Demon's Pass (24 page)

“Come on, let's give it one more try,” Jason suggested.

Reluctantly, the men made another attempt, but despite Clay's exhortations, they were no more successful this time than they had been before. Then, as darkness closed around them, Parker went over to speak to his partner.

“Clay, I hate to admit it, but Pecorino is right. Even if we do get the mules over now, the wagons are still back there, half full of goods.”

“All right, we'll camp here for the night,” Clay said in disappointment. “I can't help but think we are going to be sorry, though. We are almost there!”

They camped where they stopped that night, no more than two hundred yards down from the top of the pass.

“Where do you think we should bed down?” Parker asked.

“I don't know. Probably up at the head,” Clay answered. “If we wind up having to break through the snow again tomorrow morning, the further up trail we are, the easier it will be.”

“All right,” Parker said. Later, when they threw their tarpaulin and blankets out on top of the snow and were sitting there, Parker saw the look of frustration in Clay's eyes. “Clay, I'm sorry if you think I betrayed you.”

Clay looked over in surprise. “Betrayed me? What do you mean?”

“I know you wanted to go on.”

Clay was holding a stick and he began scratching in the snow with it. “Listen, I said we are equal partners in this operation and I meant it,” he said. “That means you have every right to express your opinion. And the truth is, I think you are right. There's really no way we could have gotten more than half the load across tonight, no matter how hard we tried. And I sure wouldn't want something to happen that would leave half our goods on one side and half on the other.”

A flash of golden light suddenly illuminated the area. Along with the light came a wave of heat. Parker looked toward the source of heat and illumination and saw that Tobin and Jason had set fire to some mossy scrub brush that was standing away from the camp.

“Hmm, good idea,” Clay said. He and Parker moved their tarp and blankets closer to it, joining with the others who were finding positions around the fire.

They sat there for a long moment, as if mesmerized by the flames.

“Moses and the burning bush,” Pecorino said.

The others laughed.

“Moses . . . if you are here, part this snow the way you did the Red Sea,” Tobin said.

“Clay, you think we'll get over the pass tomorrow?” Parker asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Clay said. He paused for a long moment before he spoke again. “At least, I hope so,” he added, a little less sure of himself. They all fell silent then, but the night wasn't quiet. The burning shrub popped and hissed and snapped as it was consumed. And, because they were exhausted by their labors, they fell asleep easily, warmed by the fire.

They were oblivious to the cold, oblivious to the precariousness of their position . . . oblivious to the large flakes of snow which, just after midnight, began tumbling down through the blackness.

The snow fell silently, moving in unnoticed by the sleeping crew.

 

When Parker woke up the next morning, he was immediately aware of the change. Last night he had gone to sleep on top of the snow. This morning, he awoke under it. A pristine blanket of snow covered everything in sight. No longer was the trail ahead that he and Clay had broken visible. No longer was the trail behind them, made by the pack mules, visible. There were no footprints, no signs of encampment. Even the shrub they had burned last night was completely covered in a mantle of white. It was as if man had never been here before. When he looked up toward the pass, Parker saw that it was packed solid and piled high with snow. There was no way anyone could get through. The thing they had feared most had happened.

Chapter 16

 

When Elizabeth first joined Standing Bear's group, she was concerned as to how they might treat her. Would they treat her as a captive, and thus make a slave of her? Or would they force her into another “marriage” similar to the one she had been forced into with Two Ponies of the Cheyenne.

As it turned out, Standing Bear and his band recognized Elizabeth's marriage to Two Ponies, and thus did not require that she marry again. In this case, the fact that she was a woman worked to her advantage, for, whereas the men could have more than one wife, women could not have more than one husband.

Elizabeth had not told them that she was a wife to Two Ponies in name only. Because Elizabeth was married to a chief, Standing Bear offered her membership in his family. Standing Bear's wife—and he had only one—helped Elizabeth erect a teepee right next to theirs. Quiet Stream was much closer to Elizabeth's age than had been Moon Cow Woman.

Quiet Stream became a good friend to Elizabeth, but Standing Bear's young daughter, White Feather, practically became Elizabeth's shadow. Using the lock of blond hair Elizabeth had given her, White Feather wove a bracelet, interlacing the blond strands with tiny beads of turquoise and garnet. It was White Feather's proudest possession and she wore it constantly.

Elizabeth had been in the Ute village for six weeks when she laced her teepee shut for the night and settled into the warm buffalo robes near the small fire she had built herself. As she lay there, staring at the flickering flames, she considered her situation.

She really had no desire to return to Two Ponies' village, and she didn't know if she would ever again live among the white people. A part of her was quite willing to accept her current status as a permanent condition. After all, she had no living relatives, and there was not one white person this side of Illinois whose name she could call upon for help.

Except one.

She thought of the big, red-haired man who had ridden with the Indians who had attacked her parents' wagon. His name was Talbot. Red Talbot. She could never forget that name.

Outside it began to snow, but inside, Elizabeth was warm and snug. An untroubled sleep came quickly.

 

All through the night, the snow fell heavily in large white flakes that drifted down from the black sky and settled upon the village of Standing Bear. It fell silently, and its presence deadened all sound, so that the movement of horses, and the stirring of the villagers in their robes and blankets were unheard.

The doors of all teepees were laced tightly shut, and wisps of blue smoke curled up from the smoke flaps, providing a scene of peaceful tranquillity to the village. The smell of a hundred simmering stews told the silent story of a night when no one went hungry, and when everyone was warm and snug against the harsh elements.

 

Two hundred yards away from the village lay the lower reaches of a great pine forest, and from the darkness of those trees, came the emerging shadows of a long line of riders. The horses moved silently, as if treading on air, and only their movement and the blue vapor of their breath gave any indication of life. A small, clinking sound of metal on metal came from the party, a sound which contrasted sharply with the drift of snow and the soft whisper of trees.

In the village, Standing Bear heard it while in the deepest recesses of his sleep, and his eyes snapped open. As he lay beside Quiet Stream, he wondered what could have caused the sound. But the bed robes were too warm, and the flesh of his woman too sweet, and as he looked at White Feather sleeping undisturbed, he realized that he must have dreamed the unusual sound. He rolled back against the inviting curve of the sleeping body of his wife and went back to sleep.

Outside, the silent horses and the quiet men approached.

Red Talbot sat in the saddle and looked toward the sleeping Indian village which lay before him. A rider, whose name was Pugh, came up beside him and spat a stream of tobacco into the snow. The snow browned for a moment, but was quickly covered by new fall.

“Looks like we caught 'em sleepin',” Pugh said.

“Yeah, well, we'll just make sure their sleepin' is permanent,” Talbot replied.

“You got that right, Colonel.”

Talbot called himself a colonel now. If his rank lacked the legitimacy of an official appointment, so, too, did the body of men he commanded. The “Righteous Militia,” as he called his organization, was the latest in a long line of Talbot's schemes.

Although he claimed to have been a colonel during the late war, in truth, Private Talbot had deserted the Union Army on the first day of fighting at Wilson Creek, fleeing the battle in panic. Working his way back up along the Missouri-Kansas border, he threw his lot in with the Rebel guerrilla, Quantrill. He hadn't changed loyalties—he simply saw an opportunity to use the war for his own gain.

The war had ended for the rest of the country, but not for Talbot. Now addicted to violence as a way of getting what he wanted, he engaged in a series of activities, all of them criminal. At one point, he allied himself with renegade Indians to attack small parties of immigrants moving West. That proved to be a less than successful scheme, however, as the settlers rarely traveled with any significant amounts of cash. In addition, Indians as partners proved too volatile and unpredictable.

Then he hit upon his present scheme. Instead of riding
with
the Indians, he would ride
against
them. He formed the Righteous Militia, a group of mercenaries, and began selling his services as an Indian fighter. His customers were citizens in those dangerous areas that were too remote to be protected by the regular army.

If no Indian trouble presented itself, Talbot was perfectly prepared to create some. In this case, however, that wasn't necessary, for recently the Cooper ranch has been attacked and everyone, including Mrs. Cooper and her two daughters, had been killed. The neighbors were outraged, and terrified by the incident. When “Colonel” Ted Talbot offered the services of his militia to hunt down and kill the offending Indians, the citizens' commission, backed by banks and other businesses, willingly paid the three thousand, five hundred dollars Talbot demanded of them. He and the forty men with him were now gathered outside Standing Bear's village in the early-morning darkness to fulfill that mission.

Two more men approached, bringing with them an Indian captive.

“Look what we got,” one of them said.

“Who is that?” Talbot asked.

“She's some squaw woman we found gatherin' wood.”

“Did she have time to sound the alarm?”

“No,” one of the two men said. “We seen her comin' and we grabbed her 'afore she knowed what hit her.”

“Do you speak English?” Talbot asked the captive woman. She didn't answer.

“Look at this, Colonel,” one of her guards said. He put his hand on the buffalo robe the woman was wearing and jerked it open. The Indian woman was young, beautiful, and, beneath the robe, naked.

Talbot heard the quick intake of breath from the men who were close enough to see what was going on. He was himself affected by the sight, and for a moment he thought of declaring her “spoils of war,” so he could enjoy her later.

“Cover her,” he said quickly. “She could be a distraction to the others.”

“You got that right,” the guard said, putting the woman's robe back in place. “I just thought you might appreciate a little peek, that's all.”

“Girl, how many Shoshoni are in the village?” Talbot asked.

“I am not Shoshoni. I am Ute.”

Talbot grinned broadly. “Ah, so you do speak English. All right, so you are Ute. Is everyone in the village Ute?”

“One is not. Sun's Light is Cheyenne,” the girl replied. Regardless of the fact that Elizabeth was white, the fact that she was married to Two Ponies and had introduced herself in such a way made her a Cheyenne in this young woman's eyes.

“What are we goin' to do now, Colonel?” Pugh asked.

“What do you mean? We are going to do what we came out here to do.”

“But you heard the girl. These here Indians is Ute. The ones that attacked the Cooper Ranch was Shoshoni.”

“Shoshoni, Ute, Cheyenne—what difference does it make? Indians is Indians,” Talbot said. “We're gettin' paid to kill Indians, and that's what we're goin' to do.”

Suddenly the girl escaped from the grasp of the two guards. She did it by simply slipping out of the robe, leaving them holding her coat while she started dashing stark naked across the snow, heading back for the village.

“Don't let her get away!” Talbot called. “She'll give the alarm!”

One of the militiamen drew his rifle from the saddle scabbard, aimed, and fired. The bullet hit the fleeing girl in the back of the head and she pitched forward, staining the snow with crimson. Her nude body lay facedown on the snow.

There was a shout from the village.

“Damn!” Talbot staid. “Let's go! Hit 'em now! Hit 'em now!”

An explosion of sound invaded the peaceful silence. Voices shouted in fear and anger, guns fired, and horses neighed.

Then the savage butchery began. The militia chased down the running Indians and shot them at point-blank range with pistols, or clubbed them with rifle butts. Women were murdered without mercy, and children and babies were run down and trampled. Old men and unarmed warriors were killed, and teepees were set ablaze.

It was a grotesque montage of sound and fury, savagery and color; black smoke, orange flames, red blood, and white snow.

 

Elizabeth had no idea what was going on, or who was doing all the shooting. She knew only that someone had attacked a peaceful village in the middle of the night. Slipping her feet into a pair of moccasins, she wrapped herself in a blanket and stepped out of the tent. The first thing she saw was a woman running from someone on horseback. The rider was carrying a pistol, and when he drew even with the woman he leaned over, put the barrel of his pistol right up to her head, and pulled the trigger.