Absaroka Ambush

4

“This ain’t legal, you ugly bastard!” one of the “soiled doves” yelled at Preacher.

“She’s one of them who helped Bedell torture poor Caroline to death,” a lady named Yvonne Knight said from the crowd. “Her name is Frida.”

“How do you women find her?”

“Guilty,” they called out.

“Any nays?”

There were none.

Orabella, Cecilia, Nancy, and Rexana led the women to the hanging tree and did the deed. The Bedell confederate checked out with a curse on her lips. One of the outlaws fell to his knees and started praying.

“That one who is calling on the Lord did unnatural things to the boys,” a woman named Vesta said. “Horrible, filthy things.”

“How do you find him?”

The verdict was unanimous.

The man was still praying when the noose was slipped around his neck. The praying stopped quite abruptly.

Six women and eight men were hanged that sunshiny afternoon along the Platte River. They were buried in a common grave, dug by those few the women decided, for one reason or another, to let live.

Louis, as it turned out, and that was verified by the whores and outlaws, had taken no part in the raping, had not killed anyone back at the ambush, and had been belittled by his older brother into coming along with Bedell. His brother was one of the dead that was killed during the first volley of shots from the mountain men.

He was sixteen years old, but looked some older, as did many people of that era.

“You can come with us, Louis,” Eudora told him. “All you need is some mothering and salvation.” She pursed her lips. “And maybe a lanyard laid across your stern every now and then for good measure.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Louis said meekly. “Whatever you say, ma’am.” He was ever so grateful to be away from Bedell and what remained of his gang.

Preacher turned to the few whom the women had let live. “I’d a-hanged you right along with the rest of your friends. But the women ran this trial. Now I’m gonna tell you how the cow ate the cabbage. A full report of everything that happened on the trail is going to be sent to Washington, D.C., when we reach the coast. That’ll take some months, so’s you all got time to change your names and live quietlike…for the rest of your lives. ’Cause you can bet the government is gonna put federal arrest warrants out for all of you. Now, you each got a horse and some food. I put your weapons in the saddle boot and bags. You got shot and powder, lead and molds, and caps enough to get you back to wherever the hell it is you’ve decided to go. And it better be far, far away. And you better live real quiet and decent. Don’t you ever let me cast my eyes upon you. Ever! If you follow us, or try to swing around to join up with Bedell, I’ll know it and I’ll kill you personal. I won’t say howdy or good evenin’, or top of the mornin’ to none of you. I’ll just ambush you and then I’ll take your hair and leave you for the buzzards, the coyotes, and the wolves. Rupert?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Start countin’. Loud. When you get to sixty, if any of this trash is still within range, me and the boys here is gonna start shooting. Now, git!”

They got.

Bedell looked at what remained of his gang. Nine men and ten women. He knew that more had escaped the ambush, but they had gotten separated and only the devil knew where they were now. But Bedell knew, too, that the nine men and ten women were the foulest, most evil, and ruthless of the lot. There was nothing they had not done or would not do. To Bedell’s twisted mind, that was a very big plus.

So they had lost a battle. That did not in any way mean the war was lost. Bedell had twenty-odd of the hardest men he could find waiting up the trail, with supplies, guns, and everything else they would need. And the wagons had a long way to go before they reached the coast. Bedell had lots and lots of time and country to once more seize the wagons and the women.

He smiled, sighed, and stretched out on the ground. He needed a bath, a shave, and a change of clothing, but all that could wait. He fell asleep and dreamed of torturing Preacher to death. In his mind, he could hear the man screaming as his life ebbed away.

Just the thought of Bedell making Preacher scream out in pain under torture was something that would have given many an Indian a good laugh. Some of them had tried it. None had succeeded.

The teams were rearranged, the supplies redistributed among the wagons, and on a gray morning, the skies threatening rain, the wagon train, minus a good many of its original passengers, rolled westward. Some of the wagons were left behind due to the sudden decline of occupants.

The women took turns driving and walking alongside the wagons. They wanted a great deal of exercise and absolutely no help in lifting heavy and bulky objects.

Preacher sat his horse off to one side and watched the wagons roll by. Blackjack had taken the point, Snake and Rupert the flanks, and Steals Pony was far out in front, scouting. Preacher wanted to hang back a ways, just to see who might be trying to sneak up or following from a distance.

By mid-afternoon, he was fairly certain those they had set free were not following, and he’d bet that Bedell and his mangy crew had gone on west to link up with his other men.

Preacher knew that he’d meet up with Bedell again. And he also knew that these women would never allow themselves to be taken alive. He had had more than one tell him they never really knew what the phrase “Shoot first and ask questions later” meant. They did now. And any band of Indians who felt this train would be an easy mark were going to be in for a very brutal, and for many, a very fatal surprise.

In a few days, the trail was going to get leaner and meaner and in many spots, the going would be slowed.

Preacher sat his saddle for several minutes, just content to look at the land that rose and fell all around him. A feeling, sort of a sadness, came over him that after this journey, it would never be the same. Oh, the land would be here for thousands of years after his bones had turned to dust, he knew that. But…in a strange way, it would not. With the coming of the white man, it would all change. Already it was changing. Although Preacher did not know it, he was already fast becoming an anachronism. As were Steals Pony, Snake, and Blackjack. Their time had come, and it had gone.

Preacher took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick shock of hair. He wondered what this country would be like fifty years down the trail. Houses, farms, fences, probably. The buffalo would be gone, and so would the free-roaming Indians. Back east, they’d already been put in reservations and left to rot.

“Wait ’til the Army tries to do that with the Plains’ Injuns,” he muttered. “They’ll find that’s easier to say than do.”

He turned his horse and headed back to the wagons, reaching them just as they had finished circling for the night’s camp and were seeing to the mules, horses, and oxen.

Blackjack and the other mountain men, Rupert included, had them a little fire going off to one side and the coffee was near to boilin’. Steals Pony had killed a buffalo that afternoon and they would have fresh steaks and the tongue for their evening meal. Since the kill had been made close to the wagons, he had been able to salvage all parts of the buffalo and had even given the hide to a lady to scrape.

She had promptly given it right back.

“Behaved as though it insulted her,” Steals Pony groused. “It’s a fine skin and would make a wonderful robe. I thought I was doing her a favor. I have discovered that white women are very strange.”

“Where’s the skin?” Preacher asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

“Right over there,” Steals Pony pointed.

Blackjack looked at him. “What are you gonna do, Preacher? You got a funny twink in your eyes.”

“Have me some fun.”

Preacher got the dullest knife he had out of his pack and then shouldered the heavy skin and located Faith, sitting with Eudora and Wallis. He plopped the skin down beside her and she immediately wrinkled her pretty little nose.

“Get that disgusting thing away from me!”

“Scrape it,” Preacher told her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said scrape it for me. Make me a fine robe. It’ll be cold time we get to the mountains. You might want to snuggle up in there with me.”

“What!” she shrieked.

“You heard me.” He tossed the knife on the ground beside her. “Use that an’ be careful. Don’t punch through the hide.”

Eudora had to turn her head away to hide her laughter. She knew there was something building between Faith and Preacher. She’d seen that way back in Missouri.

“Scrape all the scraps of meat and fat offen that and then I’ll be back and show you what to do next. It’ll take you about a week, I ’magine.”

“This thing still has fleas on it!” Faith yelled, kicking at the robe.

“They’ll leave. They just ain’t realized their home is dead. Get to work, woman.”

“I most certainly will not! Scrape your own damn buffalo hide.”

“I thought you liked me.” Preacher did his best to look hurt.

Faith picked up the knife and slowly rose to her feet. She advanced menacingly toward Preacher. He beat a hasty retreat, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll be back for my robe in about a week, dear.”

“Dear!” Faith shrieked. She threw the knife at him and just missed a laughing Steals Pony. Faith took a step backward and her foot snagged on the buffalo hide. She sat down right in the middle of the hide and did a fairly respectable job of cussing.

Back at their fire, Steals Pony speared himself a hunk of buffalo steak and said, “I say again, white women are very, very strange.”

“Somebody help me drag this stinking damn thing off and burn it!” The voice of Faith could be clearly heard throughout the circled wagons.

The wagons rolled on, now taking a northwesterly route, and still following the Platte. Indians were spotted several times, but they made no hostile moves and the westward movers did the same.

“Dakota,” Blackjack said to the women driving the wagon beside which he was riding. “Sioux to you. All kinds of Sioux.”

“I’ve read they are fierce,” Maude said.

“You read right. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Blackfoot, the Arapaho…they can be right hostile if they take a mind to it.”

“Why don’t they attack?”

“That’s a question that only an Injun could answer. They’s been times when I rid right past an Injun village and they didn’t do nothin’ ’cept look at me. Other times they’ve chased me for miles, hollerin’ and yellin’ and shootin’ arrows at me. They’s a notional bunch for a fact. Them over yonder might be lookin’ for Crow. They don’t like each other much.”

“Why?”

“Damned if I know. Probably goes back five hundred years. I’ve heared a dozen different reasons for the feud.

“If the white man would treat them with respect, they could reason with and live with these Plains Injuns. But the white man won’t treat an Injun as equal. White man is arrogant. To a white man, if it’s different, it’s wrong. And that’s why all the trouble. It’s got to be the white man’s way, or no way.”

Blackjack rode on ahead and Steals Pony rode up. “Is it difficult being a part of two cultures, Steals Pony?” Agnes asked the Delaware.

“Not for me,” the Indian replied. “I just take the best of both worlds and reject what’s left.”

“But you’re educated. That makes a difference.”

“True. In many cases. But you would be surprised at the number of whites who don’t even know me, but resent, fear, and reject me just because I am Indian.”

“Well, you will have to admit, there aren’t that many Indians living in Boston or New York.”

Steals Pony smiled and cut his eyes to her. “You would be surprised how many are there, lady. They just cut their hair and adopt the language, dress, and customs of the white man. It is a white man’s world. It doesn’t make a bit of difference if, as in this situation, where you are few and the Indian is many, it is still a white man’s world and it always will be. Whether you be a red man or a black man or a yellow man, if you wish to get along, you must adopt the white man’s ways, or there will always be trouble. That is something the Indian must accept, or the whites will destroy him.”

“You don’t sound at all bitter about that.”

“Oh, I’m not. Often amused, but never bitter. One changes with the whims of the white man. That is the way it shall be. Resist that, and one becomes an outsider and is shunned.”

“Will the savages ever learn that?” Maude asked.

The Delaware smiled at the term “savages,” but knew she meant no disrespect toward him. “No.” He frowned. “Well, doubtful, at best. And in an ever-changing climate, to cling to old ways that are suspicious, out-of-step, or seemingly hostile to those in power is a very stupid thing to do. One must constantly adapt. There will be much blood spilled before the white man settles the west.”

“The blood of both the Indians and the whites,” Agnes said.

“Yes. But much more red blood than white blood. One of the reasons so many tribes hate the Crow is because the Crow learned very quickly that to fight the white man was foolish. The Crow decided to work with the white man. A very smart move on their part. But you wait and see. The white man will still stick the Crow on reservations. They will not allow them to become a part of their society. My words will be truth. You wait and see.”

“There is talk back east of freeing the slaves held in the south.”

“They will be freed. Someday. Slavery is wrong. No man has the right to own another human being. But unless the black people adopt the white man’s ways, they will be like the Indians, free to a point. But never totally free, never totally accepted.”

“You are quite the philosopher, Steals Pony,” Agnes said.

“I am a realist, lady. I do not stand in a meadow and shout at the lightning or curse at the wind and the rain. If I chose to live back east, I would cut my hair, dress in a suit, speak the white man’s language, and be polite to those around me. I would be accepted. I have done so before. That does not mean I would lose my heritage. That would be impossible. A red man is a red man and a black man is a black man and a white man is…well, who knows what a white man is? The whites don’t even know who they are. But they know what they are. They make the laws and they rule. They always will.”

The Delaware smiled. “I know how to sit properly and balance a teacup on my knee without spilling a drop and eat little cakes and cookies and wipe my mouth with a napkin. I also know how to stalk and kill a man, take scalps, skin a deer or a buffalo, and survive out here. I have not lost my heritage. I shall never lose my heritage. How can you lose what you are born to be? But I shall always adapt and therefore I shall always be accepted by those whose opinions matter.”

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

“Exactly,” Steals Pony said. “The alternative—as the Indians and any other racial group who chooses to violently confront the whites will discover—is being fed to the lions.”