'Something the matter, Sheriff?'
'Yeah,' Lauters, said staring into the amber depths of the bottle. 'I'm scared shitless.'
13
It was getting on around two when Longtree heard the horse approaching.
He'd been sleeping an hour or so and started awake at the sound. Years of hunting and being hunted by dangerous men made him a light sleeper. He woke at almost anything. Sometimes a good wind stirring the trees was enough.
He pulled himself free of his bedroll. His horse snorted.
The rider stopped in the treeline surrounding his little gully. 'Come on in,' Longtree called, pistols out now.
The rider came down the trail slowly, the horse's hoofs crunching the snow with gentle, timed steps. Longtree fed a few logs into the dying fire and it blazed with flickering orange light. The rider was an Indian. There was no doubt of this. A long buffalo robe was pulled over his head and he sat astride a rawhide saddle.
But it wasn't a 'he.' It was Laughing Moonwind from the Blackfeet camp.
She wore buffalo mittens and carried an old Kentucky rifle. She tethered her horse and sat by the fire.
'I guess you were the last person in the world I expected,' Longtree said, putting his pistols away and sitting by her side. He rolled a cigarette from his tobacco pouch.
'You came to ask us questions,' she began, 'and now I've come to do the same.'
He nodded. 'Fair enough. Who sent you? Crazytail?'
She fixed him with her huge brown eyes. Fire was reflected in them. It seemed to belong there. 'I said I was asking the questions,' she said sternly, then softening a bit, 'I came of my own accord.'
'Your English is good,' Longtree commented, not bothering to ask her where she learned it.
'I was schooled by whites.'
Longtree nodded. 'Me, too.'
'Why are you here?' she inquired. 'Why does this matter involve the U.S. Government?'
'People are being killed. I was sent here to find out why.' He briefly sketched out for her the trouble all this could cause, what with the mines and the reservation lands and the general hatred existing between white and red man.
'And you think you can solve all these problems?'
'No, but I can try.' The flickering firelight fanned his face with jumping shadow. 'Somebody has to. This is way out of control. Keeps up, people are going to start pulling out of Wolf Creek. That may be a good thing for your people, Moonwind, but not for the white man.'
She had no reaction to this. 'And you won't leave until you're finished?'
He shook his head. 'Can't.'
'Even if it means dying?'
He shrugged. 'I'll take my chances. It's what I'm paid for.'
'You're very stubborn. Very foolish.'
She slipped the buffalo robe off, letting it fall to the ground. The fire was throwing off a lot of heat. Longtree was down to his shirtsleeves now, too. He sat smoking and watching her, letting her direct things here. She knew something and he wanted to know what.
'The buffalo herds are thinning, ' she said. 'Soon my people will be starving like the rest of the Plains tribes. We are a dying race.' She studied the ground with sadness, a sadness not so much learned, but bred. The sadness of her race. 'Of all the indignities forced on us by the whites, this is the worst. They are taking away our ability to feed and clothe ourselves. We will be reduced to a race of beggars just to feed our children. We have never liked the whites. But we could even have forgiven them of this if it was an accident. But it is no accident.' She stared into the fire, solemn, proud. 'The army is directing the slaughter of the buffalo and as they die, so do we.'
Longtree said, 'I think the army wants to stop the Sioux and the Cheyenne. So the Indian Wars will end.'
'And what of us?' Moonwind asked. 'Must we perish with them?'
Longtree sighed. 'I wish I had an answer for that.'
'Your people, the Absaroka, the Crow, have fought with the Flatheads against us-'
'We also fought the Dakotas, the Sioux.'
'You fought against us,' she maintained.
He dragged off his cigarette. 'Did the Crow have a choice? The Blackfeet raided and killed them without mercy. Moonwind, the Blackfeet are a warring tribe. They are not an innocent race.'
She ignored this. 'The Crow fought with the whites against us, against others. And where did it get them? They were forgotten and tossed aside when their usefulness to the whites had ended. The Crow are few now, Joseph Longtree. They are a starving, beaten race, riddled with white man's diseases.'
'I know what's happened,' he told her. 'I'm not ignorant of any of this.'
'The whites are treacherous.'
'Not all of them.'
'Your mother was a Crow. How can you say this?'
'And my father was a white. None of this has anything to do with why I'm here,' he explained patiently. 'I didn't come to run Indians. I came to stop some killing or at least find out why it's happening.'
'This matters so much to you?'
'Yes,' he said flatly. 'Now I'm going to ask questions and you're going to answer them. Tell me about the Skull Society.'
She shrugged. 'They are a men's society. We have many as do most tribes. There are others-the Bear, the Beaver. The Beaver is the most spiritually powerful it is said. The Wolf and Bear produce the finest hunters and warriors. But the oldest, the most secretive is the Skull Society. It is also the most feared.'
'Why?'
'Because…' she pursed her lips as if what she revealed was taboo and it probably was. 'Because they have the power to call the Skullhead.'
'And what is this Skullhead?'
'A supernatural being. Nothing more. According to tradition, the Skullhead is a righter of wrongs.'
Longtree stared at her, knowing she knew more than she was saying. She avoided his eyes. 'Tell me what this is all about.'
She continued staring in the fire for some time. Then, 'It has been said that those of the Skull Society have the ability to change shape, to shift themselves into other forms.' She let that lay with him. 'It is a fairly common belief with my people. The Bear Society believes they can assume the shape of their spiritual guide, the great bear. The Wolf Society believes they can become wolves.'
'Do you believe in this?'
'I believe many things.'
'But do you believe in this? The whites have a name for shapeshifters. Do you know what it is?'
'Werewolf,' she said softly.
He nodded. 'A legend.'
She seemed unconcerned with his label. 'It has been said the ancients were in league with many creatures. Some no longer walk this land. Some are distant memory. That they hunted with them, as them. That they could reverse their skins. Beneath their flesh were the pelts of wolf, bear. This was accomplished with the Blood-Medicine my father spoke of.'
Longtree tossed his cigarette into the fire. 'Okay. That's fine for the Wolf and Bear Societies. I don't ridicule their beliefs. But what of the Skull Society? What is it they claim to become with this Blood-Medicine?'
'With the Blood-Medicine, men of the Society could become the Skullhead.'
'What else?'
She went silent again. Then she turned and looked at him, her eyes drinking him in, making him shiver.
