The first two men were easy to dispatch. They had been standing one on either side of the transport's camp, staring out into the subdued light. One had propped his musket against his leg as he blew hot air into his hands, rubbed them together and then pressed them closely under his armpits. Stamping his feet and swaying from side to side, he had reached down to pick up his rifle when a force hit him across the back of the head. He was lowered to the ground by a strong pair of hands. He hadn't seen or heard the silent warrior who, with his body bent low to the ground, had crept up behind him and then caught him as he fell. Okomi, the youngest Ute in Adam's party, made sure the man was completely out. He then claimed the sentry's rifle before heading towards the wagon which held the captives.
At the same time as that soldier was being dealt with, Adam had selected his victim. This man was a lot closer to the wagons than the first, and a lot more jumpy. He paced nervously backwards and forwards, his head swinging sharply around at the slightest sound. Adam guessed it was the man who had been riding support on the wagon that contained the Ute. The man kept his back to the wagons at all times, staring out wide-eyed into the overcast gloom. It was all the opening Adam needed. Bending his knees, he lowered himself slowly to the ground, and keeping one eye on the nervous infantryman, he swept his hand out until he found what he was looking for: a small pebble with enough weight to make it fly. He rose upwards and edged closer towards the lone man. Adam then raised his arm and quickly threw the pebble into a nearby huddle of rocks. He listened for the tiny clatter as the pebble tumbled down amongst the boulders. It had the desired effect. The man swung his rifle in the direction of the sound, his body frozen on the spot.
By now, Adam was only a matter of feet from the sentry. Crouched low on the balls of his feet, all his weight suspended over a single fist placed before him on the ground, he waited for the man to move. His other hand grasped the hilt of the Indian blade he wore in a sheath at his waist. His muscles were tense, his body taut and ready to spring into action. Adam kept his breathing controlled and hushed; his eyes didn't blink as they stayed pinned to his victim. He was putting into practice everything Cameahwait had told him about hunting; whether it be man or beast, the principles were no different.
And then the man moved: one tentative step towards where he had heard the unsettling sound. He took another step. Adam sprang. With the sentry's attention fixed on an imaginary danger in front of him, he wasn't aware of the much greater threat behind. A hand fastened unforgivingly over his mouth and the other was around his chest, pulling him down backwards to the earth. Once the man was flat on his back, Adam shuffled around, his hand still firmly plastered over the sentry's mouth. He knelt on the man's chest and with his free hand he grabbed first one floundering arm which he shoved under his knee; then the other arm was similarly captured. He pushed his weight forward securing the sentry against the ground. Then, with a flash of movement—and a resultant sharp intake of hot muffled breath beneath Adam's palm—the cold Indian blade was pressed against the man's exposed throat. The piercing steel edge drew a miniscule drop of blood from the sentry's skin. At the feel of the wet fluid trickling down his neck, the man's eyes widened into two white spheres, bright in the dimness of the light. His eyeballs raced rapidly as he tried to focus on his assailant.
Adam leant over him, his head only inches away from the frightened soldier's face. Hot breath from the man's dilating nostrils puffed rapidly over the back of Adam's hand as the sentry panicked. Adam shushed him. "Ssssshhh." And again. "Ssssshhh." Adam glanced around, making sure his actions had been unobserved. After a minute or so, when no sounds could be heard from the wagons—and during which the sentry's breathing had slowed a fraction—Adam lifted his blade, flipped it over in his hand and with a force harder than he had intended, whacked the hilt into the soldier's temple. The man's eyelids flickered briefly and with a sigh he was unconscious.
There was one last sentry, standing alert and attentive in his position. It had fallen to Hanska to take this man out. It was clear, however, that this soldier wouldn't be as easy a quarry as the previous two. As Adam jumped to his feet and moved towards the wagons, he could hear scuffling and harsh muted breathing. Adam peered around the edge of the nearest wagon and in the steadily growing light of the dawn he could see two men struggling together, one desperately trying to throw the other off his shoulders. Hanska had his hand over the sentry's mouth and his other arm clasped around the man's chest, but whereas Adam's target had gone down easily, this man was clearly putting up a fight. Both men's feet were scrapping against the hard earth, sending clouds of dusty sand into the air. Hanska's legs were being lifted off the ground in the sentry's attempts to loosen the heavy weight which had fixed itself to his back.
Adam dropped to his haunches and peered through the wagon's wheels to see whether there was any movement from the inner circle of the camp. He could see blankets being pushed back from a couple of the men. He threw a desperate glance at his friend struggling with the sentry. He twisted on his heels and looked through the vehicles' wheels towards the wagon he knew housed the captive Indians. He could see bare legs and moccasin-clad feet besides it. If everything was going to plan that should be Akando and Okomi. Adam could see another man, seated with his back up against the front wheel of the wagon. It was a soldier, the man who had been guarding the captives. He wasn't unconscious though. He had been gagged with his own bandana and tied to the wheel with cords of rawhide. Adam twisted around to look at Hanska again, and to his dismay, he saw the tables had been turned. Hanska was lying on his back with the sentry on top of him clawing at his eyes. There was sudden shouting from the inner encampment and Adam knew for certain they had been discovered.
Adam was ripped in two. His friend was doomed without his help, and yet he also needed to free his wife and child. But then gunshots rang out. He peered quickly around the side of the wagon and could see the sentry was on his feet and dashing towards the safety of the inner circle. Puffs of gun smoke drifted out of the rocky ridge where Hoss and Joe had taken up positions. Hanska jumped to his feet and ran towards Adam. Together they careered around the perimeter of the camp towards the wagon holding the captives. Okomi grabbed the Spencer carbine he'd retrieved from the first sentry and took aim at the men stirring in the camp. Some didn't have time to grab their weapons; they scrambled to their feet, diving to take cover as far from the ricocheting bullets as possible. But then shots were being fired from the rocky ridge. With bullets coming from two sides, the men swivelled around in the confined space frantically searching for a place to conceal themselves. A couple of soldiers managed to dive into the back of a storage wagon. Others could only throw themselves on the ground and hope the bullets would miss.
In the meantime, Akando had slashed a hole in the canopy of the captives' wagon. Arms reached up to help the young men who had been sent to look for Adam as they squeezed through the gap. Hanska slashed through the bindings around their wrists as they landed lightly on the sandy earth. They grinned at Adam when they saw who was helping them flee. One of the men who turned to view his liberator widened his eyes with surprise at seeing his friend, Liwanu. It was Nashoba, the Ute who had accompanied Adam on his desert expedition to cleanse him of his white blood. Adam grinned at the man's shocked expression. "I know, you were sent to rescue me, and I'm rescuing you!" Nashoba grasped his friend's forearm. "The spirits watch over you, Liwanu." Then Nashoba was following the other young men to the safety of the rocks. With the soldiers otherwise occupied, the men ran to the rocky ridge, vanishing as quickly as they had appeared amongst the narrow ravines and boulders. Adam pulled himself up the side of the wagon and poked his head into the wagon's interior. His heart sank. There was no sign of Wanekia or his daughter. And Cameahwait was missing too. As the last young man jumped lightly to the ground, Adam grabbed the top of his arm and swung him around to face him.
"Where's Wanekia? Cameahwait?"
Okomi had long since run out of ammunition for his carbine and it didn't take long for the soldiers to realise the firing had stopped from the captives' wagon. The men who had been weaponless began to dash for their arms. The Ute boy pulled Adam down to the ground as the soldiers started to regroup and return fire in their direction.
"Cameahwait, he would not go without a fight. He was hurt. Wanekia and your child, she stay with him."
Adam's expression darkened into a fury. "They're still at the fort?"
The boy ducked as a bullet glanced off the side of the wagon, burying itself deep into the ground by his feet. He nodded furiously.
"They are back, back, where they keep us prisoner."
Okomi and Akando had run for the safety of the ridge, leaving only Adam, Hanska and the last Ute boy at the wagons.
"Hanska," Adam caught his friend's attention, "tell my brothers to go. Tell them not to wait. All of you, get away from here." Hanska's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Go!" Hanska and the boy didn't move. "Go! Go!" Adam hissed at them. After a short hesitation when Adam gesticulated at them to move, they rose to their feet and ran off in the direction of the rocks; Hoss and Joe's barrage kept the men in the camp pinned down in the inner circle.
Adam scratched at his tattoo. "Goddam you! You made me believe." He hung his head, knowing there was only one thing he could do now. Breathing heavily, he heaved himself over to lean against the wagon's rear wheel. He glanced over at the man still gagged and tied, and couldn't help but snort at the situation he now found himself in. A wry smile played across his lips.
The firing from the rocky ridge had abated. He could picture his brothers in a state of confusion, wondering why he hadn't run to the safety of the rocks with the other Indians. He hoped they wouldn't do anything stupid. A silence fell over the camp. But then a strong voice called out.
"You there! I know you're there, I can see you. Come out, nice and slowly now."
Adam stayed where he was. He could see the sun crawling over the distant hills; the greyness of the pre-dawn evaporating in the buttery light of the sunrise. When he had stripped his shirt off that morning, the cold nip in the air had made his skin tighten as goose-bumps had risen over his arms and chest. But it had been fleeting. And as the war paint had been rubbed deeply into his flesh by his Ute brothers, he had no longer felt the chill. Instead his body had seemed to burn with the power of the bison that imbued his soul. Now, lying back against the wagon's hard spokes, he felt as if he had been manipulated by the Ute's Great Spirit. It had used the desperate need he had to find his wife and child to serve a purpose: to free the young warriors. But his own sweet family had not been in the wagons. Now Adam felt cold, despite the heat from the fledgling sun. He stayed slumped, squinting against the penetrating brightness.
He heard more voices. "Mebbe he don't know English. Mebbe he cain't understand ya, lieutenant."
Adam could hear feet moving hesitantly towards him. The barrel of a rifle moved slowly into view around the side of the wagon, soon followed by a cautious soldier gripping his weapon tightly in his hands. He inched over to Adam, his rifle aimed squarely and surely at the slumped man. He eyed the Indian knife which lay abandoned by Adam's side and, edging over, he quickly kicked it out of reach. The soldier called out and then there were men all around Adam, their rifles pointing at his chest and head. With them was the young officer.
"Untie Brewer," he nodded towards the man still tied and gagged at the wagon wheel. One of the soldiers obliged. He dropped to his haunches in front of Adam. "And now you, sir, why are you still here?" He looked in the direction the escapees had run. "You could have got clean away. You don't look injured. What's it all about?"
Adam pulled his gaze away from the brightening vista. The heat was starting to permeate into his bones. He met the officer's puzzled scrutiny with a tilt of the head as he contemplated the man before him. Just like Dean, Adam thought, recalling the upright young lieutenant who had rescued him from the desert a month earlier. The officer before him looked to be in his late twenties, and he certainly looked the part with his expensive uniform, albeit somewhat scuffed and dirty after the recent gunfight. Adam's top lip rose in a sneer. They seemed to cut young military officers from the same cloth: educated, prideful, vain. An east coast education was no guarantee they would be good leaders of men, however. And although Dean had seemed overly concerned with keeping up a meticulous appearance, he at least had garnered the respect of his men. Adam doubted whether that was the case with this fellow.
The men with their guns trained on his body were jittery, flicking their gaze between the surrounding country—on the lookout for further trouble—and the Indian on the ground before them. Slowly, so as not to cause a fidgety finger to tighten around a trigger, Adam placed his inner wrists together and held his arms out towards the officer. The man was startled.
"You want me to detain you?" He glanced over his shoulder at the men standing behind him. "This is all very peculiar." He rose to his feet. "Well, do as he asks, tie him up. Put him in the back of the first wagon." He looked up at the heavily slashed canopy of the wagon that had held the captives. "This one's no good for anything right now." He shook his head. "They'll be hell to pay when we get back to the fort."
"We goin' back to Addington, sir?"
"We are, Corporal Spellman."
"But our orders was ta go to Boyd's Creek."
"Little point in that now, is there?" He sighed heavily. "We need to get this man back to face charges. Spellman?" The officer nodded towards Adam who hadn't moved from his position on the ground. Spellman pushed his rifle's strap over his shoulder, reached down and with one hand grasping Adam's upper arm, hauled him to his feet. None too gently, he pushed Adam around the outer rim of the wagons, making him stumble as he did so. Adam stayed upright but earned another push in the process. Spellman slammed him harshly against the wooden panelling of the wagon that was going to be Adam's prison for the next couple of days. Adam gritted his teeth against his rough handling; he knew he couldn't let his temper get the better of him. Spellman wrenched his arms back—Adam winced at the sharp pull in his shoulders—and tied his wrists together. He was bundled up into the wagon and the canopy flaps secured. This is becoming a habit, thought Adam. This is the second time in a month I've been tied up in the back of an army wagon.
As the camp broke up, and the mules were harnessed to the vehicles, Adam shifted to lean against a crate. He had had no choice in what he did. He could have escaped with the rest of the Indians, changed back into his western clothing and ridden hell for leather to the fort. But there was next to no chance of Kia and Mimiteh being handed over into his care. And Cameahwait would be left to languish in the fort or would be relocated to a reservation. No, in Adam's mind he had only one course open to him. Where his young family went, he would go too. And if that meant the reservation, then so be it. He could only hope the war paint which covered his face and body lasted long enough for him to maintain the ruse that he was Ute. He settled back against the crate and closed his eyes; his last vision before the gentle rocking of the wagon lulled him into sleep was of Kia wrapped in furs in their lodge, her hair loose around her bare shoulders. Adam drifted away with a faint smile curving his lips.