Blood Dance (6 page)

“You dance with that one, pilgrim,” Johnston called. “I’m goin’ to skin me ‘nuther.”

I got my Winchester up just in time to come to a half crouch and block the swing of another warrior’s tomahawk. He seemed to have come out of nowhere.

I twisted the rifle when I blocked and managed to knock the weapon out of the Sioux’s hand, but not before he kicked me in the groin and knocked me back.

Lifting the Winchester, I quickly shot and caught the Sioux just under the chin. It lifted him like an uppercut and tossed him down heavier than a blacksmith’s anvil.

Scrambling to my feet, I saw that a whole horde of Sioux had engulfed Johnston. His Spencer lay at his feet, stock cracked, and two Sioux lay there with it, heads cracked.

I shot one of the braves in the back of the head at close range. Johnston kicked another between the legs, connecting the toe of his moccasin to the Sioux’s tailbone. The Indian’s spine cracked with a sound like a pistol shot, and he dropped.

Johnston wheeled on the other, got hold of his head and twisted it around like wet mud.

Two more Indians came out of the pines, and I dropped one with my Winchester. An arrow went by my ear about the same time.

Before I could let down on that last Indian, two arrows came out of the dark back to back, and entered the warrior’s neck and left ear, buried halfway up the shaft.

Another Sioux appeared at the edge of the wood and he caught an arrow in the eye and another in the chest.

Things got quiet.

“Who invited himself into this fight?” I said.

“Well, if he hadn’t shown, Red Spot, we might be decoratin’ some Dakotah’s lodge pole come sunup.”

A man stepped from the concealment of the pines. He was dressed in buckskins. There was a quiver draped on his back, and across his shoulder was a strapped Winchester. He had a knife on his hip and a bow in his hand. He had a fistful of eagle quills in his hair.

It was the Crow from Carson’s camp. The one I had called Eagle Feather.

The Crow looked at Johnston. He did not seem interested in me.

The big mountain man did not seem in the I least bit perturbed by the arrow sticking in his shoulder.

“Dapiek Absaroka?” the Crow said.

“At yer service,” Johnston said.

I had a moment of uneasiness. Johnston had been called his Crow name—The Killer of Crows—and by none other than a Crow.

If eyes were weapons, Johnston and the Crow had already pierced each other wim">ach othth .50-caliber balls of hate.

“This isn’t going to get ugly is it?” I said.

“That’s up to this red divvel. He did save our lives, and I’d hate to scalp ‘em. I’m at peace with the Crows. Sort of.”

“We are at peace with you,” the Crow said. “Sort of.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Johnston said, “this here booger speaks English.”

“Missionaries,” the Crow said.

“Brought ya God, huh?”

“English and smallpox.”

“Listen,” I said, “you helped pull our fat out of the fire.”

The Crow looked at me. “You were the other man. I saw you shot.”

“You saw what happened at the train?”

“I thought you were dead. You and your friend were brave. You turned against many. You must be strong to live after so many wounds.”

“You were trying to catch up with Carson?”

“He has humiliated my people,” the Crow said, turning to Johnston, “as this man has done.”

“That was years ago,” I said. I could feel the tension drawing between the two men like drying rawhide.

“So who’s keepin’ count,” Johnston said. “I’d jest as soon make a necklace out of yore teeth.”

The Crow smiled. “We are at peace.”

“I reckon,” Johnston said. “How are you called.”

“Di wace rockusakeetak.”

“That right?” I asked.

“Mean’s something like, You Are Next To Dead Thing,” Johnston said.

“Nice name.”

“I know about this here red divvel. That’s not the name he grewed up with. It’s the one the Crows give him later. Crows are an adulterous people, Red Spot. They’re quite unlike the Sioux. This here brave loved his wife, did not chase squaws. Crows don’t consider that manly. They compare it to a hunter who kills a buffaler and stays by the dead critter because he’s afraid to chase after the rest of the herd. Lacks spirit, manhood. He’s dead inside.

“Tale has it this here buck’s wife didn’t feel that way. She slept around. Dishonored old Dead Thing here. He left the Crows, didn’t go back. Did some scoutin’ and such fer the army.”

“That’s why he’s called Dead Thing?”

“Dead Spirit. A woman is somethin’ the Crows think yer supposed to conquer, then move on to ‘nuther. Like huntin’ buffaler. Now, if we’re all through with our chitchat, think maybe ya could help me get this here arrow out of my hide?”

Dead Thing had not moved or blinked an eye during Johnston’s windy explanation. He just stood proud and handsome, straight as a pine all the while.

With Johnston directing, I set about getting that arrow out. Johnston was an old hand at it, and it was grisly business. He directed the use of my revolver butt to drive the tail of the arrow and push the point on through. It ripped through the skin on the back of his arm like rotten leather. I broke the point off as close to the arm as possible. Then, with a quick jerk, I pulled it out through the hole it had entered.

Johnston hardly moved at all. Let no man ever say Johnston was all bluff. He was one tough sonofabitch.

Dead Thing reached down and took the arrow, did a strange thing. He licked the blood from the shaft with his tongue.

“Like that, red divvel?” Johnston growled. Picking up the pointed end of the shaft, he tossed it in Dead Thing’s face. “Here, suck on this!”

He leapt to his feet and pushed me away. Blood pumped from the wound, but it didn’t stop the big man from lunging at the Crow.

“Boys, boys!” I yelled.

Dead Thing and Johnston locked arms. Dead Thing was a hell of a man, but wrestling with Johnston would be sort of like trying to stab a grizzly to death with a twig. You could do it, provided the grizzly allowed it, but it would take some time.

I picked up Johnston’s Spencer and shattered the stock some more by banging it off the giant’s head.

When Johnston fell, Dead Thing jerked out his Bowie.

I said, “No more, huh?”

Dead Thing looked at me, nodded. He put the knife away.

I rolled Johnston onto his back; and, using a piece of my own shirt, I stopped the bleeding from the arrow wound. Johnson’s head had a knot, but nothing more. I wasn’t looking all that forward to when he woke up.

Dead Thing was using his knife to cut the arrows from the Sioux, but when he finished that task, he gave each corpse a special salute. He stood up, raised his breechcloth, and exposed himself.

I had once heard that the Sioux did that, and they considered it the ultimate insult to the eyes of the dead.

I reckoned that Crow was giving them a taste of their own medicine.

When he was finished with that, he started back to the first and set to scalping.

I didn’t watch. I turned back to Johnston. When the fire was built up good, I put Johnston’s Bowie blade in it, and got his whisky from his saddlebag.

Dead Thing came over with a handful of scalps. “You killed these. They’re yours.”

“No, they’re yours. Call it a present. As for the rest… well, some of those are Johnston’s and you’ll need to talk to him.”

Dead Thing grunted, tossed a handful of scalps besididtscalps e Johnston. “He killed the most,” the Crow said flatly.

“He’s had plenty of practice,” I said. I went back to Johnston, knelt down and looked at the wound. It was bleeding through the torn shirt fabric.

I got the Bowie out of the fire, and very quickly, put it to the wound.

Johnston came out of his knocked-out condition like a mad puma out of cave. He got me by the throat and started squeezing it like so much weaved basket. But just as suddenly as he had come awake, he passed out again. Even Johnston had his limitations. Loss of blood, a good knot on the head and a red-hot Bowie on a wound was at least part of it.

I got my throat working again, poured whisky on the wound, redressed it with some wet leaves and a few strips of blanket, and let it be.

Johnston, that big, ugly bear, began to snore.

I made coffee and put out the fire. I gave Dead Thing a cup and we squatted around the dead coals, just looking at one another. After awhile, Dead Thing said, “You and the Liver-Eater are friends?”

“Yes. He saved my life. You saved our lives.”

“The Liver-Eater just happened to be here. I saved your life.”

“Why?”

“Because you fought White Lip.”

“White Lip?”

“The one you call Carson.”

“I see. What’s your beef with the major?”

“He made my people look like fools. They follow him and do what he wants to get his crazy water. The warriors are no longer proud. They act crazy.”

“Whisky does that,” I said. “But you’re way behind them.”

“I did not follow them at first. I saw what happened at the train. I went away. I thought about it. Those men with him were friends of mine. Once. The more I thought about them, about how they acted, about how they followed White Lip, the more I decided that they should die. They make the Crows look bad.”

“And White Lip?”

“He dies, too.”

“You do this to honor your people, yet they have dishonored you.”

“I am still Absaroka. Does White Lip dishonor you?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“He is white. Are you now ashamed of being white?”

“No, I’m not, and I see your point,” I said. “You and me, we’re after the same thing. We can follow their trail together.”

The Crow grunted. “I travel alone. Their trail is long cold now. My own people have hidden it. But I will find them. Perhaps our paths will cross again.”

It was barely light. A cool fog had settled on us like a wet, wool cap. I wasn’t really surprised to wake up and find Johnston cooking his biscuits. There wasn’t enough there for two.

“I’m sorry about whacking you,” I said, rolling out of my blankets.

“I ought to left ya on that train with them Sioux,” he said.

“Dead Thing saved our lives.”

“And I saved yorn, for some reason or ‘nuther.”

“I’m grateful.”

“Ya show it good. We’re partin’ ways, pilgrim. You go on over the rise there, and two days later you’ll reach town. We meet again, I’ll consider all debts paid. Savvy?”

“Yeah.”

I watched Johnston eat the biscuits. In the harsh morning light he looked very old, like a tool used long after its time. For the first time I could see gray in his beard. After he finished eating, he got his gear together. “I kinda liked ya, boy. Thanks for patchin’ me up.”

“Only fair.”

“Account ya doin that, I’m lettin’ ya keep yer hair.”

“We don’t have to end this, Johnston.”

“Yeah, we do.” He walked away, climbed on his stallion.

“That’s it, then?”

“Reckon so.”

“You’re the one ending it.”

“You ended it last night when ya kept me from killin’ that red divvel.”

With that he turned his stallion and started out of the hills. I was going to miss him, and I wished it hadn’t ended that way.

Just as predicted, two days later I reached civilization. If you could call Deadwood Gulch civilization.

I had never been to Deadwood Gulch, but I knew about it. There was talk of making it a town. It was home for several hundred miners, and it was said to be the roughest place since Hickok cleaned up Abilene.

It was a dead-end canyon bordered by the thick Dakota woods and the tall, rock walls of Pa Sapa. It was a gathering of miner tents, dugouts and shanties. It was, due to its narrow pass and steep walls on all other sides, fairly safe from Indians. It could be defended easily. There was hardly room for two buckboards to pass through the mouth of these rocks and into the Gulch. Law was where you found it. At the end of your own gun or with the skin off your knuckles. They said the sound of gunfire and fist fights could be heard continuously, and that many a would-be miner spent the next season fertilizing a Dakota pine.

I figured that was all true. I figured, too, that it would be a haven for outlaws, men on the run. Men like Carson and his crew.

I rode through the pass and into Deadwood Gulch, down the single narrow street between tents and clapboard saloons. I wound my horse through drunken miners staggering across the street from saloon to saloon.

Finally, I dismounted and lead my horse through the street, trying not to get knocked down by the drunks. A man, staggering a little less than most, was coming down the street toward me. This was an ugly cross-eyed cuss, and the gloomy light—for it was near nightfall—did little to enhance his appearance.

I said to him, “Hey, friend. Can you tell me where I can put my horse up for the night, find a place to sleep?”

The little man looked at me. I could smell his stinky whisky breath. “You talkin’ to me?”

“Unless you have a small man in your pocket, I am.”

“Yeah?”

“Look, friend, I don’t want trouble, just information.”

“I ain’t your friend.”

“All right. Now will you answer my questions? Where can I put up for the night?”

“How about six feet in the ground?” And with that, the little man pulled a .44 with fair speed.

I swatted his hand with the barrel of my Winchester, which I had carried in with me, leaving the Sharps in the boot. Then I put the rifle to the man’s throat.