The Arrow Keeper’s Song (12 page)

Toward evening, Pete Elk Head rode his lathered, winded mount up to the front of the roadhouse, dismounted, and looped the reins over the hitching rail in front. Hurrying inside, he found Jerel Tall Bull hunched over a table, studying his brother's drawing of a larger, more prosperous-looking gambling hall. Curtis, demonstrating some artistic talent, had rendered the drawing in keeping with his older brother's description.

“Yes, little brother. You've caught it. This is the place we shall build once the territory is opened up. The roustabouts are going to need someplace to let off steam and spend their money. We'll stock Panther Hall with plenty of whiskey and gambling tables, and Red Cherries there will run the whores and keep 'em in line. They'll beat a path to our doors.”

Curtis's eyes lit up at the prospect. “Sounds right good to me.” Before he could expound further, Pete Elk Head interrupted the conversation.

“Mr. Jerel, I got news.”

Jerel turned and pursed his lips, fixing his young hireling in his dark and steady gaze. “Well …?”

“Tom Sandcrane's gone plumb loco. He burned down the BIA office in Cross Timbers and attacked Mr. Benedict. Then he took off. There's talk of him being arrested if he stays on the reservation.”

Jerel slid back from the table and stood. He seemed to be staring right through Pete, as if suddenly focused on a distant goal, something once unattainable that had now moved within his grasp. Even Curtis looked puzzled.

“What is it? What the hell do we care about Sandcrane?”

Jerel ignored him and strode briskly to the front door, flung it open, and faced the sunset, the red rays lighting a path that seemed to beckon him. And in his mind a silent, swift prayer formed.

My brother knows nothing of the past, Grandfather. Forgive
him. But I know your story as it was told to me. You who were once the Keeper, the Spirit Singer, I am here. Shall it begin?

He waited, watched for a sign. The voice in his mind continued.
Tom Sandcrane has broken the Circle. He has turned his back on the power that was his to take. Now he will have to leave. Only Luthor White Bear remains. And I shall deal with him in good time. But
I
must know, Grandfather. You must speak
.

And, as if borne on the wind of his silent prayer, a hawk glided out of the sunset, its wings bathed in the glow of the setting sun, the bird transfixed and crimson, dipped in the dying light.

“Blood Hawk.” Jerel whispered the name aloud, in awe. “Grandfather. You have spoken. Now … now it begins.”

CHAPTER TEN

“W
HERE WILL YOU GO
?”
ASKED
S
ETH
S
ANDCRANE FROM THE
doorway while his son changed clothes, casting aside his blackened, singed garments for a faded work shirt and Levi's, socks and boots. Seth was sober now, though his eyes were red and puffy and his back stiff from sleeping in the barn. He hadn't been surprised to learn of Allyn Benedicts “business dealings,” for he had never trusted the Indian agent. But seeing the pain etched in his son's features killed any feeling of vindication. Indeed, the entire episode seemed to refocus Seth from his own bitterness. His son had left before, but this departure was different. It was final.

Tom cupped water from a basin and scrubbed the soot from his face, then poured the contents of the pitcher over his head. He had no need of a towel; the sun would dry him after he was five minutes on the trail. He hesitated, pondering his father's inquiry about his destination.

“Maybe over to Guthrie, or across the Red River. Maybe the Texas ranches are hiring,” Tom said, giving the matter only the most perfunctory consideration. “There is nothing for me here.”

“In the days before your grandfather, the Maiyun brought us visions and taught us songs, also the coyote and deer, the wolves and bear, the owl and grasshopper. Great was their power. No man who held them in his heart could be killed in battle.”

“Then why aren't these mystic warriors still among us?” Tom retorted, heading for a wooden trunk at the foot of his bed. Seth stood just inside the room.

“Men find many ways to die.”

“What are you saying now? I grow weary of your empty stories.”

“It is you who are empty. You turned your back on the Mahuts, the Sacred Arrows, and broke the Great Circle. Yet you are surprised and wounded when you can no longer walk it.” Seth was angry now, and the hammering in his skull that always came the morning after a drunk only shortened his patience. “Turning your back on the Arrows and the songs is a death. Running from the People to follow the white man's road is a death.”

“What has happened cannot be undone,” Tom snapped. How could he make his father understand that courtrooms were far removed from war parties and horse raids? He had nothing to fight the oil companies with.
Benedict won with the Tall Bulls' help while I played the fool for the Indian agent's daughter
. It was time to face the truth. A day ago Tom had been all puffed up with pride over his role in bringing an end to the Cheyenne reservation. But the bright future he had glimpsed from a distance had proved to be nothing more than an illusion, a shimmering veil of empty promises with no more substance than a mirage.

As Tom shoved an extra shirt and trousers into his saddle-bag, he gave brief thought to the worn leather-bound Bible he had used at the mission school. He'd first learned to read from the Psalms. But he left the keepsake where it lay, closed the trunk, and brushed past his father on his way to the living room. General Sheridan, having abandoned the barn, was curled upon the cold hearth, bandages circling his neck and belly. The hound raised his head as Tom entered the room and then settled back, oblivious to the man's departure. Standing in the bedroom doorway, Seth cursed himself for losing his temper again. He had to do better, to think beyond his own hurt, or he would lose his son forever.

Tom grabbed a sweat-stained hat from a post by the door and stepped outside. The curled brim shaded his eyes from the painfully bright sunlight and enabled him to see Willem Tangle Hair standing by the roan Tom had saddled and tethered to the corral fence. The half-breed looked glum, his brows knotted in a frown. His freckled cheeks were sunburned, his clothes soggy and smeared with ashes, the legacy of the bucket brigade. Down in the settlement, the last remaining wall of the BIA office collapsed in a shower of embers and cloud of black smoke.

“I need to talk to you,” Willem called out.

Tom headed straight for his friend. He had no choice if he wanted to take the roan. But he sensed trouble. Willem hadn't come to pay a social call.

A bumblebee whirred past, its bloated black-and-yellow body defying gravity as the insect glided and dived on blurred wings. A horned toad, relic of an ancient past, scampered out of harm's way and missed by an inch being squashed beneath Tom's boot.

“Allyn Benedict's ordered your arrest, Tom. For burning down the BIA office. All the other tribal police have been dismissed except me, what with the last days of the reservation and all. So it's my job. And here I am.” Willem took a step forward.

“What are you going to do,” Tom asked, approaching his friend, “if I refuse to come with you?”

“Well I hadn't thought that far,” Willem sheepishly replied, kicking at the dirt. “I kinda hoped I wouldn't find you.”

“Turn your back and wait five minutes and you won't.”

“What the hell is going on?” Willem anxiously asked. “Did you really set the fire?”

“No,” Tom said. “But I don't regret the loss. We no longer need the agent's office. There will be no more rationing, no dry beef and mealy grain for us. We'll make our own way from now on. I've seen to that. And you know what? Nothing will change.”

“I don't know what you are talking about,” the tribal policeman said, scratching his head.

“You'll find out soon enough,” Tom bitterly replied. He placed his hands on the saddle horn. “Time to fish or cut bait. I'm leaving. What'll it be, Willem?”

“I can't handle any of this,” the half-breed growled. “You and Mr. Benedict are friends. And just about everyone figured you and Miss Emmiline would …” The look on Tom's face at the mention of the Indian agent's daughter was enough to cut Willem short. Like when a train jumps its tracks, some situations demand a man simply get the hell out of the way. “I'll tell Mr. Benedict I got here too late. And you'd already left.”

The half-breed stood aside, permitting Tom to untether the roan from the corral gate and climb into the saddle. As he maneuvered out of the way, Willem inadvertently glanced toward the cabin and realized Seth was cradling a Spencer carbine as old as the Indian Wars. Now that Willem had declared his intentions concerning Tom's arrest, the fifty-caliber carbine was no longer needed. Willem had narrowly avoided lead poisoning.

Seth leaned the carbine against a post and stepped out of the shade. His long braids swayed as he hurried over to his son. Tom checked his stirrups and then looked up as his father approached. Seth reached into a white buckskin pouch and removed a medicine pipe made of wood and red clay. Animals were carved in relief upon the bowl. An eagle feather dangled midway along the length of the pipe's wooden stem. Seth knelt before the horse and drew a line in the dirt with the base of the red clay bowl. And as the pipe cut the dark-brown sod, he who had once wielded the power of the Mahuts chanted in a soft voice.

“All-Father, my son is leaving.

See, he has readied his horse.

His pouch holds food but his

Heart is empty.”

Seth drew a second line and continued.

“Tomorrow there will be another day.

Tomorrow there will be light.

Guide him, O Mother. O Father.

I cut the earth at his feet.”

Seth drew a third line.

“Lord of mountains, Lord of valleys,

Lord of barren rock and creeping vine.

The Song burns in him

Though he cannot feel the heat.”

Seth drew a fourth line in the dirt, then climbed to his feet. He placed the pipe inside the pouch of beaded white buck-skin and held it out for his son to take.

“What are you giving me, Father?”

“Mystery. For a life without it is not worth living.”

“But these things have no meaning for me,” Tom gently explained.

Seth nodded but refused to be dissuaded by his son's rejection. He merely walked alongside the roan and tucked the pipe away in Tom's saddlebag.

“You are the Arrow Keeper. You cannot escape the song. No matter how far you run, it will bring you back.”

“Father … good-bye.” Tom shook his head and walked the roan past Seth, past Willem, and headed toward the southern hills. He intended to cut east once he was out of sight of the settlement.

White oaks and cedars beckoned him with the emerald quiet of their secret places. Time lost all meaning for him. The sting of betrayal, his own conceit, the rage and the regrets—he rode through a gauntlet of these emotions in stony silence. But the sun-washed land embraced him like a willing bride and presented him with one last vision before he left Cross Timbers behind. When he looked to the hills, for a fleeting second Tom spied a fierce Cheyenne warrior, draped in all his warlike glory, watching him from the ridge. The warrior dipped his war lance and pointed it at Tom as a gust of wind brushed its warm breath against his cheek.

“No,” Tom whispered, denying the truth before his eyes.

The breeze died. The warrior dissolved, becoming a patchwork of underbrush and shifting shadows.

Seth stood by the corral and watched until his son had ridden out of sight. When that last visual link was broken and Tom was lost among the trees, the elder turned, realizing Willem had also excused himself and headed back down to the settlement. Seth wiped a forearm across his features and started back to the cabin. His shoulders bowed, Seth Sandcrane regretted having fought so much with his son, though the loss of his honor had wounded him nearly to death.

Seth returned to the cabin and looked down at the carbine, chuckling ruefully. The weapon wasn't even loaded. He searched his memory and tried to recall what he had done with last night's bottle and, after a moment, grinned in satisfaction. He remembered leaving a half-full bottle of whiskey in a bucket below the windowsill. It was still there, the bottle's dark, rust-red contents awakening a burning thirst in the man. There was just enough to carry him through another day. He started over to the bottle, retrieved it, popped the cork, and started to take a swallow. Seth never knew why, but he hesitated. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the Pipe Song he had chanted for his son that stopped him in his spiral descent into that private hell he had called home since the loss of the Sacred Arrows. He would never fully understand. But that too was part of the mystery. One moment the bottle was tilted to his lips, and the next, he sent it spinning into the yard to shatter against a stump.

Seth braced himself against the post and the wood groaned, echoing his sentiments exactly as he stared after his son and found, at last, only a faint trace of dust to mark Tom's passing. The prayer was incomplete. He must finish the song.

“Watch my son. Guard him on every path.

These are my words, these are my thoughts.

I may have said too much, All-Father.

Or not enough.”

I
NTERLUDE

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
N THE WINTER OF
1898
THE EYES OF THE NATION FOCUSED ON
Cuba. The temperament of the American populace, fanned by sensationalistic reports of Spanish atrocities appearing in the major newspapers, burned white-hot. The leaders of the Cuban insurrection, men like Maximo Gomez and Antonio Celestial, were viewed as young Washingtons willing to sacrifice everything to lead their people in throwing off the yoke of Spanish tyranny.