Stamping Ground (6 page)

His woman's name was Arabella. Save for the dusky brown of her features and a thoroughly Algonquin mode of dress, from the polished snail shells strung around her neck to her elkskin moccasins, there was very little about her that said she was part Indian. Her hair was chestnut and hung in braids to her breasts. Her eyes, more oriental than native, rode at a slight tilt atop high cheekbones. Her mouth was wide but handsomely sculpted, the line of her jaw strong but not stubborn. She seldom spoke in Jac's presence. In that respect at least she was all squaw.

The children took after their father in looks, with Lucien,
the oldest at ten, already beginning to show in the girth of his chest the beginnings of Jac's warrior build, and Jerome, six, and little, black-haired Paulette, three, watching every step of the preparations for departure with identical pairs of the old man's pale blue eyes staring out of their chocolate faces.

This, I had been told over breakfast, was Pere Jac's second family. His first wife had been killed fifteen years before when a herd of buffalo spooked prematurely during a hunt near Pembina and trampled the camp. His first son, now grown, left shortly before Jac's second mating along with his own squaw to start a new métis settlement below the Nebraska line. The old chief had taken Arabella as his bride after her first husband, his brother, succumbed to smallpox in the epidemic of '67. Jac remarked with pride that two of his five grandchildren were older than Lucien, and that Arabella was expecting another child in November.

Once the paint and my bay were saddled and ready to go, we sat down in the shade of the only tree for miles, a cottonwood beginning to die out at the top, and swapped a lie or two about past manhunts while he charged a stubby clay pipe from a pouch he carried on his belt and lit it with a sulphur match. Then we sat and listened to a faint breeze too high to reach us stir the branches twenty feet above our heads.

“Ghost Shirt,” I said then. “What do you know about him?”

“Only what I have heard.” He was having trouble keeping the tobacco burning. He struck a fresh match, puffed at the anemic glow in the bowl, got it going, shook out the match. Bluish smoke curled before his bruised and weathered features. “There is nothing haughtier than a full-blooded Cheyenne in his prime. Tell him that he is Christ reborn, as they have done with Ghost Shirt since he was old enough to understand, and he becomes impossible. Ten days before his birth, it is said, Ghost Shirt's father, Paints His Lodge, dreamed that he saw the sun rising from his squaw's loins. When the story was repeated to him, the
tribal shaman prophesied that a son would be born who would lead his people to greater glories than had ever been known, a son who was destined to be a god, yet who would remain on earth to guide the Cheyenne to their rightful place as conquerors of the land.

“It did not help matters that the boy proved himself a superior athlete long before the time came for his test of manhood, nor that when that time came he fulfilled all of the requirements with ease. Sent east to study the white man's world, he returned after three years seething with hatred for the entire race. He commanded the right flank of his uncle Kills Bear's warrior band in the Custer fight and proved himself an adept tactician as well as a born leader of men. Had the Little Big Horn never happened. Ghost Shirt might have enjoyed limited authority for a number of years and attained the rank of chief sometime in middle life. As it is, he has risen too fast too soon. He is a rash young man with more power than he knows what to do with. Unfortunately, of late he has been finding uses for it.”

“Is he as crafty as they say he is, or just lucky?”

“Craft and luck are difficult things to separate. A man must have a little of both if he is ever to be successful. Ghost Shirt is fortunate. Moreover, he is brilliant. It is a dangerous combination if you are not on his side.”

“You're describing a young Sitting Bull.”

“Or a young Napoleon,” said Jac.

He thought about it, then shook his head. “No. Not like Sitting Bull. He at least has learned to temper his distaste for the white man with wisdom. There is no wisdom in Ghost Shirt's brilliance. Only hate. He cares not for the future of his people, only for revenge. He will be the ruin of the Cheyenne nation. You have a saying for it: He burns down the barn in order to destroy the rats.”

Pere Jac was silent for a time. A dead seed came rattling down between us from the cottonwood's upper branches. A crow had come to light upon a high twig and began to scold us raucously. A newcomer, screaming for those already
there to leave. Thus harangued, I understood for a moment the feelings of Ghost Shirt and his followers. But only for a moment.

“You are to kill him?” asked Pere Jac.

I hesitated, thinking at first that he was talking about the crow. “No,” I said, catching his drift. “We've strict orders to bring him back alive for execution in Bismarck.”

“That is a foolish thing. Dead, he is a threat ended. Alive, he remains an open sore. There is always the hope among his people that he will return to lead them. If we are able to capture him, our troubles will just be beginning.”

“Look at the bright side. We won't live long enough to take him prisoner.”

He laughed and brushed at the sparks that had showered from his pipe down onto his leather leggings. “You are right, Page Murdock,” he said. “We are going to get along.”

We basked in the warmth of that for a while. Then the sound of galloping hoofs shattered the late morning stillness and Hudspeth, the loaded pack horse tethered behind his own mount, reined to a dusty halt in front of us and heaved himself out of the saddle, nearly going down on one knee as he landed on his feet with a jarring thud. His nose was flame-red and his eyes held an urgent glitter. He barely gave us time to scramble out from under the tree before he thrust a crumple of paper into my face.

“This was waiting at the telegraph office,” he announced. “It's from Judge Flood. A force of twenty injuns ambushed a patrol out of Fort Ransom last night and killed Colonel Broderick and twelve others. Ghost Shirt was leading them.”

“Why?” I looked up from the scrap, torn and wilted from being jammed into a pocket and carried across eight miles of Dakota territory.

“How in hell should I know why?” Hudspeth demanded. “He's crazy mad. He'll do anything.”

“I don't think so. If he were that crazy he'd have been dead long ago. Ghost Shirt must have had a reason to attack that patrol.”

“It don't much matter if he did or didn't. What matters is he went ahead and attacked it. I wired Flood to tell him we got the message, and Fort Ransom to let them know we're coming.”

“Any answer from the fort?”

He shook his head. “Likely they're on alert. Operator's too busy hunting up reinforcements to acknowledge.” He grunted and flicked a drop of sweat from his beacon of a nose with the tip of a blunt forefinger. “The only good thing about this whole business is now we know he ain't
met up yet with the Sioux and Cheyenne from around the territories.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it's a trap.”

“We'll know soon enough.” He swung back into the saddle. “Mount up. We're heading out.”

I straddled the bay. “What'll we do once we get there?”

“We'll think of something on the way.” He wheeled west.

Pere Jac didn't move. “Where is my whiskey, A.C.?”

The marshal reached into a saddle bag, hoisted out a quart bottle full of tobacco-colored liquid, and tossed it to the breed, who caught it in one hand. “There's ninety-five more coming day after tomorrow,” Hudspeth told him. “You want to see the receipt?”

Jac drew the cork and helped himself to a swig. “I trust you, A.C.,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

The métis slid the bottle in with his other belongings, said his good-byes all around, and stepped into the paint's leather with the ease of a man forty years his junior. Five minutes later we were clear of camp and heading southwest, fifty miles of which separated us from our destination.

We reached the Sheyenne at dusk. There, a shallow ford stretched between us and the fort, which was a purple blemish on the muted red glare of the setting sun. No sooner had Hudspeth set a hoof in the water than a shot rang out. Riding behind him, I heard a
thup
and saw his broad-brimmed black hat tilt over his left ear. He hauled back on the reins to keep his horse from spooking, but it was too late. The buckskin kicked up its heels and arched its back, whinnying and trying to turn so it could bolt. The marshal spun it around three times before dizziness took over and the animal stopped to regain its bearings.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

A lanky trooper stood up to his knees in water in the middle of the river, a rifle braced against his shoulder, smoke draining from its barrel. The challenge lost a great
deal of its force, however, when the young voice issuing it cracked in the middle.

Hudspeth let out a roar and sprang to the ground. He hit the water running, tore the rifle from the trooper's hands before he could react, and sent it spinning far out into the river. Then he swept the trooper off his feet and prepared to send him after it.

“Do it, and you'll be dead before he hits the water.” A harsh croak, dry and empty as a spent cartridge. It crackled in the charged air.

The marshal froze, legs spread apart, the trooper squirming in his arms. He turned his head slowly in the direction of the voice.

Three soldiers were mounted on horseback on the opposite bank, each with a rifle snuggled against his cheek. The broad brims of their dusty campaign hats left their faces in shadow. Two of them, anyway. The man on the left, although obviously cavalry, wore the cocked forage cap of an infantryman, a style of headgear made famous by both sides during the late unpleasantness out East. A rain cape hung to his waist, performing double duty as a duster. His features were invisible against the sun. Softer now, the wallowing light glinted off gold epaulets on the square shoulders of the man in the middle. A hammer was thumbed back with a brittle crunch. Late, but persuasive as hell. Hudspeth returned the trooper, a callow youth with blond hair and freckles, to his feet. He put several yards between himself and the marshal as quickly as possible.

“Hands up, all of you.”

We did as directed, raising our open palms above our shoulders. Hudspeth was last to comply.

“Now suppose you tell me who you are and what you're doing here.”

“We're federal officers,” growled Hudspeth, after a pause. “I'm Hudspeth. The mean-looking one is Murdock. Here from Bismarck on the injun problem. I got a letter from Abel Flood, federal judge for the territory of Dakota,
for Colonel Broderick.” He started to reach inside his coat but stopped when all three rifles rattled.

“Keep your hands up!” The command was metallic. “Colonel Broderick is dead.”

“I know. I wired you this morning to tell you we was coming.”

The officer turned his head a fraction of an inch toward the soldier Hudspeth had just released. “Go to the telegraph shack. See if there's a wire from someone named Hudspeth.” When the youth had gone: “The Indian. I suppose he's a federal officer too.”

“He's our guide, and I bet he's got more white in him than you.”

The pause that followed put an extra twist in the tension.

“You make a bad first impression, friend.” The words were bitten off.

After about a year of silence, the trooper returned bearing a telegraph blank with a spike-hole in the center of it. The officer glanced at it, then handed it back. He lowered his rifle. At a signal from him the others followed suit a moment later. Then he spurred his big black forward into the water. He stopped in front of Hudspeth and ran his eyes over the three of us. They were brown eyes, with flecks of silver in them. His heavy brows were startlingly black in comparison, downward-drawn and prevented from running into each other only by a thin pucker line that went up until it disappeared beneath the forward tilt of his campaign hat. His beard too was black and cropped close to the skin so that it resembled General Grant's. That came as no surprise. In spite of his dismal presidency, in spite of the endless congressional investigations that had hounded him during his last days in office and after, Grant was still the hero of Appomattox, the hard man on the white horse whose preference for whiskers had inspired men from New York to California to lay aside their razors. Among army officers there were two distinct types, the Grants and the Custers, and you didn't venture into many posts without finding yourself virtually surrounded by either long-hairs in buckskin
jackets or silent men who fingered their beards meaningfully when they could think of nothing significant to say.

This officer—a major, now that I could make out his insignia away from the sun's glare—had a long, one might say Roman, nose and the beginnings of jowls beneath his whiskers, which had undoubtedly contributed to his decision to grow them. The sun had burned his flesh to match the red Dakota dust on his saddle. His eyes were not the steely type one expected in men accustomed to command, but large and luminous and cowlike, strangely unintelligent—like Grant's. His physique beneath the coarse blue tunic (buttoned to the neck, even in that heat) was powerful but beginning to loosen around the thighs and belly. I placed his age at about forty.

His side arm was an Army Colt with a smooth wooden grip, the rifle he held across his lap, a Spencer. Like his uniform, both were covered with a skin of fine dust. Beneath him his horse was lathered and blowing.

He took in my face, clothes, horse, the Deane-Adams in my holster, the Winchester in its scabbard, then went on for a similar inventory of Pere Jac. Then he returned to Hudspeth.

“You owe the U.S. Government the price of a new Springfield rifle, Marshal.”