Murder at Medicine Lodge (16 page)

“That isn't true,” I said calmly.

“Yes, it is!” she yelped. “The chiefs of the other Nations are all saying this is true. They also say that Lone Wolf is only mad because it is clear to everyone that he can't control White Bear.”

Canting my head, I asked evenly, “And how do you know this?”

“My uncle told me.” Her expression self-satisfied, she sat back, the small chair hidden under her impossible clothing creaking with protest. Then she began to glare at me while rapidly fanning her face, and went on the attack again. “If you intend to prove otherwise, you'd better prove it quick. The other chiefs are also saying that it would be better if the Kiowas weren't allowed to attend the peace talks.” She sent me a meaningful look. “And you know what that means.”

Indeed I did. The end of Little Bluff's Confederacy of Nations. The end of the existing peace between Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos. With that gone, the bloody intertribal wars of long ago would resume. Even worse, without the alliance, there would be no united voice to call a stop to the intruders determined to have the prairies.

If the Confederacy of Nations ended at Medicine Lodge, White Bear would be blamed. It wouldn't matter that he had been declared innocent by the army. What mattered was the judgment of chiefs. I reasoned in those passing seconds, that Lone Wolf knew better than Mrs. Adams just what those chiefs were saying. Being a secretive man, he was keeping this vital information close to his chest.

Unknowingly, Mrs. Adams had just explained so very much—explained why Lone Wolf had gone into the Blue Jackets' camp pushing hard for a public acknowledgment of White Bear's innocence. It was also clear why he'd been too livid to move when his own men had fallen into a public wrangle. One more time, his own subchiefs had made him look bad. If everyone had kept their mouths shut, allowed the army to just go ahead and hang Little Jonas, Lone Wolf's troubles might have been halved. There would still be talk against White Bear, but Lone Wolf would have been able to ask, “If this is what the army believed, why did they hang one of their own men?” A considerable amount of pride could have been saved by this one question but, thanks to his own subchiefs and Skywalker in particular, Little Jonas had not been hanged and Lone Wolf's most difficult problems were still there. But for no longer than two days more. He'd been very clear that that was as far as he was willing to go.

I certainly couldn't blame him. Time was even less on his side than on mine. In two days, Lone Wolf might easily find himself being pitched out of the Confederacy. Lone Wolf was a man with the unenviable challenge of being Little Bluff's successor. He knew, despite his best efforts to prove himself, that he would never come out from behind Little Bluff's too-large shadow. The most he could hope for, now more than ever, was to escape becoming known as the weakest principal chief in the history of the Kiowa Nation.

Realizing I had in fact not one man to save, but three, blood rushed to my head and pounded in my ears. And suddenly I felt so hot I thought I was coming down with a fever. As there was not even a hint of a relieving breeze, I looked at Mrs. Adams and asked in a gravelly voice, “May I please borrow your excellent fan?”

Thrusting the fan into my lifeless hand, she barked, “Keep it. This man”—she said, meaning the painted likeness—“has power. You look to me like a man greatly in need of that power. You also look as if you would do well to have a bit more height and certainly more weight. I can't imagine what Lone Wolf hopes to accomplish by sending the army a skinny little nothing like you. As far as I'm concerned, you are just one more proof that that man doesn't think right.”

What a disagreeable woman.

But she gave me a good fan. A few days later I gave it to Big Tree. He liked the picture.

TEN

The two armed guards outside the prison tent were less than delighted that Billy and I had turned up asking to visit with Little Jonas. Billy spoke to them at length. I really can't say about anyone else, but I am very uncomfortable when people speak in a language I can't understand. Feeling excluded, I tend to vacillate between being angry and nervous. I was both of those things, but closing in rapidly on being alarmed when the exchange became heated, Billy shouting at the top of his voice. His anger did him no good. We were being forcibly turned away when Hawwy, still wearing his finest uniform, came sloping along, black doctoring bag in hand.

He did look fine in that fancy uniform and he must have felt equally splendid, for his manner when addressing those guards was haughty. Suitably impressed, the guards stepped aside. As the three of us entered the tent, I glanced at Hawwy, realizing how very like The Cheyenne Robber he could be. That's when I came to believe devoutly that handsome people were born with a little something extra—that something being more than just good looks. I don't know what that something is, I only know I don't have it. No one ever gave way to me simply because I raised my voice or looked down my nose.

Little Jonas was still in chains and he sat on a sagging cot looking forlorn and with blood weeping from a cut just above his left eye. Hawwy immediately set to work, speaking to Little Jonas in a comforting way as he carefully swabbed the cut. While Hawwy concentrated on the physical, I spoke to Little Jonas through Billy.

“Skywalker said to me that he feels you are a man with a big secret. I want you to tell me what it is.”

Little Jonas did not want to answer.

Impatiently I cried, “I am here to help but if you will not talk to me, in two days there will be nothing I can do to stop them from hanging you.”

Hesitantly Little Jonas spoke. “They're going to hang me anyway, once you tell them what I did.”

“What? What did you do?”

Little Jonas looked thoroughly contrite. In a muttering voice he said, “Stole a mule.”

I couldn't help it, I blurted out a laugh. This was his secret. The big, big secret that Skywalker had sensed. Watching me, Little Jonas's mouth began to twitch, then a grudging chuckle came out of him.

“It's not funny, Tay,” he drawled. That's what he'd heard Billy call me—Tay (Meat). Billy liked to use only the abbreviation of my name. Little Jonas doing that reminded me again of how personal he considered his relationship with the few Kiowa he knew. I appreciated this as he continued. “A black man stealing a mule is serious. If the army found out, they'd hang me for that about as quick as they would for killing that white man.”

“Then why did you steal the mule?”

“Had to. Wanted to join up with the army and Texas was a long way to walk from Louisiana. My father was a freeman, farming land his old master, Mr. Marriott, gave him. After the war, Mr. Marriott was dead and his widow wife sold her farm rights to a Mr. Babcock, but she told him that my daddy's little farm was separate. Mr. Babcock acted like that was just fine with him, but after he moved into the big house and got himself all settled, Mr. Babcock took over my daddy's farm, too. Next thing we knew, all the land and the two mules that my daddy knew were his, belonged to Babcock. My daddy made the mistake of complaining to the county sheriff and then the next thing that happened was my daddy got hung.

“My mamma, she said that the paddy-rollers would be coming for me too, that I'd better get out of Louisiana and I better be quick. Couldn't be quick on just two feet, so I sneaked over to Babcock's place and I stole back one of my daddy's mules. Then I went into Texas and joined the army. My mamma sent me a letter to tell me that she was doing all right, that she was going over to live in Georgia, going there as a maid with a fine family. She said I should not ever come back to Louisiana, as Mr. Babcock was having a fit about that mule and she wouldn't be there anyway.”

Hawwy stepped back from Little Jonas. He stood there holding the medicated swabbing cloth, turning it in his hands as he studied the Buffalo Soldier, a perplexed expression on his face.

My attention was drawn back to Little Jonas. He sat there looking up at me, black eyes sunk deep inside swollen sockets, pleading. “I sold that mule in Dallas. I got twenty dollars for it. I was going to save that money and whatever else the army paid me to buy my own place someday. I wrote to my mamma and told her how much I got for the mule, that I would save all my money and that when I got my own farm free and clear, I would send for her. She wouldn't have to be nobody's maid anymore. Everything was going fine for me until I got sent here to the Territory. Next thing I knew, along came Graham Wakefield, the man you Kiowas call Buug-lah.”

I was more than a bit disconcerted that the dead man's name had been said out loud, a thing forbidden in our culture. To speak the name of the dead was to summon up ghosts. Sensing my unease, Billy jumped right in, warned Little Jonas not to say Buug-lah's name again. After an indifferent shrug, Little Jonas continued on.

“Anyway, the dead man starts telling me that if I don't give him money, he's gonna tell on me, see me sent back to Louisiana to get hung. I don't know how he knew about me stealing that mule, but he did, so instead of saving my money to buy a farm someday, I was giving him all of what I had, and every penny of my monthly pay. But even that wasn't enough. I had to do work for him too. I guess you could say, I was his slave.” Little Jonas's hands, resting against his thighs, became fists. Hot anger flowed out of that man.

Needing to hurry this along, I said, “Now I want to know about your uniform, why your jacket was found far out on the prairie.”

Little Jonas flinched as Hawwy applied stinging medicine to the tender eye area. His teeth clenched as he tried to hold in the pain, and in almost a whisper he said, “It was stolen. I went quick to Captain Mac, told him myself that someone took my best jacket, the one I never wore because I was saving it for good. A soldier's got to have one dress-up jacket for when he wants to feel fine. That jacket was my dress-up clothes, the one I kept real clean and brushed. Made me mad that somebody stole it.

Captain Mac said he'd take care of it and that was the last I heard. Since then, I've been on patrol with all of you and now here I sit in chains. If you want to know what Captain Mac was doing about finding my jacket, you got to ask him. I don't believe the man was doing very much, because he seemed to have had a real serious memory lapse. When the general accused me of killing that no-good, and all account of my jacket, Captain Mac just stood there looking like it was the first time my missing jacket had been mentioned. I tried to jog his memory, but I wasn't making too much sense, what with getting whipped an' all. Little hard to talk an' scream all at the same time. Maybe if you talk to him…”

I stopped listening. Actually hadn't been concentrating all that much once that name was mentioned, bringing with the mention an unpleasant memory. Captain Mac did not like me. Hadn't since the day he'd found me near death. He hadn't wanted to save me, but he'd had no choice. The treaty allowing the army to establish a camp in the Wichita Mountains (Fort Sill), had still been a warm handshake on Little Bluff and Colonel Leavenworth's hand when I had been ambushed and left for dead. If Captain Mac had simply left me to die where he found me and the Kiowas somehow found out, their little camp would have been wiped out. So, feeling there was nothing else he could do, Captain Mac dragged me to the army camp. That was the first time I met Hawwy. That was when he nursed me back to health.

An army scout had been sent to tell White Bear where I was, and he quickly formed a party to ride to my rescue. The army was unprepared for so many Kiowas, and having the upper hand, White Bear had taken delight in bullying the Blue Jackets. I'm told that in that moment, Captain Mac seriously regretted saving me. If he had it all to do over again, I would be nothing more than a few white bones littering the bank of Rainy Mountain Creek. So, hearing that name again, knowing just how he felt about me, how could I not help but anticipate the unbridled joy of our chance reunion?

*   *   *

“Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

Captain Mac, a tall, dark, brooding man, had something of a scooped face. His brow and chin were so prominent that his profile put me in mind of a quarter moon wearing a droopy moustache and muttonchop sideburns. He was afflicted with a noticeable limp, the result of a wound received during the Civil War. According to Hawwy, the bullet had only grazed the lower leg bone, but unfortunately took out a large portion of calf muscle as the lead ball made its exit. The doctors had been able to save the leg (because Captain Mac was an officer and doctors didn't perform amputations on officers quite as readily as they did on ordinary soldiers), but Captain Mac would be forced to favor that leg for the rest of his life. I suppose all this “favoring” was responsible for Captain Mac being such an excellent horseman. He could ride almost as well as an Indian, and when he was in the saddle, there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. But now, seeing me in his private tent, the one place he was free to relax in his long white underwear and socks, Captain Mac was so agitated that he was limping all over the small amount of walking space of the tent's interior while raging at my unwelcome presence.

“That damn Red Stick is nothing but trouble,” he yelled to Hawwy, Billy whispering every word in my ear. Captain Mac stopped his hobbling pace, looked wildly about. “Where's my gun?”

“You cannot shoot him,” Hawwy said dryly.

Captain Mac's answer was a disagreeable noise in the back of his throat. Eventually relenting to Hawwy's urging, Captain Mac took the only chair. He sat there, bad leg thrust out, glaring at me with snapping dark eyes, elbows propped on narrow armrests, steepled fingers pressed against a tight mouth the whole time he listened to Hawwy.

“Yes,” Captain Mac said in answer to Hawwy's question. “Little Jonas did say something to me about his jacket and I filed a report. General Gettis said he never saw the report. But I know I submitted it, for I remember doing it on the same day that Private William Brooks came to me, saying his new trousers were missing. He accused Little Jonas of being the thief.”