Saddler's Run Read online

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Never mind. We’ve business to attend to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I’ve a buyer for my wares and’ve engaged to buy a pony for you to ride. We’ll need a blanket and one or two other things, maybe some food. I’ll warrant you’re hungry this moment?’

  ‘Maybe a little.’

  ‘How if I left you in yon’ eating house and went about my business,’ Saddler said, ‘you’d be bored silly by trailin’ round after me.’

  There were only two customers in the eating house, both of them soldiers. Saddler ordered food for Abigail and when she was seated at a table, told her, ‘You are not to set foot from this place while I’m gone. You mark what I say?’

  ‘Of course I won’t. I will sit here until you return.’

  He looked at her for a moment and then added, ‘There’s trouble in the wind, Abigail. I want to know where you are, just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know. Just in case.’

  Business of this nature, selling whiskey, bargaining over horseflesh and so on, were meat and drink to Ben Saddler. In the usual way of things he would have been as casual and relaxed as a baby in a crib as he went about such matters but, as it was, he could not shake off the feeling of foreboding. Something bad was going to happen. He felt it in his bones and the sooner he had converted his whiskey into cash money, the easier he would be in his mind.

  The liquor fetched more than he had figured it would, on account of all the soldiers thereabouts who were gasping for a drink. He did not make as much as he would have done by selling to Indians, but he had made a tidy profit, nevertheless. The man at the livery stable had sneered at the wagon, but Saddler could see that he wanted it really. After some tough bartering, Saddler had, by throwing in a couple of bottles of whiskey too, exchanged it for a little pony that would suit Abigail. After picking up an extra blanket, buying a little food for the journey and one or two other things, he felt that they were pretty well fixed up. He headed back to the eating house.

  As he was about to enter the place where he had left Abigail, it suddenly struck Saddler that there was one small matter which he had altogether overlooked and that was clothes for the child. She surely could not ride the trail on horseback wearing that long, black dress of hers! The store across the way sold work clothes and such, so he doubled back and went into it. Appearing here with a little girl and then kitting her out to dress like a boy would surely draw attention and invite unwanted questions, so Saddler decided simply to buy the things without her being present.

  The storekeeper didn’t seem to find anything remarkable about a man buying clothes for a young fellow who wasn’t with him. Saddler indicated roughly the height and build of his ficticious nephew and bought a pair of pants and a work shirt. Then he went back to the eating house and rejoined Abigail.

  ‘You were a long time,’ said Abigail. ‘I thought something had happened to you.’

  ‘No,’ said Saddler, ‘I’m fine. I’ll have some food myself and then we will see what’s next.’

  After he had eaten his fill, the two of them walked out into the street. It was a bright, sunny evening, but Saddler felt a chill in the air. He announced abruptly,

  ‘Something’s wrong. We gotta leave, right now.’

  ‘Why?’ said Abigail. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You ever been outside during a storm and felt the hairs prickle on the back of your neck, because you know the lightning’s about to strike?’

  ‘Not that I recall,’ said the child practically. ‘We generally stayed indoors when it was raining.’

  Saddler looked round the little group of buildings, cast an eye round the cavalry encampment, and then shook his head.

  ‘I’m telling you now, something’s not right. We’re goin’ to collect those horses and make tracks.’

  ‘I thought we were staying here for the night?’

  ‘Not any more we ain’t,’ said Saddler and there was no more to be said on the subject. He had evidently made up his mind.

  Chapter 4

  Abigail cavilled a little at the notion of changing her clothes in the hayloft at the livery stable, but Saddler was inflexible and determined about the whole thing. With considerable bad grace, she finally went along with the scheme.

  Towering above the little settlement was a huge, sandstone bluff; part of a massif that stretched north as far as the Cimarron river. A path twisted and turned up into the mountains, and along this Saddler and Abigail made their way up into the hills.

  ‘It feels strange to be wearing pants,’ said Abigail. ‘They are not so comfortable as a dress.’

  ‘A sight easier for ridin’, though,’ replied Saddler. ‘You couldn’t straddle that pony wearing a dress.’

  ‘That’s true. What are you afraid of? Why did we have to leave that place so suddenly?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, Abigail. Sometimes I get a feeling and it’s like I’m being warned of danger. I felt so when I rode into the little wood where I found you.’

  ‘You mean what is called a premonition?’

  ‘I don’t know the word. It’s like a tingling. I had it during the war, an’ each and every time it was telling me o’ some threat I hadn’t known of. I ain’t about to disregard that feeling.’

  The two of them rode on until they reached the top of the steep slope and could see the plain laid out before them to the south. The buildings around the Indian Bureau looked like a child’s toys from this height. Saddler dismounted and told the child to do the same. Then the two of them removed the saddles from his horse and the pony. There was a little coarse grass on the plateau which lay behind the bluff and Saddler said that it would be all right to let the beasts graze a little. He arranged their things behind a boulder, which gave shelter from the wind. Seated there, they could not be seen from below and yet had a good view of the Indian Bureau and the surrounding area.

  They each ate an apple from their stores, as they gazed down at the scene below. So used had he grown to the little girl’s eerily self-possessed ways, that Saddler had got into the way of thinking of her almost as a grown-up person, rather than a child. So it was that when he saw her shoulders shaking up and down as she looked out across the country with her back to him, Saddler thought that she might have something stuck in her throat.

  ‘You all right there?’ he asked.

  She didn’t reply and he was scared that she was choking on a piece of apple and so reached forward to touch her shoulder. Then Abigail turned to face him and he was horrified to see that she was weeping openly.

  Through her tears, the child said, ‘I miss my ma and pa. I miss them so much. I know it’s wrong to grieve for them, but I can’t help it.’

  Now Saddler had never been much of a one for handling other folk’s emotions, and for a second or two he was lost for words. Then it struck him that no words of his would help the poor little thing and that what she chiefly needed was comforting. He put his arm around her and the girl buried her face in his shoulder and cried hopelessly for some little while. As she did so, Saddler limited himself to making soothing noises and saying things such as, ‘There, there’ and ‘Everything will be all right’.

  At length, the little girl stopped sobbing and looked up at Saddler. She said, ‘You must think me a regular baby to carry on so.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. It’s a sight more natural than keepin’ your feelings hidden away inside. I’m only sorry I can’t do anything for you, child.’

  Abigail looked at him in surprise. ‘Oh, but you have,’ she said. ‘I cannot think that anybody could have been kinder to me.’

  ‘Lord,’ said Saddler, embarrassed. ‘I ain’t in that mould at all. It’s some good long time while since anybody told me I was kind.’

  ‘You pretend not to be. You are the kindest person I ever met.’

  Saddler looked vaguely discomfited, as though he had been caught out cheating at
cards. ‘Don’t speak so,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t do my reputation any good if folks got to hear of it. People’d take advantage of me.’

  ‘I know I’ve been a nuisance to you. Really, why have you taken all this trouble to help me?’

  He said nothing for a few seconds and Abigail thought that he was annoyed with her for pressing the point.

  Then Saddler said, ‘It’s like this. When I was just your age, I was cruelly used by some of the men in the orphans’ asylum.’

  ‘You mean they beat you?’

  ‘That too. But there was worse. Beastly things such as I wouldn’t like to tell of. I prayed for help, I wished some grown-up would come to my aid. Nobody ever did and I had to get through it alone. When I found you, Abigail, I knew I had to help you as best I was able. That’s all.’ From the plain beneath them, came the sharp, clear note of a bugle. Saddler said, ‘Hallo, what’s to do?’

  They looked down at the hamlet and saw that the cavalry were mounted up and looked to be ready to move out. It was twilight and the sun had sunk right below the horizon. Abigail said, ‘They’re leaving.’

  ‘Not for good. See now, they left their tents up. They’re off on a sortie. Like as not, they heard word of some Chickasaw raiding party in the area and are going after ’em.’

  As the man and child watched, the troop of soldiers moved off, heading east into the heart of the Chickasaw nation. Everything looked as peaceful and quiet as could be after they left and Saddler suggested that Abigail wrap herself up in a blanket and try to get some sleep. For his own part, he purposed to sit for a space, gazing south and west. The girl had the impression that he was waiting for something or expecting trouble, but if so he kept his own counsel.

  It was pitch dark when Abigail awoke. At least, it was the middle of a moonless night, and so there should have been no light at all. For a moment she wondered where she was and then recollected that they had climbed the bluff overlooking the hamlet. She wondered what had woken her and then realized that there was a source of light which was not the moon or stars. It was a ruddy, flickering glow and it came from below and not from the sky above. There was something else as well; the faint sound of shouting, triumphant voices. Saddler was sitting by the boulder, peering intently down at towards the Indian Bureau.

  ‘What it is?’ she asked, ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘It’s nothing to fret about. Go back to sleep now.’

  Abigail shrugged off the blanket and went over to join him.

  He said, ‘Keep down. Don’t make a profile against the sky.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Yon settlement is being attacked. Those horse soldiers was lured away on a snipe hunt and now the Indians are destroying the place.’

  The buildings were all alight, which accounted for the red glow she had seen. By the light of the flames, Abigail could see shadowy forms riding round the blazing stores, eating house and livery stable. The offices of the Indian Bureau alone did not seem to be burning, and as she watched she became aware of the crack of rifle fire.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she asked Saddler.

  ‘That’s no mystery,’ he told her. ‘Once those soldier boys were a two- or three-hour ride from here a bunch of warriors rode down and torched the place. I guess the men in the Indian Bureau are holding them off, but it won’t be long before they’re done for as well.’

  ‘Can’t we do anything to help them?’

  Saddler sighed and said, ‘Abigail, it’s one of those times when you got to sit tight. I have to watch, to see how it ends. There’s no need for you to do so. Why don’t you go back to sleep?’

  ‘No, I reckon I’ll watch too.’

  The lower half of the complex of buildings which made up the offices of the Indian Bureau was constructed of stone. It must have proved impossible so far for the Indians to set fire to it. All the other structures that made up the settlement were entirely wood and so it had probably only been a matter of piling brushwood up against the side of them and then kindling it. As they watched there were flashes from the windows of the Indian Bureau, followed a second or two later by the sound of shots.

  ‘They’re game enough, those men from the bureau,’ said Saddler, ‘but it’ll do ’em no good.’ He was proved right a few minutes late when the first flickering flames could be see licking the wooden, upper storeys of the building. ‘I’ll warrant they been splashing lamp oil about. Dry summer, it’s been; that wood’ll go up like a tinderbox.’

  In half an hour it was a straight choice for the men and women in the burning offices: to remain within and burn to death or to bolt and hope for mercy from the Indians besieging the place. Bright rectangles of light appeared as doors opened and figures were framed in the openings. There were whoops of delight from the Indians as they set to massacring those who surrendered. Abigail couldn’t bear to watch; she turned her back and huddled up in the blanket, trying to block her ears to the cries of those being killed. She dozed off again and when next she opened her eyes it was dawn.

  Saddler was sitting in just exactly the same position as he had been during the night, and as far as she could gauge he had not moved at all. He was still staring down intently at the scene below them. Abigail yawned and without turning round, Saddler said,

  ‘Don’t you stand up or show yourself against the sky. You want to come over here, then crawl on your hands and knees.’

  As Abigail wriggled over to where the man sat she became aware of the tantalizing smell of roast meat.

  ‘Are they having a barbecue down there?’ she asked and then a dreadful thought struck her. ‘That smell. It’s not . . . not people?’

  ‘It is,’ said Saddler grimly. ‘What d’you expect when a bunch of wooden buildings burn with everybody in them?’

  The smell of burnt meat mingled in the morning air with the fragrance of wood smoke and Abigail felt suddenly sick. She scrabbled across the ground to throw up some distance away.

  Saddler called over, ‘We need to move from here soon. You want any breakfast?’

  His matter-of-fact manner calmed her and she consented to share some bread and cheese. As they ate, she asked,

  ‘Will we carry on the same, now this has happened?’

  ‘No. The sooner we get clear o’ the Chickasaw nation the better. They’re right vexed with the white man just now. I ain’t about to head north from here. We’ll make north-east and work our way into the Choctaw territory.’

  ‘Was it the Chickasaw who killed all those folks last night?’

  ‘No, it weren’t. I knew when I saw that Chiricahua boy yesterday that something’ was amiss. I’ll take oath that those braves last night were Chiricahua Apaches. The Chickasaws led the cavalry away on a mad chase and then once they were out o’ the way, the Chiricahuas rode in. It was neatly done, I’ll allow.’

  ‘Neatly done? How can you speak so about a heap of murders?’

  Saddler said nothing for a spell and then observed,

  ‘Nobody asked us to come here and take their land. What they’re doing is no worse than what we all did in the War between the States. They just defending theyselves.’

  There was no sign of life in the burnt out buildings around the Indian Bureau. Whatever had lured the cavalry away, they had not yet returned. They were in for something of a shock when they did, because the Indians had made sure to burn all their tents and steal any stores left behind. The raid had, as Saddler remarked, been very neatly done.

  The horses had not wandered far and it did not take long to tack them up and make ready to break camp. Saddler wanted them to take a trail leading down from the plateau on which they were currently situated and which led east and then north, in the general direction of the Choctaw nation. Not knowing enough about the geography of the area to be able to offer an intelligent comment about this plan Abigail chose to remain silent.

  Saddler’s horse seemed a good deal happier being ridden than it had done being harnessed up and expected to draw a cart behind it. It w
as ready and raring to go. The pony which he had acquired for Abigail was a little slower and lacked the zip of the larger animal, but suited her well enough. Although, as she had told Saddler, she had once owned a pony of her own, she was but an indifferent rider and the pony, who sensed this, took full advantage of her inexperience, showing a tendency to stop and graze every few seconds.

  The man and his young companion made their way down the path leading off the mountains and Saddler was congratulating himself on having made the smart choice when, up ahead, he saw a sight which filled him with horror. A war party of braves was heading straight towards them. They were painted up and armed to the teeth and it could hardly be doubted that these were the very men who had made such short work of the nearby settlement not twelve hours since. Saddler reined in and desired Abigail to do the same, although her pony had stopped as soon as his horse had halted.

  ‘Are these men looking for trouble, would you say?’ asked Abigail nervously. Saddler hadn’t the heart to give her an honest answer, saying instead:

  ‘Let’s see what they have to say.’

  He surreptitiously loosened the pistol tucked in his belt. If it looked as though these boys meant mischief towards them, then he had no intention of allowing the little girl to be captured alive and treated barbarously. Better by far that he put an end to her life, than that he leave her at the mercy of such men. He had seen at first hand the way that the Apache treated their female prisoners.

  There were perhaps forty or more men in the band, which was fast bearing down upon them. To bring together such a large war party argued for careful planning; last night’s activity was obviously not a spur-of-the-moment attack. The Chickasaw and Chiricahua had seemingly buried the hatchet over their own long-standing differences and joined together to fight the common foe.

  Mentally, Ben Saddler cursed the greedy men who were apparently determined to drive the Red Man from the rest of his land. Even when the Indians had been confined to reservations and this supposedly ‘Indian’ territory, still they could not forbear to steal even the portions of land remaining to the Indians. No wonder they were on the war path!