Though there are times when those can prove even more powerful than that gnarled, scarred fist.
* * *
—
“We would like to go up into that country. There are many animals there. Good hunting and fine places to camp.” Bending toward the fire, Grass-in-Hair cut a choice piece of dog with his knife and passed it to his guest, who accepted the morsel with a grunt of thanks.
Amos Malone hunched closer to the tepee’s central heat and chewed thoughtfully. When he’d ridden into the encampment early that morning, his imposing bulk had frightened the children, but now Grass-in-Hair’s youngest son slept peacefully on the mountain man’s legs like a rabbit nestled in a bear’s lap.
“Then why don’t y’all just do it?”
Two-Feathers-Falling sniffed and repositioned the heavy robe that lay across his shoulders. It was late, and cold despite the fire. He would rather have been lying with First Woman, but Grass-in-Hair had insisted he be present. As far as Two-Feathers-Falling was concerned, the meeting was at best a polite waste of time. Half as big as a bull buffalo the white man might be, but in this matter he could do nothing.
“Do you not think we would if we could?” he snapped.
The mountain man took no umbrage at the medicine man’s tone. “What’s stoppin’ you?”
Two-Feathers-Falling shifted uncomfortably. He was no coward, but neither was he a fool. Grass-in-Hair let the silence lie as long as was decent, then saw that he was going to have to do the explaining himself.
“Tongue Kills lives there. He has claimed all that fine land for himself and will let no one else in. Not to camp, not to hunt. He is a greedy, evil person.”
Malone swallowed the last scrap of dog, extracted his pipe from a pocket, and commenced to chew on the rose-hued stem that protruded incongruously from the otherwise impenetrable black-wire mass of his beard. “How big’s his tribe?”
“He has no tribe, no family. He is alone.”
Malone’s gaze narrowed. “Mean to say one warrior’s been starin’ down the whole Cheyenne nation?”
Two-Feathers-Falling spoke bitterly. “Tongue Kills is not a warrior. He is a medicine man. Like myself. But his medicine is too strong for me. And not just for us. No one dares to challenge him. Those who go into his country do not come out again.”
“Except for One-Who-Carries-Stone-Behind-His-Head,” said Grass-in-Hair. “He was a war chief of the Crow who announced to his people that he would kill the medicine man so they could move into his land. He did come out. But he lived only a few minutes after returning to his village.” The old chief was solemn. “We heard the story when we were trading with the Crow up on the big river last autumn. Those who told it to us are known to be truthful men.”
Malone tamped some brown dried substance into the bowl of his pipe. “What happened to him?”
“The warriors said that he was burned all over.” The chief’s tone was hushed. “As if he had been in a great fire. His pony had been burned, too. It lived two days longer. Since then the Crow, like us, have stopped trying to go into that country.” Grass-in-Hair looked wistful. “But we would still like to. I should like very much to hunt there. It is more land than any one man needs. Even one as strong in medicine as Tongue Kills.” He went silent, expectant.
The fire crackled. Along with silence, the tepee was permeated by the pungent rankness of cooked meat and unwashed men. Finally Malone said, “What makes you think I kin help you?”
Grass-in-Hair looked up at his visitor. “I have met a few of the other white men who have passed through this country. Some spoke of you. They said you could do strange things.”
Malone laughed as he lit his pipe with a blazing splinter from the fire. “They probably meant to say that I was strange.”
“They also said you were crazy. Here.” The disgruntled Two-Feathers-Falling meaningfully tapped the side of his head.
“Might be as they were right.”
“Only a crazy man would challenge Tongue Kills.”
Malone chose not to comment.
“If you will try to help us in this,” said Grass-in-Hair, “I will give you my eldest daughter. She is a fine woman and will bear many children.”
“Wal, now, that’s a swell offer, sir, but I fear I must decline. I ain’t quite ready yet to start in on a family.”
Grass-in-Hair nodded, disappointed but understanding. “What, then, could we give you?”
“Your friendship…and mebbe that knife. I’ve kind o’ taken a fancy to that knife of yours.”
Grass-in-Hair held up the blade he’d used to partition the dog. It was a good knife made of the kind of shiny black stone that always held its edge. But it was not irreplaceable.
“I would give it to you gladly. But I must tell you that I do not think it is worth risking one’s life for.” He gestured toward the visitor’s belt. “You already have a knife of metal, one that is better.”
Malone shook his head. “Not necessarily better. Just different. Somethin’ about your knife calls out to me, Grass-in-Hair. And when somethin’ calls to me, I make it my business to listen.”
“Then I make you a gift of it. Will you use it to slay Tongue Kills?” he asked curiously as he handed it over.
Malone took the knife, admiring the way the light from the fire shone through the carefully honed edges. “Hope not. After all, y’all don’t necessarily want him made dead. Just agreeable.” He slid the knife into his belt alongside its steel cousin and leaned forward.
“Now, then. What makes this Tongue Kills’s medicine so strong? What songs does he use? What powders? What is his animal? Badger, bear, eagle?”
Two-Feathers-Falling replied tiredly, knowing it would make no difference. “He uses no songs, no powders. He has no animal.”
“Then how the devil does he make medicine?”
“With words,” Two-Feathers-Falling explained. “Only with words.”
Malone nodded as if this meant something, took a couple of puffs, then removed his pipe and passed it to the old chief, who inhaled experimentally.
“Good tobacco,” he said as he handed the pipe back.
“Thanks,” Malone told him. He grinned at Two-Feathers-Falling. “I kin tell you don’t think I’ve much of a chance against this feller Tongue Kills, but don’t count me out till you see me down. I know a few words of my own.”
The sleepy Cheyenne medicine man started. For an instant the mountain man’s eyes seemed to have disappeared, the whites and the dark blackness to have vanished completely, leaving only dark pits beneath heavy brows. For an instant, within those twin voids could be seen stars and music, tenderness and power, indifference and compassion. Wide awake, Two-Feathers-Falling blinked.
But there was only a very large white man sitting there opposite him. One with real eyes. The rest, he decided, had been a trick of the fire.
* * *
—
“What do you think?” Grass-in-Hair asked the next morning as they watched the white man ride westward out of camp. “Of course he must be as mad as the other white men say, else he would not try this for us. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.”
Two-Feathers-Falling held his buffalo robe snug against his body. Though it was warming up as the sun rose, stars still lingered in the blueing sky, pieces of ice the morning was slow to melt. “I think you have lost a good knife,” he muttered as he shuffled off in the direction of his tepee.
* * *
—
It truly was beautiful country, Malone mused as he nudged Worthless to his right. Green and heavily forested. While his mount usually could be left to his own devices to find the easiest path down a slope, sometimes his bad right eye played him false and Malone had to help out.
Plenty of forage, good water. Excellent country. Elk and deer in abundance and a host of lesser animals. Griz
zlies, too, of course, but they didn’t bother Malone. Those possessed of a cantankerous disposition usually sought alternative routes as soon as they set eyes on him.
He settled in by the side of a meandering stream lined with new spring growth. There were trees nearby from which he’d soon raised a fine lean-to against a smooth outcropping of granite. Upstream he found beaver and remarked the location for future visitation.
He was preparing to put a door on the lean-to one afternoon, when he heard footsteps approaching. He tensed as he turned, alert but in no way particularly concerned. His rifle lay close at hand, within convenient reach. In wild country a man always kept his rifle closer to him than anything else, including his woman.
His visitor’s attire was simple and traditional, except perhaps for an unusual breastplate that was decorated with feathers from a bird Malone couldn’t identify. They were orange tending to yellow at the tips. The man wore much red paint on his face and clothing. His braids were long and, despite his apparent age, black as soot. He carried no weapons. Worthless spared him a glance, snorted, and returned to cropping the fresh new grass behind the lean-to.
The visitor was shorter than Malone, but then, so was most of the human race. He stopped to study the mountain man. Malone waited for a while, then shrugged and returned to his work.
As the day wore on, the visitor maintained his silent inspection, eventually taking a seat on a small rock that protruded from the bank of the stream. Malone finished the door, peeled two large poles, and used them to brace the roof by jamming them into holes he’d dug earlier. Then he fished three good-sized trout from the stream, gutted and filleted them, and set about building a cookfire. Not one word had passed between the two men.
When evening arrived, Malone put the spitted fish on the fire, crossed his legs, and sat down to wait for them to cook. “For someone who’s supposed to be master of a lot o’ words, you’re downright stingy with ’em, friend.”
“You know who I am.” Tongue Kills did not have a voice. He was possessed of an instrument, nay, an entire orchestra. Strings and brass, woodwinds and percussion, all were present and active, vibrating and resonant within his throat. Each word that fell from his lips was of itself a self-contained speech, a declamation, an oration of conciseness and import admirable. It was a thing wondrous and beautiful to behold.
“I expect so,” Malone told him.
“Then you must know, white man, that you are a trespasser on my land.”
Malone gestured expansively. “Plenty o’ land here. Why are you so reluctant to share it?”
Tongue Kills sat a little straighter. “It is my wish. I have taken this place for my own.”
“Your brothers think you greedy.”
“They are not my brothers, and I do not care what they think. I do not care what you think. Like them, you must leave.”
Malone arched his back, stretching. “Shucks, I was jest gettin’ comfortable here. Reckon I might stay awhile.”
Tongue Kills leaned forward. Light danced in his eyes like individual flames skating on sheets of mica. “I say that you will leave. If you try to stay, I will make it bad for you.”
“With what? Some words? Mister, I’ve been around. I’ve seen a lot and heard a lot. Why, you’re lookin’ at the original lover o’ words. I know all the words of my own people as well as those of the Crow and Shoshone. Not to mention the Assiniboin and Kwakiutl, the Zuni and Arapaho, the Choctaw and the Seminole and Sioux. I know words in languages you ain’t never heard of: Chinee and Nippon, Tamil and Urdu, Basque and Romany and pidgin. I know words in languages that was, like Assyrian and Maya, and words in languages that ain’t been born yet.
“Better to share the plenty you got with your fellows. That’s the proper way for one to live.”
Tongue Kills smiled unpleasantly. “You speak of many strange things, but I see no signs of power. It matters not the kind of words but how they are used. I, too, know of other languages and other words. I have made the knowing of them my business.” His tone deepened ever so slightly. “You do not want to know of them, white man.”
Malone plucked a sprig of grass between thumb and forefinger and stuck it between his teeth. “Shoot, I’m always willin’ to learn. And since I ain’t goin’ nowhere, why don’t you take the time to enlighten me?”
Tongue Kills’s expression darkened. He nodded once, cleared his throat with a rumble, then spoke afresh. That extraordinary booming, reverberant voice spoke out, rustling the grass, its tone and emphasis sending birds fleeing from their nests and insects rushing to burrow deeper into the ground as the ominous speaker dropped one turgid obloquy after another into the previously calm pool of reality.
“Man, your spirit cannot escape the cradle of dung in which it was originally nurtured, a place shunned by the lowest living things, a birthplace so vile that it is avoided even by the beetles that seek to feed in such holes. The odor of the misbegotten clings to you and can never be washed off, so that the stink of your ever-putrefying soul turns others from you no matter whither you may seek to flee.”
As Tongue Kills spoke, Malone felt himself growing distinctly hot under the collar and, somewhat surprisingly, not only there. Looking down, he saw that the fringe of his deerskin leggings was beginning to curl slightly at the tips. Wisps of smoke emerged from several as if they were not strips of cured leather but rather thick, sweat-sodden matches. He began to perspire and, despite the chill of approaching evening, experienced an unexpected desire to be rid of attire that had become suddenly suffocatingly warm. It was clear that Tongue Kills played for keeps.
Not that Malone was about to take those words lying down or even standing up. He’d picked up a turn of phrase or two in his travels, damned if he hadn’t: the rapierlike accusations of cotton auctioneers in Savannah, the seasoned dressings-down of unyielding Prussian drill instructors. The lamentations of Calcut merchants and the withering complaints of the camel traders of old Araby. Lisboa’s fisherwomen had shared their best and most scatological insults with him, and once, severely in need of a trim, he’d had his scalp professionally singed by the singsong calumnies of a famed Canton trader in opium.
Why, subsequent to one pleasant evening’s drinking and concomitant commentary on Washington politics, none other than Dan’l Webster himself had ventured admiringly that when properly inspired, Amos Malone’s palate was truly an anvil of imprecations on which the mountain man’s tongue could hammer out insult after admirable insult, a river of inventive invective as grandiosely appalling as New York City’s sewer system after a major summer storm.
“I might tolerate that,” he replied carefully, “if it didn’t come from someone so ugly that mere sight of ’im would shock the feathers off a constipated buzzard, the taste of whom would induce in a flock o’ starvin’ mosquitoes permanent indigestion soon as they discovered that their quarry had urine for blood. Why, your countenance’d drive a dozen o’ the world’s homeliest women to sworn celibacy an’ turn the Medusa herself to stone.”
As he listened to this, Tongue Kills’s expression did indeed begin to harden, if not actually to fossilize. His skin began to redden noticeably until, in the gathering darkness, he was actually glowing slightly. Currents of agitated air streamed upward from his head and shoulders like heat waves rising from a paved road on a blistering July noon.
“Your mother,” the medicine man retorted, his voice crackling like a newly set bonfire of Georgia fatwood, “must have mated with a snail, for it is clear that slime was the sole offspring of that union. You reek of man’s civilization, of noxious hypocrisy and embalming greed, of the air you have infected and the water you have poisoned. The soil itself recoils from beneath your feet, and the air screams as it is tortured by your lungs. The fecal matter that emerges from your body is the only pure thing you give back to the suffering earth, on which you are the foulest of parasites, in which even other parasites
refuse to dwell.”
Malone was forced to remove his heavy jacket, from which dense smoke was beginning to billow. He threw it down and began jumping madly on it to stomp out the flames that were trying to spurt from the sleeves. His exposed forearms, big around as aspen trunks, began to blister, and the sweat pouring from his forehead threatened to blind him. Even his teeth felt hot.
But he who listens learns. It struck Malone as more than slightly significant that Tongue Kills had spoken not of white man’s civilizations but of man’s. As they continued to trade dysphemisms of greater and greater heat, it set him to wondering as to just exactly whom he might be contending with by the shore of the wandering stream.
Not only the palaverers but the atmosphere surrounding them grew hotter as their calefacting conversation sent the very molecules of the air into an agitated frenzy. They tried to flee, crashing into one other and raising the temperature near the campsite to nearly tropical levels. Malone’s overheated pants and leggings joined his well-pounded jacket underfoot as he was forced to expand the range of his frantic dance. Even the mountain man’s hair was beginning to sizzle.
Meanwhile, Tongue Kills’s smile grew forced, and though he did not give off any smoke, be looked more than a mite disconcerted. Heat continued to pour off him in waves, and he glowed like the big lantern that hung outside the Three Whalers’ Tavern in Boston’s High Street.
When an uneasy Worthless whinnied, Malone realized he’d better do something quick. A mere glance from his mount was suggestive of something seriously askew, but when he whinnied, it was time for a man to give serious consideration to proximate possibilities. It meant ordinary folk had better clear out fast, and the commonly fearful seek cover.
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