by Judd Cole
There was more, images flying past like quick geese in a windstorm: He saw his own people torturing him over fire; saw the white whiskey trader again slaughtering white trappers and making the killings look “Indian”; saw himself counting coup on Seth Carlson when the officer tried to torch the Hanchon spread; saw the terrified Pawnees fleeing from Medicine Lake when he summoned a ferocious grizzly; saw the keelboat called the Sioux Princess exploding into splinters as he led his people to victory over the land-grabber Wes Munro during the already-famous Tongue River Battle.
And mixed in with all the fragments from his past were glimpses from his vision quest at Medicine Lake, glances stolen from the future: He saw his people freezing far to the north in the Land of the Grandmother, saw Cheyenne blood staining the snow. The screams of the dying ponies were even more hideous than the death cries of the Cheyenne.
It all led to one huge battle. And then the warrior leading the entire Cheyenne nation in its last great stand turned to utter the war cry, and Touch the Sky recognized the face under the long war bonnet as himself.
When all seems lost, Chief Yellow Bear s voice said to him again from the Land of Ghosts, become your enemy!
When he finally left the Spirit Path and woke to the life of the little day, the morning was well advanced. And now he felt the pain so intensely that he dared not move—every effort to do so sent a white-hot jolt through him and left him gasping.
The unjust beating had not left him humiliated. He had not been in the wrong. And did he not suffer in silence like a true warrior, only speaking to give his tormentors insults to answer their insults?
No, he told himself, his mouth a grim, determined slit against the pain, this was a matter of just revenge, not humiliation. He had meant what he told Black Elk and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. Their lives were now forfeit. It was not just a matter of his own safety. Black Elk’s jealousy was a worm cankering in his brain. In his insane rage, Black Elk would eventually do more to Honey Eater than cut off her braid.
Despite the sure knowledge that these things he was thinking were true things, Touch the Sky felt some sharp doubts pricking at him. The buffalo hunt was at the very core of the Cheyenne way, the basis for their very existence. Yet was this not twice now that he had failed the hunt in some way—his fault or not?
Had he not, after all, violated Hunt Law and wasted good meat? Never mind the reasons and excuses—the results could not be denied.
He knew that by now the tribe was moving on, trailing the herd for the next kill. If—
Touch the Sky abruptly saw a harrowing sight that scattered his thoughts like chaff in the wind.
Fear moved up his spine in a cool tickle. Cresting the hills on the horizon, many riders strong, was a large war party. Touch the Sky was too far distant to make out their style of hair, by which tribes could always be identified. But almost surely in this area they would be Kiowa or Comanche, probably both given their closeness when it came to treading the warpath.
And these riders were definitely riding the warpath—so many streamered lances, easy to make out in silhouette, could signify nothing else.
He clenched his jaw in frustrated helplessness when he again tried to move. The effort made his vision go dim with overwhelming pain.
And then the truth struck him with the force of a blow. He was trapped, unable to even crawl into hiding. If the war party kept advancing, they would probably spot him and enjoy a bit of unscheduled torture before they killed him.
Then they would move against the new hunt camp, wherever it was established. Caught flush in their hunt, the Cheyenne warriors, though numerous, would be unpainted for battle, their bonnets and shields unblessed. They would have no time to renew the Medicine Arrows for battle.
He recalled Arrow Keeper telling him the Kiowa and Comanche were zealous slave traders—especially in women and children. And he thought of Honey Eater and the suicide knife under her dress.
He was their only hope of an advance warning. Again, desperation warring with the pain, he tried to sit up. But his tortured flesh seemed to scream its pain, and his mind shut down to darkness.
Chapter Nine
Hairy Wolf halted the column of warriors in the lee of a long ridge.
“We camp here,” the big Kiowa told Iron Eyes.
His Comanche friend nodded. “This is a good place. We can make small fires, and if they send scouts behind to check on their back trail, we will not be spotted.”
Hairy Wolf reined his pony around. His bone breastplate gleamed brightly in the late afternoon sun. He signaled for the best scouts, Stone Mountain and Kicking Bird, to ride forward.
“Ride on ahead,” he told them, “and discover where the next hunt camp is located. As soon as you know when the hunters will be going out again, race back with the word.”
“Move like coyotes through prairie chickens,” Iron Eyes added. “They must not spot you. We want the women and children left alone in camp.”
While the scouts rode out, the Comanche named Dog Fat returned from a quick check just forward of their present position.
“The Cheyenne are long gone. But there is a fine gray pony grazing by itself, untethered, near the sight of their first butchering. I want to ride closer and see if it is for the taking.”
Dog Fat had not noticed the injured Cheyenne brave lying in the knee-deep buffalo grass not far from the pony.
Iron Eyes considered his request. “You are sure it is not simply another one of their clever false camps?”
“No one would leave this fine pony in a false camp as a lure,” Dog Fat said with conviction. “And it is rigged for riding. I think something happened to its rider, and it is for the taking.”
Iron Eyes looked at Hairy Wolf. His friend nodded once. Dog Fat, known for his love of torturing captives, was also a capable buck with a reputation for superior stealth. It might be useful to have a look around the area of the Cheyenne’s last camp.
“Go then,” Iron Eyes said. “But be all eyes and ears.”
Dog Fat loosened the lead line tied to his buffalo-hide saddle. Then he brandished his stone skull-cracker. “If I set eyes on a Cheyenne, he will never make another track.”
~*~
Touch the Sky felt like he was floating up toward the surface of a river, rising faster and faster like an air bubble. Then suddenly he broke surface, and his eyes snapped open.
The afternoon sunlight was hot on his face. For a moment he remembered nothing, did not know where he was or how he got there. Then he tried to sit up. The abrupt jolt of pain brought him back to the present, and he remembered the war party.
This time he did manage to sit up, though the pain made his eyes water. He could move a little easier now. But why was he even still alive? The war party surely could not have missed him when it passed by.
But they must have. Somehow, though he was stiff and bloodied and raw from his beating, he had to race on and warn the tribe. By now they were almost a full sleep’s ride ahead of him.
He had just screwed up his courage to attempt rising from the ground when he glimpsed a lone rider approaching from the ridge on the horizon. He lowered himself again into the waving buffalo grass. Spotting the gray made him realize that the war party could not have ridden past. Even if they had missed him, quite possible in the grass, they would not have left his pony.
In fact, clearly it was his pony this lone brave was interested in now.
His curiosity was mixed with a feeling of sick dread. What did this enemy have planned? If they meant to engage Cheyenne warriors in a fight, why halt their advance now so early? The Comanche especially were known for attacking at night. So why weren’t they following the tribe, moving into position to strike?
Unless they had something else in mind— some opportunity they planned to seize when the Cheyenne braves were all distracted by the hunt.
Some opportunity which these infamous slave-takers would seize in the hunt camp itself, not on the battlefield.
But now there
was no more time to speculate. The rider was close enough for Touch the Sky to recognize that he was definitely Comanche. He was heavy but strong, a roll of fat hanging over the top of a pair of filthy Army trousers with yellow piping down the sides. His hair was parted exactly in the center and tucked back behind his ears. He carried a stone war club resting across one thigh.
And he was definitely intent on capturing the gray. As he drew closer, he looked cautiously all around. Touch the Sky, wincing at the movement, ducked even lower.
His rifle was still in the scabbard sewn to his horse blanket. His lance and throwing ax too were lashed to his pony. The only weapon left to him was the obsidian knife in his beaded sheath. He slid it out now, even that simple movement sending hot explosions of pain into his limbs.
The Comanche halted his buckskin pony and dismounted, uncoiling the lead line as he moved closer to the gray. The gray shied and nickered, moving off a few paces.
Touch the Sky’s brain raced, searching for a way out of this threatened loss of his horse. He himself was safe for now, but what good was safety on the Plains without a horse? In his condition, he was as good as dead.
The fat Comanche moved in again. Again the gray nickered and trotted off. But the Comanche obviously had experience with horses. He continued speaking to it gently as he moved in, soothing it.
The brave wasn’t looking in his direction now. Touch the Sky rose to his knees again, pain screaming from every pore of his whip-lashed body. The Comanche was actually singing to the gray now, a low, soothing song in words Touch the Sky couldn’t understand. But the song had a lulling effect on the pony. She finally stood still as the Comanche moved in close enough to slip the lead line through her hackamore.
Trembling with the effort, Touch the Sky drew his right hand back behind his head. As the intruder began to lead his pony back to his own mount, Touch the Sky threw the knife in a fast overhand throw. The exertion made him gasp with pain.
But his aim was true. The knife punched into the Comanche’s back just behind the heart, dropping him to his knees. A moment later he dropped forward onto his face, legs twitching in death agony.
Touch the Sky set his lips in a grim, determined slit and rose shakily to his feet. It cost a great effort, but he managed to cross to the dead Comanche and jerk his knife from his back. He wiped the blade in the grass and slid the weapon back into its sheath.
The gray nuzzled his shoulder, glad to see him on his feet again. It made hot red waves of pain wash over him, but in a few moments he was mounted. He glanced once toward the long ridge behind him, then stared out across the parched expanse in the direction his people had ridden. It was a vast vista of redrock canyons and arroyos, of steep mesas and buttes and sandstone rises.
Reading their trail would be no challenge, not with all those travois heavily laden with meat. But was there time to catch them and warn them? If Kiowas or Comanches on their notoriously fleet-footed ponies spotted him, he knew he could never outrun them—certainly not in his present condition.
But he had no choice. It was either do it or don’t do it. And if he didn’t do it, Gray Thunder’s tribe was surely in great danger. This Comanche was no lone spy sent to gather information. He was part of a powerful war party.
Nor could Touch the Sky be sure he would ride out of this place alive. He had no exact idea where the rest of the enemy might be camped. Perhaps they were keeping an eye on him at this very moment.
Trying not to glance at his blood-encrusted wounds, Touch the Sky nudged his pony’s flanks and set out in search of his tribe.
~*~
When Dog Fat did not return in a reasonable time, his friend Standing Feather accompanied Iron Eyes and Hairy Wolf to learn what had delayed him.
He was still barely breathing when they found him, bloody foam bubbling on his lips. Even as Standing Feather turned him onto his back, the death rattle rose in his throat with a noise like pebbles shaken in a shaman’s dried gourd.
His face grim, Standing Feather performed the Comanche death ritual. “Father in heaven,” he intoned, “this, our brother, is coming.” Then, embracing the dying man, he flapped his hands behind him like wings while he imitated an eagle’s call. Thus Dog Fat’s soul would be flown to heaven.
While Standing Feather lashed his dead companion to his horse, Hairy Wolf gazed off in the direction Touch the Sky had recently ridden out. The Kiowa chief looked for a long time, as if reading some clue on the distant horizon. His eyes squeezed to slits as they stared into the setting sun.
Iron Eyes knew perfectly well what he was thinking. After all, it was the Comanches who had perfected the tactic of attacking out of the sun.
“I do not relish riding into the sun,” Hairy Wolf finally said. “But neither can we stay. Surely it was a Cheyenne who killed Dog Fat. He could not have much of a lead. Never mind our fine camp. I say we ride now and reach the Cheyenne before this dog’s barking alerts his fellow warriors.”
“Tienes razon,” Iron Eyes said in Spanish. “You are right. And when we catch him, we will feed his own eyes to him.”
~*~
By nightfall Touch the Sky realized his enemies were closing in on him.
The gray was well rested from her long graze. But Touch the Sky could not constantly hold a fast pace. The jarring and bouncing felt like more whips—dozens of them—flailing him raw all over again.
Each time he crested a ridge, he glanced back and spotted his dogged pursuers closing the gap. Clearly there would not be enough time to warn the tribe.
Fear and frustration vied with the excruciating pain of bouncing on his pony. Several of the deeper whip cuts were bleeding afresh, and occasionally he tasted blood running into his mouth or was forced to swipe at his eyes to clear his vision.
As he clung to his mount, trying to place the pain outside of himself as Arrow Keeper had taught him to do, he thought of a desperate plan. It might well get him killed. But otherwise, Gray Thunder s tribe was in serious trouble.
Touch the Sky knew his trail was being lost in the much larger path left by his tribe. When he reached an arroyo that ran at right angles to the trail, he leaped the obedient gray into it and doubled back around. Riding behind a huge, sloping rise, he hurried into position behind the war party.
As he had hoped they would, the combined band of Kiowa and Comanche warriors made a brief stop to eat and water their ponies in a clear tributary of the Brazos River. While they prepared their meals of parched corn and a thick soup made from the paste of crushed insects, their ponies were hobbled in a group at the water s edge.
Touch the Sky rode his own pony as close as he dared. Then, grimacing at the throbbing pain, he dismounted and tethered his gray behind a thick stand of Spanish Bayonet. It was nearly dark now. But he knew darkness would not deter either tribe from moving and attacking. The pain making his entire body protest, he leapfrogged from cottonwood to cottonwood, from prickly pear to prickly pear, moving ever closer to the hobbled ponies.
Small groups of braves were scattered about everywhere, cooking over small fires. At times Touch the Sky could find no cover. Then he was forced to simply crawl along the ground and pray to Maiyun that he would not be spotted. Sweat broke out all over his body and streamed into his cuts, causing a fiery, itching sting.
Finally he reached the horses.
Moving quickly despite the pain, he began untying the short rawhide hobbles. He prayed that none of the horses would move enough to capture enemy attention, at least not before he had freed plenty of them.
This night Maiyun was with him. He had untied nearly half of the horses before any of them began moving very far. Knowing he had reached the most dangerous moment of his plan, he abruptly shouted the shrill Cheyenne war cry as he slapped the nearest ponies on the flanks.
“Hi-ya, hii-ya!”
Only a few heartbeats later the frightened mounts were scattering across the shallow tributary and out onto the flat.
In the confusion he was able to slip away and r
eturn to his pony. Cutting well around the tumult of the campsite, he urged the gray onward. He knew his enemies would lose valuable time recovering their ponies. But would it be enough time? he wondered.
And even as he asked the question, he also answered it: He had done all he could. It would have to be enough time.
Chapter Ten
All through the night Touch the Sky pushed his horse as hard as he possibly could, stopping only to make sure he was still on the trail of Gray Thunder s tribe.
He was numb now to the pain. After his sister the sun had gone to her resting place, the night air had cooled considerably and soothed his pain-ravaged skin. A three-quarter moon and a star-shot sky made visibility good and fast riding easy.
He ate while he rode, chewing on the pemmican and dried plums in his legging sash. Each time he stopped to verify the trail, he knelt and placed his ear close to the ground, listening for sounds of pursuit. He heard nothing, but this hardly reassured him. The Kiowas and Comanches were famous for their stealth—often, only one scout would actually follow behind an enemy, the rest riding well to the flanks and using lone riders to stay in touch with him. This way their quarry might relax and easily be taken by surprise. Every Cheyenne knew the famous stories about Comanches stealing up to sleeping couples so quietly they could kidnap the wife without waking the husband or her.
So Touch the Sky did not relax his vigilance. He was still riding hard when dawn finally painted the eastern sky in roseate hues.
Despite his pain and fear for the tribe, Touch the Sky could not help being filled with wonder at the grand beauty of this Southwest canyon country. Mountains never seemed close, yet in every direction he looked they raised their white-capped peaks into the sky above the distant horizons. Startled roadrunners scurried in front of his horse, and huge tumbleweeds bounced and hopped and rolled with incredible speed. Everywhere majestic cactus formations stood out against the sky. Some bore uncanny resemblance to human figures.