“There it is,” he said, his voice flat.
Ned took a spyglass from his saddlebags and opened it full. He peered through the lenses for a moment, then silently handed the spyglass to Preacher. The hard look in his eyes told the entire story.
Blackjack, Steals Pony, and Ring had turned their horses, to cover the other directions. All had a hunch the war party had not gone far, knowing that someone from the train would come looking for the women.
Preacher’s face hardened as he viewed the scene. Two of the three women were clearly visible through the magnification. They were naked, of course. And they were dead. Both had been scalped. The Indians had taken the mules, although many Indians disliked the fractious animals. Preacher handed the spyglass to Ned without a word.
The men cautiously walked their horses up to the savage scene. Nora Simms had been the youngest and the prettiest of the three women. She was gone. They had taken her.
Betty Rutherford had been used badly and the back of her head bashed in by a stone war-axe. She had then been scalped. Phyllis Reed probably had broken free sometime during the struggle and tried to run away. She had gotten only a few yards before an arrow in her back brought her down. She lay facedown and naked on the wet prairie grass, her inner thighs bruised.
Steals Pony dismounted, covered the lower part of Phyllis’s body with a discarded blanket, then broke off the arrow and looked at it. “Pawnee,” he said, then threw the arrow to the ground in disgust.
“Yonder’s two of the mules,” Ned said, pointing toward the southeast. “Draggin’ their harness.”
“Stay where you are,” Steals Pony said. “I will look to see if it is a trap while you bury the women. If it is safe, do you want the mules, Preacher?”
“Yeah,” Preacher said, rummaging around in the clothing-strewn bed of the wagon for a shovel. “We’ll take the wagon back and tear it down for spare parts. You watch your butt out yonder, Steals Pony. It ain’t like them goddamn Pawnee to go off very far. With them knowin’ somebody would come lookin’.”
It was easy digging in the soaked earth, and the men worked swiftly, digging down as far as they dared, constantly looking over their shoulders. The women were wrapped in blankets and buried. Then the men went looking for stones to cover the mounds, to keep animals from digging up the bodies and eating them.
Blackjack found a Bible in a trunk and handed it to Preacher. Preacher opened it at random and read a few verses while they stood over the lonely graves. Two small fresh mounds of earth on the vastness of an untamed land.
“That sounded strange, Preacher,” Blackjack said. “What did you just read?”
“I don’t know.” He looked down at the page. “It’s from Romans. I thought it sounded pretty good.”
“What do intercession mean?” Ring asked. “That sounds kinda vulgar to me.”
“I ain’t got no idea,” Preacher replied, closing the Good Book. “I ain’t no student of the gospel. But it’s in the damn Bible. So it can’t be bad, can it?”
“I reckon not,” Blackjack conceded.
“’Sides,” Preacher said, “I thought that part about ‘groanings which cannot be uttered’ sounded about right.”
“Amen,” Ned said, looking around him. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”
Steals Pony had found all four mules and brought them back to the wagon. “The Pawnee are gone. They left in a big hurry for some reason. One horse is carrying double, so they took Nora with them for sure.”
“She’ll soon wish she had died with these others,” Preacher said ominously.
“For a fact,” Steals Pony said. “I do not envy her existence from this moment on.”
The men stood around the graves and looked at one another for a few seconds.
“Well, hell!” Blackjack said.
“Now what do we do?” Ned asked.
Preacher kicked at a clump of dirt. Then he sighed heavily. “What say you boys?” he asked, looking around him. “Do we go after her?”
“By the Lord, I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t at least try to fetch her back,” Ring said. “I think we got to at least try.”
“I say we go after her,” Steals Pony said.
“Count me in,” Blackjack and Ned said together.
“All right. Let’s do it,” Preacher said. “We’ll brush-corral the mules over yonder by that thicket and come back for them. If we don’t, well, they’ll bust out of it when they get hungry. Somebody take that shovel yonder with them. If Nora kicked up too much of a fuss, they’ll just knock her in the head and dump her. Personal, I hope they do. We’ve all seen what a war party can do to a woman.”
“I’ll bring along that Bible I found,” Blackjack said. “Just in case.”
“If we need it, let me read the passages,” Steals Pony said, looking over at Preacher. “I know a more appropriate verse or two.”
“Which one?” Preacher demanded.
“The Twenty-third Psalm,” the Delaware said gently.
“How do that go?” Ring asked.
“It starts: ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.’”
“Give him the Good Book, Blackjack. He’s got me bested, this time.”
9
The mountain men found Nora Simms less than three miles from the new twin graves on the prairie. The Indians had bashed her head in, scalped her, and dumped her. She was a pitiful sight, lying naked and bloody on the ground. Ring had brought along a blanket and he wrapped her up, and all together the men took the body back to where they had buried the others and laid Nora to rest beside Betty and Phyllis.
Steals Pony read the Twenty-third Psalm and the men stood for a moment over the graves. The initial storm had blown itself out and for a brief moment, while the Delaware was reading from the Bible, the sun broke through. But already, dark storm clouds were beginning to gather, and the men knew they were in for a couple more days of terrible weather.
Just like Steals Pony had predicted.
The mules were hitched up and Ned tied the reins of his horse to the rear of the wagon and took the seat. The men started back for the wagon train. They were a silent bunch for most of the way. Ever vigilant, for that was a way of life, but not talking much. It was not that they were unaccustomed to death; they’d been around violent death for all of their adult lives. Violent, and in this case, the needless death of innocents.
Ring broke the silence. “We’re being trailed, boys.”
“Yes,” Steals Pony said. “Pawnee Bearmen. But they are holding back. I think they have bigger plans and don’t want to waste them on us.”
“The wagon train?” Blackjack asked.
“Probably,” Preacher said. “But they’re fools if they attack. We could hold off one hell of a war party. But did y’all notice the torture marks on the Rutherford woman? She might have broke and told them about the wagon train bein’ mostly women. That might have got them all excited. That may be why they bashed in Nora’s head and dumped her.”
“I never thought of that,” Ned called from the wagon seat. “But you might be right. If that’s the case, they’ve sent for more bucks.”
“That’d be my guess,” Preacher said.
“We’re in for a long night,” Ring opined.
It was dark when the men arrived back at the wagon train. Preacher gathered the women around and leveled with them about the fate of Nora, Betty, and Phyllis. His words were brutally hard, deliberately so, for he wanted the women to know every detail. It just might save their lives in the future. He spared them nothing. Then he told them about the Pawnee war party trailing them.
“We’ve got a good defensive spot here,” Preacher said, speaking to the group. The other mountain men were standing guard, with some of the Missouri men. “And before you ask, put everything you ever heard or read about Indians never attackin’ at night out of your heads. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It all depends on how strong they believe their medicine is at the time. Now let’s get supper cooked and eat and get everybody in place. I think we’re gonna have us a wet and wild night.”