“Corporal Hessler,” he directed, “when the horses have been watered for the second time, I want that brush dumped into the ravine. Arrange it so that we cannot be approached up that ravine without a disturbance being created.”
Dr. Hanlon dismounted. “You’re expecting a fight?”
“This is Indian country,” Mellett replied. “I always expect a fight.”
The men of M Troop, who knew their commander, were already busy shaping the camp into a crude but effective temporary fort, dragging a fallen log into position here, throwing up a modest breastwork there.
Mellett’s rules were few but definite. Every camp a defensive position, all cookfires out before twilight, all horses picketed close in by sundown, each camp chosen not so much for their own comfort as to deprive an enemy of cover or concealment.
Captain Mellett had fought the Sioux and the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche, the Nez Percé, and the Apache, and he knew what an Indian was like. The Indian he knew was a wily and dangerous warrior, a first-class fighting man who had his own set of rules and his own ideas of bravery.
As the camp was settling down for the night, Dr. Hanlon commented over coffee, “We’ve seen no Indians.”
Mellett took out a cigar and lit it. “I never like to argue with my superiors, and Webb knows this business as well as I do, but at a time like this, with Buffalo Horn out, I think he had too small a force for a patrol.”
“You think he’s in trouble?”
“I doubt it, but it’s taking a chance, Cart. You know that yourself. Oh, I’m not particularly worried about Buffalo Horn. The last we heard, he’s away up north and west from here…he’s Harney’s problem. But there’s something else in the wind, and I don’t like the smell of it.
“Jim Webb knew that when he was sent up here from Halleck. We’ve had no burned ranches, no settlers killed in this area, though there’s been a lot of it over west. That argues that somebody is keeping them from it, and the question is—why?”
“They may be taking a spoke from Washakie’s wheel. He’s avoided any sign of trouble with the whites.”
“I know. This is something else, because those Indians south and east of here have turned mean. Mean, but quiet, and that’s not their way. Webb’s theory is that somebody who carries a lot of weight with them is holding them back for something really big.”
“What, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know.” Mellett looked at his cigar tip. “Just the same, I’m glad that K Troop is back there at the post with Paddock.”
“A drunk.”
“Basically a good soldier, Cart. He’s been drinking, I’ll allow, but the man knows the way of things, and when the chips are down, he knows what to do.”
“Did you know Kilrone?”
“Served with him. He never went by the book, but he was good. Maybe the best I ever served with, unless it was Paddock himself.
“We used to talk about Indians, and believe me, nobody ever knew them better than Kilrone. He said something once that I’ve never forgotten. We’d been talking about the way the Mongols banded together under one man after all their tribal wars, and swept over most of Asia and part of Europe.
“Kilrone commented, ‘You can just thank the Good Lord that the Indian never developed such a man.’ His theory was that the only thing that saved us from being swept away was the fact that the tribal thinking of the Indian kept them from uniting.
“Suppose Tecumseh—and he had the idea—had been able to weld the tribes together under some such leader as Crazy Horse or Chief Joseph? We’ve never whipped a well-armed Indian force, you know. They never had as many rifles as they needed, and never enough ammunition, and fortunately for us the Indian’s idea of war was based on a one-battle, one-war tradition. Joseph had arrived at the idea of the campaign, but he was fighting a rear-guard action with only some three hundred-odd fighting men, and all his women and children along.”
“I’d never thought of it that way.”
“We’ve been lucky, Cart. Genghis Khan found the Mongols split up, living a life not too different from that of the Indians, and busy with tribal warfare and tribal hatreds. He brought them all together, and look what happened.”
“You don’t think anything like that is developing now, surely?”
“No, I don’t. But suppose there was somebody down there in the mountains who could keep the Bannocks and the Paiutes together and disciplined. Suppose he could make a feint that would draw us away from the post? We’ve got several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition at the post now, and five hundred new rifles.”
“You make me feel that we should turn right around and head back for the post,” Dr. Hanlon said. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“No, I don’t. Or I think I don’t. And as for Kilrone’s theory…it’s too late now. Moreover, there isn’t an Indian anywhere who could do it.”
“Not that we know of.”
Mellett drew on his cigar and looked at the glowing end. “That’s right…not that we know of.”
Down the line a few of the fires were already out. Mellett leaned over his fire and pulled back the biggest of the sticks, then scattered dirt over the small blaze. Smoke rose in the air and he tossed another handful of dirt over a glowing ember.
“I’ll take a look around,” he said. “Better turn in, Cart. I’m going to push it tomorrow. I’m going to try to reach the rendezvous point ahead of time.” He bent over and rubbed out his cigar. “Webb just might need some help.”
The stars came out, a coyote questioned the night, and Dr. Carter Hanlon stretched out on his back and looked up at the sky. He was tired, but it was a good tiredness, a weariness of the muscles and not of the nerves. A night’s rest and a breakfast, and he would be ready again.
But Mellett’s doubts worried him. Charlie was not a man to speak as he had tonight unless he was genuinely upset. And Hanlon had been too long on the frontier to be skeptical about the intuitions of old Indian fighters. They knew when trouble was in the wind. He was thinking of that when he fell asleep.
Mellett got to his feet and went over to the horses. He spoke to them softly, and then went on to where the sentry stood. After he had replied to the challenge they stood together for a few minutes.
Keith was a lean, rather haggard young man with a wry sense of humor. He looked like a college professor, but as a matter of fact he had never gotten beyond the fifth grade. He was known in the troop as a particularly vicious rough-and-tumble fighter, and was one of the best rifle shots on the post. This was his fourth year in the cavalry, all of the time on the frontier. He liked Mellett—first, because he was a fighter; and second, because he was never reckless with his troops. The number of fights Mellett’s troop engaged in was as great as any other in the regiment, the percentage of casualties appreciably less.
“Think we’ll have a fight this time, sir?” Keith asked.
“Yes.”
Keith glanced toward the Captain. “Will we meet the Colonel tomorrow, sir?”
“If all goes well.”
Mellett moved on, pausing with each of the guards for a few words. As he neared the last man, on the edge of the junipers, he thought he smelled tobacco smoke. The smell was faint, but tangible. Thomas was a new man, and very cocksure.
“Private,” he said sternly, “there will be no smoking on guard duty. I believed I smelled tobacco smoke when I came up here. If I was sure, I should see you courtmartialed.”
Then in a somewhat easier voice he said, “Don’t be a fool, man. A lighted match out here can be seen a long way off. If there was an Indian near you’d have lost your scalp.”
Mellett moved on, going back through the junipers to camp. Before Mellett had his boots off, Private Thomas had lighted a cigarette. “Damned old fool!” he muttered. “That’s Army for you!”
Red Wolf was a young warrior who had yet to take his first scalp. He had been lying under a low clump of sagebrush for more than an hour, and he had watched the glow of a cigarette. Almost ready to make his move, he had heard somebody approach, and had listened to the low murmur of voices. There was now no lighted cigarette to give him the exact location of the man he intended to kill.
He waited again as he had waited before. After several minutes the glow of the cigarette appeared again. Lifting his bow, he put an arrow in place, waited an instant, and let his breath out easily. Then suddenly he lifted the bow and shot the arrow.
He heard the thud of the arrow, and was moving before the man fell. His fingers touched the guard’s cheek, then seized his hair; but as the knife cut into the skin, the body beneath him convulsed suddenly and hands clawed up at him. He stabbed wildly and in a panic; once, twice, three times he thrust the knife deep, and only after the struggles ceased did he again go about removing the scalp.
Once that was done, he stripped the body, took up the rifle and belt, and moved quickly and quietly away. Half a mile away his horse waited, tied in the deepest part of a thicket. He had been gone for an hour before the corporal of the guard found the dead man.
“Bury his cigarette butts with him,” Dunivant said the next morning. “If I told him once, I told him twenty times.”
Chapter 5
T
HERE WAS NO set pattern for the layout of a frontier army post. Only the earliest ones possessed any kind of a stockade. There was a central parade ground with the various buildings grouped about it to form a rectangle. Outside this, as if looking over the shoulders of the inner buildings, were others, in no sort of formation. Further away, about five hundred yards in this case, was Hog Town, as it was called.
Along one side of the parade ground were the officers’ quarters, a row of frame, stone, or adobe houses that faced the enlisted men’s barracks across the way. At the north end, Headquarters, a T-shaped building of stone, looked down the length of the parade ground. To the east was the commissary storehouse, also built of stone; to the west the hospital.
At the south of the parade ground was the long, low store of the sutler, or post trader; behind this the stables, corrals, and hay corrals. Behind the barracks were the blacksmith shop, laundry, and a varied assortment of small buildings.
There was always a Hog Town at all the camps on the frontier. There a soldier could find whatever he wanted—women, gambling, and whiskey predominating. Operating the Hog Town here was Iron Dave Sproul, a man whose reputation had started far back along the line. Iron Dave was big, tough, and mean. He had operated such places in a dozen towns before this.
Iron Dave had come off the streets of lower New York, had served a rugged apprenticeship as a prize fighter of sorts, a gang fighter and strong-arm man before coming west to what promised to be richer fields. As a boy in the streets he had had opportunities to study the origins of power, and more than that, the applications of power. He had also learned that more money was to be had, and less risk, by managing the fighter rather than fighting himself.
At first he ran gambling houses and saloons, then owned some of each; but what he was looking for was the right man. What he wanted was a man through whom he could make money; and secondly, a man who would be a means to political power. He believed he had found both.
Iron Dave, so-called because of his iron-hard fists, knew five Indian dialects and was an expert at sign language. He needed no interpreter in talking to Indians. He also knew where and how to dispense favors; and so during the course of his wandering from army post to army post he had given away a blanket here, a rifle there, and occasionally a bottle of whiskey. And he gave them to warriors.
Making no outward show of friendship with the Indians, he still managed to become known among them as a friend. Finally, and discreetly, he began trading in whiskey and rifles, always selling to those he knew personally, always careful to let no other white man know of his activities.
And then he met Medicine Dog.
Medicine Dog was a man consumed by hatred for the white man, and particularly for the horse soldiers. He had been born of a Sioux warrior and a Bannock woman; his parents had come together in the vicinity of Bozeman when the Bannocks, numbering about five lodges, had drifted back to their ancient hunting grounds for a few weeks in the spring.
Noted first for his skill at stealing horses, Medicine Dog had soon won a reputation as a great warrior. He had fought against Crook on the Rosebud, and participated in the Custer massacre, but these were only the latest of the many battles of which he was a veteran. After the Custer fight on the Little Big Horn, when some of the Sioux had fled to Canada, he had drifted westward to his mother’s people, the Bannocks. Within a few days he was associated with a group of malcontents eager to promote a fight with the white man.
With three others, Medicine Dog had ridden to a rendezvous with Iron Dave Sproul, to trade for whiskey and guns. And Iron Dave recognized in the strange Indian those qualities of leadership with which a rare few are gifted.
As the three Indians started away after completing their trade, and as Medicine Dog prepared to follow, Iron Dave called him back. Medicine Dog drew up, then slowly walked his horse back, his black eyes glittering.
“You,” Iron Dave said, “some day big chief. You need guns, you come to me.”
The Dog had merely looked at him, then turned and rode away, but Iron Dave knew he had planted a seed.