Stamping Ground by Loren D. Estleman Page A

was a lot of metal buzzing back and forth, and the way them injuns shriek you don’t know if they’re hit or just mad. But if we didn’t at least nick one or two of ’em it’d be a miracle.”
    â€œWas Ghost Shirt with them?”
    â€œOh, he was with ’em all right. I seen too much of him when he was here in the stockade not to recognize him when I seen him again, and he wasn’t wearing no war paint like the others. He rode point on the bunch that hit us from the front.”
    â€œWhy wasn’t he wearing paint?”
    â€œHow the hell should I know? Them injuns don’t think the same as people. All I know is that paint’s supposed to turn away bullets. Maybe he figures he don’t need it.”
    â€œWhose dust were you following when they attacked?” Hudspeth asked. He peered into the buckskin sack of cartridges he carried in his saddle bag to see if they were all there.
    â€œLikely that belonged to the womenfolk, dragging buffalo robes and bushes behind their horses to make it look like the whole party. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but it works most every time. Hell, what can you do to fight it?”
    â€œYou can go back to the fort.” This from Pere Jac, without intonation. The comment drew a hostile glance from the horse soldier.
    â€œI’d expect that from a breed,” he snarled. “We’re the army. We’re trained to fight.”
    â€œAnd die,” said the other. “In the end, what have you gained?”
    Hoxie’s complexion turned a high copper. I stepped between him and the métis,.
    â€œSteady, soldier. We’re all on the same side.”
    â€œI don’t take to nobody with injun blood in his veins calling me a fool,” he said. But his violent mood had subsided.
    â€œNobody called anybody anything. Where was this fight?”
    He grew furtive. “I said enough. If the major finds out I told you what I done already he’ll bust me out of the service. I just didn’t want nobody running off and getting kilt without knowing the score. What you do now is your business.” He tugged his hat down and took a step toward the stable door. I laid a hand on his shoulder. It felt like a chunk of the scrawny meat we’d had for supper. He stopped and glared up at me from his inferior height, eyes glittering beneath the shelf of his brows.
    â€œIf you tell us where Ghost Shirt is hiding, the major will never know you told us anything.”
    He started as if slapped in the face. For a moment disbelief and consternation chased each other across his features in the greasy glow of the coal-oil lantern that hung on a rusty nail beside the door. His eyes searched mine for some sign that I was bluffing. He didn’t find anything. I sit a good game of poker.
    â€œThat stinks,” he said.
    â€œTo high heaven,” I agreed.
    â€œThey give him a lot of slack out here. He could call it high treason in time of war and have me shot.”
    â€œThat’s up to you.”
    â€œEven if I get away, he’ll send Sergeant Burdett after me. Broderick used to sic him on deserters like a trained hunting dog. He never brought any of them back alive.”
    I said nothing. The forge had grown silent, and now there was only the liquid hiss of the lantern behind me to underscore the stillness. At last the trooper fixed me with an expression that made me feel the way I’d felt when I looked down the barrel of his gun in Broderick’s quarters. I resteda thumb on the butt of the Deane-Adams, just in case.
    â€œThere’s a old stone building six, eight miles west of the river, a fort of some kind. Sergeant Burdett told me that Harms’s patrol got within a couple of hundred yards of it this morning when a bunch of bucks on the wall opened fire and the major called retreat. It’d take a force three times what we got a month to blast its way in there. A twelve-pounder wouldn’t