Sin Killer Page 30

  Tasmin had just noticed that Pomp Charbonneau was missing. Irritated only last evening by his determination to walk her home, she now found that she wanted him back. She didn’t mean to allow the hot-eyed Scot to catch her alone, and Pomp could have been some help in that regard.

  “Let me see that nose, Kit,” she said, walking over to the mountain men.

  “It’s stopped bleeding—wiggles funny, though,” Kit admitted.

  “If I promise not to wiggle it, will you walk me home?” Tasmin asked.

  “What an odd place your country is,” Tasmin said, as they neared her camp. “I was struck, you broke your nose, and my brother lost an eye. Makes one feel lucky to be alive at all.”

  Kit Carson, silent and shy, merely tipped his cap when he left Tasmin at her tent.

  12

  … naked, mutilated, frozen, scalped…

  THEY found the first two engagés—naked, mutili-ated, frozen, scalped, eyes gone, genitals gone, leg bones split—more than ten miles from the river.

  “These two made a good run for it,” Jim observed.

  “Not good enough,” Pomp said—he was worried about his father.

  “Your pa’s got along with the Sioux for thirty years,” Jim reminded him. “They wouldn’t be this hard on your pa.”

  “When someone like the Partezon gets in a killing mood, thirty years may not mean much,” Pomp said.

  Tasmin’s staghound, Tintamarre, they found not far from the river, speared and frozen stiff.

  “That dog was bad to run off,” Jim said.

  The steamer Rocky Mount was now just a few piles of charred planks, scattered over the river ice. Master Jeremy Thaw had had his skull split open with an axe. George Aitken and Holger Sten were both scalped, burned, and cut.

  “I liked George Aitken,” Jim remarked. “He ought not to have traveled so slow.”

  “Probably the old lord’s fault,” Pomp said. “He kept George waiting so he could hunt.”

  None of the other engagés could be found, nor was there any sign of Toussaint Charbonneau and his wife, Coal. The Hairy Horn was missing as well.

  “I expect your pa left,” Jim reasoned. “Maybe the Hairy Horn finally decided he wanted to go home.”

  “That’s the hopeful view,” Pomp said. Most of the plainsmen he knew considered his father an old fool who could barely find his way from one river to the next; and yet his father had survived when many a better-equipped man had fallen. Some lucky instinct seemed, at the last moment, to propel him out of harm’s way. Perhaps it would be so this time, as well.

  They wrapped the corpses of George Aitken, Holger Sten, and Jeremy Thaw in a few scraps of blankets, hasty and imperfect shrouds, but all they had. Since the ground was frozen hard, burial presented a problem.

  “George was a waterman,” Jim said. “Maybe we can cut through the ice.”

  They carried the corpses far out on the ice, hacked holes with their hatchets, and shoved the bodies through. Neither felt quite right about it but there was no better option.

  Jim Snow noticed another thing. The victims had been hacked and burned and stuck with arrows, but no one had been shot.

  “That’s the Partezon’s way,” Pomp reminded him. “I expect he may have a few guns but he don’t use ’em much, and he won’t let his people take nothing from the whites. His womenfolk still use bone needles. I think he may trade for a little corn with the Mandans, but otherwise he lives way off in the center of the plains. He tries to keep his people true to the old ways.”

  “Probably that’s why he came all this way to burn a steamboat,” Jim suggested. “Once steamers start coming up this river there won’t be any Indians left to keep to the old ways—or any ways.”

  Jim had never met the Partezon—he had just heard tales. Though not a large man, he was said to be able to shoot an arrow clean through a running buffalo, which suggested a powerful arm. He himself had tried the trick a number of times but with no success—he could only get the arrow to go in to the haft. A chief powerful enough to keep his people from trading their independence for the cheap baubles of the whites was a man to be reckoned with. That he killed with a vengeance was evident from the bodies they had found. Plenty of Indians would kill their enemies in a painful manner, but the Partezon had brought his warriors several hundred miles for a purpose—to keep the steamboats out. He had come with at least a hundred warriors, too, judging from the tracks. Few chiefs could boast of full control over their warriors—the young ones, particularly, were apt to bolt and spoil a good ambush. But the Partezon had kept control. Just knowing he was there gave the plains a menacing feel.

  “Let’s follow the Partezon a ways, and see where he’s headed,” Pomp suggested; but then he recalled that Jim Snow had a wife to think about.

  “I suppose you might be needing to get back to Tasmin,” Pomp said. “I can track the Partezon for a day or two and then go look for my pa.”

  At the mere mention of Tasmin, Jim felt filled with confusion again. He wasn’t yet clear in his mind or his feelings, when it came to Tasmin—he felt in no hurry to go back.

  “I guess I’ll stay with you,” he said, a little awkwardly—but Pomp seemed not to mind the awkwardness. He was staring at a small, conical hill about half a mile away. The hill was mostly bare, but had a gnarled tree—cedar, probably—on top, a single tree with a dusting of snow.

  Pomp looked troubled.

  “That hill looks familiar,” he said—“but it ought to be farther south. There’s a hill just like that down by Manuel Lisa’s old fort, where my mother is buried.”

  Jim looked at the tree—it seemed to him that he had seen a hill remarkably similar to this one—hadn’t it been near the South Platte?

  “Maybe it’s the wandering hill—they say you usually find it where there’s been killings,” Pomp said.

  Jim had heard of the wandering hill several times— it was a heathenish legend that many tribes seemed to believe. The hill was said to be inhabited with short, fierce devils with large heads, who killed travelers with deadly arrows made of grass blades, which they could shoot great distances.

  “If that’s the hill with the devils in it they’d have a hard time finding grass blades to shoot at us, with all this snow,” Jim said.

  Pomp was still staring at the strange, bare little hill.

  “My mother believed in the wandering hill,” he said. “She claimed to have seen it way off over the mountains somewhere—near the Snake River, I think.”

  “Well, I thought I saw it once myself—on the South Platte,” Jim admitted. “What do you think?”

  Pomp shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t remember that particular hill being here the last time I came this way.”

  They had not gone a mile more before they found the other engagés. They had tried to make a stand in a thicket of tall reeds but had been burned out by the Indians and treated as the other engagés had been. Wolves had been at the corpses.

  “I hate to leave men just laying dead on the ground,” Jim said. “It feels unholy.”

  “I agree,” Pomp said—he was still troubled in his thinking about that odd little hill.

  They covered the dead engagés with driftwood and rocks. The wolves would eventually dig through to them, but it would take them a while.

  That night, from a ridge, they saw the Partezon’s campfires, red glows far ahead.

  “Look at those fires,” Pomp said. “That could be two hundred Sioux. The Partezon sure wasn’t taking any chances.”

  “Nope—why would he?” Jim said.

  13

  Gladwyn felt a prickle of apprehension…

  GLADWYN felt a prickle of apprehension when the old warrior on the white horse rode into the Sans Arc camp. Many warriors, from many bands, visited the Sans Arc to look at the Buffalo Man—women came, and small children were brought here for him to bless. When visitors stared at him Gladwyn spoke loudly in Gaelic to impress upon everyone that
he was a god, a holy fool, born of a buffalo cow.

  Always, when there were visitors, Three Geese, his discoverer, and Grasshopper, his protector, kept up a constant chatter, describing the miraculous birth which they both now claimed to have witnessed. With White Hawk dead of fever there was no one to contradict them, yet skeptics remained, old Cat Head in particular. Cat Head often proclaimed his disbelief, but he was not a popular man; the council of elders refused to listen to him.

  But it was Cat Head who, losing patience with his gullible tribesmen, went off into the prairies and returned with the old warrior on the white horse, an old man who looked at Gladwyn with unflinching hatred. The old one had brought only a few young warriors with him, but Gladwyn felt frightened anyway. The wild newcomers looked as if they could easily wipe out the whole Sans Arc village, should they choose. Gladwyn didn’t even bother with his Gaelic— these were not men to be impressed with a little babbling.

  “You see, I told you,” Cat Head said to the Partezon. “As you can see he is just an ordinary white man, and yet these fools believe he came out of a buffalo.”

  Three Geese was horrified at the situation he found himself in. Cat Head, without asking anyone, had gone off and persuaded the Partezon to come look at the Buffalo Man. Long ago Cat Head had ridden with the Partezon’s band, but then he had hurt his back during a hunt and ever since had been leading an easy life in the Sans Arc village, with three wives to see to his needs. Cat Head was vain and sharp spoken—he was always causing trouble, but rarely this much trouble.

  “What is this foolishness?” the Partezon asked Three Geese. “This is just a white man.”

  “He is a white man, but he came out of a buffalo cow. I saw it and so did Grasshopper,” Three Geese said.

  “If he came out of a buffalo cow once then he ought to be able to do it again,” the Partezon declared. He spoke sharply to his young warriors, who immediately wheeled their horses and raced off into the prairie.

  Gladwyn could not understand what was being said, but one thing was clear enough: the old man on the white horse didn’t like him. In fact his dislike was so strong that the Sans Arc themselves began to dislike him as well. The whole tribe stopped whatever they were doing and waited idly to see what would happen. His own wives, Big Stealer and Little Stealer, always so eager to get him whatever he wanted, now backed away, waiting, with the other Sans Arc, for the old man’s verdict.

  The old chief did not bother to dismount and take a close look. He waited, his cold gaze unchanged.

  Three Geese began to feel very uncomfortable. It seemed to him that people were turning against him—even Grasshopper had left his position behind the white man. Three Geese, who had found the white man and witnessed the miracle of his arrival, was losing status by the minute. The Partezon was the most respected of all living Sioux. No one challenged him. Thanks to the meddling Cat Head, the Partezon was now there, in the Sans Arc village. Three Geese felt like leaving—he thought he might go live with his brother in the Miniconjou band. Only, for now, it was too late. Whatever test the Partezon intended to make would have to be waited out.

  Soon, from the prairies to the north, came the tiyiing of the hunters. A great cloud of dry snow was being kicked up by the racing horses. The young warriors the Partezon had sent away were now coming back, running a large buffalo cow between them. Three warriors raced on each side of the big cow, driving her straight into the Sans Arc camp. People fell back in astonishment, but the Partezon’s young warriors knew what they were doing. As the big cow, almost exhausted, lumbered into the camp, the lead hunter leaned over so close that he was almost touching the buffalo and loosed an arrow, then another.

  The buffalo cow ran a few more yards, then stumbled and went to her knees. For a moment she knelt, her breath steaming, coughing blood onto the snow, and then she fell over. The Partezon made a gesture— the six young warriors jumped off their horses and rolled the cow onto her back, at which point the Partezon dismounted and walked over to the buffalo, now spread wide as the young warriors pulled back her legs.

  “I need a sharp knife,” the Partezon said. “Mine is dull from cutting up those Frenchmen we caught.”

  He looked at the Sans Arc women—his tone was mild. In a short while, to Gladwyn’s horror, his own wife Big Stealer emerged from their lodge and gave the old man a sharp butcher knife, a blade he inspected critically.

  “I can make a better knife than this, but right now we have to make a good womb for your Buffalo Man,” he said.

  Gladwyn felt terror seize him—he didn’t know what the old man was saying, but he knew that his days as a holy fool for the Sans Arc were over. He wanted to leap to his feet and flee, but the whole band was close around him now—he would not get ten yards. All he could do was sit, numb with fear, waiting.

  The Partezon, working hard with what he considered an inadequate knife, slit the buffalo cow up her whole length, from anus to nose. He made the cut as deep as he could, and then instructed his young men to lift out the guts, armful after steaming armful. The warriors were soon bloody to their shoulders. The Partezon had them string out the guts in long lines and coils—he waved, and the hungry Sans Arc children rushed on them. Those who had knives cut themselves sections—others gnawed at the slippery coils with their teeth.

  While the children of the Sans Arc feasted on gut, the Partezon had the buffalo cow—which was still breathing—cleaned out as completely as possible, opening the rib cage wide, making a large red cavity. When the cow died the old warrior borrowed an axe and broke off most of her ribs—then he turned to the Sans Arc and pointed at Gladwyn.

  “Sew him in the buffalo,” he said. “If he is a Buffalo Man, like Three Geese believes, then he will soon slip out again. Then I will know that I have been wrong and that he is indeed a god.”

  It seemed to Gladwyn that a thousand eyes were on him—all he saw were the eyes, as he began to scream. All the eyes were hard now, like the old warrior’s eyes. Though he screamed and screamed, the warriors stripped him naked, removed the nice skins his young wives had sewed for him, and then shoved and squeezed until they had pushed him into the red carcass of the ripped-open buffalo cow. The same blood that had once warmed him and kept him alive now filled his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils—he gasped in blood when he tried to breathe.

  “He is too large—he won’t fit in this buffalo,” one of the Partezon’s warriors complained.

  “Then cut his feet off—if he is a god he can grow more feet when he comes out,” the Partezon instructed, handing the warrior the axe. The chopping was soon done, but even when Gladwyn had been crammed into the cavity of the dead buffalo, sewing him in did not prove easy. He struggled far longer than anyone had expected him to. His own blood now flowed into the buffalo, whose warm blood had once saved him. Even when the women pulled the sinews tighter Gladwyn somehow managed to gasp in air. When the sewing was nearly finished he managed to thrust a hand out—but this was a last effort; with the loss of blood Gladwyn slowly weakened; his staring eyes did not close, but he slowly ceased to see.

  “I want that hand—I have never had the hand of a Buffalo Man before,” the Partezon said. “Perhaps it will help us in the hunt.”

  The hand was easily cut off, but the young warrior who removed it began to have uneasy feelings about the whole business.

  “He hasn’t been in there long—I think he might come out when we leave,” the young warrior said. “His eyes are still open—I don’t like it.”

  “If you think that, then you are as big a fool as Three Geese,” the Partezon said. He cleaned the butcher knife in the snow before giving it back to Big Stealer. Then he mounted his white horse and left the camp.

  Later that same day Three Geese and his wives also left the Sans Arc camp and went to live with his brother, among the Miniconjous. In the eyes of the Sans Arc his disgrace was complete. If he stayed with the Sans Arc old Cat Head would never let him forget that he had been foolish enough to suppose that a man had been
born of a buffalo.

  Three Geese and his wives were not the only Sans Arc to relocate. The dead buffalo lay right in the middle of the Sans Arc camp, with the dead man inside it. The stump of his arm still protruded and his eyes were still open, staring at nothing.

  “This is a pretty bad thing to look at,” Cat Head concluded. “I don’t want to get up every morning and see that buffalo, with that arm sticking out of it and those eyes staring.”

  For once, Cat Head expressed a sentiment shared by the whole tribe. In two hours’ time all the Sans Arc tepees had been folded, goods were packed on travois, and the tribe was on the move. As they left their camp it began to snow heavily. By the time Cat Head himself was ready to leave the old camp, the dead buffalo was only a mound in the snow. Leaving it behind made Cat Head feel so good that he decided to make Big Stealer and Little Stealer his wives. After all, they were competent girls, and they had no husband now.

  14

  … a Hidatsa boy had just come running up with news…

  “THE Partezon is my half brother, but he doesn’t like me,” the Hairy Horn informed them. They were in the trader John Skraeling’s camp—a Hidatsa boy had just come running up with news that the steamer Rocky Mount had been attacked and burned. Toussaint Charbonneau shook his head sadly; it was just as he had feared, from the moment they heard that the Partezon was on the move. He and Coal and the Hairy Horn had left the boat just in time.

  “Why don’t he like you?” the trader, Skraeling, asked. He too had taken precautions when he heard of the Partezon’s advance, camping near the Mandan villages in what he hoped was a neutral zone.

  “He didn’t like it that I went to see the president,” the Hairy Horn replied. “He thinks he is better than the president. He doesn’t bargain with the white men, or make treaties with them, or smoke the peace pipe.”