The True Account (19 page)

Long before the roasting bodies were cooked, the giant seized one out of the flames and, with his drumstick, broke open the leg and arm bones to get at the marrow, which dripped down his chin onto his massive chest. After the banquet the musicians began again to play their bone fifes and shake their skull castanets; and the giant, now sated with marrow bones like Beanstalk Jack's ogre, beat on his drum—a steady, dolorous booming. All this the bishop watched approvingly while his tiny albino queen orchestrated the grisly revels with flitting motions of her little white hands.

Just at sunset, at the direction of the dwarf, the yellow-painted Anasazi and his red-painted fellow cannibal escorted Blue Moon, still bound to his horse, to a side ravine and thence to the prairie atop the bluff opposite our hiding place. There they gave a concerted whoop, jabbed his mount with their lances, and, riding abreast of him, drove him toward the brink of the precipice. I then witnessed the bravest act I had ever seen a man perform. When Blue Moon was less than fifty yards from the edge, he gave a piercing cry and clapped his heels into the sides of his horse as if, since he could not avoid his terrible fate, he would embrace it entirely. He continued to shout his war cry as he and his horse plunged over the edge, yelling all the way down until they were shattered to pieces at the foot of the cliff.

Again my uncle had to restrain the Hidatsas, outmanned as they were, from attacking the Force of Terror. He assured them that if they were patient a little longer, Blue Moon's death would be avenged. And he bade them listen carefully to his plan.

T
HE
A
NASAZI CHIEF
and his outriders sat immobile in the twilight, watching my uncle and me ride slowly up the river valley as if in the final stages of exhaustion. We had left our weapons with Franklin and the Hidatsas, now hidden well back from the bluff behind the migrating buffalo. As we drew near, the Anasazis threw nooses around our necks, jerked us off our mounts, and hauled us stumbling into the camp. The mitered bishop watched us coming, with the alabaster dwarf on his knee and the giant at his side. As we drew near, the chief hurled his lance into the ground between us and the palanquin to indicate that we were to approach no closer. Then he spoke at length in a language unlike any I had ever heard. When he finished, the bishop turned to us.

“Good evening, sirs,” he said in English. “I am Stephanos Nacogdoches, bishop of New Spain and the territory known as Louisiana. My war chief informs me that you rode out of the bowels of the earth on two chimeras spewing fire. He says he slew the dragons, then subdued you and led you here. Perhaps you have a less fanciful explanation of your presence?”

“We do, Don Stephanos,” my uncle said. “My name is Private True Teague Kinneson. This is my nephew, Ticonderoga Kinneson. We have deserted from the party of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark, leaders of an American expedition of conquest. Your man found us half a mile north of here.”

“Bishop Stephanos. Not Don—
Bishop.
My ancestor was the Moorish general El Ibrahim, who conquered Madrid not once but twice and crowned himself bishop both times. A title I have inherited. Whither bound, my friend?”

“Home.”

“Home to old Spain? For I must say you much resemble another quaint old gentleman-soldier from that glorious empire.”

“No, sir, though I appreciate the compliment. We are on our way home to the Great Republic of Vermont. But,” he continued, “I've never yet heard that the Moors or the Spaniards either sacrificed human beings to pagan gods or practiced cannibalism.”

The bishop nodded at the dwarf and the giant. “The Whore of Babylon and my grand vizier, whom I call Polyphemus, have refined a bit on the beliefs of my ancestors.”

Meanwhile the dwarf leaned over and signaled to the giant, who drew his scimitar and whispered something to the bishop.

“Polyphemus wishes to cut off your head and feed your brains to the Whore,” Nacogdoches said in the politest tones. “What think you of this proposal, Private True Teague Kinneson from the Great Republic of Vermont?”

“Polyphemus is giving you bad advice,” my uncle said. “I think you need a new vizier.”

So saying, he picked up the Anasazi chief's war lance and, to my utter astonishment, hurled it straight at the giant. Polyphemus dropped his scimitar, took several short steps backward with his hands clawing at the lance projecting from his throat, and toppled over backward onto the coals of the banquet fire. My uncle stepped forward and picked up the fallen scimitar.

“Your new vizier, at your service,” he said, bowing to Nacogdoches. Then, turning to the onlookers and speaking loudly in Spanish, “Your bishop has a new vizier. Private True Teague Kinneson, Green Mountain Regiment of the First Continental Army under the command of Ethan Allen.”

“What is my new vizier's advice?” the bishop asked, shaking his head at the Anasazi chief, who most reluctantly unnocked the arrow he had strung.

With the point of the scimitar, my uncle slashed two lines in the sand at the foot of the palanquin. The longer line ran east and west; the shorter split the first at right angles. The bishop and the chief leaned forward. Even the Whore of Babylon craned her miniature white head out over the edge of the palanquin and fixed her watery eyes on the lines in the sand.

My uncle thrust the point of the scimitar into the ground partway up the short line. “You are camped here. The American incursionists are coming up the big Missouri in pursuit of us.” He moved his pointer to the longer line. “Their company of thirty men will be in the gorge of the Little Missouri by tomorrow morning.”

“They must wish to recapture you very badly, Señor Private True. But tell me. What is the exact purpose of your Captain Merry's trip?”

“Nothing more nor less than to link forces with an American army being sent round the Horn to the mouth of the Columbia River in five warships. From there they will march south to seize your precious metal mines in California, and thence to New Spain, coming at Santa Fe from the west and burning it to flinders. Finally to annex all of New Spain south to Mexico City.”

The bishop lifted his eyebrows and tugged at his beard. Finally he inquired, “And as vizier to me, what would you do first?”

“I shall deliver Meriwether Lewis's entire expedition into your hands,” my uncle replied. “I ask only that you let me serve Lewis the same as I did Polyphemus.”

The bishop thought for a time, then smiled his benevolent smile. “Tell me this plan of yours, grand vizier.”

T
HAT EVENING
Nacogdoches told us more about his life. He had been born in Madrid, the son of a cardinal and a street whore, and at thirteen he had signed on as a professional mercenary, to fight under various Mediterranean beys and despots. He had come to North America in the employ of the Guild of Venetian Glass Bead Makers, who had engaged him to track down and assassinate several of their company who had defected to Mexico, where, in violation of their oath of secrecy, they shared the mysteries of their craft with others. While the Whore of Babylon nodded with delight, the bishop calmly catalogued how, by poison, garrote, arson, and a dozen other infernal devices he had eliminated the bead makers and their families as well. In Santa Fe he had entered the service of the Spanish governor, first as a spy, then as an Indian exterminator, ranging out as far as California and taking over a thousand scalps. But he quickly grew restless with this employment, and when the governor offered him the commission to stop Lewis's expedition by any means necessary, he recognized an opportunity to fulfill a long-held dream of establishing his own empire. Indeed, he had intended all along to turn this mission into a tour of annihilation and to declare himself Emperor of Louisiana.

Nacogdoches had begun, the past fall, by scouring New Spain for the worst dregs of humanity: banished Comanches, remnants of the Anasazis, parings and castings of mankind from the prisons of New Orleans and St. Petersburg, whence Polyphemus and the Whore of Babylon had come.

He and his crew had left Santa Fe on New Year's Day, escorted to the city's gates by a brass band and five hundred cheering citizens. On the second morning they had wiped out a Navajo village. From that day onward they had perpetrated wholesale murder, sacking the countryside and shooting, burning, or crucifying all the people in their path, keeping only enough prisoners to carry their gear and to serve as provender, for many of these monsters, including the bishop, had taken a vow to taste nothing but human flesh for the rest of their lives. As for Lewis's expedition, he cared not a whit for its success or failure. His sole objective was to possess himself of the Americans' guns.

As background for these ravings, the more chilling because of the bishop's mellifluous voice, measured phrases, liquid brown eyes, courteous demeanor, and benign countenance, the Anasazi musicians kept up a terrible symphony with their tinkling bells, rattling castanets, and bone flutes. While Nacogdoches spoke, I sketched his portrait. He praised the finished picture effusively, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto the fire.

“Now, vizier,” he said to my uncle. “Be so kind as to repeat to me your plan for the destruction of Captain Merry and his men.”

“Gladly. His scouts and trackers know we're in this canyon. The entire party will be here tomorrow morning, and my nephew and I will lure them deeper into the chasm. Your chief and his men will station themselves on the bluff above. As the members of the expedition pass by below in single file, you can pick them off like ducks.”

Nacogdoches said something in the ancient tongue to the chief, who nodded. They continued to confer for some minutes, after which the bishop told us that he and twenty of his men would remain in the canyon, hidden behind the oddly shaped stone columns, to cut off any chance of escape for Captain Merry. The rest of the company would wait with their bows and muskets on the cliff top, as my uncle had advised. After the massacre, the bishop would hold a great banquet and his men would feast upon their victims and smoke for jerky any leftover American flesh.

Meanwhile, the blue fires burned in the seams of coal, the death music played, and the slaves moaned. Finally all but my uncle and Nacogdoches, who claimed never to sleep, fell into a stupor.

B
EFORE DAWN
my uncle woke me to witness the bishop speaking confidentially to the Whore of Babylon, propped on his knee like a hideous white doll. A few minutes later we led the Anasazi chief and his men up the path to the top of the bluff. Leaving them there as the sun rose far off over the prairie, we rode north, guarded by the yellow-painted assassin on one side and the red devil on the other. The vast herd of migrating buffalo kept pace with us. I knew that somewhere beyond them, Franklin and the Hidatsas lay in wait. Soon we were out of sight of the main body of renegades. But how to rid ourselves of our escorts? As we rode, my uncle spoke to me briefly in English. A few minutes later he reined in his mule.

Pointing excitedly down the river valley, as if we saw the captains' expedition coming, we motioned for our guards to hide on the terrace above the river. Still pointing and now calling out, as though to the captains, we descended into a dip, putting a low rise in the prairie between us and the murderers. There we quickly dismounted, got out our flint and steel, and, beginning at the edge of the cliff and working our way rapidly back toward the line of migrating buffalo, began lighting the prairie grass on fire. The wind was in our favor, out of the northwest, and the grass took fire as quick as tinder. By the time Monsieurs Yellow and Red realized what was happening, it was too late for them to reach us. A high wall of flames, whipped on by the wind, was roaring toward them, driving them back toward the mob of assassins on the promontory.

As we approached the moving buffalo, still igniting the grass as we proceeded, we glimpsed rolling black smoke to the south and west. “Now for Act the Fifth, Ti,” cried my uncle.

We reached the herd at a place where the path funneled between two steep hills, and lit the grass here as well. For a few moments we were surrounded by flames and bellowing buffalo. Then we were through the pass and riding hard along the western flank of the stampeding bison, toward Franklin and the Hidatsas, who were galloping our way from the south and firing the grass with long bulrush torches as they came. The prairie was now ablaze on all three sides of the projecting bluff.

Back and forth between the walls of leaping flames rushed the trapped crew of murderers, frantically trying to find some means of exit before the buffalo arrived. But the Hidatsas, led by Franklin and my uncle, were now in their element. Made reckless by their great rage and grief over the fate of Blue Moon, they rode through the fire and directly at the buffalo to drive them harder toward the cliff and the Anasazis.

As the bellowing animals bore down on the Force of Terror, followed closely by a wall of fire whipped on by a strong west wind, the assassins, in their Spanish mail and black Moorish helmets and remnants of their victims' clothing, made one last surge to break through the oncoming beasts, but to no avail. The bison were thundering toward them in a line five hundred yards long and at least twenty animals deep. Faced with certain death under the hoofs of the stampeding animals, the Anasazis turned and ran for the edge of the bluff. The man in the red dress was hooked up on the horns of a huge bull in the vanguard and carried over the precipice impaled. The Indian in the funeral veil was trampled beneath hundreds of hoofs. Their chief disdained to run. He lifted his arms high above his head, uttered a great curse, and disappeared under the rushing herd. Men and bison alike poured off the edge of the cliff and plummeted to the rocks far below.

It was now imperative to cut off the retreat of the assassins left in the canyon with the bishop. With the entire promontory ablaze, my uncle signaled to me and the Hidatsas to follow him back around the fire line to the hidden trail leading to the gorge below. Reaching the ravine, we rode as fast as we could down the path toward the canyon floor. There we met the remaining members of the Force of Terror.