by Mark Wildyr
“I was fine, Otter. I’d rather you protected your manly backside than hang around for me.” He blushed, but he smiled as well. “They’ll be back in a few days. They’re meeting back here to return to the fort,” I said.
“Yes, I know. I heard Three Stripes tell Two Stripes.”
“The sergeant told the corporal,” I corrected.
That evening, Cut and a few others came to hear my views on this latest incursion into their territory.
“So the American army will now fight the Mexican army?” Cut asked as I finished relating my news.
“That is a possibility. The reason for this patrol was to determine any likely trouble if the army becomes tied down. If trouble breaks out, there will be no reserves to support them, and there will also be fewer new troops to guard roads, so the flow of settlers may slow. Of course, I have no idea how long the war will last—if it comes.”
The next afternoon, James led his platoon back to the Mead anticipating a rendezvous with Jamieson. Lone Eagle and Otter both stood on the porch as the troops arrived. Before long, teenage curiosity overcame natural reserve, and they circulated freely among the Americans. I kept a wary eye on both. If Lone Eagle was propositioned as Otter had been, I would not have bet on the outcome. The youth didn’t have his rifle with him, thank God, but he wasn’t above using his skinning knife if he perceived his manhood challenged.
I watched from the stoop as James got his men settled. The soldiers’ small rag houses quickly popped up in two long, orderly rows. The horses were watered, fed, hobbled to the west of the house, and placed under guard. Understandable, I suppose. Cut and his warriors were skilled horse thieves and considered it an honorable act if their foes were the victims. The troopers were likely justified in considering that they and their mounts fit into this category.
When the enlisted men were settled and eating from their provisions, James turned to his own needs. He came from the bathing room that night naked and rampant. He laid his trim form atop me and looked into my eyes.
“I have not stopped thinking about you since you left,” he said hoarsely. “Those months you were in town were the happiest of my life. I recognize your love lies elsewhere, but you are entitled to know that James Carlton Morrow loves you deeply.” My long-delayed orgasm was almost painful at the point he finally allowed it to occur.
James fair wore me out with his demands. There came a point where pleasure and satisfaction fell away, and it became a matter of endurance. He was insatiable. Toward dawn, I told him “no more.” When he stepped out onto the porch to greet his men that morning he was refreshed, revived, rejuvenated. I crawled around the house like an overused jackass.
Otter and Lone Eagle showed up, giving one another such looks and giggles that I checked the cavern door. The lock was dust-free. The rascals had crawled through the secret passage and watched from the trapdoor in the bathing room. The lamp was on low wick, so they had a good view of my bare bum as I flanked the good lieutenant. Seeing me at the cellar door, the two made themselves scarce, but not before they put the spare key back where I stored it. They merely put it in the wrong side of the bag.
James began to worry when Jamieson did not put in an appearance by the evening. That might have been why he required I only mount him twice. He was preparing to put his troop to horse and start a search the next day when one of Cut’s scouts brought word the captain was a league away.
JAMIESON WAS an uneasy man when he rode up. Over a cup of fresh coffee, he filled in his lieutenant and me. An unusual number of Sioux swelled the camps, as I had warned. He counted Santee from Minnesota and Wisconsin in greater numbers than expected. There was definitely an exodus occurring.
Cut Hand appeared at the Mead within the hour. Jamieson greeted him with a firm handshake, but not before Cut’s eyes slid from James Morrow to me. Captain Jamieson got down to business as we took our places around the kitchen table. The three men Cut brought with him sat on the floor with Lone Eagle and Otter.
Jamieson started the conversation. “Cut Hand, I am worried about what I saw up north. There are a bodacious number of Sioux up there.”
“Yes,” Cut answered calmly. “I told you of the migration.”
“Migration isn’t the word. It’s an inundation. They’re straining the land. Some of them are going to have to go somewhere, and the likely place is south. This country isn’t so filled up as their own.”
As the two men spoke, the boys kept up a running translation for the other Indians who did not speak English.
“One band has already set up camp twenty of your American miles to the northeast,” Cut acknowledged.
“What will you do if they come closer?”
“Nothing. They are our kinsmen. They will come no closer than necessary. When it gets too crowded, we will move.”
“Like everyone else,” the captain muttered, glancing at me. Was he seeing the same future I did?
THE ARMY did not show the flag for the rest of the summer, making me wonder how many men, Mexican and American, were dying down on the Rio Grande. Had the United States entered the war?
Some of Cut’s young bloods succumbed to rising sap and raided for horses, touching off retaliation. One morning I found South curiously nuzzling a fallen warrior. I managed to get the unconscious youth into the house and onto my trading table in the west fronting room. A bullet had passed through the flesh of his side. Working quickly while he was out of it, I bathed the wound in antiseptic and closed it, sacrificing one more cloth shirt to a wounded Indian.
Alerted by the dogs, I went to the porch as Lone Eagle strode to the front of the house, a scowl on his handsome face. The rest of a chase party sat their ponies at the end of the meadow and jabbered excitedly.
“Where is he?” Lone Eagle demanded.
“Inside. He is injured.” Anticipating what was to come, I planted my feet in front of the door. “You cannot have him. He is unconscious.”
Taken aback, he actually recoiled before becoming enraged. “I shot him! He is mine! Get out of my way!”
“Lone Eagle, you will have to fight me to get to that youngster. Damnation, man!” I used the term deliberately. “He’s but a boy.”
“Do not do this to me!” he pled. “The others are watching.”
“Then go back and tell them you will take the enemy’s mount and weapons and send him home afoot to relate the folly of raiding Yanube horses.”
“Where are his weapons?” he asked, making me realize he grabbed onto this idea as a way out of his dilemma.
“In the grass where he fell, I guess. He carried a knife I laid there on the steps. The pony is munching grass near the west hummock.”
Lone Eagle swept up the skinning knife and stalked back to the edge of the meadow. In a few minutes, he held up an old flintlock and let out a whoop. His companions joined in. Triumphantly, he recovered the boy’s pony and led his small band toward the village.
An hour later, the dogs told me strangers were coming. The day was dying, but the light was good enough to see Carcajou with several of his warriors at my meadow. I stepped to the porch and called him forward.
“He is here, Carcajou. He’s been injured, but he will recover.”
The subject of the discussion staggered out the door and sagged against a pillar, looking wan and hurt and young.
“I cleaned and cauterized the bullet wound, but he hit his head when he fell off his horse, so he’s apt to be dizzier than normal for one of that age. His weapons and pony are forfeit.”
“Thank you, Teacher,” Carcajou replied, beckoning two of his warriors forward to take the wounded youth. “I would talk,” he added, turning back to me.
“Then come inside my house. Do you drink the white man’s coffee?”
“Only to be polite.”
“Then come in and be polite.”
Carcajou was unaccustomed to chairs, so he sat at my table gingerly. “You are looking well, Teacher.”
“My name is Billy, Carcajou. I would
hear you speak it once before my time expires.”
Ignoring my sarcasm, the Pipe Stem misco made an effort. The name came out like Cut used to pronounce it. “Bil-lee.”
“Close enough. Now, what can I do for you?”
He asked about news of the army, and I related all I knew, including the fact the United States might go to war with Mexico. Carcajou then turned personal.
“And how are you, my friend? The People say you divorced Cut Hand and left to live among the Americans at the fort town up the river.”
“All of which is true. But I came back.”
“To him?”
“No. To my home.”
“So now you are free of your oath. I did not know Cut Hand was a fool.”
“He is no fool, Carcajou,” I flared. “He had a duty to his people, and being with me got in the way of it. I am free, my friend, but I am not available.”
“The time for that is past, Bil-lee. I took the win-tay boy as my wife.”
That got my attention. “Did not your first wife object?”
“Why would she object? He is strong and helps with her work. And he can hunt and fight if that is required. It is a good arrangement for her. Ah, I see. Yes, he made it work with her, but this boy is no Teacher. He is pliable and molds himself into a proper role.”
“That is my trouble. I don’t fit anyone’s role.”
“Yes, Cut Hand is a fool,” he mused. “I would not battle for you now because you would upset my peaceful household.” He leaned forward slightly, his impressive shoulders hunched. “But if I had you, I would never let you go.”
Carcajou left a vacuum when he took his leave, but Otter soon came to keep me company. I have no idea where he watched and waited, but he always knew when I was alone. I was grateful for his presence. Correctly perceiving my mood, he insisted on a writing lesson and soon charmed me out of my depression. He wrote almost as well as Cut, though his vocabulary was not as sound. We finished the evening reading aloud from Shakespeare.
When Otter came from the bathing room not yet in his loincloth, I came near to calling him to me. I knew he would have come, but there was something wrong with pressing a man’s desire on a youngster only fifteen. Of course, his body was not that of a child. His shoulders were even wider than last year. His hips were lean but muscled.
The Good Lord’s countenance haunted my dreams that night, thunderously denouncing my lascivious thoughts of Otter. In a bargain for peace, I promised never to touch another except in an act of love, not lust—a promise that would be sorely tested in the future.
Chapter 15
I DREW breath easier once the summer solstice and the Sun Dance ceremony passed. Dances were dangerous as blood tended to run high, and the greatest ritual of all was this annual ceremony where the White Buffalo Pipe excited a grand passion among the tribesmen.
One day, Otter broke into my musing by drawing me to the porch to point out a black, lowering cloud to the south across the river. The roiling monster dragged a thick, dirty tail that sucked up dirt and brush and grasses, leaving a rusty basal cloud of debris and dust. Evil in its purest physical form!
“Tornado!” I hissed.
“Iya left the water,” Otter said quietly. “And Wakinyan went after him. They fight awful battles, and it is humans and animals who pay.”
Iya, I knew, was a giant, the son of Inyan, the First Being, and Unk, the Mother of Contention. The Thunder-being, Wakinyan, who brought rains and cleansed the earth, was the mate of Inyan and jealous of this illicit offspring. Unable to touch the giant so long as he remained in water, she sought to destroy him whenever he came ashore. But inevitably, Iya escaped the vengeful supernatural and fled back into the depths. That is why tornadoes follow rivers… or so go the Yanube myths.
The dogs yipped and howled and buried their snouts between nervous paws as the twister harried the plains beyond the Yanube with an earth-shaking roar. We watched warily, poised to seek a fraidy-hole in the cavern if the thing turned our way. But it slowly meandered to the southeast—a direction contrary to the usual northeast trajectory I associated with such phenomena—away from both the Mead and the tiospaye. Even from this distance, Otter and I felt the pull of the hydra. From time to time, the devil wind lifted its foul funnel like a monstrous black buffalo wolf raising its leg to piss upon the plains. Occasionally, snaky tendrils dipped to the left or the right. Eventually the beast disappeared into the distance. Then the rains came, and Otter turned inside the house to burn cedar as many tribesmen did during thunderstorms.
ONE MORNING, the dogs barked with the kind of excitement that told me a friend was coming, probably in some haste. Otter muttered that it was Bear Claw.
“Butterfly! Stolen!” the big man shouted before turning his mount back toward the encampment. Otter and I were only minutes behind him.
A group of women had gone to pick wildflowers, but when they were ready to return, Butterfly was nowhere to be found. At first they called out, believing she might have fallen asleep. When that brought no results, they searched frantically, fearful she might have been struck by one of the serpents that sometimes sheltered in the shade of bushes.
They found the basket with her blossoms scattered and crushed. Signs told of a fierce struggle and two men making off with her on horseback toward the north.
Cut and I, trailed by a dozen warriors, followed the sign northward. Belatedly the fugitives devoted some effort to covering their tracks, but Cut did not hesitate. He made straight for one of those strange islands found on the plains, an isolated pine-shrouded knoll. Within minutes we broke the trail of Butterfly’s abductors and found her abandoned and unconscious in a sheltered glade. I examined her quickly.
“No broken bones. She’s been beaten and probably… assaulted,” I added in a low voice. “She will live, Cut.”
He turned to his men. “Take her to her mother. Teacher, come with me.”
Others in the party clamored to accompany us, but these rapists were obviously Sioux, and to approach a camp with an armed party might provoke something the Yanube could not handle. So with no warriors in attendance, Cut and I tracked the culprits straight into one of the encampments. Cut seemed to know some of the tiospaye, but I recognized only one—Stone Knife, who apparently led this band.
Our welcome included an offer of food and drink, but Cut insisted we were on a mission that permitted no time to be courteous.
“Forgive us for that. Two men stole and raped my sister. We trailed them to this encampment. This is not an act of friendship between kinsmen, Stone Knife. This is a crime, and the criminals must be punished.”
Stone Knife pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Are you certain this was not a romance, a thing between hot-blooded youth?”
“She was forcibly removed. We found where she escaped her captors once and was retaken. They left her on Elk Mound, unconscious and bleeding. The cowards ran straight to this fire.”
“Rest a moment, Cut Hand. Wait before my lodge. My wife will give you water to cool your thirst. I must talk with some of my people.”
Outwardly calm, Cut agreed, but the force of his grip on the water cup revealed the depth of his rage. My own condition was not much different except I was not so stolid as to conceal it. We sat for at least two glasses, and most hourglasses in these parts measured by the half hour. At last Stone Knife and several others came to sit opposite us.
“Cut Hand, it pains me your fireside has been wronged by our own. Things are not good with us. Too many strangers claiming kinship are among us. It was two of these Santee who committed this crime. They have been banished from this tiospaye and no longer enjoy our protection. Again, I am sorry for your troubles.”
With that, the men stood and walked away. The tiospaye’s council rendered the harshest possible penalty, freeing us to pursue individual justice.
“Come on!” Cut said, performing that miraculous maneuver that took him from seat to standing in a single, graceful movement. We recovered our ponies, waved
our thanks to the important men of the band, and headed out to locate the trail of the two fugitives. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stone Knife wave to the east.
“This way!” I cried, bringing Long Wind sharply right. Cut followed without question. Before long we crossed the trail of two ponies stretched out in headlong flight.
Too smart to rush after them, Cut let the men wear out their mounts. We adopted a trot both Arrow and Long could maintain all day. Only when tracks indicated the ponies ahead of us slowed did he urge Arrow into a gallop. Wi, the sun, burned the blue from the sky and left it liverish, but we pushed ahead. We crossed a freshet and paused for a drink and to allow the animals to blow, reasoning the men ahead of us had done the same. During this respite, Cut eyed the trail in the grass on the other side of the rill with suspicion. He rose and walked a short distance.
“They doubled back,” he said upon his return. “They went up or down this creek. It is not so large as to hide the tracks of two ponies. You walk upstream, I’ll go down.”
Cut was right. The two had split up. I trailed the one who fled north. My quarry kept to the water for a league before breaking east again. I tracked him into the darkness of night as long as I dared and then made a cold camp.
By midmorning the next day, the apples in front of me were growing fresher. At high sun, I raised a horseman in the distance. Of course, he could see me as well. He urged his pony into a fast run, which gained him little. Long kept a steady lope, and by the time the man’s pony was winded, my mount still had a great deal left. Abruptly the brave wheeled and took a stand. The broken, discordant tones of his death chant came across the distance. He would run no more.
I was near enough to see the shock on his face as he realized it was a white man who came for him. He threw up his rifle and wasted a ball. It did not even pass close enough to hear. He began the cumbersome effort of reloading until he realized I was too close. Dropping the weapon, he seized his tomahawk. I paid him the honor of shooting him from the saddle—an honor because I was not about to engage in hand-to-hand combat with a fully grown Sioux warrior. I respected their abilities too much for that.
