Cody Bent Knife met her gaze steadily. “I think most people are afraid.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
It was this strength and the simplicity of it that stirred Little Bird. She lifted her arms. “Hold me.”
It was a simple but eloquent plea and one that Cody Bent Knife had never expected to hear from this woman. With silent grace, he moved to her and pulled her to her feet. He held her in his arms and she clung to him like a frightened child. “Don’t be afraid. We’ve been brought to this place for a purpose, Little Bird, and we will find out what it is.”
Little Bird felt that the shelter of his strong arms was a citadel. She clung to him tightly, savoring the strength of his lean body, the sureness of his voice. She felt the stirrings of his heart and her own responded, so she lifted her head and when his lips came down to touch hers at first it was gentle, but then she drew him closer, her fingers and lips fierce. Finally, when she drew back, she whispered huskily, “I’m tired of being afraid, Cody, and I’m not as long as I’m with you.”
The smells of the desert wafted gently to Zoan where he stood on a high ledge overlooking the stark expanse. He always loved the raw smell of the wilderness and it came to him now in a way that, perhaps, no human being had ever known. The makeup that had emerged from his strange birth had sharpened his senses so that now he smelled the pinon trees and the hot breath of the thin grasses that grew under his feet. From the distance he caught the odor of burning wood and over all of this he smelled the strong odor of the jaguar who lay prone at his feet licking her fur.
As he savored the night beauty of the stark desert, his pupils grew extraordinarily large, gathering in each bit of light. Men had invented clever devices to give them night vision but Zoan had no need for such tricks. He never analyzed this gift that had come to him. All he knew was that at night he could see things others could not see. Now he looked up and saw the stars splashed across the sky, myriad pinpoints of light, some pale and almost invisible and others blazing as if a hidden fire had broken out in the heavens. The moon was only a pale scimitar overhead, but Zoan could see as well by its ghostly light as other men could see in the morning sun.
He rarely formulated his thoughts, but now he was pleased as he stood there, for he was thinking, I’m not alone. Looking back over his life, he realized that he had always been alone, a different being, and a solitary one. Although he had drawn as close as he could to Niklas Kesteven—and in Zoan’s simplistic way, he did love Niklas—he had become aware of the lack of solace in a one-sided friendship.
Since Cody Bent Knife and his followers had come, however, Zoan’s life had been different. Most of them were a simple people and willing enough to share their lives with Zoan. He had been accepted by most of the Indians in a way that he had never been accepted by the scientists and technicians in the laboratory. Part of this relationship between Zoan and the Indians had been of necessity, for they had been forced to survive by joining together in that most primitive of drives—the gathering of food. Hunting had become an important and valuable facet of their friendship. Zoan, who loved all animal life, had nevertheless realized that they must survive by finding game. To the surprise of all the Indians, Zoan was invaluable in the hunt. He himself never killed anything, but he (and Cat) unerringly led them to where the plentiful deer were running. He could lead them to the herds of antelope and the dens of prairie chickens. In fact, he had kept the pot filled for the small group, and for this skill they honored him.
His thoughts turned to Cody Bent Knife and in his visceral way he considered his favorite friend. Like the odd turn his life had taken after he had left the lab, so he had found that his friendships were not at all what he would have thought. So far, none of the people that had come to Zoan were Christians, and Zoan had been certain that God had sent him to the desert to prepare a place for His children. Still, as Zoan was the simplest and most faithful of men, he believed that all men were God’s children, whether they knew it or not; and maybe somehow, sometime, the Indians would forget their spirit ancestors and spirit animals and come to know the True One.
“Especially Cody, he’s tired and he doesn’t know what to do now or why he’s here . . . He needs You, God, to help him and to tell him.” Zoan barely knew that he had spoken aloud, and certainly didn’t realize he was praying. He was just talking to his Father God.
There was something in the tall, young Indian that Zoan felt very strongly tied them together. Zoan had tried and tried to figure out what it was that had immediately bonded the two. Finally he had given up but still was aware that the two were closer than most men ever get. “We are both different,” he said, nodding with certainty. I’ve always been different, and so has Cody.
Thoughtfully he lifted his head to study the satin-and-diamond night sky again. Then, directly over his head, a streak of light suddenly ignited. It shot low on the horizon and he knew instantly it could not be a star or even a meteor, which he had seen often enough in the thin air of the high crust of the earth.
He stood very still, watching the garish light streak to the earth, concentrating very hard. The yellow trail disappeared, then his sensitive ears gathered in a faraway whump. A lurid red ball of light suddenly swelled in the darkness far to the south.
Zoan knew what had happened, though how he knew was infathomable. A plane had crashed.
Quickly he whistled and the sibilant sound brought his old friend the stallion to him. He was temperamental, stamping and snorting, but he allowed Zoan to mount him. “Thanks, Horse,” he murmured. As the stallion broke into a dead run, Zoan trusted him to find his way down the rock-strewn gully. In fact, the horse’s night vision was not as good as Zoan’s, but he was strong and smart and agile. Zoan occasionally guided him by simply exerting pressure with one knee or the other. Quickly they reached the floor of the southern desert, and the stallion began running in earnest, stretching out his neck and heading confidently toward the light.
The fire from the explosion grew larger as they approached and he could soon hear the roaring of the flames. Nobody could live in that, he thought.
The stallion abruptly pulled up, snorting and skittering nervously, frightened by the heat and the flames. Zoan slapped his lathered neck. “It’s all right, Horse, I’ll go by myself,” he said, then slipped to the ground. Approaching the wreckage, he tried to shield his face, but found that the brilliance of the flames blinded him, in effect taking away his greatest advantage. Turning his back, he circled the raging wreck.
Zoan wasn’t consciously aware of how he found the man in the impenetrable darkness outside the blinding ragged circle of flame. He might have heard him scrabbling in the sand and moaning above the fiery roar, or his sharp night-eyes might have caught his helpless movements. He was lying on his stomach, crawling, groaning and bloody.
Zoan walked right up to him. “Hello,” Zoan said, kneeling by him. “I think you better stop moving.” The man lay still, breathing laboriously through his mouth. Gently Zoan rolled him over, then pulled a cloth out of his pocket and began to cleanse his face. The injured man reached out blindly and Zoan caught his hand. “You’re hurt, but I’ll take care of you,” he said.
The sound of Zoan’s voice seemed to reach the injured man although he was only semiconscious. Zoan asked, “Can you stand up—if I help you?”
The eyes opened then, at least partially. The lips moved as if they were numbed. “Don’t know . . . I’ll try.”
Clumsily Zoan tried to help him to a standing position, but immediately the man’s legs shakily collapsed. His head lolled, and he moaned softly.
“It’s okay, I know what to do,” Zoan assured him as he lowered him into a sitting position. Lifting his head, he whistled sharply, and the man stirred. The stallion appeared out of the shadows beyond the fire, stamping and neighing in protest, but he did come. Zoan went to him, and he allowed the small man to stroke his neck. “We need your help, Horse. Okay? Don’t be scared. I’m not. But you’ll ha
ve to be easy.”
Still skittering, but obedient, the horse allowed Zoan to lead him to the pilot who was still sitting on the ground. Zoan put both arms around the flier and, groaning with exertion, managed to get him on his feet. The man tried to help, but he was weak and passing in and out of consciousness. Finally, somehow, Zoan got him on the horse, facedown, head on one side, legs dangling on the other.
“That was good, Horse. Now let’s go home. But he can’t fall off, you know.” The stallion moved carefully along. Zoan kept one hand on the man’s shoulder, steadying him, but the horse seemed to be deliberately trying not to jog with him.
The journey back to the village was slow, and occasionally the injured man groaned, but he did not speak again.
It was late, and the Indians, as was their wont, were scattered all through the great sheltered canyon and had evidently not seen or heard the plane go down. No one greeted Zoan and Horse and the injured man. No light streamed from any of the window squares of the crude stone huts.
In front of his hut Zoan stopped the horse with a low word. He touched the man’s shoulder and said, “We’re home.” But there was no reply, and Zoan wondered if the man was dead. Sighing, he pulled the flier from the mare’s back. The body was completely limp, and Zoan struggled, for he was a large man. It never occurred to him to wake anyone and ask for help. It took him a long time to carry the man into his hut.
Moving through the low doorway, he placed the injured man on his pile of Indian blankets and sleeping bag, and then stood staring down at him. “You’re not dead,” he said dully. “You’re breathing.”
Sensing rather than hearing, he turned; Little Bird stood in his doorway. “Hello, Little Bird,” he said, lighting two of his precious candles.
She took a tentative step into the small room, her eyes big and dark. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know his name. His plane crashed. He got hurt.”
“Yes . . . he . . . that cut on his head is bad . . .” She was tentative, unsure.
“Will you help me take care of him?” Zoan asked simply.
Little Bird’s head snapped up, and her eyes grew sharp. “I—I don’t know.”
Zoan blinked. “Why not?”
Little Bird stared at him irritably; conversations with Zoan were always jarring in their simplicity. Zoan was looking at her, with mild and innocent curiosity, but with no reproof at all. Such judgments simply were not in him. A smile as arid as their world touched Little Bird’s mouth. “Okay, Zoan, I’ll help you. But I’m no doctor.” She shrugged carelessly. “He may be hurt so bad that we can’t fix him.”
“Maybe, but we have to try. You know that.”
“Yes. I know that. All right, you build up the fire, get me some clean cloths, and heat some water.”
The coals of Zoan’s little fire were still glowing and he quickly put on an iron pot of water to boil. He watched as Little Bird carefully felt along the man’s arms and legs, abdomen and sides.
“Zoan, we’re going to have to get this jumpsuit off. I think his side’s injured.”
The two of them managed to get the pilot’s uniform off and they did discover a long, ugly cut on his right side. They couldn’t really tell how deep it was, but the bleeding was minimal. He was covered with scrapes, some deep, and both his shins were bruised and beginning to swell. But Little Bird didn’t think any bones were broken. She couldn’t know if he had internal injuries, however, until the man was awake and could tell them if and where he was in pain. Unless he had brain damage from the head wound, and never woke up . . .
Sighing, she said, “Bring the water over. At least we can clean him up.” She had taken over naturally. As she sponged the filth and the blood away from the man’s face, she studied his features carefully. He was, she saw, a rather handsome man although the rough wound on the left side of his head was deep and ugly. He had crisp brown hair with a slight curl in it and rather sensitive features. Little Bird reflected that, somehow, he looked like a nice man, a kind man.
Suddenly his eyes opened, though they were unfocused. “Vas haben zie gesacht . . . ? ”
“That’s not English,” Zoan observed, rather unnecessarily.
The man’s dark eyes slid questioningly over Little Bird, then he focused on Zoan with some recognition. “I—I can speak English . . .”
He tried to lift himself, but his face crumpled, he cried out involuntarily and then slumped back.
“He’s unconscious again,” Little Bird murmured. “I don’t know . . . but I guess we should at least sew up this head wound while he’s unconscious. Do—do you know how to do that, Zoan?” In her whole life, Little Bird had only had two stitches in a skinned knee when she was a child. She hadn’t looked while the doctor was sewing, and she’d never seen anyone do stitches since.
“I’ve sewed up animals before,” Zoan answered.
“Well, it’s about the same thing, I guess.” Laying her hand on the man’s forehead, she then touched his neck and chest. “He’s feverish.”
At her touch, he moaned, shifting restlessly, then began speaking in English, though his eyes didn’t open. Leaning forward, Little Bird heard the words, “Must not have sprayed enough . . . Lost all electronics . . . It’s going! The coating . . . didn’t work!”
“He’s out of his head,” she said in a low voice. Little Bird wondered just how badly the man was hurt. It looked to her like he was in trouble, and Little Bird was surprised to find that she cared. Not about him, she thought critically as she stared at the pilot. He’s no one to me, a stranger . . . but I hate for Zoan to be hurt . . . This was quite a change from the way she’d always dismissed Zoan as the weird retard.
With an almost guilty glance at the still and silent man beside her, Little Bird said softly, “Let’s sew him up. I’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” Zoan said quietly.
“You—you’re welcome, Zoan.”
The men, the unelected but understood leaders of the Indians, came to look at the wounded German pilot.
Ritto Yerington grunted, “German pilot. Be better if he dies. We’ve had a hard enough time staying away from the commissars. Don’t need to get the military on us.” Ritto was mean and savage at times although his strength and his hunting ability had been of great value to the group. Ritto’s dark eyes lit fiercely. “Think about it, Cody. They’re probably going to come looking for him. It’d be better if we go dump him back into the wreckage of the plane.”
“No,” Zoan said evenly. “No killing.”
“I’m not talking to you, little man,” Ritto said, gritting his teeth. “I’m talking to Cody Bent Knife. I follow him, not you.” Ritto and his little sister, Layna, had lost their parents in the plague, and they had led a rough life indeed. It had turned Ritto into an angry brute, and it had turned Layna into a painfully shy and doelike girl.
The pilot, still lying on Zoan’s pallet, looked up at Ritto and Zoan with an peculiarly clinical interest. He said nothing.
Cody Bent Knife, as was his habit sometimes, crossed his arms and watched Ritto and particularly Zoan, refusing to speak. He always was fascinated at how Zoan dealt with the Indians—on his own unearthly terms. Somehow Zoan always managed to hold his own, and keep the respect of these rough desert wanderers. Cody knew he couldn’t give that to Zoan. Zoan could only earn it.
Zoan, who dealt only with one problem at a time and one person at a time, was staring at Ritto Yerington. He knew that he would not be able to stop Ritto, for the strength of the Navajo was tremendous, and Zoan was much smaller than him. But with certainty Zoan shook his head. “No. We’re not going to kill him. He has been sent to us.”
Ritto, who sensed Cody’s distance, stubbornly held his ground. “We don’t need him here, and we don’t want him here. I think we need to get rid of him. He’s nothing but trouble.”
Layna Yerington, a small shadow behind her brother’s bulk, reached out suddenly and took her brother’s hand. “I don’t think so, Ritto,” she said in a timi
d half-whisper. “Zoan is right. Kill him? In cold blood? You can’t do that. You wouldn’t do that.”
Bluestone Yacolt spoke up in his usual cynical and bored tone. His bright blue eyes flashed oddly in his flat bronze face. “I don’t trust him—why should we? Not good, not good at all, Cody, for a German soldier to know we’re camped out here. He’s the only outsider that’s ever found us.”
“I found you,” Zoan said. “I’m an outsider. So is Cody. But we’re friends now. This man is an outsider, yes. But he could be a friend.”
This discomfited Bluestone Yacolt and even derailed Ritto Yerington’s barely concealed savagery. Cody Bent Knife looked slightly amused, and pleased. He winked at Zoan, though Zoan never responded to such signals. He just didn’t understand such things as winking or body language or the meaning of facial expression.
Now Benewah Two Color spoke. Everyone knew that the old man had wisdom beyond the natural, and even Bluestone and Ritto respected him. “If you met him on the field of battle, it would be different,” Two Color said calmly. “But now he is injured and no danger to us. What do you think would be the fair and honorable thing for them to do if you had been captured by his people?”
The question fell quietly into the room and Ritto shook his head and turned. “All right, Two Color,” he grunted. “I’ll leave him alone. But I’m not going to baby him or nurse him or help with him. And neither is Layna.” He left, pulling his sister with him, and the others followed.
Cody lingered in the doorway, staring assessingly at the pilot, at Zoan, and then gave Little Bird a small smile. “You took good care of him, you two. If I’m ever injured in battle, I want you to take care of me. Will you?”
Little Bird swallowed hard, then said gutturally, “If there’s a battle, I’m going to be fighting, not holding someone’s hand.”
The Beginning of Sorrows Page 26
