by Win Blevins
She told how the Cheyennes were accepting Adam’s medical help more. Though they still wouldn’t tolerate the little death, they saw that he helped, and they were a practical people. Besides, Adam’s grandfather (she wrote grandmorther and crossed it out) put it well—Indian medicine for Indian illnesses, white-man medicine for white-man diseases. They would let Adam help with white-man hurts, like bullets.
She wrote of miracles—Little Wolf’s walking through the hail of bullets untouched, and Bridge’s stopping the arterial bleeding of Sitting Man. She surmised that the God who reigned over the earth, called by various names as he was, had room in his heart for poor red men, though white men did not.
She wrote that sleeping on the ground without a shelter, riding fifty miles in a day, and going hungry were hardships she had adjusted to easily. She said nothing about the hardship of living in perpetual fear, or about how her circumstances chafed at her fledgling marriage.
She puzzled at length over what to say, if anything, about Calling Eagle’s transformation into Sings Wolf. At length she wrote,
One of our women had a dream, and in that dream saw herself dead, dressed as a man, outfitted for war, and being buried with the honor due a warrior. She took it as a sign and revolutionized her life! She traded her feminine name for a man’s name and gave up her clothes and adornment and all her feminine ways to live as a warrior would. Her first day as a man she led a war charge that turned back the soldiers, and we won against an overwhelming number of bluecoats.
Her conversion is truly a blessing because we are so short of men able to fight, and it is taken by our people as a great sign that in desperate circumstances the Powers will provide in a truly miraculous way.
There is more to the story, which I shall tell you in person. It illustrates wonderfully with what awe our people regard dreams.
But she didn’t know whether she could bring herself to talk even to her sister about the facts of Sings Wolf’s anatomy.
She said nothing about the apparent disloyalty of fighting United States soldiers. Her family had opposed the authorities in the Revolution, when they were British, and opposed the authorities again when they tolerated slavery. Mother and Dora would understand that one fought for the right.
Finally Elaine got to the night of the crossing of the Arkansas.
My horse stumbled and fell, and in the dark water stepped on me. I fear that the result is that I have broken my right leg, but am getting excellent care. Adam brought me here to Dodge City, where I am doubly watched over. The surgeon from Fort Dodge attends to me medically while the local doctor gives me room and board. If his wife did not sit with me and talk for long hours—poor creature! no one else seems to talk to her!—I would be parched for company.
She decided to brighten her pages with what she’d learned of Dodge City from Fran Wockerley, a shy but eager gossip. Elaine told how the vast herds of half-wild cattle were herded up from Texas—“aristocratic beeves, descended from the great ranchos chartered by the King of Spain!”—to be jammed into cars and shipped to the hungry East.
So large numbers of cow-boys (most of them truly boys) gasp into Dodge City all through the summer and fall. Thirsty for amenities after their months on the trail, they collect their meager wages and set out to indulge in what they fancy to be the luxuries of civilization (really the depravities which are its regrettable by-products). Straight to the pleasure palace the cow-boy heads, the spot for drinking, dancing, and gambling all in one—Dodge’s streets are dust, its saloons gilt! Before long the country fellow has lost his wages to a professional gambler, gotten too inebriated to care, danced with a pretty girl (and maybe stolen a kiss!)—Dora would understand this euphemism—
and had a fight with someone who insulted the “great state of Texas.” Having gotten what he came for—he has “seen the elephant!”—he heads for a home hundreds of miles away, broke, hung over, banged up, and happy.
It is all in the spirit of fun, of course, and one cannot feel begrudging. It makes me wonder, though, that the people of Dodge should be so certain of the superiority of their “civilization” compared to the style of living of the Indians who just fled past them in pitiable circumstances, poor, hungry, dirty enough, and plenty ignorant, but possessed of dignity and elevated by the strongest spirituality.
She set pen and paper down a moment and rested. She tired easily these days. But she had to get to what she’d been avoiding:
Now I am in traction—I’m painfully bored not being able to move about—but Dr. Richtarsch says my break is mending “nicely,” so I shall no doubt be running races soon. Adam is gone on with the people to the north country, and I will meet him there when I can travel. Meanwhile, think of all the time I shall have to write you letters! And to read your letters. Please write me in care of Dr. M. T. Wockerley, Dodge City. Dr. Richtarsch says I shall be here at least a month.
Though my bone is knitting, the cut in my leg is infected, Dr. Richtarsch fears, and today he expressed concern about it.
The good doctor had used the word concern, but Elaine knew he was deliberately understating its seriousness. She did the same.
I am confident that I shall throw the infection off quickly—you remember how my colds lasted only a day, and yours a week!
She rested again. She told herself that her anxiety was foolish—“feminine frippery!” she accused herself. She was more than half aware that the frippery was a premonition—a premonition that she would die of this little infection—die in miserable Kansas, die a failure at marriage, die far from her husband, far from her family, die without being held, without being cherished, without being loved. Die a sort of spinster. She had risen above such feminine foolishness since she was a little girl, though, and she wasn’t about to regress now.
Lying back, half-exhausted, she thought of Adam. Adam who was riding across the plains with Sings Wolf, trying to catch up with a hapless people. Adam who was running from her. Lord, she ached to tell him she loved him. She wondered when she would get to hold him and tell him.
“I love you,” she wrote in the letter to her sister, and signed her name.
She would take a nap. It was amazing how tired she seemed to be from this broken leg. And in the afternoons she was feverish. She would take a nap, and then Dr. Richtarsch would be here, and they would visit a little while.
The flask landed with a clink. It lay across the coals that remained of the fire. It sounds empty, Smith thought, so he’s as drunk as he will get. It was an expensive-looking flask of embossed silver. Smith wondered what body Burns had stolen it from.
Burns got up and staggered over to the fire. He was a small man—Smith could have broken him of the know-it-all eye over one knee. Smith cursed himself again for hurrying and getting ambushed.
Burns just stood there, like he’d forgotten why he came. Did he mean to pick up the flask he’d thrown? Or would he not think of it until morning, when he was hung over and needed the hair of the dog and didn’t have any?
Smith had worked and worked at his bonds, hands and feet, and thought he might be making some progress. He was afloat in the damn tarpaulin and couldn’t chafe at the ropes much. He’d rubbed his back hard on the ground, though, and it felt like he’d moved the hemp up in back. Maybe before dawn he could scooch it up over his shoulders. He wished to hell his shoulders were narrower.
He figured that not long after dawn he and Sings Wolf would be seeing a lot of U.S. soldiers. And not long after that they would be dead.
Sings Wolf was sleeping. Smith had indicated Sings Wolf should look at the ropes on Smith’s back, and he had. Then he shook his head gently no and closed his eyes and went to sleep. Smith’s grandfather was not one to fret pointlessly or struggle to no effect.
Finally, Burns squatted down by the coals near Smith’s head. He held his long Arkansas toothpick into the fire, as he would roast meat, but the end of the knife held no meat. It was a wicked-looking knife, long, sharp-pointed, and double-edged—one of the few kni
ves good for throwing and ripping. He set it on a rock, tip still in the coals, and pulled a glove onto his right hand.
“I been thinking about you, Doctor,” said Burns in a slur, “and I don’t like you.'’
He let a while go by, a drunk’s pause between stupid remarks—he’d probably forget he’d been talking.
“You’re a goddamm Cheyenne.”
You Pawnees have plenty of reason to fear and hate Cheyennes, Smith wanted to say through his gag. You’ve stocked horses for us for generations, ready whenever the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio need them. You’ve provided women for the sport of our warriors. The reason we haven’t whupped on you much recently is that it’s a doubtful honor to count coup against a mere Pawnee.
“You’re a white man, too. You didn’t say so, but anybody can see it.” Burns studied the end of his knife in the coals for a moment. “Nothing I hate more than Cheyennes and white men.”
Burns sat for a while. Was this easing up to it part of the act, Smith wondered, or was Burns really drunk? Both, Smith guessed.
He saw that Sings Wolf was awake now. Smith’s grandfather had rolled to face him, looked at him with still, deep eyes.
“What’s more,” Burns ambled on, “you’re a know-it-all. You been to one of them colleges. Can’t learn that doctoring without you go to one of them colleges, can you, Doctor?”
Burns turned his head sideways and looked at Smith with a big smile. He looked almost amiable. Smith noticed foolishly that Burns had all his teeth, unusual on the frontier. He looked predatory.
“You talk high and mighty. ‘As I said,’ you said to us. Us ignoramuses. ‘As I said.’” He took the knife out with his gloved hand and inspected the tip closely. It glowed red. “Ain’t much anybody likes less than a know-it-all.”
Burns cackled, a high, piercing sound that came from nowhere and related to nothing.
“‘As I said.’” Burns fell into silence again, his eyes fixed on the end of the knife among the coals. He kept still.
Smith could feel little prickles of cold forming in the small of his back.
Finally, Burns brought the knife out and inspected the end again. Smith couldn’t see how it could be any more red-hot.
Burns changed tone suddenly. From laconic mockery he switched to a stage whisper. “But you don’t know nothing. You don’t even know who you are.”
Burns let it sit for a moment, holding the knife in the fire again. “How can a doctor wear a breechcloth and leggings? How can you do that, Doctor? How can a white man go on the warpath with Injuns? Hmmm? Tell this nigger that, now.”
Burns took the knife out and inspected it. “How can a white man kidnap a little white girl, pore thing?” He snickered. “How can an Injun be a know-it-all doctor, Doctor?
“So I got me a idea. Hear me, now. What you is, is a big question mark. Didn’t think Nelly Burns knew what a question mark is, now, did you? Didn’t think Nelly Burns could read.” He took the Arkansas toothpick out of the fire. “So I think you ought to die tomorrow with a big question mark on your face. A big question mark.”
He knelt close to Smith, the knife glowing in his hand. “Now this nigger noticed them stitches on the outside of your left eye.” Burns worked the fingers of his offhand into Smith’s hair for a good grip. “Shame you need them stitches, ain’t it? Did one of my Pawnee compañeros get to the doctor before this nigger did? Did his knife hurt? Hmmm?”
Burns jerked Smith’s head back hard.
Smith had heard all his life about stepping aside mentally, holding the spirit apart from the body. He wondered if he could.
“Well, I want to finish that question mark. It needs that little dot underneath.”
Smith saw the red-hot knife tip come toward his eyes and felt a stab of heat that took his breath away.
It was already over. He felt surprisingly calm. A warm trickle of blood flowed down his cheek, but it didn’t seem like much.
“Silent, are you, Doctor? What a brave, white-man, red-man doctor. Tell me, Doctor, when they breed a Cheyenne mare to a white burro, what do they get? Do they get a mule? Are you sterile, Doctor?”
Burns slugged Smith viciously in the groin.
Smith deliberately didn’t react. The tarpaulin absorbed most of the force anyway. Now he was determined not to let this scum make him cry out through the gag.
Burns wrenched Smith’s head back by the hair. Smith felt the bastard’s hot breath and then Burns’s teeth in his ear. He jumped, but made no sound.
Quickly, in a fury, Burns cut an arc around the outside of Smith’s other eye.
Smith just stared at him. He pretended blood wasn’t running into his eye.
“See, Doctor,” Burns purred, “a question mark on each side of your brain. What is it, a white-man brain or a red-man brain?” He cackled low.
Now Burns began to slide the Arkansas toothpick up Smith’s face. Smith felt the warm touch of it under his chin, in the cleft, under his lower lip, on his upper lip. It didn’t seem to be cutting, just touching.
Burns eased the point of the knife deep into Smith’s nostril.
“Burns,” drawled a Southern voice, “you cut him again and this boy will kill you.”
The knife stopped.
Smith held his breath. He thought Burns might ram the knife point home right now.
Burns took the knife out, stuck it in its scabbard, and stood up over Smith, smiling casually. “What’s the matter, Riley, you think he needs to look pretty to die in the morning?”
“Burns,” said the scout, “you’re relieved of this watch—I’ll take over.”
Riley looked in the dog tent at Hindy and apparently saw nothing wrong. He walked over to the fire and studied the two prisoners. Seeing Smith’s face, he said contemptuously, “A knife is a greaser’s toy. Down home in San Antone, I been known to take a knife away from a greaser.”
Burns slashed sideways with the knife—Smith thought he could hear it cut air.
Crack!
Burns yelped, and the knife fell into the dust.
Riley had the muzzle of his Colt Dragoon under Burns’s chin, forcing his head back.
Burns held the wrist of his gun hand. “You broke it, Burns whispered.
“I hope so, Burns. I’d like to kill you,” Riley said slowly, as though making a casual observation. “But I don’t like court-martials.” He stared Burns down. “Now get in that tent and make me think you’re sleeping.”
Burns went.
Riley sat down by the tree.
Smith hoped he was alert. Otherwise Burns would kill him.
Chapter 4
Smith felt a weight set down on his stomach. He took a moment—it was a good idea not to show your enemy right off that you were awake, especially when you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and tied up. Then he cracked his eyes in the direction of his belly.
What he saw in the predawn darkness was a head. Nelly Burns’s head. Just the head, severed, and held up by a hand in its dark hair. Looking at Smith from his belly, one eye was gaped and the other still know-it-all.
Twist chuckled maliciously. He guffawed in a stagy way to make his point. Smith took the point: all three scouts were beyond hearing anything.
Twist cut the gag and ropes off Sings Wolf and then came to Smith. He got out his knife and pointed it at Smith’s newly injured eye. He emitted that weird cackle again.
“Grandson,” snapped Sings Wolf. It was an admonition to behave like a human being.
Twist cut Smith’s bonds and put away the knife.
“Grandson,” said Sings Wolf, “I saw nothing and heard nothing.” He was paying compliment to Twist’s skills, and deservedly so.
“Good-bye, Grandfather,” said Twist. “Keep the veho out of trouble. Tell him to go back to his wife.” Twist disappeared into the darkened plains.
Smith stretched out his kinked-up legs and arms, then slipped into the tent and quickly cut the ropes and gag off Hindy, and told her she would be OK. She held on to Smith and said nothing, but sh
e wouldn’t let go.
After a few moments Smith disengaged himself. Riley was still against the tree, dead. Smith went to check the other tent. Two bodies, including Burns, still in the bedroll, headless. The other was halfway out, his throat cut. Too slow.
Yes, Smith thought, Twist had brought off a remarkable feat. He’d sneaked into camp, cut Riley’s throat without letting him cry out, and crept into the tent and killed both the other scouts before they could do a damn thing. Then he’d brought Smith that gruesome trophy.
Twist had known exactly how many men were in camp and where they were. He must have seen and heard everything—must have been hiding nearby in the dark. He’d plainly been tracking Smith and Sings Wolf all along, tracking them from well back, waiting for whatever opportunity came. By chance the opportunity was to save Smith’s life instead of taking it.
So now Smith owed his life to Twist. He didn’t like that. Twist would gloat over it. And now that Twist had killed more whites, more soldiers would come after the people.
Twist wouldn’t care. He would just strut and preen and brag about his coups. He was a mad dog, just like Burns.
Dr. Richtarsch gazed down on his patient. She slept restlessly. She had mostly slept, said Dr. Wockerley, for two days now, and had been steadily feverish. She tossed and turned a lot. They’d had to wake her to feed her.
The doctor frowned. This one was taking a bad course, quite bad.
“Mrs. Maclean,” Richtarsch called cheerfully. She stirred a little. “Mrs. Maclean,” he repeated, booming. She stirred again, and he began to shake her by the shoulder.
Richtarsch felt a certain liking for Elaine. Though she had committed the foolishness of marrying a red Indian, he thought, at least she had gotten a decent name out of it. Schottisch, the doctor thought—Scottish. A good name for a widow. That’s what she should give out, that she was a widow.
He shook her vigorously.
She came to with a little start. Yes, she felt bad. She had all the signs.
“How do you feel today, Mrs. Maclean?”
She shook her head, trying to wake up. “Depleted,” she murmured.