Winter Rain

“If the Indian doesn’t mind, I do need someone to see to the pack mules. Benton!”

“Sir?”

“Bring up those mules.”

“What you have in mind doing with them two mules?” Hook asked as Billy Benton brought their pair of pack animals up and halted beside Lockhart.

“These mules carry what extra ammunition Company C has along,” the captain explained. “I’m putting it in charge of the Snake here.”

He turned to Two Sleep, whose black-cherry eyes finally veered to touch the captain’s face. Lockhart asked, “You understand what’s expected of you?”

The Shoshone nodded. “I guard the mules with my life.”

Lockhart flashed a grin, motioning Benton forward with the picket ropes strung back to the mules. “I can see I’ve made a good choice in this matter. Thank you … Two Sleep.”

It was the first time Jonah could recall any of the Rangers, much less the captain himself, calling the warrior by name. As if until this moment he had been just an Injun. A faceless, nameless red-belly. But in these minutes before the bloodletting, Two Sleep had somehow become one of them. Worthy of no less an honor than standing watch over their supply of cartridges.

No matter that there were biscuits and beans and bacon in those packs. The Shoshone had just been asked to protect what was even more precious, perhaps life sustaining. The bullets.

“For some of you this charge will be the first time you ever rode into something like this,” Lockhart continued, reining his horse to the side and easing on down the line of Rangers. “Hell, I gotta admit I never rode into a bunch of Comanche that’s been ready for us. No matter is it—your green will be worn off by the time the second shot is fired and you’ve got a whiff of gunpowder in your nostrils, men.”

When the captain reached the end of the line, he sawed his mount about and brought his horse back to the middle, where he stopped to face his thirty. “You’ll ride out at my order. I will take the point, and no man will allow his mount to pass mine. Make yourselves clear on that. When we begin, spread out ten feet apart, and keep the same pace as those on either side of you. Our success or failure will depend on us staying together.”

Lockhart drew the back of his glove across his lips, chewed the lower lip a moment, then continued. “If one of you becomes separated from the company, do all that is in your power to make it back to us. In the end we may be pressed to dismount and fort up behind the bodies of our horses. If I give that order, we will circle Two Sleep and the mules. Re-form around the pack mules before we start dropping the horses.”

“Dropping the horses, Captain?” asked Wig Danville. “Shoot ’em?”

“Yes.”

“But, sir—I say ride. And ride hard. We fort up, them Comanche gonna swallow us up for sure.”

“Danville, there’s a lot of old frontiersmen who can tell you chapter and verse of their own history where the few held out against the many—and held the day.”

“You run, Wig,” Coffee added, “the Comanche got us separated. Chase us down one at a time.”

“What the sergeant says is the gospel according to Lamar Lockhart,” the captain added. “We stay together.”

“We all live,” Deacon Johns bellowed in that brimstone-laced voice of his, “or we all go to the bosom of the Lord our God together.”

“Together,” Lockhart reminded them. “Likely, it will be fighting these red-bellies to the last ditch and victory to the strongest.”

“That ol’ sulfur-belly of Satan’s son is about to get his due from a jealous God!” Deacon Johns bellowed.

Then they all fell silent again as Lockhart’s eyes went up and down the long line. Only when he had done so did the captain gently nudge his horse about. “Let’s move out, Sergeant Coffee.”

“You heard the captain!” Coffee bawled. “Move out!”

They closed on a mile of the village within a few heartbeats. Was no problem for any man to make out the village by then. A smudge of oily brown haze hung over the lodges. Morning cook fires. In the midst of the lodges there was the flicker of movement. Off to the right and beyond, Jonah could make out what extra animals the tribe could claim. Those that had not been brought into camp and readied. The warriors were already easing out of the village, disappearing for a moment as they led their ponies down the far slope of a wide arroyo, before reappearing on the near side where they halted. Waiting as more, and ever more came up.

Lockhart raised himself in the stirrups and twisted about to the left. Then the right, assuring himself of the readiness of his line spread out from him like great, undulating wings. Jonah sat two away from the end of the right flank. Behind them, riding center on Lockhart’s tail root, came the Shoshone with those two pack mules strung out at a walk behind him.

The captain raised his left hand and made a quick circle with it, then brought the arm down.

Not a one of them uttered a word but as a body urged their mounts into a lope behind Lockhart as he settled back to his saddle.