by John Norman
Chance slid the bar behind the door, and, on his hands and knees, crawled over to the window. He stood up then, inside the window, and moved about an inch of his head from the frame, to get an eye on the outside.
Two shots smashed into the soddy, the first splintering the board that framed the window on the left, the second splashing a long, thin stream, almost like water, of dust into the center of the room.
So that was where Totter was.
Chance's cheek stung with splinters. His eyes were blinded from the shower of dust.
Lucia had screamed.
"Come out," Grawson called.
Chance tried to clear his eyes and cut his face with the sight of his Colt.
Lucia was beside him. She had dipped the him of her skirt in the water bucket and was wiping his face and eyes.
"Thanks," said Chance. Then, "You've got to get out of here."
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Yes," said Chance.
"I brought you some rattles," said William Buckhorn, peering over the edge of the table, looking for them.
"Yes, William, yes," said Lucia and crawled over to the table.
"There they are," he said, pointing to the ground.
"Yes, thank you, William," she said, and took them in her hand.
"Big ones," said William Buckhorn.
Just then Totter's carbine thrust through the window, poking down to find its target Chance, under the window, grabbed the barrel with one hand and jerked the gun toward him. The weapon discharged, the bullet ripping through his shirt, creasing his wrist, the sudden burn making him drop the Colt. Trotter struggled to hold the carbine, too frightened and desperate to let go. Chance jerked him halfway through the window. The broken nose, the distorted squarish face, cursing, was almost against his. Chance twisted the carbine out of Totter's hands, swinging the barrel against the side of his head. A line of blood as straight as the barrel creased the corporal's head. He fell backward, off balance, and scrambled around the outside corner of the soddy. Chance foolishly stood in the window and snapped off a wild shot. Totter had already rounded the comer of the soddy. Two pistol shots whined past Chance, knocking a double handful of dust to the floor across the room. Chance leaped back. Grawson had changed his position, covering Totter at the window. Standing well back in the room, partly shielded by the frame, Chance fired once at Grawson, who had risen to one knee. He saw some fur leap away from the collar of Grawson's coat, and then Grawson was prone again, firing at the window, once, twice. Chance supposed Totter would be around somewhere in front now, covering the door. He would still have his service revolver. Chance leaned the carbine against the wall and picked up his Colt from under the window. He rubbed his wrist. The numbness was going away. The fingers were unbroken, not sprained. Only a burn.
Now it was quiet outside.
They would not rush the soddy, or at least it would not be wise to do so. Chance didn't figure Grawson would try that, not until dark at any rate. He was surprised that Totter had come as close as he had. He probably hadn't known any better. It was not a mistake Grawson would have made. Then Chance smiled to himself. Grawson had had a good shot at him, when he was near the window. Maybe Grawson had encouraged Totter to make his play at the window, to draw Chance into view. Grawson was smart, Chance decided, and then he smiled, and Totter was probably not so smart. Grawson would have been ready to expend Totter. Nice fellow, Grawson. I'll cover you, he could imagine Grawson saying to Totter, and Totter saying, all right.
Chance sat on the floor for about fifteen minutes, mostly listening. He looked out the window twice. Nothing much to see. The grass, the prairie, his dead horse.
"I'd better get you out of here," said Chance to Lucia. "And the boy needs a doctor."
He stood up near the window, out of sight.
"Grawson," he called out.
"Come out," he heard.
"There's a woman and a sick child here," he said. "A boy. He needs help."
"Come out," called Grawson.
"Let them go," said Chance. "I'm not coming out and they may get hurt."
There was a long pause, and then he heard Grawson call. "All right. Send them out."
Lucia was wrapping William Buckhorn in two blankets.
"I'm not going," he said.
"Yes you are," said Chance.
"All right," said the boy.
"I'll take him to the Grand River Camp," said Lucia. "I can carry him there. Then we'll get horses and take him to Fort Yates. There's a doctor at Fort Yates."
"I killed four of them," said William Buckhorn, being bundled in the blankets.
"Why do you kill rattlesnakes?" asked Chance.
The boy looked at the schoolteacher and dropped his eyes. He mumbled, and spoke in Sioux. "For her," he said, "she is afraid of rattlesnakes. I kill them so she will not be afraid, and will stay with us."
"I know the answer to that question, Mr. –Smith," said Lucia. "I made the mistake of giving him some brown sugar once when he killed a snake, and then he kept killing them. I tried to stop giving him the sugar, but he kept killing them anyway. Outside I have a whole baking-powder can filled with rattles. Then I started giving him sugar again, not for the snakes, but to have him come here. So few of the Indians do. I told him not to hunt any more of them but he never listens. I scold him but it doesn't do any good."
"You don't speak Sioux," said Chance.
"No," said Lucia.
"You think he kills the snakes so you will give him sugar?"
"Of course," said Lucia.
Chance smiled and gave the boy's head a rough shake. "I think," he said to Lucia, "that you then owe this young man four lumps of brown sugar."
"I don't want to encourage that sort of thing," said Lucia.
"Four," said Chance. "Not one more nor one less, but exactly four."
"This is no time to speak of brown sugar," said Lucia.
"Four," said Chance.
Lucia went to a box on a shelf near the range and picked out four lumps, large ones, of brown sugar. She gave them to Chance and he placed them, counting them out, into the palm of William Buckhorn, who then solemnly swallowed them, one after the other.
After the last one Lucia could have sworn that William Buckhorn, in a manner surprisingly like that of a white child, winked, more of a careful squint than anything else. This squint, or signal, was clearly directed to Mr. Smith, who then returned it in kind.
"She's coming out," called Chance out the window.
William Buckhorn in her arms, a heavy burden for her, Lucia stopped at the door. "There's food in the locker by the range," she said, "some bread, bacon, flour, beans. Take what you want."
"Thanks," said Chance.
"After dark," said Lucia, "dig out the back."
Chance smiled. "I thought about it," he said. "What if they burn the roof first?"
"They'd better not," said Lucia. "This house is government property."
"Yes," said Chance, "I guess they'd better not." He smiled.
He had considered this matter with some care. The walls wouldn't burn. Only the roof. He could stay under the table, along the wall. It wouldn't make too much sense to burn the roof. At least he didn't think so.
If it came to that Grawson would do it, but hardly in the first hours.
Grawson might even enjoy the siege, the patient waiting.
He would.
Chance wondered how they were fixed for rations.
Probably not badly. They wouldn't have known how soon they would catch up with him.
There seemed to be ample food in the soddy.
But Chance had already decided to dig out, this first night.
Covering the window and the door, they might not even realize, perhaps for hours, he had made his escape.
He could make it to the Grand River Camp.
Running Horse would help him get a horse.
He would be gone.
With luck, if things worked out, he would be gone.
&
nbsp; Lucia smiled, too.
"If I'm in the neighborhood again," said Chance, "I might want to stop in for another cup of coffee."
He unbarred the door for her.
"I would be pleased if you did so, Mr. Smith," said Lucia.
"How is that?" he asked.
"You never killed anyone," she said. "Not murdered anyway."
"How do you know?" he said.
"Because you stayed to help William," said Lucia.
Then, quickly, she turned and, as Chance swung the door open, stepped outside, carrying the boy. His head looked out of the blankets over her shoulder.
"Good-bye, Warrior," said he, speaking in Sioux.
"Good-bye, Warrior," said Chance, also speaking in Sioux.
Then they were gone.
Chance swung the door shut and barred it, and would wait until dark.
* * *
A coyote yelped somewhere, maybe a quarter mile from the Turner soddy.
The moon was very white and the prairie dust shone as though it had snowed silver.
Corporal Jake Totter, his service revolver clutched in his right hand, lay on his belly back of the soddy.
He grinned.
He could hear a scratching from the inside.
Totter pointed the barrel of the pistol at the wall of the soddy.
He could fire now if he wanted, through the wall, now, and smash open Chance's mouth and forehead with a half dozen shots. He decided to wait. It might be worth it, seeing the look on Chance's face, just before he pulled the trigger six times.
Then Chance stopped digging.
Totter waited, not minding. He licked his lips. They were dry. He put his left fist under the barrel of the pistol to support it.
Then Totter saw the tip of a knife blade poke through the wall, and then there was a hole about the size of a coffee cup, and then about the size of a lard pail, and then an arm poked through and he saw the side of Chance's head.
So intent was Totter on his quarry that he failed to hear the sound of a pair of horses not more than a handful of yards away.
Totter's finger had begun to close on the steel trigger of his weapon when suddenly the bright silvery night shattered apart almost in his ear and God he cried out scared his own sound mingling with the shriek of the Hunkpapa war cry.
The horses came around the side of the soddy and Totter's finger closed wild on the trigger of his weapon and the fire jumped out of the barrel high and wide of Chance and Totter was covering his head with his hands and rolling away and one of the hoofs of the running animals caught him in the face like a pumpkin and he spit blood and teeth through the hole in his face.
"What the hell!" yelled Grawson from somewhere in front of the soddy.
Chance's arm disappeared from the hole and he leaped across the soddy and jumped headfirst out of the window, hitting the dust, rolling and getting up and running.
Two shots were fired but Chance didn't know whether they were fired at him or the Indians.
He ran along the bottom of the hill between the soddy and the school on the other side.
Another shot was fired.
There was no mistaking that one. It kicked a rock from the side of the hill, a few feet to his right.
It had been a pistol shot.
The range was too far now for clean shooting with a small weapon.
If Grawson had fired, Chance wondered why he hadn't used his carbine.
Another shot splashed dust behind him.
There was a cut in the hill, that led up behind the school. The school was high. He headed for the school. He ran up the cut, up toward the school, and the hair stood up on the back of his head as he heard a pair of horses behind him.
He turned to fire.
A voice cried "Brother!" in Sioux.
"Brother!" cried Chance in the same tongue.
Joseph Running Horse, astride one of the horses, the other with an empty saddle, had his hand lifted in greeting. Chance took the reins of the second horse, put his boot in the stirrup and hoisted himself to the saddle.
There was a carbine in the saddle boot of his horse, and he knew why Grawson hadn't used the weapon.
"Come," said Running Horse, urging his horse up the cut.
Chance followed and he saw the white boarded school on the top of the hill. They rode past two mounts for swings on which there was no rope. Past a lonely teeter-totter in the silvery schoolyard.
Running Horse pulled up behind the school.
Chance saw a woman near the wagon box against the north side of the building.
She came to his horse. "You must hurry," said Lucia.
Chance looked at Running Horse.
Running Horse simply said, "We have their horses."
Chance dismounted and faced the girl, saw the strain of her fear, saw how her hair could be beautiful when the wind moved it in the moonlight.
"Thank you," said Chance.
She dropped her head. She had one of the blankets she had carried William Buckhorn in, wrapped about her shoulders like a shawl. The girl seemed confused. Then she lifted her head. "You were kind to William," she said. "I didn't want you to die because of me."
"I wanted to kill them," said Running Horse. "With the knife. It would have been easy. They were apart, not watching behind. She did not wish it."
Lucia looked at Running Horse as though she could not believe what she had heard. "Joseph," she said.
Running Horse was speaking to Chance, and he paid the woman no attention. "Shall we go back and kill them now?" he asked.
"No," said Chance, "but my heart is filled with gratitude to my brother."
"They will follow you," said Running Horse. "It will be better to kill them now."
"No," said Chance, "I don't want to hurt them. I just want to go away."
"Someday you must fight," said Running Horse.
"I just want to go away," said Chance.
"Your Brother will fight with you," said Running Horse.
"Thank you," said Chance, "but I just want to go away."
"All right," said Running Horse, "do what you want."
"Mr. Smith," said Lucia, "I sent William to Fort Yates, in a wagon. His parents are taking him."
"Good," said Chance, "I think he will be all right."
Lucia smiled. "You'd better be leaving now, I think," she said.
Chance grunted. Yes, he would have to be leaving now. There would be no place where he would be staying too long. There never would be.
He looked at the girl and her face, thin and delicate in the moonlight, seemed very lovely to him.
There would never be a place he could stay too long.
Chance felt bitter, and very sad.
"Someday," said Chance, "if it's all right with you, I would like to come by again."
She looked up at him, and to Chance's surprise he thought her eyes were moist. "That would be nice, Mr. Smith," the girl was saying.
"Chance," said Chance, "the name is Chance."
"So I understood from the gentlemen outside the soddy," said Lucia.
Chance smiled. "They were right," he said.
"You have a long ride," said Running Horse to Chance.
"I know," said Chance.
Lucia started briefly. It was true, what Running Horse said. This man was running. This man who had spoken gently with her, whom she had told about herself, whom she found somehow strong and aware of her, and of whom she had found herself aware, as she had never been before–of a man. She had feared the stirrings that coursed through her at his nearness, how she might shiver at his touch, feel faint and she had not wanted to come with Running Horse but she had known that she would, and she did. She would say goodbye, and he would be gone, and she would remember him, more so than the young men in Saint Louis, perhaps more so than any other.
He was an outlaw, Lucia reminded herself, a criminal, a man who must run, an animal that must prowl at night and hide in the day, away from honest men.
But he had been kind to
her and he was strong, and he had stayed to help William, to work with an injured boy while men came with weapons to shoot and kill him.
"Yes," said Lucia, "it would be nice if you would come by again."
His hand reached out and held hers, so swiftly, so suddenly, it frightened her.
"I will," he said. "I will."
She had seemed so beautiful to him in that instant that he had wanted to cry out.
He must leave her.
Never could there be such a woman for him. Only the others. The painted, empty others, the strangers whose last names he would never know, selling themselves to him or any other, not caring.
Maybe it was only his loneliness, but that he did not believe.
The others had not changed the loneliness.
With this woman, unlike the others, he was no longer alone.
What a fool she would think him.
He cared for her.
"Please," she was saying, and Chance said, "I'm sorry," and withdrew his hand.
Lucia stepped back and shivered inside the blanket.
"It's cold," he said.
"Yes," she said, "it is."
Touch me again, she thought, please touch me again.
"Good-bye," said Lucia Turner.
"Good-bye," said Chance.
His hands reached out, not really much of a gesture, and somehow her hands had seemed gently to meet his, and then his hands were on her shoulders and they had stepped toward one another and their lips touched and Lucia cried out and clutched Edward Chance to her and then she felt him taking her into his arms, felt his iron, tightening arms choking her body, and could not breathe so hard did his arms hold her.
"I'm sorry," he said, and when by an act of will he thrust her from him, she could see the heat still in his eyes, hear the heaviness, the deepness of his breathing, and she could feel the mark of his kiss on her mouth.
"I'm not the kind of girl you seem to think I am," she was saying, and hating herself for it.
"Please forgive me," he said.
Lucia pulled the blanket about her shoulders. "Good-bye, Mr. Chance," she said.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Truly."
"I quite understand," she said, and turned to leave.
Joseph Running Horse said something that sounded like, "Huh!"
Lucia stopped.
"Take her with you," said Running Horse to Chance.