With an emphatic shake of his head. “You listen, Bill Cody—that bunch of red renegades gone and wheeled off to the north now!” He pointed into the deepening gloom of night. “Making for the Laramie Plains. From there, it’s only a frog jump over to the Black Hills. That’s sacred ground to them Cheyenne. For the Lakota too, for that matter. This bunch gets up there to say their prayers near the big medicine of their Bear Butte—why, we’ll likely never see trace of them two women again.”
Cody contemplated that for a moment before saying, “You figure we ought to tell the general he’s gonna have to hump up and get his outfit high behind—or he ain’t got a chance at catching that village?”
“If Carr don’t push this bunch of worn-out men and broke-down horses even harder than he’s been doing already … yes, we ain’t got the chance of a horse fart in a winter wind to find them—”
Keening yips and howls abruptly resonated in the middistance of that summer night. Cheyenne war cries.
Shad’s hand was filled with the Spencer, and he sprang to his feet with Cody, both of them sprinting toward the hammer of oncoming hoofbeats, that staccato drumbeat flooding off the hills beyond the dull, starlit splotches of tents in North’s Pawnee camp.
They both had taken no more than a matter of steps when the Pawnee camp exploded with noise and the glare of gunfire in the night. Yellow flashes streaked the great indigo blackness as the muzzles of the trackers’ pistols erupted. He could make out the voices of the North brothers shouting orders, hear the curses of other white officers, among them Becher’s distinctive German—then it was all smothered under the racket of more gunfire and thundering hooves. Sleeping scouts and sleep-deprived pickets were suddenly jarred into a battle for their lives.
Frank North emerged from the shadowy flit of light and darkness as some of the trackers doused fires and pulled down tents. As a backdrop the tents and fires made a perfect target of a man. One of the Pawnee lumbered past, away from the fight and muttering angrily.
“Was that Mad Bear?” Cody asked the major.
North nodded, staring after the Pawnee.
Shad asked, “Where’s he bound for?”
“The horses hobbled back there on the line. Likely he’s going to mount up,” North replied with a shrug.
“Better stop that one from going out there on his own, Major,” Shad advised.
“I’d sooner try to stop a Cheyenne charge with a buffalo-tail flyswatter, Mr. Sweete!”
“Not that much firing from the Cheyenne,” Cody said. “Can’t be that many of ’em rushing camp.”
“Shit—you know better’n that, Bill: could be a whole passel of ’em waiting out there in the dark for any of us to follow,” Shad replied. “Draw a few of the cocky ones right out there and swallow them up like nighthawks.”
Without needing any more advice, North flung his voice into the dark, shouting in Pawnee at Mad Bear, ordering the tracker back from his pursuit.
“Anyone hit in your camp, Major?” Cody asked.
North shook his head. “My tent got shot up. Looks to be all the damage right now. Those bastards came right past my tent, slinging lead into it. Lute’s tent too. Then the sonsabitches were gone. Raced right out of camp and headed for the remuda to chivy our horses.”
“Doesn’t sound like they got a one of your animals—for all their trouble,” Cody said.
“We had every one hobbled and cross-lined on my order,” North said proudly.
Luther North suddenly took form out of the confusion, grumbling. “Frank—this shit is beginning to sour my milk.”
“What’s bothering you, little brother?”
“Twice now we been hit by these bastards—at night.”
Cody nodded. “The army doesn’t figure Injuns are supposed to attack at night.”
Luther wagged his head, angry. “And now Mad Bear’s gone after ’em.”
“Sonofabitch,” Frank growled. “I tried to stop him.”
“Me too,” Luther replied. “Didn’t do no good, though. He just rode off shouting at me how he was worth a half-dozen flea-bitten Cheyenne on the worst day of his life—”
A trio of shots from the west side of camp interrupted the younger North. All four white men turned and dashed onto the prairie lit with no more than dim starshine here a matter of hours before moonrise. It was but a few yards before they bumped into ten of the trackers, who were talking excitedly.
“What they say?” Shad asked.
Luther North answered, “Mad Bear took off after one of the horsemen come running through camp. This bunch says they saw Mad Bear hit the bastard’s pony, spilling the buck. So Mad Bear took off to claim him. Out there in the dark—and that’s when they heard some more shots out there.”
“Figure any more of them Cheyenne out there?” Cody inquired.
“Just shadows is all,” the elder North said.
Moving into the darkness with the rest for about fifty yards, Shad watched a shadow loom against the starry sky. A smattering of the Pawnee tongue came out of the night at them. A moment more and they came upon one of the trackers hunched over a near-naked body sprawled on the ground.
As the tracker rolled the body over, Luther North asked, “We get one?”
