Read Online Powder River by S.K. Salzer - Free Book Online

MacGill said was true, the twelve-year-old twins were out of control and it was his fault. He hadn’t given them a father’s love or a father’s attention. Sometimes he could barely even look at them. Even though he knew, in his rational, physician’s mind, that Caleb and Lorna were not responsible for Rose’s death, he had not been able to make his heart believe it, too.
    â€œPlease pack some food, Mrs. MacGill. I hope to be back with them tonight, but give us enough for two days, just in case.”
    * * *
    Dixon left at two o’clock, riding his mare, Alice, a long-legged sorrel with a flax mane and tail, and leading a mule with the food and a tent. The day’s sunny warmth held for the first few hours, and he had no trouble following the pony’s tracks. As he suspected, Lorna and Caleb were going north, probably to the Crow village. Even now, more than a year after leaving Paradise Valley, the twins were more Indian than white. Unlike Harry, neither had any interest in schooling—it was all he could do to get them to wear shoes.
    After about three hours, the wind acquired a sting and the first few flakes of the snow that had been threatening all day began to fall. Dixon turned up the collar of his sheepskin coat and hunched his shoulders, hoping he would not regret his decision to travel alone. Mrs. MacGill had tried to talk him into riding to Buffalo to enlist Sheriff Canton’s help, but Dixon refused. “There’s no time,” he said, “not if I’m going to catch up with them tonight.” Guilt and fear drove him to take speedy action, but now he was forced to admit another pair of eyes would have been useful, especially if they were in for a heavy snow.
    The sky was going red, and the valleys ahead were bathed in violet shadow. The snow was coming faster and the pony’s tracks were becoming harder to see. Dixon’s mind drifted back, sixteen years, to the first time he’d traveled this stretch of the Bozeman Road. It was late summer, and he rode with the three-man team of Montgomery Van Valzah, the barrel-chested civilian who carried the locked mailbag between forts Laramie and Phil Kearny, with stops at Fort Reno and Bridger’s Ferry. This was still Sioux country then, and the sixty-five-mile journey from Fort Reno to Phil Kearny was a perilous one, but all of Red Cloud’s painted warriors could not have stopped him, for Rose was at Fort Phil Kearny and nothing would keep him away.
    Even in the bright sunlight, the fort’s blackened skeleton held the power to chill him. Now, as he neared it again, Dixon found himself growing uneasy about confronting the ruins in the winter moonlight. Would ghosts of the slaughtered soldiers stand sentry in the ruined blockhouses? Would spectral voices echo through the gutted barracks and the quartermaster’s yard? A shiver ran through him, and not only because of the cold wind that blew down his collar.
    It was fully dark now and the snow was thick and blowing. Though he could no longer see the pony’s tracks, Dixon had no choice but to press on. The twins would follow the old Bozeman Road, he was confident of that. With any luck, Jesse, the over-burdened pony, would tire and the children would be forced to find a place to stop for the night. Had they brought bedrolls suitable for the weather? He thought so; Cal and Lorna were wild, but they weren’t stupid. No one had ever said that of them. They would build a fire if they could, though it would be difficult in this weather even for a seasoned outdoorsman.
    Dixon raised his eyes to the inky sky, trying to gauge the time. He reckoned it was getting on toward eight o’clock. The snow was letting up, but the wind was not. After one especially savage blast, Alice turned her head and gave him the side eye, as if to say, Do you have any idea what you’re doing?
    They crested a ridge and Dixon found himself looking down on the remains of