Tom Riley secured his horse in the post stables, rubbing her down and slipping a nose bag of oats on her before stalling her for the night. Then he crossed the parade square, heading toward his quarters in a long row of single-story adobe huts behind the headquarters building.
“Captain.”
He turned around in the darkness to confront the Papago Indian scout named Rain Dancer. Riley, who was in charge of a platoon of cavalry soldiers, had sent Rain Dancer out for a routine scout of the nearby Llano Estacado. There had been recent reports of large movements of Comanche and Kiowa, the two tribes Riley and his men had been ordered to prevent from raiding supply trains bound for Fort Union near Silverton.
“You’re back,” Riley said. “How do things look out there?”
“No large war party. The Comanches under Iron Eyes are back in the Blanco Canyon camp. The Kiowa Hairy Wolf and his men are with them. They have prisoners. A word-bringer has been sent to Over the River.”
“That means they have prisoners to sell the Comancheros,” said Riley. The young officer did not approve of the illegal slave trading. But so long as it involved only Indians, his orders were to ignore it.
“Arapaho prisoners?” he asked.
Rain Dancer shook his head. He was plump and short, and twin braids trailed down from under his Army hat. “Cheyennes.”
“Cheyennes? This far south?”
Riley looked thoughtful for a moment. He had originally been stationed farther north at Fort Bates near Bighorn Falls in the Wyoming Territory, near the heart of the Cheyenne hunting grounds. If Cheyennes had come this far south, they must be on a buffalo hunt.
“Not just Cheyenne prisoners,” Rain Dancer said. “I have also seen two small bands of Cheyenne warriors. They are moving separately across the Llano. Clearly they mean to rescue the prisoners.”
Again Riley looked thoughtful. The young officer was in his twenties, a towhead with a perpetual sunburn that stopped at the brim of his hat. A former enlisted man, he had been breveted to his present rank as the result of superior performance.
“What do the leaders of these two bands look like?” he asked.
“I could not get too close on the Llano. But one is taller and broader in the shoulders than any Cheyenne I have ever seen. At first I was sure he must be an Apache.”
Now Riley’s thoughtful look had grown sharply curious. “Tall? A young buck?”
Rain Dancer nodded.
Now Riley was silent a long time, thinking. He thought about the youth, once named Matthew Hanchon, who had returned to his white parents to help them fight Hiram Steele, the greedy rancher who was trying to drive the Hanchons from their new mustang spread. Riley had met the youth and respected him. When the officer learned that his colleague, Lieutenant Seth Carlson, was in cahoots with Steele, he had decided to secretly help the Hanchon boy. Together they had defeated Steele and Carlson.
Could this be the same youth? The tall Cheyenne now called Touch the Sky?
Riley made up his mind. Lately he and his men had been patrolling north of the Llano. Now it was time to swing closer and keep an eye on things.
“Prepare to ride out with me in the morning,” he told Rain Dancer. “I want to take a look at things on the Llano.”
~*~
“By now,” Black Elk told the others in his band, “the Comanche brave we chased off will have reached the Blanco Canyon and alerted the rest. If they are not riding out to meet us, they will be poised for our arrival. Only, it will not be us they encounter—we will let Touch the Sky ride into the teeth of the enemy.”
Full dark had descended over the Llano Estacado. Black Elk and his band had sheltered in the same arroyo from which they had routed the Comanche spy. Touch the Sky and his group had taken cover behind the jumble of rocks which Black Elk had climbed earlier to scout the terrain. The wind howled in steady shrieks which forced the braves to raise their voices to be heard. Hawk Feather’s wound had been packed in moist tobacco and wrapped with doeskin. Then he had been sent back to camp. Now there were four in the band.
“But cousin, what about us?” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. “How do we get into that canyon without being spotted?”
“A herd divided weakens itself, cousin. Under cover of this darkness, the others will soon advance closer to the canyon unaware that their arrival is expected. Using night’s cloak to cover us, we follow them. When the enemy attacks them, count upon it, they will put up a good fight. I hate Touch the Sky, but he is a warrior, and Little Horse and Tangle Hair can fight like ten men.
“This bloody fight will keep the enemy engaged. It is then, when their attention is elsewhere, that we will move into the cover of the canyon. But we must avoid the fight or even being seen.”
Suddenly, above the mating-wolf howl of the wind, they heard the Bull Whip named Battle Sash loose a whistle. He was on sentry duty between their position and the jumble of rocks.
“There is the signal,” Black Elk said. “They are moving out. Prepare to ride, brothers, and remember. Glide like a shadow. We will stay well behind them until they meet the enemy, then we make our move.”
~*~
All through the night Touch the Sky pushed his band across the treacherous Llano, orienting himself by the Grandmother Star to the north.
More than ever before Touch the Sky now realized the importance of not being observed before they reached the safety of that canyon. There was simply no place to run if they were attacked, nor were their numbers enough to stand and hold. But something had to be done. Every day that passed was one more day that Honey Eater and the rest spent in misery and terror—and brought them one day closer to being sold, perhaps to disappear in unknown lands where Touch the Sky could never find them again.
They rode fast under cover of a clouded sky that gave off little moonlight. He no longer worried about where Black Elk was. His only goal now was to reach that canyon under cover of night, elude the sentries and herd guards, and get into position close enough to obtain some information on the prisoners and their whereabouts.
Finally, as the eastern sky began to take on the first roseate hues of morning, they topped a long rise and Touch the Sky halted his band. A slight difference in the darkness out ahead of them told his night-trained eye that a vast opening lay before them—the Blanco Canyon.
As the moon began to peek out from behind a scud of clouds, Touch the Sky warned his men to move further down off the ridge so they would not be skylined.
“Now we are in the belly of the beast,” he warned the others. “From here, wrap the ponies’ hooves in rawhide to muffle them. And lead the ponies, do not ride them. Secure any gear on your pony which might give off a noise. And whatever you do, do not let the wind get behind you or the horse herds will alert our enemy. Even now this area must be ringed with sentries. If we are seen, count upon it, be prepared to sing the death song.”
He thought of something else. “Before we move out, transfer your rigging and gear to the remounts. If we must run for it, at least we will have the freshest ponies.”
They made their final preparations, then fanned out. Step by slow step Touch the Sky advanced toward the rim of the canyon, trying to use whatever depressions and hummocks he could find for cover. It seemed ominously quiet, as if not a soul stirred below in the wide canyon.
The wind had fallen silent. In the stillness, Touch the Sky winced when his chestnut pony, smelling the herds and the river below, nickered.
They moved steadily closer. Now the edge was so near that Touch the Sky could feel the subtle change in temperature that always marked a deep canyon. Elation began to hum in his blood. Only a few more paces and they would be on their way down. Cheyennes were excellent at taking cover and could operate for days unseen in the shelter of thickets and shrubs.
Abruptly, he heard the loud, fast clicking of a lizard. He thought nothing of it until another lizard answered the signal. What happened only a few heartbeats later shocked all the Cheyenne braves into frightened immobility.
The Comanches and Kiowas loved to mock their enemies in battle. One of them had captured a bugle during a skirmish with Bluecoats. Alerted by Big Tree’s report, they had been fully aware when Touch the Sky’s band approached so quietly. Now the Comanche bugler suddenly blasted the rousing cavalry charge known as “Boots and Saddles,” the bugle notes frighteningly amplified against the stillness of the night.
Yipping their battle cries, the enemy poured up from the canyon and leaped out onto the plains, racing straight at the startled Cheyennes.
“Fly like the wind!” Touch the Sky shouted to his companions.
Now he gave silent thanks to Maiyun for granting him the foresight to insist on remounts. All four Cheyennes mounted their ponies in running leaps and turned them away from the attack, heading back in the direction they had just come.
Fortunately, though their enemies had sufficient handguns, they were short on rifles and ammunition for them. Now a deadly hail of arrows filled the air all around them as they began a desperate running battle—the style of fighting which the Cheyennes had originally developed.
An arrow flew past Touch the Sky’s head so close he felt a hot wire of pain crease his ear. He glimpsed Little Horse on his left and Two Twists and Tangle Hair on his right, all bent low over the necks of their ponies as they drove them on. Behind them, rolling thunder welled closer as their enemy gained on them.
“Hi-ya!” Touch the Sky urged his mount, lashing her with the buffalo-hair reins. “Hi-ya hii-ya!”
Behind him, the bugle notes mocked them, bringing the promise of an agonizing death closer and closer.
~*~
Black Elk’s band had tracked Touch the Sky’s all night, staying well back and far to the right of them. Now they too sprang into action at the sound of the bugle notes. Only they ran in the opposite direction—right toward the Blanco.
As Black Elk had predicted, the enemy’s attention was focused on the other Cheyennes. And a good thing, he realized. Their own mounts were nearly exhausted and dehydrated. Had they been forced to flee like Touch the Sky’s group, they would have been sent under by now.
But as things worked out, they reached the brim of the canyon unchallenged and unobserved.
“Quickly!” Black Elk said triumphantly. “Make for cover.”
He was elated. Not only had they finally slipped into the formidable Blanco Canyon, considered an impregnable fortress—but soon his worst enemy would be roasting over a blazing fire, and with luck Black Elk could even watch him die.
~*~
As the sun burst forth from her birthplace in the east, Touch the Sky’s little group were grimly living up to their nickname, the fighting Cheyenne.
Thanks to their reasonably fresh ponies, they were able to execute the classic Cheyenne fighting strategy: They fled hard until their pursuers’ horses started to falter, then suddenly whirled and fired on them. In this they were also aided by the range of their long arms, which easily dropped the enemy ponies.
Time after time, when death was apparently about to envelope them, Touch the Sky screamed the command and they whirled, firing another volley.
“One bullet, one enemy!” he screamed repeatedly, calming the less-experienced Two Twists and reminding the youth that each shot had to count. At one point, when several enemy riders were about to converge on Two Twists, Little Horse suddenly rode into their midst with all four barrels of his flintlock shotgun loaded. He fired and rotated, fired and rotated, blasting horses and Indians into eternity.
Slowly, as they advanced across the plains, a trail of dead ponies, Kiowas, and Comanches gave silent testimony to the skill of these northern warriors. But the more that dropped, the more determined the rest became to seize these hated enemies.
The Cheyenne ponies were beginning to falter, and the warriors’ gun barrels were smoking hot, ammunition was low. Worst of all, the new day’s light showed no hope of shelter in any direction. Soon their horses would play out and they would have to sing the death song, killing each other to avoid certain torture.
Then, amazingly, the enemy abruptly halted behind them. Even more amazingly, moments later they reversed course and began riding hard back toward the Blanco. Touch the Sky realized why when Little Horse suddenly shouted his name.
“Look!”
The sturdy little warrior pointed to the east. There, flying over the horizon, was a detachment of Bluecoat pony soldiers, an American flag snapping and fluttering in the wind. The soldiers ignored the smaller band of Cheyennes, giving chase to the larger battle party. They would stop before actually entering the canyon, of course. But their presence above would keep the Kiowas and Comanches below.
“Never,” Touch the Sky told the others, “did I think I would be relieved to see Bluecoats!”
He was too far away to recognize the officer leading them as his old friend Tom Riley. Nor was this any time for rejoicing. They were still stuck in the middle of hostile territory, unable to penetrate that canyon. Honey Eater and the others were no closer to freedom. And where was Black Elk’s band?
They had eluded death this time only by a miracle. And miracles never happened twice in a row. Nor was there any proof those blue-bloused pony soldiers might not soon ride against his band.
“Brothers,” Little Horse said as they veered west from the direction of the attack, “did any of you spot the fleet-shooting Comanche called Big Tree? I could not.”
“Count upon it,” Touch the Sky said. “He was not in the attack. When trouble threatens this close to the hive, Big Tree is kept in the canyon. But be patient, you shall meet him soon, brother, because the canyon is where we are headed!”