Medicine Road (28 page)

For a long five seconds the two stood silently, feet
wide-braced, breaths close-held, the Mormon letting his eyes come slowly up from the bloody hand
to lock and hold with Jesse's only after what seemed
an eternity to the waiting mountain man. Tim was
muttering now, like an angry, crazed beast, and
backing away from Jesse to begin the circle again.
The guarded maneuver narrowed the mountain
man's eye, quickened his thinking.

With the leg gone, Jesse knew he had one chance:
to keep Tim from guessing he was crippled and to
make the hulking Mormon come to him. Slowly he
moved on in, white with the pain of the ankle, yet
making himself walk on it. Tim fell back into his
circle, moving and looking away from the mountain man. In Jesse's mind the plan was forming. It
had worked once by accident. It might work twice
by intent.

He feinted a quick step forward, taking the
weight on his good leg. Tim spun with the feint,
and, as he spun, Jesse spun with him, half slipping
to one knee. Tim took the bait, his diving leap coming with a rush and a grunt that dazed Jesse with its
speed. But this time the mountain man was in under it, and he had his feet under him. He felt his
shoulder drive into the crush of the Mormon's hairy
belly, got his palms against the great chest in the
same instant. Coming erect, he straightened his
long arms, the knotting shoulder muscles cracking
with the sudden, snapping heave.

Tim's huge body appeared to hang in mid-air for
a full second, the arc of its pause a good seven feet
from the rocky ground. Then it was in the rocks,
flat-sprawled, the contact force of its falling seeming to jar the very earth under Jesse's running
limp. It was a fall that should have broken a strong
man's spine but Tim rolled away from it and found
his feet before Jesse could get to him. Stunned,
bleeding, half blind from the rock dust and pine
needles that matted his broad face, the Mormon
came, groping and muttering, toward the crouching-Jesse.-

The awkwardness of that limping run toward the
fallen Tim had cost the mountain man a precious advantage, but it had brought him something equally
dear. The turned ankle was strengthening, would
take its share of the weight now, felt stronger by the
second. A man could work with his feet under him.
Could set himself to use those club-hard hands and
swinging shoulders. And more. Now was the time to
use them.

Tim's last clear memory was of seeing the grim
white face across from him suddenly ease into a wide-mouthed trace of a grin. Then he was reaching
for his man and storming him under. The face was
gone and the grin with it. There was nothing there,
then, and his ears were ringing and he was coughing with the blood that was bleeding back from his
nose and into his throat. Head swinging, eyes blurring, the renegade found his man again. Now he
was only a gray shadow, without face or arms or
legs. And he was moving against a flatness and an
emptiness that was as gray as his shadow. But he
was moving, and Tim could see that. Jesse set himself once more as Tim came weaving in, sighted the
bloody mouth and nose, swung his aim three inches
below them for the blunt chin. Again a last moment
lurch of the dazed Mormon steered the blow away
from the hanging jaw, landing it with a tearing side
slash across the right eye and cheek bone. Tim's
whole body twisted to the force of the smash, falling
past Jesse to land with a tooth-setting wrench on his
left side and shoulder.

From some ageless, dim, atavistic well of primal
instinct, Tim O'Mara drew the last bucket of brute
will. Somehow, unbelievably, he got his knees under
him. And then, incredibly, his feet. Turning with the
last, thrusting lurch that brought him up, the right
side of his face swung around, broadside, to Jesse.
The mountain man saw the dead white of the exposed bone beneath the damaged eye, the formless
mass of the closing flesh above it.

He knew, then, that instant, inner wash of cold
sickness that is the brave man's psychic rebellion
against destroying another, equally brave thing-be
it brute or human. And then the sickness was gone
and he was moving in on the sightless, whimpering
renegade. Moving in to do what he had to do. And meaning to do it with every ounce of merciful
strength that was in him.

Stooping, his groping fingers closed around the
jagged, melon-sized rock, his weary arm drawing
back and up as he straightened. For a long, slow
breath the rock hung poised above the featureless
pulp that had once been a fellow creature's face,
then fell from the nerveless fingers to roll and
bounce harmlessly in front of the knee-braced Tim
O'Mara. Jesse was still standing over the slumped
huddle of the Mormon's sagging body, his mind
and jaw setting to fight down the sickness that was
building in him again, when he heard it.

It was a deep voice. And pleasant. Not angry, and
not English.

"Woyuonihan! Red Fox is a fighter. We respect him!"

The affable growl of the speech broke in a chain of
high plains monosyllables that mounded Jesse's
spine with gooseflesh. A man would never need to
turn to guess that orator's identity. Still, it went
against the mountain breed to take lead in the back
without at least a farewell wave at what was undoubtedly getting ready to sling it there. Before he
could move to face around, however, the voice was
continuing its guttural, unhurried way.

"Now, wait, Fox. Just step back there, where you
are. Only a little way."

Without hesitation, Jesse moved to obey, placing
his moccasins carefully behind him for three slow,
backward steps, knowing the dangerous shift of
these red minds, not wanting to bring that coup shot
any sooner than necessary. On the third step, the
voice came again.

"That's enough, cousin. You were in the way of
that crawling dog, there."

The laconic words were punctuated with a single,
barking rifle shot.

Jesse heard the slug slap into the heaving chest of
the still conscious Tim O'Mara, saw the big renegade's hands go jerking toward the spreading stain
beneath the left nipple, watched them claw and knot
briefly, before the thick body slid forward into the
granite and lay still.

In the following quiet, Jesse turned, taking care
that the movement was slow and steady. A man had
to grant they looked beautiful standing over there in
the throat of the creek gorge. Back of them the red
morning sun bounced and gleamed off the rifle barrels and lance blades, the nervous pattern of their
many war ponies making a motley-pied background
for the eagle feathers and war grease that draped
and splattered their bodies. 100 yards in their foreground, thirty from Jesse, his great size dwarfing the
piebald stud horse he rode, the beautifully proportioned bulk of Watonga sat, black and stark, against
the climbing sun.

"Hau," said Jesse. "We meet at last." Bowing
slightly, he touched the tips of his left fingers to his
brow. "Woyuonihan."

"Woyuonihan," responded Watonga, the nearblack mask of his face cracking in a grotesque grin.
"Hohahe, Tokeya Sha is welcome. Watonga has
waited long for this pleasure."

"Tokeya is a fool!" replied Jesse, feigning a selfdisgust that wasn't half a tone from bitterly real.

"Iho! Don't say that," begged the huge chief solicitously. "Even when you were a boy, Long Chin told
my father you would one day be a chief. And now,
look. Every Arapaho north of the Medicine Road
knows of Red Fox. Tokeya Sha is a real chief! Wagh!"

"A real heyoka," insisted Jesse, stalling the precious seconds as his glance reckoned the distance to
Heyoka's hiding place against the number of pony
lengths between him and Black Coyote. "Were he
not such a witless one, how could he have come so
blindly to smell at this putrid bait?" He indicated
the silent Tim with a contemptuous, backflung gesture of his thumb.

"Big Face was telling the truth. He did not know
we came back here to catch you. He thought we had
gone. He thought I left him here as a courtesy return
to Tokeya. And so I did. Oha! Take him! Watonga
gives him back to you. But do not say he lied. He
didn't know we were hiding in Little Chief's Valley.
Big Face didn't know that."

Jesse nodded, understanding that by Little Chief
they meant Kit Carson. Damn. His hunch about
looking up Carson's Creek Gorge had been dead
right. As he hesitated thus, he saw the braves behind
Watonga beginning to split and file around either
side of the flats to hem and circle him in solidly.
There was no move to harm him, no apparent hurry
to surround him. The ponies just shuffled easily
along the cedars' edges, their blank-faced riders sitting, slack and dead-eyed, not seeming even to look
at the trapped goddam guide.

In another moment, the southern file of warriors
would be between him and Heyoka. If he were going to make any break, now was the time. Still he
hung back, fearing the odds, undecided, confused,
as near to being stampeded as he had ever been. Finally it was a little thing that decided him. One of
those strange, stray little thoughts that will flash
through a man's mind at a time like this-the
thought of Tall Elk, the dark-faced squaw. Fronted by 100 of the hardest-cut prairie warriors ever to
swing astride a spotted pony, the Sioux-reared
mountain man found himself thinking about one female squaw! And what he was thinking was that
once these red sons got him back to camp and to
that damned hawk-headed Tall Elk, there would be
a sharp end to all this courtesy rules horseplay.

The Indian men were great for ceremony, always.
Their women, never. With the squaws it was meat in
the pot or a scalp on the drying rack, and the hell
with the details of how it got there. All right, then,
he would go now. He tensed his body for the leap
that was going to start his sprint for Heyoka. If he
could get to the cat-fast gray mare, he would give
these red devils a ride they could lie to their grandchildren about for the next ten generations. The
panther-scream war cry of the Minniconjou welled
up in his throat, his legs straightening for the jump.

The leap never got started, the yell never out. A
flashing burst of pain exploded in the back of his
head. The red sun behind Watonga shattered and
flew into a thousand pieces. The amber morning
light went black as the nether pole...

Tall Elk was still spraddled over the fallen body,
raising her stone maul for another drive at the bright
red head beneath her, when Black Coyote's heavy
voice interrupted.

"Hinhanka po, that's enough!"

The chief's barking command stopped the final
hammer blow, left the squaw staring up at her mate,
broad mouth writhing like a sow bear that had just
had her snout cuffed out of the hot bowels of a yearling doe.

"That red scalp is a fine one," growled Watonga irritably. "Why get it all gummed up with the brains?"

When Jesse came awake, he was tied to a torture
stake, twenty feet from the entrance flap of Watonga's
lodge. This stake was a real can wakan sha, a real red
holy pole. Fifteen feet high, dyed a brilliant scarlet
with the juice of the wica kanaska berry, its vibrant
color was no more evident than the forecast of the
trapped mountain man's future contained in its raw
pigment. All doubts a man might have had as to how
the Arapahoes intended handling him were now
pleasantly resolved. They aimed to barbecue him.

Down canon, he could see the hanging ledge and
rank fern dell of Portola Springs. Around him and
Watonga's lodge was scattered the circle of ash-gray
mushroom spots marking the early morning ceremonial fires made to induce the spirit of pte to cooperate in the upcoming slaughter of his four-legged
patrons up on the mesa. The camp appeared deserted, the angle of the sun, squarely in Jesse's face,
indicating about 10:00 A.M. He'd been tela nun wela
dead yet alive nearly four hours. Testing the rawhide thongs, he was pleased to learn two things: his limbs
were sound, his blood moving well. His head ached
something sinful but his eyesight and mind were
clear enough.

There was a considerable trick to stringing a man
up so he would keep for hours in good condition,
yet have no chance in God's back pasture of working
himself loose. The Arapahoes proved they were
onto this trick by the way they had him laced to that
holy pole. Beyond testing the job he made no effort
to loosen it. No point wasting good strength. These
butchers knew how to hang their hogs.

The fact they had strung him up so carefully, leaving his leggings on, putting him in a nice shade
clump, let him know they didn't aim to sweat him
like they had figured for Tim. Nobody raised with
the Miniconjous needed any more telling than that
about their plans for him. The only time they took
care to keep a prisoner good and alive was when
they reckoned to take their sweet time getting him
good and dead.

As to the precise manner of this prospect, the
mountain man wasn't held long in question. Tall Elk
came barging out of the cedars, noisy as a wind
whisper in young grass. Her arms were loaded with
straight-grain cedar chunks. Seeing Jesse's eyes on
her, she nodded, displaying that curious Indian
quirk that brought them to accept a condemned enemy as highly privileged.