The Powder River (16 page)

Sings Wolf fell farther and farther behind Twist. Twist walked quickly, almost openly, making only brief use of obstacles and shadows. He was bold and sure of his medicine, that one. Also bullheaded and stupid as a buffalo.

Sings Wolf moved cautiously, staying hard to see. He crept into a position on a little bench above the yard full of buildings and lay down in the grass with his old flintlock rifle. He got into firing position. He could slow down the whites if they discovered Twist.

At that moment he saw what would happen. A white girl came from the creek wrapped in a blanket. Twenty steps behind her came a young man. Sings Wolf smiled to himself—the whites did not watch after the chastity of their young women carefully. The whites were coming openly into the barnyard, perhaps headed for the house.

Twist was easing around the barn toward the door. When he came around the corner, the three would see each other, right in the open.

Sings Wolf could do nothing. He willed Twist to stop, to peek cautiously around the corner of the barn, to see the girl and the boy following her. Sings Wolf knew his willing would do no good. Something inside him said, It is inevitable.

The girl started screaming.

Twist smiled to himself and said out loud, “It is a good day to die.”

He sprinted toward the girl, knife held low and ready. The boy was closer to her but not nearly as quick. It would be a great coup, to kill the woman in front of her man.

The girl screamed crazily, filling the air with the dung of her fear. Twist would cut off her scream and her throat with a single swipe. He felt fiercely happy.

Matthew Long swung the barrel of his shotgun just like he would follow a duck on the wing, catching up with the red nigger. Just when he was ready to cut loose, he saw Alene, too. At fifteen, Matthew was a poised and laconic youngster, hard to rattle, and a good fowler. He lowered the barrel toward the nigger’s legs and pulled the trigger. He knew he’d missed.

Alene went down and clutched at her throat with one hand. Blood ran down her arm.

Matthew ran for the Injun—the bastard was up. If only Matthew’s dad had bought him a side-by-side, he could have shot again. But the Injun was all tangled up with Ben Halstead anyway.

Matthew swung his shotgun by the stock. The muzzle bounced off the Indian’s shoulder. Bastard swung to face Matthew. The fool grinned like a madman. Out of the corner of his eye Matthew got a glimpse of Ben Halstead—his guts were hanging out. Matthew swung the shotgun again, roundhouse. On his follow-through he saw the Indian thrust forward, and knew he was about to die.

A rifle cracked, and the Injun went tumbling at Matthew’s feet.

Eric Sunvold stood on the back porch with his Winchester still held on the Injun. Matthew made a mental note to thank Mr. Sunvold later for saving his life. Meanwhile, he jumped on that goddamn Injun’s bloody back.

Another rifle shot sounded, with a different sound—Mr. Sunvold hollered out. Matthew rolled onto his side and held the Injun in front of him for cover. Peering over the Injun’s shoulder, Matthew saw black-powder smoke rising from the bench behind the yard. Black powder probably meant an Injun, and an old flintlocker or percussion-cap weapon. One shot. But just in case, Matthew would keep the Injun in front of him. Bastard stank. And he was about half-dead, from the feel of him. Matthew was getting blood all over him from the Injun’s back.

Matthew’s dad fired twice up toward the bench—Matthew knew the sound of that rifle. He was in the barn loft, a good position.

An Injun on the bench jumped up and ran left, out of the angle Dad had. Dad fired again, but the Injun didn’t go down. Matthew wondered if the skunk was alone. Must be, considering that one shot. That redskin would find out that a single-shot, black-powder weapon didn’t hold a candle to a Model 1873, center-fire, .44-caliber Winchester with a magazine that held fifteen cartridges. Much less six or eight or ten Winchesters.

That savage needed to catch up with the nineteenth century.

He would also discover that it didn’t pay to attack a ranch house with damn near forty white people in it, half a dozen of them men and another half-dozen young men like Matthew, fellas that wouldn’t be fooled with.

Damn savage.

Matthew’s Injun wriggled, and Matthew held the bastard tighter.

Now Sings Wolf had shed blood. His medicine was gone—he had abandoned it.

He lay behind the thin cover of a sagebrush, ramming a bullet into his old rifle and smiling an ironic smile at his own foolishness. In his mind he told the powers that he was only a human being, that he could not throttle his anger. And he acknowledged that he probably would die like a human being today.

He stretched out and hunted for white flesh with his sights. Twist was still down, still being held by the white boy. He must be alive. The middle-aged man Sings Wolf had shot was hidden behind the back porch and yelling out at people vigorously—he must not be shot bad. The girl and boy lay in the middle of the barnyard, the girl writhing and moaning. The man from the barn loft must be getting into a better position. So must the other two men who’d run out of the barn and darted back in.

Sings Wolf wondered how so many whites could be here, flying out like bees from a hive. He shrugged mentally. That was the way whites were. You couldn’t fight them because they were too many. The Human Beings had thought the buffalo beyond counting, but now the whites had killed the buffalo and the whites were beyond counting.

No matter. Though it was getting difficult for a Human Being to live well, it was still possible to die well.

As long as Twist seemed to be alive, Sings Wolf would not leave him. He could have left the warrior. He owed no particular debt to the man who cast away Sings Wolf’s medicine like a triviality. But maybe it was the fault of the older men like Sings Wolf that the younger men disregarded medicine. Besides, staying felt like the Tightness of the day. Sings Wolf would surely die, and that was right, too.

He chuckled to himself. For this moment it was calm. Sings Wolf enjoyed the calm.

Suddenly four white men dashed out of the barn and around the corner, away from Sings Wolf’s line of fire. No sense wasting a bullet on a running target. Two of the men started working their way up the creek through the trees. No point shooting at them. If Sings Wolf let his rifle get unloaded, the whites were organized enough to rush him now. But the whites headed up the creek would get behind Sings Wolf, with a good angle on him.

For a moment Sings Wolf saw one man at the peak of the barn roof. The man didn’t have an ideal shot—he wasn’t above Sings Wolf—but it would be good enough.

So. It would not be long. Sings Wolf looked about at the white-man buildings and fences and cattle, and thought of the white-man rifles that now surrounded him. He pondered this place, this alien place, for a moment. Then he let anger sweep through his body, mind, and spirit, a flash flood of rage, violent, unstoppable, scourging him, reaming him out like dry, cracking gullies.

Then Sings Wolf began to sing. He lifted to the dawn his death song, a mournful and melismatic farewell to this world, a preparation for his journey on the starry path through the skies:

Nothing lives long—

Except the rocks.

Smith had the uncanny sensation that his fingers had suddenly turned freezing. Then, and only then, did he realize that he was hearing his grandfather sing his death song.

Smith touched his heels to his horse and went charging down the hill.

He knew it was pointless. He, Wooden Legs, Little Finger Nail, and Raven sitting in their saddles on the hill, saw how many white men there were, and how many rifles. They’d seen the three on the barn roof, and even the two circling behind Sings Wolf. The whites had more armed men than places to station them, or Indians to kill. Still, Smith rode like hell toward his grandfather.

The first shot from the creek simply crossed his bow—someone had led him too much. Smith zigged and zagged a little to make their task harder. It’s never a good day to die easily.

He was still a hell of a way from Sings Wolf. The old man’s voice rose, crooning his death song.

Smith’s horse pitched forward and Smith went over its neck and through the sage end over end like a thrown ax handle, bouncing and tumbling.

For a moment he didn’t realize he was stopped. Flat on the ground and not in several pieces.

“Grandfather!” Smith yelled.

The old man just kept singing.

“Grandfather!”

Up swam the death song.

Smith knew that Sings Wolf could hear him. He was yelling louder than the old man was crooning. But Sings Wolf paid him no attention.

Smith looked back at his horse. It was unmoving. It could only have been shot in the head or spine, and was done for.

Smith rose into a crouch. A rifle shot made him flatten out again, fast.

Two more shots fell just short of him. Hell, these came from the top of the barn.

Smith scurried back to his horse and lay down behind it. On the way he picked up his rifle.

Beyond Sings Wolf a woman went running out toward the figures lying in the barnyard, a girl down and squirming, a still boy next to her, and a boy locked together with Twist.

The woman bent over the girl.

Smith knew what would happen. He didn’t know how he felt about it.

Sings Wolf raised his old flintlocker and aimed, surely at the woman.

Smith heard pony hooves up the hill.

Sings Wolf fired.

The woman did not fall. No one fell.

Four whites started sprinting up the little bench toward Sings Wolf.

Wooden Legs clattered up next to Smith, leading Sings Wolf’s mount. Fire came hard from the creek. Smith expected to get hit every moment as he swung into the saddle. Then he kicked up the hill behind Wooden Legs.

Halfway up, Smith stopped and wheeled around. He wanted to see.

Sings Wolf was standing, one arm raised. The arm must hold his tomahawk, or knife.

The whites closed in. No shot sounded.

The whites got Sings Wolf circled. One of them rushed him from behind, and both went down, and then Smith could see nothing but a pile of men, writhing.

He didn’t know if his grandfather was still alive. He didn’t know if Twist was still alive.

“Let’s go!” snarled Wooden Legs.

Chapter 7

Dear Mother,

You must have found my telegram strange. Please forgive your wayward daughter.

Your reply was inspiring. For you also to send so much money is wonderful generosity. I do not deserve it, but I need it, and I accept it. Thank you.

In fact she couldn’t possibly pay her way until Adam came for her without that hundred dollars.

This was the eighth day after her surgery, the first day she’d been able to sit up. She’d been comatose for several days and had slept for several more. Dr. Wockerley still wanted her to stay flat and rest, but he had no idea how bored she was. Lying there helpless made her want to scream.

Dr. Richtarsch judged a week ago that the infection in my calf might sweep me away. I made no quarrel (you will be amazed to hear) but like the Red Queen cried, “Off with her leg!”

I’ve been mostly asleep in the week since, though Dr. Richtarsch comments often on what a remarkable recovery I’m making. I tell him, with a tear in my eye, that I’m a Cummings, and can do anything.

Of the hundred dollars I’ve given seventy-five to Dr. Wockerley, who I think was concerned about being taken advantage of, and kept twenty-five back. Dr. Richtarsch has gallantly refused compensation, claiming that I am a casualty of war. He added a half joke about my possibly becoming a prisoner of war, being shipped back east out of the battle zone and being forcibly held away from the action by my family.

Though gallantry usually only amuses me, I am touched by Dr. Richtarsch’s generosity and grateful for it. I believe I shall be all right now. Dr. Richtarsch says he will absolutely force the liveryman to give me a hundred dollars for my fancy sidesaddle, which I won’t be needing anymore, and a good price for my horse. I fear Adam and I contributed all our ready cash to urgent needs of the people.

You must wonder how it feels to be without half a leg. It is odd beyond the telling. Most of the time I don’t notice it at all. It
feels
as it always did. Naturally, I’ve no chance to try to stand up or walk, you understand! So I notice its absence only when I cast my gaze down in that vicinity and see a sad emptiness there under my nightgown, and below it. A vacancy. A nothingness. Then, sometimes, it seems insupportable, and I gasp for breath. Most of the time, though, I simply imagine myself a pirate, jumping boldly from deck to deck on my peg leg, cutlass cocked for action.

She smiled wearily at the silly picture of herself as a pirate. She was tired now and would nap before she finished the letter.

Eric Sunvold had very definite notions about right and wrong and was strict and stubborn about sticking to them. In this case right was keeping the two damn Injuns alive until the army could kill them.

Sunvold felt irritable and impatient and snarly. Even shot, he didn’t feel uncertain. He was shot just under the left armpit—the lead had torn up a little flesh, but he had the blood stanched and could feel that his ribs were intact. He’d been hurt worse and felt perfectly capable of getting done what needed doing.

He would have a hell of a lot easier time making his intentions stick, though, if that old Injun would shut up his caterwauling. Sunvold was trying to get the horses harnessed and get both Injuns into the buck wagon and started to Ogallala, which was a day’s journey. The young Injun, Sunvold had shot him up under the rib cage when he was bent over. He was unconscious. If the bullet had got the vitals, he would die. Sunvold checked him more carefully. Hell, he was hit in the spine. Nigger couldn’t move his legs. He wasn’t going to give no trouble. The old man, though, was putting up a regular ruckus. Singing his death song, Sunvold had heard it called. Well, that Injun’s imitation of one of them opera tenors made everybody edgy.

Sunvold knew no one else at his place that day saw things his way. Why would they? Seventeen-year-old Ben Halstead was dead there in the barnyard, his guts spilled in the dust. It would be hard on his dad, Randall, because Ben was the last of Randall’s family. The wife and younger son had got taken away by the cholera back in East Texas. Understandably, Randall wanted first to skin that young Injun bit by bit, the little scum that used the knife, and then talk about how to kill him slow and savory.

Max and Jacob Sunvold were in a mood to lynch the Injuns. That would feel better than watching their mother cradle their baby sister, Alene, in her arms. Alene’s cut was shallow—Sunvold had checked it himself—and now that the bleeding was stopped, in no way dangerous. But a man couldn’t hardly stand to see a knife slice his baby sister’s neck. Though Sunvold understood, he meant to do what was right.

Max’s wife Kate kept saying to him softly out of the side of the mouth, “You ain’t gonna let some softhearted judge turn them Injuns loose, are you?”

Sunvold growled at Max to finish getting those horses hitched and not be all day about it.

The teenage Matthew Long and his father Raymond hemmed and hawed a lot. They didn’t have to tell Sunvold they admired Injuns, in a way. The Injuns was right—the country belonged to them. But the white people was gonna take it over, no stopping that. And that was progress, you couldn’t argue with it. The way the Lord meant it to be, the higher creature replacing the lower.

Young Matthew wanted to know if Sunvold wasn’t mad at the old Injun for shooting him.

Hell, Sunvold would as soon get mad at the wind for blowing in his face. He hardly paid the red nigger any mind at all, except to holler at him to stop that yowling.

Max brought the buck wagon and team around. Jacob had the old Injun tied up hands and feet, and gagged him to shut up that wailing. With Max, Jacob hoisted the Injun into the wagon bed and laid him flat.

The young nigger, hell, his legs were paralyzed.

Jacob asked his father permission to bury the Injun.

“Refused,” said Sunvold. The army could bury him, too.

So Jacob and Max threw him into the wagon bed loose.

Jacob climbed up on the seat next to his father, Winchester across his lap, the old man’s shotgun on the floorboards.

“Want us to ride along?” asked Raymond. “It’s on our way.”

He meant, And Injuns might still be around. “Accepted,” said Sunvold, “as far as your place.” That was eight miles down the creek. Ought to protect them against any Injuns, though Eric Sunvold hadn’t seen the day he needed protection.

Sunvold hawed the horses and they moved out. He nodded at his wife, smiled a little at his daughter Alene. A feisty one, that girl. She’d be some upset by Ben getting killed like that—a damn shame—but she’d get over it. He got the horses headed down the rough wagon track at a good pace. Town was a long way.

Sunvold snorted. Her and Ben rutting out along the creek, and everywhere else they could think of for months. And thinking nobody noticed. He shook his head. He hadn’t given a damn. How else did families get started?

Now he just had to hope Alene wasn’t with child.

Nothing he could do about that. He was damn glad to have a chance to do a little something about this Injun situation. He meant to shove these critters, one dead and one alive, at the sheriff and rub the son of a bitch’s face in what a fine job he was doing. And get the sheriff to rub it in the face of the damned army, and let the government see the results of its damned policies, and make the government do something about it.

It’s the way of nature, dammit. Every critter takes what it needs to live, and makes no apologies.

But the government, full of soft hearts, wrung its hands, said how sorry it was, and promised to make up for it by taking care of the Injuns. Then it penned them up and let them get so hungry they’d do anything just to survive. Couldn’t blame the Injuns. But the result was innocent white people dead, like Ben Halstead.

So Eric Sunvold would see these Injuns hang, all right—or did the army shoot ’em?

An hour and a half later Sunvold and Jacob said good-bye to the Longs, father and son. Raymond asked if Sunvold didn’t want them to ride on into town—the Injuns might still be around. Sunvold thought about the road to Ogallala. It kept pretty much to high, open ground. In a couple of places you could be ambushed. “We’ll be fine,” said Sunvold, waving.

He’d be careful in those places. He hadn’t survived fifty years on the frontier by being careless.

After another hour Sunvold looked back into the wagon bed again to check on the Injuns. His stomach lurched. He had only one Injun—the young one was gone.

How in the hell? Not careless, are you, old man? he mocked himself. He whoaed the team. “Jacob, how long since you checked on them Injuns?”

The young man whirled and looked. “Too damn long,” he said softly.

Sunvold looked back up the primitive wagon track. “How long since you actually saw him?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe longer.”

Sunvold considered. If the Injun could roll himself off the wagon with just his arms, he could pull himself away from the track and hide.

“So,” Sunvold said to his son, “let him die where the coyotes will get him.”

Jacob snickered nervously, glad of that decision. The truth was, his scalp didn’t feel tight on his head. He kept thinking that they didn’t know how many other Indians had been back there. But he put a good face on it. “We still got the other’n,” he said with a smile meant to be comradelike, “trussed up like a mummy.”

These red bastards sure are hard to kill, he thought.

Elaine reread her letter to Mother and Dora. She smiled at the foolish picture of herself with cutlass cocked, and then frowned. Now she must write from the heart.

I know I am a disappointment to you, and I regret it most deeply. I can say only that once I came to the Cheyennes to teach them, once I fell in love with a huge, manly, vigorous, intelligent, and devoted redskin named Adam Maclean, and once the people made the decision they made, no other course of action was possible for me.

I do not worry about myself now. I shall be fitted with an artificial leg and shall learn to get about on it. (I will be fitted with a leg here temporarily, but Dr. Richtarsch says he will refer me to a “true artist” in Omaha who is particularly adept at making comfortable and workable legs.) It may be that my feminine gait will no longer inspire poets to lyric heights, but I shall do quite well getting to and from the schoolroom, which is my calling. I want to be
used
, and I shall be.

I do worry about Adam. He sat beside my bed here, when both of us thought I would heal without complications, and told me why he had to go with his people. I did not need to hear the words—I knew his heart. He told me that he was being sucked into a great maelstrom, a whirlwind of events he could not control, and events might sweep him far away, so far he feared he could not find his way back. I could not answer well, for I was drugged by an anodyne, but I tried to communicate to him that I understood, and that I would wait for him. I shall wait for him, for all of this lifetime, at least, and want nothing so much as to live joined with him.

Now life seems so bleak. I have lost a leg, and somehow nothing is the same. I am
maimed
. Of course, he does not know.

There are things in that I cannot yet bring myself to speak of. I cannot imagine letting Adam see me crippled.

I can say that my dear husband does not appreciate the difficulty of a New England girl’s living among the Cheyennes. It is not the physical hardships. Neither you nor I could be dissuaded by those. It is that they are so
alien
—I cannot bring myself to put how alien into the naked form of the written word. To their ancient and barbaric ways, and strange gods, they are profoundly attached. To embrace the new way, the light of civilization, they must come unstuck from what they are. I doubt that they can do that, and still retain their wholeness as human beings.

Well, as Father would have said, “On with it.” I must go to Omaha. And Adam must go to Powder River—if he can live long enough to get there. I daydream constantly that he will instead come for me and once more sweep me away. I long for him.

What’s most important, though, is that the people must find a new way to live. That is incomparably more important than the fates of two individuals, and Adam can help with it. I wish I could.

I shall rest now.

Your loving daughter,

Elaine Cummings Maclean

It was Little Finger Nail who heard it.

He and Smith were trailing well behind the wagon, out of sight. Wooden Legs and Raven had headed back, with an inclination to see if they couldn’t get some horses on the way—the Human Beings had to have fresher horseflesh or they couldn’t keep going.

Smith didn’t know what to do about the damned wagon. The four white men must be headed for Ogallala. Probably meant to turn Sings Wolf and Twist over to the sheriff, who might turn them over to the military at Sidney Barracks, or might take the law into his own hands. The sheriff would give them a couple of weeks in jail, a sort of trial, and a noose. The commander at Sidney Barracks would give them the same, but quicker, and ending with a firing squad. Unless he knew how Indians hated the thought of hanging—then he’d hang them.

Smith didn’t know what to do. These open plains made it hard to get close to the wagon, and one Winchester against four rifles and shotguns was poor odds. Nail had only arrows, lance, and war club. Neither one of them was any dime-novel hero.

Leading horses for Sings Wolf and Twist, they followed the wagon and its flankers from a long way back. They could see it only occasionally, from the top of a rise, and then they stayed behind the rise until the wagon went out of sight. The wagon wouldn’t leave the road, and crossroads would be scarcer than Chinamen.

So why were the whites taking Sings Wolf and Twist to town—or to the fort? Why not just kill them right there in the barnyard? Most whites would. Maybe use the hanging rope in order to give themselves a sense of propriety about it.

No telling why. But that made it worse for Sings Wolf and Twist. Both of them were more afraid of being jailed than of dying. So Smith would just have to think of some dime-novel trick and get them loose.