The Sioux picked up a water skin had handed it to him. It was Grey’s own.
“Take a sip. No, just a sip. Let’s not be greedy. Eye to the future, what? Besides, it’s all we have.”
Grey paused with the mouth of the water skin an inch from his mouth. “We?”
The Sioux shrugged. He wore thin deerskin trousers and a hand-stitched breechcloth, but for a shirt he wore a stained and dusty blue U.S. Cavalry blouse that was unbuttoned halfway to his breastbone. Loose bracelets of leather and beads hung from each wrist. He wore a gentleman’s bowler hat beneath which a scarlet cloth was wound around his forehead. The cloth looked to be silk, and there was a hint of lace — the kind they put on women’s drawers.
“Who,” asked Grey, “the hell are you? And while you’re at it, how is it we’re suddenly friends?”
“My name,” said the Sioux, “is Thomas Looks Away of the Oglala Tiyośpaye, grandson of Mahpíya Lúta, better known as Red Cloud to you white men.”
Grey stared at him. There wasn’t a man, woman, or child in the western hemisphere who didn’t know who Red Cloud was. He was one of the reasons the Sioux had won back their tribal lands and formed a powerful nation. Grey said, “Wow.”
Looks Away chuckled, enjoying the reaction. “And your name, my dear fellow?”
“Torrance. Grey Torrance out of Philadelphia. My grandfather was a wicked old cuss and isn’t worth naming.”
Looks Away grinned at that. “Well, we don’t get to pick our family, do we?”
“Not usually. But… how is it you’re an Oglala Lakota and you speak like you just stepped off the boat from London?”
“Very likely because I just stepped off a boat from London.”
“Okay,” said Grey. “What?”
“Oh, it’s a long and rather sordid story,” said Looks Away, waving a dismissive hand. “And I don’t know you well enough to share the squalid details. The quick version is that I went to England as a young buck in a traveling Wild West show and now I’m back.”
“Fair enough. Now let’s talk about the ‘we’ thing,” said Grey. “You’re helping me and I want to know why. And while we’re at it, what in the hell was that explosion?”
“That’s also a long story,” said Looks Away.
“Well, I’m too banged up to ride and there’s not enough daylight to make it anywhere worth getting. Seems like a good time for a tale.” Then another of the clouds in his mind blew away and he jerked upright and looked around. “Hey — where are those other fellows? The posse?”
Looks Away’s smile faded. He said, “Ah.”
“Ah?”
“The sins of those men seem to have caught up with them.”
“You kill them?”
“In a word, yes.”
“Jesus Christ. Alone? One against six?”
“Well, you helped by stretching two of them out on the ground.”
Grey bristled. “I trussed them up to keep them out of it. I didn’t mean for some savage to come along and slit their throats.”
“First,” said Looks Away in an offended tone, “I am not a savage, thank you very much. Clearly not. Anyone can bloody well see that, the braids and buckskin trousers notwithstanding.”
“I—.”
“Second, I did not slit their throats.”
Grey relaxed. “Well, that’s—.”
“I dropped half a mountain on them,” said Looks Away.
“You—.”
“Though, technically it’s not a mountain, more of an outcrop, I suppose…”
“You’re sun-touched, aren’t you?” asked Grey.
“Mm? Oh, no, sorry. Merely digressing into trivialities. I do that when I’m upset. Killing those men has me quite distraught.”
“You ever going to tell me what happened or are you going to simply talk me to death and bury me next to them?”
Looks Away straightened and walked a few paces away. He held his arms wide to indicate the big pile of rocks.
“This is what happened to the posse,” he said.
Grey looked and now he saw how much it had all changed. The two shelves were gone, the jutting shoulder of rock was gone, and much of the big outcrop was shattered. Chunks of it were strewn across the desert floor. Only a small patch of ground lay mostly undisturbed and in the middle of it stood a placid Mrs. Pickles munching her grass. All around her were massive fragments of sandstone. Close to where Grey sat was a slab of stone as big as a chuck wagon. Beneath the stone, reaching out from one ponderous corner, torn and flattened, was a wrist in a denim sleeve and canvas gloves with no fingers. A thin trickle of blood had pooled out beneath the flaccid wrist and the pale fingers were curled upward like the legs of a dead tarantula.
“Oh,” said Grey. “Well… damn.”
“The men who were climbing up after me were blown to bits,” said Looks Away, and to emphasize the grizzly point he nodded toward some red and shapeless chunks that were being swarmed by blowflies. Grey felt his stomach turn over. “The other two, the ones you tied,” continued the strange Sioux, “could not get up and run, and so… well, you see what happened to them.”
“So why the hell are you still alive?” demanded Grey. “And for that matter, why am I? And my horse?”
“Why I’m alive is something we may or may not get around to. A lot depends on who and what you turn out to be. You don’t have the look of a cowhand. Your gear suggests a condottieri of some kind.”
“A con-what-er-what?”
“A free companion, a mercenary, if you will.”
“Hired gun is the phrase you’re fishing for.” Grey climbed very slowly and carefully to his feet. He was positive that even his shadow was bruised.
“Hired gun will do,” said Looks Away. Then in an overly casual tone, added, “And did you come to rescue me in hopes of my hiring you for services rendered?”
Grey got it now. This crazy Sioux thought that Grey had been attempting to rescue him from the posse and was caught in the explosion. This act of charity in helping Grey was less altruistic than it appeared and more of a fishing expedition for information.
It was an interesting problem.
Did he play along in the hopes that the man would share his secrets? And would there be some gold attached to the deal? Or, was it better to come right out and tell him the truth?
The third option, under other circumstances, would have been to hogtie the Indian and use a little muscle to open him up. Grey had done that sort of thing before, but he dismissed it. He wasn’t really that kind of person.
Not anymore.
He stalled by stretching his aching muscles and inspecting his horse. The Sioux waited him out. Grey noticed that there were several pistols and two rifles laid in a row on a flat stone. Within Looks Away’s reach. Not at all close to Grey.
Fair enough.
In the end, Grey blew out his cheeks and exhaled a great sigh and decided to be straight with this man. He owed him something for dragging him clear and giving him water. The Indian could have cut his throat and made off with Mrs. Pickles. Or simply stolen the horse and left him here to burn in the desert sun.
So, he turned back to Looks Away.
“Truth is, I’m not a gun for hire. Not at the moment,” he said. “And I didn’t step into this mess to make a buck. Not that I haven’t done that sort of thing before.”
Looks Away was not smiling now, and he edged closer to the guns. “Then why did you interfere?”
“Six against one,” said Grey.
“Uh huh. Six white men against one red savage. Is that the kind of math you want to sell? That the unfairness and intolerance sparked your inner nobility to take action?”