Free The Outlaw Josey Wales by Forrest Carter Page B

figger one hoss… maybe it’s a damn buffalo… ’er a wild hoss follerin’.”
    It was after midnight when they rested. Rolled in blankets on the bank of a creek that meandered toward Pine Mountain, they slept with bridle reins wrapped about their wrists…They grained the horses but left the saddles on them, loosely cinched.
    Up before dawn, they made a cold breakfast of jerky beef and biscuits and double-grained the horses for the hard riding. Lone suddenly placed his hand on the ground. He kneeled with ear pressed against the earth.
    “It’s a horse,” he said quietly, “comin’ down the creek.” Now Josey could hear it crashing through the undergrowth. He tied the horses back behind a persimmon tree and stepped into the small clearing.
    “I’ll be bait man,” he said calmly. Lone nodded and slipped the big knife from its scabbard. He placed it between his teeth and slid noiselessly into the brush toward the creek. Now Josey could see the horse. It was a spotted paint, and the rider was leaning from its back, studying the ground as he rode. Now he saw Josey but didn’t pause, but instead lifted the paint into a trot. The horse was within twenty yards of Josey and he could see that the rider wore a heavy blanket over his head, falling around his shoulders.
    Suddenly a figure leaped from the brush astride the paint and toppled the rider from the horse. It was Lone. He was over the rider, lying on the ground, and raised his knife for the downward death stroke. “Wait!” Josey shouted.
    The blanket had fallen away from the rider. It was the Indian woman. Lone sat down on her in amazement. A vicious-looking hound was attacking one of his moccasined feet, and he kicked at the dog as he rose. The Indian woman calmly brushed her skirt and stood up. As Josey approached she pointed back up the creek.
    “Pony soldiers,” she said, “two hours.” Lone stared at her.
    “How in hell…” he said.
    “She was at the trading post,” Josey said, then to the woman, “How many pony soldiers?”
    She shook her head, and Josey turned to Lone. “Ask her about the pony soldiers … try some kind of lingo.”
    “Sign,” Lone said. “All Indians know sign talk, even tribes that cain’t understand each other’s spoke word.”
    He moved his hands and fingers through the air. The woman nodded vigorously and answered with her own hands.
    “She says,” Lone turned to Josey, “there are twenty pony soldiers, two … maybe three hours back … wait, she’s talkin’ agin.”
    The Indian woman’s hands moved rapidly for a space of several minutes while Lone watched. He chuckled… laughed… then fell silent.
    “What is it?” Josey asked. “Hell, man, cain’t ye shet her up?”
    Lone held his palm forward toward the woman and looked admiringly at Josey.
    “She told me of the fight in the tradin’ post … of your magic guns. She says ye are a great warrior and a great man. She is Cheyenne. Thet sign she give of cuttin’ the wrist… thet’s the sign of the Cheyenne… every Plains tribe has a sign that identifies them. The movin’ of her hand forward, wigglin’, is the sign of the snake … the Comanche sign. She said the two men ye killed were traders with the Comanch… called Co-mancheros… ‘them that deals with Comanch.’ She said she was violated by a buck of the Arapaho… their sign is the ‘dirty nose’ sign… when she held her nose with her fingers… and that the Cheyenne Chief, Moke-to-ve-to, or Black Kettle, believed she did not resist enough… she should have killed herself… so she was whupped, had her nose slit, and was cast out to die.” Lone paused. “Her name, by the way, is Take-toha… means ‘Little Moonlight’.”
    “She can shore talk,” Josey said admiringly. He spat tobacco juice at the dog… and the hound snarled “Tell her,” Josey said, “to go back to the tradin’ post. She will be treated better now. Tell her that many men want to kill us… that we gotta ride