THE DUST OF MAJOR Easterwood’s departing squad had scarcely disappeared on the horizon when Pleasant McAlpin and a dozen Dog Soldiers rode out of the Ghost Timbers in the opposite direction. After splashing through the shallow waters of the Platte, they followed a winding tributary, a small stream that eventually cut across the stagecoach road. No bridge had been built over this broad sandy crossing which rarely ran deep enough to wet the spokes of passing vehicles. Stagecoach drivers usually stopped briefly at the ford to let their teams drink before continuing the long run to the next station.
Fringing this crooked stream were growths of sand-grass, turning in late summer from green to gold, reaching higher than a man’s head. Here the Dog Soldiers dismounted, two of them leading the ponies upstream until they were out of sight of the road. Pleasant and the remaining warriors then concealed themselves in the high grass and waited for the overland stage from the east.
The stagecoach was behind schedule that day, and it approached the ford with such speed that Pleasant feared it might not stop. Through his shield of grass he watched the driver anxiously, was relieved when he saw the man pull back on his lines, yelling whoa at the six-horse team. The stage was crowded, four men seated on the top, a woman beside the driver.
Pleasant waited until the driver dismounted. The man’s black boots splashed in the water. He loosened the lines and unbitted the horses, patting their necks as they bent to drink. Sounding a shrill whistle, Pleasant stepped out in front of the team, his Springfield aimed at the driver. At the same moment five Dog Soldiers appeared on each side of the coach, one springing upon the top to knock a pistol from the hands of a startled male passenger, and to seize a rifle from another before either could be brought into action. During their raids against the invading Veheos in Kansas, these Dog Soldiers had learned from Lean Bear the value of surprise.
“We’re carrying nothing but passengers,” the driver said calmly to Pleasant. “Nothing you bucks would want.”
Pleasant walked to the coach and jerked the door open, motioning the passengers to get out. Above him on the driver’s seat, the woman began screaming. Two well-dressed men, a soldier with his arm in a sling, and three younger passengers stepped down on the wet sand. Pleasant studied the faces of the three young people. One was a boy of sixteen or seventeen; another a freckled red-haired boy about ten, and a blonde curly-haired little girl, perhaps seven or eight, who made him think for just a flash of his mother, Jerusha.
The oldest of the three was trembling with fright. The red-haired boy’s eyes were big, but he was grinning with the delight that dangerous excitement sometimes brings to the young. The little girl spoke first: “Are you going to rob us?”
“No,” Pleasant said. With his rifle barrel, he pushed the two younger children toward the farther bank of the stream. “Go and stand over there,” he ordered.
“You ain’t no Indian,” the red-haired boy said.
Pleasant felt his anger rising. He was listening for the concealed ponies, but the woman in the driver’s seat kept screaming. He shouted up at her: “Be quiet and no harm will come to your children.”
“What do you want of them?” she cried.
“Your children will likely be in Denver sooner than you,” he answered roughly.
Two Dog Soldiers were unhitching the stage team. Pleasant saw the holders bringing the Cheyenne ponies, their heads bobbing above the high grass. As soon as the ponies were in the road, the Dog Soldiers began mounting. Three of them led away pairs of the stagecoach team. Two others lifted the red-haired boy and the curly-haired little girl behind their saddles and started quickly off. The woman began screaming again.
“You harm them children, half-breed,” the stagecoach driver said to Pleasant, “and you’ll have every man in Denver after your neck. They’re Tom Boyle’s brats.”
Keeping their rifles on the horseless stagecoach, Pleasant and the remaining Dog Soldiers danced their ponies back from it, whirled, and galloped toward the Platte.
When the Dog Soldiers returned to the Hinta Nagi, the two Veheo children they brought with them quickly attracted a crowd of Cheyennes. Big Star soon dispersed the adults, believing they might alarm the young hostages. “But they show no fear,” Bear Woman said. This was true. The red-haired boy was curious about the mountain howitzer. He asked Pleasant where the Cheyennes had obtained the cannon and if they had fired it at soldiers. The little girl examined the clothing of the Cheyenne children gathered around Big Star’s patchwork tipi and was puzzled because she could not understand what was said to her. Both she and the boy soon joined a playing circle for the suhkpakhit game. The children held hands with fingers interlocked, while one in the middle tried to break out of the circle. The red-haired boy volunteered to be locked in. He broke out with a loud whoop of triumph, but was quickly pursued and slapped to the ground, rolling and laughing in the leaves.
The question of who was to take the offer of exchange to Fort Starke had to be settled by Big Star. Pleasant and Dane were equally determined to be the message-bearer. Pleasant argued that he and the Dog Soldiers had captured the children and that it was his right to arrange the exchange for Little Cloud and Spotted Shield. Dane declared that he was the older and that only he could count on Major Easterwood as an ally against Belcourt in the event the colonel was reluctant to cooperate. Aware of Pleasant’s quick temper, remembering his recklessness the day he helped bring the soldiers from Platte Bridge against the Cheyenne village, Big Star decided that Dane should go to Fort Starke.
“We shall both go,” Pleasant insisted.
“No.” Dane shook his head. “Those children are your responsibility. They can’t make themselves understood with their Veheo talk to anyone here but you.”
Dane started to Fort Starke late in the night, riding slowly so that he would arrive there soon after sunrise. This was the first time he had seen the new fort, and except that it was much larger, it reminded him of the Tennessee stockade in which a quarter of a century before he and his Cherokee kinsmen had suffered and died. A rectangle of tall poles connected four massive blockhouses at each corner. From the upper walls of the blockhouses, barrels of swivel guns pointed from long narrow loopholes. Between the north side of the stockade and the South Fork was a large corral crowded with hundreds of horses, dozens of wagons, high stacks of bagged grain, and a tented smithy.
As Dane approached, he wondered what mighty force Flattery Jack Belcourt was in dread of. Who was it that he feared would raise up arms against him upon this lonely plain?
From the guard post above the gate a sentry challenged. “I come to talk with Colonel Belcourt,” Dane called out. He heard voices inside, and then after several minutes the heavy gate slowly opened. Two guards held pistols pointed at him and told him to dismount. A third man searched him. He had come unarmed. The third man led his horse off toward the corral, while guards escorted him into a room at the base of the nearest blockhouse.
Flattery Jack was seated at a table eating breakfast, his shell jacket unbuttoned, his gray hair uncombed. He wolfed down a large piece of ham and glared at Dane.
“You! You again? Where have I seen you before, a long time ago. Why do you come to annoy me at breakfast time?”
“I bring a message,” Dane said.
“From who, from where?”
“From Big Star of the Cheyennes.”
Belcourt poured whiskey from a bottle into his china coffee cup. Dane could smell the fumes blending with the aroma of hot coffee.
“Two white children are in the Cheyenne camp at the Ghost Timbers,” Dane said quietly. “They will be traded to you for the two young Cheyennes you hold in this fort.”
“The ambushers of my rifle wagons! Why should I set free a pair of murdering thieves? You go back and tell Big Star that if he is not out of the Timbers with his people and on his way to Sand Creek by sundown, I’ll exterminate every man, woman, and child in his tribe.” Belcourt took a long swallow of his whiskey and coffee. “Who are these white children? From where do they come?”
“From Denver,” Dane replied. “I believe their name is Boyle.”
“Boyles of Denver? How old? Boys, girls?”
Dane described the red-haired boy and the blonde girl.
“Tom Boyle’s younglings! Damn you! How in hell did—” Belcourt shouted at one of the guards standing in the doorway: “Corporal, get my adjutant in here!”
After the arrival of the adjutant, a lean sour-faced officer, Dane was ordered out of Belcourt’s quarters. From where he stood, still under guard, he could see tents in the open space within the stockade. He also could smell meat cooking. Saliva flowed in his mouth. For two days he had shared the skimpy cold rations of the Cheyennes in the Timbers, and he felt an acute craving for food. While he waited he looked in every direction for Major Easterwood, wondering in what part of the fort he might be.
Belcourt and the adjutant came out. “On second thought,” Belcourt was saying, “we’d better leave two companies here. You can’t tell when some bunch of crazy drunked-up hostiles might try to take this fort.” He turned to the guards. “Bring the redskin.” The guards fell in beside Dane and marched him behind Belcourt across to the opposite blockhouse. A sergeant saluted the colonel and led the way inside a short corridor where there were two facing doors locked by metal bolts. Belcourt slid one of the bolts back and opened the door. “Outside,” he said, and Little Cloud and Spotted Shield stepped cautiously into the corridor, their moccasins shuffling on the hard earthen floor, their eyes revealing uncertainty, searching for some meaning in the faces of those in front of them.
Suddenly recognizing his father, Little Cloud moved toward Dane, but Belcourt kicked the boy sharply in the buttocks, so that he stumbled past the guards. Then with one of his huge fleshy hands Belcourt pushed Dane into the emptied cell and closed the iron-bolted door upon him. “It was you,” Belcourt shouted through the door, “who led the raid against my rifle wagons. And if you lied to me about the Boyle children, I’ll bring these boys back to be put on trial with you in Denver.”