The Cutthroat Cannibals (12 page)

“The rituals, the gods, the brain readings of the bison all demand that you be sacrificed as well to the Great Hawk Dog, who
is hungry for human souls.” Great, Stone thought, his own dog was going to live—not only that but was going to be given royal
treatment in the Presidential Suite with all the fucking venison it wanted, probably even cut into little pieces—for the rest
of its mangy life. While Stone was supposed to join in marshmallow roasting time, and not only that, but give
his
life to satisfy yet another hungry dog, the fucking Hawk Dog in the sky.

“I don’t give a shit about your fucking buffalo brains,” Stone snarled. And again the braves on each side of the chief started
forward, while the medicine men waved their rattles around threateningly. “They’re wrong. Brains can be wrong, right? Besides
I
am
this Hawk Dog here’s friend. Right, dog?” Stone yelled down at the animal, which stood about three feet away looking around
for any crumbs that might have been dropped here and there. “I said, RIGHT, DOG? YOU DON’T WANT ME TO DIE. I’M YOUR MAIN MAN.
RIGHT, DOG?” The animal looked up at Stone and then at the chief and let out a sudden snarl, curling its lips back on its
teeth, letting its fur rise up. Stone didn’t know if the animal really was sticking up for him or was pissed off at missing
dinner, but it seemed to send a little scare into all of them. Stone quickly pressed the advantage.

“All right, I don’t mind dying if that’s the way it has to be. Who the hell am I to argue with buffalo brains. I’m sure you
have some of the best brain readers around.” He searched for Nanhanke among the line of witch docs behind the chief and found
him after a few seconds. But the voodoo man wouldn’t meet Stone’s look, instead lowering his face to the ground as he shook
his rattle high in the air. “But at least,” Stone went on, addressing the chief, “give me the chance to fight my way out.
Don’t all Indians have a right to challenge, some way of seeing what the gods’ true intentions are?”

“There is the right of final challenge,” the chief said grudgingly. “But that is just for Indians. You are—” The dog snarled
loud and this time took a step forward. The faces of all the ranks around the chief grew a touch pale at seeing their Hawk
Dog’s cousin or uncle or whatever the hell they figured it to be, coming straight at their number one man, saliva flowing
freely from its mouth.

“Down, dog,” Stone screamed, slapping his hand hard. The pit bull stopped in its tracks, lying down on all fours, but kept
a demonic gaze fixed right on the chief. With the tribe all looking on, and the possibly supernatural dog baring its fangs,
Chief Buffalo Breaker suddenly decided that compromise was the better part of valor and spoke up again.

“Well, I suppose you
do
have the right. We are, after all, men.”

“Right, chief, exactly,” Stone said with fake smile, shaking his head up and down.

“But someone must fight you. An Atsana. And you are a cripple, hardly a worthy—”

“I will fight him,” a voice spoke up from the front ranks.

“Cracking Elk,” the chief whispered, his voice faltering. This whole thing wasn’t turning out at all the way he had set it
up.

“Yes, Father,” the brave said, stepping from the shadows. “I will fight him and kill him. I should have killed him back at
the shore as we do all strangers.” Besides being eager to kill Stone, for he genuinely hated all whites, Cracking Elk had
deeper reasons to want to take him out. His father had always kept his son in his shadow. The very power and stature of the
chief had made Cracking Elk almost a nonentity, nonexistent, the way a small though sturdy tree pales beside the towering
oak growing next to it. The whole tribe was present on this flaming night of god power. They would see that he was strong,
that he could kill even one favored by the Hawk Dog.

“Yes,” Cracking Elk went on, taking off his deerskin jacket to reveal huge muscular arms. “I want very much to be the gods’
warrior if this white man thinks he can challenge them.” He stood back and waved his hands to both sides signaling the rest
of the nearby braves to clear off and get out of the way.

“Well, I—I—” Buffalo Breaker didn’t want to actually allow it to start. There was something wrong. Even though Stone had only
one leg, there was just something wrong. It was his own son. But it was too late—they were all watching. The gods had been
invoked, had heard the plea of the Stone man. There was no way out, even for a chief.

“Very well, the challenge may begin,” Buffalo Breaker said, letting his head drop slightly, his shoulders hunch, from his
usual proud bearing. For somehow, no matter what happened, the chief had been defeated in a way he couldn’t even really understand.

“Now, let me get this correct,” Stone said as he stripped off his own jacket with a little trouble as he had to balance on
one leg. But bare-chested was apparently the way to go around here. “I win and I can leave, right? With supplies and no one
playing any tricks?”

“If you win?” the chief smirked. “Yes, then you do as you wish. The gods have heard all. We do not lie about things like that.”

“All right,” Stone said, “what’s the pitch? Choice of weapons? Sabers, dueling pistols at thirty feet?” He grinned at some
of the witch doctors, trying to get on their good side. But these red- and green- and blue-painted, hay-covered, bird-nest-glued-in-their-hair
witch doctors didn’t quite look ready to trade a few jokes. They pointed their various rods, sticks, and carved magic totems
at him and each chanted out his own little death song.

“You use what you have, Stone Man,” the chief said, smiling now himself. “That
is
the challenge: that a man must survive with what he has, where he is at that moment.”

“Right, I get it,” Stone said, as he turned around and saw that Cracking Elk had already taken out a blade that looked a good
two feet long and was flickering like a laser in the rising columns of beating fire. Stone turned fully and lifted up the
green branch so he was holding it in both hands. If he had had both legs functional this would have been a snap. Among other
things, he and the major had spent years in one of the back caverns of the bunker working out combat killing techniques. Not
self-defense. Not something taught to grandmothers in the suburbs. But just: how to kill. The major after all had been the
toughest bastard in the toughest and nastiest little war ever fought, over in Vietnam. Not to mention Korea, Cambodia, Laos…
And the
other
guy had always died. Not his father. So Stone had paid careful attention to the lessons, even as he feuded philosophically
with his old man. Stick fighting had been one of his more innate abilities. Although he wished now that he had done a little
more practicing on one leg.

“All right, asshole,” Stone said, trying to bait the man. He had to make the Indian come to him. There was no way in hell
Stone was going to start hopping around all over the place like some kind of monoplegic rabbit. “I hear Indians’ wives like
to get fucked by white men,” Stone laughed as he tried to balance himself so most of his weight was on his good leg. He hefted
the stick between his hands, letting it slide through both palms a few times back and forth, just to get the feel of the thing
and maybe to unnerve the chief’s son as he saw the smooth, fast movements.

“Come on, what are you waiting for, Mr. Deer Fucker, or whatever your name is?” Stone snapped, trying desperately to get the
Indian angry. But all the young and immensely strong-looking brave did was walk forward in a half crouch on his toes as stealthly
as any man Stone had faced. And suddenly he was licking his lips hard. This guy looked as bad as his father. Maybe it would
have been better after all to have been broiled fast in the fire and get it over with, rather than be all sushi’ed up by this
overmuscled bastard.

“I’ll tell you why the white man defeated the Indian when he came over here to America,” Stone laughed, curling his lips back
in his best imitation of Richard Widmark in
Kiss of Death
. “Because all Indians are pansies and cowards and could be beaten up by even old white women.” Although absurdly stupid,
the insult seemed to suddenly break through Cracking Elk’s cool and he lurched forward in a sudden charge against Stone. Even
though Stone had planned it, when the brave made his move Stone wasn’t ready for the speed of the man. The cripple barely
had time to move, let alone strike out with the staff. He was lucky to swing it up alongside his body so that when the brave’s
long blade came slicing in, the branch took the brunt of the hit. Still the sharp edge sliced past the wood and into the flesh
on Stone’s exposed chest. A foot-long gash a quarter inch deep appeared along his ribs. The crowd gasped and let out war yells
as they began dancing on all sides of the battling pair. Their man clearly was going to win, and win fast.

The half parry of Stone’s branch at least managed to send the brave and his machete hurtling about six feet before he could
stop himself. Stone fell down from the force of the attack, taking the stick with him. He curled into as tight a ball as he
could as he tumbled along the ground. Which was not that tight considering he had a leg with a splint around it to contend
with. But all things considered he at least came out of the roll and up to both feet holding the staff in his hands. Dad would
have been proud.

Stone took the merest instant to look down at the gash across his chest. He’d live. Just another scar to add to his collection.
He whipped his head up and set himself again, making sure the dirt was firm enough beneath his feet so that he could turn
fast. Cracking Elk sneered and came in slashing his machete at the air. But this time, perhaps because he’d had a second to
get over the insults Stone had hurled at him, he wasn’t quite as fast. Just a fraction, perhaps a hundredth of a second slower.
But that was all that Stone needed. As the blade came flying in toward his chest, Stone turned his hips with a snap and caught
the side of the long knife with the front of the branch. Parry and strike! Parry and strike! How many fucking times had his
father pounded that into his head.

But it worked. And it worked again as the brave Indian felt his knife slammed from his grasp as the front end of the thick
branch cracked into his wrist. Then before he could even react the other end was swinging up and into his face. He felt it
slam into his nose, crushing it into little fragments that danced around inside stretched-out flesh already turning purple.
Then he blacked out and slammed facedown right into the earth. It took only an instant for the Indian to shake off the effects
of the blow that might have killed most other men. But then he was the chief’s son, with the blood of royalty running in his
veins.

He let out a whoop and turned himself over fast, pushing his arms down against the ground and preparing to spring up. But
he stopped in his tracks. For Stone was standing over him, the branch poised to come down on his skull. One strike and he
would be dead, his head opened up, his brains spilling out like the bison’s just minutes before. As the entire tribe watched
breathless, the chief as well, standing with his eyes big as saucers, Stone just held the staff there like the sword of Damocles,
a yard over the Indian’s head.

“Kill me, you bastard,” Cracking Elk screamed out, waving his fist at Stone. “You won, white man—you with your damned evil
dog’s powers behind you. No man, especially a paleface, could have beaten me. But the
gods
give you the victory. So kill me! Kill meeeeeee!” He screamed it out, his eyes closed, veins standing out in his neck like
worms about to give birth. But Stone just looked down with scorn.

“No, I
won’t
kill you. How about that?” he asked with a laugh, letting the stick lower in his hands. He looked over at the chief. “Maybe
I just won’t play your stupid blood games. Maybe I don’t have to follow your rules. Maybe I don’t feel like it.” He threw
the branch with disgust down on the ground and stood there balancing on one leg, his face covered with sweat, his chest and
stomach covered with a sheen of red from the slash.

Cracking Elk looked as if he were going to go mad. His eyes opened so wide Stone thought they were going to pop out and he
would need two black rocks to put in there. He opened his mouth, raised his arms to the sky, and let out a horrible scream
of pain and defeat. Then before anyone could make a move or say a word, the brave, next in line for the succession of power
(or so he had been until that moment), rose and ran screaming like a banshee into the shadows. Within seconds he had vanished
into the darkness, but his mad whoops and howls could be heard for minutes slowly dying out in the distance.

T
HERE wasn’t a hell of a lot they could do. The tribe had witnessed it. The gods had witnessed it. Even the damned Hawk Dog’s
cousin, which looked like it was ready to bite anyone who got close, had witnessed it. Stone had won, at least one battle,
and he would live.

“Go!” Chief Buffalo Breaker ordered, pointing with his finger toward the rubber motel Stone had been staying in. The chief
couldn’t even look at the man who had defeated his son but just stared past him into the roaring bonfire as if looking for
his lost pride. For his son could no longer be his son nor the future chief of the tribe. Cracking Elk was through, finito,
kaput. As wiped out in
his
business as a priest caught with an eight-year-old girl in the choir room would be in his. Stone didn’t even realize it,
but he had in an instant dramatically altered the entire future of the tribe, and the balance of power among its various warring
factions.

But ignorance is at least momentary bliss, and Stone grabbed up his crutch and began hobbling back toward the Goodyear teepee
with braves falling in on either side. He couldn’t help but let a smile dance across his lips. Because he was still alive.
And he hadn’t expected to be just a minute before.