Blood Dance (12 page)

“Take this for a hide-out gun, friend. You never know when you might need it.”

I slipped the Remington into my boot, just inside the neck of my old, worn sock. “Thanks.”

“And remember, Red Spot. All that head-shooting is going to get you in trouble. If you hit, it’s good, but it’s a smaller target. I’ll tell you this: if you shoot a man in the belly near the navel it may not be a fatal shot, but it will shock and stall his brain and arm to the point that the fight will be over.”

“I’ll remember, Bill.”

“I doubt it.”

I wheeled my horse, and thundered down the rocky pass ahead of Hickok and the wagon bearing Roy in back. I heard Hickok say, “Shoot straight,” and then “Heeya,” to the horses, and parted company. The next time I saw Wild Bill, the great pistoleer was in a coffin. But that is another story.

It was hard getting my mind off Roy, but I figured he would be okay. It had not been a real bad wound, but certainly one that must be attended to. I thought, too, about Bill, and how we had become fast friends so quickly. I would miss them both at my side—the Gentleman Killer and the loud but competent Honest Roy.

Night tracking is hard as hell, and for me it was harder. Even when Bucklaw and I had trailed Apaches, Bob had been the main tracker, as I never was outstanding at reading sign.

There wasn’t much moonlight, and I kept climbing off my horse to check the ground. I wished I had some matches.

I figured out that the bunch had split up, and half had gone one way, the rest another. Made sense, especially if they thought all three of us were on their tail. And after them seeing that madman Wild Bill handle a pistol, I was sure their minds were set on staying out of range.

All this became unimportant, however, for the night was suddenly filled with the sound of screaming.

I rode toward the sounds with my Winchester drawn, and pretty soon I broke out of a grove of pines into a clearing. I could see three men grappling. One white man and two Indians. Two others lay dead on the ground. One of the Ind Kne d as hell,ians was hopping about the others like a rabbit, only this rabbit was vicious and had a nasty claw in the shape of a Bowie knife.

The other two were down to knives as well, and they were trying to put the pin on the hopping Indian, but he was too fast. He was bouncing in and out, slashing, jabbing, and probably making quite a mess of the two.

I knew immediately, from the way he moved, that it was Dead Thing. I knew too that the others were part of Carson’s gang. I lifted my Winchester, and taking Bill’s advice, shot low.

I dropped the white man and he screamed like a banshee.

The Indian turned slightly, only for a moment to look-see the shot, and that was his mistake.

Dead Thing planted his knife in the man’s chest and took him down.

Dead Thing had finished off the white man by cutting his throat and was already scalping by the time I walked over to him.

“You took long enough, brother,” he said.

“Well, I been busy. Sort of got held up by some old friends.”

He looked up from his grisly work and smiled. His face was covered with blood. It wasn’t his.

“Scalp?” he said, holding them up.

“No. I still don’t collect.”

He grunted.

“Sort of left me high and dry after the Sundance, didn’t you, Dead Thing?”

“I knew we would meet again. Our lives are entwined.”

I knelt down, using my Winchester for support. “Sort of seems that way, don’t it?”

“We will finish this hunt together. You do not think it is chance that brings us together?”

I had to admit that it seemed like too much of a coincidence. But I said, “Seems like every time I see you, you and I are shooting or knifing someone.”

“We have a trail to follow.” Dead Thing moved to the others he had killed, began scalping them. I noticed the bodies bristled with arrows.

“Stands to reason our paths keep crossing. We’re after the same thing.”

“I have not been hunting them, brother. I have been waiting for this moment to arrive. I knew they would come to me, and you drove them here. You, the old man and the long hair who looks like the one you call Custer.”

My mouth fell open. “How do you know about…?”

“My vision.”

“Vision, my ass. You’ve been spying on me.”

Dead Thing smiled. “I am surprised that you did not learn more. That the dance did not teach you.”

I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I just looked at him.

He stood up with his fistful of scalps.

“Come, help me dig out my arrows. We have a trail to follow.”

We didn’t just run up on Carson and the remainder of his men as I had hoped. The fugitives had a pretty good trail to follow for awhile, but after they had traveled a bit they began to take pains to knock it out. The Crows riding with Carson—Dead Thing said there were two, plus two white men—were falsifying their trail. It was a hard go even for Dead Thing to track them.

Once we lost the sign for three whole days, and then after a period of riding this way and that, we came across it again, purely by accident.

I’d read in some dime novels about how scouts could follow sign so well, and it is true, some men are amazing, but they are still only men. They have their limitations. Red or white. I think that had we not come upon the sign when we did we would surely have lost Carson, and what later occurred might never have happened. I have mixed feelings about that.

What we found still wasn’t much of a trail, but we followed.

A few days later my horse went half lame. Most white men would have shot the critter. An Apache would have built a fire under it and made it move, injured leg or not. When the horse wore completely out, he’d build another fire. If the animal could not get up, he would kill it and eat part of it, continue on foot.

But Dead Thing was a man of the plains. Survival out here meant the horse, especially for the buffalo-dependent Indians. So we holed up for a few days and Dead Thing healed that beast. It could walk as fresh as new. I don’t know all he did, but he used herbs, kindness and know-how.

I suppose we could have left my horse and rode double, but that wouldn’t have gained us much. We would have had to walk the animal a lot, and if we
had pushed too hard, it could have turned up lame due to all the weight it would have been carrying.

Dead Thing had talked me into the right thing, and I was proud I’d listened to him when I swung back into the saddle and we rode after Carson again.

I was glad, too, that I had bought this horse back when Roy and I started mining. If it had been a rent horse, it would have been wiser for me to have just gone on and stole it.

A few days later we crossed a river called the Tongue and made a cold camp. You could practically feel the Sioux. We played it damn quiet.

Next morning, before the sun came up, we rode out. We had lost the trail, but were playing a hunch we would pick it up again after crossing the river—this one was called the Rosebud.

As we rode, we saw signs of there having been a big stomp not long back. There were arrows, rifles and even the rotting corpses of a few horses. It was plain the Sioux and the cavalry had clashed.

Actually, this gave me a sense of security. It meant the army was about, and that perhaps the hostiles would not be too interested in two men alone, as they would be busy with the soldiers.

I had totally lost track of time, but later I would learn the date and never forget it. It was a day that would inspire controversy for years afterward. A controversy I have stayed out of, in spite of the fact that I was there. It was the morning of June 25 as Dead Thing and I crossed the Rosebud and rode down into an area that would forever after be known by white men as The Little Big Horn.

The land in that area is kind of crazy. There are bluffs, ravines, and all sorts of dips in the land. Under the wing of a hill you could have hidden a small train, and if you were not at the right angle, you could not have seen it. That was one reason we did not realize that just on the other side of the rise was General George Armstrong Custer and over two hundred men of the Seventh Cavalry.

Nor did we know that just a little farther on, obscured by the rising and dipping of the land, was a village of Sioux and Cheyenne camped on the Little Big Horn—a village of over three thousand Plains Indians, the biggest single gathering of all time.

After a bit we heard some noise to the right, and figuring we might be coming up on Carson, rode over there. What we found were a half-dozen soldiers holding their rifles on us.

One of the men, who I think was a corporal, said, “More of ‘em.”

The soldiers stood with their mounts next to them, and there were a number of Indian scouts about. More interesting yet—there was Carson, those Crows of his, and two white men.

My trigger finger started to itch, but I said to Dead Thing, “Don’t move. Bide your time.”

Carson looked at us and sort of half smiled. That was almost enough for me to start blazing away, but I just gritted my teeth and held my temper.

A voice went through the soldiers, soft but sharp, and after a moment, a lean, hatless man with short blonde hair and a growth of fresh beard came up. His eyes were the most piercing blue I have ever seen. He was dressed in buckskin pants and a blue-gray flannel shirt.

“Sir,” he said to me, “you and these men,” he waved a hand at Carson, “are in the midst of an army action. There is about to be an engagement with the hostiles down the way.”

Just like that, formal as hell, like a man used to doing what my old dad used to call ‘speechifying.’

I nodded in a stupid way.

“You best take your Indian and pull in with this bunch,” he said, indicating Carson. I wondered how Dead Thing was taking that ‘your Indian’ business. I glanced a look at him. The Crow was stiff as stone, glaring at Carson and his group.

Maybe we could have rode off right then, but that wouldn’t have gotten us Carson. It didn’t seem wise to raise sand right now, and Carson knew that. He and his crew had wandered into the same situation, and now by circumstance they were safe.

For now.

After the engagement, or if we could get alone with them, they were dead men. And those bastards could put that in their pipes and smoke it.

“Thank you for your protection,” I said to the officer. I figured it best to be a bit syrupy and friendly, so as not to give away my real intent. “To whom am I speaking?”

“General George Armstrong Custer, sir.”

If I hadn’t just dismounted a moment ago, I might have fallen off my horse. “I’ve heard of you,” I said.

“I suspect you have.” Then, “Trooper!”

A soldier came forward, leading a beautiful white-stocking horse. The man had a dark, broad-brimmed hat in his hand, and he handed it to Custer. The General put it on and took the horse’s rein.

I was a little surprised. One of the things that had me bowled over was Custer’s appearance. Wild Bill had looked much as he had been advertised, but Custer didn’t. He did not look as youthful as I had expected. Nor did he fit the description I had heard. His hair was not long, but close-cropped, and there was the beard. Only his eyes fit the descriptions—fierce, intelligent, proud.

Much has been said about Custer since that day, pro and con. I myself believe he was vain, impetuous, and glory hungry, but he was not a fool, nor was he crazy. He just made a fatal mistake.

I felt certain his scouts had informed him of the presence of the Indians down there, but even though he knew they were in great numbers, he was not upset. This may have been partly due to overconfidence on Custer’s part, but one thing that folks did not think about later is the fact that a smaller group of trained soldiers generally always fared well against a larger number of Indians. Later, Geronimo would change this, and I was in on that too, but that’s another story.

The axiom was pretty much like this, and it had been coined by none other than old Napoleon of France himself: one trained soldier versus one native soldier had not a chance. The natives were too shrewd and cunning. But a number of soldiers against a superior number of natives could defend themselves to the advantage, due to training and discipline.

And I think that’s what Custer was counting on.

Dead Thing climbed down off his horse—for he had remained mounted all the time I had been talking with Custer—and Custer went away on his big, beautiful horse, riding slowly down the line of dismounted soldiers.

A soldier directed us into the line with Carson and his men, and then started leading us all toward the rear. Carson and his group watched us, and we watched them. It was one touchy sort of situation.

Finally, I walked up beside Carson, keeping Dead Thing on my left and a bit to the rear. I was afraid that crazy Indian would jump all of them any minute, because he had the look in his eyes. I felt certain that if he did, a soldier would shoot him dead or club him to death. A military campaign did not have time to be judge and jury. Besides, Dead Thing being an Indian and all did not weigh in his favor S inry as far as a scuffle with a white man was concerned.

I said to Carson, “Remember me?”

“You have been trailing me,” he said flatly.

I realized then that he didn’t know who I was, merely thought my only thing against him was the mine claim.

“You tried to jump my gold claim in the Hills.”

“That is certainly a shame.”

“You tried to kill me at a train robbery sometime back. You killed my friend Bucklaw.”

He stopped walking for a moment, and the reins almost slipped from his hands. He looked at me, squinting. My heavy growth of beard had thrown him.

“Melgrhue?”

“One and the same.”

Carson began to lead his horse again, and I followed, pulling at my pony.

“You’re the one that killed Mix, then?”

“You heard about that?”

“I did.”

“It was a great pleasure, Carson. I intend to do the same for you when I get the chance. This Crow behind me was with your group once. He wants your hide for other reasons. Making drunkards of his people, having them dance at the end of your string. Remember him?”