Shadow on the Sun (15 page)

They were getting ready to light a ceremonial fire.

 

Boutelle saw
more and more of the Pinal Spring band now. How many members did it have? He tried to recall. In the two hundreds, it seemed. He saw clusters of women and children eyeing him and Finley. Never had he felt so alien to an environment, so out of place.
This was their world, and he had no comprehension of it whatsoever.

Now the horses were stopped and he and Finley ordered to the ground. They dismounted, and Boutelle realized abruptly that the older man standing in front of them was Braided Feather. He hadn't recognized the chief because here he was not the sternly dignified figure he had been at the treaty meeting. He looked smaller now, more haggard.

Finley moved to the chief and raised his right hand in a saluting gesture. “I come as your friend,” he said in Apache.

“We know you are our friend,” Braided Feather answered. “Come with me.”

He led them away from the other Apaches to a small shelter that had been erected for him. He sank down on a buffalo robe beneath the overhang and gestured for them to sit. Boutelle glanced around and saw that Lean Bear had followed them. He looked back at the other Apaches and saw that they were tying up the two horses.

“First let me tell you what the Army and the citizens of Picture City think,” Finley said to the chief as Lean Bear sat down with them.

“No need,” Braided Feather replied. “I know what they think. That we have broken the treaty.”

“Yes.” Finley nodded.

Boutelle wished that he understood what they were saying but felt awkward about asking Finley to interpret.

“Does Finley think this as well?” Braided Feather asked the agent.

“Of course I don't,” Finley answered. “I know you to be a man of your word. I know that this is something else.”

“It is.” Braided Feather's lips tightened. “Something very different.”

“Can you tell me what it is so I can help?” Finley asked.

Braided Feather looked at his son, who looked toward the fire area and the Apaches waiting around it.

“There is no time,” Braided Feather said.

“What is the ceremony to be then?” Finley asked, having noticed Lean Bear's look.

Boutelle had no idea what was being said, but when Finley spoke, he was aware that both Braided Feather and Lean Bear grew tense.

“I cannot tell you that,” Braided Feather told Finley. “It is big medicine.”

“May we watch so we can learn and perhaps assist you in this?” Finley asked.

Lean Bear stiffened visibly and looked at Finley in anger. “This is not possible,” he said.

Finley looked at Braided Feather, knowing that despite Lean Bear's position as eventual chief of the Pinal Spring band, all authority was still in the chief's hands.

“I know it is much to ask,” he said, “but this is not an ordinary circumstance. I know that something very dark is taking place and want to help if I can. Are you certain you can deal with this alone?”

Boutelle flinched as Lean Bear spoke sharply to his father, then to Finley. Braided Feather was patient with him at first, but as his hotheaded son spoke with more and more vehemence, his father suddenly cut him off and clearly ordered him to move away.

Lean Bear grimaced savagely and lurched to his feet. “This is a bad mistake,” he said and strode away quickly.

Finley looked at Braided Feather without speaking. He knew that to say—particularly to ask—any more would be a slight to the chief's position. Accordingly, he waited in respectful silence.

Finally, Braided Feather spoke. There was a sound of sadness in his voice, Boutelle thought.

“You know that my son is right,” the chief said. “This is not a ceremony we permit outsiders to witness.” Finley felt a chill to hear a waver in Braided Feather's voice. “But this is
not
an ordinary thing, as you have said. It may well be I am forced to ask for your help. This being so . . .”

He stopped and sighed heavily. “We begin when darkness falls,” he said.

Boutelle didn't realize that they had been dismissed until Finley took him by the arm and helped him to his feet.

As they walked away from Braided Feather's shelter, he asked Finley what the conversation had been about.

When Finley told him, Boutelle frowned, not understanding. “All that over a ceremony?”

“White men are never permitted to witness such Apache ceremonies,” Finley told him. “They are a very religious people and their ceremonies are sacred to them. The only reason we're being permitted to look at this particular ceremony is that Braided Feather thinks we might help in this situation.”

“We?” Boutelle looked dubious.

“All right, me,” Finley admitted. He drew in a deep breath. “This is a very special ceremony,” he said. “What they call
big medicine.
Extremely important. I still can't believe they're going to let us watch.”

“Why did you ask then?” Boutelle asked.

“Frankly, I don't know,” Finley told him. “What's happening is so . . .
distant
from anything I've ever seen that I've behaved in a different manner with the chief. A manner I never would have assumed under more normal circumstances.”

They walked in silence toward the fire area. Boutelle looked up. The sky, now barely visible through the pine growth overhead, was almost dark.

“Keep in mind,” Finley told him, “these are brave men. Brave women. And they're terrified of something. Absolutely terrified. What else would make them flee their camp to perform a nighttime religious ceremony in the high woods?”

Boutelle glanced into the eyes of Apache men, women, and children as he passed them. Was it his imagination that he saw cold dread in every one of them?

H
e
had never experienced anything so strange in his life.

In the near pitch-blackness of the glade, the deep, resonant voice of the band's shaman seemed to be coming at him from all directions. The fact that the shaman was speaking in the guttural, rhythmic language of the Apaches which he could not understand in any way made it all the more bizarre to Boutelle as he sat there on the pine needle–covered ground.

He and Finley were located far back from the others so that the Indian agent could interpret for him. In the darkness of the forest, even Finley's whispering voice sounded unnaturally loud to Boutelle. He felt immersed in some grotesque dream, while at the same time knowing that he was totally awake.

“He's telling them that they are all in mortal danger,” Finley whispered into Boutelle's ear. “He says that he's going to perform a rite of scourging to prevent this danger from destroying them, man, woman, and child.”

Boutelle swallowed. His throat was dry and he felt a strong need
for a sip of water, yet knew it was impossible right now. Feeling almost numb, he sat immobile listening, as Finley continued.

“He's telling them that they must give this ceremony undivided attention and never smile or laugh or do a single thing to displease him or he'll be forced to call a halt to the rite, leaving them unprotected.”

Smile? Boutelle thought. Laugh? Who could possibly do either under these conditions?

“The ceremony will first inform them how this terror came to be,” Finley finished.

Boutelle shivered. In the darkness, fear comes far too easily, he thought. No wonder nighttime was the time when terror flourished.

The shaman had stopped speaking now. In the heavy silence, Boutelle heard only faint rustling sounds as the waiting Apaches shifted slightly on the ground, a few of them coughing softly.

“Who was speaking?” he asked Finley in a whisper, more to hear the sound of his own voice than out of curiosity.

“The band's shaman,” Finley replied.

“How did he become that?” Boutelle asked.

“By receiving a power grant from the mountain spirits in a vision experience,” Finley answered matter-of-factly.

Boutelle was about to respond, then changed his mind. How could one respond to such a statement? It was too far beyond the world he knew and accepted.

He started as a fire brand seemed to burst forth from nowhere. He saw it moving in the darkness like a flaming insect.

Then the bonfire was ignited and its stacked wood flamed up with a crackling roar.

Now he could see the Apaches gathered in a giant circle around the mounting fire, all of them seated cross-legged, their faces reflecting
the flames like burnished oak, their dark eyes glowing as they stared at the fire. Who
were
they? he wondered. What were they thinking? Once again, he felt completely foreign to the moment, trapped in some unearthly vision.

He glanced at Finley. The agent was looking steadily toward the fire. Even he seemed alien to Boutelle now. Clearly, Finley was a part of all this, accepting what was happening without question. An odd image flitted across Boutelle's mind: him dancing at a New York City ball, wearing dress clothes, chatting casually.

The image seemed a million miles and years from this experience.

 

His legs
jerked in reflexively as drums began to thud with a slow, regular beat, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.

He looked toward the fire. The shaman was standing beside it. Boutelle could see now how very old the man was, his coarse black hair streaked with gray. He was beginning to speak, his voice rising and falling with a sound reminiscent of the cries of coyotes. He wondered what the shaman was saying.

Finley looked intently at the medicine man as he spoke. The old man was beginning the history of a creature named Vandaih.

First a tall brave emerged from the darkness, moving to the beat of the drums. He danced in erratic circles as though deranged or drunk. When other braves appeared, he withdrew from its sheath a long knife and began to slash symbolically at them. The other braves clutched at their chests and fell to the ground in convulsing death.

Vandaih continued dancing, his expression one of maddened glee. Figures dressed as women danced from the darkness to the one-two-three-four beat of the drums, and Vandaih clutched at them, taking them in symbolic rape.

Finally, two braves grabbed him from each side and forced him into the darkness as the shaman spoke of how Vandaih, for all his sins against his people, had to suffer condemnation.

Boutelle leaned over to ask what was happening, and Finley quickly told him.

He was in the middle of a sentence when they both jumped and Finley's voice broke off as a figure leapt clumsily into the firelight.

The figure was that of a giant bird, its wings made from branches, its head a crude mask which emphasized its curving beak, the figure barefoot, toes curled in to approximate the look of talons.

As the shaman spoke, Boutelle leaned in to whisper in Finley's ear, “What's happening?”

“As condemnation for his grievous sins,” Finley told him, “the tribe medicine man turned Vandaih into an eagle.”

Boutelle felt a momentary sense of derision relaxing him. An
eagle
? he thought. All this about some ancient Indian transformed into an eagle?

It wasn't over though. The history continued as the eagle form danced crazily in the firelight, twisting in apparent agony and thrashing its giant wings.

“Vandaih, desperate in his blighted loneliness,” the shaman continued, “conceived a hideous plan.”

Another dancer, dressed as a woman, materialized from the darkness, and after moving with her in a grotesque dance of courting, the eagle suddenly grabbed her and dragged her off into the night.

“He carried off a woman who was not an Indian but whose skin was white,” Finley whispered to Boutelle, repeating what the shaman had said.

Boutelle shuddered, angry at himself for doing so. This is ridiculous, he thought. Each new element of the history was more preposterous than the one before.

He leaned close to Finley and told him so.

Was that a smile of amusement on the agent's lips? It seemed too ominous for that.

“If you think everything that's happened up to now is ridiculous,” Finley whispered, “you're going to love this new part.” The smile, Boutelle now saw, was definitely not one of amusement.

The man dressed as a woman reappeared and from beneath her bulky costume drew forth what Boutelle took to be—

“A
child
?” he whispered incredulously. “He's telling us there was a child?”

The woman moved into the darkness, carrying the child form.

“Thus this child whose father was an eagle and whose mother was a white woman grew to manhood,” the medicine man continued. Finley decided not to translate his words to Boutelle. The young man was having trouble enough as it was. He only wished he could be equally disdainful. On the face of it, it was absurdly superstitious. Still, all these things had happened in the past two days. Things there was no way of denying, much less explaining.

And here in the darkness of this forest glade, with the crackling fire and the endless four-beat thudding of the drums and the silent forms of the Apaches as they sat and watched and undoubtedly believed, it was virtually impossible to deny it.

He flinched as another figure jumped out from the darkness.

“So grew to manhood the issue of this unholy union,” the shaman went on. “Vandaih, the man now cursed to be for all time an eagle, its father; the abducted and ravished white woman, its mother.”

The man now spun abruptly into the darkness to return seconds later, holding wings, a grotesque mask across his face.

“This malevolent child was capable in times of anger or fear of changing himself at will, of sprouting great black wings instead of arms, of creating talons where his hands had been and dreadful,
beaked features for a face. In short, to be a hideous creature, part man, part eagle.”

Finley felt obliged to pass along this information, even knowing what Boutelle's reaction would most likely be. He whispered into the young man's ear and saw from Boutelle's scowl that his reaction was exactly as expected.