Tworivers
Copyright© 2025 by Harry Carton
Chapter 20: La Forche
The tribes of the Tall Grasses stayed in parley mode for over a week. The warriors of the Comanches and the Crows quickly took to the heavier bows that the Apache unloaded from their wagon. Soon after they got their hands on the recurved bows, the Comanche-Crow warriors were hitting targets at 200 paces. Some of the more ‘mentally flexible’ warriors were taking lessons from the Apache women who were knocking down targets at even longer distances. Then they’d go out and retrieve the lead balls that littered the target range. The biggest problem for the warriors was using the sights that protruded from the gun barrels; they kept wanting to sight along the barrel and that just didn’t work.
The women practiced loading and firing the Girardoni rifles, proving to be far better shots than the warriors thought they would be. The warriors were better suited to the traditional bows, but they were learning. Winona told them to keep trying. “Practice makes you better,” she said, inventing the 20th century saying, three hundred years ahead of time.
Wind Rider made the automatic Green Beret correction. “Winona, dear, what you meant to say was Perfect practice makes perfect.”
Winona accepted the correction after a pause. “That’s what I meant, Perfect practice makes you perfect.”
The Apache women quickly proved to be deadly shots with the Girardoni rifles. Some of the younger warriors, eager to prove their worth, tried to impress the women with their prowess. The women, having none of it, quickly outshot the young bucks.
One particularly cocky Comanche warrior, boasting loudly, challenged Winona to a shooting competition. She accepted, but only if he used a rifle and she used her bow. The warrior scoffed, thinking he had an easy victory. He fired three shots at a target 200 paces away, hitting it twice. Winona then drew her bow, releasing three arrows in rapid succession. All three struck the target dead center.
“Very good shooting, White Stag,” she smiled, taking a drink from a flagon of water.
White Stag grinned and slapped his chest. “You shoot well, Winona.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You shoot ... adequately. I had too much practice shooting at the Spanish. I learned to do it Perfectly.”
White Stag grinned and slapped his chest again. “I will learn this new weapon.”
Winona leaned her bow against the wagon wheel. “Good. Because tomorrow, we ride north.”
White Stag’s grin faltered. “The French camp?”
Winona wiped arrow grease from her fingers onto her leggings. “The French won’t know what hit them.” She glanced at the setting sun. “But first, tell me – when you raid, do your warriors drink the night before? — or smoke peyote?”
White Stag stiffened. “Only fools dull their senses before battle.”
Winona nodded approvingly and tossed him a freshly rifled barrel. “Good. The French drink like fish. Their sentries will be half-blind.” She pointed north where smoke smudged the horizon. “Tomorrow at dawn, we strike while their heads pound from tonight’s wine.”
The Dutch prisoner had finally broken under Broken Wing’s interrogation – revealing that LaFollet’s main force had departed eastward, leaving only a skeleton garrison. Wind Rider studied the crude dirt map drawn by De Vries’ trembling fingers. The French compound stood at the confluence of two rivers, its wooden palisade guarding rows of canvas tents.
Wind Rider had studied the landscape. “This looks like the northeastern portion of Oklahoma, or at least the Oklahoma I remembered. This should be the Arkansas River area. I don’t remember a big fork around here.”
Broken Wing chuckled. “The way you talk sometimes, warrior Wind Rider. The French call this place ‘La Fourche’. The Fork. Two rivers meet here, and then go east as one big river.”
Wind Rider blinked. “Huh. So, the French ARE here.” He looked down at the dirt map, twisting a dry grass stalk between his fingers. “And if they’re already naming rivers... ”
Broken Wing’s grin split his scarred face. “They think this land is theirs to mark. This land is OURS – the Land of the People. We have been here for many winters – beyond counting.”
Wind Rider crushed the grass stalk between his fingers. The French had already begun the colonial machine – naming rivers, mapping territories, treating indigenous lands as inventory. He stared at the smoke smudge on the horizon. “History’s playbook,” he thought. “First the maps, then the forts, then the treaties signed at gunpoint. But that was the history of another time, another Earth.”
Black Horn spat into the dirt near De Vries’ boots. “LaFollet leaves his weakest men guarding his stolen treasures. He thinks we’ll waste time fighting each other over scraps.” His fingers traced the fresh brand on his chest—a grotesque fleur-de-lis. “But his fire has welded us together instead.”
Winona emerged from the armory wagon with a cloth-wrapped bundle, her footsteps deliberate. She knelt beside Wind Rider and unrolled it – a dozen iron arrowheads glinted dully in the firelight, each stamped with a tiny inverted triangle. “Found these in the Dutchman’s gear,” she murmured. “Same mark as Helmut’s Hapsburg silver. European metal, European greed.” She pressed one into Wind Rider’s palm; the edges bit his skin.
Wind Rider closed his fist around the arrowhead. The cold metal pulsed like a second heartbeat. Supply lines. They’re already threading European poison through the tall grass. He glanced at De Vries, now slumped against a wagon wheel – the Dutchman’s wrists raw from hemp ropes. “Ask him where they’re mining this.”
Broken Wing yanked the prisoner upright by his greasy hair. De Vries whimpered something in guttural Dutch before switching to broken French. “Montagnes ... les montagnes de l’ouest... ” The big mountains of the west. His eyes rolled toward the distant peaks.
Winona stiffened. Those were sacred hunting grounds – places where elk herds moved like shadows through spruce forests. She hissed between her teeth. “They’re digging metal from P’há Sápa.” The Black Hills. A place so holy even enemies didn’t war there.
Wind Rider’s grip tightened on the arrowhead until blood welled between his fingers. The Dutchman whimpered as Broken Wing twisted his arm. “Wieveel mijnwerkers?” How many miners? The answer came in panicked Dutch, then halting Crow: “Hundreds. In chains.”
The revelation hit like a gunshot. Black Horn’s face contorted. “They defile P’há Sápa with iron picks?”
His war club twitched toward De Vries’ skull, but Wind Rider caught his wrist. “Kill him now, and we lose their supply routes.” He shoved the arrowhead into Winona’s palm. “Get Helmut. Tell him to get back to Geronimo and bring every air rifle and every grenade tomorrow. But first we take La Forche.”
Wind Rider, Tall Pine, Grey Hawk, and Black Horn had a discussion while riding through the night. “We are attacking a fort of the French army. I know you are not afraid of them — or dying at their hands, but how many warriors do you want to lose in this attack?”
Grey Hawk looked at him. “If we only lose two hands of our men, I would consider it a well fought battle.”
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