Wild Is the Night (27 page)

“What is it? A cow?” Luke started to turn, when Amanda’s words stopped him cold.

“No,” she whispered. “An Indian.”

Chapter
  
17
  

Moving cautiously, Luke reached for his gun and turned, finding himself face to face with a redman.

It was an Indian all right, but not the warlike, grinning savage he expected. The man that stared back at him had the bronze skin of the Plains Indians that so resembled buttered leather. His face was so old and creased that Luke could almost read the man’s life there—the hardship and change from a world of security to one that promised annihilation. His nose was long and straight, his lips cracked, but it was his eyes that held Luke’s attention. Black and shining like broken pieces of coal, his eyes were mirrors into his soul, reflecting hopelessness.

The Indian made a guttural sound, then gestured with his hand. It was then that Luke noticed the man’s clothing was patched and torn, held together with strips of leather that strained to break free with every movement, and that he wore no feathers. Whatever coups this Indian could claim, he obviously no longer found the need to publicize them.

“I think he wants us to follow him,” Amanda said, nodding to the Indian.

“Like hell.” Luke’s hand closed around his gun, the metal cold and reassuring against his fingers. “If it’s just himself then he won’t take us alive.”

“I doubt if he’s alone,” Amanda said thoughtfully. “The Plains Indians, although nomadic in nature, tend to travel in a group. The rest of his tribe could be around us even now, waiting for a show of resistance.”

It made sense. Furious, Luke pocketed the gun, then dismounted with Amanda. “Great, this is just great! Captured by a redskin who looks older than my father. Do me one favor. Next time you get a great idea to help us all out, don’t.”

The Indian gestured again, more impatiently this time. Luke and Amanda obeyed the cryptic command and followed him into a grove of cotton woods near the river, leaving the horses tied to a branch. It was just as Amanda had predicted. The tribe, a paltry group of old, sick men, women, and children, were huddled in teepees. The children played—like children everywhere, oblivious to their surroundings—while the men, once fearless warriors, stared bleakly at the endless plain that used to be their domain. The women moved slowly about their tasks, making baskets of rushes and preparing scant food over a meager fire, but even they seemed drained of life. Two of the Indian women, obviously pregnant, looked anxiously at Luke and Amanda, then their eyes fell to their sides as they saw the visitors brought no food or clothing.

“I have a feeling they aren’t part of the Five Civilized Tribes,” Luke said quietly.

“Actually, they might be,” Amanda said. “The tribes were sequestered within this territory as punishment for supporting the Confederates during the war. You can see the result of that decision. With their hunting lands cut off and the buffalo disappearing, they are reduced to this.”

Luke glanced around at the camp, appalled at the abject misery and poverty he saw. The children appeared half-starved, while their parents had the look of people who were perpetually hungry and had ceased caring. The Indian who had found them gestured again, and spoke in a demanding voice.

“He said he wants meat,” Amanda translated. “I studied the basic dialects of the tribes for my fifth book,
Texas Brave.
He heard that we would come this morning. The spirits told him last night, when the earth thundered and the ground split in anger.”

“When our cattle stampeded,” Luke supplied.

“Exactly. He says the spirits told him help would come to him this morning, in the shape of the enemy.”

“Wonderful.” Luke shrugged. “Seeing as we have no cattle, that would be a bit difficult. What if we can’t deliver?”

Amanda looked up at him as if afraid to reveal the answer. “Then, he says, they plan to kill us.”

“I’m sorry, son.”

The doctor picked up his flask and drank heavily, then wiped his lips and stared at the body lying on the table. He had worked straight through the night, but nothing could stop Damien’s bleeding. Worse, he suspected, were the internal injuries. Even as he sewed and patched each of the outlaw’s visible wounds, Damien’s skin grew whiter as the precious blood seeped away inside. At two in the morning, he thought the outlaw would be able to pull through. By four, he was doubtful, and by nine, he was certain they would bury the man this day.

And now, as Damien drew his last breath, the doctor knew he would soon join him. Butch had been sitting across from him all night, with a gun on the table as a deadly reminder of his reward should he fail. The doctor collapsed into a chair, knowing he had tried his best, and that it wasn’t good enough.

Butch rose and stood beside the table, looking at the crushed and battered body of his partner. “You know, Doc, I ain’t never rode without him,” Butch said. “He’s been with me since we were kids, robbing coaches and stealing payrolls.”

“I know.” The doctor held out the whiskey, and after a moment’s hesitation, Butch took it.

“I can’t imagine him dead. It’s like losing your favorite gun, or a good saddle, all broken in and fitted to your ass.” Butch drank freely, letting the whiskey burn down his throat and numb the little feeling he had left inside. “You know, Doc, this was all because of a woman. Amanda Edison.”

“You both loved her?” the doctor asked, encouraging the outlaw to drink.

“Nope. We both wanted to kill her.” Butch shrugged. “Crazy dame, Miss Amanda is. Everybody in every town we been in remembers her. She carries this old carpetbag and a pet owl.” Butch sneered at the thought. “Easiest woman in the world to track, but she was cursed with one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A brain.” Butch drank again, then played slowly and menacingly with his gun. “It ain’t fittin” for a woman to think too much. Makes them nothing but trouble, and they’re trouble enough as it is.”

“What did she do that you want to kill her?”

Butch looked up at the doctor, then began to smile, a cold, chilling grin. “You think to get me all lickered up, then you can run and tell the sheriff my plans. That’s okay, Doc. Ain’t no sheriff in hell gonna stop me now. You know, Doc? He don’t even look peaceable.” Butch indicated the body lying on the table, then he rose and holstered his gun.

“You did a good job, Doc, so I’m gonna let you live. I want him buried, though, and in a Christian graveyard. Any problem with that?”

The doctor nearly passed out in relief. He shook his head, then took back the bottle and drank the rest. Butch nodded approvingly.

“Yeah, drink up, you deserve it. Now I’ve gotta find the telegraph office. Haskwell ain’t gonna like this, but you know something, Doc?”

Butch grinned as the doctor glanced up. “I don’t give a blessed damn.”

“You should have let me shoot them while we had the chance.” Luke muttered as the Indians trussed him up, took his gun, and sat him before the fire. Amanda, they let alone, apparently having decided that this odd white woman was not much of a threat. They continually sent her questioning glances, however, even as the old man who’d captured them produced a pouch full of coffee, beans, and a single rabbit. The food, Amanda surmised, was probably pilfered from the wagon train’s store, and the game was the pitiful result of the day’s hunting.

“You couldn’t shoot them,” Amanda said skeptically. “They’re pathetic. This is probably all the food they’ve had today, and if the wagon train hadn’t come along, they wouldn’t have the beans either. They’re old and sick, all of them.”

“We’re still captured—by a group of hungry, old sick Indians,” Luke said in disgust. “Got any ideas to write us out of this one, author?”

“I should just leave you, after the way you treated me—”

“Amanda!” He stared at her, horrified, as if he thought she might do more than entertain the idea.

“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something,” Amanda replied, feeling far from sure herself. The Indian women gave her a hollow-eyed look, then went back to preparing a meal from the old man’s offerings and the food they had scrounged earlier. Amanda thought of the countless times she’d written Indian scenes, the stories she’d penned about the noble savage capturing a poor white woman and taking advantage of her. Somehow, she hadn’t pictured this as a result of her books, but faced with the grim reality of the situation, she couldn’t help but feel guilty. Any of the men in Washington who decided this fate might have read one of her stories. Amanda winced at the thought.

The men gathered around the fire, and their eyes brightened at the scent of the food and the sight of the plates covered with one stingy chunk of rabbit and a large quantity of beans. They ate avidly, a rapt expression coming over their faces as they indulged in the food. When they finished, they sat on their heels with earthen cups of the whiskey that Pop Finnegan would sorely miss the next morning.

“Maybe I can reason with them,” Amanda suggested. “Perhaps I can convince them that we aren’t the salvation they predicted coming.”

“Try it.” Luke shrugged. “But if it doesn’t work, I suggest you get my gun back.”

Amanda’s eyes flickered to the teepee where the Indian had taken his gun. A woman sat cross-legged before it on a buffalo hide, patching garments with strips of leather. She had a dour expression on her face and Amanda had serious doubts about her ability to get past her, even if she wanted to. Instead, she approached the Indian who’d captured them and began to speak in short guttural tones, accentuated with gestures.

Luke struggled with his bindings, ignored by the Indians. The old man listened to Amanda, then, with an expression that needed no translation, abruptly rejected what she had to say. He repeated the same words he’d used earlier, obviously still convinced that they were sent to bring them food.

“What did he say?” Luke asked.

Amanda shrugged. “He won’t listen. He says his name is Lonesome Bear, and that we are his last hope. He will wait until the moon is high before killing us, though. That gives us a little time.”

“For what?” Luke glared. “Great, this is just great! None of this would have happened if I hadn’t listened to you.”

“It wasn’t my fault I didn’t have all the data—”

“Amanda, get the gun.”

She looked back at the teepee. The woman still sat there, but even as Amanda watched, she rose from her position and went to the river for water. There was more than ample time. She glanced at the Indians once more, the few remaining who looked at her with those strange, black eyes, and she just couldn’t do it. There had to be another way.

As if in answer to her thoughts, there was a rustling overhead in the sunwashed cottonwoods. The leaves had fallen, leaving the branches painfully bare and bleached white, thrust against the sky like skeletal fingers. There, on the closest bough, was a familiar little owl, flapping his wings awkwardly in the chill wind.

“Aesop.” Amanda smiled as the bird squawked, obviously considering her departure akin to abandonment. When he decided she’d suffered enough, he left the unwelcoming perch and fluttered down to her shoulder, leaving a few stray feathers behind.

“Amanda, get the damned gun!—Jesus, what the hell’s going on?”

Amanda was wondering the same thing, for the instant the Indians saw the bird, they stopped what they were doing to stare in awe. Women dropped their work, while the men gaped at the sight of the owl. The oldest Indian crept forward, his finger stabbing in the air toward the bird. He approached Amanda, then fell to his knees in mute respect.