The Broken Bow, page 18
“Wasn’t that Indian that was ridin’ with you that the captain was trackin’, was it?”
“I thought he was after Charlie Littlefoot?”
“You find one, there’s always more.”
“If you say so.” Trusty hesitated, then looked over his shoulder and called out for the captain. “You all right, Plumright?” Only the wind answered him back. No other human presence responded. The silence got Trusty’s attention. He stood up with his Winchester in hand, ready to answer back to the next shot if it came. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to see his way forward. Jonah Farley stood up and followed after him. Both men stopped at the tether line to find the captain’s horse missing. They stared out in the distance, before saying anything.
“I didn’t hear him leave,” Farley finally said.
“He crawled off into the darkness after the shooting stopped.” Trusty continued to look into the darkness, surprised that Plumright had managed to sneak away. “I heard the shooter ride off, but I didn’t hear the captain take out after him. Did you?”
“Nope,” Farley said. He hitched up his pants, resettling his government-issue holsters on each hip, reminding Trusty that Farley was a military man, too. Or an ex-military man. He hadn’t had the chance to get that familiar with the man. Just because he wore a military holster and boots didn’t make him ex-army. “I didn’t hear nothin’ but the wind. You figure the captain took out on his own after that shooter?”
“He thought it was Oliver who was shootin’ at us. I suppose he did,” Trusty answered. “Oliver had enough of a relationship with the captain’s wife to cause some consternation between him and the captain, I suppose.”
“If you ask me, James Pierpoint Plumright should have kept the fires warm in his own home, so another man didn’t have to.”
The remark surprised Trusty. He cocked his head toward Farley, and looked him up and down again, casting aside any judgment he might have held against the man. Dawn was breaking harder in the east, allowing a little more light to fall on the camp and Farley’s face. Maybe he wasn’t the faithful lieutenant that Trusty thought he was. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said. Look, Marshal, I ain’t got no beef with you. You were shootin’ into the dark to protect yourself and us just the same as I was. I appreciate that. But I’m standin’ here wonderin’ where the hell Plumright ran off to now, all the while I’m freezin’ my ass off and expecting the shooting to start again at any second.”
“Welcome to my life.”
“I’m sure you’re gettin’ paid more for this than I am. I’m here at Colonel Townsend’s behest. It was his order for me and Smith to ride with Plumright. Keep an eye out for trouble, and make sure that Charlie Littlefoot came back to the fort alive. That simple. Plumright might have figured that out for himself and planned on taking off on his own the first chance he got. Just a guess, but it makes sense to me. Reed was the only one of us that held any loyalty to the captain, had served with him for several years, always buffeted trouble away from him when he could. Now look at Reed. Dead and frozen. Plumright don’t care about that. He’s bloodthirsty. Wants that Indian, or any Indian that was sympathetic to Charlie Littlefoot, dead and silenced for good.”
“So, he knew of Plumright’s intention?”
“Of course, he did. Anybody with half a brain knows Plumright will kill Charlie Littlefoot if he gets within a hundred feet of him.”
“You know more about all of this than you’re sayin’,” Trusty said.
“I know Reed and Smith are dead. They need a proper burial in ground that’s frozen solid as rock. I have to go after the captain and do my best to keep an Indian alive even though I don’t want to. How’s that for irony for you? I’ve spent the last ten years of my life fightin’ Indians, doin’ my best to stay alive, now I have to keep a West Point officer from killin’ one in cold blood.”
“We have to go after the captain,” Trusty said. “I figure he’s tracking Oliver like he was tracking us.”
“Reed was trackin’ you. You think Plumright has those kinds of skills?”
“I don’t know what skills he has; all I know is that he’s gone.”
“We need to find Charlie Littlefoot first. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
“I agree with you.” Trusty was a little relieved to hear the man was on his side of things. That is if he was telling the truth. There was no way to know that for sure, other than to pay attention to his instincts, keep his eyes and ears open more than normal.
“You gonna help me bury those two?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well,” Farley said, “if we can’t dig a grave, we can always light a big fire.”
“If the ground is too hard, we won’t have a choice.”
“We better get to work.”
“I suppose,” Trusty said, looking out over the frozen prairie again, hoping to see Oliver or the captain riding back to camp. Instead, he saw the vastness of the land opening up as the new day’s light reached and touched the ground, promising to shine on it, but not warm it. There was nothing alive in sight. Trusty wondered how anything stayed alive on the cold, barren ground before him.
Rapid City, Dakota Territory, April 1878
The city was only three years old, called the Gateway to the Black Hills, but that didn’t matter to Sam Dawson or his two friends, and fellow soldiers, Luke Elijah and Joe Rawls. They were there for fun after a long hard winter at Fort Robinson, and not interested in much else. All about the same age, Elijah hailed from Illinois, and Rawls was a born and bred Nebraska boy, aching to join the army as soon as he was able. Rawls had lost an aunt and uncle to the Cheyenne when he was a boy, and he wanted to pay them back the only way he knew how: with a rifle and an army of like-minded men at his side. Elijah always said he had nothing else to do other than be a farmer, and he wasn’t any good at that. Both reasons were good enough for Sam to become friends with the two. For the first time in his life, he was never alone. The Army had given him brothers he’d never had. Now they were on leave, with nothing but time on their hands and a little money in their pockets.
“I hear there’s another new town north of here that might be more fun,” Elijah said. They all stood surveying the city from its edge. From where they stood, it didn’t look like anything special, were a little disappointed by the few buildings they saw along the stream the place was named after. “Deadwood, I think it’s called. About another forty miles.”
Sam shook his head, while Rawls stood quietly between them. Rawls was the shortest of the trio. Sam was the biggest, most muscular. And Elijah was tall and wide-eyed. “We’d lose four days.”
“Three at the most, the way we ride,” Elijah said. All three of them had their government mounts. Jasper for Trusty, and two no name horses with numbers, that were more valuable than anything else the Army had trusted them with.
“I don’t think it’s worth it.” Sam had his feet firmly planted. “We should just find us a house here and stay for a little while. That way you get to know what’s what and who’s who.”
Rawls stirred into the conversation, confused. “House? What kind of house?”
Sam chuckled. “A whorehouse. A cathouse. Whatever you want to call it. There’s usually a flophouse nearby and a saloon or two.”
“I think we’d have better luck in Deadwood,” Elijah said. “I got a hankerin’ to play some cards and win me some money.”
Sam sighed a bit. As much as he liked being part of a crowd, he wasn’t used to it. He had come and gone where and when he wanted to for a long time. The only person he had to please was his father, and then if his errands had something to do with the shop or Madame Duchamp, he had free reign. “Look,” he said, “let’s go into this town and see what we can find. If it’s boring, then we still got time to make it to Deadwood. It’ll be tight makin’ it back to the fort before our leave runs out, but we can do it if we don’t run into trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Rawls said.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Sam answered. “Come on, let’s go.”
* * *
The house they found in Rapid City was nothing like Madame Duchamp’s house in Saint Louis. It was drab, dull, and lacked the taste of a refined woman who had been reared in New Orleans. But that didn’t matter to Sam as he eyed the girls in the dim parlor. Rawls and Elijah stood behind him, not sure what to do, pulled in by Sam’s encouragement and the confidence the half bottle of whiskey the three of them had shared gave them. Rawls had developed a noticeable nervous tick in his cheek as soon as they had walked into the house.
There was no madame, but a man named Hiram who saw to the business transactions. Hiram looked like his previous line of work was as an undertaker. The girls, unfortunately, reflected the grayness of the place, and didn’t hold a candle to the class of women Sam was accustomed to. There were six of them, a little scrawny, dull-eyed, uninteresting except a pair of twins about Sam’s age on the end. It was the tale of those that had brought the trio to this house in the first place. The twins were blond, buxom, with their faces painted and their clothes clean and colorful. One wore purple and the other pink. Besides that difference, they were identical.
Sam walked over to the girls, stopped in front of the twins, and said, “I’ll take them both.”
“That’s extra,” Hiram responded with a monotone voice that held no expectations other than a man saying no.
“That’s fine with me.” Sam had saved his errand money from Madame Duchamp, and along with his Army stipend, money was the least of his worries.
The girls stood up, and Sam walked right by Rawls and Elijah with a girl on each arm, who it seemed, could not believe what they were seeing. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, fellas,” he said, then disappeared up the staircase.
The tales that Luke Elijah and Joe Rawls told about Sam once they returned to the fort were half-true with more embellishments from all three, but one thing was true. The girls liked Sam, and Sam liked the girls. Especially girls with blond hair that reminded him of Jessica Marberry.
South of Cannonball, Dakota Territory, December 1888
Trusty and Jonah Farley rode north with the fire still smoldering behind them. Each man towed a riderless horse. Farley pulled Reed’s stout black gelding while Trusty held the responsibility for Smith’s horse, a smaller paint mare. All of the animals seemed agreeable to the situation. Even Horse, who usually objected to being tied to anything, didn’t mind the paint mare pacing after him. Something about the horse’s attitude had changed once Oliver and Takoda had come along. Or maybe it was how Trusty had looked at the horse for himself. They had been lost to each other in the blizzard, and when that storm had subsided, was finally over, Trusty had never been so glad to see a horse still standing in all of his life. Horse had been with him in all of his travels as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. They had ridden from one end of Indian Territory and back again, through good weather and bad, in troubled times, like the loss of Judge Hadesworth, and easy times, when the riding was soft, and the delivery of a warrant was effortless. Then on the ride to Dakota Territory where the world was cold and inhospitable, doing its best to make them uncomfortable and kill them with its touch. Horse had been an agreeable mount who asked for nothing more than to be treated decently, fed, and warmed when it was possible. The truth was, Horse was the only consistent creature in Trusty’s life, and the animal had never betrayed him, just looked to him with understanding eyes, willing to bear the weight of him, and take him wherever he wanted to go. The thought of losing Horse had made Trusty reconsider his need for him, his use for him, and his affection for him, too. He patted Horse’s firm roan neck and nickered him forward as gently as he could.
The ground had been too hard to dig, so Trusty and Farley had no choice but to build a makeshift pyre. The funeral fire had been easy enough to build with the wood that Oliver had collected, and what other wood lay scattered around the stand of cottonwoods. The smoke billowed upward, then shifted south as the wind pushed it away. Trusty and Farley were heading north toward Canada, doing their best to track the two horses that had fled the camp: Oliver’s and Plumright’s. Both men remained quiet, their eyes to the ground as they trudged through the snow, following the tracks left behind. The wind skirted across the ground, sending white ribbons sliding across the prairie, erasing the shallower tracks, but leaving the deeper ones. A stronger wind would make the tracking even harder. With little brush, and the grasses knocked down by previous snow and ice, finding a break to point the way north was going to be harder and harder. In the beginning, Trusty had relied on Oliver to lead them north because his own tracking skills in the winter were not that good. All he knew now was that he had to keep going. With more than one man to track, that, at least, made the task a little easier.
The day before them promised to be mild. The wind was more of a breeze than a constant gust, and the temperature had climbed upward with the sun in the clear sky to a temperate and tolerable level. Without any clouds to dim the sun, it warmed Trusty’s face as he trudged forward with Farley at his side. Just as he topped the crest of a rise, he looked back one more time to the spot where the two men had lost their lives. The smoke was thin, a cloud itself reaching from the ground to the sky, nothing more than a sad monument to what had happened there. Once the fire died and time and the weather covered up the ashes, or distributed them far and wide, the lives of the two men would be lost to the wind forever. It was a shame, but that was the way of the world, especially in the middle of a frozen nowhere.
They had ridden for almost two hours, quiet, without seeing anyone or anything alive, still edging north along the Missouri River.
“It’s another day’s ride to Canada,” Trusty said. “You don’t have to go that far with me if you don’t want to.”
“I figure Canada will look a lot like this,” Farley answered. “I gave my word to Colonel Townsend that I would ride with Plumright. I plan on seein’ this through, if you don’t mind. What are you gonna do in Canada?”
“I’ve planned on riding there from the start. I’ve got orders to meet up with a Mountie who has knowledge of the land and the way of the Indians. If anyone is hiding Charlie, he’ll know where to look. I hadn’t counted on Oliver coming along with me. That complicated my plans, and then you and the captain showed up, so there’s that, too. I should have been to Canada by now.”
“Them fellas deserved a decent burial, if the fire could be called that.”
“Depends on what you believe, I guess. Our Indian friends believe the fire sets the spirit free. Maybe they’re right. Who knows? I don’t take much to religion, and I try not to think too much about dyin’ and what comes after if anything. I rode with an ex-priest not too long ago. A good man who struggled with the bad inside of him. I think he might have complicated my view of such things.”
Jonah Farley didn’t say anything right away, just kept his eyes forward, and chewed on his lip a bit. “You know that Indian’s innocent, don’t you? He didn’t do nothin’ with that woman that she didn’t want him to.”
Trusty stopped Horse, and Farley followed suit. They were atop the rise with a clear view of the white, frozen world around them. There were no threats anywhere to be seen, and two sets of horse tracks easy enough to follow. “My gut has said that from the beginning. Marshal Delaney had his doubts, which is why I came to Fort Yates in the first place instead of heading straight to Canada. I think the real problem here is Plumright himself.”
“A man who doesn’t get his way or is made to look bad is always dangerous. Plumright has always had airs to wear that showed a thin-skinned, quick-tempered man. I always felt sorry for his wife. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, but he must have crossed her in an awful way.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Why else would a white woman take up with an Indian?”
Trusty didn’t know how to answer Farley’s question. All he could do was look out over the land before him and hope like hell that he found Charlie Littlefoot before Captain Plumright did. There was a baby coming into the world that would need its father. Just like his own. Wherever she was.
Chapter 19
White Earth River, Dakota Territory, December 1888
Trusty and Horse paced forward, head to the wind, with more snow and ice accumulating on them than Trusty thought they could tolerate. He longed to feel the warm sun of spring, see the world transform to green, hear the birds singing happily, and smell the bloom of the wildflowers. He had never felt so disconnected from the living, breathing world as he had been since riding in the Dakota Territory. He wondered if the snow was going to make him blind to color forever. All he could see before him was a blank landscape void of any interest or distinction. The ride had made him reconsider his plan to bring in Charlie Littlefoot, then go after Theodore Marberry on his own. He should have headed southeast when he left Fort Yates, headed to Saint Louis, instead of trekking north into the barren, icy land that he now found himself in. Duty and regrets had kept him going, but the sooner he was able to leave the Dakota Territory, the better.
Stopping now was not an option. Trusty could barely see ten feet in front of Horse’s nose. They were heading due north, straight into the wind, certain that if they stood still for even a moment they would be buried in the snow, suffocated, sent straight to a hell that bore no fire, was not warm, but forever white, painfully cold, leaving them both entombed in eternal ice, a statue of dedication and lack of sense.
“I think we’re being followed, but I can’t tell for sure,” Trusty said to Farley. He had seen shadows dancing in the periphery of his vision, on the edge of the whiteness where he thought the ground met the sky but couldn’t be certain. The world could have been turned upside down and he wouldn’t have known the difference.
