Bent's Fort

 One Cheyenne was quick to react; he vaulted onto the back of his pony and trotted forward. Pony stopped and raised his right hand. The Cheyenne stopped. His face was painted black, white hailstone spots marked his cheeks and chest, and Pony knew he likely carried a weapon beneath the blanket that wrapped his waist.

50 paces. Bow range. Pistol range.

Baker fixed the front sight of his carbine on the chest of the Cheyenne’s horse, drawing a deep breath as he tried to calm himself. But the parley was brief; only moments had passed when he saw the Cheyenne rein his pony around, heard him whoop his way back to his comrades. Pony walked back.

Boots and saddles lootenant.

Where are we going?

To meet Little Wound, I reckon.

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They angled south and west for three days until they cut the northern route of the Santa Fe Trail. They followed it west for another day and came to the ruins of Bent’s Old Fort.

The adobe walls were crumbling and scorched, razed by the old trader back in ’52, three years after cholera swept the southern plains, killing Indians, travelers and traders by the hundreds. Whole villages gone. Ox trains rotting on the plains, the animals abandoned and starved under their yokes. Bent had moved to another trading post on the South Platte; there would be no recovery in this place. The bones returned to the earth, monument to the disunion of cultures.

Yet it was the chosen place.

They arrived at a walk, dust rising from under the animal’s hooves, spiraling in miniature devils above the tumbled walls.

So this is where it happens, said Baker.

Correct, lootenant, said Pony.

They dismounted and unloaded the packs in the southwest corner, what used to be the main hacienda of the stockade. The animals were fed and watered, rubbed down and picketed across the plaza-type square.

When will they be here? Baker asked.

Pony shrugged. When they get here.

You don’t know?

When an Indian says tomorrow it only means not today. Could mean next week. Blizzards… war… sickness… that’s their calendar.

So we could be here for a month before they show up?

I doubt a month.

Oh? What makes you sure they’re coming at all?

I think they will. I told the Indian we had whiskey.

Whiskey?

Little Wound’s a thirsty Indian. Usually.

You mean to get them drunk so they can murder us all?

Pony took a knee and squinted. He twirled a tin cup on his index finger.

I’m goddamned sorry if this don’t meet your expectations lootenant.

I don’t understand why we didn’t follow those Indians, Baker said. We would be closer now.

Wrong lootenant. We would be dead now.

The first day passed into the next. And the next. The three kept camp, night fires bright as beacons, here, in the middle of the wild country. During the day they scouted for sign of the Cheyenne. Old trails, long grown over, led in every direction.

  

Cholera, was it? asked Baker one night.

They say twenty miles away a man could smell the stink of it, said Pony. Say for five years it kept even the wolves away.

Catcher said something in Cheyenne.

What did he say?

Said this place is full of ghosts.

Ghosts, said Baker. Perhaps the ghosts are slowing the Cheyenne down.

They’ll be here, said Pony.

You don’t know that.

Pony said something to Catcher in Cheyenne. Catcher smiled, nodded in agreement.

What’s so funny?

I said you’re impatient… like a calf looking for mama’s tit.

The girl. The child is my concern.

Goes for me and Catcher too, lootnenant.

Baker stood, threw his coffee in the fire.

Good for you.

 

Dawn saw Pony and Catcher delicately poking at the ruins of the nightfire with charred scantlings, blankets draped over their shoulders, shaking with the chill.

Across the plaza Baker picketed his saddled horse, walked over to pick up a pack saddle and walked back to where the rest of the animals were tied.

You want some coffee, lootenant?

I don’t believe so, said Baker. And I’ll thank you to set aside a reasonably modest amount of the remaining supplies for yourselves. I’ll be taking the rest with me.