Wrath of the Savage (2 page)

“Huh,” Duncan grunted. “How do you know they were Blackfoot? We were told they were Sioux. Them and some Cheyenne renegades have been attackin' some farms along the Yellowstone for the last two months.”

“The Injuns that hit Benson's Landing was Blackfoot,” Coldiron stated matter-of-factly. “I seen 'em when they came down the river last week. I figured they was lookin' to steal horses or raid homesteaders, but there ain't no homesteaders on the Gallatin, so I reckon they moved on. They was a long way from home, if they were from that bunch up near the Judith. I thought that mighta been them comin' back when you soldier boys came ridin' up my trail.”

“Maybe so,” Duncan allowed. “Don't make much difference, though. Injuns is Injuns. Where's that haunch of deer meat you was braggin' about?”

Coldiron chuckled again. “Still on the deer,” he said and pointed to a tree by the stream on the far side of the cabin, where a carcass was hanging from a limb. “I was just fixin' to butcher it when I heard you boys comin' up my trail soundin' like a freight train. I hadn't kilt it more'n fifteen minutes before that.”

His comment surprised Bret. “We didn't hear a shot,” he said. “If we were that close, I woulda thought we'd have heard the shot.”

“Most likely because you boys was makin' so much noise comin' up through them bushes,” Coldiron said, then waited for a few moments before explaining. “Coulda been 'cause I shot it with my bow, though.” He looked at Duncan and laughed heartily. “If one of your boys can give me a hand, I'll go saw us off a haunch. Wouldn't be a bad idea if we smoked a supply of meat to take with us. We don't know how long it'll take to catch up to that raidin' party.”

Duncan nodded toward Private Tom Weaver, motioning for him to follow Coldiron.

•   •   •

Although they had been grumbling most of the day, complaining about bottoms sore from pounding against saddles they had not come to comfortable relations with as yet, Bret's eight-man detail was able to enjoy the fresh venison feast. There was plenty, for Coldiron was not going to leave any behind, once they started in the morning. Long after they had eaten their fill, he continued to smoke strips of the meat over the fire, planning to take a good supply with them. He intended to feed the buzzards with what was left. While the enlisted men spread their blankets on one side of the fire, Bret and Duncan sat on the other, talking over the mission with their guide.

Bret was content to give the rough-hewn bearlike scout the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not he was a top-notch tracker. His first impression was of a bitter man who held a special contempt for officers, judging by his dismissive attitude toward him. Bret considered himself to be a fair man, but he was not one to be bullied by anyone, regardless of their expertise or experience. So he decided to ignore Coldiron's inadequately disguised arrogance for the time being, at least until he proved himself valuable or not.

The night passed peacefully enough, with every man's belly filled with venison and coffee. Duncan routed his troopers out of their blankets the next morning before the first rays of the sun found their way through the canopy of fir needles overhead. They saddled up while Coldiron closed his cabin and made sure there were no warm ashes left from the fire.

“Fill your canteens,” Duncan ordered as he stooped to fill his. “We'll boil some coffee and eat breakfast when we stop to rest the horses.” When satisfied that each man had filled his canteen and was standing by his mount, he looked at Bret and reported, “Detail's ready to mount, sir.”

“Very well, Sergeant,” Bret replied, and turned to see what progress his scout was making. Coldiron came from the cabin, leading a sturdy buckskin horse with a dark sorrel packhorse following behind.

“I reckon we're ready to go,” he stated cheerfully.

“Ain't you got no lock or nothin' to put on your door?” Duncan asked.

“What for?” Coldiron replied. “I got ever'thin' I need with me. If I left a lock on the door, I just might come back with my door busted off the straps. Ain't nobody stumbled across my cabin that I know of. At least, if they did, they left it pretty much the way they found it. I left my sign propped up against the door, anyway.”

“Your sign?” Duncan asked, straining to stare back at the cabin.

“Yeah. I can't read or make no letters, but I had Everett Bingham over at the fort make me a sign to leave when I'm gone.”

Duncan laughed. “You think a sign'll keep anybody out?”

“Don't know,” Coldiron came back, “but there ain't been no damage so far.”

Unable to resist, Duncan walked back to the cabin door to see for himself. Sure enough, there was a sign propped against the door.

THIS CABIN PROPERTY OF

NATHANIEL COLDIRON

BE WARNED

DON'T BE HERE WHEN I GET BACK

A trip of about forty miles as the hawk flies took the small patrol of eleven men almost two days owing to the rugged terrain and the frequent rests for the horses. Led by their imposing guide, they followed one small game trail after another, crossing mountains sparsely covered with spruce and fir, through rugged ravines and along ridges devoid of trees. Finally they descended into the Yellowstone Valley, striking the river precisely two hundred yards south of the trading post near Benson's Landing.

If there had been any question in Bret's mind regarding Coldiron's knowledge of the mountains between the two rivers, it had been properly put to rest. Speaking for himself, he knew with certainty that he would be unable to accurately retrace the way they had just come in the event he wanted to return to Coldiron's cabin. It was easy to attribute that skill to the fact that the mountains between the two rivers were, in essence, Coldiron's backyard. Bret would reserve his opinion of the man's ability to track once they found a trail to follow.

“If it's the two families that I heard about that got raided, they're about two miles south of here,” Coldiron told them.

“You haven't been over here since you heard about the attack?” Bret asked.

“Didn't have no reason to,” Coldiron replied indifferently. “It was too late to do them poor folks any good. Might as well wait to rest the horses till we get down there.” He turned his horse upriver and led off toward the trading post. “I reckon you're gonna wanna see what the folks at Benson's have to say about the raid.”

“That might be a good idea,” Bret said.

•   •   •

On any given day, there were usually two or more trappers hanging around Benson's Landing, and this was the case when Lieutenant Hollister's small patrol rode up to the trading post.

“Here comes the army,” Lloyd Turner called out facetiously from the porch, “and Nate Coldiron's leadin' 'em.” Turner got up from the empty keg he had been using for a seat and walked out to the hitching rail to meet them. “I thought you was dead,” Lloyd said in greeting Coldiron, a customary salutation between men who roamed the mountains alone.

“I ain't scheduled to go until right after you lose your scalp, Lloyd,” Coldiron responded as he and Bret dismounted.

“Coldiron,” acknowledged another man who had walked outside when he heard Lloyd's announcement.

“Leadfoot,” Coldiron returned in recognition.

Lloyd took a long look at the lieutenant and the soldiers behind him. “I reckon you boys came over to see about the Injun raids up the river. They didn't send many of you, did they?” He addressed Bret then. “You boys wanna step down and rest a little?”

“No, thank you just the same,” Bret replied at once. “We're pretty far behind on this patrol as it is. So I'd just like to see if there's anything else you might have to add to what we already know. Then I expect we'd best get about our business.”

“Yes, sir,” Lloyd replied. “I know you wanna do what you can to save those women.”

His remark caused Bret to stammer in complete surprise, “Women? What women?”

“Them two the Injuns took with 'em,” Leadfoot interjected when he saw the shocked expressions on the lieutenant's and sergeant's faces.

“We weren't told there were captives taken,” Bret replied.

“I ain't a bit surprised,” Coldiron allowed.

Needing to know for certain, Bret asked, “Are you sure about that? Two women?”

“The feller who can tell you for sure is layin' up in one of Lloyd's bunks with an arrow hole in his side,” Leadfoot answered, then stepped out of the way when Bret almost ran over him in his haste to question the man.

“I saw 'em when they rode off with 'em,” Tom Sayers told them. “Me and my little brother was helpin' Cliff Buckley plow up his corn crop. That night, me and Billy slept out behind the barn. We woke up in the middle of the night when we heard the Injuns attack. They had already hit the house and ever'one in it. We made a run for the woods, but they saw us, and that's when I got hit in the side. I told Billy to run for it, try to get to Fort Ellis. I figured they were gonna come finish me off, but I reckon they forgot about me layin' there in the cornfield. When it started gettin' on toward daylight, they took off, and they had Myra Buckley and Lucy Gentry with 'em. I figured they'd hit the Gentry house first.”

It was a sobering testimony to be suddenly confronted with, and was enough to cast a new importance on their patrol. In Bret's mind, there was no longer a question of responsibility. He turned to Coldiron, and said, “Let's get up to that house and see if we can find enough tracks to see which way they headed from here.”

•   •   •

It was as Coldiron had speculated. They came to the first of the two dwellings after a ride of a couple of miles, at least what was left of it. It had been burned almost to the ground, the still-smoking timbers attesting to the high risk of homesteading the Yellowstone Valley. Be- yond it, another pile of burned timbers marked the spot where the barn once stood. At the edge of a cornfield, there were three graves, evidence that any attempt to aid the stricken family came too late. In the barnyard, the remains of a milk cow and several pigs lay half-eaten by scavengers, accounting for the odor of rotting flesh that drifted to Bret's nose as he gazed at the ghastly scene. “That's one of 'em,” Coldiron said, breaking into his thoughts. “The other'n's around the bend on the other side of the river.”

Bret sighed helplessly and dismounted. Turning to Duncan, he said, “Lead the horses upwind a little and we'll rest them here before we move on to the other house.” Then he turned to watch Coldiron, who was already out of the saddle and looking around. “There are a helluva lot of tracks all over this place,” he commented to the crusty scout. “It's gonna be pretty hard to sort out where the Indians went when they left here.”

“There's enough to tell,” Coldiron replied, studying the ground carefully. “I ain't interested in the ones wearin' shoes. Those were left by the folks who came to bury 'em.” Something caught his eye in the charred timbers of the house, so he stepped over the end of the fallen ridgepole and picked up the feathered end of a broken arrow. He studied the markings on the shaft and the way the feathers were fashioned. “Yep, like I said, Blackfoot, and I'll bet you they didn't have nothin' but bows and arrows—maybe an old musket or two—but I bet most of 'em was shootin' arrows.”

“Maybe so,” Bret conceded. He had no way of knowing if Coldiron was right or not.

“We gonna be here long enough to make a little coffee?” Private Bill Copeland yelled back to Sergeant Duncan, who was walking up to join Bret and Coldiron.

Duncan looked at Coldiron, who nodded. “Yeah, go ahead,” Duncan yelled back to Copeland. Then thinking he should have checked with Bret before responding, he asked, “That all right with you, Lieutenant?” Bret nodded. The horses were due a rest before they started out again, anyway.

Coldiron paused for a few moments to cast a long glance in the direction of the patrol. “Damned if that ain't a sorry-lookin' bunch of soldiers you brought with you this time, Johnny,” he commented. “Look at 'em—asses so sore they look like a bunch of cripples.” He winked at Duncan then and asked, “How 'bout you, Lieutenant? Your ass a little bit tender?”

“How about you keeping your mind on what the army's paying you to do, and I'll worry about my ass,” Bret retorted. He started to walk toward the barn then, but paused to respond to the big man's attempt to provoke him. “To answer your question, no, my ass isn't sore. I expect I can sit a saddle as long as you can, maybe a little longer.” Then he continued to the barn, leaving Coldiron at a loss for an immediate comeback, and Duncan with a wide grin on his face.

“Damned if he ain't a feisty one,” Coldiron conceded. “I'll have to give him that.”

“He is,” Duncan agreed. “There may be somethin' inside that fancy blouse besides a typical West Point greenhorn.”

Bret spent only a few minutes at the barn before walking to the river to look along the bank for signs of a crossing. He was kneeling down, studying a mixed trail of both moccasin and hoof prints, when Coldiron approached. Bret got to his feet and offered his interpretation of the sign.

“Looks to me like Sayers is right. They hit the other house first,” Bret said. “They came across here, leading their horses at night.”

“That so?” Coldiron asked, waiting to see for himself before commenting further. After a moment's study, however, he couldn't disagree. There were surely both footprints and hoofprints leading up out of the water across an open sandy stretch of bluffs. “I reckon you're right,” he said. “What tells you it was at night?” Tom Sayers had just told them the Indians struck at night. Coldiron wanted to see if the lieutenant was pretending to be a tracker.

“This spot they picked to cross,” Bret told him. “If it had been in the daytime, they would have crossed back there where those trees come down to the bank. They figured at night they could take the easier crossing on this sandbar, thinking it was too dark to see them.”

“Well, I ain't got nothin' to add to that,” Coldiron said. “That's the same way I read it.” Then thinking of something he could add, he said, “You can tell by the length of their stride, and the way the toes ain't dug into the sand, that they were sneakin' up on 'em and not chargin' outta the river.”

“Right,” Bret agreed. “So I think there's no need to waste extra time scouting the other farm. We just need to scout around the perimeter to see which way they headed when they left here.”

“Most likely we can save some more time if we start lookin' for their tracks north of here,” Coldiron said. “The Injuns that done this piece of business are Blackfoot, and I'm thinkin' they headed for home. Now, if I'm leadin' that war party, I'm not gonna wanna take on that bunch of trappers that hang around Benson's Landin'. They've all got rifles, and I ain't got nothin' but bows and arrows—and maybe a shotgun or two I mighta got from the raid. So what I'm sayin' is, somewhere between here and Benson's, we're gonna find where they crossed back over the river and headed up in the hills.”

“That makes sense to me,” Johnny Duncan said as he walked up to join them. “But first, we need to make sure they headed north.”

There were many tracks, going and coming, along the wagon road that followed the Yellowstone River, most of them recent. But Coldiron soon isolated the unshod tracks of the Indian ponies, and they were heading north, as he had predicted.

“Now all we gotta do is find where they crossed the river, but I'll guarantee you it'll be before we get to Benson's,” he said.

“All right,” Bret said. “We'll let the men drink their coffee. The horses should be rested by then.” He turned to Coldiron. “You can go on ahead and scout the riverbanks if you want to, unless you want to have some coffee first.”

“I don't need no coffee,” the scout responded. “My horse is ready to go. I'll go on up ahead and wait for you boys.” He took his horse's reins and started walking along the wagon track, his packhorse trailing along behind.

Over beside the river, a small fire was burning, and the eight troopers lay sprawled around it, tending the metal cups that held the scalding black coffee.

“Look at 'em,” Private Brice McCoy slurred, “over there lookin' all around that damn house for tracks. Hell, them Injuns are long gone.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Private Tom Weaver remarked. “And maybe they're up ahead somewhere fixin' up an ambush, hopin' we chase after 'em.” The eight men knew very little about each other, all being new recruits, and having known each other for less than a couple of months. But that was all the time needed to learn that Weaver was a chronic complainer, and the only one he could count as a friend was Brice McCoy, who complained almost as much. A tall, wiry man with dark eyes that peered out from under heavy black eyebrows, Weaver never volunteered any facts about his life prior to enlisting in the army. “I ain't anxious to get my ass shot full of arrows while Lieutenant Fancy Pants tries to go after some glory for himself,” he drawled. “Ain't that right, McCoy?”

“Damn right,” McCoy responded.

“I think you men mighta judged Lieutenant Hollister wrong,” Private Pruett said. “He seems like a decent sort. I doubt if he wanted to go on this patrol any more than the rest of us.”

“Shit, Pruett,” Weaver snapped. “He went to West Point. That's what all them assholes are in the army for—medals and promotions to generals. Hell, why do you think he went to West Point? I just don't want him steppin' on my dead ass to get his glory.”

“All I know is I sure as hell didn't know what I was doin' when I volunteered for the cavalry,” Private Joe Lazarra complained. “My ass is so sore I'm gonna have to sleep on my belly. If I had it to do over, I'd sure as hell rather be a walkin' soldier.”

“Hell, I didn't get any choice,” Bill Copeland chimed in. “They just sent me straight to the recruit depot at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri, and told me I was in the cavalry. I was hopin' to get sent to Washington, D.C., maybe to guard the president or somethin'.” His remarks brought a derisive laugh from the others.

“Hold your tongue,” McCoy warned. “Here comes Duncan.”

“All right, ladies,” Duncan mocked. “Let's get mount-ed—tea party's over.”

“My horse ain't hardly rested enough, Sarge,” Weaver complained.

“Is that a fact?” Duncan replied. “Well, in that case, I reckon you can tote him till he gets rested up enough.”

“Nice try, Weaver,” Pruett said sarcastically.

“Kiss my ass,” Weaver shot back as he reluctantly climbed into the saddle.