Allie Summer and Art Rogers entered Sheriff Dan Harmon’s office very early the next morning— exploded in, might best describe what Rogers did. Harmon was sitting at his desk and looked up.
“Sheriff!” Rogers said. “We were attacked last night by Indians! But this lady…this ranger…she saved us!”
Allie was shaking her head. It was time to set the record straight. “Not Indians.”
Harmon looked from Rogers to Allie, then back again. He appeared to be a little surprised to the see the ranger. “Ok, Art, start at the top. What happened?”
“It was nightfall,” Rogers began, “and I was just about finished with my chores. Rita was in the house, with the baby, getting supper fixed. All of a sudden, I heard these Indian drums, and then the singing…just like that girl, Molly, said she heard. An Indian song—“
“It wasn’t an Indian song!” Allie burst out, almost beside herself. “I know that song!”
“Well, you should know it,” Harmon said. “You’re Indian.” Some of what Allie had said hadn’t quite connected with him yet.
Allie was still shaking her head, and then she explained. “Sheriff Harmon, you’re forgetting something. I’m only half-Indian. My mother was Scandinavian, her parents moved here from Europe. When I was a child, my mother taught me a number of songs from the old country. That song I heard last night wasn’t Cheyenne, it came from Scandinavia!”
Harmon stared at Allie like she was out of her mind.
Allie started singing, beating time on Harmon’s desk.
Ay o lay lale lo e-la, lay-o
Ay o lay lale lo e-la
el-lay o lola lo e-la, lay-o
Ay o lay lale lo e-la….
“Yeah, yeah,” Art Rogers said, “that’s the song!”
“That song,” Allie said, “comes from the Sami people. They live in the far north of Scandinavia. They have a wonderful tradition of song and dance. My grandmother taught many of their songs to my mother, who passed them on to me. It’s not Cheyenne, or native to any tribe on this continent. None of them would know it.” Dan Harmon continued to ogle Allie as though she were from outer space. “Are…are you sure?”
“Oh, good grief, of course, I’m sure. I know the songs my mother taught me.” Allie then spotted something on a table behind Harmon—the butt end of an arrow. “Where did you get that?” she asked.
Harmon looked back, then reached around and picked up the arrow. “It came from the body of Ted Britz, the first rancher killed. I snapped it off to show Einarsen. Indian arrow.”
Allie sighed, totally frustrated now. “I don’t believe this. I’m surrounded by idiots, fools, and ignoramuses,” she said in disgust. “See these feathers?” She pointed at the turkey feathers at the base of the arrow. “Don’t you know enough to know they are used by Southern Cheyenne, not Northern Cheyenne? And these markings…they are from the southern tribe. My people—Northern Cheyenne—the people at the reservation, would never use these feathers or these markings on their arrows.”
Harmon was still trying to take it all in. “What are you saying, Ranger Summer?”
Allie exhaled and paused a moment, trying to gain some semblance of control. “Sheriff, whoever is doing this, whoever killed those ranchers and attacked the Rogers’ place last night, is trying to make it look like it’s being done by Indians. So they use this Indian-sounding song, which isn’t Indian at all. They know enough about the Southern Cheyenne—but nothing about the Northern tribe—to use arrows that would fool the ignorant.” Allie paused. “For some reason, there is a deliberate attempt to make the Northern Cheyenne, and especially the people on the Big Horn reservation, appear guilty of those murders. Somebody, Sheriff Harmon, somebody is trying to either start a war, or more likely, trying to find a reason to wipe out the Northern Cheyenne.”
Harmon was stunned. He couldn’t speak for several moments. Then, still unable to formulate much coherent response, he asked, “You’re absolutely sure that it couldn’t be somebody from the reservation?”
“Nobody on that reservation would know that song. I’d bet my life on it. And I can guarantee you that no Northern Cheyenne would ever use an arrow decorated like a Southern Cheyenne. Territory—their ways and ours—would absolutely forbid it.”
Harmon tried one last, feeble, attempt. “But couldn’t somebody on the reservation use the Southern Cheyenne markings to try to pin the blame on them, deflect suspicion away from the Northern tribe?”
“Sheriff Harmon, there aren’t any Southern Cheyenne up here! They’re all down in Indian Territory. And besides that, nobody around here seems to know that these arrow feathers and markings are from the Southern tribe. Pretty lousy job of ‘deflecting suspicion’ if that’s what it was.”
Dan just stared for a while, letting what Allie had said sink in. “What happened last night?” he asked. “I never got the full story.”
Allie told it. “I just happened to be in the area of the Rogers home. Pure, dumb luck, actually. But I heard the drums and I heard the music. It shocked me for a moment, but from what I had heard about the little girl’s experience, I knew what was happening. I was close enough to the ranch and rode there as fast as I could. It was full moon, so it was easy to see. I saw Mr. Rogers run into his house, and three men approaching him. I pulled my gun and started shooting at them. I didn’t hit anybody because I was riding at a full gallop, but I spooked them and they ran off. That’s pretty much it.”
Harmon glanced at Rogers. The rancher nodded. “She saved our bacon, Sheriff Harmon, no doubt about it.”
“Why didn’t you come in and report it last night?” Harmon asked.
“Why?” Allie asked simply.
Harmon opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, because he couldn’t think of an adequate response. He then looked at Allie, and asked the $64 question. “If not Indians…then…who?”
Allie gave the sheriff a wry smile. “I think the Romans gave us a clue long ago.”
“Oh? How?”
“With a question they asked. ‘Cui bono?’ Who benefits? That’s what we need to find out.”
Dan Harmon appeared very thoughtful. “Yes. That is a very good question.” After a few moments, he said, “I’d like to ride out to the Rogers place. I want to check the moccasin tracks, see if these are the same In—uh, people as before.”
“Ok. I’ll go with you. I didn’t have a chance this morning to look at the tracks, but as soon as we do that, I’ll get on their trail. You have tried to follow them before, haven’t you? Followed their horse sign?”
Harmon was a little embarrassed. “Uh…no. I’m not a very good tracker.”
Allie’s face clearly registered what was in her mind. “There’s no good tracker in this area? Surely somebody could have followed those horses.”
“I think Boomer Gulf, the marshal at Tin Cup, tried to track them after the Doughty murders, but he lost them in a stream.”
Allie nodded. Riding horses in a stream for a distance was a good way to throw off inexpert trackers. But it wouldn’t fool her. “All right. Let’s get started,” she said, and turned towards the door.
“Um, one more thing, Ranger Summer,” Harmon said, and he still looked a little sheepish.
Allie turned to him.
“This came for you this morning.” The sheriff handed her a telegram.
Allie read it. It was from McConnell, telling her to return to Port Station. She looked at Harmon. “You still don’t want my help?” she asked him.
He smiled. “Let’s stop at the telegraph office on the way out of town and I’ll withdraw the request to have you return to Port Station. I think we need you here.”
Allie didn’t smile back. “Yeah,” she replied, “I think you do, too…”
“Well, this is just another nail in the coffin to the ‘Indians are guilty’ theory,” Allie said.
“What do you mean?”
She and Harmon were at the Rogers ranch, which was about five miles from town, looking for sign of the men who come the previous night. They found plenty of moccasin footprints and they were examining them at that very moment.
“Every Indian tribe has its distinct moccasin style,” Allie said. She stooped and traced a moccasin track with her finger. “Some make their moccasins with square toes, some with round, some pointed, or with some other feature. These moccasins are very non-descript, probably bought at a local General Store and made by the owner’s wife. These aren’t Cheyenne prints, I can assure you of that.” She stood up and looked at Art Rogers, who was watching with interest. “Where is the arrow that was shot at you?”
“I don’t know,” Rogers replied. “I didn’t go look for it.” He pointed. “From the angle at which it was fired, it would have missed the house and gone out somewhere into the front yard. I can go search for it, if you want me to.”
Allie shook her head. “No, that’s not necessary. You’d only find the same kind of arrow that was used to kill the others. A Southern Cheyenne design.”
Dan Harmon stared at the distant hills for a moment. “Ranger Summer, do you understand what you are saying?”
“Call me Allie,” she said. “And, yes, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea. But I’d like to know what conclusions you are reaching.”
“Ok, I’m Dan,” the sheriff replied. “If Indians aren’t doing this…then…well, it gets back to your Roman question. Cui bono? Why would white men do it?”
“You tell me, Dan,” Allie replied. “Let’s examine it for a moment. Number one, why would somebody do this? Kill these white ranchers and try to pin the blame on Indians?”
Harmon was thinking. “Well, the fear has always been that, if the raids continue, people will leave and nobody will move in. The white man would clear out. That would seem to benefit Indians.”
“But that’s not taking it far enough, Dan. The white man will not leave forever. Eventually, whoever is doing this is going to be stopped and people will return. Now, who would benefit from that?”
Dan looked at her. “The people who sell the land. Real estate agents, bankers, maybe the railroad…”
Allie half-grunted. “Yeah. Follow the money. It wouldn’t be the first time the answer was found at the end of that trail.”
“People leave, the bank gets the land back…resells it, probably at a higher price. Faye Fontenot, president of the Arkmore bank, told me that land prices would be higher because of the risk factor involved. The risk of people getting scalped.”
Allie gave him a puzzled look. “There won’t be any risk once this problem is solved.”
Harmon gave her a sardonic grin. “Any excuse to raise prices.”
Allie made a face, but nodded. “I guess. Maybe you better go talk to your banker,” she said.
“I’d like for you to be there when I do,” Dan replied. “In fact, I’ll get the other lawmen in the area to join us as well. Let’s see, today is Saturday…I’ll try to set a meeting up for this coming Tuesday night. That’s the 21st. Do you reckon you’ll be back by then?”
“I’m going to follow these tracks, Dan, and see where they lead. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but that’s the first thing to do. This trail is warm and I need to get on it while it is.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, I don’t. No offense, but I work better by myself.”
“Ok,” Harmon said. “Try to be back in Arkmore by Tuesday…”
Allie Summer was an excellent reader of sign, something her father had spent countless hours teaching her. “Man always leaves some mark of his passing, Summer Rain,” Winter Wolf had told her. “It might be nothing more than the bent blade of grass, but man’s trail will show. Search for what nature would not do…”
She quickly found where the assailants had left their horses—in a little gully about 150 yards behind the house. A few moments’ investigation revealed four horses—unshod—and four men. One of them must have been beating the drum and singing… Following them proved not to be difficult at all. The terrain was as described before--mostly undulating, with a few sharp ravines occasionally breaking the pattern. With the little rain the area had had, the grass was dry and thin, so the hoof prints of the four horses were clearly visible.
But then, as Harmon had suggested, they tried the “hide our tracks in the stream” gambit. About five miles from the Rogers house, Allie came to a very narrow brook, no more than foot deep and 10 feet wide, and it wasn’t altogether clear in which direction the horses went. She stopped and let Ranger have a drink and surveyed the scene. The desperados had been travelling basically southeast since leaving the ranch; the stream itself flowed at a northeast/southwest angle. To her left—north—the land slowly ascended; there were some fairly steep hills in the distance, perhaps 20 to 25 miles away. It would be a good hideout, but rougher terrain to traverse. But the towns, fort, and reservation were all south of Allie’s present location, so she opted to go that way. She decided she’d follow the stream south for a few miles and then, if she didn’t find a location where the men had exited, she’d backtrack and go north. Tracking someone wasn’t always an exact science; it took time, patience, and often, trial and error.
As she slowly walked Ranger along the stream, looking carefully on both sides for indications where the four horses had exited, she analyzed what she knew and tried to reach what conclusions she could. She was thrilled by one thought: Swift Current obviously isn’t guilty of murder…but then, who? Who benefits? The idea that the banker, Fontenot—or maybe a banker in one of the other towns—was behind it seemed a bit surreal to her. Or at least, that he would go to such dastardly measures. If he wants more money, why doesn’t he just raise the interest rate, he doesn’t have to kill people…But Allie also knew that men, all through history, had done exquisitely vile deeds if they thought they could make a buck out of it. She smiled ruefully. Yeah, like kill Indians and put them on out of the way reservations. What’s a few white deaths thrown into the mix?...The explanation didn’t sit real well with her, but it was an explanation, and one that could be fitted to the facts. A banker would have money. He could hire renegades with no conscience to dress like Indians. People would easily accept that Indians were guilty; many would indeed be frightened and perhaps leave the territory, to come back later and purchase land at a dearer cost. Or, maybe the army could be convinced to just wipe out all the Indians. That would give the bankers all the reservation land to sell, too…She admitted to herself that she hadn’t liked Fontenot when she met him, but she hadn’t read murder in his eyes, either. Yet, many a ruthless killer has had the sweetest baby face…
There was one thought that nagged Allie continually, though…where did they learn that song?...
Within a mile and a half, Allie discovered where the four horses had left the stream. The men had tried to cover their tracks, wiping them away with a tree branch, and they had done a pretty good job; it would have fooled a non-expert. But Allie had also been looking for something like that, so she spotted it right away. Sure enough, within 20 yards of the stream, the hooves of four horses became clearly visible in the broken, dusty earth.
It was a hot day, with a brilliant sun and nary a cloud in the sky. And the land was monotonous. Yellow grass and brown dirt, with a mixture of saltbush and sagebrush, dominated a landscape that, as far as the eye could see, undulated like long, gentle waves of the sea. Some lazy, hazy mountains and higher elevations were visible in the purple distance. The occasional gully provided some respite to the monotony, if respite is the word. As Allie was coming out of one such gully, a prairie rattlesnake became offended by the ranger’s—and Ranger’s—presence, and shook its tail at them. Allie told it to shut up or she’d blow its head off. Apparently, the rattlesnake understood because he silenced his temper.The trail ended abruptly. Allie came to the edge of a ridge and stopped. Below her about 30 yards was a cul-de-sac in the shape of a horseshoe, perhaps no more than 75 yards wide, with its opening due south. She could see a stream flowing just beyond the upper left arm of the cul-de-sac; otherwise the land spread out in all its grass- and shrubland glory and splendor.
However, the most outstanding, or at least noticeable, feature about the cul-de-sac was the small cabin near the base. It was rather plain, maybe 20 feet by 20 feet square. From where Allie sat, she could see a back door and window, and, on the opposite side, a make-shift corral. Some thoughtful soul had gone to the trouble of putting a corrugated tin roof over part of it so that the horses could get out of the sun. And that’s exactly where the four horses of the corral were—under the tin roof.
It had taken Allie less than three seconds to make that survey, and so she quickly backed Ranger away from the edge of the ridge and out of site of the house. She hadn’t seen anybody in her quick examination, but the four horses implied four humans. She circled around to the east and found where the stream meandered in from the distant hills to the north. There were some trees and some grass, so she left Ranger there to drink, graze, and rest while she took her rifle and headed back towards the cabin.
The place where she had left Ranger was only about 150 yards from the northern edge of the ridge. Moving swiftly and silently, Allie covered that distance in less than a minute, the last five yards on her belly. She peeked over the edge of the ridge and saw the back of the house. She saw no movement, and she heard no noise—except the sound of a horse scratching itself against a post. She settled down to wait.
A half hour later, there had still been no sign or sound of human activity. Allie noticed that the corral seemed to have an overabundance of hay; four horses could eat on that much hay for a month. There was also a rather substantial, round, tin water trough at the east end of the corral. It was at least three feet high and six feet in diameter, and it was full of water. Allie frowned. For all the world, it looked like somebody had left those four horses alone—and intended for them to stay that way for the next few weeks.
But Allie wasn’t convinced yet that the house wasn’t occupied. She had the patience…of an Indian. But even an Indian’s patience runs out eventually. About an hour before dusk—or, some two hours after her arrival at the ridge—Allie was absolutely convinced that there was no one in the cabin. Well, almost. She decided it was time to investigate so, moving carefully, she made her way down the hill and to the back of the house. She leaned back against it, listening.
Nothing.
Crouching, she ran around the side and peeked in the window.
Not a soul to be seen.
Just to be sure, Allie looked all around, but saw nothing. She then walked around to the front of the house and—carefully—pushed open the door, standing to the side lest somebody started firing from a hidden location. There was no reaction from inside the cabin. Allie leaned her head around and looked inside.
The place was empty.
Frowning, she walked inside. Somebody had been here, and not long ago. Like, last night. Allie glanced around the cabin. To her left, there was a small stove with a coffee pot on top. She walked over and looked inside the pot, and saw a small amount of coffee. The fireplace had had a fire that morning—the ashes indicated that—and there were several blankets piled haphazardly in one corner of the one-room shack. A table with four chairs, some eating utensils, and a deck of cards. That was about it. She thought about it. It took me about five hours to get here…if I had come straight from the ranch, knowing where I was going…three hours tops…they got here last night…slept here…left today…went where?
Allie figured she learned all she could from the cabin so she walked out to the corral. The horses stared at her and didn’t seem to be frightened of her. Animals always seemed to sense when Allie meant them no harm. She walked up to one of the horses, talking soothingly to him, and lifted up his right front hoof. No shoe. The Lady Ranger wasn’t one to waste time, if she could help it, so she didn’t bother checking the other hooves or the other horses. A cursory examination of the corral told the story. She knew now what had happened.
The four raiders from the night before had ridden directly here after their aborted assault. They had spent the night, had breakfast, then exchanged their unshod horses for shod ones—there was an abundance of sign that denoted four other horses had recently been in the corral, and those four horses all wore horseshoes. The men had left on those horses.
Where did they go?
And more importantly, when would they come back? Tonight?
Allie had no way of knowing, of course, the answer to her first question—where did they go?—but she could find out. She’d just follow the tracks of the four shod horses, though she’d have to wait until tomorrow because darkness was going to settle in soon. The second question caused her brow to furrow; would they come back that night? And, Allie was convinced that, no, they would not. In fact, given the aforementioned amount of hay and water available, it was possible the men might not come back…until they are ready to raid another ranch. There was no telling when that would be, and Allie couldn’t afford the time to stake out the place indefinitely. But somebody would come back sometime, if for no other reason than to feed and water these horses. It was worth telling Sheriff Dan Harmon about and see if he could come up with a stakeout plan. She’d let him worry about it.
Allie decided she would spend the night on the ridge above the house—just in case the men did return that evening. If they didn’t, she’d simply find their trail and follow them tomorrow.
Well, I can shorten this part of the story immeasurably with a few sentences in summation. No, the men did not come back that night. Yes, Allie easily found their tracks leaving the cul-de-sac. Yes, she faithfully and successfully followed them.
She followed them…right to the town of Arkmore, where the tracks of numberless horses completely and forever obliterated the tracks of the horses Allie had been trailing.
Allie Summer had never been so disgusted in all her life.