Yet, in the days that followed, all their preparations seemed for nothing. The mornings came one after another, each crisp and clear, and the days warmed. The grass was green on all the hills now. There were several light showers and a thunderstorm that brought a crashing downpour that lasted for less than an hour.
The Qu’Appelle River lay somewhere before them and off to the west the Moose Mountains.
Orrin found himself thinking of Nettie. She should be well on her way to Fort Carlton now, far away to the north. He would probably not see her again. The thought made him melancholy, yet there was nothing to be done. Their way lay west, and if Tell were alive, he would be coming on to join them if by some chance he was not already there before them.
Occasionally, they saw the bones of buffalo, once the antlers of a deer. Occasionally, there were other bones, unfamiliar to a quick glance, but there was no time to pause and examine them. They pushed on, accompanied by the creaking, groaning wheels of the Red River carts.
Tyrel’s bruised leg remained sore and stiff, but his flesh wound healed rapidly, as wounds usually did on the plains and in the mountains. He took to riding a little more each day, usually scouting wide of the drive and only returning to it occasionally.
“Something’s not right,” he commented once. “I can smell trouble.”
“The Ox is worried,” Orrin added. “He’s got something on his mind. That partner of his, I guess. Gilcrist, his name was. Or so he said.”
“Good a name as any,” Tyrel said. “Out here, if a man doesn’t like his name, he can choose his own, and a lot of folks have.”
“He never talks to Fleming,” Orrin said. “At least, I haven’t seen them even near one another for days.”
A brief but violent thunderstorm came with the afternoon. Fort Qu’Appelle was nearby, but there was no need to stop, and when the storm passed, he led the drive on past the fort. However, he had gone but a mile or less when a party of riders appeared. Several Indians, Crees by the look of them, rode up. While the cattle moved on, Orrin waited with Baptiste and the carts.
The Indians were friendly, curious as to where the cattle were being taken and about the Sioux, with whom they were only occasionally friendly.
Tyrel rode to meet them when they finally caught up.
“Picked up some sign,” he said. “Something you should see, Orrin.”
“Trouble?”
“Maybe.”
Orrin glanced at the sun. “We’ve got a few miles of driving ahead of us. All right, let’s go look!”
The tracks were two miles ahead of the herd. At least five riders had come up from the southwest and had met a half-dozen riders coming down from the northeast. They had dismounted, built a small fire, and made coffee. The coffee grounds had been thrown out when they emptied their pot for packing.
“Maybe a dozen men riding well-shod horses,” Tyrel said, “and they rode off to the west together.”
Orrin nodded. He had been poking around the campfire and looking at tracks.
“Just for luck, Tye,” he said, “let’s turn due north for a spell.”
“Toward Fort Carlton?” Tyrel asked, his eyes too innocent.
Orrin flushed. “Well, it seems a good idea.”
Chapter XVI
When first it come to me that I was alive, I was moving. For what seemed a long time, I lay there with my eyes closed and just feeling the comfort of lying still. Then I tried to move, and everything hurt, and I mean everything.
Then I got to wondering where I was and what was moving me and what was I doing flat on my back when there was work to be done?
When I tried to move my right arm, I could, and my hand felt for my gun, and it was gone. So was my gun belt and holster. Yet I wasn’t tied down, so it must be that I was with friendly folks. About that time, I realized I was riding on a travois pulled behind an Indian pony.
After a bit, I closed my eyes and must have passed out again because the next thing I knew we were standing still. I was lying flat out on the ground, and I could hear a fire crackling and smell meat broiling.
Now when a body has been around as long as me, he collects a memory for smells, and the smells told me even without opening my eyes that I was in an Indian camp.
About that time, an Indian came over to me, and he saw my eyes were open, and he said something in an Indian dialect I hadn’t heard before, and an Indian woman came over to look at me. I tried to sit up, and although it hurt like hell, I managed it. Didn’t seem I had any broken bones, but I was likely bruised head to foot, which can be even more painful sometimes.
She brought me a bowl with some broth in it, and whatever else was wrong with me hadn’t hurt my appetite. The man who had found me awake was a young man, strongly made but limping.
A youngster, walking about, came over and stared at me with big round eyes, and I smiled at him. When I had put away two bowls of broth, an old Indian came to me with my gun belt and holster. My six-shooter was in it, and he handed it to me. First thing, I checked the loads, and they were there.
The old man squatted beside me. “Much cows, all gone,” he said. He gestured to show they’d scattered every which way.
“Men?” I asked.
He shrugged and pointed across the way, and I saw another man lying on the ground a dozen feet away. I raised up a bit and looked. It was Lin, the Chinese cook.
“How bad?”
“Much bad. Much hurt.” He looked over at Lin and then said, “White man?”
“Chinese,” I said.
The word meant nothing to him, so I drew a diagram in the dust, showing where we now were, the south Saskatchewan and the mountains of British Columbia. That he grasped quickly. Then I made a space and said, “Much water.” Beyond it, I drew a coast and indicated China. “His home,” I said.
He studied it, then indicated British Columbia and drew his eyes thin to seem like Lin’s. “Indian,” he said, “here.”
It was true. A long time since I had been told by a man in the Sixth Cavalry that some of the Indians from the northwest coast had eyes like the Chinese.
After a while, I went to sleep and was only awakened when they were ready to offer me food; it was daybreak.
The young Indian who had been wounded and on the travois when first we encountered them carried a rifle of British make. The older men were armed only with bows. We were heading northwest, but I asked no questions, being content to just lie and rest. What had happened to me, I did not know, but I suspected a mild concussion and that I had fallen and been dragged. My shoulders were raw, I discovered, and had been treated with some herbs by a squaw.
On the following day, I got up and could move around. Then one old Indian, who seemed to be in authority if anyone was, showed me my saddle, bridle, saddlebags, and rifle, carefully cared for on another travois. I left the riding gear where it was but took up the rifle, at which the old man showed approval. Seemed to me they expected grief and were glad to have another fighting man on his feet.
Lin had a broken leg. He was skinned up and bruised not unlike what happened to me, but he had the busted leg to boot. They’d set the bone, put splints on the leg, and bound it up with wet rawhide, which had dried and shrunk tight around the leg.
“Where are the others?”
I walked beside him as we moved. “No tellin’. Dead, maybe. Scattered to the winds, maybe. All you’ve got to do is get well.”
Well, I was a long way from being a well man. Before the day was over, I was so tired I could scarce drag. They made camp in a tree-lined hollow with a small waterhole and a bunch of poplars.
We’d lost all track of time, Lin an’ me. We’d both been unconscious, and we didn’t know how long. I’d no idea what had become of my horse or the remuda stock we had, and we’d lost all our cattle.
Only thing I could say for us was that we were headin’ in the right direction and we were alive.
What I needed was a horse. This was the first time I’d been caught afoot in a long time, and I didn’t like it. I should be scouting the country, hunting for Tyrel and roundin’ up cows.