Chapter 32

September 26, 1869

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Duncan marched his cavalry south to Medicine Lake Creek, then followed the stream down to the Republican River. It was there he established a base camp and sent out the first of the scouting parties he ordered to scour the countryside, both upstream and down.

While hunting parties from the main camp hunted among the buffalo herds to augment their daily rations, Pawnee and civilian scouts explored the territory as far south and east as the Solomon, west all the way to Fort Wallace country—intent on finding some sign of the Sioux following Pawnee Killer and Whistler.

Bill Cody sighed deeply, drinking in the chill air of a morning found on the plains in early autumn. At times such as these, that air proved every bit like an elixir. A tonic for anything that could possibly ail a man.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Major Frank North said as he came to a halt on the crest of the hill beside Cody.

“I remember some younger days spent down there along the Prairie Dog,” Cody said wistfully. “Spent a long winter and early spring running a trap line along that creek with a fella named Dave Harrington.”

“I knew you rode mail express across these plains,” North replied. “But I never knew you trapped out here. You’re a man of many facets, Bill Cody.”

He smiled. “Man does what a man has to—so he can survive, running out his days.”

“Seems you’ve always done what you wanted to, though.”

“Agree with you there, Major. No sense in a man wasting his time being unhappy with what he’s doing. Time’s too damned short to carry a chip on my shoulder the way your brother does.”

North sighed, staring into the distance. “I figure that’s a big part of what has made Lute carry that grudge for you—he’s never been truly happy standing in my shadow.”

“Why doesn’t he go off and do something all his own?”

North wagged his head. “Don’t figure it, Bill. In his own way, Lute’s always been his own man. But he doesn’t see things like you and me.”

“I’ve done my best to stay out of his way.”

“He won’t ever do you physical harm, Bill. Lute isn’t made that way. He’s just one to nurse a grudge till it’s real sore—and he’ll nurse it all his life.”

“Like I said, life’s too short for a man carrying ’round his own type of unhappiness.”

North was quiet for some moments. His silence eventually prompted Cody to speak. “Believe I’ll head back a ways, see if I can spot that advance guard of those bridge-building pioneers. Duncan will need ’em to come up for this crossing.”

North slid from the saddle. “All right. If you don’t mind, I’ll sit here, enjoying the quiet and the view.”

“Always was a pretty place,” Bill said as he turned Buckskin Joe about and loped northeast in search of the cavalry column probing the countryside for Sioux.

Beneath the climbing of the morning sun he saw the dark snake of their column piercing the grassy hills burnt golden with summer’s heat, in recent days kissed by the first frost come and gone like a schoolgirl sharing her first love with a wide-eyed boy.

“We’ll wait here, boy,” he whispered to the big buckskin, slipping from the saddle. He dropped the reins, letting the horse eat the grass that snapped and popped as the animal tore it up in grazing.

No sooner had he stuffed a slender shaft between his lips and settled back onto his elbows when three rapid shots rattled beyond the hills he had just left behind.

Without hesitation, Cody was on Buckskin Joe in a fluid leap. Leaning over, he snatched up the reins at the same moment he pounded heels against the mount’s flanks. As Cody reached the bottom of the long, grassy slope, Frank North leaped against the skyline of the far hills, coming hell-bent at a lather. A puff of smoke erupted from North’s pistol. A heartbeat later Cody heard the crack of the weapon.

At the top of that hill just abandoned by North appeared more than a handful of warriors.

Stuffing his reins between his teeth, Cody yanked the Spencer from its boot and levered a cartridge as it came to his cheek. One, two, then three quick shots before it was time to ride. He had spilled two riders. But in that time, at least forty more appeared on the hillside behind the six who closed on North.

Jamming the carbine back into the leather boot, he hammered the buckskin into a gallop, making a wide arc, as if he were attempting to flank the warriors; but at the last moment, in full gallop, he brought the horse in toward North on an angle. Cody wasn’t able to hear the major’s words. It all came out only as noise garbled among the shouts and taunts of the Sioux warriors close on their tails. North’s mouth moved up and down as he drew close. They joined at a full run.

Just as Cody snugged his hat down on his head, a faint whistle keened past. A telltale sound that at the same time tugged at the hat.

“They’re shooting close, boy!” Cody laid over to holler into Joe’s laid-back ear. “Don’t you dare let ’em close on us now.”

Cody brought back the elk-handled quirt he carried around his right wrist, a souvenir captured from a lodge in Tall Bull’s Summit Springs’ camp. It splintered, sending a sliver of antler deep into his palm.

The hand grew warm and wet, but without much pain as he looked down at the end of his arm. The quirt hung in fragments that flopped heedlessly on the wind as he struggled to free it from his wrist.

For more than two miles they raced ahead of the screeching warriors, bullets flying overhead like angry wasps.

“Don’t they look grand!” North shouted, his words gone as quickly in the breeze.

A half-mile off was the advance guard, complete with Luther North and a small company of his Pawnee scouts.

“It’s our turn now!” Cody replied.

They reined up together, which caused the unsuspecting warriors behind them to howl even louder, believing they had won the chase.

“Bastards think our horses are done in!” North shouted. He immediately reined his animal in a tight circle on that hilltop, long a signal on the plains meaning enemy in sight.

With a wild shout and a flourish, Luther North led the two-dozen Pawnee away from the engineering detachment at a gallop.

North and Cody spurred down to meet the scouts, further drawing the Sioux into their surprise encounter with the Pawnee and cavalry. It was downright amusing to watch, as the first Sioux on the fastest ponies, who had their blood running the hottest, reached the point where they first caught sight of the Pawnee, coming strong on a collision course with them. And behind the Pawnee stretched two companies of soldiers in dusty blue.

Laughing together as they reined up, Cody and the major turned about to watch the Sioux skid to a halt and beat a hasty retreat. Luther and the Pawnee sped on past the two horsemen, hot on the trail of the warriors.

“You wanna follow along and see what happens?” Cody asked.

Frank North shook his head. “Naw, let Lute have his fun.”

“Got ’em on the run now.”

“They’ve gotta be camped nearby, Cody.”

“I know—out hunting and bumped into us, likely.”

“Let’s go on down there and report in to Volkmar. Get his column on the alert tonight when we bed down.”

Just past sunset, Luther North and his Pawnee reached camp. They had scattered the warriors, besides capturing two ponies and a mule. One new scalp dangled from a scout’s belt.

*   *   *

Pulling out early the following morning, the column ran across the Sioux campsite beside a tributary of the Prairie Dog. Luther North and the Pawnee eagerly charged down on the lodges standing against the willows. But no gunfire erupted from the camp and no hostiles burst from the abandoned lodges.

“Looks like our Injuns scared Pawnee Killer’s Injuns right on out of the country,” commented scout John Y. Nelson as he came to a halt beside Major North, Cody and Seamus Donegan.

“Left in a hurry, didn’t they?” asked the Irishman.

“Sonsabitches are scattering again,” North growled. “Like this every time we get on a scent. Few days, the trail will all but disappear. Poof,” and he gestured angrily. “They’re gone like snow in a chinook.”

To a degree, North was right. It was five days before any of them next saw a Sioux. And this time, it was a hunchbacked old woman.

She sat in the scanty shade of some swamp willow near Beaver Creek, either deaf or very much unconcerned at the clatter of approaching horsemen.

“I don’t speak any Sioux,” Cody said, reining up near the woman and turning in his saddle to signal behind. “Seamus—bring Nelson up here. His woman’s Brule.”

“The old one’s in bad shape,” Donegan said quietly as he knelt at the woman’s side, looking over the well-seamed face and the lidded eyes. “They just leave her here like this?”

Nelson nodded as he went to his knees beside Cody and the Irishman. “The old ones get so old. Look at her. Doubt she’s had a thing to eat in days.”

“We make ’em do this—pushing the village the way we are?”

Nelson nodded. “That’s likely, Irishman. A band of ’em gets on the run, they’ll leave the old and the sick behind because they can’t keep up. The young ones know the soldiers won’t kill an old one like this—if we can keep the Pawnee off’n her.”

“Pawnee’d kill her?”

“Damn right they would. Sioux scalp is a Sioux scalp to them Pawnee. Don’t matter if that scalp’s gray and got a couple of dry teats hanging empty below it.”

“Damn but this country out here gets crazier the more I learn.” Seamus dragged the canteen up and pulled the cork. She fought the hand he tried to put under her chin.

“Let her drink for herself,” Nelson suggested. He spoke a few words in Lakota.

She reached out clumsily and took the canteen in both hands, really opening her eyes for the first time. It was then Seamus saw the thick clouding of cataracts over both opaque eyes.

“She blind, Nelson?”

“Yep. No doubt that’s why she’s here, and starving. Waiting for her time to be called up yonder.”

“See what you can get out of her,” Cody said. “Anything on the village.”

Nelson pulled two thick slabs of jerky from his belt-pouch and laid them in the old woman’s hand. She said something to him and he chuckled.

“Says she smells tobacco on me. Wants our tobacco more than our poor meat. Says white man has poor meat, but good tobacco.”

“Tell her she can have some to smoke or chew when she answers your questions,” Cody suggested.

With the browned stumps she had left for teeth after a lifetime of chewing hides, the old woman gnawed and sucked on the tough jerky while she conversed with the white scout. At last Nelson turned to Donegan.

“Give me some of your chew for the woman. I just found out she’s a relative of my wife. More’n that, fellas—we’re in the presence of Sioux royalty.”

“Somebody special?” Frank North asked.

“This is Pawnee Killer’s mother,” Nelson replied, slicing off a thin strip of the fragrant, coal-dark plug. She promptly stuffed the tobacco in her mouth and began gumming it noisily into a moist cud.

“Where’s her son gone?”

“She doesn’t know for sure. Only that when he left her here three nights back, she listened to the village move off. Upstream.”

“I doubt they’re moving southwest,” Cody said.

“I agree,” said Frank North. “If anything, they’ll turn north and make their run for Red Cloud’s country.”

“How can a man just leave his mother here?” Donegan asked, wagging his head in disbelief. He looked about, finding nothing left with the woman for her well-being.

“Says she had a little meat, what Pawnee Killer could spare when he rode off. And he left her a little gourd of water she finished yesterday.”

“Just her and this greasy blanket?”

“That’s right, Irishman,” Nelson replied, “Seems hard-hearted to us, but it’s the Indian way. Got a soft spot in your heart for the old Sioux witch, do you?”

“No,” he snapped, testy as a wet goat. “Just … just that she’s someone’s mother and … and that red h’athen run off on her, s’all. That’s what sticks in me craw like a chicken-bone.”

“Column’s coming up,” Luther North announced, coming up easy on his horse. “Who’s this?”

“Pawnee Killer’s mother,” Nelson replied. “You want me leave her where we found her, Cody?”

“What? And let them bloodsucking Pawnee stick a knife in her belly?” Seamus growled. “I’ll have no part of that, you heartless bastirds.”

Cody rose to his feet. “The Irishman’s right. Let’s get her packed on one of the wagons.”

“To do what, for God’s sake?” Luther North asked.

“Taking her back to her reservation,” Cody answered.

“No better place for her now that she’s bound to die out here,” Nelson said.

“She don’t have to die.” Seamus scooted forward on his knees, scooping up the tiny, frail frame in his arms. He rose with her steadily. “I’ll go down and meet the wagons coming up.”

Cody and the rest watched in wonder as Donegan walked down the rise into the flat meadow filled with grass beaten down by lodges and moccasined feet. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Duncan’s troops were arriving.

“Look at the way she clings to him,” Nelson said quietly. “Maybe she thinks the Irishman’s her boy.”

Cody wagged his head, adjusting his pistol-belt. “No. But I’ve a notion Seamus is treating her as good as he wishes he could treat his own mother right about now.”