“When I came back to the truck, he was gone. I remember the seat cover; it was one of those saddle blanket ones that you can buy anywhere.”
He wasn’t looking at me any longer but had his eyes focused on the snow.
“I remember the weave of the fabric-what it looked like with him not there, the depression in the seat.” The great bear head lifted. “It was the last time I ever saw him.”
It seemed like time was holding its breath; I could feel the pressure on my lungs and against my eyes, and it was almost as if I was back underwater.
“I don’t know why they didn’t send him. I know that he’s dead. Maybe it’s because he’s not with my people; perhaps his spirit is uneasy and they can’t find him-maybe he can’t find me.” I couldn’t see his eyes under the maw of the grizzly mantle, and the only part of his head that was truly visible was his jaw and the scar that dissected the side of his face like an erosion in an emotionless desert. “If that’s the case, then his body will have to be returned to my people, so that someday I might see him again.”
It was at that moment that the Crow turned and stepped outside the safety of the crevasse, and I heard the only other steady sounds I’d been able to hear besides the voices since I’d crawled out of the pond-two three- thousand-feet-per-second rounds passing through Virgil’s body.
Thwup.
Thwup.
It took a second for my dulled wits to understand what was happening, but when I did, I threw myself into him in a behind and to the side body block, forcing him onto the snowbank to our left. “Damn it to hell!” I yanked the rifle up as I lay over Virgil and, closing my finger around the trigger, trained the sights on the overhang and the ridge.
I played the Sharps along the horizon and could make out just the slightest aberration on top of the outcropping-the outline of something that just didn’t look right. I waited and hoped he would shoot again and miss so that I could be sure that he was where I thought he was. I saw the muted muzzle flash along with the spectacular illumination of the snowflakes between us as another round buried itself into the snow alongside Virgil.
I aimed at the exact spot where I’d seen the four-point flare, squeezed the trigger, and the big-bore kicked. I was certain that if I didn’t kill him, I hit part of him. I jacked the lever action, replaced the round from the butt stock, and slammed it home, placing another round at the ready.
I held the sights on the exact spot where I’d fired. If he was still alive, he might try for another, but if he was smart and ambulatory, he’d move. There hadn’t been much of him revealed, but even a fragment shot off the edge of the rocks would’ve done the trick.
I lifted my head a little and became aware of the beer-barrel chest of the giant Crow rising and lowering. “Virgil?”
He coughed, grunted, and then strangled out a laugh. “I told you I saw something.”
“How bad are you hit?” I adjusted my weight so that I wasn’t lying on him, then reacquired my target as much as the whiteout would allow.
His voice was strange. “Bad enough-don’t let him shoot me again.”
“I promise.” I kept my eyes on the rimrock.
I noticed that my shivering had stopped and that my mind was now relatively clear, evidently the side effect of every bit of adrenaline in my body being dumped into my nervous system. I wondered abjectly how long the high octane would last.
His words were slurred. “Did you get him?”
“I’m not sure.”
There was a pause. “I would like to think that you got him.”
“Me, too.” There was no more movement on the granite shelf, and if I hadn’t gotten him, he’d moved to another spot or retreated. I thought again about the old maxim that had crossed my mind when Raynaud Shade had fired on me back at Deer Haven Lodge: “The first one to move is the first one to die.” Shade held the advantage in that I wanted to check Virgil’s wounds and possibly move him to the overhang ahead, but I had to be sure that we weren’t drawing fire while I did it.
So, I waited.
“How do you feel, buddy?”
He grunted again. “Not so bad; I think only one got me good. The other one deflected and climbed up my chest and face.”
The original 55-grain lead-core round had a propensity to fragment at the cannelure at certain ranges, but that was crazy. “A tumble round? I haven’t seen that since Vietnam-they haven’t made those since ’67. You must be imagining things.”
“It climbed over my face, so I think I would know.”
I suppressed a smile. “Sit tight, and I’ll take a look at you.”
He was breathing regularly, talking, and even joking, so I figured our situation must not be too bad. Trying to carry the monster to the overhang was going to be the hard part; as near as I could estimate, Virgil White Buffalo probably tipped the scale at almost four hundred pounds.
I hoped his legs worked.
I growled in my throat, knowing every passing minute wasn’t doing the big Indian any good. “Virgil, I’m going to check you and then try and move us to that overhang.”
“I would like to sit up.”
“Okay, here we go.” I lowered our only defense into my lap and turned, watching in amazement as the giant pushed off with one arm and rolled up to a sitting position. He turned to look at me, and the effects of the. 223 round were evident. The bullet had ripped up over the surface of his jawbone, had continued across his cheek, and deflected from the ridge of his brow toward his hairline. The wound was deeper at the side of his face where the distended tissue was opened like a flap, and the majority of the blood was coming from there. The socket was already swollen but appeared operable. “Can you see out of that eye?”
“Yes. I have a matching set of scars now?”
“Like train tracks.” I yanked off a stiffened glove and attempted to lay the flesh back together on his cheek, but it wouldn’t stay. “Virgil, I need to see where the other round went, so I realize this is a pretty absurd situation, but can you hold your face?”
He gently nodded, and one of his enormous hands came up to press the skin back in place. I pulled the cloak open, revealing the moosehide shirt underneath, and could see two small marks where the slug must’ve fractured and split away into three separate pieces. I felt the spot where the round had hit and had to laugh. It was like a cliche from an old pulp western-the slug had struck the thick paperback. The book hadn’t stopped the bullet, but it had deflected it enough so that it hadn’t killed the behemoth-maybe it hadn’t been a tumble round after all.
I started laughing. “Jesus, Virgil, Dante saved your life.”
For obvious reasons, he didn’t smile but grunted.
I yanked at the shirt, even going so far as to pull the book from underneath, noticing the. 223 had gone as far as page 305. I tossed the book aside and gently peeled the hide shirt back-it was then that I saw where the second round had gone. Dead center, but with the angle of deflection and the big Indian’s response, it must’ve traveled down and not into the heart or lungs. Where the hell did it go? Virgil had the unfortunate disadvantage of having the larger silhouette, thus being Shade’s primary target, but he also had the advantage of having more room for bullets.
The only thing left to do was check his back for an exit wound, so I leaned him forward against my shoulder. It was like bulldogging a steer, but I could hear his breathing and it was steady. I pulled at the bear fur cloak that fortunately wasn’t trapped underneath him, and then pulled the shirt and a thermal top away from his vast back. “Virgil, you may be the luckiest son of…”
The words caught in my throat when I saw the exit wound at his lower back.
The pack was lying next to him, so I snagged the first-aid kit that Omar had included from the bottom cavity. I put a number of pads over the wound, and then used the packaging as a seal to keep air out of the cavitated tissue. I tore open rolls of medicated gauze, which I wrapped around his chest and closed off in the front. “How are you feeling?”
He nodded.
