Scalpdancers (13 page)

Lost Eyes gingerly made his way through corn lilies. The ground softened underfoot, and his moccasins left deep impressions in the soil. He moved slowly as if stalking game; in truth, it was his own deep misgivings that gave him pause. At last pride overrode fear and superstition, and he sank to his knees by the pond and hunkered forward to drink.

He broke the cold mirrorlike surface, dunked himself face first, and emerged with his hair streaming as he gasped for breath. He cupped a mouthful of icy water, then paused to study his own image as it reassembled on the surface. He saw a young man with far too serious features, a guarded young man, dark eyed and quick, intelligent. He liked to think he saw courage there and a chance at maturity and wisdom.

No demons rose to attack him, so to prove himself as courageous as Sparrow he chanced another drink and splashed water over his face, neck, and head. He eased back on his haunches and again watched his reflection. For a single brief second, he saw himself covered with blood, his eyes staring through a mask of crimson. Lost Eyes sucked in his breath and straightened. But the moment had passed and he saw only what he truly was … a young Blackfoot brave who had yet to accompany his first raiding party or ride to battle much less suffer such a grievous wound. Maybe it had been a demon come to the surface to warn him away. He shivered and stared at the water. A hand touched his and he whirled about, only to find Sparrow at his side.

The girl retreated a step, startled by his quickness and the look of raw fear in his eyes. She moved past him to the edge of the pond and, standing in the imprint of his knees, looked down. She saw only herself, a girl of sixteen, her lustrous black hair adorned with doeskin braid holders. She wore a beaded dress of brushed elkskin and calf-high moccasins that she herself had decorated with tiny glass beads Black Fox had brought from a raid down on the Tongue River, many days' ride to the south in the land of the Crow. She saw herself and none other in the ripples at her feet.

“What did you see?” she asked, regretting her decision to enter the pass. She had wanted to show him the cliff paintings she had discovered beneath a granite ledge just a stone's throw from the falls. These crude drawings of a large tusked animal being slaughtered by a handful of hunters armed with spears and firebrands had been left by the Forgotten People.

“What did you see?” she repeated. Still he did not answer. Sparrow came to him, crushing the lilies of spring in her path.

His arms opened to receive her. She stood in his embrace. Lost Eyes breathed her in; she smelled of wood smoke and chokecherries. Her warmth leached the sudden chill from his limbs. He stroked her hair as he held her in his arms. Sunlight glimmered on the surface of the pond and refracted onto the granite cliff where the ancient hunters had left the story of their lives upon the walls of the pass.

Lost Eyes had heard of such depictions. Great power resided in the age-old drawings. He could see clearly now in the rarefied air of the high country. Who were those forgotten ones and what mystical beast had they attacked? Perhaps it was some kind of shaggy buffalo, a demon creature of terrible strength. His gaze dropped from the pictographs to the waters noisily plunging into the pool. Yes, there was power here. He had glimpsed a fraction of it, and it had shown him his own death.

“What have I seen … nothing.” He laughed bitterly. “Remember who I am. I have no vision.”

“I know who you are,” Sparrow replied, growing warmer in his arms. The fear had left him, she sensed. It was good. But she knew better than to try and coerce him into explaining what had spooked him there by the pond.

Lost Eyes looked down at the woman in his arms. The ground behind her was inviting, the new grass would make a perfect bed. In his mind's eye he saw them both entwined upon the silken blades of spring growth.

As if reading his thoughts, Sparrow pressed herself against him and a throaty purr sounded deep in her throat. She did not care about custom or tradition or what was right or wrong. All that had been swept aside in the face of her own deep feelings and the longing to give herself to this young man. She was perplexed that he held back.

“I cannot,” he explained as he dropped his arms to his side. He loved Sparrow. But she should have a man, a whole man to care for her and be with her. And he was not whole. The All-Father had turned from him.

“Why?” Sparrow asked, wanting the young man as much as he wanted her.

“Because I am Lost Eyes.” The young brave walked away from her and headed away from the pool and the woman, turning his back on mystery and love.

He never reached the gray mare grazing a few yards from the pool. Sparrow never called to him, never cried to him in anger or remorse, never told him the truth: that they were bound each to the other and that for all his pride, her love could make him whole. None of it was said, for quite suddenly they were no longer alone in the shadow of Singing Woman Ridge.

A stranger in the mist, a Blackfoot like no other, a brooding, powerfully built, solitary figure had materialized west of the pass. He rode slumped forward over the neck of his blaze-faced stallion. The horse, smelling water, increased its pace. As the stranger neared, Lost Eyes recognized the buffalo horn symbol painted in white clay paste on the stallion's shoulder. The symbol stirred in Lost Eyes' memory a story told among the Scalpdancers, a tale passed to their children of a legendary warrior and shaman, a man of great courage and prowess who had been banished from the village along Elkhorn Creek for committing a most terrible, dark deed.

Lost Eyes had been a child of six winters and unconcerned with the problems of adults. His had been a world of rough play, pretend battles, and learning the skills of the hunt. And yet, even such a headstrong youth had heard of the man called White Bufialo, slayer of the sacred beast, taker of the animal's name and the animal's power.

The Blackfoot brave watched the horseman loom larger still. Now the stallion's hoofbeat echoed along the cliff. The man appeared to be at least a head taller than Lost Eyes, maybe more. But this trail-worn figure seemed hardly the stuff of legend, drooping forward as he was onto the neck of the stallion. The man's long hair was streaked with silver and hid his features. A slight breeze tugged at an eagle feather braided into a lock of his hair. The feather had been notched and edged with red war paint, indicating the wearer had slit an enemy's throat and taken his scalp. The stranger's buckskin tunic hung in tatters about his muscular torso, and blood had coagulated in the cuts that streaked his coppery flesh. A flintlock rifle was slung over his shoulder, and his right hand firmly gripped the hardwood shaft of a long-handled war club, its length wrapped with rawhide and inlaid with silver beads. The weapon's stone head was encrusted with dried blood.

The stallion paused and raised its nostrils to catch the scent of the man and woman and the mares by the pool. Finding no threat, the stallion continued its course unbidden by its rider. Lost Eyes wondered if the warrior was dead. Just to be on the safe side he drew the knife at his waist.

The stallion bore the rider to the sacred pool and when it reached the water, the weary animal eagerly drank its fill. Lost Eyes hesitated and then, when the stranger made no move to dismount, the young brave sheathed his knife and began to circle the pool warily.

“White Buffalo,” Sparrow said in an awed whisper.

“I don't know. Perhaps.”

“Is he dead?”

Lost Eyes glared at her and left unspoken his admonition that she asked too many questions.

“It is White Buffalo,” Sparrow flatly pronounced. She fell in with Lost Eyes. However, the woman wasn't as cautious and stepped on a dry twig that broke beneath her moccasins with a muffled snap just loud enough to spook the stallion away from the sacred pool and dislodge the rider and the elkskin packs draped across the stallion's rump.

The fallen man groaned but made no move to help himself. Lost Eyes hurried to his side, freed the rifle, and then turned the man face up. The warrior's pain-drawn features were hidden behind war paint, a streak of white that covered the upper part of the man's face, from the bridge of his nose to his forehead. On close examination Lost Eyes also noted ragged wounds in the warrior's left shoulder and right thigh. Arrows had pierced the brave's limbs, but from the torn, bloody flesh and the way the wounds were made, it was clear the brave had broken the arrows off at the flesh and forced the pointed shafts out. Blood had caked both the entry and exit wounds.

“Is he dead?” Sparrow repeated, drawing close and peering over Lost Eyes' shoulder at the fallen warrior.

Even in repose the brave possessed an aura of menace, of great strength and latent violence. How could such a man be killed? And yet he lay so still and his wounds were so grievous.

Lost Eyes didn't know, but it seemed as if the man were surely dying if not already dead, and the young Blackfoot started to say as much when he heard the voice of the wind—the voice of a woman singing. The sound was almost imperceptible at first and Lost Eyes suspected his own senses had deceived him—except that Sparrow heard it too. Her hand tightened on his arm.

“
Saaa-vaa-hey
,” Lost Eyes muttered. What was this? He turned toward the granite cliff rising above them, its weathered facade cracked and scoured from rain and snow. Nothing moved save the plunging ribbon of water.

The voice carried above the merry burbling of the stream as it threaded its way out across the pass. The song seemed to come from all directions at once, from the very ground—no the ridge—everywhere at once.

As if the ghost woman's song wasn't unnerving enough, suddenly the fallen warrior reached out and caught Lost Eyes by the front of his buckskin shirt. “Crow dog,” the wounded man rasped and bolted upright.

Sparrow gasped and fell back, but Lost Eyes was caught. Indeed, he was frozen in place as the wounded man stared at him and through him. “You are among your own people,” Lost Eyes gasped. “I am one.”

“I am White Buffalo,” the stranger hoarsely replied. “I have no people.”

Lost Eyes grabbed the shaman's wrist and tried to pull free, but the fallen man had a grip of iron and he raised himself up and brought his face inches from Lost Eyes. His breath smelled of pipe smoke and blood and pemmican. White Buffalo's puzzled expression faded and gradually became one of recognition. He eased his hold and sank back upon the ground. He turned his granitelike features toward Sparrow and his eyes flickered with renewed interest.

Sparrow shifted uncomfortably, feeling naked before his steady scrutiny.

“I'll cut wood. You lash the travois together,” Lost Eyes said, stepping between the two. “I will help you as soon as I backtrack him.”

“Why?” Sparrow thought him too cautious.

“Because the Crow are our enemy also.” Lost Eyes led her away from the pond and over to a stand of young saplings suitable for a litter for the wounded man.

“It will be slow going. Black Fox will be furious,” Sparrow chided gently. Actually, she was certain she could defuse her brother no matter how angry he became.

The soft green branches of the willow saplings brushed her cheek as Lost Eyes hacked through the tender trunks with his hand ax, leaving Sparrow to bend and break them and trim away the branches with his tomahawk. When she had enough wood for a crude travois, the young woman lashed the saplings together with rawhide strips torn from the fringed sleeves of her knee-length dress. All the time she could sense White Buffalo studying her. Sparrow worked uneasily and tried to keep her mind on the task at hand, but the tightness between her shoulder blades distracted her. She glanced up as Lost Eyes galloped away to the west to retrace White Buffalo's trail. She twisted around to see if the wounded man had lost consciousness. He was staring at her, though his arms trembled from supporting himself.

Sparrow licked her dry lips and wiped the moisture from her brow and shifted her point of view to the plunging falls. She considered a break from her labors, wondering if she could ever drink enough to slake the thirst she felt. Save for the gray mare receding in the distance, nothing disturbed the silence.

Silence? And what of the singing woman—had they both dreamed the voice? No, impossible. Sparrow had heard it with her own ears. Then she heard another voice.

“What are you called?” White Buffalo asked.

“Sparrow,” she replied timidly, unable to lower her guard in his presence.

“Sparrow, come to my side.” His strength appeared to be ebbing, for he sank back upon the earth.

The girl of sixteen winters left the travois and haltingly crossed to the wounded man's side. His arm rose slowly. She sank into the blackness of his eyes and became transfixed as his hand cupped the back of her neck and then turned to iron as it forced her down to him. She tried to resist, but his power overwhelmed her. She was helpless to stop him from forcing her face to his wound, her mouth to his ragged, bloody flesh. He laughed and whispered, “I take your spirit into me. Drink of my blood, little one. Is it not living water? Now I claim you. Now we are joined. My blood has claimed you.”

A woman's voice drifted on the wind, faint, tremulous, yet in its own way powerful, for the Above Ones worked their wiles in the world of men. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, but in its wake White Buffalo released the girl. She shoved against him with such force, she toppled over on her backside and crabbed on her hands and heels away from his side.

“Too late!” White Buffalo roared and his voice reverberated through the pass. He was joined to her by blood. The girl was his. He listened to the yellow silence; the strange unearthly voice had grown still in the pulsing sunlight. See, there was no spirit song borne on the spring air. He did not fear the Above Ones. He was White Buffalo. He had stolen the power of the sacred beast.

As the shaman lost consciousness and succumbed to his wounds, his last thought was that he would live … forever.