Nevada Night Riders by Jon Sharpe

Author:Jon Sharpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

“Bring me the white-eye seller of strong water,” the Paiute medicine man Sis-ki-dee ordered one of his Sash Warriors. “And tell Eagle On His Journey to bring one of his best dogs forward when the sun has moved the distance of one lodge pole.”

Sis-ki-dee and the war chief Plenty Coups stood at the far edge of the barren desert camp. The fingernails adorning the shaman’s buckskin leggings were pale and opaque in the late afternoon sunshine.

“I have told you many times,” Sis-ki-dee said, “there are ways to kill besides foolishly standing in front of the white devils’ thunder sticks. Now the dogs are well trained to hate the white-man smell. You will see how it is with your own eyes.”

Plenty Coups, who took great pride in never showing his feelings in his face as women and white men did, nonetheless scowled in disapproval.

“I have ears, Contrary Warrior, when you say we must attack,” he said. “But it is not the Warrior Way to kill without counting coup and—”

“Then join the women in their sewing lodge,” Sis-ki-dee cut him off sharply. “Things are the way they are—do you not see it? Why push if a thing won’t move? All the world knows you are a brave and deadly fighter, a man fit to wear the buffalo horns in battle. Your coup feathers trail on the ground. But these white invaders are true spawn of the Windigo, and now a ‘noble’ Paiute is a dead Paiute.”

“You speak words a brave can place in his parfleche,” Plenty Coups finally said.

“As you say. And do not forget that your brave warriors will face the enemy and kill them. But they are like a plague of locusts, too many to fight with our small numbers. Our white prisoner has told me how to use the big-thundering powder we have captured. We—”

The Sash Warrior arrived just then with a prisoner in tow, a thin, frightened, badly burned and scarred whiskey peddler who had foolishly tried to cross the wrong stretch of desert.

Sis-ki-dee had learned some English during his days in the Green River country. “You are fortunate, white dog. I decide to let you go. The white man’s lodge circle lies straight west from here. Take this.”

Sis-ki-dee handed the man a bladder bag of water. “You can walk there in less than one sleep.”

“Juh-Juh-Jesus,” the astounded captive stammered. “Thank you, Chief.”

Sis-ki-dee suddenly reached out and ripped a piece from the prisoner’s butternut-dyed shirt. The captive looked startled, but Sis-ki-dee’s deep panther scars made his face terrible to behold as did the insane sheen of his black obsidian eyes. The white man wisely held his tongue.

“Well?” Sis-ki-dee demanded. “Will you stand there blubbering until I gut you?”

The whiskey peddler required no further encouragement. Limping, but moving rapidly, he bore off across the hot white sand toward the miragelike silhouette of Mount Davidson, an image rippling in the heat.

The two Paiutes watched him recede like a figure in a dream disappearing in a long tunnel.

“Eagle On His Journey will be here soon,” Sis-ki-dee said.

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