Tie My Bones to Her Back (33 page)

Two of the wagons, their teams dead in the traces, had halted side by side, leaving an alleyway between them. Otto saw a man dart into the corridor they formed and break in their direction. Blue eyes, blond whiskers. Two heavy revolvers in his hands. A short red jacket, yellow sash, too elegant for the frontier—it must be the Englishman! Tom was firing his Yellow Boy in another direction, so Otto swung the Gatling himself to cover the man, cranked off a dozen rounds. But the gun was aimed too high—Otto saw the bullets rip holes in the canvas top of one Studebaker—and the Englishman dove to his left, under the wagon. Otto pushed the gun barrel down, but it had reached the bottom of its arc. He could depress it no further.

With the Gatling silent, the Englishman quickly rolled out from the far side of the wagon, fired four shots without aiming toward Otto’s wagon, and ran to the rear. Then Otto saw Pony Quirts step out from the shadows and swing his war club . . .

Suddenly another white man appeared at the head of the slot between the wagons. It was Milo Sykes. He skidded to a stop, looked wildly around, and Otto saw that he was wearing spectacles now. They flashed in the sun. Blood on his shirt, breathing hard. Otto swung the Gatling on its tripod and hit the crank. For a long thunderous moment gunsmoke erased Milo, but when it cleared he was gone. Nowhere to be seen . . .

By Christ, I’ll hunt him down on foot!

F
ROM
R
ALEIGH
M
C
K
AY’S
perspective, too, the battle had disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust. He had seen the Indians picking up guns from the dead. They were well armed now, judging by the sound of it. The bellow of their gunfire began to dominate the fight, a few ragged crackles at first, the pop and thud of different calibers, then rising to a maniacal crescendo as the Gatling entered the fray.

At first Raleigh hoped that His Lordship had reached the gun and turned the tide of battle. Then through rifts in the smoke he could see an Indian standing beside the Gatling—Tom Shields? The firing began dying away in flurries, toward an occasional bang as the redskins tracked down and finished their enemies.

Raleigh looked at the sun.

The whole affair had lasted no more than fifteen minutes.

Already the buzzards were circling.

What had happened to Sir Harry? And Milo? And where in that whole savage scene was Otto? Or Jenny, for that matter? As the dust thinned and settled out and the cries died away, Raleigh searched for them with the glasses.

M
LLO LAY ON
his side, breathing as shallowly as he could manage in the hot dark beneath an overturned wagon. He’d snapped off the arrow below the fletching and just behind the head, but left the remainder of the shaft in the wound. He’d leak less blood that way. The pain in his chest and belly was intense, but he couldn’t allow himself a groan. He could see Indians walking around the wagon from time to time, their ugly bowed legs and beaded moccasins, now and then a lance point thrusting into an already dead man or mule. Beside him under the wagon lay another white man who he’d thought at first was dead. But now the man began to move his head and shoulders, uttered a low groan.

“Easy, partner, easy,” Milo whispered. “They’re all around us. Jes’ keep quiet and mebbe they’ll go away.”

The other man grunted softly and turned his head toward Milo. Milo could see the pale-blue shine of his eyes, the blond furze of muttonchop whiskers. His Lordship.

Lord Malcombe whispered, “Is that you, Sykes?”

“Jes’ pipe down, Sir Harry, please.”

They lay there quietly for a while. Then there came a guttural explosion of Indian laughter. Whoops and the sound of openhanded blows. Peering out from under the shattered tailgate of the wagon, Milo saw moccasined feet kicking and stomping a white man—Gomez, he realized. Sliding Billy gritted his teeth. One side of his face was bloody, the right half, blood running down until it was diverted by his mustache to spill off the side of his chin like a lopsided red goatee. A Cheyenne with a blue coat and a crook-handled lance stepped astraddle the Meskin, screamed something hoarse, then with the iron point of the lance began to skin out Billy’s face below the cheekbones. Billy seemed unable to move his arms or legs, probably a bullet in the spine, but his belly muscles writhed beneath his bloody shirt. Other muscles danced like snakes in his throat and jaw. Still, he did not scream.

Must have Apache blood in him.

Then another Cheyenne stepped up beside the first and said something. The first Cheyenne laughed and nodded. The other, just a boy, Milo saw, drew aside his breechclout and hauled out his whang. He flourished it and laughed. Then he began pissing on Billy’s skinned-out face. A ragged burst of laughter . . .

“Beasts,” whispered His Lordship.

Of a sudden Sliding Billy reached up, quick as a cottonmouth, and grabbed the boy by cock and balls. Yanked hard. The boy screamed, and the first Cheyenne plunged his lance into Billy’s neck, pinning him to the ground. Immediately the other Indians grabbed Billy by the heels and hauled him out of sight. A few moments later Milo smelled smoke. Over the crackle of flames he heard Sliding Billy’s first heartfelt scream.

“Hellfire,” Milo whispered. “They’re burnin’ the wagons.”

P
ONY STRUTTED AWAY
from the fire, the spider’s scream a scalp song to his ears. At least he strutted as best he could. His groin still ached from the spider’s grip. He had counted his first coups on two white men today, taken the hair of the man he pissed on before they threw him on the fire, and he felt proud. He affected a warrior’s swagger, his face showing no emotion, his back straight and square-shouldered, walking perhaps a bit more bowleggedly than his limbs demanded, now and then allowing a slight manly sneer to appear on his lips as befit a blooded Elk Soldier. One spider he’d killed at full gallop with the stoneheaded war club Two Shields had given him, overtaking the man and reaching across with his empty hand to slap him on the back before swinging the long, whippy-handled club with his other hand in an upward sweep that connected squarely with the base of the spider’s jouncing skull. The satisfying crump of stone on bone still felt sweet up the length of his arm.

The second spider he confronted on foot, a hairy-faced man with two empty revolvers and a red jacket and huge, desperate eyes, crazy eyes, pale blue behind the spectacles that covered them, the spider running out of the smoke and dust toward another rolling thing, away from the one with the black tepee on it. Pony had seen him coming, though, and stepped from the concealment of the wagon with the club dangling at his side. The spider saw his club, but also saw Pony’s youth. He pointed one of the six-shooters at him, pulled the trigger, then stopped when he heard the futile clack of hammer on empty chamber. Pony walked toward him until he was within arm’s reach and stuck out his hand and pulled the spider’s long yellow sidewhiskers. The crazy-eyed spider swung the barrel of his pistol at Pony’s head, but Pony ducked and with the club knocked the spider’s legs from under him. Crazy Eyes fell, staring up into Pony’s face. Pony leaned over, plucked the spectacles from the spider’s nose, crushed them, and placed the palm of his hand on the man’s fragile chest. He could feel the man’s heart thumping. He seemed paralyzed except for his racing heart, his rapidly blinking ugly white eyes.

Pony swung the club and smacked Crazy Eyes on the side of his head, a glancing blow, then spun on his heel and strode away without looking back. Later, when he returned to the spot to pick up the spider’s revolvers, he could not find them, nor even the body. Perhaps he hadn’t hit Crazy Eyes hard enough to kill him and the spider had crawled away, maybe under this very wagon.

He turned and saw Two Shields approaching on foot, leading his horse. Pony smiled and started to speak. But Two Shields did not smile back. Blood streaked his red-and-black paint from a bullet gouge on his cheekbone that had left the flesh ridged and ragged at the edges. Burned gunpowder from a close discharge had stippled his chest, throat, and chin with black dots like those on a trout. He dropped the reins of his horse and stepped up to Pony still unsmiling and punched him in the mouth, hard. Pony fell back, on his rump. Tears sprang to his eyes, blood from his lips.

“I saw you make water on that man whose scalp you carry. Never do that again,” Two Shields said. “An Elk Soldier does not humiliate a brave enemy, even in defeat. That spider was brave, he wouldn’t cry out even when Crazy was skinning his face. You’d have seen that if you’d bothered to look. But you wanted to make a big show in front of your brothers. That’s no way for a man.”

He reached down and took the limp, dripping scalp from where it dangled on Pony’s belt and slung it into the fire of a burning wagon.

“There’s still one spider left,” Pony said, “maybe more than one, alive and hiding beneath this rolling thing.”

Two Shields listened, heard spider voices arguing under the wagon. He smiled at last. “Then let’s get them out, into the light of this wonderful day.”

Pony yipped, reprieved. Before Two Shields could stop him, he had ducked down to peer under the back of the upside-down rolling thing.

“Don’t look yet!” Two Shields yelled. “He may have a . . .”

But his warning came too late.

“W
HAT’S THAT?”
L
ORD
Malcontent whispered. He had been slipping cartridges into the empty chambers of his pistols. Now he was staring at Milo with a look of madness in his eyes.

“What?”

“Shining there on your face, Sykes. Is it pair of specs?”

“So what?” Milo said. “Let’s keep quiet or they’ll have us out of here for the chop.”

“You don’t even wear spectacles,’ Lord Malcontent hissed. “Those are
my glasses
.” He grabbed for them. Milo slapped his hand away and stifled a groan. The arrow shaft was working in his chest.

“Give them over, you swine!”

“No. Without them I can’t see to shoot.”

“So what? You’ve no bullets to shoot with, anyway.”

“Give me some of yours. We’re both shooting .44s.”

“Give me the spectacles, then maybe I’ll give you some bullets.” *

“Shut up!
Here they come.”

Moccasined feet rushed up to the open end of the overturned wagon. A young Indian face appeared, staring into the dark. It saw them and grinned.

Lord Malcontent fired at point-blank range . . .

The red devil fell backward and kicked in the dirt.

I warned him not to look under there
, Two Shields thought.

Then he and Cut Ear, on horseback, roped the rear axle of the overturned wagon with their riatas and pulled it up on its side. Another pull and it toppled upright.

Sir Harry stood quickly out of the dust and fired twice in rapid succession. One shot knocked Cut Ear backward. He blinked rapidly as he toppled, dead when he hit the ground.

The other hit Two Shields. He jolted to the hit but did not fall. A black hole below his collarbone began to well with blood. He couldn’t raise his arm. On his bare back a fist-sized hole had appeared, opposite the first, raggedly fringed with meat and fragments of his shoulder blade.

Otto, crouched beneath the wolfskin not five paces away, whipped his spontoon and skewered Sir Harry through the belly.

Two Shields watched and tried to say something. He couldn’t speak. He slid to the ground, then sat down and laid his head on his knees.

Now Milo staggered to his feet, blood trickling from the corners of his cracked lips, glasses gleaming in the smoke. He threw his empty pistol into the flames. A tall, gaunt figure stepped up to him, limping, a one-armed man clad in a wolfskin, his face sun-blackened except for his eyes. They were blue-green as the lakes of Wisconsin. Otto Dousmann.

Milo couldn’t look at him.

A mirror dangled from a rawhide thong on the chest of the dead Indian boy Sir Harry had killed. Milo reached down and removed it. He raised his eyebrows, grinned, looked into the mirror. Then he laughed, a wheezing liquid sound. He spat blood and phlegm into the dust.

“I ain’t seen nothin’ but ugly since I put these things on,” he said.

He plucked the spectacles from his face and threw them into the smoke, after the empty revolver.

“Come on and kill me, ye red nigger lover.”

Otto stuck the spear point first into the ground, then reached forward and placed his maimed hand over the stub of the arrow shaft protruding from Milo’s chest.

“You’re dead already,” he said.

Milo looked down and laughed again.

Then Wolf Chief smiled, took up his weapon, and killed Milo Sykes with one hard upward thrust of the spear.

A
MOMENT LATER
the flames of the burning wagons reached the gunpowder stowed with the Gatling. The explosion threw the gun high into the sky, where it twirled brightly in the sunlight before falling, broken, back to the smoke below.

22

V
IE WED FROM THE
flats as Jenny approached, the butte more and more closely resembled the head, hump, and shoulders of some mythic buffalo bull, thrust upward from a cruel and ageless captivity in the depths of the earth to erupt onto the freedom of the plain. Misshapen to be sure, stained yellow in leprous blotches across its craggy face and the sides of a great bulging hump, the entire massif torqued and skewed, frozen in mid-thrust at the very climax of that effort, with one horn truncated as if snapped off just below its tip in that final battle. He hadn’t quite made it. The shoulders and neck of the bull sloped upward more gradually than its steep, bulging face or the vertical sides. Raleigh would certainly have climbed the more gradual slope.