CHAPTER FOUR

“Of all the memories of the past that come like a summer breeze . . .” Quiet Jim’s soft tenor voice and perfect pitch seemed to float on the chill September air as he continued the familiar refrain, concluding with the words, “the good-bye at the door.”

“Dadgum it, Quiet Jim, you keep singing that song and you’ll turn us all melancholy,” Yapper Jim hollered. He rode second in line, behind Big River Frank.

“We are all melancholy already,” Grass Edwards insisted. He was just ahead of Brazos, who rode at the rear of the procession. “It’s been over a month since the army rounded up the miners, and we are still in these hills. We haven’t found any more gold, nor Hook Reed’s Dakota cross. Shoot, we cain’t even find a safe trail out of here.”

Big River Frank leaned back on his horse but continued to lead the plodding procession. “Make you feel like the last rats on a sinkin’ ship, don’t it? What do you think, Brazos? Is it time for us to make a run and try to save our scalps?”

“It’s dangerous to stay, dangerous to leave.” Brazos said. “The Sioux know we’re up here. They’re not waitin’ for us to give ’em an easier target.”

“Maybe we ought to all go get some jobs in town,” Grass suggested.

“What town?” Yapper Jim challenged.

“I was thinkin’ of Cheyenne, myself,” Grass replied.

“Ain’t no jobs in Cheyenne,” Yapper insisted. “Why there’s ten bummers hangin’ around ever’ street corner for one honest job as it is.”

“Well, maybe we could pass through Cheyenne on our way somewheres. I surely would like to meet my sweet Jamie Sue,” Grass pined.

“No offense, but I’m gettin’ a little tired of starin’ at the same four dirty faces ever’day, myself,” Quiet Jim added.

“Well, boys,” Brazos laughed, “the situation is desperate when Quiet Jim is willin’ to admit he misses the ladies.”

“Not just ladies in general,” Quiet Jim added. “One special lady.”

“Whoa!” Yapper hollered so loud every horse instantly pulled up. “Do you mean to tell me Quiet Jim has a special lady on the side that none of us knows about? This is a momentous day!”

Quiet Jim tugged off his dirty felt hat and ran his hands through his light brown hair, thin enough on top to foreshadow a bald spot. “I didn’t say I had a special one lined up,” he mumbled.

“You most certainly did,” Yapper boomed.

“What I meant was, I know the Lord has a special one for me. I guess what I mean is, I’m not interested in just any dance hall girl.”

“Good,” Yapper shouted, “that’ll leave two for me!”

“Three, I reckon,” Grass mused. “The ol’ man here is still a grievin’ widower.”

“You ever think about gettin’ remarried, Brazos?” Yapper Jim asked.

“Nope.”

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“You reckon you ever will start to think about gettin’ remarried?”

“Nope.”

Yapper Jim’s unshaven beard now covered up his previously neatly trimmed sideburns and goatee. “How about you, Big River?” he called. “Are you the marryin’ type?”

“Well, I do have a fondness for Mexican señoritas . . . but I don’t reckon I’d make much of a husband. Don’t seem fair to stick some lady with the likes of me.”

“Why, I don’t know, Big River,” Grass Edwards chuckled. “You seem like a mighty fine catch to me. Providin’ the woman was short. What do you think, Brazos, does Big River have marryin’ qualities?”

“Yep. Hardworkin’, loyal, truthful . . .”

“’Course, if that’s all she wanted she could jist get herself a dog!” Yapper hooted.

Quiet Jim began to sing, and Brazos leaned forward to hear his soft voice.

Grass Edwards’s voice cut through the melody. “I hear down in Colorado they have this hundred-foot cross up in the mountains that forms ever’ spring melt. The snow just stays in them rock crevices in the shape of a gigantic cross. I wonder if this here Dakota cross is somethin’ like that?”

Quiet Jim continued to sing.

“Trees cover most ever’one of these hills. Them that is bare is worn smooth. If you want a marker in these mountains you’d have to carve ’em, yourself,” Big River Frank called out.

“The whole thing about a cross could have been made up by some down-and-out gambler in Tucson who wanted a stake for a game,” Brazos added.

Quiet Jim stopped singing. “Maybe we ought to rest the horses in this little meadow. It’s more grass than we’ve seen in two days.”

“It ain’t no ordinary grass,” Edwards insisted. “This here red one is Agrostis stolonifera, and that one that looks like wild wheat is Agropyron smithii.”

Yapper Jim turned his horse around and rode back to Brazos, but he talked loud enough for all of them to hear. “You know, if Edwards would have got snowed in that winter with a mining engineer instead of some fool botanist, we’d all be rich by now.”

Quiet Jim glanced up with his normal, expressionless face. “If that had happened, we’d probably have to call him Mother Lode Edwards.”

Brazos watched the others dismount.

“You ain’t gettin’ down?” Big River inquired.

“I’m going to ride on up over that next ridge, just to see what’s on the other side.”

“You thinkin’ about mamma . . . or daughter?”

“Both, I suppose,” Brazos said.

“Let’s get out of these mountains and go back to Texas.”

“I’ve thought about it.” Brazos nodded toward the ridge. “If I’m not back after you take a rest, follow my tracks up the hill.”

The loose limestone shale on the steep hillside made every step a gamble. Brazos continually spurred Coco to convince him to keep climbing. The downed trees, caught in the fairly thick stand of pine, acted as a random corral wall and prevented any semblance of a straight trail. As Brazos picked his way up the steep incline, he gave up his seat on the saddle and hiked, tugging his reluctant dark sorrel gelding.

Well, Lord, the only good thing about this country is that no one in their right mind would work this hard to follow us.

Brazos struggled to make it ten steps up the steep hillside, then stopped to rest.

Lord, I can’t bring a family into these gulches. I can’t even bring a horse in here. Wherever it is you’re leadin’, I think I made a wrong turn someplace. Hook’s Dakota cross got me sidetracked.

Brazos hiked up ten more steps. His calf muscles cramped up, and he stopped to rest.

I don’t reckon many men ever hiked this hill. Maybe I’m the first, ever.

I suppose the old-time trappers worked this land. But not this mountaintop. They would’ve stayed to the creeks and basins.

He glanced back down the steep hillside at his tracks, still evident in the loose rock and dirt below him.

Maybe I’m the first one to ever set foot here. From the time you created it, Lord, until this moment, it’s just been sittin’ here . . . growin’, livin’, dyin’, snowin’, and growin’ some more. Maybe you made this whole mountainside just for me to see!

Brazos tugged the horse another dozen steps up the loose shale, then leaned over and rested his hands on his knees. “Coco, I’m too old for this.” He could feel a cramp coming on his right side. His long-john shirt was holding cold sweat against his chest under his heavy canvas coat.

It’s like Adam and Eve in the garden lookin’ at things for the very first time.

Well, it’s like Adam lookin’ at things . . .

In my case, there is no Eve.

Only fifty feet from the tree-covered crest, Brazos split the difference and pushed himself to the halfway point. Sliding downhill, he jammed his boot against a pine tree with a six-inch trunk.

Sarah Ruth, what would you say about this land?

No place to raise children?

Well, the boys are raised.

And Dacee June? That girl would follow her daddy anywhere. But I can’t bring her in here. Can I?

Brazos glanced down the steep hillside.

His words interrupted the rustle of a slight breeze about the pine top. “Dacee June, can you hike up this hill?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard the crisp, clear voice of a twelve-year-old. Yes, Daddy, I can make it! Just watch me!

“Well, come on, girl,” he mumbled to the wind. “Let’s see what’s up there.”

When he reached the top, he found it to be a razorback ridge no more than six feet across. Lightning-burned pines were scattered along the northern slope, so thick they prevented any view of the next gulch. After a small swell to the east, the ridge seemed to ascend to an outcropping of white limestone rock about a half-mile away.

“Time for a little break, Coco,” he explained as he tied the horse to a pine. “I’ll hike this on my own.” He pulled the Sharps carbine out of the scabbard.

When he finally reached the rock outcropping, it was forty to fifty feet still higher than the ridge. He searched for a path to the top, but realized it would be a hand-over-fist ascent.

Brazos carefully shoved the carbine down his back, between his shirt and his coat, hooking the barrel on his belt. He yanked off his spurs and dangled them from his suspenders. His calloused fingers clutched the cold, rough rock as he pulled himself up, one step at a time.

Brazos, you’re a fool for doin’ this. An old fool. It’ll be four times tougher climbin’ back down. I surely hope there’s somethin’ worth seein’ up here.

The top of the huge rock he was climbing was not the crest of the mountain, but merely a platform on which to catch his breath. He continued the ascent on another rock that jutted up and out to the north.

He took a swig from his canteen, adjusted the carbine at his back, and continued the climb. Cresting the final limestone boulder, he found a swell in the rock the size of a small bench. From the highest point he could look out over the Black Hills to the badlands to the east. There was one more tall ridge to the north, then it, too, looked as if it sloped down to the plains.

Brazos pulled off his sweat-drenched spectacles and gazed to the south and west. In both directions, there was nothing but wave after wave of steep, pine-covered ridges. The wind whipped across from west to east, turning the sweat into ice water. He yanked his carbine from his coat, then hunkered down on the limestone bench. The boulders blocked some of the breeze.

Brazos hunted for a dry spot on his shirttail to try to wipe his spectacle lens clean. Carefully placing the gold wire frames back on his broad, bent nose, he folded his arms across his chest and began to survey the gulch in front of him.

Movement in the creekbed far below him to the north caused him to leap to his feet, barely able to catch the carbine before it tumbled off the rocks.

“Men? Tents? Miners?” The words knifed through the breeze like a woodpecker on a dead tree. There are prospectors down there workin’ that stream! Who are they? Where did they come from? Why didn’t they leave with the others? Are they havin’ any luck? Are there any more claims left?

For half an hour Brazos perched on the limestone peak and studied the proceedings below. He was too far away to count men, or even distinguish claims. But he could trail the creek from the east up to a fork where the gulch split into two smaller ones. There was hardly any room on the south side of the creek. The mountain seemed to drop straight down into the brush and deadwood along the creekbank. The north side was wide enough for a cabin or two, then swooped up a pine-scattered ridge almost as tall as the one he was on. To the west, he spotted scattered, dark clouds that seemed to be tethered to the horizon.

Goose bumps formed on his chest and arms as the cool breeze continued to swirl around the peak. He took one more studied 360-degree survey, then started down. The descent proved as treacherous as he had thought, but the excitement that raced through his heart and mind kept him moving down the rocks at a steady pace. Twice he slipped and crashed into some boulders, scraping and leaving a welt on his temple.

He was trotting down the razorback when he realized the other four were standing next to their horses at the pine where Coco was tethered.

Big River Frank hiked towards him, his ’73 Winchester in his hand. “Brazos, you get hurt?”

“No, no . . . just a scratch.”

“There’s blood all over your—”

“There’s a couple dozen men a few miles north of here, workin’ the next gulch!” Brazos interrupted.

“Which gulch?” Yapper Jim hollered.

“Follow this razorback around to the east, then you drop down into a little creek,” Brazos reported as he tightened the girth and climbed into the saddle. “I tell you, boys, they’re workin’ it like they found gold!”

“Don’t that beat all! For over a month we’ve figured we’re the only ones in the entire Black Hills, and they’ve been up here beatin’ us to pay dirt,” Grass Edwards complained. “How come the army didn’t round them up?”

“The same reason they didn’t corral us,” Brazos replied. “I think there’s even a cabin or two.”

“How do we get off this ridge?” Big River Frank queried.

“Not up that way. It drops straight off on the other side of those white rocks. Let’s slant down off this razorback to the east, pick up the south creek, and—”

“There’s two creeks?” Big River probed.

“They fork down there near where they’re working,” Brazos explained.

Yapper Jim spurred his horse to catch up with the others. “If there’s two creeks, there’s bound to be a claim left.”

“We don’t want just any claim.” Quiet Jim’s voice was just above a whisper. “We want one with gold on it.”

It was noon the next day before they hacked their way through the brush and rode up to three startled prospectors with gold pans working a placer claim on the south fork of the creek. Within minutes an impromptu meeting was called at a cabin about half the size of Sidwell’s. Two dozen men huddled to explain to Brazos and the others the mining laws and point out what claims were still available. They were given five days to prospect any one claim in.

Within two days they paid their two-dollar recording fee for each of five claims. No. 14 Below Discovery and No. 18 and No. 19 Below Discovery on Whitewood Creek showed the most promise of placer gold. No. 20 and 21 Above Discovery on Deadwood Creek showed some possibility at bedrock depth or deeper.

Huddled around the evening campfire, Big River Frank yanked the coffeepot off the hook, then replaced it without pouring any in his cup. “I’ve drank spring water that’s had more taste than this coffee.”

“We can make tea out of the Ceanothus herbaceus,” Grass Edwards reported.

“I ain’t drinkin’ no weed tea,” Yapper Jim protested.

“I reckon if we get desperate enough we’ll be steeping pine nuts,” Big River Frank said.

Quiet Jim nodded agreement.

“That ain’t the only supplies runnin’ low,” Big River added.

Grass Edwards tried to bite off a chunk of jerky, but it was so tough he just shoved the entire wad in his mouth and mumbled, “We can buy a few supplies from Frank Bryant and that gang.”

“Word has it that by November the creeks is froze and all placer work is finished until spring,” Yapper Jim informed.

“The ones that has hit bedrock are plannin’ on diggin’ underground during the winter,” Big River said.

Brazos poked at the flames with a short stick. “The army could show up any day and move us out of here, too.”

Yapper swizzled his coffee around in his cup and stared at the grounds. “Or the Sioux could just ride up the gulch and scalp us all.”

“I think they’re too smart to come to these hills in the winter.” Brazos could feel the flame lap at his face. “The ol’ boys on No. 15 Above have a two-man saw in camp and no one who’s ever bucked one. They said it’s so dull they can’t cut kindlin’. They’ll trade it to us, if we cut some boards for them. Quiet Jim’s a sawyer, and any of us can get down in the pit and buck the other end. You’ve got a file on ya, don’t you, Jim?”

Like a bass note feather in a soft breeze, Quiet Jim’s “Yep” floated across the fire.

“You sayin’ we should go into the timber business instead of findin’ gold?” Yapper Jim protested.

Brazos scooted back on a stump. “I’m sayin’ with two of us workin’ timber and three in the creek, we can have a little poke of gold and a decent cabin within three weeks. Maybe we can trade wood for supplies.” He tried to rub the stiffness out of his wrists.” We aren’t going to buy many supplies with gold. These boys have gold by the sacks. They can’t get out to spend it. What they’re worried about, right now, is keepin’ these claims through the winter.”

Yapper Jim poured the contents of his coffee cup into the dirt next to the fire. “The very first thing we are tradin’ for is some coffee.”

The Texas Company cabin was twenty-four feet by twelve, the biggest structure in Whitewood Gulch. It contained two identical rooms, with rock fireplaces at both ends. The fire in the bedroom end barely glowed, but the one in the other end blazed.

Brazos Fortune entered the cabin with a stack of firewood balanced in his left arm, the Sharps carbine in his right. He pulled off his boots inside the door; his denim trousers were water-soaked from the knees down. He could feel the stiff material rub raw on his legs. “Did you boys hear the tally on the vote to name this burg?” he asked.

“If they decide to call it Muckleville, I’m leavin’,” Yapper Jim piped up.

“Deadwood City.”

“Well, that got my vote, but it isn’t much of a city,” Big River Frank reported. “Shoot, it don’t even have one store. It didn’t even have three cabins before Quiet Jim opened the saw pit.”

Quiet Jim waited for a break in the conversation. “Did you see Albien and Verpont about salt?” he asked.

Fortune squatted in front of the fireplace and shoved several sticks into the flames. “I saw ’em. They said they couldn’t give us any salt, no matter what the trade.”

“We might could make it to January, but we’ll never last to March,” Big River reminded them.

“We keep wadin’ in that creek, we’ll all die of pneumonia long before January.” Brazos turned his back to the flames, and felt his pant leg beginning to warm. “We’re breakin’ ice ever’ mornin’ now. One of these days we’ll have to shut it down for the winter.”

Yapper Jim broke off a hunk of stale bread and waved it around as he talked. “How can we quit when we’re pannin’ a hundred dollars a day out of No. 14 Below Discovery?”

“Not to mention Quiet Jim clearin’ twenty dollars a day on sawed boards,” Big River pondered.

Brazos rotated his stream-soaked pants and now faced the fireplace. “What about a couple of us makin’ a run for supplies?”

Yapper Jim pushed his long-handled shirtsleeves up to his elbows. “Two can’t get through the Sioux.”

“We snuck into these hills following the draws and arroyos. Maybe we can slip out to the north the same way,” Brazos proposed. “We could divide the gold—leave half with those who stay, and half with those who go.”

“That way, when the fools goin’ for supplies get themselves scalped,” Yapper blurted out, “the ones back here still have some gold.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Brazos continued. “Those who go for supplies can try to make it back in here before the snow flies. The ones that are left will have fewer mouths to feed. With any wild game at all, they should be able to survive most of the winter, even if the others get bushwhacked.”

“I ain’t really interested in survivin’ most of the winter,” Quiet Jim reflected. “I was countin’ on survivin’ all of the winter.”

Grass Edwards leaned back against the wall as he ran a cleaning stick with a rag tied to it down the barrel of his pistol. “It don’t make sense for all of us to sit in here hoardin’ gold, then starve to death.”

“I say for them that leave, take all the gold,” Big River Frank suggested. “We don’t need any gold here in Deadwood.”

“But what if they get scalped, like Brazos said?” Yapper protested.

“Then we lost a whole lot more than some gold. The more we send out, the more supplies and equipment we can bring in. The more we bring in, the more gold we dig next spring,” Big River Frank proposed.

“Who is it that tries to make it out?” Yapper quizzed, as he continued his stroll across the room.

“Brazos ought to be one,” Big River insisted. “He’s the best shot among us. Besides, he’s got his boy, Robert, out at Fort Abe Lincoln.”

Quiet Jim rubbed his full beard. “Being the sawyer, I better stay to keep sawin’ boards as long we can.”

Brazos could feel his pant legs growing ice cold again. He returned to the fireplace. “Who do you want to stay in the pit with you?”

Yapper Jim waved his arms. “Me, of course. Ain’t no one can work that bottom cut like me.”

Quiet Jim concurred. “I do enjoy the silence.”

“What silence?” Yapper Jim demanded.

Quiet Jim didn’t crack a smile. “With all that sawdust tumblin’ down, Yapper has to keep his mouth closed.”

“Laugh all you want to, but I’d just as soon stay. Don’t feel much like gettin’ scalped anyways,” Yapper pouted.

“Grass knows more about buyin’ minin’ equipment than I do,” Big River suggested. “I reckon that means I stay.”

“Do you think we’ll have time to go down to Cheyenne?” Grass Edwards asked.

“Nope. We’ll make a run straight for Fort Pierre. It’s the closest place, providin’ we don’t get lost,” Brazos said.

“Speakin’ of lost,” Yapper Jim tugged his suspenders down over his shoulders and let them hang towards the ground. “Did you see that notice posted on Muckle’s cabin? They’re searchin’ for some man who’s lost in the hills.”

“What’s his name?” Brazos asked.

“Vince somethin’ or other.”

Grass Edwards jumped to his feet. “Vince Milan! That’s my sweet Jamie Sue’s brother! Is she still in Cheyenne?”

“It said to contact her in Fort Pierre,” Yapper said.

Grass Edwards began to prowl the room. “My Jamie Sue’s in Fort Pierre? Why, in a week or so, she could be in my arms.”

“I would surmise that Jamie Sue has a little somethin’ to say about it,” Brazos teased.

“She won’t be able to resist me, boys. You ain’t never seen me when I turn on my charm.” Grass Edwards’s smile seemed wider than his ears.

By 10:00 the next morning, Brazos and Grass Edwards had ridden past the lowest claim in the district. They tried to follow Whitewood Creek out of the mountains, but found its steep gulches so checkered with dead trees and abandoned beaver dams that they slowly climbed the pine-sloped hill on the north, and picked their way through the tree line for two more days.

On the third day out, they broke through the pines into the great plains of Dakota Territory.

Grass Edwards waited as Brazos rode up alongside him. “Look at that . . . prairie as far as the eye can see. I’ve been in them gulches so long I forgot what it was like to look out over a quarter mile at a time. It’s goin’ to be mighty tough takin’ freight back in this way.”

“Quiet Jim said if the ground froze up, they’d try to log off some trees along the trail. Maybe it will be a little easier on the return.”

“You plannin’ on droppin’ down there and followin’ the north fork of the Cheyenne River?” Grass quizzed.

“Nope.”

“But it looks like it’s the easiest grade, now that we’ve gotten out of the hills.”

“Too easy. It will be the trail everyone takes.”

“But there ain’t no one around. What ‘ever’one’ you talkin’ about?”

“Cheyenne and Sioux,” Brazos said.

“Where?”

“If we could see them, it would be too late. Let’s head northeast through that white, crusty-looking land.”

Grass Edwards cupped his hands and blew warm breath into them. “Fortune, you’re just gettin’ senile in your old age. There ain’t nothin’ out there! I’ll bet there ain’t a stalk of Elymus canadensis for twenty miles. There won’t be any water in there, no feed, not a scrap of firewood, and no trees to hide behind. No one in his right mind would ride through that.”

“Good.” Brazos retied his black bandanna around his neck, then glanced at Grass. “That way no one will bother us.”

By nightfall they had crossed the north fork of the Cheyenne River and made a cold camp at the base of a small gorge that led down to a dry creekbed. For the last two hours of the day they had seen nothing but the crusted rolling prairie of baked-hard, white alkaline dirt. As the clouds piled up above them, the north wind increased, swirling with it the flour-fine white dust.

Hats pulled low, bandannas over their noses, covered in white dust, they crowded near the base of the small cliff, trying to block the wind. They picketed one horse on each side of them, facing south. Sitting beside each other, their backs against the dirt, they pulled Brazos’s canvas bedroll tarp partially over their heads. Carbines tucked in their laps, huddling close, they tried to drink a little water from their canteens.

“This surely is a lovely camp, Fortune.”

“Thank you,” Brazos said.

“Ah, but you was right. Not one Sioux followed us in here. Boy, we sure are smart. The wind blows away our tracks and no one on the face of the earth knows we’re here. Wherever we are.”

“It could be worse,” Brazos added.

“Worse? How can it be worse?”

Brazos pointed to the evening sky. “It could rain.”

“What’s wrong with rain? That would clear the air of this dust.”

“This alkali turns to a gumbo in a heavy rain. It would be so slick and sticky, we couldn’t ride ten feet without boggin’ down.”

“You figure we ought to keep ridin’ tonight?”

“Nope. We’d probably just circle around with all these clouds above.”

“You plan on sleepin’ sittin’ just like this?”

“Nope. I don’t plan on sleepin’. Me and sleep don’t do too good.”

About midnight it began to snow.

Tiny flakes dropped like crumbs off a boardinghouse table for about fifteen minutes, then a blast of frigid wind followed. Finally, the clouds disappeared, and a blanket of Dakota stars covered the coal-black night sky.

“Brazos, are you awake?”

“Yep.”

“Ain’t that something the way them stars light up the snow? It’s almost like daylight. Not that the color of the badlands is any different. They was white with alkali. But at least now the air is clean.”

“When the snows melts it’s going to get real gummy,” Brazos reported. “And if we wait for the gumbo to dry, it will be another dust storm and we still won’t have water or wood.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we take off right now,” Brazos said.

“That’s mighty fine with me.” Edwards stood up and stretched his legs. “Gives me the feelin’ I’m walkin’ on the moon.”

Both men pulled the blinders off their horses and yanked the girths down tight. Brazos waited in the saddle for Grass Edwards to mount up.

“Brazos, do you figure there’s people livin’ on the moon? I read this here book one time about moon people.”

“I don’t know, Grass. The Lord created the sun and the moon for light for the earth. It says that in Genesis. You’d think he’d have mentioned people up there.”

“I reckon the Almighty can do anything he wants.”

“If he ever needs some people to live on the moon,” Brazos offered, “I’d be tickled to recommend a few.”

The night got so cold that Brazos clutched his carbine in his lap by the wooden stock, not the metal receiver. Even then his gloved fingers ached. They rode straight east, but the cold wind that pushed the clouds away continued to blow from the north.

“I have half a mind to turn around in the saddle and ride backwards,” Grass called out. “That way my right side can freeze on equal basis with my left.”

“I have been thinkin’ about breakin’ out the bedroll and pullin’ it over my head,” Brazos said.

“It will make us look like squaws.”

“If they stay warm when they ride at night, they’re smarter than we are,” Brazos added.

Hats tied over their ears, wool blankets hanging down from their heads like shawls during fiesta, the two plodded through the night.

Right before daylight, Grass Edwards tried clapping his gloved hands to restore circulation to them. The noise startled his horse. He broke into a series of bucks that landed Edwards in the dirt.

Real dirt.

“Brazos, do you see this?” Edwards yanked a plant out of the ground and waved it up at Fortune. “Do you know what this is?”

“A dried weed?”

“It’s Distichlis spicata, that’s what it is . . . inland saltgrass. That means we made it to the edge of the badlands!”

Brazos tugged the blanket off his shoulders and rolled it up. “Well, I think we better find some water.”

As the sun rose over the flat eastern horizon, sage and grass appeared as scattered clumps in the gently rolling, treeless prairie. The only evidence left of the light snow was the clean air and dustless ground. Cresting a long, steep incline, the prairie dropped off into a ribbon of yellow-leafed cottonwood trees running north and south.

“There’s a creek down there.” Edwards pointed to the tree row.

“Or at least a mud hole.”

The trickle of water in the creek was no more than two feet wide, mostly clear, and very cold. A four-foot-wide patch of Canadian wild rye, brown and with full head, banded the creek. The horses grazed and drank as the men filled their canteens and built a small fire to boil coffee.

“It’s a wonder there ain’t a band of Sioux and Cheyenne camped here,” Grass said, squatting next to the fire.

“The creek’s too small, and there isn’t any game. Besides that, there’s not enough protection from the wind and blowing snow. Not exactly the kind of place I’d want to winter,” Brazos replied.

A movement in the leaf-shedding cottonwoods startled them. Brazos lifted the Sharps carbine to his shoulder. Grass yanked his revolver off his belt. Both men followed the noise through the brush, looking down the sight of their guns.

A thin, hatless man staggered into the open space on the other side of the creek. He clutched a bloody rag held tightly to his chest. “Thank God, you’re here!” he groaned, then collapsed into the short, dry grass.

“You check on him. I’ll see if there’s more,” Brazos ordered as he leaped the creek and scrambled towards the brush, his carbine cocked. He found no trace of any others and jogged back to a kneeling Grass Edwards, who was giving the injured man a drink from his canteen. “How is he?”

Water dribbled down the man’s unshaved face, as he squinted in pain. “I’m fumed, boys. Don’t mind me. It’s them Sioux you have to watch out for!”

“Where are they?” Grass quizzed.

“North of here.”

“North? We thought they were south.”

“So did I. I figured on makin’ a run to Fort Pierre, but they ambushed me yesterday evening just east of here. I hid out in a buffalo wallow all night and finally had the strength to make it to the creek.”

“Were there others with you?” Brazos plied. “This is a dangerous trail by yourself.”

“I should have knowed better. But I was in a hurry. Are you two goin’ to Fort Pierre?” The man’s narrow gray eyes searched wildly around the camp.

“If we can avoid the Sioux,” Brazos said.

“You got to do a favor for me.”

“What can we do?”

“Take my poke to my sister who’s waitin’ for me in Fort Pierre.”

Grass Edwards gently gave him another drink of water. “A poke?”

“You two are carryin’ gold out of the hills, ain’t ya?” he asked.

“Maybe . . .” Grass answered.

“That’s what I figured. I knew I could trust a couple of miners like myself.”

“Where’s your gold?” Grass asked.

“I cached it right before the fight with the Indians. About a mile east of here, I piled up three rocks as a marker, in the clearing in the middle of the boulders.”

Brazos studied the man. This might be the first mortally wounded man I’ve seen who didn’t sweat. “We haven’t seen a boulder since we left the Black Hills.”

“There’s some just east of here. You got to go get my poke and take it to my sister in Fort Pierre.” The blood on his bandage had already dried.

“How will we find your sister?” Edwards asked.

The wounded man pointed to his coat pocket. Grass removed a yellowed handbill, slowly opening it up. “Jamie Sue! My word, man, are you Vincent Milan?” Grass choked.

“You’ve got to go tell her what happened and give her the money,” the man gasped.

“We’ll do it!” Grass promised.

“Let me look at that wound, partner,” Brazos said.

“Cain’t move my hand,” Milan protested. “It’s keeping my guts from spillin’, boys. Just let me die peaceful in the grass, knowin’ my bones will be buried and my sister will get my gold.”

“Grass, you go get his gold and bring it back here. I’ll stay here and take care of him,” Brazos suggested.

“No!” the man insisted with a clear, strong voice. “You’d both better go. Those Sioux might be hiding near those boulders. It would be safer for you to go together.”

“He’s got a point about that,” Grass concurred.

Brazos stood up, then looked down at the man. “We can’t go off and leave you here.”

“The only thing that will bring rest to my soul is that I know you have my poke in hand.”

Grass Edwards stepped across the stream and retrieved the ­horses.

“We’ll leave you a canteen,” Brazos offered.

“Thank ya . . . and when you come back . . . bury me deep. But hurry . . . you’ve got to find that gold before them savages do.”

As they trotted east, both men kept their guns cocked. Their eyes scanned the horizon.

“My dearest Jamie Sue’s brother. This is providential, Brazos! I reckon she’ll be a-grievin’ when you tell her about her brother’s death,” Grass called out.

“Me tell her? She’s your sweet Jamie Sue.”

“I figure you can do the tellin’, and I’ll do the comfortin’. Look, there’s the boulders, jist like Milan said. I wonder if the Sioux is in them rocks?”

“I don’t know why they should be. They stole his horse, gun, and saddle. Milan was wrong to think the Indians would steal his gold. They have no use for it.”

“I was thinkin’ the same thing,” Grass said.

“It’s a wonder they didn’t steal his boots and clothes.”

“He must’ve got away before they stripped him. I’m going to get that gold for my Jamie Sue.” Grass spurred his horse into the boulders.

Brazos hesitated, then followed.

In a clearing, about twenty feet across, Grass Edwards leaped down and walked his horse towards a small pile of stones. “This must be it!”

Brazos’s hand was still on the receiver of his carbine that lay across his lap, when he heard a hammer cock only a few feet behind his head.

“Oh, there’s gold in here all right, boys, but it’s in your pokes, not that ground,” a deep voice boomed.

Brazos cocked the big hammer on his Sharps but let it lay in his lap.

A man in a black long coat stepped from behind the rocks, a Smith & Wesson pistol pointed at Grass Edwards on his knees by the pile of rocks. Brazos couldn’t tell if there were one or two men behind him. He didn’t turn around to look.

“Well, I’ll be . . .” Grass dropped his hand to the grip of his revolver.

“Don’t try it, boys,” the voice behind Brazos insisted. “We’ve got the drop on you, and you know it.”

“It was a trap, Brazos . . .”

“I reckon it was.”

“I cain’t believe Jamie Sue’s brother would do this to us, wounded like he was.”

“Maybe he wasn’t wounded,” Brazos suggested.

The injured man from the creek rode into the clearing on a stout bay horse. The bloody rag hung from his saddle horn. He displayed no sign of an injury. “You two is the most gullible we’ve had in a month,” the man sneered.

“Drop those guns in the dirt!” the man behind Brazos insisted.

“I’m not going to do that,” Brazos replied.

“We can shoot you right where you are.”

“And one of you will have a hole the size of a watermelon in his gut when this .50 caliber hits him.”

“But you’ll be dead!”

“So will the man with the hole in his guts.”

“You don’t need to shoot anyone,” the man behind him said. “You get down, and we’ll just take your horses and packs and leave you here with your guns. That’s a deal, and you know it.”

“It’s a lousy deal. I’m not gettin’ down,” Brazos replied.

A fourth man strolled into the clearing leading a string of saddle horses. On the last horse was an Indian woman, bound and gagged.

“You stealin’ women, too?” Brazos quizzed.

“That ain’t no woman, that’s a squaw. We found her all doubled up and sick. We nursed her back to health, and now she helps us locate water holes.”

Brazos glared at the man across the clearing. “Is that why she’s tied up?”

“We got tired of her kickin’ and bitin’ us,” Milan replied. “Now, are you goin’ to drop those guns, or do we shoot you?”

Brazos gave Grass Edwards a look. Grass dropped a quick glance down at his revolver, dangled on a wire from his belt. There was a barely visible nod at the man standing nearest him.

Brazos gripped the receiver of the carbine tight in his right hand. I agree with you, Grass, we aren’t lettin’ go of our gold, let alone our lives, without a fight. They have no intention of letting us go.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

“Well?” the man behind him shouted.

Still mounted, Brazos held his hands up, the carbine in his right hand, the barrel parallel to the ground, pointed over the top of his head to the north.

“I said, drop the—”

Brazos opened his hand as if to let the gun drop, instead he twirled it to the back and pulled the trigger without looking behind him. At the sound of the blast of the .50-caliber Sharps, Grass Edwards yanked his gun and fired a quick round at the man standing closest to him, who promptly dove behind the boulders.

Brazos threw himself low on Coco’s neck and spurred across the opening, frightening the cavvy of horses held by the fourth man. He had dropped the lead ropes in order to pull his own gun, and the horses, including the one the Indian woman rode, bolted to the open prairie to the east.

The scream from the man behind him let Brazos know he had wounded the spokesman. Whipping around fifty feet beyond the boulders, he fired a second shot. Grass Edwards swung up into the saddle, galloped out of the boulders, riding so low on the horse’s neck he could hardly be seen above the saddle horn.

Brazos sprinted off to the east with Edwards. Several shots rang out, but they didn’t slow until they crested the next roll of the prairie and the boulders dropped out of sight.

“Are you all right?” Brazos called out.

“I ain’t shot, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did I hit that guy behind me?” Brazos asked.

“I reckon. He dropped to the rocks like a rotten apple topplin’ from a tree in winter.”

“I think you wounded one, too,” Brazos added.

“I didn’t aim too much. I was in such a hurry to mount up. We ain’t going back after them, are we?”

“Nope. They’re in the middle of Sioux land on foot, several wounded. I surmise that’s punishment enough.”

“There’s their horses!” Edwards pointed to the next ridge.

Brazos grabbed his spectacles out of his vest. “Is the woman still riding one?”

“Yep.”

“She can sit a horse, if she stayed on during that romp, all tied up like that.”

“You reckon we should unbind her?” Grass asked.

“That’s what I’m thinkin’.”

The loose horses trotted further out on the prairie as they approached, but the woman’s horse stood fastened by a lead rope that had snagged a sage.

Brazos rode alongside her and untied the bandanna around her mouth, her hands still fastened behind her back. The moment the dirty red cloth dropped from her mouth, she let out a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream.

Brazos held up his hands. “Quiet, we aren’t going to hurt you,” he shouted.

She continued to scream.

“Put the gag back on her!” Edwards shouted.

“What?”

“The gag!”

Brazos reached back over with the gag, and she snapped at him like a bobcat cornered in the barn.

But she did stop screaming.

“Look, lady, we aren’t going to harm you,” Brazos insisted. “Do you speak English? What is your name? Where do you come from?”

She looked at him, then Edwards, then back at Brazos with her fiery brown eyes. “Táku eníciyapi hwo? Tuktétaņhaņ yaú hwo?”

“What did she say?” Edwards probed.

A sly smile broke across her face. “I said, ‘What is your name? Where do you come from?’ Don’t you speak Lakota?”

“No, ma’am,” Brazos admitted. “Let me untie your hands, and we’ll be on our way, and you can go on yours.”

“You will let me go free?” she said.

“I reckon you’ve got family around here.”

“Yes, these men kidnapped me when I was at the creek drawing water. They demanded I tell them where the next water was to be found.”

“Did you?”

“Oh, yes. It is about ten miles straight east of here.” As Brazos leaned over to untie her hands she looked back at the boulders. “But I did not tell them there would be two hundred lodges of Lakota camped there.”

“Two hundred lodges?” Grass stared at Brazos. “I reckon we’re not going east.”

“Are you going to Fort Pierre?” she asked.

“That was the plan.”

“My people are scattered from here to there. It is better you go north to Bismarck.”

“She might be right,” Brazos admitted.

“She might be lying,” Edwards added.

“She has been taught at the mission school not to lie.”

“How do you know I’ve been to the mission school?” she asked.

“You speak good English.”

She rubbed her wrists, then leaped to the ground and untangled the reins from the sage. “It was a very good school.”

“Are you going to take their horses?” she asked as she remounted by grabbing the horse’s dark mane and yanking herself to the saddle in one motion.

“Nope. We won’t steal a man’s horse, no matter how despicable he might be.”

“I do not steal horses either. However, if they happen to follow me into our camp, there is nothing I can do about it,” she grinned.

After two steps Brazos turned back and laid his hand on the horse’s rump. “Ma’am . . . is there a water hole to the north?”

“Yes, ride northeast under the noon sun, and you’ll find water at Tatá¸nka Wiwíla.”

“Where?”

“Buffalo Springs.”

“Will we find buffalo there?”

“No, but there is plenty of Buchloe dactyloides.”

Grass Edwards jerked back as if he’d been kicked in the shins. “Buffalo grass? Where did you learn the proper names?”

“I told you, the mission school was very good.”

Brazos and Grass Edwards rode northeast for several minutes then stopped to look back.

“You see anyone?” Grass asked.

“Nope. How about you?”

“Nope.”

“I reckon she got those horses to follow her,” Brazos mumbled.

“Yep,” Grass concurred. “Horses is funny that way.”