Sacred Is the Wind (18 page)

Esther was leaving this morning! And Rebecca had promised to spend this last evening with her friend. Esther would not only be hurt but she had probably raised an alarm when Rebecca failed to return after an hour. Sam and Rebecca would be leaving on the southbound stage to Denver. They may even have already left. No. On the contrary, Esther was probably delaying their departure until she learned of Rebecca's fate.
We have to leave now! The least I can do is return to Castle Rock to ease Esther's fears and say good-bye.
Rebecca looked down at the robe, still warm from the bodies that had rested upon it. The warmth eased her guilt. For something was happening in her life so important as to make even the glow of friendship grow pale in comparison. Still, if she and Panther Burn left now, they might just reach Castle Rock in time for Esther and Sam to make their morning departure.

But where was Panther Burn? Rebecca crawled to her feet and began to methodically circle their cold camp, searching the ground for some sign of the Northerner's departure. But the carpet of pine needles covering the earth revealed no trace of Panther Burn. Fifteen minutes passed. Rebecca sighed in exasperation and widened her perimeter, all the while resisting the urge to quicken her pace. Haste only meant missing the sign. A mourning dove sounded its melancholy call—coo-ah, coo, coo—the notes rising in pitch, both lovely and sad. Just as hope faded, Rebecca found a moccasin track indicating Panther Burn had crept off through the ponderosas and down the hill. Why? Suddenly she glanced back over her shoulder at the buffalo robe and blankets. The rifle was gone! She returned her attention to the heavily wooded slope. Nothing stirred. Not a sound now. A false peace? Only one way to find out. She started down the hill.

Panther Burn waited for Sabbath McKean to ride clear of a dense cluster of lodgepole pines before stepping out from behind the outcropping of granite he had chosen for his own concealment. McKean was so intent on following the trail left the night before, he was caught completely off guard as Panther Burn leaped into view a stone's throw away.

“
Ha-hey,
McKean!”

The scout reared back in the saddle. His gelding danced to one side, bucked and kicked as Sabbath shouted “Whoa” and clung to the animal's back. The gelding finally settled down after a brief violent struggle.

“Damnation!” Sabbath gagged and spat a stream of tobacco juice. He coughed, dug the chaw out of his mouth, and coughed the last of the leaf out of his throat. “I been too long in the wind to let a mere younker like yourself spook me into swallowin' my tobac.” McKean held up both of his hands to show he held no weapon. Then he reined his mount closer to the Northern Cheyenne. Sabbath adjusted his battered felt hat, then reached back into his saddlebag and retrieved the knife he had brought from town. Panther Burn eyed the man suspiciously. He respected Sabbath and yet knew that white men in general were a mercurial lot. Panther Burn waited in peace but kept his Hawken cocked. McKean fixed a shrewd stare on Panther Burn and tossed the knife into the dirt at the Northern Cheyenne's feet.

“Recognize that, laddie?” The scout began idly to twist the tips of his flowing red mustache, a habitual gesture of which the frontiersman was totally oblivious. Panther Burn scooped up the knife and slid it into the sheath sewn inside his calf-high moccasins.

“I am in your debt, McKean. This was given to me by my father. I did not think I would ever find it … again.” The brave glanced up to find that the man on horseback now brandished a short-barreled Navy Colt. Sabbath had palmed it after distracting the Northern Cheyenne with the knife.

“Sorry, younker, but this helps me save face for the way you caught me.” He gestured at the rifle. “Now, just toss that bear-killer aside.” Panther Burn remained motionless. “I know you savvy me, laddie, so do what I told you. I get nervous with these belly guns with their hair triggers and all. I'd never forgive myself if it was to go off.”

Another few yards beyond the Northern Cheyenne, Rebecca cleared the shadows of the timber and froze at the sight of the men with their guns leveled at each other. Sabbath caught sight of her as she emerged from the trees. He was distracted for just a second, but long enough for Panther Burn to hurl his rifle at the scout. The Hawken landed on the rocks beneath the white man's gelding. The rifle belched flame and thundered. Sabbath's skittish horse bolted straight up, pawing air as the frightened mare neighed in terror, then took off at a dead run. The scout, still airborne, squeezed off a shot from his Navy Colt. The world turned upside down, then righted itself with a jarring thud. Sabbath landed flat on his back, the air exploded from his lungs, and his head bounced off the table rock. His last thought: Getting my skull cracked twice in two days is too damn much.

Sabbath opened his eyes. Vision blurred, shimmered as if he were swimming from the depths of a pond to the surface with his eyes open. When he broke clear, the shock of his aching skull helped him to see with renewed clarity. Nothing like pain to remind you that you're alive, he thought. He located the gelding where the horse grazed in a clearing a few yards from the pinto. He remembered being puzzled that the horse he was following carried double. He turned as Rebecca knelt at his side. The young woman had soaked his bandanna in an icy spring. Cradling the scout's head, she gingerly applied the cloth to Sabbath's skull. He yelped, but the cold soon numbed the pain. Sabbath craned his head to the left, where Panther Burn sat cross-legged, his rifle loaded and cocked in his right hand, in his left, the Navy Coat.

“Now tell me,
ve-ho-e.
Why do you follow me?”

Sabbath's tongue felt like leather. He mumbled something unintelligible, groaned, tried again. “Seeing as I'm still alive … and you're riding double … and no offense, ma'am, but I get the feeling you two have spent the night here in keeping one another company … uh …” He sat upright. Simon White Bull's village! Sam Madison must be having his hands full this very minute. The scout shuddered as the pain once more knifed through his head. Catching his breath, he looked over at Panther Burn, and studying the Northerner's eyes, Sabbath asked one question. “Did you kill Tom Bragg, the colonel's brother?” He heard Rebecca gasp to his right, but continued, “He was found with your knife in his chest.”

Panther Burn shifted his gaze to Rebecca, then back to the white man.

“Hear me,
ve-ho-e.
I walk in truth. It is the warrior's path. What guilt I have is for all to see.” He held out his maimed left hand, three fingers and a thumb. “But it is a private sorrow for my heart alone to bear. As for the one you name, I know nothing of the matter. You have returned a knife that was lost last night. Who has held it between your hand and mine I do not know.” Panther Burn leaned forward and placed McKean's Navy Colt in front of the scout, who took the weapon in his callused hand. It was still loaded save for the shot he had accidentally fired. “I have spoken,” said Panther Burn. His gaze did not waver for an instant. Sabbath tucked the pistol back in the pocket of his wool-lined denim coat. He nodded, satisfied.

“Younker, I hope you're up to riding, 'cause we got to race the rabbits. Bragg's taken a whole army to the Warbonnet to have a reckoning with White Bull's village. They say they're lookin' for you but I got a feeling any fight will do. Sam Madison's gone on to try to talk some sense into them. You and I are gonna have to risk our skins to clear up this mess. Help me to my feet.” He looked over at Rebecca. “Best we leave you at Reverend Holstead's, lass. Things could get a mite fractious before we settle this.”

Images, phrases of a conversation, a jumble of memory. Rebecca felt her flesh grow cold as she remembered a sign of great and terrible change. A wolf demon rising from medicine fire.
Star! All-Father keep her safe!

“My place … is with …. my people,” Rebecca haltingly replied. Sabbath started to protest. “My place is with my people!” Rebecca's gaze bore into Panther Burn. They were not the eyes of the woman he had held in his arms. She seemed frightened of him, and more, full of unspoken accusation. “I will ride with you until we find a horse for me.” The tone of her voice brooked no argument.

“Blue Thrush,” he tenderly called to her. But she was already hurrying toward the pinto stallion. Driven by a terrible premonition, suddenly she had no time for gentleness … or love.

8

A
soot-blackened sky had drawn the three at a gallop over the last few miles. Now Rebecca sat motionless on the horse Sabbath had “borrowed” on the way, from an outlying farm, as she struggled to comprehend what lay before her. Panther Burn and the white man, McKean, were like statues set upon the crest of the hill that rolled gently to the banks of the Warbonnet.

“My God,” Sabbath managed at last to mutter. Not that his brief prayer changed anything. God seemed far indeed from this place of destruction. No cabin, tipi, or lodge remained untouched. Even the split-rail fencing that protected the garden littered the earth like so many burned husks. Smoldering logs and planking marked former homesites and tendrils of smoke trailed into the sky from the charred skeletons of collapsed cabins. And strewn like so many toy dolls among the gutted remnants of the village were the people themselves, Southern Cheyenne men, women, and children, most burned beyond recognition by the flames that had spread from cabin to cabin, igniting the meadow grasses underfoot, until the earth lay scorched to the river's edge. The waters of the Warbonnet were tinged a sickly rust color and bloated, bullet-riddled bodies were sprawled in the shallows. A carrion horde circled lazily through the smoky residue that darkened an already somber sky. On the ground, vultures feasted in packs of half a dozen or more upon mortal remains. They filled the air with their caustic cries as the carrion brood quarreled and fought over a particular chunk of meat. Greedy birds; there was plenty to go around. For the villagers had died in their sleep, died as they staggered from cabins set ablaze, died as the braves attempted to fight off the attackers with guns and farm tools, died as mothers gathered their children and pleaded for mercy in the face of men driven to savage slaughter by righteous anger and blood lust. Women, children, and babes had died where they huddled, died as they ran toward the safety of the forest, died with the men in their newly plowed fields, watering the crops with their blood; died with their cattle, the tame buffalo of the whites; died fighting or kneeling in prayers and supplication to
Jay-ho-vah.
The stench of the butchery, of day-old blood and charred corpses, as-sailed the slope as the wind shifted. Rebecca doubled over and vomited. She slid from horseback and fell to her knees until the spasms ceased and she managed shakily to stand. She started forward then, with numbed steps, down the incline. She did not feel the gentle caress of the wind as it stirred the dust underfoot. Behind her Sabbath McKean raised his voice. “In the name of heaven, what have you done, Jubal Bragg? What have you gone and done?” Panther Burn ignored the man. He searched out the approximate location of Joshua Beartusk's cabin and nudged his pinto into a trot, then as the ground leveled, a gallop, leaving Rebecca and McKean in his dust. As he rode into the ruins of the village the Northern Cheyenne loosed a wild, high-pitched war cry, and raising his Hawken, fired the rifle into the air. Back up on the rise, Sabbath dragged his Spencer from its scabbard and levered off another three rounds. The reports echoed over the budding prairie land, washed to the line of trees hiding the pond, and reverberated back to its source. As the rifle shots sounded, Panther Burn continued his cry, and grabbing a blanket, waved it overhead, whipping the air as he voiced a piercing war cry. Turkey vultures, some with wingspans greater than a man was tall, rose in a chorus of shrill protests, a hundred wings drumming the air like thunder and billowing, swirling skyward in alarm, some with grisly morsels of flesh jutting from their hooked beaks. Rebecca raised her hand as if to ward them off and stumbled and fell. Tears streamed down her cheeks, blurred her vision. Grit stung her eyes. But she pressed onward past children who even in death appeared to cower by their mothers, past the gas-bloated corpses of those she had known, of childhood friends she had played with in a time of innocence. And the men, those unburned, she recognized as well, blasted and bullet-riddled, scarred by saber thrust and the talons of the carrion birds. Rebecca stumbled on, through the landscape of a nightmare.

“
Na-hko-eehe
… Mother …
Na-hko-eehe
!” she called, knowing there would be no answer. With leaden footsteps she approached the blackened rubble that had been the house of Star, medicine woman of the Southern Cheyenne. Rebecca paused on the scorched threshold, and using every ounce of strength, it seemed, she raised her head. “My mother?” Nothing. Perhaps Star had escaped. The young woman's gaze shifted to the chimney and down to the hearth, and there poking through the crumbled wreckage of the north wall a blistered, seared forearm and hand jutted upward in death as if Star had grasped at the vast battlements of clouds above, even as the fiery timber had come crashing down, crushing and killing the medicine woman. Rebecca's whole body shuddered, her shoulders bowed forward. But not a whimper escaped her, for silent is the song of sorrow, whose lament no throat can capture, no heart contain.

The pinto stallion pawed at the earth, knocked a board loose, and danced back, skittish in the presence of so much death. Panther Burn finished searching the gutted ruins of his uncle's house but found nothing, which did not necessarily mean Joshua Beartusk was alive. Panther Burn glanced past the wreckage toward the pasture. Judging by the line of corpses, it appeared a number of the villagers had made a break toward the forest. Quite possibly some of them had reached the pines and escaped. He remounted and walked the stallion away from the village. The first bodies were two boys and a girl. He thought he recognized them but couldn't be certain, nor did it matter. It was enough that they had been children of the Morning Star. Panther Burn rubbed the wetness from his eyes and was glad he was alone here on the fringe of what had once been the village. Grimly he forced his pony into a trot, unable to linger too long by the children sprawled upon the gentle bosom of the earth in the late afternoon. He tried to give the other corpses only the most perfunctory appraisal, checking for Joshua Beartusk or young Zachariah Scalpcane. However, the sprawled lifeless form of one other brave attracted his attention beyond the others and Panther Burn altered his course and reined to a halt alongside Simon White Bull. The chief of the Southern Cheyenne lay on his back, his dead stare focused accusingly heavenward. He was minus a boot. His stiffened hands held the American flag that had wafted over the village. Perhaps the chief had taken it down, in the furor, as if its presence might stop the attackers. It covered Simon like a shroud. There were several bullet holes in the material and bloodstains the color of rust marred the bars of red and white. For some reason the vultures had not yet found the chief. Perhaps the flag frightened them away: a corner of the fabric flapped in the breeze. Panther Burn jumped down, and kneeling by the dead man, closed Simon's eyes.