Charlie Whitelaw went down
hard, rolling the rest of the way down the grade and coming out on the level, flat on his stomach, where he lay unmoving while the bullets buzzed over him. I couldn't tell if he was hit or had acted from reflex because I was down myself by that time, knocked flat by the weight of the Mountie sergeant. I didn't know where he was struck or how badly. I shoved him off me and crawled over to where Inspector Vivian lay hugging the pile of rocks that curved down from where the stronghold had begun its collapse one or ten thousand years before. His whole body jerked when I gripped his shoulder; he wasn't dead.
“Is this how you obey orders up here?” I asked him. “Whitelaw made you call down to hold their fire.”
I saw one pale eye and the flesh of a bitten-off British smile.
“I could have given them the rest of the month off from up there and they'd not have budged. Ottawa issued a standing order when the police were commissioned, and no one's disobeyed it yet: No bargains. No negotiations. No hostages.”
“Not even their own?”
“Especially not their own. No part of the force is more important than the force. The force is not more important than the law. How is the sergeant?”
“Dead or wounded. I can't tell.”
“Stupid blighter. No etiquette at all. I never commanded a better man.” He made a noise of discomfort.
“Are you hit?”
“Right in the old breadbasket. Good job I haven't had a bite since breakfast. Not that even Saint bloody Bartholomew could do a thing for me out here.”
I felt empty. I didn't know why. I didn't like the man.
The deep barking cough of the Gatling had continued, the blue flashes tinged with orange sparking clockwise in a circle and sweeping left and right as the gun turned on its swivel. Ragged small-arms fire opened up, throwing up little arcs of snow from the ground behind a figure running in a crouch across the flat toward the horses, one arm stuck awkwardly out to the side.
Vivian spotted him at the same time I did. “That rotter Bliss! After him, man! Hurry!”
The Gatling had swung right to chop at a number of gang members fleeing in that direction. I pushed myself up and ran, pausing when I reached level ground only to look down at Whitelaw. The back of his coat was stained dark, with blood bubbling out of a hole in the center of the patch. He'd been shot through a lung. When I resumed running the Gatling swiveled back around; I felt the vibration made by the heavy slugs striking the ground behind me. A clump of snow and mud struck my pantslegs. I picked up my pace. If I slipped and fell they'd have to shovel me into the ground.
Bliss had got hold of one of the Mountie horses and hauled himself one-handed into the saddle. He lunged straight at me to
run me down. I sidestepped left, putting him and the animal between me and the big gun, and snatched at the bridle. Stinging heat lashed the right side of my face; he'd quirted me with the ends of the reins. I fell backwards, my legs sliding in front of the chestnut's hooves. It reared and a bullet from the Gatling buzzed under its belly and tore the badger hat off my head. The horse leapt over me, scrabbled for its balance in the snow, and took off at the gallop.
I threw myself into a roll, came up alongside the mustang, and got hold of its reins as it was straining to rear against the tether. I fumbled for the loop, slipped it, and got a foot into the stirrup just as it took off. I groped for the saddle horn and hung on in a crouch Comanche-style, using the horse for a shield. Something thudded into the mustang's side, it grunted and stumbled as if the wind had been knocked out of it, but caught its balance and found its pace; a slug must have struck the saddle.
The Gatling continued to chatter, with lighter rounds cracking and popping in between, but by then we were moving too fast to make a good target in the ghostly light conditions. I got my other leg over the horse's back and bent low for speed. Bliss's chestnut had left a clear trail in the snow, with here and there a spot the size of a silver dollar that looked black on the white surface. One or both had been hit, although I couldn't tell how badly.
Mountie animals were bred for speed, but cow ponies are accustomed to cutting through scrub and cactus and are tough to beat on the flat. I knew I was gaining on him when something cracked overhead and I realized it was a ball from my own Deane-Adams. It didn't slow me down. The odds of hitting anything with a belt gun from horseback are too small to figure, and with his left arm out of action Bliss couldn't neglect the reins long enough to take aim. I hunched lower and raked the
mustang's flanks with my spurs. The sound of gunfire faded behind us like something belonging to someone else's battle.
We kept it up for what felt like hours. Most likely it was no more than ten minutes before we entered some rolling country north of the lake, and I slacked off a little in case he'd decided to dismount and set up an ambush from a crease between hills. As I swung down, a bullet split the air where my head had been a second earlier, followed by the report.
I saw the fading phosphorescence of the muzzle flare, squeaked the Evans from the scabbard on my side of the horse, and snapped off a shot in that direction to keep him busy while I got into position for a better shot. I sank to one knee in the snow, wrapped the reins loosely around my boot to discourage the mustang from bolting, and drew a bead just above a dark oblong that lay across Bliss's trail some four hundred feet ahead. I guessed what it was without wasting time looking any harder; either the chestnut had been wounded and had given out finally, or Bliss had killed it to make a breastwork.
I was still lining up the sights when flame spurted again. He was using the rifle that had come with the horse, but he was unfamiliar with it or he was a lot less handy with a long gun than he was with his bowie because I never found out where the bullet went. I fired at the spot, jacked in a fresh round, and followed it up.
There was a long silence then. I unwound the reins from my ankle, looped them around each of the mustang's forelegs in a makeshift hobble, and moved away from it in a duckwalk. Just then a volley broke out from near the carcass up the trailâhe was racking them in as fast as he could squeeze the triggerâand I threw myself flat on my belly to wait it out.
When it stopped I came up again, just in time to see something dark moving quickly against the snow beyond the carcass.
Bliss was making a run. I took careful aim, leading the moving thing slightly with the barrel, but he changed courses abruptly just as I squeezed off, and I wasted the next shot jerking to adjust. I lost him then.
I let a minute go by I couldn't afford, in case he was playing possum and waiting for me to show myself. Then I went back to the mustang and slipped its hobble.
I led the horse to the spot where the chestnut had gone down. It lay on its side with its tongue out and its eyes grown satiny soft, a great gout of blood glittering on its exposed side. The bullet had passed through both its lungs and exited there, and being a horse the animal hadn't thought to fall down until it was strangling in its own blood.
My Deane-Adams lay in the snow near where Bliss had knelt to use the Mountie rifle. I brushed it off, checked the load, replaced the spent shells with cartridges from my belt, and reunited it with its holster. Then I got back aboard the mustang and kneed it into the path of footprints in the snow. I kept it to a walk to avoid galloping into another ambush.
The moon and I came over the next hill at the same time. Now the white landscape was as bright as the desert by daylight. The trail of footprints made a straight black line over the hill beyond. Beyond
that
was black sky stained by uneven light: the glow of a large campfire.
Most fugitives in Bliss's position, pursued and finding themselves approaching other men, would have changed their course in the direction of friendly darkness. From the beginning, Lorenzo Bliss and Charlie Whitelaw had not behaved like any other pair of outlaws. Hunted, they had never stopped hunting. Fire meant people. People were game, a source of supplies and weapons and fresh horses, soft and secure in their numbers and easily
disposed of by a man on the prod. The trail divided the hill in a straight line toward the light.
Nearing the top of that hill I stepped down and led the mustang. I added a hundred yards to my journey circling around to the west to keep the moon from silhouetting me from behind.
“You will lay the rifle at your feet.”
The owner of the voice had followed my plan as carefully as I had. He stood facing me on the downslope of the hill, just as if he were blocking an existing road instead of a mound of undisturbed snow.
I didn't recognize the voice at first. Too much had happened since I had heard it last. But the mackinaw the man wore looked familiar, the white man's garment making a strong contrast with the braided silver of his long hair and the dusky face that looked as if it had been hacked out of red sandstone. And I had seen the watch chain before, glittering now like a thread of molten silver in the moonlight.
“We've met before,” I said. “I didn't know your name then. You are Piapot, chief of the great Cree Nation.”
Some Indians were mollified when a white man remembered to address them with the respect they took for granted when it was one of their own speaking. This one just told me again to lay my rifle at my feet. His tone was without threat or anger, but indicated clearly that he would not repeat himself a second time. I obeyed, moving slowly. He stood with his hands loose at his sides without a weapon showing, but there were others standing behind him, vague shadows against the flicker of the fire burning at the base of the hill. I'd been under the gun too many times not to recognize the feeling.
“You are the man who would not give us one of your rifles.”
That impressed more than it frightened. The incident had taken place weeks ago and four hundred miles to the south. He
had to have seen many white men in the time between, and we all look alike to many Indians. I didn't even consider denying it. “Yes,” I said, and took a chance. “And you are the man whose medicine healed me after I was shot on the Saskatchewan.”
He was silent long enough for me to wonder if I'd been mistaken about that after all.
“The medicine was not mine,” he said. “Small Man is our shaman. It is against your law to kill another white skin, though it does not stop you from doing it. Your death would have brought harm to the crazy woman who shot you, and she is good medicine to the Cree. Therefore you did not die.”
“I brought food to the crazy woman. She thought I was there to harm her. She made me well. I am not angry.”
“You said before you had business.” He buzzed the word with which he was only half familiar. “Is that the reason you have come all this way?”
“Yes. I'm a deputy United States marshal from the territory of Montana. I am hunting the men who killed the crazy woman's family and friends and made her crazy. I mean to bring them home to hang.”
“You were chasing the man whose arm is broken.”
“Yes. His trail led me here.”
“You cannot have him. He will answer to the Cree.”
“Answer for what? All his crimes are against the whites.”
Piapot put a hand in one of the mackinaw's side pockets and drew something out of it. As he stretched it between his hands my stomach did a slow turn and landed with a thud.
“He had this on him. It is not the scalp of a white man or woman.
“It isn't,” I said. “He cut it off the body of Wolf Shirt, a Sioux chief.”
A brief pause was all he gave up to show surprise. “The man whose arm is broken killed Wolf Shirt?”
“No. He died of disease. The man with the broken arm is named Bliss. He took the scalp as a souvenir.”
“I do not know this word.”
“A trophy. He said he always wanted a Sioux scalp. He cut it off Wolf Shirt where he was laid out for burial.”
“I do not understand why a man would want to claim a scalp from a man he did not kill. I will never understand why white men do what they do. Yet our friends the Sioux tell us the whites in America wish the red men to live as they.”
“I stop trying to think the way men like Bliss think once I find out where they are,” I said. “If you spend too much time in your enemy's skull you become the enemy.”
He folded the scalp. No honor guard ever folded Old Glory with more reverence. “It is theâbusinessâof a chiefs woman to stay with him until he is buried. What was Wolf Shirt's woman doing when the man Bliss stole his scalp?”
I told him what Yeller had done when the woman tried to stop him from stealing the dead chiefs lance to make Bliss's splints. He was as silent as the hills while I told him that Yeller was either dead or in Mountie custody. I hoped I was right.
“Bliss will answer to the Cree,” Piapot said again.
Just then I heard a high-pitched curse from somewhere on the other side of the fire. The mix of Spanish and English ended in a ragged whimper I can still hear all these years later.