The Arrow Keeper’s Song (39 page)

“Nothing a hot bath won't cure. I'll scrub your back and you can scrub mine.” She leaned against him and kissed his stubbled jaw. “I feel safer with you in town. All the women do. That awful half-breed Tangle Hair is capable of anything. None of us is safe while he's loose. He murdered his own kind, no telling what he's thinking. Anybody could be next.” She draped her arm across his shoulder. Clay Benedict was just about the handsomest man in these parts with his soft brown hair and slender build, and his features that could seem rugged one moment and boyish the next; the school-marm wasn't about to let him get away.

“If you're that worried, maybe I ought to stay till morning,” Clay suggested, anxious to avoid discussing his family or Willem Tangle Hair. Both topics had begun to wear on him.

“And cause a scandal … Mildred Peltier and the school board would fire me in an instant. No, thank you.”

“You are quite a woman, Miss Flannery,” Clay said. He extinguished the lamp and guided her toward the front door. The wind moaned beneath the doorsill, winter pawed at the panel. It would be a cold ride to the schoolmarm's house, but well worth the effort. He grabbed his coat off a wall peg by the door and ran his hand over the woolen material until he came to the star pinned to the chest. He reattached it to his vest.

Allyn Benedict's money may have insured his son's election to office, but somewhere along the way, with Olivia Flannery's urging, Clay Benedict had stepped out from beneath his father's roof and discovered sunlight. He liked the feel of it. For the first time in his life, Clay Benedict cast his own shadow, and he was loath to give it up.

Curtis Tall Bull followed the path from Panther Hall that led through a grove of white oaks and cedar trees. Jerel had left an easy trail to follow, with explicit orders that no one was to disturb him. But Curtis thought the news of Tom Sandcrane's return outweighed any such admonition. Besides, what was Jerel up to that Curtis shouldn't know about it? They were family, after all, and family should have no secrets.

Curtis walked his horse along the winding trail that cut across gullies and draws, and eventually he saw the glow of a fire filtering through the trees and heard an unearthly wail that made the hairs stand on the back of his neck. Chanting! He reached into the pocket of his frock coat and felt for the Colt revolver he kept there. Then, somewhat reassured by the smooth walnut grip, Curtis dismounted and, leading his horse, tracked the chanting to its source. A chilling breeze toyed with the black string tie he wore loosely knotted at his throat. He tugged his flat-crowned hat tight against his skull to keep the wind from snatching it away. Brittle twigs cracked underfoot. He tripped over a tangle of vines and cursed the frozen darkness.

Who the hell was out there? The Tall Bulls didn't tolerate intruders on their land. A thousand acres surrounding Panther Hall were their private domain, and Curtis welcomed the opportunity to show his brother he could be counted on to stand up for their interests. Where was Jerel, anyway? He had been acting peculiar for the past few weeks, taking off by himself, secretive and abrupt, even hostile, to anyone who called attention to his behavior. Perhaps Jerel was just ahead, stalking the unknown singer through the underbrush. The noise of these tired customs was out of place here. The Tall Bulls were entrepreneurs, businessmen; they had no use for the old ways.

Curtis cleared the trees at last and froze in his tracks as he emerged onto a small clearing in the heart of a thicket near a steep-sided creek that frequently flooded in the spring. The trickle of water between the steep banks was called Little Sister Creek by the locals. Every hard rain transformed it into a torrent that churned its way south to empty into the Washita, redistributing sediment and tree limbs along a wildly undulating course several miles in length.

The clearing was ringed with felled timber around an inner circle of fieldstones, at the center of which a roaring fire sent flames leaping upward taller than a man, and embers spiraling into the night sky. Jerel Tall Bull stood with his back to his younger brother, arms outstretched in the glare of the fire. He had discarded his hat, coat, and shirt. Despite the cold, his close-cropped hair was plastered to his skull, shiny with sweat from keeping so close to the flames.

Curtis could scarcely believe his eyes. How could this be? Jerel had learned well the white man's way, even to the point of securing the very fortunes of many of the southern Cheyenne. So this display of primitive ritual was the last thing Curtis expected and, in that instant, realized he did not know his older brother at all.

Jerel seemed to sense the presence of another, for he spun around as Curtis started to approach. Jerel's upper torso was streaked with blood, the cause of which was plainly evident. He held the bloody talon of a hawk in his right hand, a cloth-wrapped bundle Curtis had never seen before in his left. Jerel's eyes were wide and, to Curtis's thinking, crazed. The muscles along his chest and shoulders and throat stood out in stark relief.

“What are you doing?” Curtis asked, stopping dead in his tracks, so frightened was he by his discovery.

“Taking back the power,” said Jerel Tall Bull. “Each night I have come here, waiting, listening. Tonight the old ones spoke. Voices from my blood, our blood. Why have you come here?” He moved to conceal something on the blankets in front of him, tossing a deerskin pelt over what lay there.

“Tom Sandcrane has come home,” Curtis stammered, frightened by his brother's appearance.

Jerel's eyes widened.
“Savaa-he!
Then it must be. He has come to stand against me. But he is weak. And I have the power!” Then, without warning, Jerel raised his hands and loosed a savage cry that seemed to be wrung from his heavy-set frame by unseen hands. The wail rose in pitch and, behind him, fire-gutted logs exploded and crashed in upon themselves, shooting a shower of lurid orange embers into the air, embers that fanned outward, like the wings of some terrible bird of prey.

Curtis fell backward, landing hard on his rump, then frantically crawled to his feet and dashed headlong toward the trees. Limbs tore at his clothing, ripped his coat, slashed his cheeks. He ignored the pain and fought his way through the thicket until he reached his horse. All he wanted now was to be safe within the walls of Panther Hall, with a bottle of strong whiskey in his hand and a whore to ease the confusion and dread that gripped his heart. Jerel's younger brother vaulted into the saddle and galloped off down the trail, risking a broken neck in his haste to distance himself from what he had seen, and from the brother who was a mystery to him now.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

T
HE EARLY HOURS OF MORNING WERE THE BEST TIME FOR
shadow walking. Old, familiar faces like passing landmarks materialized out of the mists of memory: Seth Sandcrane offering the Medicine Pipe to his son … the ride from Cross Timbers, leaving the past and his own dishonor behind. A chance meeting with Philo and Tully surfaced, along with the faces of other soldiers striding onto the sun-washed Cuban shore. There were battles, and killing, a brief remembrance of a dark and bloody night. Now he was standing before Enos Stump Horn, who lay propped against a wall, crimson stained and dying from his wounds as he held out his tomahawk to Tom. life for life, blood for blood. The dream shifted, like the surface of a pond suddenly stirred by an unseen hand.

He lay by a campfire, wounded, battered. Joanna was at his side, whispering. “No, Mr. Thomas Sandcrane, I will not let you die. There has been enough dying.” Why should she concern herself over the fate of a ghost? The image dissolved, becoming Antonio Celestial standing in the overgrown, abandoned garden behind his house, his hand on Tom's shoulder.

“Words do not seem enough. What can
I
offer but my thanks and friendship, Senor Tom.” His gaze lowered to the gloved left hand. “You too have paid a price for our freedom.”

“Not as much as the others,” Tom said
.

“And what of Joanna
—
will you not wait for her?”

“Better that
I
leave,” he replied
.

He had believed at the time it was for the best.

Move on. The dreamer moved on. The rails carried him to the white man's cities, where he stood before the factories and took in the stench and noise of the industries that
vehoe
worshiped; in his dream he wandered once again the white man's world, which he thought held such promise, and relived the longing, then the realization that something was missing at the core of all this progress. And there was something missing within him as well. Tom Sandcrane had known it since Cuba, since the moment he'd begun to reclaim his life from the specter of his own mortality.

As if summoned by this last remembrance, the fire-winged wraith-hawk, with talons of living lightning, tore asunder the fabric of Tom's memory, shattering his dreams. Diving past his flailing arms, it tore at his chest. While Tom tried to fight off the hellish creature, he heard laughter and, behind the spectral image of the horridly familiar hawk, recognized the man who looked on, grinning. It was Jerel Tall Bull.

Tom Sandcrane's eyes opened; he stared at the ceiling for a moment and listened to the reassuring sound of his own breath, which told him he was still alive. He rolled out of bed, pulled on his trousers, boots, and a poncho made from a trade blanket, then walked out of the bedroom. He opened his saddlebags and removed the Medicine Pipe his father had given him, taking also the tomahawk, its blade dark with dried blood.

He stole across the front room, where Father Kenneth, wrapped in a couple of patchwork quilts, slumbered peacefully on the couch, then eased out the door into the gray gloom of early dawn. General Sheridan stirred and lifted his head but made no move to accompany the man. Curled before a warm hearth was the only position for a dog to be in at this hour.

The cold pressed against him as Tom made his way across the front yard. The house faced the north bank of the creek, whose singing waters seemed to welcome the intruder on this frosty morning. A sheen of white blanketed the ground and dusted the tips of the wild fronds, weeds, and buffalo grass. The corral fence had not escaped a coating of ice crystals, either. The brittle grass crackled underfoot as he continued east and, skirting the willows on the creekbank, entered the gloom of a thicket of post oaks. He followed a path frequented by deer and bobcat, a trail he had often walked when he had come alone to this place and dreamed of the life he would begin to build, here where the waters flowed sweet and pure and the grass grew lush in the meadows. He kept alert for deadwood and soon had an armful of broken and decaying limbs and branches.

The ground rose to form a knoll, and by the time the trail played out, the trees had cleared and he stood on the crest of a small hill overlooking the land of the Cross Timbers, a place where the Southern Cheyenne had made their last stand against the unstoppable tide of progress. On this knoll he dug a small pit using a flat, jagged piece of stone for a crude spade. He arranged the limbs and branches, touched a match to kindling, and soon had a comforting blaze to combat the chill. That was easy; it was much more difficult to ward off the terrible vestiges of the dream. Some visions and dreams he experienced seemed to be leading him back to Oklahoma and the Southern Cheyenne. Some had been of Cuba and what had befallen him there. Granted, the images had been painful at times, especially the time when he had lain wounded and had warred with the spirit of the hawk. At the time, he'd thought his battles were over, and yet the hawk lingered on the periphery of his thoughts.

Why? And what did any of this have to do with Jerel Tall Bull? The master of Panther Hall meant nothing to Tom. And yet the Maiyun were warning Tom by linking the man to the vision of the hawk. “Well, the Old Ones have lured me here, and they will no doubt reveal the reasons for all that has happened,” Tom muttered, warming the palm of his right hand. The wind tugged at his tangled black hair. But he couldn't lose the nagging, unsettling notion that all he had experienced—from betrayal and loss, to war and wounding and the journey of his tormented soul—was preparing him for something completely unforeseen, that which would take all his courage and all his strength to face. Zuloaga had not been an ending, after all, but possibly just a beginning.

A tall order for half a man
, he ruefully observed with a glance at his gloved left fist. He tossed a fistful of dried sage into the flames, then took the Medicine Pipe and the tomahawk, crossed their shafts, and gripped them in his right hand. He stood and, passing the pipe and the tomahawk through the smoke of the fire, he sang:

“Black lightning is in my body,

Black water is here.

White smoke carries my words.

I carry the Pipe,

Its Mystery is gray.

I carry the tomahawk,

Its Mystery is red.

Tom faltered. So much time had passed. The words came slowly. He hesitated, like a man stumbling in the dark over uneven ground. But he did not turn back.

“My steps upon the Great Circle.

To the Beautiful Place I walk,

In the Company of Spirits.

My steps upon the Path

Have brought me here.”

He repeated the chant, the words gradually becoming familiar until they flowed melodiously off his tongue. Time passed. The minutes were lost on him. There was only the song and the bleak dawn. Winter breathed upon him. But the fire held winters worst at bay, and as his voice rang out, cranes rose from the wooded creekbank and took to flight.

While he sang, the world seemed to hesitate; the birds hung in midair, transfixed; the wind ceased; the barren branches grew suddenly still; the flames nearby might have been etched in stone. And then the moment passed, and the birds winged upward into the sky. The flames devoured another log. The world spun on. The dark clouds parted, and a shaft of sunlight like a hurled lance split the gloom and embedded itself in the meadow below. Gradually the sunlight spread and washed over the knoll, and the man continued to sing with his hand upraised, the crossed pipe and the tomahawk bathed in light.