Demon's Pass (15 page)

“What the hell? Where did he come from?” Reynolds yelled, riding to the front of the column at a gallop.

“They're here!” Ira shouted. “Get ready for 'em.”

“What are you talking about? It's only one Indian.”

“Get ready!” Ira repeated. “Get the wagons in a circle!”

But it was too late for that. By now, nearly twenty Indians came into view.

“My God, where did they all come from?” Reynolds asked, a quick, nauseating fear building in his throat. Swarming down on the wagons from both sides, the Indians were emitting blood-curdling screams as they fired their pistols and rifles.

Bloody Axe leaped over the rocks and gullies, shouting with joy as he pursued the fight. The men defending the wagon train shot at him, but it was as if he were impervious to their bullets. He surveyed a burning wagon and looked at the battlefield, chortling in glee as the last white man was put to the lance. Now everyone—men, women, and children—were dead.

He and the others looted the freight wagons, taking whatever they wanted. Some of them started drinking the whiskey right away, chopping holes in the end of the barrel and holding their mouths under the issuing stream. Kicking Horse found a hat with red feathers, and he put it on, clowning for the others, who laughed at his antics.

Bloody Axe saw a young girl lying on the ground with a bullet hole in her temple. She didn't look to be much older than Running Rabbit. Neither he, nor any of his warriors, had killed her. She had been killed by one of her own people. The man on the chestnut horse had ridden up to her, put his gun to the side of her head, and pulled the trigger.

She had made no effort to avoid it, but had sat there, unprotesting, as if she welcomed it. He had seen such things before, white women killing themselves or being killed by their men, in order to avoid being captured by the Indians. What cowards white people were.

Chapter 10

When Bloody Axe and his warriors returned to the camp, they were laden with booty from the looted wagon train. He had sent an advanced messenger back with word of his great victory, so the camp was already celebrating by the time the main body of warriors arrived. Elizabeth saw no call for celebration. She remembered her own experience as a helpless victim of a brutal Indian attack, and she was sure that this one had been just as bloody. She stayed in her teepee, refusing even to go outside.

The flap to her teepee opened and brave Eagle came in.

“Here,” he said, offering her a pot of black smudge paint. “Put some of this on your face.”

“Why?” Elizabeth asked. “Isn't that for mourning? Will it not make it more obvious to everyone if I mourn the death of so many of my people?”

“This is to mourn one Cheyenne that has been killed,” Brave Eagle said.

“To mourn for a warrior who does not belong to me would bring disgrace to others who live,” Elizabeth said, showing that she had managed to grasp some of the customs of her new people.

“You can mourn for one who has no family,” Brave Eagle suggested.

“Who would that . . . Brave Eagle, no! Not Running Rabbit?”

“It is so,” Brave Eagle affirmed.

Elizabeth thought of the young Indian boy who had helped make her transition into her new life bearable. Tears sprang quickly to her eyes.

“I tried to stop him from going with them. He was just a boy.”

“He called himself a warrior,” Brave Eagle said. “And he died a warrior. The coward who now calls himself Bloody Axe attacked a wagon train. He made war against women and children.

“You can wear mourning paint for Running Rabbit,” Brave Eagle continued. He put his hand to his chest. “And, in your heart, mourn for your own people as well.”

“You are a good man, Brave Eagle,” Elizabeth said. She walked over to him and put her arms around him. She felt him stiffen in her grasp, then pull away from her.

“We cannot,” he said. “You are the wife of Two Ponies.”

“Brave Eagle, I didn't mean . . .” Elizabeth started, then she stopped. She was going to tell him that she didn't mean her embrace to be anything more than a gesture of friendship. But she realized at that moment that if the council had voted differently, if she had been made to choose Brave Eagle, that the thought of sharing Brave Eagle's bed wasn't all that unpleasant.

With a look in his eyes that told her Brave Eagle was thinking the same thing, he turned and left her teepee.

 

Outside, the celebration continued. Bloody Axe had drunk much of the liquor they had brought back from the wagons, and he felt whiskey's fire burning inside him. He was intoxicated, not by the whiskey, but by the exuberance of his own greatness. He listened to the songs which were being sung in his honor, and he heard the praises to his name, and he knew his deeds would help solidify him one day as chief.

When he saw Brave Eagle leaving the teepee of Sun's Light, his blood ran hot with anger. Everyone knew that Sun's Light was the wife of Two Ponies in name only. Everyone knew that she had not shared his bed, even on the night they were married. The marriage was nothing but a means of denying Bloody Axe his rightful claim to the woman who had been his prisoner.

Bloody Axe didn't like the arrangement, but he had accepted it for what it was. Until now. When he saw Brave Eagle leave her teepee, he was convinced that Brave Eagle was enjoying what rightfully should have been his. Bloody Axe was being played for a fool!

The anger he felt at seeing Brave Eagle leave the teepee passed quickly, however, when he realized that here was his opportunity. He looked toward Sun's Light's teepee. She was still inside.

Bloody Axe felt a quick-building need for her, and he rubbed himself through his loincloth and thought of what it would be like to be with her. Looking around, he saw that Brave Eagle was nowhere in sight. He started toward the teepee of Sun's Light.

Bloody Axe slipped through the open flap of Sun's Light's teepee and stood there glaring defiantly for a moment.

“Brave Eagle, I'm glad you've come back,” Elizabeth said, turning toward him with a smile on her face. When she saw who it was, though, her smile was replaced by a combination of terror and revulsion. “Elk Heart!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“Elk Heart is no more. You will call me by my new name,” Bloody Axe demanded. His painted face was underlit by the dull glow of the teepee fire, and the fire and shadow gave him the look of a demon. He stared down at her menacingly.

Elizabeth realized that it had been a foolish and dangerous thing to taunt him by calling him by his old name. “I apologize. I meant to call you Bloody Axe,” she said. She was frightened, but she tried not to show it. She looked behind him, hoping that Brave Eagle was with him.

Bloody Axe smiled, but rather than making his face more pleasing, the grin seemed to pull his fire-lit features into an even more hideous countenance.

“Why have you not come to celebrate my victory?” Bloody Axe asked.

“I . . . I am in mourning,” Elizabeth explained.

“You mourn for the white dogs who were killed?”

“I mourn for Running Rabbit,” Elizabeth said.

“Running Rabbit was a fool,” Bloody Axe said. “He tried to make a coup, to take the glory that was mine. And as that glory was mine, so shall you be.” Bloody Axe gloated.

“What?” Elizabeth gasped. “What are you talking about?”

“You belong to me,” Bloody Axe said and he touched his chest. “It was Bloody Axe who captured you. You should be in my teepee, cooking my meals and warming my blankets.”

“It was not Bloody Axe who captured me,” Elizabeth said. “It was Elk Heart, and Elk Heart is no more.”

Suddenly, and without warning, Bloody Axe swung the back of his hand across Elizabeth's face, sending her sprawling. She was so surprised by his action that she didn't even cry out.

“Now I will show you what it is like to be taken by a warrior.” Bloody Axe grunted. The light gave his eyes a demonic glow of lust. Elizabeth opened her mouth to scream, but a wicked blow from Bloody Axe's fist cut her scream short. She tasted blood, and realized that her lip was cut. She tried to scream but couldn't, because Bloody Axe was holding his hand across her mouth.

Elizabeth let her body go limp. Bloody Axe, thinking she was giving in to him, grinned and relaxed his grip. It was the opening Elizabeth was seeking, and she rolled over and struggled to get up.

Bloody Axe perceived then what she was doing, and he gave her a wicked kick in the stomach, knocking her back down. She became dazed, barely aware of Bloody Axe spreading her legs apart.

Suddenly, through the numbing haze of near unconsciousness, Elizabeth saw the shadow of another man in the teepee. It was Brave Eagle!

Brave Eagle bellowed in rage, and he grabbed Bloody Axe by the hair, jerked him up, and threw him outside the teepee. He followed outside, and as a stunned Bloody Axe scrambled to get up, Brave Eagle savagely punched him in the face, knocking him down again.

“You are but a cur that eats its own vomit,” Brave Eagle cursed. “You are a worm, crawling in human dung!”

Every time Bloody Axe tried to get up, Brave Eagle would knock him down again, uttering a curse each time he did so.

The celebration which had continued unabated even as Bloody Axe was in Elizabeth's teepee, had now stopped abruptly, and people began to gather to watch the confrontation.

“Give me a weapon so that we may fight!” Bloody Axe finally called to the assembled group.

Brave Eagle grabbed the lance of a warrior who had came from the dancing circle, and threw it at Bloody Axe's feet, where it stuck in the ground. Bloody Axe pulled it out, then turned it toward Brave Eagle.

As Brave Eagle turned to arm himself with another lance nearby, Bloody Axe made a thrust at him, cutting him off.

“Unfair!” Kicking Horse called. “Let him pick up a weapon!”

But Bloody Axe paid no attention, and continued to thrust the lance toward Brave Eagle, who could do nothing but dance out of the way of each deadly thrust.

“Tonight you will see me lie with Sun's Light,” Bloody Axe boasted. “Your severed head will be hanging from the lodgepole, and I will prop your eyes open so that you will see everything!” He made another jab with the lance, and Brave Eagle avoided it deftly as he had the others.

Elizabeth, alarmed by the urgent cries outside her teepee, came out to see Bloody Axe facing Brave Eagle with murder in his eyes. Bloody Axe lunged viciously at Brave Eagle, who managed to avoid his thrust yet again, and as Bloody Axe was trying to recover, Brave Eagle cuffed him on the back of the head, sending him sprawling, facedown, in the dirt. Bloody Axe dropped the lance and Brave Eagle swooped in to pick it up. Then, as Bloody Axe turned over onto his back, Brave Eagle put the point of the lance against Bloody Axe's throat.

“Kill him!” someone shouted. “You have bested him fairly!'

Bloody Axe looked up at Brave Eagle with hate and defiance in his eyes, preparing to die. “Kill me,” he said. “I will wait for you in the other world.”

But Brave Eagle pulled the point away. “You are the grandson of my grandfather. I have no wish to kill you,” he said.

Brave Eagle dropped the lance, then turned away from him. He started toward Elizabeth, and she knew that, if he wanted her, she would share his bed this night.

Then, with horrifying suddenness, the point of the spear burst out of Brave Eagle's chest. Blood pumped out from around the shaft and Brave Eagle, more surprised than in pain, put both hands up to feel the lance before falling forward.

“Brave Eagle!” Elizabeth cried out in shock and horror. She looked up and saw Bloody Axe on his feet. Bloody Axe had picked up the spear Brave Eagle had dropped beside him, and hurled it at Brave Eagle's back. So great was Bloody Axe's anger-induced strength, that the lance had penetrated all the way through Brave Eagle's body.

“Seize him!” Two Ponies shouted, for he, too, had been drawn from his lodge by the fight. Two Ponies pointed toward Bloody Axe, and two nearby braves darted toward him to obey Two Ponies' command.

“No!” Bloody Axe said, knocking the two Indians away. He took a couple of hesitant steps backward, looking into the faces of those who, only a short time before, were paying him honor. Now they were ready to put him to death.

Bloody Axe turned and ran toward the remuda. He leaped onto the back of the first horse, grabbed the line of another, and rode quickly, into the night. The other horses, spooked and alarmed, ran through the remuda's open gate.

“Get the horses!” Two Ponies commanded. “Get the horses, then ride him down and bring him to me.”

The Indians, many of whom were drunk from the stolen liquor, ran stumbling and bumbling into the night, trying to catch the skittish horses as Bloody Axe made his escape.

 

 

Clay held up his hand and the wagons behind him stopped.

“What is it?” Parker asked.

Clay pointed. “Buzzards.”

It wasn't uncommon to see one or two of the scavengers making long, slow circles in the sky. But here was a whole flock of them, gathered as thick as blackbirds.

“A dead coyote, maybe?” Parker suggested.

Clay shook his head. “Too many for a coyote. Too many for a person even, unless there's more than one.”

“Well then, what do you think it is?”

“It's hard to say.”

“Want me to ride over there and see what it is?”

Clay shook his head. “No,” he said. “We'll all check it out together.”