Son of the Hawk Page 6

  “I suppose we could camp here for the night,” Luke said.

  “Well, it ain’t the best place to camp,” Buck said. “That water ain’t fit to drink—the horses won’t even drink it—but if I recollect correctly, there’s a better place no more than three or four miles beyond that ridge to the east. There’s better water and a little grass for the horses.”

  “What about Bull Hump? We’re supposed to wait for him here.”

  Buck snorted. “Hell, he can damn shore follow our trail. If he can’t, he ain’t much of an Injun.” He turned his head and launched a brown stream of tobacco juice that spattered on a rock a few feet away. ‘“Course you’re the boss, whatever you say.”

  Luke laughed and turned to Grady Post, who had joined them. “Sergeant, get ’em mounted up. We’re going to a better camp.”

  As Luke suspected, Buck’s memory was reliable. They arrived at a grassy knoll below the pines on the eastern side of the ridge, where a clear stream made its way down the mountainside. There was still at least an hour of daylight left with no sign of Bull Hump as yet. The troop went about setting up camp. Sergeant Post put out pickets while Luke checked to see that Annie was comfortable. Buck decided to scout the area around them to make sure they didn’t have any neighbors.

  Luke paused to look at his scout as Buck crossed the stream and disappeared into the pines. Then he turned his attention back to Annie Farrior. “I don’t know if you overheard back there, but Buck is pretty sure the campfire at Bitter Water was that of your husband and his friends.” Annie’s eyes brightened—evidently she had not heard.

  Dimeron, busy at that point with his bedroll, had paused to listen, and hearing the lieutenant’s statement, walked over to join them. “You think we might be close to finding them?” he asked.

  Luke only glanced briefly in the reporter’s direction before directing his answer toward Annie. “According to Buck, that fire is pretty old, weeks maybe. If it had been recent, I would have told you right away. But I thought you’d like to know we’ve at least crossed their trail.”

  It was almost dark when a picket called out, “Rider coming!” It turned out to be Buck, returning from his scout. He reported to Luke that he had found no sign of anyone else in the area. Glancing around the camp, he noticed that Bull Hump had not shown up yet. Although Luke was mildly concerned, Buck was not. He didn’t have that much faith in the Indian’s ability to begin with. “Hell, Lieutenant, if he can’t find a whole troop of soldiers in these hills, he ain’t much good to us no how.”

  It was early the following morning when the Sioux scout came riding in, stolid and unperturbed. He rode straight over to Luke and slid off his pony. “I find valley,” he said simply, “white men been there.”

  Buck, walking stiffly as a result of his usual morning back pain, made his way over to Luke and the Sioux. Questioning Bull Hump in his own tongue, he asked, “How long ago?”

  “Not long,” Bull Hump answered, “maybe one or two days, no longer.”

  “Any sign of a war party?” Buck asked.

  Bull Hump shook his head vigorously. “No war parties. No sign of anyone else.”

  Buck translated for Luke. “He thinks they were there only a day or two ago.”

  “We’d best get moving, then,” Luke decided, and instructed Grady Post to hurry the men to finish their breakfast and get ready to move out. “And, Sergeant, tell Mrs. Farrior what the scout said—she’ll want to know that.”

  Buck continued to question Bull Hump. “Where is this here valley?”

  “Three or four hours’ ride, that way.” He pointed toward the northwest. “I’ll show you.”

  Buck scratched his head, thinking hard in an effort to recall what valley Bull Hump might possibly be referring to. The somber Sioux scout was not very adept at transmitting information. But Buck figured it couldn’t be many miles from where they stood, if it was no more than three or four hours away, because it would be slow travel in the direction he pointed out. It would require following a series of valleys and canyons to make their way through the high hills.

  Within half an hour, the troopers were in the saddle and moving out behind the stoic Sioux scout. Buck rode beside Luke Austen and Sergeant Post, a few paces behind the Indian. Annie and Robert Dimeron were next in line before the column of troopers. There had been no rain for weeks, promising another dusty ride, so Annie and Dimeron rode near the head of the column to avoid most of the dust. Leaving the grassy knoll, they followed a dry canyon through a low line of mountains. After approximately two hours’ ride, Bull Hump turned back east, following a narrow cross canyon that appeared to make a blind turn some two hundred yards ahead.

  Buck stood up in his stirrups, peering intently toward the point where the canyon turned. “I ain’t too sure about this,” he mumbled, wondering if the Indian had made a mistake in his directions. He nudged his horse and moved up beside Bull Hump. “You sure this is the canyon you found? It don’t look like it leads anywhere.”

  If Bull Hump was insulted by Buck’s lack of confidence in his sense of direction, it did not register on his face. He only gazed intently at Buck for a few moments as if considering the old scout’s question. In fact, Bull Hump’s answer surprised Buck. “Maybe you are right. It was dark when I found it yesterday. Before we go any farther, maybe it is best if I ride on ahead and make sure this is the way.”

  “Well . . .” Buck hesitated, “all right.” He pulled his horse to a halt and turned back to tell Luke what the Sioux scout had said, shaking his head in wonder. That might be the first Injun I ever met that couldn’t find his way outta his own tipi.

  Luke halted the column before proceeding any farther up the narrow canyon, and they sat and watched the Sioux scout until he disappeared around the bend. “I guess a lot of these canyons and draws look alike, even to an Indian,” Luke offered in defense of his scout. He knew what Buck was thinking, though, and he himself was beginning to wonder about Bull Hump’s ability.

  Buck inwardly scoffed at the lieutenant’s remark. None of these canyons looked alike to him. To Buck, the greater part of his life spent in the mountains, every canyon, draw, coulee, gulch, and gully had its own distinguishing characteristics. They might be small and undefined by the casual eye, but a real mountain man could tell one from another right enough. He was about to share that opinion with Luke when Bull Hump reappeared at the turn of the canyon, and signaled for them to come on.

  “Looks like he knew where he was going after all,” Luke commented as he signaled his troopers into motion.

  “Shit,” Buck mumbled too low to be heard as he gave his horse a tap with his heels.

  Bull Hump waited at the bend of the canyon, watching stolidly until the soldiers were within fifty yards. Then he wheeled his pony and disappeared again around the turn. Buck went on ahead at a fast trot to catch up with the Indian. The canyon’s walls closed in even more before the bend, and when he made the turn, there was no sign of Bull Hump anywhere. Buck was confused for only a moment before he realized what was happening, then immediately alarmed when he glanced ahead and found himself in a box canyon, the end of it no more that four or five hundred yards away.

  At once, he wheeled his horse and raced back to warn the lieutenant. It was too late. As his horse skidded around the bend, its hooves spraying a shower of dirt and gravel as it sought solid footing, Buck’s eyes were met with a terrifying sight. For from out of nowhere, hundreds of Sioux warriors suddenly emerged from the rocks and gullies, and filled the narrow canyon behind the troopers.

  Luke was not even aware of the trap closing behind him until he saw Buck come flying around the bend in the canyon, his eyes wide as saucers, his arms flailing in a frantic effort to warn the column. The Sioux, also seeing Buck, held their silence no longer. The canyon suddenly exploded with rifle fire and ear-splitting war whoops, as the rearmost troopers were cut down from their mounts as if a giant scythe had taken a bloody swipe across the rear of the column. So great was the surprise, t
hat there was no immediate return fire from the soldiers. The narrow corridor filled up with a screaming half-naked horde of warriors, firing rifles and arrows in almost constant volleys. Eight army saddles were emptied before Luke could respond.

  Buck was yelling and waving his arms frantically for the lieutenant to come on as fast as he could. Since there was no cover on the canyon floor, there was no option but to run, hoping to find a place to take up defensive positions at the box end of the canyon. At breakneck speed, the soldiers ran for their lives amid a chaos of war whoops and bullets snapping around them, punctuated by the frequent screams of their comrades as the deadly Sioux bullets found their marks.

  Annie, her heart pounding with terror, bent low on her horse’s neck, the echoes of the ambush reverberating around her ears as she urged her horse for more speed. Now she found herself being jostled and bounced back and forth as the terrified troopers competed for the limited space at the narrow bend. Chaos reigned and it was plainly every man for himself, even though Luke Austen tried to maintain some form of discipline in the retreat. Her horse stumbled and almost went down when Robert Dimeron’s mount wedged in ahead of hers, trying to escape the wave of bullets and arrows. She got only a glimpse of the reporter as his horse charged ahead. He had dropped the reins and had both arms clamped around the frightened animal’s neck, his eyes wide in panic.

  “Annie!” Luke yelled and forced his horse between those of two wildly retreating troopers. “Stay in front of me!” He pulled back hard on the reins, straining to slow his horse long enough to allow Annie’s mount to forge ahead. Then he followed close behind in an effort to shield her from the hostile fire behind them. She made no effort to control her horse. It would have been to no avail, anyway, for there was no way she could have kept the animal from galloping after the mob of horses sprinting toward the end of the canyon.

  With no cover from the devastating shower of arrows and rifle balls, Luke’s troop was cut to pieces as the Sioux warriors’ fire claimed one trooper after another. Buck, fifty yards ahead of the frantic retreat, circled his horse and tried to direct the soldiers toward the trees that girded the steep sides of the canyon—the only available cover in which to make a stand. Grady Post, seeing what Buck was trying to do, wheeled around when he caught up to Buck and tried to help the scout guide the desperate rush to safety.

  “Get ’em into that gully there!” Buck shouted, pointing to a low rock-strewn defile at the base of the steep wall of the canyon. The sparse growth of trees near the floor of the canyon was not sufficient to give them adequate protection, so without waiting to be ordered, the troopers starting digging shallow rifle pits in the rim of the gully.

  Even as they labored to carve out defensive positions in the hard, rocky soil, their numbers were still being methodically reduced as first one man, then another, screamed in agony as Sioux rifle shots ripped through their bodies. Lieutenant Luke Austen’s distress was written across his face in bold concern as he tried to hurry his men in their digging. As he witnessed the devastating destruction of his command, one man at a time, he struggled to maintain some semblance of order. In those first few minutes of the ambush, it was a hopeless endeavor because his troop of misfits, drunks, and foreigners abandoned all thoughts of military discipline, concerned only with thoughts of self-preservation. The dead and wounded lay like strewn firewood before the rim of the gully, and some of the survivors could be seen pulling the bodies of some of their fallen comrades up closer to the edge of the defile to provide protection against the continual hail of missiles.

  Annie, at Luke’s direction, laid behind him as flat as she could in the bottom of the gully. Her hands clamped tightly over her ears, she tried in vain to shut out the terrible noise of the massacre. The horrifying bedlam of guns, agonizing cries, shouted commands, horses screaming, mixed with the blood-chilling war whoops of the savages, left her shaking with fear. She didn’t even remove her hands from her ears when Buck suddenly grabbed her arms and roughly dragged her out of the path of a terrified horse that almost trampled her. The confused animal had scrambled over into the gully with the embattled soldiers, trying to escape the deadly hail of bullets.

  Finally Luke and Sergeant Post were able to organize return fire, and the attack was beaten back some distance as the Sioux warriors now sought cover. After a few more minutes, the continuous firing subsided, replaced now with individual sniping from the steep sides of the canyon. Luke looked around him at the bodies before the gully, and those slumped over their rifles on the rim. He could only count four troopers in addition to Buck, Grady Post, Annie, the reporter, and himself—nine survivors from a troop of thirty-four. There was no time to dwell on it. The task now was to find a way to save those who were left.

  Buck crawled over beside Luke. “We can keep ’em off us for a while here, but when they decide to climb up the sides of this canyon, we’re gonna be sittin’ ducks down here in this hole.”

  Luke looked at the old scout, the young lieutenant’s eyes burning with anxiety. “You’re right about that, but I don’t know what else we can do but sit tight and keep our heads down. Have you got any suggestions? Because if you do, I’m damn sure open to them.”

  Buck shook his head slowly. “We’re in a fix, and that’s a fact.” He looked behind them at the sheer rock wall that rose for some fifteen or twenty feet before breaking away to a tree-covered ledge, above which the mountain sloped steeply up to a high ridge. “Well, that’s the only way out, and that don’t look too promisin’. ’Course, Injuns is unpredictable sometimes. They might just figure they’ve had enough fun with us and go on about their business before they lose any more of their warriors. Maybe the best thing to do is to just wait ’em out a while—see what’s on their minds.” He didn’t voice it, but he hoped the Sioux would figure they were satisfied with the plunder they had already gained. He didn’t have to call Luke’s attention to the gruesome activity taking place near the bend of the canyon where the braves were stripping the bodies and taking scalps.

  “Those savage bastards,” Luke murmured under his breath, and Buck knew the lieutenant had seen the same thing he did. Back to the question for the moment, he said, “I guess we don’t have a lot of choice. We’ll wait them out for a while before we try to scale that cliff behind us. We can make it plenty costly for them to try to overrun us here.”

  So they lay low behind their breastworks of rocky soil and human bodies, watching the desecration of the bodies of their former comrades, helpless to avenge the outrage. Not knowing how long they would have to hold out, Luke ordered the men to hold their fire, shooting only if the hostiles ventured within range. Sergeant Post slid along the length of the gully on his belly, collecting as many cartridge slings and canteens as he could from the bodies.

  Annie, able now to sit with her back against the rock wall behind her, had regained some of her composure. She asked Grady Post for one of the rifles he had collected, determined to contribute what help she could. She took a second rifle and thrust it toward the still-shivering reporter, encouraging Dimeron to make himself useful. Dimeron was in no state of mind to be of much use. For the first time realizing that the end of his life might very well be within the next few hours, his zest for firsthand knowledge of Indian territory ran down his pantsleg to form a dark stain in the sand. He had abandoned his notebook during the wild dash for the cover of the gully and now sat staring at the rifle Annie pressed upon him with terrified eyes.

  “Git down!” Buck yelled, his warning followed a few seconds later by a hailstorm of arrows that thudded into the ground and clattered against the rock wall behind them.

  “Artillery,” Luke commented, then called out, “Anybody hit?”

  No one was, but they soon found that it was only the first of a series of attacks as wave after wave of arrows rained down upon them. Everyone there knew that it was impossible for all of them to escape the deadly rain. A trooper near the far end of the gully was the first to be hit. He cried out in agony as an arro
w pierced his chest. The soldier next to him tried to comfort the injured man, but there was little he could do. In spite of Luke’s order to maintain a vigilance in case the hostiles decided to charge the gully, he, Grady, and Buck were the only men willing to expose their heads enough to keep watch. The remaining three troopers chose to cringe beneath the brow of the defile. Buck and Luke were too occupied to notice the huddled conference between the three, and were taken by surprise when they made a sudden desperate attempt to escape.

  Without announcing their intentions, one of the soldiers, a big raw-boned fellow named Logan, who had spent a good portion of his enlistment in the guard house, suddenly jumped to his feet and ran to the stone wall. Right on his heels, the second man followed him and scrambled up on his shoulders—the third man moved quickly behind the two.

  It had happened so fast that Luke was unable to prevent it. Their plan was obvious. The two smaller men figured to be able to reach the ledge by standing on Logan’s shoulders. Once both of them were up, they could pull Logan up and make their escape up the steep slope above.

  “Logan!” Grady Post roared, but it was too late to prevent the escape—the second man was already scrambling up on the ledge and reaching down to grasp Logan’s hands.

  “Logan! No!” Luke shouted when he saw what was happening. “You men, get back down here—now!”

  Logan, his feet kicking at the sheer rock wall frantically while the other two strained to lift him, finally managed to struggle onto the ledge. Once on sound footing, he looked back at the lieutenant. “You can sit around and wait for them bastards to kill you. Not me. I aim to be long gone when that next bunch of arrows hit.”

  “Logan, that’s crazy,” Luke pleaded. “Our only chance is to wait it out. Get down here! I order you to get back down here.”

  “You can go to hell, Lieutenant. We’re savin’ our ass while there’s still time.”

  Grady Post turned his rifle on the big man on the ledge above as if to shoot the insubordinate soldier. Buck gently, but firmly, pushed the barrel of Post’s rifle down, saying, “Don’t waste your ammunition, we’re gonna need it. They’re done for, anyway.”