have stopped and formed into a loose and porous circle into which the oxen and mule teams are being led. Early for camp, Kohn thinks. Two-thirty in the afternoon but perhaps they have been travelling longer than normal or need repairs. He glasses them again and sees why they have stopped.
“Jonathan,” he says, offering the scout the field glass. “Are they Indians? Can you see them?”
“Women and children. Old folk,” Jonathan says. “Maybe Sioux. Maybe not Sioux. No warriors with them. Maybe more up the trail. We will watch for them.”
It is the first time any of them has heard the Pawnee speak. He prefers to listen rather than talk. Even when he is drunk on whiskey, he does not often talk. The taakaar—the white soldiers—are the other way around mainly. He thinks they might better understand the country they are in, the enemy they are fighting, if they talked less and listened more. Still, he thinks the curly-headed corporal named Kohn may be piita, a warrior. There are not many of them among the bluecoats but there are some.
He takes the scope from Kohn and looks through it, though he saw the Indians at the pilgrims’ wagons while the others were still shaving and combing their locks. He assumes they are Sioux, or maybe Cheyenne, but he cannot be certain until he is closer. There do not appear to be any warriors among them. Some young braves perhaps but through the glass he confirms that they are mostly women and children mingling with the pilgrims. Some young boys on ponies, some travois pulled by dogs. Jonathan has heard talk of all the bands of the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne and Arapahoe meeting together in alliance to fight and drive the white soldiers from the Powder River valley. These could be a band or some families en route to such a meeting place. Perhaps the warriors are waiting further up the trail in ambush or maybe they are away hunting or on a war party, the scout thinks and wonders would the lieutenant let him take a woman or a child as a captive. His wife at home would like another child and he would like to bring her one. A girl child—for she has only sons—to help with the hides and the cooking and to keep her company when he is away. A pang of longing for his wife comes to him, a piercing arrow high in his chest. He doubts he will be let and it will be difficult to travel and scout with a captive in tow but then the lieutenant may well be dead before they reach the fort where they are headed. On this he would bet ten horses. The afterlife will not be kind to the lieutenant; he can see it in his face. He is destined to follow the Morning Star to the spirit village in the south. A cold place. Dark.
Rawson takes out his rifle.
“Put it away, Rawson. Unless I tell you,” Kohn says.
“You heard the Pawnee. They is Sioux most likely.”
“Put it away, Private,” Molloy says from behind his green spectacles. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Kohn smiles and urges his horse forward.
They arrive at the wagons and there is no threat from the Indians but consternation and ill temper among the travelers. Black clothes and round-brim hats and beards, the women in bonnets and plain dresses, the pilgrims running to and fro after a group of Indian children. One of the traveling women swings a broom at an Indian child who laughs and darts under the wheels of a wagon. Kohn notes a group of sullen boys on ponies, young, thirteen to fifteen years old perhaps, sitting just off the trail. They are speaking among themselves as if deciding on something. Kohn looks to Molloy and sees that he has noticed them as well but knows that there is little chance of him engaging them, even if they do become aggressive. There is too much about them that is similar to that day in Tennessee. Young boys acting as men.
“Good afternoon, friends,” Kohn says.
Instead of returning Kohn’s greeting, one of the pilgrims says, “Please, they steal from us. Drive them away from us please. They—”
The man—in his thirties with blond hair and the black clothing of an Amish or Mennonite—turns and catches an Indian boy of four or five climbing down from the back of one of the Murphy wagons with a fistful of brown sugar. The pilgrim holds