The Holy Warrior

by Gilbert, Morris

  Abruptly, Chris sat down by the fire. “I’m staying here,” he announced.

  The three stared at each other, then back at Chris. Finally Con spoke. “Stayin’ here? What’s that mean, Chris?”

  “Means just that.” Chris smiled at their stunned expressions and said, “Leave me a few traps. You three go on to the Yellowstone. You can pick me up when you come back next spring.”

  “That’s crazy, Chris!” Knox cried loudly. “Ain’t you been listenin’? This is Sioux country!”

  “Boy’s right about that,” Con agreed slowly. “Ah shore wouldn’t want to try an’ make it around them devils.”

  They all began arguing with him, but he cut them off impatiently. “I’m staying here. You can’t keep me from it, so just give me what I’ll need.”

  “But—why, Chris?” Knox pleaded. “Things have gone so good—here you’re almost well, and we’d thought you’d die. Now why do you want to stay here?”

  “Don’t know.” Chris shifted, then shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. “I can only tell you I’ve got to find out what I am. If the Sioux get me, then I reckon that’s the way it was spelled out. If they don’t—why, maybe I’ll get a handle on some things. But live or die—I’m staying.”

  Con looked across the fire, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Every feller has to go the way his stick floats,” he said. “I’d say you’ve picked a mighty rough way to find out about yourself, Chris, but if’n you make it through a season on these here Sioux grounds... wal, ah reckon there ain’t no quicker way to find out what you’re made of.”

  At dawn the canoes were loaded, and Knox stared unbelievingly at Chris, who was standing alone next to the small pile of belongings they had left him. Pulling around a bend, Knox lost sight of the solitary figure, and the tears filled his eyes, blinding him to everything else.

  Con was alongside, and he saw the boy bend his head, and he tried to assure him. “Don’t give up on that brother of yours, Knox! I been watchin’ him pretty close, and if he ain’t a first-class trapper, I never seen one. Moves around like a ghost, and that’s about half the secret in Injun country. If’n he keeps his hair, he’ll be a real mountain man.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHITE INDIAN

  Watching the last of the four canoes disappear from sight, Chris was filled with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. He had to fight an impulse to run after them. Now’s not the time for second thoughts, I guess, he decided. Instead, he set about moving his gear to higher ground. As he picked up his traps and his other gear and entered the thick grove of beech and oak that grew fifty yards away from the river, he mentally mapped out his next move.

  He knew his only hope was to keep his presence a secret from the Indians. It was a miracle they hadn’t spotted him already. As he made his way toward the higher ground, the traps jingled, and he was sure he would never make it. From what Con and Frenchie had told him, the Sioux knew this territory better than he knew the back of his hand. Clearly, his chances of survival were small. By white man’s standards he was an adequate woodsman, but he was only visiting this wild country; the Sioux were immersed in it, as a fish is immersed in a stream or lake. If he wanted to survive, he must to do the same—forget everything he knew of “civilization” and join their world.

  That would be difficult—just learning the wilderness lore was enough. At the same time, he was motivated by the fact that if the Sioux caught him, all was over. They were notorious for their cruelty to captives; his one firm resolve was to kill himself rather than fall captive to them.

  As he went deeper into the wilderness, he grew strangely elated, less fearful. Must have lost my mind, he grinned as he moved upward through the brush. Probably going to get scalped by the Sioux—and I just don’t seem to be rightly scared. Then again, he always had loved a challenge, reveling in competition with other men, just as he had loved to gamble—and this was the ultimate gamble. Everything was reduced to its simplest elements: live or die. None of society’s subtle pressures were important now. And despite his slender chances of survival, he was suddenly filled with the deepest sense of satisfaction he had ever known.

  He buried the traps wrapped in a piece of deerskin he’d gotten from Con, carefully obliterating all signs of digging. Before he left, he took a quick inventory of his gear, including a fine bow and fifteen arrows he’d obtained from Bull Man in exchange for his own pistol. Although he was not an archer, Chris was determined to master this weapon, for here the sound of a pistol shot could very well bring his own death as well as his prey’s.

  He picked up his sparse store of supplies and moved farther back from the river, in the direction of the small tributary where he’d seen Con and Knox go to trap the beaver. By noon he had scouted the terrain without catching sight of Indians. So he ate a piece of meat, washed it down with the cold water from the stream, and moved back into the deeper woods. Got to learn to sit still and watch, he thought, and was startled to discover how difficult it was to sit absolutely motionless for thirty minutes. His muscles grew stiff and it was a struggle to prevent involuntary movements. He’d still-hunted squirrels often, and had learned to stand motionless so long that they’d practically run over his boots. But this was different. Now it was not his dinner at stake; it was his life.

  He made a fireless camp that night, finding a natural cave on the crest of a lofty knoll. He could lie in the mouth of the opening and catch a panoramic view of the woods that fell off toward the river bottoms. On the backside rose a sheer bluff of sandstone that afforded good cover from any approaching enemy. He lay there long after the full silver moon rose, listening to the echoes of a wolf howling down by the river. The peacefulness around him soon lulled him into a dreamless sleep.

  Every day for a week, Chris made a stealthy journey, spanning out in circles from the cave; and by the end of that time, he knew the terrain well. Moving carefully as a fox, he slipped from tree to tree and avoided the open spaces whenever possible. He would freeze in one spot, totally immobile, and wait until the animals and birds resumed their activities. He became an expert in waiting, in turning himself into stone, and many times he could almost have reached out and taken game with his hands.

  The week ended, and then another, and time was reduced to its simplest form—the light was day and the darkness night. Constantly he scanned the forest and sharpened his skill with the bow. While studying the wild creatures, Chris often spotted Indians far off, but he always faded back into the deep woods. He found wild berries, and learned to tolerate the small mussels from the river.

  The weeks turned to months, and he broadened his range, finding on one of his silent stalks a large Indian camp about fifteen miles from his cave. He went to the camp’s outskirts frequently, studying their activities, risking death for the sight. After some time he could recognize some of them, for they lived in the open, outside of the buffalo hide tepees they used for sleeping. The young men often had contests—running, wrestling, mock wars or drills with war spears and tomahawks. Among these young braves there was one who stood out from the others. He was taller than the rest, and always won at any of the contests. He wore a single eagle feather and a knife in a yellow sheath, and it was obvious that he was of some importance in the tribe.

  Several times Chris was nearly discovered. Once he avoided a hunting party only by climbing a tree; it had been too late to run. The Indians moved by, speaking to one another in their guttural language, and he could easily have dropped his knife on the tall young Indian with the eagle feather and the yellow sheath.

  A week later Chris had hidden himself near a small stream, waiting for a deer. When three deer stepped out of the woods into the small clearing, he fitted an arrow into the bow and carefully took aim.

  Zipppp! An arrow shot out of the woods at a point just upstream from where Chris knelt, stunned. He could clearly see the shaft of an arrow protruding from the body of the largest buck. The animal fell to the ground, then sprang up, mortally wounded, le
aving a scarlet trail as he ran into the woods. Immediately, a short, stocky Indian wearing only a breechcloth leaped up from where he had been concealed by a clump of willows and dashed off in pursuit of the wounded animal.

  Chris found his hands shaking with fear for the first time since he’d come to the Sky Country; if he had loosed his own arrow, he would have been an easy mark for the hidden Sioux warrior. He kept his place, and soon the Indian came tramping back, the deer draped over his shoulders. As he passed within a few feet of Chris, he could smell the strong odor of smoke and sweat from the man steadily making his way in the direction of the enemy camp.

  Finally Chris rose and started to leave, then hesitated. Out of curiosity, he backtracked to where the Indian had hidden himself. Looking across the creek, Chris could clearly see the tree he had stood beside, and with a shudder he realized he had been directly in line of the Indian’s sight. Guess I’ve graduated. If I can be so still that a Sioux can’t spot me, I must be pretty good!

  He was moving away when something on the ground caught his eye. Leaning over to pick up the object, he found himself holding a smooth piece of bone with a crude picture formed by lines of gold. He could make out a figure of a deer and then he saw what must have been a man hunting a deer. “Kind of pretty,” Chris mused aloud. “That brave will miss it—probably come back for it sooner or later.” The form and workmanship pleased him, so he stuck it in his shirt and took it with him.

  He left the area, heading due north. More weeks passed, and the Sky Country began to grow on him. The peaks rose sharply, jagged and rough and inhabited with goats of a sort he’d never seen before. Then he swung east and found his first buffalo in the flat plains. They were huge shaggy beasts, seemingly unaware of him, and he brought one down with an arrow. He ripped the tongue from the carcass and ate it raw, having heard Frenchie say it was the best bite of meat the world afforded. He spent the rest of that day and a few more skinning the animal, then cutting up the meat and spreading it out to dry. After it had dried he wrapped the jerky in the buffalo hide and took it back to his cave.

  For the next two months he wandered all over the Sky Country, his skills growing sharper as his body grew into a piece of fine-tuned machinery, strong and wily as any mountain lion. The air grew colder, and one day he was surprised to feel a cold touch on his cheek. “Snow!” he said. “Winter’s caught up with me. I better get back to my place.”

  By the time he got back to the cave a week later, an early storm had hit, and he made it just in time to avoid getting frozen. He had made the buffalo hide into a bed, and as the ground swelled with the weight of innumerable snowflakes that packed themselves into blankets five feet deep, he felt as if he’d come home, sitting before a small fire, cooking a tender doe.

  For a week it continued to snow, but he was warm inside the cave, and the doe was enough to last for a while when he supplemented it with pemmican. He would stare out at the flakes swirling in the wind and let his mind drift back to the time he had spent at the Greenes’. He particularly missed Missy. If he ever returned, he’d decided to give her the medicine bone he’d found. It was the sort of thing she would like; he could picture her eyes shining brightly as he gave it to her.

  By the time he’d finished the deer, the storm had stopped. He put on a pair of winter boots he’d made out of a deerskin, rough but sturdy enough to keep the wet off his feet. Slipping some dried buffalo meat into his pocket, he hesitated. Then, for the first time, he picked up the rifle and left the cave, purposing to bring down a deer. It was risky, but he did not think he could get close enough for an arrow kill. He felt exposed as he moved down the slope—the only dark shape in that white world, the only motion in a frozen world of white stone.

  The cold pierced him, but he grew accustomed to it. He broke through the crust in places, but for the most part it held his weight as he moved toward the river where he thought the animals might be seeking scrub leaves and willow bark.

  He saw no game, nor did he see any sign of Indians. The snow was smooth and unbroken as he made a trail. An Injun could follow my tracks back to the cave, he thought. That fact troubled him, and he determined not to return until the snow melted or his trail was covered by a fresh snowfall. Finally the afternoon came on, and when the shadows of the trees grew long on the snow, he gave up his hunt. “Least I got this pemmican,” he muttered. “Tomorrow I’ll try upriver.”

  It was almost dark. Chris munched on the buffalo jerky while he hunted for a dry spot to get a little sleep. Suddenly he heard a sound that made every nerve in his body tingle—the sound a grizzly makes when it charges, and it was close!

  He whirled to his left and through a screen of dead willows, he saw an Indian spring up, drawing his bow in the direction of the roar. The brave was facing away from Chris, seemingly unshaken by the frightening sight of a charging mammoth grizzly—its head down, revealing that unmistakable hump—not twenty feet away from where the man stood.

  An arrow won’t stop that critter! Chris thought frantically. Horrified, he watched the arrow leave the Indian’s hand and bury itself in the chest of the bear; it didn’t even slow the creature’s pace. The wounded animal attacked the brave, who tried to avoid the charge by throwing himself to one side; but one swipe of the grizzly’s paw caught him on the leg and sent him spinning through the air, landing on his back in a mass of hackberry bushes. He struggled to his feet, but the bear was over him, rearing high in the air, with his bloodied paw poised for another blow.

  Without thinking Chris raised the rifle and sent a ball through the head of the beast, who fell to one side—but not before he had given another blow to the helpless Indian.

  Quickly Chris swiveled the second barrel into place, then ran to where the bear lay still, with the Indian partially hidden underneath. The injured man raised his bloody head to stare at his deliverer. The claws had raked away part of his scalp—three crimson furrows seeped blood so rapidly it ran into his eyes. Quickly Chris wiped the blood away, but it only welled up again; the cuts ran very deep. The brave struggled to crawl out from under the bear, but Chris stopped him. Pushing the carcass off, Chris could see the Indian’s leg was severely hurt. With each pulsebeat the white snow turned red, and Chris knew that the big artery in the groin had been sliced.

  Chris looked into those obsidian eyes and saw resignation—clearly the young man expected death. With a start, Chris recognized the tall young man with the yellow sheath. Even now the single eagle feather, covered with blood, lay on his head.

  The eyes were black as night, but there was not a trace of fear in them as the young warrior stared back at him. He was only a couple of inches shorter than himself, Chris guessed, with a body that was sleek and powerful, like a panther’s. With dismay Chris watched as the man’s awful wounds poured his life out on the pristine snow.

  Without warning the Indian raised his hands and started to chant—Chris had heard of the death song that Indians sang just before they died. Considering his options, Chris realized that if the Indian’s wounds weren’t closed immediately, he’d die from loss of blood.

  Quickly, Chris leaned the rifle against a tree and moved beside the Indian who was trying to sit up. Taking him by the shoulders Chris forced him to the ground. The death song broke off, and the Indian struggled wildly. Chris’s hands slipped on the wet arms and he hollered, “Be still, blast you!”

  The voice seemed to take all remaining strength out of the brave; obviously the loss of blood already had done much damage. He lay back, his black eyes like twin dark tunnels as he watched the white man. Chris reached into his pouch and whipped out a bit of cloth and made a pad of it, putting the wad over the groin wound, then pushing down hard. He said nothing, and neither did the Indian. The silence was eerie as the deadly enemies stared into each other’s eyes. There was a confused look on the face of the young Sioux.

  “Here—you got to hold this, Injun!” Chris said, and saw that his words were at least partially understood. He took the Indian’s hand an
d held it over the artery, pressed it down, and said, “Hold that—or you’re on your way to the happy hunting ground!”

  While the brave watched, Chris pulled down a pouch he always carried on his shoulder on hunting trips and extracted the needle and waxed linen thread. Threading it, he checked the flow of blood and grunted with satisfaction. “Good!” Then he held up the threaded needle, and motioned to the Indian’s head. “Got to patch you up. Going to hurt.” He saw a quick intelligent glint in the eyes of the man, and there was a faint nod of the head.

  Chris had never sewn up a wound, but he knew it had to be done or the man would be terribly deformed, for the scalp had been pulled forward so far that even the area close to his eyes was affected. There was no way to be gentle, so he went at it as best he could, pulling the matted scalp back and mercilessly driving the needle through the flesh. His own lips grew pale and perspiration beaded his forehead, but the Indian never flinched at what must have been excruciating pain. The ebony eyes watched him in an unnerving fashion as he worked, and Chris grew nervous at the stare. Finally he drew the last stitch and tied an awkward knot. “That’s the best I can do—but it’s better than having your scalp around your chin!”

  The Indian said nothing, but stared silently at him. Chris looked at the wound that had cut across the young man’s thigh and groin. “Bleedin’s almost stopped.” He pulled the blood-soaked rag away carefully and said, “Time for some more fancy needlework.”

  He sewed up the gashes in the leg, then checked the artery and was relieved to see that it was not bleeding at all. Cold froze it, most likely, he mused.

  Chris stood up and wiped his hands on his shirt before he put the needle and thread away. He turned to look at the man. It was almost dark, but he could see that the Sioux’s face was gray, and the eyes were glazing over.