the dead logs. Braddock motioned Azul to sit down, drawing up a low wooden table on which he set the brandy.
‘I guess it’s time to do some horse tradin’,’ he grinned, exposing blackened teeth. ‘You smoke?’
Azul shook his head, and the trader went over to a high, glass-fronted cabinet set against the rear wall. He opened the glass and took out a brass-bound keg containing cheroots. He struck a match against the side and sucked the leaf-wrapped tube to life, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs so that he began to cough.
He came back to the cold fire and sat down, producing a bright red handkerchief to dab the tears from his eyes. When he was fully recovered he stuffed the patch of cloth back in his pocket and took a sip of brandy. His colorless eyes turned in Azul’s direction. ‘What’re you lookin’ for?’
The half-breed saw no point in hiding his own interests. Braddock had made it clear that he wanted something in return so it came down – quite literally – to horse trading.
‘A Sioux took my pony,’ said Azul. ‘A big gray. I want it back. The Sioux had three other ponies with him. All mustangs. I shot him through the left arm. You know anything about that?’
Braddock shrugged. ‘Whole lotta wounded Indians drifting through here nowadays, an’ I don’t see all of them. Wait.’
He stood up again, going back to the glass-fronted cabinet, this time to rummage through cupboards built in to the underside. He came out with a blue-covered tally book.
‘I got a recollection of a brave comin’ in the morning you arrived. He was a Sioux by the paint on his shirt. Had a bandage on his arm.’ He traced a dirty fingernail down the page of the tally book. ‘Yeah. Traded three mustangs for a parcel of Winchester shells an’ some likker.’
He snapped the book closed, frowning for a moment so that he resembled a blind gnome. Then: ‘I saw him. He was ridin’ a real big horse. Fine animal. I wanted to buy it, but he wasn’t havin’ none of that. Said he won the horse fair an’ he was fixin’ to keep it. Rode off maybe three hours before you arrived.’
‘Where’d he go?’ Azul sat forwards in the chair. ‘You know?’
‘I got an idea.’ Braddock grinned, stroking the side of his bulbous nose. ‘I can maybe even fix for you to meet him. But first you gotta listen to what I want.’
The sudden explosion of anger that clouded Azul’s face dropped the trader’s hand to his gun butt. ‘Don’t start nothin’,’ he snapped, ‘or you’ll never get your horse back. All I got to do is holler, an’ there’ll be half my men in here. Leavin’ you rope dancin’ while you wonder where the animal went.’
Azul saw the truth of the comment and forced himself to resume a semblance of calm: ‘I’m listening.’
‘Thought you’d see reason.’ Braddock nodded and topped his glass. ‘There’s a message I want delivered. I want you to take it.’
‘Why?’ Azul got curious. ‘You got men you could send. I don’t even know this territory.’
‘Exactly.’ The trader chuckled. ‘And no one knows you. Except me. Now I reckon that if I told the preacher an’ the local Army just who you are, they could find reason enough to hold you over a spell. That’d mean your horse was long gone before you got out. If you did.’
‘I’m not wanted here,’ said Azul; slowly.
‘Don’t matter,’ Braddock murmured. ‘Way things are right now, the Army’d hold you until they got word to let you go. That could take months. You fancy spending the next few weeks inside a Cavalry stockade?’
Azul shook his head. ‘What’s the deal?’
‘Like I said: I want you to deliver a message for me.’ Braddock filled his glass again. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult, an’ in return I’ll kit you with a new pony and a rifle for the journey. Meanwhile, I’ll try to get that horse of yours back.’
‘You got a deal.’ Azul shrugged, accepting the terms. ‘What’s the message?’
Braddock went on smiling. Like a toad surveying its patch of slimy pond. He reached inside his coat to fetch out a sheet of folded paper.
Spread it on the table.
‘Look.’ He tapped a chipped fingernail against a black circle with a small B inside, the rim touching the downslopes of an inked-in vee-shape. ‘This is where we are now. That’s the post.’ Across the line of the left-hand stroke of the vee there were crudely-drawn mountains, a second line marked in below the vee. Azul recognized the configuration of the valley. ‘You cross the river and follow on here.’
Braddock traced the course of a dotted line that ran from the encircled B to the wavy indication of the eastern hills. There was a childish outline of a pine tree behind the zig-zag line, then a solitary triangle, blacked-in hard enough that the paper was scored through. An arrow with a big N at the top pointed upwards.
‘You follow this trail,’ Braddock said. ‘Ride northeast until you reach the pass. You can’t miss it —there’s a boulder at the head shaped like an eagle’s beak. Go on through until you spot a real big pine tree, all blackened an’ dead, then turn north for the closest hill. It looks black on account of the. trees an’ the dirt. There’ll be a camp there. I’ll give you a sign that’ll get you in.’
‘Whose camp?’ Azul demanded.
‘It’s headed by a Sioux called Long Lance.’ Braddock reached for the bottle again. ‘You speak to him an’ no one else.’
He filled his glass, pausing as he drank. Azul said, ‘What’s the message?’
‘You tell him,’ said the trader, ‘that Braddock is ready. Just that: Braddock is ready.’
‘All right.’ Azul climbed to his feet. ‘When do I go?’
‘It’ll take you about two days to get there.’ Braddock tossed the stub of his cigar into the fireplace and rose to fetch another. ‘Why not leave tomorrow?’
Azul nodded. ‘Fine.’
The trader reached up to slap his back. ‘I knew we’d work it out. Now I’ll start lookin’ for that horse of yours.’
‘Suppose you don’t find it?’ The half-breed paused at the door.
‘Then you still ain’t lost much,’ smiled Braddock, unctuously. ‘You keep the pony I give you.’
Azul stepped through the door, closing it behind him.
The kerosene lanterns set at either end of the corridor running down the center of the sleeping quarters afforded the only light in the place, and when he stepped inside his tiny cubicle it was fully dark. The air was hot and musty, redolent of the unchanged bedding and the aftermath of the previous occupant. The half-breed came close to gagging on the smell, and his nerves tensed in protest at the claustrophobic smallness of the room.
More accustomed to sleeping under the open sky, he scraped the skimpy mattress from the bed and rolled it beneath his arm. Then he paced down the corridor to the far door and stepped out into the clean night air.
The fence surrounding the well seemed like a barrier, so he dropped his bedroll over after taking a long drink and then clambered over himself. There was grass on the far side, spreading in a long alley between the central buildings of the trading post and the low sheds he had seen earlier. It spread past the sheds to the wall of the stockade, shining silvery-green under the light of the waxing moon. He found a spot off from the main alley, sheltered by the wall of a low hut, and spread the mattress there. Full-dressed except for his hat and his gun, which he kept under his right hand, he drifted into sleep.
It was the kind of halfway slumber an animal enjoys: deep enough that if left undisturbed it will awake refreshed and rested, but not so deep that it becomes unwary of danger. Faintly, a pleasant background sound, he could hear the murmuring of the animals penned in the stockades, and from somewhere beyond the wall of the trading post there echoed the faint sound of an Indian woman crooning to a restless child. The grass smelled fresh and clean, and out here the closed-in odors of the bunkhouse and the saloon were washed away by the cool breeze blowing from the hills to the west.
He slept.
And woke to the sound of low voices from close beside him.
Instinct closed his hand on the grip of the Colt, and he rolled from the mattress, fetching up against the wall of the shed. His forefinger clamped down on the trigger and his thumb drew back the hammer, wrist turning the gun to cover the empty ground before him.
There was no one.
He eased the hammer down, wondering if he had dreamed it.
Then knew he hadn’t, because the voices went on, a low, indecipherable mumble in the night.
He lifted to his feet, the Colt still pointed out in front, and scanned the ground around him. The moon was bright now, spreading a silver light over the grass so that he could see the wall of the nearest shed clearly, see past it to the open space between buildings and palisade. He pressed his ear to the wall of the hutment behind. And the voices grew louder.
They were vaguely familiar, although muffled and distorted by the barrier of clay and timber.
Glancing at the moon he saw that it was long past midnight. The sky off to the east was already beginning to brighten, a pale glow starting up from under the ridge so that the undersides of the gray cloud that had blown up during the night were tinted with a roseate light.
He slid around the edge of the building, his moccasins making a barely-discernible squashing sound on the dew-wet grass. Halfway down the shed, at the center, a narrow door hung open. It was hinged so that it swung out. A chunk of displaced soil had prevented it from folding back against the wall, where it would have been indistinguishable from the black shadow of the wide-open frame. He sidled, catfooted, along the wall and crouched in the angle of door and plastered timber.
There the voices were clearer, though not fully recognizable: he listened.
‘Yeah …’
‘But if … don’t work.’
‘It will … He’ll do it … No choice.’
‘But … Suppose … Finds out.’
They were both deep, though Azul thought he recognized Braddock’s tones, muffled by distance and the walls. The other, he could not identify. They sounded somehow worried, as though discussing some plan that might go wrong and rebound with unpleasant results.
‘A risk … No telling what …’
‘Hell! … gamble … other way.’
‘Right … Money … Lot …’
They got clearer as the speakers concluded their argument and began to move towards the door.
‘Tomorrow …’ Azul shifted back along the wall. ‘Gone.’
‘I’ll keep him here.’
Azul ducked around the edge of the shed. Heard the door slam shut and a key rasp in a padlock. Then the soft padding of cautious boots on moist grass, going away from him. He swung back around the corner, risking a glance down the alley.
It was dark, the moon’s light fading as the unfilled disc descended behind the ridge, the growing dawn not yet bright enough to shed light past the two rows of buildings. He thought he recognized Braddock’s ornate coat, but the other figure might have been anyone.
He waited until they were gone around the angle of the fence that backed the sleeping quarters, then moved to check the door of the shed. The padlock was big and solid, set into the timber on either side with heavy metal plates.
He went back to the southern wall and circled the thing. There were no windows. After a moment’s thought he moved round to the front again, where the shadows were still deepest, and climbed on to the roof.
It was covered with turves like most of the buildings inside the trading post. Foot-wide squares of grass and earth cut from the prairie and left to dry before being tamped down over the under-structure. He used his Bowie knife to prize a yard-wide section clear, finding beneath a covering of thin wooden slats. He kicked through, dropping down into the hole as the sodden timbers scattered beneath him.
He landed on the sharp edge of something piled close to the roof, tumbling off to land awkwardly between interior walls. His bruised shoulder hurt from the impact and cobwebs dusted his face as he rolled over the narrow space packed with straw. He came up on his feet, ignoring the pain in his arm as light filtered down through the hole.
It shone dimly on lines of stacked crates piled in neat rows to form a kind of building within the shed. That was how he heard the voices: the exterior walls were little more than a thin cover against rain and sun, a temporary shelter for the deadly contents.
Down the walls, wadded with straw and sacks, were several hundred crates of guns and ammunition. The hole in the roof let in sufficient light that Azul was able to read the marks stenciled on those closest to his entry point. They mostly read: Winchester Arms Co. Property of the US Gov. And underneath was stenciled either .44-40 Cal. or Repeating Rifles.
‘Some message,’ he murmured, realizing why Braddock needed a stranger to take word to the Sioux. ‘If you don’t get it the first time, you just repeat it.’