Laughs like a Woman rolled over and stretched, his muscles bunched and tight along his limbs and across his bare chest. He sat up and sniffed the air which, to George’s perceptions, barely moved down here on the forest floor. The still-yawning Indian back-handed the shoulder of Storm Arriving, who woke with a start and a squint-eyed glare.
Laughs like a Woman spoke between his yawns. Storm Arriving flopped back onto his bed of fronds and grass.
“He says it is going to rain.”
George looked at the bloom of thunderheads to the west. “I think I knew that.”
Storm Arriving rubbed his face with his hands. “He says the thunder beings are pushing the clouds to us. They will be here after the sun sets.” Laughs like a Woman said something else and Storm Arriving translated. “Six hands. The rain will be here in six hands. With lots of thunder.”
George could not help but doubt the precise prediction and it must have shown on his face for Laughs like a Woman spoke up again.
“He says you say we must trust you to guide us across this land you have never seen. In return, you must trust us in what we know.”
George nodded. “It is a shame it wasn’t coming a few hours earlier. We could use a few more hours of darkness.”
Storm Arriving relayed the words and listened to the reply.
“He says he will see what he can do.”
The music of Mozart and the quiet conversation of his dinner guests was pushed from the room as Custer gently closed the door behind him. He took off his white gloves and threw them onto a chair.
“What do you mean he’s lost them?”
Jacob shrugged and held out empty hands.
“They’re using the railroads, Autie. It’s impossible to track them across the ties and gravel. They move quickly enough over regular terrain. The railroads just make it that much easier. Stant simply cannot keep pace with them. He lost them in that maze of rail lines in Illinois.”
Custer shook his head. “Well, now, that’s just fine. Just fine. Does he have any idea of how large a force it is?”
“I asked him that.” Jacob’s round cheeks were flushed and his brow was pale. “He said it was hard to say but thought it might be anywhere from several hundred to as many as a thousand.”
“A thousand! Do you mean to stand there and tell me that my senior general on the Frontier can’t find a thousand savages traipsing through his own cornfields? Hell, Jacob, a blind three-legged mule could find them.”
“You know it isn’t as easy as that.”
“Hell if it isn’t!”
“Autie, keep it down.”
“I will not.” He felt his blood surging in his temples. “This is inexcusable. We’re talking about a thousand giant lizards running loose through the state of Illinois and a forty-year veteran who says he can’t find them. I tell you he doesn’t want to find them. I should have listened to you in the first place. So tell me, Jacob. Has he at least found the eight or nine thousand Indians that headed the other way?”
Jacob winced. “He says his scouts are overdue.”
“He hasn’t found them, either.”
“No. He hasn’t found them, either.”
Custer stood there, hands on hips and his toe tapping the hardwood floor. He considered his next action carefully. “That’s it, then,” he said finally. “Stant is relieved.”
“Autie—”
“He. Is. Relieved,” Custer said, jabbing each word home with a pointed finger.
The two men faced one another, aware of the censure that would accompany such an action. No general had been relieved of active command since McClellan. Custer clenched and re-clenched his jaw, while Jacob—at a loss and unable to form his thoughts into words—simply stood there, his face devoid of any emotion but befuddlement.
“It will crush him,” Jacob said at last.
“I don’t care,” Custer said, but he did. It would ruin the old man’s career, but he knew of no other course. “He’s either unwilling or unable to make the quick progress that we require. I cannot afford another slaughter of our men.”
“Who shall replace him?”
“I don’t care,” Custer said, meaning it this time. “Just get me results.” He picked up his gloves. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have guests.”
He opened the door and the strains of Beethoven entered the room, fierce and brooding. Custer did not bother to close the door behind him.
“Speaks While Leaving,” said a voice.
She heard it and fought her way back from the vision world.
“Speaks While Leaving.”
She felt her cold limbs and felt the rough touch of the Trader’s wool blanket. She smelled the smoke of the fire and the luscious aroma of stewing meat. She heard the hiss of the heated rocks as they were put into the water to boil it.
“Speaks While Leaving, come back. You need to eat.”
“I am here,” she said. “Food sounds good.”
Her sight returned—always the last—and between the shell-pink clouds she saw the bowl of heaven, a deepening blue the color of spring irises. Night was coming.
She propped herself up on her elbows. Her mother was tending the fire while her grandmother cooked. The other families were spread out on the blanket of the plain, taking a well-earned rest after two and a half days of constant marching. The chiefs were taking no chances and had not stopped for rest until the People were deep within Alliance lands.
“Where are they?” said a young voice.
Speaks While Leaving turned to see who it was who spoke. It was Mouse Road. She sat a whistler-length away, poking the ground with a stick. Under her arm was an old doll.
“She has been waiting for you to return,” Healing Rock Woman said. “She has been very patient.”
Speaks While Leaving beckoned and patted the ground at her side. The young woman came over and sat down. Her sadness and grief had changed her. To Speaks While Leaving, she seemed no longer a girl, but a young woman. Speaks While Leaving held her hand.
“I do not know the place,” she said, “but it is very beautiful. It is nearly night now, though, and a storm is upon them.”
“The same one that we had yesterday?” There was hope in her question, hope at the possibility of even so tenuous a connection with her brother.
“Yes,” she told her. “The very same storm that rained on us yesterday will rain on him tonight. See? He is not so far away.”
Mouse Road sighed and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “I must go help my mother now. Thank you.” She ran off toward the north to where the Tree People band had camped. The three women watched her go.
Magpie Woman ladled some stew into a shallow horn bowl. “Eat, Daughter. The ma’heono will come back upon you soon. Eat while you can.”
She took the bowl with a nod of thanks. She took a piece of meat out of the stew and laid it at the edge of the fire, an offering to the spirits that were with her so much of late. Then she sipped at the hot broth. It was strong with meat and the flavor of lily root. It was good going down, and helped to melt the ice that lingered within her. The visitations by the spirit powers were tiring. The stew, and the spirit of the buffalo it held, restored her strength.
She and her mother and grandmother sat like a triumvirate before the fire. The buffalo chips burned with orange and red flames. Overhead, the clouds did the same, ignited by the setting sun.
“He is all right?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” she said. “My father is well.” Sometime during the past two days, Magpie Woman had ceased to question her daughter’s persistent visions.
“What are they doing?”
Speaks While Leaving laughed. “Complaining about the rain,” she said. “And giving thanks for it.”
It was a veil—no, George thought—a curtain of rain that fell upon them. Not only had Laughs like a Woman worked to bring the storm to them early, it had unleashed such a downpour that no sane person would have been caught out in it.
�
��Which says something about us,” George muttered to himself. “We’ve got to pick up our pace,” he said to Storm Arriving.
“It is early yet,” the Indian said. “We have all night.”
“We won’t have this rain for cover all night. Look.” He pointed to the sky behind them.
Along the horizon, the clouded heavens had separated themselves from the earth and a fine line of starry darkness showed between the two.
“I want to use this storm as long as we can. For the next two hundred miles we will be dodging villages and towns every step of the way. The rain and thunder will help to hide us. I’d like to stay beneath this storm, hopefully until we reach the backroads of Kentuckee.”
Storm Arriving signaled his agreement. “I will tell the chiefs what you say.”
“Oh, and ask Laughs like a Woman if the thunder beings would please push this storm a little to the south.”
He saw Storm Arriving’s smile even through the gloom and night. “So you believe him now?”
“I see no reason not to,” George said. “Until I see that he cannot, I will believe that he can.”
Storm Arriving waved and fell back to talk to the chiefs.
To either side of the shiny iron rails, the small mounded hills of southeastern Illinois lifted their secret heads above the level ground to peer at the bizarre procession of men and mounts. The storm had eased and though the rain still fell, the men did not have to shout to hear one another above its fury.
They forded the Wabash at the lonely wooden trestle bridge outside of Vincennes. Beyond it, they turned south and followed the Evansville & Crawfordsville Rail Road through the deep valleys that wound past the sharp-ridged terrain known as Little Egypt. As they approached the border and the Ohio River, the rain intensified once more. The thunder cracked above their heads, and George turned to Laughs like a Woman. He pointed to him and then to the sky, asking: did you do this?
Though Laughs like a Woman merely shrugged and smiled without commitment either way, he accepted the thanks just the same.
They came upon Evansville from the north. George kept them to the outskirts of town, bypassing the main rail lines and running along the Belt Line Railroad past the cemetery and coal mines, past the stock yards and the base-ball field. They crossed Pigeon Creek at the fringe of the neighborhoods and crept past the long, four-story mass of the cotton mill. They continued onward, avoiding the town entirely. At the bridge, however, it would not be so easy.
One of the long bridges that crossed the Ohio at Evansville had been built downstream of the town. George and Storm Arriving and two other men left the rest of the party and went to scout the scene.
Despite the hour—which George refused to place at anything less than midnight—lantern lights still shone from the engineer’s shack at the head of the bridge and, barely visible through the rain, from behind dirty windows in a long, low building on the far side. George pointed them out to Storm Arriving.
“There’s no reason for anyone to be awake,” he said. “They must be watching for us.”
Storm Arriving scoffed. “Not everything is about you,” he said. He gave orders to the other two men. “They will find out why these vé’ho’e do not sleep.”
George watched as the two others climbed up onto the girdered spans. Then he waited.
The bridge sat high atop cylindrical stone plinths that grew up out of the restless water. Their wide, heavy feet stood in the river and their sides tapered as they rose until, at their tops some fifty or sixty feet above the flow, they were just wide enough to support the iron trestles. The section over the channel was high enough to allow even the tallest masted ships to pass beneath it, though most of the travel these days was by the faster paddlewheels and other steam-driven craft.
George began to get nervous. He squinted into the rain, trying to make out the forms of their returning scouts. Surely they should be back by now, he thought worriedly. Time ticked on, however, with no sign. He glanced at Storm Arriving and wished he had a fraction of his companion’s confident equanimity.
“Where are they?” he had to ask at last.
“They will be back.”
George sighed. He cupped his hands and caught the rain dripping from his nose. When his hands were overflowing, he emptied them and let them fill again. He did this twice more, waiting with little patience but a great determination not to seem impatient. More time passed. He took a breath to speak but halted as a figure detached itself from the bridge’s overhanging bulk. Another man joined the first. The scouts had returned. They crouched down beside Storm Arriving and spoke quickly with words and gestures.
“There,” Storm Arriving said, pointing to the engineer’s shack. “One. Asleep. And there.” He pointed across the river. “Five. Playing with cards. Drinking.”
George smiled. “You were right. Our luck is holding. Get the others. We must cross at once. Quickly and quietly.”
The scouts left to bring the others ahead from their hiding place. George chided himself.
“I apologize,” he said.
“For what?”
“For worrying about them. It was silly of me to worry. After all, if something had happened to them, it would not have been terrible.”
Storm Arriving looked at him like he was looking at a bug.
“What I mean is, it would not have been the worst thing that could have happened. That’s one lesson I never seem to learn. If something is to go wrong, it will go wrong at the worst moment. It’s a military fact.”
Storm Arriving chuckled. “You are like a new mother, worrying at every breath and cough. Be calm. It will be fine or it will not be fine. You have done what you can to affect the outcome. The rest is up to Ma’heo’o.”
The others arrived and they went to meet them.
“Have the whistlers go first,” George told Storm Arriving. “I’ll come across with the walkers. I want to be here in case the night guard wakes up.”
The warriors began to lead their mounts across the bridgework. Just as at Rock Island and at Vincennes, they blinkered their fractious beasts with blankets or lengths of cloth. This bridge was especially treacherous, though. The rain had made the old wooden ties slick, and the swollen current swept against the pilings below with the sound of an eternally cresting wave. The whistlers balked at the roar and the unsure footing. Fortunately, the rain and the current drowned out their quiet whistles of distress. Still, George watched and prayed as fifteen score men led their beasts over the waters.
While the others crossed, he crept up to the shack. From a distance, he peered through the smudged glass of the small window.
Inside, a man slept in a chair that leaned back against the wall. The chair rested on its back legs and the man’s hat was perched forward over his eyes. A small tin-backed lantern burned on the lone table, its wick turned low, and George could see the brown ceramic bottle that lay on its side nearby, empty. This man would provide no problems. He let out a breath that he felt he’d been holding for a week.
The walkers were all on the span now. He moved into place behind them. The huge lizard-like creatures—so powerful and quick in open country—were clumsy and uncertain perched above the open waters of the Ohio. They lurched and twisted as they made their way, eyeing every plank, girder, and tie like hens on a grate.
They were near the end, and George felt the wringing rag that was his stomach begin to relent. The whistlers were waiting up ahead—dark shapes massed along the roadside. The walkers were moving off the span quickly now as the invitation of solid ground drew them onward.
A bloom of light shot across the darkling scene, a swath that stretched out in a fan of illumination, catching the last of them in its glare.
“Hámêstoo’e,” George rasped and they all—man and beast alike—stooped to the squelching mud.
George heard voices; the men who were playing a midnight hand of poker. “Just deal me outta this one is all.” The man’s voice was thick and heavy with drink. “I’ll be back
in a wee…in a wee bit.”
Even with the rainfall and the sound of the nearby river, the man’s sloshing footsteps were still audible as he tramped up towards the raised railbed. George and four warriors hid behind their crouching beasts. The footsteps came closer, hit brush, and then gravel. The Indian with the walker nearest the man whispered quiet words to keep it calm and quiet. The monster lay perfectly still. It did not move as the man came up to it in the dark, his breathing labored from his walk up the slight slope. Nor did the beast move when the man mistook its rain-slick bulk for a slab of stone, nor as he unbuttoned his trousers and proceeded to relieve himself along its side. But when the sky cracked open with lightning and the man saw the head and eye and the bone-white teeth of the monster before him, he screamed. Only then did the beast move.
It rose and turned in one swift movement. It bellowed down upon the man with a sound that overwhelmed the thunder from above. The man screamed again and stumbled backwards down the slope.
The doorway light was eclipsed by bulky men. The walker bellowed again, its brethren joining in. The men disappeared from the doorway and the light returned.
“Nóheto!” George shouted, and calls went up all along the railway line. Lightning crashed above them and thunder rocked the earth. George grabbed an extended hand and was pulled up onto a walker’s long, narrow back. He held on to the warrior in front of him as they took off. Shots were fired behind them—small and puny sounds in comparison to the walker’s roar. George saw one of the warriors set arrow to bow.
“No,” he shouted, and then, “Hová’âháne.” The warrior glared at him but did not shoot. From the bridge, more shots came, but none came close. Darkness and drunkenness conspired to keep them safe.
They ran on for miles at headlong speed until George felt they were past any immediate danger. There was no pursuit and no defense was required. They rested their mounts for a small time, and then continued onward.
The Year the Cloud Fell Page 28
