City of Dreams (11 page)

Pappitan could see her clearly. Hatred for her rose in Pappitan’s heart. Not just because she was a whiteface, one of those he had vowed to drive from the lands of the People. He hated her because she was not what he had wanted her to be.

Pappitan hefted his tomahawk. His uncle had made it for him and it fit perfectly in his hand. If she were a man he would throw the tomahawk right now and it would divide the shoulders of his enemy and kill him. There was no brave young or old in his village who could throw a tomahawk more accurately than Pappitan of the Fox clan. But the thought of killing this woman in that swift way, as if she were his equal in battle, did not please him.

He watched her shift the split log that barred the door of the cabin. He waited. Perhaps inside was the man, maybe even the soldier, the fox totem had brought to Pappitan’s tomahawk.

Sally left the door of the cabin open behind her. She needed the moonlight until she could locate some dry kindling and find the tinderbox and get a fire going. Funny, she wasn’t a bit tired. It must be two of the clock, but—

The hand that went around her neck was the only thing that kept her upright. In that first moment her shock was such that if the Indian—she couldn’t see, but she knew instantly that her attacker was an Indian—hadn’t been holding her she’d have fallen.

Her hands fluttered in the air. She grabbed at his arm, trying to get free. The grip tightened. She was choking. The room was spinning. Sally fought the release of oblivion. She knew it meant death. But to live she must speak, and to speak she must breathe. Sally clawed at the arm around her neck, dug her nails into the skin. Suddenly her attacker released the stranglehold and threw her forward onto the ground.

Her face smashed into the dust covering the floorboards. She lay gasping, struggling for air. She was half unconscious, almost unaware that her hands were being tied behind her back.

Pappitan did not desire her. Her smell was terrible and the many layers of clothes she wore on her body were thick with filth. He had to suppress his disgust as he cut them away and exposed her flesh. He prayed to the fox totem to give him a hard tool to do what he must do: use the woman before he killed her, so her kind would know he was the master and she could only submit.

When he was finished he would slice open her woman part. Then he would cut off her breasts. Only then would he slit her throat and take her scalp. And maybe after all that he wouldn’t be so angry that there was no soldier, no whiteface man, anywhere near this cabin to honor his tomahawk with its first enemy blood. Only this stupid, ugly woman with the whiteface stench thick upon her.

Because her hands were tied behind her, Sally had no means to support herself when the Indian lifted her legs. Her upper body bounced on the floor, her face was dragged and scraped across the rough, splintered boards. She gagged on her own vomit even while she struggled to speak. “No. You don’t understand. I’m your friend. I’ve always—”

She could not suppress her scream. It was as if a white-hot poker had been thrust inside her, reaching up into her belly and searing her guts.

Pappitan was astounded at the resistance his tool met. Perhaps whiteface women were made differently from women who were of the People. Maybe the tools of whiteface men were different. No, he was inside her now. The woman hole was very small and tight. His thrusts began to give him pleasure, but it ended quickly. In a few seconds he felt the last shudders of enjoyment come and go.

Then he felt the arm that circled his neck.

The brave who pulled Pappitan from the whiteface woman was the leader of the war party and Pappitan’s uncle, the man who had made the boy’s first tomahawk and taught him to throw it. It was that tomahawk the uncle now raised above his nephew’s head. “You have wakened the blood spirits,” the older man said. “You have come to a place where in the old days the women came to bleed and give birth, and you have wakened the blood spirits they left behind.”

Pappitan opened his mouth. Before he could speak the tomahawk came down with all his uncle’s weight behind it. The boy’s skull was split almost entirely in two.

His sister’s child. A member of his clan. But the law must be obeyed. The uncle took the knife from his belt and opened his nephew’s chest and cut out his heart. Then he carried it to the door of the cabin the whitefaces had built on the forbidden ground of the blood spirits.

“Hear me, holy ones,” he cried out. “I have killed my sister’s son in your honor. Do not make evil and defeat come to the war parties of the People. The warpath will never again cross the Little Musquash Path.” Then he flung Pappitan’s heart into the woods beyond the clearing. “Sleep, holy ones. You have blood to drink.” Finally he returned to where the woman still lay on the ground.

He knelt over her and listened. Her spirit had flown, but she still breathed. Perhaps because she was a female the blood spirits would save her; it was not for him to decide if she was to live or to die. He used the same knife with which he’d cut out Pappitan’s heart to cut the leather thong that bound her wrists. Then he hoisted the body of his dead nephew and ran silently and swiftly from the cabin.

It was soon after dawn when Lucas reached the clearing in front of the cabin. He’d run all the way, relying only on his musket for protection. His first thought had been to get a couple of soldiers to accompany him, but by the time he woke and saw that Sally was gone the patrols had all left the fort, and the few soldiers who stayed behind were needed to man the guns that protected the town.

Even as he ran across the clearing Lucas saw that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. A bad sign. But if she weren’t there, where could she be? Dead and scalped somewhere in the woods. He wouldn’t let himself think such thoughts. “Sally! Sal! For the love of God, Sally, where are you?”

The log that held the front door shut had been removed and the door was open enough so Lucas knew it wasn’t bolted from the inside. Thanks to his shouting he’d already given up any chance of surprise. God, what a bloody fool. The musket was primed and ready. He raised it to his shoulder, then lunged forward, kicking the door open the rest of the way.

Silence. And blood. It seemed to be everywhere. The floor and the walls were covered with it. Something else as well. Clots of gore in a trail leading from the door to somewhere near the cold hearth. He recognized it almost at once. Parts of a human brain. “Oh, my poor Sal,” he whispered. “My poor, foolish sister.”

He heard labored breathing. Lucas turned, swinging the musket in a wide arc, searching the gloom of the cabin. She was huddled in the corner, her back to the timber wall, her skirts wrapped around her and her knees drawn up nearly to her chin. “Sal! Thanks be to God, you’re alive! I thought … Are you all right? Is there some wound that—”

His sister didn’t seem to know he was there.

He set down the musket, leaning it against the table, and went to Sally and knelt beside her. Her face was scraped and bruised, one eye half closed with swelling. Worst of all she stared past him. “Sally, in God’s name, tell me what …”

He pulled her upright. Her body was limp in his hands and she made no move to cover herself when her clothing fell away. Her skirts and petticoats had been slashed and ripped apart, exposing her from the waist down. Lucas stared at that evidence of what had happened in the cabin. Dear God. Dear bloody God. “Come, Sally,” he whispered. “I’m taking you home. We won’t speak of this again. It never happened. Do you hear me? It never happened.”

She still didn’t look at him, but she was docile enough when he led her away.

It was the one time Lucas was grateful for the location of his barber shop. He was able to get Sally into the town with no one seeing her except the sentry who waved them through the gate as soon as he saw they were white, and went back to scanning the countryside for Indians.

A few steps brought them to the shop. “Come inside.” He led her to the stool beside the fire. “Now sit. I’ll poke up the blaze.” He prodded the embers and when they reddened put on another log. “There, that’s better. Are you cold? Sal, you have to say something. You can’t just—”