Beauty for Ashes Read online

Bad luck. “No, mountain luck,” said Hannibal’s voice in his head, “which runs just as bad as good.”

  The Head Cutters…Sam reminded himself that they wanted to be called Lakotas. They had young men from the warrior societies out in front as scouts. Instead of Blue Medicine Horse spotting them, they had somehow spotted him. No one would ever know how that happened. Warriors sign their mistakes in blood.

  It is a good day to die.

  The entire village moved up the trail. Sam walked behind the pock-marked warrior, tethered like a mule. Paladin and the pack mules walked nearby, tethered to pony drags. Coy minced along behind Sam, whimpering.

  Where is Gideon? Sam hadn’t seen him since he charged off into the cottonwoods, an arrow jacking up and down in his hip. Probably his friend ended up fifty yards down the grove, a hundred at most, arrows sticking out of his back like needles from the branch of a pine tree.

  Again, Sam hoped like hell Flat Dog wouldn’t come riding into this mess. If Sam knew a god to pray to, he would ask now that Flat Dog see the advance scouts, or the village itself, and get the hell gone. But Sam wasn’t sure the God of his childhood held sway out here.

  He walked. He paid attention. He cleared his mind, so he could see any opportunity for escape. All day, no opportunity. Before the sun dropped behind the Big Horn Mountains on the west, the parade rode right into the village Sam feared.

  His heart went rigid. Damn well no mercy from these people.

  He stood, rope around his neck, while the women put up the tipis and unpacked their belongings. The pock-marked warrior who held the other end of the rope watched Sam idly. Carefully, Sam showed no particular interest in anything he saw.

  Two Horns, now holding The Celt, faced Sam. ‘The people will talk about you in council,’ the fellow signed, with an indolent smile. Sam knew how that would come out. Tomorrow he’d be turned over to the Lakota women, well bound. They would begin the delicious torture, making his death come as slowly and painfully as possible, giving him every chance to be immensely brave as he died in stoic silence.

  “Tonight we will hold you in a small tipi,” said Two Horns. “Don’t try to get away. Two men will stand guard. Outside, where you can’t get at them. If you come out, they will kill you.”

  IT WAS A small tipi, maybe a travel lodge. Sam was bound, and had to lie on his back the whole time.

  The first problem was getting untied. He’d give a lot now to be able to get his hands on the hair ornament knife in his braid. A weapon. The thought stirred his heart foolishly. A weapon.

  There was nothing at all inside, so nothing Sam could use. No stones encircled a fire pit. No fire pit. No wood to build a fire with. No flint and steel for making a fire. Nothing but the poles, the lodge skin, and the rope that held the tipi down against strong winds.

  Sam snorted. They didn’t want the little lodge to blow over and let him escape. Hannibal’s voice said in his head, “Even the wind can be your friend.”

  He laughed.

  Sam snorted. They didn’t want the little lodge to blow over and let him escape. Hannibal’s voice said in his head, “Even the wind can be your friend.”

  He laughed.

  He rolled over. Rolled over a couple of times the other way. Found out that was the limit on his freedom, rolling over.

  He thought. He didn’t feel afraid to die, not especially. He looked around the tipi in the dwindling light, and on the panels of stretched hide between the poles he saw parts of his life, like pictures hung on the walls of a home. Himself and his father, wandering the woods, Sam learning. The feeling the night he untied the painter on the boat there at the family landing, and let go into the current and into the wide world, one of the best feelings he’d ever had. The piercing loneliness of the week and a half he’d waited for Diah and Fitz and the fellows and they didn’t come. His dream of melting into the buffalo, so he and the beast were one. The village crier circling through the lodges, declaring that a young man had earned a name, Joins with Buffalo, or in his language, Samalo.

  These experiences were his life. If it was time to quit living…

  He felt it like a gut burn. No. Because they didn’t include sharing love with Meadowlark. No.

  He snorted, and felt a spasm of stubbornness. When he breathed back in, his breath smelled like buffalo breath. He gave a crazy chuckle.

  “Buffalo is your medicine.” That’s what Bell Rock told him. “Watch the buffalo and see what they do. Notice that when the bulls fight, they are not quick, they’re big and heavy, but they never flee. A bull will fight until he wins, or he will fight until he is defeated. But one thing he won’t do—run away.”

  Sam thought of his medicine pouch, with his swatch of buffalo hair. Gone. But he didn’t think he needed it. He thought of the bulls and what Bell Rock said about them. They fight until they win or die, but they never run away. He wondered how…

  And finally he had a thought. The center rope was anchored to a gnarled piece of limb driven into the ground as a big stake. I could, maybe I could…scrape the ropes of braided rawhide on the head of the stake, and scrape them and scrape them, and maybe they’ll slip down.

  He inch-wormed to the stake. He lifted his legs and after a couple of tries caught the bottom strand of rope on its head. Then came the job. He jerked. And pulled. And jerked. And wriggled. And jerked and pulled and jerked and wriggled again. I don’t know or care how long it will take.

  At last the bottom strand slipped over his heels.

  He heard a peg being pulled out of the door opening.

  What if they see?

  He rolled quietly away from the center stake and lay still, facing the door. He pointed his feet inconspicuously the other way.

  The last peg slipped away, and Pock-Marked ducked in. They looked at each other in the last of the twilight that seeped down from the center hole at the top of the poles.

  “Are you afraid?” signed Pock-Marked. “I suggest you spend the night wrapped in the blanket of your fear. In the morning, when you ask, I will save you all that pain with a quick cut of your throat.”

  He laughed. “We permit men to be cowards.” He disappeared.

  From the inside the door appeared to reassemble itself.

  Now that the bottom strand had slipped over his heels, Sam got the rest off easily.

  He stood up. It felt good.

  In the new darkness he knelt, backed up to the center stake and started working his hands against it hard.

  He didn’t know how long it took him. It was the most frustrating task of his life. Catch—pull—nothing. Catch—pull—nothing. Catch—pull—nothing.

  When he finally found a way, it took a lot of skin off his thumbs. He stuck the sore digits in his mouth and tasted warm, salty blood.

  He stood now, moved around silently, swung his arms, and stretched his cramped wrists and fingers. He tied the rope around his waist. Might come in handy. He took out the hair ornament knife and ran his fingers along the sharp edge. Plenty sharp to cut a throat.

  Then he stood on his tiptoes and looked up at the center hole. No sign of the moon, Big Dipper out of sight, no idea how much night was left.

  Half the night, he guessed.

  How do I get out of here?

  Pull the stake and use it as a club.

  He no more had the thought than he rejected it. If he began to pull out the pegs that held the door together, that would take a lot of seconds, and both guards would be standing there laughing when he stuck his head out.

  He wanted to pace but didn’t dare. Sometimes he looked up in the hope of a glimpse of the moon. Finally he sat down cross-legged. He remembered not to think. That’s what Hannibal taught him. If you keep your mind still, you get ideas.

  Where is Flat Dog?

  It didn’t matter. Since Blue Horse died—since Sam got Blue Horse killed with his horse-stealing scheme—Flat Dog probably wouldn’t try a rescue. Sam couldn’t blame him for that. Regardless, Sam could not wait to be rescued. Tomorrow morning deat
h would open the tipi door.

  When the idea came, at last, it came as a picture.

  Without any special thought, he acted. He grabbed hold of the center rope and began to shinny up. Half way to the top his arms started screaming at him. He had to rest—he almost let himself drop to the ground. Then he realized. One chance. Arms never fresher than now. One chance. Reality: Do it or die.

  At the top he stuck a foot way out. He squirmed and pushed and nearly fell before he got a toe in behind the lodge pole. A little more squirming and it was wedged between the pole and the lodge skin.

  He seized the pole with his exhausted left hand. He took a deep breath, then another. At last he let go of the rope with his right hand and swung free.

  Reprieve!

  Now, though, his muscles were getting used up fast in a different way. Time running out.

  The lodge skin split under the blade of the hair ornament knife. He gushed out relief.

  Quick!

  He made the split longer and stuck a leg through. Silently, he slipped his head and shoulders through.

  He was in the world again. In the light of the moon he could even see. His own moon shadow angled down the lodge cover.

  This position was damned awkward. He…

  Sam slid to the ground and went tumbling.

  On your feet! Now!

  Running footsteps.

  He rolled behind a sagebrush.

  Pock-Marked ran up, knife ready. In the moonlight he looked up and saw the gaping hole in the top of the lodge.

  And saw nothing more, ever.

  Blood gushed all over Sam’s knife arm. He held the limp body for a moment. Then he let it fall and looked briefly at the bloody neck. You offered to cut my throat.

  A raised tomahawk caught the moonlight as it swung down.

  Sam dodged and rolled.

  He looked up and saw the dark figure raise the tomahawk again. Sam ducked inside its arc and rammed his head into the man’s chest. As they went down, he tried to slash the man’s back with his hair ornament knife, but couldn’t tell if he got deer hide or human flesh.

  Tangled arm and leg, the dark figure and Sam slashed at each other.

  SLAM!

  Someone else whammed into them. All three men rolled in the dust and darkness. Sam spilled away onto his back. His mind hollered, Run! The new man lifted a tomahawk.

  Sam’s arm was caught. He looked up into the tomahawk and swallowed his own scream before he died.

  The blade swung down and crashed into the Lakota’s skull.

  “Let’s go!”

  It was a loud whisper—in the Crow language!

  Sam followed the figure into the sagebrush. It paused and turned, and in the moonlight Sam saw Flat Dog’s face. He motioned into the darkness, and Sam followed him at a run.

  SHOUTS SOUNDED BEHIND them. Quickly the Lakotas would discover their dead comrades, and the escape.

  They ran.

  Suddenly there was Paladin, staked. Coy danced toward Sam.

  Flat Dog jumped onto his mount. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Sam jumped onto Paladin. No saddle, and Paladin would be fine without a bridle.

  “Let’s slip off quietly,” Flat Dog said. “They can’t track us in the dark.”

  After a hundred yards Sam said, “I gotta get my rifle.”

  “Forget it!”

  Sam realized he didn’t know where it was anyway. The Celt is gone. His one legacy from his father.

  “I got Paladin for you, and Coy with him,” Flat Dog said, as though to say, “And that’s enough.”

  They came out onto the trail downstream of the village. “This trail, they won’t be able to see any tracks. With luck they’ll look for us the other direction,” Flat Dog said.

  They walked the horses all night. Sam half froze. Even August nights are cold when you’re stark naked.

  When the sun came up, they concealed themselves in a willow thicket and slept.

  Late in the afternoon they gathered juneberries and ate them. “I’ll hunt tomorrow,” Flat Dog said. The only hunting weapon they had left was his bow.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’ll follow the mountains north. There’s another pass up that way, and we’ll cross to the Big Horn.”

  They rode all night, and Sam froze again. Being naked had its disadvantages. He thought glumly that when they started riding during the day, he’d sunburned all over. Then he grinned at himself. All over except for the small strip where the ropes belted his belly, a funny sight.

  Flat Dog killed a doe. They ate all they could that night and the next morning carried the hind quarters and left the rest. “Gotta get out of Head Cutter country,” said Flat Dog.

  Sam pondered his situation. He’d lost everything he owned except his horse, dog, and hair-ornament knife. Rifle gone, knife gone, clothes gone. No more powder and lead, no more pemmican, no more coffee. No traps to get beaver with. No bow and arrows. Nothing to trade to the Indians.

  He’d lost his friends.

  Ghastly.

  A clear, rotten thought clanged into his mind. Instead of getting eight horses to win Meadowlark, I killed her brother.

  He spent the rest of the day getting sunblistered and swimming in remorse.

  That night and morning they gorged themselves on the hindquarters and ended up picking the last flesh off the bones. Amazing how much you could eat when you knew no more food was available. Coy looked back at the bones as they rode off. “Better to go hungry than get scalped,” Sam told him.

  Up came a mental picture of Coy scalped. Sam started laughing and couldn’t stop. Paladin turned her head and gave Sam a queer look. Flat Dog looked at Sam. He laughed the way a spring bubbles out of the ground, and he didn’t know whether the water of his laughter was sweet or alkaline.

  FROM THIS CAMP they could see where the Big Horn River flowed, and where it cut through some mountains to the north. According to Flat Dog, the village now would be where the Stinking Water River flowed into the Big Horn. Later the big buffalo hunt, with several villages gathered together, would be held near the Pryors.

  Sam was learning where the mountains lifted up and how the rivers ran, all a big picture in his mind. He wished he could write it all down, like Jedediah did, and make a map. Which was a damn funny thought for a man who didn’t read or write, and didn’t own even a scrap of paper.

  But on this warm evening in August, in a pleasant camp on a nameless creek, that wasn’t on his mind.

  “I’m sorry I got Blue Medicine Horse killed.”

  “Don’t use his name,” said Flat Dog.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it. The one who isn’t here, he made a mistake.”

  Silence. As if that was enough.

  “I feel terrible about it.”

  This drew a flicker of sharpness in Flat Dog’s eyes. “Warriors pay for their mistakes.”

  Silence.

  “I found all the signs,” Flat Dog went on. “I could tell a lot of what happened. The one who isn’t here, it was his job to see anyone we were riding into. He didn’t.”

  “He was my friend.” Then Sam thought that Blue Horse was Flat Dog’s brother, and felt ashamed of himself.

  “I took care of him. Wrapped him in his blanket and put him in the fork of a tree. After one or two winters I’ll go back and put his bones in a rocky crevice.”

  Sam started to ask if Blue Horse was scalped, but he already knew the answer to that.

  He tried to find something good about their situation. Well, on the trip home he would learn to ride bareback, since his saddle was gone. And he would train himself and Paladin always to turn with pressure of the knees instead of the reins.

  He wished they had coffee. He wished they had food. He wished he didn’t have to ride into the village tomorrow dead poor and stark naked.

  Now that he thought of it, literally naked was too much of a problem. “Big favor,” said Sam.

  Flat Dog looked up
at him.

  “I need a breechcloth. Don’t see anything to use but your shirt.”

  Flat Dog looked down at his chest. It was a perfectly good deerskin shirt but nothing special. He stripped it off. “You owe me a shirt.”

  Sam started cutting a breechcloth from the tail of the shirt. The very sharp hair ornament knife worked well. “This is going to be one very short breechcloth,” he said.

  “Cut two. We’ll find someone to sew them together.”

  Sam looked at the material. “I’ll have enough for a couple of pairs of moccasins, too.” Barefoot could get painful.

  He took off a sleeve and sliced part of it into a belt for the breechcloth, the rest into strips to braid into another rope.

  “You owe me a shirt,” Flat Dog repeated, laughing a little.

  “I owe you everything.”

  Part Five

  Passage Through Darkness

  Chapter Sixteen

  MILES FROM THE village, Sam felt his flesh redden. In his imagination he saw that, sunburned as he was, his skin would glow redder yet when they entered the village. Red Roan would watch him and smile. Gray Hawk and Needle, seeing they had lost a son, would turn their backs on Sam and refuse to look at him. Meadowlark would run into her lodge and weep.

  He lived in this moment of humiliation all afternoon, running it over and over through his mind. He told himself that the real moment only had to be lived once, but he couldn’t help rolling it through his mind again and again.

  They spotted the village across an open plain, on the south bank of the Stinking Water. The moment was coming. Sam steeled himself.

  Then, for some reason, no more than two hundred yards away, Flat Dog had said, “We have to go up on that hill.”

  When they got there, Flat Dog’s words surprised him again. “You have to sit here.” Sam dismounted and plopped his breechclothed bottom down. Coy joined him and looked up at Sam anxiously.

  The hillock overlooked the camp. Flat Dog dismounted, walked the few steps to the crest, and waved his blanket in a big circle. “I have to get the people’s attention,” he said.

  This seemed odd—the sentries surely had told the camp that a small party was coming in.