The Tall Men (The Classic Film Collection) Page 7

  Ben chucked his head. This girl knew a thing or three about Indians. A man could tell it by the way she twisted her pretty lips around that “real peaceful,” like it was powdered with alum or straight saleratus. He let her go on, wanting her to get shut of it, knowing she’d feel better when she had.

  “He jabbered in Injun for a spell. It wasn’t Caddo or Comanche. I couldn’t make it out, and of course none of my folks knew a Kiowa from a Kwahadi.”

  Ben looked at her, wondering at her easy use of the southern tribe names. “Sioux,” he said. “Northern Oglala.”

  She nodded, hurrying on. “Anyway, after a bit he gave up and said something to one of his little friends, big, darkfaced buck wearing a handful of black feathers. This one had been to school, a Reservation Injun for sure. He let us know in something that was aimed at being English, and missed it pretty wide, that they meant us no harm and only wanted to come in and get warm; and to maybe share a cut or two of our mulemeat.

  “Not knowing them, and all, my folks wanted to let them come along in. Right about there, my friend,” she straightened her mouth with the short nod, “is where yours truly headed for the wagons.”

  “It figgers,” grunted Ben. “Go on.”

  “I dug Baby, here, out of my bedroll and took over the meeting.” With the reference, she patted the beautifully engraved little Henry Repeater, giving Ben only time to wonder where she had gotten such a gun and what she was doing toting it in her personals, before concluding with a wry smile. “I reckon I raised hell and put a good-sized chunk under it. My folks folded and the big buck with the black feathers did likewise. At least he did after I’d thrown two shots under his pony’s belly.”

  At this, Ben scowled. Damn the flat-hat fools. There was one thing they never learned. That was never to let any Indian outfit, made no difference how friendly they let on, come into your camp. Give them food, blankets, tobacco, anything you had—but never camp room.

  “Where was you raised?” he said quietly to Nella Torneau.

  “East Texas, mister. The Trinity River brakes.”

  He nodded, threw a shot toward the riverbank, narrowly missing a careless Oglala head. “You seen your share of red-guts, I allow.”

  “And more. My daddy had a little ranch outside Cold-spring down in San Jacinto County.”

  “Know it,” Ben said “My pap drove cattle from down that way before the war. Your pap runnin’ cows?”

  “He was. He let a bunch of Caddo bucks into the house one day. I wasn’t but three or four at the time—”

  Again Ben nodded. In the old days Texas was full of Indian orphans. “I reckon I’ve heard the rest of it,” he said. “What’d the Sioux do jest now, when you called ’em?”

  “Threw in, like I said,” she shrugged. “But holding a kicker like Injuns always do. They pulled around, went maybe ten yards toward the river, spun back and came for us.” She gestured, indicating the fringe of the grove to their left. “I got two,” she said.

  Ben’s eyes, following her direction, widened. Past the trees in the snow, already partly buried by the drifting wind, lay two paint ponies. From beneath the drift mounding one of them, a buffalo hide boot protruded stiffly. Ten feet from the other a third, smaller drift was growing. From it protruded not only a boot but two red hands and the distorted half of a darkskinned face.

  “I’m one up on you,” was all he said. “I got three.”

  “It leaves seven,” said Nella.

  “Agin two,” agreed Ben.

  “Three,” corrected the girl. “Jed Bates is still alive.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Upstairs.” She poked the wagonbed above them with the Henry muzzle. “I got him bedded down in there after he was hit. He was still shooting up to a few minutes ago.”

  “Bad hit for sure?”

  “For sure. Arrow. Still in him. Clean through both lungs, six inches out the far side.”

  “He’s done then.”

  “And lucky,” said Nella, hardfaced.

  “How was it with the others?” asked Ben gently.

  “Bliss and Johnson and Miz Bates got it easy all down in the first rush. They got clean into us before I got my two and they pulled out. On the way they caught Tom Hudgkins with a lance. Miz Bliss and Tom’s wife got crazy. Ran out to where they’d gotten Tom. That skinny devil with the red blanket cut back and got them both. Clubbed them down, first, then shot them on the ground. I was empty, he got off before I could bring down on him.”

  “That quick, eh girl?”

  “No more than a minute, start to finish.”

  “Reckon I better have a look at Bates,” said Ben. “Watch the river. And don’t let that son back of that down pony so much as take a deep breath, you hear? We got him right where we’re goin’ to be needin’ him.”

  “For what?” said Nella bitterly.

  “I allow you’ll see,” muttered Ben, moving for the wagon’s tailgate. “The bastards have took the first pot but they’ve played their red ace into a fair bad hole."

  As the afternoon wore on, Ben’s red ace began to look less comforting. He had figured the Indian wouldn’t stand the intense cold of the pre-blizzard frost for more than a couple of hours. Would shortly be in the mood to make a deal for his freedom. But twilight was coming down and the Sioux hadn’t peeped.

  There had been a short, shouted conversation between him and his followers back of the riverbank, once the trapped brave saw the white riflemen meant to keep him pinned to his dead pony. After that the hours fled silently, with no sight or sound from any of the waiting Sioux. With dusk shrouding the grove and the snow at last beginning, Ben knew he had stretched his bluff for more than it was worth.

  But weak or not, a man had to play his hand the way he held it. Ben played his by stepping suddenly out beyond the edge of the grove, calling to the braves behind the riverbank. As he did, he placed his rifle carefully on the ground before him, showing he meant to talk peace.

  Shortly, the tall brave came up out of the riverbed, his black feathers slanting, flat out, on the drive of the bitter wind. He kept his gun in his hand but made no move to use it. In his guttural, thick-tongued English, he inquired of Ben what inspiration was stirring the white brother’s imagination.

  Ben told him. The white brother would allow the red-blanket brave to leave his dead pony and go free. In return he and the brave white squaw would expect the same courtesy, in addition to a twenty-minute start and the loan of one of the mules. The other four longears and the fine shelter of the white man’s wagons would be generously left to the red brother.

  The black feathered brave politely submitted that he was no fool. Let the white brother know that ten minutes after he arrived, their leader had opened the belly of his pony with his scalping knife and crawled into its warm paunch, had been since, and still was, quite comfortable. The snow was coming now, the darkness not far behind it. With such cover the red brother would take his chances of getting those mules and that fine, warm camp by his own devices. Was this all understandable to the white brother?

  Ben admitted that it was, adding that when they came in to take the camp, they had better bring their best war charms with them. Some of them would be needing them for the long ride into the Land of the Shadows.

  The big brave shouted back that now indeed everybody understood everybody. He was turning to drop back over the riverbank when the Sioux behind the dead pony called out to him. He stood listening to his leader’s instructions for a moment, shouted once more to Ben.

  Red blanket wanted to know the name of the white brother in the grove. He saluted him as a brave warrior, and thought he must have some red blood in him by the way he fought and talked. He would like to know what name to remember him by, what tribe to credit for his courage.

  Ben thought a moment, knowing they had him where the neckhair grew short. And knowing that barring more luck than any two white people could hope to hold in the face of seven stormbound, starving Sioux, he and the girl had mayb
e twenty minutes between them and that yellow sign he’d seen on that buffalo skull. The thought to the contrary, the grin which suddenly twisted his wide mouth was as quick and crazy as any Clint had ever managed.

  “Sat-kan!” he shouted back to the brave. In Kwahadi it meant just about the pungent value he presently placed on Ben Allison’s future—horse dung. And was as good a name as any other, present company considered.

  “And your people?” called the tall Sioux.

  By now, Ben was feeling the wildness that was in him. The dark streak he had always shared with Clint. That he had fought down all his life, and fought it so hard down that not even Clint knew he had it in him. That feeling that grew in a man’s guts, low and cold and swift, when he knew he was backed into a one-way corner and had to kill his way out of it.

  He stepped forward, over his rifle, the vacant, meaningless grin flashing darkly. Leaning down, he drew a ten-foot line in the snow, marking it with a broad series of wavering curves, like the track of a diamondback in deep dust. “The Snake That Travels Backwards!” he shouted to the watching Indian. “The Tshaoh!”

  “The Tshaoh!” echoed the big brave, clearly impressed.

  “The Enemy People!”

  “That’s right, you Throat Cutter bastard!” yelled Ben, still grinning. “The Comanche!”

  Stepping back, he picked up his rifle, waved it airily at the brave. “What’s your skinny friend in the Three Point blanket call hisse’f? Jest for the hell of it now,” he added. “Seein’s we’re all gittin’ so goddam cozy.”

  “Tashunka Witko!” shouted the brave defiantly. “Remember it when you die.”

  There would come a time when Ben would indeed remember that name. At the particular moment he was not quite ready to lie down and roll over, and he had never heard of Tashunka Witko.

  “You’ve got a big mouth, brother!” With the return yell, he slipped back into the cottonwoods. “Let’s see you fill it with somethin’ worse than wind for a change!”

  When he rejoined Nella, the wild grin was long gone, the pale eyes narrowed seriously.

  “What the hell was that all about?” queried the gaunt-faced girl. “You can sure talk when you want to, mister. I never heard such a mess of nothing in my life. Now where are we?”

  “They’re funny” explained Ben quickly. “You give ’em a good fight, they think you’re great. No matter they mean to take your hair for your trouble.”

  “Well,” said Nella caustically, “you’ve played your little red ace and had it called, flat. What do we do next? Pray for a long sunset and two troops of Union Calvalry?”

  “Pray for ten minues of good shootin’ light,” grunted Ben abruptly. “And throw some of that leftover mulemeat in my hoss’s saddlebag.”

  “You can’t mean to run for it, mister! We wouldn’t get out of the trees.”

  “Mebbe I cain’t,” said Ben. “Nonetheless, I do. Jest the damn minute the snow’s heavy enough to cover our backsides on the way out, you hear? That’ll be likely about twenty seconds before they hit into us from all four sides. Git that meat into them saddlebags, goddam it. And rustle your blanket roll out’n the wagon and lace it on back of the saddle.”

  Nella started out from under the wagon, moving quickly now, in wordless, whitefaced obedience. Suddenly she stopped.

  “What about him?” she gestured toward the wagonbed above.

  “He’s all took care of,” said Ben. “Git goin’.”

  Nella looked at him narrowly. “Wait up, mister,” she demanded, face going hard again. “I thought you said we couldn’t move him and that to pull the arrow out would kill him.”

  “That’s right,” Ben rasped.

  “I’ll not leave him!” cried Nella defiantly. “He goes, or I stay.”

  “He’s a’ready gone, ma’am—” He softened it a little, seeing how it struck into her.

  “Thank God,” she breathed after a moment. Then, quietly. “Jed was a good man, he was good to me. And everybody. He just didn’t know Injuns—”

  “He sure didn’t,” said Ben.

  “I’ll get the meat and the blankets,” Nella murmured. He saw the white teeth bite into the tremble of the full lip. “And thanks, mister, for seeing to Jed. I’m beholden to you that he went easy.”

  “Not quite, Miss Nella.”

  The soft, sharp way Ben said it brought her around, low voiced and staring.

  “What do you mean—?”

  Ben pumped two shots into the dead pony out beyond the grove, threw another three into the darkness now rolling toward them from the river bank. He levered the last empty out, already reloading as he rolled to his feet and faced the girl.

  “Nobody.” he said hoarsely, “goes easy agin a broadhead buffler arrer pulled out through his lungs, barbs backwards.”

  Chapter Ten

  There was no pursuit from the grove. The reason was white and cold and it was bucketing through the air about them at a nice, steady, forty-mile clip. It wasn’t a full blizzard, just a medium rough spring snowstorm. The wind was due out of the north and a man could set a course by it and make fair slow time by holding to the high ground along the eastwest ridges, staying south of their crests, naturally, to be out of the wind.

  But the black gelding was packing close to three hundred pounds. By midnight, Ben felt him beginning to stagger and sensed, through his clamping knees, the flutter and tremble beginning to wrack the big ribs. At the same time the wind started to rise, the temperature to drop.

  “The hoss ain’t goin’ to last it to the fort,” he told the girl. “We got to hole up.”

  She tightened her arms around him in a way that put a thrill through him, cold or no cold. She pressed her head closer against his broad back, the quick tones of her voice letting him know the words were coming through that bright, hard smile.

  “Mister, you’re doing fine. Just find your hole, I’ll crawl into it with you.”

  He turned the black up and over the ridge, heading him for the Arkansas. They were about halfway to the fort, roughly opposite the spot where he had seen the buffalo skull earlier in the day. Along the river at that point he remembered having seen a high clay bluff based with willows and honeycombed with wind and water holes. The base of that bluff would be shelter enough and he reckoned they might even find an undercut or a cave that would do even better.

  He reckoned right.

  Old Ka-dih was still with him.

  The spot looked like just another watercut under the bank at the first sight of it through the stormdark. But once down off the horse and feeling into it, a man could tell it ran on back under the bluff into a regular cave. Nor was that all. Last spring’s high water had stacked up a dam of driftwood in its throat that would, if necessary, last them for firewood from now on until the ice went out.

  He helped Nella off the black, careful and gentle about it as if she were a child, and thinking as he did so, how many men could have stood up to what she’d seen in the past hours. And faced it through without a whimper, the way she had—with her eye lining up a Sioux buck down a rifle barrel half the time, and her arms hanging on back of a frozen saddle through fifteen miles of ice and wind the other half.

  His own arm, circling her shoulder in the darkness, guiding her in under the bluff, tightened with the thought. She felt the pressure, instinctively sought for his big hand. Finding it she clung to it, the trusting touch of the slender fingers feeling to Ben like they’d wrapped themselves around his heart rather than his hand. They were back under the overhang now, out of the wind and the lash of the now. He stopped then, all at once confused and clumsy-feeling inside. “You set here along the wall,” he said gruffly, pushing her down in the darkness and pulling his hand away from her. “I’ll be back directly. Got to see to the hoss and fetch in some wood.”

  Outside, he fumbled an armload of wood out of the drift-pile, carried it back under the overhang, struck a light and got it going clear and strong. With the firelight pushing the blackness back and out into
the willows, he led the gelding in under the bank. Pulling the saddle, he slipped the bit and bridle. While the big horse nuzzled his arm, he slid his hand along the crested neck, back and down across the steaming flank. Satisfied he was not too lathered to cool out safely without blanketing, he gave him a final pat and low word of assurance, moved off and let him stand.

  The weary gelding didn’t shift a hoof, only shook himself out, eyed the fire, blew the snow out of his nostrils, whickered gratefully, dropped his head and went to dozing in the reflected heat of the driftwood blaze.

  With his horse taken care of, thought Ben, a man had best look to his woman. He grinned as the thought struck him. His woman? Now there was a hell of a note. What put a thing like that in a man’s mind? It sure wasn’t anything she’d done, or said. Or that he had. Well, no matter, he had to look to her.

  Turning to do so, he saw what he should have known he would—Nella Torneau looking to herself.

  While he was fussing with the horse, the girl had lugged in more wood, banked the fire, shaken the snow out of the bedroll, toted the saddle back into the cave, fetched out the mulemeat, produced a small sheath knife from under her wolf-skin coat, gone to slicing off pieces to roast over the flames.

  Looking down on her, Ben grinned again. “You sure you ain’t part Injun?” he asked. “You work faster’n a Kwahadi squaw.”

  “When in Rome,” said the girl soberfaced, not bothering to look up from her slicing, “ride with the Romans.”

  “Meanin’ I’m a damn redskin,” said Ben.

  “Close enough to it,” she nodded. “Cut me a couple of green sticks.”

  He went out into the willows, cutting the required roasting sticks and not thinking very much about what he was doing while he was at it. Right then a man didn’t have mind for much except how funny it felt, and how deep-good, to be ordered around by that cussed big-eyed girl in there past the fire yonder. He ducked back into the cave, as schoolboy-grateful to be there as if he’d been gone a month.

  “Miss me?” he said, and for no damn reason he could think of at the moment.