I nodded. "Yes, sir."
He walked out of the shelter we'd just finished up two days earlier. I saw, then, what he'd seen: a line of Indians up on the ridge beyond the clearing where our cabin sat.
I think Papa knew what was going to happen, because when he left, he looked back one more time with a kind of sadness in his face. I almost followed him out of that shed right then, but I didn't want to disappoint him.
Then the Indians came riding down off the ridge, whooping and yelling, and Papa stopped trying to act like there wasn't nothin' wrong. He took off runnin' toward the house, yellin' for Mama. I heard the door scrape as Mama opened it.
"Thomas! Thomas!" she screamed. But by then, those bastards had killed Papa. They rode down into the front yard of our cabin and tomahawked him, his blood shooting up in a fountain of red. Mama came running on out the front door, down off the porch.
That was when Red Eagle jumped down from his horse and grabbed a-holt of her. He was laughing, and his arms were covered with Papa's blood. He wiped it off on Mama's dress, and she spit on him. My Mama spit! I hadn't ever imagined she'd do any such of a thing, 'cause she was usually so proper about everything.
"Warrior Boy," Red Eagle said, now, watching me from the cooking fire. "You are not afraid, are you?"
He spoke to me in pretty good English, for a devil.
"Why do you not speak?"
Because I don't want to. But I didn't answer him, even then. He got up and walked over to where I hunkered down, sitting with my legs drawn up as I leaned against a big rock. My hands were still tied up and it was a good thing for him they were. Because there in the darkness, with the cooking fire lighting those evil faces around me, I still figured I might be able to lunge up and choke the life out of this one varmint that had killed Mama like he done. If my hands was untied, which they weren't.
He leaned up real close to me then, breathing into my face. He smelled like pure meanness, covered with sweat and old blood. I thought about takin' up where Mama'd left off and spitting at him. I could have spit right in his face, he was so close, and I wouldn't even had to've moved an inch.
I didn't, though. I just looked at him, and I didn't turn my eyes away, even though I felt like I was looking into Satan's face and it scared me, down in my gut.
Papa always said, "Look a man in the eye, friend or enemy, so they'll know you mean what you say." Even though I hadn't said nothin', I wanted to let him know I wasn't gonna back down from him. That made me feel like I had a belly full of snakes twistin' around. But I thought about all he'd done to Papa, and Mama and Lisbeth, and I wished all over again that he'd untie my hands for just a minute.
Red Eagle took out a knife, then, real slow like he was tryin' to scare me. I tried not to act like it did, but I kept thinkin' about what he did to Lisbeth. He'd used this same knife, I remembered, and never would forget, the handle on it, carved from bone and the unwieldy length of the blade. Something told me that bone wasn't from any animal.
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Fire Eyes Page 24
