Free Winter Rain by Terry C. Johnston

Cheyenne. This season of the year those warrior bands were all far to the north, hunting most like. Nary a sign of anything for the last three days now on his ride coming west out of Laramie.
    Quickly he had tied off the animals, then dragged saddle and packs from their backs, letting them graze on the sun-stunted grasses back in a copse of alder where they would be less likely seen. He hurriedly made it look as if he were going to spend the night right there, then slipped off among the willow as if he were going to relieve himself, with one hand tugging his britches down over his hip as he went.
    But once behind the thick growth of alder, Jonah rebuckled his belt and stuffed his shirttail back in his pants, squatting beneath some overhanging branches, where he gently parted the drying leaves with the barrel of his Winchester repeater. He waited, watching across the stream. To his right lay his campsite and the plunder he hoped would be bait enough to draw in the sneaky bastard dogging his backtrail.
    He fought the sleep struggling to overtake him as the rain hammered the ground at his side, battering the leaves above, soaking his old hat that served as little protection. Jonah shuddered, growing chilled to the bone, and tried desperately to keep his eyes open.
    “Keep ’em moving,” he told himself, remembering the words of Sweete and Bridger about sentries who had tired and fallen asleep because they had not kept their eyes moving. Staring at one thing too long proved deadly whena man was weary. Such a fool woke up too late—finding himself out of the frying pan and into the fire—if he woke up at all.
    There came a rustle of movement to his left, along the creek bank, on the far side. Then a half-dozen birds took to the wing noisily, startling Jonah as he whirled the repeater about.
    In the deepening silence that followed their frightened departure, Hook reasoned that no white man was going to make a successful sneak on him. All he had to do was wait and watch his campsite. That was the place the backtracker was surely headed. Likely the man had come across the river where the birds had taken wing and was moving downstream on the near bank, making for Jonah Hook’s camp.
    The wet ground made it hard to hear a thing, and the sodden air didn’t carry a sound well at all. Two marks against him, Jonah brooded.
    “Damn,” he muttered as more of the cold rain spilled from the hat brim down his collar.
    He was sitting in a cold puddle of it now, yet he dared not move. His stalker was likely drawing close. He held his breath a moment, listening, straining against the rain for sound. His eyes must be deceiving him. He’d be damned, but it sounded as if someone were already in his camp, rummaging through his packs.
    Try as he might, Jonah could not see a soul. As well as he had chosen this spot, for some reason he still could not see anyone rustling the oiled canvas. But, plain as sun, Hook could hear the sound.
    Slowly rising on one knee, Jonah inched forward, parting more of the leaves and branches with the rifle muzzle. Then he saw the top of a man’s head.
    “A Injun,” he said under his breath, swiping a damp forearm across his lips.
    Brushing his thumb across the Winchester’s hammerto make sure it was cocked, he rose to a crouch and prepared to make his play—just as the Indian pulled free one of the glass bottles Jonah had purchased back at Laramie.
    A loafer, by God. Nothing more’n a good-for-nothing, whiskey-bellied loafer!
    Hook burst from the willow and alder, Winchester at his hip and leveled at its target.
    “Goddamn you! Leave my whiskey alone, you drunken redskin!”
    At the white man’s growl exploding from the rain-soaked undergrowth, Two Sleep scrambled awkwardly for his feet, moccasins slipping on the wet ground, and flew backward, tumbling headlong over more of Jonah’s packs. Yet he slowly raised one arm in the air, grinning sheepishly at the white man, almost apologetic, for certain