Chapter Twenty-Six

There was a hunter’s moon again that night, dominating the eastern sky like a huge, sickly face. It was cloudless, as well, and in the frosty, star-studded clearness, the riverside woods seemed almost as bright as day.

Less than ideal conditions to be going up against an enemy as formidable as the Sioux, Gabriel mused.

They were waiting for Charlo’s return from upriver, standing chilled and miserable within the sparse timber bordering the river. On his left, Gabriel could hear the gentle lapping of the Missouri’s waters. An icy breeze flowing down the broad, shallow cañon of trees lining the river would now and again rattle the branches above them like the sabers of some distant army. Other than that, all was quiet and bitterly cold.

The snow that remained had frozen over when the sun went down. Now it crunched loudly underfoot every time a horse shifted its weight or position. Such conditions would make slipping up on the Sioux all the more difficult, Gabriel knew, yet of them all, he questioned only Pike’s ability to move soundlessly over the crusted snow.

Studying the American from the corner of his eye, Gabriel decided Pike was as much of an enigma now as he had been on the day Gabriel and Big John had rescued him from the Chippewas. That he was hurting badly from the wounds he’d received from the Sioux was obvious. His left knee—the one that had been clubbed hard by a Yankton’s rifle—was especially tender yet. But Pike hadn’t complained once on the long, grueling ride, and Gabriel admired him for that.

Still, the core of his distrust for the American remained as strong as ever, and it had been growing steadily since the night of the attack by Black Fish’s warriors, when Celine came to him expressing her fear that Pike wanted to kidnap her to the mountains. If abduction was indeed Pike’s intent, then the time for him to put his plan into motion would be soon, Gabriel reasoned.

A low, sharp whistle pierced the night, and Gabriel, his nerves already twangy as a fiddle string, jerked his musket part way up. Close to the riverbank, Charlo stepped clear of a tree, waited until he was certain he’d been identified, then approached without a sound.

“It is them,” the old Indian announced in a whisper. Glancing at Pouliot, he added: “I saw Emmaline. The little one is unharmed, although they make her work at the fire.”

“And Lizette?” Hallet asked tonelessly.

“She is also unharmed.” He paused a moment, then looked at Big John. “Maybe Celine has given them trouble. She is barefoot, and without her coat.”

“Then they be punishin’ her for her resistance?” Big John asked.

“Maybe,” Charlo replied. “Lizette tries to show her how to help with the boat, but she… does not seem to listen.”

“What of the bullboat?” Gabriel asked.

“They dry it over coals even as we speak. Lizette and Celine work on the boat while Emmaline cares for the meat. They must have shot a buffalo, after all, and cached its meat and hide before the attack.”

“How many are there?” Pike asked.

“Twelve, but only three who watch. They have their robes and saddles in a pile next to the river. I think they intend to cross tonight.”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” Big John said. “’Tis fools they’d be to slow down so soon after stealin’ our women, whether they thought we followed ’em through last night or not.”

“The bloody, black-hearted devils,” Hallet muttered fiercely. “Another hour of snow and we’d not have been able to follow them at all.”

“Aye,” Big John agreed. “Our luck has held so far, but we don’t have ’em back yet. Charlo, ye’ve been close to the buggers and have seen what needs seein’. What say ye, man?”

Charlo was quiet a moment, thinking. Finally he said: “There is no way we can approach them quietly on foot without endangering the women. What I think we must somehow do is go in very fast and each of us kill a man before they know we are among them. Then we must each of us kill another, before they can harm the women.”

“That ain’t possible,” Pike said flatly. “The Sioux won’t be that slow to react. Some of us are going to taste steel or lead tonight.”

“Does that worry you?” Gabriel asked tersely.

“Not so much, sonny, but there’s no point in ignoring it, either. Main thing is the women, and especially Noel’s little girl. We have to get them out of there fast, before the Sioux have a chance to get at them. They’ll kill them out of spite if we don’t, sure as hell.”

“There is truth in Pike’s words,” Charlo said thoughtfully. “But I think also there is a way to surprise them, even though they have men watching.” He cocked a brow toward Big John. “The unguarded side, eh?”

“The river?”

“Oui, the river. Two men. We carry our guns such, tied.” He lifted his fowler across both shoulders. “Our powder horns, too. We go into the water and pull ourselves upstream by roots. It can be done, and if the others wait until we attack, then the surprise will be complete.”

“’Tis a wee mite dangerous, old friend,” Big John replied weakly, then, after a moment’s reflection, added: “But, aye, it might work, at that. Sure, I’m game to try it.”

“No, not you, Big John,” Hallet said. “I’ll go.”

“And me,” Pike interjected.

“No. ’Twill be me and Charlo doin’ this.”

“You’re gonna be in freezing water up to your necks for nearly half a mile,” Pike reminded him. “That’s a young man’s game.”

But Big John was adamant. “No, Mister Pike, ’tis an old man’s game, not to be played by those with a life ahead of ’em yet.”

“Big John is right,” Gabriel said, his voice suddenly choked and unsure. He looked at Hallet and Pouliot, then Charlo and Pike. Lastly he looked at Big John, and his fists clenched until his fingers ached. “Big John and Charlo should go. The rest of us must remain behind and be ready when the time comes.”

“I don’t like this,” Hallet said. “It isn’t right.”

But Big John’s reply was quick and succinct. “Aye, friend, ’tis naught but right.”

Charlo stepped forward to shake Hallet’s hand, then Pouliot’s and Pike’s and Gabriel’s. Big John did the same, though pausing before Gabriel, smiling warmly. “Ye watch yeself, laddie,” he said. “’Tis a hornet’s nest we’ll soon be walkin’ into, and no way for it except to take us a sting or two.”

Tears welled in Gabriel’s eyes. He let them come, unashamed. “I will watch myself, Big John. You will do the same, no?”

Big John’s smile widened briefly, then disappeared. He went to the roan and began to strip, tying his clothes in a bundle atop his saddle. When he was naked, he dug a tin of bear grease from his saddlebags and coated his body with the heavy, pallid yellow lard until his flesh shone and the scars from his encounter with One Who Limps gleamed a bright, angry red. When he had greased himself as best he could against the icy waters of the Missouri, he drew on the lighter, deer-hide moccasins he wore beneath his heavy souliers de boeuf, and his knee-length woolen drawers. He belted his knife and hatchet around his waist, then thrust a single pistol into the fringed scabbard with his rifle. He turned then and, without a backward glance, vanished into the trees. Charlo was only a few paces behind, skeleton lean, pale as a wraith.

Gabriel stared after them only a moment, then wiped the tears from his cheeks and went to where Baldy was tethered. He slipped out of his factory coat and tied it across the front of the saddle, then took off his bulky winter moccasins and secured them to his bedroll. He wrapped his bandanna over his mouth and nose to mask the frosty cloud of his breath, then readied the Brown Bess by feel. When he’d checked the belt axe and the two knives he carried at his waist, he was ready. He entered the trees as Big John and Charlo had done, quietly and without fanfare, and made his way alone toward the tiny, flickering glow that was the Sioux’ fire, nearly half a mile away.

There was no fear in him, not even the familiar twinge of anxiety, just an incredible awareness. He felt every twig beneath the thin leather soles of his moccasins, could sense its tension and pull his foot back before it snapped. His toes glided into the crusted snow as if it were water, and his foot slid smoothly after them, with only minimal noise. He spotted an owl watching him from a high limb and changed direction before it whooed or flapped loudly away.

A time or two he thought he heard one of the others behind him, but the sound was always small and never carried far. He didn’t even bother looking back. Gradually the light of the Sioux’ fire strengthened. Drawing closer, he spotted the overturned bullboat propped on a low brace between the Indians’ camp and the river, its pale hull glowing dull red from the reflection of the coals beneath it. A woman stood nearby but Gabriel couldn’t tell whether it was Lizette or Celine. Several men sat around the fire, talking animatedly.

Stopping, Gabriel finally looked back. Hallet was following in his tracks, but the others were still hidden from view. He nodded as Hallet came up, and the two men sank to a crouch.

“We will wait here a few minutes, before moving closer,” Gabriel whispered.

Hallet cast a brief glance over his shoulder. “Noel and Pike are still coming.”

Gabriel shook his head. “We will wait only a few minutes. We must not lag when Big John and Charlo begin their attack. That is the most important thing.”

Hallet didn’t reply. He’d spotted the woman standing beside the bullboat and was studying her intently. After a couple of minutes, he shook his head in frustration. “It could be Lizette, but I’m not sure.” The bandanna over his mouth puffed in and out as he spoke, like the irregular beating of a heart, the oval patch of condensation right at his mouth whiskered with frost.

“Look,” Gabriel whispered, nodding toward the Sioux camp.

A couple of warriors had stood and were making their way to the boat. Lifting one side free of the props, they examined the drying hide, commenting on its condition to one another. Lizette Hallet—in the increased reflection from the drying fire Gabriel could see her clearly now—stood silently to one side.

Hallet drew his breath in sharply, and, in a choked voice, said: “If I lose my Lizette…”

“We will get them back,” Gabriel said grimly. He moved his hand back to cover the musket’s big lock. “Come, it is time to move closer.”

With Hallet dogging his heels, Gabriel made his way carefully through the trees to a waist-thick limb, only recently fallen. Smaller branches arched upward from it, tapering into a lattice of twigs pointing crookedly toward the river. Crouched within the limb’s camouflage of twigs and branches, Gabriel surveyed the camp. He counted only eight or nine warriors, but remembered Charlo had said at least three of them were standing watch. Celine and Emmaline were sitting in the snow behind the bullboat, close to Lizette and within the light of the larger fire, although outside its circle of warmth. None of them had blankets or robes with which to combat the intense cold, although Lizette and Emmaline still had their capotes.

Only Celine had been stripped of her outerwear. She wore the same dark, heavy dress that she’d come to the valley in, and sat, hunched and shivering, beside Emmaline, rocking steadily back and forth. Gabriel thought Big John must have been right. Celine was being punished for something, and would have to earn her clothing back with obedience.

Hallet touched his arm, then nodded toward the flat meadow separating the trees from the distant line of hills they had come through that afternoon. It took Gabriel a couple of minutes to spot the warrior standing motionlessly beside a cottonwood, but, once he had, he soon picked out a second Indian, keeping watch about forty yards below where the first one stood. He tried to recount the braves lounging around the fire, but still couldn’t tell whether there were eight or nine. That left at least one, and possibly two, unaccounted for.

Leaning close, Hallet whispered: “I saw someone moving near the river.”

Big John and Charlo? Gabriel thought it probably had to be, although he knew it could also be one of the unaccounted for warriors.

Then he heard a faint thud from the river’s edge, followed by a muffled cry, then a loud splash. The Sioux sitting around the fire sprang to their feet, and, at Gabriel’s side, Hallet’s fusil roared. One of the Indians at the fire was knocked spinning. A second later, Big John’s rifle flashed from the darkness of the riverbank. Gabriel snapped a shot at the scattering warriors. His ball struck one of the braves in the back and slammed him to the ground, face first.

Lunging to his feet, Gabriel raced toward the Sioux camp, pulling his powder horn around to reload as he did. He kept his eyes on the warrior he’d shot, scrambling awkwardly into the brush, his shoulder glistening with blood.

Hallet was sprinting through the trees for his wife and Gabriel ran after him. Lizette was trying to pull Celine toward the river, but she was resisting, fighting back with slaps and kicks. Emmaline had already vanished. Most of the Sioux had also disappeared into the trees, but at least three of them were dashing toward the captives.

Gabriel cried an impotent warning as he spilled a haphazard powder charge down the barrel. He watched helplessly as the warriors closed in on the women, tomahawks raised. Then he heard the crack of Big John’s second barrel, and saw in that same instant the flowering muzzle flash of Charlo’s fowler.

Two of the braves rushing the captives were blasted off their feet. The third skidded as he spun toward the trees; he was darting into the timber when Hallet threw his reloaded fusil to his shoulder and fired on the run. The third warrior jerked and staggered, then dropped to his knees, from there toppling slowly to his face.

Thumbing an unpatched ball down the musket’s bore, Gabriel rapped the butt sharply against the ground, then jerked it up to the cradle of his left arm and quickly primed the pan. He stopped then, the musket held ready, but there were no targets in sight.

The Sioux were gone.

The clearing around the fire was empty save for the saddles and gear of the Indians. Taking his time now, Gabriel started to work his way around the camp in a large circle toward the river, being careful not to blind himself by looking directly into the brighter light of the clearing. Movement to his left preceded the cold whisk of an arrow paring the air close to his ear. He spun, shouldering the Bess, but the shattering crack of a rifle—Pike’s rifle, he thought—interrupted his aim. He heard the startled cry of the Indian, then the loud splash of a body tumbling into the river.

A horse nickered from beyond the fire. There was a shout, a reply in Sioux, then the drumming of hoofs that quickly faded to the west.

There was another cry then, of pain and surprise, followed by a Sioux’s triumphant shout. The cry was Pouliot’s, or at least it had sounded like Pouliot. A short silence followed, then the night erupted once more with shouts and cries, the sharp cracks of rifles and the more hollow booms of the smoothbores.

Gabriel plunged recklessly forward. A Sioux sprang up before him, tomahawk flashing. Gabriel smashed him in the face with the musket’s butt, slashed downward with the barrel. There was a grunt that nearly drowned out the dull, wet plunk of steel against flesh and bone. A warm, bloody mist showered the back of Gabriel’s hand. As the Indian crumbled, he leaped over the body and ran on.

He saw Charlo come into the clearing, then dodge quickly to one side. He saw Big John approach the bullboat just as one of the Sioux who had been shot earlier sat up. The muzzle flash of the Indian’s fusil lit Big John’s face with an orange glow, staggering him backward.

Pouliot seemed to appear out of nowhere, the left side of his shirt bloody around the shaft of an arrow protruding from his shoulder. His fusil was gone, but he stepped up behind the warrior who’d shot Big John and cleaved his skull with a belt axe. Leaving the hatchet embedded in the Indian’s head, he strode rapidly to the bullboat and flipped it over with his good arm. Emmaline was crouched beneath it like a rabbit under a bush. She cried out in terror when the boat was lifted away, then cried again with joy and jumped into her father’s arms. Holding her tightly, Pouliot darted into the shadows.

Gabriel had come to a halt when Charlo ran into the clearing, then had watched in stunned disbelief as Big John fell. Pouliot’s rescue of his daughter took mere seconds. When he and the girl were gone, Gabriel’s gaze was drawn numbly back to Big John’s writhing form, the big Scotsman’s hands clutching and clawing at his face from which came hollow, breathless shrieks that made Gabriel’s scalp crawl.

Gabriel started forward, but hadn’t gone more than a few paces when yet another scream yanked him to a stop. Pivoting, he saw Celine running toward the clearing from the direction of the open valley. A mounted Sioux was racing his pony after her. Gabriel shouted and lifted his musket, but the Sioux was already leaning from the back of his mount, his arm curling toward Celine’s waist, her body partially shielding his.

Helplessly Gabriel watched the warrior grab Celine and pull her roughly across the horse’s withers. Then a rifle cracked from the edge of the trees and the Sioux pitched limply from the pony’s back.

Celine fell with him, sprawling in the snow. Gabriel ran to her side. Goose-flesh pimpled the flesh of his arms as her unearthly screams raked the night. Her body jerked convulsively, and she was beating at the air and kicking at the snow as if still fighting off dead warriors.

Gabriel dropped to his knees at her side, leaning the Brown Bess against a tree. Celine’s face snapped toward him, twisted with rage.

“You don’t love me!” she yelled wildly. “You don’t love me!”

He froze, transfixed by the stark intensity of her features, the lifeless depths of her eyes. He was only peripherally aware of her arm fumbling behind her. Then the look of hatred on her face faded. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. She came up fast, her hand flashing forward in a blur of polished steel.

A hand grabbed Gabriel’s shoulder and yanked him back at the last instant. He fell in the snow and Pike stepped between him and the girl, holding out his hand to stop her rush. Celine screamed her frustration and lunged toward him, her arm darting like the strike of a snake. Pike grunted and spun away, wrapping an arm around the trunk of a tree to hold himself up. With his free hand he plucked clumsily at the hilt of the knife protruding from his chest, but he was too weak to pull it out. Then his knees buckled and he crumbled to the ground, dead before Gabriel could reach his side.