The Outlaw Josey Wales by Forrest Carter

fast… thet there’s too much danger fer a woman,” Josey paused, “and tell her we ’preciate what she’s done fer us.” Lone’s hands moved rapidly again. He watched her solemnly as she answered. Finally he looked at Josey, and there was the pride of the Indian when he spoke. “She says she cannot go back. That she stole a rifle, supplies, and the hoss. She says she would not go back if she could… that she will foller in our tracks. Ye saved her life. She says she can cook, track, and fight. Our ways are her ways. She says she ain’t got no-wheres else to go.” Lone’s face was expressionless, but his eyes looked askance at Josey. “She’s shore pretty,” he added with hopeful recommendation.
    ‘Josey spat, “Damn all conniption hell. Here we go, trailin’ into Texas like a waggin train. Well…” he sighed as he turned to the horses, “she’ll jest have to track if she falls back, and when she gits tired she can quit.”
    As they swung into their saddles Lone said, “She thinks I’m a Cherokee Chief.”
    “I wonder where she got thet idea,” Josey remarked dryly. Little Moonlight picked up her rifle and blanket and swung expertly astride the paint. She waited humbly, eyes cast to the ground, for the men to take the trail.
    “I wonder,” Josey said as they walked the horses out of the brush.
    “Wonder what?” Lone asked.
    “I was jest wonderin’,” he said, “I reckin that mangy red-bone hound ain’t got nowheres to go neither.”
    Lone laughed and led the way, followed closely by Josey. At a respectful distance the blanketed Little Moonlight rode the paint, and at her heels the bony hound sniffed the trail.
    They traveled south, then southwest, skirting Pine Mountain on their left and keeping generally to open prairie. More grass showed now on the land. Lone kept the black at a ground-eating canter, and the big roan easily stayed with him, but Little Moonlight fell farther and farther behind. By midafternoon Josey could just make out her bobbing head as she pushed the rough-riding paint nearly a mile behind. The soldiers had not come into sight, but late in the afternoon a party of half-naked Indians armed with rifles rode over a rise to their left and brought their ponies at an angle to intercept them.
    Lone slowed the black.
    “I count twelve,” Josey said as he rode alongside.
    Lone nodded. “They are Choctaws, riding down to meet the trail herds. They will ask payment fer crossing their lands … then they will cut out cattle … permission or not.”
    The Indians rode closer, but after they had inspected the two heavily armed men on the big horses … they veered off and slackened pace. They had ridden on for another quarter mile when Lone slid the black to a halt so suddenly that Josey almost ran his mount over him.
    “Taketoha!” he shouted, “Little Moon…!” Simultaneously, they whirled their horses and set them running back over the trail. Coming to a rise they saw the Indians riding close, but not too close, to the paint horse. Little Moonlight was holding the rifle steady, and with it she swept the squad of Indians. The Choctaws saw Lone and Josey waiting on the rise and turned away from the Indian woman. They had gotten the message; that the squaw was, somehow, a member of this strange caravan that included two hard-appearing riders mounted on giant horses and a cadaverous-looking hound with long ears and bony flanks.
    It was midnight when they camped on the banks of Clear Boggy Creek, less than a day’s ride from the Red River and Texas. An hour later Little Moonlight jogged into camp on the paint.
    Josey heard her slip silently around their blankets. He saw Lone rise and give grain to the paint. She rolled in a blanket a little distance from them and did not eat before she slept.
    Her movements woke Josey before dawn, and he smelled cooking but saw no fire. Little Moonlight had dragged a hollow log close to them, carved a hole in its side, and placed a black pot