by Emilia Loft
“Ruby!” He barked to the woman where she stood, still caught in some sort of dilemma, but the decision was made for her, the young man shaking his head. She mounted up beside Alistair, dead fear in her eyes and Casper got the distinct impression this would be the last he ever saw of her.
The whole village began to churn, getting things, preparing for something, moving out as one into an open space. They were escorted along to the sound of singing, dark eyes everywhere shining with cruel smirks, taunts, laughing. Lisa was shaking beside him and Casper put his arm around her.
As they came into the field, the people moved about, forming two loose parallel lines, jostling each other for space while the children crouched in the dirt making little piles of stones. A pallet of sorts was brought out for the chief and placed at the far end of the line while the prisoners were held back. Bobby looked grim and clutched at Meg.
Just then Casper felt a tug at his sleeve, turning to see a young girl with strangely familiar features. “They make you run.”
She had grown since he’d last seen her, still skinny, but taller and undeniably more like a young woman than the tomboy he’d slipped candy to all those months ago. The relief at this familiar face was nearly painful.
“What do you mean?”
“The Walking Snake want us to kill or make you yetse na. Seven Rivers knows men, he see in the-“ and she poked him in the chest for the word she didn’t have. “If more white men come, they come for Seven Rivers. Not refuse gift, not bring white guns here if kill you, so you run. You live, you free. You die, it is will of Spirits for Walking Snake son.”
The chief began speaking and the crowd roared in excitement, and they could all see now the cudgels, the sticks and leather lashes and heavy rocks that every single one of those people were brandishing in the air.
“Christ it’s a gauntlet.” Bobby growled.
The Indian man who had facilitated their exchange was suddenly by their side. The crowd had settled only a little, waiting for the action to start. He was speaking to them now, and it was a damn good thing the young girl had already explained most of it, for in his terror Casper had missed most of what he’d said.
“You place this in hand of Seven Rivers, it is done.” He held up a large, glossy black crow feather. “Only ends with this.”
Lisa elbowed her way out of Casper’s arms and stepped right up to the man.
“Let me get this straight, I run through that, put that feather in the chief’s hand and I’m free? I can walk out of here back to my son?”
The man nodded, “You will be as us, free.”
Not a single person there was prepared for the swiftness with which Lisa snatched the feather from his hand and ran with skirts raised like the devil was after her. The crowd had been waiting for a signal, a word to begin, but by the time they realized what was happening Lisa was already halfway through. The rocks flew harmlessly behind her, the sticks just missing her legs. A few of the people crowded at the end managed to land a few blows but they must not have been too direct as it didn’t slow her once. The crowd was already screaming in anger by the time she made it to the chief and handed him the feather.
It was a tense moment as they watched the chief study Lisa, then the crowd. It didn’t take a translator to understand many of them were calling for her to run again. But he held up a hand and everyone fell silent. He nodded at Lisa and spoke a word.
“He accepts.” The Indian said, and all three of them breathed a heavy sigh of relief. It was short lived. The feather was returned, and Casper knew that this time the crowd would be ready, and furious. With a shaking hand he took the feather.
“I’ll go.”
Meg and Bobby watched with chests tight as Casper made his way to the start. He stood, letting the crowd scream and curse him while he sent a prayer to the Heavens. A slim hand covered his own and he looked down at it, then up at the face of the young girl.
“Run fast.”
So he did. They were on him immediately, rocks flying from every direction, lashes raining down on is back while the women tried to trip him up, shoving their long branches between his legs. He could feel the damage but he was too flooded with fear to register the pain. A young child of no more than ten threw a perfectly aimed rock at his head, felling him in a flash. The blows landed faster, harder, the screams for blood ringing in his ears. Somehow he pushed up, stumbled, then threw himself forward and let the momentum take him the last few feet.
Good God he’d made it. It was almost hard to believe, but there was the chief and Casper watched himself place the feather in his hands. The old man nodded and spoke that same word, it was done.
But it wasn’t, not when Casper made his way back to his friends and realized suddenly what the others had already figured out. There was no way Bobby could make it, not with his leg. Casper limped up to the group just as the Indian was handing over the feather. Meg was screaming at him, then at her husband, pleading that it wasn’t fair, he would die. They didn’t care. Bobby spoke softly to his wife, trying to calm her, to sell her the lie that it would all be ok.
“Wait.” Casper croaked. “I- I’ll go for him, will you accept that?” His friends looked at him in equal horror, he wasn’t in much better shape than Bobby at this point, but his mind was made up. His legs were bruised, cut, but they could still carry him with some measure of speed. The Indian looked him over, then nodded, and Casper found himself once more standing at the head of the line.
If it was possible to compare, and he wasn’t sure it was, they were even more brutal now. With his slowed pace, the blows had a chance to be more precise, land with extra force over his already battered body. There was blood in his eyes, in his nose, throat, choking him as it fought the air he desperately pulled into burning lungs. He fell more than once and every time they were on him, the children giggling as they pelted him with rocks and tangled his feet, slowing him even further for the onslaught all around him. At one point he realized he had no strength left to stand, so he crawled, the knuckles of his fist that clenched the sticky feather scraped raw and bleeding out patterns in the dirt.
He didn’t think he would make it, he was sure he was going to die, but he had to, he had to, or they would make Bobby run. This thought was just enough, just the last little push to see him drag himself past the finish, one eye swollen shut the other clouded in red so that it took more than one try for him to find the exact location of Seven River’s hand.
There was screaming, or no…it almost sounded like cheering. But he was in too much pain to give it much notice. Arms were lifting him, carrying him back to his friends and a low masculine voice spoke clipped words he didn’t understand in his ear.
He was lowered to the dirt, Lisa cradled his head in her lap and Bobby called him an ‘idjit’. The Indian was turning to Meg, and Casper tried to push himself up.
“I don’t think so preacher, you ain’t gonna survive round three. I got this.” Meg started unbuttoning her dress, pulling off the generous fabric without a hint of modesty. Bobby looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to strangle her or hug her one last time. “I made this dress, mister, you know how long that took me? I’ll be damned if some heathen assholes tear it to pieces.” She plucked the blood matted feather from the Indian’s hands and jammed it down the front of her girdle, and with her head raised high, took her place at the start.
“Fuck every one of you straight to hell!” And she was off.
Meg Singer, in underclothes and high laced boots, with undone hair streaming behind her, charged into the gauntlet with a different set of priorities than those of her companions. If they were going to try to beat her down, than she was just going to give it right back. Barely a few feet in, a few blows landed and Meg spun fast to backhand the face of the woman that had just lashed her in the arm with a switch. There were a few gasps, but this only gave her time to run a little farther, duck under the arch of a cudgel then grab at a stick that was thrust at her chest. She heaved backwards, yank
ing hard until the man holding it fell forward into her path where she kicked him once in the ribs before leaping over him to attack the people at her right as they tried to help their comrade.
Some were screaming in anger, others were laughing, and it was one of these that jumped from his place to rush across the path and grab a handful of her ass. His smug whooping cheer was cut short with Meg’s elbow to his face and a sudden gush of hot blood from his nose. Now everyone was enraged, the rocks and sticks came hard and fast. Meg ran, ducking when she could, then spun, hauled a child from the ground where he’d been chucking stones and threw him bodily into the crowd, toppling several in their attempts to catch him and causing more than a few to drop their weapons.
Meg ran again, this time with a heavy cudgel in her hands, and just as she was halfway through something snapped and the finish was no longer her goal. Careening sideways she swung her blunt weapon wildly, landing solidly on the wall of flesh and sending the children scattering to safety. The other side of the line looked like they would rush her, but in the next moment she was whirling after them too, and now it was chaos as men and women either fled or ran at her and it looked like she was done for before a shout stopped the crowd in its tracks. The chief was standing on his pallet, an unreadable look on his face. The crowd parted, waiting. No one moved, the prisoners watching didn’t breathe.
Meg looked around, panting, bleeding, then stalked the last few feet to the end, chucked the cudgel into the dirt at the chief’s feet and plucked the feather from her girdle, handing it to him with a scowl. He stepped down before her to take it, then lifted her hand to place it in the crook of his arm and confound the lot of them as he walked her back to her group the very image of a proper gentleman.
The chief spoke a few words then handed Meg over to Bobby.
“Seven Rivers asks if you would consider a trade for this woman.” The young Indian translated. “He likes her fire.”
Casper heard Bobby’s near hysterical bark of laughter. He heard something like words in a careful, apologetic tone and the percussive alto of Meg cursing. But it was all too slippery for his mind to grasp, a dark, constricting tunnel dissolving both his vision and reason. Lisa’s hand stroked his hair, and it was a single point of pleasantness that he could focus on before he understood they were safe and let unconsciousness overtake him.
* * *
This land was so beautiful, open and unknown, this was what his dreams looked like when they were good. Golden grass shimmering in the low afternoon sun, the smell of it sweet and dry. Everything vast and still sovereign from the iron and rough lumber brand of men. White men. Evan knew very little about the natives that slipped like phantoms through the edges of his world, only that they were better than his own kind at making land like this a home.
But he had lived a sizable portion of his life in the saddle, out here in untouched land like this, so he liked to consider that his own senses were acclimatized enough to rival that of any native. What he hadn’t counted on through the haze of his panic, though in hindsight he most certainly should have, was that other men might be just as well suited to the task. Most outlaws suffered the wilderness out of necessity, but were much more accustomed to beds and walls and hot meals. The Parkers knew how to use that against them. Alistair, however, was not such a man.
Evan scented the horror before he saw it, saw the flat crimson patch Parkerhat went on forever. His horse shied back, the blood and bile and excrement sparking the instinct to flee in the poor beast. Evan forced him still, then dismounted in silence, creeping over in the high grass to where a lone horse stood calm as anything, unbothered or more likely accustomed to the gore. The bones of Evan’s body threatened to crack under the strain of his muscles, mind screaming, begging, bargaining with a God he never really believed in to not let this butchery be his family. Please you son of a bitch. Or he would just eat a bullet right here because the man that retuned to Lawrence, if that was so, was no longer a man capable of being a father, a brother, a human being.
A gun cocked to his right.
“Come to admire my work, sheriff? As you can see I have a bit of difficulty tolerating failure.” Alistair materialized beside him, gun trained, cocked smile, and Evan clamped down tight on his desire to scream fury and let the bullets fly.
But he was a lawman first and a damn good one, so he turned slowly, hands raised, and faced the outlaw that had got the drop on him with calm, giving his brain time to catch up, organize and hand over what he’d seen.
Those bodies in the grass, those weren’t his people.
“Oh, Evan,” The man sighed with gentle exasperation, with a fondness that made Evan’s skin crawl. “I’ve kept tabs on you for a long time now. You have such purity in your wrath, it is really quite exquisite. I would have loved to make you into one of my own. You would have blossomed. But this business has become rather unfortunate. I feel the need to start fresh, yes? You understand that, I’m sure.”
“Where are they?” He spit out, trying not to look at the massacre, trying not to waste his mental resources piecing together what had happened.
“Well, if you’ve found me here then you must know. And if you hurry, there might even be something left to bury. They’ll likely kill you on the spot, mind you. You could scurry on home and live out your days with what I’ve left of your family. Or you can try your luck storming the village, guns a’ blazin’ as they say. We both know how that will end, but you do love to be the hero, so there’s that. Either way I win.”
“I’m gonna kill you.”
“I certainly hope you’ll try, but not today. Now if you don’t mind, your guns please.”
Evan bared his teeth in an ugly snarl as he lowered his guns to the dirt with steady fingertips, then stepped back a few paces as Alistair indicated. The man mounted his horse, barrel still trained. “Now then, you’ll find the village dead west of here, can’t miss it. You will notice that I am headed east. I look forward to meeting you again someday Parker, you do make things more interesting.”
He was gone. Leaving the sheriff in the cottony silence among the dead.
Every single member of Alistair’s gaParker horses, too. Evan allowed himself one frozen moment to look, to see what Alistair’s punishment was for failure, to unhinge the cellar door to the deepest part of his soul that marveled at the slick, juddering entrails where they glistened in the dying sunlight. The eyes that lay open to nothing, those that still had eyes. So very much red it was almost inspiring. If he could have gotten to them first, this was the picture he would have painted with his own two hands, and he shuddered at the whisper of such a violence that Alistair had sensed.
Evan followed the setting sun, letting its brilliance burn the tears from his eyes as he raced across the plains. Chanting a prayer of the only holiness he had ever known.
Casper…Casper…Casper…
11
Chapter 11
A soft, insistent rattling sound woke Casper, who opened his eyes, turning his head to see a shining black pair that stared at him from not a foot away. Round silken cheeks plumped around the makings of a smile as the baby shook its toy of leather and deer teeth, drooling and cooing its happiness at Casper’s attention. It was warm here, soft on a bed of furs in the dim light and for a moment Casper didn’t try to figure out where he was. The baby sucked on its toy, then shot an uncoordinated arm out to bat the damp thing against Casper’s lips as if he might enjoy a turn.
A woman’s voice lowed from somewhere beside him, and in the next moment the baby was lifted into a pair of tan arms. He was blinded briefly when the door flap was lifted as the woman called to someone outside. Another woman was beside him now, hand roughly turning his head by the jaw to get a better look at him. His young friend.
“You live.” She seemed pleased.
The mother crouched beside him, the same woman he’d helped with her labor all those months ago. She was glowing, strong, and her baby was a fine, fat thing at her hip and Casper couldn’t hel
p but smile that they had made it here in safety. He’d often wondered.
The mother spoke to the young girl, gesturing around then handing off the child who was very intent on getting his hands in Casper’s hair.
“You stay here, with you woman. Others in aksotha place. Stay till you walk, then we help you go.”
“My woman?” None of this seemed real.
“Little brown fox,” the girl laughed. “Fast, sneaky. I like you woman.” Lisa, he realized. She was talking about Lisa. They must think she was his wife. Well better to let them think that if it gave her any protection.
“So we’re really free then?” The girl shrugged and it struck him as an oddly French gesture, he began to wonder where she’d learned English.
“We keep you, not good for us. Walking Snake bad, but he has blood here, so he is paid blood and now you free.”
Casper stared up at the domed roof, watching the fire smoke curl up, seeking out the little hole at the apex. The baby had discovered how nice it was to flail both arms and smack them down on Casper’s tender side, causing him to groan, confirming one bruised rib if not more. The girl moved the child away.
“What’s your name?”
She gave it some thought, “Waneek. I don’t have the words…”
“I’m Casper.”
In all this time the sounds of the village filtered through the walls, a different set of harmonies than the ones he was used to in Lawrence, but still so soothingly familiar it began to set his mind adrift. The horror of what had happened to them sat in the corner of his thoughts, spines sharp and dripping poison, waiting for him to finally give in and face it. But he wouldn’t have to just yet, for a new sound filtered in, the sound of rising excitement, the sound of many people moving in one direction. For a brief flash he felt panic, something had gone wrong, Alistair was back, his friends were in trouble. Waneek’s face gave him no comfort, she too heard the building commotion and listened with a frown, pulling the baby to her.