The Stalkers by Terry C. Johnston

Author:Terry C. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter 22

His blood went cold.

Watching his pony rear back, thrashing its front legs, tearing its rawhide halter from the willow where he was about to tie it before kneeling there on the riverbank overlooking the island. The animal ripped itself from his grasp as the two bullets thudded home, whining past his cheeks like angry, red buffalo-gnats.

Round and round the pony pranced, its side pumping bright, liquid ooze as it danced its life away. The hawks’-bells he had tied for medicine in its mane tinkling with every dusty step into death.

Jack O’Neill watched the animal crumple to its side twenty yards out on the prairie. It had been a gift presented to him by Roman Nose. Now leg-running its way to a last breath.

As the four painted legs slowed to a stop, Jack sensed the hair standing on the back of his neck. His eyes muled, turning back to gaze at the island through the leafy willow-branches. Realizing but for seconds and inches, he would have been the creature breathing his last on the sandy prairie at this moment.

He found himself giving thanks to the Cheyenne’s Everywhere Spirit, and for the first time was not ashamed to raise his face to the summer sky overhead in real prayer. Not the dancing, hand-waving, all-consuming trance both the black Bible-thumping preachers and sorcerers alike preferred to work up among their sweating congregations.

Jack felt the first tingle of real deliverance. For some reason he had been allowed to escape the white man’s bullets fired from that hole on the end of the island.

As the battle had dragged on earlier in the day, before the first charge that had taken the life of Roman Nose, the mulatto had joined Two Crows and other warriors in crawling through the swamp-willow near the riverbank, searching for the bodies of Weasel Bear and White Thunder. Among the plum-brush they came across Cloud Chief, Black Moon, and Bear Feathers, three who had gone into the willow as well to rescue bodies of their fallen friends.

Black Moon whispered, his eyes wide and expressive, “Be careful how you creep through the grass. The whitemen watch the grass. And when they see it move, they shoot at us. Three times they came close to hitting us.”

“I have a wound to show how close they come,” Bear Feathers said, pointing to a flesh wound across his right shoulder.

“You should go back,” Jack replied.

“No, Nibsi. We all come to fight the whitemen this day, eh?”

Jack nodded, smiling. “Yes. We have much blood to spill yet.” He sank to his belly once more, and led the rest into the grass, slowly parting the tall stalks, then inching forward, causing as little disturbance as possible.

He came to a stop, old Two Crows bumping against his leg.

“What is it, Nibsi? You stop.”

He smiled. “I see the bodies. Weasel Bear. White Thunder. They are ten feet from me.”

Jack rolled carefully onto his side when his eyes caught the grass moving directly behind them. The faces of two warriors poked through the dried stalks of grass.

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