“Let Young’s most dangerous fear now become his greatest undoing!” Jubilee had roared at them, his eyes finding those of George, the Negro manservant who dutifully stood nearby, outside the wall tent where the woman lay.
He knew George did not believe in the way of the Church, yet steadfastly believed nonetheless in Jubilee Usher. It did not matter, Usher had decided long ago. For, after all, for those of color—the black African, the red-skinned Indian, and the yellow-hued Oriental—the feet of none were yet taking the right path. None but the white man had been blessed by the Christ and his mighty angels come to visit ancient America. From time to time people of color were placed in Usher’s path to serve him and the greater good Jubilee was to play in this life on earth.
Still grappling with the dog, with one hand now he reached behind him and found the plate of bones George had collected at last night’s supper. Seizing the biggest his fingers could blindly determine, Usher presented his favorite hound a dilemma. Slowly he brought the big bone up before the animal’s eyes, where it could plainly see the temptation. All the while the dog never loosened its tension on the bone held perilously between it and its master’s jaws. Jubilee watched the eyes, glorying in that instantaneous indecision he caused the animal. He saw the first flicker of bestial desire flame into jealousy, then the moment of action as the hound opened its great, salivating jaws and lunged for the bone Usher held in his hand.
As quickly Usher flicked away the temptation.
Rather than chase down the new treat, the hound immediately lunged back for the bone it had been tussling with its master for—yet it too was gone. Usher had risen. All of it in smooth, seemingly orchestrated movements, calculated precisely. Knowing animals the way he did, perhaps Usher was able to read eyes the way he did better than any man he knew—to act before others had time to react.
The menacing growl rumbled from the animal’s throat as it rocked farther back on its legs, as if ready to spring with its teeth exposed, staring up at its master now in anger, robbed of not just one, but both the bones.
“You’d love to gnaw on my flesh, wouldn’t you, Alexander?” he said, reaching out to pat the top of the great head.
The hound snapped at the hand. And as quickly that huge, manicured hand batted the dog’s head aside with a ringing snap. It lay whimpering a moment, sprawled in the grass, then picked itself up, a totally different being from what it had been a moment before: now contrite and pleading for its master’s beneficence. Usher stroked its neck, presenting the hound the bone.
“Go on now, Alexander. There are more where that came from.”
Jubilee straightened and held his hands out before him. George hurried up, a china bowl cradled between his ebony paws like a pale offering of a full moon in the blackness of the firmament, a crisp hand towel draped over one forearm. Usher washed hands and face, dabbed them dry, then dropped the towel over the Negro’s shoulder.
“Time I should awake the woman,” he told no one in particular, as those who had gathered began to move off of their own accord, back to the breaking of camp, the loading of the wagons, and the saddling of horses brought in from the good grass down by the river where they had been hobbled of last night.
Yes, he thought. How he loved gazing upon her skin in the morning, slowly disrobing her, taking her hands and placing them around his own flesh to arouse himself, bring himself to readiness. At long last across these years, he had finally brought her flesh back to a pristine, milky purity by keeping her out of the sun—and the horrendous toll that it took on a woman’s beauty, aging her before her time. Usher had instead stopped the clock, allowing the woman only the shade of a tree, the depths of the shadowy ambulance, or the protection of their oiled tent. With such vigilant protection, she would stay every bit as beautiful as this, for many a year to come.
Her eyes found his as he came in and closed the flaps behind him. Then those same blue eyes crawled to and held the top of the tent. And did not move as he unbuttoned his britches, took her hands, and wrapped the unwilling fingers about his swelling flesh.
Jubilee eagerly set about slowly pulling apart the folds of her sleeping gown, aroused at the pure, unsullied beauty of her.
Truly, this was one woman worthy of him—worthy enough to be the wife of the new Prophet of Zion.
Bull drove the pony relentlessly down into the shallow riverbed, sandy spray glittering like a thousand gold-starred nights in this red-tinged coming of day, galloping to join the rest as they surged down the north bank of the Plum River, completely filling the riverbed, screaming and screeching, their guns barking, iron-tipped arrows snarling in the cool dawn air at the half-a-hundred. Scarlet light played off the ten-foot buffalo lances bedecked with colorful streamers and scalp locks of many hues, every man resplendent in feathers fluttering from rifle barrels brandished overhead as they came on.
Bull was now among them, deep in their throbbing midst, a part of that massive flow like a red tide, a crimson coursing of a heartbeat destined to pound all life right out of the half-a-hundred. The leaders swept close to the sandbar, forcing their wild-eyed cayuses into the river itself, circling north of the island as they dropped to the off side of their ponies, there to hang by nothing more than a heel and wrist clutched in the matted, beribboned manes, from first to last of them firing, yelling, lobbing hissing arrows among what frightened, milling horses the white men had not already killed themselves.
The scene had almost a surreal effect on the young Shahiyena: this great flood of warriors washing over the river valley. Never before had he been part of something so overwhelming, so savage, so undeniable. It not only gave his heart strength for the coming fight, but gave his spirit rebirth for the days to come when he would hunt the one he sought more than any other.
The hundreds had appeared out of the west as if out of nowhere, as if the ground itself sprouted the naked horsemen. Suddenly blooming out of the thickets, up from the streambed itself, they magically appeared at the top of every hill, in every direction as they swarmed toward the helpless whites, every mouth screeching its own irreverent death songs.
There had been no sound when first he had drawn off and stopped to look back on the white men reaching the island—then nothing more than the echo of hammering hooves. But with his next heartbeat, the riverbed flooded with screeching, painted horsemen sweeping past the island. High-Backed Bull had actually felt the breast of the earth tremble beneath his pony’s legs before he urged the animal into that great cavalcade two thousand hooves strong.
Yipping like coyotes out on a bloody spree, waving blankets, firing their bows and rifles, the whole heavy procession became a blurred parade of colors running out in water-strewn streamers of new light seeping into the valley of the Plum River.
As Bull brought his pony about and in a wide sweep to the west once more, to make a second pass along the north end of the island, he caught a glimpse of three of the whites who had not joined the rest among the thrashing carcasses of their horses on the sandbar. While most hurled themselves down in the tall grass and swamp willow, hiding behind the plum brush and the first of the dying horses, there were three who hung back, hugging those murky shadows beneath the low, overhanging riverbank. From there the trio could not be seen by the onrushing warriors until it was too late and the horsemen were directly in the teeth of the white man’s guns.