22

11 July 1869

SHAD’S THROAT BURNED in torment each time he hollered out his own death song.

In the thick of it, his hot-blooded fury drove him to carry death to the door of every lodge in this camp of kidnappers, thieves, and murderers. He swore that by himself he would cut a swath through the Dog Soldier camp until he found every last one of the warriors who had burned and maimed, mutilated, raped, and butchered white folk across the whole of Kansas and Nebraska.

And a part of him hoped, prayed fervently, that he would find his son before anyone else.

Shad knew the boy was here.

As a shadow burst from behind a lodge, he fired the Spencer on instinct.

Yet High-Backed Bull was no longer a boy. He was a full-grown man. But thinking that in his head had never helped Shad’s heart deal with what had become of his shattered family. For this father, Bull would always, forever and always, be a boy. His boy. His father’s only son.

Before he realized it, Shad was hurtling through the air, heels over head, landing on his belly, sliding across the grass and sand, then slamming the side of a lodge. Behind him his horse struggled to rise, one leg broken, flopping wildly, where the animal had stumbled in a hole. Perhaps a fire pit.

A scream aroused his blood as he came slowly to his senses, making him whirl around to pull the Spencer’s trigger, finding he had not chambered a fresh cartridge. He took the warrior’s charge there, where he lay sprawled on the ground, raising the rifle in two hands to blunt the blow from the youngster’s war club.

Driving his big foot into the warrior’s groin, sending the Cheyenne reeling backward in pain, Shad clumsily levered another round into the Spencer’s action and fired.

For a moment he stared at the warrior collapsing before his eyes, studying the face, the war paint, the way he wore his hair. He sickened for an instant—believing he had killed his son.

In grief he careened over to kneel beside the body. Sweete used some of the Cheyenne’s loose hair to smear a patch of the greasy earth-paint from the young warrior’s face. This dead one’s skin was too dark to be Bull. Still, he was nearly the same age as his boy, if that old. So young to die—

The terror-filled screams were not those of a man. Not those even of a Cheyenne woman. Such blood-chilling cries for help came only from one of the white women.

Out of the swirling dust and gun smoke curling serpentine on the dry breezes among the lodges emerged a white woman, babbling incoherently in a foreign tongue. She hurled herself toward him for a moment, then skidded to a stop, bringing a hand up to her mouth when she gazed at his buckskinned frame up and down. Eyes wide as saucers, she shot away from him—careening toward some mounted soldiers.

The Pawnee darted through the thick of it, screaming at the top of their lungs, sating themselves with long-awaited blood lust. Exacting revenge on their old enemies. Hacking, butchering men and women who had fallen with the soldier onslaught.

Fifty yards away a small group of warriors held out from a ravine, drawing the white man’s fire away from their families fleeing into the sandhills. Small platoons of soldiers raced after other knots of resolute warriors who steadfastly continued to fight from horseback, but most fought their struggle on foot. These small bands would retreat for some distance before suddenly wheeling to fire at their white pursuers while the women and children doggedly made for the tall grass in the marsh, some for the sandy bluffs nearby.

It was but a moment before Sweete and an old sergeant gathered enough soldiers to lay down some blistering fire on that ravine running through the Cheyenne camp. Without thought, nothing but courage and foolhardy bravado to power their legs, the sergeant led his squad in an infantry charge on the ravine, pouring enough lead into the enemy to drive the warriors who could still move clawing up the far side of the sandy defile.

One by one the defenders went down—those brave enough to stay behind and cover the retreat of the others. Now the soldiers and Shad were among the sweat-slicked brown bodies, both dead and wounded, kneeling quickly to rechamber another cartridge spat from the spring-loaded butt-mounted tube, firing at the retreating brown backs.

“Lookee here, Sergeant Dickson!”

Shad watched a young, thin soldier come up to the old sergeant, opening his palm. In it lay the shiny crimson-and-gold badge of distinction worn by a Royal Arch Mason. On the white enamel of the banner stretched across the bottom of the badge were emblazoned the words: West Springfield, Illinois.

“Where in hell you get that, Lorrett?” demanded the sergeant.

“Yonder,” and he threw a thumb up the ravine at the copper-skinned bodies of the enemy.

“Some white settler gave his life for that goddamned badge,” grumbled another soldier come up to join the group as he shoved more cartridges into his Blakeslee loading tube.

“Lookit there,” Private Lorrett said, pointing into the village.

At least a dozen of the Pawnee trackers herded some captured ponies ahead of them, making quickly for the north and away from the fiercest of the action.

“Goddamned Pawnee every bit as bloody bad as these here Cheyenne,” grumbled a middle-aged corporal sporting greasy, smoke-stained stripes sewn at the sleeves of his sweat-soaked blouse.

“Damn right, Walsh,” replied Dickson. “I ain’t seen a one of them Pawnee scouts down here mixing it up with the Cheyenne bucks like us.”

“Chicken-shit Pawnee sonsabitches went running in to rub out the women and children,” Walsh growled. “Yellow-backed redskins … no one’s ever gonna convince me they can face the music like a white man.”

“Sergeant Dickson!” an officer’s voice hollered from the dust and gun smoke. “Bring your squad over here!”

“Let’s go, bunkies!” Dickson hollered. “Fill them tubes if you ain’t already.”

Shad watched them go, headed south toward a ravine with more steadfast defenders.

The clatter of the Pawnee trackers skidding to a stop captured his attention. Five of them dismounted, most already wearing some captured necklaces and bracelets, each of them sporting at least a pair of bloody scalps hung at their belts, where they had stuffed captured pistols and axes. Into the ravine they pitched, crouching over the dead Cheyenne warriors. With the toes of their moccasins, the scouts rolled the Dog Soldiers onto their backs, slashing loose belt pouches, yanking necklaces of elk milk teeth or mummified fingers from the dead, stripping the enemy’s bodies of anything worth stealing.

Shad couldn’t stay for the rest of it. It had been how many years now since he had seen his first scalping—that first mutilation? The fur trade had been in its infancy … Shad shook his head as he clambered to the side of the ravine. Too damned many winters to remember right now. It wasn’t as if mutilation—even jamming a dead man’s pecker in his mouth—were something new to Shad Sweete. He turned away and planted a foot up the side of the grassy slope.

Then he stopped. And turned to look back at the dead warrior sprawled in the grass at the lip of the ravine—one of those who had refused to budge, refused to attempt escape before the soldier guns.

That meadowlark, stuffed and tied in the warrior’s hair.

Slowly Sweete took a step, then another toward the body. At the same time one of the trackers descended on the dead Cheyenne, who appeared to have nothing of any value but his big Walker pistol. Wrenching it from the dead man’s belt, the Pawnee jammed the captured weapon in his own belt as he knelt beside the Cheyenne’s head. Shad kept walking, walking toward the body, his eyes fixed on the meadowlark.

With a flick of his wrist the Pawnee brought his knife from his belt, then yanked back on the long black hair, cutting free the thin whang that had bound the stuffed, mummified meadowlark to the warrior’s single braid.

“You shouldn’t done that,” Shad declared quietly. “Put it back.”

The Pawnee looked up, a quizzical light in his eyes. Then, as if recognizing the tall white scout, he smiled in a friendly sort of way. And went back about his business, laying his knife blade behind the dead Cheyenne’s ear. He plunged the blade into the flesh—

Then stopped as he heard the click of the hammer on the Spencer rifle, felt the carbine’s muzzle pressed against his head, just back of his ear. Slowly the tracker turned, finding the white man’s rifle less than an inch from his nose.

“I told you: shouldn’t done that. For the last time … tie it back.”

Shad was amazed the words had gotten across his tongue, as dry as his mouth had gone suddenly. For him the battle for Tall Bull’s village at Summit Springs was something far away and fading, most of the remaining gunfire concentrated now at a deep ravine south of camp where Cody and the North brothers had gone when a dozen warriors holed themselves up and were making a stand of it.

For Sweete, this fight was over.

“Mine,” the tracker said, mimicking in poor English, trying out his ready grin on the white man. “Mine hair.”

Shad shook his head, fighting the stinging boil of rage. It wouldn’t take much just to pull the trigger in the tracker’s face.

“Listen, you no-count stupid nigger!” he roared. “I’m gonna give you your worthless life—if you want it. Now … get up!” And he motioned with a couple swings of the Spencer’s muzzle. “Get the hell away from my … the body.”

He saw the Pawnee’s eyes flick left, then right, about the same time Shad heard the tumbling clicks of several belt weapons. Not anything near as loud as the Spencer’s action—so he instinctively figured them to be the trackers’ pistols. He sensed the Pawnee drawing near more than he could hear them. Like a burning he sensed their muzzles trained on his back, pointed at his ribs, aimed for his gut. Years of staying alive out here plainly told the old plainsman that the rest had turned their sights on him. His ears burned as they jabbered among themselves in confusion and anger.

“Leave him be,” one of them finally spoke. “His coup. Leave be. His hair.”

Shad turned his head slightly, seeking the one who talked something he could understand from this bunch. “You speak English. So I’ll say this in English. Get this worthless sonofabitch off that Cheyenne—or I’m gonna kill him. Here and now.”

“You shoot him, you won’t—”

Shad roared, “Listen—I’m gonna splatter his goddamned face all over the ground!”

His eyes went immediately to the tracker on the ground over the body when the Pawnee shifted a bit, then bent over to resume his taking of the scalp.

Uncorking his fury, Sweete swung the muzzle of his Spencer against the side of the tracker’s head to send him sprawling backward and clawing for his own belt weapon. In a whirl of motion the old plainsman brought up his big moccasin, connecting below the chin, hurling the tracker backward again, watching the blood squirt from the Pawnee’s mouth.

He had begun to whirl back on the rest, but not before he felt the searing slash of the blade along his ribs. The pain came white-hot as the knife tip entered, then skittered along a rib with a sound like someone drawing rusty iron across a flat sheet of granite. That turn he had started likely saved the old man’s life, that act of bringing the elbow up, making contact with the slasher. Like the solid ring of an iron ladle brought down hard on an oak table, his arm sent the Pawnee into the air. The rest were coming now.

Too close to fire the Spencer, he slapped it into his left hand, gripping the barrel midlength to continue his swing in one unstoppable arc. It cracked against a skull, splattering some blood as the Pawnee went down in a heap, as heavily as a burlap hundredweight of wet oats.

Shad took a long step toward the others. Now he stood over the body, ready to defend it—flailing away with the Spencer in the left hand as he yanked the big knife from his belt with his right, ready to fling it as the rest suddenly drew back, their eyes as wide as frightened coyotes suddenly interrupted at a feeding frenzy.

They jabbered among themselves quickly. Shad wished Hook were here: he knew enough of the Pawnee tongue. Then one spoke.

“We shoot you—or you kill us,” the Pawnee said.

From the tremulous edge to the tracker’s voice, Sweete somehow did not quite believe it. “If you’re to be about killing me—let’s have at it, you red niggers.”

Tossing the Spencer with a spin into the air a few inches, Sweete caught it, thumbing back the hammer. Not knowing if there was a loaded cartridge under that hammer or not.

“No bullet in gun,” the Pawnee sneered. “We shoot you—”

“Just what the shit is going on here?”

At the corner of his eye Shad watched an officer appear, coming to a halt with more than a dozen soldiers.

“Likely I can get a couple more of you before I can’t pull the trigger on this here rifle no more. Maybeso gut a bunch of you niggers before I go under,” Sweete growled.

The soldier plunged down the side of the ravine, landing in front of Sweete that next moment. Major Royall.

“Mr. Sweete, isn’t it?”

“Out of my way, Major. Don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Hurt?” William B. Royall asked. “Looks to me like you’re the one about to be hurt by this bunch of North’s trackers.” The officer’s eyes fell to the two groggy Pawnee on the ground, then quickly narrowed on the dark, wet slash along Sweete’s ribs. “Tell me what started this bloodletting.”

“Told this bunch of niggers to leave the body alone.”

“We’ve got Cheyenne to fight, Mr. Sweete. We’re not supposed to be drawing down on our own Pawnee.”

“I’ll kill them—I’ll even kill any soldier of your’n what touches this body.”

For a moment the major studied the scout’s face. Then Royall glanced down at the dead warrior. Slowly he wiped his dusty, gloved hand across the back of his mouth. “Never will get used to using Indians against Indians. It’s something I think makes us just as savage as—”

“You gonna get these sonsabitches away from me, Major? Or am I going to have to spill a little more blood here?”

With a wag of his head the officer asked, “What in blue blazes makes this one so damned special to you, Mr. Sweete?”

The salty sting at his eyes made it hard to look down into the face of this dark-headed officer. Not really such a bad sort, this Royall.

“Put your guns away!” the major suddenly turned and snapped at the Pawnee.

Their leader grumbled, then passed the order along in their tongue. The trackers angrily stuffed weapons away, but refused to move off. Instead, they clustered around the one of their number Sweete had hammered with his Spencer.

“Now,” Royall said as he turned back to the plainsman, “are you going to tell me?”

“You get these goddamned turkey buzzards away from here!” Sweete bellowed with all the rage of a wounded bear. “Far away from me!” The rifle in his hands shook, still pointed at the chest of the English-speaking tracker.

“Mr. Sweete—these guides are allies of ours—”

Shad spat his words. “Pawnee no better’n vultures feeding on dead meat.”

The soldier sighed, then cleared his throat. “Lieutenant—go ahead and get these trackers out of here.”

“Major?”

“Now!” Royall snapped like a man gone too long without sleep. “We’ll sort the damned thing out later.”

It took some threats from the lieutenant’s soldiers before Royall got the trackers herded on their way out of the ravine. Reluctantly the sullen Pawnee left with their escort, yet not without some nasty grumbling that Major North would have a lot to say about the soldiers interfering with his Pawnee having their revenge on the enemy dead. As tense as it was for a few minutes, in the end Royall’s soldiers did get them on their way toward the ravine to the south where a withering gunfire still rattled above the last of the Cheyenne holdouts.

Royall sighed as he watched them leave, hands balled on his hips. When he turned, he strode back to confront the tall gray-head. For a few wordless moments, the major studied Sweete’s face, as if searching there for some clue.

Choking on his grief, Shad didn’t trust himself to move, not just yet. Then as he blinked, the first tear spilled in a streak through the dust caked on his cheek.

“It’s all right. It’s gonna be all right, Mr. Sweete,” he said quietly, clearly bewildered by the big man’s violent actions. “Now, please—just tell me what the devil was going on here? Why were you so all-fired ready to get yourself killed over some dead buck—over this dead particular Cheyenne bastard here?”

Royall waited for what seemed like a hot, endless moment, watching the tall plainsman’s face.

“Mr. Sweete?” he asked again. “Just what in blazes is one dead Dog Soldier over another to you?”

“My … my boy.”