Worse Than Death

by James W. Marvin

  Crow levered the top off the can of oil and quickly splattered it over the Indians as they knelt by their dying victim, soaking them with the heavy liquid. The oil absorbed by their thick blankets and trickling through to their shirts and trousers. They both turned at the sensation of wetness, seeing the black-clad white man looming high over them, a burning lamp dangling from his left hand.

  It was as though a cosmic clock-maker had frozen the action, everything seeming as if it was happening in the slowest of motions.

  The lamp swung in the air, sailing a red glow like a distant comet, hitting the iron ground immediately between the two Shoshone. Exploding in a ball of white fire, splashing liquid flames over both men.

  The oil catching immediately, turning them into blazing puppets that danced and waved their arms. Rolling in the frozen snow and screaming at the tops of their voices for help that was already too late for them.

  Crow watched impassively as the Shoshone attempted to tear off their own clothes, but the flames were now blistering their skin, welding their shirts and breeches to their scorched bodies. The greased hair caught fire as they danced and cried out, the red-orange flames flaring out around them as they moved.

  ‘Burn, you sons of bitches,’ said Crow, quietly, dropping the empty oil-can in the ice at his feet, turning back to the main fight.

  But the incineration of the two warriors had broken the spirit of the attackers. The Shoshone had pulled away from their onslaught just at the moment when victory seemed within their hands. There was only Trooper Muir left alive of the soldiers, and he was up against one of the wagons, holding off three knife-wielding braves with his saber. Blood coursing over his chest from a cut near the top of his left arm, his lank yellow hair pasted to his skull with sweat, yelling incomprehensible curses at the Shoshone.

  Women still screamed and Crow caught the voice of the deranged Mary-Lou, crying out for them all to surrender to their fates.

  But above it all rolled the dreadful dying screams of the two blazing braves, still running about like headless chickens, their plight clearly visible to the remainder of the band waiting back in the hills. One of them suddenly fell on his face and never moved again. Crow guessed that he must have swallowed some of the flames and instantly roasted his lungs.

  The other turned away and stumbled towards the cliffs above the Moorcock River, toppling over the edge and disappearing from their sight. All they could see was the glow of his flaming body, and soon that was extinguished in the cold, racing waters.

  It was over.

  The rest of the Indians scurried away, called back by a burst of carbine fire from Many Knives, their attack neither success nor failure. Taking what wounded men they could. Leaving behind the young brave with his temple stove in by Crow’s metal oil-can. And those in the wagons counted the cost.

  Still laying out their dead and tending their wounded as the first light of dawn began to appear far away over the snow-topped mountains to the east.

  Muir panted along with Crow as they heaved the corpses of McLaglen, Kemp and Gilbert out beyond the circle of rigs. The tubby Trooper was sweating with the effort, constantly pausing in the labor of manhandling the stiffening bodies to peer to the openings among the rocks where the trail ran. Ahead and behind.

  ‘They’ll be back, huh?’ he said, stopping to push back the matted blond hair off his forehead.

  ‘Sure as the Lord made Shoshone,’ replied Crow, glancing around the area. Counting the living and the wounded.

  Himself and Muir, both uninjured. Maggy Eklund and Jane Golders hadn’t been the only victims among the women. Two others were dead. One with her throat slit from side to side, like a grinning scarlet mouth. The other with the blade of a war-axe still buried in her skull.

  That meant six women, including the raving Mary- Lou. And two men. But Many Knives was having to pay one Hell of a price for his victory.

  It was starting to snow again to greet the new day. Crow looked up at the slate sky, tasting the freshness of the cold flakes clean on his powder-dry lips.

  ‘Yeah. They’ll be back,’ he said, quietly.

  Chapter Eleven

  The lean man finished tying the yellow bandana around his muscular neck, the only splash of color against the blackness of his clothes and his pale face.

  ‘Guess it’s worth a try,’ he muttered.

  ‘What if you don’t get back?’ asked Trooper Muir, rubbing a hand nervously across the blond stubble that decked his chin.

  ‘Then pass out a round of ammunition to each of the ladies so they can escape that fate worse than death that Martha Hetherington’s always jawin’ on about.’ He paused. ‘Though I don’t recall hearth’ her mention it so much in the last day or so.’

  Each time they beat off the Shoshone, It made it the more certain that they’d stay to come again. Pride was important to Indian warriors, and thefts was being badly dented by a handful of pony-soldiers and a few white women. Many Knives would come and come again.

  Unless Crow could get to him and kill him. Then, with their chief slain, the rest would take that as being a bad omen and might give up. It was a slim chance, but it was about the only one that they had to grasp at.

  The snow was driving down and across the open face of the plateau, banking against the wheels of the wagons, thicker than anything that had fallen before. It was this blizzard, cutting visibility to less than fifty feet, that gave Crow the idea that he might be able to pull it off.

  The loaded scatter-gun was tucked safely into the, greased holster, the Colt in his belt. And the cut-down saber balancing the Purdey on his other hip. Strapped across his shoulders Crow carried a Winchester, hoping to get a chance of a clear shot at the Shoshone leader.

  ‘What ‘bout him?’ asked the Trooper, pointing at their prisoner.

  He was a short boy, hardly into his teens. Since he’d recovered consciousness from the blow to the head Crow had given him, the young warrior hadn’t spoken a single word, keeping his lips firmly closed. There was a lump on the front of his head the size of a pigeon’s egg, and dark blood clotted around his mouth and nose.

  On Crow’s orders the boy had been tied overnight to one of the wagon wheels, though a couple of the women, — and Muir, were all for killing him there and then.

  ‘An eye for an eye,’ said a stout widow.

  ‘Let us turn the other cheek, sister!’ replied Martha Hetherington.

  Crow ignored the argument among the women. He’d said that the Shoshone would be kept prisoner and that’s what was going to happen. At first he’d hoped that maybe the young buck might have been the son of one of their leaders, but it was obvious from his clothes and paint that he wasn’t But there was always the chance of a deal and Crow decided to let him live.

  He answered Muir’s question. ‘I’m leavin’ you in charge, soldier. I want to see that boy still breathin’ when I come back. If I don’t then I suggest you keep him until you need him.’

  ‘What the Hell would we need that stinkin’ bastard for?’

  ‘In another day or so folks are goin’ to get kind of hungry, Muir. If’n you take my meanin’.’

  Muir did. So did the women who were gathered around, listening. Crow looked at the circle of starved faces, sunken eyed. Hollow cheeks and sores around their lips. All hooded and cloaked against the biting wind and the driving blizzard.

  The Indian had near frozen to death during what remained of the night, but Rachel Shannon had left the wagon where she and Martha had rejoined Crow. On the orders of the tall man she had shrouded the boy in a blanket of bed coverings. Saving his life.

  For the time being.

  Crow looked around the circle of wagons again, wondering just what he was doing there. If the Cavalry didn’t get up off their butts in the next four or five days, there wasn’t going to be anything left for them to come in and rescue.

  ‘I’ll be back when you see me.’

  Martha stepped forwards and kissed him on the cheek, her lips warm against
his skin.

  ‘Take care, Crow.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded at Rachel Shannon, who smiled back at him.

  As he moved out into the snow, Crow wondered just how much longer they’d be able to hold out.

  It couldn’t be that long.

  Not now.

  It was worse than he’d thought.

  The snow came down so thick that he couldn’t see more than a few paces in front of him. It drove into his face, through the long woolen scarf around his mouth. Making it hard to breathe. It went into his nose and eyes, coating his lashes with ice. Finding every tiny crevice in his clothes, down his neck, inside his boots.

  Only his amazing sense of direction kept him going towards the Shoshone camp. Any ordinary man would have been helplessly lost within fifty paces of the wagons, doomed to wander in the white-out until finally he would fall into a merciful sleep.

  And it was cold. A biting cold that froze the center of the bones. When he cleared his throat and spat, the saliva sang and crackled in the air, frozen almost before it hit the ground. The snow beneath his feet squeaked in the clamping chill.

  It took him nearly an hour to struggle through to the opening in the trail, between the high walls of icy rock. There the cliffs gave him some protection from the biting wind, but the snow was piled deeply, up to eight or nine feet against the walls. As far as he could make out there had been little activity from the Indians, but with the wintery weather it was impossible to be sure. An army could march through in the snow and within a half hour there would be no trace of their passing.

  But Crow’s real problem came a while later. Weakened from the lack of food, he was finding it agonizingly hard going.

  And it was then that he ran into the Shoshone patrol, walking practically into the middle of them, the noise of the wind drowning the sound of their feet and the blinding snow making it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead on the trail.

  The first he knew was the group of figures looming out of the murk. Immediately he drew and cocked the Purdey, blasting both barrels into the war-party.

  The boom of the double load of ten-gauge shot was strangely muffled, but the kick of the recoil sent Crow, staggering back, falling in the snow, nearly dropping the gun. He could hear screaming and yelps of pain from the murk ahead of him. At that range he knew that the sawn-down scatter-gun must have claimed more victims from the Indians, but he wasn’t about to stick around and find out how many. He scrambled to his feet and ran back along the trail, his boots sliding on the ice and rutted snow.

  Behind him, he could hear the Shoshone starting to come after him.

  Certain that they would run him down if he tried for the wagons, Crow dodged into a side canyon, clambering awkwardly on a ledge up one side, lying flat, breath burning his throat, hastily reloading the, shotgun. Straining his ears for the noise of the Indians. Positive that they wouldn’t let him go easily.

  They didn’t.

  The lean man was stuck on that narrow ledge for a day and a half, nearly frozen, unable to climb down. The Shoshone were everywhere. Five times they came into the narrow box canyon where he hid, but the snow had hidden the signs of his movement and they never looked up at the white-shrouded figure.

  It took all of Crow’s immense reserves of strength to make it through the day and the night that followed. In his time he had spent periods with various tribes, and he had passed hours talking with shamans, the holy men of the Indians. From them he had learned the skill of closing down the body as much as possible. Slipping into a dreamless waking sleep when necessary to shepherd what vitality remained. Never had he needed it more than during that unbelievably chill night.

  When he stirred himself the snow had stopped and he was covered in a blanket of frozen ice. That crackled and snapped as he moved. The wind had also dropped and he sat still, listening for any sound of Shoshone. But there was nothing. So they’d finally given him for dead or figured he’d slipped through their net and regained the safety of the train.

  There was no point in trying to kill Many Knives now. Not with the weather so perfect. What he had to do was go as quickly as possible to the wagons.

  They saw him coming from a long way off, waving and shouting. Muir fired off a shot to welcome him, leaping about like a ragged scarecrow.

  There was smoke coming snakily up from the center of the rigs, and Crow wondered what they could have been cooking.

  He was soon to find out.

  They didn’t seem that worried that he’d failed in his mission to try and kill Many Knives. There was a strange exultation among the women. A kind of triumph that was oddly mixed with shame. They’d catch his eye and then look away. Muir had the same guilty gleam to his foxy face and Crow confronted him with it while he drank a mug of precious hot coffee.

  ‘What’s been happenin’ here, Trooper?’ he asked him.. ‘Fire and that? And what’s up with the women? Look like they had the best lay of their lives. Only it come from a bunch of Memphis nigras. Kind of happy and scared, all at the same time.’

  Muir shuffled his boots in the slush and wouldn’t look Crow in the face.

  ‘We thought you was dead. When you didn’t come back out of that blizzard, we all … we kind of figured you was dead. And that meant we hadn’t long to go. Hell, there was even the first whisper I ever heard about maybe givin’ in to the Shoshone.’

  ‘You can’t have liked that,’ said Crow. ‘Seems as how the way the Indians’d treat you is kind of different from the women.’

  ‘Right. There was only a couple spoke for it. And the loudest was Mary-Lou. And God knows but she ain’t playin’ with a full deck.’

  ‘So you all stayed?’

  ‘Yeah. Only …’

  ‘Only …’

  ‘Well, they was talkin’ ‘bout food. How we was all surely starvin’ to death and here was this fat young buck tied up there and grinnin’ at us.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Crow jumped to his feet, throwing down the empty mug so it rang on the hard earth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The smell.’

  ‘What smell, Crow?’

  ‘When I was comin’ back from the cliffs I caught this smell.’

  The look of discomfiture increased on the soldier’s face.

  ‘The coffee, you mean?’

  ‘The Hell I do! I mean the smell of roastin’ meat. Weren’t from the Indians. And we don’t have any meat. Do we? Do we, Trooper?’

  ‘Well, they all …’

  ‘And I don’t see no prisoner, Trooper. Where’s the Shoshone kid you was guardin?’

  ‘He … I thought … And you said that I was to be in command and I could do whatever … so …’

  ‘So you cooked the red bastard. That it?’

  ‘Yeah. The women did it all. I slit his throat for him and they did the rest. We all ate him. Hey, you know that it tasted real fine! Once you got your mind used to what it was that …’

  Muir was beginning to babble with relief that Crow wasn’t angered by their venture into cannibalism and the tall man stopped him by raising his hand.

  ‘That’s all, Muir. I’m not blamin’ you. Not blamin’ none of you,’ he called, lifting his quiet voice so that they could all hear him. ‘I figured we’d come to it. Could have been mule if … but that’s water down the Moorcock by now. Speakin’ of which, I see it’s a deal lower than it was. Must be less water from the hills.’

  ‘Yeah. We got enough meat for days, Crow.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Very tender, it was,’ interrupted Martha Hetherington. ‘We’ve stripped most of the meat off to dry. We flayed the head.’

  They showed him what remained of the young Shoshone boy. A scattering of bloody bones and a raw skull, the eyes milky and staring in their sockets. The ribs had been hacked away with a heavy cleaver and all the soft flesh from the inside of the arms and legs cut neatly off with a sharp knife.

  Crow stared at what remained, smelling the lingering sweet odor of roasting meat. The f
ace was unrecognizable, all of the sinew and flesh being peeled away inside out off the angles of the skull.

  ‘Guess that s Christian of you,’ he said quietly, turning to look at Martha Hetherington. ‘Though I never figured that was what it meant.’

  ‘What, Crow?’

  He pointed at the corpse’s face. ‘That what they call turning the other cheek, Martha?’ he said quietly.

  She didn’t answer as he walked away from her.

  There wasn’t really very much that she could have said to him.

  Chapter Twelve

  The end was sudden.

  Bloody.

  And unexpected.

  For three days the survivors had gorged themselves on the flesh of the dead Shoshone, and for some of that time there had been a mood of strange elation. But it passed, and it was replaced by a black depression. Apart from an occasional rifle shot from one of the two openings of the plateau, just to remind them the Shoshone were still there, the Indians made no move. Content to hang on. Knowing that time was still on their side.

  The women moved away from Muir and Crow. Martha and Rachel still shared the wagon with the lean Crow, but they were constantly joining the others for long whispered conversations, keeping looking at the two men over their shoulders.

  ‘Ways of women, Muir,’ he replied, when the Trooper asked him what was up.

  ‘But what do they want?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Out.’ Muir looked puzzled, absently fingering a yellow-topped sore near his lip.

  ‘They all want out, Muir,’ replied Crow, wondering how much longer he’d be able to keep his stallion alive. Several of the women had been looking enviously at its fine muscles.

  ‘We all do.’

  ‘Yeah. But they’re gettin’ tireder than Hell with all this. And they got less to lose than you and me. Not a lot less, but some. They don’t get killed in the first day or so like us. With white woman it just takes a whiles longer for them.’

  ‘What can they do?’