Son of the Hawk (24 page)

The horses saddled, Charlie walked over and, reaching under the buffalo hide, grabbed an ankle and dragged White Eagle out in the open. Booth grinned. With the boy’s hands tied behind his back like that, it had to hurt like hell the way Charlie dragged him over the roots and dirt. But the kid never uttered a sound. In fact, he hadn’t made so much as a whimper ever since Charlie captured him. Like Charlie, Booth’s first thought was to put a bullet between the brat’s eyes. But unlike Charlie, Booth fancied himself a businessman, and he never destroyed any commodity that had trade value. The kid showed a lot of spunk, giving Booth a hard eye. He might be Snake like he claimed, but there was a hell of a lot of white in him, too. And Booth knew a band of Gros Ventres where he was pretty sure he could trade the boy for maybe five or six good horses. He had kept the boy out of sight while in Iron Pony’s camp. They knew he had the boy, but the damn Sioux were sometimes softhearted about children, and they would more than likely want to adopt him—maybe for some old woman who had lost a
son—and he wouldn’t get anything for him in trade. For that reason, he had kept White Eagle under cover—to give the Sioux less to think about. Besides, he said to himself,
I might like havin’ me a slave for a while—and a nice little spotted gray pony to boot.

“Put the boy on his pony,” Booth said, his voice low so as not to attract any attention. “Then let’s you and me lead these horses on down across the crick nice and easy. We don’t wanna disrupt the powwow goin’ on.” He watched with interest as Charlie struggled with the boy, who tried his best to resist. “Crack him on the head if you have to, but don’t kill him, dammit.”

Charlie obliged with a sharp thump of his rifle butt, and White Eagle slumped to the ground, his head reeling. Losing the will to resist further, he was barely conscious when the stoic half-breed threw him up over the saddle. Unnoticed by the congregation of warriors ringing Strong Bow, Booth and Charlie led their horses down the narrow trail to the stream where White Eagle had been captured. Once on the other side, Booth hastily tied the boy to his saddle and the two men climbed into their own, leaving their former allies behind them.

*   *   *

From his position high on the ridge, Trace watched the Sioux camp prepare to ride. Riders were sent out to call in the scouts who had spent the night watching the soldiers to make sure they didn’t attempt to escape under the cover of darkness. Trace remained where he was until the riders returned. In a matter of no more than an hour, the band of close to two hundred warriors deserted the valley, moving off toward the Powder River. When the last Sioux pony disappeared from view, he rose to his feet, the silence of the now-empty valley laying heavy on his ears. “Well, that’s that,” he muttered softly and turned to descend the ridge.

*   *   *

“Why the hell don’t they come?” Turley demanded of no one in particular as he stalked up and down behind his line of troopers. It was half-past seven by his railroad watch, and no sign of hostiles anywhere. “Somethin’ ain’t right,” he mumbled, then called out, “Keep a sharp eye on them flanks.”

“Could be they’re trying to draw us out in the open again,” Luke Austen speculated as Turley crawled up beside him on the creekbank. He was about to say more when Turley suddenly grabbed his arm.

“Look there!” Turley interrupted in a loud whisper. “There’s somebody coming across the rise.” Turning toward the men to his side, he cautioned, “Get ready. Keep a sharp eye, but don’t shoot till I say so—pass it on.”

Luke had been studying the lone rider while Turley alerted the troops. “It’s just one man,” he said, “and he’s waving his . . . Hell! That’s McCall!” Turning quickly toward the men, he yelled, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

When Trace was sure that he had been identified, he rode down the slope to meet Luke and Turley coming up from their holes in the bank.

“Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Luke said as Trace dismounted.

“Where the hell are the damned Injuns?” Turley blurted. Behind him, the embattled troopers slowly began to crawl out of their emplacements, seeing that their lieutenant had abandoned his caution.

“They pulled out about an hour ago,” Trace replied.

“You mean they’re gone?” Luke asked incredulously. “For good?”

‘“Pears that way,” Trace answered with a shrug.

“Gone,” Turley marveled. “We didn’t even hear ’em move out.”

“Hell,” Trace said, “they’re Injuns.” He figured that was explanation enough.

Luke realized they had been damn lucky that day. But he knew there had to be some reason why the Sioux had decided not to press the attack on his men, and he questioned Trace while his troopers prepared to celebrate their survival with a hot breakfast. Trace modestly explained that the Sioux had lost their desire to fight when their chief was killed. “That was bad medicine, and Injuns don’t like to fight if the medicine ain’t right.”

Luke thought about that for a moment. “But we could hear them all night . . . what sounded like a war dance to me. I know they were still sneaking around out there all during the night. We could hear them, even fired at them a couple of times. If they decided to quit because their chief was killed, why didn’t they leave before this morning?”

Again Trace shrugged off the question, but Luke was insistent, so Trace finally told him. “They didn’t know their chief had been killed until sunup this morning.”

Luke was still somewhat puzzled. After all, the Sioux had them badly outnumbered. They could have kept his soldiers pinned down on that creek bank indefinitely. It didn’t make sense to him that the hostiles wouldn’t know their chief had been killed in the fighting the day before . . . unless . . . and then it dawned on him. “You mean you got into that Sioux camp last night and killed Iron Pony?”

He got no more than a nod in affirmation, then Trace quickly changed the subject. “Any of you boys got any coffee? I swear, I sure could use a cup.”

Luke and Sergeant Turley looked at each other and shook their heads in amazement. Trace McCall was a piece of work all right. Luke had occasion to talk to
many of the old mountain men—trappers and scouts—since he had been assigned west of the Missouri. Almost to a man, he had found them to be the biggest collection of boastful storytellers he had ever met. Jim Bridger and Buck Ransom came to mind—either man would have vocally painted a masterpiece of their daring assassination of the Sioux war chief, with every detail a brush stroke of vivid color. Trace, on the other hand, was modest to the point where Luke had to dig the details out, fact by fact, to get a clear picture of why his detachment had been spared another conflict with a superior force of hostiles.
Maybe, when he gets as old as Buck, he’ll learn how to exaggerate like all the other old trappers.
Luke chuckled to himself at the thought.

While Trace helped himself to a cup of coffee, Turley turned to Luke. “Well, sir, it looks like we can get moving again. What have you got in mind to do? Are we still goin’ on to the Powder like Captain Leach said?”

Luke, who had been watching the tall mountain man with amusement while Trace gingerly sipped boiling hot coffee from a tin cup, turned abruptly to face Turley. “Sergeant, do I look like a damn fool to you?” Not giving Turley time to respond, he went on. “We’ll bury our dead, and return to Fort Laramie while there’s still a few of us left.” Turley touched his hat in a casual salute that signaled his silent approval and turned to get the men ready to move out. Luke turned back to the sandy-haired trapper squatting by the fire. “How about you, McCall? You riding back with us?”

“Reckon not, Lieutenant. I’ve still got some business out here to take care of.” He had been thinking about White Eagle while he sipped his coffee, wondering about the boy’s whereabouts and the possibility
that he might be following the band of Sioux himself. Surely the boy could not have missed sighting a band as large as Iron Pony’s. Trace regretted the fact that he had been detoured by the conflict between the soldiers and the Sioux. It would just make it that much more difficult to find the boy.

Sergeant Turley had a burial detail digging graves when Trace climbed on his horse and turned to ride up toward the ridge again. Luke pulled up beside him. “Thanks for sticking your neck out for us, Trace. When I get back to Laramie, I’ll see if there’s any way to get some scout’s pay for the time you put in on the army’s behalf.” Trace shrugged indifferently. Luke gave voice to a thought he had come up with earlier that morning. “You know, with the fur trade gone to hell, you might consider signing on with the army as a regular scout. We sure as hell need men like you.”

“I don’t know, Lieutenant. I’ve been riding alone for some years now.” Buck had frequently suggested the same thing, but Trace wasn’t sure he could tolerate a constant crowd of soldiers around him.

Luke could see the hesitancy in the big trapper’s face. “Give it some consideration. All right?”

“I’ll consider it,” Trace allowed and gave his pony his heels.

I
t was no trick to follow the large band of Sioux warriors as they made their way back to their village, a village Trace guessed to be located somewhere on the Powder River. They wasted little time, evidently intent upon returning to their women and children. They were not overly cautious, either—not even employing rear scouts to alert the band of any enemies that might be following. As a result, Trace was able to tail the band a little closer than he expected.

Sioux scouts weren’t the only riders he was watching for. He could not be sure that White Eagle wasn’t trailing the war party, too. He wouldn’t expect an eleven-year-old Snake boy to know the country—probably never having been as far east as the Bighorns. But then again, the kid appeared to be pretty smart, and he certainly had the spunk. He just might be determined enough to find the Sioux war party.

Trace would have made a more intense search for the boy if not for the fact that he had seen the white man in the Indians’ camp. He could not permit Blue Water’s killer to ride out of his sight, so he felt he had no choice but to follow the Sioux and hope he got to the white man before White Eagle attempted to.

Fearing no danger deep in their own territory, the Sioux, now led by Strong Bow, did not travel far the first day, making camp on the Belle Fourche with
plenty of daylight left. There being little cover for concealment, Trace was forced to do most of his scouting of the camp on his belly, crawling through the grass. He managed to make a complete circle around the camp before darkness settled in, constantly searching for the white man in the black hat—but to no avail. There was no sign of the thin-faced white man anywhere. Trace began to experience a nagging fear that the man had parted with his Sioux friends somewhere back along the trail. But how could he have turned off the trail without being seen by Trace? Unless, Trace realized, he had left the camp before the Sioux even started for the Powder River country. The more he thought about it, the more worried he became. He had to be sure, though. He couldn’t go riding all over the territory like a horse without a halter, hoping to stumble upon the white man. He had to know for sure that the man he searched for was no longer with the Sioux, so he decided to ride on ahead of the Indians and wait for them to start out in the morning. The trail they were taking to the Powder was fairly obvious, used quite often by many bands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. He would find a spot where he could watch the whole band as it filed by. If the white man was still with them, Trace would surely see him.

The place he picked was a narrow draw the trail passed through as it led up from the Belle Fourche. Perched high up on the side of the draw, Trace waited, lying close to the ground behind a screen of spindly scrubs. By the time the morning sun had begun to ingest the night chill, the advance scouts were already approaching the draw. Invisible to the unsuspecting warriors plodding below him, Trace looked hard at every man that passed. When the last few riders left the draw, rising to the plain beyond, Trace had the
sinking feeling that he had wasted a whole day’s tracking. There was no white man with the Indians.

Knowing that the man he hunted had evidently left the Sioux camp before it moved—and angry with himself for not discovering it when it happened—Trace lost no time in backtracking. As soon as it was safe, he left his hiding place and went back to the other side of the hill where his horse was hobbled. There was a strong sense of urgency about him as he urged the paint along. The possibility that he might never find the boy or the man who killed Blue Water weighed heavily on his mind. It was a big country—it could swallow up an eleven-year-old boy—and make a white man in a black hat damned hard to find.

With no clue to start with, there was nothing Trace could do but scout around the site of the Sioux camp back at the foot of the ridge. It didn’t help to know that he was relying heavily on pure luck, since there were hundreds of tracks left by the comings and goings of the Sioux warriors. But having no choice, and unwilling to give up, he began a careful study of the many trails around the former campsite.

He spent an entire morning studying various tracks. They told him many things—here, a warrior tied his favorite pony near his bedroll, instead of with the pony herd; here, a dozen hunters rode out to get meat; here, they returned, their ponies loaded with meat; here, a large party galloped through the camp—the tracks told him many things—but they did not tell him where a white man in a black hat rode out of the camp.

Resigned to the fact that he was getting nowhere, he paused to spend some serious speculation on the white man’s thinking.

Who could say where a man might decide to go? He thought back to where he had watched the camp from
the ridge. If a lone rider had left the camp, heading for Fort Laramie, he would have passed close to the very ridge where Trace sat. Anyone riding off to the north or east would have also been seen easily from his position.

Perplexed for a moment, Trace rode halfway back up the ridge, almost to the exact spot he had watched from, and looked back over the abandoned campsite. The only part of the camp that could not be seen from high up on the ridge was the western edge, where the stream took a turn back to the north. The brush and trees were thick there, close to the water. It would have been possible for someone to slip down across the stream without being seen. It was a long shot, but he had run out of options. So he rode back down the ridge and began a careful search of the creekbank.