It did not take long for things to grow as quiet as a graveyard in the desert night around him—except for the irregular wind that would gust from time to time to remind him that his ears still worked, heaving first from that direction, then circling around to blow from another. Below the wind keening through the sagebrush Jonah heard the nearby snuffling of the horses as they returned to grazing on the scant grass. He had cocked the dead man’s pistol some time back, though he constantly ran a thumb back and forth over the hammer pad to assure himself he was ready when the rest came out of what darkness the night had left it.
How many, he could not be sure of—but likely the rest had taken care of Two Sleep. After that war cry and the explosions of white-hot light that rocked the night, Jonah couldn’t be sure who was still alive. Except for the pain here and there on his body. The pain reminded him he wasn’t dead and gone to heaven, not yet. One thing for certain: it was still too damned dark here to figure he’d landed himself in hell.
Yet it was growing lighter, almost imperceptibly and as cheerless as a hangover slapping a drunk’s face. But day was coming nonetheless in the relentless crawl of the earth beneath the skies. Gray had begun to seep sluglike out of the east when he realized the horses were no longer just grazing—they were moving. Then footsteps, unsure and advancing quietly, inched toward him out of the murky dawn light.
He tried to lie as quietly as possible, turning only his head slowly to follow the soft crunch of the footsteps. Jonah felt more than heard the movement on the earth as the feet circled around him many yards out. He tracked the sound with the barrel of the dead man’s pistol, knowing he would have to pray for one more loaded cylinder when the Mormon he was hearing came out of the dark.
“Hook?”
Calling to him like this, he could not be sure they didn’t know his name.
“Hook? Where you?”
Jonah thought he saw the movement of something dark off to his left and leveled the pistol in that direction.
“C’mere and get me!” he whispered harshly.
Ready to fire at the first shift in the dark shadow as it rose from the sagebrush, Jonah felt the breeze stiffen, and he suddenly recognized the long, loose hair.
“Think you was one of them,” Two Sleep said as he strode up and crouched beside Hook.
“I almost killed you, you stupid Injun.” He said it with relief.
Two Sleep gazed around a moment. “All them gone. Make quiet so quick. Two for you. Rest for me.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Gazing down at the spot where his shoulder met the arm, the Shoshone replied, “Chew some root. Wrap up for two days. Something small. You hurt?”
“No, don’t think so,” Hook replied as the Indian grunted, heaving the heavy body from Jonah’s legs. He sat up watching the ground turn gray in those moments while his head finished its wild, spinning dance. “They all dead?”
Two Sleep nodded, finally stuffing a pistol beneath the belt that wrapped his wool coat around his waist. “You want scalps?”
“No.” He shook his head, hanging it between his shoulders. “Only one scalp I really want.”
“He not here?”
With a struggle Jonah got to his feet, leaned on the Shoshone for a moment. “I got an idea where to find him.”
“South.” Two Sleep turned and strode back to the fire pit, using one foot to push a body off the pit where the clothes had smoldered and the flesh begun to burn with a sickening stench. “Coals in fire hole cook our meal. We eat. Wait the day till you ready to ride.”
“I don’t need no breakfast, you dumb Injun,” Hook snarled sourly. “You remember we lost more’n a day already—riding back to take care of this bunch. I don’t aim to lose no more time tracking Usher.”
Two Sleep stared wistfully at the food and collapsed to one of the Mormon bedrolls. “Then we sleep. No sleep for me in night. Sit with you till ready to attack and fight. No sleep for me. I’m tired.”
“Sleep if you want,” Hook growled as he threw the first of the Mormon’s weapons down onto a rumpled blanket. “I’m taking all the guns, and what food they got. I’ll leave you something to eat when you wake up from your nap. Figure to take any horses not lamed up to carry all of it.”
“You go now?”
He dragged another gun belt from one of the bodies and pitched it onto the blanket with a clatter of polished steel. “Soon as I get our horses down here.”
Two Sleep grumbled as he clambered to his feet. “You make me sleep on horse again today, Hook. You a hard friend to have.”
“Don’t have to go with me. Stay—take care of that shoulder.”
The Shoshone stopped before the white plainsman. Staring Hook in the eye. “Yes. Yes I do have to go with you. Two of us. Not alone you go.”
And Hook understood, staring into the dark pools of those eyes in the gray light of day-coming. “All right—I figure you do have to go with me after all is said and done. And I’ll admit I’m glad you’re along for the ride.”
“I get the horses, Hook. Then we go,” he said as he turned away from the white man, striding off across the sagebrush flats toward the boulders where they had hidden their animals, slowly rubbing his wounded shoulder.
Gazing for a moment to the east at the growing light, Jonah sensed more than ever the pinch of time, the way new boots pinched his feet. “Damn right we’ll go, Injun. Lost enough bloody time already.”
15
Moon of Ducks Coming Back 1869
SPRING HAD COME to the southern plains. Flowers bloomed and birds flocked in great heaving clouds over every new pond tilled by the last thunderstorm. Chilled of a morning, the air nonetheless warmed long before the sun ever rose to its zenith. Shoots of young grass crowning the rolling hillsides nourished the winter-gaunt ponies with the promise of strength for renewed raiding.
An endless wind blew out here, this far west beyond any white settlement—wind that tormented Tall One’s long hair, tied in braids now. It had been something on the order of four winters since last a pair of scissors had touched his hair. Filmy, milk-pale memories of a chair set on the narrow porch of a log building … a small boy seated there, a bed sheet swallowing him from the chin down … a dark, thin man busy above the boy with a comb and scissors. Cutting his hair.
Hair. The source of the Kwahadi warrior’s greatest pride.
Tall One touched a braid wrapped in the fur of a buffalo calf as he peered east, wondering about that man from his memories.
Every day it seemed he grew more and more filled with doubt that he had ever lived another life, more than he was filled with yearning or remembrance of the past. Still, he could not deny that smoky wisps of ghostly trails troubled his mind when some smell, some sight, some texture, triggered recall. He always choked them down, afraid the memories would cause him doubt in what he was, who he had become with the Antelope People.
Most of all, Tall One was frightened to death that the Kwahadi would find out he was not what he wanted most to be—a young Comanche warrior waiting for his first pony raid—but that he was nothing more than a lying, thieving, murdering white-tongue after all. No different from all the rest of the lying, thieving, murdering white-tongues.
He shuddered in the dawn breeze as light ballooned around him, the sun rising reddish-yellow as a prairie hen’s egg from the far eastern edge of the earth, a great blood-tinged benediction at the far edge of everything he had ever known.
It would not be a good thing to be found out, Tall One feared, for his people to think him no better than a lying, thieving, murdering white-tongue. Especially after yesterday when some far-roaming Kiowa warriors carried their news to the Kwahadi village of last winter’s struggle with the enemy soldiers far to the east in what was called Indian Territory. That sort of thing always made the pale-eyed war chief laugh, his white teeth showing as he threw his head back, hands on hips, finding it very funny that the white man would call a section of all of this country “Indian Territory,” when it all belonged to the Indians.