The Shirt On His Back (31 page)

'Then—' January
frowned, trying to fit times together: the start of the rain, the time of the
shots. The dry inside of the roof wrought of boughs. 'Do you know what time the
old man left your camp? At sunset? Before?'

'You speak like
a fool,' snapped the warrior impatiently. 'You will die, and then you can seek
out the old medicine man and ask him yourself. And I, I care not when the old
man came to die, but only that my vengeance on those who killed my people be
accomplished. It will be soon,' he added quietly, 'and I will walk through
their camp as they are dying and ask them:
are you happy now, that you came into our lands
?’
He glanced
toward the bound men, lying still as the dead in the shadows just beyond the
small gem of the fire, and a bitter smile moved his lips. 'It will please me,
to make a beginning tonight.'

He walked away.
An owl passed close over the camp, wings silent as the wings of Death;
somewhere in the darkness some small thing squeaked in pain.

I am a fool.
January lay down again on his side. Only a fool would be troubled over that
sense of a pattern broken, a detail disturbed, when the next hour would bring
death in agony. Patiently, agonizingly, he began to work his wrists back and
forth against the rawhide:
it's leather.
It will stretch . . .

He wondered if
Shaw were doing the same.

We have to warn
the camp
. . .

Boden would find
some other occasion to broach his kegs of very expensive liquor, to keep Iron
Heart's good will. He would need it, for the long hunt ahead through the
wilderness. With those deaths, Iron Heart would be obligated to fulfill his
part of the bargain.

He
twisted at the rawhide, until his fingers lost their feeling. On the
mountainside the wolves howled, cold voices in the cold and empty darkness.
I have to succeed in this. I can't let Rose spend the next
year wondering what became of me. 1 won't let her raise our child alone, as
Bodenschatz made his poor Katerina raise hers
. . .

What had old
Klaus Bodenschatz made of it, traveling all those thousands of miles at his
son's behest? Ship and packet boat and steamboat up the brown Missouri, the
dirty clamor of Independence after the quiet cobblestones of Ingolstadt? He was
a scientist. Had he missed his greenhouses and his laboratory, the quiet order
of his days? Had he carried a notebook, full of observations and descriptions?

Had there been
some friend waiting for him, whose voice he'd conjured for himself in those
lonely miles? His son's deserted wife, his grandchildren? Or had he, like
Franz, honed his life to a weapon of vengeance for that lovely daughter for
whom he had never ceased to wear mourning?

He wished to
poison only Manitou,
Iron Heart had said. And when Iron
Heart and Dark Antlers had gone to watch the fight, the old man had left the
Omaha camp - for the first time since coming to the valley, January knew:
probably for the first time since he had joined the village back on the high
plains. Had crossed Horse Creek on that fallen tree and scrambled up the
wooded ridge . . .

And now he lay
in a shallow grave.

Beneath his
cheek, January felt the distant tremor of hooves.

Boden.

And when I can't
give them any specific information about who might or might not know about the
scheme to poison every man at the rendezvous, they'll start by carving up
Hannibal - who, like old Bodenschatz, had wanted only to do the office of
friendship
. . .

He turned to
look toward his friend and saw, to his astonishment, that Hannibal was gone.

In the same
instant that January stared, rather stupidly, at the place where the fiddler
had lain - how many minutes since last he'd looked? - he felt the blade of a
knife slide between his bound wrists and part the rawhide like kitchen string.
Beyond his feet he could glimpse Shaw lying suspiciously still . . .

The hoofbeats
strengthened in the darkness - the fire's glow had sunk to a red flicker no
bigger than a hat - and the camp guard all looked in the direction of the
sound. The other warriors rose, waked by the sound, gathering to welcome Charro
Morales - Frank Boden - as he rode into the camp . . .

And more
silently than January could have imagined possible for a man of his own size,
he rolled into the darkness where hands unseen were waiting to cut the thong
that bound his ankles. A hand took his arm, guided him, stumbling, between
trees of which he was barely conscious. He glanced back, saw that Shaw had
disappeared from where he'd been an instant ago.

Someone pushed
Goshen Clarke's brass-studded rifle into his hands.

The grip on his
arm tightened -
stand . . .

He saw ahead of
them the moving shadow of a bear, ambling between trees where a feather of
moonlight glimmered. Turning his head, he saw Shaw then - or Shaw's angular
silhouette against the reflection of the war camp's fire. Since those first
days of travel up the Platte, every man in the wagon-train - and later every
trapper he'd ever spoken to - had cautioned him:
don't stand by the fire, you 'II show yourself up . . .

And there was
Charro Morales - Frank Boden - in his bright Mexican jacket and his town boots,
standing by his horse, next to the fire, lit up as Bo Frye had been lit,
gesturing and arguing with Iron Heart with the red-gold gleam painting him
against the night behind him. January was conscious that this was what Shaw was
looking at too, small head turned like a raptor bird's, the slouched lines of
his body clumsy-graceful as a very old tomcat's as he brought up his rifle, for
a perfect shot that he couldn't miss . . .

And that would
bring every warrior in the camp after them, afoot and within fifty feet of
where they'd lain bound a few moments before.

You can kill
anything with one shot,
Tom had said.

You owe me, and
you owe Johnny
. . .

There wasn't
even the chance to say:
Don't . .
. because they were close enough yet to the Omahas that someone would have
heard.

Shaw stood for
all of three full seconds with his rifle raised. Then he lowered the barrel,
turned away, touched January's arm with one hand to move them all on up the
hill.

January could
hear the sawing pain of Hannibal's laboring breath, and, in a moment's whisper
of moonlight, he recognized that thin silhouette between the trees. He heard
also the susurration of heavy fabric: Veinte-y-Cinco. In another blink of
moonlight - they were following the trees, back east along the coulee - he made
out the heavy shoulders and bear-like head of Manitou Wildman.

Manitou led them
up the dry creek-bed at the bottom of the gully - pale boulders, jumbled stone
that wouldn't hold tracks. January caught Hannibal's arm as the fiddler
stumbled, the drag of his weight - even perceived through January's own aching
exhaustion - telling him that his friend was at the end of his strength. 'Go,'
the fiddler whispered, and staggered again. 'You'll never get away—'

January
tightened his hold. 'Rose will kill me if I make her find another Greek tutor.'

'I'm not
fooling.'

'Neither am I.'

'Please,' panted
Hannibal, and he made an effort to plant his feet. 'I've never been anything
but a waste of air and boot leather. Please don't make me die with my last
thought being that I caused the deaths of the only people I care about—'

'If I have to
carry you January doubled his fist in his friend's face - 'it's going to slow
me down. But I'll do it.'

'I got horses up
top of the draw,' rumbled Manitou. 'I'm guessin' Iron Heart's gonna head
straight north after you into open country. He may not. Left Hand - brave that
fetched Boden just now from the camp - brung him news that had him spittin'
nails.'

'What news?'

'Somebody been
an' burned one of the Omaha lodges at the rendezvous. Dunno what was in it—'

'I do.' Hannibal
gasped for breath, hand pressed hard to his ribs. 'I think that was Morning Star,
and the lodge she burned was the one where Iron Heart and Bodenschatz were
keeping the poison.'

'
Poison
?'

'The poison
Franz Bodenschatz and his father were going to put in all the liquor at the
rendezvous to serve Iron Heart's vengeance on the white man,' replied January
quietly. 'In exchange for Iron Heart's help in killing you.'

Manitou paused
for a moment in his long stride, looked back at January, silent as his
namesake, the great spirit-bear, in the starlight. It was too dark to see any
expression on his face, but January heard him, very slightly, sigh. Then he
turned and moved on.

After a long
time he said, 'They say you're a doctor, Winter Moon.'

'A surgeon,'
said January. 'I've studied medicines, but it's not my trade.'

'Ever done
mad-doctorin'?'

'I've known
mad-doctors.' January grimaced at the recollection of the asylums he'd
visited, in France and in Mexico. Remembered the patients twisting and groaning
in the so-called 'Utica crib', like a coffin wrought of bars; remembered the
way the lunatics would cry and plead not to be put into the 'swing', and the
surreal 'water cure' that left the half-drowned victim temporarily incapable of
any manifestation of their insanity, whatever voices might be screaming at them
in their wandering brain. 'I never had the impression that any of them were
doing anything more than guessing.'

They climbed in
silence, following a ridge of rock up the side of the draw now, toward one of
the outcroppings of granite that studded these arid hills among the trees.

'She could bring
me back,' said Manitou at last, very softly, into the stillness. 'Mina could.
Mina Bodenschatz. Only one who could, when I'd go blank.'

They moved
across the boulders, moccasins soundless on the granite. Wind breathed down on
them the smell of cloud; the air was clammy and cold.

'Silent Wolf
says -' Manitou's slow voice fumbled at the words - 'when I was born, at the
same time and same place a thunder spirit came into being and got trapped up in
my flesh. Makes as much sense as anything else I've heard. Lot more than those
mad-doctors in Munich.'

'You've been to
mad-doctors, then?'

'Oh God, yes. My
parents never would consult with 'em when I was little, when anger'd set me off
an' I'd do things I didn't remember . . .'cept in dreams. I was six or seven,
first time. Then not again 'til I was eleven. Air catches fire—' His big hand
gestured, trying to find expression, and the movement flinched and caught, as
it had by the ashes of the Blackfoot campfire, like he had a wound in his arm.
'I wake up, hours later, head hurtin' like I don't know there's human words to
tell it. I'll sometimes dream about what I did, maybe not 'til years later . .
.' He shook his head. 'I never have dreamed about Mina. Some nights it feels
like I'm gonna. Those nights I get myself drunk.'

'Do you know
what happened?'

'I know what
they said at the trial. By the time I was fourteen I figured out I could use
pain to bring myself out of it. I'd heat the top end of one of my mama's
knitting needles in the fire, brand myself on the inside of my arm or on the
thigh. If I caught it quick enough - 'tween the time somethin' would set me
off, an' the fire closin' in around my vision - I could pull out of it. Pa was
a doctor in Lucerne. We moved down to Nuremberg, I think so they wouldn't be
around his family or Mama's - so they wouldn't know about me. But he said

Mama did, too -
everyone would know there was somethin' goin' on, if I didn't be a doctor,
too.'

'You're Swiss,
then?'

'Yeah.' In the
sing-song German of the south, he added, 'It's been ten years since I spoke
German, but when I dream of the Alps - of the shepherds who worked for Mama's
family
they
all speak it, and I can still understand.' In the darkness, for an instant,
January heard the smile in the mountaineer's voice.