With the addition of George Hammond, the party that approached Little Soldier’s camp tallied thirteen. This made the Englishman’s boy distinctly uneasy; they were back to the bad-luck number they’d suffered before Hardwick cut loose Farmer Hank. Now he felt as if Farmer Hank had changed shape, remounted, and was spurring himself across Battle Creek with them.
The Englishman’s boy stuck close to Ed Grace. They rode side by side, knees almost touching; the strong-boned profile of the Eagle with its powerful hooked nose was stoical, as pale as the marble bust of a Roman senator. He looked neither right nor left, but kept his eyes fixed dead ahead as if they were fastened on stern duty.
Hardwick had given the command to go forward at a walk, in good order, so as not to give the impression they were attacking; nevertheless every man carried a rifle at the ready, butt planted on hip. The camp stirred excitedly at their coming; the wolfers could hear the strident, hysterical barking of dogs, could see figures dodging in and out of lodge entrances, young boys hurrying to catch ponies in the pasture, women snatching up children on the run. In a matter of minutes, a phalanx of fifty or sixty warriors had assembled on the outskirts to meet them.
Hardwick halted his men three hundred yards from the camp, waved a white handkerchief in the air to announce a parley and rode forward, accompanied only by George Hammond. The fierce afternoon heat warped the air between the two parties like a flawed and wavy windowpane; sweat slid out from under the derby on the Englishman’s boy’s head and trickled down his face.
Some of the welcoming party were drunk, had the same slack-jawed whisky belligerence written on their faces as the majority of wolfers Hardwick had left waiting behind him. Yet a goodly number of the Assiniboine were stone-faced and sober, waiting so profoundly, so mutely still, the only discernible movement in their ranks was the flicker of a feather when a gust of hot breeze licked it. Their faces were painted red like the Bear Cult man’s, except their eyes were circled in white instead of black. The warriors’ hair was hacked short over the forehead, daubed and smeared with white clay, drawn back in long, thick queues trailing down their spines. Many wore ear beads, and those who went shirtless displayed two black stripes of tattoo running from their throats to their bellies. The red of the faces was repeated in red flannel breechclouts and leggings, black and crimson trader blankets which many of the old men wore draped around their shoulders.
The only firearms Hardwick could spot were Northwest muskets. The Indians without guns were armed with lances and horn bows.
Hammond leaned across his saddle-pommel to draw Hardwick’s attention to a tall, lean Assiniboine in a round wolf-skin cap, the owner of a ferociously lupine face extravagantly pocked with smallpox scars and looking like an adobe wall riddled by a blast of buckshot. “I know that bird,” he said. “He’s a bad one. Killed two Blackfoot outside of Fort Kipp last year. His name’s First Shoot, and he does.”
Hardwick nodded, then began to speak, demanding to see the chief, demanding to see Little Soldier. He spoke a childish English, scolding them for stealing Hammond’s horse and saying if the Assiniboine didn’t want heap trouble, Little Soldier better make the bad Assiniboine return the pony pronto.
He had just launched into this pidgin peroration when Abe Farwell galloped up from the fort on a saddleless mule, legs flapping against its ribs. On second thought he had decided the stakes were too high to sit this one out; if there was trouble with the Assiniboine, a post full of trade goods and a winter’s cache of furs and buffalo robes would be placed in jeopardy. He was offering himself as interpreter and mediator.
“Which one of these rascals is Little Soldier?” Hardwick wanted to know.
Farwell quickly scanned the crowd. “He ain’t here.”
“Then you tell one of these monkeys to fetch him. On the double.”
“You want the horse back, there’s your man,” said Farwell, pointing out First Shoot. “He’s head of the Agi’cita, the Soldier’s Society – Indian police. If Hammond wants his horse back without bloodshed, you ask First Shoot to get it for you.”
Hammond’s jaw was working angrily under a wiry black beard which crawled so high up his cheekbones it stopped just short of his eyes. “I ain’t asking nobody,” he said. “I ain’t begging for what’s mine. I paid once to get my property back to keep the peace, but they turn around and steal it off you again. I ain’t asking any more, I’m telling.”
Hardwick was studying First Shoot. His face betrayed he understood a little of Hammond’s speech.
There was a disturbance at the back of the warriors. The crowd parted to make way for Little Soldier, blind drunk, leaning on his Sits-Beside-Him wife for support. A big American flag was tied in a bib around his neck. Looking like a grey-haired baby taking his first uncertain steps, he stumbled forward to greet Hardwick.
“There’s your chief,” said Farwell, under his breath. “Think you can talk any sense into him?”
Little Soldier began to orate.
“What’s he jawing on?” Hardwick snapped.
Farwell translated. “He’s saying he brought the Star Flag to show you how good a friend Little Soldier is to the Americans. They gave him this Star Flag because he never kills Americans – only Peigans. The Peigans kill Americans all the time. Maybe sometime you’d like to come with him and rub out a few Peigans. Maybe you’d like to make him a present of needle-guns so he could kill the Peigans for you and save you the trouble.”
“You tell him my trouble right now is a horse. That’s my only trouble. You tell him George Hammond’s horse was stole by one of his people. You tell him a couple days back Indians stole nigh on twenty head of my horses. You tell him I’m losing patience with redskin thieving ways and I’m of a mind to do something about it. You tell him that.”
“I ain’t telling him no such thing. You can’t talk to him like that in front of his own people.”
“You tell him what I said – straight out – or I’ll make my point by riding over and ripping the flag off that lying old rogue.”
Farwell, looking uneasy, addressed Little Soldier. Before he was finished, Little Soldier interrupted him, speaking wildly, flailing an arm, teetering back and forth on his heels.
“He says nobody from his band stole Hammond’s horse. Maybe Hammond’s horse wandered. Horses wander. Maybe some bad Peigans took the horse. He knows Hammond’s horse. A sorrel horse. Look for yourself; there are no sorrel horses anywhere in Little Soldier’s camp.”
“No,” said Hardwick, “there ain’t never no stolen horses in an Indian camp. That goes without saying. Shit.”
“He says to show Hammond he speaks the truth, he will give him two horses of his own. They will be hostage horses. When Hammond finds his wandering horse again, then he can give the ponies back to Little Soldier. If he doesn’t find his horse, he can keep them. That’s fair, he says. Two horses for one. Let them shake hands on it and then when Hammond brings him a bottle of whisky they will be friends.”
“I don’t want two goddamn starving, bag-of-bones Indian ponies for my horse,” blurted Hammond. “My horse is grain-fed and fat. He’s got thoroughbred blood in him. I ain’t horse-trading with no son of a bitch of a pilfering Indian. I want my horse back and that’s the end of it.”
Farwell said a few words to the chief. He answered.
“He says he can’t give you what he doesn’t have. You might ask him for the sun, but the sun is not in his power to give. He will give you what he has to give – two horses for one. Be happy with what he has to give – the Assiniboine are poor Indians. They came to the Cypress Hills to escape the hunger in the north. The hunting is good here but they are not fat yet. They need horses to run the buffalo, but he is willing to give George Hammond two horses so there will be no bad blood between them. George Hammond should take his horses and be happy. There are young Assiniboine men with no horses who would bless Little Soldier’s name if he were to make them such a generous present. He says take the horses or you will make the young men angry. He cannot be responsible for young men when they are angry.”
A queer smile flitted across Hardwick’s lips. “I believe I just heard a threat,” he said.
“No, no,” soothed Farwell, “it ain’t no threat – it’s the truth. Take the goddamn horses, Hardwick. This is a mighty poor band. He’s making you a big gift. Big enough it hurts. I don’t think they own more than a dozen horses. He’s trying to smooth things over. Be polite – take them.”
“Tell him I piss on his horses.”
Farwell heeled his mule in front of Hardwick, strategically blocking the old man’s view of the white man’s sneering face. Little Soldier smiled broadly while his wife clutched his elbow, steadying him as he rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Tom, I ain’t going to say that. Don’t go hot-headed on me now. Some of these young bucks are full of Solomon’s whisky. Don’t go poking the hive with a stick. Let it rest.”
Hardwick stood in his stirrups and shouted over Farwell’s head. “I piss on you and your horses! Understand? I want Hammond’s horse! Give us Hammond’s horse or take the consequences!” Uncomprehending, Little Soldier grinned foolishly back at him, but First Shoot understood enough English to grasp Hardwick’s meaning. He began to angrily shout and a discomfiting murmur arose and spread through the ranks of the warriors. Stepping forward, he flung his buffalo robe to the ground in a passionate gesture. Others followed suit, Stripping off their clothes. Farwell trotted his mule back and forth between the two white men and the Indians, holding up his arms in supplication, doing his best to cajole them in the Assiniboine tongue.
“They’re getting ready to fight,” said Hammond anxiously. “Throwing off their clothes so if they take a bullet it’ll be a clean wound. We better pull stakes.”
The Assiniboine were nearly naked now, taunting the whites, brandishing muskets, making the air whine as they whirled poggamoggans threateningly above their heads, shaking bows and lances as Farwell desperately pleaded with them.
“Farwell, clear out!” shouted Hardwick. “Clear out or, damn your hide, I’ll fire anyway!”
“Don’t you do it!” screamed Farwell. “Not with a white man between you!”
Hardwick and Hammond, carbines levelled, were backing their horses away from the shrieking Assiniboine. Suddenly, Hardwick’s horse reared. Hammond had fired.
A frantic scramble to suck leather, clawing to keep his seat. The horse slammed back down on its forelegs, hard, popping him up, skidding his boot out of the stirrup. He heard the dull pop of a musket discharging, caught the dazzle of the haunch of Hammond’s horse, spinning in a tight turn. Farwell flew by him, wide-eyed and screaming, clinging to his mule, slashing it into a clumsy, slew-footed gallop with his reins. Fumbling with his boot to retrieve the lost stirrup, fumbling with the Henry, without aiming Hardwick squeezed a shot off over the flank of his horse. Then he was pounding after Hammond and Farwell, flattening himself low in the saddle, brutally slapping his pony’s rump with his rifle barrel. A spasm of muzzle-loader fire erupted at his back. He shrank down further, pinching himself as small as he could. His neck tingled with the expectation of a bullet.
With the white men between them and the Assiniboine, the wolfers sat their pawing, stamping horses, holding fire. The Indians pursued on foot, little patches of black musket-smoke puffing into the air as they ran and fired, ran and fired. They were reloading fast, shaking powder into the barrels of their guns and spitting bullets into the muzzles, in their haste omitting to use wadding, so their shot did not carry far or accurately.
Hammond reached the wolfers and bellowed, “Run for cover, boys! The coulee! The coulee!” as he galloped by, heading for the narrow gulch which lay like a wound in the breast of the prairie. But the nervous wolfers held their ground on whinnying, panicked horses.
A row of tense white faces shimmered sidelong in the eye of the Englishman’s boy. He heard harsh, whispered curses directed at no one; shouts of encouragement to Hardwick that Hardwick could not hear. Distance and time were mirages, bending and shimmering like the hot air. Closer yet farther. Sooner yet later.
And then Hardwick and Farwell were upon them. Hardwick waving them back to the coulee. The line swung as one, as prettily orchestrated by terror as a practised cavalry manoeuvre on a parade-ground square. They whipped their mounts into a headlong gallop which in moments brought them churning down into the cutbank where Hammond cowered, a cataract of heaving horses, clouds of dust, men jolting in saddles.
By the time the Englishman’s boy dismounted, the narrow confine of the crevice was ringing with rifle-fire. He picked out Grace’s blue-handkerchiefed head and ran to him doubled over, jerking his horse down the shallow coulee bottom after him. He could hear someone screaming, “They’re coming! Lord Jesus, they’re coming!” He flung himself down beside Grace. Here the coulee was only four feet deep, forming a natural rifle pit.
Dragging himself up on his elbows, he surveyed the ground he’d just covered in precipitous retreat, an open expanse dotted with clumps of wolf willow and sage. Over this the Assiniboine were advancing from patch of cover to patch of cover, firing their muzzle-loaders, reloading, then skittering and zigzagging their way forward to discharge another shot. Behind them the camp was emptying, women rushing children and infants into thick timber which, once it closed on them, resumed its placid front.
Already the Englishman’s boy could count three of the attacking Indians lying broken on the landscape like dolls hurled to a nursery floor. Ten yards from the lip of the coulee Farwell’s wounded mule lay on its side, its head rising and falling as the strength bled out of it with every pump of its heart.
“Your mouth’s hanging open,” Grace said. “Close it and fire.”
In that instant, the Assiniboine let loose a volley and swept up out of the willow and grass with sharp, piercing cries. Fox-fast and fleet, they shredded the screen of gun-smoke issuing from their muskets with their charge.
The Henrys began to bark up and down the coulee like a pack of hounds on the scent. The Englishman’s boy was firing fast, the sweat pouring into his eyes in a blinding, stinging rain. For a terrible second, he believed the Assiniboine were going to pass unscathed through the hail of bullets, pour into the coulee stabbing and clubbing. But the attack ripped apart, like rotten cloth. The abrupt sprawl of men into the sage stunned the Englishman’s boy. They dropped like all the deer he had ever shot cleanly and fatally. The attack stuttered, hesitated, the Indians withdrew in confusion. A cheer went up in the cutbank.
The Englishman’s boy slid down the face of the slope, pulled off his derby, mopped his brow with his sleeve. His mouth was bone-dry. He’d tried to draw a bead on those twisty, slippery figures but they’d leapt and dodged so as to freeze his finger on the trigger. In the end, he’d only pointed and fired, pointed and fired. He didn’t think he’d got himself one.
Hardwick was walking up and down the trench, asking each man, “How many rounds you got left? How many rounds?”
Grace answered tersely, “Enough.”
Hardwick took one glance at the bandoliers looped over the shoulders of the Englishman’s boy and passed on.
John Duval was calling for water. Hardwick shouted, “Nobody drinks yet! We don’t know how long we’re going to be pinned down here! Water’s rationed!”
The Englishman’s boy dug a pebble out of the side of the cutbank, put it in his mouth to suck. The blistering heat roiled in the coulee.
The wolfers pricked their ears. Out there, someone was chanting. It ran toward them like a wave, washed over them, receded, swept forward once more.
“Death song,” said Grace to the boy.
The men crouched in the coulee, gripping their guns, listening to a man preparing to die. The chant rose and fell, rose and fell. Suddenly it stopped. In the distance, a man stood up out of the scrub, straight as a lodgepole pine. It was First Shoot in his wolf-skin cap. The wolfers began to fiddle with their sights, adjusting them for the range. First Shoot didn’t give them time enough to sight him. He pumped his musket to the sky three times, sprinted forward. The Soldier’s Society soared up out of the grass like a covey of birds. A second force of hostiles gushed up behind them, older men not so fleet, not so agile as the first, all of them whooping.
This time, the Assiniboines did not skirmish forward, discharging their weapons. It was a pell-mell assault, a dash of supple swiftness, a foot race to the coulee. The speed, the audacity of it stunned the men huddled there. The Assiniboine came pelting forward, leaping sagebrush, veering and twisting like a hunting wolf pack, quick, terrible.
A sheet of flame scorched the air. The death-song singer did not break stride; it was as if the muzzle flashes were a curtain of beads, insignificant, to be brushed aside. He drove on, hot, direct as fire burning down a fuse to a powder keg. Fifty yards, forty.
Then the powder keg exploded. The curtain refused to part. His heels skidded out from under him, kicked up, flesh fountaining in a spray of blood. The white men worked the levers of their rifles madly, shot swinging through the warriors like a heavy scythe mowing hay, everywhere the human grass shivered when it met the sharp blade, wavered, fell in a windrow of bodies.
The Indians broke and fled.
A shout went up in the coulee, punctuated by rebel yells. Random shots spat on fleeing backs. An Assiniboine fell, staggered to his feet, was scythed again.
The surviving Indians retreated to an opposing coulee from where they began to lay down fire. Now in a defensive position they had time to prime and load with calculation. The use of wadding gave them greater range and accuracy. Despite smooth-bore, single-shot weapons, their numbers made for a steady, debilitating sniper fire which penned the wolfers in the coulee. Whining, whistling shot kept them ducking. A ball struck a stone near the Englishman’s boy and he felt a sting of splintering lead on his cheek. It began to drip blood.
They knew they were trapped. The sun glared and burned, roasted them. Fear sank its claws in their tender, smitten skins.