No, the idea I had was to let the Cheyenne come to me, so to speak, and therefore for two years I had drove them mules conscientiously and ate my grub at end of day and put up with Caroline, who never really got more sensible, and bedded down early in my little tent, waiting, just waiting for this time to come.
I don’t know whether anybody has ever pointed out the patience you need if you live a life of violence. It ain’t the action that takes the guts, but the minutes, hours, days, even months of interval between encounters. When the Indians finally did begin to hit the railroad, they seemed to avoid my immediate area of it and strike the grading parties further west or the track layers to the east. And though they run off stock, they never come near my mules, which I would tether close to my tent and then lay awake much of the night with a coiled lariat in my hand. Capture is what I intended for the brave what come close, not slaughter. I didn’t want his scalp, but rather the return of Olga and Gus, and needed to be in a bargaining position. But as I say, wherever I was the Cheyenne struck elsewhere; that’s what I mean about needing patience.
It had got well into the summer when I finally received my chance. End-of-track lay just beyond the old stage station at Lodgepole, and my work at present was with the graders on west of that, but I had gone down to Julesburg upon an errand and was about to start back when an engine stopped for water at the tank there and I saw it was pulling several freight cars loaded with Frank North and his Pawnee Scouts, who the Government had hired as protection against the hostiles.
“What’s a-going on, Frank?” says I, for I knowed him.
And he answers: “The Cheyenne have caused some trouble down at Plum Creek and we’re moving there to fight them.”
“All right if I come along?”
He allowed it was a free country, so I clumb on. I was armed with a .56-caliber Ballard rifle, along with a percussion Remington 44 in my belt. There wasn’t time for to go get my saddle horse, which was being newly shoed at the blacksmith’s, for that engine pulled away while the tank was still gushing water. I asked North if he could mount me, and he said the Pawnee might have an extra pony but that would take a special kind of horseman.
I just laughed to myself. I hadn’t told nobody thereabout of my years among the Cheyenne, who for obvious reasons weren’t none too popular a tribe at this point, and in them days people was suspicious of you if you spent any length of time with hostile Indians and come back alive.
While we was larruping down the track, a Pawnee staggered over to the corner of the car where I was sitting-I don’t mean he was drunk: that ride was so rough you practically had to crawl when you wanted to move-and commences to peer at me. Now the Pawnee used to fight white men along the Santa Fe trail, but they turned friendly after the traffic got too heavy to deal with, and also they was hereditary enemies of the Sioux and Cheyenne, so made common cause with the Americans sometime back. A Pawnee shaved his head on either side, leaving no hair but a high-standing scalp-lock, which you call a roach. Everybody has his own taste in Indians, and I didn’t care much for the way they looked. This was natural enough considering my upbringing. You recall how I had warred against them when a young fellow among the Cheyenne.
Well, this brave studies me for a spell, then moves over to North and converses in Pawnee. He had to shout, for the train noise was awful, but I couldn’t gather a word, not knowing the lingo.
Then Frank cups his hand at his mouth and says to me: “He claims he fought against you once on the Niobrara River, when you were a Cheyenne.… Don’t laugh or you will hurt his feelings.”
The warning wasn’t necessary: I wasn’t amused, for undoubtedly this sharp-eyed Indian was telling the truth. I remembered once that some Pawnee had raided our pony herd in broad daylight along that river, which we called the Surprise, and we Human Beings went after them. One Pawnee’s horse was hit, throwing him onto the prairie, and being closest, I sought to ride him down, but he kept me off with a rapid fire of arrows until a comrade come back and he swung upon the pony’s rump and yelling the Pawnee victory cry they made their escape untouched through a blizzard of our shafts and musket balls, in despite of our fast-running pursuit though we got the rest of the party and took their hair.
This man must have been one of them two which got away though what startled me was that he could recognize me these years later without paint and in American clothes. Well, I didn’t say no more till we reached the Plum Creek station and left the cars. I let North think it was a joke, for I didn’t want to explain, but while he and another white officer was going over the situation there, I went to that Pawnee and says, in the signs: “You had big medicine that day.”
This Indian’s name was Mad Bear. He says, without expression: “You were a Cheyenne then. Now you are a white man.” And then give the signs for “I don’t understand.”
“That is a long story,” I replies. “But the Cheyenne since then have stole my white wife and child, and I am going to fight them with you, and I don’t want that anything bad should stand between my heart and yours.” To which I adds, it being an Indian idea: “Everything changes except the earth.”
“And now the earth does too,” he signals, pointing to the railroad. He went on: “I believe you, but not because of what you tell me, for you look like a liar. I believe you because Pawnee Chief” (which was to say, Frank North) “says you are only a fool who drives a wagon. He asked me to protect you if we get into a fight.”
Before telling what happened when we had that fight, I ought to say first what the Cheyenne done at Plum Creek, for it was quite a success for them and never done before nor since to my knowledge. They derailed a whole freight train! Somehow they pried out the spikes and bent a rail up into the air, then give it a twist so when the next engine come along, why off it tumbled and the cars followed suit. I don’t know where them Indians had got so clever. Earlier there had been reports of Cheyenne braves who rode alongside trains and tried to lasso them, and this was believable, for a savage Indian wouldn’t have no sense of mass or magnitude when it come to a hunk of metal that big: and he would take the fact that a white man run it to signify that a red man could as well rope it.
We stayed at Plum Creek a couple days, and the Pawnee patrolled the country roundabout, finding it altogether clear of hostiles. North and his officers had just about decided to return to the end-of-track when a force of Cheyenne appeared on the south bank, coming back, I reckon, as an Indian will, to the place of their prior victory: remember they had hit Julesburg twice.
The Pawnee howled their war cries and headed for the bridge near the old stage station, which was too small to accommodate their whole force, so a good many went into the water and forded the stream, but coming up the other shore their horses stuck in the mud, so the scouts dismounted and footed it up the bank. This movement confused the Cheyenne, who had not expected resistance where before they had it so easy, and when the Pawnee delivered a murderous fire from their Spencer repeating carbines, making a half-dozen kills, the Human Beings turned and run for it despite their advantage of number.
I rode with North across the bridge. As I have suggested he had a low opinion of me, but when the action started he didn’t have time to take a mind of what I was doing and once we reached the other bank I galloped free on the borrowed Pawnee pony. It was a liberating feeling once again to have such a mount. I hadn’t rode pad saddle for many a year, but once you have been trained to the Indian style of riding you don’t forget it no more than you disremember to swim if dumped into the water after years away.