Chapter 15

They saw the lump of discarded clothing off to the side of the trail right by the scattered ashes of a recent fire that was used for something other than cooking or getting warm.

It was the Indian scout that was as silent as a grave that gave Sam the sign of a “dead female” with the slight movement of his arms and hand. The others looked without really trying to see because they had seen it all before and had no stomach for it so early in the morning.

They didn’t have the cook’s wagon with them and all they had was the dried beef jerky and the cold water from the mountain stream that paralleled the faint outline of a trail almost so slight that only a trained tracker or an Indian could read the sign.

The bounty hunter with that weird stare that labeled him as a trained killer came over and turned the lump over and they saw it was one of the captive white women. It looked to be the more mature one with the children back near the settlements that wouldn’t be seeing their mom ever again.

“It’s the Simpson woman, boss-man. They only have four hostages left now and I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for any of them making it home for Christmas.”

The Indians kept their eyes on the horizon watching carefully for any movement because some of those new repeating rifles were a mite accurate in the hands of a trained rifleman and it didn’t make any difference if he was a white man, a black man or even a savage Indian with no regard for human life.

Sam sent a couple of the posse stragglers back to the cook’s wagon to bring the two women up to their camp before the fall of night. It was beginning to look like they wouldn’t catch up to the renegades before they made their hideout and it didn’t make no sense to leave them out there by themselves at the mercy of the murderous bastards with black eyes of evil and not a lick of decency in their entire body.

It looked like the Indians were sending a message to the pursuers and it was saying,

“Keep your distance, if you don’t want the rest of the white women roasted like a slab of meat on the fire screaming her way into the other world without the pity of the Great Father.”

They all knew the women were not the mission and the only thing that mattered was the elimination of Geronimo and his murdering band in a way that would insure his name would never be a matter of concern to any future settlers of the wild and often violent frontier.

Sam allowed the men in his unit with the exception of the Indian scouts to take pleasure from the two women on the cook’s wagon. They were more than happy to split the pack between them and showed how resourceful they were in handling them all with the same competence that they had showed back in the settlements when they were in business for themselves.

It was sometime after midnight when the former nun, Sister Joan joined him under the saddle and the blanket to huddle up next to him for some added heat in the cold night air. It was strange that it could be so hot in the heat of the day and so downright chilly at night when the sun didn’t shine to keep you warm. He knew that Joan and the other woman would be rising early to get the biscuits ready along with the magic potion of fresh brewed coffee to start the day off just right. What with the men all primed up with some female companionship and with those vittles in their ravenous bellies, the next day might be the end for Geronimo and his band of renegade reservation jumpers. Sam planned to make them carrion for the crows and the vultures because they had no intent of taking the time to bury them. It would be proper justice to just leave them to the animals like they had done to poor General Custer and his brave band of troopers stretched out at odd angles minus their hair and worse than garbage in a place of beauty and majestic silence.

After only an hour on the fresh trail the next day, they cut sign of the fleeing Indians. They were making no attempt to cover their track now because the only chance they had for survival was to make it to their sacred “High Ground” in the middle of the blessed place for dreams of the future smoking the weeds of paradise so important to the “old ways” and the traditions of their ageless past.

A corpse of a dead Indian baby was thrown to the side like an offering to the wolves and the coyotes hungry for anything edible before the snows of winter covered the tracks of their prey. Sam did bury that poor unfortunate because he did not wage war on children. The wolves would give up because the rocks were too much of a hindrance and time was of the essence in the game of survival.

They could see the heights of the escarpment now with the almost unclimbable steep walls. The only way the high place could be climbed was on the north wall where the rocks were a bit loose and there were places to make the attempt with a small degree of success.

Most of the men were good climbers but they all knew that the likelihood of death was at the top of the solid stone face and it was only good sense to make certain their direct assault was the best way to solve the problem of getting rid of the renegades in the quickest way possible.

The Indian scouts were both convinced that the renegade Indians didn’t have enough food to make it through the long winter and that they would be forced to forage for additional supplies sooner rather than later when they were too weak to hunt.

Sam sent one of the scouts back to the fort to ask for a resupply wagon to give them the edge they needed to keep a tight lid on the escaped Apache band and not allow them to escape yet again. The Indians no longer felt that they had any obligation to adhere to their promises of good behavior and to follow all the new rules and regulations that seemed to have a life of their own flowing out the frontier from the sheltered center of power back in Washington, D.C.

In retaliation for the escape, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent about half of the remaining tribe on the reservation all the way up to the Canadian border country that was too poor for farming and too sparse for the raising of domestic animals for a living food chain. Chickens were a possibility but they would have to be tended carefully due to the harsh cold weather that would decimate an entire poultry population in a single night.

Half of the Cavalry unit at the fort was called back to act as a riot control element due to unexpected strikes at the newly constituted industrial economic giant rising from the ashes of the Civil War.

Farming was still the magnet that drew the settlers to the West and the land was cheap and plentiful. Only the Cattle ranchers stood in the way of the sodbusters from realizing their dream in the new nation that was created with liberty and freedom for all. Well, at least for the settlers and the troopers and even the miners looking for their fortune in the yellow flakes of gold slowly sifted from the creeks and the mountain river beds that carried the water all the way out to the endless ocean at the end of the Continental Trail.