A Forgotten Evil by Sheldon Russell

Author:Sheldon Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC014000 FICTION / Historical / General
Publisher: Cennan Books of Cynren Press
Published: 2019-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Dawn broke and they rode once more, ever deeper into the heart of the prairie. None spoke of the night before or acknowledged the warrior’s face, now split and swollen and seeping with blood.

As if from nowhere, the camp appeared, teepees twisting through a ravine below. Children played at the camp’s edge, and women worked at buffalo hides or stirred the steaming pots of soup. The warriors sounded their arrival, and all came running, a great fuss being made. The women looked at Caleb from under their hands, and the children grinned with curiosity. Little River spoke, pointing at Caleb, and the others nodded in approval of this fine acquisition.

That night Little River hobbled him under a lean-to made of cottonwood limbs and sage brush where animals were butchered. Charred bits of meat, still smelling of smoke, clung to its limbs, and the ground was clotted black with blood. A young child brought him soup in a bowl, and Caleb ate without inspection, drinking it down as a man starving.

The drums beat from the camp, and the cries of celebration filled the night. Shivering, he curled into the corner of his hut, a man forfeited and lost in the land of his enemy. He could remember only the name “Woodcutter,” his real name lost somewhere in the past, and a loneliness emptied him of all that he was or had ever been, bereft now even of tears to console him in his desolation.

That night the winds dropped away, breathless and dark with secrets, and a cloud bank blotted out the moon. A rush of cold wind swept from the night, and dirt swirled into Caleb’s hut, stinging his injured ankles and stripping raw the last of his hope. Lightning flashed, and the night was fixed in its brilliance. When thunder rolled through the valley, rain began to fall, wet, cold, and relentless. All night it rained, Caleb trembling with cold and abdication, his hut stinking with the slaughter of the past, and when morning came, he cursed the rise of the sun and of yet another day.

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