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  Like a wounded buffalo, Bone lay on his back, finished. He struggled for a few moments with the knife sunk deep in his midsection, moaning and cursing alternately, then lay still as Jason stood over him. He opened his mouth to speak and blood seeped into his whiskers, forcing him to cough, trying to clear his throat. In a rasping whisper, he said, “You son of a bitch, why don’t you finish me off?”

  Jason reached down and, with one quick move, withdrew his knife from Bone’s belly, causing Bone to cry out in pain. “I’d love to, Bone. I’d put you out of your misery with a bullet but I don’t want to disturb your friend Tall Bull’s sleep.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you in hell, Coles.” The strain of making the words caused him to choke and he coughed in an effort to clear his breathing passages.

  “I expect you’ll still be busy dealing with all the folks waiting to settle with you.” With one quick move, he slit Bone’s throat, finishing him off. Bone wheezed several times, then lay still, his life oozing out on the rocky soil.

  Jason sat down on his haunches and watched the now still body for a few minutes. There were few times in his life when he could remember feeling satisfaction from killing a man. This was one of those times. If ever a man deserved killing, it was Bone, and Jason felt justified in the taking of this evil life. Bone may have been the strongest man he had ever faced and he had to admit that there were moments when he wasn’t sure which one of them would walk away. “I got lucky, I guess.” He sighed and stood up. Aware now of the lateness of the hour, he hurriedly relieved Bone’s body of his bullet belt. Tying the dead man’s weapons on his horse, he led the animal back down the ravine to the gully where he had left Black.

  CHAPTER IX

  Jason rode back about a mile south of where he told Little Hawk to bring the troopers. There he waited until he saw the scouts’ horses descend from the bluffs onto the river basin. When he rode out to meet them, he recognized Shorty Boyd riding between Little Hawk and Cross Bear.

  “Bone?” Shorty asked, eyeballing the extra horse and saddle, when Jason pulled up beside them.

  “Gone under,” Jason replied.

  “Figured,” Shorty said. “Reckon hell’s got a new mayor.”

  “How far behind are they?” Jason asked.

  Little Hawk answered, “Half mile maybe.”

  Jason looked up at the early morning sky. It would be light in a couple of hours and there was still some ground to cover. Shorty read his thoughts.

  “Want me to go back and hurry the major along?”

  “That would be advisable. And, Shorty, tell ’em to hold the noise down. We’ll be up ahead near the bend in the river.”

  In a few minutes the advance guard emerged from the darkness with Shorty Boyd in the lead, followed by Major Linebaugh and Thad Anderson. Thad had volunteered his troop to ride through the Sioux camp and lead them out into the bluffs. When the main body of troops pulled into view, he directed Sergeant Brady to split B Troop off from the main column and stand down. Jason led the other four troops around the bluffs to the north of the camp where he would advise the major where to position his men for the most effective fire. Half of the column was positioned in the steeper part of the bluff where dozens of gullies had been formed. Captain Blevins’ H Troop was dug in on the left flank, down closer to the water. Lassiter’s D Troop held the same position on the right. When all the troops were positioned, Jason rode back to Major Linebaugh.

  “I’ll be going back to give Lieutenant Anderson a hand now,” he announced.

  Linebaugh stood in a waist-deep gully near the top of the hill, his pistol drawn. “When should I signal the men to fire?” he asked Jason as the scout prepared to ride.

  “You won’t need to signal. You’ll damn sure know when the shooting starts. Just be sure your boys don’t shoot at us when we come hightailing it across the river and up that draw there.” He pointed to the draw in question. Linebaugh nodded and Jason touched Black with his heels. Without hesitation, the Appaloosa was off at a canter and the major was left standing in the fading darkness, nervously awaiting his first taste of Indian fighting.

  “Don’t worry, Major darling, I’ll see you don’t get killed.” The voice was Shorty Boyd’s and Linebaugh jumped when he spoke. The little scout moved so quietly the major was not aware he was even there.

  “Dammit, Boyd! I might have shot you!” the flustered officer blurted.

  * * *

  Thad was readying his troop for the assault when Jason appeared out of the dim light. He turned and waited for the scout to dismount. He hadn’t counted on having Jason with his unit making the charge through the Sioux village. He assumed he would be waiting in the bluffs with the main force but he had to admit he felt a great deal more confident with the presence of the scout.

  “Well, Lieutenant, I reckon you can start your little party as soon as it gets light enough so the horses won’t break their necks. First, I reckon I’d better go down and see what kind of river bottom we got here. It wouldn’t do to have your troop sink in the sand, would it?”

  Thad grimaced. It hadn’t occurred to him to look for the best place to ford the river. “That’s right,” he answered. “I was thinking it was time to do that.”

  Jason smiled. “I figured you were about to tell me to check it. When you can see me signal you from the other bank, it’ll be light enough for you to start your attack.” He stepped up on Black again and went down to the water’s edge.

  This was the season when the river was normally low and it had been a dry summer to boot. Still, there was nothing that would stop a cavalry charge like a soft river bottom so he walked Black up- and downstream in case there were any soft pockets to avoid.

  Finding everything satisfactory, he stopped his horse in the middle of the current and listened. In the village, he could hear a solitary dog barking—no other sound—and within a few minutes, the dog stopped barking, leaving a heavy silence. He urged Black slowly forward and climbed out on the other bank. Walking his horse up through the willows and wild plums, he stopped under a cottonwood. From here, he could just make out the dark shapes of the Sioux lodges. Somewhere in one of those lodges, Black Eagle was sleeping. His one most pressing thought at this moment was to encounter that murdering savage. Black Eagle’s death would never pay for the life he took, for Jason would always keep Lark’s image tucked away in a special recess of his mind. But it might help ease the pain he felt because he had not been there to protect her.

  The deep morning gradually faded to gray. It would be only minutes now. He thought about the plan of attack he had suggested and Thad had embraced. Thad’s troopers had better ride like hell when they swept through the camp because he had an idea that they were going to see more return fire than they had ever encountered before in an Indian camp. There should be no problem in drawing the warriors out after them and Jason was confident that was the best way to inflict heavy damage on the camp without a lot of casualties on the army’s side. He had not mentioned to Thad another reason he had suggested this plan of attack. By drawing the warriors out into the bluffs to fight, it would keep the women and children of the village out of the battle. Jason had seen too many of the typical cavalry attacks where every living thing in the village was slaughtered. It had never set well with him.

  He was rescued from his thoughts by the first morning song of a thrasher, nesting not fifty feet from him in the brush along the river bottom. The dog started barking again. Behind him, across the shallow water, a horse whinnied. The dark forms of the tipis in the camp began to take definition. Soon he could make out the paintings on them. It was time. He turned Black and went back to the water’s edge, held up his hand and signaled the lieutenant. Almost at once the first riders entered the river and plowed across.

  In less than ten minutes the entire troop was across and spread out along a line. Thad signaled with his hand and the troop started forward at the canter, making as little noise as possible. When within a hundred yards of the outermost tipi, a c
ry of alarm rang out in the camp. Thad raised his hand once more and shouted, “Bugler!” The charge was sounded, blasting the stillness of the summer morning like a sudden thunderclap, and the troopers sprang to a gallop. The first shot fired was distinct and loud. After that, there was a continuous roar of rifle fire.

  The troopers were well into the village before there was chance for return fire. Many of the warriors were killed as they ran from their tipis, before getting the chance to fire their weapons. Jason had counted heavily on the element of surprise and, so far, it was going as he had hoped, with the soldiers sweeping past the center of the village and still no casualties.

  Black seemed to know what was expected of him and he ran at close to all-out speed, his stride so even that Jason could drop the reins and use both hands to handle his Winchester. The camp was now in chaos with women and children screaming and running from the tipis, men shouting angry warnings, dogs barking. Return shots rang out and Jason saw a trooper fall from the saddle.

  “Ride!” Jason shouted at Thad as he guided Black in beside the lieutenant. “Keep going!”

  Another trooper fell and then a third as the besieged hostiles brought their weapons into action. Jason searched right to left but in the confusion of the raid, he was unable to identify Black Eagle, the Cheyenne. There was nothing he could do at the moment but ride and shoot. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a group of warriors running toward the pony herd. They would soon be in pursuit. “Ride!” he shouted again. The bullets snapping through the air around them were from repeating rifles as he had anticipated.

  The line of cavalry was now approaching the other side of the village. The air was filled with the angry lead from the repeating rifles, making it seem to be hot as steam, and there was no need to encourage the troopers to make haste as they made for the river. Once past the last tipi, they merged into a column at the direction of Thad and Jason who stopped by the edge of the village to guide the stampeding soldiers. Jason pointed the way and Sergeant Brady led the troop across the river and headed up a wide coulee on the opposite side.

  When he was sure all his men were following the sergeant, Thad kicked his horse hard and followed after Jason who was a half a length ahead of him. They plunged their horses into the water, bullets flying around them. Jason made the other side and climbed the low bank. He looked back in time to see Thad knocked from the saddle and disappear below the surface of the water. In a few moments, he surfaced again, staggering to get to his feet in the waist-deep current. His horse clamored up the bank and galloped after the others. Thad sputtered around in the current, trying to keep his feet, one arm hanging limp at his side. From the far bank a group of four warriors plunged into the water, racing toward the wounded soldier.

  Jason slid out of the saddle and took a firing position on one knee. Oblivious to the shots ringing around him, he patiently drew down on the first of the four Sioux and squeezed the trigger. When the Winchester spoke, the first hostile doubled over and sank beneath the surface. Before his body could resurface, the second and third hostiles were cut down moments before they reached Thad. There had not been time to get the fourth Indian who sprang on the injured soldier. Thad seemed unable to defend himself and the hostile grabbed him by his hair and raised his scalping knife. Thad looked up in time to see the look of shocked surprise on the Indian’s face and the hole Jason’s bullet made in his forehead. Then, disoriented and dizzy from his wound and the shock of staring death in the face, Thad slid under the water, too weak to support himself.

  Not sure whether Thad was dead or alive, Jason looked back at the village. It was swarming like an opened anthill with most of the warriors already on their ponies and preparing to chase their attackers. There was still time for Jason to gain the safety of the bluffs where Major Linebaugh lay in wait for the Indians. But he remembered a promise he had made to a young girl back in Fort Laramie. He gave Black a slap on the rump and the Appaloosa took off in the direction of the fleeing cavalry horses.

  He scrambled back down to the water’s edge and, after laying his rifle and cartridge belt under a bush to keep them dry, plunged into the water and made his way, half walking, half swimming, to intercept Thad’s body as it moved with the current. There was no time to determine if he was rescuing a dead man or not. Only a few yards upstream the river was already churning from the feet of Indian ponies as the inflamed hostiles rode in hot pursuit of the soldiers. He could only count it as pure luck that no one paid any attention to the two heads bobbing above the water and drifting toward the opposite bank.

  It was only after he had dragged Thad up into some thick brush that he was able to determine that he was still alive, although he had swallowed a great deal of water and was only half conscious. Jason figured Thad had come within a minute or two of drowning. He rolled him over and started working on him to expel the water. In the bluffs behind him, he could hear the roar of gunfire as Major Linebaugh’s volleys filled the river bottom with thunder. Peering through the bushes, he could see the hostiles as they were pushed back toward the river. “They’re gonna be right here in our laps if you don’t hurry up,” he murmured to the still unconscious man.

  His efforts seemed in vain and he was about to decide he was pushing on a corpse when Thad coughed and a stream of water gushed from his mouth, followed by a coughing spasm, and Jason knew he was back among the living. Jason kept working on him and, with each push, a little stream of water trickled from Thad’s mouth. Then his breath came in gasps and his eyes blinked open. Jason rolled him over on his back then and stared at him for a moment. When he decided Thad was lucid, although still confused, he said, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  On his belly, he crawled back out to the water’s edge. Keeping low behind the bank he pulled himself back upstream to retrieve his rifle. Watching to make sure he had not been spotted, he returned to the wounded man.

  Thad was alert when he crawled back up in the bushes. “Jason,” he gasped, “you saved my life.”

  “Yeah, well, I might have saved you from drowning but you might bleed to death yet. Let’s have a look at that.” While he opened Thad’s shirt to expose the wound, he went on. “Better not thank me yet. I can stop the bleeding in your shoulder right enough but we’re in a helluva spot here. You might be plumb full of holes before we get outta here.”

  He didn’t have much to doctor Thad with. He took the young lieutenant’s neckerchief from around his neck and pressed it tightly against the wound until the flow of blood dwindled. Then he took the rag and tied it under his arm and over his shoulder. The sounds of the battle seemed to be all around them, and when he took a moment to look, he found the reason why. “Looks like we’ve joined Tall Bull’s army,” he said to Thad. “From what I can see, Tall Bull’s braves have been driven back by Major Linebaugh’s boys. Trouble is, looks like they’ve dropped back to the riverbank on both sides of us to make their stand.”

  Thad stirred and tried to sit up. “What are we gonna do?” he whispered.

  Jason restrained him. “Nothing we can do but lay low. These bushes are pretty thick . . . course I’d like it if they were a whole lot thicker. Right now they hide us pretty good but I’d like it a whole lot better if they could stop a bullet.” As if to punctuate his remark, a rifle slug kicked up sand no more than a couple of feet away. “That one came from one of your soldiers, I reckon. You got any preference on what kind of bullet puts you under? . . . Sioux or army?”

  “Damn, Jason, we’re in one helluva spot.” Thad looked around him, his eyes wide, the pain in his shoulder throbbing.

  “We’ll be all right, son. Just lie low and don’t go flopping around and get that blood started again.” While he talked, trying to keep Thad calm, he worked away at the bank with his knife to make a rifle pit. “These bucks will get tired of shooting at those bluffs and wasting their ammunition and will probably high-tail it before long. Then we can ride on back to Laramie where that pretty little Miss Lynch can nurse you back to health.”


  * * *

  Tall Bull was stubborn. After an hour of shooting at the soldiers at long range, he rallied his warriors to make another assault on the bluffs. As before, they were met with a blistering volley from the bluffs, inflicting even more casualties. Once again, they fell back to the riverbank for cover, this time even closer to the two men lying close to the ground under the bushes. There seemed to be an increase in the number of slugs kicking up dirt and singing through the trees above them. Jason moved Thad around to get more of his body into the shallow pit he had dug with his knife.

  He pulled his forty-four from his belt and wiped it as dry as he could. He had neglected to leave it with his rifle when he went in the river after Thad. He opened the cylinder and extracted the bullets, wiped them off and reloaded them. The noise of the battle seemed to increase around their hiding place again as a branch above Thad’s head popped in two and fell in front of him. Jason heard another rustle in the bush behind them and turned to encounter the startled face of a Sioux warrior, crawling for cover. Seconds later, the startled expression turned to one of eternal shock and there appeared a small black hole between his eyes when Jason fired his pistol. “Well, I reckon it still works,” he said dryly, turning the pistol over to examine it. With his foot, he shoved the dead Indian back out of the bushes, where he rolled down the low bank. “Here,” he said, handing the pistol to Thad. Speechless, the lieutenant accepted it.

  * * *