The Scalp Hunters

Chapter Ten

The hard part was not knowing when the scalp hunters would catch up. It was like sour food in the pit of Evelyn’ s stomach, an ache that wouldn’t go away. The others were worried, too. She could see it in their faces. Except for Plenty Elk. He didn’t seem worried at all. Maybe it was the deaths of his friends. He acted eager for a fight, as if he had something to prove. Whatever his reasons, Evelyn was glad he was there.

Waku and his family weren’t fighters. The Nansusequa had been a peaceful tribe. They fought only when provoked. From what Evelyn could gather, most eastern tribes didn’t esteem counting coup as highly as tribes west of the Mississippi River. Why that should be was another of life’s many mysteries.

All morning they rode hard. When the sun was at its zenith, they stopped to rest their lathered mounts.

Evelyn passed out pemmican. She gave a piece to Plenty Elk and he signed his thanks. He had more to sign.

‘Scalp men catch us tomorrow.’

‘No today?’

‘They have far ride where black man kill my friend. They have far ride here.’

Evelyn wasn’t so sure. The scalp hunters would push hard, too. ‘Maybe when sun go down.’

‘Question. White men fight night?’

‘Yes.’ Evelyn was aware many tribes usually only waged war during the day. Some whites believed it was due to a superstitious taboo. Common sense was the real reason. Fighting in the dark, when a person could hardly see, was an invite to an early grave.

‘Question. You have husband?’

Evelyn was startled. It had been her experience that Indian men, especially Indian men her age, only asked that question when they had designs in that direction. ‘I have no mate,’ she signed.

‘You beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You smell good.’

Evelyn was flabbergasted. Here they were, fleeing for their lives from a pack of demons in human guise, and this young warrior was trying to court her. ‘You smell my sweat,’ she signed.

‘Sweat smell good,’ Plenty Elk persisted.

Men, Evelyn decided, were too ridiculous for words. She smiled and went over to Dega and gave him a piece of pemmican from the beaded parfleche her mother had made.

“What you two hand talk about?” Dega asked.

“Nothing much.”

Dega had been watching them closely, and he was sure it was more than nothing. He had seen her face, seen how she reacted to something the Arapaho warrior signed. “Him have big ears.”

“Excuse me?”

Dega touched one of his own ears to emphasize how much smaller his were. “His ears too much big. Look funny.”

“I thought the Nansusequa don’t judge people by how they look but by how they are inside,” Evelyn reminded him.

“We do.” Dega felt it necessary to justify his lapse. “I not judge his ears. I just say they big.”

“He can’t help how he was born.”

That she would defend the Arapaho worried Dega considerably. “You like his ears more or my ears more?”

“Ears are ears.”

“Please. Which ears best?”

Was it her imagination, Evelyn asked herself, or was Dega jealous? “Mountain lion ears are sharpest,” she answered, and went over to Teni. The older girl took a piece of pemmican and thanked her in the Nansusequa tongue.

Dega squatted and held a counsel with himself. Perhaps it was time he told Evelyn how he felt. Until now he had hidden his true feelings, afraid that if he revealed them, she would want nothing more to do with him.

Evelyn faced east and shielded her eyes with her hand. The distant haze was unbroken save by a flock of birds in flight. She turned and nearly bumped into Waku, who had come up behind her. “Goodness. Scare a person, why don’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. I’m jumpy.”

“No sign of the scalp men yet.” Waku had been anxiously watching their back trail all morning.

“Not yet, no.” Evelyn had been thinking, and she had an idea. For it to work, she needed to know something. “Tell me. Will your family kill if they have to?”

“My son and me kill if bad men catch us,” Waku promised.

“No, not just you two,” Evelyn clarified. “What about Tihikanima and Teni and little Miki? Have they ever killed?”

“They are women. They are not warriors.” Waku liked the Kings, liked them dearly, but they were too prone to violence. In that regard they were no different from the tribes of the region, who waged war for the sheer excitement. An attitude that ran contrary to all he believed. The Nansusequa valued peace above all else.

“Shoshone women will kill to defend their village. The same with the Sioux and the Crows and the Blackfeet,” Evelyn said. “Will your wife and daughters do the same?”

It hit Waku, then, what she was suggesting. “You want them to help kill the scalp men?”

“We could ambush the whole bunch,” Evelyn proposed. “Plenty Elk says there are nine of them. Well, there are seven of us. I could give one of my pistols to your wife and another to Teni. You and Dega both have bows. So does Plenty Elk. I have my rifle. If we did it right, if we let them come up close so we couldn’t miss, we could drop six of them before they got off a shot. That would leave three for us to deal with.”

Waku was amazed she would propose subjecting his wife and daughters to such terror. “Not Tihi, Teni and Miki.”

“I can teach Tihi and Teni to shoot the pistols. It’s no feat at all if your target is near enough. You just point and squeeze.”

“No.”

“Why not? It’s our best chance of ending this and saving all our lives. The scalp hunters won’t ride into an ambush twice.”

“Not my wife and daughters.”

“You don’t want them to kill even when they might be killed? Where’s the logic in that?”

“You do not understand,” Waku said.

“Enlighten me.” Evelyn was convinced an ambush would work but only once. They must make it count. They must slay as many scalp hunters as they could with their first volley of lead and arrows.

“You are a white girl…”

“I’m half Indian,” Evelyn reminded him.

“Your mother is Indian, yes. But you do not look like her. You look like your father. You are more white than Indian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Tihikanima and Tenikawaku and Mikikawaku are Nansusequa. They live the Nansusequa way. We are raised to not take life unless we must.”

“We have to now, or we’re goners.”

Waku sighed. There were times when it seemed that the white solution to every conflict was to kill. His people had been wiped out by whites who craved their land, and the only way those whites could think of to get it was to kill every last Nansusequa. That the Nansusequa wouldn’t have given the land up under any circumstance was beside the point.

Waku had noticed the same trait in his new white friends, to a greater or lesser degree. Zach King, Evelyn’s brother, was a notorious manslayer. Shakespeare McNair, mentor to her father, had no qualms about slaying an enemy. As for Nate King, he had done his share, but always reluctantly, always when there was no other recourse.

Of all the whites Waku ever met, he respected Nate King the most. Nate’s outlook was a lot like his own. It was to be regretted that more people, red and white, didn’t share their view. Many fewer lives would be lost.

“Tell me, then,” Evelyn prompted. “What do you want to do? How do you want to deal with the scalp men?”

Waku had to think to remember the right word. “Flee.”

“You want to run?”

“If run is the same as flee, yes.”

Now it was Evelyn who sighed. “Do you realize how far we are from the foothills? What chance do you think we have of reaching them alive with the scalp men after us every foot of the way?”

“We must try.”

To Evelyn it was lunacy. The scalp hunters were bound to overtake them. “When they catch us, as they surely will, what will you and your family do then? Turn and fight?”

“If they catch us, yes.”

Evelyn had been raised to respect her elders. Her inclination was to bow to his wishes. Giving in, though, could cost them to pay too high a price for his ideal.

“My family will run,” Waku declared. “We will not fight if we can help it.”

Evelyn’s exasperation knew no bounds. Tihi, Teni and even Dega would do as Waku told them. To try to talk them into bucking him would be a waste of her breath. The only one Evelyn could count on to side with her was Plenty Elk, and the two of them alone stood no chance at all against nine hardened cutthroats. “You’re making a mistake.”

“It will not be my first.”

Disappointed, Evelyn went off by herself a dozen yards, tucked her legs under her, and gloomily munched on a piece of pemmican. When a shadow fell across her she sensed who it was before he spoke.

“You look much sad.”

“Your pa won’t listen to reason.”

Dega sat across from her. “I see you talk to him. I see your face. I come make you smile.”

“Tucking our tails between our legs isn’t how we should deal with this. When your back is to the wall you bite and scratch.”

“Tuck tails?”

“It means to run. That’s what your pa wants to do. Run until they’re on top of us. But unless we whittle down the odds first, I’m afraid we’ll all be bald before the week is out.” Evelyn smiled thinly at her poor joke.

Dega repeated her statements in his head. He understood the running part and the bald part but the whittling part was a puzzle. To whittle had to do with carving wood with a knife. Shakespeare McNair liked to whittle. How that had anything to do with the scalp hunters was beyond him. He fished for more information by saying, “You think whittle good idea?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it, to get in the first licks? Catch them with their guard down. Maybe make half of them goners before they know what hit them.”

Once again Dega wrestled with her meaning. Licking was what a person did with their tongue, but she certainly couldn’t be suggesting they lick the scalp hunters. As for goners, that sounded a lot like gone, and gone was when someone went away. So she must be saying that she would like half the scalp hunters to go away. But where? And what was to stop them from coming back? He began to despair of ever learning the white tongue.

“I wish my pa was here. Or Zach. They’re better at this sort of thing than I am.”

“You girl.”

“Thank goodness. To tell you the truth, I never could stand the bloodshed. Ever since I was old enough to remember, our family has had to fight for survival. Fight against hostile Indians, against white scoundrels, against wild beasts, against nature.” Evelyn paused. “When I was small, I’d get down on my knees next to my bed at night and pray that God would let us get through the next day without something or someone trying to kill us. Silly, huh?”

“Smart.”

“It’s not like this back East. You can go your whole life long and no one ever lifts a finger against you. There isn’t a bear over every mountain or a war party over every hill. A body can go about their business in perfect peace.” Evelyn bit off more pemmican. “That’s partly why I wanted to move back there for so long. I was sick and tired of always having to look over my shoulder. It grates on the nerves.”

Dega had noticed that while the mountains were wonderlands of beauty, perils lurked in the shadows. He couldn’t go anywhere, even in King Valley, unless he was armed.

“Here I wanted this trip to be fun,” Evelyn said quietly. “We’d shoot a buff and peel the hide and take enough meat back to last your family a couple of months or more. I never counted on anything like this.”

Another shadow fell across her. This time it was Plenty Elk. He pointed to the east.

Evelyn looked and didn’t see anything. Only the grass and the sky and the summer haze. Then her eyes narrowed. A speck had appeared, a speck in motion, miles away yet but there was no mistaking the fact it was smack on their back trail. “Their tracker,” she guessed.

“The black man, you think?” Dega asked.

Evelyn nodded and stood. “The others can’t be far behind. We’ll have to ride like the wind to stay ahead of them.”

“I tell my family,” Dega said.

Plenty Elk signed, ‘Question. You want do with black man?’

There was no sign for “what.” Evelyn had to fill it in mentally. She responded with, ‘Question. You want do?’

Plenty Elk mimicked drawing his bowstring and releasing an arrow.

‘You me think same,’ Evelyn signed, and grinned.