She’d held up fairly well. Her breathing was regular and she hadn’t bled much. She’d been very quiet, too, but tiny as she was, the woman was breaking his back. He’d carried her for more than an hour, and now that he was close, the lieutenant wanted more than ever to get there. His fate would be decided shortly, and that kept his adrenaline running, but more than anything, he thought of the monstrous ache between his shoulder blades. It was killing him.
The land up ahead was dropping away, and as he drew closer, he could see pieces of the stream cutting across the prairie, then the tips of something; and then, as he reached the brow of the slope, the encampment rose into view before his eyes, rising as the moon had done the night before.
Unconsciously, the lieutenant squeezed the reins. He had to stop now. He was gazing on a sight for all time.
There were fifty or sixty conical, hide-covered houses pitched along the stream. They looked warm and peaceful in the late afternoon sun, but the shadows they cast also made them look larger than life, like ancient, still-living monuments.
He could see people working around the houses. He could hear some of their voices as they walked along the tamped-down avenues between lodges. He heard laughter, and somehow that surprised him. There were more people up and down the stream. Some of them were in the water.
Lieutenant Dunbar sat on Cisco, holding the woman he had found, his senses crushed by the power of the ageless tableau spread out before him, spread out like the unraveling of a living canvas. A primal, completely untouched civilization.
And he was there.
It was beyond the reach of his imagination, and at the same time he knew that this was why he’d come, this was at the core of his urge to be posted on the frontier. This, without his knowing it before, was what he had yearned to see.
These fast-moving moments on the brow of the slope would never come again in his mortal life. For these fleeting moments he became part of something so large that he ceased to be a lieutenant or a man or even a body of working parts. For these moments he was a spirit, hovering in the timeless, empty space of the universe. For these precious few seconds he knew the feeling of eternity.
The woman coughed. She stirred against his chest and Dunbar tenderly patted the back of her head.
He made a short kissing sound with his lips, and Cisco started down the slope. They’d only gone a few feet when he saw a woman and two children come out of the breaks along the river.
And they saw him.
The woman screamed as she let go of the water she was hauling, scooped up her children, and broke for the village, crying, “White soldier white soldier,” at the top of her lungs. Scores of Indian dogs went off like firecrackers, women shrieked for their children, and stampeded around the lodges, neighing wildly. It was full-scale pandemonium.
The entire band thought it was under attack.
As he drew closer to the village Lieutenant Dunbar could see men running everywhere. Those who had gotten hold of weapons were going for their horses with a whooping that reminded him of game birds in a panic. The village in upheaval was just as otherworldly as the village in repose. It was like a great nest of hornet people into which a stick had been poked.
The men who had reached their horses were swarming into a force that would momentarily race out to meet him, perhaps to kill him. He had not expected to create such a stir, nor had he expected these people to be so primitive. But there was something else that weighed on him as he moved close to the village, something that blotted out all else For the first time in his life Lieutenant Dunbar knew what it felt like to be an invader. It was a feeling he didn’t like, and it had a lot to do with the action he took next. The last thing he wanted was to be regarded as an intruder, and when he reached the bare ground of a clearing at the mouth of the village, when he was close enough to see through the curtain of dust that had been raised by the clamor and into the eyes of the people inside, he squeezed the reins once more and came to a stop.
Then he dismounted, taking the woman into his arms, and walked a pace or two in front of his horse. There he stood still, his eyes closed holding the wounded girl like some strange traveler bearing a strange gift.
The lieutenant listened hard as the village, in stages that lasted only a few seconds each, grew oddly quiet. The dusty curtain began to settle, and Dunbar perceived with his ears that the mass of humanity that had raised such a fearful howling only moments before was now creeping toward him. In the eerie quiet he could hear the occasional clank of some item of gear, the rustling of footsteps, the snort of a horse as it pawed and jostled impatiently.
He opened his eyes to see that the whole band had gathered at the village entrance, warriors and young men in front, women and children behind them. It was a dream of wild people, clothed in skins and colored fabric, a whole separate race of humans watching him breathlessly not a hundred yards away.
The girl was heavy in his arms, and when Dunbar shifted his stance, a buzz rose and died in the crowd. But no one moved forward to meet him.
A group of older men, apparently men of importance, went into a huddle as their people stood by, whispering amongst themselves in guttural tones so foreign to the lieutenant’s ear that they hardly seemed to be talking.
He let his attention wander during this lull, and when he glanced on a knot of about ten horsemen, the lieutenant’s eyes fell on a familiar face. It was the same man, the warrior who had barked at him so ferociously on the day of the raid at Fort Sedgewick. Wind In His Hair was staring back with such intensity that Dunbar almost turned around to see if someone was standing at his back.
His arms were so leaden that he wasn’t sure if he could move them anymore, but with the warrior’s glare still fixed on him, Dunbar lifted the woman a little higher, as if to say, “Here . . . please take her.”
Thrown by this sudden, unexpected gesture, the warrior hesitated, his eyes darting about the crowd, obviously wondering if this silent exchange had been noticed by anyone else. When he looked back, the lieutenant’s eyes were still on his and the gesture had not been withdrawn.
With an inward sigh of relief Lieutenant Dunbar saw Wind In His Hair leap off the pony and start across the clearing, a stone war club swinging loosely in his hand. He was coming over, and if the warrior had any fear at all, it was well masked, for his face was ungiving and uncaring, set, it seemed, on doling out a punishment.
The assembly fell silent as the space between the immobile Lieutenant Dunbar and the fast-striding Wind In His Hair shrank steadily to nothing. It was too late to stop whatever was going to happen. Everyone stood still and watched.
In the face of what was closing on him, Lieutenant Dunbar could not have been braver. He stood his ground unblinking, and though there was no pain in his face, he wore no fear there either.
When Wind In His Hair was within a few feet and slowing his pace, the lieutenant said in a clear, strong voice:
“She’s hurt.”
He shifted his load a little as the warrior stared into the woman’s face, and Dunbar could see that he recognized her. In fact, Wind In His Hair’s shock was so plain that, for a moment, the awful idea that she might have died flashed through his head. The lieutenant looked down at her, too.
And as he did, she was torn from his arms. In one strong, sure motion she’d been ripped from his grasp, and before Dunbar knew it, the warrior was walking back toward the village, hauling Stands With A Fist roughly along, like a dog would a pup. As he went he called something out that prompted a collective exclamation of surprise from the Comanches. They rushed forward to meet him.