The Shirt On His Back

Chapter 26



At least ten of the Omahas wheeled their horses and, shrieking war-cries, charged the newcomers. Two others wheeled from the melee and rode at the little group of fugitives by the fallen pine. There was just enough good light left for January to shoot one and Manitou - whose rifle Hannibal had reloaded with a swiftness Kit Carson himself would have commended - to shoot the other. Franz Bodenschatz spurred in through what looked, to January, like a Renaissance battle-painting of whirling horses and writhing half-naked bodies, brought up his pistol within yards of Manitou's head, and Veinte-y-Cinco fired, her bullet tearing the outside of Bodenschatz's left arm, but nearly knocking him out of the saddle with its force. An Indian warrior - one of the newcomers - launched himself from his own horse on to the trader, dragging him to the ground. Bodenschatz screamed something - in the din, January didn't hear what - to Iron Heart, but the pockmarked war-chief and the remaining members of his band only bunched their milling horses tighter, spears and rifles pointing outward as they were surrounded.

Three of the newcomer riders - rifles held pointed at the fugitives - trotted in close, in what could have been either an encirclement or a protective ring. January noticed the sun design worked in quills on one man's leggings, the line of triangles painted on another's sleeve.

'They's Crows,' said Manitou softly.

Hannibal whispered, 'Is that good or bad?' He was loading both rifles with a speed born of desperation, chalk white and breathing like a broken steamboat-engine. The nearest Indian watched him, rifle leveled, but showed no signs of using it.

'Depends,' answered Manitou. 'You can talk to some Crows, the ones that ain't from a band that's at war with the white man. But they know my brother's Silent Wolf. An' just about every tribe in the mountains is at war with the Blackfeet.'

About half of the Omaha were down; the rest gathered in a group, Iron Heart talking furiously with the leader of the Crows. A Crow warrior rounded up the horses of the dead. Three others went systematically from one fallen warrior to the next, counting coup - striking them with hooked and decorated medicine-sticks - then scalping the bodies where they lay in the pine straw. The smell of blood was overwhelming. Another warrior jerked Bodenschatz to his feet and thrust him into the group of white captives with such force that he stumbled. Manitou caught his arm to steady him, and Bodenschatz jerked free, lips skinned back from his teeth like an animal about to bite.

'Don't think you can get your savages to do your dirty work for you!' he snarled in German. 'I swear to you on the grave of my sister - my sister whom you murdered—'

'You're not one to talk,' broke in January, in the same language, 'about getting savages to do dirty work, Boden. That seems to be the way you play the game as well.'

Instead of answering, Bodenschatz - whom January still found it hard to think of as anything but the good-natured Charro Morales - whipped a knife from his belt and threw himself on Manitou, who caught his wrist easily - he was some eight inches taller and outweighed the man by a good fifty pounds. One of the Crows on guard over them shouted something, and January wrenched the knife from Bodenschatz's hand. The Crow rode over, and January immediately flung the weapon on the ground before him, then fished in the merchant's coat pocket and brought out a pistol, which he held out immediately by the barrel, so that the warrior could take it.

'Nigger dog!' Bodenschatz almost spit the words at him, clutching his bleeding arm. 'You think they'll let you go free?'

'Just making sure that if shooting starts, it'll be coming from in front of me, and not behind.'

The leader of the Crows rode over to them, a thickset, powerful warrior on a black horse painted with white handprints. Striking his chest, he said, 'Lost.' Dark eyes moved from January to Manitou, then on to Bodenschatz. 'Do you ride bound, do you ride free?'

Bodenschatz stabbed at Manitou with a finger. 'This man murdered my sister and murdered my father. Are the Crow women, to regard so little the right of a man to vengeance?'

As if his enemy had not spoken, Manitou answered, 'I will ride free.' He took his rifle from Hannibal - carefully handling it by the barrel - and held it out to the Crow warrior who came up with a horse on a lead rein.

In the end none of them were bound. Lost - the leader of the Crow war party - separated them along the line of warriors, and as the party filed through the darkness into the deeper mountains, January was well aware that the riders on either side of him had their rifles trained on him. Iron Heart - similarly guarded - rode next to Lost, and in the thin moonlight January saw the Omaha speaking in sign to the war chief as they rode, pointing back to Bodenschatz, to Manitou, to the west where the rendezvous lay, and sometimes back to the south, where the bones of his people rotted along the banks of the Platte.

Halfway up a steep coulee another party of Crow joined them, and by the time they reached the Crow village, strung out along a substantial creek between the hills, January guessed there were some two hundred warriors surrounding them. This was, he thought, the unknown band whose identity had caused so much speculation at the rendezvous. He knew there'd been a bet on it at Seaholly's. It was small comfort to know that he could now win it.

It was relatively early in the night, and little 'squaw fires' glowed in front of many of the lodges. In others, the blaze had been built inside, and a low, honey-gold radiance shone through the translucent skins. Camp dogs and camp children boiled out from among the tipis, the dogs noisy, the children pointing excitedly at the black white man.

In front of a lodge in the midst of the camp, Lost signed them to dismount. An older man - heavy-built like Lost, and with the same mouth and chin - emerged, his shirt flecked with row upon row of elk teeth, from which eagle feathers and ermine tails dangled. Lost said, 'Walks Before Sunrise,' and Manitou murmured:

'He's big medicine.'

A moment later two other men ducked through the low entry, one of them - hands bound behind him and looking considerably the worse for wear - Abishag Shaw. The other - a deeply tanned white man in a trader's well-cut frock-coat and riding boots - studied the captives appraisingly and said, 'You'll be

Wildman - January - Bodenschatz - Sefton . . . M'am,' he added, touching his hat brim to Veinte-y-Cinco. 'Iron Heart—' His glance shifted to the Omaha war chief. 'I'm Asa Goodpastor. And I've been hearin' some very strange things.'



'I am here on sufferance Goodpastor raised his hand against Bodenschatz's angry tirade as they entered the lodge - 'like the rest of you. Walks Before got word that you -' he nodded to Iron Heart - 'and your men attacked white men just outside the rendezvous camp two nights ago.'

'We aided this man,' said Iron Heart, with a cold glance across at Bodenschatz, 'in his hunt for the man who killed his father and his sister. We promised to help him fulfill the vow of his vengeance, if he would help me fulfill the vow of mine. This promise he did not fulfill, nor will he, I think. Yet this is not through his own doing. These -' Iron Heart gestured to Shaw, January and their companions, who had seated themselves beside the small central fire-pit - 'followed him from the white man's country because, in the course of his pursuit, he killed the brother of Tall Chief. If he would accomplish his vengeance, they must be stopped in theirs.'

'Ain't you forgettin' one tiny detail,' put in Shaw, rubbing the weals on his wrists where January had untied the thongs that bound him, 'havin' to do with you plannin' to murder every man jack an' woman at the rendezvous with the poison this man's father was bringin' out for you?'

'They poison themselves,' sneered Iron Heart. 'I do not pour it down their throats.'

And this is not your affair, Medicine Lynx,' spoke up Walks Before Sunrise, with a sharp look at Goodpastor. 'Many tribes hate the white men. If they choose to kill them without honor, either for themselves or for their enemies, this is nothing to me.'

'My people died without honor,' retorted the Omaha chief, stung by the imputation of cowardice. 'Why do I need any? Had this man -' he jerked his head toward Wildman, who had sat through the whole of the discussion beside the fire in silence, his head in his hands - 'not killed the old white father, I would have had my vengeance.'

'Did you kill them?' Goodpastor turned to Wildman. 'This man's father, an' his sister?'

'I killed his sister.' Manitou raised his face from his palms, looked across the fire with ravaged eyes. 'I got no memory of doing so, because of my madness—'

'Your madness that conveniently convinced your judges not to hang you!'

'So you were tried?'

'Judges heard my case, yes. And put me in a madhouse. I didn't kill his father.'

Bodenschatz opened his mouth to shout a refutation of this, but January cut him off quietly: 'No. You did that yourself, didn't you, Bodenschatz?'

Iron Heart's eyes widened in shocked rage. 'What?'

'It's a lie,' shouted Bodenschatz. 'Can't you see he'll say anything? I never killed the Shaw boy. The Blackfeet did that—'

'The Blackfeet woulda kept his scalp, not thrown it away in the hollow of a tree,' retorted Shaw softly. 'You killed him 'cause he woulda kept you from your revenge—'

'The same way that you killed your own father,' pointed out January quietly, 'because with a broken leg, he would have kept you from pursuing the man you sought. The man for whom you left your wife, and your children—'

'He is a monster!’

'You are a monster,' replied January. 'Manitou Wildman was born as he is. You made yourself - yourself.'

'That Bodenschatz's face worked with the effort to remain normal - 'is a damned lie.' His glance cut to Iron Heart. 'It is a lie.'

Iron Heart said softly, 'Prove it.' And there was something in the tilt of his head, the sudden flex of his nearly-hairless brows, that made January wonder if he had not suspected this before. 'Words are cheap, Winter Moon. White men's words most of all.'

January sighed. 'I wish everyone would stop calling me a white man. Send the woman back to the rendezvous camp.'

Veinte-y-Cinco looked up, dark eyes wide with shock and hope.

'Keep a guard on her, if you will,' he added as both Iron Heart and Walks Before Sunrise began to protest. 'Will you do this?'

He saw her hand close hard on Hannibal's, the two of them sitting side-by-side near Manitou on the other side of the fire, without speaking. She started to stammer something and stopped, the whole of her heart in her face, as if the marrow of her bones cried her daughter's name.

And though he spoke to Walks Before Sunrise, January's eyes held hers. 'Great Chief, have one of your men go into the camp and bring out to her Moccasin Woman, the old mother of the Delawares. She knows Veinte-y-Cinco well, and Veinte-y-Cinco will speak for us. Promise Moccasin Woman safe passage here to this camp and safe passage back. Veinte- y-Cinco,' he added softly, 'we trust you with all of our lives. For if you cry out, or escape, or rouse the camp, or bring any attack against the Crow here, you know we will all of us be killed before we can be freed.'

The woman took a sip of breath, let it out, her eyes going to Hannibal, and then to Shaw, who had favored her, January knew, above the other girls at Seaholly's, despite the fact that at thirty-six she had half a decade over him in age, and despite her skinniness and two missing teeth. She looked at the doorway - the two Crow guards sitting outside in the firelight of the camp - and then at Bodenschatz.

'Did he really kill that poor old man?' she asked softly. 'His own papa?'

'Schlampn bitch, you'd believe any man who paid you—'

Her mouth twisted. Her gaze returned to January. 'I'll go,' she said quietly. 'And I'll return with Moccasin Woman, without rousing the camp.'

'Thank you. Tell Moccasin Woman that we know that she found the old man in the woods and took the last of his clothing, not only the shirt that he wore, but also the shirt that had been torn up to bind his ribs. Tell her to bring those things back here, if she would. Tell her that our lives hang on her doing this. Tell her also - or the warrior who goes with you,' he added, with a glance at Walks Before Sunrise, 'to bring the camp chest from Bodenschatz's tent - Charro Morales's tent - unopened.'

The trader's face turned ghastly in the low firelight, brows standing out suddenly dark. 'Of all the impudent—'

'Veritas odium parit: said Hannibal and added, to January, still in Latin, 'You're sure it's Moccasin Woman?'

'She's the one who gave Pia the old man's cravat. And who else in the camp,' he added, 'would have carried him back into his shelter and carved the sign of the cross above his head, to bless him as he lay? Of all the people in the camp,' he went on in English, 'I don't really think it could be anyone else.'

'Well, Maestro,' said Shaw, after Iron Heart and Bodenschatz had left the tent under guard, and Walks Before had likewise bid them good night, 'I purely hope you're right.' He got to his feet and limped heavily - a makeshift, bloodied bandage showed where an arrow had gone through his thigh - to lower the skin across the lodge entrance, against the growing chill of the night. "Cause it seems to come down to: who is Walks Before gonna trust? An' if it ain't us, I do not see a good outcome for anyone in this tent.'