Fugitives

Cutter and the boy took one of the guards’ horses and a mule from the wagon team. Since the fugitives were chained left leg to right leg they rode double, the boy seated behind and facing back, holding the chain so the horse wouldn’t step into the loop. The lead on the mule was tied around his waist, which slowed their progress, lest the animal balk and pull off both riders.

Cutter figured they had the better part of two days before authorities in Springfield would come looking for them, so they rode steadily for the next twenty hours; moving through thickets off main roads, stopping only for water, avoiding farmhouses and towns as night fell. At dawn they came to the Little Osage River, which they followed west until the horse gave out.

They struck northwest, riding until the legs of the mule trembled so badly the animal could barely stand to drink. They dismounted and allowed it to graze, whelmed in a sea of bluestem, switchgrass, and Indiangrass, as high as the mule’s belly. They had reached tallgrass prairie, and Cutter seemed to relax as he shaded his eyes against the setting sun, scanning the horizon.
Ye ever been west, boy?

The boy shook his head. He was fighting fatigue. He hadn’t eaten much for a day and a half, and he knew if he laid his head down he would sleep, but he wasn’t sure what Cutter would do - kill him and chop off his foot? He’d seen Cutter murder three men without hesitation; surely another killing posed no problem. The boy promised himself he would fight if it came to that, and he thought of Little’s pistol in his waistband. He had no idea if the weapon would fire.

Cutter sat. He laid back in the long grass, folding his long arms behind his head.
I intend to sleep for a while. I’ll advise ye do the same. We’ll be off again shortly.
The boy listened as the sound of Cutter’s breathing slowed to an intermittent buzz. Slowly he lowered himself to the ground, silently vowing to stay alert. He looked up into the night sky, wondering at the scattered brightness of so many stars, more than he could ever recall seeing. A minute later he was sound asleep.

They slept for four hours before resuming travel that lasted through most of the following day. They rode until the waves of tall grass gave way to bluestem and wheatgrass. Trees became scarce; oak and hickory disappeared, leaving only shallow belts of cottonwood and willow to mark the region’s waterways, which ran generally west to east, forming a ladder of streams to confront the northbound travelers.

In late afternoon the mule began to founder, so they halted next to the skeleton of a lightning-killed cottonwood. A quarter mile to the west a willow thicket surrounded a shallow, blackwater pond. They hobbled the mule and walked to the slough, shouldering their way through the tangled growth until they sank ankle-deep in the sour-smelling muck. Set upon by swarms of buffalo gnats and mosquitoes they retreated, cursing, back to the tree where they stripped their wet shoes and socks and watched angry welts bloom on each other’s faces and necks. They ate the last of their food in silence.

The boy slept fitfully that night, waking often as coyotes prowled in the darkness, calling back and forth from the gullies and brush-filled ravines that webbed the surrounding country. Several times they came close enough for the boy to hear their quick footsteps in the dry grass, their panting as they tested the breezes that gently rattled the branches of the dead cottonwood.

Toward morning the boy fell into a sound sleep. He dreamed he was sitting at the crown of the cottonwood; to the west clouds of white dust rose like mountains in a red sky. He could hear horses running and men shouting, and the horses screamed and shots were fired, and he recognized his uncle and the red-bearded teamster along with Scoggins and the two dead guards, and they all carried drums which they struck in steady cadence as they emerged from the swirling dust. They walked to the tree and stood at the bottom looking up at the boy, playing a long roll. Cutter appeared in the middle of these men and the drums stopped. He was smiling at the boy, white teeth shining like stars, and he gripped the Springfield rifle like an axe and swung it against the tree’s blackened trunk, which shook and tilted until the boy felt himself falling.

Wake up boy.
Cutter prodded the boy with the rifle until he twitched and sat up, eyes wide.
Get ready. We got distance to cover.
The boy looked around, expecting to see the men in his dream. But he saw the tree still upright and realized he had been asleep. He looked at Cutter for a long moment.
Light, he said.
What?
William Light. My name.
Oh, said Cutter. Well, William, no breakfast this morning. I expect to possess a good stake soon enough, but we best pull foot.

For most of the morning the two walked, leading the footsore mule while the sun bore down upon them, burning their ears, noses and necks. The still, humid air radiated heat and the heavy, sweet smell of goldenrod; by midmorning the sun hammered the horizon into a shimmering, shallow water mirage. At noon the fugitives retreated to a shallow draw, where giant fossilized bones of creatures long dead shone white in the eroded walls. They sought the shade of a buckbrush thicket, but were roused by the appearance of a visitor.

An old Indian rode up to the edge of the draw, where he stopped to look at the chained travelers. The old man wore an ancient trader blanket wrapped about his waist, and a filthy turban on his head. He was mounted on a small pony the color of ripened barley. Across the withers he held a bow and two arrows. His skin was dark -- so dark the boy thought at first he was a runaway slave. He had never seen so many wrinkles on human skin. The Indian’s jaw and mouth were painted red, and a single, ragged feather dangled behind his right ear, which appeared small and misshapen poking out from a tangle of oily, shoulder-length hair.
The boy put his hand on the butt of the pistol.

Hold on boy.
Cutter raised a hand in greeting. The old man responded and began making sounds the boy did not recognize as language; he could not tell where one word ended and another began. But the Indian made signs as he spoke and Cutter seemed to understand.
Got any tabbacky on ye boy?
No.
Cutter held out his arms and slid his left hand down his right sleeve and shook his head. The old Indian quit speaking and stared silently at the travelers for a long moment before sawing the pony around and kicking it into a quick trot. The boy watched until horse and rider became a small dot on the landscape. He opened his mouth to speak, but the outlaw had already pulled his hat down over his face.
Kaw, he muttered.
What?
The Injun. A Kaw, I think. Bastards is thick as fleas around here. Surpised they ain't caught up with us before now.
He lifted his hat from his face.
Tell me boy. Ye got an eddycashun?
The boy shook his head.
No? Well, too much is made of it anyhow. A man’s entire obligation is to live his part, whatsoever he finds that to be. All else is sham. Each and every man is born with that knowledge. It’s the schools and churches that confuse it. They draw it out and replace it with the law, which is the whip they lay on ye to suit the conventions of capital and government. Them damn Injuns, heathens they are, they know it and want no part of it. No churches, no banks. They got it figured.
He leaned back, put his hat back over his face.
Yep, only thing they lack is the spondoolix.
---
By dusk they were well out on the prairie, a speck of movement in an eternity of short grass. Overhead the empty sky deepened.
To the boy the land had assumed an inhospitable barrenness, and he began to wonder if Cutter was insane and if they would perish from starvation or thirst, wandering in directions only the outlaw could ascribe, steered by currents unknown to a rational mind. Yet the boy did not speak, and as he walked it occurred to him that whatever fate awaited him in this place, it was his only course – the way his life was meant to play out.

They halted in the shallow light, Cutter shading his eyes, staring into the distance.
What ye lookin’ for, the boy asked.
Gotta be here. It’s close, I know it.
What?
The mule snuffled and let out a wheezy bray. Cutter smiled. He pointed at the animal.
See? Look at them ears. Foller them ears.
A half hour later they approached the rim of a shallow valley. Cutter turned and shook his finger at the mule.
Well? Where is it? Ye smelt somethin’, didn’t ye?

He took a step and disappeared; the ground seemed to open and swallow him. The boy followed, yanked by the leg chain into the void, drained from the prairie surface with scarcely a sound.
The drop was nine feet. They landed on the smooth dirt floor of a dugout, the dark earthen walls yellowed in the light of a lantern. Coughing, they slowly sat up in the dusty air, rubbing their eyes.
Across the space a white man and an Indian sat on wooden crates, staring at Cutter and the boy. The white man stood.
Henry? That you?
Teddy... I ain’t yer dead grammaw.
Ye found the dugout.
I guess so. The roof, anyway.
Cutter stood, brushing dirt from his shirt and hair.
C’mon boy.
The boy rose.
Who’s that?
This one says his name is William Light. Split the skull of some teamster in Westport. We was in the juzgado together.
He spit.
Say Teddy, ye got any grub? It’s been awhile since we et, and my gut’s damn near shriveled to nothin’.

Over a meal of antelope steaks the boy was introduced to Cutter’s cohorts: Theodore “Teddy” Cole and Eli Jumper. He learned that in June of the previous year Cole, a Texas native, had celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday by shooting a fourteen-year-old farm boy in the attempted robbery of a post office in Clinton, Missouri -- the crime for which Cutter had been arrested -- and that in March of that same year Jumper, a full-blooded Osage, had been baptized by Methodist missionaries at Shawnee Mission, Kansas territory. For the event Jumper wore a fancy shell ornament in his left ear, which he proudly showed the boy, along with the dried, blackened ear of the Sioux woman he murdered to obtain it.

It was a reunion of killers.

I got to tell you Henry, Cole said, I figured you was done for once them Missouri pullets got their hands on you.
Yeah well, they ain’t seen the day they can put the choke on Henry Cutter.
We didn’t know what to do. Me ‘n Eli, we just holed up here.
We’ll be on the move soon enough. First things first, though. Got to get shed of these damn bracelets. Fuckin’ guard throwed the keys in the crick.
He laughed.
I give that trash a little somethin’ to remember me by. Didn’t I, boy?
The boy looked at him.
I guess.
Cole regarded the boy.
What about him? Is he with us Henry?
Don’t know. Ain’t inquired that of him. Can ye shoot boy?
Reckon I could, if I had to.
How’d you kill the teamster? Cole asked.
The boy didn’t reply, but returned to his plate. Cutter answered.
Sheriff said he bashed him. What’d ye hit him with?
A pot lid.
Cole laughed.
A lid? What fer? Why’d you bash him?
Don’t propose to say.
Cole frowned.
Hell, he’s just a kid. Prob’ly wants to get back to his mam and pap. Say, Henry… mebbe they’d pay us to get him back… if we was to ask.
The boy shook his head.
Got no kin.
No family? How you been livin’ boy?
The boy looked up from his food. His eyes moved around the dirt walls of the dugout.
By the looks of it same as you all. Don’t appear they’s any big bugs in this ditch.

Cutter smiled. He slapped his knee and looked at Cole, who pointed at Jumper. Outside, the picketed horses raised their heads toward the dugout as the sound of laughter filtered out onto the dark prairie.

Prisoner

The Indians who captured the boy called themselves Lakota. The name originated from the combination of two words, da, which means considered, and koda, which means friend or friends. Considered-friends.
They also knew themselves as Ocetiyotipi Sakowin, meaning the Seven Council Fires, because they were a tribe divided into seven bands. These warriors belonged to the Titonwan, or the Camping on the Plains band, so-called because they were driven by the Algonquins from the forests of northern Minnesota to the prairies. The Titonwan, or Tetons, were further divided into seven kinship clans: the Sicangu, or Scorched Thighs, also called the Brulés; the Oohenonpa, Boiled Twice, also known as Two Kettles; the Minikanyewotupi, Plant-near-water, called Miniconjou; the Itazipco, No-bows, called Sans Arcs; the Sihasapa, Black-foot; the Hunkpapa, End-of-horn; and the Oglala, Cast-on-own.

The boy’s captors were Oglala and Brulé. They were mostly young men, filled with arrogance, longing to prove themselves, trained since boyhood in the use of horse and bow by a culture that viewed warfare as the crucible of manhood.
Except for horses, guns, and the iron from which they made arrowheads, there was little about the wasichú these Lakota coveted, nor could they imagine for themselves other than a free roaming life on the Plains, which they regarded as a right of birth.

Under their rules of kinship all Lakota were ankantu, superior, and all others ihukuya, considered-inferior. As far as these warriors were concerned the treatment the boy received was appropriate for a captive. His life was forfeit and the property of his captors to use as they pleased from moment to moment. The killing of the old man chief at Laramie had intensified the boy’s abuse, but the intercession of The Bear-That-Walks limited its effect; they would not intentionally kill him.

They were eight days on a serpentine route to their village on the White River in what is now northwest Nebraska. By the time they arrived the boy was barely able to walk. The warriors had given him occasional pieces of jerky to gnaw in the evenings, but the meager rations were insufficient to sustain him. His ragged clothes were filthy and the holes in his shirt revealed a shrinkage of flesh; pronounced ribcage outlines and sharp points on his shoulders augured his decline. He was dying.

In camp he collapsed next to a pile of kindling and lay there, unmoving, largely ignored by the Indians throughout the following day into the evening. Finally one of the wives of Bear-That-Walks noticed the boy as she built a cooking fire. She told her husband that the boy appeared to be dead, and asked if she could dispose of the body. The warrior approached the boy and spoke, prodding him with the toe of his moccasin. The boy did not respond, and finally the Bear poked him in the back with a piece of kindling. The boy moaned. When Bear-That-Walks did it a second time the boy stirred, and with a surprising burst of strength he reached out to grab the stick.
The Indian continued until the boy turned, feebly, to raise himself. Bear-That-Walks held him down with his foot and laughed and told his wife that the boy was alive, but had no more strength than a puppy, and perhaps they should put him in the pot and cook him. He bent low to ask the boy if he’d like that.

The boy spit in the warrior’s face.

The Bear grabbed the boy’s throat and struck him hard on the jaw. He drew his scalping knife and pressed it against the boy’s windpipe. He squeezed the thin, pale neck until he felt the bloodbeat and saw the veins swell; until he heard the boy’s breath come in rasps. He looked into the boy’s eyes, just as he had looked into the eyes of a dozen enemies as they died. But now these eyes did not reflect fear; this time what the Indian saw was defiance, and the Bear-That-Walks remembered that from the beginning this boy had not wept nor begged for mercy. The beatings and abuse had not broken him. Now the Indian recognized that in the last terrible moment of his life this wasichú boy would not surrender.

That moment saved the boy’s life. Bear-That-Walks released his grip. He rose and stared at the gasping boy.
Feed him, he said to his wife. Bring him a robe.

In the days that followed the boy survived by being useful. He gathered firewood, hauled water, and watched arrow makers and story tellers and healers at work, but the Indians made no attempt to bring him into the band. He ate what was provided and gradually gained the use of some words and signs as he listened to the conversations and observed the daily routines, but he remained isolated, sleeping on the ground outside the lodge of Bear-That-Walks, with only the old robe for comfort. He could have stolen a pony, but was unsure where he would go. These people, these lodges, were now his home; their sights, smells and sounds no less foreign than the alleyways and gutters of the communities in which he slept among the piled trash, like a thing thrown away.
His strength gradually returned.

Hostility toward whites ran high in the camp, especially after General Harney’s troops struck a Brulé village near the Bluewater, killing women and children and sending refugees to Bear-That-Walks’s camp. There were now seventy lodges, a sizable community for the Lakota, made up largely by the members of six families.
Initially the boy avoided confrontation, staying close to his sleeping robe. But trouble drew to him, like slat-ribbed camp dogs to cooking pots. There were young Lakota who held memories of relatives shot down and hacked with sabers; memories that burned like embers, requiring only a small reminding breeze to burst forth in flame. The boy’s presence was a whirlwind.

It happened one morning as he carried wood from the pine-filled draws skirting the buttes north of the White River. He was alone, moving quietly across a meadow that overlooked the river’s winding course, listening to younger boys haze the pony herds from the night pasture across the river.
Four boys his age waited in the blue shadows of a nearby gulley until he crossed in front of them. The weight of the wood across his shoulders bent his back so he couldn’t turn quickly or look up, but he heard them coming. He dropped the wood, simultaneously crouching and raising his arms to ward off the blows he knew were coming. The attackers carried stone-headed clubs, striking him as they ran past, whooping with each blow.
The first caught him in the small of the back. The second found his lower ribs, the third glanced off his left thigh. The fourth landed on his left elbow and was the most painful, striking the radial nerve, sending electric shocks to his fingertips.

They surrounded the boy, circling like wolves, taunting him, yelling insults, challenging him to fight. He grabbed a stick of firewood and swung it to keep them at a distance. He was clubbed from behind. He whirled and was struck again between the shoulders. He staggered and went down. More blows rained on him, sending dull thuds and slapping sounds into the early morning air.
He curled his body, his head wrapped in his arms, but knew he wouldn’t last long on the ground. In desperation he kicked out - and felt a snap as his heel struck a knee. One of the Lakota boys went down with a scream. The assailants hesitated.

It was the chance the boy needed.
He rolled to his feet, snatching up a length of kindling. From deep in his chest came a hoarse, coughing growl. Not a whoop or yelp, it was a murderous snarl, like the sound a bear makes on the attack. He exploded toward the nearest aggressor, swinging the wood with both hands. The blow landed on the side of the Lakota youth’s head. He went down, and the boy turned on the others, striking flesh again and again.

And then it was over. Two of the young Lakota were running, one cradling an injured arm. On the ground one of the boys rocked back and forth, moaning and holding his injured knee, while another lay twitching, eyes rolled back in his head, foam gathered at the corners of his mouth, a crimson trickle pooling in one ear.

Two days after the fight Bear-That-Walks came to the boy at dusk as he lay on his sleeping robe. The man looked at the boy for a long moment, then dropped an old trader knife on the ground next to the robe. Its blade was worn thin by many whetstones, and the short, wood handle was cracked and weathered, held together by yellowed strands of sinew. The warrior turned and walked away.

Summer passed, and the boy was not bothered again.

Attack On The Emigrants

The emigrant train descended at Ash Hollow into the valley of the Platte. The wagons crossed the Bluewater and headed northwest, onto what geologists call the Box Butte Plain, where box-shaped sandstone monoliths rise from the gullied stretches of shortgrass buffalo prairie. The emigrants were still 150 miles east of Fort Laramie, but they had made excellent progress since leaving Fort Kearny and would soon be seeing the silhouette of Scotts Bluff, gateway to the final push for Laramie and the mountains.
The weather was warm and dry.

Three times since Kearny the train had been stopped by Indians. At the first encounter the pilgrims gave up flour, sugar and coffee. The second cost them molasses, salt pork, powder and a few pounds of lead. On the third meeting a brave attempted to board a wagon and weapons were drawn, but the Indians withdrew.
Shortly before dawn on the 19th day out, 10-year-old Charles MacGruder, his twin brother Edward and his uncle James were herding the train’s stock back from the Platte when two Indians rode out of a wash behind them and approached the uncle to ask for ‘tabac.’

The uncle indicated he had none, and as he turned back toward the herd fifteen warriors came whooping from the tree line along the river, circling the train’s animals and clubbing both boys from their horses. The uncle’s hand had barely touched his revolver when he was struck simultaneously by four arrows.
All of the MacGruders were scalped.

The scout Chambers was the first in the camp to see them coming. As morning light broke over the hills he walked out onto the open prairie and heard the yelping and saw the dust and then the warriors waving the MacGruders’ bloody shirts like flags as they came on, hazing the horses, oxen, and mules toward camp. Chambers yelled Indians, murderers, and took up his heavy dragoon revolver. He managed to split the stampeding stock with a shot that brought down the herd’s bell mare kicking, tossing up chunks of sod as she somersaulted and slid on her side, bloody foam streaming from her mouth and nostrils.

Miles and two others quickly joined the scout and each took a hurried shot at the red horsemen before they saw an even larger force bearing down on the camp from the east, out of the rising sun.
Naked, with the bright light behind them, their horses’ tails tied up for war, 40 attackers with bows, lances, and clubs galloped out of the glare like circus riders, throwing themselves to the sides of their ponies, shooting arrows from under the horses’ shaggy necks, whooping and swinging their weapons. The air filled with dust as they rode through camp, sawed their ponies around and came back to board the wagons.

Screaming women and children ran out onto the prairie in panic to be clubbed down or skewered, arrow and lance shafts passing through, some extending like puppet parts out both sides of a neck or a shoulder or midsection. Fires broke out in some of the wagons.

By the time he reached his wagon Miles carried an arrow in his hip; he fired his rifle once from his wagon seat before taking another shaft through the chest. He fell back into Abigail’s arms, wide-eyed and spitting blood as he mouthed final instructions to flee, flee, flee.
Sarah stared in horror, her hands covering her mouth as her mother rose and pushed her toward the back of the wagon.

Go Sarah, she said. Go now. Go now, she repeated in a calm, almost catechistic tone. It was her final response to the litany of slaughter, for in the next moment an arrow pierced the wagon cover, passed through her back and emerged between her breasts.

Then came a ripping sound and the canvas parted under the blade of a scalping knife, and the vermilioned face of a Sioux warrior became Sarah’s last recollection of the day.

---

I’ll be fucked, exclaimed Teddy Cole as he stood in the gulley where he and Cutter laid in concealment. He recognized the lone rider descending the barren rise to the south, yet another antelope slung across the crup of his pony.
Lookee here. It’s Jumper, Henry, he said.

Cutter rose. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled.
Jumper. Come here, ye soulless heathen. We’re on foot, unhorsed again by your goddamn kin.

They moved to the river where they built a small fire and roasted the antelope backstrap, the first meat in two days for Cole and Henry.

Need to procure mounts, said Cutter, who emitted a loud, rolling belch as he tossed a piece of gristle into the fire. We’ll lose our feet strolling this country.

This country. Jesus Henry, said Cole. Do ye have a notion of where we are?

Cutter shook his head. No but the heathen does, pointing at Jumper, who looked at him. Do ye know where we can obtain some animals on the cheap?
Jumper shook his head.

In the morning they headed north, across miles of broken prairie until they reached the Platte. Four days later they came upon the massacre site.

The blackened corpses lay bloated in the grass, stiffened limbs sticking out like the roots of trees blown down in a tornado. Carrion eaters had dismembered many, and several wolves slunk away at the approach of the travelers, who moved among the burned wagons, noses covered by their shirt sleeves, waving away the flies, which rose in dark, oscillating plumes as they passed.

While Jumper stood watch they scavenged currency, several blankets, gold teeth and pocket watches. They examined damaged firearms, arrows, burned clothing.
Cole moved among the decomposed bodies until the stench became intolerable. Jesus Christ Henry, let’s be on our way, he said.

Two weeks later they used the currency to purchase horses and saddles at Ft. Kearny.

Labor Day

Hope all enjoyed a peaceful, safe holiday weekend.