The Arrow Keeper’s Song (43 page)

Luthor looked quizzically at the man.

“Call a council. Bring forth the Sacred Arrows. It is known that if one Cheyenne takes the life of another, there will be blood upon the Mahuts. This I learned from my father.”

A fleeting look of horror flashed across the shopkeepers face; then he glowered at the younger man and drew himself up, summoning all his dignity as he spoke. “Who are you to speak to me of such things? When the bundle was taken from your father's keeping at the Great Council, you turned your back on the Mahuts. Have you forgotten?”

“No. The Maiyun will not allow me to forget,” Tom said.

Luthor White Bear was momentarily taken aback by Sandcrane's admission, his mouth framing silent words of protest and disbelief. He was no fool, and the implication of Tom's reply was not lost on him. But he shook his head and waved the younger man away. “Leave me alone.
Enanotse!”
The shopkeeper retreated toward the stairs before he heard any more troubling remarks from Sandcrane.

Tom considered pressing the matter, then changed his mind. Luthor was deaf to him for the moment, perhaps until after his daughter's murderer was brought to justice. The shopkeeper followed his wife upstairs, leaving Tom to the less than tender care of Ned Scalp Shirt and sons.
Willem could not have done such a thing. He loved the girl. She meant too much to him
. Tom inwardly wrestled with what little he knew of the incident. It just seemed impossible his friend would have murdered Charlotte. “Time you left Uncle Luthor alone,” said Little Ned, interrupting Sandcrane's speculations.

“Let it be,” another voice counseled.

“Keep out of this, Matt,” said the younger brother. His clothes were dirty from his tumble in the street, but he was otherwise unharmed … save for the most grievous hurt of all in a young man's mind—his wounded pride. Tom faced the chunky youth who stood in the middle of the center aisle, his hands near his belt where he kept both revolver and knife. Little Ned was flanked by his father and older brother, who remained a few paces back. In the shadows by the wall stood Pete Elk Head, fresh from the posse and ready for new mischief.

Sandcrane advanced until he stood toe to toe with Ned Scalp Shirts quarrelsome son, who held his ground, watchful for any sudden moves like that which had landed him facedown in the dusty street.

“You hardly know me,” Tom said. “Why?”

“Because you're Tangle Hair's friend. Pete here thinks you might even know where he's hid out,” said Ned, his muscled arms folded across his chest, studying the one-armed man confronting his son. He was beginning to have misgivings about all this—despite Pete's words to the contrary, Tom was clearly a match for any of them.

Toms dark eyes, like ice-glazed chips of obsidian, continued to bore into Little Ned. And when Sandcrane spoke, his voice was quiet and chillingly effective.

“Tell your son to back off, Mr. Scalp Shirt. You are letting Pete talk him into trouble. Now, Elk Head's all gut wind, nothing more. He will not stand. I say Little Ned here is man enough to see this through.” As Tom spoke, Pete edged toward the front door, a premonition flashing through his mind that he might die this day and so had better escape while he still had the chance. “Listen to me,” Tom went on. “I have … done things. I have stood knee-deep in bones and brains. I have washed my hands in the blood of my enemies. So I say: Tell your boy to back off.” Now the voice became almost a whisper. “Or I will hurt him.”

Little Ned tried to remain impassive, but his knees began to tremble and his throat constricted as if totally devoid of moisture. His arms had suddenly become leaded weights that lowered to his side, depriving the former soldier of the slightest excuse to act. Fortunately, his father came to his rescue. “Stand aside, son.” The young man managed to keep himself from openly sighing with relief as he stepped out of harm's way, allowing Tom Sandcrane to pass. The bell over the front entrance rang as the door opened and shut.

“You should have backed me, Pa. You and Matt,” Little Ned peevishly snapped, attempting to salvage a few tattered remnants of his pride.

“Now was not the time or place,” the cowman replied.

“When, then?”

Ned Scalp Shirt shrugged and shook his head. What had he glimpsed in Sandcrane's features? “Never. I hope.”

Upstairs in the hall Luthor paused and glanced toward his daughter's bedroom, then closed his eyes, squeezing back tears of loss and recrimination. He averted his gaze and entered his own bedroom. Rebecca sat in a rocking chair by the window overlooking the street. The room was comfortably furnished. Indeed, after having almost lost the store through his own poor investments in a dry hole that was supposed to make him a rich oil baron like Allyn Benedict, Luthor White Bear had recovered his losses, for business had been good. He was accepted by the white community, and by anyone's standards he lived well—unlike so many of the Southern Cheyenne who labored as roughnecks and lived out in Rabbit Town. Luthor had prospered. The four-poster bed came all the way from Baltimore, not to mention the china, and the porcelain lamps, and the polished mahogany tables and cushioned seats in the sitting room at the rear of the house. And yet none of it gave either of them any pleasure—not anymore. The price had been too high.

Rebecca continued to stare out the window, gnawing at her lower lip. One hand was constantly rubbing the palm of the other, then toying with a silk kerchief, then digging at her palm again. Luthor crossed the room, his footsteps muffled by the throw rug. He reached out to drape an arm over her shoulder. Rebecca drew back. “No!” she whispered.

“Wife … please.”

“No! Bring me my daughter. I want my Charlotte back. You bring her to me!” she said, her cheeks flushed as she spoke, her voice a hushed rasping sound.

“By the Spirits of Those Who Have Gone Before, I wish I could,” Luthor said.

“You killed her. Sure as Willem.”

“Woman, what are you saying?”

“You know what I mean,” Rebecca replied, the rungs of the chair creaking as she began to rock back and forth, moving from sunlight into shadow, darkness into light, then darkness again. “You know what I mean.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

J
OANNA
C
OOPER MADE HER WAY BY MOONLIGHT TO THE BACK
door of the infirmary. A kitchen and adjoining bedroom at the rear of the building served as her private quarters. She had used the rest of the space for her practice. An outer office (with its book-lined walls, ceiling-high medicine cabinet, rolltop desk, and reading lamp) dominated the front of the clinic. From the office a set of double doors opened onto two examining rooms that served both as scenes of operation and as bedrooms for those patients requiring supervised care.

It had been a morning and a night of extremes. She had begun the day by helping to bring a new life into the world and ended it by holding the hand of a prostitute while the poor girl drew her last breath. Smoke and drink and too many sordid liaisons had driven Clarice to an early grave.

Joanna was no stranger to death, but she had yet to don the physician's mantle of callousness that kept anguish and pity at bay. There were still times when she wrestled with the awesome matter of mortality. Throughout the drive to town, an innocent's first gurgling, cooing breath and a worn-out whore's death rattle played over and over in her mind. And so, preoccupied, Joanna took no notice of the figure approaching her from the shadows. Perhaps she was just tired. No … weary, to put it more honestly. Despite the knowledge she was needed in Cross Timbers and the satisfaction that came with that realization, deep in her heart Joanna had another reason for being here. And on nights like this, with gloom draped around her like the cloak she wore, Joanna began to think of herself as a fool. Her heart had led her there, flying in the face of wisdom as the heart's errands are wont to do. A will-o'-the-wisp fantasy had brought her to Cross Timbers—a fantasy, the track of a “ghost,” and the illusory sound of drums heard what seemed a lifetime ago on distant shores.

She shook her head, tried to clear her mind, and spied a few sparse snowflakes drifting down. Fire's
bound to have burned itself out by now
, she thought, unlocking the back door. Steeling herself, she stepped into the cold, cheerless kitchen.

The woman rubbed her hands together to get the circulation going, headed straight for the stove, and began to vigorously stoke the blackened chunks of wood in the chamber. She added tinder from the wood box, tore a few pages from a mail-order catalog kept on the nearby counter for just such an occasion, struck a match, and lit the pages. As the flames began to feed, she used a burning twig to light the ceiling lamp. Soon the interior of the room was awash with amber light, revealing a countertop crowded with jars labeled “flour,” “sugar,” “rice,” “salt,” and the like, cupboards for the earthenware, a row of pans suspended from hooks in the wall, a table and four ladder-back chairs, which dominated the center of the room. More cabinets lined the walls.

When she had patients stay over, the doctor often hired Rebecca White Bear to cook for them. Luthor's wife was good company and could always be counted on as a source of local gossip. However, since the death of Charlotte the woman had not ventured out of the store except to attend the funeral, and Joanna had begun to miss the woman's visits.

She shivered as a chill gust of wind tickled the back of her neck.
I shut that door
, she thought, and turned to find Tom Sandcrane standing in the doorway. They faced one another across a gulf of silence. He had appeared like a specter, and for a moment Joanna couldn't believe her own eyes. Then he stepped into the kitchen and closed the door after him. He was bundled against the chilled night air, gloved hand at his side and the other dug into the pocket of his fleece-lined denim coat. He removed his hat and tossed it onto the table, where it landed with a soft thud. His long black hair framed his coppery features, his expression uncertain and somewhat embarrassed.

Suddenly Cuba came flooding back to her: arriving at Celestial's hacienda to find Tom Sandcrane gone from her life without so much as a good-bye, the “ghost” she had nursed back to health, the Southern Cheyenne whose sad courage had won her sympathies and awakened even deeper emotions she had come to admit at last …

Bless him. Curse him!

“I don't know whether to slap your face or take you to bed,” Joanna said.

“Perhaps I can help you make up your mind,” Tom replied, a hint of a smile toying at the corners of his mouth.

“I think I've already made my decision,” Joanna said, shedding her cloak, a hungry expression on her face. She unpinned her auburn hair, allowing it to cascade down across her bodice. In a silence broken only by the crackling flames bursting into life, Tom eagerly shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto the table as the woman drew close, her moist lips parting, her eyes twin pools of passion and desire.

“Tom,” Joanna purred. And then she slapped him right across the jaw with enough force to raise a welt and cause him to stumble backward against the door. He looked stunned, she triumphant. Then she turned on her heels, set a couple of glasses on the table, and produced a bottle of Irish whiskey she kept handy for cold winter nights when the chill of mortality bit deeper than north wind. She motioned for him to take a seat.

“I guess I deserved that,” he said, ruefully rubbing his jaw.

“You most certainly did. And more. The nerve, just disappearing like that, after what we went through together. You weren't hurt so bad you had to jump on the first hospital ship headed for the States.” Joanna poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into her glass.

“I thought it would be easiest.”

“The coward's way generally is,” she remarked, tossing back the first round like a veteran and gasping as the warmth spread from her throat to her chest. “Well, what brings you to town, Tom Sandcrane?”

He sat and poured a drink for himself, grinning now, glad she was in Cross Timbers; it was worth a stinging jaw. Indeed her presence merely added credence to the dreams and visions that had steered him home. There was more at work there than mere coincidence, he thought, resting his gloved hand on the table, his gaze clear and steady.
“E-peva-e
. Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Consuela, the Benedicts' housekeeper and cook, cleared away the plates from in front of her employer and his family, moving swiftly around the great, long table which could seat up to ten guests, four to a side and one at each end. But, of course, there were three at supper this night. Allyn and Margaret sat at either end of the table, distant from each other, separated by several feet of polished walnut-and-silver settings, candelabras, and a soup tureen crafted to resemble some enormous seashell.

The housekeeper was anxious to be out of the dining room and away from this moody family, who took their meals in silence these days. Emmiline, seated midway between her two parents had tried to initiate a conversation and involve both Allyn and Margaret until it became evident the two had quarreled again. Despite the apparent trappings of success that had brought them their elegant surroundings, the two had grown irrevocably apart, almost in direct proportion to their financial gains. Allyn Benedict was a driven man, determined that his meteoric rise in prestige and his increasing wealth should not subside and sputter out. Ambition was one thing, and the prospect of wealth appealed to Margaret. But their relationship had become forced over the past couple of years; his infidelities mocked their marriage vows. The rumors concerning her husband and his dalliances with younger women shamed her. At first she blamed Jerel Tall Bull's corrupting influence, from the very first day she had counseled against becoming involved with the proprietor of Panther Hall. The innuendos festered like open sores, poisoning her mind and heart. The only time she had broached the subject with her husband, Allyn had ranted and roared and protested his innocence with such fervor that she was left believing the worst. And, wounded, she had withdrawn her affections from the man.