“I don’t like this,” Caleb Riley told his surveyor.
It was late morning of the day after his Cheyenne pathfinder had set out into the mountains.
“Touch the Sky should’ve reported back to camp by now,” Caleb said. “I made it clear to him that we had to check with him regularly in case we run into route problems at our end.”
Caleb, Nat Sloan, and C. J. Stone were well out ahead of the rest of the rail gang. Nat was bent over the revolving telescope of his surveyor’s level, shooting an azimuth up the grade to a point where Stone held the boundary stick attached to the long Gunter’s chain. Behind them, they could hear the graders whistling and cursing to their mule teams. Even further back, a steady, metallic ringing as laborers drove the spikes down.
“Don’t forget,” Nat said, “he’s not exactly on a clerk’s schedule up there. Anything could have held him up.”
“Anything. You’re right as rain there. That’s what worries me.”
Caleb glanced warily around them as he spoke. Several men had already demanded their wages after Sis-ki-dee’s bloody demonstration with the mule. Even those who stayed couldn’t wait to call it quits with wild Indian country.
“At least,” Nat said, digging papers and tobacco from his fob pocket, “we’ve got rails going down fast again. I rode ahead to check his first sightline. That young buck’s doing good work. His savvy and the crew’s desire to get the hell out of here should have us out of these mountains quick.”
“He’s doing great work,” Caleb agreed. “Trouble is, he should’ve re-outfitted for the next leg by now. All we can do, until he blazes the way, is stand around here with our thumbs up our sitters. I got ore to pack out!”
Behind them, they heard the tough, affable gang boss, Liam McKinney, bellow out a command to a grader. Out front of them, seeing Nat break to build a smoke, C. J. Stone drove his stick into the ground. Caleb watched him pick up a pebble and place it atop the narrow stick.
Stone always took advantage of Nat’s smoke breaks for more of his compulsive target-plinking practice. Any dolt could hold the sticks—Caleb had actually hired the trick shot as extra security for his vulnerable surveyor. It also made Caleb breathe easier knowing Stone was in camp, keeping an eye on Woman Dress, when he had to leave her alone there. She was the kind of woman men looked at twice.
C. J. joined them and slid his LeFaucheux six-shot pinfire revolver out of its hand-tooled holster.
“How come you filed the sight off?” Caleb said.
“Lad, you are tender. So she won’t snag comin’ out the holster, that’s why. No need to ‘aim’ a handgun no how. You just point it and shoot. Just like it was your finger. If you got to aim a short arm, you’re already buzzard bait.”
To drive the point home, Stone holstered his weapon again. Then, in one smooth movement with no noticeable pause, he drew the weapon and blasted the pebble off the stick.
“Won’t be any splinters on that stick, either,” Nat said admiringly. “There never is.”
Normally Caleb would have asked C. J. to do a few more fancy shots. But not today, not with this raw canker of worry about his pathfinder.
He made up his mind. Touch the Sky had already explained that, in the event of trouble, Caleb should ride back to the nearby Powder River camp and summon the brave called Little Horse. He figured he’d waited long enough.
Something was definitely wrong.
“Why don’t you hang around camp for awhile?” he suggested to Stone, thinking again of Woman Dress. “I got something to take care of.”
~*~
Old Arrow Keeper frowned as he glanced out over the Powder River.
The last pockets of mist had burned off long before, and now the sun was almost halfway through her journey across the sky. But still, a dark cloud of sparrow hawks continued to circle the river.
Clearly it was an omen of trouble. But which trouble? Lately, it rode at the Shaiyena people from every flank.
His question was partially answered when he saw the blond beard crest the long rise before camp. The one who had purchased a private treaty with the tribe. A white truce flag snapped over his head in the breeze. Perhaps he had come to tell them that Touch the Sky was dead.
Arrow Keeper caught sight of Black Elk and his younger cousin Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. They were standing in the open doorway of the Bull Whip lodge. The two troublemakers had made much headway in their claim that this Yellow Eyes stranger was in fact a Bluecoat soldier chief—the same one Touch the Sky had conspired with in Bighorn Falls. Now, once again, they held their heads together as the white man approached camp.
At least things went calmly enough for Honey Eater these days. Arrow Keeper knew that Black Elk’s latest intrigues against Touch the Sky occupied him much, leaving her more time away from his jealous, hateful wrath. But Touch the Sky was right, Black Elk was like a Crow Crazy Dog—completely unpredictable. He was on the verge of snapping the way Arrow Keeper had seen men snap in battle—going completely berserk and literally eating their enemy’s hearts.
Now the dogs started howling as they caught the stranger’s smell. Arrow Keeper pulled his blanket tighter around his bony shoulders and waited for whatever must come, his cracked-leather face impassive.
~*~
As he came down the long rise, Caleb thought the tipis looked magnificent in their clan circles, some of the hides so aged they were thin as parchment. At night, his brother Tom had told him, the fires inside turned them into orange-glowing cones.
The emergency visits to Little Horse had already been approved at the council when Caleb’s peace price was accepted. Though an outlying sentry studied him closely, he did not raise a challenge. Now, keeping his eyes politely straight ahead, Caleb walked his pony down the well-packed main trail of camp and past the curious Cheyennes. Some stared with open hostility, but a few others smiled and nodded shyly.
He found Little Horse in front of his tipi, sharpening a double-bladed throwing axe with a whetstone.
The short but solid brave glanced up and saw him. Nothing registered on his face. But Caleb could see, by the troubled light in his eyes, that he understood instantly why the white man had come. Indians were an odd lot, he knew. White men looked at those carved-in-stone faces and thought they had no sense of humor. But his brother swore that all Indians knew how to laugh deep down in their abdomens. He said they came away from treaty signings with belly aches.
But he didn’t think this one was laughing now. Caleb made the sign for trouble: a cupped hand passed around the left side of the face in a circular motion. Then he made the sign for enemy by bringing a closed fist against his forearm.
Tom Riley had taught Caleb many of the signs to identify Plains tribes. Flapping the hands at shoulder level meant Crows; touching the left breast signified the Northern Arapaho because of their good hearts; moving the index finger forward in a sinuous movement meant Snake. Now Caleb picked up a handful of dirt and scattered it over his right foot.
The moment he recognized the sign for Blackfoot, Little Horse ducked inside his tipi to make ready his battle rig. Clearly, Caleb Riley decided, he too had heard about this Contrary Warrior.
Caleb decided something else: Indians didn’t always keep their feelings from showing. Because as soon as this one realized who his friend Touch the Sky was up against, most of the color had drained from his face.
~*~
Sis-ki-dee reined in his big claybank when he spotted the fine gray pony hobbled near the path.
How could they have forgotten the pony! Yesterday, after the perfectly timed rock slide had killed the Cheyenne dog, they had spent some time searching for the body. But hunger, and their eagerness to celebrate the kill with some strong water, had sent them back to their camp in the lower elevations.
But during the night, the thought began to rankle at Sis-ki-dee: He must, if possible, obtain his enemy’s facial skin as a trophy as was his custom. After all, this upstart Cheyenne had defeated him in a Death Hug match in front of his entire band! How they would howl and praise him, though, when he danced around the fire, the Cheyenne’s wrinkled visage worn over his own, his own eyes peering through the empty holes!
So the next day, before approaching the Crooked Feet miners again, he rode out with Plenty Coups to search once again for the body. That’s when they discovered the pony, impatient to be freed of its rawhide hobbles.
“I have sent the licker of white men’s crotches to his death,” Sis-ki-dee gloated as he dismounted. “Now I will add his pony to my string. If I discover that he had a squaw, I will have her, too.”
He was forced to speak up so Plenty Coups could hear him over the roar of the falls just ahead. He ran one end of a lead line through his bridle ring, held the other in his hand as he approached the nervous pony.
He coaxed her gently. She stood patiently enough as he undid the hobbles. But the moment they were removed she bolted, unused to the smell of this tribe. Sis-ki-dee cursed and made a grab for her, but the mare was too quick, disappearing back down the trail her master had recently marked out.
Plenty Coups lifted his big-bore Lancaster to shoot the animal. Sis-ki-dee stopped him. Perhaps they would meet it again on their way back. For now, he was eager to skin his enemy. The whites would be quite impressed when he threw that familiar face at their feet and repeated his own terms.
They proceeded down the trail, reached the narrow ledge which led under the misting, roaring cataract. Carefully, hugging the cold stone behind them as Touch the Sky had, they crossed to the other side. Now, as they climbed up onto the rubble from yesterday, they searched in earnest for their victim.
It was difficult work. They were forced to climb in and out of tight, awkward spaces, probing for some sign of the body. Rock was heaped upon rock, and it was difficult to get to the bottom of the slide.
Then, above the almost deafening roar of the falls, Plenty Coup’s voice shouted, “Look!”
Sis-ki-dee’s eyes went where his friend’s finger pointed. Then an ear-to-ear smile creased his face. Sis-ki-dee was pointing to a huge boulder, the size of a pony. Trapped underneath it, one corner barely protruding, was a fox skin quiver.
There would be no skinning his face, then. But elation swelled Sis-ki-dee’s breast, for here was the proof: Their enemy had been crushed like a beetle!