The Powder River (14 page)

He figured that not long after dawn he and Sings Wolf would be seeing a lot of U.S. soldiers. And not long after that they would be dead.

Sings Wolf was sleeping. Smith had indicated Sings Wolf should look at the ropes on Smith’s back, and he had. Then he shook his head gently no and closed his eyes and went to sleep. Smith’s grandfather was not one to fret pointlessly or struggle to no effect.

Finally, Burns squatted down by the coals near Smith’s head. He held his long Arkansas toothpick into the fire, as he would roast meat, but the end of the knife held no meat. It was a wicked-looking knife, long, sharp-pointed, and double-edged—one of the few knives good for throwing and ripping. He set it on a rock, tip still in the coals, and pulled a glove onto his right hand.

“I been thinking about you,
Doctor
,” said Burns in a slur, “and I don’t like you.'’

He let a while go by, a drunk’s pause between stupid remarks—he’d probably forget he’d been talking.

“You’re a goddamm Cheyenne.”

You Pawnees have plenty of reason to fear and hate Cheyennes, Smith wanted to say through his gag. You’ve stocked horses for us for generations, ready whenever the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio need them. You’ve provided women for the sport of our warriors. The reason we haven’t whupped on you much recently is that it’s a doubtful honor to count coup against a mere Pawnee.

“You’re a white man, too. You didn’t say so, but anybody can see it.” Burns studied the end of his knife in the coals for a moment. “Nothing I hate more than Cheyennes and white men.”

Burns sat for a while. Was this easing up to it part of the act, Smith wondered, or was Burns really drunk? Both, Smith guessed.

He saw that Sings Wolf was awake now. Smith’s grandfather had rolled to face him, looked at him with still, deep eyes.

“What’s more,” Burns ambled on, “you’re a know-it-all. You been to one of them colleges. Can’t learn that doctoring without you go to one of them colleges, can you,
Doctor
?”

Burns turned his head sideways and looked at Smith with a big smile. He looked almost amiable. Smith noticed foolishly that Burns had all his teeth, unusual on the frontier. He looked predatory.

“You talk high and mighty. ‘As I said,’ you said to us. Us ignoramuses. ‘
As
I said.’” He took the knife out with his gloved hand and inspected the tip closely. It glowed red. “Ain’t much anybody likes less than a know-it-all.”

Burns cackled, a high, piercing sound that came from nowhere and related to nothing.

“‘As I said.’” Burns fell into silence again, his eyes fixed on the end of the knife among the coals. He kept still.

Smith could feel little prickles of cold forming in the small of his back.

Finally, Burns brought the knife out and inspected the end again. Smith couldn’t see how it could be any more red-hot.

Burns changed tone suddenly. From laconic mockery he switched to a stage whisper. “But you don’t know nothing. You don’t even know who you are.”

Burns let it sit for a moment, holding the knife in the fire again. “How can a
doctor
wear a breechcloth and leggings? How can you do that,
Doctor
? How can a white man go on the warpath with Injuns? Hmmm? Tell this nigger that, now.”

Burns took the knife out and inspected it. “How can a white man kidnap a little white girl, pore thing?” He snickered. “How can an Injun be a know-it-all doctor,
Doctor
?

“So I got me a idea. Hear me, now. What you is, is a big question mark. Didn’t think Nelly Burns knew what a question mark is, now, did you? Didn’t think Nelly Burns could read.” He took the Arkansas toothpick out of the fire. “So I think you ought to die tomorrow with a big question mark on your face. A
big
question mark.”

He knelt close to Smith, the knife glowing in his hand. “Now this nigger noticed them stitches on the outside of your left eye.” Burns worked the fingers of his offhand into Smith’s hair for a good grip. “Shame you need them stitches, ain’t it? Did one of my Pawnee
compañeros
get to the doctor before this nigger did? Did his knife hurt? Hmmm?”

Burns jerked Smith’s head back hard.

Smith had heard all his life about stepping aside mentally, holding the spirit apart from the body. He wondered if he could.

“Well, I want to finish that question mark. It needs that little dot underneath.”

Smith saw the red-hot knife tip come toward his eyes and felt a stab of heat that took his breath away.

It was already over. He felt surprisingly calm. A warm trickle of blood flowed down his cheek, but it didn’t seem like much.

“Silent, are you,
Doctor
? What a brave, white-man, red-man doctor. Tell me,
Doctor
, when they breed a Cheyenne mare to a white burro, what do they get? Do they get a mule? Are you sterile,
Doctor
?”

Burns slugged Smith viciously in the groin.

Smith deliberately didn’t react. The tarpaulin absorbed most of the force anyway. Now he was determined not to let this scum make him cry out through the gag.

Burns wrenched Smith’s head back by the hair. Smith felt the bastard’s hot breath and then Burns’s teeth in his ear. He jumped, but made no sound.

Quickly, in a fury, Burns cut an arc around the outside of Smith’s other eye.

Smith just stared at him. He pretended blood wasn’t running into his eye.

“See, Doctor,” Burns purred, “a question mark on each side of your brain. What is it, a white-man brain or a red-man brain?” He cackled low.

Now Burns began to slide the Arkansas toothpick up Smith’s face. Smith felt the warm touch of it under his chin, in the cleft, under his lower lip, on his upper lip. It didn’t seem to be cutting, just touching.

Burns eased the point of the knife deep into Smith’s nostril.

“Burns,” drawled a Southern voice, “you cut him again and this boy will kill you.”

The knife stopped.

Smith held his breath. He thought Burns might ram the knife point home right now.

Burns took the knife out, stuck it in its scabbard, and stood up over Smith, smiling casually. “What’s the matter, Riley, you think he needs to look pretty to die in the morning?”

“Burns,” said the scout, “you’re relieved of this watch—I’ll take over.”

Riley looked in the dog tent at Hindy and apparently saw nothing wrong. He walked over to the fire and studied the two prisoners. Seeing Smith’s face, he said contemptuously, “A knife is a greaser’s toy. Down home in San Antone, I been known to take a knife away from a greaser.”

Burns slashed sideways with the knife—Smith thought he could hear it cut air.

Crack!

Burns yelped, and the knife fell into the dust.

Riley had the muzzle of his Colt Dragoon under Burns’s chin, forcing his head back.

Burns held the wrist of his gun hand. “You broke it, Burns whispered.

“I hope so, Burns. I’d like to kill you,” Riley said slowly, as though making a casual observation. “But I don’t like court-martials.” He stared Burns down. “Now get in that tent and make me think you’re sleeping.”

Burns went.

Riley sat down by the tree.

Smith hoped he was alert. Otherwise Burns would kill him.

Chapter 4

Smith felt a weight set down on his stomach. He took a moment—it was a good idea not to show your enemy right off that you were awake, especially when you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and tied up. Then he cracked his eyes in the direction of his belly.

What he saw in the predawn darkness was a head. Nelly Burns’s head. Just the head, severed, and held up by a hand in its dark hair. Looking at Smith from his belly, one eye was gaped and the other still know-it-all.

Twist chuckled maliciously. He guffawed in a stagy way to make his point. Smith took the point: all three scouts were beyond hearing anything.

Twist cut the gag and ropes off Sings Wolf and then came to Smith. He got out his knife and pointed it at Smith’s newly injured eye. He emitted that weird cackle again.

“Grandson,” snapped Sings Wolf. It was an admonition to behave like a human being.

Twist cut Smith’s bonds and put away the knife.

“Grandson,” said Sings Wolf, “I saw nothing and heard nothing.” He was paying compliment to Twist’s skills, and deservedly so.

“Good-bye, Grandfather,” said Twist. “Keep the
veho
out of trouble. Tell him to go back to his wife.” Twist disappeared into the darkened plains.

Smith stretched out his kinked-up legs and arms, then slipped into the tent and quickly cut the ropes and gag off Hindy, and told her she would be OK. She held on to Smith and said nothing, but she wouldn’t let go.

After a few moments Smith disengaged himself. Riley was still against the tree, dead. Smith went to check the other tent. Two bodies, including Burns, still in the bedroll, headless. The other was halfway out, his throat cut. Too slow.

Yes, Smith thought, Twist had brought off a remarkable feat. He’d sneaked into camp, cut Riley’s throat without letting him cry out, and crept into the tent and killed both the other scouts before they could do a damn thing. Then he’d brought Smith that gruesome trophy.

Twist had known exactly how many men were in camp and where they were. He must have seen and heard everything—must have been hiding nearby in the dark. He’d plainly been tracking Smith and Sings Wolf all along, tracking them from well back, waiting for whatever opportunity came. By chance the opportunity was to save Smith’s life instead of taking it.

So now Smith owed his life to Twist. He didn’t like that. Twist would gloat over it. And now that Twist had killed more whites, more soldiers would come after the people.

Twist wouldn’t care. He would just strut and preen and brag about his coups. He was a mad dog, just like Burns.

Dr. Richtarsch gazed down on his patient. She slept restlessly. She had mostly slept, said Dr. Wockerley, for two days now, and had been steadily feverish. She tossed and turned a lot. They’d had to wake her to feed her.

The doctor frowned. This one was taking a bad course, quite bad.

“Mrs. Maclean,” Richtarsch called cheerfully. She stirred a little. “Mrs. Maclean,” he repeated, booming. She stirred again, and he began to shake her by the shoulder.

Richtarsch felt a certain liking for Elaine. Though she had committed the foolishness of marrying a red Indian, he thought, at least she had gotten a decent name out of it.
Schottisch
, the doctor thought—Scottish. A good name for a widow. That’s what she should give out, that she was a widow.

He shook her vigorously.

She came to with a little start. Yes, she felt bad. She had all the signs.

“How do you feel today, Mrs. Maclean?”

She shook her head, trying to wake up. “Depleted,” she murmured.

This one had a brain. Even when she was sick half to death, she used an expressive word. “All day yesterday and today, depleted?” Richtarsch asked.

“Yes. Don’t seem to have any energy. Completely drained. Did anyone mail the letter to my sister?”

Yes, my dear, you have an infection, a bad one. “The letter has been taken care of. Mrs. Maclean”—he spoke urgently now—“we are approaching a critical time. We must make a decision.” She closed her eyes, and he wondered if she heard him, and if she was capable of making a decision.

“Your infection is serious. As your physician, I believe it threatens your life. I recommend that we remove your leg above the infected place, in other words just below the knee. You will still be able to walk. What do you say?”

He waited, and for a moment didn’t feel sure she’d heard him. When she opened her eyes, though, he saw the pain and grief.

“How long do I have to decide?” Ah—pain, grief, and increased awareness. Good woman.

“I would prefer a decision today. I am prepared to do the procedure this afternoon. Waiting is dangerous. If you insist, we will wait until tomorrow. Given the seriousness of the situation, though, I cannot recommend even that.”

“Please give me the facts as you see them, Doctor.”

She looked more awake, at least. Richtarsch told her truthfully. “The wound on your calf is infected, and the infection has spread systemically. That means through your entire system. You may overcome the infection through your constitution, but I see no signs of that. To wait for that would be to risk your life. I recommend removal of the leg below the knee, as soon as possible. You will be able still to walk, with the help of an artificial limb.” He stopped and waited.

“Does the surgery,” she asked softly, “also put my life at hazard?”

“It is not without risk to life. It can go wrong. The other course, however, is more dangerous.”

She reached and patted his hand lightly, a gesture he found too familiar.

“Perhaps, Doctor, if you would ask Mrs. Wockerley to bring me a cup of coffee to help me stay alert, and give me thirty minutes to think.”

He nodded. Yes, good woman. “Naturally,” said the doctor, with the stress on the second syllable, making it sound like
natürlich
.

How do you say good-bye to a leg?

Elaine dreamed. Not by mistake, or through drowsiness. Knowing necessity for what it was, she let herself go in a reverie, drifting, floating in and out of time and space. Strangely, and sweetly, in the reverie what she saw and heard and smelled and felt seemed not half-real but ultra-real.

Later she would not be able to remember most of what she spun from the warp of memory and imagination, and the weft of something like vision. He saw herself running behind Dora, just barely behind, on a race to the pond, and wondering if she had a right leg and being unable to see it or to feel its foot striking the earth and knowing it must be there but being eerily sure it wasn’t. She dared not look.

She saw herself standing up beside her husband-to-be in front of the missionary, in her yellow dress and about to be wed, and seeing her right foot planted solid on the floor and feeling glad, absurdly glad that it was there, reaching down to feel it—warm and fleshy it was—and looking up at Adam and laughing like buddies with him because she was feeling her own leg in front of the preacher.

Afterward—or was it an entirely different time?—Adam lifted her up to help her into her sidesaddle and nipped her playfully on the shoulder with his teeth and let her go, and because she had no right leg to hold on to the horns with, she fell out of the saddle and through his reaching arms and past the earth and into the eternal void, falling endlessly.

She woke up after that one with a start. Lying back down, she reminded herself that self-torture wasn’t necessary.

She returned to the scene of her own wedding, and laughing with Adam about feeling her own leg, and the leg turned to squish in her fingers and bled scarlet all over her hands and arms and her wedding dress, and she fainted.

In this reverie, this heightened state, not merely what the whites meant by
dream
but what the Cheyennes meant, the eight-year-old Elaine did a cartwheel in front of her father, daringly exposing her bloomers to her daddy and her whole family. Elaine, though, noticed only her daddy. And he laughed with delight, the top of his beard trembling, and the second time she cartwheeled he grabbed for her legs and got hold of one ankle but she pulled the other, the right one, back at the knee, because it was, most strangely, at once there and not there. And she grabbed his big head to her breasts (yes, she was grown and had breasts) and held him and said how sorry, how very sorry, she was for the awful, missing leg. And he started to weep with her, but she realized she was holding an emptiness to her breast—her father was not there—and she woke again in a fright.

The awakened, alert, adult Elaine Cummings Maclean made a grimace for a smile and got hold of herself. She drank her coffee, which was cold. And she saw Dr. Richtarsch coming up the walk. A soldier followed him bearing what appeared to be a tool kit.

When Dr. Richtarsch opened the door and looked questioningly at her, she said only, “Yes.” He nodded curtly at the soldier.

Dr. Richtarsch went inside to get Dr. Wockerley. The soldier started unpacking the tools, several scalpels, silk thread, needles, scissors, a small saw, and some sort of burner she’d never seen. The soldier set it up, calling it a Bunsen burner. She smelled gas as he touched a match to its top, and it made a steady, blue flame.

Elaine felt a great wrenching heave through her insides, like violent nausea, but she didn’t throw up.

Dr. Richtarsch picked up the saw and looked at it for a moment. Dr. Wockerley stepped forward with a folded linen cloth, and the familiar smell of chloroform came over her. As she lost consciousness, the saw rose in her mind’s eye, tidily gnawing at her leg bone.