* * *
She could feel the ropes biting into her hands behind her back, then she woke up to the rocking movement of the cart. She looked around her using the poor light coming in from outside. Matthew and Stephanie sat beside her, while Conrad and Tom sat opposite her. The sniper still wore his hat, but his hands were gloveless. He just sat there staring at the cart’s wooden floor, while his colleague kept looking around in fear. “Why don’t you use the book?” she whispered to Matthew in their native tongue.
“My hands?” he pointed out.
“Where are they taking us?”
“Their encampment,” Stephanie said.
“Our encampment,” Matthew corrected. He didn’t want an Indian father. “I think we’ve met enemies again for no reason of ours.”
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you, Mr. Know-it-all,” Nora said.
“I’m sorry,” Matthew whispered. He meant it, but his senior sister didn’t acknowledge the apology. She did this intentionally, he thought. She was so mean.
The cart rumbled into a camp of triangular tent-like structures Nora knew to be tepees from History class. Mountains encircled the settlement, and she noticed the two soldiers opposite her become alarmed.
“So it is true,” Mr. Tom muttered. “They have a camp here.” He’d forgotten all about Mariana in the last few minutes and had never been more terrified in his life. “What do you think they will do to us, Shooter?” he asked his fellow prisoner-of-war.
“I wish I could answer that,” Conrad snapped. “They might skin us alive and boil us with buffalo meat, aye?”
“GOD HAVE MERCY ON US!” Tom screamed, becoming more aware of his surroundings. He wasn’t thinking of his daughter anymore. Escape from imminent death, whether he found her or not, now topped his priorities.
From his position opposite the only two adults in the prison cart, Matthew wondered why the sharpshooter had been so calm all the time they were on the river’s path. Nora’s charm? Well, maybe. Both men now looked so frightened that he thought they must have been quietly praying not to meet any Indian encampments near the Yellowstone River.
The cart stopped and the Indians unlocked the cage. They dragged out the prisoners and mercifully cut their bonds before pushing them towards a particular tepee copiously decorated with feathers.
“Why are they treating us this way?” Stephanie yelled. “I thought we were Indians as well! It’s not . . .”
“Silence,” a Sioux with a rifle growled beside her and she clamped up.
A flamboyantly dressed old man was emerging from the buffalo tent before the prisoners and Stephanie’s attention turned to him. His headwear dragged on the floor as he walked. The many feathers decorating it were almost the length of a man’s arm. A wooden stick attached to the tail of a horse stood as his staff. Traditional shoes covered his feet. His face was hard and heavy, and he looked very, very crafty.
“Bow to our glorious leader,” a skinny man who emerged with this masquerade barked. “Bow to Tatanka Iyotake.”
“Sitting Bull?” Nora whispered under her breath as she knelt down like the others and bent from her waist.
“What about him?” Matthew asked.
“Standing before us,” she muttered in disbelief. A rough hand vigorously pulled her up and she found herself staring into the man’s eyes.
“You failed, Kora,” Sitting Bull accused her without reason. “You failed to succeed in your mission.”
Nora cursed the black book. “I—I do not remember . . . Great One,” she found herself stumbling over.
“Silence,” he growled and turned away. “Search her, Carved Face.”
The order had gone to a tall man with facial knife wounds, and the Indian eagerly stepped forward to pull out a sharp knife from a concealed part of Nora’s thigh.
“What was she to do with that?” Matthew demanded, but Carved Face merely looked at him and turned to his chief.
“You failed to use this on the general,” the old man revealed with annoyance, glaring at Nora. “You even fell in love, I hear.”
“Am I an assassin?” Nora whispered in disbelief. Of all the occupations! “It’s not true.”
“That you failed to kill our greatest enemy or you fell in love with one of them? You take me for a liar? Bring the deserter,” the Indian chief ordered. He sat on a stool before his tepee. “He will be my only witness.”
“Oh, my God,” Matthew exclaimed when he saw the fellow who’d driven their cage down to the river. He must have been caught on his way back and tortured badly, because he was carried by two warriors. The boy remembered to cover Stephanie’s eyes with his hand as these men came forward. The man’s two legs were broken.
“What did they do to him?” Tom wailed in a panic-stricken voice.
“What did you tell us, fool?” Sitting Bull asked the man. “Speak before I cut off your tongue.”
“Kora likes Shooter,” the wounded man repeated. “Brother knows this.”
The skinny Sioux beside the chief spat on Nora and she cringed back with disgust. By the way, who was he?
“You shame your father, Kora,” a woman nearby cried. “You bring shame to your dead brothers and sisters.”
Nora stared blankly. Was her father the fellow who spat on her? She couldn’t tell.
“Enough,” Sitting Bull said. He turned to the skinny Indian beside him. “We must allow her to confess, Crazy Horse.” Now he pointed out Conrad, who held on to his hat with one hand. “Do you love him, Kora?” he demanded from Nora, and all eyes turned to the blonde girl. “Do you love one whose greedy people have seized the lands of your own people without any reason but gold?”
“What are they saying?” Conrad asked Matthew.
“She love you?” he interpreted.
“I do not, Great One,” he heard with relief. “I only like him.”
“What?” Matthew snapped. Nora had gone mad!
“Then you are no longer my daughter,” Crazy Horse declared, abruptly turning on his heels to enter the tepee.
Nora was amazed. Crazy Horse her father? Many of the men gathered there shook their heads and walked away. Even the only woman standing nearby did the same thing and entered a tepee. What did she do now?
“What did she say?” Conrad asked Matthew.
“She hate you,” the boy craftily said, feeling dejected.
“She saved my life,” the shooter told Tom with great joy. “She lied for me.”
“She kill you,” a nearby Indian told him. “She no save life.”
“What?”
Matthew shifted away from the man, pulling Stephanie along.
“This is my judgment,” Chief Sitting Bull resumed, having discussed the cases before him with his chief warriors. “You must return home,” he said, pointing out Mr. Tom. “Your daughter found! If we meet again, you die.”
Matthew swore he could feel the big man die of relief as he was taken away.
“And for you, Kora,” the old Indian chief continued, “you have chosen your destiny.” He spoke in their native tongue. “Your father has disowned you and you have failed your people, so you must die with the enemy.” His warriors approved of this judgment with their heads.
“You may travel on your final journey with your brother and sister if they want to go with you, since they failed to remind you when you forgot your mission,” another highly placed Sioux told her. “They will surely die with you if they want to.”
“Great,” Matthew concluded, talking to himself. “We’ll definitely go with our sister, chief. We’ll be together in death, okay?”
But Sitting Bull turned to the boy and looked intently into his eyes. The chief had sensitive hearing. “Boy not afraid of death,” he deduced in English. “Crazy Horse should be proud of you, only that he has many other sons who show more loyalty! And why do you not beg for your life?”
“Um. . . . Why should I?” Matthew stumbled, before realizing his mistake and clamping his mouth. “I can choose not to die, right?”
/> “Search him,” the Sioux leader ordered Carved Face, who advanced with a grin towards the boy.
It did not take long before he found the book.
It did not take long before he dropped the book!
“What evil is this?” his old chief demanded from Matthew, staring at the burning book. “Where did you get it?”
Matthew gaped at the flickering flames with his mouth wide open. What if it had exploded on him? He dared not even imagine!
“It is evil! I sense it,” a warrior near him cried.
“Book must burn with Kora,” another declared. “It brings evil with it! It must leave with Kora now.”
As surprised as every other person there, Private Conrad watched the burning book with awe. The Sioux boy must have learned magic superior to that of Chief Sitting Bull, himself! The book burning before him had so agitated the Indians that confusion reigned amongst them as they tried to explain the phenomenon behind it. How does a book start burning without being ignited, and continue burning without getting burnt? What kind of devilish magic was manifesting itself before him?
If only the lieutenant colonel would come to his rescue at that very moment in the middle of the confusion this burning book had caused! He just hoped that those Crow scouts behind them earlier in the day had seen what happened near the Little Bighorn River before retreating to Custer’s units!
Gunshots.
Far away.
They had arrived!
“Prepare for battle,” the Sioux chief quickly said, standing up. “Bring me my sacred dog.”
“What of them?” a subordinate asked, pointing at Matthew and the others.
“Bring them along! They will burn with the enemy on the field of battle! Lock them in their iron cage and soak the cart with oil! Set it on fire as you drive into the hills! Go quickly.”
Again Matthew and his sisters had their hands tied behind their backs. The Indians must have forgotten about the evil book because they just left it lying there on the ground while they prepared their horses for battle and sharpened their spears. As usual, it had burnt out. “Get the book, Nora!” Matthew yelled.
Conrad had wanted to run, but he reconsidered this move when he saw the natives distributing a large cache of rifles and ammunition. Now, he allowed his hands to be tied behind his back.
“Nora!” Matthew shouted at his sister and she heard him. “Get the book,” he signaled with his head and she quickly shuffled over to it and knelt to pick it up with her shackled hands.
About time, too, because the next moment, three Sioux warriors came and dragged them into the cage. A surprised Nora stared at the hard leather cover in her hands as she sat down beside her adopted brother. The cold emanating from it felt so good in the heat.
“We must escape,” Private Conrad told them and peered out of the hooded cart as it rumbled into life. More gunshots were heard.
“They must have spotted our camp,” a Sioux warrior snarled outside. “They must have come with the traitors.”
“Phew!” Nora exclaimed.
“Can’t believe they take us all to be traitors,” Matthew remarked. “It’s not fair.”
“Silence back there!” their new driver shouted in his local dialect from the front. He had orders to burn the cart and its human cargo in due course, so he had some oil containers with him and was looking forward to his diabolic mission with relish.
“I am free,” Conrad suddenly whispered, brandishing a knife he got from his coat’s sleeve. He quietly moved over to Nora for reasons best known to him and she smiled at the top of his hat, which had surprisingly remained on his head.
“How do we get out of the cage?” Stephanie asked Matthew.
“We don’t,” he replied. “We can still escape while inside—Nora’s got the book.”
“And what of him?” she asked of the United States trooper with them.
“He can come along if he wants to.”
The shooter had already freed his Kora from her shackles, but now gazed at her with admiration as the other two conversed behind him.
“What’s he doing?” Stephanie asked Matthew in their native tongue.
“Getting to know her better, I guess.”
But Conrad was staring blankly at Nora and she was transfixed by this sudden change in him. She moved to shake him, but he slumped to her feet and his hat fell off his head and rolled away.
“He—He just touched my hand and stopped breathing,” she stammered.
“Is he dead?” a shocked Stephanie asked her sister, but the older girl was in shock herself and couldn’t speak. “Is he dead?” the little girl asked again, but her companions failed to say anything. They were both staring at Conrad’s face and looked so perplexed that she became perplexed herself. The cart came to a stop.
“Nora, does—does he look like your friend Leonard?” Matthew finally ventured.
“No,” Nora rejected with an alarming calm. “He is Leonard.”
The Black Book Page 41
