by Vella Munn
Jed desperately wanted to see if someone was heading toward the fort for help, but from what he could tell, no one could think beyond trying to stay alive. Not knowing where he was going, he started running toward some low lying hills where there might be a tree or boulder to hide behind. His side had come alive with pain, yet fear kept it from overwhelming him.
The look on other pale faces, fury and stark terror, set his belly to grinding. These men had taught him how to curse and brag, that it was natural and right and manly to hate the Sioux. One had even eased a little of the loneliness inside him. Today, with the weak sun struggling to break free from a haze of clouds, the uniformed soldiers made him think of chickens routed by foxes.
Jed stumbled, surprised by his weakness, but managed to right himself. He'd just dodged to escape a riderless horse when something hit his leg and he pitched forward onto his knees. Lord...
For a moment he crouched with his fingers digging into the cold ground and his rifle half under him. Then, although the top of his head was threatening to explode with pain and he was scared to look, he did.
An arrow protruded from his right calf.
Lead me through the valley...
Thunderclaps of screams and curses and war yells rolled over him like a spring swollen river. He groveled on the ground, unmindful that he was tearing his nails on the rocks. He couldn't stop shaking, couldn't stop the puppy-like whimpers coming from deep inside him. Finally, fighting dizziness and terror and helplessness, he rolled onto his good side and tried to blink away the red curtain someone had thrown over his eyes.
The Sioux hadn't gone away. Their sweat-streaming horses were so close that he didn't know why he hadn't yet been struck by a hoof. He saw underbellies and dark, naked legs and knew hell couldn't be any worse than this.
He must have touched either his leg or his side because his hand was wet with blood. This time he did retch. When it was over, he felt so spent that all he could do was lie next to his waste and try to remember how to breathe.
He'd just begun to lift his head when he heard a laugh. No. It couldn't be a laugh. Surely no one, soldier or savage, could find anything funny about this nightmare. But the sound must be awfully close for him to hear it in the midst of this....
Someone grabbed his hair. He felt his head being yanked up and to the side and looked into the eyes—the eyes of hades. The warrior had painted his face black and red so that his white teeth stood out in horrible detail. He leaned so close that their noses nearly touched. Jed smelled the man's breath and sweat and hate. His own body was filled with the stench of fear. He struggled to free himself, but he was no stronger than a small child.
The warrior held a knife high in his free hand, making sure Jed saw it, then screamed something. Although Jed didn't understand the words, he knew he was being condemned to hell.
Didn't the savage know? This battlefield was hell.
As he continued to struggle both against the Sioux and his own terrifying weakness, the knife descended, slowly, tauntingly. He was vaguely aware that men continued to fight and die all around him, but nothing mattered except that he was going to be scalped.
He screamed, tried to kick and bite. The knife touched his forehead so gently that he had a flash of his dead mother's caresses. The impression didn't last. The knife became pain.
His scream joined the hurricane of sound around him, loud enough, he prayed, that he wouldn't be able to concentrate on being scalped.
The savage laughed again. Jed felt blood run down the side of his face and frantically tried to wrench away. His wounded leg had no strength and his side was on fire.
Suddenly the savage's laugh turned into a gurgle, a funny, choked sound. Although he continued to crouch over Jed, he was no longer trying to scalp him. He gurgled again from deep in his chest, then shuddered and flopped almost gracefully onto the ground with his face plastered into the cold dirt. Jed saw that his naked back had turned red.
"Jed! You alive?"
He tried to answer Charles, tried to thank his only friend for saving his life. Instead, he whimpered and nearly threw up again.
Charles ran toward him, his rifle banging uselessly against his leg. He'd just begun to reach for Jed when his body spasmed as if a giant had attached ropes to his limbs. Charles stared at Jed and despite the heat and hell around them, for one, maybe two seconds there was only the two of them and terrible regret for what they'd never share.
Jed shouted when Charles crumpled to the ground. He'd known the Sioux was dying. Now he knew the same about his friend. Charles lay still, a pocket of quiet in this storm from the earth's underbelly. Despite the pain, Jed began dragging himself toward Charles. God in heaven, please don't let this be.
Only God wasn't on the battlefield.
Tears now dry, Jed stretched out his hand. He was too far away, couldn't touch...
Why... this dark... on the fifth day of...
* * *
Pounding hooves. Curses. Leather squeaking. So... so many hooves.
Were the Sioux back?
Concentrating, Jed opened his eyes. It took so much effort that he was forced to rest for several minutes, his vision still blurred. He smelled winter cold and blood. His body was both numb and so racked with pain that he felt as if he was drowning in a whirlpool of agony. He thought that his scalp had stopped bleeding but was too weak to lift his hand toward it.
The sound of approaching horses became a tidal wave, and he could no longer ignore it. Blinking over and over again, he managed to chase the film from his eyes. He lay with his head on a knot of ground higher than his body, which made it possible for him to see a great deal.
Charles hadn't stirred from his crumpled position. Because his mind refused to deal with his friend's death, Jed strained to make out the approaching horsemen.
"Oh my God! I don't believe—"
"It's not possible! God in heaven..."
The words were American. The horses now prancing nearby wore shoes. As the fear of even more Sioux coming to finish him off faded, Jed fought his body's weakness and managed to lift his head. His side and leg and head throbbed; he ignored them.
Soldiers from the fort had arrived. They were armed and if there were any murdering Sioux still here—
He didn't think so. Otherwise, wouldn't their hellish war cries be assaulting the air?
"They're dead. All of them."
No. Not all. I'm—please, not all.
He tried to sit up, but he'd lost too much blood. His head weighed at least a thousand pounds. Still, he refused to lie back down and die. "Help me." His words sounded like they came from a baby. He didn't care. "Please help me."
Someone on a dark, healthy breathing horse rode so close that he could see the individual hairs on the horse's fetlocks. The soldier dismounted and dropped to his knees beside Jed. "This one's alive!" the soldier screamed. "Where's the medic? Get the—God, what happened?"
"Ambushed," Jed got out. "The others?"
"I don't know," the soldier said, not meeting Jed's eyes. "We came as soon as we could, but the devils were already gone. I pray—" He touched Jed's scalp and his face blanched. "Oh my God. They nearly—why didn't they finish?"
"Charles killed him."
"Charles?"
"My friend." My friend. "Look after him, please. Right over there. He's..."
The soldier was staring at Jed's leg now, and at the arrow still in it. Two other calvary men joined the first, their voices heavy with disbelief. Although they quickly knelt beside Jed, they kept looking around. Jed wasn't sure whether they were on the lookout for Sioux or if something closer held their attention.
Something in this nightmare from hell.
When they rolled him over onto his back, he sobbed. He wanted his mother beside him, his father holding his hand. He needed Charles ordering him to stop whimpering like a baby, Charles pouring brandy down his throat.
"It's a massacre. A—massacre."
"We'll get 'em. Hunt down the bloody devils
and kill every one of 'em."
"Shut up! We ain't doing that right now. Soldier? Soldier?" One of the men poked his face close to Jed's and spoke loudly as if Jed was deaf, or dead. "We'll get you back to the fort. You're going to be all right, you hear? This was one time God—"
"God?" Jed barely got the word out.
"Yes, God," the man repeated, his head bobbing up and down, his eyes showing too much white. "The Lord was with you today, boy. Saved your life when all the others—saved your life. You can spend the rest of your years thanking Him."
Another man joined those around him. This one didn't waste time staring but immediately began cutting at his uniform. He thought he recognized the fort doctor, but his vision had started to blur again. "You listen to what Henry says, boy. Listen and be grateful. The Lord was surely riding on your shoulder today."
"God—had nothing to do with it." His voice was failing; maybe he was dying.
"You don't know what you're saying. He—"
"No!" He reared up, fell back gasping. "It's taken me seventeen—seventeen years to find out. But I know. Know... there's no God."
Chapter 3
November 29, 1872
Morning nibbled at the edge of Luash's mind, but she pushed it away. She had been up most of the night, talking to old Aga about summers past, when the Modocs wandered from Goose Lake to distant Mount Shasta while hunting deer, antelope, and mountain sheep, about the sweet taste of wild plum and choke cherries and fields of camas waiting to be dug.
Now the woman lay near her snoring softly, twisted fingers curled under her chin. When she woke, they might talk again of when Aga's body was young and strong. But maybe Aga would be deep within herself, thinking of the death-sleep that waited for her.
Luash hoped there was yet more time for talking. Aga's memories of summer valleys filled with rabbits, sage hen, squirrels, and woodchucks were so vivid that they nearly made Luash forget the seemingly endless cold and her fear that she and the others would be forced back onto the reservation. There whites demanded they give up their ancient ways, ways her people had embraced from the beginning of time.
Warmed by the thought of harvesting water-lily seeds while standing in a sun-heated lake, Luash snuggled under her heavy blanket and listened to the wind's rhythm as it knocked gently against the large, crowded wickiup.
The sound put her in mind of a mother's humming as she rocked her baby. Once her own mother had sung to her like that, long before she knew the meaning of such words as rancher and soldier, long before she'd followed her mother's brother Chief Kientpoos and the other rebel Modocs back to this place. She'd grown up here, but the army men said it no longer belonged to them. Half awake, Luash pretended she was a newborn, secure and warm in her mother's arms, her belly full of milk, eyes drooping....
Rifle!
She had bolted to her feet and was trying to kick away the deer hide still tangled around her before her mind made full sense of the sound. She heard others yelling, but in the gloom, she couldn't make out the individual figures of the four families that had found shelter under one roof. Aga called out weakly, but Luash couldn't concentrate on her because another rifle shot had followed the first, and then a third. Unconsciously, Luash ran her fingers from her forehead to the top of her head, along the streak of white hair that had been there since the first day Eagle touched her.
One of the braves hurriedly pushed aside the willow-bough door and let in a little of the dark winter morning.
"Soldiers," he announced flatly.
A woman sobbed. From out of the corner of her eye, Luash saw Nau'ki clutch her child to her breast. Aga muttered again, her voice thick.
Another brave joined the first; both began speaking rapidly. Because horses snorted and pounded the ground just beyond the entrance, Luash couldn't hear what they were saying. Not taking time to slip on her footwear, she grabbed her sleeping blanket and threw it over her shoulders.
Soldiers.
"Luash, don't!"
Ignoring Aga's warning, she hurried forward so she could stand in the doorway. Thick fog rolled in from the nearby lake, making it all but impossible for her to see beyond the hastily constructed, close-bunched village. Several other women pressed around her, and even though they shook and cried, she took comfort in their presence.
The braves stared at the armed men in uniform, who yelled and gestured. In three heartbeats, Luash realized the bedraggled looking soldiers were demanding to see the man they knew as Captain Jack, her uncle. Over and over again they insisted that if Captain Jack didn't show himself, everyone in the winter camp would pay. She wasn't sure what pay meant, just that it was a threat.
"He is not here," Cho-Cho, who the whites called Scarface Charlie, insisted. The brave's hands were knotted at his sides, and he shook his head from side to side as if not yet comprehending that a sleeping village had been surrounded. The large scar on his right cheek was pulled tight by his clenched teeth.
"You lyin' red skin," a soldier said in heavily accented Modoc. "Montgomery seen him just yesterday. Spotted him sneaking 'round his ranch; slaughtered one of his prime bulls."
"Montgomery is the one who lies."
If she hadn't been so uneasy, she might have laughed at the army man's reaction. His cold-whitened mouth tightened; he looked to be in danger of breaking his jaw and his big ears all but flapped. He shivered violently. "You better keep quiet, Scarface. Your squatting time's come to an end. Like it or not, you and the rest of this outlaw bunch is heading back where you belong."
She wasn't surprised by this. For months now, the army had been saying that those who followed Kientpoos had no right to winter here. But what else could they do? The Klamaths had all but chased them off their shared reservation. Kientpoos, Cho-Cho, and the others were men, not animals to be kept in pens. Neither were their families. Although she didn't look behind her, she knew most of the women and children had joined her. They spoke in whispers, sounding more disbelieving than afraid. Someone said she couldn't remember seeing Kientpoos since yesterday. Luash thought he might have left Lost River with his old wife Spe-ach-es, but remained silent. She couldn't imagine speaking a word to the soldiers, some of whom had frost in their beards; all looked half frozen. Frozen and angry.
"We have told you this before," Cho-Cho was saying, "told your leaders why we came here. The army has not kept its word to make the Klamaths leave us alone. Until there are promises we can believe, we will not return to the reservation."
"The army doesn't make deals with renegades, Scarface." The man with ears too large for the rest of him aimed his rifle at Cho-Cho's chest. "If the rest of your people can live in peace with the Klamaths, your bunch can by God learn to do the same."
Cho-Cho spat, then expanded his chest as if daring the man to shoot him. His wife begin to cry. "The others are cattle, small burrowing animals. They have lost their hearts and their courage and no longer look at the world through the eyes of a Modoc. We have no need for them, no use. We—" Cho-Cho tapped his chest"—we are men."
"Men hiding behind their women's skirts. Damnit, where's Jack?"
"He is not here. Are your mule ears broken, army man?"
Even before the words were all the way out of Cho-Cho's mouth, the soldier's ears began jiggling again. Ignoring the warrior, he yelled for Captain Jack, then, in English, ordered the men with him to round up all the Modocs.
Luash watched, barely aware of her icy feet, as the shivering soldiers tried to herd the men, women, and children into a circle. Several of the women glanced anxiously at her. Whispering, Luash translated what the soldiers had said. Many of the women and children hurried back inside and flattened themselves against the underground dirt floors, where bullets would be less likely to find them.
From where she stood, she heard the army men arguing with Cho-Cho and the other braves; the argument seemed to go on forever, with the soldiers demanding the Modocs surrender their arms while the braves continued to refuse.
Across the meandering
river, where the hot-tempered Ha-kar-Jim had his camp, Luash could hear a few more army men and some settlers trying to convince those Modoc to give up as well. When a scuffle broke out between Ha-kar-Jim and a white man, Cho-Cho and two other braves dove for their wickiups. They emerged a moment later, rifles in hand. Most of the soldiers simply stared; she wondered if they were so frozen that even their minds had filled with ice.
"Leave!" Cho-Cho ordered. "This is our land. You have no right!"
"Put that thing down, Scarface. You don't want to start a war," a deep-voiced man insisted. Luash didn't care who had issued the order; she knew it wouldn't be obeyed. Already, several braves had taken advantage of the fog and the disorganized soldiers to hurry out of sight. None of the armed braves fired at the army men, who didn't seem capable of making up their minds whether to chase the fleeing warriors or remain in the village.
One of the soldiers barked an order at her, and Luash felt hatred build in her belly. When Eagle first came to her, she hadn't fully understood what it meant to have white settlers and an army fort on land that had belonged to her people for all time. Now, six years later, she did.
It meant the end to freedom.
"You get going, now! You hear me, squaw?"
She wheeled, ready to fight, but the soldier was no longer speaking to her. Instead, using his horse's bulk, he'd backed Cho-Cho's wife against the side of the wickiup. Angry, Luash hurried over, clamped her hand around the man's ankle, and yanked. "Do not call her squaw!" she warned in English. "Her name—"
"You think I give a damn what her name is?" He kicked out, but Luash was too fast for him. She ducked, then straightened. The man spun his horse around, looking as if he wanted to run her down. A rifle shot rang out.
"They're attacking!" one of the soldiers yelled.
Luash stared at the barely visible low hills where several of the soldiers were pointing but couldn't see anything. It seemed to her that the rifle blast had come from somewhere much closer, maybe from one of the army men themselves.