Old Teva’s mouth hardened, and even her dessicated jaw became firm. “Red Dagger,” she spat. “Get him!”
Gyva rose to leave. It was dark, and the night was passing. She would have to hurry.
Gyva’s blankets were cold and the fire was waning when she made a display of going to bed for the night. Farson’s armed men were spaced in regular intervals along the edges of the Indian encampment, half of them on guard, half of them asleep. Gyva knew the white men were tired, too. The trail was no easier for them than for the Chickasaw, and if Farson had not promised them a share of the money he intended to make in his putative bargain with the Memphis slave-traders, some of them would already have quit the march, militia responsibilities notwithstanding. Gyva knew the white men—their sudden, bloody enthusiasms, their quick discouragement, their easy disillusion. They had not lived in these mountains for thousands of years. They did not know in their souls the peaceful immanence of time, the failure of patience. They did not know how to wait.
But she did. She watched as first one sentry and then another grew bored standing watch and betook themselves to sit beneath trees. Soon they were nodding, and not much later they dozed: She slipped from her blankets and crawled across the damp grass. In moments she was in the bushes, and then in the forest itself. North, Farson had said. The Choctaw village. The night had but a fragile bend of moon, but star-shine lit the woods, and she made good progress. After not too long a time, she could smell the village: leather, campfires, horses. The Choctaw had a smell to them, too, of course, but Gyva did not wish to think of it.
The village lay before her, as she peered from behind the shield of underbrush at the edge of the forest. She knew what to look for: a wigwam before which stood the totem of the chief. And there it was. Did Red Dagger sleep with a wife? Did he have a wife? Or did he spend his waning nights delighting in the eager charms of obeisant young women who would do anything he asked, and more?
Gyva was here to kill one person, and one person only. Like Bright Flower and the others, she had a knife good enough for the cutting of meat, the slashing of hide; and such a knife was also sufficiently strong to slip through the flesh of a man. But such a quick thrust was too charitable. She remembered little Andrew, bleeding from the fall upon the rocky ledge, coughing and shivering against the coldness of water and wind, and she unable to warm him. She recalled laying down his tiny body next to the others, quickness gone from it forever, and his vibrancy fled as if it had never been. She remembered casting the beads of her necklace upon the graves of son and husband. No, a knife was too easy.
The sentinels paced and peered from the borders of the village, pausing, looking. They were nervous. Jackals were in the territory, and even jackals guarding vanquished Chickasaw might find it in their unpredictable minds to make a raid.
Gyva moved along and beneath and around the underbrush feeling her way, coming nearer and nearer to the wigwam of Red Dagger, and studying the plants and leaves. Finally she touched what she was looking for: the thick, supple vines of a climbing flower. Deftly she cut a long length of vine and wrapped it carefully around her wrist, then continued to move along the floor of the forest. Red Dagger’s wigwam loomed against the night sky, not far from her. She would have to cross open ground, beneath starlight. The sentinels paced. She waited.
The two sentinels met at the juncture of their rounds, spoke a few quiet words to one another, and separated, going in opposite directions. Gyva did not waste a moment. Half crouching, she shot soundlessly from the covering foliage and dashed to the shadow of Red Dagger’s wigwam. By the time she had settled to her knees, the little knife was doing its work, slashing a flap in the skins that covered the shelter. And by the time the sentinels turned to retrace the steps of their appointed rounds, Gyva was inside the wigwam, the flap pulled shut, and she was breathing—barely breathing—in the inner darkness.
And by his breathing did she first have awareness of the presence of the perfidious chieftain. Heavy and rasping, it came deep and regular. That he should have life, and little Andrew none! That this piece of Choctaw scum should dream with full belly while Jason lay cold in the earth, while Torch-of-the-Sun fought for life, a captive on the trail of tears! Soon, by fading light from the embers of Red Dagger’s fire, and by starlight from the smokehole in the roof of the wigwam, Gyva made out the bundled outline of the chief’s sleeping form. He was alone. The Great Spirit was with her.
Carefully she crept closer, examining the chief. He might, in daylight, be a bold, sagacious, duplicitous leader, but asleep he was an old man, and he slept like one. His mouth was half-open, and a sheen of drool coated his chin. Now and then, involuntarily, he puckered his lips, and they flapped together with an obscene kissing sound. He lay on his side, half curled into himself, his bearskin blanket bunched at his midriff and pulled tight beneath his chin. An aging baby, slipping day by day into the great darkness. Well, he was not going to slip anymore. He was going to plummet.
And he slept in his moccasins, too, this bloody old coot! With deft fingers Gyva unlaced the long rawhide thongs by which the footwear was bound, tied the two lengths together, fashioned a loop on either end, and slipped the loops first around his ankles and then—carefully, carefully—around his wrists. Red Dagger stirred as she eased his arms around, but he did not awaken. Then she unraveled the vine from her wrist, fashioned a noose on one end, and curled it over his head. The free end she fastened to his wrists, which were bound behind him by the rawhide. The vine was taut. By pressing downward on his arms, it would grow even tauter, pulling the noose tightly around his throat, cutting off his breath.
Abruptly she rolled him onto his stomach and put pressure on his bound arms.
Red Dagger awoke with a jolt of pain and surprise, tried to cry out, felt his breath and his voice cut off by the vine around his neck. He thrashed about wildly for a moment, then realized that his struggles were only making his plight worse, and stopped fighting. He sought his assailant with his eyes, showed surprise when he found a woman looking back at him.
“Do not make a sound and I will release the pressure somewhat,” she said. “I must tell you certain things.”
Red Dagger jerked his head, a gesture of agreement if not of submission.
Gradually, so that she might reapply the pressure if the chief attempted to cry for help, Gyva allowed the noose to loosen.
Red Dagger could call for no one, not yet. He spent his time gasping for air. “Who…are you? What—?”
“I am Dey-Lor-Gyva. Chickasaw. I was Delia Randolph. You killed my husband. Because of your raid on Harrisville, my husband and child died. Because ’ of you, my people have been cast out of our homeland.”
Red Dagger could not help but smirk. All these things she had recounted—because of him they had come to pass. Mighty deeds!
An instant later he was sorry to have betrayed such glee. Gyva pushed down on his wrists, the vine tightened, and he gulped and gulped for air that was not there. When he had first seen that it was a woman who accosted him, he had relaxed. What could a woman do? He could deal with her. He was very confident of that. So he smirked, and—
She jerked the noose tight and let him suffer. He felt explosions of brilliant light going off inside his skull before she slackened the noose again. He was not afraid, not Red Dagger, but he was not so confident anymore, not at all.
“Why are you here?” he croaked.
“Revenge.”
He choked for air, thinking, Revenge is a thing for warriors.
He twisted his head to one side and looked into her eyes. They did not move from his own. They blazed. She smiled and a shudder passed through his body. He was looking into the eyes of a warrior as implacable as any he had ever beheld. And he knew that he was about to die. But his heart would not permit him to believe it.
“For your husband, for your child, I am sorry,” he said, bargaining for time. “We did destroy Harrisville. It was a glorious thing, and had to be done.”
“It
is more than that,” Gyva replied.
What else? Red Dagger wondered. Oh, yes—Torch-of-the-Sun!
“As you know,” he choked, “your chieftain did not join us in the battle—”
He suddenly felt the vine tighten around his neck, and her voice came hard in his ear as he choked for air, one word after another, like slaps: “You did not wait for his message and you disguised yourselves as Chickasaw!”
This time she kept the pressure on until he knew he was going to die. Then she released her grip, and let him swim up, up, back into the ocean of air that was sweeter than anything else on earth. It was a long time until he felt even half-alive. She was still there, a terrible presence. And, warrior though he was, had been, Red Dagger despaired. Still, he would not plead or babble. He would apologize, if that would do any good, and even if he meant not a word of it. But he would not grovel or whine or beg.
“I come,” she told him, “to avenge my chieftain and my people. Torch-of-the-Sun has more honor in his fingertip, in his glance, in his heartbeat, than do you in your whole body and entire life. He would avenge himself, were he able.”
“It was—the thing was—we had to destroy Chula Harjo,” gabbled Red Dagger, seeking to call up the image of the great jackal and thus win Gyva over to his point of view.
“Chula has more honor in a moment than do you in your lifetime circling the sun.”
That stung him, and he tried to cry out, but the noose was tight again.
“Farewell, Red Dagger,” she was saying. “In mere moments, you shall know what lies in wait for those Indians who manipulate and betray their own kind, who sully the bright blood, of our race.”
She twisted his head to the side, and Red Dagger saw those coal-dark eyes burning down on him, through him, as again he fell down and down and down to where there was no air, where there was nothing. His lungs were bursting, like the blown bladders of pigs that were used in sport, and his heart was pounding in his chest, in his head, and his blood was roaring. Just one breath, he thought desperately, just one breath! But then her words hovered in his mind—know what lies in wait—and the thought struck him as terribly important. He had always believed that a warrior who does his duty, holds his post with honor, would join He-Who-Dwells-in-the-Clear-Sky. He had always believed that he, as a chieftain, would meet the dark horseman Death and ride with him out beyond the fiery field of heaven, forever to romp in joy and glory, hunting in the fields that lay beyond the North Star. But now, suddenly, he doubted, he wondered. In the thrashing throes of death, he had to admit his blatant perfidy in betraying a promise to another chieftain, in lying to the Chickasaw, in duping them. He had to admit that what he had done was heinous, not only according to the code of honor, but even more so according to the canons of simple honesty.
What transpired when a renegade chieftain crossed the great divide? What hunting was provided for a warrior who had, with malicious intent, practiced deceit upon an ally, and thus destroyed his own blood brothers?
Gyva’s eyes were upon him when Red Dagger moved toward such terrible knowledge. She kept the noose tight and never flinched or wavered, simply pressed her weight upon him when his last violent struggles caused his body to jerk and writhe upon the earth.
Ah, the earth, he thought. So easy to come to, and so hard to leave…
It was then that Red Dagger perceived the horseman Death come for him, riding over black vistas, dark mountains, veiled in a cape as blue as infinity, darker than the skies beyond Orion. Red Dagger’s heart thundered when he saw the horseman, for he knew now that he had done great evil in these last days of his life, evil for which there was no longer time to make amends. Then Death was before him, and from beneath the eternal cape of night a skeletal hand reached for him. Trembling, Red Dagger touched Death with his soul. Heaven gave him one flashing instant to know he would have no reward. And the spirit of Red Dagger was extinguished forever from heaven and from earth.
Chapter XI
Fes Farson had posted his sentries for the night and given them their instructions. Then, nursing his lust along with a jug of whiskey, he sat against his rolled-up blankets and his saddle and considered how to get between the legs of that fetching little Bright Flower with a minimum of fuss. The more he thought about the swell of her breasts, the curve of her haunch, the more he had to have her.
All he had to do now was figure out how to do it. The chief couldn’t put up no fuss, nosiree, but Fes couldn’t just walk over there and put his John Thomas to the girl, because all them Indians was sleepin’ on the ground. Very least they would wake up. He could have the sentries tie up the men, true, but that would get ’em all het up, all that extry work, et cetera—and, what the hell, Fes Farson was not a man who had to have an army guard him while he got hisself a piece of tail, even red tail. Naw, there had to be a better way. Bright Flower, get ready, he thought.
He took another big slug of the drink and thought it over real hard. The Chickasaw had few good braves left, after the way Fes an’ Jackson had whupped ’em, but they were all savages, even or especially the women, an’ Fes was not about to get himself in a bind where a bunch of them squaws might see fit to retaliate onto his personal parts, a danger he might face should he be caught with his pants down, so to speak. The woods was the only place to do what he had in mind. So having decided on where, he had to go on to how, which was harder. Can’t go over and drag her out, because that would set ’em all hoppin’ and yelpin’. There must be a way, he thought.
He got to his feet and made his way between the sleeping bundles of the redskins. Slept almost jes’ like they was human, too, they surely did. Pretty soon he got over to where Flower and the chief was sleepin’. The chief was still breathin’. He saw the squaw’s eyes in the fire-lit darkness. Awake. An’ that would probably be one of them little knives pokin’ out from beneath her blanket.
“Nev’mind me,” he grunted, hardly able to restrain himself from jumping her right here. “Nev’mind me, I jes’ come to bring ya a message. That old woman wants ya.”
She looked a little surprised, but he could tell she believed him.
“Yeah, the one with the ugly mark on her face. She said tell you to meet her over there by that big rock, next to the clearing. I think it’s got something to do with that Gyva woman,” he added, congratulating himself on a beautiful improvisation. Talk about competition, he could for sure an’ hell see there was some between Delia and this Flower, what with the same boyfriend and all. Hell, you could take any woman an’ bet your bottom dollar she would still be jealous about some man. Well, that was natural, wasn’t it? That was the way good ol’ God made the world. Bein’ jealous about a man was perfectly understandable, ’specially if that man happened to be ol’ Fes.
After giving the squaw his message, Fes wandered away, pretending to check that everything was quiet. But once he got out of sight of the campfires, he went hell-for-leather over to that big rock, trying to smother his expectant chortle as he saw Bright Flower, back there among the Indians, rise up an’ think it over an’ wait around and think it over some more.
Finally she headed toward the big rock.
Fes was ready and waiting.
He knew she had that little dinky knife, of course. All he had to do was watch out for that, an’ he would be perfectly all right. Just get the thing, toss it away, an’ hey, but wouldn’t he have hisself a time. Two times, possibly three. It all depended.
As Flower crept around the shadow of the rock, light-footed and quick, Fes shot out and grabbed her, putting his knife to her throat. “Talk an’ I’ll kill you,” he grunted. “Otherwise, you’ll have plenty of fun.”
She didn’t move, and didn’t cry out.
With the tip of his knife he slit her buckskin dress from collar to hem, leaving a thin red line where the tip of the knife touched skin. Blood began to seep out slowly and pearled like beads at the places where the knife had been.
Flower moaned softly. To be defiled by a lust-filled brave was bad en
ough, but to be raped by a white man was worse than anything. Worse than death. It did not matter that a maiden might struggle against him to the end of all effort. Such resistance could neither reduce nor erase the taint left in her body and soul by the jackal. Indeed, to be taken against one’s will by a white man was like having coupled with a dog, a goat, a stinking wild boar. In ancient times, according to the stories, the women thus assaulted were lucky to be banished from the tribe. Those who were unlucky received a far crueler sentence: to be tied down in the center of the village and set upon by actual dogs. A maiden true to herself was expected to end her own life rather than submit to a white man’s rape.
“Not a sound,” Fes warned again. He checked her all over. She was bare-ass naked, and what a piece she was. But no knife. Wasn’t in her mouth, he knew that, and the only two other places where it might possibly have been it wasn’t. He checked both. He was no damn fool. Never trust a redskin. There was no end to the tricks they had.
So now she stood there all ready for his purposes, as lush a. female as he had ever had, ’cept—to his credit, he chuckled—he had a knife of his own in the hand that was wrapped around her neck. He switched the knife to his other hand and touched the cold tip of the knife to her nipples, which rose and swelled with fear.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s what I like to see.”
She didn’t make a sound now, so he knew she was ready. She just stood there on her bare feet, those thick braids of black hair hanging down on either side of her face. God, for a moment he wished she was a lovely white girl and he something other than what he was. But Fes Farson had long ago stopped thinking about what might have been. Now he was thinking only of the slave-trading money in Memphis, and going back to “Farsonville” to get rich on pore old dead Rupert’s coal—and how it would feel to shoot every liquid ounce of his whole being into the ripe body of this redskin.
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