The Last Ride of Caleb O'Toole (17 page)

Two hours later, the trail burst from the ravine and opened out to a vast prairie. Pride could run forever, it seemed, but Dusty, sweat flying off his gray hide from pulling the little wagon, was beginning to tire. The moon shone bright over the mountains to the west as they rode like the devil back toward the Bozeman Trail. The sun began to rise in the east as the horses pounded a mighty beat.
We
must
have
fooled
them
, Caleb thought.
Surely
they
would
have
caught
up
to
us
by
now
. Caleb prayed they had outrun the outlaws as he looked over his shoulder. His heart caught. There, just a half-mile behind, were three riders bearing down on them fast.

“They're on us!” Caleb reached for his Henry rifle. “Pull up! It's no use trying to outrun them. We'll make a stand here!” Caleb reached for the Sharps rifle and tossed it to Julie as she pulled Dusty to a stop. Then Julie grabbed her pearl-handled Colt and climbed into the back of the wagon.

“Tilly, stay down!” Julie said as she pushed her little sister's head lower. Quickly, she brought the Sharps to bear as the outlaws rode down on them. Caleb leaped off Pride with his Henry rifle and dove into the back of the wagon. Together he and Julie sighted in on the advancing men.

“Wait till they get a little closer!” yelled Caleb as he saw the outlaws draw their rifles. “Shoot at the one on the left, then reload quick! I'll try to take the other two.”

“OK!” Julie peered down the barrel of the Sharps. “You say when!” Julie moved her hand over to the Colt and brought it next to her. If they got in close, she thought, she would switch to the pistol.

Suddenly, two of the outlaws split off wide. Caleb grabbed the telescope. At barely two hundred yards away, he could see that Jake was in the middle. He figured if he could hit him, the others would be without their leader, so he took a deep breath. Jake fired from the middle, Larson from the left. Wolf took his horse out wide to the right. The three outlaws, guns blazing, galloped toward Caleb and his sisters.

“Not yet!” Caleb forced himself to wait. He carefully drew a bead on Jake as he closed to within a hundred yards. “Ready?”

“Ready!” shouted Julie as she sighted in on Larson.

All of a sudden, the three outlaws stopped dead in their tracks. Quickly, Larson and Wolf rode back to the center toward Jake. Caleb held his fire, puzzled that they had ceased their attack. Then a great rumble of hooves shook the ground behind him. Caleb turned, half expecting to see a herd of buffalo. His heart jumped at the sight before him, for more than a hundred Indians rode down on them from the north. War cries filled the solemn prairie air as the Indians swept toward them. Julie dropped the Sharps and hugged Tilly next to her. Caleb dropped his Henry and put his arms around his sisters. There was nothing they could do. If this was how their lives were to end, in an attack by the Sioux, then so be it. The hearts of the three O'Toole children beat to the pounding of the horses as the Indians overwhelmed the wagon.

Caleb, Julie, and Tilly lay in the wagon, clutching each other, as the Indians surrounded them, the dust swirling as the Sioux warriors came to a fast stop. They lined up on either side of the wagon and faced down the outlaws. Not a word was spoken, not a war cry was heard. Julie and Caleb peered over the wagon. Wolf, Jake, and Larson sat on their horses a hundred yards away. The Indians stretched out wide to either side, and the line of one hundred Sioux warriors walked their horses slowly toward the outlaws. Suddenly, the three bad men turned and galloped away in the opposite direction. Then the Indians turned and faced the wagon. The leader motioned for several fierce-looking warriors to follow him. They trotted their ponies toward the buckboard, rifles held in their iron grips. Then they stopped and studied Caleb and his sisters, speaking among themselves for several moments. Caleb wondered if they were deciding whether or not to kill them. The leader then motioned toward their guns. Slowly, Caleb handed him the two rifles and the Colt. Then the Indian turned his horse and signaled them to follow.

“They want us to follow them,” said Caleb as he jumped off the wagon. Pride was about fifty feet away, and Caleb made his way through the Indians to the big warhorse. Some of the Indians circled around him, curious, murmuring to each other while Caleb mounted Pride.

“We've got no choice.” Julie climbed into the driver's seat and picked up Dusty's reins.

They rode west for an hour along a game trail some distance closer to the Big Horn Mountains. They were still near enough to the Bozeman Trail, so they could get back on it when they had to. As the game trail wound closer to the mountains, they turned north and the ride became a lot rougher for the wagon. The jostling of the buckboard managed to rouse tough little Tumble from his terrible ordeal. He nuzzled onto Tilly's lap for comfort. Just as the going seemed impossible, the trail led into a clearing near a river. Sioux tepees surrounded the banks on either side. Caleb led Pride through the camp as Julie followed with Dusty and the wagon. Indian warriors surrounded them, and many women and children walked alongside, curious about them, as they were led to a large tepee. Then the biggest man Caleb had ever seen stepped from the tepee. He rose head and shoulders above all the others, and his torso rippled with muscle.
Touch the Clouds!
Caleb gasped to himself. It was the great Sioux war Chief. The one who had his people lay down their arms in peace. Like Red Cloud, he vowed never again to fight in what the white man called the Indian Wars. As Caleb neared the huge man, the Sioux Chief held out his hand and gripped Pride's bridle.

“I am Touch the Clouds. You are welcome here,” said the Chief. “Climbing Rat has told us of his story. How you set him free from those men who wished to kill him. He wishes to express his thanks.” Then Touch the Clouds called out to someone over his shoulder. After a moment, Patch slipped from the tepee and stood next to him, dwarfed by the big Chief.

“I am Caleb.” Caleb sat next to Touch the Clouds. Other Sioux Indians sat attentively in the big tepee. “These are my sisters, Julie and Tilly. Patch, or Climbing Rat, was too hurt to leave alone so we took him with us. We called him Patch because Julie patched him up.”

The Chief explained this to the others in his language. “Sitting Bull is leader of his people. Climbing Rat wishes to say that he had not intended to harm you when his warriors attacked the white wagon train for shooting his brother, Listening Bird. His brother was scouting for game and was killed that day.” Touch the Clouds spoke in very good English. “He only wanted to touch you and try to run away, not fight you. It is called
anho
.”

“Please tell him I am sad about his brother.” Caleb accepted some food and water from one of the women. Touch the Clouds spoke quietly to Patch, who then looked at Caleb and smiled his appreciation. It seemed they all shared the good and the sorrow of life. “What is
anho
?”

“Counting coup. When a young boy is the first to touch an enemy in battle, it brings great honor to him and his family,” said the Chief. Patch spoke at length, demonstrating painfully to the other Indians in the tepee the battle he had with Caleb. “He says you grabbed him out of the air and he had to fight for his life. He says you are a young warrior of much strength and you killed him with your knife. He was singing his death song.”

“Tell him he fought very hard and that I had been lucky. He may have killed me if he had not been shot before our fight.” Caleb pointed to his side where the bullet had passed through Patch. He thought if he showed respect, he would be given the same treatment in return. He felt the Sioux were not evil. They did not usually kill for no reason. It was his father's voice, the teacher voice that called out to him once again. “Tell him he is very strong too.”

The Chief spoke with Patch and the others, explaining what Caleb had told them. There was much nodding of heads and murmuring. “They say they have heard the Lakota talk of a young white warrior on a black horse who rides and shoots like an Indian. They have heard of this boy from Scotts Bluff who rode with no hands and fired on our brothers in the south. They say he has the roots of a warrior. Are you this boy?”

“Yes,” Caleb nodded his head carefully, unsure of where this was leading. The Indians talked among themselves. Several of them spoke to Patch, offering congratulations. Patch smiled as if he were given a great honor and began to speak animatedly. The others paid rapt attention to his story.

“He says he is honored to have fought with the young white warrior. He says at first he wanted to kill all of you for letting him live. He was afraid that the girl did some bad magic that made him die again,” said the Chief.

“It was something from my bag to make him sleep so I could stitch him up,” explained Julie as she pointed to Patch's stitches. She pretended to sew with her hands. Touch the Clouds spoke and someone brought in Julie's medical bag.

“We want to see how you made Climbing Rat sleep.”

“I don't know if that's a good idea,” Julie protested. But seeing how serious the Indians were, she reached into her bag for the chloroform and poured some onto a cloth. Then she went over to Patch. Patch immediately covered his face in fear, refusing to participate. At first, no one moved. Then one of the men stepped forward.

“Do this thing on Running Deer,” commanded the Chief.

“Well, all right,” Julie said hesitatingly. She motioned for Running Deer to sit. When he did, she placed the chloroform against his mouth. Running Deer gasped at first, then he breathed from the cloth. After a moment, he stood and looked around as if nothing had happened. All the Indians looked confused about the powers of the sleeping medicine. Then Running Deer took a step and began to stagger to the side, crashing into a heap. He tried to rise, but his legs would not cooperate. He was conscious, barely. “When he is like that, I then can do the stitches.” She sat Running Deer up and pretended to stitch his side like she did Patch's. Running Deer sat slack-jawed, a rather comical expression on his stern face. Patch began to speak at length with the elders. There was much discussion among them.

“Climbing Rat wants to know if his debt is paid,” said Touch the Clouds. “It is important to him, so when he returns to his people, he can tell them of his story. We are taking it under consideration. It is not so easy to know. In time, it will be decided.”

“Thank him for bringing you to help us. I feared between your tribe and those outlaws, our lives would end here,” said Caleb.

“Not all Sioux will kill like that. I do not wish to make any more war with the whites. I see things that my brothers are unwilling to see. Some of my people still wish to kill all whites. Drive them from their lands. But what for? They will keep coming, and there is no way to stop this change.”

Suddenly, there was a round of barking outside the tent. It sounded like a half-dozen dogs were at it. An old Sioux woman came running into the tent and began to gesture wildly, speaking animatedly with the Chief. Then she threw up her hands and ran out.

“She says your dog is chasing all the other dogs in our camp.”

“Tumble!” cried Tilly as she ran out of the tepee.

“It might be good to tie him up,” explained the Chief.

“Seems he's feeling better,” chuckled Julie as she packed her bag. “I'll go.”

Touch the Clouds folded his massive arms in front of him. “The elders want to know how it is that three white children are alone. It is not a place to be alone in this country. There is a name the whites use for this trail they made. They call it Bloody Bozeman.”

“We are heading to the Bitterroot Mountains. Our own mother and father are dead. We have to meet my mother's sister in a town called Virginia City,” explained Caleb.

Touch the Clouds conversed with the elders for a while. One old man in particular seemed to have the final say. Touch the Clouds nodded his head and turned to Caleb. “You will ride with us. You will be safe. It is many miles and many days. We are going on our last hunt before the winter to this place your government wants to protect. You must go through this place before Virginia City. The lands are rich and full of game. It is a sacred land where water shoots to the sky. We will get fat and take skins before we go south for the winter.”

“What is this place?” asked Caleb

“Mi tse a-da-zi,” said the Chief. “Your government calls it Yellowstone.”

***

For nearly three weeks, Caleb rode Pride along the hunting trails, surrounded in the safety of Touch the Clouds's people. During that time, they had not seen a white man for three hundred miles. There was no end to the amount of game they found along the route to the huge mountain pass. They were some distance south of the Bozeman Trail, but nearing Yellowstone. Sometimes Caleb rode alongside the great Chief and listened to stories of the Indian's life. Though Touch the Clouds supported his fellow Sioux Chiefs in their wars with the white men, he told Caleb he would no longer participate in them.

For days, Caleb and his sisters traveled in the company of the Indians, and he and his sisters were the better for it. Julie and Tilly had been given new clothes by the Sioux women. Julie's own clothes had become a tattered mess, and she was grateful for the soft doeskin dress. She wore this on top of buckskin trousers. She preferred to wear pants as they were practical and tough and more suited for the rugged terrain than her dress and shirt. Tilly wanted to look like her sister, so she was given matching clothes. Together they looked like a pair of golden dolls. A great deal had been made of their long blond hair, and they let the Sioux women cut little locks of it for their keeping. The Indian women were fascinated by the golden color and loved to run their hands along the fine hair. There was excitement as the Sioux warriors and all the women and children prepared for the buffalo hunt.

“You will see how we hunt buffalo on the jump,” said Touch the Clouds as he and some hunters rode up to Caleb. “Come.”

Caleb watched from the tree line as the Sioux hunters rode alongside a small herd of buffalo about a half-mile away. They dashed in and out among the huge beasts. They did not shoot their arrows or fire their rifles, but instead drove the rampaging buffalo along the plateau that led to a cliff. Hundreds of feet below by the river, the Sioux women waited with spears and knives. They were given tasks to perform once the hunt was over. Caleb held his breath as the poor bleating animals were driven to the edge of the cliff. Suddenly, the hunters stopped, but the huge animals continued their flight straight off the cliff, perishing either from the fall or speared by the Indian women below.

“This is the best way to hunt the buffalo. That is why we call it Buffalo Jump. It is quick and it saves our arrows and our ammunition,” said Touch the Clouds. “Now the women do their work.”

Caleb, shocked by what he had seen, urged Pride down the trail to the river. The women were working furiously, killing the wounded buffalo and skinning them. They were efficient and quick, for they did not want the meat to spoil. Nothing was wasted. For several days, they labored hard. Caleb and Patch cut and shaped the buffalo bones, sharpening them to make tools and weapons. Julie and Tilly helped the Indian women build small fires and learned to dry the meat. The buffalo steak was cut into large, thin pieces and draped on wooden racks over the small fires like clothes drying on a line. The smoke billowed and kept the insects away so they could not contaminate the meat or lay their eggs in it. The steaks were slowly dried in the hot sun and preserved to make jerky to be eaten in the cold months ahead when the Sioux would travel to their winter grounds. When all the work was done, preparations were made for a grand feast. Tales would be told of the great hunt.

***

Caleb woke to a fierce licking from Tumble. “Tumble, cut it out,” he laughed as the scrappy little dog climbed over him, forcing him to leave the comfort of his bearskin blanket. The first chill of an early fall filled the air as he went outside and stretched in the morning sun. Caleb figured it must be September by now, but he had lost track. As he looked around, he noticed the entire camp was being dismantled. The Indians were packing up and preparing to make a move.