Shade and his horse both tilted their head to the side as they heard the definitely feminine voice call out weakly. One of the missing women. Shade released the reins of his horse but still kept his hand close to the butt of his holstered revolver as he moved back to the wagon. With his left hand he pulled back the tattered remains of the wagon covering.

He expected to see a white woman, probably wounded, likely scalped. He wasn't prepared for what he saw. The woman was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and olive toned skin. For a moment he thought she was a Native until his gaze swept over the unusual clothing. Flamboyant, colorful, not buckskin, nor the plain cotton gingham that some Native women chose to wear to blend in with their settler counterparts.

As the woman half turned to stare at him, he realized her hair was tied to one of the wagon's bands.

“Witko,” he mumbled as he hoisted himself into the wagon and crouched down next to her.

He could tell by her expression that she recognized the name.

Shade had heard of this woman. She was some gypsy roamer, lost her husband a while back and made her way and reputation by herbal healing, snake oil medicines, and fortune telling. He had never met her, but had listened to the tales told by soldiers, trappers, even some of the Natives who held her to be a bit touched.

That would explain why she was virtually untouched and tied in a show of, saw you, acknowledged you, and not going to touch you, bondage.

With a pull of his knife, Shade edged his blade against the thick strands of hair double knotted.

“Wait, nono, please, don't cut my hair.”

Shade debated for a moment, staring down at the pleading eyes. He was surprised at the beauty of the youthful face that half-turned up at him. He had expected the face of the woman to match the legend of the woman. Or at least the legend of an old Romanian etch-lined and wrinkled gypsy woman who mumbled over foggy crystal balls, and reeked of strings of garlic hung from the sides of a wagon.

This woman was young, had high cheekbones, a small straight nose, and full sensual lips. Her eyes, rounded, and long lashed, were such a deep brown that they were nearly black. She could almost pass for a Native woman except that her face was more oval, her lips more full. And now the face was contorted in a wordless plea.

With a shake of his head, Shade sheathed his knife and began the tedious task of tugging, twisting, and untangling the thick locks of hair. On one level he was aware of how soft the strands were and how they smelled of soapwort and lavender. On another level he was fighting the urge to just cut it and be done. He wanted to move on from here as soon as possible and he was aware that he wouldn't be able to just leave this woman here – alone and without a way to get back to a fort or town, neither of which was close enough to walk to.

It took him over twenty minutes to finish the task, a time in which neither he nor the woman spoke. Shade was aware that she was measuring him up, as well as listening for any return of the attackers. Outside of the wagon he could hear his horse making a leisure pacing around the decimated camp. Dead bodies didn't bother his horse, she had seen her share of death, and been ridden in a lot of battles before she found her way to Shade.

Nanabah was getting thirsty and they had been on their way to a nearby canyon where there was fresh grass and clean water – if he didn't finish up soon, she would leave without him.

She would return of course, as her name – she who returns from battle – meant, but he didn't like the idea of hanging around here waiting, or walking.

As the last of the tied tangle was freed, Shade nodded to the woman and jumped down out of the wagon.

“Grab what you need,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way over to his mare who called out to him with a high-pitched whinny. He gathered up her reins and led her over to the wagon, quietly soothing her in Sioux, assuring her that they would soon be on their way to water. As he looped the reins to the ring on the side of the wagon, he called out to the woman again.

“Name's Shade. Horse is thirsty and I ain't got much water left.”

Shade tugged his canteen from its tie to the saddle horn, pulled the cork, took a swig, then passed it over to the woman. “Here. Be quick, I want to get on out of here.”

The grim trail of smoke rising up in the morning sky alerted Shade to the fact that once again, something was wrong. Wrong things had become an almost daily event out here now. He stood next to his horse, loosely holding the reins as the beast grazed on the dew damp grass and scrub and stared at the horizon line.

He squinted his eyes as he tried to make out the distant shapes nearing the bottom of Split Rock. There appeared to be twenty or so riders, Sioux he thought. And moving away from the column of smoke.

Shade gathered up the reins of Nanabah, his blue roan mare and hoisted himself into the saddle. He gave her a pat on the shoulder, then leaned back and gave a slight kick to urge her forward.

Nanabi's ears twisted back and she nickered as she caught the smell of the smoke and realized her rider's intent. For a moment she hesitated, back stepped and shook her head, the dark mane rippling down her shadowy sides.

“I know girl, but we gotta check.”

He rode slowly, giving more time for the Lakota warriors to move on. He knew that if he saw them, they also saw him, but he wasn't too concerned. He traded with the natives, allied himself with the Lakota, fought alongside them against the Cree once; they weren't interested in him, only in the white wagons that continued to invade their territory and force them into retaliating against broken promises and treaties.

The recent treaty of 1868 was supposed to end the fighting. Whites were warned to stay out of the Indian lands and the government promised to enforce the borders. But the Oregon trail cut across this area and despite the warnings, some folks still tried to cross the lands. The army had deserted their line of forts and only a few weeks ago, the natives had celebrated by burning all of the abandoned buildings. It was thought to be a time of newly gained freedom from the never-ending trail of the white snakes that devoured everything in their sight. It wasn't though, and what the soldiers didn't enforce, the native warriors did.

As Shade neared the smoking remains and charred wagons, his eyes scanned the area for survivors. It appeared to have been a small group of travelers. Out of the four wagons, only one wagon still stood nearly untouched, the others were smoldering or smashed in. A few horses lie dead in their rigging, but the rest were gone. No doubt spoils for the victors.

Shade guided his horse into the half-formed ring, then dismounted, and signaled his horse to stay. Nanabah uneasily began to yank on a tuft of dried grass as Shade began to search the battle field. He paused near the first two bodies he approached. Two middle-aged men, one riddled with arrows, the other with bullet holes laid sprawled in the dirt in the middle of the half-formed circle of wagons.

As Shade flipped the arrow riddled body over with a nudge of his boot, to his surprise, he could tell that the man was Shoshone. The man wore a trapper's shirt, but it was ornately sewn with colorful beading of Shoshone design. His pants were simple buckskin and his feet were clad in moccasins that were outlined with the same beading as his shirt. The thick black hair and brown hues of his skin left no doubt of his heritage.

Shade stepped over to the other man, but quickly determined that this man was white. Multiple bullet holes pocked his body and his swollen tongue protruded past gaping lips as if he was shouting a protest as his brutal death. Brothers by marriage possibly, and definitely in blood, he thought as observed their once back-to-back position as they made a valiant last stand.

He turned from these two and carefully began a check of the wagons. Their first two were burnt to smoldering heaps of bolts, boards, and ash. The third one still stood despite one wheel busted and laying on the ground, which left the wagon at an odd stilted angle. Three more bodies, two white men and one more Shoshone man hung over the tongues and sides of the smoldering wreckage. The native man's shirt appeared to have been slashed with a knife and hundreds of small blue beads littered the ground below. This man's body was skewered with arrows too, but also several bullet wounds, one which had burst though the front of his throat, nearly decapitating him.

Shade shook his head. Mixed-bloods, he wondered to himself as he crossed to the fourth wagon that still flickered with dying flames.

The once white canvass was in tatters, and smoke singed, revealing the hard curves of the metal bands fastened to the sides of the wagon.

Shade hoisted himself up on a wheel rim and stared down into the half shell of the wagon. The bodies of three teens, two males, one female, were splayed out along the bottom of the wagon. The two youths, a brother, perhaps a boyfriend – lay on either side of her as if had they defended the girl until they drew their last breaths. Painful ones he surmised by the number of bullet holes riddling both their bodies. They fought hard. They died hard.

Some of the boards beneath them were charred and by the blistered flesh along one of the boy's hands, he had desperately tried to quell the flames with his own body.

His shirt was half melted into the chest on the left side, the material on the right side torn as if he, or someone, had attempted to pull the shirt off and failed. It appeared the pain of the burns was ended by the huge gaping bullet hole through the boy's heart. The chest and abdomen were coated in congealed and charred blood; and from what Shade could tell, the chest wasn't even mature enough to sport hair yet.

The other boy had half his face blown off, a skeletal jaw bone protruding from the wound, and an eyeball swinging down by a thin bit of sinew. On the far side of the wagon's interior Shade could see splatters of brain tissue and flesh.

Between the two males, was the body of the girl. Her blue eyes stared endlessly upward toward the sky, a crimson mottling across the front of her gingham dress. She had been shot once in the abdomen, and twice in her right arm. The shoulder was twisted back, nearly behind her as if she was stretching to brush her hair, but instead of a brush, her fingers were knuckled around a revolver. The weapon appeared old and while still usable, not considered valuable enough to be taken from a dead woman's hand as a trophy. It had been left in her young hand, almost as if in tribute to her brave fighting spirit.

Interwoven in young woman's inky black hair was a red bow that ended in a bright array of bead work.

Mixed-bloods for sure he confirmed to himself. Ones that didn't really seem to fit in either world and for they and theirs, as likely to fall prey to white and native alike.

Shade stepped down from the wagon wheel and surveyed the encampment again. Those men must be these children's fathers. But, where were the women, the mothers and wives?

Retracing his steps back to the two men lying in the dirt, he scoured the ground for footprints. Men's boots and moccasin tracks lead from the wagons to this area where the men made a desperate last stand. Perhaps hoping to draw the attackers away from the youths in the wagon.

Shade kept his eyes to the hardened ground as he paced the area until finally he found what he was looking for. Scuffed moccasin tracks, smaller than the boot prints, several of them moving back and forth between two of the wagons. Likely loading and reloading for the men, defending the young also, fighting for their families until – here...Shade crouched once more and skimmed his hand along a cluster of feminine tracks interspersed with horse tracks. Indian ponies for sure, no signs of metal shoes.

As he stood he stared over toward Split Rock where had seen the retreating warrior band. The women, likely native themselves, had been taken. Either to be punished for marrying with white men, or to be traded back or hostaged to their own tribes, he couldn't know for sure.

With a sigh, Shade swiveled his sights over to the last wagon. The canvas had several bullet holes, and a few arrows protruding from the weathered boards along the sides. The horses were gone, the traces hung empty, and abandoned reins flapped in the wind. But the wagon didn't show any of the ransacking or burning that the rest had undergone. It was set further away from the others, as if it had joined the hastily made circle at the last moment, or was intentionally left out of the ring.

Shade slowly pulled his gun from the holster and clicked his tongue to signal Nanabah to follow. The horse's head jerked up and with a jangle she stepped forward, her head shaking side to side to protest. The horse knew the smell of blood and smoke and paced along behind her owner in protesting unease.

Not knowing what he might find in the last wagon, Shade wanted to be sure his mount was close by in case he needed to make a fast retreat.

Could be that this wagon was left relatively unscathed because someone inside had a sickness, smallpox, or dysentery.

Perhaps it was even someone who was wasicu witko as the natives called it, the white-man madness.

White people who seemed so overwhelmed by the expanse of the west, of the inhospitable conditions, the drought, the heat, the bitter cold, the thousand and one ways to die out here, that their minds seemed to literally unhinge.

If it was the wasicu witko, he risked being shot himself. He'd seen people who went so mad they didn't even know their own wife or husband. They were lost in a dark world of their own and most simply took their own life, or wasted away from dehydration or starvation.

Shade c*cked his revolver as he neared the wagon and paused. He could hear a sound from within the canvass closed interior. Was that a voice? A whimper? Moaning?

Behind him he could hear Nanabah snort as her nostrils flared. She could smell something pungent, tangy – Shade could too, but he couldn't fix on what the smell was.

At the sound of the snort, the voice within the wagon fell silent. For several minutes there was only the sound of the wind and metal rigging clanging and Shade began to doubt what he heard when he caught a sighing ripple, the tiniest shuffle of movement, then silence again.

Sh*t, this was going to be a stand off. Whoever was in that wagon didn't seem to be inclined to come out or look around, and he sure as hell didn't want to look inside and risk getting his head blown off. He had to make up his mind, pursue his curiosity, or cut out now, mount up, and ride away. If whomever was inside was someone the Indians wanted to avoid, he felt pretty sure that he did too.

He kept hold of his revolver and slowly reached back to grab hold of one of his horse's reins. His mare stepped sideways, positioning herself so he could step back and mount her. Shade had just backed up to the side of the horse and was about to lift one leg into the stirrup when he caught the whispered words of a woman's voice saying,

“Wait...don't leave me.”