Medicine Road (32 page)

Happen the boy got in the way of the Arapaho
head man getting to that blood, he'd get hurt. Out in
the open and running away, chances were near sure
some buck would make a dead gallop scoop-up of
him and lug him clear of the fracas. Wagh! There'd be plenty of honor in that. Grabbing Watonga's foster son right out from under the Wasicun's magic
holy iron. Scooping Ya Slo, unharmed, from under
the very muzzle of Tokeya the Minniconjou's mazawakan. Wagh, indeed! Anyway, that was as close as a
man could set it up for the boy. Johnny might make
it, might not. He'd have his chance. Nohetto. A man
did what he could, then let it lay.

Shrugging, the mountain man turned his rifle eye
on his own prospects. Half a look was plenty. The
Arapahoes, both sides of the meadow, were ready.
On the up canon side, Watonga was wheeling his
roan gelding in front of the main force. Twenty
yards down the waiting line, Yellow Leg pivoted his
pony in imitation of the chief's revolving horsemanship. Across meadow, the thirty braves with
Blood Face stood hooking their toes in their ponies'
surcingles, hawkeying the gyrations of their chief
and Yellow Leg.

In his rock pile, Jesse watched the weaving turns
of the ponies with equal interest, if inferior anticipation. The Sioux-taught mountain man understood
the pattern and purpose of that wheeling maneuver
as well as an Arapaho within rifle shot. Watonga
and Yellow Leg were riding the icapsinpsineela. The
swallow, the circling signal ride that announced that
the preliminaries were done-the final act coming
on stage. When the tracks of their ponies crisscrossed, look out. When the hoof prints came together and divided like the forked tail of the
wheeling swallow-a-ah, that was the time. And the
time was now.

Watonga spun his blue roan, hard left, heeling
him straight for Yellow Leg's mount. The sub-chief
hauled his pony around to meet the approach of his chief. The two careening horses veered at the last
moment, crossing each other in the lethal forked angle. The scaling red-granite float of the meadow
floor churned to the hammer of 400 barefoot pony
hoofs. Jesse whirled, flagging Johnny to run. The
boy caught the signal, started to run, got out in the
clear past the rocks, got his first look at the lancestreaming Indian charge.

Skidding to a stop, his childish cry wobbled back
to the mountain man: "Come on, Jesse! Oh gosh,
look at them come!"

"Go on, boy!" Curse the little devil's red-head
hide. "Run, god damn it, Johnny, run!"

Johnny O'Mara hesitated half a second, turned,
and ran. Ran like old Jesse had told him. Scooting
like a singe-tail bunny. Straight back toward the
mountain man.

Jesse threw his left arm, wide, hooking the sliding
youngster to his side, cursing him while he hugged
him, winking the first tear he could ever remember
out of his ice-blue eyes, snarling at him like he'd
heard Tall Elk snarling at him in that teepee, and
thinking for the first time how the giant squaw must
have felt about this freckle-face tadpole.

"God damn you, boy! I'll flay your bottom raw for
you. I told you to run. What's the idea, Johnny?"

"You wasn't coming." Lacey's son was sobbing,
now, the tears flooding Jesse's buckskins. "You said
you was coming, and, when I looked, you wasn't. I
got scared, Jesse. Honest Injun, wowicake. I'm sorry,
Jesse. I ..."

Jesse gritted his teeth. "Hit the dirt in there!" he
yelled, shoving Johnny flat on his face between two
jutting boulders. "If you so much as twitch, Johnny,
I'll knock your goddamn' head off!"

Without waiting to see his command obeyed, the
mountain man threw himself over a waist-high
rock, leveled on the nearest hostile, the wild-riding
Blood Face. That was the greatest single shot Jesse
Callahan ever made. Not only Blood Face flew out of
his saddle, but four of his braves out of theirs.
And-even more remarkable-Yellow Leg and two
of the big-mouth war whoopers in Watonga's backside charge grabbed their bellies and lost interest in
their work.

Jesse was just as confounded as the Arapahoes.
Gray Bear and Elk Runner swung the remaining
braves in Blood Face's bunch wide of the rocks,
hightailing it for Black Coyote's riders. Pudding
proof of their panic and an almost unheard of action
among Plains warriors, they left their fallen where
they hit. In this case it was equal proof of their excellent judgment, too.

As they piled into Watonga's charge, checking
and turning it with their warning shouts, the mystery of Jesse's great shot was blasted wide open.
Black Coyote, unable to see clearly across the rocks,
missed the loss of Blood Face and the four braves,
had seen Yellow Leg grab his middle but figured
that for the work of the hidden Tokeya. Jesse had
seen the braves go down with no idea what sent
them, had assumed that wild lead from Watonga's
bucks had done the damage. The rag and tag of the
galloping Indian pack, on both sides of the charge,
simply had no idea what had hit them.

Watonga, Gray Bear, Elk Runner, and surviving
company now got the second installment of Tokeya
Sha's holy iron miracle. It came crashing from the
elevated, rocky aperture of the down canon trail
head, the one toward the Medicine Road, and it set three more Arapaho ponies to carrying double. The
smoke of that second volley, crawling up the canon
walls, raised the curtain on as fine a natural eyeful
ever a surrounded mountain man took in. Ranging
back of their granite breastworks, waving their rifles and whooping it up as woolly as any pack of
braid-hair hostiles, Andy Hobbs, Morgan Bates,
Joplin Smith, and the balance of the Choteau Company muleskinners hooted and catcalled the fleeing
Arapahoes.

Jesse slumped down on a handy rock, feeling
the sudden need for something harder than a
handful of hot air under his seat. "All right,
Johnny boy. Come on out. We got ourselves a
breather."

The mountain man had to grin at the puny sound
of his own voice. It wobbled out weaker than a tenday kitten. By cripes, a man had to allow that when
he'd been in a tight that cozy, he knew he'd been
squeezed somewhat. And he knew more than that
as soon as he'd gotten his wind and had himself a
sick smile at Lacey's young one wiggling, tearful
and dirty-faced, out of his crack in the rocks. He
knew he wasn't yet home in bed. Not by forty miles
and ninety-five howling-mad Arapahoes. He and
Johnny were for sure in the middle of the plank.
With both ends sawed off, short. The Arapahoes
couldn't get at them without running the ambushing teamster's fire. The muleskinners couldn't get
out to relieve them without exposing themselves to
the rifles of Black Coyote's raiders. And both sides
counted plenty of center shots in their ranks. When
a man faced up to it, the Indians still had the top
hand on the coup-stick handle.

In the mountain man's working mind, the fact that Andy Hobbs and the boys had gotten up from
old Gabe's so suddenly meant one of two things: either they hadn't brought the powder wagon at all, or
they'd brought it part way and had to leave it down
on the Medicine Road. From where Jesse squatted,
cuddling Johnny and snatching looks at both trail
heads between reassuring pats on the tousled red
head, the whole thing looked like a clear stand-off.

Damn the luck. If Heyoka could still run, he'd
chance a dash for it in half a shuck. But the mare was
stove. If she could walk out of the meadow bareback,
let alone getting up a gallop under double carry, it
would be a mortal wonder. He had raveled the knit
of their chances down this far when a commotion
among the Arapahoes sent his eyes, following their
excited pointings, swinging to the white side of the
meadow. Jesse grabbed his look and got excited
right along with the hostiles. Son-of-a-bitch!

Don't ask how that big leather-faced hardcase had
done it. Don't question what skull work and back
break had gone betwixt him and Andy Hobbs and
the rest of the muleskinners to get it done. Don't say
a god damned thing. Just squat there and run your
ever loving eyes over her from her upswept prow to
her high-tailed stern, from her glaring white Osnaburg top sheets to her circus-red wheels! Yes,
man. Run your eyes plenty and then raise them to
old Man Above. Lift them to old Wakan Tanka.
Thank him. Ha ho, woyuonihan. By God, Morgan
Bates had done it-he'd brought him his gunpowder and his red-wheeled goddam!

If Watonga had a price, this was it. His band was
out of meat and powder and with a big herd of fat
cows running around on the mesa above Portola
Springs. Wagh! Any man in the business who'd been Sioux-coached and couldn't make a trade out
of this tangle deserved to have his hair hoisted.

On his side of the meadow, Watonga was digging
in, spreading his best shots among the rocks flanking the upcanon trail head, covering Jesse's hole as
closely as the muleskinners had it covered from
their side. If it was going to be a siege, the wily Arapaho was ready for it. He might be low on powder
and lead, but he had a mort more of men and time
than the whites.

Among their rocks, the muleskinners were imitating the chief's moves, shifting their individual vantage points to improve their rifle command of the
trapped mountain man's cover. It was Jesse Callahan's move. Cupping his hands, he bellowed across
the meadow: "Hi, there, Andy! Can you hear me?"

Jesse had a baritone halfway between a colicky
boar pig and a sore-throat bullfrog. Apparently it
was more than adequate, the bearded wagon master
bellowing right back that if a couple of old North
Trail hands like Jesse Callahan and A.J. Hobbs
couldn't make themselves heard over 200 yards of
open meadow, they were in the wrong business.
What did Mr. Callahan have on his bright young
mind this bracing autumn afternoon? And how
would he like to hear that Mr. Hobbs had managed
to bring along the whole original load of Du Pont
intact?

Jesse let the thrill of that spread his rare grin
about four more teeth, before calling back: "All
right! Fine. Now, listen. Hold her down and watch
your words. Old Blackface over there, and some of
his top haircutters, they catch a little white chin music." The mountain man tried using words that
wouldn't likely fit into the bobtail English primer of Watonga's prairie education, hoped he was getting
the idea across to Andy Hobbs. "And they ain't exactly got their thumbs in their ears. You get me?"

"Like as not, little man. Can you hear this all
right?"

"Just right. All set, now. Watch your talk."

"I said I got you, boy. What you aim to pull?
Straight trade?"

"Straight trade," the mountain man echoed him.
"The Pittsburgh and Du Pont for me and the kid.
What you say?"

"Bad medicine, Jesse." The old man's voice was
quick with worry. "What's to keep them from accepting the swindle, and then crossing us double?
They got us ten to one and nobody never got fat
swallowing no Injun eyewash. I'm spooked at just
giving them the Du Pont, right out."

The moment Jesse had seen the powder wagon,
his mind had started turning on how best to use it.
When he had set out after the Arapahoes, things had
been a mort different. He had, offhand, thought that
if he could bring the wagon up to the red camp on a
peaceful palaver basis, with a reinforced party of
whites to back up the talk, he could trade them out
of the kid with nobody getting hurt on either side.
But that was before a lot of things. It was before he'd
had to kill Tall Elk and carve up Watonga. It was before he could have known that, when Andy Hobbs
got the wagons to Fort Bridger, he would find
Bridger and the other mountain men usually
around the place absent from the fort and scattered
God knew where. And before anybody but the old
white warrior himself could have known that, old
Gabe had changed his whole plan about trying to
stand off Brigham Young's Danites from within the fort. Had decided to cut for the timber and not be
home when the Saints dropped in.

Now, hesitating, Jesse knew Andy Hobbs was
plenty solid in his doubts of turning the powder over
to the unstable red men. Knew, also, that he was up
against a moral decision that spelled murder. The
mountain man made that decision the way he had to.
Without thinking about the dirty side of it. Keeping
his mind on Lacey O'Mara's kid and the dozen white
men with Andy Hobbs and Morgan Bates. And
keeping it on Jesse Callahan's own tender, snowwhite hide. Somebody was going to get hurt now.

Watonga had taken too much loss of face off of
this particular bunch of Wasicun goddam drivers to
let them go clean and free following a peaceful
trade. That was the way Andy Hobbs had it figured
and he likely had it figured right. On top of that general debt, you add what Jesse had handed the giant
Arapaho on his own personal account and you had a
sum that toted up way too heavily for a white man
to look for an even-steven trade from a red one.

Across the meadow Andy Hobbs, waiting nervously on Jesse's long silence, sang out: "Hello,
Jesse! What's amiss, boy? I said I was plumb set
against just giving them the Du Pont, clean out. Did
you hear me?"

"I heard you." The mountain man's voice came
quick now, the snap and hop of it telling a decision
hastily made but finally meant. "And you needn't be
skittery about giving them the powder. Not the way
I'm aiming to give it to them, old salt."

"What you mean? You said straight trade, didn't
you?"

"I'm changing that. I ain't saying it no more. You
was right. We can't chance it."

"What you saying, now?"

"Straight Injun trade."

"Where's the difference?"

"I said straight Injun, old hoss. You got that? We
ain't trading with old Gabe or Charley Bent, you
know. Those're red Injuns over there. The whole
thing's gummed up, Andy. This ain't just the ideal
swap I had in mind when I took out after these sons.
They got us spread so far over the barrel our butts
are pointing sun high. Give one chance, the way
they're gingered up now, they'd snatch the Du Pont
and half our hair along with it. Brush up, Andrew!"