Charles West - Day of the Wolf

Lorena smiled and nodded in the direction of their guide, walking the horses up to the wagon. “You tell him.”

Billie Jean sputtered and Rose giggled at her fluster. “Let’s do what he says,” Rose suggested. “There ain’t anything keeping him from taking off any time he feels like he doesn’t wanna put up with us anymore. He ain’t much when it comes to charming entertainment, but I feel a whole lot better having him around.”

“Amen,” Lorena said.

Backing the team on either side of the wagon tongue, Wolf glanced up to find all three women staring at him, smiles on their faces. “Here,” Billie Jean offered, “let me hitch ’em up. You can go saddle your horse.”

“Much obliged,” he said, and let her take the traces. She was better at it than he was, anyway. She did more of the driving than Lorena, and Wolf had no trouble picturing her working in her father’s blacksmith shop. While he went to fetch his horse, he wondered what had led her to her present occupation. She hardly looked the type. She wasn’t as tall a woman as Lorena, but she was solidly built, with no slimming of her waistline, even though she appeared to have a flat stomach. Built more like a man, he thought. Good thing she’s got that long yellow hair. She was a sharp contrast to Rose, the youngest of the three. There was a hardness about Rose, probably as a result of the brothels and saloons she had in her past. And yet she was quick with a smile and usually found something to be cheerful about. A slender woman with shiny black hair, she looked to be of Creole descent.

His horse saddled, he led the bay up to the fire, where Lorena handed him a cup of coffee. He drank the strong black liquid in quick gulps, impatient to get started. Then he pulled the fire apart and kicked dirt over it, stepped up in the saddle, and sat waiting for the women to climb in the wagon.

They were waiting, twelve Lakota warriors, fresh from a successful raid on a homestead no more than forty miles southeast of Fort Laramie where they had killed a farmer, his wife, and three children. The brazen attack, right under the army’s nose, was led by Iron Hand, feared warrior of the Oglala Lakota. Intent as they were upon returning to their village on the Tongue River before army troops were sent after them, they were nevertheless excited to spot a single wagon heading toward Fort Laramie. Iron Hand knew his medicine was strong, for they might not have been given this opportunity to attack the wagon if the deer had not been sent to delay his return. His warriors did not doubt his medicine when their journey had been interrupted by the small group of deer that had gathered conveniently by a little pond at the bottom of a narrow stream flowing from the hill above. Two of the deer were killed before the others escaped, but that was plenty of meat to supply the raiding party. They decided to remain in the valley to butcher and prepare the unexpected bounty.

As a precaution, scouts were sent out to make sure there was no sign of an army patrol. Iron Hand didn’t expect the soldiers to receive word of their raid on the farm this soon, but he felt it wise to know that they were in no danger of surprise. One of the scouts, Red Blanket, had returned early in the afternoon to announce the sighting of a lone wagon heading north. “One man on a horse leads the wagon,” Red Blanket reported excitedly. “It looked like a woman driving the wagon and maybe another or maybe a child beside her.”

Iron Hand and the others were immediately eager to attack. “How far?” Iron Hand asked. He was told that if the wagon continued along in the same direction, the war party could head directly west and wait in ambush where a line of low hills stretched across the prairie. The plan was enthusiastically accepted by all in the war party, and they had started without delay to arrive at the point of ambush, where they now waited.

Wolf reined the bay to a stop while he looked at the hills some two miles in the distance. Good place for an ambush, he thought, although he really didn’t anticipate the possibility of hostile activity so close to Fort Laramie. He was more concerned with the best route that would place the least strain on the horses to pull the wagon through the hills. He turned in the saddle to look back on the women, a quarter of a mile behind him. Billie Jean was driving the horses and Rose, being the more spritely of the three, was walking beside it. Lorena never walked. He returned his attention to the hills before him, letting his gaze skim along the tops until he settled upon a low draw that seemed to be the best bet for an easy passage. Urging the bay to resume a comfortable walk, he veered slightly to the west and headed straight for the draw. He looked back once again to make sure Billie Jean was following.

Making his way across the treeless flat, he rode through large patches of sagebrush that covered most of the hills he was now entering. The draw he had chosen was plenty wide enough for the wagon to pass, with steep sides rising up to the tops of the hills on each side. After riding a couple of dozen yards into the defile, he pulled up and looked around to see if there was anything that might do damage to wagon wheels that were already in need of repair. He saw nothing that would cause any trouble, so he decided to wait there for Billie Jean to catch up.

The afternoon was clear and warm on the open prairie as the sun began to sink closer to the distant mountains, and there was a stillness that could almost be heard, interrupted only by an occasional cry of a hawk wheeling high overhead. His first sense of something wrong was triggered when the bay’s ears pricked up, usually a sign that the horse was aware of something. When the bay snorted softly, he became totally alert and he felt the muscles in his arms tense. There was no answering whinny from the hills on either side of him. Still, he suddenly sensed the presence of something that shouldn’t be there. Maybe he was being overly cautious, but he preferred to err in that direction if he was wrong. Acting on the possibility that he was leading the wagon into an ambush, he wheeled his horse around casually and slow-walked the bay back out of the draw, hoping to look as if he was not suspicious.

While he rode toward the wagon, he glanced around on either side to pick a spot that might be best to defend against a war party. If he was right, and the party set up to ambush them was the same bunch of Indians that had crossed Horse Creek a day or two ago, he didn’t like his odds of repelling them. One rifle against ten or fifteen Sioux warriors didn’t stand much chance. But that was the only choice he had, so he would make it as costly for them as he could. One spot looked about as good as another, so he chose the closest one, a deep gully at the base of the hill to the west of the draw.

Reining his horse up to a stop beside the wagon seat, he wheeled the bay around and told Rose in a calm but forceful voice, “Get in the wagon.” Surprised by his tone, she promptly did as she was told. Addressing Billie Jean then, he said, “You see that gully yonder?” She nodded and he continued. “I want you to drive like hell to that gully when I give you the signal, and I don’t mean maybe.”

“What is it?” Lorena demanded as she crawled up to join Billie Jean in the seat.

“I think we got some trouble,” Wolf replied. “I might be wrong, but I got a feelin’ I ain’t. I got a powerful itch that says there’s a bunch of Injuns waitin’ for us to ride through that notch in those hills up ahead. So we’ll keep on kinda peaceable till we get to that big clump of sagebrush on the right, and then we’ll make a run for it and hope we get to that gully before they can cut us off.”