Return of the Tall Man Read online

  “What happened? What is it, brother?”

  Ben’s two-word reply, “More Sioux!” brought him sharply awake.

  The light was still poor, but there could be little doubt they had blundered into a second party of Throat Slitters. After the Indian habit on the trail, this band of red travelers was early adoing. Hence, the weary night riders had no chance to withdraw gracefully from the unwanted meeting. In fact, eight or ten Winchesters were pointing their way before Go-deen got his discovery curse well out. The click-clink of these rifles being put on cock provided an effective suggestion to stand where they were.

  Two of the red riflemen now arose from beside the breakfast fire and came forward. One of these was slender and sensitive looking, no more than five seven or eight in height. The other was quite tall, narrow-faced, very dark-skinned. It was not until they drew near that Ben noted a racial peculiarity in the taller Indian. He had startlingly gray eyes. It was at the same time that Go-deen discovered something even more notable about the smaller Sioux.

  “Tashunka!” he cried. “He-hau! It’s you, it’s you!”

  The slender chief, plainly less pleased than the Milk River half-breed with the meeting, held up his hand and asked a blunt question in the native tongue. The tall, hawk-faced Indian stood by saying nothing. Go-deen replied effusively in Sioux, then turned delightedly to Ben and Lame John.

  “It’s Crazy Horse,” he told them, “my Oglala cousin, the half uncle of my mother, three times removed. These are my people. We’re saved!”

  “From what?” asked the tall, dark-skinned Oglala, startling Ben with his clear English.

  “From that damned Buffalo Ribs,” explained Go-deen.

  “Slohan?” said the other. “Tell us about it.”

  When Go-deen had complied, including the information as to Ben’s and Lame John’s reasons for being in the country, the tall Sioux turned to Crazy Horse and spoke rapidly to him in Oglala. The latter scowled but nodded in apparent consent. He then went back to the fire and sat down. The tall one waved quickly to Go-deen.

  “Get down and come eat, Frank. Your friends, too. You’re in luck; Tashunka’s in a good mood. No spirit dreams last night. He says you can join us at the fire and listen to the news, if you wish. He says your two friends will be all right—maybe.”

  “Thanks, Cetan,” said the breed, Ben noting the patent respect he paid the other. “It was good of you to talk for us. Yes, and for the woman, too.”

  “What could I do?” asked the Oglala. “You told us she was a white woman.”

  Ben thought the comment a little strange from a high plains hostile. He wondered about it as, with Lame John and Go-deen, he followed the English-speaking Sioux to the fire. Here they squatted on their heels in polite and proper imitation of their savage hosts. Directly, fresh strips of deer loin were cut and put to broil over the clear pine flames. While the fat from the venison spat and hissed into the fire, Ben watched the tall chief. He was even more interested in him than in Crazy Horse, an Indian seen at such range by no more than a handful of white men before or later. It was not the fact that he spoke English, but the particular way in which he spoke it, which dug at Ben’s mind. He could swear he detected a slight drawl, very much like his own Texas accent, in the other’s speech. Lame John and Go-deen both spoke English, of course, but they continually reverted to Indian phrasings and ways of saying things. This gray-eyed Oglala talked as straight as Ben Allison. Indeed, his grammar, Ben realized, was superior to his own, marking him obviously as an educated man. Here was a puzzler for sure, but since he was unmistakably second-in-command to the famed Crazy Horse, he had to be a Sioux of reputation. Ben determined to find out about him from Go-deen at the first opportunity.

  Meanwhile, the talk over the breakfast fire had begun. Ben and Lame John sat silently through its course, glad enough to be ignored by these fierce horsemen who were their sworn enemies. After about half an hour, during which time Ben caught the war sign over and over again, Crazy Horse stood up and made the departure sign. His tall subchief came over to Ben and Lame John.

  “You two keep as quiet as you can,” he advised them soberly. “Just come along as you’re told, and try to keep out of the way as much as you can. I’ve spoken for your safety and been promised it. But with these people of mine, you must be extremely circumspect at all times.”

  He threw a glance at the mounting Sioux.

  “Did you understand any of what was just said?” he asked Ben.

  “Enough,” answered the latter. “Neither of us speak or savvy Sioux, but we both read hand signs.”

  “Then you know the talk was all of war. I am doing my utmost to prevent it, but I’m in a peculiar sort of a position and can do only so much.”

  Ben wondered what that position might be but dared not ask just yet.

  “What about the girl—Amy Johnston?” he asked. “Do you think they mean to get Buffalo Ribs to turn loose of her?”

  “I’m going to do what I can in that direction. I’ve already spoken of it to Tashunka. He said only that we would see. I left it there. You don’t push Tashunka.”

  “That’s right,” said Go-deen, coming up with their mounts in time to hear the last sentence. “Not if you want to see the buffalo come again, you don’t. Here’s your animals. Get on them, and shut up.”

  Ben took Malachi and legged up on him stiffly.

  “Where away we going?” he inquired of Go-deen, as the tall subchief went off to get his own mount.

  “With them, naturally.” The breed shrugged. “You think they’d turn us loose in their rear? Me, perhaps. But you two? A white man and a Nez Percé? Hah, that’s a good one! I’m laughing.”

  “All right,” said Ben, showing a patience he didn’t feel, “where are they going then?”

  “Why to see Cousin Slohan, of course. Where else?”

  Ben gritted his teeth. He looked around to see if the Sioux were watching. They were not. Out of the side of his mouth, he said to the grinning Go-deen:

  “Listen, you crackpot breed, it may tickle your funny bones something fierce, but I ain’t laughing with you, you hear? I killed two of those Hunkpapas yesterday and put down a third that never got up. Likewise, I made Buffalo Ribs look bad in front of his braves. That don’t add up to any welcome mat for me up there to that village. Neither does it for old John here.”

  He checked the Sioux again, swept on.

  “I ain’t going, you understand. I’m pulling my .44 and bluffing my way out of here right now. If the bluff don’t work, I’ll try blasting. You coming with me, John?”

  “Yes,” replied the Nez Percé. “Those Hunkpapas will kill us no matter what these Oglala say. But the Oglala may let us run if we start from here. Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” hissed Go-deen. “You’ve got these Dirt Throwers wrong. They won’t let you run. The only thing keeping them from opening your throats is that big devil with Tashunka; the one that just now talked to you. You think he was warning you for fun?”

  Ben held up, alerted by the unusual seriousness of Go-deen’s manner.

  “That tall rascal must have pretty strong medicine,” he said, watching the Sioux brush away with pine branches all sign of the campfire and of the picket line where the ponies had stood during breakfast and since being brought in from the meadow and the night’s grazing. “Ordinarily, one Indian won’t listen to another like that.”

  Again Ben didn’t know how he knew this. It simply flashed into his mind blindly from the blind past, as had everything else since the snowslide in Madison Canyon. He accepted it intuitively, and in this case the instinct proved as accurate as his previous ones about these nomad people.

  “That’s right,” agreed Go-deen matter-of-factly. “Ordinarily, one Indian wouldn’t listen to another like that.”

  Ben watched him, sensing another of his queer spells.

  “Bu
t what?” he asked guardedly.

  “But this other Indian isn’t an Indian,” leered the breed happily. “He’s a white man.”

  On the way back through the Big Snowies, Ben found his chance to query Go-deen about Crazy Horse’s gray-eyed companion. The breed knew surprisingly little of the white Oglala. What he knew he told straightly enough.

  He had been a government scout or army guide, wounded in the big fight at Fort Phil Kearny the past winter. That had been in December, but a few months gone, in the ambush where Colonel Fetterman had lost all his soldiers to Red Cloud, Long Fox, and Crazy Horse. Well, this tall white man had been picked up unconscious from the field, his life claimed by Crazy Horse who had admired the way in which he fought. The Oglala chief had taken him back into He Sapa, the sacred Black Hills hunting country of the Sioux, there nursing him to health. Given an Indian name, Cetan Mani, Walking Hawk, he had married an Oglala girl and taken up the life of the tribe.

  Ah, no, you could not call him a squaw man. He was a full Sioux, a true blood brother in Crazy Horse’s own White Fox Lodge. His dark skin was only partly from wind and sunburn. He had been, in the beginning, as dark as many High Plains Indians. The Sioux had accepted him as one of them. His great skill with rifle and pistol had led them to name him chief hunter of the band. Because Crazy Horse had personally adopted him into his own lodge, he also stood high in the war command of the Oglalas. But as to where he had originally come from, who he was, or what his white name might be, nothing was known. His former life, like Ben Allison’s, led only into a box canyon. If Ben would inquire further into it, he would have to do so of Cetan himself.

  Accepting this, Ben turned the inquiry to the Sioux members of the party. Here Go-deen was prepared to speak with more detail and, plainly, more enthusiasm.

  Hah! Now Ben had asked something. Did he have any idea at all of the power of the company in which he rode? Of course not. But look—that handsome chief on the bay pinto—American Horse, called Iron Plume by the Oglalas, one of the great fighters of all time. Then take the shaggy-haired grizzly of a man on the stout black—Charging Bear—a very famous warrior. And the dangerous-looking skinny warrior who rode with him—Little Wound—as bad as they came.

  Then going down the line front to rear, there were Low Dog, Crow King, Fast Bear, Little Big Man, Old Bull, Red Shirt, Swift Bear, and Big Road. These were not all Oglalas by any means, but members of various other Sioux families going to the big council at Slohan’s meadow.

  Coming also to that meeting would be the Cheyenne of Crow Necklace, Hail, Two Moons, High Wolf ,and Yellow Hand. Yes, and even the Blackfoot of John Grass. Oh, it was going to be some war talk, all right. And what a lot of fun as well to see what all those white-haters would do when Crazy Horse spoke up and told them to give the white woman to Ben and Lame John and to let her thus go happily free with a white man and a Wallowa Nez Percé! Eeh! That would be some laugh. Especially since High Bear and Gall, the war chiefs of Sitting Bull, were going to be there to speak for that old Hunkpapa head devil, the greatest white-hater of them all!

  Ben found small trouble suppressing any inclination to join Go-deen in the walleyed cackling with which the breed relished the thought of this Indian joke. He stared at him, instead, with a dubious frown.

  “You,” he announced accusingly, “ought to be in the booby hatch.”

  “The what?” Go-deen scowled defensively.

  “The place where they keep crazy people,” said Ben. “A nuthouse. A loony bin. You’re as cracked as grandma’s pet thunder mug.”

  Go-deen nodded, lance-scarred grin suddenly back in place. He pointed up the line of war-feathered Sioux.

  “We’ll see who’s crazy,” he said, “and pretty quick, too. Do you recognize that rise in the trail ahead?”

  Ben peered through the late afternoon shadows.

  “Well, maybe not. It was pretty dark when we came down there last night.”

  “Damn!” said Ben. “So soon?”

  Go-deen didn’t answer and didn’t need to.

  Ben looked around, feeling a chill from more than the long blue shadows of the bull pines. There was no denying it. The dry rocks, the steep rise, the warped straggle of the cedars breaking the skyline where the trail went up and over the hogback spur. This was the place. Beyond that rise lay the lovely alpine meadow which held the lodges of Slohan’s Hunkpapas—trail’s end or journey’s beginning for Ben Allison and Amy Geneva Johnston.

  Whatever came of the war talk in Slohan’s meadow, Ben and his friends were not to know of it. They were held prisoners in a spare lodge set up upon their arrival. Their guards were two each of Hunkpapas and Oglalas, the four chosen as much to watch one another as the three hostages. Darkness came quickly. With it the council fire was lighted. Ben could see its flare from the entrance flap of the prison lodge. He could see, too, the excited reaction of the Hunkpapas to Crazy Horse’s brief opening speech. But he could not make out what that speech concerned. Since Go-deen could not see the speaker from his position, there was no translation of the Oglala’s remarks. However, the transcript arrived soon enough. Bearing it was the tall white Sioux. With him was an Indian of peculiarly dangerous look, armed to the earlobes and aloof as a buffalo wolf.

  “Zinciziwan,” said the tall white man, indicating his companion. “Yellow Bird. He will take you out of camp and set you on your way. The Hunkpapas are afraid of his personal medicine; they’ll let him through.”

  “There was trouble just now?” asked Ben, as the other cut him loose.

  “Yes, more than a little.” He was working now to free Go-deen and Lame John. “You won’t want to waste any time.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “She’s gone. They traded her to some visiting Cheyenne last month. They were Southern Cheyenne, Black Kettle’s people. The Hunkpapas say they heard—don’t ask me how they heard; it’s one of their secrets I haven’t discovered yet—but they say they heard ‘by the wind’ that the Cheyenne didn’t keep her. They are supposed to have gotten rid of her down on the Arkansas. That would be up near the headwaters, as they haven’t had time to get down on the main stream. Anyway, ‘the wind’ says she had a mean mind and wouldn’t lie quietly with the chief. So they palmed her off on the Kiowas. They got eight spotted horses for her, a high price; especially from Satank.”

  “Satank!” groaned Go-deen.

  “Is that bad?” asked Ben quickly.

  The breed threw up his hands helplessly.

  “Bad? Anything to do with Satank is bad. He’s mean as a boar grizzly with a sore sheath. He’s head man of their toughest warrior society, the Kaitsenko. They’re all murderers, and Satank the worst of the lot. If he’s got her, we may as well forget the whole thing and go shoot summer meat on Milk River.”

  “That’s not far from true,” admitted the white Sioux, “but if you’re determined to go down there on the Arkansas after that poor girl, there’s one more thing I’ve been able to arrange to help you.”

  “We owe you a plenty just to be getting out of here in one piece,” said Ben. “But we’ll take any help we can get as far as going after Amy Johnston. I mean to find her if she’s alive.”

  “I thought as much,” said the other, “or I wouldn’t have given those ten mares and my best buffalo horse for you. Not to mention the ’66 Winchester and eight boxes of shells the Kiowa boy cost me.”

  Puzzled, Ben started to question him about the Kiowa boy, but he waved hurriedly for them to follow him and ducked under the rear skins of the lodge. They crawled after him and went off through the dark, keeping the high cone of the prison lodge between themselves and the council fire. Looking back as they went into the timber, Ben noted that the guards were gone from in front of the lodge and that the meeting at the fire had grown suddenly noisier. He didn’t need the tall Sioux’s anxiously called, “Hopo, hookahey,” to speed him at this point. His Indian intuit
ion was working fine, and it was telling him to lean on the white Oglala for all he might be worth right now and to worry about paying him back for the favor later; preferably much later.

  Some half mile into the pines, they came upon a murky glade formed by one of the small creeks of the Judith’s origin making a horseshoe loop free of timber. In the hollow of the loop they saw a shadowy clot of horses and, upon drawing close, saw they were tended by a lone Indian youth not appreciably bigger than a bear cub.

  “Little Tree,” said their tall guide, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “your Kiowa passport. The Hunkpapas took him in a southern raid last fall. They were holding him for a hundred and fifty horses. Tashunka got them to see where it might be a good way of getting the Kiowas to join the Sioux in their war to send the boy back.”

  “Damn,” said Ben doubtfully, “that skates like pretty thin ice to me.”

  “It does,” admitted their rescuer, “but I’m hoping it will hold up under you until Yellow Bird can get you across the Musselshell.”

  “Little Tree?” wondered Go-deen belatedly and with obvious concern. “Is the boy by any chance of the blood of Big Tree, Cetan?”

  “Very much so, I’m afraid, Frank. That’s why the high price and the agreement to let him go home.”

  The answer was echoed by a second groan from Go-deen, and Ben asked resignedly:

  “Now what?”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Just that there are two other Kiowas who go hand in hand with Satank for bad reputations, and Big Tree is one of the two.”

  “Oh, well, I’m glad it’s nothing serious. For a minute there, you had me worried.”

  “Not serious, not serious at all!” piped up the Kiowa boy in sudden, unexpected English and backed it with a grin bright enough to light a candle by. “Not unless you also arouse great-uncle Satanta.”

  “No!” cried Go-deen, covering his ears. “It’s impossible. I won’t hear it. He didn’t say it; he didn’t say Satanta. He couldn’t have!”