“As soon as the rest have finished eating, let the fire die to coals, keep the coffee on, and have every man stand to arms.”
“They are tired, Lieutenant, mighty tired.”
“I’d rather see them tired than dead.” He went to his weary horse and mounted.
Without another word, he swung toward the settlers’ camp. There he demanded:
“Who is in charge here?”
A tall, lanky man with a shock of sandy hair looked up at him, grinning slowly.
“This here ain’t the army. We’re free agents. We take orders from nobody.” Rawlings turned away from him. “Any old soldiers here? From any army at all?” he asked.
Several men spoke up. “All right. Now you men listen to me. I have no authority over you except what authority the Army has given me to protect you. There may be an Indian attack. Get your children inside the tie-wall, and stay in yourselves. Get out any firearms you have and have them ready. Appoint a commanding officer and detail some guards.”
“I don’t see any Indians.” It was the tall, lanky man who spoke. “What you tryin’ to do, Yankee? Show off that blue uniform?” Another man sauntered from the group, slowly followed by the others who had been soldiers. The first one was a slender whip of a man with neat black mustaches and high cheek bones. There was a tautaess in him that Zeb immediately liked. “Vaucelle, sir. French Foreign Legion.”
“Vaucelle? I did not know there were Frenchmen in the enlisted ranks of the Legion.”
The man’s eyes smiled faintly. “I was an officer, sir. Will you tell us what the situation is?”
“These are Arapahoe hunting grounds. The Indians were under the impression the railroad would bring no settlers or hunters here. They will try to drive us away. I do not know their numbers, but there will be at least five hundred Indians out there—perhaps half again that many. I expect an attack soon, perhaps before sundown.”
Zeb indicated the army group. “I have twenty-two men, including myself and my sergeant. With three exceptions, they are veterans, and the exceptions are good men. But we will need all the help we can get.” “Thank you, Lieutenant, I will see what I can do.” The sandy-haired man got to his feet slowly. “I’d like to see what the Lieutenant can do. I’ve seen him perambulatin’ around here, shinin’ up to that gal lives by herself in that tent, and I—“ Zeb Rawlings swung down. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “I hope you will excuse me.”
The sandy-haired man was three inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Zeb. He grinned a slow grin and rubbed his palms down his jeans. “Ain’t had me a chanct like this here since the war, by G—!”
He closed his fingers in a big fist and threw his punch. There was no finesse in Zeb Rawlings. He had never had an opportunity to learn there even was such a thing. Linus, on the other hand, had been victor in many a brutal fight with keelboaters and trappers, and he had demonstrated to his sons and rehearsed them in the basic elements of fighting to win. The big sandy-haired man swung, and Zeb Rawlings went under the swing and put everything he had into a right to the ribs. The man buckled at the knees and started to fold, and Zeb Rawlings jerked up his knee to meet the falling chin. There was an ugly clunk and the man continued to fall. Zeb Rawlings stepped back, blowing on his skinned knuckles and looking at the man on the ground. Then he turned. “Mr. Vaucelle, I’ll appreciate what you can do. Thank you!” Quickly, he stepped into the stirrups and turned away, and as he did so he saw Julie Stuart.
She was standing not fifty feet away, a basket in her hand, and as their eyes met, she turned sharply as if to go. He touched a spur to his horse and was beside her in a bound. “I’ve yet to offer my congratulations,” he said stiffly. She turned her eyes on him. “Congratulations?”
“Mike King told me he had spoken to you.”
Her chin came up. “He has spoken to me many times, and what of it? I’ve no doubt he will speak to me again if he passes me on the way, and I shall answer, and what of that?”
“You’re not—you mean you’re not going to marry him?”
“Mike King? And why should a girl want to marry a railroad, I’d like to know?
I’ve never given a thought to it.”
“But he told me—I thought—“
“Do you believe everything you’re told, then? Don’t you know the man hasn’t the truth in him? You had no reason to think anything of the sort, and if you’d been less of a fool you would have known it.”
Zeb glanced toward the encampment. “Julie, you’ve got to get what you need and come to where the army is. We’re expecting an attack.” “You change the subject very fast.”
He grinned sheepishly. “It’s a poor time to talk of romance and what comes after, when I have a duty to fulfill.” He looked down into her eyes. “Julie, I’ll be leaving the Army.”
“So you told me before. If you are going to leave, you should do it soon.
Wherever we settle we will want a crop in, and there’s little time.”
He was halfway back to the camp before the full weight of her words struck him.
He rode into camp in a daze.
And then anger flooded through him. King had lied to him, made a fool of him, and he had let it happen. Wheeling his horse, he rode toward King’s car just as the railroad man stepped to the door and stretched. Zeb drew up. “You’re not wearing a gun,” he said. “Get one, and get it now.” Mike King lowered his arms with care. His pistol lay on his desk inside, and almost within reach was a fully loaded shotgun. Zeb Rawling’s face was taut and white, and King, who was counted a courageous man, felt an odd sinking in the pit of his stomach. In that instant he knew he was closer to death than he had ever been. He had seen Zeb Rawlings shoot, and he knew just exactly what his chances were.
He started to speak, when a shout came from the army encampment. “Indians!
Indians!”
A shot barked in the afternoon sun. Zeb wheeled his horse sharply around. The crest of the hill was feathered with charging Arapahoes, and even as he looked, another bunch burst from the mouth of a gully not twenty-five yards off, their horses at a dead run.
“You asked for war!” he shouted savagely at King. “Now you’ve got it!” He turned his horse and raced the few yards to his own camp, where sporadic fire had already begun as his veterans picked their targets. Directly before him Zeb saw a man stagger, clutching at his throat, where blood welled between his fingers.
Glancing toward the settlers’ camp, he saw Vaucelle and the ex-soldiers he had mustered lined up behind the tie-stacks, rifles poised to fire. Under their steadying influence the others were coolly prepared to fight. Mixed among the muzzle-loaders and breech-loaders were a few of the new Henry rifles, and here and there a Spencer. You could always tell when the big Spencer hit, because the .56 or .54 caliber cartridges would lift an Indian right off his horse.
A statuesque blonde girl who might have modeled for Brunhilde was running a ramrod down a rifle barrel, loading it and passing it to a man who exchanged it for the rifle he had just fired. Another woman was bending over a wounded man, bathing a wounded arm and preparing to bandage it. Far from their homes in a savage land, these stalwart people, many of whom had never heard a shot fired in anger, were fighting to defend their right to be here. No less than the Indians, they fought for home and family, and many would die.
King’s railroaders settled down grimly. Most of them were veterans, or men who had experienced Indian battles before, and they took their positions quickly and began to fire.
The sudden fire seemed to break the onrush of Indians, for their charge suddenly split off to left and right. And then Zeb heard a sound that gripped his throat with sudden fear.
A soft, muted thunder, scarcely heard, then filling the ears with sound … a great dust cloud that suddenly exploded above the hill, and then the dust was split apart by a vast, rolling blackness from which came the thunder. A dark cloud of massive, woolly heads, glistening horns … buffalo! On either side rode the Arapahoes, pointing the stampeding herd straight at the town of canvas, straight at the flimsy barricades of the settlers, many of whom were at the end of the tie-stacks.