The Arrow Keeper’s Song (45 page)

“I thought my ideals, however naive, led me to Cuba. Perhaps your ‘spirits' guided my steps as well,” Joanna added, rising from the table and following him down the hall. She found him in the library, standing by a mahogany bookcase, running his hands over the bound books whose titles he could not read in the gloom.

“So many books, so much knowledge. You could have been anywhere. When my father told me you were here, I was surprised.”

“Seth is a dear. We have had many visits. We've even talked about you,” Joanna said, smiling impishly.

“Ah, I feared as much,” Tom said.

“Yes. He told me everything, how the tribe trusted you and followed your lead and willingly ended their protected status. How Allyn and Emmiline Benedict misled you and betrayed your trust.” Joanna moved toward him in the dark, her words like hurled spears, striking home. “He described the day you left, and how he used his own sorrow and guilt to overcome his drunkenness and give him the resolve to build something for you to come back to.”

“I turned my back on the Sacred Arrows. That cannot be. I am the Arrow Keeper. I did not want to believe it and even tried to run from them.” Tom crossed to the front window and peered through the letters of her name painted on the glass. The street was deserted looking save for an occasional coat-muffled figure that dashed past the front windows of the Lavender Hotel and disappeared inside.

“In Cuba one night you spoke of this frontier and told me how few doctors there were, and so it was easy to fool myself into thinking that's why I came to Cross Timbers.” Joanna dropped a hand to the deeply padded armchair by the rolltop desk. The leather was cool to the touch. There was a small cast-iron woodstove in the corner, but she never lit it except on nights when she was caring for overnight patients. “But it was something else, really, that drew me to this place.” Her voice grew faint with introspection. “But the dead do not speak to me,” she added bitterly, the memory of a dying whore still fresh on her mind. The sad culmination of a broken, bitter life.

Lamplights gleamed in the windows of the houses, in the shops and false-front stores and offices. Cross Timbers was growing, becoming everything Tom had ever envisioned. But where were the Southern Cheyenne? His own people no longer belonged where once they were lords of the plains. They were becoming aimless, faceless even to one another, scattered across the lower range or clinging to a shadowy existence in the settlement called Rabbit Town. How could Luthor White Bear have allowed this to happen? Why had he not brought his lost people together? Had his own success made him blind? It was time for
ma-heonesto-nestotse
, the Sacred Ceremony of Renewal. The council fires must be lit and the tribe gathered so that the Maiyun could ride the Arrow Keepers song into the hearts of the people, renewing one and all. The bond between Maheo the Mysterious One and the Southern Cheyenne must be restored and made whole again.

Joanna drew close to him, and in the faint illumination seeping through the unshuttered window, she could see moisture on his cheek. She reached out to touch his tears and found them warm on her fingertips.

“My fault … I broke the Circle,” he said. “Sometimes I see Philo and Tully, sometimes even Captain Zuloaga, bloodied and dying beneath me. Other times it is a warrior I do not know, or I smell burning sage when there is no fire, or I hear the ceremonial drums. All these things are visions I can no longer deny. And all of them have brought me here.” He turned to face the woman at his side and lowered his lips to hers, covering her mouth in a hungry, yearning kiss. She leaned against him, molding her lithe frame to his. Then he drew back. “You once told me you would not be laid hand on unless you wished it.” His right hand reached down to brush a strand of hair away from the corner of her mouth.

“That's right,” she replied. And then, taking the initiative, kissed him again. When she stepped back, both of them were a little breathless. “Now I think you had better leave, Tom Sandcrane. For I am tired and perhaps a little drunk, and I just might take you to my bed were you to stay any longer.”

“Oh …” His interest was indeed heightened.

“But we will not share my blanket, my dear friend, until you are a whole man.” She reached down and took his gloved left hand, lifting it to her lips. “And I do not mean this wound.”

“I could stay with Coby Starving Elk,” Sandcrane forlornly said. “But he snores loud as a bellowing bull.”

“Good. It will serve you right.” Joanna was wise to his tricks and not about to let him off the hook too easily, no matter what desires he had awakened.

Tom allowed himself another moment of shared warmth and then nodded. She was right. When he came to her, it ought to be as a whole man, not split apart by the mistakes of the past. There was much to be done. He must restrain his longing and his own needs. How could he find solace for his own pain while his people perished?

A great darkness had descended upon the Southern Cheyenne. Alone he must enter its center, alone he must find them and bring his people out into the great light. One-armed or two, the task was his.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

W
E ARE HERE
. W
AITING
… W
AITING
…

For the better part of an hour Tom had paced the confines of the stable, his shadow gliding past the stalls and flitting over the carriage and surrey that were Allyn Benedict's personal conveyances. Sandcrane, lost in his own introspection, paid no heed to wagon or horse as he covered the straw-littered aisle from one end of the building to the other, while the north wind prowled the perimeter of the walls, plastered the moist flakes against the windowpanes, and, finding a loosened plank up near the roof line, slipped through with a keening wail like some lost soul in anguish.

Coby Starving Elk emerged from his quarters at the rear of the stable, holding in his right hand a couple of thick slabs of crusty bread surrounding half-a-dozen strips of bacon. The fat, still sizzled, its juices seeping into the thirsty bread.

“Want another one?” Coby asked, offering the sandwich in hand.

“No. I'm set,” Tom answered. “But do not let me stop you.”

Coby shook his head and, liking his bacon half cooked, took a bite. Grease dribbled down his chin and onto the bib of his overalls as he ambled down the center aisle. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and joined Tom at the window near the front door. Across the street the columns of Benedict's ostentatious dwelling rose like pillars of ice against the wintry backdrop of night.

“Yessir, Allyn Benedict did all right for himself,” Coby muttered, his breath clouding the glass. He shivered and glanced sideways as a cold gust of wind swept through the open door, and saw Tom Sandcrane step outside. The iron hinges creaked in protest.

“Saaa-vaaa!
What are you doing?” the stablekeeper said. He caught the door and followed Tom into the night. It was no longer snowing. The precipitation had tapered off, leaving only a patchwork accumulation on the wheel-rutted earth. Now and then an occasional flake fluttered out of the sky. One crystal struck Coby Starving Elk in the eyelid. The older man cursed, grabbed a checkered bandanna from his hip pocket, and dabbed at his face. The wind gust continued up the hill, rattling the branches of the oaks and cedars as it followed the well-worn path to the dark and silent ceremonial lodge some 250 feet up the slope.

Tom studied the hillside, turned the sheepskin collar of his denim coat up around his ears, then dug his right hand into his coat pocket for warmth.

“How long has it been since Luthor called a council and lit the ceremonial fire?” he asked.

Coby shrugged. “I cannot remember. A long time. After the land rush, maybe just once. Our people were selling and trading the land deeded them, everyone trying to be rich like Allyn Benedict. Including me.” The stableman glanced over at the office and house of his employer. “See? I made it. I live right across the street from the richest man in the territory.” He lifted the sandwich in salute, as if it were a drink, then brought it to his mouth, paused, scowled, and tossed the remaining bread and meat aside. “Now, see what you have done. I've lost my appetite.” Coby snorted in disgust and tucked his hands into his armpits, resting his muscled forearms on his paunch. “Oh, some of us fared well. I heard Luthor paid off his debts a few weeks ago, though for a while there I thought he might lose the store. Little good it does him with Charlottes getting herself killed. That fool Willem.”

“You have him tried and convicted too,” Tom said, continuing to scrutinize the hillside.

Come. We are here. We wait for you
. The voice again. Coby could not hear it. But the words reverberated inside Tom's skull like an echo heard from afar.

“That's what everybody says.”

“You open your mouth, but I hear Allyn Benedict's voice,” Tom replied. He started up the overgrown path that led to the ceremonial lodge.

“Where are you going? It's too damn cold for such nonsense, Tom,” Coby called out, his words falling on deaf ears. He turned and, muttering to himself about the foolishness of the young, retreated to the warmth of the barn and the back room he called home.

Tom stood outside the walls of the ceremonial lodge, his breath streaming on the cold breeze as he studied the building's bleak facade. Weeds crowded the doorway. Low-hanging branches scraped the rough hewn weathered exterior like talons clawing at the log walk.

Now that Tom had reached the entrance to the lodge, the voice in his head had ceased its demand. Sandcrane glanced over his shoulder at the sprawling settlement below and remembered how Cross Timbers had once been a cluster of a few buildings on a single street surrounded by a motley collection of huts and cabins. The amber glare from so many windows illuminated the darkness, the formless array of lights resembled the moon-dappled surface of a stream, sparkling in the wintry night. All that bright life offered a sharp contrast to the silent lodge lying in such a sad state of disrepair.

A shadow detached itself from the periphery of darkness. Tom froze and sucked in his breath as the spectral form glided out of the underbrush, the dry straw crackling beneath its footfall. This was no ghost. Tom's muscles coiled as the shape loomed over him and for a brief moment took on the form of some terrible bird of prey, until the “wings” became a black woolen cape draped across the muscled, sloping shoulders of Jerel Tall Bull.

“I knew you'd come,” his voice rumbled. The moon poked through a veil of clouds and bathed both men in its boneyard glare. Tall Bull chuckled softly and tucked his large hands into the pockets of his frock coat.

Tom heard a horse neigh and paw the earth from somewhere behind the lodge. That explained how Jerel had arrived but had nothing to do with the reason for his being at the ceremonial lodge. Sandcrane held his ground as the man lumbered toward him. An inner voice cautioned him against retreating from the master of Panther Hall. First Jerel Tall Bull had invaded his dreams, now the man had intruded in person upon Tom Sandcrane's personal odyssey. Why?

“I saw you at Coby's. I knew with the lodge being so close you would have to climb the hill, to confront once more the scene of your disgrace.”

Tom bristled. “None of this is any of your concern, Jerel.”

“It has always been my concern.” Jerel studied the younger man and, to his dismay, sensed the power in him, a force Sandcrane himself was only just discovering. Now was not the time or the place for a confrontation. “You think you know me. To you I am a gambler, a whore runner. But you know only my shadow.”

Jerel glanced up at the moon, his features seemingly bloodless and solemn as he watched the clouds pass by, black bar-kentines sailing on some forbidden sea. “My grandfather's grandfather was Blood Hawk, the Arrow Keeper in the olden days when the Kiowa raided and stole the Mahuts. Blood Hawk pursued the Kiowa along with others of the tribe. Many battles were fought until the Sacred Arrows were at last recovered.” Jerel's brows furrowed and his eyes hardened. “But the elders called a council and refused to allow Blood Hawk to receive the Mahuts into his care. By losing the Arrows he had broken the trust. Blood Hawk rode from his people and was never seen again. For many moons my family endured the shame until at last memories dimmed and the name of Blood Hawk was spoken no more.” Jerel turned and stared at Sandcrane. “But I speak it, here and now.”

“The past is a burden each of us must bear,” Tom said.

“You have come home to your death, Tom Sandcrane. Most men run from their fate. But you seek it.”

“Did Allyn Benedict send you to threaten me?” Tom asked, his voice hard.

“Benedict …” Jerel contemptuously repeated. “This has nothing to do with him. What lies between us is more than white man's gold. Or white man's oil.”

“I do not understand you, Jerel,” Tom said, wondering if the man had taken leave of his senses.

“I will tell you something, listen. You will find it important one day. Behind Panther Hall is a trail through the woods that leads to Little Sister Creek. I have cleared a circle and lit a fire. I will be waiting for you there, holding your death in my hands.”

“What new madness is this? Whiskey talk?”

“Do not worry. You will know the time.” Jerel grinned. “The Maiyun will tell you. Or perhaps the hawk.” He turned and with swiftness surprising for a man his size disappeared behind the ceremonial lodge. Tom remained still as a statue, puzzled by Tall Bull's remarks and shaken by their threatening tone and his reference to the hawk. He listened and heard the creak of saddle leather and then the sound of a horse picking its way upslope and brushing against ice-laden branches, showering the narrow path with broken twigs.

Memories assailed Tom Sandcrane, flooding back to the renewal ceremony when he had refused the Sacred Arrows and allowed them to pass from his father into Luthor White Bear's keeping. A mistake … perhaps … and yet he acknowledged the possibility even then that his actions might have been guided by the Maiyun, whose presence he had long denied. Steeling himself against the guilt, Tom walked to the entrance, hesitated, then ducked inside. The walls acted as a break from the biting wind. Tom cautiously approached the center of the circle. His legs felt numb from the cold seeping through his trouser leg, and he knew he ought to light a fire—but not here, not in this hallowed place, where a man must walk alone and face his troubled past. The images of yesterday danced in his mind as they had once upon the firelit walls. He had been so certain of the way of things, determined to bring about change without realizing the cost or the consequences.