Fear Weaver

Horror

One lock was not enough.

Black Elk thought it would be. But after he held the wonderful yellow curls in his hand and felt how soft the hair was and marveled at how the sunlight turned the yellow to gold, he wasn’t content. He wanted more than one lock. He wanted the whole head, and the girl that went with the head.

The others listened to his appeal, but Black Elk could tell Mad Wolf was the only other one as eager to continue tracking the girl. Mad Wolf was always eager to kill whites. Mad Wolf was always eager to kill anything.

“I say we let them go,” Small Otter declared. “They gave you the hair you asked for. To kill them now would be bad medicine.”

“You see bad medicine in everything,” Black Elk said. “If a cloud passes in front of the sun, to you that is bad medicine.”

Mad Wolf and Double Walker smiled.

“And we will not make war on the women,” Black Elk went on. “We will not kill Golden Hair or the old one or the other two. Only the men, so we can take their guns and horses.”

Double Walker said, “And so you can take Golden Hair, as you call her, back to our village. What will Sparrowhawk and your other wives say? You have not asked them if they want to raise this white girl as their own.”

Black Elk grunted. He had four wives. Among the Blackfeet only a poor man had one wife. Warriors rich in horses and possessions had as many wives as they could support. The leader of their band had five. “They are my women. They will do as I say.”

Mad Wolf grinned and said to Double Walker, “He does not want Golden Hair for a daughter. He wants her for a fifth wife.”

“She looks young,” Double Walker said.

“I can wait a few winters.” Black Elk could wait for as long as need be to make her his wife. No one in his band, no one in the entire tribe, had a wife like her. Several warriors had white women in their lodges but none with hair so yellow. Hers was like the sun. She must be a favorite of the sun god, he thought. She would bring good medicine to his lodge and his people. And at night, under the blankets, he could run his fingers through her hair and—he grew warm at the imagining.

Small Otter was speaking. “There is another matter. This Grizzly Killer. His is a name we all have heard. He is white but he is Shoshone. It is said he has killed more of the silver tip bears than any man, white or red. It is said he has counted many coup.”

“Are you afraid?” Mad Wolf sneered.

For a moment Small Otter appeared ready to strike him. Instead he said, “If you truly think I am, we will set all our weapons aside except our knives and you can test my courage.”

It was Black Elk’s turn to grin. With a bow and arrow they were all about equal in skill. Mad Wolf was best with a lance. Double Walker, so big and so strong, was formidable with a war club. But with a knife Small Otter had no peer.

“Do not take me so seriously,” Mad Wolf said. “As for Grizzly Killer, yes, he has counted many coup. They say he has killed Sioux. He has killed our brothers, the Bloods and the Piegans. He has killed Black-feet. He is a great warrior.” His face lit with the passion that inspired him more than any other. “Think of our fame if we kill him.”

“Think of your fame, you mean,” Double Walker said. “You are the one who wants to count more coup than any Blackfoot who ever lived.”

“I make no secret of that. We are warriors. Warriors kill. The more we kill, the greater we are. I will be the greatest one day. Our children and our grand-children and our grandchildren’s children will sing songs about me.”

“Here he goes again,” Small Otter said.

Black Elk held up a hand. “Enough. If Mad Wolf wants to kill Grizzly Killer, I wish him success. My interest is the girl, Golden Hair. But Mad Wolf and I cannot kill the white Shoshone or steal the white girl alone. Are you with us? Are we together in this?”

Double Walker shook his war club. “I am with you.”

“Good.”

Small Otter scowled. “We have been friends since we were little. We have grown together. We have hunted and played and gone on the war path together. So yes, I am with you. But I want it known I do not think we are doing right. I have a bad feeling.”

“You always have bad feelings,” Mad Wolf said.

Black Elk slung his bow across his back. “Then we are agreed. We must hurry. The whites are making for a pass high up that will take them to the other side of the mountains. But I know another way. A faster way. We can get to the other side ahead of them and catch them unprepared.”

Hurriedly they mounted. With Black Elk in the lead, they rode south along the edge of the forest until they came to a game trail pockmarked by elk and deer tracks. It led up a long slope to a wall of rock well below the summit. The wall had a break in it, a break barely wide enough for a horse, but it brought them to the other side of the mountain well before the whites could hope to make it through the high pass.

Drawing rein, the four Blackfeet surveyed the maze of peaks and shadowed valleys. All was deathly still, even the wind. Not so much as the chirp of a bird reached their ears.

“I do not like this country,” Small Otter said.

“There must be much game,” Double Walker remarked.

“And plenty of ghosts.”

Mad Wolf rolled his eyes. “Not that again.”

“Only a fool is not afraid of ghosts. You know as well as I do that they like forest and rivers. Look below us. What do you see? Forests, and in the distance a river.”

“I see smoke,” Double Walker said, and pointed.

Rising out of a shadowed valley below were gray tendrils that writhed and coiled like snakes. The valley was thick with timber and dark with gloom thanks to sheer red cliffs that hemmed it on three sides. One of the cliffs had been split long ago by a mighty cataclysm.

“A village?” Small Otter wondered.

“Not enough smoke,” was Black Elk’s opinion. “It is a campfire.”

“We should go see,” Mad Wolf proposed.

The game trail wound down into the dark valley. They were just entering the dense forest when Double Walker thrust out a muscular arm. “Look there!”

A dead cow elk lay on her back, her legs wide, her belly ripped open. Ropy loops of intestine and other organs had spilled out, along with a flood of blood, now dry.

“Dead five or six sleeps, at least,” Small Otter guessed.

Black Elk leaned down as low as he could to examine the cow elk. “I have never seen a kill like this. See these bite marks? Where something has chewed meat off the rib bone? What animal bites like that?”

None of them could say. They rode on, their bows strung and shafts notched. The stillness of the forest was unnatural, the quiet absolute. The dense ranks of trees could hide a multitude of enemies.

“There are ghosts here, I tell you,” Small Otter whispered.

A stream gurgled to their right, but they couldn’t see it. Once Black Elk thought he glimpsed a flicker of movement. He didn’t like this place, but he didn’t tell the others. Mad Wolf and Double Walker would tease him as they teased Small Otter about ghosts.

The smell of smoke grew stronger even as the cliffs seemed to grow higher. When they looked straight up, all they saw were the cliffs and a small patch of blue sky.

“Let us leave this place,” Small Otter declared.

Black Elk gave him a sharp glance. As he did, once again he thought he glimpsed movement in the heavy undergrowth. He strained his eyes but saw nothing.

The trail curved, and a clearing appeared. But it wasn’t the clearing that caused Black Elk to draw rein in amazement. It was what stood on the other side of the clearing.

Mad Wolf, Double Walker and Small Otter came to a stop to the right and left of him. Their expressions mirrored the same astonishment.

“This cannot be,” Double Walker whispered.

“I would ask you to hit me to wake me, but I know I am already awake,” Small Otter said.

Mad Wolf made a stabbing gesture. “Are the whites everywhere now? It is one of their wooden lodges.”

Black Elk thought he understood. “This is where Grizzly Killer and the others are coming. They must have friends in that lodge.”

“We should kill them and wait in ambush,” Mad Wolf advised. “Grizzly Killer will ride up and—” He suddenly stopped, his eyebrows arching toward his hair. “Do you hear what I hear?”

From the structure came loud, merry singing. Not good singing, either, but the kind that set the ears on edge.

“It is a woman,” Black Elk said.

“She has the voice of a frog,” was Mad Wolf’s opinion.

At a gesture from Black Elk, they dismounted. Each tied his horse to a tree. Then, bows at the ready, they advanced in a skirmish line, spreading out as they went. They were within a stone’s throw when the singing suddenly stopped.

Black Elk halted and the others followed his example. He had seen such dwellings before. Unlike the buffalo-hide lodges of his people, which had flaps for entering and leaving, the lodges of the whites had rectangles of wood that swung out and in. He remembered that the entrances were usually in the middle of the front wall, and sure enough, he saw a rectangle of wood in this wall. He also saw a square opening to one side, covered by a red cloth. Even as he set eyes on it, the red cloth parted and a pale face peered out at them. A female face.

“She has seen us!” Mad Wolf cried.

Black Elk braced for an outcry, for a shriek of warning that would bring armed white men rushing from the lodge. But the woman didn’t cry out. She didn’t scream. She did the last thing Black Elk expected her to do: she smiled at them. Then the red cloth closed.

“That was strange,” Small Otter whispered.

“She showed no fear,” Double Walker said.

Black Elk sighted down his arrow at the square with the red cloth. He was sure that was where the white men would show themselves. But to his surprise, the flat wood in the center of the front wall opened and out stepped the white woman. She showed all her teeth, and held what appeared to be long needles and part of a blanket.

Instantly, all four of them trained their bows on her.

“Why is she smiling?” Small Otter wondered.

“She is ugly,” Double Walker said. “If she was not wearing clothes, I would take her for a buffalo.”

To their utter bewilderment, the woman began to sing.

Black Elk glanced at his friends. It was plain they shared his perplexity. “Be careful,” he cautioned. “This might be a trick.”

The white woman smiled and sang and was not afraid, not even when Mad Wolf took a step toward her and made as if to shoot an arrow into her belly. “I will spare our ears.”

“Wait,” Small Otter said uneasily. “I do not like this. What if her head is in a whirl?”

“She must be alone,” Double Walker said. “No one else has come out of the lodge.”

Black Elk didn’t know what to think of the white woman’s behavior. He realized that her singing was not really singing at all. She was chanting. But what she had to chant about was as great a mystery as her presence.

“Do I kill this buffalo or not?” Mad Wolf asked.

Black Elk was about to say it would be best if they silenced her when the white woman gazed toward the woods and clasped her arms to her bosom as in great joy. He looked to see what she had seen and his blood turned to ice in his veins. Shock sent him back a step. “Beware!”

The others whirled.

Mad Wolf instantly let fly with his arrow but the thing that had come out of the forest bounded aside and the arrow missed.

“It is a ghost!” Small Otter cried.

Black Elk disagreed. Whatever it was, it was flesh and blood. He snapped his bow up to let his own shaft fly.

“There is another!” Double Walker shouted, thrusting his arm toward a second apparition.

“And a third!” Mad Wolf warned. “Where do they come from? What are they?”

“We must flee!” Small Otter exclaimed.

Black Elk refused to run. He had never run from anyone or anything in his life; his bravery was a byword among his people. For him there was one recourse, and that was to slay the things before the things slew them. Accordingly, his bowstring twanged—and the shaft flew wide of his leaping target.

“Behind you!” Double Walker bellowed.

Uncertain whether the warning was intended for him or one of the others, Black Elk started to turn. He was only halfway around when something slammed into his back with such force that he was driven to his hands and knees. He lost his bow. Pain racked him, but not enough to stop him from grabbing for his knife. Before he could jerk it from its sheath, his wrist was seized in an immensely strong hand. A stinging pain in his throat resulted in a warm, wet sensation spreading down his neck and chest. He became unaccountably weak, and pitched onto his side. Something tore at him and he couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.

Black Elk saw Mad Wolf and Double Walker, both down and being ripped limb from limb. He saw Small Otter flee toward the white lodge. For a few moments he thought Small Otter would make it into the lodge, but the buffalo woman sprang with remarkable speed and ferocity and buried one of her long needles in Small Otter’s eye.

Black Elk’s own eyes became wet and sticky with his blood. The world faded around him. The last sound he heard was a gurgling whine that came from his own ravaged throat.