Authors: Charles G. West
“Let me go down and talk to ’em. Might be a good idea to keep your boys behind the ridge till I can find out what’s going on. They might think we’re trying to ambush ’em if they see a bunch of soldiers behind ’em—and then we might have a real fight.” Luke agreed. He and Turley stayed back while Trace got on his horse and started down the bluffs toward the Crows.
* * *
“Where did he come from?” Big Turtle said, alarmed to discover a solitary rider making his way down the bluffs toward them.
Black Wing jerked his head around quickly, searching the ridge behind the rider. “Be alert!” he cautioned. “There may be more.” The small band of Crow warriors moved to better situate themselves to counter an attack from above. Black Wing made his way farther up the bluff to a position where he could watch the rider more closely.
“Be careful,” Big Turtle warned, “he may be as crazy as the soldiers in the gully.”
Black Wing didn’t answer right away. He was busy studying the lone figure approaching them. Something about the way the man sat his horse seemed familiar to him, yet he couldn’t identify the man. He was not a soldier. He could even be an Indian, but Black Wing was unable to identify the tribe if he was. As the
stranger approached, he held up his hands in a sign of peace. Black Wing made no sign of recognition and continued to scan the ridge behind the rider, watching for any sign of deception. Black Wing and his warriors were deep inside Sioux country. He could not afford to be careless. Still the man kept coming, and was now within fifty yards of the Crows.
“I come in peace,” the man called out in the Crow dialect. “Let’s talk.”
Black Wing and Big Turtle exchanged puzzled glances, still uncertain. Finally Big Turtle shrugged and Black Wing nodded in silent agreement. He stood up and returned the peace sign, saying, “If you come in peace, you are in no danger from my warriors.”
Dismounting some twenty yards away, he stepped down into the thin layer of snow and led his horse the rest of the way. Trace and Black Wing recognized each other at the same time. For a brief moment, both men were stunned, not believing what their eyes were telling them. Trace was the first to break the silence.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he uttered in English, then in Crow, “Black Wing?”
Black Wing’s stern face was transformed into a smile of delighted discovery. “Trace. It has been a long time.”
The two boyhood friends stood there staring at each other, each one amazed to find the other still alive. Then, as if on signal, they suddenly broke into laughter and clasped hands, patting each other on the shoulder. Amazed, Big Turtle came forward to join the reunion.
“Do you know this white man?” Black Wing asked Big Turtle when his friend was obviously doing his best to recognize the tall stranger dressed in buckskins. When it dawned upon Big Turtle that this was the boy who had been taken in by his people years
ago, the joyous reunion erupted again with more laughing and back slapping. The reunion continued as a few more warriors in the party came forward to greet Trace. Most of the others were too young to remember him.
The celebration was cut short by the crack of a rifle from down below in the gully, the ball imbedding itself high up in a cottonwood. Remembering the situation at hand then, Trace remarked, “They ain’t exactly good shots, are they?” Turning serious then, “What’s going on here, Black Wing?”
Black Wing then told Trace how they came to find themselves watching the soldiers in the river bottom. “We came to this country to avenge one of our people who was killed by a Sioux raiding party. We encountered a Sioux hunting party of six men and killed them.” He indicated two fresh scalps on his lance. “We started back to our village when we saw the soldiers with the wagons. We thought, maybe the wagons are filled with coffee and beans, maybe flour, and we might trade some pelts for them. But the soldiers went crazy.” He turned to Big Turtle for confirmation and Big Turtle nodded.
“I made the sign of peace when I rode up to them, and one of the soldiers shot at me. I wanted to tell them that we were peaceful, but they ran away, riding their horses hard toward the river. The wagons turned over and the soldiers cut the horses loose. Then they all jumped into that small hole on the riverbank. We tried to talk to them, but they shoot at us when we come near. We were going to leave when you came.” He shrugged. “There was nothing in the wagons but wood, anyway.”
Astonished, Trace could only shake his head, and he thought,
Grace, you’re gonna be a widow again if that
damn fool greenhorn doesn’t get some sense about Indians.
To Black Wing, he said, “I’ll see if I can talk to them.”
He got on his horse and started down the bluffs, waving his arm back and forth and calling out, “Hold your fire!” Stopping halfway down, he called out again, “Hold your fire! You boys can come out now.”
His answer was a volley of half a dozen rifles from the terrified soldiers in the gully. The shots were wild, and far from the mark—all except one—and that one struck his horse in the chest. The animal screamed and dropped immediately. If Trace had been a fraction of a second slower, he might have been pinned under the beast. Trace hit the ground rolling. Shocked at first, then angry as hell, he crawled back to the stricken animal to retrieve his rifle. “Damn fools!” he roared as he pulled his pistol out to put the unfortunate horse out of its misery. A shot behind the ear quieted the animal’s thrashing legs. The frightened soldiers by the water’s edge mistook the shot as one aimed at them, and another round of shots were sent his way. “Damn fools!” Trace repeated and scurried back up the bluff to safety.
When he jumped into the snowy trench that Black Wing was using as cover, his friend could not hide the smile on his face. “Are you a scout for those soldiers down there?”
“No,” Trace replied frankly, “I just go out to round up the crazy ones.” Knowing now that it was not worth the risk to stick his neck out again, he stood up on the edge of the trench and signaled to Luke and Turley, still watching from the ridge. Turning back to Black Wing, he explained. “There’s about thirty soldiers on the other side of the ridge. I’m waving them on down.” When he saw the look of concern in Black Wing’s eye, he hastened to reassure him. “Don’t
worry, these ain’t the crazy kind. They know you’re friendly.”
Several minutes passed, then a line of troopers appeared on the top of the ridge, making their way down toward them, Luke and Turley in the lead. The Indians came out of their defensive places and stood watching the arrival of the soldiers. Trace walked out to meet Luke.
“I guess you could see what happened when I tried to talk to that damn fool down there,” Trace said as Luke rode up.
Seeing that Trace was not injured, Luke found the incident rather humorous and could not help but smile. He started to remark on it when he was interrupted by a cheer from the wood party in the gully. Seeing the arrival of Luke’s detachment, they assumed they had been saved from an Indian massacre. “I think Masters is happy to see his rescuers,” Luke said, his grin spreading.
Trace didn’t say anything for a long moment while his bile lowered a bit. “You can send somebody down to tell him he can come out. Maybe he won’t shoot at soldiers.”
Luke laughed. Turning to his sergeant, he said, “Turley, go down there and rescue Lieutenant Masters and the wood party.”
While Turley proceeded down the slope, Trace introduced Luke to Black Wing and Big Turtle. Black Wing suggested that it would be a good thing if they sat down and smoked together. While Luke’s soldiers and the Crow warriors looked each other over, Trace, Luke, Black Wing, and Big Turtle sat down on a buffalo hide and passed a pipe that Big Turtle carried. The meeting went well, with Black Wing declaring his friendship for the Great White Father in Washington. After the polite talk and rituals were
observed, the conversation was mostly between Black Wing and Trace. When Trace inquired about the welfare of Black Wing’s father—and Trace’s adoptive father—he was told that Buffalo Shield had become too old to ride with the war parties.
Soon, Lieutenant Ira Masters and his detachment of fifteen dragoons made their way up from the river and sheepishly stood off to one side while several of their number attempted to right the overturned wagons. Some of the Crow warriors helped round up the army horses that had run off during the soldiers’ panic to reach the safety of the gully. Trace took one of the horses from the wagon team to replace his. While he was recovering his saddle and bridle, Lieutenant Masters approached.
“Sorry about the mistaken identity, McCall,” Masters said, his tone condescending even in the face of his blunder. “I suggest you find an attire less like that of an Indian while you’re working for the army.”
Trace stopped what he was doing and turned to look the young officer over thoroughly. He could overlook greenhorn stupidity—and no harm done—but arrogance was another thing. He fixed Masters with a penetrating glare and in a low, even tone, said, “Let me tell you something, sonny. If you’re lucky, you might keep your scalp long enough to learn how things are out here. You’re lucky I wasn’t riding my own horse, else I’d still be kicking your ass.”
Masters recoiled. “Do you realize you’re talking to an officer in the United States Army?” he demanded indignantly.
Trace didn’t blink. “I’m talking to the ass I’m gonna be kicking if you ever shoot at me again. Now, get the hell away from me before I decide to start practicing right now.”
Masters was completely unnerved. Insulted and
confused, he was uncertain what he should do about his dressing down from a civilian scout. His sense of manhood called for him to demand satisfaction from this half-wild lout. But Trace had risen to his full stature, a good head taller that Masters, and half again as wide across the shoulders. As a compromise to his honor, Masters glared back at the mountain man for a few moments before turning on his heel and departing.
I would not soil my hands
, he told himself.
* * *
Trace stood talking to his friend Black Wing until the troopers were ready to move out. They reminisced about the times they had when they were boys, living in Red Blanket’s village. They were good times, both agreed. “Why do you live with these crazy soldiers?” Black Wing asked. “Come back to the mountains with us, live as a man should live. We could hunt the buffalo together again, follow the elk and the deer, take horses from the Blackfoot.”
“It would be good,” Trace admitted—and it did have a great deal of attraction for him—“but I have something I must do now. There is a white man that I must find and kill.”
Black Wing nodded his head slowly. “This white man, what has he done to earn your vengeance?”
Trace told him of the union with Blue Water that had produced a son, of the murder of the Shoshoni girl, and the abduction of the boy. “I lost his trail in the snow, but I will search for him again when the snow melts.”
“There is a white man who lives with the Gros Ventres,” Black Wing said.
This captured Trace’s attention at once. He was interested in any rumor about a white man living with Indians. “How do you know this?” Trace asked, knowing
that the Gros Ventres were allies of the Blackfeet and no friends of the Crows.
Black Wing explained. “A Hidatsu man came to our village. He had been a prisoner of the Gros Ventres for two years where they made him a slave. One day when he was gathering wood with the women, he saw a chance to escape. He happened upon our village after the first snow. He told of a white man who came to the Gros Ventre camp with a boy tied with a rope around his neck.”
Trace’s blood went cold inside his veins. Without realizing it, his hand tightened around the handle of his knife until his knuckles were white.
It had to be him!
After a moment, he regained control of his emotions. “Where was this village?”
“He said it was on the Big River, beyond the land of the Assiniboine, near the mouth of the Yellowstone.”
“I’ll find it,” Trace said, his words slow and hard as granite. Heating now, blood rushed through his veins, and he was burning with an urgency to ride. Fighting to keep his emotions from taking control of his senses, he told himself that he would have to wait. There were too many miles of frozen country between here and there. Two more months and the passes would be free of snow. That was time enough. The Gros Ventres would not likely leave their winter camp before then. Even if they did, he would find them, for now he had a trail to follow. Taking control of his emotions again, he took a deep breath and promised himself that he would not be denied.
They camped side by side that night, the soldiers and the Crows. The troopers shared their hardtack, salt pork, and coffee with the Indians, since Black Wing’s warriors had found little game in the area. The next morning, when the wagons were righted and minor repairs were completed, Luke gave the order to
mount and the troopers prepared to return to Fort Laramie. At Trace’s suggestion, Luke had his men donate half of their coffee ration as a gift to the departing Crows. It seemed an appropriate gesture of goodwill. And since the men had drawn rations for ten days, there was coffee to spare. Once again, Trace bid his boyhood friend farewell and turned his horse toward Laramie.
Guiding his horse in beside Luke’s, Trace looked toward the east where the rising sun had lit the cloudy sky in shades of fiery red, waves of brilliant color that spread across the prairie until they faded to a pink glow in the dark clouds over his head. Trace knew the radiant display was no more than a tease, and it would soon disappear. As he suspected, within an hour there was no evidence that there was ever a sun, the clouds grew dark, and it would probably snow before they reached the fort. But with Laramie only one day’s ride, the soldiers were in a lighthearted disposition as the column retraced their march of the day before. Trace sat easy in the saddle, trying to adjust to the uneven gait of the horse he now rode. It was a hardheaded beast with a broken rhythm in its walk, and there was little wonder that it had been relegated to pulling a wagon. Behind him, he could hear the almost constant banter of the soldiers, as the men from Luke’s patrol chided the members of the wood detail on their panic-stricken flight to the riverbank upon sighting “hostiles.” Trace supposed that Lieutenant Masters, who was even closer to the banter, was getting his ears singed a little. That thought led him to thoughts of Grace Turner, and for a moment, he recalled the chilly afternoon on the creekbank. It caused him to glance back at the boyish face of the young lieutenant. He unconsciously shook his head as he decided that Grace was too much woman for Masters to handle. As
quickly as thoughts of Grace had come, they were pushed aside by the news Black Wing had given him. Suddenly the banter of the soldiers got on his nerves and he needed quiet time to think.