Sudden Country (12 page)

C
oming up on midday we saw our first Indian. He appeared atop a rise as suddenly as if he had been conjured, seated astride a whitestocking black with nothing but sky behind him and only his long hair stirring in the wind to indicate that he was anything but carved out of the hill. In leggings and breechclout and blue cavalry coat and campaign hat he was like a spirit caught between worlds, with a carbine slung from a strap over his shoulder, quiver fashion, and his feet in moccasins and the moccasins thrust into conventional white man's stirrups. Ben Wedlock, following the wagon ahead, sensed my excitement.

"Easy down, Davy. He don't mean us no harm."

"How can you tell?"

"Because we can see him."

And then, as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone. After a moment he came around the curve of the hill farther down, leaning inside, back arched and one arm hanging as if coming in at an easy lope, although the black was in full gallop. Queen Victoria on her seventieth birthday could not have shown more grace.

Deacon Hecate, sitting his bony claybank at the head of the column, raised a hand and the visitor drew rein thirty yards short and again sat motionless, his black shaking its head and throwing lather. Presently the Deacon turned in his saddle and caught Wedlock's eye. Wedlock pulled the chuck wagon out of line and we joined our guide.

"A Sioux policeman out of Standing Rock," Hecate reported. "I know him not, but that's a grain-fed mount he is riding, with an army brand."

"He's a deal from home," said Wedlock.

Mr. Knox pulled his wagon abreast of ours. "What business has he here?"

"One way to find out." Wedlock made a sign. After a pause the Indian signed back. His movements were as graceful and economical as his horsemanship. "He wants a parley."

"Tell him to come in," said Hecate.

The black picked its way through the fallen rocks at the base of the hill. Up close the Indian was young, not more than ten years older than I, his face made up of ovals, with a thick nose and dark eyes from which the lashes had been plucked. He was naked-chested under the army coat and wore a Colt pistol with a smooth cedar grip in a holster on his right hip. He said something in a harsh guttural.

"He wants to know who we are and why we're here."

"Ask him the same thing."

The Indian appeared to think it out. Finally he replied at length.

"You was right about Standing Rock," Wedlock told Hecate. "This here is Panther, a corporal with the Indian police there. He's tracking a band of renegades bolted the reservation ten suns back. Their leader calls himself Lives Again and he's got him a bellyful of the Ghost Dance sickness. That's what Panther calls it anyway."

"He's tracking them alone?"

Responding, the Indian pulled open the right side of his coat, where a raw scar bisected his rib cage. It had bled recently and dried yellow-brown.

"He says five of them was ambushed by Lives Again's men hiding in the rocks. The others was kilt. He played possum and got two of Lives Again's bunch when they came down to finish him off. The others ran."

"Why has he not gone for help?"

When Panther spoke this time, I saw that he was not young at all, whatever his years were. There was a deadness in his eyes, and a setness to his cracked lips that might have been described, on a white man, as a grim smile.

"He says that he has sung his song and that it's a good day to die."

"Heathen," muttered Hecate; but it was plain from his tone that he was not unmoved. "Ask him where he thinks this Lives Again is now."

"I know English."

We stared, as if at a graven head from which words had issued. The Deacon broke the silence. "Why did you not say so before?"

"When dealing with strange white men I prefer time to choose my words." Panther spoke carefully, as one who is not thinking in the language in which he is speaking. "You come to this place with many questions but no answers."

"We are prospectors," said Mr. Knox. "I am Henry Knox. These gentlemen are Philo Hecate and Ben Wedlock. The boy is David Grayle."

The Indian regarded me. "He is old enough for manhood." To Wedlock: "Go back, False Eye, or leave your bones. The gold is gone from this place."

"Are you threatening us?" Hecate pointed his chin. " 'Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?' "

Now the expression on Panther's lips was a smile indeed, albeit a sad one. "The words of Goliath. The Philistine. I am the son of Gray Fox, who laid your fire winter mornings. You grow old, Deacon, that you forget those whom you taught your Bible."

Hecate seemed only slightly taken aback by this revelation. "Not well, or you would not speak of it as mine."

" 'Thy belly is like a heap of wheat.' " He was still smiling. "My wife's is the color of clay. I think that it does not speak to us."

"Where is Lives Again?" demanded the Deacon a second time.

"Not far. I found a pile of manure with the steam rising from it this morning. He has twenty braves with him. They have sworn to murder every white man they find in the Black Hills. It is not my business. My business is to die. I have sung my song." He gathered his reins. "You would do well to sing yours, or else leave this place." And before any of us could address him again, he spun and galloped back the way he had come. The hill swallowed horse and rider.

"They will not all come to Jesus," said the Deacon sadly. "Get back into line."

"Should we arm the men?" Mr. Knox asked.

"There will be time for that. If young Panther has not just been' smoking up dreams."

"What did he mean about singing?" I asked Wedlock, when the formation was regained.

"His Death Song." The saloonkeeper knocked out his pipe and put it away in his clothes. "When an injun gets ready to die he sings to the Great Spirit for courage and goes out."

"To die?"

"Be kind of foolish to sing the Death Song and then go out for a beer."

"Will Panther die?"

"If he goes up against twenty renegades I don't see he's got a choice."

"That is the most heroic thing I have ever heard."

"That's the idea."

"Ben?"

He grunted.

"Would you ever do it?"

"I already did once."

He involved himself with the traces then, putting an end to the conversation. But I was burning to know the story.

We saw no more Indians nor anyone else that day. At evening, Mr. Knox, Judge Blod, and the Deacon gathered at the rear of Mr. Knox's wagon to discuss the route through the Black Hills. Bored by this geography lesson, I set out to find Wedlock, who was relaxing after supper with the Amarillo party. Mr. Knox called me back.

"David, see to Cassiopeia, will you?" He had brought the mare from home to serve as a saddle horse.

"That is Eli Freedman's duty," I pointed out.

"She is off her feed. I don't trust him to keep after her until she eats."

"Can it wait until later? I was going–"

"I would deem it a favor."

I could not refuse, although I knew the request was but a design to prevent me from spending more time with Ben Wedlock than Mr. Knox considered necessary. Ruminating upon the difficulty with which old conflicts died, I took myself under a naked three-quarter moon to the ridge where the horses were picketed. The Black Hills loomed darker than night beyond: ancient, feral, sinister in their crouched attitude.

Eli Freedman was absent–availing himself, I supposed, of a late supper now that the mounts were fed and made ready for the night. He seldom dined with the others. I had been told that this was his way going back to the time he was burned trying to rescue plantation horses from a blazing stable during the siege of Atlanta. Thus unobserved, I determined that Cassiopeia was indeed content, and turned to leave. Something white caught my eye.

At first I thought it was a patch of moonlight on the forehead of Wedlock's sorrel Nicodemus, but upon investigating I found that it was fixed in place. I had not noticed it in all the time the horse was tied to the back of the chuck wagon during our trek through Wyoming. Suspecting a bird passing overhead, I licked my thumb and rubbed at the spot. Nicodemus flinched–as did I, for the thumb came away streaked not with white, but with the reddish brown of the stallion's coat.

Curious, I plucked a handful of grass damp with evening dew and scrubbed at the animal's forehead, clutching its mane to prevent it from shying. Slowly the dark color came off. I stepped back, dropping the stained grass. A chill gnawed at my vitals. Before me was the blaze-face horse belonging to the one-eyed man who had superintended the murder of Jotham Flynn.

WHAT I HEARD

I
had scarcely time to digest this revelation when the sound of approaching voices alerted me to my own danger. To be discovered staring at the awful evidence would have been fatal; for among those voices I heard the bantering, storytelling tones of Ben Wedlock. Without thinking I scrambled down the other side of the ridge. In the shadow of the hill my foot found the burrow of some small animal and I fell headlong into the tall grass, emptying my lungs and stunning myself momentarily. The horses, unsettled by so much unexplained movement, stamped and snorted and tugged at their pickets.

"Here, what's with the horses?" I recognized Mike McPhee's brogue.

"Eyes open," Wedlock admonished. "Horses draw injuns like gnats."

Yellow light came over the ridge in a counterfeit dawn. Flattening myself further–I was stretched out on my stomach now-I saw the Irishman's profile on the crest with lantern raised. He passed it around in a wide arc, startling the horses into fresh transports. I buried my face and felt the light sliding over my back. Finally he lowered it. "Nothing."

"Varmint." The single word belonged to Christopher Agnes. "They're what snakes was invented for."

"Go on, Black Ben. You was at St. Louis."

"Mind that!" snapped McPhee.

"Aw, that Bible-banging old bastard won't hear us up here."

I could not place this voice, and decided it belonged to one of the young men who had joined us in Cheyenne.

Wedlock said, "Just the same, call me Ben. Well, St. Louis. We dropped a tree across the tracks and when she stopped, Pike and me boarded and throwed down on the engineer and brakeman. Beacher was riding the cars and had the conductor pinned back by that time. Then Bloody Bill come up with Flynn and the rest. The eye was my doing. When the shooting commenced I lost concentration and that engineer jerked this old knuckle-duster out of his back pocket and let fly at my face. It was the powder flash done it; the ball had fell out if it was ever in or I wouldn't be here jabbering. I reckon I done for that engineer while I was still howling.

"I wasn't good for much after that, though I got mounted and made it to our first camp. It was Bloody Bill told me he couldn't stop to see I was took care of; said Shelby'd be along directly and his sawbones'd fix me up proper. Well, we both knowed he was lying in his whiskers, but I reckon I looked not long for this here world or he'd of put a ball through my other eye to keep me from talking to the bluebellies."

"What happened?"

I was struck by the thought that the young man from Cheyenne sounded much like me.

Christopher Agnes said, "He died."

"Stop funning the boy. It was the Yanks found me. Told 'em I was with Shelby or they'd of hung me on the spot to save powder. I was halfway to Elmira with a patch on my eye by the time they worked it out, if they ever did."

"You spent the rest of the war in prison?"

"Busted out when I was up for it and hiked back. Took me six months. By the time I caught up with Pike and Beacher and the rest Bloody Bill was dead. Flynn had lit out and it wasn't till the shooting stopped on both sides we put together what became of the gold. When that paymaster Peckler turned up dead in Amarillo and Flynn got sent to Huntsville we knowed for sure. That's when I set up shop in Amarillo; if there was a way to that gold, there's where it'd start. Mind, if I knowed it'd take twenty years I'd of found a better one. Ah, but then I would never of hitched up with you, Tom. You're wise beyond your years and hang the rat that says different. I've ridden with men twice your age didn't have half your brains."