Appaloosa

“Shoot the packhorse,” Cole said. “We’ll need the weapons.”

Then he raised the Winchester and shot Allie’s horse out from under her. Before the animal had floundered down, he had shot the Indian with the Sharps rifle in the middle of the chest. I killed the pack animal and put a bullet into the Indian who’d been holding it. The rest flattened themselves over their horses’ necks, and hanging down on the side away from the gunfire drove them in a flat-out run toward the low hill. Cole and I each managed to knock down another horse, but in both cases the rider was up and behind another Indian before the horse had died.

The Shelton horses, waiting to be driven, had spooked and were strung out at a gallop along the river, straight west. The Shelton brothers dove flat behind the dead packhorse. Mackie pulled a knife from his boot and cut the pack bags loose. Bragg and the other man came at a dead run toward us in the woods. Allie struggled away from her dead horse and followed them, hanging on to her blanket. Mackie took one pack bag and Ring took the other, and they sprinted for the woods as well. The Indians didn’t shoot; they were heading for the hill. There’d be plenty of time to kill us, if the Indians decided they could.

The Indians went behind the rise, out of sight. Mackie cut open the pack bags, and he and Ring got their guns out, rifles and sidearms. Bragg and the fourth man got theirs out as well. When this was done, Ring straightened and looked at us.

“Knew you’d be after us,” Ring said.

Cole nodded.

“Kiowa?” Cole said to Ring.

“Think so. They got them fu

“Three and a pack mule,” Cole said.

Ring looked at me.

“Everett,” he said.

Mackie nodded at me.

Allie was crouched near us with her blanket around her. Bragg had flattened out on the ground with a Winchester, facing toward the hill where the Indians had gone.

“This here’s my cousin Russell,” Ring said. “Russell can shoot a little.”

Russell nodded, looking off toward where the Indians had vanished behind the rise. He was a small, wiry man with a big Adam’s apple and not much hair.

“First thing,” Cole said. “While we got them hostiles to deal with, it ain’t a good idea for us to be shootin’ each other.”

“There’s a town we was heading for, ’bout two days’ ride,” Ring said. “Without pushing the horses, I say we put our troubles aside until the day after we get there.”

“Your word?” Cole said.

“My word.”

Cole nodded.

“Everett?” he said.

“Twenty-four hours?”

Ring nodded.

“Fine,” I said.

“Okay,” Cole said. “Mackie, you got any clothes in there to cover Allie up?”

“None a hers,” Mackie said. “You remember she come along sort of sudden.”

“Got some spare pants in there,” Russell said. “I seen them Indians pack ’em.”

He felt around in the bag and came out with the pants and gave them to Allie. I gave Allie my clean shirt. Clutching the blanket around her she stood and looked for a place to change.

Cole said, “We seen pretty much everything you got, Allie. No reason to go hiding it now.”

Without looking at him, she went behind some bushes and came out a minute later, looking silly but dressed. The pants were too big. She rolled the bottoms and I cut her some rope to make a belt. I was at least twice her size. My shirt billowed around her. The sleeves were too long to roll. I cut them off for her at about the elbows.

“Fire’s dying down,” Russell said. “Ain’t much moon. I can snake out there and get them moccasins off one of them bucks you shot.”

“I can’t wear those.”

I said, “You don’t want to be walking around barefoot, Allie.”

“We can’t spare no shooters,” Ring said.

“I can get ’em,” Russell said. “I don’t make much of a target.”

He eased out from the trees on his stomach and scooted on his belly toward the nearest corpse. He could go like hell on his stomach. He came back with the moccasins.

“Fit anybody,” Russell said. “Just wrap the laces around your legs.”

The moccasins had been greased to keep them flexible and to repel water. Allie looked like she wouldn’t take them, then she did and put them on and wrapped the lacings. She looked preposterous. But she was dressed. Being dressed seemed to pick her up a little.

“What are we going to do?” she said.

Her voice wasn’t very big, and it had no reason to be. I noticed she put the question to a spot about halfway between Ring and Virgil.

“We’re workin’ on that,” Ring said. “Sit over there.”

Allie looked at Cole. He was looking elsewhere. Allie went and sat against the foot of a tree near the horses and the mule. Mackie picked up his Winchester and moved to the edge of the woods away from Bragg. Russell settled in near the middle of our little perimeter. Cole and Ring and I sat on our heels between Russell and Mackie, and looked out of the shelter of the trees at the low rise across from us, and not very far.

“Think they’ll come at us?” Ring said.

“Nope,” Cole said. “Everett?”

“No,” I said. “They won’t. Not until they know what we are and how many. They’ll put someone upriver and downriver within shouting distance, and they’ll watch us from behind the hill.”

“They know we ain’t got enough horses,” Ring said.

“They don’t know that; we could have brought extra. In the morning, they’ll send someone upriver a ways to track us, see how many we are, then they’ll know we’re short some horses.”

“Yours’ll probably come drifting back,” Cole said.

“Indians will kill them if they do,” I said.

“ ’Less they don’t see ’em,” Ring said.

“They’ll see ’em,” Cole said.

Ring nodded.

“They will,” he said. “Won’t they.”

“And noon tomorrow, when the trackers come back, they’ll know how many we are and how many horses we got.”

“Nobody can read sign like an Indian,” Cole said.

“ ’Less they drink up all the whiskey tonight,” Ring said.

I shook my head.

“Everett’s right,” Cole said. “These are fighters. They ain’t going to get drunk in the middle of a fight.”

“So I guess we got to dig in here and await developments,” Ring said.

“Anybody see if they got food?” I said.

“Didn’t see none,” Ring said.

Cole shook his head no.

“Butchered that buffalo a ways back,” he said. “Musta cooked it, probably still got some left.”

“There’s about ten of ’em got to eat,” I said.

“Thirteen,” Ring said. “There was fifteen when they arrived. You killed two.”

“Food might work for us or against us,” Cole said. “They get hungry and they got someplace else to get it, they might go there. They ain’t, it’ll make ’em more vigilant, trying to get ours.”

I think he meant vigorous. But Ring and I both knew what he meant.

“We got the river behind us,” Ring said. “And we back up a little to the end of this point, we’ll have it on three sides.”

“Can’t watch ’em too good from there,” I said.

“Got a shovel on the mule,” Cole said. “We can dig us in a little back there, and pull down some trees and branches around, shield the horses. Couple of us stay up here, if they come at us and we need to, we can pull everybody back into the redoubt.”

“Now?” I said.

“I’d say so,” Cole said.