Sergeant Grant had advised Jordan that the patrol would not start out until after mess call, but Jordan was awake before sunup. He heard the bugler blow reveille. Then, in about thirty minutes, there was another bugle, which he would later learn was stable and watering call. With Sweet Pea saddled and ready, he was waiting at the mess tent when Hamilton Grant arrived at seven o’clock, just as the bugle sounded mess call.
“You said the patrol was leaving first thing this morning,” Jordan said when Grant walked up to join him. “With all the bugles blowin’ and everybody runnin’ around, I thought for a little bit that the patrol had left without me.”
Grant laughed and replied, “You’re new to army routine. Everything has to be done on schedule. Lieutenant Wallace likes to start out with a good breakfast under his belt, so he’ll be ready to go after the troops are fed.”
“Seems like an awful lot of fuss to me,” Jordan said, a smile on his face.
“It’s the army way,” Grant returned.
“You don’t look like you’re ready to ride,” Jordan observed.
“Hell, I’m not going anywhere,” Grant replied. Jordan had assumed that his friend would ride with the patrol, but as first sergeant, Grant would remain to carry out administrative duties in the company orderly room. Reading the surprise and disappointment in Jordan’s eyes, the sergeant reassured him, “Macy will be riding with you. He’s a good man. You can count on him in a fight.” He paused then, wondering if he should say more. “You should get along with Wallace. I warn you, though. He thinks he can wipe out the whole Sioux nation with one company of men.”
From his brief exposure to the lieutenant, Jordan wasn’t surprised at all, and he again had second thoughts about signing on as a scout. What the hell? he decided. I’ll go on this patrol and then decide if I’m gonna be a scout or not.
After breakfast, the patrol formed on the parade ground. Four mounted Crow scouts sat watching the soldiers as the troopers milled around with no apparent show of urgency. With a quick tip of his finger to his hat, he bade Hamilton Grant farewell and wheeled Sweet Pea around to join the detachment. Pulling up before the four Crow scouts, he reined up a safe distance away lest Sweet Pea take a nip out of one of the ponies’ flanks. The Indians eyed the scruffy-looking horse in open curiosity. In a few minutes, Lieutenant Wallace appeared, riding an immaculately groomed blue roan. The troopers responded to his presence, forming up in formation. Wallace hardly glanced in Jordan’s direction as he waited for Macy to report the patrol ready to ride. When all was in order to the lieutenant’s satisfaction, he led the detail out in a column of twos. The Crow scouts followed the column, and Jordan brought up the rear. With no instructions from the lieutenant, he was not sure where his position should be. After leaving the post behind, Wallace ordered the Crow scouts out on the flanks. With still no specific instructions as to what was expected of him, Jordan rode up to the head of the column.
“Do you want me to lead you to that homesteaders’ cabin?” Jordan asked the lieutenant. It was his impression that it was the sole reason for his being on the patrol.
Wallace cast a condescending glance in Jordan’s direction. “It won’t be necessary, Mr. Gray. I know full well where the Weldon place is.”
“Then what the hell am I doin’ here?” Jordan responded, unable to hide his irritation.
The two young men glared at each other for a long moment before Wallace replied, “You’re here to learn. I’m told that you supposedly know the Big Horn country. Maybe you’ll be useful when we send patrols out in that area. As far as the present operation, you’d do well to watch the Crow scouts.” That said, he turned his eyes to the front, dismissing his new civilian scout.
Before this is over, you and I are going to have a little tussle. The thought must have been apparent on Jordan’s face because Macy pulled up alongside him. “You ain’t the first one that wanted to kick his arrogant ass,” he whispered low. Macy’s remark served to cool Jordan’s anger a bit, and he gave the corporal a slight smile and a nod of his head. Maybe so, but I might be the first one that gets the job done, he thought.
* * *
The patrol—fifteen enlisted men, one officer, four Crow scouts, and one white scout—arrived at the Weldon place about midmorning the second day out. Jordan would have thought the distance could have been covered in one full day’s march, but he was learning firsthand that the military moved in a grinding sequence of orders and procedures. When the charred ruins of the cabin were in sight, he nudged Sweet Pea out ahead of the patrol. Three days before, when he had encountered the three white men, there had been no opportunity to scout the area without risking his neck. Now he wanted to examine the tracks around the cabin before the soldiers added their own.
There was an abundance of prints around the small clearing, some old, some fairly new. Most were from shod horses, but there were a few from unshod horses, which made Jordan wonder if his hunch about Preacher and his sons might be a little suspect. Still, it was a strong gut feeling he had experienced when he had faced the three white men, so it was hard to concede to Preacher’s version of the tragedy. He stood up to meet the patrol as they rode into the clearing.
“Sioux,” one of the troopers called out after retrieving an arrow from a corner post of the cabin. It had been so obviously planted that Jordan had not even noticed it when he rode in ahead of the soldiers. He took a good look at it as it was being handed to Wallace, and he was willing to bet that it was the same arrow Preacher’s son had fetched from his saddle strap.
Wallace turned the arrow over and over, examining it closely. “It’s Sioux all right.” He glanced over at Jordan. “You agree, Gray?” It was obvious from his tone that he was baiting his new scout.
“I agree that what you’ve got in your hand is a Sioux arrow, but I ain’t sure this was the work of a Sioux war party.”
The lieutenant formed a slow smile as he gazed at Jordan. “Still think this was done by white men, right?”
“Looks that way to me,” Jordan replied.
Wallace dismounted then, and pointed to the tracks that Jordan had been examining when the patrol rode up. “Unshod,” he said. “Indian ponies.”
“Maybe so,” Jordan had to admit.
“Sioux war party,” Wallace pronounced confidently, and handed the arrow to Jordan. He then took a cursory look around the tiny homestead before ordering the Crow scouts out to look around the surrounding hills. “See if you can find which way they left here,” he told Iron Pony, the only one of the Crows who spoke English. With a dismissingly smug glance aimed at Jordan, the lieutenant walked over for a closer look at the ruined cabin.
“Sir,” Corporal Macy asked, “can the men boil some water for coffee and take a little break while the scouts are out?”
Wallace paused to consider. “Granted, Corporal. A little coffee wouldn’t hurt.”
Jordan walked over to the trooper who had found the arrow and asked to see exactly where he had picked it up. The soldier pointed to the corner post, about halfway up on the charred timber. “About here?” Jordan asked, pointing to the area indicated. The trooper nodded. Jordan looked closely at the burned post, searching for the exact spot where the arrow had been implanted. All he could find was a small indention, nothing like the scar an arrow shot from a bow would make. With his hand, he sank the arrow into the wood, and backed away, leaving the arrow stuck in the post. “About like this?” he asked the soldier again.
“Yes, sir, I reckon,” the trooper replied, failing to see the relevance of Jordan’s questions.
Jordan nodded thoughtfully, convinced that it was more than likely the same way the arrow had been planted before. He still had no explanation for the unshod tracks around the clearing, however, and that troubled him. While the men took advantage of the break, he walked over to the corral. He had barely stepped into the churned-up mud of the small enclosure when he discovered that most of the tracks he saw were from an unshod horse. He was certain then that the tracks found around the cabin were not from Indian ponies. Franklin Weldon’s horse was unshod, not that unusual for a white man living so far from a blacksmith.
Feeling it his duty as a scout, he informed the lieutenant of his findings. Clearly skeptical, Wallace listened patiently before voicing his doubts. As he was about to convey them, Iron Pony rode up. “We found ’em,” he announced proudly. “Up on the ridge, tracks of five, maybe six ponies.”
“Shod?” Wallace shot back.
Iron Pony shook his head. “Not shod—Indian ponies.”
With a smug smile, formed for Jordan’s benefit, Wallace turned to Macy. “We’ll give the men fifteen minutes more and then mount ’em up. Then we’ll follow the hostiles’ trail. We might even get lucky and run them to ground.”
While the soldiers drank their coffee, Jordan climbed the hill to take a look at the tracks Iron Pony had found. “Left ponies here,” the Crow scout said as Jordan approached a stand of pines near the top of the slope. “Went on foot here,” Iron Pony continued, leading Jordan a dozen or more yards away to a thicket of young pines. Then the somber Crow scout stepped back, offering nothing more.
“Damn!” Jordan softly exclaimed, looking around him in the thicket. It looked like a war had been waged there. Fresh tree limbs lay about on the ground, trunks on many of the young trees showed chips and scars, still new. Dropping to his knee, he looked closely at the pine straw. It told him that someone had lain close to the ground there, no doubt because someone else had been shooting up the thicket. Maybe Preacher Rix and his two half-wit sons, he thought. Getting to his feet, Jordan followed the signs back to where the horses had been tied. Then he walked a few yards down the opposite side of the ridge and stood looking out over the prairie in the direction the Indians had obviously fled.
When he turned around, it was to find Iron Pony staring intensely at him. When their eyes met, the Crow warrior nodded his head as if to confirm what Jordan had deduced. Jordan was aware then that the other three scouts were watching him with the same interest shown by Iron Pony, and he realized that they had apparently been evaluating his ability to read sign. Evidently they approved, for all three solemnly nodded their heads. Jordan turned back to Iron Pony. “There was a hot fight here,” he said. “I’m thinkin’ maybe a Sioux huntin’ party came up on the three white men I met here before.”
“Maybe so,” Iron Pony agreed. Gesturing toward the scarred trees around them, he added, “Too many bullets for one man.”
Jordan climbed in the saddle and rode down the slope. The Crows followed on their ponies. About halfway down the hill, they reached the point where other tracks from shod horses mingled with those of the fleeing Indians’. So Jordan had a pretty clear picture of what had taken place. “I expect we’d best go back and tell the lieutenant what we’ve found,” he said. Iron Pony nodded.
“You’re still trying to tell me there’s a preacher going around murdering homesteaders?” Wallace asked impatiently after hearing Jordan’s report. “And now he’s fighting Indians as well?”
“All I’m tryin’ to tell you is what probably happened here,” Jordan replied without emotion. “The Crow scouts agree.”
Clearly irritated, Wallace glanced at Iron Pony, then back at Jordan. “The Crows will agree to anything you want them to. They’d say it was preachers, Mormons, or Commanche if they thought that’s what you wanted.” The lieutenant was certain that the Weldons had been massacred by Sioux raiders, just as other small ranches and homesteads had been hit in the area. He had no time for half-baked theories from the likes of Jordan Gray. Turning to Macy, he ordered him to get the men mounted. “We’ll go after these murdering savages,” he said as he strode over to his horse. “I don’t think we’ll find any gun-toting missionaries, though.” The shod tracks that joined those left by the Indian ponies simply told him that the Sioux had stolen horses from Weldon.
“Waste of time,” Jordan couldn’t help commenting. “Those tracks are at least two days old.”
Just about to step up in the stirrup, Wallace paused and turned to face Jordan, clearly angry. “Dammit, man, I’ll decide what’s a waste of time and what isn’t. The mission of this patrol is to investigate this Indian attack, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve all been properly entertained by your wild imagination, but I suggest you take a position at the rear of the column, and maybe you’ll learn something.”
Jordan stood motionless for a few moments, surprised by the arrogant young officer’s scathing verbal attack. It was clearly out of proportion to the facts that Jordan had pointed out. He glanced at Iron Pony, but the Crow scout averted his gaze to the ground, unwilling to support Jordan’s position. Jordan didn’t blame him. The Crows did not want to risk losing their jobs. Jordan harbored no such fear. The small taste he had of working for the army was already bitter on his tongue. After a long moment of silence, during which the lieutenant stood glaring at him, Jordan finally responded, “Lieutenant, when’s the last time somebody told you to kiss their ass?”
“What . . . ? Why, you impudent . . .” Wallace sputtered, mortified to be talked to with such disrespect for his rank. Those troopers closest to him were now frozen dead still, watching the confrontation with some amusement while inching closer so as not to miss anything. This served to fan the flames of Wallace’s anger even higher. In a fit of infuriation, he grabbed his riding crop from his saddle strap and took a step toward Jordan.
“If you’re plannin’ to use that crop on me, you’d best think on the idea some more,” Jordan advised, his voice calm, his words even and unhurried.
Though soft and without apparent anger, the buckskin-clad scout’s tone had a lethal quality that caused Wallace to freeze in his tracks. He looked around him, dismayed to realize that none of his command appeared ready to defend him, content instead to be spectators to the confrontation. Burning with indignation and frustration, he nevertheless retained the good judgment to avoid engaging Jordan in a fistfight. “You’re fired!” he finally blurted. “You no longer are employed as a scout for this patrol.”
“Suit yourself.” Jordan shrugged, having already decided that being an army scout was not necessarily in his future plans.
Seeking to quickly end the mortifying confrontation and regain his air of authority, Wallace stepped up in the saddle. “Let’s move ’em out, Corporal Macy.”
“Yes, Sir!” Macy replied smartly and wheeled his horse to carry out the lieutenant’s command. As he turned, he winked at Jordan and nodded his approval.
Jordan acknowledged the nod and backed Sweet Pea away to give the corporal room. Within a matter of minutes, Macy had the patrol ready to ride. A casual spectator now, Jordan sat his horse and watched the column file past him and proceed down the slope. Following a trail that’s at least two days old, maybe three, he thought. It was a waste of time. The half dozen Sioux who had left those tracks were probably back on the reservation by this time. Jordan was convinced that they had nothing to do with the bodies occupying the grave below him in the clearing, anyway. Well, he thought, I didn’t have much of a career as an army scout. He shrugged and decided it was best to find out right away that he wasn’t suited to the vocation. Had it not been for the fact that his packhorse and most of his possessions were back at Fort Laramie, he would have turned Sweet Pea’s head toward the northwest to the Big Horns. Even as he thought it, a vision of Kathleen Beard invaded his mind. Unwilling to admit to a strong interest there, he told himself that he would return to Fort Laramie only long enough to collect his horse and possibles.