Trail Angel (27 page)

“What about this?” She clenched something inside, a movement she hadn't known was possible before he was in her.

His voice sounded pinched. “You're killing me.”

“I'm
loving
you. There's a difference.”

“When it's done, I will slip from you. I'm not ready for that. I want to feel you like this as long as I can.”

“And I want to feel this.” She allowed her hips to slide again. He didn't protest. “You can't hold out forever.” Her hips moved again, down and up. “And you will have to leave in the morning.” Down and up. “So if we can't remain like this.” Down and up. Down and up. “I will have to give you a reason—”
downandup downandup
“—to come to me again.”

As much pleasure as the memory gave Annabelle, in the light of a new day, with her here and him someplace else, well . . . like a bug bite that wouldn't stop itching, the more she tried to put her doubts from her mind, the worse they plagued her.

At least she had no worries for herself and her family. A hundred soldiers surrounded their wagons. They even had a wagon hauling a small howitzer the soldiers said terrified the Indians, who called it “the gun that shoots twice.”

In the Colonel's absence, a scout named Jim Bridger led their train. “Old Gabe” was a legend.
Give him enough time, and he will tell you himself.
Just as with the Colonel, Annabelle had struck up an odd rapport with the mountain man.

Bridger must have been over sixty, a little bowed by age yet enlivened with the charm only an old man can possess, capable of looking at a woman with a lascivious gleam while still passing himself off as harmless. He had come west as barely more than a boy, so long ago, he liked to say, “Chimney Rock was a hole in the ground when I first saw it.” Despite a penchant for tall tales, Annabelle trusted Bridger. She sought him out while they were halted for a midday break.

“Hello, little darlin',” Bridger said with a wink and a crooked smile as he brushed the old gray mule he called Hercules.

Bridger swore by mules. Not only were they sure-footed, he told Annabelle, but their smaller legs made for a more comfortable gait than a horse. “Even at my age, I can ride all day and never get sore.”

Done with the brushing, Bridger stood to his full six feet. “I suppose you've got more on your mind than the proper method of brushing a mule.”

Annabelle nodded. “It's the other train. Everybody says I have nothing to worry about, that the Indians won't attack a military train, but I don't believe it's as large as ours. Do you believe they're safe?”

Bridger hesitated before answering. “The commander's right,” he said. “All the Sioux attacks so far have been ambushes. A show of force will make them think twice.” His eyes clouded over with a concern he seemed reluctant to voice. It was said the man had lived with Crow Indians, who hated the Sioux even more than white men did. The land they were passing through had been sacred to the Crow, but the Sioux had driven them out in a bloody war lasting decades.

Annabelle urged him on. “There's something you're not saying.”

“It ain't my place to second-guess Colonel Carrington. He's the military man.”

“You know the Indians.”

Bridger smiled as if caught in another tall tale. He sighed as he pointed to the blue-clad soldiers lazing about on the grassy field after their meal. Safe in their large numbers, they gave no sign of being at war. “Lookit how young they are. Most of 'em have never fought, and those that have ain't fought Indians. They think with their rifles and cannon and military training no bunch of savages will ever beat 'em.”

“The Indians have rifles, too, don't they?”

Bridger removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his face with a swipe of his sleeve. He nodded toward the dust-colored buttes that overlooked the valley. “The Sioux will skulk in them cliffs or wherever they can lie low under wolf skins, watching all the time. The moment you don't see any is just about the time they're thickest and you should look for their devilment.”

Annabelle followed his gaze to the hills. It didn't seem like he wanted to frighten her, but she shivered, feeling more than the breeze off the distant Bighorn Mountains.

Caleb felt strong enough to insist on getting up when the soldiers stopped for water. Doc Hines warned him against it, and Caleb's legs quivered as he pulled himself up. Yet it wasn't his lingering weakness that would make him regret leaving the wagon.

They must have departed Fort Reno at an ungodly hour, for the sun hung low on the horizon. The doctor explained as they rode that the river near the fort was too alkaline to be much good, and they were limited in how much they drew from the fort's spring. They left in the middle of the night with plans to fill their water barrels at the next creek and push on to a campsite before the worst of the day's heat.

Caleb leaned against the wagon, hoping he looked stronger than he felt. The doctor told Caleb he might ride in front with the driver if he felt well enough after they stopped for water. Caleb wondered if the doctor hadn't been merely eager to be rid of his troublesome patient, but he wasn't about to complain. Unaccustomed to riding
inside
a wagon, he found the close quarters and constant rocking nearly as debilitating as the fever.

Their train consisted of five supply wagons, including one drawing a steam-powered sawmill, two ambulance wagons and a few horses belonging to officers. They were an odd assortment. Doc Hines had told him there were more than a dozen soldiers, nearly as many teamsters, a chaplain and two soldiers' wives, each with a baby. With the five officers new to the region, the Colonel and Josey Angel served as guides.

The wagons had stopped near a creek bed. A crowd of soldiers and teamsters gathered near the front wagon. Caleb hesitated when he heard the sharp voice of the officer in charge, a lieutenant named Wands.

“Keep the women back.”

The warning drew Caleb forward, curiosity helping him forget his pain. Instead of the stream of clear water he expected, he saw a dry creek bed and the nearly naked body of a soldier— his identity made possible only by a square of blue uniform secured to his body by one of the arrows that pierced his back. The man had crawled into the sandy creek bed, so desperate for water he had been willing to dig with his hands to find it.

“Looks like they waited here,” Josey Angel called to the Colonel from the tree line, a good twenty paces from the creek.

“Water always makes a good spot for an ambush,” the Colonel replied.

More mindful now of the group's small numbers, Caleb saw no sign of Indians. He maneuvered among the soldiers for a better look and immediately regretted it.

During the war, Caleb had seen many dead bodies. Corpses mangled and twisted in every conceivable fashion and some Caleb would have deemed inconceivable before he witnessed them. None of that prepared Caleb for the sight of the dead soldier. The left side of the man's head had been crushed so that it resembled a melon dropped from a height. A patch of hair from just above his forehead had been ripped clear, and his ears were gone. More had been done to the lower half of his body, but Caleb looked away, glad for an empty stomach.

The man was just as dead as any he had seen in the war, but those bodies possessed an impersonal quality, men made corpses by the accident of a musket ball, their deaths motivated by larger objectives.

What had been done to the soldier in the creek bed was different. Methodical. Calculated. Caleb wasn't sure the soldier was dead when the Indians took his ears, nose and other things.
They enjoyed it.
Caleb shivered at the thought. The soldier's final release into death had probably been a disappointment to his tormenters, a premature end to their entertainment.

The reaction of the soldiers was mixed. Some calling to God, others angrily cursing the Indians, swearing a revenge Caleb hoped he wouldn't be around to see. One of the teamsters retreated to the trees and vomited his breakfast. His retching set off two others.

The young teamster who'd lost his breakfast swore under his breath. “Savages,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Some things the Sioux did to the Crow would make this look like play,” the Colonel said. “White men have done things just as wicked in the name of God.”

The teamster looked uncertain. “God had nothing to do with this.”

The Colonel shook his head. “When he dies, an Indian brave believes he will pass on to a place filled with wild ponies to tame, game to stalk and pretty young maidens to woo.” The Colonel smiled at the thought as a few of the soldiers gathered close. “If his enemy has no fingers to pull back the bowstring, no tongue to taste the buffalo, no pecker to get a poke, well, that man's heaven becomes an eternal hell.”

Lieutenant Wands interrupted and ordered the men to dig a grave near the trail. The soldiers seemed grateful to be occupied. Caleb sensed tension between Wands and the Colonel. The pair had stepped aside from the others and were speaking. Wands kept his voice low, and Caleb made out only part of the Colonel's much-louder reply: “—not this late in the season, after the snow melt. You just can't be sure.” Wands reached out to the older man, guiding him farther away from the soldiers. He looked no happier than the Colonel, who stalked off with him.

Weak and thirsty, Caleb found a spot in the shade, his condition and civilian status sparing him from the work detail. The wagon driver came over. Sam Peters was a squat, round man, with a jowly face that even a crescent of untamed whiskers couldn't hide. He looked like he had spent the war in the quartermaster's office, a little too near the food supplies, but the lack of deprivation gave him a generous nature. He offered a smoke. Caleb refused, afraid the tobacco would make him ill.

“Where are we, anyway?” he asked.

“Dry Creek.”

Caleb thought the private was joking. “Did you come up with that yourself?” Peters shook his head, confused by the question.

“The name of this place is Dry Creek?”

Peters nodded, looking as if he might call the doctor for another examination of Caleb's head.
Oh, Lord.
Caleb would never understand how the Union won the war with this kind of planning and leadership. “Just like the army to hatch a plan that depends on finding water at a place called Dry Creek,” he said, though it occurred to him the army might have the last laugh. Having failed to kill him during the war, maybe the army meant to rectify the oversight on the trail.

Wands, his face red with strain, yelled orders to prepare to head out.

“They say the campsite's by a river,” Peters said as he stood, offering a hand to Caleb. “Guess the lieutenant wants to hurry and get there.”

Caleb took Peters's hand, grateful for the aid. “I hope you're right. Doc says we're almost out of water.”

As they walked to the wagon, Caleb looked back to where they had found the dead soldier. “So much for Dry Creek. Tell me, where are we going to camp?” he asked Peters. “Indian Massacre River?”

He had meant it as a joke, but neither man laughed.

After a midday break, Annabelle sneaked some sugar from the commissary wagon to spoil Paint. She intended to ride the horse that afternoon, putting from her mind the strange looks the marching soldiers gave her as she passed riding astride a horse and wearing boy's clothes.

They were still at least three days out from the new fort, the Bighorn Mountains to their west looking like they might stretch forever. As the wagons advanced, she noticed Jim Bridger hunched over a circle of white stones. Annabelle eased Paint toward him, realizing as she drew near that the objects were bones from an animal like a cow, only larger and bleached white in the sun.

“Buffalo,” Bridger said as he looked toward her, his face pinched in a squint against the bright day.

Annabelle dismounted for a closer look. With its dark horns, the skull looked monstrous, the bones coming together in the beast's face like some kind of beaked predator. “I've never seen buffalo. I thought they would be everywhere.”

“Used to be. Settlers have driven off them hunters haven't killed. I used to think there were more buffalo than stars, but now it's like the skies have growed dark.”

Annabelle noticed odd scratchings on the thick side of the bleached skull. The marks appeared too regular to be natural, combining to form odd shapes and swirls. She asked about them.

“That's what I been ruminatin' over.”

“They're not letters, not English anyway.” Bridger wasn't literate, Annabelle knew, though she'd heard he enjoyed being read to. “Are they Indian letters?”

“Somethin' like that.”

“I didn't know the Indians had a written language.”

Bridger picked up the skull and ran a long, leathery finger across the marks, as if to read them by touch. “It's not so plain as English, but they have ways of transmittin' a message.”

“Can you tell what it says?”

Bridger nodded and looked to her, as if judging how much to say. Annabelle feared what he might say, but she had to know if they or the others were in danger. “Tell me.”

He stood, walking over to get his mule's reins and signaling with a nod that she should do the same with her horse. After he mounted the mule he looked back to her. “The message is a call to any Indian who passes to gather for a big battle.”

Annabelle looked around the empty fields. “Where?”

“I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I would say Crazy Woman Creek.”

“The stream we crossed yesterday?”

Bridger nodded. “Kinda thought we was bein' watched. Any train headed north would have to cross there. It's the only good water.”