At the metallic rasp, the four Crows halted. He Dog glared, then signed, “Do not try to stop us, woman.”
Stepping a few paces to the left so her daughter would be out of the line of fire, Winona stood tall and said to Zach, “Translate for me. I dare not take my hands off the rifle.”
“Sure, Ma,” the boy responded. He had leaped up when his mother did, resolved to do whatever was necessary to protect her.
“Tell them this,” Winona said, and her son began to relay her words as best sign language allowed. “Say that we agreed to help them because Two Humps is Grizzly Killer’s friend. Say that we knew the dangers, but that did not stop us. We have risked all on their behalf, yet now we find that they have no respect for us and no regard for our lives.”
“Your tongue speaks false,” He Dog replied. “I am the only one who has a grudge against you. These others are leaving with me because they know I am right.”
“Are you?” Winona rejoined. “Or are you letting your affection for Fetches Water cloud your mind?” She paused. “If you ride off, all our hard work in slipping into Lakota country undetected will have been for nothing. In broad daylight you are bound to be spotted sooner or later. The Oglalas will overwhelm you, and what will happen to Fetches Water then?”
“What do you think might be happening to her now?” He Dog said. “I am not going to waste more time when even as we speak a Lakota bastard might be forcing himself on her.”
Winona lowered the muzzle a bit. So there it was. The real reason the warrior was so passionately determined to rescue the girl.
“If you intend to shoot, shoot,” He Dog went on. “It will prove that you lie when you claim to be a friend of the Absarokas.” He addressed the men with him, then added, “None of us will lift a finger against you. So squeeze the trigger.” Holding his arms out, he faced her. “Shoot me if you really believe it is in Fetches Water’s best interests.”
Winona could not bring herself to do it.
He Dog nodded. “I did not think you had it in you to kill someone who is not trying to kill you, and I was right.” He lowered his arms. “You need not go with us, woman. Stay and wait for your precious white man. By the time he shows up, we will have rescued Fetches Water.”
“Ma?” Zach said as the four warriors stepped to their mounts. He raised his rifle, but his mother shook her head and eased down the hammer of her own. “Why are we just letting them ride off?”
What should she say? Winona mused. That in his twisted way, He Dog had a point about the greater danger to Fetches Water? That she could not bring herself to shoot him or any of the others down in cold blood? That she could not blame the Crows for not wanting to wait there forever for Nate?
“Ma?” Zach repeated.
Bull Standing With Cow approached. “I am sorry, my friends,” he signed, “but we cannot let them go off by themselves. Two Humps, Flying Hawk and I must go along.”
“I understand,” Winona signed.
“I wish I did,” Zach muttered aloud.
Winona stepped to her blanket and knelt to fold it. “Saddle our horses quickly, Stalking Coyote,” she said. “We must go with them, too.”
“But Pa told us to sit tight.”
“He will find us eventually.” Winona noticed Zach’s confusion and elaborated by saying, “Think, son. What is one of the first things the Lakotas will do if they come on a band of Crows in their own country?”
“Attack them.”
“Besides that.”
“I don’t—” Zach began, and abruptly recollected the time the Shoshones had found evidence of a Piegan band near their village. “Some of them will go after the Crows while others will backtrack to see if the band is part of a larger war party.”
“And if the Sioux backtrack, where will that lead them?”
Zachary King looked at the tall trees and the bubbling creek and the stump. “Right here.”
~*~
Nate King offered no resistance as the Lakotas pushed and shoved him over to the bloody pole. Outnumbered as he was, it would have been pointless. Plus, he wasn’t about to do anything that smacked of rank cowardice. He would show them that not all white men were like Emmet Carter.
Hide thongs were used to bind the big trapper’s hands and feet. One of the Sioux wore his beaver hat. His pistols had been claimed by two others. A fourth sported his knife in a beaded sheath. Wearing mocking grins, the warriors completed their task and walked back to where the bowmen were notching arrows to their strings.
Nate squared his shoulders and regarded the archers with forced detachment. The onlookers had fallen silent again. Among them was the ancient warrior, who studied Nate closely.
The tall warrior slowly elevated his bow. As he had done with Carter, he sighted carefully down the shaft. He aimed high, though, not low, and held himself perfectly still.
To Nate, it seemed as if the razor sharp tip were pointed straight at his heart. An urge to close his eyes came over him but he resisted it. His mouth felt dry, his palms damp. Suddenly the shaft flashed from the bow. He could see it clearly, see the glistening tip and the revolving feathers almost as if the arrow were moving in slow motion. For a heart-stopping moment he had the impression it was going to transfix his chest. Then there was a loud thud and the quivering shaft was so close to his neck that he could feel the smooth wood brushing his skin.
Nate’s breath had caught in his throat. He let it out and willed himself to relax to calm the blood racing madly in his veins. His legs tingled as if from lack of blood and grew so weak that he had to exert all his willpower in order not to sag.
Another warrior moved forward to shoot. This one did not take nearly as long aiming. His string twanged and the arrow sped across the intervening space to sink into the pole on the other side of the trapper’s neck.
Again Nate betrayed no fear. Some of the bowmen exchanged glances. Three more times arrows were shot, one sticking into the pole between his legs, two others missing his ears by the width of a hair.
The ancient warrior said something that caused the bowmen to lower their weapons. The tall one handed his to another man. Drawing a knife, the tall Lakota briskly advanced. When he was within five paces of the pole he gripped the knife by the blade and held it above his shoulder, poised to throw.
Nate locked his eyes on the Oglala’s. No enmity was apparent. The warrior was simply doing what had to be done. He made his face muscles go rigid to keep from flinching. The very next instant the Lakota’s arm whipped down and the knife leaped from his fingers.
The blade bit into the pole above Nate’s head. He nearly grimaced when it nicked him. A moist sensation spread across his scalp and down past his left ear. He was bleeding.
Murmuring broke out among the assembled Sioux. The aged chief consulted with a handful of other apparent tribal leaders. Listening in were the tall warrior and the man who had snared Nate in the gully. The latter did not act pleased by whatever decision was reached. He protested vigorously. The gray-haired Lakota responded, and the roper walked off in a huff.
Nate was perplexed. He had expected to be accorded a swift and painless death if he demonstrated he was not afraid, but the Oglalas quite clearly had something else in mind. Several of them untied him from the pole, bound his wrists, and escorted him to the same small lodge in which he had initially been tossed. This time they did not treat him roughly. They even let him stoop and enter under his own power, perhaps out of respect.
Since the smoke flap at the top of the lodge was closed, Nate had to sit in near darkness and ponder what his next move should be.
That the Sioux had spared him was amazing. By all accounts they were not fond of whites and had already slaughtered a few trappers foolhardy enough to cross their territory.
Shakespeare McNair had once told Nate that many years ago the Lakotas and the whites had been on friendly terms. In fact, it had been an Englishman who first encountered them back when they lived along the Missouri River. On seeing that they used kn
ives made of bone and stone, he had gone east and later returned with steel knives which he had handed out for free. Among the Minniconjou, among whom McNair had stayed for a short time over forty years ago, that winter was known as They First Saw Steel Knives.
But sometime after that a dispute had arisen between several trappers and their Hunkpapa hosts. According to Shakespeare, the trappers had been drunk and one of them had stupidly insisted on making advances at the wife of a Hunkpapa leader.
None of the trappers had left the village alive. Ever since, there had been bad blood between the Lakotas and the whites.
So Nate had no reason to count on his reprieve being permanent. He figured that in their own sweet time the Oglalas would get around to finishing him off. They probably had something special planned for him, he mused, like the time he had been captured by Blackfeet and they had made him run a gauntlet.
Nate had to escape while he could. He decided to await nightfall and try. Moving over to the side of the lodge, he leaned against the buffalo hide to rest.
It could not have been more than a minute later that the flap was thrown wide and sunlight bathed him. He squinted as into the lodge came the tall warrior and the ancient leader. Straightening, he scrutinized their features for a clue as to why they were there, but both men were inscrutable.
The older man knelt and set his staff down. At a nod from him, the tall warrior cut Nate loose. The chief’s gnarled hands moved slowly as he resorted to sign language, saying, in essence, “I am called Ant. I was born Minniconjou but came to live with the Oglalas when I took an Oglala woman as my mate.”
Nate signed, “I am Grizzly Killer, a Shoshone.”
Ant’s features crinkled in wry humor. “How strange. You do not look like any Snake I have ever known. Or do the Shoshones now dress and act like white men?”
“They took me into their tribe when I took one of their women as my mate.”
The leader chuckled. “It does not surprise me to learn this. The Snakes know a brave man when they see one.” Ant gazed at the lodge wall as if peering into his own past. “I have lived longer than any Lakota alive, so I have counted many coup, fought many enemies. And none have ever shown more courage than the Snakes.” He paused. “The Absarokas are brave, too, but they do not like to do battle unless they stand a good chance of winning. The Hohe would rather flee than fight. As for the Flatheads, they resist when they are attacked, but once they start to lose, they run. Practice has made them good runners, too. I never could catch one.”
Nate did not know what to make of the old warrior’s friendliness, so he made no comment.
“Question. What was the name of your friend who did not die so well?” Ant inquired.
“He was not my friend,” Nate signed. “I was hunting him down to kill him when the man beside you found us.”
Ant and the tall warrior conversed briefly. “Were those your shots Thunder Hoop and the rest of the war party heard?”
“The white man was firing at me,” Nate detailed. “He had stolen a horse and two guns from my family and he knew I wanted them back.” He also remarked, “As for his name, it can only be said in the white tongue.” Aloud, Nate stated, “Emmet Carter.”
Ant tried to say it several times but could not accent the syllables properly. “It twists the tongue,” he conceded. “So from now on we will refer to him as He Who Bawled.”
Thunder Hoop had not resheathed his knife. He did place it on his leg to sign, “Tell us, Grizzly Killer, why were you in our country?”
“I was chasing He Who Bawled,” Nate reiterated. “He did not know this was land the Oglala roamed.”
“He did not know much at all, if you ask me,” Ant said. “Who taught him how to be a man?” The warrior made a clucking noise. “Such weaklings reflect poorly on a people.”
“I could not agree more.”
Ant clasped his hands and was quiet for a short spell. “What are we to do with you, Grizzly Killer? Many want to kill you and be done with you, but there is a quality about you I like. There is something I see in your eyes that tells me you are a man much like myself.”
“You flatter me.”
“You also remind me of the first white man I knew. We called him The Knife Bringer. He gave the Minniconjou many steel knives when I was barely old enough to walk. I can still remember my father holding his close to the fire every night to admire the fine steel.”
So the story Shakespeare had told Nate was true. He made bold to sign, “Not all white men are bad. Even though your warrior captured me and brought me here against my will, I bear the Oglalas no ill will. Nothing would please me more than to be able to smoke the pipe of peace with you and call you my brother.”
Ant acted pleased. “I would be just as honored. But that cannot be, for you have admitted that you are a Snake now, not a white man, and the Snakes are our enemies.” His fingers hung in the air a moment. “We kill our enemies.”
Nate had tried. He did not let his disappointment show.
“Or most of our enemies,” Ant amended his statement. “We do not make war on women and children, as the Blackfeet and Absarokas do. I still remember the time three women went off to cut wood and the Crows rubbed them out.”
Nate took a gamble. “Is it true that your people raided the Absarokas within the past couple of moons?”
“Yes,” Ant signed proudly. “Our warriors slew many Crows and stole many horses. They also brought back captives who will be reared as Oglalas. In time they will forget they were ever anything else.” He indicated the tall warrior. “Thunder Hoop was on that raid. He counted four coup. And he brought back a pretty girl who will soon be married off to a deserving man.”
“Is her Crow name Fetches Water?”
Ant was surprised. “It is. How did you know, Grizzly Killer?”
“A friend of mine heard about the raid from a Crow who was there,” Nate hedged.
Thunder Hoop wasn’t satisfied. “Since when do Absarokas get along well with Snakes?” he asked suspiciously.
“I did not say my friend was a Shoshone,” Nate responded. “Remember I was born white, and the whites get along well with both tribes.”
The tall warrior and the aged leader talked at length. Ant signified the parley was at an end by picking up his stick and pushing off the ground. “It has been a pleasure meeting you, Snake Who Is White. Tonight we hold a council to see what we will do with you. I, for one, will propose that we grant you a death due a true warrior.”
“I thank you,” Nate replied sincerely, and did not object when Thunder Hoop tied his wrists behind his back.
The moment the flap closed behind them, Nate scooted to it and peeked under the bottom edge. Ant walked off toward the big lodge while the tall warrior entered a tepee further away. Painted on its side was a lightning bolt in the shape of a circle.
The horses were back in front of the council lodge. Both had been hobbled.
Nate would have liked to note more details, but a pair of moccasins materialized before his eyes.
The Sioux had posted a guard.
~*~
“This is a mistake, Ma,” Zachary King declared. “I can feel it in my bones.”
Winona shared her son’s sentiments, but she goaded her mare northward anyway. They had gotten ready to go as swiftly as they could, yet they were well behind the two groups of Crows.
He Dog and his three companions had ridden out first, deliberately leaving everyone else behind, and were now a quarter of a mile ahead of Two Humps, Bull Standing With Cow, and Flying Hawk, who in turn were well ahead of the Shoshone and her son.
“Doesn’t He Dog have any brains at all? Doesn’t he see that being strung out like this is asking for trouble?” Zach groused.
“I doubt he cares.”
“He doesn’t care whether he lives or dies?”
Several dark shapes had appeared on the horizon to the west. Winona was studying them to insure they were buffalo and not Lakotas. “He Dog is in love with Fetches W
ater. All he cares about is saving her.”
Zach rose and shielded his eyes from the glare so he could see the four warriors who were in the lead. “It’s awful hard for me to imagine a man like him caring for anybody.”
“Love can be a mystery at times,” Winona agreed. “But never doubt its power, son. It is stronger than the muscles of the mightiest man, more lasting than the sky above and the earth below. Love is forever.”
The youth mulled that over for the next five miles.
On all sides the high grass rustled in the breeze. Coyotes slunk off at their approach, and on two occasions antelope gave flight in great bounding leaps. Scattered clusters of buffalo regarded the riders with the patent belligerence of their shaggy breed.
Winona hardly noticed the wildlife. All she cared about was spotting Oglalas before any Oglalas spotted them. Blue Flower was awake and uttered soft sounds every now and then. Shortly before midday Winona slowed, shrugged out of the cradleboard, and breast-fed her daughter on horseback.
Zach was on proverbial pins and needles. It was dreadful, being exposed out in the open in the middle of hostile territory. His worry was more for his mother and sister than for himself. He couldn’t abide the notion of either of them coming to harm.
He Dog and his three friends never slowed, not even at noon as had been the war party’s habit. They pushed on north toward the junctions of the South Platte and the Platte.
The afternoon waxed and began to wane. Winona was thankful for the absence of Lakotas, but she was also mystified. They were so near traditional Oglala haunts that it defied belief they had not encountered any Sioux yet.
At one point Zach shifted to scan the flat ocean of prairie to their rear. He observed how the grass had a knack for springing back up after the horses went by, and it provoked a question. “Are you sure Pa will be able to track us? I know I’d have a hard time.”
“Your father was taught by one of the best trackers alive, Shakespeare McNair. He will find us,” Winona avowed, while inwardly she suppressed a latent fear that he might not.
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