Friends by Charles Hackenberry

following his tracks with their faces down. He put his glass aside and picked up the Sharps, then slid the bead onto the first riders head. He would wait 'til they got a few yards closer, give himself an easy shot. Two easy shots.
    "You do this with all the fellows?" I ask her, making it a joke, thinking I could get her to blush.
    Mandy splashed water in my face with her hand. "Only one," she said, laughing at me. "Last summer. His family, they were white people, all white. But after they saw him with me, they fought with him and then went on to Oregon. He took me to St. Louis. Do you know that place, Willie?"
    "I been there."
    "I loved it there. I loved Robert, too, my first love. We were so happy! But then he gambled and owed a lot of money. He sold me to the man he owed most of the money to."
    I couldn't believe I heard her right and I guess my face showed it.
    "Oh yes, he sold me! Just as if I were a slave, like my mother had been. The man said so after Robert left, but I did not want to sleep with him, so he beat me and then I ran away from him and came back home. St. Louis is not such a nice place if you have no money and no man to protect you." She looked down into the water and wiggled her toes and watched them for a minute before she looked up and smiled at me. "But that is long over, eh?"
    "It's a wonder you can see it that way," I told her. "Best to forget and move on forward, but most folks-"
    She took my hands and stood up then, so I stood up too. She was leaning close to kiss me, like I was towards her, but she stopped sudden and turned her head. "Did you hear that?" she asked.
    "What?"
    "A gun shot! There, again!"
    I couldn't decide if I did or not. For a minute, I thought maybe she'd changed her mind about kissing me and all, but when I looked at her face close I seen that wasn't so. She was scared. We waded out of the water pretty quick and got into our clothes.
    I was hoping it was Clete firing to let me know he was close. "Could you tell which way it come from?" I ask.
    "That way," she said. "The way the stream goes. Toward the little mountain." I looked where she was pointing, the way his tracks led, and far out was a butte.
    I was mighty uneasy heading out there, I can tell you. Not far from the river two more sets of hoofprints joined those made by the girl's paint and my man's limping animal. The new tracks was those of unshod horses, and around here that could only mean Indians. Lots of Sioux still running wild. Some'd settled on the reservations, Red Cloud's tribe, mostly. But I'd heard Crazy Horse and his people was still killing whites over the Black Hills trouble. Just what I needed on this ride.
    When we got closer to the butte, every hundred yards or so I stopped and stood in the stirrups, seeing what I could see up there on top. Not much. Once, when Mandy thought she heard something close, we jumped off and took cover behind a little clump of sage. But nothing happened, so after a while we led the horse a piece-after I got us our rifles. A few yards further on I seen two bodies sprawled in the short squirrel tail grass.
    From their dress and the way they was painted up, I believed they was Sioux, though maybe Cheyenne. No question about it being the work of the man I was following. I saw where he come down after he'd shot them, done his knife work, and then climbed back up. I didn't need to see his tracks to know who done this. He'd be gone now, or Mandy and me would be dead too. One of the Indians had his whole head gone-blowed off, it looked like. The other with a hole in his chest big enough to set a bucket in. And he'd been scalped, though the hair was just tossed beside him, so I knowed double sure it couldn't of been other Indians.
    I looked at Mandy's face about the same time she first seen them braves, and I wisht I'd thought to keep her away from this. It was too late by then, though, and the best I could do was take her back to the horse.
    Before we left, I scratched Clete a note on