The combination of fear and dislike on Janna's face told Ty more than he wanted to know about Janna and Joe Troon.
"Janna," Ty said softly, pulling her out of her unhappy memories, "from what I've heard in towns where I bought my supplies, Troon is a drunk, a thief, a coward, a woman beater and a back shooter. He deserves whatever Cascabel feels like giving to him. Besides, you don't even know if Troon has been captured. He could be back in Sweetwater right now, getting drunk on Ned's rotgut. There's no point in either of us risking our butt to scout a renegade camp for a no-good bit of swamp gas like Joe Troon."
"I know," Janna said. "I just hate to think of anyone caught by Cascabel. He's so cruel."
Ty shrugged. "Cascabel doesn't see it that way. He's a warrior who has stood up to the worst the country, the pony soldiers and his fellow Indians can offer in the way of punishment. He's never given quarter and he's never asked for it. And he never will."
''You sound like you admire him."
There was a long silence before Ty shrugged again. "I don't like him, but I do respect him. He's one hell of a fighter, no matter what the weapon or situation. He has knowledge of how to use the land and his limited arms to his own advantage that many a general would envy."
"Do you have any idea what he does to the captives who don't escape?"
"Yes," Ty said succinctly. "I didn't say I admired him, Janna. But I learned in the war that honor and good table manners don't have a damned thing to do with survival. Cascabel is a survivor. Black Hawk knows it. He hasn't pressed a confrontation because he hopes that the U.S. Army will take care of the renegades for him."
"Black Hawk is lucky that Cascabel hasn't lured the whole tribe away from him," Janna grumbled. "Cascabel must have half of Black Hawk's warriors down here by now, and they're still coming in by twos and threes every day."
"Cascabel is half-Apache. The elders in the Ute tribe would never let him be a headman. As for the younger men, they still believe that they're invincible. They haven't had time to learn that the same army that flattened the South sure as hell won't have too tough a time ironing out a few renegade wrinkles in the Utah Territory."
Janna started to speak, then caught a flash of movement at the far edge of the meadow. Ty had seen the movement, too. As one they flattened completely to the earth, taking advantage of every bit of cover offered by the slight depression in which they had lain to watch the meadow.
Four hundred feet away, five Indians rode out into the wide river of meadow grass that wound between the two evergreen forests. The men rode boldly, without bothering about cover or the possibility of ambush, because they knew that Cascabel ruled Black Plateau. The only reason they weren't laughing and talking among themselves was that human voices carried a long way in the plateau's primal silence, and the deer they were hunting had excellent hearing.
Peering cautiously through the dense screen of evergreen boughs, spyglass shielded so that it wouldn't give away their position by reflecting a flash of light, Ty watched the hunting party ride along the margin of forest and meadow. Usually in any group of Indians, barely half the men were armed with carbines, rifles or pistols, and there were rarely more than a few rounds of ammunition for each weapon. Part of the problem for the Indians in getting arms was simply that it was illegal to sell weapons or ammunition to Indians. What they couldn't take as the spoils of war they had to buy from crooked white traders.
But most of the problem the Indians had in staying well armed was that none of the tribes had any experience in the care and repair of machines or in the art of making reliable bullets. The weapons they acquired through war or bribery quickly became useless either because of lack of ammunition or because of mechanical failure.
Cascabel's men were well outfitted. As well as the traditional bow and arrows, each man had a carbine and a leather pouch bulging with ammunition. Ty was relieved to see that the carbines were single-shot weapons of the type that had lost the Civil War for the South. None of the five Indians had a weapon that could compete with the new Winchester carbine he had discovered in an otherwise empty box at the store Preacher had rather hastily abandoned. Ty's new carbine was the type of weapon Johnny Rebs had enviously insisted that a Yank "loaded on Sunday and fired all week long." With his new Winchester, Ty could reload as fast as he could fire, an advantage the Indians didn't have unless they used their bows and arrows.
Ty went over the details of the Indians' gear with the experienced eye of a man to whom such knowledge had meant the difference between continued life and premature death. The presence of good weapons explained some of CascabePs allure for young warriors-on a reservation, these men would have barely enough to eat, no weapons beyond wfaaT they could make with their own hands, and no freedom to roam in search of game. With Cascabel, the young men would have a chance to gain personal fame as warriors, they would be well fed and well armed, and they could live the roving life celebrated in tribal legends.
The fact that the young men would also find themselves the target of every white man with a gun simply added spice to the Indians' lives. After all, there weren't that many white men.
Ty knew that the situation would change, even if the Indians didn't. Since the end of the Civil War, footloose and disenfranchised white men had pressed west in greater and greater numbers. Most of them had already been in shooting battles, so the prospect of occasional skirmishes with Indians wasn't much of a deterrent. Ty himself was one of those men, as were his brothers. There were hundreds and thousands more men like the MacKenzies, drawn by the West's wild horizons and seductive promises of a better life for anyone who had the courage and stamina to withstand the hardships. Not all the promises of the new land would be kept, but each man was certain that, for him, the dreams would indeed come true.
And a lot of those men would be armed with repeating rifles and carbines and as many bullets as they could wear without dragging their belts down to their boot tops. The Indians would take some of those weapons and put them to deadly use, but more white men would come west, and then more and more, and their superior arms would always be enough to offset the Indians' superior knowledge of the land.
Ty had no doubt about the eventual outcome of the battle between Indian and white; he just wasn't sure he would be alive to share in the celebration when the renegades were defeated.
Abruptly the five Indians stopped their mounts. One of the warriors leaped from his horse, landed lightly and sat on his heels while he examined something on the ground. After a time he stood again, walked a few steps and then bent over the ground once more, looking at everything from a different angle.
Ty lay without moving, going over in his mind once more what he would do if he and Janna were discovered. With his new carbine he could cause as much damage in one minute as ten men with single-shot guns. Even allowing for the fact that he hadn't had time to accustom himself to the Winchester's action, he should be able to put two warriors out of the fight before the others took cover. That would give Janna plenty of time to slip away while he played cat and mouse with the remaining warriors. With a little luck, he might even get away himself.
With a lot of luck, he and Janna wouldn't be discovered in the first place.
When the warrior finally remounted and the five continued along the far edge of the meadow without looking in the direction where Janna and Ty lay concealed, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He had known some men who loved fighting and killing. He wasn't one of them. He was quite pleased to see the Indians disappear into the trees without a single shot having been fired from his shiny new carbine.