"Children who will someday grow up and learn to shoot rifles."
Haienwa'tha watched the men assemble on their destriers and head for the ruins. He looked around in horror at the eager looks on their cruelly painted faces. Keewassee called out his name and waved for him to hurry up, "You're riding with me up front."
His legs felt numb and stiff as he walked, as if they were attached to strings and someone else was moving them step by step. He watched himself climb onto his destrier as if he were far away, observing everything that happened from outside of himself. He looked around at the men and thought, Where is Lakhpia-Sha?
Toquame Keewassee let out a fierce scream and raced forward, pumping his fist in the air. All of the men cried out in high-pitched voices and charged after him, filling the air with wet, swirling dust that stung Haienwa'tha's eyes and stuck to his skin.
Haienwa'tha shielded his eyes and looked up at the storm clouds as black as smoke and headed after them. Sheets of mud began to spill off the sides of the hills ahead and water flooded the plains beneath them, sucking their destrier's hooves down with every step. Toquame Keewassee's men plodded through it, making their way toward the tall stone hills. "Get your weapons ready," Keewassee said. He lifted his own rifle and checked the digital screen. Wasichu writing flashed across it, but it didn't matter. The colors were green. Green meant ready.
Haienwa'tha had to shout over the thunder to be heard. "I am going to ride ahead and call Thathanka-Ska out!"
"No. You will stay with us."
"You said you would give him a chance!"
Toquame Keewassee spun, glaring at the boy, "You test me a little too much, I think. Your brother is a traitor and will meet his fate. Or do you rebel against me as well?"
"But you said!"
"And I will. One chance. It will be his decision what happens after that. But it will not be through your intervention or pleading or begging on his behalf. Am I clear?"
"Yes."
"Get in the back of the formation. You don't deserve to be up front with me."
Haienwa'tha stopped to let Keewassee and the rest of the older, more senior men, pass. There was no more lightning now and the rain was beginning to slow, leaving everything he saw a pallid, sickly grey.
Chapter 18: Thunderstruck
"You hear that?" Father Charles said. He looked up at the sky and shook his head, "Weather didn't smell like a storm was coming. Where the hell did that come from?"
Jem saw the dark clouds ahead and said, "Lightning's no good out here without cover. Start looking for a cave."
The preacher pulled the Beothuk woman's destrier closer to his wagon, "We gotta wake her up. If lighting spooks her animal, she'll get thrown off and trampled."
"She's been awake for over an hour," Jem said. "Couldn't you hear how she was breathing?"
"She weren't breathing no different than she was before!"
Jem shrugged and said, "Suit yourself. Don't go sticking your fingers near her face though, she'll bite off the ones you got left."
Father Charles reached down and shook her destrier's shoulders, "Hey, you awake? I'm not kidding. If you're awake, you need to say so because we got lightning rolling in and it could get bad real quick for you."
The preacher continued to plead and cajole for her to get up until Jem looked back at him and said, "I thought you knew about these people."
"I know more than you'll ever know, young man."
Jem sighed and stopped his destrier and kicked both legs over to drop down. He went came around the side of the animal where her legs were dangling and said, "You gonna wake up nicely or not?"
She kept laying there, not moving.
Jem shrugged and swatted her across the backside. It was like pissing into an electric fence. She went batshit crazy with screaming and thrashing, trying to kick Jem and reach him enough to claw his face off with her bound hands. Jem put his hands up and laughed, "I tried to be nice about it."
Father Charles had to struggle to keep her destrier from bucking as he shouted, "Nobody's going to lay another finger on you, I swear it. Calm down before you get thrown!"
She hissed and grunted at Jem, cursing him in a garbled mix of native, English, and outrage. He came around her front side and said, "Listen, I'm gonna untie you. You can run off if you want, but I ain't giving you your weapons back. It's getting dangerous out here, so you're welcome to come with us."
She spat at him and said, "Go to hell, wasichu!"
"Not a doubt in my mind," he said. He grabbed her arms and held them fast, "Stop struggling so I can cut the rope. Keep moving around like that and pretty soon people will think you and the old man here are part of some weird cult together."
Father Charles stared at him, "Aren't you tired of that yet?"
Jem cocked his head to the side in thought for a moment and said, "Nope." He cut the rope between the woman's boots and moved away as she instantly swung her feet back onto her destrier and bolted forward, getting out of their reach.
A blue trident of lightning sparkled above her on the path and she stopped. She spun her destrier around, eyes glaring, "I want my things back!"
"I'd normally ride ahead of you and leave them, but we ain't going anywhere with those lightning forks on the horizon."
"Then give them to me and I'll go," she said.
"Yeah, okay," Jem chuckled. "Fat chance."
"If you think I'm going into a cave with you and him unprotected, you are a fool."
"There's nothing we could do to you in there that we couldn't have done when you were passed out," Jem said.
The woman sneered at Jem and snapped her reins to ride off when Father Charles held up the picture of his daughter and said, "Wait! Wait just a second. Look at this. Please. This is my little girl. I wanted to show you what she looks like when you came to. That's why I was keeping you so close to me. I was hoping you could tell me if you seen her?"
The woman looked at the preacher and then at the photograph for a moment before she held up her hand but did not move. Father Charles got down from his wagon and walked toward her. Jem put his hand up to block the old man, but he pushed it out of the way and said, "It's all right." He walked up to her holding the photograph out and said, "Just please don't do anything to it. It's the only one I have of her."
She took the picture from him and looked at it closely before saying, "I have not seen this girl. But now that I have seen this, I will not forget her."
"Ok," the preacher said. He had to look down at his boots and swallow hard. Expectation and hope died in his throat, leaving a hard walnut of shame. He didn't lift his head as he reached out to take the picture back.
"What is her name?" she said.
"Wendy. Wendy Buchinsky."
"I am Ichante," she said.
"What tribe are you from?"
"I have no tribe," Ichante said. "I am like her. A half-breed."
The preacher winced, "I never let anybody call Wendy that. Sounds like some sort of damn farm animal."
She looked at him evenly, then said, "Did you know the man you seek is not far from this place?"
Father Charles' eyes shot up to her, "What did you say?"
"Toquame Keewassee is camped nearby. He searches for the remaining women of the Hopituh Shi-nu-mu to stamp them out."
"Yes," Father Charles whispered. "Yes! That is why we came here! He's nearby? He's nearby, Jem! Come on!" The old man snatched the picture out of her hand and ran back to his wagon. He grabbed onto the rungs and swung himself up into the carriage like a monkey, then snapped the reins so hard his destrier protested. Within seconds, they were worked into a full gallop and flying past the native woman.
Jem watched him take off and shouted, "What the hell's wrong with you, lady?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why'd you have to go and tell him like that? He's heading right into the storm now."
"Should I have lied to him?"
"No," Jem said. He grabbed her gunbelt and tossed it at her, "Maybe j
ust a little more discreet."
Ichante strapped the belt around her waist and checked her gun and knife. She reached into her shirt and slid a long, thin dagger out from between her breasts. "You missed this one, wasichu," she said.
"Sorry to disappoint you." He folded his hands across his saddle horn and said, "Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Get on, then. I want to make sure you ain't following us."
"I'm not following you," she laughed. "I'm coming with you."
"Like hell."
She snickered at him as she rode past, heading in the preacher's direction. Jem raced to catch up with her, "Hey! This is an invitation only event, and you weren't asked, lady. Turn around and get goin'."
"Who do you think you are to talk to me this way? I should cut your tongue out of your jaw and feed it to my destrier."
"I'd like to see you try."
"Fine. After we are finished with Keewassee, you and I will spend some time alone together and find out!"
"Fine!" Jem shouted, having to kick his destrier in the sides to keep up with her. "I'm starting to think I should have spanked you a lot harder."
***
One of the scouts sprinted up the overgrown steps toward the dwelling, barely making it inside before she announced, "Men are coming!"
Hehewuti stabbed a crooked finger at Thathanka-Ska and said, "If you have led them to us, you will be the first to die, boy."
A dozen women and children of the Hopituh Shi-nu-mu crowded inside the ancient room, the same as the next two beside them. The clay roofs were so short few of them could stand straight inside them. "We will leave then, grandmother," Lakhpia-Sha said. "We will lead the men away from you."
"Too late," she hissed. "They might see where you ran from. Everyone be quiet and do not make a sound. If these men want to fight, they will find that there are still warriors of the Hopituh Shi-nu-mu who will oblige them."
"Here they come," one of the women said. Each of them covered their children's mouths and bent low to the ground, trying to stay away from the windows. Some of them whispered songs to content their little ones. Some of them prayed.
One of the women crawled across the ground and grabbed Thathanka-Ska's arm. He turned to see the girl that Haienwa'tha had spent so much time staring at. It stabbed him to look at her and remember the time they'd spent together before the arrival of the snake Keewassee. "What do you want?" he whispered.
Kachina said, "Where is your brother? Why did he not come with you?"
Thathanka-Ska pushed her hand away and said, "He could not come."
"Why not? Where is he?" she said.
Tell her he's dead. Tell her he met someone else and ran off. Tell her anything but the horrible truth, he thought. He was about to speak when the woman near the window said, "There are two men. Wasichu. And a woman."
The word wasichu spread around the room quickly and Thathanka-Ska crawled to the window and slid up alongside the wall. He saw the man on the large wagon and two riders on destriers, one of them a man in a crumpled black hat that he cocked back to wipe the sweat from his face. Thathanka-Ska let out an involuntary cry of joy and said, "El-Halcon!"
Jem spun around in his saddle at the sound with both of his guns cocked and aimed at the small windows carved into the cliffs above. He watched in amazement as a young man emerged from inside the rocks and clambered down the hillside, racing toward him on foot with his arms wide shouting, "El-Halcon! El-Halcon!"
"Bug? What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere, boy?" He dropped down off his destrier and embraced the boy, stepping back to admire how tall he'd grown. "Look at you. You sprouted up like a damn weed. Where's your brother?"
Thathanka-Ska pulled him by the hand, trying to drag him up to the dwellings, chattering to him in Beothuk.
"Where's your brother? And where's Ichabod?"
Ichabod stuck his head up from the window and waved, and Jem waved back to him. He stopped moving completely as windows inside three of the dwellings suddenly filled with the silent, terrified faces of native women and children. An elderly woman came to the window beside the boy and looked down at Jem with disdain, muttering something in a creaking, raspy voice.
"She says that she prayed to her ancestors for deliverance, and that she does not know what she could have done to anger them to cause them to mock her so," Ichante said.
Jem looked back at Ichante and winked, "I guess I'm just full of disappointing women these days."
He followed the boy up the hidden steps that were carved into the rocks, trying not to slip on the vines and brush spilling over them. Thathanka-Ska waved for him to come inside the first dwelling and Jem ducked under the doorway and stopped. "I'll be damned," he whispered. He looked around the room at all of the women and children who stared at him with a mixture of terror and amazement.
"They've never seen a wasichu before," Ichante said from behind him. "All they've heard are stories of your horrors."
Jem waved slightly, "Hello everyone. No horrors to see today, sorry."
Lakhpia-Sha came around his side and hugged Jem briefly and spoke his name. Jem patted the boy on the back and looked around the room. "Where's Squawk?" He looked at Ichante and put his hand on Thathanka-Ska's head, "This one has a brother. Ask him where he is."
She and the boy spoke back and forth rapidly, and Bug's voice grew soft and forced as he said his father's name. Ichante nodded gently and said, "Their father crossed over and sent them here to find their new Chief. Something went wrong, but he won't say what."
Jem cocked his head back at Bug, "Thasuka Witko is dead?"
Father Charles was shouting something from below, loud enough and urgent enough that Jem let go of the boy and stuck his head out the window, "What the hell are you yelling about?"
"We've got company!" The old man pointed at the end of the trail at the cliffs fluvial slope where a large group of Beothuk warriors were crossing the stream and coming right for them.
Jem cursed and withdrew from the window, looking around in a panic, suddenly realizing they were trapped. "What weapons do you all have?"
Ichante chatted with the women and said, "They have bows and arrows. No rifles. Some oil to set the arrows on fire or pour on their enemies if they try to come up the steps."
"No fire!" Jem said. "Not with all these kids in here." He looked back through the window and saw that the Beothuk had held up a hundred yards away at the sight of Father Charles and his wagon. The old man was sitting in the driver's seat watching them. The Beothuk warriors were carrying heavy weapons. "Damn. Damn, damn, damn," Jem whispered. His hands were slick with sweat and he wiped them on his pants and said, "Everybody listen up. Nobody makes a sound. I'm going to go down there and tell them to beat it, but if they figure out you're up here, it's all over."
Ichante explained to the others quickly, pressing her finger to her lips to tell the children to all stay quiet. Jem swallowed hard and said, "Okay. Here goes nothing."
"Wasichu?" Ichante said.
Jem stopped at the door, "What?"
"You know this will not work."
"I know," he said.
"But you'll still try it?"
He smiled stupidly at her and said, "Yeah. At least until the shooting starts."
Ichante slapped him across the rear end so hard that it stung her hand and said, "Good luck."
Jem hustled down the steps and ran to his destrier. The Beothuk advanced slowly, held back by their leader's raised hand. Jem took measure of the man, seeing his bald head and long curving braid like the tail of a snake dangling to his chest. "Toquame Keewassee," Jem said. He rode up next to the preacher, "All right, listen, old timer. Here's the plan."
"No, you listen," Father Charles said. "I'm gonna do all the talking, and you just stay behind me."
"This is no time for craziness, padre. I'm not letting you commit suicide just because you're looking for revenge. You'll take the rest of us with you."
Father Charles looked ba
ck at him, his thin eyes mere slits in the sun, and said, "Have faith, Jem Clayton. I didn't come alone. I brought the power of God with me."
"Oh, well, why didn't you say so before…" Jem's voice fell silent as Father Charles reached under his seat and started pressing buttons. He watched the old man's seat spring up hydraulically from the carriage.
"You better back up, son," the preacher said.
Gas hissed from the wagon as the hinges popped open and the wooden frame began to come apart. The side panels flew off to reveal a massive construct of gears and cylinders inside. The center cylinder extended upwards almost fifty feet and whined as it rotated down, forming a long, wide-mouthed canon aimed straight at the Beothuk warriors.
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