that greedily licked every last bit of warmth out of the land like the Pawnee licked every last smear of marrow from the center of the bones they roasted in their fires.
Here Jonah roamed with the rest, eleven of North’s Pawnee, digging among the baggage and folded lodge skins and camp equipment and broken travois poles abandoned by the Cheyenne in their mad flight away from Plum Creek. Much of it looking like black lumps on the prairie beneath the pale starshine—no pattern at all. More like a random scattering of buffalo chips.
With his teeth, Jonah yanked on a strip of dried jerky. Antelope or deer, he figured. One of the Pawnee had found some among the abandoned baggage. The one among them who had the best nose, so joked the rest. They were thankful for that dried meat and marrow bones, especially after darkness smothered the land. The Pawnee extinguished their cooking fires and contented themselves with waiting out the rest of the night. Talking softly among their little knots and drinking sips of cool water from canteens dipped into Plum Creek not far away, eager for the sun-coming.
Jonah leaned back against a bundle of smoked lodge skins, warmly pungent with the fragrance of many fires. It had been a long time since he felt this lonely. Something to do with the overwhelming darkness, for out here, unlike nighttime in the timbered hills back home or the high slopes of the Rockies, the plains magnified the darkness, and the bigness of the land, and hence the smallness of one lonely man.
Perhaps he was more lonely because he was the only white man here among so many Pawnee. But right now he really didn’t want to have to work and strain at translating their foreign tongue to follow their conversation. So he sat by himself, off a ways from the rest as they laughed quietly, poked fun at one another, told of coups from bygone days and what feats had belonged to the day just grown old with night’s coming.
Listening to the horses hobbled nearby crunching the dried grasses aroused a feeling of yearning for a time already gone from his life—of early autumn nights such as this, after the children had been bedded down, wandering outside the cabin into the moonlit yard, leaning against the barn door and hearing the animals in their stalls, working their feed hay.
It was a good sound, reassuring, a sound claiming that in some manner of thinking all things were made right at this moment in his world. But Jonah knew they were not. There were pieces of his life left unraveled, like the hem to one of Gritta’s long dresses snagged on her heel and slowly unfurling with time.
Time lost. Never to have those minutes, hours and now years back again. Time.
And he didn’t know how to stop it. How to repair the damage. How to make it good as new. At least make things almost as good as they were before he marched off to fight the damned blue-bellies when he should have been home to mind the fields and fight off the bullyboys who came in to tear his family asunder.
His kidneys hurt from the pounding they had taken in the running battle. Jonah slowly rolled onto his side, drawing his legs up to ease that pain at the small of his back, knowing by morning, he would be needing to relieve himself. It hurt to even think of that—what with the hammering his body had taken in the fight and the ride back. He closed his eyes and thought on that rutted, muddy road leading down among the trees, and at the end stood Gritta, her poke bonnet at the end of her arm, waving … waving him on ….
It was damned cold later when the urge to piss would not be denied. He snorted quietly, seeing the breath before his face turn silver in the late starshine. Blinking his eyes clear of grit, Jonah glanced at the east. The autumn nightsky was gray there. The land coming to life far off … somewhere over Big Cobbler Mountain in Virginia it was morning now. Soon to be over the homestead left behind in Missouri. Right now it was light enough that a man could tell the baggage from the sleeping Pawnee rolled in their blankets or cocooned in the Cheyenne’s abandoned buffalo robes.
He was warm enough and did not want to stir, but damn if his kidneys and bladder would let him wait any longer.
Jonah struggled to his feet, cold as they had grown in the boots. He shuffled his clothing around him and buttoned the wool mackinaw clear up to his neck, blowing in his hands as he strode off several yards. While he unbuttoned his fly and was spraying the ground, Jonah gazed at the dozen horses grazing here and there among the scattered baggage. Perhaps he could find some Cheyenne coffee to boil. Get a fire started and find a pot or kettle. As empty as his bladder was at last, Jonah figured he could drink a mess of coffee—
One of the Pawnee yelled out, falling at the crack of a rifle. As Jonah took off, his fly still unbuttoned, the scouts came out of their blankets and robes behind him. The two other camp guards were already on their feet and coming on as well. But Jonah was going to get there first.
As he drew his pistol from its mule-ear holster, the gray horizon north of their position suddenly sprouted a weaving mass of horsemen, surging down on the Pawnee. At least two dozen. No, more than that now. At least three-to-one odds, he figured. Who was to know, he argued with himself, his breathsmoke disappearing as quickly as his lungs ached with each step into the cold, seeping darkness. All he cared about was his little piece of it. Three of the horsemen were peeling off from the rest, heading for the wounded Pawnee picket who struggled to crawl backward, his hand gripping the side of his hip, dragging the useless leg.
On instinct Jonah fired. Not so much aiming into the dark, but sensing where he ought to point the weapon at one of the trio of screeching horsemen.
A yelp answered the bark of his pistol. A body tumbled backward off the rump of a pony with a thud, and air was driven from his lungs as the warrior landed on the grassy sand.
Jonah’s eyes stung from the bright muzzle flash, and as they cleared, he found another target bearing down on him with a horrifying scream. A war club raised overhead. Pony knees coming up and hammering down like steam pistons. Hooves clawing at the sandy soil, sending dark clods flying into the gray light of morning coming. Nostrils swollen wide as it carried its rider closer and closer still to the white man.
Behind that faceless, formless rider came another, turning off to claim the wounded Pawnee.
Jonah met the Cheyenne horseman as he swept low off the side of his pony. He caught the warrior’s arm with the war club in it, yanking so hard as the pony tore by that Jonah heard a distinct snap, a yelp of pain, and the thud of the warrior striking the ground.
Jonah whirled, firing … then firing again as the third rider closed on the wounded Pawnee. Another screech of surprise, perhaps pain. The pony Hook had wounded suddenly skidded to a halt, reared wildly, and spun about with its rider holding dearly to the withers.
“Stay down!” he shouted, then realized he had yelled in English. Jonah couldn’t remember the Pawnee words. Even the one for down.
But the scout’s eyes told him he understood. Darkness oozed between the Pawnee’s fingers where he held his hand over the bullet hole in his hip. Jonah dragged him upright on one leg, the other dangling useless now. Behind them the whole of the scattered camp was ablaze with spurts of orange and yellow light. There really was no safe place, except at the center of it all, among the baggage and lodge skins.
Madness and terror brought in the new day—screaming horses and shouted curses, chanting songs and death wails from warrior throats on both sides. Bullets singing through the cold morning air. The flat putty-smack of lead and snake-hiss of iron-tipped arrow.
“Follow them!” one of the Pawnee shouted.
“Don’t let them ride away!”
“Finish these scalped-heads—now!” cried a voice from beyond.
As most of the young Cheyenne circled the camp, firing into the dark lumps of scouts and baggage, the Pawnee struggled to control their horses enough to mount and pursue the enemy. Jonah marveled at their courage. Outnumbered more than three to one, they coolly went about wresting the offensive from the Cheyenne when most men would be content finding a big place in which to make themselves small. In Jonah’s breast burned a pride for fighting alongside such brave men.
And in the next few moments he was not sure why he did what he did, but he remembered helping the wounded man behind a large bundle of lodge skins, then sprinting toward his horse and leaping atop it bareback, joining a handful of the rest who were charging out to break through the cordon of attackers.
The yelling grew faint in his ears as the animal carried him into the growing light of dawn, all rose and blood orange to the east, the ground a hammering thunder of noise—
—when suddenly the earth shook and came upon him, driving the breath from his lungs. Beneath his bloody cheek he heard the riders coming. Dragging his heavy head from the soil where it was warm and wet with his blood, he saw the young Cheyenne warriors bearing down on him. He did not stand a chance, he thought, his eyes rolling back in his head as he slipped away.
