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Authors: Ford Fargo

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BOOK: Wolf Creek
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Charley hoped his friend Tom Dent made it
out of this situation with his life. There was little hope of him
getting out if it with his career intact, not with Putnam no doubt
pushing for the harshest punishment he could get. This was the
second time Dent had disobeyed orders and refused to engage the
inhabitants of a peaceful village. The first time, at Colorado
during the war at a place called Sand Creek, Dent had the advantage
of the attackers being militia whose actions were condemned by the
regular army. But times had changed; George Custer had cemented his
fame by attacking the Cheyennes along the Washita in a manner very
similar to Putnam’s.

If there was one bright spot, it was that at
least the verminous photographer Wil Marsh was not accompanying
them to the fort. Dying would be just a little more unpleasant when
done in such worthless company. Putnam had insisted that the
photographer continue along with the main body, in his wagon, in
case there was another engagement and pictures to be taken to
further preserve the regiment’s glory. Marsh had seemed torn
between the desire to keep his scalp and his desire to make a
dollar—the dollar won, but Charley was not quite sure if that
qualified as bravery or not.

Marsh did insist, however, on making one
more image of Charley and Captain Dent before the force divided,
this time bound on horseback.

“I guess the joke’s on you, you uppity black
Indian,” Marsh had said. “Here you are headed back to the fort to
get your neck stretched, and here I am stealing your soul at this
delicate juncture by taking your picture.” Marsh chuckled to
himself. “No Happy Hunting Ground for you, I suppose.”

Charley had scowled. “Oh, I’m worried about
you stealin’ my soul, all right,” he said. “But it’s more from just
bein’ in your presence than any cameras you might have.” Then
Charley’s scowl turned into a chilling grin. “And my last thoughts
will be sweetened by one thing—whatever’s waitin’ for me back
yonder, rope or bullet, is a whole lot better than what you’ll get
from Stone Knife if’n he catches you out on the prairie.” The
photographer blanched, and it was Charley’s turn to laugh.

“No Happy Hunting Ground for you, either,
Marsh,” Dent chimed in. “And if there is, you’re sure going to look
funny with all those parts missing.”

“Go to hell,” Marsh had said, and stomped
away.

So there was no need to listen to his smug
voice on their trip to judgment. On the other hand, they were still
stuck with, not only Major Putnam, but the strange little barber
John Hix. Hix had insisted on accompanying the detail going back to
the fort. Putnam had given in to the man’s demands easily
enough—the barber was a civilian, after all, and no one could
really figure out why he had volunteered to come along on an Indian
hunt in the first place. Those who knew him casually from
frequenting his shop knew that Hix had missed the whole Civil War,
having spent it fruitlessly in the California gold fields and now
obsessed by stories about the adventure he had missed, always
pestering his customers for war tales. Most of the troopers assumed
he had come along on this trip for the same reason, to see the
elephant, and that the prospect of actually doing so had made him
lose his nerve and be anxious to get back to safety. He was a
scrawny, scraggly man—for a barber—and seemed pretty harmless.
There were people in town, though, who knew that—when the chips
were down—Hix had proven to be hard as steel. He was a strange man,
all right, and Charley knew there was much more to him than met the
eye. And more to his story. Charley did not trust him.

They made camp for the night. They were
about halfway to the fort. Charley and Dent were grabbed roughly
from their horses and forced to their knees; their feet were bound
together.

“Best to hobble skittish ponies like these
two,” Major Putnam said. “Else they’ll steal away in the night, eh,
boys?”

There were a few murmurs of nervous
laughter. Putnam’s men were clearly not finding any of his actions
very funny, but most of them were afraid to let that show.

The major stood over his prisoners, smiling.
“Mister Hix!” he said. “Perhaps you should give our prisoners one
last shave before they face their fates.”

Hix seemed as nervous as everyone else.
“Well, sir,” he said, “it’s nigh onto dusk and the light ain’t real
good.”

“Oh, I was only jesting,” Putnam said. “And
it would be tragic if you were to cut their throats before they
could be stretched!” He laughed, although no one else did. He cast
an irritated look at Hix. “You are a wet blanket, sir. Why are you
even along, if you will neither shave in the dark nor participate
in civil conversation?”

Hix shrugged. “Fact is, Major, I’m much in
favor of civil conversation, and in a way that is the very reason I
did come along.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The real reason I came along,” Hix
repeated. “I’ve heard a lot about your exploits during the war,
Major Putnam, and I have to admit I’m something of an admirer of
yours.”

“You don’t say,” Putnam responded, suddenly
very interested.

“Oh, yes,” Hix said. “And so youthful, just
like Custer the boy general.”

“You flatter me, sir. Speak on.”

“Oh, for petesake,” Dent said under his
breath.

Charley nodded. “The major could give
Marshal Gardner a run for his money.”

“I hear that the company you commanded then
sent many a Missouri bushwhacker to his grave, Major,” Hix said. “I
heard you even dispatched one of Bloody Bill Anderson’s top
lieutenants.”

Putnam’s chest had noticeably inflated.
“Yes, that is true—more than one, in fact we caught half-a-dozen of
the bastards in a crossfire and cut them down like dogs. I assume
you’ve heard stories of how Anderson took the scalps of good Union
men as trophies?”

“I’ve heard that, yes,” Hix replied. “How
savage.”

“Savage, yes, but effective at striking fear
into one’s enemies. Which is why, when we cut down those six
comrades of the fiend, I had my men scalp each of them.” He leaned
closer to the barber. “They gave one to me as a memento, in fact,
Mister Hix. As a barber, I’m sure you’d appreciate such a close
hair cut as that.”

Hix seemed to be as delighted as a child.
“Oh, my,” he said. “Surely it’s too much to hope that you’ve kept
that item in your possession after all these years?”

Putnam chuckled. “It is sort of a lucky
charm for me, I go nowhere without it. I keep it in my
saddlebag—it’s a fine red-headed specimen.”

“Could I—could I see it?”

The major appraised the eager barber for a
moment. Finally he said, “Why, certainly you can. After I get a
bite to eat we’ll walk over to my horse and I’ll give you a private
viewing. Though it is barely light enough to see, now—perhaps by
then we’ll have a bit of moonlight.”

“I’m in your debt, Major,” the barber said,
“and am greatly obliged. I swear, I can’t hardly wait.”

“All in good time, my man.” Putnam turned
his attention once more to his prisoners. “I suppose we can spare
you two some rations, though I’m afraid you’ll have to eat them
without the use of your hands.”

“We’ll manage,” Charley said darkly.

Putnam and Hix walked away, and a trooper
brought some hardtack and shoved it into the prisoners’ mouths.
They chewed on it carefully. Dent dropped his after finishing about
half, and swore as he rolled on the ground trying to get his teeth
around it. Charley did not drop his.

It was almost two hours later that John Hix
came back over, and spread his bedroll on the ground beside the
prisoners and climbed into it.

“Did you get to see your Rebel scalp?” Dent
asked.

“Yeah, I seen it.”

“Was it everything you hoped it would
be?”

Hix grunted noncommittally. “No different
from any other,” he said. “But I did get a good story out if
it.”

“Quit talking to the prisoners,” the trooper
standing guard said.

Hix grunted again, then rolled over and was
soon snoring.

***

Half-an-hour before dawn, everyone was woken
by a commotion from the area where the horses were hobbled.
Everyone except Charley, who had only dozed lightly off and on
through the night.

“Wake up, wake up,” a sergeant was calling
out. “Stand to arms!”

“Is it Injuns?” the newest guard said. “Are
they attacking us?”

“They ain’t attacking,” the sergeant said,
“but they’re here!”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, I ain’t seen ‘em.”

“Then how do you know they’re here?” asked
another trooper, who tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes as he
spoke.

“Because they’ve snuck in and kilt the
major,” the sergeant explained, panic rising in his voice. “I
stumbled on his body out yonder by where the horses are hobbled.
His throat was cut clean as a whistle, and he was scalped.”

“Sweet Jesus,” said another man.

“There ain’t been no Indians in this camp,”
Charley Blackfeather announced calmly. “Well, none ‘cept me.”

“Then how do you explain Major Putnam?” the
sergeant said shrilly.

Charley smiled cryptically. “Major Putnam
don’t matter—ʼleast, not to me.” His eyes flashed quickly toward
the barber, Hix, who had sat up and was smoothing down his long,
stringy hair. No one noticed Charley’s brief gaze except Dent. “We
got bigger problems.”

“Bigger problems than a scalped major right
in under our noses?” the sergeant said.

Charley nodded. “I said there ain’t been no
Indians in this camp tonight,” he said. “I didn’t say there ain’t
none around. There are—out in the darkness, all around us. Several
dozen, I’d say, maybe as many as forty or fifty. Just waitin’.”

“Waitin’?” the soldier who had been on guard
said.

Charley nodded again. “It’s about twenty,
thirty minutes to daylight,” he said. “So it won’t be long till
they come up and introduce their selves.”

“Are—are you sure?” the same soldier
said.

“You know how good Charley is at this kind
of thing,” Tom Dent said, and then held up his arms. “You’d best
cut us loose, sergeant. We’ll be sitting ducks like this, and two
more gun hands might make all the difference.”

The sergeant snorted, and forced a laugh.
“Oh, I see,” he said. “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you. Stand
easy, boys,” he said to his men. “They’re just tryin’ to scare us
into settin’ ‘em loose.”

“But somebody killed the major,” a trooper
said.

The sergeant snorted again. “Yeah, there’s
probably one or two Injuns skulking around—probably tryin’ to
rescue these two. These two Injun-lovers. They’ve probably been in
on the whole thing all along.”

“I don’t know,” the trooper said.

“It ain’t your job to know,” the sergeant
said. “Your job is to do what I tell you. And what I tell you, all
of you, is this: stand at the ready, just in case.” He shot an
angry look at Charley and Dent. “But these two, we ain’t cuttin’
them loose no matter what.”

The sergeant walked away. John Hix jerked
his head, trying to get Charley’s eye. Charley looked at him. Hix
had pulled his straight razor, still folded, out of his pocket and
was casually playing with it. The barber looked straight at the
scout and whispered.

“When the time comes,” he said, “I’ll get
you loose.”

Charley nodded slowly, and then looked
intently into the darkness.

* * *

At the first hint of dawn, Stone Knife’s
Kiowa warriors charged the campsite. The still morning air was
broken by their war cries. Bullets thudded into blue-uniformed
bodies, and arrows whizzed all around.

John Hix took a rolling dive toward the two
prisoners, flicking his razor open as he came to his knees beside
them. He had sliced through their bonds in seconds. While Charley
and Tom rubbed their numb wrists, Hix took another dive, scooping
up the sidearms from two fallen troopers. He tossed them to Charley
and Dent. Quick as a rabbit, he ran past two other fallen troopers
and grabbed their sidearms as well. A pistol in each hand, he ran
toward the hobbled horses. He emptied one revolver into the
screaming animals, dropping six horses with six shots. Hix leaped
behind the first horse that stopped thrashing, using it as a fort
and digging a box of ammunition from its saddlebags. Charley and
Captain Dent ran toward him, doing the same thing. Soldiers fell
all around them; a couple, including the sergeant, managed to take
cover behind dead or dying horses.

A few Kiowas were dropped from their
saddles, but the troopers were by far taking the worst of it. Dust
and smoke swirled around them, and the barrage of gunshots was
punctuated by the screams of the dead and dying. Then the Kiowas
pulled away, just out of pistol range, to regroup.

Charley looked around. Five men lay behind
dead horses: himself, Tom Dent, John Hix, the sergeant, and the
trooper who had stood the last watch over the prisoners. The latter
man had pushed aside a dead soldier who previously occupied his
position behind the horse carcass but who had taken a fatal bullet.
The sixth dead horse sheltered the corpse of another unfortunate
trooper. Two other men were in the open, both of them fallen to one
knee to make smaller targets; one of them had an arrow sticking
from his leg. Both those soldiers, after pushing the corpse of
their comrade aside, hunkered behind the sixth horse. The remaining
horses had either been shot by the Indians or unhobbled and stolen.
Charley had killed two Kiowas who let themselves be distracted by
efforts to free the horses.

Dent called out in a worried tone. “Charley,
you as low on ammunition as I am?”

“Yep,” Charley replied. “I reckon we all
are.”

Even from this distance Charley could
recognize Stone Knife. The Kiowa leader was prancing his pony back
and forth, taunting them.

BOOK: Wolf Creek
10.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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