Chapter 14

After he made his decision to split his posse forces up into three separate units, Sam did a bit of painful retrospective thinking about the dubious move taken to insure at least one of them would be able to track the renegades to their unknown hideout.

He had no doubt that that the trail would lead in the general direction of Mexico because the closer to the border, the more dangerous the trail became in the lawless outlands.

The fact that they had the cook’s wagon with them slowed them down considerably but he knew that his pair of Indian scouts was the best of the half dozen he had rounded up under emergency conditions.

He couldn’t help but notice that Ladybug and Sister Joan were in fine spirits and he was now certain if that had to do with the reduction of their duties both in the kitchen and in a nocturnal setting or the fact that they were concealing a cache of confiscated hard liquor they had seized from the corrupt agent’s cellar.

Sam and Saul didn’t have any military authority but he had a memorandum of agreement from the ranking officer at the fort to pursue and capture either alive or dead all of the renegade Indians from the reservation.

Sam doubted that any civilian court would hold him responsible for their deaths because they had already caused the deaths of almost twenty settlers and had taken five female hostages captive. The entire frontier knew that the future of these young women was forever tainted by that fact and that they would never be the same again even if they were rescued by the pursuing force early in the confrontation.

The men were mostly silent keeping their eyes open at all times just in case the renegades doubled back and attempted to take the scalps of their pursuers grown careless by the sense of false security in a void of little action.

Sam suspected that the wily Geronimo had his rear guard scouts maintaining contact with the following forces at all times always on the lookout for some mistake or tactical error that he could turn to his advantage even whilst he was retreating as fast as possible in a “run for your life” situation that promised no joy at the final end.

His experience with the hostiles back in Texas had convinced him that they would continue to fight and cause as much trouble as possible despite full knowledge that their way of life was forever ended and never to return again.

Too many families had been destroyed, too many females had been taken hostage and the hundreds of scalps hanging on lodge-poles across the Great Plains bore mute testimony to a revenge driven society willing to sacrifice the entire tribe for the honor of a way of life no longer relevant in a changing world.

Soon, the “Iron Horses” of the encroaching settlers would crisscross the country in all directions and the mighty buffalo were all but disappeared into the dust of a forgotten age of plentiful food for the stomachs of their children already born and yet to be born into a savage world of survival as the primary goal on the edge of civilization.

The smart ones like Geronimo knew that instinctively, but still he fought on because of his personal agenda of revenge for losses already suffered and for losses to come as sure as the snows of winter would start in the never-ending cycle of seasons.

Sam knew it would be a waste of breath to even plead with the Indians for some logical decisions regarding their future because the two cultures were so incompatible that logic no longer was the answer to the problem.

They were on the edge of the great basin of scarce water and the deep gorges and difficult terrain made their progress even slower because they had the cook’s wagon with them. They had to zig and zag in a crazy tacking motion just to cross some challenging slopes too steep to attempt a straight line.

The Indian scouts had made a long-range sweep and discovered the fleeing renegades were already on the other side of the badlands and heading down the tumble weeded foothills on the other side.

Sam made the decision to avoid the badlands altogether and he circled them to the north and made much faster time by bypassing the bad terrain. They took up the trail on the other side and he had probably managed to save a full day by following his instincts and listening to the wise words of the dependable Indian scouts.

He didn’t see any need to relay this to the posse unit and that was probably a mistake because it just gave them more fuel for the rampant rumors and seeds of discontent about his non-military approach to chasing hostiles in their own country.