The Cutthroat Cannibals (7 page)

Suddenly they hit a tremendous wave, a good thirty feet high. The entire spruce flew up out of the water, countless tons of
it. For a split second Stone could see above the mist and spray on the surface of the river and ahead—to a washing machine
of white water. Not that he was going to get to see much of it. For the tree came down like an elephant jumping into a tub
and sent out a splash as high as the wave that had tossed it. Stone felt himself flying off the thing, just rising up as in
a dream and gliding off at an angle. Then he was in the water and everything was just a blur of foam and mouthfuls of water
and fear, terrible fear, for he didn’t want to drown. Not this way, sucking in mouthfuls of water, the lungs exploding.

Blindly he swam, just trying to keep himself afloat, not even heading in any direction. Suddenly he felt himself pulled straight
under as if a giant hand had grabbed him and yanked him right down. He was buffeted around at all crazy angles, pulled first
this way and then that, like a child playing with his toy ship and constantly ripping neurotically at the controls as he couldn’t
make up his mind which direction he wanted the toy to go in.

Then he was nothing but animal consciousness, flailing around in a world where he couldn’t grab hold of anything, which just
spun and spun and seemed to pull him down ever deeper into a vortex of darkness. And just when he knew he was dead, that he
had reached bottom and there was no further to go, Stone felt something pulling at him. For a split second, in his half-delirious
drowning state, he thought it was giant snakes, a childhood fear suddenly dredged up out of the terrors of imminent termination.
He struck out at the grasping snakes, trying to dislodge them from his body.

Suddenly he was sucking in air and realized he wasn’t even in the water but up on land and that he could breathe. But when
he opened his eyes Stone saw the meanest-looking bunch of dudes he had ever laid eyes on, and every broken-toothed, scarred
face was streaked with garish stripes of reds, greens, and yellows in sharp, nasty-looking patterns. It was a fucking Indian
war party. And Martin Stone was General Custer.

S
TONE half expected one of the Indian warriors to say, “Now you die, paleface.” Instead, the nearest of the braves standing
in a semicircle around him, with a face painted in jagged red and yellow dayglow stripes, spoke up.

“White asshole, you look like shit.” The other Indians stared hard, their mouths twisted into grimaces within their warpainted
faces. They were all powerful-looking men stripped to their waists in animal hide pants, carrying only traditional Indian
weaponry—bows and tomahawks—though the latter were made from hammered-down meat cleavers, Stone noticed as his head began
clearing slightly.

“You could say that again,” Stone grinned, rubbing his head where he must have taken a hit from one of the rocks when he took
his little water ride. “Did you… guys”—Stone faltered for a second, not sure what the hell to call them—“save me?”

“Save you?” The brave who stood above him looking down as if from a towering height laughed. “No, white man, we just pulled
you from the river. Pulled you from one grave into another. You’ll most likely die now that you’ve stumbled onto our world.
That will be up to Chief Buffalo Breaker, he with fists that can kill buffalo, Hwanata—my father.”

At least they weren’t going to bleed him on the spot, Stone thought, though it was little enough comfort. From the way the
half dozen or so men of bronzed muscle stared at him, their dark eyes peering through those nightmarish painted faces of stripes
and jagged lines, with wolves and serpents drawn in brilliant colors all over their bodies, from the way those faces looked
at him with purest malevolence in them as if they could imagine nothing more enjoyable than ripping his heart right out of
his chest at that moment, it didn’t look promising. But even savages have moral codes by which they live. Or at least these
did.

“Sounds like fun,” Stone said, trying to rise. Suddenly there was a commotion about fifty feet down the sandy shore and they
all turned, reaching for various knives and tomahawks. An Indian that Stone hadn’t seen was backing away from the water and
toward the group surrounding Stone. And coming toward him walking in a crouch with its teeth snarling and its body so completely
drenched with muddy water that it looked like some sort of aquatic rat that wasn’t having very good luck was Excaliber. As
the brave retreated, his red skin turning a much whiter shade, he reached for a long blade at his side. But somehow he didn’t
seem particularly interested in trying to use it. The dog looked like it had just jumped up from hell itself, so fierce were
its almond eyes, absolutely bearing down on the Indian.

“Dog!” Stone screamed with something approaching joy. He hadn’t even had time to wonder about the dog, and if he had, doubtless
he would have been sure it was dead. But Wonderdog, albeit looking like refried shit, had made it through the watery gauntlet.
The rest of the braves tried not to look uptight, keeping their lips as hard as cast iron, but in their flashing eyes Stone
could see fear. For some reason the dog seemed to scare the shit out of them, way beyond its physical threat.

“That… your dog?” the brave who had been speaking to Stone asked, with a dash more respect suddenly in his eyes.

“Like I tell everyone,” Stone smirked, “we travel together but he’s his own animal.”
To say the least
, he added under his breath. Excaliber kept coming forward in that low crouch like a wolf, as if ready to spring off those
overmuscled legs at any second and launch right at the throat of the green-faced brave who, still walking backwards one careful
and slow step at a time, had reached the rest of his band.

“Call him off, call him off,” the chief’s son demanded nervously as he too whipped out a long machetelike implement. “Don’t
want to have to kill.” The brave seemed almost desperate, and Stone could see that Excaliber had some strange effect on the
Indians way beyond his menacing stance. The steely frames and scarred bodies of the Indians attested to their toughness, but
the quotient of stark fear in their eyes was more like what a man might have of a charging grizzly like the one Stone had
faced, than of a dog. But perhaps he could use all this to his advantage. If only he knew what the hell was going on.

“Excaliber,” Stone called out, slapping his hands together. The clap caught the pit bull’s attention like a bomb, and the
dog’s ears ripped around toward the source of the sound.

The instant the animal saw Stone its whole body relaxed, and it rose up higher on all fours and trotted happily over like
nothing was going on whatsoever. Once it had jumped up against Stone’s chest to sniff him and make sure that he actually was
the Chow Boy and not some imposter, the animal dropped back down on all fours and turned with a happy tongue-hanging look
toward the Indians. Excaliber barked twice, but this time in more friendly fashion as if to say, hey who the hell are you
guys? Any friend of Chow Boy’s is a pal of mine!

But the braves’ demeanor hardly changed; their eyes still wide, they were still backing away, not really wanting to get too
close. Something was getting to them. Stone wished he’d paid more attention to his “Primitive gods” lecture in anthropology
back in college. Dogs, dogs—what the hell did they represent to a bunch of lost Indians?

“You—you come with us,” the brave addressed Stone, but much more haltingly now, unsure of himself. “Me, Cracking Elk, son
of Buffalo Breaker. Take you to chief. He must decide.” The brave glanced over at the dog as flickers of fear raced across
his features like a swarm of bugs. “You can control dog from biting?” Cracking Elk asked with a little contemptuous grin as
if he really didn’t care about it much one way or another.

“Sure,” Stone lied, knowing that though the pit bull had certainly helped him on numerous occasions when the shit had hit
the fan, making it attack or hold back was a different matter. “Yeah, he’ll do pretty much what I say, right, pal,” Stone
said, leaning over to scratch the animal behind the ears. Only problem was he had forgotten for a moment that his right leg
was cracked like a child’s old toy, and as he shifted his weight onto the wounded leg, a bolt of pain shot up through his
nervous system and he tumbled to the ground, like a scarecrow fallen from its perch, and crashed straight down onto the sand.

The only good thing about the stone-faced stoicism of Indians Stone decided at that moment was that though they didn’t act
too friendly, they also didn’t laugh at the asshole sprawled below them on the ground. Stone didn’t like this being wounded
business, it made him feel much too vulnerable.

“Here,” Cracking Elk said without expression, handing him a stick to use as a crutch. The one Stone had used before no doubtless
had been ground into toothpicks floating twenty miles downriver.

“Thanks,” Stone said, trying to look into the brave’s eyes with an offer of friendship. But the chief’s son would have none
of that, and he looked away coldly. Stone knew he had no choice but to go with them. If he’d had his firearms it would have
been different story. But without the slightest weapon, even with the dog on his side, he would be slaughtered by this crew.
He’d just have to play it by ear and try to find out fast why the red men feared Excaliber so.

The Indians led him off into the woods that ran alongside the river. Here the solid land between riverbank and the towering
mountains that followed along was nearly half a mile, so there was plenty of forest and wildlife, which Stone could hear scampering
around in the distance. Cracking Elk and two others led and the rest followed behind Stone, escorting him along like a prisoner
of war. They kept a wary eye on him, hands resting on their stabbers, as if Stone was about to make a running one-legged dash
off into the shrubbery. As he stumbled along trying to get used to walking with just one appendage, Stone got the chance to
look closer at their painted bodies. They were a strange breed. The things they had adorned themselves with were a bizarre
mix of modern and ancient. Beads and wolf teeth were worn around necks but on some feet Stone saw beat-up old tennis sneakers.
Several of the braves wore leather thongs around their waists to hold up their buffalo or buckskin pants, but again Stone
noticed that two of them had mass-produced belts, one a black patent leather number, the other some sort of silvery rippling
thing like a disco belt. The contrast of different accessories was quite striking. But Stone knew better than to criticize
a murderous band of Indians’ dress habits.

They led him on twisting, hardly noticeable paths through the thick woods. The sky had lightened from very dark to a slate
gray, the rain at last diminishing to just a thin spray. It was hard to see his way and Stone kept nearly falling, having
to wobble along on one leg, and, to make matters worse, the pit bull kept winding back and forth all around him so that the
damned creature kept tripping him up. Excaliber, assuming the Indians were friends, felt playful and kept looking up at Stone
as if to say, “Well, aren’t we all having a good time?” The Indians stayed clear of the pit bull, which seemed to hurt the
animal’s feelings. Whenever it drew close to one of them in playful jumps, they would back off. Again Stone saw that same
peculiar and deep fear in every man’s eyes.

It took about fifteen minutes to reach the camp, though they would have gotten there much faster if Stone hadn’t been limping
along like a wounded soldier returning from the front. Then suddenly they came through a grove of firs and there it was, the
strangest little encampment Stone had ever seen. There were about twenty completely round structures perhaps ten feet high,
shaped somewhat like igloos only they were all made of tires. Car tires, truck tires—you name it, you could find it in the
wall of somebody’s home. When he was on better terms with this crew, Stone vowed, he’d ask them just where they bought their
construction materials.

But he had to wonder if he’d ever get to pose the question, as they approached the edge of the Indian village, set off with
a small, completely encircling fence made of branches piled atop one another. For rising above the open space in the branch
barricade were heads dangling from ropes tied to a long pole stretched across the opening. There were five buffalo skulls,
and two human. The flesh of the buffalo skulls had long ago disappeared so they were basically slabs of bone that looked as
if they’d had little patches of fur glued not very symmetrically over their surfaces. The human heads looked as if they’d
been stripped from their bodies within weeks, months at most. The flesh had hardened, pulled in, so they still looked like
human faces carved out of leather. Eyes had turned into horrid black eggs, beef jerky lips shriveled up into little mouth-cracking
grins as if it was all a big joke. Stone swore he saw the eyes of one moving to keep a scope on him. He gulped hard and tore
his own eyes away, vowing not to look at the damned things ever again.

As they walked beneath the head greeting committee the Indians around the camp saw that their returning warriors had brought
back some strange cargo. Evidently they didn’t get a hell of a lot of visitors in these parts, for every man, woman, and child
in the village dropped whatever they were doing, rose, and headed quickly over to see what God had wrought. Their faces didn’t
look too inviting; maybe they were trying to visualize how Stone’s head would look up there as an addition to their small
but highly regarded skull welcoming sign.

But when they caught sight of the dog trotting along half hidden behind Stone’s legs, the Indians’ faces took on a different
look—one of stark terror. They backed off, talking wildly to one another in dialect that was incomprehensible to Stone, not
that he was an expert in Indian lingo. Still this stuff sounded like it might be spoken on Uranus. Whatever power the mutt
had over the sons of bitches Martin Stone would play to the hilt. The ninety-pound ball of ass-kicking pit bull was his only
chance in this rapidly deteriorating scene. But the question still was why the hell did they react to the dog as they did?
Stone looked down for a second at the loping animal and was suddenly thankful he had treated the canine to a stomach-filling
load of Dog Gourmet Crackers that he had found weeks before. He hoped the beast remembered.