Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (76 page)

 
          
 
A nervous hand at his stomach, Richard stared
at the faces surrounding him. Wolfish eyes gleamed back at him in the
firelight.

 
          
 
"Ter Dick!" Wah-Menitu cried,
shaking a fist and ululating the most horrible of war cries. Then he barked out
words in Sioux, and the others whooped and screamed ecstatically.

 
          
 
"Dance!" Travis hissed in Richard's
ear. "And hold up that fetish."

 
          
 
Richard fumbled at his belt, only to find
Travis's quick fingers had beaten him to it. The skunk hair was thrust into his
hand as Travis shoved him forward. "Dance, coon. Dance smart, now!"

 
          
 
Richard started roughly, jumping and twirling
as Travis began chanting, "Hey-a hey-a-hey-hey. '' The Sioux joined him.

 
          
 
"Hold 'er up!" Travis prompted.
"So's everybody can see!"

 
          
 
Richard raised the fetish and skipped in the
milling circle of warriors. A song rose on the lips of the Sioux, and a drum
began a rhythmic beat. The excitement of it built in

 
          
 
Richard's breast, a kind of exhilaration he'd
never experienced before. His feet found the rhythm of the music, and he
mimicked those around him: step-shuffle, step-shuffle, leap.

 
          
 
He leapt and ducked, pirouetted and jerked in
time to the warriors around him. Electric energy seemed to pulse within him,
flowing up from the ground, down from die sky, and through him so that his feet
grew light. Time vanished in the exertion and wheeling bodies.

 
          
 
Free! I feel free! An ecstasy bright as the
Sioux fires burned in his breast. His feet skipped and leapt with the airy
buoyancy of the sparks that flickered upward.

 
          
 
He wrapped himself in the singing of the
Sioux, weaving himself within it. He let the music carry him, like moss in a
gentle current. Men, women, and children had come to watch, all swaying with
the chant. They were stepping and clapping in time with the lilting song.

 
          
 
As if we were all one, together, relatives
instead of strangers from different worlds, Richard threw his head back,
whirling in time with the dance. His spirit soared, buoyed by the dance until
his body had become remote, a leaf on the wind.

 
          
 
In the end, all that remained was a pure,
shining bliss the likes of which he'd never experienced. Power rose within him,
stretching, opening itself to the night and the rising harmony of Sioux voices.

 
          
 
How long did he dance? Winded, sweating, he
slipped from the circle, in time for Travis to hand him a hornful of alcohol.
This time he choked a burning draught down his throat.

 
          
 
"Shining times," Travis cried, then
crowed like a rooster.

 
          
 
"Shining times," Richard agreed,
wiping his sweat-shiny face. "What next? God, for a drink of water!"

 
          
 
"That gut bag hanging yonder. That's
water, coon. Haw! Lookit old Baptiste! He's a-prancing like a buck antelope
come fall! And thar be Green. Lookee there! Reckon he'd outjump a buck mule
deer in high sage!"

 
          
 
Richard grinned, watching the others cavort
with the Sioux.

 
          
 
"Hell, Doodle, ye ain't done, are ye?
Night's young! Fetch yer water and go gallivanting! I'd be a-dancing with 'em .
. . specially afore they notice yer not out thar!"

 
          
 
Richard drank his fill from the musty-tasting
gut, then charged back into the gyrating bodies.

 
          
 
When he staggered back to Wah-Menitu's lodge,
sweating and grinning, the ugly old man still sat in his place, single eye
gleaming in that ruined face. Richard hesitated; the old man raised an
age-callused finger, beckoning.

 
          
 
Willow
lay in the darkness, aware of the rustling
rodents scurrying behind the cargo. She'd lived most of her life with mice
sneaking into the lodges. Mice were a necessary evil, the little creatures
doing as Tarn Apo willed, seeking to fill their bellies and raise their pups.
Rats, too, had their place. The kind she knew best were the bushy-tailed
packrats of the mountains: the ones who'd leave a rock in place of a shiny
bead. Packrats chewed anything leather, or even the sweaty wooden handle of a
hammer or the middle of a good bow. They raided food caches, and generally made
life miserable for humans.

 
          
 
The old conflict favored neither side, for
when times got hard and starvation rubbed a person's belly raw, the Duku-rika
set fire to packrat nests, ambushed the fleeing rodents, and roasted their
little carcasses for their soft pink meat.

 
          
 
These dark gray rats, however, were different,
with glinting eyes and naked scaly tails that gave her the shivers.

 
          
 
She resettled herself in the bedding Green and
Henri had laid on the packs of blankets. Over the furtive scuttling of the
rats, and the water slapping the hull, the faint beat of a pot drum, and the
yip-yaping snatches of song carried down from the Sioux village. The edges of
her souls frayed with each distant scream.

 
          
 
Here I am, hidden away in a White man's boat,
while he trades with the Cuts-Off-A-Head People, And what if the cut-throat
Sioux turned on their guests? Murdered them all?

 
          
 
She could imagine Ritshard's headless body,
white and naked in the sunlight, flies thick in the blood pooled beneath and
severed neck. Those soft brown eyes would never sparkle again. He would never
have the chance to seek the answers that lay just beyond the fingertips of his
soul.

 
          
 
Trawis wouldn't go down without a fight. He'd
shared his soul and blood with the white bear—the greater the honor for the
Sioux who finally killed him.

 
          
 
This is ridiculous. I'm only doing this to torture
myself. Trawis and Green know what they are doing. Or did they? She tightened
her grip on the war club that lay between her breasts. I should leave as soon
as I can. Sneak away into the night and find my way home.

 
          
 
It couldn't be that hard. Follow the rivers
west. Eventually they'd rise to the mountains, and as a girl she'd walked most
of them, or heard the stories about which rivers ran where.

 
          
 
So why don't I go? The lie she had told
herself, about learning more about White men, had worn as thin as last year's
moccasins. She'd learned enough about the Whites.

 
          
 
She blinked at the dark roof over her head,
images of Ritshard growing in her soul. What was it about him that drew her so?
Had he cast some spell on her that day she'd looked into the eye of his soul?

 
          
 
That was it, wasn't it? He'd done what no man
of the Dukurika would dare to do. And he'd done it without fear, without
anything except curiosity.

 
          
 
And does that bother you, Heals Like A Willow?
Is that what draws you to Ritshard? Is it because he didn't see you as a woman
— or did he see you as a complete woman?

 
          
 
She shifted uneasily. The sounds from the
Sioux camp grew louder.

 
          
 
"
You're being an idiot," she told herself. "Tarn Apo alone
knows who these White fools will find next. Maybe the next people will just
kill them ... and you, too! You should run while you still can."

 
          
 
She nodded to herself. Yes, run. Now . . .
tonight. Before anything else horrible happened to her.

 
          
 
Just as she'd made up her mind, the soft scuff
of leather on wood reached her ear. Every muscle stiffened. Her soul pictured a
wily Sioux creeping along the passe avant, intent on murder and theft.

 
          
 
A shadow darkened the doorway, but Willow had
already lowered herself into a gap between two flour barrels. She clutched the
war club in one hand, her knife in the other.

 
          
 
Step after careful step, the intruder eased
down the stair slats. Cloth rasped ever so softly, and a big man slipped over
to her bedding.

 
          
 
Willow's skin crawled. He reached out
cautiously to finger her blankets.

 
          
 
One of the rats scampered away, and the man
jerked, stifling a curse.

 
          
 
Couldn't he hear the pounding of her heart,
the fear pumping in her blood?

 
          
 
He grabbed at her bed now, searching
frantically, then whirled to peer around the black interior of the cargo box.

 
          
 
If he reached into her hiding place, she'd
strike with all her strength. Thrust up from below with the knife so that he
had little chance to block it. Then she'd rise, braced against the barrels, and
hammer him with the war club.

 
          
 
"
Willow
?" he whispered softly.

 
          
 
She strangled the cry within, recognizing the
French accent. Not a Sioux—an engage. Why?

 
          
 
Ritshard, Trawis, and Green were gone. Only
Henri slept atop the cargo box.

 
          
 
Who? Trudeau, most likely, but it could have
been any of the others. In the charcoal black, she couldn't be sure.

 
          
 
He stood in silence for what seemed an
eternity, then carefully turned, easing back the way he'd come.

 
          
 
Only after the shadowy form ghosted back up
through the doorway did she take a deep breath and wipe at the fear-sweat that
had beaded on her upper lip.

 
          
 
The one-eyed Sioux continued to beckon with
his crooked finger. In his other hand he clutched an eagle-feather fan as long
as his withered arm. In desperation, Richard looked around for Travis,
Baptiste, or Green, but only Wah-Menitu remained seated, his pipe resting on
the ground before him. Now the chief's feral eyes narrowed as he studied
Richard.