Absaroka Ambush (7 page)

“What's wrong, Captain?” Eudora shouted, during Preacher's third pass.

He rode over to her wagon. “I don't know. But something is. Get a head count, Eudora. I got a bad feelin'.”

One wagon and three women were missing.

“Nora Simms, Betty Rutherford, and Phyllis Reed,” Eudora told the men, who had strung up a sheet of canvas and were crouched under it. “But they were in the center of the column. How could they just disappear?”

“Easy, in this weather,” Blackjack said. “I'll wager it was during that real bad spell when couldn't none of us see nothin'.”

“Eudora,” the soft southern voice came from the edge of the group. They all turned to face April Johnson, a slim and attractive young woman from Georgia.

“I overheard Nora and her group talkin' the other night. I thought they were only funnin', They were talkin' about turnin' back. Then they saw me and all of them laughed. I . . . should have reported it. I'm sorry.”

“It isn't your fault,” Eudora said, putting an arm around the smaller woman's shoulders. She looked at Preacher and he jerked his head toward the wagons. Eudora led the young woman away, back to her wagon.

“We wasn't a mile out when that bad storm hit,” Preacher said. “I figure we've come five miles. So if they kept on and didn't stop, they're a good eight to ten miles back.” He waved at a Missouri man. “Saddle us some fresh mounts, Felix. The best in the herd.” Felix took off at a run. “Snake, you and Charlie stay with the women. Let's go, boys. We got to find them women 'fore Indians or that trash that's followin' us does.”

Lieutenant Worthington burst onto the scene. “Is it true about the women?”

“Yeah. It's true,” Preacher told him. “Stay with the wagons and be sure to post extra guards this night. The goddamn Pawnee love to strike in this kind of weather. And in this part of the country, them goddamn Pawnee are liable to be right over the next rise.”

Preacher rarely spoke of the Pawnee without putting some sort of oath before them. Preacher and the Pawnee just did not like one another. Never had. But he never underestimated them. The Pawnee were sly, slick, and the best horse thieves on the plains. The story goes that a Crow warrior decided to rest during the heat of the day. He tied his horse's reins to his wrist and stretched out and went to sleep in the shade of trees. A Pawnee came along, looked at the scene, and smiled. When the Crow awakened, the reins had been removed from his wrist and his horse was gone.

That's why Preacher never underestimated the Pawnee.

“We're gonna have to be ridin' with lady luck beside us, Preacher,” Ned remarked. “You know we've had Injuns all around us for several days.”

“Yep,” Preacher said, swinging into the saddle of a tough-looking, long-limbed roan. “Keep your powder dry, boys. Let's go.”

The women stood silently and watched the men ride out into the drenching rain, heading east. The men did not push their mounts, but left at a steady gait. They would alternately trot and walk their horses to save them.

About a mile from the wagon train, the men split up, left and right, staying about a hundred yards apart, to better spot where the errant wagon had left the train.

Ned had summed up the feelings of all the men on this ride. None of them expected to see the women again. At least not alive. If Indians had found them, anything might happen. They might be taken as slaves and treated reasonably well, after they were repeatedly raped. If it was a war party looking for scalps, they would be raped and then killed. If they were lucky. If the Indians were in a bad mood, the women might be tortured. There was simply no way of telling about Indians. Some would not harm them at all. They would just look at them and ride off, leaving the women be, to fend for themselves. But the plains Indians were warriors, fierce fighters; killing a woman meant no more to many of them than killing a poisonous snake, and no Indian held to the same moral code as the so-called civilized white people. The Indian was neither evil nor morally wrong—not to their way of thinking—to them it was the white people who were terribly cruel and unfeeling. Indians respected the land and most of the creatures who inhabited it with them. Not so the white man. The white man raped the land and cut down all the trees. He diverted the flow of water to suit his needs and to hell with what others thought. He killed off all the game, left nothing, and would not share. The Indian never killed more than he needed. White men would kill game for something they called sport and take only the best cuts, leaving the rest to rot. That was a sin to an Indian. And the white man lied. Everytime he opened his mouth he told great lies. You just could not trust most white men to keep their promises. Many people believed the western Indian knew nothing of how the eastern Indians were treated by the whites. That was a ridiculous theory and showed the arrogance and ignorance of the whites. As the tribes were pushed west, they brought their tales with them, and they were told over and over again. It was no wonder the Indians distrusted the white man. And the Indians knew that many whites believed that the only good Indian was a dead one. It was no wonder that many Indians soon believed the same to be true about whites.

The Indians were not necessarily wrong in their beliefs and way of life. They were just different.

After a few miles, the men reined up in a ragged group of trees to rest their horses and talk.

“We got to be gettin' close now,” Blackjack said. “And the hair on the back of my neck is standin' up, boys.”

“They're all around us,” Steals Pony said. “Pawnee. I sense them.” He shook his head and his eyes touched those looking at him. “And I think they are Bearmen.”

“Damn!” Ring said. “That would be our luck.”

The Bear Society was a very elite one among the Omaha and the Pawnee. And they were feared by all. They were fierce fighters; like bears, unpredictable and dangerous.

“If they took the women, we'll not never get them back,” Ned said.

“No,” Preacher agreed. “We sure won't. We'll be lucky to stay alive. The Pawnee hate me worser than they do the Assiniboins. And that includes anyone who rides with me. Goddamn Pawnee,” he added, as all the men knew he would. Preacher stood up from his squat and gathered the reins. “Well, this ain't doin' nothing but gettin' us wet. Let's ride.”

The men mounted up and headed out, but riding much more slowly now. To a man they knew they were in trouble. They had spent all their adult lives in hostile country, and all could sense the danger that lay around them, lurking silently behind the silver shield of the hard-pouring rain.

The men carried their pistols under their buckskin shirts and in covered holsters on their saddles; the rifles were carried in hardened skin cases that could be discarded in a second. And a second might be all the time they would have should the Bearmen of the Pawnee attack out of the storm. Long-bladed knives and war-axes were readily at hand.

Steals Pony reined up and with a wave of his hand signaled to the others. He had found where the women's wagon had left the train. The men gathered around and looked. The rutted tracks were still clear.

“Headin' straight back, following the trail,” Ned remarked. “Foolish, foolish ladies.”

A few hundred yards later, the fears of the men were silently confirmed. The tracks left by a dozen unshod ponies were clearly visible. And the Pawnee were closing on the wagon very quickly.

“How many you make it, Steals Pony?” Blackjack asked, staring at the churned-up earth.

“At least twelve,” the Delaware said. “Maybe as many as fifteen.”

The rain continued to come down in torrents. But the men knew it could not last much longer. It would slacken as the storm moved on.

The mountain men rode for another hour, following the wagon tracks. The rain began to abate, finally dwindling down to no more than a drizzle. Preacher stood up in his stirrups and pointed.

“There it is,” he said, his voice flat.

Ned took a spyglass from his saddlebags and opened it full. He peered through the lenses for a moment, then silently handed the spyglass to Preacher. The hard look in his eyes told the entire story.

Blackjack, Steals Pony, and Ring had turned their horses, to cover the other directions. All had a hunch the war party had not gone far, knowing that someone from the train would come looking for the women.

Preacher's face hardened as he viewed the scene. Two of the three women were clearly visible through the magnification. They were naked, of course. And they were dead. Both had been scalped. The Indians had taken the mules, although many Indians disliked the fractious animals. Preacher handed the spyglass to Ned without a word.

The men cautiously walked their horses up to the savage scene. Nora Simms had been the youngest and the prettiest of the three women. She was gone. They had taken her.

Betty Rutherford had been used badly and the back of her head bashed in by a stone war-axe. She had then been scalped. Phyllis Reed probably had broken free sometime during the struggle and tried to run away. She had gotten only a few yards before an arrow in her back brought her down. She lay facedown and naked on the wet prairie grass, her inner thighs bruised.

Steals Pony dismounted, covered the lower part of Phyllis's body with a discarded blanket, then broke off the arrow and looked at it. “Pawnee,” he said, then threw the arrow to the ground in disgust.

“Yonder's two of the mules,” Ned said, pointing toward the southeast. “Draggin' their harness.”

“Stay where you are,” Steals Pony said. “I will look to see if it is a trap while you bury the women. If it is safe, do you want the mules, Preacher?”

“Yeah,” Preacher said, rummaging around in the clothing-strewn bed of the wagon for a shovel. “We'll take the wagon back and tear it down for spare parts. You watch your butt out yonder, Steals Pony. It ain't like them goddamn Pawnee to go off very far. With them knowin' somebody would come lookin'.”

It was easy digging in the soaked earth, and the men worked swiftly, digging down as far as they dared, constantly looking over their shoulders. The women were wrapped in blankets and buried. Then the men went looking for stones to cover the mounds, to keep animals from digging up the bodies and eating them.

Blackjack found a Bible in a trunk and handed it to Preacher. Preacher opened it at random and read a few verses while they stood over the lonely graves. Two small fresh mounds of earth on the vastness of an untamed land.

“That sounded strange, Preacher,” Blackjack said. “What did you just read?”

“I don't know.” He looked down at the page. “It's from Romans. I thought it sounded pretty good.”

“What do intercession mean?” Ring asked. “That sounds kinda vulgar to me.”

“I ain't got no idea,” Preacher replied, closing the Good Book. “I ain't no student of the gospel. But it's in the damn Bible. So it can't be bad, can it?”

“I reckon not,” Blackjack conceded.

“'Sides,” Preacher said, “I thought that part about 'groanings which cannot be uttered' sounded about right.”

“Amen,” Ned said, looking around him. “Let's get the hell outta here.”

Steals Pony had found all four mules and brought them back to the wagon. “The Pawnee are gone. They left in a big hurry for some reason. One horse is carrying double, so they took Nora with them for sure.”

“She'll soon wish she had died with these others,” Preacher said ominously.

“For a fact,” Steals Pony said. “I do not envy her existence from this moment on.”

The men stood around the graves and looked at one another for a few seconds.

“Well, hell!” Blackjack said.

“Now what do we do?” Ned asked.

Preacher kicked at a clump of dirt. Then he sighed heavily. “What say you boys?” he asked, looking around him. “Do we go after her?”

“By the Lord, I couldn't live with myself if we didn't at least try to fetch her back,” Ring said. “I think we got to at least try.”

“I say we go after her,” Steals Pony said.

“Count me in,” Blackjack and Ned spoke together.

“All right. Let's do it,” Preacher said. “We'll brush corral the mules over yonder by that thicket and come back for them. If we don't, well, they'll bust out of it when they get hungry. Somebody take that shovel yonder with them. If Nora kicked up too much of a fuss, they'll just knock her in the head and dump her. Personal, I hope they do. We've all seen what a war party can do to a woman.”

“I'll bring along that Bible I found,” Blackjack said. “Just in case.”

“If we need it, let me read the passages,” Steals Pony said, looking over at Preacher. “I know a more appropriate verse or two.”

“Which one?” Preacher demanded.

“The Twenty-third Psalm,” the Delaware said gently.

“How do that go?” Ring asked.

“It starts: ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.'”

“Give him the Good Book, Blackjack. He's got me bested, this time.”

The mountain men found Nora Simms less than three miles from the new twin graves on the prairie. The Indians had bashed her head in, scalped her, and dumped her. She was a pitiful sight, lying naked and bloody on the ground. Ring had brought along a blanket and he wrapped her up, and all together the men took the body back to where they had buried the others and laid Nora to rest beside Betty and Phyllis.

Steals Pony read the Twenty-third Psalm and the men stood for a moment over the graves. The initial storm had blown itself out and for a brief moment, while the Delaware was reading from the Bible, the sun broke through. But already, dark storm clouds were beginning to gather, and the men knew they were in for a couple more days of terrible weather.

Just like Steals Pony had predicted.

The mules were hitched up and Ned tied the reins of his horse to the rear of the wagon and took the seat. The men started back for the wagon train. They were a silent bunch for most of the way. Ever vigilant, for that was a way of life, but not talking much. It was not that they were unaccustomed to death; they'd been around violent death for all of their adult lives. Violent, and in this case, the needless death of innocents.

Ring broke the silence. “We're being trailed, boys.”

“Yes,” Steals Pony said. “Pawnee Bearmen. But they are holding back. I think they have bigger plans and don't want to waste them on us.”

“The wagon train?” Blackjack asked.

“Probably,” Preacher said. “But they're fools if they attack. We could hold off one hell of a war party. But did y'all notice the torture marks on the Rutherford woman? She might have broke and told them about the wagon train bein' mostly women. That might have got them all excited. That may be why they bashed in Nora's head and dumped her.”

“I never thought of that,” Ned called from the wagon seat. “But you might be right. If that's the case, they've sent for more bucks.”

“That'd be my guess,” Preacher said.

“We're in for a long night,” Ring opined.

It was dark when the men arrived back at the wagon train. Preacher gathered the women around and leveled with them about the fate of Nora, Betty, and Phyllis. His words were brutally hard, deliberately so, for he wanted the women to know every detail. It just might save their lives in the future. He spared them nothing. Then he told them about the Pawnee war party trailing them.

“We've got a good defensive spot here,” Preacher said, speaking to the group. The other mountain men were standing guard, with some of the Missouri men. “And before you ask, put everything you ever heard or read about Indians never attackin' at night out of your heads. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It all depends on how strong they believe their medicine is at the time. Now let's get supper cooked and eat and everybody in place. I think we're gonna have us a wet and wild night.”

Faith sidled up to him when he was alone. “I have noticed, Mister Preacher, that your quaint manner of speaking sometimes vanishes and you do seem to be able to speak proper English. Why is that?”

“I ain't got no idee, Missy.”

“There you go again. Do you wish people to believe that you are nothing but an ignorant buffoon?”

“I don't give a damn what people believe me to be, Missy. What other folk think ain't no concern of mine. It's what they do that I pay heed to.”

“What are you running from, Mister Preacher?”

“Huh?”

“It's obvious to me that you are hiding out here in this desolate place because of something terrible that occurred in your past.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. It is. Did some lady break your heart years back and you had to run away to ease the pain of love lost?”

Preacher stood in the light rain and blinked. “What are you talking about, Missy?”

Old Snake had slipped up and was standing a few feet away, behind Faith. He was listening and struggling to contain his laughter.

“You can tell me, Preacher,” Faith said, stepping closer. He could feel the heat from her body. “I want to be your friend. I really, really do.”

“Uh-huh.” Preacher resisted an urge to grab her and run off under a wagon with her. Faith was ripe in all the right spots and even with a dark floppy hat covering her cut-off strawberry curls, she was lovely to look at and quite desirable. Faith was pushing hard to get bedded down. However, with anywhere from twenty to two hundred Pawnee, or more, prowling around the encirclement, Preacher concluded that this was a poor time to be thinking about romance.

“Yes,” she whispered, stepping closer still. Another two inches and she'd be crawling inside his buckskins.

Steals Pony unknowingly saved Preacher from what was fast becoming a very awkward moment. “They come, Preacher!” the Delaware called.

“Get back to your wagon, Faith,” Preacher said. “This night's about to blow up in our faces.”

Preacher turned and was gone, old Snake right behind him. “How many?” Preacher asked Steals Pony.

“Too many,” the Delaware said softly. “We're not that far from the Platte, and they must have just broken their winter camp there. This would be quite a prize for them.”

“I can smell war paint,” Snake said. “My God, there must be hundreds of them.”

“Several hundred, at least,” Steals Pony agreed. “I think they know about the women.”

“I got the women under the wagons and behind boxes and the like,” Blackjack said, striding up, big as a bear. “They're scared, but game.”

“I don't understand this,” Preacher said. “Something's got 'em all stirred up and we ain't it. We're just bearin' the brunt of whatever it is.”

“You reckon Jack Hayes and that trash with him somehow is mixed up in all this?” Ned asked.

“It wouldn't surprise me none. I just can't figure out what it might be.” He turned his face skyward. The rain had stopped for the moment. “They'll be hittin' us right about now,” he said. “Get in place.”

The first wave of the war party came at the westward women and their few men in a silent surge of painted-up fury. “Now!” Preacher shouted, and nearly a hundred rifles smashed the wet night, turning it into a bloody, pain-shrieking darkness.

Whatever the Pawnee expected, it certainly was not this. The only white women they had ever encountered were all cowering, trembling types, and that is what they believed they would encounter on this train. They were wrong. The heavy balls from the rifles tore their flesh and bloodied the ground. The Pawnee lost nearly fifty men in the first few seconds, and that was quite enough for this night, thank you.

They gathered up their wounded and their dead and pulled back to talk this over. They looked with contempt at their medicine men, who had promised them that their medicine was good. The medicine men shrugged and took the hostile looks stoically. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, the shrugs seemed to imply. Sometimes the thrown bones lied.

Those women whose jobs it was to reload the rifles and pistols worked fast, and within seconds, the women behind the rifles were ready for another charge.

But it did not materialize. The night grew steadily quieter as the Pawnee pulled back, well out of range. Some of their dead were too close to the wagons for them to recover, and the mountain men were quick to take advantage of that.

Most of the women and many of the Missouri men looked on, horrified, as Preacher and his friends pulled out knives and began mutilating the bodies.

“Stop that!” Faith shouted.

“Shut up,” Preacher told her. “We ain't likin' this no more than you all. But it's got to be done.”

“Why, for God's sake?”

“Cut out the eyes so's they can't see their way to the Great Beyond. Cut off their hands so's they can't fight any enemies they might come up on. Now they'll be forever lost in the darkness. To wander forever.”

“That's the most unchristian thing I have ever witnessed!” Miss Claire Goodfellow said.

“You shoulda seen Nora Simms, Betty Rutherford, and Phyllis Reed,” Ring called over his shoulder, his long-bladed knife flashing bloody in the night. “Then mayhaps you wouldn't be so aghast at this.”

Steals Pony let out a blood-chilling wild war cry and held up two severed hands. He called out loud in Pawnee, heaping insults on the dead. Faith shuddered. Eudora smiled.

“Every other person get some rest for a few hours, then take your partners' place,” Preacher called. “Work it out, ladies. It's gonna be a long night.”

“I thought you said they wouldn't return?” Faith's voice cut into the damp night.

“I said they
probably
wouldn't be back,” Preacher replied. Under his breath he muttered, “I wish I hadn't a said nothin'.”

“What's that?” Faith called.

“Nothin',” Preacher said. “Just nothin' at all.”

“Are you going to leave those disgusting bodies right there?” she called.

“No, Missy,” Preacher replied wearily, for it had been a long day. “We're gonna pick 'em up and tote 'em over to where the Pawnee have made camp and dump the bodies there.”

That shut her up for about five seconds. “Well, you don't have to be sarcastic about it.”

“Hush up,” Preacher told her, wiping his hands on the wet grass to remove the Pawnee blood.

It was the wrong thing to say to Faith. Whatever ardor they might have experienced a few moments past suddenly cooled and evaporated into the night air. She told him to absolutely, positively
never
again tell her to hush up. Of course she was quite vocal about it and it took considerably longer to express her thoughts, but that was the sum of it.

Blackjack looked at her in awe. He shook his head. “That woman can shore string words together, can't she?”

“If Preacher don't give her what she's a-cravin' pretty soon,” Snake whispered, “we're in for a long trip.”

“Have mercy on us,” Steals Pony replied.

About that time, a lady named Madeline Hornbuckle found a very large rattlesnake curled up in her blankets and she let out a war whoop that brought the whole camp running. The snake disappeared, but no one got into their blankets for the rest of the night.

 

 

It poured from the skies the next day, and Preacher told the ladies to rest—and shake out their blankets for the umpteenth time.

“Go kill a rattler and bring it back here,” he told Steals Pony. “That's the only thing that'll calm these women down. Damn bunch of city women anyways.”

“I have a better suggestion,” the Delaware said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. You go kill a rattlesnake and bring it back here. And good luck finding one in this rain.”

“And watch out for them Pawnee,” Blackjack added with a smile. “'Way I see it, most of them hightailed back to camp. But I figure they's maybe fifty or so who stayed behind with revenge on their minds. And they'd just love to find you ridin' out there alone.”

“What a bunch of friends I got,” Preacher muttered, making another walk-around of the circled wagons, slopping through the muddy and churned-up ground, the rain beating down on his hat. “Smart alecks, all of them.” Then he grinned, knowing that a man could not have better friends than those who accompanied him on this journey.

He stopped by a wagon when he heard a hard, wracking cough. Squatting down, he looked at the three women huddled on the ground under the wagon bed. “Get that woman inside the wagon and get her warm,” Preacher ordered. “If you got any ginger root, make some tea. She's on the verge of pneumonia. Strip 'er down to the buff and rub her good; get that blood to the surface and keep her warm. Pneumonia's a killer out here. Oncest you get her dry, warm, and full of ginger tea, add some clove to it and she'll go right to sleep. She's got to rest.”

When the men who were to be called mountain men had first arrived in the west, they had discovered that the 'poor ignorant savages,' as whites called the Indians, knew a hell of a lot about medicine and healing of the body.

Perhaps one of the reasons the breed of men called mountain men were considered so tough is that they just simply would not succumb to illness. No matter how they felt, they just kept on going.

Rain continued to pound the pioneers during all that wet and gray day. The only bright spot was that the Pawnee had chosen not to launch another attack. Charlie and Steals Pony rode out about noon and completed a wide circle around the area. The Pawnee were indeed gone.

“They headed north,” Charlie said, huddled under a canvas, his hands clutching a tin cup full of hot coffee. “Then they cut west. I reckon they figured the rain would cover their tracks, and it would have in another hour or so. That bunch of revenge-seekers will be hittin' us somewheres along the Platte.”

“I most certainly will not do that!” a woman's voice carried across the muddy circle to the men.

“Suit yourself, lady,” Steals Pony said, and came walking over to the small group of men.

“What was all that about?” Preacher asked, as the Delaware poured a cup of coffee.

“The woman said her child had gotten into poison ivy and asked me what to do about it. I told her to strip the child and dunk her into a mud puddle. That would help relieve the irritation. She refused.”

“It works,” Snake said.

“Of course it does,” Steals Pony said. “But I will find some goldenseal when the rain ends and that works better. Even though I was raised by whites back east, I have always felt that whites are sadly lacking in basic knowledge. It's amazing to me that the white people have progressed as far as they have. Present company not included, of course.”