Blood Feather (15 page)

Strongheart decided that, although it was colder, he would camp up higher on the western slope, where he might spot fires or even catch a glimpse of Blood Feather after daybreak. He rode into a group of boulders that would offer plenty of protection. First, he glassed for any signs of a campfire down below. Seeing none, he built his own fire and made a camp. He was back in the saddle at daybreak, but Blood Feather, who was camped several miles west of him, had been on his horse an hour before daybreak. By the time Joshua discovered
We Wiyake
's night camp and started to investigate it, the killer had turned right at the bottom and was now flanking the Great Sand Dunes rising up seven hundred feet on his left. The Sangre de Cristos, however, rose way up on his right, as he headed north along the eastern edge of the massive valley.

Joshua did not arrive there until mid-morning, and he could tell by the age of the tracks that they were several hours old. He got well north of the dunes and decided to pull off the trail and fix breakfast, which he had not had earlier. He figured that for getting bushwhacked he would be sticking out like a sore thumb now, so he would have to be very careful.

He built a fire and put on coffee and fixed some food, trying to figure out how to trail the killer without exposing himself too much. Out in the valley, Strongheart saw a group of what looked like cavalry soldiers. They were riding north, too, but suddenly turned right and headed straight at him. This really bothered Joshua.

He ran to the fire and started to kick the fresh dirt pile over it, but then decided that would be a waste of time, as the riders were certainly coming to this place anyway. Besides, he didn't have time to go anywhere unseen.

He checked his guns—his regular Colt Peacemaker and his belly gun—and grabbed his rifle, making sure all were cleaned and loaded. Then he lay down among the rocks and waited, watching the dots grow larger and larger. It was a cavalry troop, but again Joshua sensed something wrong. He listened to his intuition, always. In this case it told him to play it easy but careful; to keep his cards close to the vest.

Strongheart sat up, put more coffee in the pot, and set it on the fire. He now leaned against a large rock as he sat on another one. He moved and seated himself on a log, laid his rifle across his lap, and lit another smoke.

The patrol rode up and ground-reined their horses below the cottonwoods at the base of the rocks. They walked up with a friendly enough demeanor. It was a squad-sized patrol, with one corporal and five privates.

It dawned on Joshua suddenly why he was troubled; the patrol was not riding in any type of formation. They had no point, flankers, or rear guard out. He understood that it was just a six-man patrol, and they didn't necessarily have to be in a formation, but it was enough to make him suspicious.

Strongheart got more concerned when he noticed the men walking toward him without the squad leader issuing any kind of orders to anyone to water horses, watch for bad guys, straighten their gig lines, or anything of the sort. He might just be an inefficient squad leader, but it was one more thing to make Joshua wary. All the men walked toward the spring he cooked next to, emptying the remainders of their canteens.

“Howdy,” the squad leader said. “Looks like you had yerself a bit a lunch, stranger.”

Suddenly it dawned on Strongheart that these men had been in the saloon where he and his new friend Chris Colt and had gotten into the fight at Fort Union.

He sensed they recognized him, too.

Joshua said, “I am looking for a very large Sioux riding a big draft horse and leading a packhorse with a little white girl with flaming red hair. Seen 'em?”

One of the privates said, “Nay, laddie, we ain't seen the likes a anybody for all the days we been out an' about.”

The corporal gave the man a dirty look and said, “We're with Troop K, Seventh Cavalry. Been out on patrol for a long time.”

“I guess,” Joshua said, fishing, “it's way over one hundred miles to Fort Union.”

“Recognized us, huh?” the corporal said. “We seen yer red-and-white paint from that far off and knew it was you.”

Strongheart noticed one of the privates off to his left start to reach for his pistol, but another grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

The corporal smiled. “Yeah, that horse is a looker.”

“Who's your CO?” Joshua asked.

“Captain Goodwyn,” the squad leader replied.

At the same time, one of the privates started to say something else, but a stare from the squad leader shut him up.

Joshua smiled and took a swallow of coffee, waiting to see what they would say or do next.

He heard a gun cocking off to his right and turned to see a blond-haired, red-faced trooper pointing a pistol at him. “This is bull squat, Reg! He's gonna spill his guts when he gits to Fort Union and tells 'em where he seen us! We gotta kill 'im, so quit pussyfootin' around. Now, get shut a that rifle, Injun.”

Joshua felt anger begin to burn in his ears. His face flushed. “You're making a big mistake, mister,” he said. “Sure, it's obvious to me you're all deserters, but by the time I get to Fort Union again, you'll be long gone from here.”

The man said, “But it's less than fifty miles to a telegraph key. Sorry, but you gotta die.”

Joshua started to stand and said, “Now, look.”

With that, he swung the Winchester up and fired from the hip while diving to his left. He saw flame blossom from the man's gun and heard the crack of the bullet as it passed him by. A big red patch appeared on the man's dusty blue tunic, over his heart, as he flew backward, quite dead. Strongheart cocked the rifle, and as he hit the ground he drew his belly gun with his left hand.

Another private felt lucky and went for his gun, but he was clumsily fumbling with the big leather flap over the butt when the Pinkerton's left-hand gun spoke loudly. The bullet took the man right through the left cheek, tearing the side of his head off. The man fell to the ground and clawed frantically at the bloody mass where his face had been. He twitched a few times spasmodically and died, after having run away from the cavalry to avoid just such a horrible death in battle.

This scene had a very sobering effect on the other troopers, who all raised their hands. Strongheart kept them covered with both guns and signaled that they should all drop their gunbelts and step away, which each man did quickly and efficiently.

Joshua said, “Now, you lily-livered cowards, you unsaddle those mounts and shoo them off.”

“Mr. Strongheart,” the corporal said pleadingly. “You ain't gonna leave us out here without horses, are you?”

Joshua said, “Your friend was going to leave me out here dead, and I didn't see you stopping him. You're playing a rough game, mister, and you shouldn't have picked up the cards if you weren't willing to call or raise.”

One of the privates stepped forward and said, “You talk big with a gun in each hand, and we're unarmed. You ain't leaving me without a horse, you red blanket nigger.”

Joshua smiled and said, “Dad burn it. I was going to have a big poker game next week and invite you, but it seems like you don't like me very much.”

He pointed his right-hand gun and fired.

The trooper's hat flew off his head, and Strongheart said sarcastically, “Please?”

“Set those guns down, and we'll see how tough you are,” the private went on.

Joshua laughed. “I'm tough, but I'm not stupid. Speak one more word, and you'll find out how tough I am.”

The man, shamed by Strongheart's talk, looked at his cohorts, all of whom were looking to see if he would do anything.

He said, “I told you that . . .”

Boom!
The fancy Peacemaker roared, and the man went down onto his face with a scream, both hands grabbing at the bloody hole through his right thigh. All the men looked at Joshua, as he cocked the gun again.

The Pinkerton agent grinned broadly and said, “A man is only as good as his word. If I say something, I mean it. Now, anybody else want to argue?”

The men just stood transfixed, then as one they started to shake their heads no.

“Good,” Joshua went on. “Get those horses ready. I'll be on my way.”

Joshua had hated to shoot an unarmed man, but on the other hand he'd had to take bold action against superior numbers, guns off or not. Besides that, cowardly men who could leave their friends before an upcoming battle sickened him. He himself had felt fear many times. He was afraid every time he confronted danger, but Strongheart had learned that by conquering that fear and doing what was right you improved and strengthened yourself.

He left the bewildered deserters behind him at the rock tank, their guns lashed to the saddle of the last horse behind Strongheart. When he was two hundred yards up the road he unlashed the guns, and they fell to the ground with a clatter. He knew that the ex-soldiers would be watching him intently, as they would most certainly be lost without guns to protect themselves. He checked all the horses and ensured that the lead line of each was tied in a knot to the tail of the horse in front of it.

He was headed north now, toward Poncha Pass. He would turn the mounts loose.

He felt sore. His head pounded like it was on the receiving end of a miner's doubletree. His back was sore from slamming into the ground when he was hit at the ranch house, and the side of his head would probably continue to hurt for several more days anyway. He also would get irritable, because he felt confused. Strongheart had seen enough of head wounds to know that that was a fairly normal occurrence. He had seen others lose part of their memory and also have trouble adding and subtracting things for months afterward. It was natural to get frustrated over those small details.

Strongheart had gone far enough that he wouldn't have to fear the deserters following him on foot, although he didn't believe they wanted a part of him again. Joshua was puzzled by men like that. They felt the same fear he and every other man felt, but they succumbed to it. He wondered how they would be able to go the rest of their days knowing that they had sneaked away from their duties like a thief in the night.

Strongheart watched the ground around him for signs of potential ambush by
We Wiyake
. He grinned to himself as he remembered a conversation with his stepfather years earlier.

Joshua was the love child of his white mother and the Lakota warrior Claw Marks. The young half-breed longed for a father and was excited as a young boy when Dan Cooper, the town marshal of the new blossoming community of Flower Valley, got serious about his ma. He was tall and slender, maybe six-foot-two and 190 pounds, but that was all muscle and sinew from years of hard work.

Marshal Cooper had high cheekbones, a prominent nose, and honest, intelligent hazel eyes that would bore daggers through anybody. Much older than Joshua's ma, he had a little gray in his mustache, which was always well trimmed and full, running down in a point just past the corners of each thin lip. Like his hair, it was primarily dark brown. He was not given to talking, just doing. Dan was a very harsh taskmaster on Joshua when he was growing up, but he was all man and was bound and determined to make his stepson a man. He said the country was too unforgiving.

The one thing Joshua remembered most about the only father that he ever knew was how good the man could fight even though he was much smaller than some of the giant buffalo hunters and mountain men he had to arrest. Dan had actually taken a section of log weighing over two hundred pounds, shaved the bark off of it, and the two thick branches that extended out for two feet, and sanded them, rounding the ends so they would resemble thick arms. Joshua would watch the man for hours on end tossing the log backward, sideways, and in various combinations of those directions, working on numerous grappling moves.

Dan was also an incredible shot with pistol or rifle. He started Joshua when he was small and taught him first how to shoot a long gun. He learned to shoot with an 1860 Henry .44 repeater, and his stepdad gave it to him when he turned twelve years old.

The lawman and young Joshua Strongheart were having a conversation about courage one day when Dan Cooper said, “Joshua, the difference between a coward and a hero is about one minute in time.”

Strongheart was perplexed by that statement, and it bothered him for a long time afterward, but he had finally gotten a handle on it. He got into a fight with two brothers whose family owned a small ranch farther up the valley. Their family and his had attended the same church, but the two brothers were about the farthest thing you could get from walking the Christian walk of life. They were troublemakers from the get-go.

The two bullies simply beat up everybody, and finally Strongheart's turn came up, along with the numerous half-breed remarks and taunts. Everyone had backed down from the bullies because they were so tough and brutal—they would chase a person down and beat him senseless. When one of them started to pick on Joshua, he tried everything he could think of to avoid getting into a fight. When one of the two, however, made some disparaging remarks about a girl in Joshua's church whose father had been arrested for public drunkenness, Strongheart finally had had it. He was scared—their brutality had become legendary locally—but he was beyond caring at that point.

He had stopped at the blacksmith's before school to pick up four horseshoes for his stepfather. His mom owned a general merchandise store, but Marshal Cooper rode a seventeen-hands-tall Thoroughbred with very large feet and had to get his shoes from the blacksmith. These were conveniently tucked into the back waistband of Joshua's trousers.

They knocked his schoolbook from his hand and started laughing. Joshua managed to seem so ferocious in his demeanor alone that the two bullies looked a little unsettled. He had heard from his stepdad that a man using his head has a much better chance in a fight than one who just uses his muscle, so he tried to think his way out of trouble. When the first punch was thrown, it landed square on Strongheart's temple and sent him reeling to the ground. His right hand closed around one of the horseshoes, and he grabbed it without his adversaries noticing. Then he grabbed another with his left hand, figuring if they were going to gang up on him, he would even out the odds.