The Montanans (v1.0), page 12
While the men scoured up firewood and tended the horses, Buffalo Calf Woman treated the injured soldier’s wound with powdered sage and medicinal herbs and made a wrapping of the shed wool of a buffalo bull. She did a good job of it, No-Fights noted approvingly. They must avoid offending these wasicun in any way.
The sun had heeled deep into the west, and No-Fights indicated his wish to erect a burial scaffold before darkness came. He would need his hatchet. Robertson was agreeable, but told the youth named Kamas to go along with a rifle.
No-Fights found a grove of cottonwood downstream and cut a number of saplings which he lashed together into a lofty platform. With the help of the women, while the white men looked on, he lifted the grandmother’s tightly wrapped body atop it Pretty Shield hacked her hair off short and Buffalo Calf Woman gashed her legs and wailed some more. Rawlings growled that if she did not shut up he would slit her tongue, and Robertson passed the suggestion along more politely but just as definitely.
“It is no good making the white ones mad,” No-Fights pointed out to his wife. “Soon, if we are lucky, they will be gone.”
Pretty Shield was in a pet. “I do not like how the one with hair on his face looks at me. Why do you not kill him? Why do you smile at these white men and stutter in their stupid tongue? Has your heart turned to water?”
The words had a bitter ring to his ears. “Henala,” he muttered, eyeing her in mild astonishment. He was used to this kind of talk from her family, but how could Pretty Shield think such a thing of him? He put the question to her.
“I do not know,” she said sullenly. “If you are not scratching the earth like a dog for these men, still you act the part and that is bad enough. If the hairy face touches me, I will kill him.”
To a Sioux woman nothing was more sacred than her virginity prior to marriage and her wifely honor afterward. The trouble was, No-Fights knew worriedly, few white men believed it. But beyond this, he was stunned by her confessed doubt of him. Perhaps her father had succeeded in planting a doubt which had been hidden till now. He supposed, if it came to that, he was afraid of what the whites would do; but mostly his fear was on her account. Playing the fool was no part of real courage that he could see.
Rawlings’s hot black eyes followed Pretty Shield as she went to get water. When she returned, the black-bearded one made a grab for her and was rewarded by a quick slash of her small knife even as she evaded his reach. Rawlings howled and clutched his nicked wrist. He would, he promised, kill the bitch, and suited action to words by pulling his pistol.
The crisp sound of a gun being cocked halted the big man’s movements.
Robertson was sitting by the smoke flaps, his pistol carelessly trained on Rawlings. Negligently he removed his pipe from his mouth. “I say, Rawlings, you’re being an ass, you know. Pity if I had to kill you over such a trifle.” Rawlings swung, half crouching; his eyes were red in the firelight. “But nice for you, huh? If Fritz cashes it, you and
Kamas could split the gold two—”
“Shut up, you ruddy fool.” Robertson’s gaze bored against No-Fights and the two women, then swung back to the big man. “That’s enough.”
“Too bad,” Rawlings said. “Deserting was your idea, and if killing them two prospectors was mine, you was pretty quick to fall in with the idea.”
Robertson gave a resigned sigh and shook his head, as if the damage were done and there was no point in fussing. He holstered his gun and looked on wearily as Rawlings tore open his saddlebag to dig out a bottle of mui waken, the white man’s holy water which made the world look better and often led to visions. No-Fights noticed the heavy thud the bag made when Rawlings dropped it again.
As few of the communal-living Sioux did, No-Fights had a firm understanding of the whites’ feeling for personal wealth. His mission-school training was responsible, but with his reflective mind, understanding had brought contempt, not sympathy. He knew, as did all the Sioux, that it was Long Hair’s finding gold when he had visited the Black Hills two years ago to make a treaty with the conclave of chiefs (and which he had amusedly broken by spreading word of the strike so that the treaty lands were soon overrun with white gold-hunters) that had led to their current trouble.
The two women prepared a stew of dried meat and wild turnips. It was a desire to relieve the monotony of this diet that had sent Crooked Horn and his sons far afield for meat. While the copper pot bubbled, Rawlings sat cross-legged and pulled at his mui waken. Finally, his eyes glazed with its holy effect, he produced a rawhide sack from his saddle and spilled some of the sparkling dust it contained into his palm. His gaze grew faraway as he examined it by the firelight.
This was gold; there were more such little sacks in the saddlebag, and No-Fights was beginning to understand.
Much of what had been a puzzle about these men became ever more clear during the course of the meal. From random fragments of Rawlings’s boisterous, spirits-inspired talk, No-Fights learned that the four of them, each for his own reasons, had deserted the garrison at Fort Abraham Lincoln. They had decided to throw in together and head for Canada, where Robertson’s uncle owned a ranch. Early today they had come on the camp of two ancient prospectors who, seeing their uniforms, had boasted too readily and trustingly of their good fortune. After availing themselves of the prospectors’ hospitality, the four deserters had murdered the prospectors and split up the gold on the spot. One of the pair had managed to put a bullet into Fritz before he was killed.
To No-Fights his own situation, as well as that of the women, was suddenly, brutally clear. There was no way of telling whether the one called Robertson had ever really intended letting them go unharmed. But Rawlings’s loud betrayal of the two murders had made certain that these white deserters could not afford to let the three of them live to tell what they knew to the soldiers who would finally overtake them and return them to the reservation. Their lives, No-Fights guessed, would be safe only while the white men needed Buffalo Calf Woman to treat the wounded one.
Twice, as the evening wore on, Rawlings restored the gold to the sack, only to return to it and sift it through his fingers in a distant trance.
No-Fights sat in his blanket, his thoughts black and bitter. He was tough and wiry, but small, and his physical strength was not great. He flexed his bad leg, the lifelong legacy of a childhood fall. Yet he would have seized any chance at all to overcome one of these men, except that the remaining two would effect his own death that much sooner.
He would stand no chance against all three at once, that was certain. He measured the three through half-lidded eyes, appraising their strengths and weaknesses. Presently, by grunts and signs, he told Robertson that there was insufficient wood to keep the fire alive much longer; he would fetch more. Robertson assented and, as No-Fights had hoped, told Kamas to accompany him.
Taking the hatchet, the young Sioux headed out along the creek, which glittered in the moonlight. Kamas followed him at a casual but cautious distance, rifle in hand. No-Fights hacked an armload of brush while watching Kamas from the tail of his eye. His palm itched with the impulse to throw the hatchet at the sallow one in a single, swift movement. As a boy he had practiced much with the throwing ax. But he let caution flag down the temptation.
No-Fights made two trips for wood, and on the second he quietly jammed the hatchet deep in the thick grass where the sloping stream bank was veiled by the deep shadows of fringing brush. How this would help he could only conjecture, but at least he had a hidden weapon.
As he had hoped, the slow-witted Kamas missed the surreptitious action and forgot to ask for the hatchet when they returned to the lodge. A further stroke of luck was that Robertson and Rawlings were arguing and took bare notice of their return. These two, but especially Robertson, would be harder to trick.
“We oughta move on now,” Rawlings was grumbling. “Cover all the ground we can while it’s dark.”
“No,” Robertson said crisply. “I’ll desert an army any day, but not a hurt comrade. We’ll not leave this spot until Fritz can ride.”
“Hell, he ain’t gonna live out the night. Look at him.”
The yellow-haired one’s condition was worsening, there could be no doubt. His ruddy color had faded to a pasty gray; fever and delirium were on him. He was bundled in blankets, yet was wracked by violent chills.
“Perhaps not,” Robertson agreed. “But live or die, we’ll wait him out—unless you care to go on alone? We’ve divided up the gold.”
“Naw.” The black-beard shook his head vigorously. “Not with them wild Injuns that got Custer running all over the country.”
’Then shut up and listen. We’ll split the night into three watches, two hours apiece. Which will you take?”
“We don’t need to watch him,” Rawlings protested, waving a contemptuous hand at No-Fights. “That runty siwash couldn’t stomp his own nits and he ain’t got the brains God gives gophers.”
No-Fights beamed his vapid appreciation of the white man’s notice.
Robertson gave the Sioux a long, keen appraisal. “Hmm. Perhaps so. But what about that young she-devil with the knife? Which watch, boys?”
Kamas volunteered for the first, and Rawlings, scowling, said he’d take the second. Robertson yawned and stretched out on his blankets. “Jolly good. Me for the dawn one, then. And see here, old chap, keep your paws off that girl. Confine your wooing to Morpheus, understand?”
Rawlings growled unintelligibly and rolled into his blankets. No-Fights eased himself onto his side, wondering about this Robertson’s strange loyalty to a helpless companion when he could casually murder other white men for their gold. There was only one aspect of the wasicun in which the young Sioux held full confidence: their greed.
He tried to catch Pretty Shield’s eye for a glance of understanding and reassurance, but she refused to look at him. He felt vaguely pained in his chest. She wanted her man to play the man she had always believed him to be, whatever others might think. But he had to do this thing his way. The differences that separated him from his fellows went deeper than physical; they embraced mind and heart. He cared little what the others thought, but he wanted Pretty Shield to understand.
As the other occupants of the lodge drifted into sleep, he stayed awake and alert. Kamas sat by the fire, knees drawn up, the rifle propped between them. No-Fights lay on his side facing the fire, his blanket tucked cowl-like about his head so that he could feign sleep while peering out between the folds. He watched Kamas sink into a light doze time after time, always snapping himself erect again. Finally his head tilted solidly onto his knees, and he slept.
No-Fights did not twitch a muscle. What to do now? He could not secure any of their guns without waking them. Perhaps he could steal outside and get the hatchet, but suppose he succeeded in killing one, only to wake the others?
He stirred the folds wider, letting his eyes move. Rawlings’s gold-filled saddlebag lay perhaps the length of his leg away. No-Fights smiled.
He spent the space of many heartbeats inching close to the bag and securing one of the heavy rawhide pokes inside it. Painstakingly, then, he raised himself on an elbow and gently tossed the gold sack across the lodge, holding his breath as it thudded softly between the skin wall and Robertson’s blanket-wrapped form. The man sighed and stirred but slept on.
No-Fights maneuvered back to his former position, watching and waiting. At last Kamas jerked awake and looked about with furtive guilt. Hastily he consulted an old watch, then went to shake Rawlings awake for his watch, afterward turning in. Kamas snored off at once.
Rawlings squatted by the fire, occasionally pulling moodily at his half-empty bottle, restlessly wrapping and unwrapping the stained bandanna that covered the little cut on his arm. He eyed Pretty Shield’s recumbent form with a burning hunger. No-Fights’s muscles tightened into aching knots.
Finally, as he had hoped, Rawlings rose and tramped heavily over to his saddlebag. He carried it back to the Are, sat down, and fumbled the bag open. Almost at once came his feral curse. He scrambled about the floor on his hands and knees, looking wildly. Then his glance of dawning suspicion found Kamas. Shouting incoherently, he dragged the sallow youth out of his blanket, slapping him with vicious, open-handed blows.
“Where is it, damn you? Maybe you thought I never counted my pokes! Where is it, damn you?”
Robertson, sitting upright, gave a curt order. Rawlings flung Kamas to the ground and stood spraddle-legged, looming over the other man in the firelight, his massive fists closing and unclosing.
“Don’t be a fool,” Robertson snapped. “Kamas wouldn’t—”
“He was on watch, wa’n’t he?” Rawlings’s huge shoulders stiffened then; his arm swung up. “There it is, right beside you!”
Robertson looked blankly down. The bulging gold sack lay only a foot from his elbow.
“That’s it, the two of you,” Rawlings bellowed. “You are in this together, fixing to cross me up.”
“You drunken—” Robertson began, but his words were drowned in the flat roar of Rawlings’s pistol.
Caught sitting, Robertson had time for one abortive movement before the slug smashed the bridge of his nose.
No-Fights was already on his feet. But his head was cool in the confusion; he tried neither to fight nor to run on his bad leg. He made a strong, lunging dive that carried him through the smoke flaps into the night.
Lighting on his side, he let his momentum take him on a short distance, rolling, before he scrambled to his feet. He broke through the brush and tumbled down the shadowy stream bank, skidding on his belly close to the water. His outflung hand groped for, and was rewarded by, the smooth familiar grip on the hatchet.
Rawlings was yelling that they had been tricked. “Watch them women!” he roared.
Hugging the bank with his belly and face, No-Fights heard the thud of heavy feet coming from the lodge. Rawlings was cursing fretfully as he circled the lodge. Then he started along the top of the stream bank, poking at the brush, quite careless and noisy because he thought No-Fights was unarmed.
Cautiously, the Sioux raised himself to his knees. The soldier’s bull head and shoulders topped the brush. He was skylined at a distance of about the length of three tall men as he stopped, beating a thicket with his pistol.
No-Fights whipped his arm back and forward. The hatchet blade caught a fitful moonbeam, turning over once in its short flight.
Rawlings’s eye caught the flash of steel, or perhaps the motion of No-Fights’s arm. The startled grunt that erupted from his chest ended in a gurgling sigh. He toppled with a crash into the brush and rolled down through it to the water’s edge.
No-Fights crawled to the body and pried the thick fingers away from the pistol grip. From the lodge, Kamas was querulously calling Rawlings by name.
No-Fights had never held a weapon he had taken in battle; he felt the fierce pride of his birthright leap high in his breast. He wanted to run out and confront the last white man. But always his cool head was master; he, who had scarcely held a gun in all his life, would have little chance thus.
So he loped noiselessly up the bank and waited behind the dark brush until Kamas showed himself against the firelight in the tipi entrance. Then No-Fights took careful aim…
During the night the one called Fritz died quietly in his sleep. No-Fights thought about it awhile before deciding to bury the white men after their own fashion, rather than letting the bodies achieve a properly advanced state of decomposition before ground burial, as was customary with the Sioux. No-Fights, who took a jaundiced view of most customs, cared little one way or another; he merely wanted to test Pretty Shield. He brusquely told her to start digging and she, with an adoring glance, meekly knelt and attacked the prairie sod with a bone tool.
While they were so engaged, No-Fights dozing in the shade, Pretty Shield sweating beneath the sun, her mother hunting for wild turnips nearby, Crooked Horn and his two boys returned, riding up with exuberant whoops. Hunting had been good; the packhorse carried the hides of two butchered pronghorns, the skins hanging down on either side with the choice cuts folded inside and the big, marrow-sweet bones tied on top.
The three halted, looking from their busy daughter and sister to the three blanket-wrapped bodies, from the glowering Kamas sitting propped against a lodge pole with his wounded leg stretched out, to their somnolent son-in-law who did not rise, only the movement of his eyes offering sleepy acknowledgment of their return.
Bad-Heart Bull, the older son and born clown, tried to jest away the incredible sight. “Ho! Look at the soldiers our little sister has slain while her husband slept,” he laughed, but Crooked Horn cut him off with a glance. He motioned his wife over and soon had the story.
To No-Fights he said, “Why is this one alive? All soldiers are our enemies.”
No-Fights stirred his shoulders against the earth. “I did not want to kill him,” he explained idly.
“Why?” demanded White-Man-Running, the belligerent younger son. “Did your heart turn to water?”
No-Fights watched him steadily. “I do not like to kill. There was no need.”
“What,” asked Crooked Horn, “will you do with him?” There might have been the merest note of respect in his tone.
“Let him go without horse or gun. He is hurt. If the prairie does not kill him, the soldiers will find him and shoot him. He ran away from their army.”
Crooked Horn appeared pleased by the idea, but the sons continued to strut and taunt, ridiculing No-Fights in the old manner after he admitted that he had not counted coup on even one of his enemies, had not risked his life to strike one without inflicting injury.
It was Buffalo Calf Woman who finally interceded, fiercely castigating her sons. “Fools! You think there is no way to fight but with your muscles, your great mouths, your stupid coup-counting. I tell you, my son-in-law has fought with his head, his good brains, and so we are alive. Where would we be if one of you, and not he, had been here? I will tell you. Dead, all dead!”
