Touch the Sky had guessed correctly. So long as Seth Carlson thought there was the slightest chance of catching him and Little Horse, he would delay his advance toward Shoots Left Handed’s camp. Now and then, as they topped a rise, they could glimpse the soldiers still dogging them.
But this game could not go on forever. The two Cheyennes were in unfamiliar country, an area swarming with blue-bloused enemies. And blessed with magic or no, their ponies would soon be played out. Nor did Little Horse possess the stamina for a sustained hard ride so soon after his wound. Already, the constant bouncing and jostling had started fresh bleeding. Eventually Carlson would hunt them down. Then he would return to his original mission of exterminating Shoots Left Handed’s band.
“Brother,” Touch the Sky said when they stopped briefly to water their ponies in the Milk River, “Arrow Keeper always says you must pop a blister before you can get rid of it. We have been running scared before a stampede. Now let us play turnabout and take the bulls by the horns.”
Little Horse looked exhausted. A network of deep lines covered his face, and his normally copper-tinted skin was pale.
“How, brother? You saw that Blackfoot camp. These are some strong bulls on our tail.”
Touch the Sky pointed toward a huge rock formation just across the river. Pawnee Killer had explained that it was a familiar landmark known to Indians as Wagon Mound because of its resemblance to the canvas-covered “bone shakers” white settlers traveled in.
“Pawnee Killer has a sentry up there. The same lookout who sent the mirror signals when the whites attacked. We are going to find him. Pawnee Killer said to let him be our mouth if we have messages.”
“Find him? But why, brother?”
“Because it is time to play the fox, not the rabbit. Now hurry, while enough sun remains to send our message.”
They forded the shallow river and pointed their bridles northeast toward Wagon Mound. While they rode, Touch the Sky explained his plan. The only map Carlson could possibly have, he explained, would be a crude pictograph done by that Ute scout. That meant distances and locations would not be precisely marked. Growing up all of his life next to Fort Bates, Matthew had learned this was one of the chief complaints officers had about their Indian scouts—the red man’s vastly different notions of time and space.
Touch the Sky’s plan was a strategy he recalled from the recent buffalo hunt in the Southwest. The two Cheyennes would indeed lead the soldiers to camp. But not to the camp of Shoots Left Handed—rather, to a false camp set up further down the trail. Clearly the murdering palefaces always attacked in the night, and with poor visibility it might not take much to fool them. Once the soldiers attacked it, the Cheyenne warriors would close in on them from behind. With luck, the element of surprise would counterbalance those terrifying Bluecoat weapons.
It was a desperate plan, full of risks, and both youths knew it. But at least it was a plan. As things stood now, they were simply waiting to die.
They reached the rock formation. After they signaled to him with the familiar hoot own, the sentry popped up from behind a pile of scree and raised his lance in greeting.
They explained the urgent situation and their plan. Then the sentry, a brave named Eagle On His Journey, scaled up to the top of the rocks and broke out his fragment of mirror. Touch the Sky and Little Horse waited nervously below. If this message was not received, all hope was lost for the camp.
“They are signaling back!” Eagle On His Journey finally called down to them. “They will do as you say. They will meet you at the place you mentioned and bring the things you said.”
Now both braves knew that time was their worst enemy. There was no way to double back toward the mountain hideout without Carlson and his unit knowing about it soon enough. They had to get well enough ahead of the soldiers again to leave time for setting up the camp and getting into position.
As they mounted again, Touch the Sky scattered some rich tobacco as an offering to the Four Directions.
Then he offered a brief prayer to Maiyun, the Good Supernatural, asking him to once again turn their ponies’ feet into wings.
~*~
Their shadows gradually lengthening in the westering sun, the two Cheyennes deliberately rode straight into the teeth of their enemy.
Carlson spotted them as they emerged from a cutbank near the river, aiming due south into the Bear Paws. In classic Cheyenne style, they divided and raced wide around both flanks, also dividing Carlson’s force.
And despite the superior training and breeding, these cavalry horses were also burdened with heavy ammunition and other field gear. As the chase once again began to lead upward, they began to tire more rapidly than the Indian ponies.
The sun dropped lower, became a dull orange ball just above the horizon. The trail wound ever upward, crossing steep cliffs and climbing torturously winding pinnacles.
up all of his life next to Fort Bates, Matthew had learned this was one of the chief complaints officers had about their Indian scouts—the red man’s vastly different notions of time and space.
Touch the Sky’s plan was a strategy he recalled from the recent buffalo hunt in the Southwest. The two Cheyennes would indeed lead the soldiers to camp. But not to the camp of Shoots Left Handed—rather, to a false camp set up further down the trail. Clearly the murdering palefaces always attacked in the night, and with poor visibility it might not take much to fool them. Once the soldiers attacked it, the Cheyenne warriors would close in on them from behind. With luck, the element of surprise would counterbalance those terrifying Bluecoat weapons.
It was a desperate plan, full of risks, and both youths knew it. But at least it was a plan. As things stood now, they were simply waiting to die.
They reached the rock formation. After they signaled to him with the familiar owl hoot, the sentry popped up from behind a pile of scree and raised his lance in greeting.
They explained the urgent situation and their plan. Then the sentry, a brave named Eagle on His Journey, scaled up to the top of the rocks and broke out his fragment of mirror. Touch the Sky and Little Horse waited nervously below. If this message was not received, all hope was lost for the camp.
“They are signaling back!” Eagle on His Journey finally called down to them. “They will do as “Brother!” Little Horse cried finally, “I see them ahead!”
The pathetic-looking group of underfed, discouraged braves waiting for them disheartened Touch the Sky and made his plan seem worthless and foolish. They had gathered just past a sharp turn in the trail, in a clearing under a ridge similar to the one further up where camp was located. There were only about twenty of them, only a few clutching rifles—beat-up British trade rifles, many of them held together with patches of buckskin.
“Brother,” Little Horse said quietly as they drew close, “the children back in our camp could whip this group using just their toy bows and willow-branch shields.”
“You speak the straight word, buck. However, no amount of hoping will turn them into Southern Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. So we had best work quickly and well. You shall soon hear enemy horses snorting behind you.”
The braves had already started setting up the false camp. Several tipis were still going up, taking much longer to assemble than to take down. Fires had been built, and even two skinny nags—their ribs showing like barrel staves—had been tethered nearby in a patch of graze. Limbs and bushes had been stuck here and there to approximate human shapes. The size of the camp would not be immediately apparent in the darkness. Masses of bushes well back from the fires already appeared to be more tipis.
Touch the Sky stepped back for a critical glance. It was a hasty job, but it would have to do.
“You warriors,” he said. “The best opportunity for attack will not last long. You must seize it when it comes, and understand, it will not come twice. The moment the soldiers open their attack and move in, we must strike from the rear.
“You braves with rifles! One bullet, one enemy! We will have at most only a few heartbeats in which to act. That quick strike must be devastating enough to send them scattering. If they regroup, count upon it, you will experience a firestorm of bullets like you have never seen.”
Down the trail, Little Horse was keeping watch. Now he called up to them. “Here they come, brothers, now the fight comes to us!”
“You know where to go and what to do,” Pawnee Killer told his men. “The Arrows have been renewed, you are painted and dressed. If you must die, you are ready.”
The Cheyennes knew that all talk had gone as far as talk could go. The rest now was in the doing. Silently, their faces grim, they moved back into the rocks and bushes circling the camp clearing.
~*~
Darkness fell, so black it seemed like vengeance. Yet Touch the Sky welcomed that blackness. Now the fake Cheyenne village took on a realistic appearance in the flickering, shadow-mottled light. The limbs and bushes did indeed appear to be vigilant Indians.
The fires burned lower as the night advanced. The soldiers, knowing full well the Indians knew they were coming, would expect the braves to be in rifle pits or behind breastworks in front of the tipis. The women and children would be expected to huddle inside the tipis. So Pawnee Killer had made sure his men built a line of log breastworks too, on which the enemy could concentrate their fire.
The soldiers waited well into the night, letting a damp chill settle over everything. Clearly they hoped to lull the Indians into thinking the attack would not come until tomorrow.
Touch the Sky had taken up a position behind a boulder just to the right of the trail. Little Horse hid to his left, Pawnee Killer to his right. When Little Horse imitated the clicks of a gecko lizard, Touch the Sky knew the sharp-eared brave must have heard signs of an advance. Sure enough, moments later Touch the Sky saw dark shapes massing toward them out of the night.
Touch the Sky had warned the others. Even so, when the first artillery rockets burst down onto the camp, many of the Cheyennes thought they were staring into the face of the Wendigo himself.
A tipi exploded, flaming bits of buffalo hide and wood flying everywhere. The explosion suddenly spilled a ghostly orange light over everything. The horses nickered in fright. Another explosion, another, and the ground seemed to be heaving all around Touch the Sky. Rock fragments rattled through the trees, sounding like a powerful hailstorm.
The Indians stared, fascinated in spite of their bone-deep fear. What was this thing with a flaming tail so like a fire arrow? But no fire arrow could explode just above the ground like that in deadly bursts of powerful bad medicine.
A Gatling opened up, chattering its mad, lethal message of death. One of the horses was cut down, blood pumping from dozens of holes. Entire trees were fragmented as the bullets raked them.
Through all this, the Cheyennes held their discipline, waiting for the Bluecoat charge. It came only moments after the Gatling opened up.
Screaming their savage kill cry, the riflemen poured into camp to finish off the job.
“Hi-ya!” Touch the Sky screamed, “Hii-ya!”
Even before he realized how he had been duped, Seth Carlson had spotted uneasy signs. Why weren’t the warriors singing their battle songs to rally their courage? Now, as his surprised men whirled to confront a rear assault, Carlson caught sight of his enemy Matthew Hanchon.
The officer was just in time to watch the Cheyenne squeeze back the trigger of his Sharps. A moment later, the soldier just to Carlson’s left crumpled to the ground, his carbine flying from his hands.
Little Horse surged forward, adrenaline-quick despite his weakened state. His four-barreled scattergun roared and roared, dropping a soldier each time. In the precious few seconds before the soldiers could regroup, Pawnee Killer and other warriors also scored lethal shots and blows.
Panic swept through the paleface ranks like a prairie fire in a windstorm. These were hard men accustomed to killing. But most of them were sharpshooters, experts who killed at a long distance from the safety of secure positions. They were not experienced in close combat, nor eager to confront Indians defending their very homes. After all, the soldiers were only in it for two hot meals a day and a straw mattress full of bedbugs back at Fort Randall.
“They’ve bamboozled us!” someone shouted. “We’re surrounded!”
“Stand and hold, you white livers!” Carlson shouted, even as he drew a bead on Hanchon.
But a moment before Carlson’s carbine fired, the Cheyenne leaped forward and used his tomahawk to kill a soldier who was about to plug Pawnee Killer from behind.
The attack had turned into a rout. Soldiers fled back down the trail, some abandoning their weapons. Ulrich was unhurt but unable to fire his Gatling because the private feeding ammo into the hopper had just caught a Cheyenne arrow flush through the eye. Watching the man flop on the ground like a fish out of water and screaming piteously, Ulrich had abruptly joined his comrades who were retreating at breakneck speed.
Suddenly Carlson too realized the danger he was in. Most of his unit was already gone. He was eager enough to confront Hanchon, all right, but only on his own terms. And being taken prisoner in a Cheyenne camp was no fate for a soldier— especially one who had already shed so much Cheyenne blood.
So far Hanchon had failed to spot him. Carlson decided to keep it that way, for now. But this was only a battle, not the war. Carlson knew that if he returned to Fort Randall without destroying these Cheyennes, his Army career was over. Worse, this campaign now was probably the last opportunity he’d ever have to kill Hanchon. And letting that red bastard live would canker at Carlson for the rest of his life, destroying the peace of his old age.
No. This tonight, he told himself again, would not be the end of it.
Clutching his rifle at a high port, he ran back down the trail and joined his panic-stricken unit.