The beast crumbled to its knees as if dropping into prayer. It had time only to let out one ghastly mooing sound that was filled with so much pain and terror that Stone felt his chest tighten up. The bison’s great head seemed to shake back and forth atop its quivering body like one of those heads on a spring that Americans had once carried in the back windows of their cars. The chief suddenly reached down with both hands and dipped right into the skull pan of the bison. Digging in deep, his hands flat like two shovels, he stood up, scooping out the whole brain, trailing arteries and nerves and every goddamned thing.
The chief held the pulsing brain package up over his head as he turned and headed back to the fire about thirty feet away. The Indians let out war whoops as the drums pounded victory and the spilling of blood. With the slime dripping down over his hands the chief walked up until he was within feet of the flames and threw the bundle of tissue with all his might. It soared up, spinning and trailing a web of mucus, and then disappeared into the wall of flames in the center. There was a sudden bursting sound and then a loud pop of red flame as the tissue of the brain ignited all at once.
Suddenly there was a sound behind him and Stone turned, startled, expecting for a moment to see Excaliber entangled in something again. But it was the “door,” the big tractor tires being rolled back. Two braves walked into the hut, swinging metal cans—Campbell’s soup if Stone was not mistaken, though the lables were worn and discolored—filled with flaming coals. The flickering torches filled the tire teepee with shadows making their arms look ten feet long, making Stone’s head appear big as a chair on the far wall. Then one of the braves, a fellow with metal can openers through each ear, his face painted red as freshly spilled blood, stared hard at Stone.
“You next,” was all he said, pointing with his thumb toward the door and the fire. In his whole life Martin Stone had never hated a word as much as he did the sound of the word “next” at that moment.
CHAPTER
Ten
STONE walked out between the two guards as Excaliber followed sulkily along between two more. They carried long spears made of kitchen knives glued and taped around broom handles. But they didn’t look terribly eager to take on the dog. Stone hobbled along on the crutch trying to look unafraid and still plenty tough, which was a little difficult as he kept almost stumbling into gopher holes in the dirt. They led him up to the chief, who was on his throne now, still wearing only the feathered hat thing and his black bear loincloth. The man’s body was covered in sweat so his copper skin glowed like a freshly minted penny. The black stone in his missing eye looked as if one could fall into hell itself if one peered too long into it. So Stone focused on the other eye as the chief spoke to him.
“Good news and bad news, Stone Man,” Chief Buffalo Breaker said, sitting up straight in his recliner, holding the staff as the symbol of his authority. “The good news is your dog can live. It is not the Hawk Dog, that has been decided through the flames of the bison’s head. But it is a relative of the Hawk Dog and can stay here as our honored guest and be assured food and shelter as long as it desires.”
“Sounds pretty good to me,” Stone said, looking down at the pit bull, which glared around at the Indians as an empty stomach always made it pissed off and ready to kick ass.
“The bad news,” the chief went on, rising up from his chair so his stomach popped out like a boulder about to roll down a hill, “is that you are not of the gods and therefore must die immediately.”
“Shit,” Stone spat out. “I’m not even well,” he protested, raising his crutch. The other Indians started forward, thinking Stone was about to attack the head man. But it was only a dramatic gesture on his part. Stone was in no condition to go charging anyone. He let the branch fall back to the dirt as his bad leg settled its weight back on it. “At least let me heal so I can die as a complete man, not a half man.”
“The rituals, the gods, the brain readings of the bison all demand that you be sacrificed as well to the Great Hawk Dog, who is hungry for human souls.” Great, Stone thought, his own dog was going to live—not only that but was going to be given royal treatment in the Presidential Suite with all the fucking venison it wanted, probably even cut into little pieces—for the rest of its mangy life. While Stone was supposed to join in marshmallow roasting time, and not only that, but give his life to satisfy yet another hungry dog, the fucking Hawk Dog in the sky.
“I don’t give a shit about your fucking buffalo brains,” Stone snarled. And again the braves on each side of the chief started forward, while the medicine men waved their rattles around threateningly. “They’re wrong. Brains can be wrong, right? Besides I am this Hawk Dog here’s friend. Right, dog?” Stone yelled down at the animal, which stood about three feet away looking around for any crumbs that might have been dropped here and there. “I said, RIGHT, DOG? YOU DON’T WANT ME TO DIE. I’M YOUR MAIN MAN. RIGHT, DOG?” The animal looked up at Stone and then at the chief and let out a sudden snarl, curling its lips back on its teeth, letting its fur rise up. Stone didn’t know if the animal really was sticking up for him or was pissed off at missing dinner, but it seemed to send a little scare into all of them. Stone quickly pressed the advantage.
“All right, I don’t mind dying if that’s the way it has to be. Who the hell am I to argue with buffalo brains. I’m sure you have some of the best brain readers around.” He searched for Nanhanke among the line of witch docs behind the chief and found him after a few seconds. But the voodoo man wouldn’t meet Stone’s look, instead lowering his face to the ground as he shook his rattle high in the air. “But at least,” Stone went on, addressing the chief, “give me the chance to fight my way out. Don’t all Indians have a right to challenge, some way of seeing what the gods’ true intentions are?”
“There is the right of final challenge,” the chief said grudgingly. “But that is just for Indians. You are—” The dog snarled loud and this time took a step forward. The faces of all the ranks around the chief grew a touch pale at seeing their Hawk Dog’s cousin or uncle or whatever the hell they figured it to be, coming straight at their number one man, saliva flowing freely from its mouth.
“Down, dog,” Stone screamed, slapping his hand hard. The pit bull stopped in its tracks, lying down on all fours, but kept a demonic gaze fixed right on the chief. With the tribe all looking on, and the possibly supernatural dog baring its fangs, Chief Buffalo Breaker suddenly decided that compromise was the better part of valor and spoke up again.
“Well, I suppose you do have the right. We are, after all, men.”
“Right, chief, exactly,” Stone said with fake smile, shaking his head up and down.
“But someone must fight you. An Atsana. And you are a cripple, hardly a worthy—”
“I will fight him,” a voice spoke up from the front ranks.
“Cracking Elk,” the chief whispered, his voice faltering. This whole thing wasn’t turning out at all the way he had set it up.
“Yes, Father,” the brave said, stepping from the shadows. “I will fight him and kill him. I should have killed him back at the shore as we do all strangers.” Besides being eager to kill Stone, for he genuinely hated all whites, Cracking Elk had deeper reasons to want to take him out. His father had always kept his son in his shadow. The very power and stature of the chief had made Cracking Elk almost a nonentity, nonexistent, the way a small though sturdy tree pales beside the towering oak growing next to it. The whole tribe was present on this flaming night of god power. They would see that he was strong, that he could kill even one favored by the Hawk Dog.
“Yes,” Cracking Elk went on, taking off his deerskin jacket to reveal huge muscular arms. “I want very much to be the gods’ warrior if this white man thinks he can challenge them.” He stood back and waved his hands to both sides signaling the rest of the nearby braves to clear off and get out of the way.
“Well, I—I—” Buffalo Breaker didn’t want to actually allow it to start. There was something wrong. Even though Stone had
only one leg, there was just something wrong. It was his own son. But it was too late—they were all watching. The gods had been invoked, had heard the plea of the Stone man. There was no way out, even for a chief.
“Very well, the challenge may begin,” Buffalo Breaker said, letting his head drop slightly, his shoulders hunch, from his usual proud bearing. For somehow, no matter what happened, the chief had been defeated in a way he couldn’t even really understand.
“Now, let me get this correct,” Stone said as he stripped off his own jacket with a little trouble as he had to balance on one leg. But bare-chested was apparently the way to go around here. “I win and I can leave, right? With supplies and no one playing any tricks?”
“If you win?” the chief smirked. “Yes, then you do as you wish. The gods have heard all. We do not lie about things like that.”
“All right,” Stone said, “what’s the pitch? Choice of weapons? Sabers, dueling pistols at thirty feet?” He grinned at some of the witch doctors, trying to get on their good side. But these red- and green- and blue-painted, hay-covered, bird-nest-glued-in-their-hair witch doctors didn’t quite look ready to trade a few jokes. They pointed their various rods, sticks, and carved magic totems at him and each chanted out his own little death song.
“You use what you have, Stone Man,” the chief said, smiling now himself. “That is the challenge: that a man must survive with what he has, where he is at that moment.”
“Right, I get it,” Stone said, as he turned around and saw that Cracking Elk had already taken out a blade that looked a good two feet long and was flickering like a laser in the rising columns of beating fire. Stone turned fully and lifted up the green branch so he was holding it in both hands. If he had had both legs functional this would have been a snap. Among other things, he and the major had spent years in one of the back caverns of the bunker working out combat killing techniques. Not self-defense. Not something taught to grandmothers in the suburbs. But just: how to kill. The major after all had been the toughest bastard in the toughest and nastiest little war ever fought, over in Vietnam. Not to mention Korea, Cambodia, Laos… And the other guy had always died. Not his father. So Stone had paid careful attention to the lessons, even as he feuded philosophically with his old man. Stick fighting had been one of his more innate abilities. Although he wished now that he had done a little more practicing on one leg.
“All right, asshole,” Stone said, trying to bait the man. He had to make the Indian come to him. There was no way in hell Stone was going to start hopping around all over the place like some kind of monoplegic rabbit. “I hear Indians’ wives like to get fucked by white men,” Stone laughed as he tried to balance himself so most of his weight was on his good leg. He hefted the stick between his hands, letting it slide through both palms a few times back and forth, just to get the feel of the thing and maybe to unnerve the chief’s son as he saw the smooth, fast movements.
“Come on, what are you waiting for, Mr. Deer Fucker, or whatever your name is?” Stone snapped, trying desperately to get the Indian angry. But all the young and immensely strong-looking brave did was walk forward in a half crouch on his toes as stealthly as any man Stone had faced. And suddenly he was licking his lips hard. This guy looked as bad as his father. Maybe it would have been better after all to have been broiled fast in the fire and get it over with, rather than be all sushi’ed up by this overmuscled bastard.
“I’ll tell you why the white man defeated the Indian when he came over here to America,” Stone laughed, curling his lips back in his best imitation of Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. “Because all Indians are pansies and cowards and could be beaten up by even old white women.” Although absurdly stupid, the insult seemed to suddenly break through Cracking Elk’s cool and he lurched forward in a sudden charge against Stone. Even though Stone had planned it, when the brave made his move Stone wasn’t ready for the speed of the man. The cripple barely had time to move, let alone strike out with the staff. He was lucky to swing it up alongside his body so that when the brave’s long blade came slicing in, the branch took the brunt of the hit. Still the sharp edge sliced past the wood and into the flesh on Stone’s exposed chest. A foot-long gash a quarter inch deep appeared along his ribs. The crowd gasped and let out war yells as they began dancing on all sides of the battling pair. Their man clearly was going to win, and win fast.
The half parry of Stone’s branch at least managed to send the brave and his machete hurtling about six feet before he could stop himself. Stone fell down from the force of the attack, taking the stick with him. He curled into as tight a ball as he could as he tumbled along the ground. Which was not that tight considering he had a leg with a splint around it to contend with. But all things considered he at least came out of the roll and up to both feet holding the staff in his hands. Dad would have been proud.
Stone took the merest instant to look down at the gash across his chest. He’d live. Just another scar to add to his collection. He whipped his head up and set himself again, making sure the dirt was firm enough beneath his feet so that he could turn fast. Cracking Elk sneered and came in slashing his machete at the air. But this time, perhaps because he’d had a second to get over the insults Stone had hurled at him, he wasn’t quite as fast. Just a fraction, perhaps a hundredth of a second slower. But that was all that Stone needed. As the blade came flying in toward his chest, Stone turned his hips with a snap and caught the side of the long knife with the front of the branch. Parry and strike! Parry and strike! How many fucking times had his father pounded that into his head.
But it worked. And it worked again as the brave Indian felt his knife slammed from his grasp as the front end of the thick branch cracked into his wrist. Then before he could even react the other end was swinging up and into his face. He felt it slam into his nose, crushing it into little fragments that danced around inside stretched-out flesh already turning purple. Then he blacked out and slammed facedown right into the earth. It took only an instant for the Indian to shake off the effects of the blow that might have killed most other men. But then he was the chief’s son, with the blood of royalty running in his veins.
He let out a whoop and turned himself over fast, pushing his arms down against the ground and preparing to spring up. But he stopped in his tracks. For Stone was standing over him, the branch poised to come down on his skull. One strike and he would be dead, his head opened up, his brains spilling out like the bison’s just minutes before. As the entire tribe watched breathless, the chief as well, standing with his eyes big as saucers, Stone just held the staff there like the sword of Damocles, a yard over the Indian’s head.
“Kill me, you bastard,” Cracking Elk screamed out, waving his fist at Stone. “You won, white man—you with your damned evil dog’s powers behind you. No man, especially a paleface, could have beaten me. But the gods give you the victory. So kill me! Kill meeeeeee!” He screamed it out, his eyes closed, veins standing out in his neck like worms about to give birth. But Stone just looked down with scorn.
“No, I won’t kill you. How about that?” he asked with a laugh, letting the stick lower in his hands. He looked over at the chief. “Maybe I just won’t play your stupid blood games. Maybe I don’t have to follow your rules. Maybe I don’t feel like it.” He threw the branch with disgust down on the ground and stood there balancing on one leg, his face covered with sweat, his chest and stomach covered with a sheen of red from the slash.
Cracking Elk looked as if he were going to go mad. His eyes opened so wide Stone thought they were going to pop out and he would need two black rocks to put in there. He opened his mouth, raised his arms to the sky, and let out a horrible scream of pain and defeat. Then before anyone could make a move or say a word, the brave, next in line for the succession of power (or so he had been until that moment), rose and ran screaming like a banshee into the shadows. Within seconds he had vanished into the darkness, but his mad whoops and howls could be heard for minutes slowly dying out in the distance.
Eleven
THERE wasn’t a hell of a lot they could do. The tribe had witnessed it. The gods had witnessed it. Even the damned Hawk Dog’s cousin, which looked like it was ready to bite anyone who got close, had witnessed it. Stone had won, at least one battle, and he would live.
“Go!” Chief Buffalo Breaker ordered, pointing with his finger toward the rubber motel Stone had been staying in. The chief couldn’t even look at the man who had defeated his son but just stared past him into the roaring bonfire as if looking for his lost pride. For his son could no longer be his son nor the future chief of the tribe. Cracking Elk was through, finito, kaput. As wiped out in his business as a priest caught with an eight-year-old girl in the choir room would be in his. Stone didn’t even realize it, but he had in an instant dramatically altered the entire future of the tribe, and the balance of power among its various warring factions.
But ignorance is at least momentary bliss, and Stone grabbed up his crutch and began hobbling back toward the Goodyear teepee with braves falling in on either side. He couldn’t help but let a smile dance across his lips. Because he was still alive. And he hadn’t expected to be just a minute before.
“Hey, Chief,” Stone said, turning his head slightly as he was led off. “How about some food. Not that I care that much, but Hawk Dog here is going to start getting pissed off as hell, I can promise you that. Why, he might even start chewing on some of those tires.” He moved forward with a slight hop of enthusiasm that he was still among the living. He didn’t see the chief grind his wooden teeth so hard that they made a crunching, cracking sound as wooden splinters fell out of them.
Back at the Rubber Towers Condo, Stone’s predictions immediately came true. The dog was in a horrible foul temper, snarling and snapping at everything in sight—Indian ankles, branches along the ground—and when they got inside the tire palace, the walls themselves. It wasn’t always like this. But from past experience Stone knew that when the dog had been getting a lot of food for a few days its stomach expanded to quite a large size. And consequently when the source of feasting was removed the stomach took on such a feeling of swollen emptiness that it drove the animal half to madness. It dove headfirst into the back wall of the place, its teeth snapping open and closed like the jaws of a thrashing Great White. Huge chunks of rubber were instantly ripped free and tossed back into the air as if a threshing machine were spitting out black grain.
The Cutthroat Cannibals Page 9