Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (14 page)

           
“Speak, Eagle Wing,” bade Otter. “We
say that you think you ought to be chief instead of Woodpecker. We say that you
tried to keep my white brother from killing Giluhda, because Giluhda’s death
would make Woodpecker a stronger chief.”

           
Eagle Wing only smiled frostily.
Otter drew his arrow halfway back on the string, but Sam stayed him with a
gesture.

           
“Eagle Wing, listen to me,” said
Sam. “The warriors and hunters of
Twilight
Town
have tried to fight Giluhda, and have been
killed and hurt. They have stopped fighting him. I am the only man your people
have seen in a long time, who wanted to try to kill Giluhda. If Giluhda’s death
is what your people want, why do you try to keep me from killing him?”

           
Eagle Wing finally spoke, with
grudging loftiness, as though he himself were the accuser.

           
“I do not think that you came to
kill Giluhda,” he said. “I think you came to hurt the Twilight People. You are
one of the Red Coats, and the Red Coats are the enemies of my people and of all
other peoples but themselves.”

           
“Do you like the White Coats
better?” suggested Sam.

           
“I do not like the White Coats, but
I like them better than the Red Coats. When white men come into a new country,
they take it away from the tribes that live there. The White Coats do that
thing, but not as much as the Red Coats. If you have seen this land, and then
go back and tell your people, the Red Coats, many of them will come and take
it. I do not want that to happen.”

           
Sam was no fool, and no greedy
hunter of a fortune in land. He knew that there was some truth in what Eagle
Wing had said. In the
North Carolina
country east of the mountains, the white settlers had ruthlessly shoved
the Indians from their hunting grounds, by tricks and by trifling, cheating
payments in trade. But it was Otter who replied to Eagle Wing’s new charge.

           
“Eagle Wing, you are telling lies
again,” said Otter. “You have said those words to my brother, but you looked at
me. You wanted me to believe the things you said. You wanted me to turn from
his side to yours. I know that you say those things only to hide your real
thoughts.”

           
“Otter has become a medicine man,”
growled Eagle Wing. “He says that he knows my real thoughts, and that they are
hidden behind words I do not mean. Only a medicine man can read hidden
thoughts.”

           
“I see your thoughts because they
are not hidden,” said Otter. “You showed them at
Twilight
Town
. You talked to any who would listen. You
spoke against Woodpecker. You do not care for the people or the town. You want
to be chief. You will do anything to be chief.”

           
“It is not good to speak angrily,”
said Sam, his own voice calm. “Eagle Wing, eat the
noon
meal with us. We will talk more. I want to
know all that you want. I want to see if there is any wisdom or good plan in
your thoughts.”

           
“I will not eat with enemies,” said
Eagle Wing flatly. “Otter makes his brave talk because he knows I cannot answer
him without weapons.”

           
“You can have weapons soon, and show
me if you can use them,” promised Otter passionately. “Now, I will finish what
I was saying. Eagle Wing, you know that my brother came here because Woodpecker
asked him to come. You made talk against inviting a man of the Red Coats.”

           
He paused. Eagle Wing refused to
comment.

           
“You know that if my brother kills
Giluhda, then the people will say that it was Woodpecker’s wisdom that made the
thing to be done,” continued Otter. “The people will love Woodpecker and follow
him. Your words will be no words. No ear will listen to you when you speak
against Woodpecker. You know this to be true.”

           
Otter had risen to his feet in his
angry earnestness, and now Eagle Wing rose, too. Once more Otter drew his bow.
Eagle Wing almost shoved his naked chest against the point of Otter’s arrow.

           
“I have listened too long,” said
Eagle Wing, as though he spoke to an ill-mannered child. “I am a medicine man,
and my wisdom is a strong wisdom. I know what is going to happen, and now I
will say what is going to happen.”

           
“What is going to happen?” Otter
challenged him. “I am going to go away from here,” announced Eagle Wing coldly.
“I am going to walk out of this cave and go back to
Twilight
Town
. I am tired of sitting with two fools and
hearing their words that are like water running over rocks.”

           
He put out a finger and flicked the
arrow head contemptuously.

           
“I am going to turn my back on you,”
he said. “Maybe you will be brave enough to shoot me from behind. Now, I have
finished. I will say no more.” With commanding dignity, he took a long step
past the furious Otter and went out of the cave. He moved across the cleared
space, with long, slow strides. Every motion of his body, every fine of his
straight, scornfully presented back, dared them to try to stop him.

           
With a sudden intake of breath,
Otter aimed his arrow and drew its feathered butt to his very ear. But Sam
sprang upon him and caught him by both wrists.

           
“He thinks I do not dare to shoot
him,” panted Otter as he struggled with Sam. Otter’s eyes glared after the form
of Eagle Wing as it gained the shadow of the trees and vanished from sight.

           
“He knew that I would stop you,”
said Sam. “Eagle Wing’s heart is bad, but he is wise and brave. He knew that I
would not let him die from an arrow in the back, to be seen by hunters of the
Twilight People.”

           
Exerting all his strength, Sam
wrestled Otter back across the floor of the cave to the rear wall. “He has
friends in
Twilight
Town
,” said Sam. “We must make them stop being
his friends. I want Eagle Wing to live, and to see that he will never be chief
of the Twilight People.”

           
Otter ceased struggling, but he did
not relax. “If we do not kill him—” he began.

           
“Let him live,” said Sam. “I will
give you anything of mine you want.”

           
“Anything?” echoed Otter, his eyes
bright. And then he subsided. “It will be as you want it to be, my brother.
Eagle Wing can go without my arrow to strike his back. I promise.”

           
“Good words,” said Sam, and let go
of him.

           
“And now,” went on Otter, “you said
you would give me anything I want.”

           
“I said I would give it,” agreed
Sam. “Ask.” “Then you must sit in the tree while I go on the ground to bring
Giluhda under the spear.”

           
Sam frowned, and opened his mouth to
argue again. Then he closed it. He nodded slowly.

           
“I promised, and it will be the way
you say. Now, we must go to see if Giluhda is back from his eating, to drink
from the river. We must find him and kill him now.”

           
“I see your plan,” Otter told him.
“It is good. If we kill Giluhda, then Eagle Wing can speak no more against
Woodpecker. Quick, take the meat from the fire. We will eat it as we go to find
Giluhda.”

           
ONCE HE had agreed not to kill Eagle
Wing, Otter became his cool, rational self once again. He bit into a piece of
grilled venison and gazed after the vanished medicine man.

           
“Let him go a short way,” he said to
Sam. “Then we will follow him.”

           
“Follow him?” repeated Sam. “He
cannot hurt us. We took his weapons. He will not try to fight two enemies, when
they have bows and arrows and knives.”

           
“No, he will go straight back to
Twilight
Town
. Perhaps he will try to plan some new way
to hurt us. But to go to
Twilight
Town
, he must go across the trail of Giluhda
between the drinking place and the forest on the other side, where Giluhda went
to look for food. If Giluhda comes back just now,” and Otter looked crafty,
“Eagle Wing will be in front of us. Giluhda will see him first and run after
him. That way, we can see Giluhda without being in danger.” “Eagle Wing will
help us?”
grinned
Sam. “That is good talk. Let us eat,
very quickly, and follow Eagle Wing’s trail.”

           
Munching the venison, they left the
cave with eyes and ears alert. They headed for the point at which Eagle Wing
had walked away through the trees.

           
Almost at once, they saw a point
where Eagle Wing had apparently come to a halt. One pair of his moccasin tracks
were marked more deeply and sharply than those before and behind. And beside
them lay a jagged piece of rock, several pounds in weight. Sam and Otter could
see the depression in the soil from which that rock had been violently pried.

           
“Eagle Wing’s heart was bad,” said
Otter, pointing to the rock and the tracks. “It almost made his wisdom
go
from him. He stopped here, and took that piece of stone
in his hand. He thought about coming back to fight us once more.”

           
“And I think he would have come
back, if there had been only one enemy waiting for him,” added Sam. “It is as
you have said. He is brave and his heart is bad against us, but he is wise.”

           
They followed the marks of Eagle
Wing’s moccasins, moving at a good rate of speed, taking care not to rustle
leaves or to jar against trees. Thus they travelled for nearly a mile after the
medicine man. Then Otter, who was leading the way as usual, came to a halt and
spread his palm behind him to hold Sam in his tracks.

           
Sam froze in position, making ready
his bow and arrow. Otter peered slowly and warily around a low- sprouting bush,
taking care not to stir a single twig of it. He gazed a long moment at what he
saw beyond, then turned and beckoned Sam with a quick jerking motion of his
shaven head.

           
Sam worked his way to Otter’s elbow
and also looked past the bush. Not many yards ahead of them
was
Eagle Wing.

           
He was squatting beside a narrow
trickle of water, sitting on his heels, while he dipped in the little stream
with both his hands. He splashed palmfuls of water on his face, rubbing
briskly.

           
Eagle Wing was washing away the
bright war paint with which he had decorated himself to come looking for Sam
and Otter. That meant that he would come back to
Twilight
Town
with a clean face. It also meant that he
had kept his plan for fighting and killing from his companions there. He
carefully rinsed the last streaks of color from his cheeks, brow and nose, then
lifted water in one palm to drink. Finally he straightened to his full height
and peered to the right and the left, then turned and gazed back the way he had
come. His face was brown and well washed.

           
The two watchers behind the bush
held themselves motionless, and knew that Eagle Wing did not see them. Finally
the medicine man resumed his homeward journey, on slow feet. He had departed
from the cave with a mocking swagger, like a great man turning from a
conference with small ones; but now that he thought himself alone and
unwatched, his brown shoulders seemed to stoop, his head to sink forward. He
looked weary and unhappy.

           
Again Otter and Sam stole forward
after
him,
again Eagle Wing came to a stop ahead of
them. Otter and Sam halted where they were, each concealing
himself
behind a big tree. Eagle Wing stood tense and apprehensive, his neck craning and
his head thrust out as he watched and listened.

           
A moment later, the two heard the
sound that must have been caught by Eagle Wing’s ears—a thunder- some crashing
far away among the forest trees. Giluhda was coming toward them.

           
All three of the men waited
motionless and furtive. But the noise of Giluhda’s ponderous passage among
trees, vines and bushes did not come toward them, but crosswise in front of the
medicine man. Apparently the monster was again heading for the
Big
River
, as earlier in the day Otter had predicted
he would do.

           
For a whole long minute they
listened, while Giluhda stamped and smashed his way through the thickets and
clumps. Sam could judge the very moment when the big beast was passing directly
in front of them, and was thankful that there was no breeze stirring to bear a
whiff of human scent to Giluhda, Eagle Wing waited, motionless as a bronze
statue and taut as a bowstring. Plainly he feared Giluhda deeply.

           
Yet, Sam remembered, Eagle Wing had
done all that he could to keep Giluhda from being killed. He had argued against
Sam’s hunting for the beast, he had dropped the bag of bullets at the village,
and now he had tried to kill Sam. With all his fear of the monster, Eagle Wing
had tried to make an advantage to himself out of its life. His ambition to win
the chieftainship of the Twilight People from Woodpecker was far stronger than
any dread of the ageless, merciless giant that now lurched through the trees
toward the river.

           
The noise grew less. Giluhda had
passed them and was going away, carrying with him his enmity and danger.

           
Eagle Wing listened for a few
seconds more, then resumed his own journey. He moved with the utmost care and
silence, pausing again and again to gaze and listen in the direction of the
river. Finally he came to a point where he examined the ground most thoroughly.
When he had ventured on, Sam and Otter followed him to his last stopping place.

           
It was on the rough land Giluhda had
rammed through the forest, and toward the river they could see a belt of thorn
bushes where his body, as wide as a cart, had shoved its way through. The two
friends stood still, side by side, and let Eagle Wing pass along ahead and well
out of sight among more trees. Then they changed direction and crept after
Giluhda.

           
They could see that he had gained
the game path not far beyond the thorn bushes and had headed along it toward
the drinking place. As Otter and Sam set their feet to this hard-packed runway,
a slight breeze sprang up from the river. They glanced at each other in
grateful triumph. With wind blowing from Giluhda toward them, he would not
smell out their nearness.

           
More boldly they followed him along,
past the two great oaks where the spear still hung poised and ready for what
they had put it there to do. They came to the end of the path, and from it they
peeped out into the clearing.

           
Giluhda was at the edge of the
river, where he had been early that day. Again Sam saw him thrust his trunk
deep into the water, and squirt a drink from it into his big, three-cornered
mouth, then another drink. Giluhda wagged his head, the huge, curved tusks
moving to and fro as easily as feathers on the head of an Indian warrior. Then
he waded out until the current flowed against his hairy flanks. He splashed
water over his back and shoulders. His pleased grunts carried all the way to
the path.

           
Sam watched in a mood of
apprehensive wonder, taking time to look well at his enemy. He tried to guess
how much Giluhda weighed, and he could not. All he could say was that this
living colossus, just now sporting in the river like a muskrat, was surely
twice the height of a tall man, as he had been told, and broad and powerful
even for that great stature. He asked himself if the spear he had forged from
his rifle barrel was large enough, after all, to deal a mortal wound to such a
thing. And again he could not answer his own question.

           
Otter touched Sam’s elbow, and
motioned him to fall back along the path. They retreated to the place where the
oak trees grew.

           
“He will bathe for a long time,”
whispered Otter close to Sam’s ear. “He will be there until I go to call him.”

           
“When you go to call him,” repeated
Sam under his breath. “I still think it would be better for you to sit in the
tree and wait while I bring him to you.”

           
“We will say no more about that. You
gave the running on the ground to me. Now, is your knife sharp?”

           
Sam drew the blade from its sheath
and tested it with his thumb. He produced his whetstone from his pouch and
began to stroke the edge of the knife back and forth upon it.

           
“Quietly, quietly,” warned Otter’s
whisper at his ear. “It is not a loud noise, but Giluhda might hear it —his
ears are good—and he would think it a strange one. Now, speak once more. What
are we to do here?”

           
“When you run in front of Giluhda,”
answered Sam softly, “run along the trail, and from the trail turn to the side
and then go between the trees.” He moved across the ground to show how. “Make
sure that he goes between them after you.”

           
Otter nodded to show that he
understood. He followed Sam to the place between the trees. “Speak on,” he
whispered.

           
“He must come in from the trail, so
that his shoulders push both the trees, here at this place.” Sam stood and
stretched out a hand against each of the oaks. “Then most of his body will
still be behind them, and his back will be under the point of the spear.” He
pointed to the motionless weapon with its bulging packages of heavy stones. “At
that moment, up above him, I will cut the spear free to fall down upon him.”

           
“It is a good plan,” whispered
Otter. “Brother, you are wise and your medicine is strong.”

           
“Wait until we find out,” Sam
muttered in English. He knew that the spear and its downward-driving weight
must not fail, or Otter’s life would pay for that failure. He began to whet his
knife again, silently but carefully. Pausing, he tested the edge on his thumb
as before. It felt as sharp as a razor.