Wyoming Jones Page 7

  "Why didn't you go after him?" Wyoming asked. "He couldn't get very far with six horses to wrangle along."

  "We sent two men," Martin said. "They haven't come back."

  "We can't wait any longer. We're going on in the morning," Pritchard said. "Every cent I have in the world is standing out there in the darkness. I can't wait any longer. The Cimarron is dry now and I can't afford to lose any more time or take a chance on a flash flood. I lost nearly two hundred head crossing the North Canadian."

  Wyoming studied the fire. "And Steel knew you wouldn't be able to go after him."

  "That's the way we figure it," Martin said.

  Wyoming stood up. "I'm moving on," he said abruptly. "It's going to be easier to travel at night now than in the day because of the heat and the Comanche. I'm losing time."

  He turned away from the fire, picked up his Colt from the dust where it had fallen, and grabbed the reins of the stallion. He walked back to the fire. "You come from Abilene?"

  "Circle Double Bar," Pritchard said.

  "I'll let you know if I catch up with him." Wyoming said. He swung into the saddle and nodded to the men. "See you," Wyoming said, and spun the stallion around

  "Good luck!" Pritchard called.

  A thousand yards out, Wyoming turned to look back at the fire. Martin and Pritchard and several of the others were sitting before the fire, their heads down. Wyoming moved along the edge of the herd slowly so as not to spook them. What kind of man was Arky Steel, he wondered, that would turn on a helping hand and bite it like a rabid wolf?

  Wyoming's jaw tightened. Well, just like the rabid wolf, there was only one way to deal with them. He pulled out the Colt and began cleaning the gun as he rode softly past the herd.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wyoming saw the Indians at dawn, four days out of the cattle camp. They were moving in a line across his path, trailing pack animals in back of them.

  He pulled up on the top of a hillock, slipped the saddle, and moved to a clump of sagebrush and lay flat on the ground. He watched the file of Indians move from east to west and from the size and shape of the packs on the trailing animals, guessed they had been making meat, probably buffalo.

  He waited for several hours, hot and sweaty in the sun, hardly protected by the brush from the hot morning sun. The Indians moved out of sight and beyond the rim of a low crumbling butte.

  Wyoming stood up and walked back down the side of the rise to where the stallion had waited patiently. He drank water from his canteen and wiped the sweat from his face.

  He stared around the parched and baking land. He should rest, he knew, after riding all night, but there wasn't a spot of shade as far as the eye could see. He searched the horizon and wiped his eyes. No, it was not a trick his eyes were playing on him, nor was it a heat mirage. There were vultures circling far to the southeast, about the place where the Comanches would have come from. If the Comanches were heading west, away from the spot where they had butchered their kill, it would be unlikely he'd meet any of them if he headed in that direction. He would swing wide to the east before doubling south. If it were buffalo, he thought, there was probably grass, and where grass grew trees grew. There was a chance of some shade for him and the stallion.

  He moved in an easterly direction, looking over his shoulder constantly for signs of the Indians, searching the sky before him and the horizon on all sides, a lone figure swinging across a big dry toward the circling vultures he judged were about five miles away.

  He had to climb an outcropping butte to gain full view of the area over which the vultures circled. He pulled the animal upward, talking softly to the big stallion that he had come to respect for its intelligence and strength.

  At the top of the butte he swung back into the saddle and worked his way through crumbling bedrock, picking his way carefully around the boulders, careful for the buzz of a rattler that might startle the stallion. The closer he came to the vultures, the stronger the odor of decay became. He moved around a big boulder and startled the huge ugly birds into flight.

  Wyoming turned away. The vultures had not been feeding on the remains of buffalo. The half-eaten, half-rotting bodies of two men lay exposed to the sun. Wyoming knew who they were. Steel had trapped the two cowboys from the cattle outfit in the rock table and bushwhacked them. Their guns were still in the leather.

  Wyoming got off the stallion, tied his neckerchief around his nose, and walked toward the stinking bodies. Slowly, holding his breath when he came close, he began to pile rocks on the bodies. It took him two hours of hard, sweating, nauseating work to cover the bodies while the vultures circled over his head. He had placed the last stone on top of the pile and stepped back to rest when a shaft whirred through the air and buried itself in the soft ground at his feet.

  He spun around. A dozen Comanche braves, arrows strung, eyes flat and hard, squinted at him.

  Wyoming remained perfectly still and looked at one and then the other, trying to determine who their leader could be.

  There was no place to hide, no chance at all. He might draw his Colt and kill one, or perhaps two, but that would be all. He would be caught by half a dozen shafts before he fell to the ground.

  "I am blood brother of the Comanche," Wyoming said, speaking their language slowly and clearly. "I am not to be killed until brought before your chief."

  The faces were immobile. The shafts in the bows remained steady. Wyoming turned slowly to look at those in back of him. One Indian, wearing two feathers and with his arms folded across his chest stared at Wyoming without expression. Wyoming addressed him.

  "The blood of the Comanche flows in my body. I am as much Indian as any of the braves before me who draw their shafts on my heart."

  "I am chief," the voice said in back of him. "And you lie! You are not brother of Comanche."

  "There is one way to prove my tongue is not forked," Wyoming said, keeping his back toward the speaker. "Every Comanche knows of this way."

  "Only true Comanche can demand this!" the voice said.

  Wyoming noticed the shafts were not held so tightly. "I am true Comanche."

  "You are white!"

  Wyoming spun around and faced the man. "You are not a chief and cannot speak for a chief!" he said.

  Several of the others looked at the unarmed Indian and waited.

  "If you were chief, you would not hesitate to give me the right of proving if I lie," Wyoming said.

  The man unfolded his arms slowly and made a gesture toward Wyoming. "Take him. The son of a dog will die a thousand times before his blood is swallowed in the earth."

  Several of the braves stepped forward and caught Wyoming by the arm and tied him quickly and painfully. On a signal from their leader, Wyoming was hoisted into the saddle of the stallion and led further to the east, through the table rock and down into the soft grass country.

  They rode for several hours. Not a word was spoken as they slipped past quiet stands of buffalo that nuzzled the long grass. They paused at a stream and all of them drank, but Wyoming was not allowed to get off his horse. The heat bore down on him unmercifully. He had ridden all night and then worked in the heat of the day piling stones around the bodies of the two cowboys. It seemed a week since he had taken a drink of water.

  They moved on through the grass of the country north of the Red River, steadily south and without talk.

  It was late in the afternoon, with the sun red on the western rims, when they came upon a stand of tipi. It was a big village, more than a hundred lodges and several large corrals full of the fine southwestern range ponies.

  As they passed the corrals, Wyoming saw several blacks with the unmistakable traces of a double-cinched Texas saddle in the hide of the animals. A light-colored gray stood near the edge of the corral and Wyoming saw the plain circle and double bar across the center of Pritchard's brand.

  Had they gotten Steel as he made his way through the Panhandle country of Texas, and taken the horses? Were the Comanches responsible for the
death of the two Pritchard cowboys back on the rock table?

  He moved down through the tangle of tipi with the others, his thoughts and his eyes searching for some answer.

  "You go in there!" the leader told him, and pointed to a tipi.

  Wyoming slipped from the stallion and stood his ground. "I demanded to see the chief," he said harshly. "A blood brother of the Comanche is not a squaw to be ordered about."

  The leader came forward and shoved his face close to Wyoming's. "You lie!" he shouted. "You are not brother to Comanche; you are white!"

  Wyoming turned and spoke to the others. "He talks like a woman who is afraid," he said and ducked his head to enter the tipi.

  The inside of the tent was hot and the smell of rancid grease and body sweat filled his nostrils. He stood still until his eyes grew accustomed to the light. The necessary equipment for living were spread before him: bows and arrows, drying meat, a stone-rimmed hole for cooking, several leather gourds for water. Hanging on the poles supporting the tipi were the colored beads and feathered head dress for special dances and ceremonies.

  He looked around for a knife, saw one and walked to it He glanced back at the flap opening and seeing no one, slipped the knife into his hands. He cut himself loose, hesitated before deciding what to do next and then walked to the water bag and drank.

  He made a small hole in the rear of the tipi and saw that it would be impossible to escape. He turned back to the interior of the tipi and pulled several strips of drying beef from a pole and began to eat. He sat down on a buffalo robe and chewed the beef carefully and slowlym. He was halfway through the second strip of beef when there was a commotion outside the tipi and the flap was suddenly thrown back.

  A huge Indian, well over six feet, dark and solemn, wearing breechclout and leggings of bleached deerskin neatly and elaborately worked with colored beads stepped inside the tipi. The leader of the party that had taken Wyoming stood in back of him. Several other braves crowded behind them.

  Wyoming pulled the knife. He nodded to the cut leather thongs that lay to one side. "I have no reason to run or hide from the chief of the Comanches, nor do I want to be held like a child."

  "Kalhaachee," the chief said, indicating the man beside him, "says you claim blood brother to the Comanche Indian."

  "That is true. Many summers ago in the Sioux country I found a Comanche brave sick and without a horse. I cared for him and sent him back to his people well again. We cut our arms here—" Wyoming exhibited an old scar received as a boy on a wild bramble bush while picking berries. "We are brothers."

  "Only a chief can make a blood brother," Kalhaachee said.

  "That may be so," Wyoming declared and cut another piece of the beef. "But this brave taught me the tongue of the Comanche and if he is Comanche, then I am his blood brother."

  "That does not make you Comanche," the chief said heavily.

  "Am I enemy to the chief and his village? Am I a threat to his lodges and children and squaws?"

  "You are white!" Kalhaachee said through a voice of hatred.

  "And you are—" Wyoming did not finish. He threw the knife in the ground at the feet of the brave, barely missing the Indian's foot. He turned to the chief. "I will prove I am worthy of being blood brother to the Comanche," he said.

  "How?"

  "Let him who thinks I am not worthy," Wyoming said, picking his way through the Indians to face Kalhaachee, "prove that I am not.''

  The old chief turned and looked at his subchief. "Let it be so," he said gravely. He turned and swept out of the tipi.

  Wyoming looked at Kalhaachee and then deliberately turned his back. The other Indians left with the subchief and Wyoming was left alone.

  Slowly, his hands sure, and steady, he began to strip off the buckskin shirt.

  They had moved to the edge of the village. Wyoming stood alone, his white skin standing out sharply against the deep bronze of the Indians. To one side a group of braves were busy talking with the subchief as he prepared himself. A sturdy pinto was brought around and held ready for Kalhaachee. The palomino was brought over to Wyoming by an old brave who also handed him a short-handled tomahawk. Wyoming examined it carefully for balance and strength of handle. He waited beside the palomino, watching Kalhaachee until there was a signal from the old chief who sat apart from the rest of the braves, astride a pure white stallion.

  The old man raised his hand. Wyoming saw Kalhaachee slip up onto the pony's back and scream at the top of his voice. He whirled around, sent the pony down toward the end of the clearing and turned and waited.

  The entire village turned to watch Wyoming mount the palomino. He took a good grip on the tomahawk and trotted out into the clearing and faced the Indian at the opposite end of the field.

  Kalhaachee spurred the pony forward and began moving toward Wyoming at a steady trot. Wyoming spoke to the stallion and the animal kicked dust and moved foward. Wyoming tightened his grip on his weapon and watched the approaching Indian. The pinto began to pick up speed. Wyoming did likewise. They were at a half gallop now and Wyoming watched to see on which side the Indian would make his pass. He dug his feet into the stirrups and took a tight grip on the leather.

  The pinto was coming at a gallop now, full on, driving hard. Wyoming waited a split second before sending the stallion forward to meet the Indian's attack.

  At fifty feet, the Indian was leaning forward and a little to Wyoming's right. The cowboy waited until the horses were twenty feet apart before suddenly pulling the stallion away to the left, half standing in his stirrup and leaning over low.

  The horses flashed past each other. Kalhaachee threw the hand ax a split second too late. Wyoming dropped completely behind the side of the golden horse, holding onto the saddlehorn with his left hand and sending the tomahawk flying after the retreating Indian. The throw was off balance and difficult, but the ax landed handle first on the back of the Indian. There was a howl from the village. Nothing had escaped their eye.

  Wyoming jerked the animal to a stop and whirled around. He had no idea what would be next. Were they supposed to recover their weapons and try again?

  Wyoming waited until he saw the Indian draw up before the chief. Wyoming trotted up alongside him and waited.

  Not a word was said. The old chief summoned one of his braves who handed the leader two knives, each with a blade ten inches long.

  The chief indicated that each was to have a knife. Wyoming accepted his and watched while Kalhaachee spurned the use of the knife, bringing out his own from his belt sheath. He slipped from the pinto and landed squarely on the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet, and waved the knife at Wyoming.

  The cowboy took a deep breath and got off the stallion and moved away from the animal, his eyes on the Indian. The entire village population crowded in a tight circle around them.

  He tried to remember everything Curly had told him about fighting with a knife. Blade up, handle resting naturally across the palm, right foot forward, left foot dragging and acting as leverage for the whole body. You jabbed with it, Curly had told him, jab and stick, as if it was a sword three feet longer than it actually is. The thing you want to do is get the knife blade as close to your enemy as possible. Your left hand is used as a chop, and only a chop, to beat down the other's thrust.

  The Indian crouched low, body bent forward, both hands about even. After the first few seconds of circling each other, Wyoming's initial feeling of awkwardness wore off and he fell into a natural position as he had done so many times when Curly had worked with him, using the hot ends of a burning stick instead of knives. Wyoming had many a painful burn on his arms and belly before he began to give it back to Curly. After a while it got so Curly was getting most of the burns instead of Wyoming.

  The Indian flashed in quickly and made a pass at Wyoming. Wyoming's left arm snapped out and chopped down hard on the Indian's wrist. The man nearly stumbled and caught himself just in time and danced away from Wyoming's lunge.

  They circl
ed again. Wyoming lunged and watched the Indian dance clear. He lunged again, and again the Indian danced out of his way, moving first left and then right.

  The Indian came in fast and low. Wyoming caught him squarely in the face with a perfectly timed kick. He felt the bone of the Indian's nose crunch. The Indian sprawled back. Wyoming moved in on top of him, but the Indian recovered and scrambled out of the way, throwing dirt into Wyoming's face and momentarily blinding him.

  They moved away from each other, the Indian fingering his nose and snorting as he tried to breath, Wyoming wiping the dust and grit out of his eyes.

  The Indian moved in again, crowding Wyoming, swiping at him with the blade and concentrating on Wyoming's left hand, that was the defense. It was then that Wyoming saw a flaw.

  He waited. The Indian came in again and again, swiping at the chopping left hand, trying to get at the wrist and disable it. Again and again he moved in, first left and then right.

  Wyoming waited, fighting defensively, chopping the attacks with his left hand, wary of the Indian's own left that sought to grab his outstretched arm.

  Kalhaachee became reckless. He was intent on getting the left arm now. He moved in closer, closer. Wyoming stuck his left out a little further than usual and the Indian took the bait. He lunged in to slash the wrist of the left hand, and as he did, Wyoming lunged straight-armed and inside the Indian's own defending arm. The blade went into the Indian's belly above the naval and came through on the other side.

  Wyoming knocked the knife out of the Indian's hand as the man tried to slash even as the life was running out of him. He sagged in the knees and Wyoming withdrew the knife. The Indian fell to the ground and lay still.

  Wyoming held the knife tightly and turned to the chief. No one moved. Not a word was said.

  Wyoming hurled the knife into the ground at the feet of the nearest brave. Then he turned and looked at the old chief. "What have I won, now that the brave who did not believe I was a blood brother is dead?"