A smile flitted momentarily across Milo’s weather-darkened face. “It was far easier than you’d probably believe, Chief Gus, far and away easier than I’d dreamed it would be. You, you and the others, you have greatly misjudged and hideously maligned the men of MacEvedy Station, you know; they are in no way the rabid, ravening, bloodthirsty beasts you gave me to understand them to be.”
Seeing Gus Scott’s hand go to the pitted, disk-shaped piece of ancient shrapnel depending from his neck on its chain, Milo raised a hand placatingly, saying, “Regardless of what these people’s parents and grandparents may have done to your own grandfather and his generation, I am convinced that were you but to meet the current war chief of that fort you would not only like him but find much in common with him. I have come to like Chief Ian Lindsay and many of his subchiefs as well. In fact, I have moved the camp of my tribe into and around the MacEvedy Station compound.”
Scott just sat staring goggle-eyed at Milo, his mug dangling forgotten from his fingers, the precious whiskey trickling from its rim down onto his boot. Then he straightened up, and a smile began to crease his face.
“Heh heh heh,” he chuckled. “Had me a-going there for a minit, you did, old feller. Took me some time to figger out jest where you were a-headed, but I see now. It’d take a prairie rover borned to tell the diffrunce ’tween your fighters and mine or LeBonne’s or any of the others, so we jest let your hunters ride out day by day, ’cepting more rides back in then went out until we has us enuff fighters hid in your tents and all to massacree ever damn bugtit in thet place, right?”
“Wrong, Chief Scott, completely wrong,” Milo replied firmly. “There will be no further attacks or raids against the MacEvedy Station, not by you, not by LeBonne, not by any of the other warbands. If attacks and raids do take place, the attackers and raiders will find themselves up against not just the men of the station but my fighters, as well. Let’s get that much of the matter clear right now, at the outset.”
“So, you done sold out to the murdering bastids, have you?” Scott declared bitterly. “Sold out to ’em jest to git a clear crossing of their fucking ford. Damn it all, I’d never of thought a man like you’d do a thang like thet to his own kinda folks. And I’d thought you was my friend, too. With your fighters on top of my boys and LeBonne’s and the others, we could of jest flat rode over thet place and their fucking rifles be damned.”
Milo slowly shook his head. “You’re wrong, Chief Gus, wrong about a lot of things. You must learn not to jump to quick and erroneous conclusions.
“To begin, recall if you will that I said at the start that your generations-long feud against the people of the MacEvedy Station was not my fight or my tribe’s fight, and that if we could find a way to do so, we would keep out of it.”
Scott nodded slowly. “Yeah, I recollect thet, Chief Milo, I surely do, but I still would never of thought you and your tribe would of thowed in with them sonofabitches, made a common cause with the folks who crippled up my grandpa.”
“Chief Gus, what if, after a very hard winter, a collection of men rode into your camp and demanded that you allow them to take all the jerky and pemmican you had left, plus all of your best horses and cattle? What would you and your tribe do then?”
“Do our damnedest to kill off every mother’s son of the damn fuckers, thet’s what!” snorted Scott. “But whut’s thet got to do with you selling out to them murdering bastids, huh?”
“A lot, Chief Gus, one hell of a lot,” stated Milo solemnly. “All of the station folks both read and write; so, too, do I. I was allowed to read their records, and those ridiculous demands were precisely what the leaders of the force of which your grandfather, father and uncles were a part insisted was their due. When those demands were not met, they attacked the fort and were cut down by rifle and artillery and mortars long before any of them got even within bow range of those walls. So, you see, the then chief, the present war chief’s own grandfather, did no more than you yourself admit that you would do under similar circumstances; your grandfather simply suffered for the overweening arrogance of the leaders of that group of massed warbands. So blame them; don’t continue to blame the descendants of fighters who were only doing the natural thing—protecting themselves, their families and their stock.
“As I understood from our first meeting, the other thing that you and some of the other war chiefs hoped to accomplish was to once and for ail make safe and easy the passage across that ford commanded by the station complex, correct?” Scott just bobbed his head.
“Well, it is possible that that purpose will be achieved, Chief Gus, and without any bloodshed to accomplish it, either. My subchiefs and I are in process of persuading Chief Ian and the other survivors of the original complex complement to leave those lands on which they have been nearly starving for years, now, and come with us to the high plains, give over farming and become nomadic herders and hunters. We are making some progress, although it is slow and fitful at present, but I entertain very high hopes for this project; they’ll come as one, maybe two new clans of my tribe. You and yours could be a third new clan, if you and your subchiefs but indicate interest in so being. I like you, personally, and I admire your leadership abilities; your tribe and the station people added would almost double the size of mytribe, make of us a real power on the plains and the prairies.
“With the strength that such numbers would give us, we could set about clearing the grasslands of all the squatting farmers so that these grasslands would be ours and ours alone, completely free and fenceless for our families and our herds, for our children and their herds to roam at will in peace.”
All the time that he was speaking aloud, Milo’s powerful and long-trained mind had been projecting into the unshielded mind of Gus Scott thoughts favorable to the merging of the three disparate groups of people. His many years of life had convinced him that any man who failed to make use of any personal advantage in argument or fight was a fool and an eventual loser.
It was, therefore, no real surprise to him when Scott nodded and said, “Whutall you’s said, Chief Milo, it all makes a heap of good sense to me. I likes you, too, you know, and that’s why it pained me so bad, first to thank you was a-going to get yourse’f kilt, then thet you’d sold out to Chief Ian and his folks.
“I thinks my folks would like being a clan of your tribe, too, and you right, ain’t no sense to being little and weak when you can be big and strong. And you right ’bout us having to git shet of them damn dirt-scratching farmers, too; ain’t never been too many of the fuckers up nawth, here, but they done been a plumb plague further south and looks like ever year it’s more of the sonofabitches, a-plowing up the graze and a-fencing off the water.
“It’s a passel of no-count herders, too, ought to be kilt or drove off, but I never been strong enuff to do ’er alone, jest my tribe and me. But let’s us plan on taking care of all the damn farmers, first off, like you said, then we can git after them fucking sneak-thieving bastids like of the Hartman tribe.
“But really, Chief Milo, we ’uns should oughta ask Chief Jules to come along of us, too; true, he ain’t got all thet big a tribe, but they’s all of his fighters good boys.”
Milo thought to himself that he would liefer adopt a clan of diamondback rattlesnakes than the scruffy, filthy, constantly conniving Jules LeBonne and his pack of prize ruffians. But just now was neither the time nor the place to refuse a friend of Chief Gus Scott’s a chance at joining the projected tribal alliance, so he agreed with what he hoped resembled pleasure. The sad and bloody events of the two ensuing weeks were to give Milo Moray much cause to regret this action.
VI
With the hunters of Milo’s tribe and those of the Scott tribe as well, out all day, every day, while parties of girls, women and younger boys scoured the surrounding grasslands and wooded areas for edible wild plants, nuts and the like, the station people began to eat well and regularly once more, and to recover their strength.