Beneath a Dakota Cross (11 page)

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying we take off right now,” Brazos said.

“That's mighty fine with me.” Edwards stood up and stretched his legs. “Gives me the feelin' I'm walkin' on the moon.”

Both men pulled the blinders off their horses and yanked the girths down tight. Brazos waited in the saddle for Grass Edwards to mount up.

“Brazos, do you figure there's people livin' on the moon? I read this here book one time about moon people.”

“I don't know, Grass. The Lord created the sun and the moon for light for the earth. It says that in Genesis. You'd think he'd have mentioned people up there.”

“I reckon the Almighty can do anything he wants.”

“If he ever needs some people to live on the moon,” Brazos offered, “I'd be tickled to recommend a few.”

The night got so cold that Brazos clutched his carbine in his lap by the wooden stock, not the metal receiver. Even then his gloved fingers ached. They rode straight east, but the cold wind that pushed the clouds away continued to blow from the north.

“I have half a mind to turn around in the saddle and ride backwards,” Grass called out. “That way my right side can freeze on equal basis with my left.”

“I have been thinkin' about breakin' out the bedroll and pullin' it over my head,” Brazos said.

“It will make us look like squaws.”

“If they stay warm when they ride at night, they're smarter than we are,” Brazos added.

Hats tied over their ears, wool blankets hanging down from their heads like shawls during fiesta, the two plodded through the night.

Right before daylight, Grass Edwards tried clapping his gloved hands to restore circulation to them. The noise startled his horse. He broke into a series of bucks that landed Edwards in the dirt.

Real dirt.

“Brazos, do you see this?” Edwards yanked a plant out of the ground and waved it up at Fortune. “Do you know what this is?”

“A dried weed?”

“It's
Distichlis spicata,
that's what it is . . . inland saltgrass. That means we made it to the edge of the badlands!”

Brazos tugged the blanket off his shoulders and rolled it up. “Well, I think we better find some water.”

As the sun rose over the flat eastern horizon, sage and grass appeared as scattered clumps in the gently rolling, treeless prairie. The only evidence left of the light snow was the clean air and dustless ground. Cresting a long, steep incline, the prairie dropped off into a ribbon of yellow-leafed cottonwood trees running north and south.

“There's a creek down there.” Edwards pointed to the tree row.

“Or at least a mud hole.”

The trickle of water in the creek was no more than two feet wide, mostly clear, and very cold. A four-foot-wide patch of Canadian wild rye, brown and with full head, banded the creek. The horses grazed and drank as the men filled their canteens and built a small fire to boil coffee.

“It's a wonder there ain't a band of Sioux and Cheyenne camped here,” Grass said, squatting next to the fire.

“The creek's too small, and there isn't any game. Besides that, there's not enough protection from the wind and blowing snow. Not exactly the kind of place I'd want to winter,” Brazos replied.

A movement in the leaf-shedding cottonwoods startled them. Brazos lifted the Sharps carbine to his shoulder. Grass yanked his revolver off his belt. Both men followed the noise through the brush, looking down the sight of their guns.

A thin, hatless man staggered into the open space on the other side of the creek. He clutched a bloody rag held tightly to his chest. “Thank God, you're here!” he groaned, then collapsed into the short, dry grass.

“You check on him. I'll see if there's more,” Brazos ordered as he leaped the creek and scrambled towards the brush, his carbine cocked. He found no trace of any others and jogged back to a kneeling Grass Edwards, who was giving the injured man a drink from his canteen. “How is he?”

Water dribbled down the man's unshaved face, as he squinted in pain. “I'm fumed, boys. Don't mind me. It's them Sioux you have to watch out for!”

“Where are they?” Grass quizzed.

“North of here.”

“North? We thought they were south.”

“So did I. I figured on makin' a run to Fort Pierre, but they ambushed me yesterday evening just east of here. I hid out in a buffalo wallow all night and finally had the strength to make it to the creek.”

“Were there others with you?” Brazos plied. “This is a dangerous trail by yourself.”

“I should have knowed better. But I was in a hurry. Are you two goin' to Fort Pierre?” The man's narrow gray eyes searched wildly around the camp.

“If we can avoid the Sioux,” Brazos said.

“You got to do a favor for me.”

“What can we do?”

“Take my poke to my sister who's waitin' for me in Fort Pierre.”

Grass Edwards gently gave him another drink of water. “A poke?”

“You two are carryin' gold out of the hills, ain't ya?” he asked.

“Maybe . . .” Grass answered.

“That's what I figured. I knew I could trust a couple of miners like myself.”

“Where's your gold?” Grass asked.

“I cached it right before the fight with the Indians. About a mile east of here, I piled up three rocks as a marker, in the clearing in the middle of the boulders.”

Brazos studied the man.
This might be the first mortally wounded man I've seen who didn't sweat.
“We haven't seen a boulder since we left the Black Hills.”

“There's some just east of here. You got to go get my poke and take it to my sister in Fort Pierre.” The blood on his bandage had already dried.

“How will we find your sister?” Edwards asked.

The wounded man pointed to his coat pocket. Grass removed a yellowed handbill, slowly opening it up. “Jamie Sue! My word, man, are you Vincent Milan?” Grass choked.

“You've got to go tell her what happened and give her the money,” the man gasped.

“We'll do it!” Grass promised.

“Let me look at that wound, partner,” Brazos said.

“Cain't move my hand,” Milan protested. “It's keeping my guts from spillin', boys. Just let me die peaceful in the grass, knowin' my bones will be buried and my sister will get my gold.”

“Grass, you go get his gold and bring it back here. I'll stay here and take care of him,” Brazos suggested.

“No!” the man insisted with a clear, strong voice. “You'd both better go. Those Sioux might be hiding near those boulders. It would be safer for you to go together.”

“He's got a point about that,” Grass concurred.

Brazos stood up, then looked down at the man. “We can't go off and leave you here.”

“The only thing that will bring rest to my soul is that I know you have my poke in hand.”

Grass Edwards stepped across the stream and retrieved the ­horses.

“We'll leave you a canteen,” Brazos offered.

“Thank ya . . . and when you come back . . . bury me deep. But hurry . . . you've got to find that gold before them savages do.”

As they trotted east, both men kept their guns cocked. Their eyes scanned the horizon.

“My dearest Jamie Sue's brother. This is providential, Brazos! I reckon she'll be a-grievin' when you tell her about her brother's death,” Grass called out.

“Me tell her? She's your sweet Jamie Sue.”

“I figure you can do the tellin', and I'll do the comfortin'. Look, there's the boulders, jist like Milan said. I wonder if the Sioux is in them rocks?”

“I don't know why they should be. They stole his horse, gun, and saddle. Milan was wrong to think the Indians would steal his gold. They have no use for it.”

“I was thinkin' the same thing,” Grass said.

“It's a wonder they didn't steal his boots and clothes.”

“He must've got away before they stripped him. I'm going to get that gold for my Jamie Sue.” Grass spurred his horse into the boulders.

Brazos hesitated, then followed.

In a clearing, about twenty feet across, Grass Edwards leaped down and walked his horse towards a small pile of stones. “This must be it!”

Brazos's hand was still on the receiver of his carbine that lay across his lap, when he heard a hammer cock only a few feet behind his head.

“Oh, there's gold in here all right, boys, but it's in your pokes, not that ground,” a deep voice boomed.

Brazos cocked the big hammer on his Sharps but let it lay in his lap.

A man in a black long coat stepped from behind the rocks, a Smith & Wesson pistol pointed at Grass Edwards on his knees by the pile of rocks. Brazos couldn't tell if there were one or two men behind him. He didn't turn around to look.

“Well, I'll be . . .” Grass dropped his hand to the grip of his revolver.

“Don't try it, boys,” the voice behind Brazos insisted. “We've got the drop on you, and you know it.”

“It was a trap, Brazos . . .”

“I reckon it was.”

“I cain't believe Jamie Sue's brother would do this to us, wounded like he was.”

“Maybe he wasn't wounded,” Brazos suggested.

The injured man from the creek rode into the clearing on a stout bay horse. The bloody rag hung from his saddle horn. He displayed no sign of an injury. “You two is the most gullible we've had in a month,” the man sneered.

“Drop those guns in the dirt!” the man behind Brazos insisted.

“I'm not going to do that,” Brazos replied.

“We can shoot you right where you are.”

“And one of you will have a hole the size of a watermelon in his gut when this .50 caliber hits him.”

“But you'll be dead!”

“So will the man with the hole in his guts.”

“You don't need to shoot anyone,” the man behind him said. “You get down, and we'll just take your horses and packs and leave you here with your guns. That's a deal, and you know it.”

“It's a lousy deal. I'm not gettin' down,” Brazos replied.

A fourth man strolled into the clearing leading a string of saddle horses. On the last horse was an Indian woman, bound and gagged.

“You stealin' women, too?” Brazos quizzed.

“That ain't no woman, that's a squaw. We found her all doubled up and sick. We nursed her back to health, and now she helps us locate water holes.”

Brazos glared at the man across the clearing. “Is that why she's tied up?”

“We got tired of her kickin' and bitin' us,” Milan replied. “Now, are you goin' to drop those guns, or do we shoot you?”

Brazos gave Grass Edwards a look. Grass dropped a quick glance down at his revolver, dangled on a wire from his belt. There was a barely visible nod at the man standing nearest him.

Brazos gripped the receiver of the carbine tight in his right hand.
I agree with you, Grass, we aren't lettin' go of our gold, let alone our lives, without a fight. They have no intention of letting us go.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

“Well?” the man behind him shouted.

Still mounted, Brazos held his hands up, the carbine in his right hand, the barrel parallel to the ground, pointed over the top of his head to the north.

“I said, drop the—”

Brazos opened his hand as if to let the gun drop, instead he twirled it to the back and pulled the trigger without looking behind him. At the sound of the blast of the .50-caliber Sharps, Grass Edwards yanked his gun and fired a quick round at the man standing closest to him, who promptly dove behind the boulders.

Brazos threw himself low on Coco's neck and spurred across the opening, frightening the cavvy of horses held by the fourth man. He had dropped the lead ropes in order to pull his own gun, and the horses, including the one the Indian woman rode, bolted to the open prairie to the east.

The scream from the man behind him let Brazos know he had wounded the spokesman. Whipping around fifty feet beyond the boulders, he fired a second shot. Grass Edwards swung up into the saddle, galloped out of the boulders, riding so low on the horse's neck he could hardly be seen above the saddle horn.

Brazos sprinted off to the east with Edwards. Several shots rang out, but they didn't slow until they crested the next roll of the prairie and the boulders dropped out of sight.

“Are you all right?” Brazos called out.

“I ain't shot, if that's what you mean.”

“Did I hit that guy behind me?” Brazos asked.

“I reckon. He dropped to the rocks like a rotten apple topplin' from a tree in winter.”

“I think you wounded one, too,” Brazos added.

“I didn't aim too much. I was in such a hurry to mount up. We ain't going back after them, are we?”

“Nope. They're in the middle of Sioux land on foot, several wounded. I surmise that's punishment enough.”

“There's their horses!” Edwards pointed to the next ridge.

Brazos grabbed his spectacles out of his vest. “Is the woman still riding one?”

“Yep.”

“She can sit a horse, if she stayed on during that romp, all tied up like that.”

“You reckon we should unbind her?” Grass asked.

“That's what I'm thinkin'.”

The loose horses trotted further out on the prairie as they approached, but the woman's horse stood fastened by a lead rope that had snagged a sage.

Brazos rode alongside her and untied the bandanna around her mouth, her hands still fastened behind her back. The moment the dirty red cloth dropped from her mouth, she let out a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream.

Brazos held up his hands. “Quiet, we aren't going to hurt you,” he shouted.

She continued to scream.

“Put the gag back on her!” Edwards shouted.