The fire had burned itself out, the herders keeping it always under control. Brush had been cleared, and at a suitable moment Otio ordered the band of sheep moved through the cleared timber.
It was a bright morning. The men were in good spirits, for they were saving a lot of time. The girl was able to walk, though her leg did appear to cause her some discomfort. But she did not complain. She ate what was offered her, and she did not converse. She was not antagonistic, however, but simply held her own counsel. Otio and Ciriaco had slackened their efforts to communicate with her. Yet Otio found himself stealing looks every so often, and this did not go unnoticed by an amused Ciriaco.
They had finally passed through the timber, and now Otio stood on a high rise of ground, looking across the swelling prairie as it fell toward the river.
“What do you think, Nephew?” Ciriaco asked. “The feed is only so-so, it seems to me.”
Closer to the river it would be better,” Otio replied. But he did not look at his uncle. He was staring at something in the distance.
What is it?” Ciriaco asked after a moment, catching something in Otio’s attitude.
“Horses.”
“Ah, I see them.”
“And men.”
“Yes, men too.”
Otio took the field glasses that had been strapped to
one of the packmules.
“How many men?” Ciriaco asked.
“I count ten.” He lowered the glasses. “And they have guns.” He turned quickly. “Michel, bunch the ardiak. Take Pinto and Rom, leave the other dogs free. Xerxes, call the men. Hurry!” He turned back to Ciriaco. 1 think we have a fight on our hands.”
“Fighting?” Ciriaco’s eyes were big and round. “Is
it the Indians?”
“It looks like the men who drive the cows.”
At Outpost Number Nine, Hawes Thatcher stretched his long legs, leaned back in his easy chair, and, with one eyebrow raised, looked down the length of his body to the toe of his boot. He let his eyes move now to the girl sitting across from him.
“I have spoken to Venable, as you know, my dear.” The words were soft, couched in a mixture of confiding familiarity and parental authority. “He is not the person, I must say. I’d normally choose for a son-in-law. He is hardly, shall we say, wholly desirable. But he is a man, and he is a husband for you, my dear. And under the circumstances, as the old saying has it, beggars cannot be choosers.”
Typically, he did not notice the flush that came to his daughter’s cheeks as he said those words, nor how her lips tightened.
“It remains to choose a time and place.”
“Yes, Father.” Julie Thatcher lowered her eyes to look at her hands lying in her lap. She spoke the words so softly that he barely heard her.
“Are you feeling all right, Julie?”
“Yes I am, Father.” She raised her head. “I think I’ll go in and lie down.”
“Ah, yes, of course, my dear.” His smile was filled with paternal understanding, which infuriated her.
But the girl didn’t get up right away. She watched her father pick up his newspaper and start to read. It was as though she had already left the room.
Julie Thatcher continued to sit there facing her father’s opened newspaper. But she was not thinking of her father. Nor was she thinking of her prospective husband. She was thinking of the young soldier who had shown her the horses and had talked to her about his life, and had held her hand. She was thinking of Billy Golightly.
The object of her attention was presently watching the two Delaware scouts riding in toward First Platoon as fast as their ponies could run. The dry ground thrummed under the racing hooves, the ponies streaked out to their whole length, like racing greyhounds. Where the plain lifted to a ridge. Windy Mandalian and Henry Walks Quickly could be seen sitting their mounts and watching something beyond.
The two Delawares came dashing up to whirl to a dazzling stop in front of Lieutenant Matt Kincaid.
“Windy tell—stay here. Many Sioux ahead. Many. Many Brules, Hunkpapa, Oglalla. All painted up.”
Billy heard Lieutenant Kincaid say, “Shit!” He was sitting his horse close by, and now he remembered hearing a few times since he’d joined the army how it was on a clear day like this that General George Armstrong Custer had only recently led the Seventh Cavalry right smack into the middle of a vast Indian trap. Sitting up a little straighter in his saddle, Billy reflected on the mutilated bodies, the tom heads dripping with blood that had been found near the Little Big Horn—not so very far from where Easy Company’s First Platoon now waited. A very strange sensation began to creep along
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Billy Golightly’s spine and up into his scalp.
Presently, Windy Mandalian and Henry Walks Quickly rode back to the platoon.
“There’s a good two hundred,” Billy heard the scout say. “Quick Thunder’s hooked up with more Oglallas and Hunkpapas. Matt, we had best backtrack and head across by Slim Butte; try to get to the cattle ahead of them.”
“I’m sending a man back to warn Captain Conway,” Kincaid said. “It’s two hundred now; it could get to be a whole lot more if they start feeling they’re getting us on the run.”
“That I know. That I know.”
Suddenly, Billy heard his name called.
“Yes, sir.” He kneed his mount toward Lieutenant
Kincaid.
“Ride back to Number Nine and inform Captain Conway that we’ve sighted about two hundred Sioux, though we’ve not made contact so far. We’re going around by Slim Butte to try to reach the Cohoes herd ahead of them. Since they don’t seem to be in any hurry, we’ve got a chance. How’s your horse?” Kincaid had spoken fast, and Billy knew he wasn’t going to repeat anything; but he made an extra effort to get the message exactly.
“He’s good, sir. Got good wind. We’ll make it.”
“Good luck.”
Billy snapped a salute, wheeled his horse, and was racing back down the way they had come.
Larrabee Hogan rode slowly out of the clump of box elders and toward the cowboy lounging in his saddle at the edge of the cattle herd.
“Howdy.”
The rider, looking up, greeted Hogan with a nod, exhibiting the usual wary neutrality of the trail.
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“I am heading toward the Stinking Water cattle depot,” Hogan said, reaching into his shirt pocket for a cheroot. “Got a light, have you?”
The cowboy, wearing a dusty brown Stetson hat with a piece tom out of the brim, bent his head slightly as he reached for a lucifer. And Larrabee Hogan laid the barrel of his .45 easily along the back of that bent head.
Then, holding his victim so he wouldn’t fall out of the saddle, he led his horse back into the box elders. Here the unconscious cowboy fell to the ground as Hogan released him. Swiftly he bound him with strips of rawhide and the cowboy’s own lariat and gagged him tightly with a piece of his shirt.
“You’ll sleep awhile,” he said softly. “And when you wake up you’ll have a new boss.”
According to his reckoning, there were four more men with the herd; he had seen the others ride out. If he could take them at gunpoint, he could pull it off. And to add to his good fortune, the man he had knocked out had a Winchester in his saddle boot.
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