War Party (Cheyenne Western Book 8) Read online

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  From the day Touch the Sky returned to his tribe, blue-coats, desperadoes, and rival Indians fought for his scalp. The strong brave had little to protect himself besides a few bold allies, his skill as a warrior, and the cunning he had learned from the white man. And he’d need all the trickery and daring he could muster when an old foe devised a diabolical plot to crush the Cheyennes’ dreams into the dirt.

  CHEYENNE 8: WAR PARTY

  By Judd Cole

  First published by Leisure Books in 1993

  Copyright © 1993, 2016 by Judd Cole

  First Smashwords Edition: July 2016

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin

  Visit Ed here

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  Prologue

  In 1840, when the new spring grass was well up, a Northern Cheyenne named Running Antelope led his wife, infant son, and thirty braves on a journey to counsel with their Southern Cheyenne kin living below the Platte River.

  Running Antelope was a peace leader, not a war chief, and his band rode under a white flag. Nor had they painted or dressed for battle, nor made the all-important sacrifices to the sacred Medicine Arrows. Nonetheless, they were forced to fight when blue-bloused pony soldiers attacked them in a pincers movement near the North Platte.

  It was the Cheyenne way to flee during battle until a pursuing enemy’s horses faltered. Then the Cheyenne would suddenly turn and attack. But a hard winter had left their ponies weak. Nor were their stone-tipped lances, fire-hardened arrows, and one-shot muzzle-loaders any match for the Bluecoats’ percussion-cap carbines and big-thundering wagon guns that shot screaming steel.

  Still, the braves fought the glorious fight, shouting their shrill war cry even as they sang their death song. When flying canister shot cut down their ponies, they used them for breastworks and fought on. But eventually Running Antelope, his squaw, and all thirty braves lay dead or dying. The only survivor was Running Antelope’s infant son, still clutched in the fallen chief’s arms.

  Pawnee scouts were about to kill the child when the lieutenant in charge interfered. He had the baby brought back to Fort Bates near the river-bend settlement of Bighorn Falls in the Wyoming Territory. John Hanchon and his barren young wife Sarah, owners of the town’s mercantile store, adopted the child. His Shaiyena name lost forever, he was raised as Matthew Hanchon.

  His parents were good to him, and at first the youth felt accepted in his limited world. He worked for the Hanchons, earning hostile stares and remarks from some customers, but also making friends in Bighorn Falls. Then came his sixteenth year, when tragedy struck his safe little world.

  Matthew fell in love with Kristen, daughter of the wealthy rancher Hiram Steele—the Hanchons’ most important customer after Fort Bates itself. Caught in their secret meeting place, Matthew was severely thrashed by one of Steele’s hired hands. And Steele warned Matthew: Stay away from Kristen or he was a dead man.

  Afraid for Matthew’s life, Kristen lied and told him she never wanted to see him again. But even then the youth’s misery was not complete. Seth Carlson, a jealous cavalry officer with hopes of marrying Kristen, issued an ultimatum: Either Matthew left Bighorn Falls for good, or Carlson would use his influence to ruin the Hanchons’ mercantile contract with Fort Bates.

  Saddened, but determined to know if the tribe of his birth would accept him, Matthew fled north to the up-country of the Powder River—Cheyenne hunting grounds. Captured by braves from Chief Yellow Bear’s tribe, he was declared a spy for the hair-faced soldiers and sentenced to death. But at the last moment Arrow Keeper, the tribal shaman, interfered and ordered the prisoner freed.

  Arrow Keeper had just returned from a fateful vision quest at sacred Medicine Lake. His epic vision promised the arrival of a mysterious Cheyenne youth—one who carried the mark of the warrior on his body. And one who would eventually lead the entire Shaiyena nation in one last, great victory against their enemies. For despite the prisoner’s white man’s clothing and language, Arrow Keeper had spotted a mulberry-colored birthmark buried well past his hairline: a birthmark in the perfect shape of an arrowhead, the mark of the warrior.

  Arrow Keeper insisted that the youth must be allowed to live with Yellow Bear’s tribe, to train as a warrior. His white name was buried forever, and the tall youth was given the Indian name Touch the Sky.

  This infuriated those who wanted him executed as a spy. These included Black Elk, the fierce young war leader who hoped to marry Chief Yellow Bear’s daughter, Honey Eater. Black Elk noticed the glances Honey Eater gave this handsome stranger. And early on, Black Elk’s younger cousin, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, stepped between Touch the Sky and the camp fire, thus announcing his intention of killing the white man’s dog.

  From the beginning of his training, Touch the Sky faced many trials and much suffering in his quest for acceptance in the Cheyenne world: He helped to save his tribe from destruction by Pawnees and white whiskey traders and land-grabbers; he fought against Crow Crazy Dogs, Comanches, and bloodthirsty Kiowas. But throughout all of this, the hatred and jealousy and mistrust of his tribal enemies only strengthened.

  Now Black Elk, hard but fair at first, has finally succumbed to jealous rage over Honey Eater. Touch the Sky’s recent rescue of Honey Eater, when she was a prisoner of Kiowa and Comanche slave traders, has further humiliated Black Elk in the eyes of his fellow warriors. And Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, realizing that Touch the Sky is the main obstacle to his ambitions for tribal leadership, has vowed to eliminate this obstacle once and for all.

  Chapter One

  “Brother,” the young warrior called Little Horse said, “a thing troubles me greatly. I would speak with you about it.”

  Touch the Sky glanced up from the new bow he was fashioning out of green oak. He sat in front of the elk-skin entrance flap of his tipi. Their sister the sun had already gone to her resting place, and now Uncle Moon owned the sky. A fire burned in a circle of stones. Orange spear tips of flame illuminated Touch the Sky’s strong, hawk nose, pronounced cheekbones, and long, loose black locks. Though he was seated, it was clear that he was tall and broad-shouldered, even for a Cheyenne.

  “You know I always have ears for your words,” Touch the Sky told his best friend in the tribe. “Sit and speak of this thing.”

  Little Horse had brought his favorite clay pipe, filled with kinnikinnick—a mixture of coarse tobacco and fragrant red-willow bark. He sat beside his friend and lit the pipe with a piece of glowing punk pulled from the fire. Little Horse was much smaller than his friend, but built strong and sturdy like a good war pony. Unlike Touch the Sky, he wore his hair wrapped tight in a single braid, the style preferred by men of his clan.

  As was the custom, the two young braves did not immediately broach the subject on Little Horse’s mind. Instead, they smoked for several minutes, speaking of insignificant things and watching the camp come to life as darkness descended.

  There was no established “bedtime” in the Cheyenne village, now located in the lush grass at the fork where the Powder River joined the Little Powder. Often the camp stayed li
vely and loud all night long. Braves placed bets on pony races and wrestling matches; children played at taking scalps and counting coups; sad old grandmothers keened in grief for sons and husbands whose bones had been strewn on battlefields from the Missouri River to the Marias.

  Finally Little Horse set the pipe between them, the sign that he was ready to begin talking.

  “Brother, you are no white-livered Indian. I have fought beside you when you waded into battle fighting as fierce as a she-grizzly protecting her cubs. You have defeated many enemies, as the scalps dangling from your coup stick prove. But sometimes the most dangerous enemies live closest to home. Even the fierce badger has been killed in his own burrow.”

  Touch the Sky met his friend’s eyes but said nothing, only listening. Beyond the well-lit circles of the clan fires, a coyote raised its ululating howl to the heavens, a howl that ended in a series of yipping barks. The tall young brave knew full well what his friend was hinting at.

  “Black Elk has always been covered with hard bark,” Little Horse said. “But there was a time when he tried to be fair to you. That time has long passed, thanks to his jealous rage over Honey Eater. Now, since you saved her from the Kiowas and Comanches down south in Blanco Canyon, the other braves in his Bull Whip Society goad him on. They tell him, ‘This Touch the Sky, he wants to put on the old moccasin with your squaw!’”

  Touch the Sky nodded, watching sparks float up from the flames like fireflies. “Putting on the old moccasin” was a reference to a young, unmarried brave who was eager to rut with a married woman.

  “I fear greatly for Honey Eater’s safety,” Touch the Sky admitted. “Black Elk has already cut off her braid to shame her, and he has beaten her. Now, since he failed to rescue her, he threatens to kill her if she so much as looks at me.”

  “You speak straight-arrow. But buck, it is not only Black Elk you must watch. His young cousin is enraged since the Council of Forty punished him. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling hates you as never before—I have heard warnings from Tangle Hair and other Bowstring soldiers friendly to you.

  “Wolf Who Hunts Smiling now speaks in a bark against you every chance he finds. He tells the younger warriors you are a white man’s dog. That because palefaces raised you, you have the stink of the whites on you for life. He has made it the mission of his life to destroy your name within the tribe.”

  Again Touch the Sky could only let silence acknowledge the truth of these words. During a recent buffalo hunt far to the southwest, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had served as a hunt soldier: one of the braves who enforced the strict Hunt Law which governed buffalo hunts. Using his authority to arrest, he had falsely accused Touch the Sky of illegally employing a buffalo jump—driving part of the herd over a blind cliff to their death, a serious violation of Hunt Law permitted only if horses were not available.

  But Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was not content with the severe whipping this false accusation earned Touch the Sky. He went on to bribe an old squaw of the Root Eaters Clan. He convinced the addled old grandmother—known for her prophetic medicine dreams—that she had experienced a “vision” concerning Touch the Sky. She then announced, before the entire tribe, that the youth must set up a pole or else his white man’s stink would ruin the hunt.

  Tribal belief in such medicine dreams was strong. Touch the Sky had no choice but to undergo the grueling penance. Bone hooks were driven into his breasts, and he was suspended for hours from a pole atop a hill. But later, Arrow Keeper discovered Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s treachery and reported it to Chief Gray Thunder.

  Recently, by a formal vote of the clan headmen comprising the Council of Forty, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had been stripped of all his coup feathers—a serious blow to a haughty, proud warrior who constantly boasted of his battle prowess. Now there were no white eagle-tail feathers in his war bonnet. Now admirers could not count how many times he had defeated his enemies.

  Even as Touch the Sky was about to answer his friend, three shadowy forms passed near the edge of his fire.

  “Steady, Cheyenne,” Little Horse said in a hushed tone. “Here come your enemies now, traveling like curs in a pack.”

  Touch the Sky recognized Black Elk, Black Elk’s younger cousin Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, and a brave from the Wolverine Clan named Swift Canoe. Swift Canoe had played the dog for Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and wrongly accused Touch the Sky of killing his twin brother, True Son.

  The trio stopped, their stern faces outlined in the flickering flames. Black Elk was the oldest. He looked especially fierce because of the dead, leathery flap of skin where one ear had been severed in battle, then crudely sewn back on with buckskin thread. Like the others, he wore a soft kid breechclout, buckskin leggings, and beaded elk-skin moccasins. A small rawhide medicine bag dangled from his clout. It held a set of lethally sharp panther claws—the special totem of his Panther clan.

  “Look here, stout bucks!” Black Elk called out to his companions. “Here sit two of the white men’s favorite spies, plotting new ways to play the big Indian while they sell tribe secrets to hair-mouths!”

  “Indeed, cousin, I smell the stink of whites all over Woman Face,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. He was smaller than Black Elk, and younger, but his strength and agility were fearsome. His dark, furtive eyes constantly moved like minnows, missing nothing.

  Touch the Sky said nothing at the allusion to “Woman Face,” refusing to rise to such familiar bait. This was a mocking reference to his former habit of permitting his feelings to show in his face—a white man’s trait despised by Indians as unmanly.

  “Even the buffalo run from this stink,” Black Elk said.

  “But the red men have run from it long enough,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling added. The young brave had looked on, horrified, when a burst of Bluecoat canister shot turned his father into stew meat. Now tight anger sizzled behind every word. “It is time to feed all the white men and their dogs to the carrion birds.”

  It was Little Horse who next spoke up.

  “You three speak of white men’s dogs until I am weary of hearing it. The first scalps to dangle from our clouts were those of hair-faced whites.”

  “So you say,” Black Elk replied. “But you yourself saw this one”—he pointed at Touch the Sky—“drinking strong water with hair-faces at the trading post. Both of you were seen holding secret council with blue-bloused soldier chiefs, and leaving talking papers for them in the forks of trees.”

  “During a bad flood, a snake will share a dry rock with a rat. This does not make them lodge brothers. What is seen and what is true are not always the same.”

  “Hold, brother,” Touch the Sky said, gripping his friend’s shoulder. “Do not waste time arguing with words. Words are the coins spent freely by old squaws. These talking magpies are nothing. Men let their war lances speak for them.”

  “Men,” Black Elk said, “find their own wives instead of holding another man’s in their blanket.”

  “No man can steal that which is his by right,” Touch the Sky replied.

  Absolute silence greeted this remark. All four braves clearly understood Touch the Sky’s point. Despite having undergone the squaw-taking ceremony with Black Elk, Honey Eaters heart belonged to Touch the Sky alone. Only her mistaken belief that he had deserted her and his tribe had led her to accept Black Elk’s bride price. And then only because tribal law forbade her living alone after Chief Yellow Bear, her father, had crossed over.

  Black Elk’s fierce dark eyes glowed with the hatred of blood-lust. His hand moved to the bone-handled knife in the beaded sheath on his sash. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe followed suit.

  As one, Touch the Sky and Little Horse rose to meet the attack.

  “I will not stain the Sacred Arrows by being the first to let Cheyenne blood,” Touch the Sky said. “But close against me or Little Horse, and I will leave your warm guts steaming on the ground.”

  “Cousin, I for one am weary of this bloodless sparring,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said, moving a step cl
oser. “This make-believe Cheyenne would rut with your squaw! I say we make maggot fodder of him now!”

  ~*~

  Cheyenne village life centered around a huge clearing, in the center of which was a hide-covered council lodge. On a lone hummock at the river edge of the clearing stood the tipi of old Arrow Keeper, the tribe shaman and keeper of the sacred Medicine Arrows. A pony with markings unfamiliar to Gray Thunder’s camp was hobbled before the tipi.

  Inside, a fire blazed in the stone-lined pit in the middle of the tipi. The buffalo-hide tipi cover was almost stretched transparent with age, and was now transformed into a dull-orange cone by the fire within. Old Arrow Keeper sat across the fire from a young Cheyenne brave named Goes Ahead.

  Goes Ahead was a word-bringer who had ridden south from the camp of the Cheyenne Chief Shoots Left Handed. It was located far tribe had proven difficult since that first day, many winters gone now, when he had been captured, taken before the Council of Forty, and pronounced a spy for the hair-faces.

  However, recent events had endangered Touch the Sky more than ever before. It was as clear as blood in new snow that Black Elk’s jealousy over Honey Eater had finally driven him insane with suspicion and rage. And being stripped of his coup feathers had left the mean-spirited Wolf Who Hunts Smiling keen to punish his enemy. Either brave would gladly sully the sacred Medicine Arrows—and thus the entire tribe—by killing Touch the Sky.

  The old brave had been thinking, even before Goes Ahead rode into camp, that perhaps it was time, once again, to send Touch the Sky away for his own safety. For one thing, despite Touch the Sky’s youth, Arrow Keeper knew his medicine was strong. He also knew the youth possessed the gift of visions. What better Cheyenne than he to send north to help Shoots Left Handed, whose people had no spiritual guide through this difficult time?

  Besides, Arrow Keeper had intended to eventually send the youth north anyway. The elder had experienced a powerful vision at Medicine Lake. One which told him that Touch the Sky must be prepared for eventual leadership of the entire Shaiyena nation. He must meet their northern allies and familiarize himself with the land of the short white days.