That’s ice on the handrail. You see it? That’s ice.”
“Crosby and Margolies in position, sir. We got a good view of the bus door.”
“Where’s that half-track? I want that half-track across the road. I don’t want anybody entering or leaving unless we say so.”
“Do you think the children are dead?”
“Who knows? Who knows what the hell’s going on?”
Singing Rock lifted his eyes to the thunderous sky. “We won’t see Nepauz-had when she appears,” he said quietly. “How long is it now?”
“Two minutes,” said Neil.
A Marine helicopter appeared from the southwest, and hovered around the bus for a while, taking reconnaissance photographs and trying to see into the iced-up windows. The draft from the helicopter’s rotors washed fiercely around them, and Singing Rock’s ribbons and beads flapped from the fence like the wings of ominous birds. Clouds of dry dust rose from the creek bed, and then gradually settled again as the helicopter sloped away southwest again, and disappeared.
“About a minute,” said Neil.
“Then it’s now,” whispered Singing Rock. “Now is the moment.”
The keening whine from the bus suddenly died away. The police and the troops didn’t notice at first, but then gradually the hubbub from both sides of the creek diminished and sank into silence. Everybody turned and stared at the bus. There was total quiet under the floodlights, as if they were all waiting for the first take of a movie sequence.
Over the radio transmitter, a voice said, “What’s happening now? All of a sudden, it’s like a graveyard around here.”
The school bus, in absolute silence, exploded. An intense ball of fire rolled right out of the middle of it, and pieces of debris flew into the darkness and littered the roadway.
“They’ve killed them! They’ve killed all the children!” yerbed an NEC reporter. “The bus just exploded right in front of our eyes, and it must have killed everyone in it!”
A circle of fire still blazed on the roadway, and billows of smoke obscured their view.
But then Singing Rock touched Harry’s arm and said, “Look.”
In the flames themselves, standing in a circle, were the tall figures of the twenty-two greatest Red Indian medicine men who had ever lived. They were dressed in their full ceremonial robes of buckskin and buffalo hide and elaborately woven robes, and their headdresses were decorated with horns and feathers and the tails of cougars.
Among them, in a robe of black and red that shimmered with gold and silver threads, with, a headdress of outspread eagle’s wings and carrying a mystical, carved staff, was the greatest of the greatest, the wonderworker whose name was still whispered by the grasses and the trees of the wide American continent. His high cheekbones were.painted with blue and yellow and white, in the war decorations of the Iroquois, and his deepset eyes burned with pride and with a desire for righteous vengeance.
Neil, with a feeling of breathlessness and fear, knew that this was the being who had possessed and overwhelmed his son; who had come to life as a man of wood and tried to destroy him. It was Misquamacus.
Singing Rock said, “Gitche Manitou, protect us. Gitche Manitou, aid us. Gitche Manitou, see that our desire for peace is good, and guide our hands.”
He was about to cast the powders in front of them for protection, when Harry tugged at his sleeve. “Singing Rock-for Christ’s sake! Look what they’re doing!”
Through the barricade of police cars and armored trucks came a squad of ten National Guardsmen, young and fresh-faced under their khaki helmets. They formed a line across the road, and then knelt down, aiming their rifles at the medicine jnen.
Singing Rock, almost desperate, shouted: “They mustn’t! Don’t let them shoot! They mustn’t]”
But over the transmitter the order snapped: “Aim- fire!”
NINE
There was a sharp rattle of gunfire. But it was only because they knew what was going to happen that Harry and Neil and Singing Rock could follow the fatal action of the next split second. Misquamacus swept his arm across in front of him, dismissing the manitous of each bullet, and returning them to where they came from.
Unprepared, unprotected, the ten young guardsmen were shot down where they were kneeling-killed by their own bullets. They died on the road in dark stains of blood, twisted and crumpled like sleeping children. There was a stunned silence over the bridge and its surroundings, and even the news reporters stared without speaking. A brief sharp odor of gunpowder drifted away on the unsettled wind. The echoes died away.
Singing Rock bowed his head. “They never listen,” he said softly. “They never, ever listen. O ancient gods, protect us.”
It was too late now. A further detachment of National Guardsmen was running forward with rifles and rocket launchers, and making their way through the fallen bodies of their comrades. They knelt on the roadway and aimed their weapons, while corpsmen ran out with stretchers to collect the bodies.
In the middle of the bridge, Misquamacus was spreading his arms, and he was beginning to recite the words of the summoning of Nashuna and Pa-la-kai and Coyote. His voice was deep, and it rumbled with the same timbre as the wind, and the vibrations that shook from the storm across the lake. The other medicine men turned inward to face each other, and spread their arms too, ignoring the intense line of guardsmen who were aiming their weapons at them.
“Pick a target carefully,” instructed the National Guard colonel. “Then shoot at will until you’ve brought it down.”
There was a nervous pause. Then: “Fire!”
The second holocaust was worse than the first. Both Neil and Harry dropped down to the dusty roadside as a shrieking, sparkling hail of automatic rifle fire burst over them in all directions. The NBC news reporter beside them was hit in the face, and keeled over backward in a spray of blood. Police and soldiers and spectators twisted and fell, and bullets shattered automobile windows and pierced gas tanks. Four Highway Patrol cars exploded and burst into flames, and the night was lurid with orange fire and the rank odor of blazing gasoline.
The National Guard colonel still couldn’t comprehend that the guardsmen’s own bullets were being turned against them, and he ordered another detachment of sharpshooters forward. Harry, crouched on the ground, said/”For God’s sake, Singing Rock, you’ve got to tell them!”
Singing Rock said, “There’s only one thing I can do. I have seen it done by a great elder of my tribe, and I have heard it said that Crazy Horse could do it.”
Harry said, “Don’t take any stupid risks! Just go tell the National Guard that they’re decimating us!”
They heard another order to fire, and there was another sharp crackle of rifles.
Instantly, Singing Rock flung back his head and stretched wide his arms.
It happened so fast that Harry couldn’t really see what was going on. But the entire salvo of rifle fire flashed in a wide curve away from Misquamacus and headed for Singing Rock. Singing Rock spread his fingers, and the bullets sprayed off his hands in a screeching, whining burst of fire and hot lead. Then there were nothing but echoes, and they were gone.
Harry stood up. Singing Rock was silent and pale, and there were beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead.
“You deliberately attracted those bullets,” said Harry, hoarsely. “You dumb Indian, you. What would have happened if Crazy Horse’s spell hadn’t worked? They would have blown you away. Straight to the happy hunting grounds with no stop for lunch.”
Singing Rock wouldn’t look at him. “I have to trust my spells,” he replied quietly. “If I lose my faith in my magic, what do I have left?”