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  She sank to her knees in the center of the camp and in a weary voice said, “Dear God! Safe at last.” Then she collapsed in a dead faint.

  “Double the guards,” Lieutenant Gerry ordered, as Bodine got his canteen and moved to the woman’s side.

  He brushed the honey-blond hair back from her forehead and wetted his kerchief, wiping the grime from the woman’s face. He noted that she was quite a beauty. Blue eyes, he would bet, and when they opened, he saw that he was right.

  She came awake with a start and a small cry.

  “Easy now,” Bodine cautioned. “You’re safe.” His eyes drifted to her full breasts and then back to her face.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, noting the direction his eyes had taken.

  Bodine smiled at her. “I’m sure. The men are rigging some blankets so you can wash up and change clothes. Have you ever worn men’s britches? It’s the best we can do, I’m afraid.”

  “Heavens, no!” Then she managed a smile. “Proper young ladies from Chicago don’t wear men’s britches. But there’s a first time for everything.”

  Then she started to cry uncontrollably.

  Bodine was no hand when it came to weeping women. He took off his jacket and rolled it up, putting it under her head, then covering her with a blanket handed him by a soldier. He sat back in a squat, watching her for a time.

  Two Wolves brought some coffee and food and placed it beside Bodine. The woman chose that time to wipe her eyes and look at Two Wolves. Although dressed in white man’s clothing, there was no mistaking his Indian side. The woman hissed and drew back in fright.

  “Relax,” Bodine told her. “This is my brother, Sam August Webster Two Wolves. His father, Medicine Horse, was the first Cheyenne to make peace with the whites and that peace is still good. You have nothing to fear here.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for that.” She sipped at the hot, strong cowboy coffee as her eyes drifted back and forth between the two men. “There is a slight resemblance, I suppose.”

  “We’re blood brothers, miss,” Two Wolves told her. “Bodine saved my life when we both were just boys. My father adopted him into the Cheyenne tribe.”

  Her eyes touched upon the identical necklaces both men wore. “Bodine . . . the gunfighter?”

  “I can use a gun, miss. When I have to. I’m a rancher down in Wyoming and sometimes scout for the Army. What is your name again?”

  “Terri. Terri Kelly. I came out here to teach school at a small settlement on the Little Missouri.” Her face hardened. “That settlement is no more.”

  She paused as Lieutenant Gerry squatted down and began taking notes on a small pad.

  “Feel like telling us what happened?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Can I wash up first?”

  “Of course you can.” Bodine held out his hand and she took it, very conscious of the strength in that outstretched arm.

  On her feet, Bodine noted that she was no shrinking violet. Terri Kelly was a good five-six or five-seven. And her figure was truly magnificent. It was no wonder the braves were after her; she would have been worth a dozen horses in a trade, once she was beaten into submission.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to bathe in cold water, Miss Kelly,” Gerry told her. And I don’t know what we’re going to do about footwear for you. Your shoes are just about gone.”

  “I can fix her some moccasins,” Two Wolves said. “It won’t take long.”

  “You don’t have a trace of an accent,” Terri said, looking at him.

  “I was educated back east, Miss Kelly. As was my father. My mother came from a very old New England family. Connections with the Mayflower, and all that.”

  Her suddenly cool eyes told him what she thought of any woman who would marry a red savage. She turned away and walked toward the strung-up blankets.

  “Should be an interesting trip back to the fort,” Lieutenant Gerry said.

  “For some of us,” Two Wolves added.

  Chapter 14

  Bodine did his best to rig up a saddle for the woman to ride sidesaddle, but finally gave it up in frustration. She would just have to ride astride.

  Terri was appalled and the men were embarrassed, looking ever’-which-away except at her, but she gamely swung into the saddle just after dawn.

  “We’ve got a long and dangerous way to go, Miss Kelly,” Gerry told her. “Right through hostile country. So be prepared for anything.”

  “After the other night,” she said grimly, “I assure you that I am.”

  “Colonel Travers will want to hear your story when we reach the garrison,” Gerry reminded her. “As will I. We only skimmed it last evening.”

  She put cool blue eyes on the man. “My niece was drawing water when they came. She was thirteen. They ran a lance through her. Her mother, my aunt, ran to her and the savages killed Aunt Helena. My uncle hid me in the cellar just before they overwhelmed him. I lay amid the potatoes and the canned goods listening while they tortured him to death. But they couldn’t make him scream.” She cut her eyes to Bodine.

  “He died well. They will sing songs about him around the fires.”

  “Barbaric filth!” She spat the words.

  “Different cultures, miss,” Bodine told her. “I must tell you sometime about American cavalrymen who impaled tiny Indian babies on their swords and then cut off their heads as trophies. I’ll tell you about unarmed old Indian men and women who were lined up and shot down for the fun of it. Ten-year-old Indian girls who were literally raped to death. Little Indian boys who were run down and trampled to death under the hooves of the cavalrymen’s horses. Savages, Miss Kelly? We have them on both sides. Believe me. I’ve witnessed it firsthand.”

  She opened her mouth to speak and Bodine wheeled his horse and rode to the head of the column.

  “That insufferable! . . .” She bit back the last.

  “He was raised, sort of, by the Cheyenne, Miss Kelly,” Lieutenant Gerry told her. “I could not abide the man when I first met him. If you will pardon my language, I thought him to be an arrogant ass. But I’ve grown to both like him and to respect his judgment. As for what he said about savages on both sides, well, I have to agree with him. I’ve both seen and heard of some rather ghastly events about the cruelty of whites toward the Indians. And,” he was quick to add, “some equally horrible stories about the Indians and their methods of torture.”

  Terri sighed. “I suppose I have much to learn about the wild frontier. I only got here in June.”

  “Yes, Miss Kelly,” the lieutenant agreed, remembering his own prejudices and misconceptions as he arrived on the frontier. “You have much to learn.”

  * * *

  “What are we going to do with her, Bodine?” Gerry asked over the noon meal.

  “That’s Colonel Travers’ worry, Gerry. How’d she get out of the root cellar, anyway?”

  “They burned the house down over her. She breathed through a tiny hole in the foundation. She waited for several hours after they’d left before making a break for it. The entire tiny settlement was gone; burned bodies everywhere. The men horribly mutilated. Said she just ran in blind fear. Then she came to her senses and began following what she thought was the Little Missouri. That’s when she found us.”

  “She’s a lucky woman. If a brave had seen her, they would have taken her and traded her for a dozen horses . . . after a time.”

  “That is disgusting, Bodine!”

  “That’s the way it is, Gerry. You’re from Maryland, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your family hold slaves before the civil war?” The lieutenant sighed. “Yes, they did.”

  “Beat them, trade them, sell them?”

  “Yes, Bodine! So I am told. I do not remember it. All that was stopped in our family long before the Civil War.”

  “Right,” Bodine said dryly.

  Gerry shook his head. “This is a confusing war, Bodine. I thought, before I came out here, that the issues were all clear
-cut. I . . . find that is not the way it is. But I am a soldier, Bodine. I will do my duty and obey orders.”

  “Right,” Bodine said.

  * * *

  Terri slowly began to warm toward Bodine as the trek back to the fort continued. Two Wolves did not stay with the column, choosing instead to range out far on either side, or in front. Bodine knew he was deliberately staying away from the woman.

  “You’ve been out here long?” she asked him.

  “I was born out here. My father and mother came out years back. The first whites in the valley. Carved a place to live out of a wilderness. Fought Indians and blizzards and droughts and outlaws.”

  The only sound for a time was the clop of their horses’ hooves. Bodine was very conscious of the woman’s eyes on him.

  “Do you have a wife and children, Bodine? Is that your first name?”

  Bodine smiled. “No, to both your questions. And my name is Matt, but everyone calls me Bodine.”

  “I expected a much older man. Your reputation would certainly suggest it.”

  “I never asked for that reputation, Terri. But I don’t push worth a damn. A lot of men have died because they don’t understand what it means to strap on a gun out here. They don’t—or didn’t—understand that when a boy straps on a gun out here, that boy becomes a man. And the man is expected to use the gun if called out. Out here, Terri, a man’s word is his bond. That is why in the West, calling a man a liar can be a killing offense. Nobody trusts a liar. There is no law, or very little of it. From my ranch, I don’t even know where the nearest law is. There is a saying, I suppose it sprang from the lips of someone out here, that in the West, a man kills his own snakes and saddles his own horse.”

  “I will admit I have a lot to learn, but I still find it all very barbaric.”

  “It is barbaric, Terri. I’ve read where you have lots of police in Chicago to fight your battles for you. To control the thugs and hooligans and others of that stripe. It isn’t that way out here. We usually hang a rustler on the spot. And we hang horse thieves when we catch them. You’ve been on foot out here; what do you think would have happened to you if you had not stumbled upon us.”

  “I . . . imagine I would have died, on foot.”

  “That’s why we hang horse thieves.”

  “Your blood brother seems to be deliberately avoiding me.”

  “I’m sure he is. He’s trying to keep down any confrontation, knowing how you feel about Indians.” Bodine cut his eyes. “And speaking of Two Wolves,” he said, watching his brother race his horse toward the column, and that was something he would not do unless there was trouble on his heels.

  “Gerry!” Bodine shouted. “Head for that creek over there. I think we’ve got troubles!”

  Two Wolves slid his horse to a stop. “Lone Dog and his bunch about a half mile away, Brother. And his following has grown.”

  “Get Terri to those cottonwoods over there by the creek. At least we’ll have water and banks for some cover. Go, Brother.” Bodine whacked Terri’s horse on the rump and then gave Rowdy his head, racing toward Gerry.

  Far in the distance, even over the pounding of hooves, the war cries could be heard, coming closer behind them.

  Lieutenant Gerry’s command was getting into position along the banks of the creek. In a wider and deeper part of the creek, sheltered by high banks and cottonwoods, the horses were being held.

  Bodine, Winchester in hand, leaped from the saddle and got into position on the protected side of the cool and mossy bank.

  Lone Dog and his braves circled about three hundred yards out, riding low against the necks of their ponies, offering little target for the short-barreled, single-shot carbines of the soldiers.

  “Two Wolves!” Lone Dog called, his voice just reaching those on the banks of the creek. “You would dare to fire at me?”

  “You would dare to attack me?” Two Wolves countered with a yell. “The son of Medicine Horse, the greatest Cheyenne warrior who ever lived?”

  Lone Dog met with several of his sub-chiefs for a moment, then yelled, “Then ride out and live, Two Wolves. And take Bodine with you. We want the woman.”

  “Go to hell!” Two Wolves shouted.

  Terri looked at the half breed, with a new understanding of him in her eyes.

  “Your blood will stain the waters of the creek just like the soldiers, Two Wolves!” Lone Dog shouted. “We want the woman.”

  Bodine looked at Gerry, who was beside Terri on the bank. “If they overrun us, save one bullet for Miss Kelly, Gerry.”

  The lieutenant nodded his head, a grim expression on his face.

  Terri’s face was very pale.

  “Get ready,” Two Wolves told them all, the hammer reared back on his Winchester. “They’re just about ready to charge us.”

  “The Cheyenne with Lone Dog are pulling back,” Bodine observed. “They don’t want to fight the son of Medicine Horse.”

  “Or Bodine,” Two Wolves added.

  About forty of the braves with Lone Dog had withdrawn, to sit their ponies on the crest of a hill, watching and waiting.

  With a cry that seemed to come from a single throat, the braves of Lone Dog charged the creek from both sides. Bodine and Two Wolves knocked half a dozen sprawling, commencing firing with their long barreled Winchesters a few seconds before the troopers. A half dozen more ponies were soon riderless as the seasoned cavalrymen opened fire.

  Lone Dog waved his braves back. A dozen dead and wounded was just no good. The Indians had long ago learned that to stand and die was stupid. Better to ride off and fight another day.

  They rode off, but they did not go far.

  “What are they doing?” Terri asked.

  “Determining their medicine is bad for this day,” Two Wolves told her, overhearing the question asked of Gerry. “Lone Dog has lost a dozen or more men in less than a minute. That is not good. You see the flankers, Bodine?”

  “I see them.”

  “What flankers?” Gerry asked, looking all around him. He could see nothing.

  “Coming toward us through the grass,” Two Wolves told him. “Crawling on their bellies. See that bush just to the right of that lightning-blazed tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “It won’t be there a minute from now. The bush, not the tree,” he added with a wry smile.

  Gerry glanced at him, giving him a jaundiced look that even under these circumstances brought a smile to Terri’s lips. When the lieutenant again looked over the terrain, the bush had moved several yards.

  Bodine lifted his rifle and sighted in the bush. He took up slack on the trigger and fired. A brave screamed and leaped up, his chest smeared with blood. Bodine shot him again and the brave fell over on his back and did not move.

  “Here they are!” a trooper yelled, just as the Indians leaped up and closed with the troopers. Some of the Sioux had crept to within a few yards of the creek, as silent as death.

  “Every other man, eyes to the front!” Gerry yelled, as a brave leaped at him and Lone Dog’s braves charged on their ponies.

  The lieutenant lifted his pistol and fired pointblank into the Indian’s chest, the slug turning the warrior around in midair and twisting his painted face into a pain-filled mask of hate and fury. Gerry lifted his six-shooter and shot the brave in the face, ending it.

  Two Wolves shot a brave in the head just as Bodine clubbed another with his rifle butt, kicked him between the legs with a boot and smashed his throat with the butt of his Winchester. Lifting the rifle, he shot another one in the belly and again in the chest.

  A hoarse choking cry ended the brief battle. Bodine looked toward Terri. A brave had leaped at her and she had picked up the guidon carrying the colors. The brave had impaled himself on the pole, the end of it going directly in and through the belly. He lay writhing and coughing. Two Wolves walked over and shot the warrior in the head, ending his death-struggles.

  Two Wolves stared at the brave for a moment. “Wohk pe nu numa,” he
said.

  Terri looked at Bodine.

  “Painted Thunder,” Bodine told her. “The son of Gray Thunder, a sub-chief of the Sioux.” He glanced at Gerry. “This is not good for us.”

  “Hell, man! They attacked us!”

  Bodine shrugged his shoulders. “We’re on their lands.”

  “Did you see the Arapahoes and the Ho He among them, Brother?” Two Wolves asked.

  “Yes. And some Blackfeet and Cree. They’re coming together, and that’s even worse.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Gerry started to rise.

  Two Wolves pushed him back down to the moss. “Not unless you have a death wish, man. Lone Dog is crazy, but he’s not stupid. They’re just over the rise, waiting for us to do something like that.”

  “Then we’ll stay here,” the lieutenant said. “We have ample water and plenty of rations. We’ll be safe tonight,” he assured Terri with a glance.

  “How do you figure that?” Bodine asked.

  “Indians don’t fight at night,” Gerry said smugly.

  Both Bodine and Two Wolves smiled. “Many Apaches don’t fight at night,” Two Wolves told him. “Depending on the tribe, many others don’t either; their fear is that if they are killed at night, their spirits will forever wander. But don’t take any bets on this bunch not fighting at night. It all depends on their medicine.”

  The sounds of chanting drifted to them. “What are they doing?” Terri asked.

  Both Bodine and Two Wolves listened carefully, then glanced at one another. “They’re questioning their medicine for this day,” Two Wolves said. “I think it’s over. If they start the chant for the dead warriors, we’ll know it’s over.”

  After a time, the chanting changed, then stopped. A silence crept over the land, broken only by a horse stamping its foot in the muddy, churned-up creek bottom.

  Bodine stood up. “It’s over for this day, I’m thinking. We’ll wait a few minutes, then get out of here. We’ll ride like hell for a time, eat, then ride some more before we make a cold camp for the night. With any kind of luck, we can stay ahead of them. They’ll have to take some time to find and to gather up their dead, then carry them off to prepare the warriors for prayers and burial. That’ll give us about an hour or so.”