Commanche Vengeance Read online

  “I see.” Slater nodded and turned back to his packing.

  Duke began saddling the roan and the black. The small party was packed and ready to leave before anyone spoke again. Slater stood with the reins of his sorrel in his hand and looked at Duke and Sarah. “Now listen, I’m an old stinkweed that ain’t got no particular reason for saying what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it.”

  “I promise I won’t take offense,” Duke said soberly.

  “All right. Now here’s the way I see it. I got all the trimmings for a solid summer of hide-hunting—” he waved his hand at the two pack animals—” but I’m getting old and lazy. Time was when I thought I’d make me a big stake on killing bluffer and selling hides and then light out for Texas somewheres and start me a little cattle place.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. The memory of her own little place and of her son and daughter and the work her husband Adam had put into the raising of the breed herd, made her turn away.

  “You got an offer, Mr. Slater?” Duke asked.

  “I have.” Slater said. “One man can care for himself all right enough, especially this one talkin’ to you. But like I said, I’m getting tired and lazy. If this lady would keep camp for us, cook and stuff, while you and me go out and do the killing and skinnin’, why I reckon we’d do right well by ourselves before the snows come.”

  Duke thought about this and turned to look at Sarah. She made no sign that she had anything to say. It was plain to Duke that it was his decision to make. “What you say is fine, Mr. Slater, but didn’t you just tell us that you trailed all spring and only found one little stand of meat?”

  “Sure,” Slater said, “that’s because I been working south of the two Plattes. That Cheyenne business we run into is the reason I’m here now. One man can’t go into country where the buffalo are and kill and skin and hide and cook for himself—and still keep one eye out for the Injun parties.”

  “Are you sure the buffalo are around the two Plattes?”

  Slater nodded his head emphatically. “Scouted them myself.”

  Duke thought about this for a moment. “How would you want to split the earnings?”

  “Well, I got a mite invested in the gear—that counts some—so I reckon if the lady will take care of the camp that’s worth a full share. Let’s say that we do it three ways, even, after I take out for the trappings.”

  Duke turned to Sarah. “It’s a good proposition, Miss Sarah. If you don’t have any feelings about going back into the Cheyenne country—after what happened, I mean.”

  Sarah nodded her head. “I think that Mr. Slater’s offer is generous and I think we oughtta take it, Mr. Duke.”

  “Fine,” Slater said and offered his hand to her, then to Duke. After they had shaken hands, he turned to look around at the sky. “Best thing for us to do is sneak into that country, and the best way to do that is ride west and come back around into Colorado and cross the South Platte at the headwaters of Frenchman Creek. I got an idea that every danged bluffer in the whole world is up there belly-deep on some of that heavy grass.”

  They rode out of the canyon, swung directly west and made steady time until sunset, and by the time darkness caught them they were bedded down for the night near a small stream that was jumping with fish. In half an hour Duke and Sarah had pulled a dozen out of the water, gutted them and strung them through the gills over a hot greasewood fire.

  With coffee and sourdough biscuits the three partners settled down to a feast of rare delicacy. Sarah, it was established, would always take the first guard after eating and be allowed to sleep a full night without being disturbed. Duke would take the middle watch and then the old man. Duke promptly crawled off from the fire into his blanket and left Sarah and Slater alone. Sarah was just finishing her coffee before taking up a position when Slater glanced over at Duke. He listened a moment for the deep regular breathing of the thickchested cowman and men turned back to Sarah, speaking in a low voice. “It ain’t none of my business, ma’am,” he said, “but I’m sure high on curiosity about how you and this fellow happen to be out here in the middle of the Indian country all by your lonesome and—beggin’ your pardon ma’am—not married.”

  Sarah smiled. “It’s not hard to explain, Mr. Slater,” she said gently, with a look at the figure of Gibson Duke. Softly, and without emotion, she told the old trapper about her husband and One Nest. “At first, I thought I’d never be able to draw another breath until I had found him and killed that Injun—Let alone look at another man, to have feelings for him.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Slater said.

  “Now—” She paused. “Now, Mr. Slater, I think I might even be able to forget about One Nest. I think I understand a lot of things that pain and hate and revenge wouldn’t allow me to consider when I started out. Gibson Duke helped me that way. I never met a more patient man.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Slater said. “You don't have to say nothin’ else. I understand. I’m old an’ mean an stink to high heaven because I hate taking baths—” he shook his head in annoyance—“but I sure like to see things real and honest once in a while.”

  Sarah picked up the Sharps and walked away toward a small crust of hill that stood about thirty feet above their position. She settled down and held the gun across her lap and stared into the darkness, looking up at the stars, letting her mind wander back over the weeks to the beginning. It all seemed like a dream. But she turned and looked at the bed of coals in the dying fire and felt the reassurance of its being real. In a moment the snores of Slater drifted up to her.

  She stood up, alert, gun ready, eyes sharp and clear in the darkness, and waited for something to happen. Nothing did happen and Duke came to take her place before midnight, grumpy, sleepy and not fully awake. He grunted something to her that Sarah took for “Good night,” and she went down to the blankets. She lay a moment on the hard ground and watched the vague outlines of his kneeling figure in the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sarah awoke to the slight pressure on her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes. It was still dark. But she knew it was Duke kneeling beside her. “What is it?” she breathed silently.

  “Get up quietly. We have company.”

  She moved out of the blankets, pulling the Colt as she stood up and looked around the camp. Slater was gone, and the fire was out. She could see the piles of dirt that had been kicked on the coals, vaguely, and the little smoke coming out of the edges.

  Duke took her hand and guided her to the outer edge of the dirt ridge that had been used as a sentry post. They crawled to the edge of the top and bumped into Slater. “Where are they?” Duke asked the old man.

  “Just coming into the open over yonder. Watch just below the polestar and you’ll see one of them move in a minute.”

  “Indians?” Sarah asked in a soft whisper.

  “No,” Duke said. “Camp raiders.”

  Sarah felt Slater touch her on the back and motion for her to move further over to the right, stringing the three of them out at ten-foot intervals along the ridge.

  Sarah slipped the Colt back into her holster, and laid the carbine over the crust of earth, and waited. She saw something move in the graying light She glanced toward the east and saw the first signs of day coming up, just a smattering of gray that was nearly black. But she knew it would start coming up lighter, fast and sure. She wondered fleetingly if Duke or Slater had given any thought to trying to escape. She didn’t remember their position too well, but she did know that it wasn’t much of a place to make a fighting stand.

  There was movement again, directly in front of her and about two hundred yards out. Just a slight, abrupt gesture that would not have been seen in the dark a few minutes before.

  “See anything?” Duke asked on her right

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “You, Slater?”

  “Yup,” the old man grunted.

  “I think I have one of them spotted. Want to fight or run?”


  “Fight” Slater said, spitting it out

  “All right by me.” Duke said “How about you, Miss Sarah?”

  “If it’s necessary,” Sarah said. “But if there’s any other way, I’d rather do it.”

  “There ain’t no other way,” Slater said. “These vermin are worse than Apache.”

  “Pick out one of them and when I give the word, fire,” Duke said.

  Sarah turned her attention back to the place where she had seen the movement a few minutes before. She saw it again—the barest suggestion of gleaming metal. She leveled the carbine and waited In the silence she heard the heavy hammer of Slater’s buffalo gun pulled back. Then she heard the rustle of Duke as he laid the Sharps on the ground and sighted down. “Ready?” he said quietly.

  “Yup.”

  “Ready.”

  “Fire,” Duke breathed.

  The three guns spoke together, three sheets of flame in the darkness.

  “Down!” Duke commanded There was a scream out in front of them, then a crashing around in the darkness. A man began to gag. Then a hail of lead began to dig into the ridge they were hiding behind.

  “Try and spot one of them,” Duke said.

  “I got two. Slater replied.

  “I have one,” Sarah said.

  “Steady now,” Duke said. “Move further apart about another ten feet and wait for the command to fire.”

  Sarah inched her way further away from the others and stopped at what she judged to be ten feet She leveled the carbine again and caught sight of movement in the rapidly lightening area in front of the ridge. There was a shallow depression of thick grass that dropped off sharply into a gulch made long ago from an overwash or rain. A man’s head, hatless and gray-white in the expanding morning light, popped up and then dropped down again. She sighted along the depression’s edge and waited for the man’s head to reappear. It did and she marked the spot

  “Ready?” Duke whispered to her.

  “Yes.”

  She did not hear Slater’s reply.

  “Fire,” Duke said.

  Slater fired and a man screamed. She waited for her man’s head to reappear again, finger on the trigger, palm flat on the barrel of the carbine, pressing it down into the dirt to keep it from dancing when she pulled the trigger. There was a long minute of silence. Then Duke fired again. And as soon as he fired, the head in Sarah’s sights danced up and snapped a handgun which had been shot in Duke’s direction. Sarah fired and saw the man flip backwards.

  She withdrew and sat protected behind the ridge. The sky was lighting up rapidly now. She could make out the figures of Slater and Duke plainly. She looked down at Duke and nodded that she was all right. Slater moved back toward the middle section of the ridge and spoke quietly to Duke. They both turned and looked up toward the camp where the horses were staked. The fire from the other side of the ridge began to grow steadily stronger. Sarah listened to the different sound the guns made. She counted five different guns, listening to the reports and checking the pattern of the man firing. Duke and Slater were nodding. Slater slipped down the edge of the ridge and into their camp and made his way toward the horses. He saddled his sorrel quickly and leaped into leather. He nodded to Duke, who men worked his way down to where Sarah had resumed her position on the edge of the ridge.

  “Slater is going to try and get around them and make for that hillock back yonder.” He nodded toward the opposite side of the depression. “That way we can get them in a crossfire. Use your Colt and get ready to cover him when he makes a run for it.”

  Sarah drew the Colt examined it and nodded that she was ready. Duke had his gun out and moved back to his position. He nodded to Slater, who drew his handgun and spurred the sorrel in the flanks. The animal leaped ahead with amazing energy and speed and the old hunter, leaning low on the off-side, firing over his saddlehorn, broke free of the ridge cover and headed straight out for the plains and grass country.

  Immediately Sarah and Duke emptied their Colts into the line opposite them and did not attempt accuracy in their shooting, just a covering fire. A few of the answering guns in the depression broke away from the head-on fight and began firing at Slater, but the breakneck speed of the sorrel was too much, plus the element of surprise, and Slater was out of range and circling hard and fast in back of the raiders hardly before they knew what was going on.

  Duke and Sarah reloaded one at a time and sat back to wait

  Suddenly Sarah heard a crunching noise to her side. She whirled and fired. She caught the man in the right leg. He stumbled and nearly fell, but steadied himself and brought up his gun again.

  Sarah fired quickly and shot him in the heart. She dropped in a heap and lay still. Duke watched from his position, and Sarah could see his face go white from twenty feet away.

  There was a distant booming now, a loud, heavy report that was much deeper and more solid than any of the sharper noises of the carbines and Colts used on both sides.

  Duke indicated the other side of the raiders. Sarah sneaked a look, sticking her head above the ridge, and had her hat shot off. She dropped back down.

  The heavy report came again. Duke grinned. “Slater’s gun—a big Ballard fifty—he’s so far out of range they can’t hope to get back at him. They either have to run or stay here and get it.”

  It didn’t take the raiders long to decide. In a few minutes and after several more of the booming shots from Slater’s buffalo gun, Sarah and Duke heard the sudden rush of hoofs beating a retreat back to the south. Carbine up and ready, Sarah winged a couple of shots after them but the five remaining men escaped to the nearly yellow sky of the morning.

  Slowly, Duke leading the way, they inched out from behind the cover of the ridge and stepped over to the depression. Seven men lay on the ground. One of them was still alive, but only barely so. He tried to speak.

  Sarah leaned over quickly and picked the man’s head up and rested it in her lap. The man tried to smile—and then closed his eyes.

  Slater came in a few minutes later. He looked around at the dead bodies and danced a jig. “Damnation! Once I got this old hump killer hot and working, they sure lit out like an Injun chile after his first drink of fire water!”

  Sarah stood up. “Who are they?” Her face was drained of color.

  Duke took her by the shoulder. “Raiders. Saddlebums of one land and another. Don’t feel bad about it, Miss Sarah. It was them or us. And I don’t have to tell you what they would have done if they had gotten you alive.”

  “Yes.” Instinctively, Sarah trembled as she saw the grinning and excited Slater going through the pockets of the dead men.

  “God! What a fight! Damn it, Miss Sarah, you’re better with a shooter than any four men I ever saw.” Slater held up a gold watch and listened for the tick. “Works, too!” He shoved it into his pocket

  All the rest of the day Duke and Slater worked, digging out shallow graves to bury the dead. They selected two of the best rifles, took all the shells, and Duke rode out to round up the horses. . . .

  That night as they sipped coffee and Duke and Slater talked over the fight again and again, Sarah remained silent wondering about the land that was so full of death and hardship. She wondered if it would not have been better to remain in Georgia after the war—even all the hardships to endure there—rather than this.

  Without a word she took her carbine and walked back to the ridge position on her first guard of the night, and looked down at the shallow graves of the seven men she had helped to kill. Nameless, meaningless, death. She thought a long time about the revenge killing of One Nest.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They moved into the headwaters of the Republican a week later and crossed the river well into Colorado and then turned north, traveling at a steady daylight-to-dusk pace without a break, stopping only at noon to make coffee and pull at smoked meat cooked the night before.

  It was toward the middle of August and the heat was parching and the land was dry when they moved into the wat
ershed area of the South Platte and trailed northeast along the river’s edge and crossed back into Nebraska. On the seventeenth of August they topped a butte and stood staring out over the deep valley that Slater called Hansen’s Place. Below them, hemmed in on three sides of the valley, were more buffalo than Sarah had ever seen.

  “There they are,” Slater said, pulling his kerchief down off his face to hang on his beard. “Meat on the table and skins for the asking. We make camp right here, Miss Sarah.”

  Duke slipped his saddle and pulled out an ax from one of the packs on the trailing horses. He began working on a group of poplars for hide racks and a makeshift corral. Slater dropped down the gentle slope leading into the valley and began scouting the herd, working his way around slowly, watching for signs of Indians and studying the hills. Sarah set about establishing a fireplace with stones, building the campsite near a stream and clearing the grass away from the cooking area. Dry as tinder, the slightest spark would have set the brush to burning. That night they went to sleep early and arose before dawn, and by the second night, Duke and Slater had built half a dozen hide racks and a goodsized corral for the horses.

  In the morning Sarah was left alone as the two men took their guns and knives and two pack horses each and dropped down into the valley. About an hour after sun-up, Sarah began to hear the rolling boom of their rifles echoing and re-echoing. At noon, the shooting stopped and Sarah knew they were turning now to the skinning.

  Having prepared a simple meal for the two men, she climbed the roan and made her way into the valley. Duke had killed more than thirty buffalo and was busy skinning them down, trimming the skin away from the hoofs, slitting up the belly to the throat, around the throat and then down the inside of each leg to the belly cut A rope was made fast to a section of the skin and looped to the saddle of his black, which kept an even, though slight strain on the rope. As Duke peeled the thick hide from the tissue and flesh, the horse pulled the animals hide from its body.

  Duke was bloody from head to foot. Sarah left his food and rode out into the valley several miles to find Slater in the same condition, only having killed nearly twice as many animals as Duke had.