No Chance
by Carolyn Steel

Chapter 1
The rider tugged at the brim of his black felt hat. Mist settled like a layer of cloth over Mother Earth and her children. It wasn't rain, although it had been earlier. Heavy air, that's what it was, threatening to become heavier, wetter, colder.
Whispers of human suffering mingled and melted together becoming one solid, miserable sound in the darkness. Horses snorted as they sloshed through mud. Wagons rumbled and creaked. Cooking utensils clanked together in the faltering rhythm the rider had listened to for weeks. He tried to shrink his body away from the clinging wetness of his clothes and concentrated on the soft music made by the silver disks adorning his roan's bridle. A dog howled and the sound was lonely.
Eighteen thirty-six had not been a good year. It was as if Beelzebub himself sat on his shoulder stirring his wrath. He wasn't sorry he killed that drunken sergeant back in Pensacola. Only sorry he was caught up in the latest treachery of the white man, the forced march to Indian Territory. He wasn't particularly sympathetic toward the Creek Indians that shared his misery, either. They should have been prepared. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the relentless push of the whites would force them off their farms, out of their homes. It had been happening for at least the last twenty years. No one knew that better than he.
The rider gritted his teeth at the bitter memory and snugged his heel into the side of the roan. He felt as one with the large horse, trained to respond to every shift of his body, the slightest sound of his voice. He trusted this animal as he trusted no man.
The ground was bloated with constant winter rain and kneaded into a thick morass by the passing of hundreds of poor souls. Mud sucked at the roan's hooves and splattered several children. They looked up through young eyes grown old from hunger and despair. Pale lips shivering, they bent their heads and trudged on.
The rider cursed the children's parents for their stubborn faith that the latest treaty would be honored, that no one would remove them from their beloved land. Go far away, west of a river called the Mississippi, the Great White Father said. There the land was fair, the grass green and the water always ran. He glanced around at the gnarled trees lurking in the shadows of the night. They had lost their hair and been made ugly by winter's killing breath. He jerked the reins to circle the children and bumped another horse.
Impatient, he frowned at the young woman astride a chestnut mare. Startled, she grabbed the saddle pommel to steady herself. Silver bracelets around her wrist clinked when she pushed wet strands of black hair from her face to look at him. She blinked her lashes free of tiny droplets of moisture; then dropped her hand to rest on her swollen belly.
The rider murmured an apology and spurred the roan ahead. He glanced over his shoulder at the beautiful Indian. Her condition prevented the closure of her decorated coat. A beaten silver gorget necklace, the symbol of importance, hung about her neck.
Everyone suffers, he mused. High born, low born, young and old, as long as they are Indian. A tired smile crossed the young woman's face.
He nodded and turned his attention to several men struggling to free a small wagon mired in the mud. The narrow road was on a slight rise. The roan carefully plodded into a shallow gully of water and around the wagon. Large chunks of earth crumbled beneath the horse's hooves as it regained the road.
A young man held a blazing torch aloft. Its golden glow touched the heads and shoulders of those unfortunate enough to be afoot. Three women, wrapped in once colorful blankets that whipped about in the wind, held onto each other. An old man stopped to lean on his cane in a coughing fit.
The roan rider slowed his horse to a walk. He had no wish to remain in the circle of light and be illuminated. With the wide brim of his hat pulled low, he had remained hidden on the edges of this mass of moving humanity for weeks. Now, in a few days, they would be in Indian Territory and he would just keep moving - Texas maybe or California.
A gust of wind bit at his back and screamed in his ear. He turned in the saddle. The night air had been thick with the sounds of misery. However, the wind sounded particularly human just now, pitiful and agonized. He slouched back down and reminded himself that it was only Father Wind crying for his suffering children. Besides, human scream or wind, it was not his affair.
A woman stopped in front of him to readjust a decorated cradle board. He halted the roan. Flickering light ahead shifted and fell on the figure of a man mounted on a horse coming toward him. Brass buttons glittered briefly. The rider glanced behind him to see another soldier skirting the mired wagon. He swore beneath his breath at being caught between two soldiers. On impulse he reached to relieve the mother of her crying infant.
She looked up at him, reluctant to release her hold on the cradle board. His long braids fell forward as he put his hand on hers and bent close to say, "Mvnkat vnt cemvnicv hvnayv? Papucen vsayis."
With a sigh, the haggard woman nodded her consent to his offer of help. He pulled the cradle up to rest in the bend of his arm and bent over it. A small brown face with intense black eyes peered from the rabbit fur lining. Its tiny lips quivered with weary sobs.
"Shhh," he admonished with little hope of quieting the child. The rider nudged his horse to a walk again and searched in his pocket with his free hand. He took out a paper packet and ran his thumb under the edges of the fold to open it. Carefully he pulled loose a strip of black licorice with his teeth, refolded the paper and tucked it back in his pocket.
A private galloped past to meet the oncoming sergeant. The rider peered from under the brim of his hat to watch the two soldiers in animated discussion. He looked back down at the baby and pushed the end of the candy into the infant's mouth as the roan plodded toward the two men.
"I'm telling you, Sarge, the people aren't going to go any farther. The horse must have lost its footing when the woman fell. The worst of it is, she's in a delicate way."
The sergeant screwed his face up. A cigar-butt wavered between his clinched teeth as he sputtered. "Ah, shit, son, I told you don't let 'em stop for nothing. You hear me?"
He took the cigar out of his mouth and spit pieces of tobacco. Then pointing the chewed stub at the young man, he continued, "Now, get on up ahead and bring Russell and Jacobs back with you. And that son-of-a-bitch Seminole, too, what's his name?
The private frowned. "You mean the scout, Coache?"
"Yah, get him and be quick. The Captain don't reckon to make camp for another couple hours. We gotta keep these Injuns moving."
The rider shifted the cradle board in his arms and chanced a quick glance at the two soldiers as they passed. The private spurred his horse splattering the young mother, who walked beside the big roan, with mud and disappeared into the darkness ahead. The sergeant chomped on his cigar, looked from the woman to the rider; then noticed the stalled wagon and began yelling.
"Get that jackass going, 'fore I shoot her in her traces. Can't you see you're blocking the whole damn road." His burly voice receded as he moved away. "What's the matter with you idiots?"
The baby sucked on the limp strip of licorice with contentment. Black drool escaped from the corners of its mouth. It was none of his affair, the rider told himself again. These are not my people.
The sergeant's angry voice cut through the night. "Come on, pull, you good for nothin' hag." The rider grit his teeth. Keep in the shadows, keep to yourself. The soldiers think you are a Creek and the Indians, in their tightlipped way, will not tell them different.
He wiped spit from the infant's chin with a finger and angled the cradle so that it would shield his face from scrutiny. The young mother clutched the stirrup leather for support as she trudged next to his horse. Her calico skirt clung to her legs in sodden folds.
Four riders came trotting back down the line of immigrants toward him - three soldiers and the Seminole named Coache. Clever, he mused as the scout passed; the army uses a brother to watch a brother. Only these brothers, the Creeks and the Seminoles, hate each other. The scout, with his bright blue turban, red and yellow striped jacket, and knee-high beaded moccasins, was in colorful contrast to the dull blue of the soldiers' army uniforms. Unlike the Creek Indians he helped to guard, the Seminole carried a long rifle across his lap.
The young private's voice rose in bitter complaint as he checked his gun cartridge. "What the hell does Sarge think I could do? Tell that pregnant woman just laying there, all still like, to get up and keep walking? If I knew where the hell we was, I'd just as soon quit right now."
The rider turned to watch the men continue back down the trail. The once-mired wagon was now moving and blocked his view of a growing radiance in the distance. He settled back in the saddle and moved the cradle to rest on his other arm. The Creeks could expect no sympathy from the scout, and less from the soldiers. The plight of these people was not his, yet the thought of leaving an almost mother alongside the road stirred a vague memory. He felt a familiar flush of anger heat his bones.
The rider halted the roan as he wrestled with indecision. Peering at him from under the hood of a blanket, the woman reached for the infant he handed down. Her whispered thanks, "Mvto," was lost in the moan of the wind.

Flames flickered in the mist as a number of Indians with torches surrounded the soldiers. The orange glow gave an illusion of a circle of warmth. The rider pushed his horse into the fringe of light. A chestnut mare pawed the soft earth and knickered. Mud streaked her shoulder and front legs.
The rider stared down at the young woman lying in a shallow pool of dirty water. Fingers of blood traced a path down her face. An old Indian shivered as he knelt and forced his own blanket beneath the woman's head.
"Dammit boys, can't you keep 'em moving?" The sergeant stood from his examination of the Indian and waved the people back. Few moved. The three privates spread out and halfheartedly urged them away.
Sharp and forceful, the Seminole shouted his command to keep walking in the Creek language, "Yvkepes! Yvkepes!" He pranced his horse back and forth, pushing the Indians onto the road. The roan rider did not move.
Coache stopped to study the stubborn man and repeated, "Yvkepes."
In the Seminole language of the scout, the rider said in a low voice, "This woman must be important. Assure these people that she will not be left alone and they will move."
"Bah, they drop like flies in the first frost. If I did that with all who fall by the wayside there would be none left to reach Fort Gibson." Coache moved his horse next to the roan so that he sat face to face, knee to knee with the stranger. "Who is it that speaks to me as a brother?"
A wavering voice, half moan, half song, rose above the murmur of the gathering crowd. The two men turned to watch the old Indian kneeling in the mud. His eerie chant gathered force and he began to rock back and forth. The young woman's face contorted in pain as she clutched her swollen stomach.
Ignoring the scout's question, the rider continued, "Surely you see that her child comes. Leave a woman to help her and her husband to guard her."
Coache shook his head. "My heart is not stirred by a people who have hunted the Seminole since my Grandfather's time." He leaned forward; then frowned with a new discovery. The roan rider's blue eyes met Coache's gaze.
The scout moved the barrel of his rifle from the crook of his arm. "Why does a white man hide beneath the guise of an Indian, and seek to fool me with the inflections of my own language?"
Coache pointed the rifle at the stranger's chest and pushed open the shirt to expose a jagged scar. "Unless he is the bad half-blood known as," the corner of his mouth went up in a smirk, "No-Chance."

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