The Scalp Hunters

Chapter One

The four were young and eager for excitement. They liked to explore and roam where whim took them. Only one had counted coup. That didn’t matter since they were careful to avoid their many enemies.

Short Bull in particular was tired of the same old haunts, the same old hunting grounds. He wanted to set eyes on country he had never seen before. So on the tenth night of their wandering, as he and his friends were hunkered around a crackling fire, he announced, “I am not ready to go back to our village. I want to see more of the prairie.”

Plenty Elk grunted. “What is there to see but grass and more grass?”

Across the fire from them Wolf’s Tooth said, “Were it up to you, we would not ride out of sight of our lodges.”

Right Hand laughed. He had the best disposition. His mother liked to say that when he was born the sun lit his eyes and had burned bright ever since. “We have already come farther than any of our people have ever come. What is another five or six sleeps?”

They were young and they were Arapaho. The Sariet-tethka, some tribes called them; the Dog Eaters. The Arapaho liked dog meat. To them it was delicious. To the other tribes it was the same as eating one’s grandmother.

All four wore finely crafted buckskins and moccasins that each bore the personal stamp of the wearer. Right Hand’s moccasins were white, to represent snow, with large blue triangles, the symbol for lakes. Wolf’s Tooth’s were mostly brown but had red squares that stood for buffalo guts. Plenty Elk’s moccasins were brown, too, but with green rectangles to betoken the breath of life. Short Bull’s had red markings that symbolized red crayfish.

Only Short Bull had an eagle feather in his hair. He was the one who had counted coup. “So we are agreed? We continue east?”

“I am for it,” Right Hand said.

“And I,” Wolf’s Tooth declared.

Plenty Elk poked the fire with a stick and sparks rose into the air. “You are my friends. I will go where you go. But I am not as fond of grass as the rest of you. I am against this.”

Right Hand grinned at the others, then said casually, “I have heard you are fond of antelope.”

“Especially Small Antelope,” Wolf’s Tooth said, “even though she has two legs and not four.”

Plenty Elk waited for their mirth to end before saying, “You envy me because she is as beautiful as a sunrise.”

“Now she is,” Wolf’s Tooth agreed. “Have you seen her mother? That is how she will look in fifty winters.”

“I would not shed tears if the Utes took your hair,” Plenty Elk parried.

They were young, and they were best friends. Ever since they could remember they did everything together. They learned to ride together, to hunt together, to shoot bows together. Short Bull’s father was a member of the Spear Society, warriors who vowed never to retreat in battle and taught them to throw a lance.

They had been to many places together. Up into the mountains where the snow stayed on the highest peaks even in the heat of summer. To the Black Hills, the sacred territory of the fierce Lakotas. To the geyser country with the longtime ally of the Arapahos, the Cheyenne.

But the four had never been this far out on the prairie.

It was the Thunder Moon, and the prairie teemed with life. Elk hid in the thick timber that fringed the streams. Deer could be flushed from the cottonwoods. Raccoons, possum, fox, coyotes, all called the prairie home. So did the wolf and the bear and the tawny cats with their sharp claws and fangs. Prairie dogs popped out of their burrows to whistle in alarm. Hawks soared on high, perpetually on the hunt. Birds sang and warbled and chirped. Vultures circled, doing their aerial dance of the dead.

It was the Thunder Moon, and their world was bountiful. Although they were far from Arapaho country, they were far from the country of tribes who might do them harm.

They felt safe traveling farther.

Two mornings later they were wending through a maze of rolling hillocks and gullies. The scent of the green grass was strong in their nostrils, the warm breeze strong on their backs. Puffy white clouds floated in the blue sky.

The four friends came around a bend and beheld a ribbon of water. They drew rein to let their mounts drink.

Short Bull was in the lead, as was his habit, and he was the first to swing down. He stretched, then froze, his brown eyes fixed on the soft earth at the water’s edge. From his lips came two words that stiffened the others. “White men.”

The evidence was plain. Tracks of shod horses pockmarked the ground. Only white men rode shod horses. Mixed with the hoofprints were footprints of men in hard-soled boots. Only white men wore boots.

Wolf’s Tooth was the best tracker. He squatted and read the sign. “I count nine. They came from the southeast and went that way.” He pointed to the north. Rising, he examined a circle of trampled grass. “This is where they camped for the night. See? That is where a heavy one slept. They broke camp at sunrise. They cannot be far.”

“They camped here?” Plenty Elk said skeptically. “Then why was there no fire? White men always make fires.”

“I only say what their sign tells me.”

Right Hand was studying a large footprint in the mud. “This one is twice as deep as the others.” He put his foot next to the track to demonstrate. “He must be as heavy as my horse.”

“What are they doing here?” Short Bull wondered. “They are far from the trails whites use.”

“Maybe they hunt buffalo,” Wolf’s Tooth said.

Plenty Elk snorted. “Only white men would come to hunt buffalo when most of the herds are to the south.”

“White men are strange,” Short Bull said.

“White men are dangerous,” Wolf’s Tooth added.

No one disagreed. They had never fought white men, but they had listened to warriors who did. White men were hairy and smelly and had bad manners. White men were clumsy and noisy and made their fires much too big. They also had guns that could shoot far. Most important of all, in close combat white men were surprisingly formidable.

Only a few whites had come west of the Muddy River, but more trickled across the prairie each summer, many bound for a distant land by the great salt sea. Some stayed. A few lived on the prairie. A few more lived deep in the mountains. Some adopted Indian ways.

These nine came from the east, from where their kind reportedly lived in stone lodges and went about in carts such as the whites used to bring supplies to the rendezvous in the days of the beaver hunters.

All this the four friends knew, and more.

“I say we count coup on them,” Short Bull proposed.

The others looked at him.

“Wolf’s Tooth says there are nine,” Plenty Elk reminded him.

“So?”

“They will have guns,” Right Hand said.

“So?”

“So it does no good to count coup if you are killed counting it. We want to live to see our lodges again.”

Short Bull made a noise of mild disgust. “Are we stupid that we let them see us and shoot us? No. We stalk them. We wait. When one or two separate from the rest, we strike. We count coup. We take their horses and their weapons. We return to our people and they sing of our courage. You get to wear feathers in your hair as I do.”

“It appeals to me,” Wolf’s Tooth said.

Plenty Elk didn’t hide his dislike of the idea. “There are things you do not do if you have sense. You do not kick a skunk. You do not poke a sleeping bear with a stick. You do not hunt nine white men with guns.”

“I will only do it if the rest of you do,” Right Hand said.

Short Bull stepped to his horse. “Mount and we will follow them. They cannot be far ahead.”

“Wait,” Plenty Elk said. “Did you hear my words?”

“I heard the words of an old woman in the skin of a young man. Do you want to be a warrior, or would you rather cook and sew?”

“I want to go on breathing.”

“Who of us does not? You make of these whites more than they are. They will fall to our arrows and knives as would an Ute or a Nez Perce.”

“Stay here if you want,” Wolf’s Tooth said. “We will come get you when we have counted coup.”

With a sharp gesture of annoyance, Plenty Elk stepped to his animal. “Where you three go, I go. That is how it has always been. That is how it will always be.”

“Then stop complaining.” Short Bull reined up the gully. He rode with his lance at his side. His grip showed he was ready to throw it at an instant’s need.

The white men had followed the twists and turns of the gully for a long way. Finally their trail led up out of it—only to enter a dry wash and follow its serpentine windings.

“They do not want to be seen, these whites,” Wolf’s Tooth said.

“They hide from war parties,” Right Hand noted.

The four young Arapahos went around a bend. Ahead was an oval hollow roughly an arrow’s flight from side to side. They could see that the tracks crossed and went up and over the far slope. They kneed their horses and were halfway across when Short Bull’s pinto pricked its ears and whinnied.

As if that were a signal, figures materialized on the hollow’s rim. Nine men, all bristling with weapons, half wearing buckskins and most with beards. Sunlight glinted off rifle barrels and illuminated tobacco-stained teeth bared in vicious grins.

The four young warriors drew rein, startled.

“They were waiting for us,” Plenty Elk said. “They knew we were following them and lured us into a trap.”

One of the white men came down into the bowl. He wore a wide-brimmed black hat. He sauntered toward them with a casual, insolent air, his rifle in the crook of an elbow. He was no taller than the Arapahos but he was twice as broad, with shoulders wider than any man they had ever seen. His beard and hair were the color of a mountain lion’s hide, and his eyes were as flint. He stopped, spat a dark juice on the ground, and said a few strange words.

“We do not speak your tongue, white man,” Short Bull said.

The man cocked his head, his grin widening. “You Dog Eaters, yes?”

Their shock was considerable.

Right Hand recovered first and answered. “Yes. We are Arapaho. You speak our language?”

“I talk your tongue little,” the white man said. “It many winters since last talk.”

“How can a white man know our tongue?”

“Before you born, boy, I trap beaver. I find Arapaho warrior caught in ice. I help him.”

“Why are you in Arapaho country?” Short Bull demanded.

“Your country?” The white man laughed. “This land no Arapaho. This land no Cheyenne. No Sioux. No Blackfeet. This land buffalo. This land prairie dogs.”

“What do you do here?” Short Bull persisted.

A gleam came into the white man’s flinty eyes. “We hunt.”

“The big herds have gone south,” Right Hand said. “Come back in three moons and the plain will be covered with them.”

“We not hunt buffalo,” the white man responded. “We hunt hair.”

The four Arapahos looked at one another in mild confusion.

“Hair?” Plenty Elk said.

“Hair,” the white man said again. He opened a pouch and reached inside. Very slowly, chuckling all the while, he drew his hand out and extended his arm so they could see what he was holding.

“Scalps!” Plenty Elk exclaimed.

The white man had a string of half a dozen on a length of rope. Most were long and all were black and none left any doubt as to the race of those who lost them.

“Indian scalps,” Wolf’s Tooth growled.

“This what we hunt. This how we live.” The white man touched one. “This Otoe.” He plucked at another. “This Pawnee.” Yet another. “This Cheyenne woman.”

Short Bull shifted toward his friends. He said one word, quietly. “Flee.” Then he whipped around, raising his spear arm as he turned and tensed for the throw.

The boom of the white man’s rifle was like thunder. At the blast, the lower half of Short Bull’s face dissolved in a spray of skin and bone and blood, and he was catapulted off the back of his horse. He flew head over heels and came down with a thud.

The other three Arapahos scattered.

From the rim, the rest of the white men opened up. Some were laughing.

Right Hand bent low and streaked toward the west rim, but he barely brought his sorrel to a gallop when there was a splat and one of its eyes was no longer there. He clutched at the mane as the horse went into a roll. At the last moment he tried to throw himself clear and something struck his head a powerful blow that sent him plunging into a black pit.

Wolf’s Tooth and Plenty Elk wheeled their animals and raced back the way they came. Hornets buzzed their ears. Suddenly Wolf’s Tooth’s shoulder burst in a shower of blood. He swayed and would have fallen if not for Plenty Elk, who reined in close and leaned over to steady him. Then they were in the gully and flew like the wind.

Behind them, the white man with the flinty eyes howled with fury.