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Their leader grumbled, then passed the order along in their tongue. The trackers angrily stuffed weapons away, but refused to move off. Instead, they clustered around the one of their number Sweete had hammered with his Spencer.

“Now,” Royall said as he turned back to the plainsman, “are you going to tell me?”

“You get these goddamned turkey buzzards away from here!” Sweete bellowed with all the rage of a wounded bear. “Far away from me!” The rifle in his hands shook, still pointed at the chest of the English-speaking tracker.

“Mr. Sweete—these guides are allies of ours—”

Shad spat his words. “Pawnee no better’n vultures feeding on dead meat.”

The soldier sighed, then cleared his throat. “Lieutenant—go ahead and get these trackers out of here.”

“Major?”

“Now!” Royall snapped like a man gone too long without sleep. “We’ll sort the damned thing out later.”

It took some threats from the lieutenant’s soldiers before Royall got the trackers herded on their way out of the ravine. Reluctantly the sullen Pawnee left with their escort, yet not without some nasty grumbling that Major North would have a lot to say about the soldiers interfering with his Pawnee having their revenge on the enemy dead. As tense as it was for a few minutes, in the end Royall’s soldiers did get them on their way toward the ravine to the south where a withering gunfire still rattled above the last of the Cheyenne holdouts.

Royall sighed as he watched them leave, hands balled on his hips. When he turned, he strode back to confront the tall gray-head. For a few wordless moments, the major studied Sweete’s face, as if searching there for some clue.

Choking on his grief, Shad didn’t trust himself to move, not just yet. Then as he blinked, the first tear spilled in a streak through the dust caked on his cheek.

“It’s all right. It’s gonna be all right, Mr. Sweete,” he said quietly, clearly bewildered by the big man’s violent actions. “Now, please—just tell me what the devil was going on here? Why were you so all-fired ready to get yourself killed over some dead buck—over this dead particular Cheyenne bastard here?”

Royall waited for what seemed like a hot, endless moment, watching the tall plainsman’s face.

“Mr. Sweete?” he asked again. “Just what in blazes is one dead Dog Soldier over another to you?”

“My … my boy.”

23

Mid-July 1869

HE SAW THE figure in the distance. On that big buckskin, it had to be Cody.

The far-off rider reined the pale horse in Shad Sweete’s direction and brought the buckskin into an easy lope. He watched the young blond-haired scout eat through that shimmering summer countryside. When Cody was ten yards out, he slowed the animal to a walk, then brought the buckskin to a halt where the old plainsman had waited with his two extra ponies atop the low hill that looked down on the South Platte.

“Been worried about you, Shad.”

Sweete’s eyes found the distant serpent of blue crawling over the tan carpet of rolling, sandy plains, following the riverbank north.

He looked at Cody, smiled. “Where away you bound, Bill?”

“Carr’s got us headed in to Fort Sedgwick,” Cody replied. “We got one of the women out of that camp alive. Gonna take her on in to the fort, where the army can dig around and try to find her people back in Kansas. Seems the right thing to do: get her back to her own folk, to her family. The other woman … damn, but we found her butchered just like we figured them Dog Soldiers would do.”

“You say some words over her—bury her?”

“Back there at the springs.”

Shad only nodded, his eyes leaving Cody’s face to stare into the distance.

Cody sighed, almost contentedly, as he studied the old man’s face a moment. “I was really worried about you.”

With a shrug Shad asked, “Got any chew about you?”

“Pipe tobaccy.”

“It’ll do, if’n you can spare some for this ol’ nigger.”

Cody flashed that even-toothed grin of his that seemed to light up the whole of his handsome face as he stuffed a hand into a saddlebag, fished about, and came forth with a dark lump wrapped in oiled paper. “You’re entitled to as much as you want to take, Shad.”

“Just a chew,” he replied, taking a wad from the paper and stuffing the coarse-cut shag inside his cheek. “Damn,” he said quietly as he handed the bundle back to Cody. “Ain’t had no tobaccy in more’n three days. It does taste good. Thanks.”

“Keep the rest?”

He shook his head. “I’ll get some on down the way, I s’pose.”

A cloud crossed Cody’s face. “You … why, I thought you was here because you was joining the column to go on in to Sedgwick with us.”

Squarely looking at the young scout, Shad said, “Don’t think so, Bill. Have Carr send my pay voucher up to Laramie. Care of the post commander there.”

“But—this campaign ain’t over yet, Shad. We’re just getting—”

“It’s over for me, Bill.”