Medicine Road (29 page)

"Hau, you have been walking in the shadows. Hohahe, welcome back."

"Ha ho," replied Jesse, straight-faced, "thank you.
That is fine wood you have there. Hard and dry. The
splinters will be excellent."

The big squaw nodded again, approving the Wa sicun's good guessing. "Indeed, nothing like dry
cedar for a real roasting."

"Hau, it burns slow and long. The meat gets done
right, that way."

The squaw grunted an agreement to Jesse's statement, squatting down in front of the lodge, beginning the loving work of splitting the foot-long
burning-splinters off the seasoned cedar.

Jesse gave her a few minutes to get started, then
inquired politely: "Where are all the men? Where is
Watonga and Little Chief?"

"All gone," growled the squaw. "All gone to hunt.
There is a fine herd up on the high grass. Gray Bear
and Elk Runner found it there. Black Coyote took Ya
Slo, his son, along that the boy might learn how a
herd is properly approached."

And that, apparently, was the end of Tall Elk's conversational efforts for the day. To the mountain man's
further inquiries, she was deaf as a limestone post,
her only further contribution to the palaver being to
come up off her haunches, move over to the captive
trapper, and belt him in the mouth with one of the
iron-hard cedar chunks, the blow being accompanied with a soft-grunted request: "Shut up now."

Jesse licked his split lip speculatively, spat his
mouth clear of blood, and complied.

For a pleasant hour, then, he was entertained by
his contemplative viewing of Watonga's wife at her
ingenious best-displaying all the fascinating hand
skill of the Plains Indians. The fact the Arapaho
woman's prairie art craft was being devoted to fashioning the shapely little hardwood splinters that
would, with nightfall, be illuminating various and
tender portions of Jesse Callahan's swart skin was
irrevelant. The woman was an artist.

Along about noon, business improved. First off,
Watonga came riding down the mesa trail followed
by Johnny O'Mara on his stubby paint pony. Jesse
had time to sing out as the youngster spotted him.

"Hi, there, Johnny boy! Are you all right?"

The put-on cheerfulness missed its mark with the
dirty-faced boy, his answer coming with childish direction, right to the point. "Gosh all hemlocks, Jesse!
Am I glad to see you! Say, golly! What have they got
you all tied up for? I'll bet they're going to torture
you, Jesse. Gee, L.-."

Evidently the Indians hadn't let the little cuss see
him when they had brought him into camp after Tall
Elk had sneaked up behind him in the flats and
floored him with that damned maul. Jesse was
about to reassure Johnny that he was not in any danger, but before he could Tall Elk grabbed the boy off
his pony and hustled him into the teepee.

From within the lodge, the mountain man could
hear the squaw growling at him like a she-bear
warning her cub. Hearing nothing from Johnny,
Jesse called out, still putting his words light and easy:
"Don't you worry none, Johnny! They ain't going to
harm me none. You watch, now. The Arapahoes ain't
been whelped what can handle us Minniconjous.
H'g'un, in there, Wanbli Sha. Keep your heart big
and your ears wide open!"

There was no answer from the teepee and shortly
Tall Elk came out to join Watonga where the chief
squatted by the lodge entrance. Looking at her mate
frowningly, the squaw demanded: "What happened?
Why did you return? Where are the braves?"

Black Coyote shrugged. "It was nothing. Such a
thing as will happen no more. We got a bad change
in wind and the buffalo smelled us. They began to run before we could get around them. Yellow Leg
and the others went after them. I brought Ya Slo
back, that's all."

"Waste, it is good you did. Ya Slo should sleep.
Last night his eyes were open to the smoke hole as
long as the stars were there."

"Hau," rumbled Watonga, "mine, too. You can't
sleep much around that Tokeya Sha. I haven't had
my eyes closed right since he fooled me about that
gunpowder. Right now, I am tired. Like an old chief
with six young wives. Curse that red-haired Wasicun devil. Curse his red-wheeled goddam. Curse
that damn gunpowder!"

"Not the powder!" Tall Elk said quickly. "Don't
curse the powder. Don't put a bad dream on that.
Remember, we must get powder soon. Don't curse
it, then!"

The chief scowled the squaw down, snapped at
her irascibly: "That red-wheeled goddam is the
curse of my life. It has defeated me. It is a devil. An
evil thing. I would give much to have it in my hands.
Wagh! At least I have the Wasicun who guided it
against me. Who ruined my honor agreement with
the Mormon chief. Now we'll see. I'll kill him.
Maybe that will count as a coup against the goddam. Do you think so?"

"Oh, sure. But sleep now. Don't think about it.
Old Horse has dreamed that you will get the powder. Maybe the Mormon chief means to give it to
you after he has captured Big Throat's fort. Anyway,
Old Horse always dreams right. You will get that
powder. And soon."

Observing this conversation, Jesse was aware of
Johnny O'Mara's pinched face peering out from under the lodge's side skins, a few feet from the en trance flap. The boy looked about as drowsy as a
tom kitten in an Airedale kennel. He caught the
mountain man's eye at once, waved quickly, disappeared back under the side skins. Another second
and his high voice was piping in defiant disregard
of Tall Elk's warning to he quiet.

"Don't worry, Jesse. We'll get away all right!" The
mountain man had no more than winced helplessly
at this boyish optimism than Johnny's voice concluded with a bull's-eye shout that hit dead center of
Jesse's bitter sun squint. "Shucks, we've still got our
Sioux secret, ain't we?"

As the meaning of the boy's words struck into
Jesse's thoughts, the big Arapaho squaw was inside
the lodge, scolding the youngster angrily, cutting
his words sharply off. But the mountain man had
heard all he needed, and a heap more than he had
expected or hoped for. Maybe it wasn't much, but a
hidden Green River skinning knife was for sure a
sight more of a something than the nothings Jesse
had been able to think of for the past two hours. As
this hope arose in the mountain man, Tall Elk came
out of the lodge, standing aside for Black Coyote to
enter.

"What have you done with Ya Slo inside there?"
the chief demanded.

"He is quiet, tied by the leg to a lodgepole."

"Waste," replied her mate. "Now we will sleep.
The hunters will be returning by the time Old Father Wi has traveled almost to the west. See that you
have plenty of burning splinters by then, woman. I
owe this Minniconjou Fox a real roasting."

"There will be plenty. I will make more while Watonga sleeps."

Jesse figured that Black Coyote, like any seasoned soldier, would not need more than five minutes to
be asleep. He gave him ten, then began anxiously
hawkeying the side skins of his lodge where he'd
last seen Johnny O'Mara's gopher face.

Another endless five minutes crawled by and the
side skins hadn't even quivered. Well, hell. It had
been a long shot, last chance, at best. Even if the
gutsy cub had meant that he still had the knife Jesse
had given him, he would never get the chance to use
it with that cursed squaw squatting there splitting
those damned splinters.

The mountain man's slant gaze swung away from
the lodge, narrowed down on the busy squaw. She
looked up, catching his eye, nodded grimly, held up
one of the splinters for his approval. He nodded politely, and she fell again, loosely smiling, to the loving concentration required by her labors. The second
her glance left him, Jesse caught an eye tail flash of
light from the direction of the lodge.

Then he was looking at the three brightest spots
any Arapaho-bound white man ever saw under the
slightly raised side skins of a hostile Arapaho lodge:
the lively sparkle of two Johnny O'Mara blue eyes
and the sun bounce off the glittering blade of a
Green River knife. Now, by God, if that horse-size
squaw would somehow turn her back for twenty
breaths. Man Above! Wakan Tanka! Make her do it.
Send her down something to do besides sitting there,
hacking away at those burning splinters!

The next second's reaction on Tall Elk nearly
made an Indian Christian out of Jesse Callahan. As
though in ordered obedience to the mountain man's
fervent prayer, the Arapaho woman suddenly stood
up. Glancing at the prisoner, she scowled, went
limping off into the brush. Jesse could still see her as she hoisted her deerskins and hunkered down, back
to him and out of sight, behind the screening brush.

Good old Wakan Tanka. Bless that Man Above.
Thank him for the clock-like regularity of the Plains
Indian bowel!

The next instant his warning, side-mouth hiss was
on its way toward the sleeping chief's lodge, and
Johnny O'Mara was popping out from under the
side skins, leaping across the open, racing, wideeyed, down upon the waiting mountain man.

"The hands first, boy. For God's sake slash those
thongs. Never mind if you get a little meat along
with them."

He felt the bite of the razored blade whacking into
the rawhide laces, felt them loosen and fall slackly.
Writhing, he seized the knife from the white-faced
boy, low-voiced his tense order.

"Back in the lodge, young 'un. Hop it before she
sees you."

Without waiting to see his harsh command
obeyed, Jesse bent forward, slashing at the intricate
knottings of the ankle rawhides. Another second,
now. Just one. Looking up to check the squaw, his
fingers frantically seeking out the twistings of the
thongs, the better to get the knife at them, he was in
time to see Tall Elk coming for him.

Passing the splinter pile, the long arm swept
down, scooping up the stone maul. Three more bigcat leaps and she was on him, the grating grizzly
coughs of her people coming with her.

Jesse measured her diving drive, twisted as far
left as his bound feet would let him. The stone maul
missed, hissing by his ear an arrow's width away.
As it passed, Jesse shifted the knife to his left hand,
his right striking, snake-like, for the squaw's right wrist. Striking and going home. Nailing the squaw's
arm clean as a ten-penny spike. At the same instant,
he put every ounce of the power in his tendon-tough
muscles into a wrenching shoulder twist.

He felt the Indian woman's wrist bones turn and
snap under his fingers, saw the falling stone maul
leave the squaw's nerveless fingers. Simultaneously
his free left hand whipped the skinning knife into
her contorted back.

White mountain man, stone buffalo maul, and
knifed Arapaho squaw all hit the ground together,
Jesse's clawing right hand biting into the maul's haft
as they did. Tall Elk flung herself to one side, surging to free her broken right wrist from the Wasicun's
grip, found that the hand brought up in the iron
school of Minniconjou horse-breaking doesn't give
worth a puny damn. The squaw had time to start
one last, broken growl, and that was all.

With everything he had to offer, from his memories of little Kathy's crushed face onward, Jesse
drove the stone maul squarely into the snarling face.
The pop and splatter of the pulping bones, the way
the maul broke in past the nose-bridge, suddenly
soft and deep, let him know that Tall Elk, the wife of
Watonga, had split her last burning splinter.

Twisting free of the squaw's body, Jesse came
away from it as Black Coyote stumbled to the opening of the lodge. The chief's eyes, heavy with sleep,
seized the situation a little slowly. When it came to
him that the Wasicun was cutting himself free, Watonga wasted no breath in war whooping. Crouching for his leap at the still tethered white man, his
knife flashed into his hand.

Jesse needed five seconds more. He got them by
grace of Johnny O'Mara's quick-headed thinking. As Watonga launched himself through the teepee
flap, his own four-foot coup stick hanged itself between his bowed legs, knocking him as head over
heels as a bear cub in a scuffle play. Before he could
come clear of the ground, Jesse was on him.

Black Coyote got as far as his knees when the
mountain man's size-eleven stomper took him dead
in the crotch cloth. The bursting pain of the groin
kick doubled the chief forward into the split-oak fist
that followed the foot. Watonga jackknifed down
into the dirt, his great jaw sagging. He rolled half
over on his back, lay there, glaze-eyed as a poleaxed steer.

"We've got plenty of time." Jesse's reassuring nod
went to Johnny O'Mara, where the nervous boy sat
his paint pony fifty yards downtrail of Watonga's buffalo camp. "Just you set there and hold onto Heyoka
and that stud hoss of the chief's. I'm going back to
the camp a minute. I got me a message I want to pin
on old Watonga."

He was gone, loping easily back toward the silent
camp, before Johnny could put his nerves into words.
White-faced, the boy sat his pony, dividing his frightened glances between keeping an eye out for Jesse's
return, and seeing to the considerable business of
holding onto Watonga's skittery piebald stallion.

Heyoka, the mountain man's indispensable but
immoral mare, did her bit to heighten Johnny's trial
by choosing to make the most of this, her first opportunity in months to be alone with a gentleman.
The way she kept rumping up to the nostril-belled
attentions of Black Coyote's best buffalo horse was
likely to pull the boy's thin arms clean off.

Breaking out his manliest seven-year old oath, the near-panicked youth belted the watch-eyed stud
frantically across the nose. "Dang your mangy 'Rapaho hide! Leave that there mare alone! Jesse'll kill
the both of us, happen you bust loose of me!"

Whether annoyed by Heyoka's delicate Minniconjou scent, or impressed by the plain audacity of a
weanling Wasicun boy's gall in rope-swatting a chief's
war mount, the ear-pinned stud backed off, cleared
his offended nostrils disdainfully, quieted down.