“A’hee! He carries the souls of the dead to the white man’s land of the dead? Their Seana?”
At mention of the word, the Cheyenne muttered uneasily among themselves.
Vehoc said something to Little Wolf, who whispered under his breath. The other riders backed their horses away, making more room between them and the wagon where Butler perched. The fingering of medicine bundles was more fervent, their efforts to avoid Butler’s attention even more apparent.
“When I was little,” Vehoc said, “a black robe came to our camp to talk about Jesus. We had an old hohnokha who called the rains and thunder. The black robe raised his book, called our hohnokha a devil, and shouted at him. That night lightning struck the black robe’s camp and killed him dead. Only fools laugh at Ma’heono.”
“What’s that?”
“The four sacred Powers. The spirit beings.” He gestured in a wide loop that didn’t include Butler. “They are all around. All that lives. Buffalo, grass, birds, the deer and antelope. The mice and grasshoppers. The flowing of the river. You white men know so little, yet here you are, filling our land.”
Doc used his probe, located the bullet where it had stopped between the liver and diaphragm. With his straight forceps he reached into the wound and grasped the bullet, easing it out.
“Looks like a .36 caliber. From the scraped rifling, it was a revolver shot.” He extended the bullet and dropped it into Oak Skin’s hand. “You can give it to Red Legs as a remembrance.”
Doc sponged up some of the blood, tied off a bleeder, and carefully began to suture the wound closed. “Make Red Legs drink all the water he can hold. Tell that to Little Wolf there. I don’t want Red Legs walking or riding, so when he has to piss, tell him to just let it go. Do you understand?”
Little Wolf asked something. Vehoc translated, “Is he going to live?”
Doc tied his last knot, fixing his gaze on Oak Skin’s. “I think so. The only thing I can’t help is if the wound infects. Indian medicine or white, that’s up to the wounded man to beat. He has damage to his liver, but it will heal if you don’t let him move for a moon or so. But if he gets bumped hard, or falls, it could break the wound open, and he’ll bleed to death. Do you understand?”
Vehoc made a sign with his hands, saying, “Reckon so.”
Doc smiled thinly, aware that the evening light was fading. “Can you find him a Cheyenne medicine man? A healer? Someone who can bathe him in smoke, feed him herbs. Maybe hold a sweat?”
“Maybe so.”
“It would help his healing.” Doc tapped the side of his head. “Up here. In the soul. You need to do this as quickly as you can.”
Vehoc stood, turned to Little Wolf, and spoke hurriedly.
“Haahe,” Little Wolf said. Then he asked something else as he made a fist-knocking hand sign that meant to kill.
Fear gripped Doc’s spine with icy hands.
Vehoc made a sign that Doc thought meant no, and added something else. Then he made a slight gesture of the head toward Butler, as if indicating him without indicating him, and said something about the hohnohka.
Vehoc turned to Doc, a grim smile on his lips. “We are Hotame’taneo. Dog Soldiers. Unlike whites we are men of honor who will not harm a hohnohka. Tell your holy man that we offer prayers in honor of his journey to carry his dead to the white man’s Seana. Because you serve him, we give him your life.”
With that he backed carefully away, turned, and leaped onto his horse. The warrior holding the lead rope handed it to Little Wolf. The leader glared his hatred at Doc, but studiously ignored Butler as he led the travois forward.
Within minutes the last of them disappeared into the growing gloom of evening.
Doc sank onto his surgeon’s chest, his heart hammering like a sledge on an anvil.
“At ease, gentlemen,” Butler called to his men. “Surrounded and outnumbered as they were, they wouldn’t have dared to try anything. Not against Company A. We had them boxed the entire time.”
65
October 5, 1865
Sarah stood in the cold wind, arms crossed, and stared westward at the road. Little more than a rut in the overgrazed grass, it vanished into the growing darkness. Only a hint of light lay behind the low clouds to mark where the sun had set on the southwestern horizon.
She tried to ignore the sound of shovels grating in the hard ground, the rasping curses of the soldiers, or to think of the remains of the two men who would soon be laid under the High Plains sod.
Just at dusk their convoy of two stages and a detachment of cavalry had pulled into Willow Spring station to find the horses missing, and not a soul in sight. The two herders—the ones the soldiers were now burying—had been spread-eagled on the ground in front of the dugout. Dugout? Little more than a hole in the ground actually. Both men had been naked, each with his severed penis and testicles protruding from his bloody, open mouth. The tongues—cut out to make room for the genitals—had been stuffed into slits cut into their crotches, as though obscene vaginas were giving birth. The men’s scalped skulls had been split to expose the brains. As a final indignity, the Indians had piled poles ripped from the corral over their stomachs and set them on fire.
This is a damned and terrible country. Why the hell did we ever come here?
Worse. Seeing those mutilated and tortured men opened a door she’d wanted forever closed. It was as if she could hear the hinges creaking as she peered through a slit and saw Dewley’s body lying there on that narrow ledge. She was rising, the knife in her hand dripping crimson, Dewley’s severed genitals limp, warm, and squishy in her bloody
