Scalpdancers (33 page)

Vlad and the girl left the porch and moved away from the burning building as the heat intensified.

“Julia …” Morgan called out. He glared at Vlad. “I'm here, you bastard. Let her go.”

“So be it,” Vlad said and sidestepped a few paces, permitting the girl to stand alone. “You see, I'm hardly the villain you think I am. Go to him, girl. Go to your love.”

Julia flashed a questioning look at her captor, then started toward Morgan. The roof beams groaned and crashed in on themselves. Demetrius Vlad watched the flames and thought them a fitting pyre. Julia was running now, her arms outstretched, her hair streaming.

“You'll remember this climb uphill; you'll remember this night all the rest of your life,” Vlad said, striving to be heard above the thunder. “And you'll wonder what you should have done, and curse yourself.”

Morgan never heard the gunshot for the storm. But he saw fire and powder smoke spew from one of Vlad's pistols. Morgan snapped up his own guns and fired both simultaneously. The big-caliber pistols bucked in his fists. Vlad twisted completely around, blood pumping from his chest. He fired his second shot into the air and staggered blindly, then toppled forward. For all a lifetime of scheming and deceit, he was dead in a matter of seconds.

“Morgan …” Julia called to him; she wasn't running now. She moved awkwardly. She reached out to him. A raindrop splattered in the palm of her hand. She beheld it as something miraculous. She caught another and lifted her hands to the sky.

Morgan ran to her and wrapped his arms around her. He felt a moist stain spread along her side. He pulled his hand away and found it covered with blood.

“Oh, God, no,” he whispered.

“I love you, Morgan,” Julia said, her voice weak.

“Oh, no, please, no!”

“I love—” She sagged against him as the rain fell from the angry sky.

Morgan looked down at the grave, at the name on the headstone. He said the name aloud: “Julia.” He raised his eyes to the river and the hills beyond and thought to himself that there were worse places to spend eternity. He'd heard the words and endured the prayers that Emile Emerson had spoken in his trembling grief-laden voice. Morgan had played the role of grave digger. He'd done everything he was required to to. And it had not been enough.

“C'mon, lad,” Temp Rawlins called to him, standing off to the side at a discreet distance. “There's nothing you can do for her now.” The old sea dog sniffed, and wiped a forearm across his eyes.

“Nothing I could do for her when she was alive,” Morgan said bitterly. He knelt, placed his hand on the freshly mounded earth, and closed his eyes. “I am so sorry.” Then he straightened. He looked down the river trail to where Reap and Faith McCorkle waited in their wagon. Reap had already begun to rebuild his inn. Captain William Black was there and many of the trappers, who had come out of a gesture of sympathy. They all stood together. They all waited.

Morgan started toward the horse he had ridden up from the stockade.

“There you be. Some things is best left behind,” Temp said, encouraged by the young man's actions. Morgan had not even spoken since the fight. He had not wept at the funeral.

“Good-bye, Temp,” Morgan said.

“Now, lad, It's rough seas, I know, but you'll come through it.”

“I mean really good-bye.”

Temp stepped back and studied him. The look in Morgan's dark eyes told the seaman that nothing would ever be the same again, that the younger man was leaving. No. He had already left. “Good-bye,” Temp managed.

Morgan mounted the sturdy brown gelding and rode away from the grassy hill overlooking the river. He guided the animal toward the mission church and Emile Emerson. The missionary was using the same shovel that had dug his daughter's grave. The large wooden cross lay on the ground close at hand. The reverend intended to raise it upright today. He had refused any help. He would do this alone. Morgan could understand his reasons. But planting a cross wouldn't heal the hurt Morgan felt deep in his heart.

Emerson worked the shovel like a man possessed, pausing briefly to wipe the sweat from his brow on the sleeve of his shirt. But he noticed Morgan approach and he stopped to face him. Emerson's eyes were red rimmed, and moisture streaked his dirt-smudged cheeks. The frock coat he had worn for the funeral service lay folded on the ground. His Bible was open face down on the coat. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows; in truth, he looked more like a laborer than a minister. Emerson leaned on the shovel and looked up at the man on the horse.

“I'll have it in the ground by afternoon,” Emerson said, with a quick look toward the cross. “Then the difficult work begins.”

“What's that?”

“Living.” Emerson closed his eyes for a brief moment and grew very attentive, as if listening to some private inner conversation. He then returned to work. Morgan left him with his cross and his graves and his dreams.

Lone Walker had come to bid farewell to the spirits of the Great Water. He had come to stand upon the edge of the world for the last time. He had come to sing the song of sorrow for a woman he had barely known. She had not been of his people, yet he felt her death. And he prayed she might find peace and be allowed to enter the Great Mystery singing.

It was late afternoon. Already the sun had begun its earthward slide to the rim of the world. Lone Walker made a sacred fire, gathering twigs and dry grass and setting them afire with sparks from a flint. Then he opened his medicine pouch and took a pinch of sacred soil and sprinkled the cheerful little blaze. And when the prayer smoke began to spiral skyward to be gathered by the drifting clouds, Lone Walker began his chant:

“It is done, All-Father.

I have fulfilled the vision.

May I return to my people?

My heart aches for the woman

Who walks in my soul.”

He reached into a shoulder pouch and brought forth his reed flute and began to play upon it a series of softly trilling notes. He played the flute, and the music was his song and his prayer. As he played, he saw Sparrow's face and he knew joy. But the joy was short-lived, for White Buffalo appeared in the shadows behind her and he was a fierce and terrible figure in his sacred robes, and Lone Walker seemed to hear the shaman speak. And he said, “My magic is strong, my power is strong, and none can stand against me.”

The image faded and Lone Walker saw a high-country trail where the new-fallen snow lay thick upon the hard earth, covering the wind-and rain-eroded boulders with a sheet of ice as smooth as glass. Lone Walker knew then he was homeward bound. He could even see his shadow cast upon the pristine snow as he rode east across the Backbone of the World. No … two shadows shimmered silently across the drifts. This puzzled him, and he asked more of the vision.

“Lone Walker.” Morgan's voice broke the spell. The images faded and the Indian opened his eyes. He took the flute from his lips. The horizon was tinged with scarlet and vermilion. The clouds themselves became vessels of burnished gold. Lone Walker beheld Morgan Penmerry through a haze of sacred smoke.

“I am going with you,” Morgan said.

A journey ends, another begins, such is the way of the Great Circle, ending and beginning, ever changing, ever the same.

The second shadow was Mor-gan
.

Lone Walker replied, “Let it be so.”

PART IV

The Return

19

October 1814

The last thing Singing Woman wanted in her bed on a frosty night in autumn was an albino sage lizard with spiny claws and eyes like drops of blood. The startled reptile crawled under the blanket and ran up the old medicine woman's naked legs. The creature attempted to burrow beneath her smock. Singing Woman yelped and shot out of her blankets with the speed and agility of a person thirty years younger. She leapt to her feet and slapped at her buckskin smock. Seven inches of terrified lizard dropped to the cave floor and scampered toward the nearest patch of darkness. The old woman headed in the opposite direction and stumbled onto the two culprits responsible for the lizard's intrusion.

Raven Takes Him rebounded off his brother Turtle and the two youngsters leapt over each other in an attempt to escape the old one's clutches. They scrambled toward an inner chamber of the cave where the rest of the survivors of the Shoshoni raid lived by torchlight amid limestone columns and draperies of travertine.

“Run, jackrabbits, hide if you will, but you cannot escape my magic!” the irate woman shouted as she chased them into the chamber.

“We aren't afraid of you,” Raven Takes Him called over his shoulder. It was easy for him to say, for his long-legged gait put him well ahead of Singing Woman. However, she caught Turtle by the ear and dragged him to a halt.

“By the light of my spirit fire I'll conjure the eaters of the dead to pluck this hide from your bones,” she told him and pinched the fat on the underside of his arms. Turtle squealed for help and fought her efforts to drag him back into the outer reaches of the cave. Their commotion woke the other children, including the recently born son of Black Fox and Yellow Stalk, a baby they had taken to calling Little Elk. The smaller children, once awakened, began to clamor for their weary mothers, who themselves had just curled up on beds of evergreen needles beneath blankets of hide or fur pelt, bearskins, and buffalo robes.

Black Fox, who had been enjoying his wife under their blanket, sat upright and began to pelt the old woman with pebbles from the floor. A couple of other men joined in, anxious to drive the intruder from the room.

“Leave him alone, old mother,” Black Fox said. One of his stones caught Singing Woman on the tip of the nose. She released Turtle and wagged an accusing finger at the lot of them.

“Be gone, ungrateful dogs!” Blood oozed from the tip of her nose along the jagged little cut. “Once I heard only the wind and the song of living water that hid me from you and all the others like you. I was happy and did not know it,” Singing Woman said in disgust.

Wolf Lance entered from a side chamber where the horses were kept. He wore a coat of gray wolf pelts that added stature to his already bulky form. He hurried to the old woman's side.

“Enough,” he roared. “Singing Woman risks her life for us. Is this how you repay her kindness?”

Yellow Stalk cradled her infant to her breast. Little Elk found his mother's nipple and began greedily to suck it. Yellow Stalk tugged at Black Fox's arm, but he pulled away.

“The Above Ones have touched her,” he said. “She is crazy.” The baby, frightened at his father's ranting, began to howl.

“Touched me, yes, long ago,” Singing Woman said. “I abandoned my people and came here to live.” The old woman moved through the chamber, carefully skirting the huddled forms of the men and women who were trying to sleep.

When she came alongside Yellow Stalk's bed, Black Fox raised a hand to stop her. He was a proud man, but Singing Woman could see through him to the angry boy within. She wasn't cowed by him, and she understood his worries. He had a new child and yet must live in hiding. White Buffalo and the Shoshoni were searching for the remnants of the tribe they had nearly destroyed. How long could they elude capture? Where could they go? The Scalpdancers had become a people without vision, a defeated people whose days seemed numbered.

Singing Woman crossed in front of Black Fox and knelt by Yellow Stalk and her fussy infant. Singing Woman took a small medicine pouch from her neck; she sprinkled a pinch of dust and ash on the infant's belly and chest. “Now he will be able to ignore his father's bellowing as do I.”

The sacred dust settled on the baby's plump flesh and the child quieted and began to coo and giggle as the old woman sang a soothing little chant. Black Fox scowled at her insult.

“I have had my fill of magic,” the warrior grumbled. “And this cave.”

“Then go,” Singing Woman told him. They were watching her now, all of them. She unnerved them; she was too strange. “Go, I say. But leave my blanket here.” Her hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of the blanket Black Fox had wrapped about himself. She spun around and pulled.

The Blackfoot brave was caught completely by surprise and before he could tighten his hold, the blanket was yanked completely from his grasp, leaving him standing totally naked in front of everyone. He dived for the extra blanket he'd shared with Yellow Stalk much to the amusement of the entire chamber full of people.

Singing Woman left Black Fox to the good-natured derision of his clan and returned to her own quarters. Wolf Lance followed her, looking older than he had a right to. Singing Woman draped a worn and ratty trade blanket across her shoulders. The lizard that had instigated the uproar scurried along the wall opposite her bed. She grabbed a parfleche of dried hollyhock and fleabane and hurled it at the intruder. The lizard became a pale blur and escaped through a crevice in the limestone wall.

Lying still, one could hear the droning of the waterfall as it spilled into the pool at the base of the ridge. Come winter, the plunging cataract would be reduced to a trickle when temperatures dipped below freezing and remained there. It too would have its own tentative song, tumbling tremulously over the smooth-worn ledges and cornices of granite and columns of ice.

“Forgive us, grandmother,” Wolf Lance said, standing in the passageway just outside the chamber. “My own people shame me this night.”

“They are afraid. Fear colors their words. It clouds their thoughts. They do not want to die.”

“No one wants to die.” Wolf Lance shuddered.

“Only the rocks last forever.” The medicine woman had spoken her piece. She sat on her bedding and pulled aside the bearskin blanket to reassure herself that there were no more uninvited guests hidden in the folds.

Wolf Lance eased back into the passageway. He glanced over his shoulder at the larger chamber where the survivors of his village settled back into sleep. He walked instead toward the entrance of the cave. The air became noticeably cooler where the autumnal breezes wafted through the shimmering falls. Wolf Lance sidestepped the pool formed within the cavern and, hugging the smooth-worn walls, made his way past the curtain of water into the cool night. He spied a solitary figure standing at the edge of the pond, her back to the cave; she searched the shadow-shrouded valley, keeping a silent, faithful vigil beneath the silver moon.