It knocked him forward and off balance, and in a moment I was jerkin’ him off the pony and swingin’ to its back.
We ran those ponies, me ahead and them after me, until the sun went down, but I’d circled around and came back to where my outfit was camped. I went through patches of woods, across plains, down rocky draws, and finally I seen ol’ Tilson’s high-top sombrero against the sky, and I called out, “Don’t shoot, Til! It’s me! Sackett!”
Well, they’d give me up for dead. Two days the Injuns had me, and there’d been a third day of gettin’ away from them.
“Where the hell you been? We’re short-handed enough,” Til said, ” ‘thout you taken off a Sundayin’ around over the hills whilst the rest of us work.”
“I was took by Injuns,” I said.
“A likely story!” he scoffed. “You’ve still got your hair.”
He pointed toward camp. “Get yourself some coffee. You’ll be standin’ guard at daybreak.”
Well, I walked down into camp, and ol’ Nelson was standin’ there by the fire. “You bring any company with you?” he asked.
“Tried to avoid it,” I said, “but there might be one of them show up. I done some runnin’,” I said, “and then I got this horse.”
“You call that a horse. Won’t weigh six hundred pound.”
“Don’t you miscall him. He can run.”
Nelson took up a cup and filled it. “Have yourself something.” He looked at me. “You et?”
“Oh, sure! Don’t you worry none about me! Why, two, three days ago, I et at a cow camp run by Nelson Storey, who was takin’ cows to Montana. I ain’t had a bit since, but then what can a man expect? I didn’t come up on no rest-too-rawnts, and them Injuns didn’t figure to waste grab on a man who wasn’t goin’ to live long enough to digest it”
He pointed. “There’s some roast buffalo, camp-baked beans, and some prunes. That should fix you up.” He took out a big silver watch. “You got two hours to sleep before you stand guard.”
“Nels,” I said, “I lost my rifle, and —”
“One of the boys picked it up,” he said. “It’s in the wagon. Draw you a new knife there. I’ll dock you for the time off.”
Well, I knew he wouldn’t do no such thing, but I was so glad to be back, I didn’t care if he did. Only when I was a-settin’ my horse out there by the cattle that night, I thought back to the hatred lookin’ at me out of those fierce black eyes of High-Backed Bull, and I was glad I’d seen the last of him.
Until now —
He stared at me. “You Sack-ETT,” he said.
Tyrel said, “You actually know this Injun?”
“I know him,” I said, “from that trip I took up the Bozeman Trail after the War Between the States. We had us a little run-in back yonder. They had me fixed to run the gauntlet — fifty-sixty big Injuns all lined up with me to run down the aisle betwixt ’em and each one hittin’ or cuttin’ at me.
“Well, I recalled that story pa told us about John Coulter, so I done likewise. I just taken off across the country and not down their gauntlet. This big buck here, he durned near caught me.”
“So Sack-ETT,” Bull said, “it is again.”
Smiling, I held out my hand. “Friends?” I said.
He stared at me. “No friend,” he said. “I kill.”
“Don’t try it. I’m bad luck for you. Me,” I said, “bad medicine for you, much bad medicine.”
He stared at me, very cool and not at all scared. “Soon you hair here.” He touched his horse’s bridle where three other scalps, one of them obviously that of a white man, already dangled.
He changed the subject. With a wide sweep of his hand, he said, “This belong to Sioux. What you do here?”
“Crossing it, Bull. We’re just driving across on the way to Fort Qu’Appelle.” It was a Canadian fort, and the name just came to me. “Maybe we’ll meet on the way back.”
They turned and rode away, and Tyrel, he just sat there looking after them, and then he shook his head. “There was a time there when I figured I’d have to do the fastest shootin’ I ever done.”
Gilcrist and the Ox come ridin’ up. They could see the four Sioux ridin’ away. “What happened?” Gil asked.
“No trouble,” I said. “Just a Sioux who tried to take my hair one time, thinkin’ about another try.”
“You knew him?”
“Some years back,” I said. ‘Td just come out of the Sixth Cavalry and — ”
“The Sixth?” He was surprised. “Sackett? Were you that Sackett?”
“So far as I know, I was the only one in the outfit.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll be dee-double damned!”
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “Let’s get ’em movin’!”
We lined them out and pointed them north and prayed a little that we wouldn’t meet any more Sioux, but after my meeting with High-Backed Bull, I knew they’d be back.
Cap rode up to see me at point. “Hustle ’em, Cap. I want distance.”
“You know you ain’t goin’ to outran any Injuns,” he said. “If they come for us, they’ll find us.”
“They’ll come,” I said.
“You should’ve killed him when you had the chance.”
Brandy had come up to us, wanting to hear. “I’d figure him grateful,” Brandy said. “You let him live when you could’ve killed him.”
“They don’t figure that way, son,” Cap remarked. “They figured him a coward for not followin’ through. They don’t think he had nerve enough.”
“Injuns don’t think the same as us, and we keep thinkin’ they do. That’s been the cause of most of the trouble. We think one way, they think another, and even when the words are the same, they mean different things.”
“I’ve fought ’em here and there, lived with some of them, too. They’re good people, mostly, but there’s right-out bad ones, the same as with us.”
“Folks get the wrong idea about Injuns. Somebody figured the Injuns thought the white man was somethin’ special. Some easterner who’d never seen an Injun figured it that way. Nothing of the kind. The Injuns mostly looked down on the white man.”
“Why? Because he was tradin’ for furs, and the Injuns figured if he was any kind of a man, he’d go ketch his own. He traded for ’em because he didn’t know how to hunt or trap.”
“The Sioux, the Cheyenne, an’ all them, they despised the white man, although they wanted what he traded. They wanted steel traps, guns, blankets, and whiskey.”
Cap pushed a brindle steer back into the herd. “Some folks figured it was all wrong to trade the Injuns whiskey, and no doubt it was, but it wasn’t meanness made ’em do it. They traded the Injuns whiskey because it was what most of those white men wanted themselves, so they figured the Injun wanted it, too.”
We pushed ’em on into the evening and bedded down on Rocky Run, finding ourselves a little hollow down off the skyline. The mosquitoes were worse, but we were a whole lot less visible.
When we had a fire going, I roped a fresh horse and switched saddles. “I’ll mosey around a mite,” I told Cap. “You an’ Tyrel, you keep a hold on things whilst I’m gone.”
“We’ll try,” Cap said.
Rocky Run was a mite of a stream that probably fed into the James, but there’d been rains, and there was good water. Topping out on a ridge, I dropped over the edge far enough not to skyline myself and took a look around.
Mostly, I studied the country to the west. Come daybreak, we’d be lined out to the west, shaping a bit north for the James again.
How many Sioux were there and how far away?
There’d be a-plenty, no doubt, but I was hoping High-Backed Bull would have to go some distance to his village. There was no way to hide eleven hundred head of cattle and no way you could move them very fast. We’d have to do what we could.
Turning back toward camp, a movement caught my eye. Somebody was coming, somebody on a slow-walking horse that stopped now and again, then started on. But he was coming my way.
Shucking my Winchester, I taken my horse down off the low ridge, kind of angling toward that rider.
It was already almost dark, and there were stars here and yonder, but a body could make things out. This rider was all humped over in the saddle like he was hurt. I caught a momentary glint of metal, and I pulled up and waited.
When he was some fifty yards off, I covered him with my Winchester and let him close the distance.