Heaven and Hell (95 page)

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have agreed to go except for eight of the Dog Men, who refuse to quit.

I said I would not lead grandfathers and infants to death just to preserve the honor of the Dog Men. It wounds my pride to go to the soldiers. I was brave once too. But I have learned that bravery and wisdom sometimes cannot walk together. Life is more precious than pride."

Charles wiped stew from the corner of his mouth. He said nothing.

He hadn't slept in twenty-four hours. But he wanted to be on his way. Red Bear endorsed that. "The Dog Men know you are here. They are angry."

Then the wise thing was to hurry out of the village. Ceremoni 602 HEAVEN AND HELL

ously, he thanked Red Bear's kindly wife and the chief for welcoming them. He said he would like to say goodbye to Green Grass Woman.

The chief's wife led him to a nearby tipi where she'd made the girl comfortable. Beside a small fire, bundled in a buffalo robe, Green Grass Woman lay with her head and shoulders elevated by a woven backrest.

Charles took her hand.

"You'll be all right now."

The puffy eyes welled with new tears. "No man will ever have me. I love you so. I wish you had lain with me once."

"So do I." He leaned down, holding his beard aside as he kissed her mouth lightly. She cried in silence; he could feel her shaking. He caressed her face, then stood and slipped through the oval hole into the slackening rain.

Stars began to shine through translucent clouds blowing across the sky. Red Bear saw them to the edge of the camp, then turned back. The freshening wind tossed Charles's beard. He patted Satan, watched the clearing sky, began to hum the little melody that reminded him of home.

Beside him, Gray Owl trotted his pony and observed his friend cautiously.

What the Indian saw brought a fleeting smile.

They spied a lone horseman motionless on a low rise ahead and thought nothing of it. Some boy on duty with the horses, Charles assumed.

He angled the piebald toward the stream to avoid passing too near the sentinel. The Indian suddenly loped down off the rise to intercept them.

"What's this?" Charles wondered aloud. Then his mouth dried.

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The Cheyenne was speeding toward them, booting his pony. In one hand he carried a lance, in the other a carbine with long feathers tied to the muzzle. Something about the rider's head and torso reminded him of--

Gray Owl reined in, despair in his eyes.

"Man-Ready-for-War," he said.

And so it was. Older now, but still handsome, though there was a famished, fugitive look about him. He wore his regalia and full paint.

Around his neck hung his wing-bone whistle and the stolen silver cross.

From shoulder to hip ran a wide sash painted yellow and red and heavily quilled and feathered. When Charles saw the sash he remembered Scar had been chosen a Dog-String Wearer.

In the light of the clearing sky, the huge white scar fish-hooking from the tip of the brow down around the jawbone was quite visible.

Satan snorted nervously, smelling the Cheyenne pony as it trotted up.

"Others told me you were here," Scar said.

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"We have no quarrel anymore, Scar."

"Yes. We do."

"Damn you, I don't want to fight you."

Wind fluttered the golden eagle feathers tied to the barrel of the carbine. Scar rammed his lance point in the muddy earth. "I have waited for you many winters. I remember how the old one tore away my manhood."

"And

I remember how you repaid him. Let it go, Scar."

"No. I will pin my sash to the earth here. You will not pass by unless it is to walk the Hanging Road."

Charles thought a moment. In English, he said to Gray Owl, "We can bolt and outrun him."

Gray Owl's morose old eyes were despairing again. He pointed to the rise. The starlight showed that four warriors had appeared there to insure they would not escape.

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Sick at heart, Charles flung off his black hat. He pushed the gypsy robe over his head and laid it across his saddle. He dismounted, handed Satan's rein to Gray Owl and drew his Bowie from his belt and waited.

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Scar drove his lance down through the slit at the end of his sash, pinning it. The lance vibrated as he let go. Charles understood what the sash said. To the death.

The Dog Society man began to mutter and chant. He untied a thong at his waist to free a wood-handled axe. He raised axe and carbine over his head in some ritual supplication Charles didn't understand. Then he ran the edge of the iron head along the carbine's barrel, back and forth, a whetstone rasp. Sparks spurted.

I've had enough, Charles thought. Texas, Virginia, Sharpsburg, the Washita. Augusta, Constance, Bent's razor--is it endless?

With a grunt, Scar threw the carbine away. The gun tumbled barrel over stock and landed unseen in the dark. Chanting louder, he kicked out of his moccasins. He sidled around to the right, presenting his shoulder and forearm. He showed the axe, then began to swing it clockwise in a small taunting circle. Suddenly he struck out straight toward Charles, the blade horizontal.

The ground was soggy, the grass still brown and scant after the winter freezes. Charles's foot slipped as he raised the Bowie in both hands and blocked the axe blow, edge against edge. Scar's force drove his arm on. The axe head slid off the knife and whistled past Charles's ear. Charles stabbed at the lunging body, a hard target in the starry dark. He missed.

Scar's sash limited his movement, Charles's only advantage.

He knew that if he just walked away, out of Scar's reach, the four riders would come down for him. So he had to finish it here, God help him.

Once more Scar came sidling in, rotating the axe in the clockwise 604

The Hanging Road 605

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circle. He swung. Charles ducked. He swung again. Charles ducked again, but he felt the iron pluck at his hair. He stabbed upward. Pricked the inside of Scar's left sleeve. The Dog Soldier leaped away nimbly, turning like a dancer to unwind the sash twisted around him.

Charles crouched, both hands high in the traditional stance of the knife fighter. The Bowie twinkled in the starlight. Already the two men had churned their little patch of ground to choppy mud. It sucked at Charles's boots as he sidestepped, awaiting the next feint or slash.

Scar chanted and tossed his axe to his left hand. Charles shifted to counter the move. Turning toward Scar's left hand opened the left side of his body to attack. Without warning, Scar tossed the axe back, laughing deep in his belly as he chopped with his right hand.

Charles's right-to-left parry slashed the inside of Scar's forearm.

Scar reacted by jerking the axe upward. Charles reached for it with his left hand and Scar kicked with his right foot. The hard blow struck Charles's groin. He reeled, lost his balance in the mud, fell.

Scar screeched like a boy who'd won a game. He jumped on Charles with both knees, then rolled him from his side to his back. He seized Charles's knife hand and pushed it over his head into the mud. The axe swung high, a black wedge against a familiar milky veil of stars.

The axe came down. Charles wrenched his head the other way; felt the blade scrape his hair before it buried in the mud. He twisted his knife hand and pricked Scar's knuckles. Scar yelled, more surprised than hurt.

Charles tried to jerk his knife hand free. Scar held fast. Charles smelled the rancid grease Scar had used to dress his body before he applied his paint. Scar swung the muddy axe down again, and again Charles twisted away. The wrenching movement freed his knife hand.

He spiked the Bowie through the upper part of Scar's left arm.

The Dog Society man dropped the axe. The blunt top of the blade bounced off Charles's temple. Sear was breathing harshly; in pain. Charles clamped the Cheyenne's chin in his left hand, his right hand with the knife well inside Scar's bleeding left arm. He felt the chin clamped in his left hand turn to flaccid weight. The wound was draining Scar quickly.

Charles had only to reach up and cut his throat.

"Stab him," Gray Owl said from the dark.

Charles's knife hand began to shake. Scar hung over him like a meal sack someone was filling; it became heavier and heavier.

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Reach up.

He couldn't do it. He pushed with his left hand and rolled from underneath as Scar tumbled away. He'd whipped him. That was enough.

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He felt a hand snatch at his right thigh before he comprehended what it was. Gray Owl ran forward as Scar sat up, cocking the Army Colt he'd plucked from Charles's holster. Despite the mud coating the piece, the mechanism worked. Gray Owl stepped in front of Charles to shield him, and the two Cheyennes exchanged shots. The tracker took the one meant for Charles.

Scar's head flung backward in the mud with a sloppy splash. He was hit, though Charles couldn't tell where. Up on the rise, the ponies of the four riders neighed and tossed their heads. Gray Owl sank to his knees and discharged three more rounds at them. In Cheyenne, he shouted that Scar was killed. The Indians hastily formed a file and trotted out of sight.

Gray Owl exhaled, a weary sound. Charles scraped mud out of his eyes and crawled toward the tracker as he relaxed and slipped down onto his back. In the village someone raised an alarm.

Charles lifted Gray Owl in his arms. The tracker's shirt was slippery with mud and blood. The starlight whitened his face, which showed a remarkable repose.

"I found the way for us, my good friend. Now I go on."

"Gray Owl, Gray Owl," Charles said in a broken voice.

"I go on as my vision foretold. I go--"

''Gray Owl."

"There." With a tremor in his hand, Gray Owl reached for the veil of stars. The Hanging Road. His hand fell back to the bosom of his shirt and Charles heard the rattle and felt the shudder as he died.

He held Gray Owl's body while he studied that of Scar, motionless with the Army Colt in his hand. He knew there was something he should do but exhaustion and confusion kept it from him a few moments.

Then he remembered. He envisioned a platform high in a tree, nearer to heaven. It was his duty to build that for Gray Owl, a good man. He had believed his gods wanted him to lead others, even if that led him to exile, and the white man's path, and death. To the end he was faithful to the vision. Charles wished he had something as strong to believe
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in.

But he did. He remembered Gus. He remembered Willa.

Gently he laid the body on the muddy grass. He slipped twice gaining his feet. He heard clamorous voices behind him. Red Bear and his people. They would help him build Gray Owl's resting place. He turned around to wait for them.

Dying but not dead, Scar raised himself a few inches and shot Charles in the back.

The Hanging Road 607

GEO HAZARD

CARE OF HAZARDS

LEHIGH STATION

PENNSYLVANIA

THE CRIMINAL BENT APPREHENDED AND EXECUTED

IN THE INDIAN TERRITORY ON THE 27TH INST.

I HAVE THE EARRING.

CHARLES MAIN

FT LEAVENWORTH KANS

BY TELEGRAPH

MADELINE S JOURNAL

May, i86g. The press has a new hare to chase. Charleston papers are full of revelations from Washington about the Dixie Stores.

Cannot believe the name associated with the scandal.

"Unfortunate," said the Boss. "Very unfortunate, Stanley. I thought you'd make an excellent congressman from your district when Muldoon retires at the end of the next term. You're well known, you can afford to campaign, your positions are highly principled."

Stanley knew what that last meant. He was obedient to orders from the state machine, which was under his guest's absolute control.

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The two of them were seated near the bust of Socrates at the Concourse, Stanley's favorite club. Stanley's face had a pale and saggy look these days. He was standing fast in the face of daily exposes, principally in the'Star. Although Stanley was forty-seven and his guest, Simon Cameron, seventy, Stanley felt that the Boss was the more vigorous.

He'd stayed slim. His hair showed no sign of thinning and his gray eyes revealed none of the dullness of imminent senility that Stanley noted in some men Cameron's age. The Boss had returned to the Senate in '67, and had never been so powerful. Political intrigue agreed with him.

Reflective, Cameron sipped his Kentucky whiskey. A warm spring twilight gilded the windows near them. "As to circumstances now," he resumed, "I must be candid with you. Usury may not be illegal but it is certainly unpopular. And Northerners have grown tired of flogging 6o8 HEAVEN AND HELL

the South. The Dixie affair has actually generated a surge of sympathy for the victims of carpetbag profiteers." He raised a hand to placate his host. "That's a newspaper term, my boy, not mine. But it is regrettable that the moment Dills was confronted with that Klansman's confession, he caved in."

Stanley snapped his fingers to summon one of the servile waiters.

He called for another round so blithely, Cameron was puzzled. Stanley was under enormous pressure because of the stories linking him to ownership of Mercantile Enterprises, which owned the forty-three Dixie Stores throughout South Carolina. Almost daily Stanley made a public denial of his guilt; he explained nothing, merely professed his innocence with the determination of old Stonewall resisting the enemy at First Bull Run.

Given Stanley's past behavior, Cameron expected him to be not only visibly tired, which he was, but also completely unnerved, which he was not. Remarkable.

Stanley said, "I presume Dills cooperated in hopes of keeping what's left of his practice. In the past year or so his circumstances have been greatly reduced. No one's sure about the reason. He had to resign from this club, for example. He couldn't afford it any longer."

"Like our friend Dills, I presume you'd like to keep something, too? Such as your good name?" The lean old Scotsman's face showed a familiar severity. "You have no political future without it."