Stamping Ground by Loren D. Estleman Page B

of the next ridge, teeth bared white—or as close to white as Indians’ teeth got—against the ebony goo they had smeared over themselves from hairline to breechclout, Spencer repeaters braced one-armed against their biceps in that impossible-to-hit-anything way they had. At that range, however, they couldn’t
all
miss.They were all over me in two blinks, stabbing the bay’s bit before it could rear, snatching the carbine out of my hands, jerking my Deane-Adams from its holster. I was overpowered by the stench of hot sweat and bad grease, of lathered horseflesh and paint. No hands reached for me. They didn’t have to. I was ringed in.
    They were Cheyenne. One, a brave with a nose like a razor and a lightning-streak of yellow slashing diagonally across his blackened features, wore one of those human-finger necklaces for which the tribe was notorious, its macabre pendants brown and wrinkled and shrunken so that the nails stood out like claws. They didn’t look as if they had ever strung a bow or braided beads into a horse’s mane or, to put an even grimmer face on it, drawn a needle through an embroidery hoop or followed a passage in a family Bible. Interspersed among these were tiny medicine bags that looked to have been fashioned from human flesh. The ornament carried strong medicine, too strong for an ordinary warrior. But there was only one chief in Ghost Shirt’s crowd, so he must have been no more than a sub-chief or a brave who had proved himself in many battles. Possibly a medicine man. In any case, he seemed to be the leader of this band, as my Winchester was turned over to him without hesitation by the Indian who had seized it. He eyed it lovingly, passed a hand over the engraving on the action, then, decisively, thrust his own dusty Spencer into the hands of the brave nearest him and tucked the carbine under his arm. He grunted a terse order. The point of a broad-bladed knife was thrust inside my left nostril and hands rooted around inside my saddle bags. At length my cartridge boxes were produced and tossed to the ranking warrior. The sharp scent of steel tickled the hairs inside my nose. I controlled myself with an effort. A sneeze now could have cost me a substantial amount of blood, to say nothing of what a startled Indian might do. Not that I was going to live long enough to see the last of the sun, wallowing now in a blood-red pool behind the fortress on the distant ridge.
    Another order was given in guttural Cheyenne and my horse began moving with no encouragement from me. In a mass we struck out toward the mission. I glanced in that direction, but Ghost Shirt was no longer there. Having served his purpose as bait, he had left the situation in the hands of his subordinates and returned to his stronghold. Such confidence in the obedience of his warriors bordered on arrogance.
    Up close, the wall of the mission turned out to be constructed of weathered stone, tightly mortared and forming a barrier nearly twenty feet high around the buildings inside. Three decades or more ago it had served as a place of refuge for the settlers who had dwelled nearby in farmhouses long since reduced to their foundations by fire and the elements. A few pulls on the great bell that swung in the central tower and the Mormons would come streaming in for protection from Indians, blizzards, or religious persecution, three of the many dangers they had learned to live with in order to uphold their creed. I wondered which of the three had brought an end to it all in this lonely quarter, or if they had simply thrown everything over to join Brigham Young’s exodus to Utah. Whatever the reason, only this fire-blackened, bullet-chipped fortress remained as a monument to the brotherly existence they preached.
    The gate was made of logs bound and pegged together vertically, all but petrified with age. It swung open in one piece to admit us, then was secured by a handful of Indians who lowered another log