Warrior (Freelancer Book 2)

by Irving, Terry

  "Thanks." Rick dug out his Zippo and did his trick to light the cigarette. The driver watched curiously.

  "Cute trick. Looks like an old habit."

  "More of a good luck charm." Rick inhaled the rich smoke. "It seems to keep me alive."

  "Hey, if you find something like that, you don't ever want to give it up."

  Eve emerged from the outhouse. Rick noticed that the warped wooden door even had the classic crescent moon shape cut in it. She gasped for air. Clearly, she'd been holding her breath.

  "Bad?" Rick asked.

  "Only if you like to breathe. Damn. They had a stick in there, so you could push everyone else's crap aside." She took another deep breath. "I think that's a new record for all-around stench."

  The old man laughed. "You've been off the rez too long. You'll be asking for paper next."

  "Are you kidding? You haven't used a true New York City restroom like the one in Penn Station. Makes this seem like a field of clover."

  Rick headed in the other direction. "I guess I don't really want to sit down all that much."

  When he returned, Eve was leaning against the car smoking. Her face was closed and serious. "What's up?" Rick asked.

  "I'll tell you on the road." She snapped the butt off into the asphalt parking lot and pulled her helmet on. "Dawn's coming, trooper. We need to push if we're going to—" She stopped suddenly then simply said, "We need to get going."

  For a second, Rick thought she was worried about the old man but then realized she was trying to avoid talking about "men's business." He buckled his helmet, pulled the bike down from the stand, and backed it up far enough to avoid the front of the car on the way out. Eve waited until he got on and then settled on to the rear seat.

  Rick tossed a salute at the driver. "Thanks. Much appreciated."

  The man responded in Cheyenne.

  Eve answered sharply and whatever she said reduced the old man to a combination of coughing and laughter that rendered him helpless.

  As they pulled away, Rick asked, "What did you say?"

  "You don't want to know. Let's just say I was defending your…honor."

  "Humph." Rick turned the lights on after they'd pulled back on the main road. It was only 4:30, but there was already a dim glow on the eastern horizon. "Well, there are no mountains from here on out, straight and boring all the way to Montana. I'll use the spare tank to get us there so there will be no stops."

  "There should be someone to meet us," she said. "The old guy was telling me about the phone call he got from his cousin in Lame Deer just before he came out to wait for us. Apparently, all kinds of strange people are hanging around outside the reservation, and whoever is behind them has some serious clout."

  Rick got the Ducati up to a comfortable rev zone in fifth gear. Even after all tonight’s riding, it was still difficult to believe they were doing well over 115.

  Eve continued, "The Sheriff's Departments of both Powder River and Rosebud Counties have let them put up roadblocks on the main roads."

  "'Let them'?"

  "That's what I said. Old Buck said the deputies weren't actually helping, but they aren't making them move their trucks out of the road either."

  Rick thought a moment, "Any idea where the roadblocks are?"

  "Right on the border of the reservation. The Tribal Police may not get a lot of respect, but they aren't going to let a bunch of strangers set up shop on their territory. So, do you have a plan?"

  "Not yet, but there's a whole lot of miles still to go. We'll think of something."

  Rick stopped the Ducati and looked at the small bridge across the Tongue River as the first knife blade of gold light lit the top of the hills far to the west.

  No cars, no pickups, and no armed men waiting.

  Eve unzipped the top of her jacket. The temperature was beginning to rise. "Well?" she asked.

  "I can't see anything." Rick kept sweeping the land ahead as it emerged from the dim of the early dawn. "But aren't 'eagle eyes' supposed to be your contribution to this partnership?"

  "No. I bring legal advice and the hard-earned wisdom of the Ivy League. The great jungle warrior here is the big white guy at the front of the bike."

  "Well, big white guy doesn't see anyone."

  The main road would have led them through Ashland and almost certainly a checkpoint, but they'd cut off to the south and taken a bone-rattling ride down a road that was no more than used motor oil sprayed over dirt and gravel. Rick thought it was a miracle they hadn't blown a tire.

  Now, they were looking at the small bridge that crossed a small creek and entered the reservation through the town of Birney. It would be only an hour's run up to the tribal council office at Lame Deer.

  If there wasn't anyone waiting at the bridge.

  Rick toed the bike up into first gear. "Well, to quote a great general's last words, 'Hurrah boys! We've caught them napping!'"

  "Gee, and here I'd always been taught Custer's last words were, 'Where the hell did all these fucking Indians come from?'"

  "Makes a lot more sense that way." Rick opened the clutch and the Ducati leaped forward. "Here goes nothing."

  The rough surface of the road cut the bike's speed. Rick couldn't get above third gear without feeling the front wheel going airborne and losing its grip. When men with rifles came out from behind the trees right before the bridge, he knew he couldn't get up enough speed to cut through them.

  He slowed and stopped only yards away. Facing them were five young men, wearing jeans, denim jackets, and shirts still stiff from store shelves, and carrying identical AR-15 rifles. At least Rick assumed they were the civilian version. As far as he could see, they looked like military issue M-16's.

  Rick would have bet good money that they all had identical square scars on their upper arms.

  "Hey, assholes!"

  The five men jerked and spun as they heard the loud voice coming from behind them. At least a dozen young men with the round faces and long hair of native Cheyenne were walking across the short bridge. There were some hunting rifles and at least one AK-47, but most had shotguns at their shoulders. Several were wearing M-65 field jackets, and Rick could tell by the careful way they moved as a group that they all had combat experience.

  The one who had yelled was wearing a policeman's jacket with a baseball cap. He called out, "Tribal Police. Place your weapons on the ground and step away to the side of the road. I'm Sergeant Frank Kaline, and these men with me are an authorized posse under the laws of the Sotaeo'o and Tsitsistas peoples. You have no right to be here and you need to leave."

  Two of the men standing in front of Rick moved slightly, beginning to bring their rifles to their shoulders. Instantly, three of the men in the front line of the posse dropped to prone firing positions to clear sight lines for the men in back and a dozen weapons shifted aim. The sound of safeties snapping off rippled through the still air.

  The two men froze.

  "Maybe, you didn't understand me," Kaline said. "So I'll translate it into 'white trash' for you. Put those fucking weapons down and move the fuck over to the side of the road. Now!"

  Slowly, the men placed their rifles on the road and began to back away.

  Suddenly, one reached into his jacket and turned toward Rick and Eve. A shotgun blast hit him in the right shoulder, and he continued the spin as the pistol in his hand flew into the brush. Kaline said without looking back, "I sure hope that was you, Herb."

  The man who had fired the shotgun racked the pump. "Yep."

  "Good. That was birdshot, right?"

  "Rock salt."

  Kaline grinned. "Shit. That'll sting." Then his face became serious. "To my knowledge that was the only non-lethal load any of us are carrying. I might be wrong, but I'd say the rest of you should consider the odds before you do anything as stupid as your buddy there just tried."

  The man who'd been shot was bent over and moaning, a high, whistling sound of pain, but no blood stained his new denim jacket.

&nbs
p; "Whoever you are on the bike," Kaline continued. "Get moving before any of us gets a good look at you. In a couple of minutes, all of us are going to forget any of this happened, and it would be helpful if you were out of sight by then."

  Rick opened the clutch and rode across the bridge into the reservation. It was smooth paved road on the other side, and the Ducati was up to cruising speed in less than a minute.

  As they approached the outskirts of Lame Deer, Rick slowed to the speed limit for the second time since they left Oglala. As they passed the intersection where Sweet Medicine Road crossed Cheyenne Avenue, a man stepped out from a copse of trees on the left and waved them down.

  He was tall and thin, dressed in jeans with a silver belt buckle, a faded red checked shirt with pearl buttons, and a battered Resistol hat that might have once been white but now was the same dull red as the ever-present dust. His face was weathered and lined, but Rick thought he could have been any age between 40 and 75.

  Rick slowed; the man held up both hands with the palms empty and then gestured for him to pull the motorcycle over to the left. Rick asked Eve, "What do you think? Do we stop?"

  “Hell, yes." Her response was unequivocal. "He's definitely a Cheyenne, but I've never seen him before, and I know everyone on the reservation at least by sight. That makes him important."

  The tall man spoke to Eve first, a soft murmur of words in Cheyenne. She nodded once, dismounted from the motorcycle, and walked over to the shade of the trees where she took off her helmet and sat resting against a tree trunk—pointedly looking away from the road.

  Once she was seated, the man turned to Rick and continued to speak in Cheyenne. Rick shook his head and said, "I can recognize 'whirlwind,' the name Eve gave me, but the rest is beyond me. Could we change to English?"

  The man laughed, lines around his eyes showing that this was a familiar reaction. "That's a good name for you, Whirlwind. After all, you beat the wind to get here."

  "It was fun." Rick took off his helmet and rubbed his hair vigorously. "I haven't had the chance to dance on a hot bike for way too long."

  "You see it as a dance?" The man's face was thoughtful and approving. "That's good. It's fitting that what you have carried has been returned in a dance."

  Rick kept his face blank and didn't say anything.

  The other man seemed pleased. "You have the patience of a Cheyenne. Most white men just can't wait to start talking. I guess you still need proof that I'm the right person to hand off your burden."

  He stuck out his hand. "I'm Charlie Walksalone, and I'm one of the Arrow Men and a member of the Council of 44."

  Rick pulled off his motorcycle glove and shook his hand. It was a firm grip with the calluses of a working rancher. "Pleased to meet you. I believe I have something to give you." He paused a second, "That is, if you can say who gave it to me."

  Walksalone's smile disappeared and a deep sorrow filled his eyes. "Peter Talltrees was a good and brave warrior. They found him a few days ago. It obviously took a long time for them to kill him, but from the way they took their anger out on his body, he died in silence. I know that he declared you an honorable warrior worthy of carrying the Arrows. He broke our traditions, but he would never have done that if he hadn't felt you had a clear soul and an honest mind." He chuckled briefly. "That and Pete was a Pawnee, and they never get anything right."

  He continued in a sober voice. "Now I need to ask you. Will you give me what you carry willingly and expecting nothing in return?"

  Rick didn't know exactly why but he answered with the respect he'd been taught to give a senior officer. "Yes, sir, I will."

  Rick unzipped his leather jacket and pulled the leather loop over his head. He had never actually looked at the pouch he carried. It was decorated with dots and loops in colored paints and sewn with rawhide strips whose varied hues indicated they were from different animals. It felt both very old and recently made, an impossible combination that seemed to make sense.

  He sat on the motorcycle looking at it for a moment and then handed it to Walksalone. The older man took it carefully. He studied the pouch closely on both sides, held it to his chest with his eyes closed for a long moment, and then ritually raised it to the four directions, ending up holding it above Rick's head.

  Again, he spoke in Cheyenne, and Rick listened to the graceful flow of the unknown words. It sounded like speaking and singing combined as if they had never been parted, and it went on for a long time.

  Finally, Walksalone put the loop around his own neck, and the pouch disappeared under the red-checked shirt. "You have given our medicine back freely, but out of respect for the medicine we must pay a respectable ransom. The first Arrow was returned for a gift of 100 horses."

  The man's smile returned. “How are you fixed for horses?

  Rick laughed. "Man, all those horses in Washington? I'd have to graze them on the White House lawn."

  "OK, how about a hot shower, a hot meal, and an inconspicuous lift back to your bus in Oglala?"

  "That would be more than enough."

  "Well, it will be a start." Walksalone called to Eve, and then turned back to Rick, putting his hand on his shoulder. "We still owe you. Someday you must ask us for a service, a serious one that is worthy of what you have returned to us. Remember, you must do this."

  Rick nodded.

  Walksalone laughed and clapped his hands. "All right. Let's get you two washed, fed, and on your way. You're going to have to excuse me, though. I have some serious business with the Tribal Council. We need to talk about coal leases and exactly where we're going to tell Excacoal they can shove them."

  "Come here, granddaughter!" He gave Eve a hug and a kiss on the top of her head. "You and your 'whirlwind' have done well. Now, it is the old men's time to fight."

  CHAPTER 15

  May 20, 1973, Washington, DC

  "OK, that was Kanawha, and here's Jocelyn." Rick was leaning far over the horizontal steering wheel of the VW bus and peering to the right trying to pick out the road signs in the gathering dusk. "Wait a minute. Jennifer? That's not fair. You can’t have two ‘J’s in a row."

  In the passenger seat, Eve smiled. "You can't expect the city planners to be consistent all the time."

  "Hey, this is Washington. A 'foolish consistency' is practically mandatory." Rick sat up and began to haul the bus into a right turn. Even after all the miles they'd put on it, it still felt heavy and unwieldy. "Ingomar. Do you know why it’s named 'Ingomar'?"

  "You asked me the same thing about Tunlaw and I told you it was 'walnut' spelled backward," Eve said.

  "That was half an explanation at best," Rick replied as he straightened out on the quiet residential street. "Why not just name it 'walnut' and shove it back about five streets, so it fits the alphabet? And what does Kanawha mean?"

  "It's a river in West Virginia and it's undoubtedly named after the original inhabitants once they were safely killed or driven away." Eve began to pack away the cigarettes, snacks, and other detritus of a long road trip. "I will, however, admit that 'Ingomar' has me stumped. Some sort of Viking?"

  "A Wagnerian dwarf was my first guess." Rick shook his head. "No, I had to look it up to solve the riddle. He was the hero of a play named, obviously, 'Ingomar.' Well, ‘Ingomar the Barbarian,' to be precise. It was apparently a monster hit before the Civil War, and cities and counties all across the country are named after him. And one street in Washington."

  He smiled ruefully. "Only my roommates would send me a coded letter where I had to break the code first and then answer a series of riddles to find the address. I think it's on the 2100 block of Ingomar, but it could easily be on the other side of the city completely. Or in Nebraska, for that matter."

  He slowed the bus and continued down what was now a single-lane street with cars parked on both sides, and houses perched on high banks at least a story above the street. It felt like a ravine. "But I think it's right along here."

  It had been a long and, thankfully, boring journey f
rom Montana. After a night’s sleep back at the cabin on Muddy Creek Road, they'd been stuffed into plywood boxes in back of a pickup truck with bales of hay on top of the boxes. They had air mattresses to cushion the bumps, but the two-day ride back to Oglala was dusty and claustrophobic.

  They picked up the VW Camper from the Iron Crow family and took the old Lincoln Highway east. The first coast-to-coast paved road, it was slow and relaxed with old restaurants and tourist courts that seemed to have never left the 1930’s.

  In Gettysburg, they'd stopped and walked through the battlefield. The numbers of dead and wounded there had struck Rick as incredible—50 thousand in just three days. He could see why there were so many monuments and memorials. The nation had lost a generation.

  It was an educational experience for Eve as well. The cavalry companies and battalions that she knew from their part in the Indian wars were born in a very different conflict, learning their trade by killing each other. Although, as she pointed out, at least it was a fair fight, and damn few women and children were involved.

  Standing on Little Round Top, even she was silenced as she considered the courage of the Confederate soldiers who assaulted such an unassailable position. There, they were met by the equal courage of the men from Maine who fought until their bullets ran out and then attacked with their bare hands.

  All the way, they watched for strange men with peculiar scars dressed in just-bought clothes. It was easy to do since just about every car and truck would pass the VW as it struggled up hills, but no one slowed to stay behind them or waited at the next turnoff.

  There was plenty of time to talk while driving and during the slow lazy evenings when they'd find a secluded spot, camp, cook dinner on a little hibachi, and watch the sun go down. They went back over every event, beginning with the "security arrest" in Wounded Knee and the coordinated fire on Indian and law enforcement positions the night of April 26, and how it had broken the AIM occupation.