Winter Rain

“High-Backed Bull!” Bad Tongue hissed sharply in his crude, unpracticed Cheyenne. When the oldest of the Shahiyena drew alongside at the crest of the hill and knelt with the others, Bad Tongue began his hands-dancing, talking in sign.

“Yes, I can see!” High-Backed Bull answered with his hands, his heart leaping, his blood throbbing at his temples. Quickly he glanced at Starving Elk and Little Hawk, their young heads bobbing eagerly in anticipation.

Still far off across the starlit prairie twinkled the faintest glimmers of light: enough to see that they were a handful of fires, their dim, bloodlike glowing beneath the star-dark skies. White-man fires gone low with neglect. He knew that the white horsemen would likely be asleep.

“They will have guards on their herd,” the Bull said softly.

Bad Tongue agreed with a nod. “We will not have to worry about their guards.”

“Into their horses and drive them out again before the guards know what bad wind blew through camp,” the second Brule added.

“Let’s go close enough to see these soldiers?” Little Hawk asked.

Bad Tongue turned on the youngest of that group. “Yes, my little friend. We will go close enough for you to see all the white men.”

“When we have driven off these horses, then we can ride back to wait for the others to attack at dawn?” Starving Elk added. On his face was written that look of apprehension, as plain as his earth-paint.

The Sioux warriors stood with Bad Tongue, all five as one.

“We Lakota did not come to see the white man, my Shahiyena friends. We came to take his horses.”

“You may come to take the horses and mules,” sneered High-Backed Bull. “The Shahiyena came to take scalps this night. Do you ride with me, Starving Elk?”

Starving Elk took a deep breath, looking at his younger brother. “I … I go to steal the horses. My brother, Little Hawk, can choose if he wishes to return to camp now—before the attack.”

“No! I will ride with Starving Elk. He is my brother and I will follow him.”

Without another word Bad Tongue led the half-dozen Sioux atop their barebacked ponies, unfurling blankets, some unrolling stiff pieces of rawhide brought with them. One even pulled a large hand drum from a coyote-skin cover he had slung over his shoulder.

“What is this you are doing with these things, Bad Tongue?” asked High-Backed Bull as he pulled his old Walker Colt’s revolver from the belt around his waist.

The Sioux warrior glared at his Cheyenne companion. “Make ready, Shahiyena. For the Burnt Thigh are making ready to put the white man afoot!”

“Aiyeeee!” shouted the Bull as he nudged his pony past the Lakota horsemen, heels pounding his animal into a lumbering gallop. “The Shahiyena are not content to take horses. I have come to make the white man’s knees turn to water—to let him hear the sound of my war music!”

In the darkest time of that night, Usher found the one he was looking for among the recumbent, formless mounds beneath the blankets, their feet to the fires in that camp on the west bank of the Muddy River. He stood a moment more above him, listening to the tone of the snoring, only to be sure. Then he knelt and shook the man awake.

The sleeper came up startled, lunging for the pistol at his side as he blinked his eyes at the huge man hulking over him.

“Strickler, it’s your colonel.” He put a finger to his lips and motioned the man to follow.

Jubilee arose and moved off, knowing Oran Strickler would not fail to follow. Satisfied when he heard the sound of blankets coming off and the creak of cold leather boots scrunching across the sandy soil behind him.

When he had stopped among the cottonwood and turned, Usher hissed, “I have come to trust you as much as any of these.”

The man hawked up some night-gather in his throat, flung it into the darkness, then replied, “I been with you from the very start, Colonel. I was riding along with the same wagon train when we was took.”

“You got as much stake in all of this as I, don’t you, brother Strickler.” Usher could tell just what effect that endearing term had on the man. It had quickly softened the harsh night edges of the Danite’s face.

“Perhaps—like you say—it is time for a change in Deseret. The American government, its army sent out to aim its guns down on us—something should’ve been done long ago.”

Usher placed a hand on the tall, thin man’s shoulder. “We need only to show the many others in Zion the error of Brigham’s ways. Was a time I would have followed Brigham through the fires of hell.”

“We done that, Colonel. And we’re on our way back again, by damned!”

He snorted, then threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there, on our backtrail—we all know we’ve got that sodbuster following us.”

“The woman’s husband.”

“He’s not her husband!” Usher snapped, then composed himself a bit. “She’s mine by rights of all divine law now. By rights of time, by rights of angelic purpose, by right of might.”

“But don’t it bother you that this sonofabitch just keeps coming on when he ought’n to know better, Colonel?”