The Badlands Trail by Lyle Brandt & Ralph Compton

The Badlands Trail by Lyle Brandt & Ralph Compton

Author:Lyle Brandt & Ralph Compton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-06T16:00:00+00:00


* * *

* * *

TALL TREE RAN swiftly through the darkness, half a mile or more to reach the point where his raiders had left their tethered ponies. He arrived before the rest and watched them, looking disgusted with themselves and rightly so.

“Old Owl, what happened?” he demanded. “You and Someone Found were closest to the shooting.”

“The white man surprised us,” Old Owl said. “If there had been some warning—”

“No excuses!” Tall Tree cut him off. “Could you not see him coming?”

“Saw him, heard him,” Someone Found chipped in. “He was talking to himself, some kind of doo ‘áhályᾴᾳ da.” Meaning “idiot.”

“But caught you anyway,” Tall Tree observed. “And fired a shot to bring the others running.”

“I was faster,” Someone Found replied. “He fired his pistol falling, I believe already dead.”

“So now they have an arrow,” Tall Tree countered. “If they recognize its markings they can name our tribe. Do you consider that a victory?”

“The other choice was to be killed ourselves. Or else use Old Owl’s coach gun.”

“The best choice,” their war chief reminded them, “was to obey my orders and avoid letting the white men see you.”

“No one saw us,” Old Owl said, sounding disgruntled. “If the one did, he is silent now. None of the others had a chance.”

“So, you consider this a victory?” Tall Tree inquired rhetorically. He moved on without giving either of them time to answer. “What of you, Bright Sun and Fire Maker?” he asked. “I see no steer with you.”

“The shooting spoiled our chance,” said Fire Maker. “We had our line around its neck when—”

“When you left a second clue behind.” Tall Tree made no attempt to mask his disappointment. “Iron Jacket? Great Leaper? What of your mission?”

“No longhorn,” said Iron Jacket. “But at least we left no clues behind.”

“As if they needed any more, with two ropes and an arrow. We may just as well have left a sign.”

“We will do better next time,” Old Owl offered.

“It could hardly be much worse.” Tall Tree relented then, deciding he had scolded them enough. Whatever their mistakes might have been, he needed their cooperation in order to proceed. “And we will try again,” he said.

“How soon?” asked Fire Maker.

“At least four suns and moons,” Tall Tree replied. “They will not have forgotten us by then but let them think the shooting frightened us away. White men are foolish. They prefer to think good things await them, what the Mexicans call optimismo. They would rather run away from danger than confront it, as the Sioux found out at Little Big Horn.”

He saw no reason to remind them of what happened after that great victory, when Crazy Horse surrendered in Nebraska and was foully murdered there, while Sitting Bull retreated all the way to Canada, his army dwindling pathetically along the way. Of the other war chiefs present at the fall of Custer, Two Moons was defeated eight months later, in Montana, while Phizi—Gall—followed Sitting Bull’s road north to Canada and still resided there today.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.