The Cutthroat Cannibals (11 page)

A
BOUT three hours later, that morning, when Stone awakened and saw that it was dawn, the sky a mass of dripped ink and spilled
color, he looked out the tire slot nearest his face and saw that something was up. They were building a structure of some
kind in the very center of the encampment, a cleared circle about a hundred feet in diameter where much of the tribe’s group
interaction occurred. And it was as bizarre as anything out of
Gulliver’s Travels
. As the sun hauled itself up to the tree line like an old crow that can’t quite make it, Stone could make out the general
shape of the structure. The shape—but not what the hell it was going to be used for. It was a rough box about eight feet long
and three wide, with ropes and junk all over it. As one group of braves worked on that, testing ropes, tightening corners,
another group was building a huge bonfire about twenty feet behind the structure, a mother of a fire that was already ten
feet high and perhaps an equal size around. It looked like their work was only beginning as braves walked in long lines back
and forth to the nearby forests, dragging more fuel.

Stone watched throughout the day as they put up poles and banners, the women getting elaborate gowns together, their hair
being put up and braided by each other. Something big was in the offing, that was for damned sure. Somehow Stone had the sickening
feeling that he was going to be an integral part of the festivities. They fed him breakfast and then lunch, Excaliber so chagrined
by the embarrassing episode of the evening before that the dog couldn’t even face Stone but just dragged its food off to the
farthest corner and ate with its face to the wall. Then it went back to sleep, nose pressed deep into a crevice trying to
suck in fresh air. Stone felt sorry for the stupid dog. Its macho image had been attacked and the dog had come out the loser.
There’s something about hanging like an ornament on a Christmas tree, and knowing that you’d be there until hell freezes over
if you’re not rescued, that does wonders for one’s tough-guy rep.

Nanhanke never showed that day, which seemed like a bad omen to Stone. And as the sun fell blood red and bloated from the
sky like a leech that had drunk too much, he still hadn’t gotten dinner. If they weren’t feeding him that was a bad sign.
It meant they didn’t think it was going to matter if he was hungry or not, and who the hell knew what that meant. But as the
twilight and then the night fell like the shroud over a coffin, Stone grew increasingly nervous. The dog, too, which had just
been getting used to the three squares seemed skittish, testy, and it snarled out through the cracks at the activities going
on around them.

When darkness fell the festivities began. Stone didn’t know exactly what the hell was happening, but he watched fascinated.
First the great bonfire that now topped thirty feet high, twenty wide, was doused with some sort of flammable liquid. Then
at Chief Breaking Buffalo’s command, archers on every side of the square opened up with flaming arrows. The pyre caught in
numerous places and sprang into fire. A great yellow funnel ripped up into the night sky like a flaming tongue trying to kiss
the curvaceous clouds wiggling by above. A second curtain of sparks and smoke and sputtering, crackling drops of superheated
resin followed behind the flames. The wall of fire lit up the low flying clouds above which reflected the yellows and oranges
off their mile-wide stomachs back down to the earth below, so that it almost appeared that the sky and the earth and everything
in between were on fire.

After about five minutes, once the sparks had settled down, the braves began dancing around the fire. Stone couldn’t see clearly
at first, as everything was alternately in shadows and then streaks of light. But as he strained his eyes he focused in on
the scene. About forty braves were running and leaping around the flames as the chief stood back near the strange wooden contraption
that had been built. They wore something on their heads that made them look huge and horned, and as he squinted Stone could
see bison heads—mangy brown heads as big as beach balls, with curved horns. Some of the heads looked real, others perhaps
made from leather and pelts. But it was all real enough for the Indians for they got into the ritual dance with increasing
enthusiasm.

Log drums pounded from the shadows around the bonfire. It sounded as if there were dozens of them, beating out an unstoppable
rhythm that seemed to shake the very ground, the stars above, shake them and move them in rhythm to its syncopated tribal
tempo. The buffalo-headed braves ran around the fire in all different directions smashing into one another, weaving intricate
dances around one another. They pretended to gore one another and make screaming noises, throwing their heads back and baying
at the flame-splattered sky as if they were in mortal agony.

After about twenty minutes of this Stone noticed other braves sneaking up on them from the shadows, fake swords and bows in
their hands. They suddenly rushed forward and into the ring of “buffalo,” attacking them with wild thrusts and screams of
human dominance. But the buffalo fought back. Terrified at first, after a minute they seemed to gather their forces and in
one great unit charged back. The humans were ripped apart and fell “dying” to the ground as the others fled back into the
shadows.

Stone wished he had a video camera to record it all for posterity, if there was any. He remembered his anthro professor back
at college. Son of a bitch would have thrown a shit fit to witness this. He glanced over at Excaliber but the dog couldn’t
care less about buffalo dances. The pit bull sniffed forlornly at the tire he had adopted as the most comfortable in the place
and sniffed hard, searching for an errant scent of porridge or venison that meant dinner was coming soon. Stone turned back
to his viewing slit with a grunt. The dog could use a diet anyway. Its stomach looked as if it could have been a life preserver
on the
Titanic
.

Suddenly there was a great pounding on the drums. From out of the shadows walked Chiefie, all decked out in his royal duds.
Even from many yards off, Stone was impressed by what he could see. The great one had on an even longer feathered headdress
than he had worn the day before. This one split up into two and came down each shoulder in front of him to the ground. The
feathers were luminous and shining like jewels even from fifty yards off. Beneath it he was stripped to only a loincloth made
of black bear fur, as shimmering as satin. The man was immense, huge arms and chest. Buffalo Breaker came up to the circle
of dancers and held his arms high to the sky. Then he lowered them and waded into the beasts, fists flying. The buffalo fell
to the dirt where they lay still. It was over in seconds. All were “dead.” The chief stood in front of the fire and raised
his arms so Stone could see them by the flames. It was quite impressive.

But not as much as what happened next. For Stone found out what the strange box they had been building all day was for. Out
of the darkness was led a shape, and as he squinted, he saw it was a cow—no, a buffalo. A real honest-to-god bison. Somehow
they’d manage to scrape one up way back here in the middle of nowhere. The animal looked a bit rib-sticking and motheaten.
But it was real, that was for sure. No men could saunter around, could lower their head in charge gestures like that. The
buffalo was led around the fire three times as the drums pounded and the braves let out high-pitched screeches, waggling their
hands over their mouths so the sound came out like a siren. The bison was led by tether over to the wooden box that had been
constructed. Stone’s guts relaxed just a notch as he saw that whatever horrible thing was going to happen was going to happen
to a dumb beast—and not Stone and his fucking wonderdog.

Stone shifted around to get a better position against the tires, as he didn’t want to miss a second. He massaged his leg,
which had fallen half asleep, to make sure that the bandage around it wasn’t too tight and shutting off the blood supply.
Then he turned quickly back, burying his face deep in the opening. The bison was pushed, with some trouble, backwards into
the pen and Stone could now see that the wooden structure had been measured exactly for the beast’s specifications, for it
fit the pen to a T when it was at last completely pushed inside.

Chief Buffalo Breaker raised his arms again and addressed the sky half singing, half screaming out a whole litany of Indian
promises, threats, prayers. At last when all the gods had been satisfied ritual-wise, the chief walked over and stood directly
in front of the bison. He stared deep into its eyes as the ropes that had been thrown around it from each side of the pen
were pulled tight, effectively immobilizing it in place so that it couldn’t move but a fraction of an inch in any direction.
The chief seemed to be looking for something right in the center of the bison’s skull, dead center between its horns, because
he stared down there for about five minutes, like he was searching for gold.

Then he raised his right hand slowly, ever so slowly, like a guillotine being raised inch by agonizing inch, its slow ascent
all the more terrible because of the speed at which it would descend, and the results of that descent. And when the hand was
up over the chief’s head as if he were reaching for the very moon, he let out a great scream that dwarfed even the mass of
chanting, the beat of the log drums that echoed for miles down the canyons.

Then the hand came down and Stone saw why the chief was called He Who Breaks Buffalos’ Heads. Because he did. The hand slammed
down like a cleaver right between the horns or that exact spot that the chief’s lifelong experience in killing the animals
had shown him, the weakest spot, where the bone would give. And he was right again. This was his thirteenth buffalo, one a
year for the last thirteen years. The buffalo’s head was cracked clean open, right down the middle like an egg broken to throw
into the omelette pan. The bone of the skull just opened up and a geyser of muck gushed up several feet into the air, blood
and miscellaneous slime under the pressure of the buffalo’s circulatory system.

The beast crumbled to its knees as if dropping into prayer. It had time only to let out one ghastly mooing sound that was
filled with so much pain and terror that Stone felt his chest tighten up. The bison’s great head seemed to shake back and
forth atop its quivering body like one of those heads on a spring that Americans had once carried in the back windows of their
cars. The chief suddenly reached down with both hands and dipped right into the skull pan of the bison. Digging in deep, his
hands flat like two shovels, he stood up, scooping out the whole brain, trailing arteries and nerves and every goddamned thing.

The chief held the pulsing brain package up over his head as he turned and headed back to the fire about thirty feet away.
The Indians let out war whoops as the drums pounded victory and the spilling of blood. With the slime dripping down over his
hands the chief walked up until he was within feet of the flames and threw the bundle of tissue with all his might. It soared
up, spinning and trailing a web of mucus, and then disappeared into the wall of flames in the center. There was a sudden bursting
sound and then a loud pop of red flame as the tissue of the brain ignited all at once.

Suddenly there was a sound behind him and Stone turned, startled, expecting for a moment to see Excaliber entangled in something
again. But it was the “door,” the big tractor tires being rolled back. Two braves walked into the hut, swinging metal cans—Campbell’s
soup if Stone was not mistaken, though the lables were worn and discolored—filled with flaming coals. The flickering torches
filled the tire teepee with shadows making their arms look ten feet long, making Stone’s head appear big as a chair on the
far wall. Then one of the braves, a fellow with metal can openers through each ear, his face painted red as freshly spilled
blood, stared hard at Stone.

“You next,” was all he said, pointing with his thumb toward the door and the fire. In his whole life Martin Stone had never
hated a word as much as he did the sound of the word “next” at that moment.

S
TONE walked out between the two guards as Excaliber followed sulkily along between two more. They carried long spears made
of kitchen knives glued and taped around broom handles. But they didn’t look terribly eager to take on the dog. Stone hobbled
along on the crutch trying to look unafraid and still plenty tough, which was a little difficult as he kept almost stumbling
into gopher holes in the dirt. They led him up to the chief, who was on his throne now, still wearing only the feathered hat
thing and his black bear loincloth. The man’s body was covered in sweat so his copper skin glowed like a freshly minted penny.
The black stone in his missing eye looked as if one could fall into hell itself if one peered too long into it. So Stone focused
on the other eye as the chief spoke to him.

“Good news and bad news, Stone Man,” Chief Buffalo Breaker said, sitting up straight in his recliner, holding the staff as
the symbol of his authority. “The good news is your dog can live. It is not the Hawk Dog, that has been decided through the
flames of the bison’s head. But it is a relative of the Hawk Dog and can stay here as our honored guest and be assured food
and shelter as long as it desires.”

“Sounds pretty good to me,” Stone said, looking down at the pit bull, which glared around at the Indians as an empty stomach
always made it pissed off and ready to kick ass.

“The bad news,” the chief went on, rising up from his chair so his stomach popped out like a boulder about to roll down a
hill, “is that
you
are not of the gods and therefore must die immediately.”

“Shit,” Stone spat out. “I’m not even well,” he protested, raising his crutch. The other Indians started forward, thinking
Stone was about to attack the head man. But it was only a dramatic gesture on his part. Stone was in no condition to go charging
anyone. He let the branch fall back to the dirt as his bad leg settled its weight back on it. “At least let me heal so I can
die as a complete man, not a half man.”