Bad Medicine (27 page)

Ray set his bow aside and reached for his rifle. “Clear outta—” he began.

That's when the battle ended for Will and Ray. The impact of rifle butts on the backs of their heads removed them from the fracas and everything else.

A bucket of water from a trough brought Will and Ray back to consciousness. They were on their backs, hands tied behind them, with heads that hurt more than either man thought a head could possibly generate pain.

One Dog stood at their feet, muscular arms folded,
face painted with war paint, the red hand of death imprinted in dried blood on his forehead.

“Sit up.”

When the two bound men didn't comply immediately a group of about twenty men moved in, prodding and kicking Ray and Will with their boots. They struggled to sitting positions, legs extended in front of them, hands already becoming numb from the tightness of the rope around their wrists.

A thought flashed through Will's mind as he looked about him.
This is all that's left of One Dog's army. We killed the rest of them—and they all deserved to die. Now, if I can get my hands on One Dog . . .

Will had heard that Dog constantly smoked ganja and that he used the sacred mushrooms almost daily. He looked closely at the Indian's eyes but saw none of the dilation and wet glistening the drugs brought.

One Dog spoke again. His voice was calm, but there was an obvious tone of hatred beneath his words. “I will fight and kill each of you with my friend, the serpent's fang.” He held out a knife in one hand. It had a fairly narrow, double-edged twelve-inch blade. “The second to fight will watch his friend die—and I will not kill quickly.”

“We gonna stay tied while you kill us, you chickenshit savage?” Will snarled.

“Just like you tied women an' kids when you killed them?” Ray said.

“You don't have the balls of a prairie dog, you woman who wishes to be a man but cannot, because she's a coward.” Will spat toward One Dog. “I'll fight you to the death right now, with or without a knife. A coward dies easily. I won't break a sweat.”

“The coward will piss himself,” Ray added. “That'll be fun to see.”

Dog took a step closer to Ray and swung his right fist hard, connecting with the man's mouth. Ray spit out blood and bits of smashed teeth. Still, he managed a bloody-lipped, derisive grin. “Your type of fightin', no? When your enemy is tied an' helpless. Your sow mother gave birth to a worm, a cowardly worm that—”

One Dog swung again, smashing Ray unconscious, head lolling to the side, draining blood and enamel.

“Cut me loose an' we'll fight,” Will shouted. “Any goddamn way you wanna fight—jus' cut me loose!”

“We will fight,” One Dog growled. “Here's how, white-eyed snake. A short piece of rope will be tied to our left wrists. In the other we will hold knives. The winner lives. The loser's guts are fed to the coyotes and vultures.” He fingered the deerskin belt around his waist with many globs of hair attached to it. “Thirty-one times I have fought in this manner. My belt holds thirty-one scalps. Yours will make thirty-two.”

“Don't bet on it, coward.”

One Dog took a quick step behind Will. Will wasn't at all sure whether the Indian was going to slash his throat or free his hands. He breathed in relief as his hands fell to the grit of the road.

The Indian motioned to a renegade wearing a Union officer's hat, a rebel shirt with several bullet holes in it, and a pair of men's dress trousers several sizes too large for him held up with a length of baling twine. He carried a piece of rope about six feet long.

Will struggled to his feet, the pain from his head almost knocking him back to the ground. His hands were numb. He shook them—hard—to restore sensation to them.

The renegade moved to One Dog, who held out his left arm. “Pew! You stink, you swine,” Dog said as the man took two wraps around One Dog's left wrist and secured the rope with a knot. The outlaw did the same with Will, leaving five feet or so between the two combatants. One Dog had been quite right about the stench of his man; he smelled like a rotting corpse under a long day's hot sun. Will shook his head to clear it and immediately regretted the move. What was left of Dog's army formed a rough circle around the bound-together fighters.

One Dog nodded and an outlaw handed Will a knife. It was a decent piece of work: twelve-inch single-sided blade with a smooth blood channel and finely worked bone grips. Will tested its weight and balance and was satisfied.

“We will fight,” Dog said grimly.

“You bet your red ass we will.”

They circled each other once and then again, the rope taut between them. Then, surprising Will, One Dog tried a sucker's move: an attempt to kick Will's knife from his hand. Will hacked downward with his blade, opening a gash on One Dog's forestep that showed bone through the blood.

One Dog's kick had been a ruse. His blade slashed a six-inch groove across Will's throat, barely opening the skin. But another couple of inches and the fight would have been over.

They circled again, this time a tad more cautiously, bent slightly forward at the waist, on the balls of
their feet, ready to move in any direction, their knives in front of them chest high, extended a couple feet from their bodies.

One Dog's eyes swung for the briefest part of a second to his audience and Will took that fraction of a moment to attack with a direct thrust at the Indian's gut. One Dog was both agile and fast—but not fast enough to completely evade Will's blade. They stepped apart, Dog with a five-inch laceration slightly above his waist, blood flowing copiously onto the scalps on his belt under the wound.

One Dog countered immediately, again aiming at Will's throat or chest. Their wrists met, and each man exerted all the power he had against his opponent.

Will felt a jarring bolt of raw fear. His wrist was being pushed back toward his body minutely, almost imperceptibly, but it was moving toward him.

One Dog is stronger than I am.

Will slipped the wrist contact, dropped into a crouch, avoiding the Indian's thrust, and delivered a bone-revealing slash to Dog's calf—the same leg he'd stuck early on in the fight.

But I'm smarter than he is.

They circled again. One Dog feinted low and then impossibly fast brought his knife upward to open a gash across Will's chest, crushing two ribs with its force. Blood erupted the length of the cut and pain screamed from the fractured ribs.

The impact slammed Will to the ground and he scrambled to get his feet under him, but he was a heartbeat too late. One Dog fell on Will's chest, one knee pinning his right arm—his knife arm—to the ground.

Now the Indian had all the time he needed to play with Will, to kill him slowly. “First,” he said, “I'll take your ears.” He brought his knife down so that the edge didn't quite touch the flesh of Will's upper ear. “Now, white eyes with your false wampus and your partner and his bombs, you'll pay for those you've killed. I can gather fifty men in a week to replace those you've murdered. You've accomplished nothing, white eyes.
Nothing.
And you'll scream for mercy as I kill you.” He lowered the knife and began slicing into the top of Will's ear. “Ehh—where is your wampus now? Cringing somewhe—”

It was then that a silver-gray juggernaut with a bloody mouth and a piece of rope hanging from around its neck slammed onto One Dog, knocking him off Will. The wolf dog struck first at the jugular, which was revealed for a half second when One Dog was still falling. Gushes of blood spurted but quickly slowed to strong flowing rivulets. But this time, Wampus wasn't finished. As One Dog fell forward, the wolf dog sank his teeth into the back of the Indian's neck and snapped his spine. Then he began to saw with his teeth into One Dog's neck, shaking the body, bearing harder and harder until his trophy was free. He took One Dog's head from his body, carried it to Will, and dropped it in front of him.

Most of Dog's troops had run for their horses when the wolf dog appeared. The balance of them now ran after their peers.

“Holy mother of God,” Ray croaked, barely back to consciousness. “Holy mother of God.” He took some deep breaths. “You ever tie that boy again an' I'll draw on you, Will Lewis,” he said.

Will stumbled to Ray and cut his hands free.
“Gimme a hand with these cuts an' fetch our horses. I can't walk worth a damn. We got ranch work to do, pard.”

Wampus lived to be fourteen years old and died quietly, sleeping next to Will's bed in the ranch house Will and Ray had built. The wolf dog was never much good with cattle—too aggressive—but he followed the men each morning as they saddled up to check on their stock.

Wampus never “turned.”