by Nan Ryan
She smiled at her handiwork.
Lois swept out into the foyer, lifted her torn skirts and looked down at her gold slippers. Several red beads were missing and she knew where they were. She smiled evilly, picturing those missing beads being found on the floor of Shanaco’s cottage.
She again donned the long cape and drew a deep breath before she ducked back out into the night and hurried to the darkened quarters of Captain Daniel Wilde.
Weeping now, she banged on the door with her fists and called out. In seconds a sleepy Wilde opened the door to see the crying Lois. “My God, Lois, what…what in the world has happened to you?” he demanded.
“Oh, Danny, Danny,” she said, brushing past him and into the shadowy quarters, “I’ve been raped!”
“You’ve been…?” Wilde was horrified. “By whom? Who would do such a terrible thing?”
“Shanaco,” she sobbed, “the half-breed, Shanaco! He raped me.”
“That barbaric bastard!” swore Wilde. “He’ll pay for this!”
“Just look at me, Danny!” Lois wept. “He hurt me so bad, used me like you’d use a whore. He made me do the most disgusting things with him!”
Daniel Wilde lighted a lamp with shaking hands, sat Lois down on his bunk, knelt before her and carefully examined her. “Jesus God,” he swore, upon seeing the split lip and reddened cheek and tangled hair.
Tears streaming down her face, Lois threw open the cape to reveal her torn clothing and bruised body. And she saw, with satisfaction, the building fury in Wilde’s eyes.
“See, Danny, how he…he brutalized me.” Her slender shoulders shook with her sobs.
“Oh, darling, yes, yes…I do, but…but how did this happen? Where were you? Were you in your quarters? Did he break down your door and…?”
“No, no,” Lois wept, shaking her head. “I…I was feeling bad, like I was coming down with a cold. I couldn’t sleep. I think…I’m sure I had a touch of fever so…I…I…oh, Danny…”
“Go on. You must tell me exactly what happened.”
“Well, I…it was foolish of me, I see that now, but I thought if I went to the civilian village and bought a tin of pain tablets, I could…I could…” She sniffed, coughed and continued, “I was on my way back home when I ran into the half-breed. He must have been drunk, I don’t know. He saw me and I could tell by the lewd look in his eyes that he…that he…”
“Did he grab you and…?”
“Yes, yes! And I fought him as best I could, but he said he had wanted me from the first minute he saw me and that he was going to have me.” Lois dissolved into fresh tears, lifted her hands, covered her face and peeked through her fingers to determine if Wilde was believing her story. He was. “No one else was about, so that filthy Indian swung me up into his arms and forcefully carried me out to his cottage.”
“Oh, God, my poor Lois!” swore Wilde.
“Once he shoved me inside he savagely kissed me and tore my clothes. I fought him, but he’s so much bigger and stronger…”
“I know, I know,” Wilde sympathized. “So he forced you…?”
“I put up a fierce struggle, I swear it. I kicked and kicked him. I’m sure there are red beads from my ruined shoes all over the floor of his cottage. And I bit him, too, bit him on the hand.” Again she was racked with sobs when she said, “But it did no good. The animal used me! If you were to examine him right this minute you would find…you would see lip rouge on his…on his…”
“No! You didn’t—”
“He made me, Danny, he made me. Grabbed me by the hair of my head and shoved me down between his legs…and that’s not all. He…he…”
“Stay here! I’ll get the post surgeon.”
“No!” she said, immediately frantic at the thought. “Please don’t do that. Please, Danny. I’ll be fine, I will, I will. I just want to go home. Promise you won’t tell the post surgeon about this.”
“But you might be seriously injured and—”
“No, just the bruises. I’ll be all right, please, I don’t want to see the doctor.”
“Anything you say, but don’t try to stop me from going after Shanaco!”
It was nearing midnight.
Shanaco was sound asleep when the angry Captain Wilde and a quartet of troopers burst into his cottage, awakening him. Wilde snapped his fingers and one of the four, a big stocky man with a deep scar across his left cheek, roughly dragged the sleepy Shanaco out of bed.
Shanaco fought, but there were too many. They managed to quickly restrain him.
“Light a lamp!” ordered Captain Wilde, and one of the troopers obeyed.
While the soldiers held the naked, struggling Shanaco, Wilde examined him, searching for scratches and bruises. To his dismay, he found none on the half-breed’s body. But when he spotted the faint teeth marks on Shanaco’s thumb, he knew Lois had told him the truth.
Wilde turned away, picked up the lamp and looked around on the floor. Several tiny red beads were scattered about and a small piece of torn red silk lay just at the edge of the shadows.
His face a mask of anger, Wilde set the lamp down and turned back to the scuffling Shanaco.
“Hold him still!” Wilde ordered as he stepped closer, sank down onto his heels and roughly inspected Shanaco’s genitals. Wilde’s face grew red with fury when he spotted—on the inside of Shanaco’s thigh—a tiny red smudge. He rubbed away the smear, lifted his forefinger, stared at it in disbelief and groaned loudly.
Lois’s lip rouge!
Sickening images filling his mind, Wilde shot to his feet. He threw a hard-fisted punch at Shanaco’s chin and said, “You will hang for this, half-breed!”
Allowing Shanaco only the opportunity to throw on a shirt and a pair of trousers, they dragged him—shoeless and coatless—out into the cold and to the icehouse prison. Once there they took great delight in beating him senseless.
“Civilized folks don’t go about raping helpless white women!” Wilde told the bleeding Shanaco as his big, scar-faced subordinate, Sergeant Sparks, landed yet another punishing blow to Shanaco’s exposed midsection.
His face bruised and bleeding, ribs and stomach tender from the merciless battering, Shanaco didn’t waste his breath defending himself. He remained silent as they threw him onto the stone floor and locked him up.
He could hear, from inside the roofless icehouse, the troopers congratulating one another on “caging the wild animal.”
Shanaco gritted his teeth against the pain. His head was throbbing, his stomach hurting bad, and his chest and shoulders were bruised and sore. He realized that this was a dangerous situation.
The commandant was not at the fort. Double Jimmy, the one man who might believe he was innocent, was also gone. Major Courteen, the second in command, had been taken back to the hospital late this afternoon, so Shanaco had heard in the village.
There was no one to whom Shanaco could turn. No one to hear his side of the story. No one who would believe that Lois Harkins had lied.
He was alone.
Shanaco closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He didn’t need anyone. Wouldn’t beg anyone for mercy. He would wait until he regained at least some of his strength. Then he’d break out of this prison, even if it meant getting shot.
Shanaco raised a tired arm and blotted some of the blood from his battered face with his torn shirtsleeve. The movement exhausted him. His arm fell back to the stone floor. He heaved a great sigh of weariness.
And passed out.
Come Friday morning, the post was in an uproar. The shocking news of Shanaco’s vicious criminal behavior and swift incarceration had spread like a prairie fire throughout the fort and across the reservation.
The entire regiment agreed that the cruel Comanche deserved harsh punishment for daring to lay a hand on the colonel’s innocent daughter.
The Indians were furious. They did not believe Shanaco had harmed anyone. Some of the young hot-blooded braves attempted to free Shanaco but were quickly driven back by trigge
r-happy soldiers. Others fled the reservation, swearing they would never come back.
Maggie heard the gunshots and knew something had happened. On the way to school she saw groups of soldiers gathered and some of the officers’ wives standing out in the cold, talking and shaking their heads. Snatches of their conversation carried. “…knew something like this would occur…” “…should have kept him locked up from the start…” “…still an untamed animal…”
A sense of dread swamping her, Maggie hurried on to the schoolhouse. She looked up and saw the Kiowa chief, Old Coyote, waiting for her just outside the classroom. She knew when she saw the look on his weathered face that it was something bad.
She felt her heart flutter.
“What is it?” she asked, taking the old man’s arm and ushering him a short distance from the schoolhouse door.
“Shanaco is in prison,” he stated simply.
“Again?” she said in disbelief. “They locked him up again? Why? For what?”
Coyote lowered his eyes when he whispered, “He has been accused of…rape.”
“Rape?” Maggie repeated without sound, just her lips forming the awful word.
She felt all the blood drain from her face. She listened without commenting as Old Coyote told her all that he had heard. He said that the commandant’s young daughter had been plucked off the streets of the civilian village last evening by a drunken Shanaco.
Shanaco had carried the struggling Miss Harkins out to his cottage, where he had made her submit against her will. Later last night the hysterical young woman had gone to her father’s aide-de-camp’s quarters with her clothing torn and bruises on her body. Captain Wilde and a handful of troopers had gone at once to Shanaco’s cottage and arrested him.
Listening to the old man relate the appalling story, Maggie felt physically ill. But she knew that Shanaco had not forced himself on Lois Harkins. She didn’t doubt for a moment that it was Lois who had seduced Shanaco. Lois had eagerly made love with him, then felt guilty afterward. Or was afraid of being found out. So she had made up this damning lie that would endanger Shanaco’s very life.
Maggie nervously bit her bottom lip and tried to think what to do. She wished that Double Jimmy was at the fort. She was worried sick for Shanaco. She waited until Old Coyote, tears shining in his eyes, had completely finished speaking.
She then said in a soft but firm voice, “Lois Harkins is lying.”
“This is how I feel,” said Old Coyote. “Shanaco has never—even on raids against the whites—never harmed women or children.”
“And he didn’t harm this one,” Maggie said with conviction. “Surely Major Courteen will—”
Coyote shook his head and interrupted, “Major Courteen very sick. Is in hospital. Unconscious.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” she said, knowing there was no one to whom she could turn. “Come, we better go on inside.”
Maggie was a professional. She warmly greeted the class, smiled at Bright Feather, then enthusiastically drilled the restless students in syntax and the multiplication tables as if nothing were amiss. But her mind was on Shanaco. When the noon bell rang and classes were dismissed, Old Coyote stayed behind.
“We have to do something, Miss Maggie,” he said. “The soldiers, they will kill Shanaco.”
Maggie patted the old man’s stooped shoulder. “They will kill you if you attempt to free him. Promise me that you will do nothing.”
“I am no coward! I will get my old lance and—”
“You mustn’t,” she warned, then lowering her voice she added, “Let me handle it, please. I will think of something, I promise. Go now and say nothing to anyone. And don’t worry.”
“I want to help him get away,” stated Old Coyote.
Maggie nodded. “When the time is right, I will call on you.”
“I will be ready,” said the old chief.
Twenty-Five
It was Friday afternoon and Captain Daniel Wilde sat in Colonel Harkins’s chair with his feet propped up on the desk and his hands laced behind his head. Opposite him sat the four troopers who had arrested Shanaco. The five were talking about the “yelping mongrel dog” to whom they had taught a lesson.
“I don’t feel,” said Daniel Wilde, “that it’s enough punishment for Shanaco to lie out there resting on the stone floor of the prison.”
“Nor do I,” said Sergeant Merlin Sparks, thoughtfully scratching the deep scar on his left cheek. “Can’t let the red bastard to get off that easy.”
The others chimed in their approval. Daniel Wilde smiled and nodded. He had known he could count on Sergeant Sparks. Sparks hated Indians. All Indians. The big man had despised every last redskin on earth since a band of renegade Kiowas had—fifteen years ago—swooped down on a small Texas farm and killed his young fiancée on the eve of their wedding.
“Ideas, anybody?” asked Wilde.
“Tie the son of a bitch to a horse and let it drag him through the res,” suggested Sergeant Sparks.
The others eagerly offered their ideas. But none struck Daniel Wilde’s fancy. Finally he took his hands from behind his head, moved his feet to the floor and leaned up to the desk.
“Leave it to me. I’ll think of something appropriate. You are dismissed, gentlemen.”
The troopers rose and filed out of the office. Once they were gone Wilde sat with his fingers steepled, pondering what he should do to Shanaco. At last he smiled as an idea came to him. He sent the orderly for a copy of solar charts.
He laid the tables out atop the desk and, scratching his chin thoughtfully, mused aloud, “Just what time do they lower the colors today?”
Maggie was in the civilian village as sunset approached. She had purposely stayed away from the icehouse prison. She didn’t want anyone to suspect that she was concerned about Shanaco’s fate.
She busied herself picking up coffee and sugar and other essentials. But she was in no hurry to get her shopping done. She stopped and looked at items she had no intention of buying. The main purpose of her visit to the mercantile was to learn what she could about Shanaco.
She had cautiously avoided discussing the distressing turn of events with anyone but Old Coyote. Only he and Double Jimmy were aware that she even knew Shanaco. She wanted to keep it that way. But she was dying to hear what they were going to do with him. When would he be released? Would he be released?
As she picked up a small sack of flour, she heard the locals talking about Shanaco and strained to listen without looking up or turning her head. “He’ll likely be held in the prison till the colonel gets back,” said a man in denim overalls and plaid shirt. “It’s gonna get mighty cold tonight and that icehouse has no roof,” said another. An old-timer tugged on his long gray beard and said, “I figure them troopers will think of something real bad to do to the savage.”
Maggie swallowed hard, paid for her items, turned the collar of her wrap up around her ears and left with Pistol at her side. When she reached the fort the sun had just set. Only a pale gloaming of amber light remained. The temperature was already plummeting with the coming of darkness.
The officers’ quarters temporarily obstructing her view of the parade ground, Maggie could see the very top of the flagpole rising to meet the winter sky. The colors had been lowered for the day.
She rounded the corner of the building onto the quad and stopped. She didn’t believe her eyes. Surely she was seeing things in the fading light. Her arms around her sack of provisions, Maggie took a few steps forward, eyes narrowed, straining to see.
She abruptly stopped short again and involuntarily emitted a soft moan of misery.
Shanaco, beaten and bloody, was lashed to the flag-pole, his dark head sagging onto his chest. A guard with a carbine slung over his shoulder marched back and forth across the quad, ignoring the suffering human being tied out in the cold.
As she looked on in horror, Maggie’s first inclination was to rush to Shanaco. She checked herself and quickly cautioned Pistol to be quiet. If she
were to be of any help, no one must suspect her.
Heartsick, Maggie hurried back around the officers’ quarters with Pistol on her heels. She took the long way to her cottage. Once there she paced worriedly, shaking her head, wondering how in the world she could free Shanaco. There was no one to help her. Whatever she did, she would have to do it alone.
Maggie finally stopped pacing and calmly analyzed the situation. Mentally, she began to lay plans. She would, she decided, wait patiently until it was nearing midnight and the soldiers were all in their barracks, the officers in their quarters. Then she would go out there after Shanaco and bring him to the safety of her cottage.
The hours dragged as she waited for the bugler to play taps and the fort to grow silent. But the time was not wasted. Maggie readied her small home for the arrival of the sick, suffering Shanaco.
She spread a freshly laundered sheet out on the floor directly in front of the fireplace. She put clean sheets on her bed and fluffed up the lace-trimmed pillows. She spread the blanket evenly and laid an extra one across the foot of the bed. She carefully folded back one corner of the sheet and blanket, smoothed it neatly, then stepped back to admire her handiwork.
She went to the back door, opened it and brought in spare wood for the fire. Shivering, she stacked the wood beside the fireplace. She tossed a couple of logs on the fire, jabbed at them with the poker and watched the fire blaze up. She laid the poker aside and stood before the fire, staring into the flames, thoughtful, despairing the fact that Double Jimmy was gone.
She was alone.
An old, feeble, forgetful Indian was her only ally.
Maggie mentally shook herself, drew a deep breath, turned about and crossed to the tiny kitchen alcove. She hummed as she cooked a pan of beef broth. She lifted the spoon, tasted it and nodded her approval. Pistol, following her around as she did her chores, realized she was eating something and began to bark furiously.
