Nancy A. Collins by Walking Wolf

Author:Walking Wolf [Wolf, Walking]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2012-05-20T14:27:14+00:00

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CHAPTER EIGHT

After the death of the Sundown Kid at the hands of Witchfinder Jones, I went a little crazy for awhile. I fled the carnage at Pilate’s Basin and wandered the high plains for several days, in a feverish delirium. At times I thought Medicine Dog rode beside me, his blind eyes undaunted by the snow. Other times I fancied I saw Sundown standing on the horizon, waving me on. Other times I imagined I could hear Whatisit?‘s moronic laughter echoing from the darkness.

On the third day out, poor, faithful Erebus literally dropped dead underneath me, spilling me back into reality. There was little I could do but eat the horse, which strengthened me enough to press on. From that moment on, I wandered the plains in my true-skin, preying on antelope, the occasional buffalo calf, and other four-legged creatures that crossed my path.

At the end of each day I would find an outcropping of rock or dig out an abandoned prairie dog burrow in order to shelter myself from the unceasing winds of the plains, and listen to the true wolves howling from the distant hill tops, like lost souls mourning their expulsion from hell. Sometimes I would take up the howl, only to hear confusion and mistrust in their reply. Even without seeing or scenting me, my wild cousins knew an unnatural thing when they heard it.

I wandered westward without planning it that way. I was leagues beyond my old tribe’s hunting boundaries, moving towards lands undreamed of when I was a boy tending Eight Clouds’ horses.

I have no way of knowing precisely how long I spent in the wilderness—at least two, perhaps three seasons, of that I’m certain. I steered clear of both Whites and Indians during that time. Since leaving the Comanche, I had found little joy in the White Man’s world. And while I had known a certain friendship with the likes of Praetorius and Sundown, I knew their types to be few and far between. Buffalo Face and Medicine Dog were right—Whites were bad-crazy. Not all of them were as demented as Reverend Near, McCarthy and Witchfinder Jones, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying. I had come to the decision that it was best not to trust Whites on general principles and give them as wide a berth as possible.

As for the Indians…well, I guess I didn’t want to get close to anyone for fear of losing them. It seemed to me I was cursed. Everyone I had ever loved or befriended in my short life—for I was still shy of my twentieth year—had ended up killed. Some by my own hand.

My natural parents, who I never even got a chance to know, had been brutally taken from me when I was no more than a mewling pup. Then there was poor Flood Moon and Small Bear, whose deaths shame me to this day. After them came Praetorius and poor Whatisit?, left to feed the crows along some godforsaken river bed.

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