Scalpdancers (3 page)

“He is a man without a vision,” Yellow Stalk said. “Your brother would not allow it.”

“My brother is not here,” Sparrow replied.

“But he sees through my eyes.” Yellow Stalk wasn't smiling now, and her square features turned severe, her eyes full of admonition. “Wait. Other men will stand in the dark and play upon their reed flutes, and their songs will sound the same.”

“No. I will know the difference.” Sparrow gently tugged free of Yellow Stalk's grasp and started toward the entrance flap. Flames danced in a circle of stone; shadows played upon the conical walls of the tepee. The fire, the bedding near the blaze, the warmth within—all seemed so safe and comfortable.

Outside, uncertainty reigned. Cries of mourning lingered on the air at sunset. Waiting Horse had been placed upon a burial scaffold on a hillside to the west, a hidden place ringed by aspens, where breezes played and birds sang in the sunlight in the time of the Breeding Moon. Sparrow could sense the safety here in the lodge.

The flute called. There was nothing to stop her now, save her own misgivings. Sparrow ducked through the opening and abandoned the lodge's familiar warmth for the uncertainty of night and a song that called her by name.

Lost Eyes opened his blanket as Sparrow approached, her face downcast, a timid smile upon her lips. His arm trembled as he settled the blanket around her shoulders. Now that she was finally here with him he didn't know what to say.

So he led her away from the lodges, down toward the creek where the mooncast waters bubbled merrily. Other flutes sounded in the night, adding an eerie counterpoint to the keening wail drifting down from the hill of the dead.

Lost Eyes paused to listen to the lament. Sparrow studied the young man beside her and read the tight-lipped resolve in his expression. He appeared unaffected by the songs of sorrow floating on the currents of night.

“Many Walks Woman will keep her vigil throughout the night,” Sparrow said.

“It is night for her.” Lost Eyes held his emotions in check, no easy task, for he trembled at the very nearness of the young woman walking at his side. He tensed, expecting her to blame him for the death of Waiting Horse. He said, “Some say it was my doing.”

“What do you say?”

“That I loved Waiting Horse like a brother. But he rode too close to
Iniskim
and his arrows did not find their mark.
Iniskim
killed him. Not I.”

There was an urgency in his voice, as if he were trying to convince himself more than Sparrow. No matter, she believed him.

He held a branch for her, then ducked as the two of them emerged from a willow grove lining the creek bank. They made no effort to conceal their progress and crunched noisily through the underbrush only to startle a woman kneeling on the creek bank. Owl Bead, the rotund wife of Tall Bull, clambered to her feet, clutched a water bag to her bosom, and beat a hasty retreat, leaving in her wake a trail of water from the unstoppered bag. The formless shadow stalking toward her out of the brush could have been anything. She wasn't taking any chances. Lost Eyes and Sparrow laughed and walked along the creek in the moonlight.

“Poor Owl Bead, now she will alert the camp, crying that a bear has entered the village,” Sparrow said.

“Perhaps the men will come for us with spears and arrows.”

“And hang our hides upon the tanning racks when they are done.” Sparrow stopped and stared down at a patch of ice that had yet to succumb to the spring sun.

Something a couple of yards upcreek had caught her attention, a patch of darkness beneath the translucent barrier of ice, just off the creek bank in the silvery light. Lost Eyes saw it too and drew close to the silhouette. He knelt, as did Sparrow, both of them anxious to discover what was trapped beneath the ice. She found a fist-sized chunk of granite, worn smooth by water, and handed the stone to her suitor.

“What is it?” she asked, leaning forward to peer over his shoulder.

“We will see,” Lost Eyes told her and struck the surface a mighty blow that sent slivers of ice exploding up into his face. The river splintered and icy water swelled upward through the wintry wreckage, and up from the silvery shallows a doll floated to the surface, like a corpse rising from its grave. Lost Eyes drew back despite himself, for the doll was no child's toy. It was a medicine doll, the figure of a man carved out of a ten-inch-long chunk of pine. The doll bore a series of markings, Blackfoot by design, but it was the doll's face that caused Lost Eyes to shudder. Some knife had rendered an all too familiar countenance in the wood and placed two white beads like sightless orbs in the carving's haunted facade.

Clouds scudded across the moon, obliterating the light as the now black waters recaptured the doll and bore it into the center of the creek and away.

“What did you see?” Sparrow whispered in a tight, nervous voice.

“Myself,” Lost Eyes said.

The medicine fire is nothing but embers. I could breathe them into life once more. But what is the use? The night is ended. And all I have seen is what has been … a death and
Iniskim,
a woman and a medicine doll. My spirit too is imprisoned. Who will set me free? Even if my vision is black water and mystery, I will bear it. I am weak; my limbs shudder like stalks of buffalo grass before an approaching storm. The sweat has ended and there is nothing to do but live. Sparrow waits without, Wolf Lance too. What shall I tell them? Shall I lie and claim that which I have not seen and earn the wrath of the All-Father? Surely, the Above Ones would curse my deeds and all whom I touched, and the prophecy of the medicine doll would come true
.

No. My words will fly straight. It is all I can do. They will ask, who are you now? And I will say, I am a seeker of visions.… I am Lost Eyes
.

PART I

Macao

1

March 1814

Captain Morgan Penmerry bet everything he had on his cock. It was an Asil, that plucky breed of rooster with plumage the color of day-old blood. The gamecock weighed over five pounds and every ounce full of fight and fire. Its body was compact and powerful, hard as whalebone to the touch. The Asil's beak was short and as nasty-looking as a dirk; its natural spurs had been trimmed to half an inch and a set of silver spurs—looking for all the world like miniature bayonets—were secured on its shanks. Morgan kept the gamecock hooded and his hand never ceased stroking its scimitarlike feathers.

Morgan Penmerry was a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested Cornishman, who at the age of eleven had stolen away on an American merchant vessel out from Bristol bound for Cape Cod. In twenty years he had risen from stowaway to captain of his own three-masted bark. A fur trader, he plied the waters of the Pacific and ranged from the west coast of the Americas to the trade ports of the Far East. Only a couple of weeks ago he had arrived in the Portuguese colony of Macao with a boatload of furs and a crew of rogues ready to unleash themselves upon the crowded thoroughfares, the gambling parlors, brothels, and rum houses in the city and in the surrounding emerald hills. Macao was a place to satiate every vice: There were more ways to hell than to heaven in the city at the mouth of the Pearl River. Whore cribs flourished in the cathedral shadows. Brawlers ranged the alleyways a stone's throw from carefully tended Chinese gardens.

Morgan brushed a strand of his chestnut-colored hair back from his brow and strode purposefully to the center of the dirt ring. The air in the fighting house was thick with the stench of blood and tobacco smoke, the pungent aroma of brewed tea and salted fish. Here men of means wagered on a blood sport and fondled their concubines and drowned themselves in rice wine.

“Captain, you gotta be crazy. You ain't gonna put the
Hotspur
on the line?” Temperance Rawlins groaned. He was a lean, lanky New Englander, a Connecticut-born graybeard who had known Morgan since the captain's stowaway days. Temp Rawlins's bushy eyebrows arched up his broad, blank forehead. Only a few silvery wisps of hair clung to his skull.

Despite Temp Rawlins's towering presence and advanced years, it was Morgan Penmerry who carried the aura of command. He ran a hand through his bushy mane and swaggered past the crowd of Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, English, Americans, and Russians who enjoyed the Cornishman's showmanship. They greeted Morgan's arrival in the ring with a chorus of epithets and good-natured challenges.

Derision turned to cheers as he ordered Temp to place a sack on the ground; the
Hotspur's
first mate dutifully obeyed.

The fighting pit was a circular depression dug out of the earth. Its sides were graded and wooden benches surrounded the hard-packed earth of the pit itself. The three-foot-high stone wall circling the arena had been inlaid with shells and pictographs symbolizing bravery, stamina, and good fortune.

Morgan winked at Temp and nodded to Chiang Lu, a silken-voiced middle-aged man, whose enthusiasm for the sport had prompted him to build the cock pit behind his personal residence on a hillside overlooking the Pearl River above the opulence and squalor that was Macao.

Chiang Lu was particular about who climbed the steps to his hillside villa. Only aficionados of the fighting cocks and only men of wealth were invited to the pit. For now, Morgan Penmerry was a man of wealth. Should he lose, Chiang Lu's servants would summarily escort him to the garden gate. At Chiang Lu's a man's fortunes rose and fell more swiftly than the tides.

“A pretty sack, my honorable friend,” Chiang Lu said. He bent down, retrieved the pouch, and opened it. “Curious,” he purred as he removed a large brass key. He was immaculately trimmed, and his graceful hands deposited the gold pouch in the folds of his cobalt-blue silk coat. The gold-stitched dragons adorning his sleeves seemed to wink as he tucked the key away. The Chinaman loved to gamble and loved a mystery even more.

“The key unlocks the warehouse at Tung Wan Pier. You will find a shipload of furs and fine pelts within,” Morgan said.

His wager was immediately repeated in several different languages.

“A most interesting wager,” Chiang Lu replied, eyeing Morgan's fighting cock. “I am told your pelts are always of the finest quality.”

“Then match their worth in gold and bring your best gamecock,” Morgan challenged.

Temp Rawlins sighed in relief. The wagering hadn't gotten out of hand—yet. He anxiously eyed the bill of ownership jutting from the wide black leather belt circling the captain's solid waist. Morgan had held the bark as a last resort if his bluff hadn't worked. But Chiang Lu had accepted and now Temp could only groan to think of the consequences if Morgan lost. There'd be hell to pay if Chiang Lu tried to collect his winnings. A fire in the hold of the
Hotspur
had damaged most of the cargo during a squall in the South China Sea. But Morgan Penmerry wasn't a man to take a loss lying down—not while his good-natured, larcenous self could formulate a plan to transform disaster into a tidy profit.

Morgan Penmerry was young and brash and too damn confident for his own good. True, his shoulders were broad enough and, yes, he was as quick and agile as a dolphin at play. But Temp felt the young captain lacked the cool, calm head that a man in his profession needed.

Chiang Lu was as shrewd and dangerous as any man Temp Rawlins had ever known. And this crowd, of every nationality, was armed to the teeth with knives and pistols, and there were several rifle-bearing bodyguards. Chiang Lu's own private entourage, the Blue Wing Dragons, were black-clothed henchmen armed with kris—wavy-bladed daggers of Malaysian origin—and handguns. Their heads were shaved, their impassive faces devoid of pity.

“We cling to life. Even when every breath is agony,” Chiang Lu remarked and called for a servant. The servant bowed to his master, Chiang Lu whispered in his ear. The servant nodded and hurried back up the steps to the place Chiang Lu had reserved for himself among the spectators. There upon a dais carved of stone a teakwood chest had been set alongside a thronelike chair. The servant touched a hidden latch and a panel in the chest swung open. The servant retrieved a white silk pouch embroidered with brightly colored blossoms and green lily pads.

“It is a mystery, do you not agree?” Chiang Lu continued.

“What are you getting at, Chiang Lu?” asked Morgan.

“But what is life without mystery?” the Chinese warlord said. He lifted a delicate hand and indicated a couple standing at the entrance to the arena. Morgan lifted his gaze and saw an older man, garbed in black frock coat, black trousers, and cleric's collar. He was a portly middle-aged man.

The young woman standing alongside the reverend was a nubile lass of about twenty—if that old. Comely as a well-trimmed clipper, Morgan thought. Even better looking—for what ship could boast of auburn tresses and cream-colored skin and such an appealingly well-rounded bosom and derriere?

Her dress was buttoned to the throat. She wore a charcoal-gray shawl about her shoulders in an attempt to conceal what nature had endowed her with. Such an attempt was doomed to failure with a girl like this cleric's daughter, if indeed that was her relationship to the older man.

“That is the Christian Missionary Emile Emerson and his daughter, Julia. I have ordered them to leave Macao; yet they come to seek terms, hoping I will permit them to remain. I have refused once before, still they persist. Why?” Chiang Lu shrugged. “You see, Captain Penmerry, another mystery. Ah … my servant.”

The man Chiang Lu had dispatched returned with the silk purse. Its contents jingled as Chiang Lu tossed it from one hand to the other. He issued another order to his servant and the man hurried off.

“Gold sovereigns, the amount of which shall remain unknown, like the wealth of your furs. I wager one mystery against another. What say you?” His almond-shaped eyes flashed.

Morgan made a show of trying to decide, when in truth any amount in Chiang Lu's purse would be more than what his ruined cargo might bring. The captain glanced in Temp's direction, winked, then faced Chiang Lu. “Agreed!”