by V. J. Banis
“And whose benefit was that for,” she asked, lifting an eyebrow, “yours or theirs?”
“Don’t be an ass,” he said simply. When she tried angrily to pull her hand away he held it fast, forcing her to fall into step beside him, though it meant walking to the side of the path and tripping over tree roots. Silently she cursed Summers for an arrogant fool.
The path followed a bend in the river around a stand of trees, where it widened. In the clearing ahead she saw the Indian village. It consisted of a collection of the tipis she’d heard of, cone-shaped structures of animal skins stretched over long poles. These were scattered in a seemingly random pattern about a central clearing in the center of which a large fire was burning. The smell of roasting meat wafted to her.
The entire village had turned out for their arrival, including dogs and children. These last two groups ran about them making a considerable uproar. The women, Claire saw, remained well back behind the braves, though they looked no less curious. She could see that she herself, particularly her hair, was the main attraction, and though mostly the Indians seemed excited about it, her gaze fell on one squaw who glowered at her sullenly.
Their eyes met and to her surprise Claire recognized a familiar emotion: pure jealousy. Perhaps the squaw’s own sweetheart had made too much of the visitor’s blonde hair?
The extent of the squaw’s jealousy was made clear to her a moment later. No sooner had Claire looked away than the Indian brought up her hand and hurled the stone she’d had clenched in it. It struck Claire a glancing blow on the forehead, hardly bruising her though she cried out in fright.
The entire procession stopped and one of the braves, the one who had first approached Claire, strode quickly through the parting throng. To Claire’s horror, he knocked the squaw to the ground, giving her a hard kick in the rump when she tried to crawl away.
“Oh, stop him,” Claire begged, tugging at Summer’s hand.
“And get us all killed?” Morton said. “That’s the chief’s son, and how he punishes his wife is nobody’s business but his.”
“Can’t we do anything?” Claire asked.
“Yes,” Summers said, “you can act like she half-killed you with that rock. It puts them in our debt, sort of. Go on, put your hand over it and act like you’re suffering some.”
She shot him an angry look, but she did as he instructed, pressing one hand over the barely painful spot where the stone had hit her. The squaw, she saw, had managed to scramble to her feet and run off among the tipis. The chief’s son, shouting something after her, came back to the column, and they resumed their procession.
They were heading toward a particular tipi, larger and more imposing than the others. From this stepped a tall, dignified-looking man that she took to be the chief, flanked by two others nearly as somber. Morton, leaving the group, approached this trio and addressed the chief, who seemed to recognize him. When the two men actually embraced one another, Claire began to breathe more easily.
For a few moments everyone—Indians, Morton, Summers, even Leblanc—seemed to be speaking at once, sorting out some detail or another. Finally the Indians gestured for them to enter the chief’s tipi.
There was one difficult moment when Claire went to precede the men inside. One of the Indians said something angrily.
“They don’t like women in their councils,” Morton said.
“She stays with us,” Summers replied. He said something short and sharp to the chief. There was another moment of heated debate, which Summers apparently won.
“After you,” he said, ushering her into the low, squat structure.
It took several moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloomy interior. A hole had been left open in the roof for the smoke from the central fire to escape, but the air within was smoke filled nonetheless, making it difficult to breathe and darkening things considerably.
They sat on the ground in a circle about the fire. Two women came in bearing carved wooden bowls that were handed first to the chief, then passed about the circle in either direction, each person using his fingers to eat a little of the contents.
“What is it?” Claire asked as Summers handed her the bowl.
“Eat it,” he said.
She thrust a tentative finger into the gooey-looking substance in the bowl and her eyes widened. “It’s moving,” she gasped, whispering, though it was unlikely anyone could decipher her words. She was uncomfortably aware that all eyes had turned toward her.
“Eat it,” Summers said tersely out of the side of his mouth.
“I can’t.” She stared at the mass in the bowl. She recognized nuts, berries, and worms. She did not dare to try to guess the rest of the ingredients.
“They’re liable to be eating us for their next meal if you don’t,” he said. “To decline their hospitality is a grave insult, and I for one don’t intend to fight these boys just to defend your delicate sensitivities. Now eat it, before I stuff it down your lily-white throat.”
He reached toward the bowl with his hand as if he meant to do exactly as he’d threatened. “Damn you all to hell,” she snapped, but the anger helped to overcome her squeamishness, and she managed to get a small and hopefully wormless dab between her fingers and lift it to her mouth. Her stomach gave a warning turn. Holding her breath and focusing her eyes on the veins in her wrist, she stuffed it into her mouth and swallowed hard, hastily passing the bowl on.
“Kind of tasty once you get used to it,” Summers said, clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“Shut up, or you’ll get mine back.”
After the food had gone round—she was thankful it only went round once—they passed about a pipe, from which everyone was expected to smoke. By this time, with the heat and the close air, not to mention a tipi filled with unwashed bodies, she had begun to feel more than a little ill. She fought against the threatening nausea and dizziness and tried to concentrate on what was going on. Serious parlay had begun, but as it was conducted in the Indians’ language, in which all three of her companions seemed conversant, she could tell little of how the talks were progressing. It seemed to her that they’d been sitting there in what was proving to be an increasingly uncomfortable position for hours when Summers, speaking in a loud angry voice, started to get to his feet. The others, in tones ranging from placating to equally angry, managed to coax him back down.
“Let me handle this,” Morton said.
“He knows my terms,” Summers replied. The Indians began discussing something heatedly among themselves.
“What was that all about?” Claire asked.
“The chief just made us an offer to give us all the horses we need,” Summers replied.
“Well, isn’t that what we came here for?” she asked, letting her exasperation show. “Really, Mister Summers, it’s quite one thing for you to be rude to me, as you so often are, but I must object to letting your temper hinder our current negotiations.”
“I didn’t like his terms.”
“Oh for God’s sake, give him whatever he’s asking for. What does it matter, so long as we can get out of this abominable place with our skins intact?”
“You really mean that?” he asked, turning to look down at her.
“Of course. Why?” she asked.
“He wants to trade us the horses for you,” was the reply, delivered with a perfectly straight face.
After that she made no further attempt to interfere in the negotiating process, though she kept a sharp eye on the various facial expressions about the circle.
Finally Summers opened his pack and began to remove the trading goods he’d brought along. He laid a blanket on the ground before him and several cards of beads atop that. The Indians looked scornfully at the pile.
He brought out a silver bracelet, weighing it in his hand while he gave Claire a long, measuring look, before adding it to the pile.
At last, with the addition of several more silver trinkets and another blanket, the Indians were satisfied, and once again the pipe w
as passed around. As this was so preferable to the prospect of the wooden bowls, Claire puffed at it almost gratefully, and the negotiations were concluded.
It was nearly sundown when they started back to their own camp, each of the men having embraced the chief, who bowed his head gravely before Claire. They brought with them the skins and poles for two tipis, which Summers had insisted they would need as the weather turned cold, and four horses. Summers had decided that the benefits of having Morton accompany them at least marginally outweighed the risks. Sometime or other Morton was sure to become a problem, but he would handle that one when he got to it.
Claire, who was still feeling sickish, was not cheered by the news that Morton would be joining them, but at the moment nothing seemed quite so important to her as getting on their way. Before the Indians had a chance to change their minds, and reopen negotiations, she found herself thinking.
“How soon can we leave?” she asked when they’d reached the bank between the two branches of the Platte.
“Late tonight,” Summers said. “Let’s get this camp set up quick.”
“But if we’ll be leaving tonight, why bother setting up camp?”
“Cause we want to be ready when those Indians come to get their horses back,” he informed her. “We don’t want them to know we suspect anything.”
“But I thought everything was settled,” she said. “They were so friendly when we left.”
“Why shouldn’t they be? They had all day to size us up, see what kind of goods we had with us. They’ll wait till we’re asleep, then they’ll sneak in here, lift our scalps, take our goods, and get their horses back. Least, that’s what they’ve got planned.”
“But if that’s the case, shouldn’t we just ride out of here now?” she asked.
“They’ll be ready for that,” Morton said. “They’d cut us down before we got half a mile. No, our best bet’s to do what he says, catch them off guard same as they were trying to do to us.”
“We learned one piece of news, though,” Summers said, setting up camp as if there were nothing out of the ordinary. “Your husband was here, stayed for a week in their village.”
“Peter? Are you sure?” Claire asked, momentarily forgetting the danger they were in.
“Said he was the one came with these two the last time, left after they did and headed west.”
“Do you believe them? Perhaps they murdered him,” she said. She glanced around, shuddering. Perhaps his very grave was right here.
“They say not,” Summers said, seeing her fright and speaking more gently. “They say he headed west. Apparently he impressed them with a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo. They seemed to think he was a holy man. Look, why don’t you start looking for some firewood. Oh, you’d better take this.”
He handed her one of his revolvers. She stared at it for a moment before thrusting it into the belt of her skirt. Then she set out to look for wood.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was an eerie feeling to watch the sun set and know that she might never see it rise again.
“You stay over here,” Summers was saying, loading the rifle for her. “It’s far enough from the fire they won’t be able to tell much about you. Once it’s good and dark, you take your blanket and move around there, between those two big rocks. No one can sneak up on you over there.” He hesitated. “If things don’t go our way, you should be able to slip off into the bushes and hide out of sight.”
“But I can shoot,” Claire argued. “You’ll need every gun.”
“The guns won’t do us as much good as the surprise will,” he replied. “I reckon they think they’ve got us fooled. The thing is, you’re not to shoot unless you’ve just got to. We don’t want to attract their attention to you if we can possibly help it.”
He left her in the shadow of the large boulders, and went back to consult with the other two men.
Their plan was simple. The fire they’d built was small and would soon burn low. The three men had spread their blankets farther from the fire than usual, and under cover of darkness Leblanc, the smallest of the three, would crawl out of his to the shelter of some brush near the river bank. The other two would remain, feigning sleep. This was by far the most dangerous choice of positions. An arrow fired from the woods might kill either of them before an alarm could be raised. Both were dependent upon Leblanc’s keen senses.
The horses had been tied to a solitary tree near the river, ready to ride. Three of them were saddled; the fourth would carry their gear, including the two tipis. They were fine, strong-looking animals, two big red geldings, a bay mare for portage, and a spirited pinto mare, which Claire would ride. The Pawnee, expecting to get the horses back, had been generous in giving their best beasts.
She could not remember a night so long. Under cover of darkness she had wrapped herself in her blanket and crawled as Summers had directed between two oversized rocks, where she would be well shielded, not only from sight but from stray bullets and arrows.
There she waited, her rifle propped across her knees, through the seemingly endless hours of the night.
She must have finally dozed, for when the trouble came it startled her awake. One moment there was a deep stillness, with seemingly nothing moving, then Leblanc’s long rifle exploded and from the edge of the woods came a death cry.
All hell broke loose for the next several minutes. The Indians had waited for the moon to rise, and in its ghostly light she saw a swirl of half-naked savages racing into the clearing. Morton, flinging aside his blankets, had thrown himself sideways to the shelter of a tree, but Summers crouched where he was, firing at the attacking Indians first with his rifle, then with his revolver.
Summers’ exposed position in the open clearing left him vulnerable to attack. While the three men were firing in the direction of the woods from which the Indians had originally attacked, Claire heard a pebble rattle across one of the boulders. Realizing at once that someone was climbing over the rocks, and that it could be no one but the Pawnee, she flattened herself against the larger of the two rocks as far back into the shadows as she could shrink, not even daring to breathe. A moment later a shadow flitted across the ground before her as first one of the Indians and then the other leaped the short distance between the two rocks.
For a moment they were invisible to her.
Then one of them dropped to the ground at the edge of the clearing. As she watched, he crouched and began to steal toward Summers, whose back was to the brave.
Her heart pounded. The other Indian was still somewhere above her on the rock. If she cried out to warn Summers, she would reveal her presence to the man above.
The opening between the rocks gave her a clear view of both Summers and the man edging ever closer to him. She waited, praying that either Morton or Leblanc, or Summers himself, would discover the Pawnee.
No one did. The Indian was no more than ten feet from the still unsuspecting Summers. He lifted the ugly tomahawk in his hand, preparing to rush forward and bury it in Summers’ skull.
At that moment Summers fired the last shot in his revolver. He breached the gun, preparing to load it again, and as he did so he glanced back and saw the Pawnee. The Pawnee gave a yell and rushed toward the defenseless man.
At the same time Claire took a deep breath and stepped from between the boulders. Lifting the rifle to her shoulder, she fired.
The Pawnee arched violently, staggered a few more steps, and fell, practically in Summers’ arms. Claire remembered the man above her just as the Indian jumped to the ground before her. The rifle was yanked violently from her hands and flung aside, and she found herself face to face with the fiercely grinning savage, the moonlight gleaming off the blade of the knife in his hand. With a cry of triumph he seized her with one hand, the other lifting the knife to plunge it into her breast.
There was no time for Summers to reload his gun, and the shots and cries had gone unremarked by the other two men in the general melee. On the ground before him was the tomahawk the Pa
wnee had dropped. Seizing it, Summers stood and hurled the weapon with an expertise the Pawnee would have envied—straight for the skull of the Indian struggling with Claire.
It happened so quickly that it was some minutes before she had fully comprehended what had happened. She was struggling with the Indian, her face only inches from his, so that she could see the veins standing out at his temples and the little rivulets of sweat that ran down his brow. Then his head seemed to explode in two, splattering her with a shower of blood and shattered bone and cartilage. The man fell forward into her arms, dragging her to the ground with him as he fell.
The unexpected and fierce defense threw the remaining Indians into confusion, and with a few last, wild shots they fled into the forest.
Claire struggled to free herself from beneath the dead Pawnee. Suddenly Summers was there, helping her to her feet and grinning with boyish enthusiasm. In a flash of insight she realized that notwithstanding the danger they had been in Summers was enjoying himself.
“That was pretty good shooting,” he said.
“Is it over?” She looked around. The clearing was strewn with fallen bodies. Morton and Leblanc were just emerging from cover.
“Just round one,” Summers said, taking her arm and hurrying her toward the river. “We’d better skedaddle, before they get up the nerve to come back.”
Leblanc, the only one who was not going west with them, would take one of the canoes and continue upriver, to look for a place to camp until winter set in. The other canoe would be left as a peace offering to the Pawnee.
“But won’t they kill him when he comes back downriver?” Claire asked.
“Not likely,” Summers said. “They’ll probably greet him as an old friend and pretend they know nothing about this. Or chalk it up to renegades.”
They helped Leblanc get his canoe safely into the shallow water. When he had begun to paddle upstream, the others mounted their horses and headed south and west, following the course of the South Platte.
