Free Tie My Bones to Her Back by Robert F. Jones Page B

Territory, about six or seven years ago. You never heard of it? Out here folks can’t forget it. Some young bad faces of the Oglala Sioux under a chief called Red Cloud, along with a few Cheyennes, lured eighty-one men—U.S. Army troops and a couple of civilians—into an ambush, killed the lot of them. Just before Christmas, it was, in ‘66. The Army was building some forts along the Montana Road, what some call the Bozeman Trail. It runs smack through the Indians’ sacred hunting grounds. The forts were supposed to make it safe for the miners heading to the goldfields around Virginia City. The government was trying to negotiate a right-of-way through the Big Horn Mountains and the Indian Territory beyond, and most of the Sioux agreed. But Red Cloud and his Oglalas, along with some of Tom’s people, wouldn’t allow it. They kept sniping at the Army work parties, didn’t want the white eyes, as the Sioux call us, cutting their sacred groves, or some such thing. At any rate, there was this hotheaded captain named William Judd Fetterman, bragged that if the Army’d just give him eighty men he’d ride clear through the whole Sioux nation. So one day, when the Hostiles were acting particularly stroppy, the commanding general gave him eighty men and he rode out. But he didn’t ride through the Sioux nation. The Oglala branch of it rode through him.”
    “Killed them all?”
    “Every last one, and in only about half an hour. Then they did to the bodies what our Tom did to those Snakes last night.”
    “Could Tom’s father have gotten a rifle like mine there?”
    “Certainly. The two civilians, Jim Wheatley and Ike Fisher, had Henry rifles and apparently they did the only real damage to the Hostiles. The Army troops were armed mostly with singleshot Springfields left over from the war. Slow-loading, no match for arrows and lances at close range. I was up that way when they brought Ike Fisher’s body back to the fort, he looked like a porcupine. Had 105 arrows in him. Tom’s father could have recovered one of those Henrys. Hell, Tom could have been there himself, for that matter. He’s old enough. These boys start on the warpath when they’re fourteen or younger.”
    He looked over at Tom Shields yoking up the oxen. A good hand with draft animals. Very patient. Gentle and sure with his voice and his movements. Viewed from behind, he might have been any Western stockman, perhaps even a Wisconsin farmhand preparing for a trip to town on market day. A good-natured country yokel—you’d enjoy drinking a lager with him down at the local tavern. Maybe even spin a yarn or two. But turn him around and you’d see the face of a killer.
    “The only way to make a Cheyenne quit the warpath,” Otto said dryly, “is to shoot him off of it.”
    _____
    D ESPITE O TTO’S ADMONITION , Jenny could not resist having a peek at Tom’s handiwork. She waited until the men were busy rearranging the loads in the wagon, then slipped down to the streamside meadow, where the horses still grazed. The hum of a thousand flies led her to the bodies. They hung over the scene like a blue-gray cloud. She edged closer, fearful of what she might see. It wasn’t as bad as she had feared. The blood had dried and blackened by now, and the mutilated corpses, despite their fearful wounds, looked like strangely painted wax mannequins, certainly no worse than the freaks of nature she’d sneaked in to see at a raree show near Heldendorf—she still had occasional nightmares about the Lipless Woman.
    A footstep sounded behind her. Turning, she saw it was Tom. He stood there staring at her, his face impassive, and for a moment she felt a tingle of fear.
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not my enemy.”
    “How could you do this?” she snapped, angry that he had seen her fear.
    “They’d have done the same to me,” he said. “To all of us, if they’d had the chance. They were brave boys. Especially that one.” He pointed to an emasculated