The Tall Men (The Classic Film Collection) Read online

  “Thanks,” said Ben, “for nothin’.” Then, quickly. “Git Stark over here. He jest might know.”

  “Now mebbe he jest might,” Clint agreed. “I allow it’s about time he knowed suthin’. Fer a man that’s so big in Montana he’s sure been gradin’ short yearlin’ south of his home range.”

  “Give him time,” advised Ben. “He’s four-year-old beef. Jest new to the trail, I judge. Git him over here.”

  Clint grunted something Ben didn’t hear, but that sounded as if it had son of a bitch and Montana mixed up in it somewhere, and spurred his mare on back to where Stark waited in the main trail.

  “Twist your two-bit tail,” he called cheerfully. “We need a educated man up here that kin read summat besides Kiowa and Comanche billy-doos.”

  Stark took one look at the pictograph on the bull’s skull, lost a layer or two of his fresh pink color, used a single agonized word both to justify Ben’s faith in his Indian higher learning and to let the Texas brothers know upon whose tribal crossroads they were trespassing.

  “Sioux—!“ he gasped unbelievingly.

  “The hell!” challenged Clint, not caring for the startled diagnosis. “I thought this here Arkansaw basin was Cheyenne country.”

  “It is,” said Nathan Stark. “From the river, north to Fort Laramie and the Oregon Road. But that signature is Oglala Sioux.”

  “You certain sure?” asked Ben.

  “No chance I’m wrong. I’ve not studied their signs much, never had to in my business. But I do know that yellow symbol. Saw it splashed on the tailgate of a wagon burn-out up on the Bozeman last summer. I had one of Colonel Carrington’s Army scouts with me, and he read it off for us. That long slash connecting what look like ears, there, is a knife cut. That’s what the Oglala call themselves—the Throat Cutters.”

  He broke off, frowning at the bright red hand and broken gun as Ben and Clint exchanged looks, then added, puzzled. “What does the rest of it mean?”

  “The hand,” recited Clint with mile-wide irony, and as though reading it for him from the prairie primer on the facts of life in the far West, “if drawn upright with the fingers pointing to the sky and the palm outward, means peace. The gun, if in one piece and also aiming at the great blue beyond, indicates the selfsame Christian intention.”

  Stark was looking to Ben, as he had from the outset, hearing Clint’s hardbitten recital but waiting for the older brother’s less caustic seal of acceptance.

  He was not kept waiting overlong.

  “The rest of it,” repeated Ben Allison slowly, “means war.”

  The discussion grew swiftly bitter.

  “I don’t give a damn what you say” rapped Nathan Stark. “Our best bet is to go on to the fort. Those pony tracks are heading west. Our course is east.”

  “My course is where I say it is,” said Ben. “And I say it’s back to that emigrant camp.”

  “Ben, be reasonable,” pleaded Stark, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. “There’s only ten or twelve of the Indians. They’ve nothing to gain by attacking those poor devils back there. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Don’t it?” smiled Clint easily. “Take a look at that north sky, mister.”

  Stark glanced nervously at the greasy mushroom bed of clouds growing rapidly beyond the river, then defiantly back to Clint. “All right. The clouds are coming in heavy again. Where’s the difference? We can beat them to the fort.”

  “The Sioux,” nodded Ben, pale eyes narrowing, “kin likewise beat ’em to the grove.”

  “I don’t follow you, Ben.”

  “Well, follow this!” Clint shoved his mare into Stark’s studhorse. “You said you didn’t know much about Injuns. Mister, you don’t. They ain’t partial to snowstorms no more’n white men. It’s damn seldom how few times you’ll bump up agin a war party out joggin’ a blizzard jest fer the fresh air. Also, they got bellies jest like us. They git hungry and they got to eat. You know how much game we’ve seen the past week. You kin lay they ain’t seen no more where they come from. It jest ain’t the weather fer game. She all adds up, mister.”

  “To what, for God’s sake?” demanded Nathan Stark angrily.

  “To Timpas Creek Grove and them five emigrant mules,” said Ben quietly. “I reckon we got to go back.”

  “Yeah,” muttered Clint, reining the mare sharply. “And sometime ’fore spring would be nice.”

  “Well, you reckon wrong,” declared Stark, still angry. “And without me. I’ve got ten thousand dollars in these saddlebags and it’s going to get to Fort Worth, emigrant mules or no emigrant mules.”

  “What about emigrant jennies?” said Clint innocently, letting his slack grin loosen with the question.

  Stark knew he meant the girl, and what he meant about the girl. But he covered his hand. “I won’t waste words with an idiot,” he snapped loftily. Then, wheeling his stud to face Ben, flatteringly, “Ben, you’re a man that makes sense, and understands it as well. I’m appealing to you now. Use that sense, man. Think! Why we can—”

  “You’re bellerin’ inter the wind,” muttered Ben. He kicked his gelding around. “You comin’, Clint?”

  Clint held the little sorrel in, making no move to send her after the black. “Not jest yet,” he said, hardfaced.

  “You stickin’ with Stark, Clint?”

  The straight-eyed, too soft way Ben said it let Clint know his refusal had caught his brother like a knife in the kidney. But his own face lost no line of its hardness.

  “Stark,” he answered, just as low, “and our ten thousand dollars.”

  It was the difference in them, that Ben had made nothing of Stark’s mention of the money. But Clint’s reminder of it was something else again. Something even Ben couldn’t miss, nor ignore, nor even blame.

  “Likely, you’ve got a good point. Leastways,” he shrugged, “the way you see it.”

  There was no bitterness in the words. Clint knew none was intended. Ben was like that. Still a man knew what store his brother set by certain things. Knew, in that line, that ten times ten thousand dollars could not have kept Ben from going back to help those poor bastards on Timpas Creek.

  “We’ll git to the fort and back quick as we kin,” he muttered awkwardly. Then, harshly, to Stark, “Kick that studhorse in his blue-blooded butt, mister. We got miles to make.”

  Ben watched them go. He heeled the black gelding once more and finally around.

  With the slap of the reins, the right spur raked the black’s side, leaping him into an ears-flat gallop. Behind him, as he raced the narrow trackline of the Sioux war ponies, came the first of the returning blizzard’s sleeted forebreath. Crouched atop him, Ben was thinking they had some miles to make, too. And knowing they wouldn’t make their miles on blue blood, but red!

  Chapter Eight

  The rising wind was behind Ben, whipping out of the northeast, driving hard past him, full toward the grove. He did not hear the firing until he was breaking clear of Ludlow’s Bend, almost atop the Timpas Creek timber. He had had sense enough to drop the black down below the river bluffs as he approached the camp. It was all that saved him from riding right up the rumps of the Sioux ponies.

  With the flat, wind-buffeted report of the first rifle shot, he was off the big horse like a cat.

  Ka-dih must still have been watching over his quarter-bred grandson for he had placed in the precise spot where Ben slid the black to a halt a heavy stand of riverbank willows. Tying the horse, and not worrying about him winding the Indian ponies, since the near gale force of the wind was dead away from the willows, he ran crouching forward to the edge of the leafless thicket.

  The first look was all a man needed to show him he had bitten off a Texas-sized mouthful.

  Up the streambed perhaps a hundred yards, directly opposite the grove and not over fifty paces from it, the hostiles were bedded in against the river bank. They had a clear field of fire into the little camp, impeded only by the outer fringe of trees and the hastily barricaded
slatbed wagons. The return fire from the grove could only serve to prevent a frontal charge, since the red attackers were quite comfortable behind five solid feet of yellow Arkansas bank clay. The hostiles, never in their conception of prairie warfare willing to accept casualties for no reason, could afford to take their time.

  They were taking it.

  There were nine of them, Ben counted; all dressed in the knee length, buffalo hide boots and wolfskin coats which were the standard Plains Indian winter garb. They were bareheaded, of course, some wearing copper braid ornaments, some only an eagle feather or two. Five of them had muzzle-loading trade muskets, the other four, only war bows or short buffalo lances. From the stark lack of feathers or other foofooraw in their attire, a man drew one quick conclusion. These boys were in business. They were not out to make social conquests.

  Ben, accustomed as he was to the short, broadbodied physiques of the southern tribes, was at once struck with the size of the northern nomads. He had heard the Sioux were a tall people, but not how tall. There wasn’t a buck up that riverbed that would go half a hand under six feet, and several of them towered well over the two-yard mark.

  Recovering from the first unpleasantness of having ridden, but for the sake of a lucky bend in the river, into this nest of six-foot red hornets, Ben’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

  In the huddle of the Sioux ponies, standing rumpsto-wind beyond their darkfaced masters, he now counted ten mounts. With the belated correction, his scalp squeezed in and his hand tightened on the breech of his Henry carbine.

  Somewhere out yonder, or maybe handclose in the willows around him, he had a missing Indian.

  The thought had only formed, when he found him.

  Upstream, beyond the entrenched Sioux, the left bank of the Arkansas built into a considerable bluff. Atop this prominence, silhouetted against the sleeting gray of the winter sky, stood the tenth Indian.

  Unless the distance fooled you, he was not as tall as the others. He was dressed in black wolfskins from head to foot, with the scarlet slash of a Three Point Hudson’s Bay blanket shrouding his narrow shoulders and trailing to the snows behind him. And, by God, unless you didn’t know as much about Plains Indians as you thought you did—which right now wasn’t half as much as you wished you did—what he was doing up there, was praying!

  But there could be no misreading the ramrod stiffness of his posture, nor the stock-still, outstretched appeal of the suppliant arms. To Ben, suddenly, there was something sinister about that Indian. Something about his black furs and his rail-thin motionlessness that got into a man like the other nine put together hadn’t done.

  He shrugged off the chill, blaming the cut of the north wind for it. At least there was one thing damn certain about that religious redskin. If he was praying, it wasn’t for peace. When an Indian did that, his gun was always placed on the ground in front of him. In the upraised hands of this black-robed brother reposed a Henry Repeating Rifle as short and sweet and ugly as the one now getting sweated in his own shrinking grasp.

  Well, no matter. Nine working at war and one praying for it, or not. A man knew what he had to do. And what he had to do was get through them and into that emigrant camp.

  He had seven shots in the Henry. If he couldn’t get five of those bucks with that seven rounds, at that peashooter range of not over a hundred yards, he was in the wrong business. Naturally, after that, the ball was over and the band could go home. The rest of them would be falling in on him like a rotten roof, and a man would have to figure his chances lay somewhere between how fast he could get back to the black and how slow the Sioux could scramble for their ponies. There wasn’t any use trying to guess it past there. He would only get the shakes and spoil his aim.

  Ben got on his belly, moved his elbows around in the snow until he found firm ground under both of them. He wedged himself down solid, cheeked the Henry, lined up the first buck and squeezed off.

  It was a head shot. The Indian never moved. He just buckled a little in the knees, eased gently forward into the bank, was out of the fight for keeps. He got two others through the body in as many seconds, then his luck and their surprise ran out together.

  A freakish gust of wind boiled up the groundsnow between him and his running targets, obscuring the Sioux for a full five seconds. In that time they had made it to their ponies and were vaulting up on them. The air was still dancing with blown snow as he levered the last four shots into them.

  A man feels things with his rifle. If he knows it. Ben knew that Henry from bent foresight to battered buttplate. He was just as sure his past four shots were wasted as he was certain his first three were center-ring, meat-in-the-pot, solid.

  Going for the black, he shifted the empty carbine to his left hand, whipped out the Kwahadi knife with his right. It was too long after lunch to be fussing with tied reins. He went aboard the gelding like a charging grizzly swarming over a crippled buffalo heifer. The Kwahadi blade slashed, the San Saba “Heeyahhh!” echoed hoarsely, and the race was on.

  For the first forty jumps he guided the black with his knees, using his hands for a few other things that needed to be done before spring set in. Like transferring the knife to his clenched teeth, ramming the useless Henry into its saddle boot, sheathing the blade, refilling its vacated hand with a comforting fistful of case-hardened steel backstrap, worn grip screws, and well used walnut.

  With the Colt out and ready for argument, a man felt better.

  Even good enough for a twist in the saddle and an over-the-shoulder look at what he had behind him in the way of late afternoon callers.

  Those boys were well mounted and making the most of the fact. They rode nearly as good as Kwahadis, which was to say the best in the Indian world, and had bigger, stronger horses under them than you generally saw with Kiowas or Comanches.

  Well, if it was a horse race they wanted, they had picked a pretty good pony to beat. The black was a halfblood Spanish Arab from the best caballaje in Old Sonora. He was sixteen hands of horse and bred by a people who had been doing nothing else since they had dabbed a riata on the first of Cortez’s wandering, Old World purebreds. He could go a distance at a quarter-mile clip or a furlong in fifteen seconds flat, and not be looking up the crupper of any Indian scrub anywhere in between.

  And right about now those big Sioux ponies were giving him as tight a chance as a white man would ever appreciate, to prove it.

  Ben rode the race the only way he saw it.

  He let them get close enough up on him so that they could not cut across on him when he made his swing, then shot the black up the riverbank and headed him for the grove. Once up the bluff, he opened him out and let him run. Halfway to the grove he had his lead stretched to two hundred yards and was easing back in the saddle.

  He didn’t ease very far back. Once again he had sudden cause to remember the tenth Indian. That buzzard in the black furs had gotten down off his blufftop and back to his mount just in nice time to see Ben make his swing for the grove. And to spur his fast steeldust pony across the open flat to cut him off.

  Ben cursed, flattened the black’s belly to the snow. That red devil had him. All he could do was run for it and hope to Ka-dih he didn’t get winged with a rifle slug on the way. His own Colt was useless at the range and the Sioux had at least one hundred yards to lever that Henry into him before he could get up to where the handgun would hold and hit.

  He cursed again, wondering why in God’s name those flat-hat fools in the grove didn’t open up and give him cover. The wonder was father to the wish. No more had he cursed, than somebody from the camp began cutting down on the Sioux horseman with a repeating rifle. Even as the hidden rifleman fired, Ben had time for a last angry thought. What the hell were the rest of them doing in there? They had all had guns, he had made sure of that before he left, even if he didn’t recall the repeater that was letting off now being among those guns.

  Anger as quickly gave way to admiration.

  Whoever was handling that repeater had
his eye flat down the barrel and knew how to hold on an incoming bird. He saw the snow fly close in under the racing feet of the Sioux pony on the first three shots, the mushrooming spurts beginning ten feet in front of the steeldust and walking dead into him. The fourth shot centered the pony, drilling him from brisket to breadbasket and dropping him, dead floundering, in his flying tracks. His rider rolled free, unhurt, leapt to his feet, ran doubled over for the shelter of his dying pony’s belly.

  Seconds later, the black was crashing Ben through the fringe trees, into the center of the emigrant camp. He was out of the saddle on the first slide, pumping fresh brass into the Henry as he ran toward the bunched wagons and the fur-clad figure of the lone rifleman beneath them.

  The next instant he was diving between the wheels and dropping beside him, his whole attention riveted on the dead pony out toward the river. He snapped three shots, all he had had time to load, at the trapped Indian, making him dive back behind his fallen mount, abandoning any immediate plans he had for rejoining his henchmen in their retreat to the Arkansas redoubt.

  “Cover the bastard!” he rasped to his companion. “I’m empty!”

  “The bastard, brother,” said the overcoated marksman quietly, “is covered. Load away.”

  Ben gasped. He twisted around on his propping elbow. He met and dropped his mouth open to the familiar, white-toothed flash of the cynical smile.

  It was Nella Torneau.

  Chapter Nine

  With the main force of the Sioux once more behind the banks of the Arkansas and pinned there by his and Nella’s rifles, Ben had time to get his answer to the lack of fire from the emigrant camp. The place was a shambles. What his first-chance glance around it didn’t tell him, the low voice of Nella Torneau did.

  “They showed up about an hour ahead of you, mister,” she said. “They rode straight in and stopped their ponies about fifty yards out. That brave in the black skins is their leader. He put his rifle under his leg and held up both hands, real peaceful.”