Scalpdancers (38 page)

Sparrow would remember the next few moments of her life and recount the event for her people until it passed into history and became legend.

A red-tailed hawk plummeted out of the sky like a bolt of living fire, its four-foot wingspan passing inches from Little Sky's rifle barrel. Perhaps the hawk had been so intent on some prey hidden in the grass that it had ignored the man thing until the last possible second when it rocketed earthward for the kill.

In a flurry of brown and scarlet plumage and cruel talons the hawk reversed its course and swooped up toward the Shoshoni brave, just missing the startled man's face and blocking his shot. The hawk rose on powerful wings toward the safety of the distant trees. It would find another prey, but not the Shoshoni brave.

Little Sky steadied his mount. The Crazy Dog Soldier was just bringing his rifle to bear when Lone Walker's arrow pierced his groin. At the same instant a blast from one of Morgan Penmerry's pistols knocked the brave from his horse and left him dying in the grass. Morgan trotted forward, a second pistol cocked and primed in his hand.

The last of the Shoshoni braves on horseback fled for his life and never looked back. He left only a trail of dust in his wake to mark his passing.

Drum managed to stagger to his feet. He spied his rifle lying a few yards away, over by his dead horse. He started toward it; then a shadow fell between him and the weapon. Blind Weed stood with her skinning knife in hand all but daring the brave to try for the rifle. Drum thought about it, then thought better. For one thing, Blind Weed was bigger than Drum. She was smiling and seemed eager for him to come within reach of her iron knife.

Lone Walker managed to salvage Drum's pride. He rode up leading a captured horse and dropped the reins in Drum's hand. The Shoshoni looked up into the eyes of his benefactor and felt the same sensation, the identical fears, he had experienced upon first coming face-to-face with White Buffalo. The Shoshoni had also seen the incident with the red-tailed hawk and how it had saved the life of the Blackfoot.

“Go. I give you your life,” the Blackfoot said. Drum could not bear the man's dark stare, his eyes like chips of obsidian that never wavered. “Tell White Buffalo, Lost Eyes is no more. Say Lone Walker is coming to destroy him. Four mornings from now. I will come.” Drum quickly mounted the horse, ignoring the fresh blood matting the animal's mane.

“I will tell him,” Drum said. “White Buffalo will hang your hair from his belt.” Turning his horse with a savage tug on the reins, he galloped toward the south end of Stone Bear pass, grateful to be alive.

Then Lone Walker turned his back on the field of battle. Sparrow came running to him. He reached down and gathered her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He held her close. She knew him despite his wind-burned face and eyes that had grown wise and sad.

Blind Weed held back. She watched the white man, her expression registering suspicion. Morgan shifted his stance. In beholding the man and woman's embrace, Morgan could not help but relive another time and place, a woman and a love he would never find again. He turned and walked to his horse. His rifle lay out in the grass where he had ignominiously fallen off his horse. The gelding cropped the dry shoots, oblivious to its former rider.

“Avast, you pitch-for-brains.” Morgan retrieved his rifle and remounted. When he looked to the side, Lone Walker had ridden up. Sparrow was behind him, her arms firmly wrapped around his middle.

“Sparrow,” Morgan said her name with a gentlemanly bow. He spoke in her own language. “It is good to see you.”

“This is Mor-gan,” Lone Walker said to his woman. “He is my friend.”

Sparrow said, “I have much to learn. You are welcome at our fire.”

“You honor me,” Morgan replied.

They gathered the guns and the horses of their enemies and within half an hour they were ready to depart. Sparrow had her red medicine. Blind Weed, somewhat in awe of Lone Walker, led the way to where she had left Moon Shadow and the other fugitives. All they left behind to mark their passing were trampled wildflowers, the bodies of the dead, and the shadow of a circling red-tailed hawk.

On the following day Singing Woman awoke early, startled from sleep by a commotion outside the cave. She knew in her heart that her dream had come to pass. Lone Walker had returned from the edge of the world. She wanted to rise to see him, but she was much too fragile. Still she made the attempt, propping herself up against a willow backrest and only then deciding she must wait for the young spirit singer to find her. She could picture the scene outside the cave, how those who had remained faithful to Lone Walker received him with open arms while the others held back and watched him with a mixture of wariness and uncertainty. It would be that way all his life.

Those Scalpdancers who were healthy enough gathered outside around the falls when Lone Walker and Sparrow arrived leading Blind Weed's party of fugitives. Moon Shadow rode proudly at Lone Walker's side. She had instantly recognized the changes in him; he had returned from where the sun sleeps a man of power and vision. Morgan Penmerry, on the other hand, kept a nervous guard. Had he not been in Lone Walker's entourage, he might have been killed outright, for white men were considered intruders in the land of the Blackfoot. As long as the white traders encroached no further than the land of the Cheyenne to the south, they could be tolerated and traded with. But this “Mor-gan” stood with Lone Walker and therefore came under the protection of He Who Had Been Lost Eyes.

Sparrow wasted no time, but hurried to the nearest camp fire. She began the process of boiling water and steeping the red medicine. Every now and then she glanced toward the cave entrance, anxious over what might happen when her brother appeared. Wolf Lance walked forward out of the crowd and embraced his friend.

“You have returned to us. It is good.” Wolf Lance glanced past his friend's shoulder at Morgan, who waited uncomfortably a few paces back.

“You have always been as my brother,” Lone Walker said. “I would have you be his.”

“Let it be so,” Wolf Lance said.

Morgan sighed in relief and gently eased his finger off the trigger of his rifle. He placed his hand across his heart and held it palm open toward Wolf Lance in the traditional greeting among the northern tribes. It showed he arrived with an open hand as well as an open heart.

Another figure appeared in the mist of the falls, emerging from the cave entrance to see for himself the source of all the excitement. Sparrow wasn't the only one to grow tense at the arrival of her brother. It was common knowledge there was no love lost between Black Fox and Lone Walker. Women and children paused in the midst of their own reunions and moved away from the two men.

Lone Walker saw Sparrow's brother. His expression guarded, Lone Walker stepped around his friend and headed straight for the man in the mist. Black Fox, in turn, quickened his pace as he walked toward the man he had sworn to kill. They met away from the falls where lily pads grew near the water's edge.

Black Fox glanced around at all the newcomers; there was even a white man. Then he noticed Sparrow by the camp fire adding the stems and berries she had gathered to a water bag made from the stomach of a buffalo.

Lone Walker heard cries overhead and lifted his eyes to the sight of a flurry of Canadian geese, twenty by the count, lazily circling one another. Their calls echoed along the ridge as they flew in ever-tightening spirals. They were preparing to begin their southward migration. It was the way it had been, the way it always would be.

“I have sworn to take the life of Lost Eyes,” Black Fox said. “I have sworn to dip my knife in his blood, to avenge the honor of my sister.”

“A man must be careful what he swears,” Lone Walker observed dryly. “Lost Eyes is dead.”

“Your words tell me that. But my eyes see otherwise.”

“Do they?” Lone Walker moved nearer.

Black Fox dropped his hand to his knife. Lone Walker's hand closed around his antagonist's wrist. Black Fox tried to overpower the smaller man and failed. Black Fox felt the trade knife slip from its scabbard. Then, despite all his efforts, the blade turned in the viselike grip until the iron tip pointed toward his own chest. He tried to wrench free as the naked blade drew inexorably near. The tip of the blade pierced his flesh and a droplet of blood spilled down Black Fox's naked belly.

“Kill me and you kill yourself,” Lone Walker said in a voice no louder than a whisper. His burning gaze caused Black Fox to avert his eyes. Black Fox opened his hand and the knife dropped to the ground.

Lone Walker raised the arm in his grasp and pointed his opponent's hand toward the sky, where the airborne dance of the geese had re-formed itself into a giant “V” disappearing into the southern quadrant. They were poetry in flight, the power of the All-Father revealed for every man, woman, and child to see … if they would but lift their heads to look.

“Even these ones know enough to leave the past behind,” Lone Walker said. He released the wrist. Black Fox studied the departing formation. His arm ached from the grip that had rendered him powerless. He retrieved his knife from the ground and returned it to the sheath. Even his vanity and stubborn pride could not deny what he had experienced and the wisdom in Lone Walker's words.

“I am the last of the Kit Fox Society,” he said, eyes lowered.

“There will be others,” Lone Walker told him. “Our village will grow again. There will be new life.”

“Where?”

“In Ever Shadow,” Lone Walker said, looking to the north, where beyond Singing Woman Ridge the land rose and plummeted in mazelike canyons, upthrust peaks, and verdant, glacier-carved valleys.

“Who will lead us?”

“I am the one.”

“And I will follow,” Black Fox said, leaving the past behind.

Lone Walker hesitated outside the torchlit entrance to the old woman's chamber. He could see her propped up against the willow backrest, the snow-white hair spilling like an avalanche across the bony plateaus of her shoulders. At first she seemed asleep or—worse to him—still and lifeless there in the dancing shadows.

“I have finished my vision quest, grandmother,” he said gently, so as not to startle her. “My journey is ended.”

“Foolish one, have you learned nothing?” an aged, almost disembodied voice spoke to him from the chamber. “The journey will never end. You are a shaman, but young—so young. Spirit singer, it is the way of things.”

“A shaman?” Lone Walker gasped. “How can that be? Who will show me such a path?”

“The path is the circle. The circle is within you.”

Lone Walker moved into the room and knelt by the medicine woman's side. Her eyes were wide open, but she seemed unable to focus on him. Singing Woman spoke to him though her attention was rooted on the shifting patterns on the stalactite ceiling. She could see a pack of green-eyed wolves in those dancing patterns. The beasts had turned on themselves with bared fang and claw, destroying one another while the old woman looked on in terror.

“What do you see?” Lone Walker asked and looked up toward the bristled ceiling of the chamber and studied the writhing shadows.

“He wants you dead,” Singing Woman said. “You must face White Buffalo and kill him or he will surely kill you.”

“Yes. From the first moment I stood at the edge of the world and saw the sleeping sun and the
Maiyun
dancing at the end of all days, I knew what I must do.” Lone Walker stood by the old one's hide-covered bedding and leaned against the cold stone wall. “But White Buffalo's power is great. And he has many men, many guns. We are but a handful.”

“No,” Singing Woman said. “You must go alone.”

“Do you send me to my death, old woman? I could take my woman and leave. There are other mountains, other valleys. We will find a place in Ever Shadow and live in peace.”

“The good can never live in peace while evil walks the land.” Singing Woman was weary and sick. She feared that time was running out for all of them. “Hear me. White Buffalo is my daughter's son. I took him when his mother and father died of the spotted sickness. I taught him. But he had no eyes. He could not see beyond seeing. He had no vision.” She sighed and propped herself up on an elbow and drank a cup of water. “Where is Sparrow?”

“Making the red medicine,” Lone Walker replied.

Her revelation had caught him by surprise. White Buffalo was the old woman's grandson; they were linked to each other by blood, yet she would see him dead! “White Buffalo has told me how he killed the sacred
Iniskim
and took its power. He even offered to share his magic with me.”

“But what was your answer?”

“That I would rather be blind than to have his stolen visions.”

Singing Woman nodded. “From that moment on, White Buffalo surely plotted to kill you. By refusing him you revealed your own strength. One of you must die or your songs will die. They will no longer have life. Nor will any of us.” The medicine woman pointed toward the rear of the chamber, where she had built a small ceremonial altar of limestone and chert and surrounded it with sage and bitterroot. A small fire burned in the center of the altar. A rawhide image of a man had been placed to the right of the fire and a clay figurine of a woman to the left. The woman symbolized the moon, and the man the morning star, while the fragrant little blaze served to represent the sun.

Behind the altar was an elkskin case. Singing Woman instructed Lone Walker to take it. The young Blackfoot obeyed her and unwrapped what turned out to be a seven-foot-tall Medicine Cane, a pine staff fringed with raven feathers. The crook was stained a dull red and wrapped with strips of white buffalo hide.

Lone Walker gasped at the sight of the sacred skin similar to the hide White Buffalo wore about his head and shoulders.

“The night White Buffalo returned and told me what he had done I waited until he fell asleep and then I cut a strip from the sacred skin and fled our people to live alone in these mountains.”