Murder at Medicine Lodge (2 page)

The distraction of the redbird and its fable lasted no longer than the time it took for that bird to disappear. When it was gone, lost among the tall grasses, Favorite Son began the slow unhinging of his lower jaw on the verge of another gripe when a shot was heard and the entire mass of plodding women and children came to a stop. Being one of the few men riding among them, naturally their heads turned toward me, uncertainty and fear evident on every face. The riding-ahead warriors were over the next rise, lost from our view. Everyone remained completely still, horses not even flicking away flies with their tails as we waited the interminable seconds in a silence so total that it reverberated in our ears.

My eyes were trained on the rise, my entire body tense as we waited. Feeling a pressure on my arm, I glanced down. Favorite Son was leaning against me, welling tears sheening dark eyes. Feeling instantly protective, I was readying my rifle when a fast-riding warrior crested the rise.

“Tay-bodal!” the warrior cried, whipping his horse to faster speed. “Tay-bodal! White Bear needs you.”

Women quickly maneuvered their mounts and pack-horses out of the way, as the young warrior known as Big Tree galloped hard. I let him know where I was by standing in the stirrups and waving both arms over my head. When he spotted me, he aimed to the left, barely dodging the living obstacles in his path. As he neared, he drew up hard on the reins, the back hooves of his warhorse skidding precariously beneath the large animal's body. Big Tree was close to me now, barely a foot away, but he shouted as if we were yards from each other as he gestured excitedly in the direction of the distant rise.

“Three Elks has been wounded.”

Hearing this, the women gasped sharply and children whimpered.

“We've been attacked?” I cried.

“No,” he answered, inside a heaving breath. “There's no time for talk.” He turned away from me, bellowing out over the heads of the women. “Get down from your horses. Rest and feed your babies. There is nothing to fear.”

As this was Big Tree, a man of considerable merit, the women were prompt to obey. He turned again to me, his mouth working as he swallowed in whole gulps the scalding air. During this space of seconds I was again struck by his extraordinary looks. Big Tree was a young man of slight build, but he was incredibly strong. He puts me in mind of a coiled bedspring, amazingly light yet able to bear considerable weight without breaking. But it was his face that was his most striking feature. From the time of his infancy, people tended to mistake him for a pretty girl. While this greatly appalled him, I secretly envied his unique looks. I have always been an ugly person. Even though in those days I was a man in my prime, my otherwise fit condition did little to alleviate the irregular planes of my features or hide the deep pits left along the sides of my face. The pits were caused by a bout of the smallpox I had been lucky to survive. That brutal illness took not only my dubious handsomeness but lost me my first wife and both of my parents. Deeply hurt by my loss, I shunned any close ties for years following that plague. But that solitude became a type of gift. Without any family connections, I had time to perfect my healing craft and, getting used to my ugliness, I became an ardent admirer of all things and all persons truly beautiful.

Crying Wind was beautiful. So was Big Tree. My wife could be quite vain about her beauty but Big Tree was mortified by his. I think this was on account of the teasing he suffered. He was so pretty, and, being almost dainty, he continually worked to prove his courage and manhood. Which is why, during his twenties, Big Tree was a To-yop-ke, a war chief. Throughout the whole of his life, he was known to be utterly fearless, wholly dependable. So when he said the situation was not dangerous, the women did not question his word. Instead they climbed down from their horses and set to making a rest camp.

After several more gulps of air, Big Tree spoke again. “White Bear says to bring your medicines. Three Elks is bleeding badly.”

My medical supplies were packed up somewhere on the trailing travois. Scrambling down from the saddle I asked, “He's bleeding from what part of his body?” This was a thing I needed to know in order to take along the proper bandaging.

Feeling his hesitation, I peered around the neck of my horse. Crying Wind had not dismounted. She was staring at Big Tree. Looking away from her, finding my peeking eyes, he blushed, his cheeks turning a muddy rust color.

“His … um…”

Crying Wind craned her head forward, intent on hearing the juicy details. This was a fault of hers that, during the first years of our marriage, I battled to break. A healer's wife could not be a gossip. People came to me with all sorts of peculiar problems and it did their troubles not one iota of good knowing that her big ears were anxious to hear everything. Realizing that she was at it again, Big Tree gave up.

“You'll need a lot of bandages!” he said sharply. “And you must hurry.”

*   *   *

The sight that greeted me was almost laughable but, because of Three Elks' undeniable pain, I did not laugh. A difficult thing not to do considering that his naked rear end was lifted skyward while he bent himself double and held on to his ankles. The bleeding wound was in his left buttock and it looked quite deep. Even worse for Three Elks, the bullet was still in there. But the type of bullet was the thing I needed to know. Warriors had all manner of guns, the e-pe-tas (repeaters) being the newest. The trusty flint lock, or trader gun, was still in the majority and the most common bullet used in those guns were round pebbles. Pebbles could be a discomfort if left inside the body but if the wound was treated right, that would be all the harm they would do. But the e-pe-tas used lead bullets and lead caused blood fevers, putrefying wounds, and killed the victim slowly.

Looking away from Three Elks' aloft posterior I demanded, “Exactly how did this happen?”

The question was posed to a scowling White Bear. He turned slightly away, wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The unrelenting sun radiantly outlined his near-naked body, the aura emphasizing his great height and girth. With his hair partially tied up in a knot just behind his crown, his head seemed to erupt from his shoulders. White Bear did not have much of a neck—what there was of it, blended in with his shoulders in a manner similar to the neck muscle of a great bull.

White Bear was known as Satanta by the whites. Not only did they get his name—Set'tainte—wrong, they also erred in believing that the vacant expression he could sometimes get while enduring the long hours of the peace councils the American government seemed so desperately fond of, meant that mentally he was as blank as a board. They failed to notice the quick, dangerously alert eyes set in that broad expressionless face. If they had, they would have known that there was a lively mind inside that large head. White Bear had the same cunning of one of their own tactically brilliant generals. But the side of himself he readily showed the world, was that of a very large man who loved practical jokes. Yet even in this boisterous display he could be quite lethal. That humor of his was threatening the moment now, as he tried to explain to me just how Three Elks had received his very peculiar wound.

“My favorite nephew”—he said, meaning The Cheyenne Robber—“seems to be the cause of this unfortunate accident.”

He glanced back over his shoulder to his nephew, a shockingly magnificent specimen of male animal. The Cheyenne Robber did his best to appear contrite. The attempt failed. The best he was able to manage was a defensive arrogance. If you could have seen him, you would have understood why. Any human being that splendid could not help but be arrogant. In fact, as his friend, there were times when I wanted to be arrogant for him. But he didn't need my services. He already had a swarm of lieutenants willing and able to carry any excesses of his vanity between them.

His haughtiness was not seen as a fault, but his natural due. As with the genesis of the Osage, The Cheyenne Robber looked as though he had appeared by divine hand from the sky and was content, for a time, to dwell among thoroughly undeserving mortals. He stood somewhere over six feet in height and every inch of him was perfectly proportioned. Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist and below slim hips were two long legs as well-muscled as any horse's. As you might imagine, he wore everything disgustingly well and on that blazing hot day he looked especially well in a very short breechcloth, a Navaho silver belt slung low on his hips, a pair of knee-length moccasin boots, and hair the color of pitch left to hang down his back to his waist. He was so good-looking that even the half-disgusted expression on his face failed to dull his handsomeness. Mistaking my quiet admiration of him as a wait for an explanation or an apology, he folded his arms across his bare chest and commenced to glare at me from under hooded eyes. As always, when realizing that I had The Cheyenne Robber's full and concentrated attention, I began to feel weak in the knees.

In my defense, I was not the only one thus afflicted by his piercing gaze. Women were known to drop in a dead faint whenever they were singled out by him. To my knowledge, there was only one female who ever proved the exception. A young woman known as White Otter. When he first met her and she failed to swoon or drool on herself, The Cheyenne Robber had to know why not. This needing-to-know began a hot pursuit of her, culminating in their marriage. White Otter did eventually faint at his feet but only because she was pregnant. Now she was the mother of his baby son and her attentions had become so divided that she simply didn't have the strength or the inclination to feed her husband's massive conceit. Not surprisingly, The Cheyenne Robber's temperament was known to be surly of late; his moods so foul that it would not have surprised me in the least to learn that he had shot Three Elks in the butt on purpose, and for no other reason than he was feeling the need to shoot something.

The Cheyenne Robber turned his face away from me, looking at his older brother Skywalker, who was squatting down, not looking at anyone in particular, his expression pensive. Skywalker was an Owl Doctor; a mystic—if you must qualify him as such—having the ability to blank out every living thing around him while he listened to the voices speaking to him from an unseen world. He wasn't blank now, so he wasn't having one of his “spells” as we called them. If anything, he was very aware and highly irritated. I knew for a solid fact that he didn't approve of our Nation going into Kansas. He'd been more than vocal on the subject, saying that the Kiowas should show their contempt for the peace talks by staying away. But our people heard that the army would be bringing many wagons filled with gifts and that there would be great feasts—presents and food are two things Indian people love.

In the end, Skywalker had been overruled. Our new principal chief, Lone Wolf, was a man of great pride. He couldn't see himself excluded from the talks with the Washington government when the chiefs of the other nations of the Plains Confederacy were certain to be there. This was the first truly important event in the early days of his chieftainship and he was not about to miss it. The vote naturally upset him, but Skywalker wasn't normally a sulker. His less-than-social attitude of late sprang from something else. Something he would not share, not even with me, a man supposed to be his best friend. As a matter of fact, for almost a week now, he hadn't spoken to me at all, causing me to worry about a friendship I'd formerly taken for granted.

Standing to his feet, not looking at me or anyone else, he went for his horse. No one tried to stop him or call him back. If he would persist in being ill-natured, then he wasn't wanted—at least, by the majority. I—decidedly in the minority—wanted him to stay, but after he brushed by me as if he'd never known me, I held my tongue and did nothing more than watch him as he rode off, disappearing over the rise.

Once he was out of sight, with effort I concentrated my attentions on my patient, examining the wound while White Bear and The Cheyenne Robber began to argue. As Three Elks' condition wasn't funny to him anymore, White Bear was now demanding to know precisely how the man had come to be shot.

The thing that happened—or at least, it was The Cheyenne Robber's explanation—was that his horse had stumbled or shied, and as he worked to bring the horse under control, the rifle resting across his lap went off, the bullet finding its way to Three Elks' left haunch. Had this happened in battle, it would have been considered a lucky shot; but as Three Elks was a friend, it was quickly put down to a freakish accident. One that would cost The Cheyenne Robber many expensive gifts, as Three Elks was in considerable pain and, because that bullet was now known to be lead, he would experience a great deal more while it was being dug out.

To lessen (granted a bit late) Three Elks' dire humiliation, those warriors not needed to help with the procedure were told to go back to where the women were, to guard the camp and have a meal. The Cheyenne Robber volunteered to be in that number; and as he was becoming even more grim-natured about the entire incident—and a grim The Cheyenne Robber was distinctively of no help to anyone—White Bear granted permission for him to go. Led by Lone Wolf, there was the subsequent departure of the host of warriors, leaving me with Big Tree and his brother Dangerous Eagle, Kicking Bird, White Bear, and a warrior known as Raven's Wing to help me with Three Elks. I had wished mightily that White Bear would go, too, but because he did not like being shown up in any way by his archrival Kicking Bird, he stayed.

As did his warped humor.

The trouble with tending the wound was its inconvenient angle. My digging around inside for the bullet caused Three Elks to be understandably squirmy. To keep him still, it took the combined strength of all the men present to try to hold him in place. Unfortunately for all of us, White Bear found himself standing almost directly behind the patient, holding Three Elks' twitchy hips as best he could. I was using the small metal digging tool that Haw-we-sun, a Thaiqahi (white man) and friend of mine who is also a doctor, had given to me. Hawwy was a Blue Jacket (soldier) doctor. He had all sorts of amazing tools. To make friends with me, he allowed me to choose any three of his doctoring tools that I wanted. The digging tool had been my first choice. It was wonderful because it was able to dig and scoop at the same time. At least I thought it was wonderful. During the procedure Three Elks hollered an entirely different opinion. It was over Three Elks' caterwauling that the indignity of his position in the scuffle finally struck White Bear.