Cody swallowed, then stuffed the oiled paper back into the saddlebag. “What with them Dog Soldiers we scattered over hell’s half acre, why all this time I been thinking on you, Shad—worried ever since you left the springs, pulled away with the … with your boy.”
Shad straightened, wincing as if shot through with a burning pain. “You know?”
“Royall told me.”
“A good man, the major,” Sweete replied, staring down at his hands crossed over the big-dished saddle horn.
“Was it, Shad? You sure it was …”
He nodded. “It were my boy.”
Cody nudged his buckskin a little closer, coming up alongside the big scout on the strawberry roan. “You can’t blame yourself for it.”
“I ain’t, Bill. Really I ain’t. Leastways, I’m not blaming myself for him getting killed in that fight. He was his own man. Been so … for some time now too.” Sweete looked at Cody, his puffy eyes gone sad as a doe gone dry. “What’s that they say the good book tells us: them that lives by the sword gonna die by the sword?”
All Cody did was nod, his lips drawn into a straight line as if determined not to betray himself with emotion. He flicked a glance over his shoulder at the distant column pulling farther away to the north.
“You buried him proper, Shad?”
“He was a Cheyenne warrior, Bill,” Sweete said proudly, his eyes stinging and his lips trembling so slightly only he would know. “A Dog Soldier what died defending his people. His … his chosen people.”
“I’m … proud of you, Shad.”
Sweete snorted, trying a smile. “I made mistakes a’times—”
“Any man does.”
With a wag of his head, Sweete stilled the young scout. “His mother’s gonna be proud of him.”
“Shad—that bunch has been murdering and—”
“His people gonna be proud of him too.”
“They killed and raped and kidnapped from Nebraska down into Kansas, Shad. You can’t forget that.”
His eyes got a cold fire behind them as he glared at Cody. “I ain’t gonna forget none of it.”
Then Sweete thought on Bull, remembering times he had been driven to lash his willful son’s thumbs to the lodgepoles, just as a Cheyenne father would do, to let the boy hang there awhile and settle his high spirits.
Then he sighed with the sting of remembrance. “I did of a time forget something, Bill. Forgot that white is white and red is red. And ’cause I forgot and fell in love with a Cheyenne woman—my boy did everything in his power to wash away what he had of me inside him.”
“Goddammit, Shad—don’t blame yourself for what he turned out to be. You said yourself he was—”
“Bill, a man finds he made a mistake, he can do one of two things to right it. He can curse himself the rest of his days, reminding himself of what wrong he’s done. Or—” And Shad stared off at the wagon drag of the far, dark column of Carr’s march.
“Or?”
“Or he can do what he can to help another man keep from making a mistake, maybe the same mistake.”
“Another man?”
“A friend,” Sweete replied quietly.
“Somebody you’ve knowed for a long time?”
Sweete shook his head. “No. Not very long at all. Got to help him—so I can help myself in the bargain.”
“I don’t understand, Shad. You help this friend of yours—how are you gonna help yourself?”
“I help him, then I can forgive myself, Bill. That’s the hardest thing I have to do right now. To forgive myself.”
Cody glanced over his shoulder at the distant column. “If you’re headed north to Laramie, why not ride with us far as Sedgwick? It’s on the way.”
Shad wagged his head and tried a wan smile. “No, my friend. Gonna cross over the river down there. Head north by west. Ride up along the foothills toward the Laramie plain. Gonna be … all right to be alone for a while.”
“Will the woman be there?”
“Bull’s mother? She should be. If not, I’ll find out where. She deserves to know how he come to die. Where he’s buried.”
“I figured you took off from the springs to bury him.”
“The Cheyenne way: put back in the rocks where the ground and water spirits own his body now.”
“And after that? You’ll come on back to McPherson to work with me?”
Sweete held out his hand. Cody stared at it for a moment, then smiled and took it. When they finished shaking, Shad kept hold of the young scout’s. “After I tell Shell Woman about the boy, and she’s had time to grieve—a person needs someone there with ’em when they grieve … then I gotta ride off to find someone else.”
“Someone else should know about your boy?”
“No. Find the friend I want to help. The one I got to help now. Before it’s too late for the two of us.”
Cody finally took his hand from Sweete’s. “You … you need anything? Cartridges? Jerky? Some of the army’s goddamned rotten hard-bread? I got plenty of that.”
Shad grinned a little to show some measure of his appreciation, then the smile was gone. “Don’t need nothing else now but to be on my way, Bill.”
“You’re sure I can’t do nothing else for you, Shad?”
Sweete brought his old, gnarled hand up to his brow and saluted the young scout. “Well done, soldier. Well done.”
