The Scalp Hunters

Chapter Fourteen

“Who do you think is buried in the graves?” Tibbet wondered.

“How the hell do I know?” Venom snapped. “I can’t see through dirt.” He had a hunch, though, about one of them. “Dig them up.”

“Dig up dead bodies?” Potter said apprehensively.

“They wouldn’t be buried if they were alive.” Some days Venom had no patience with Potter’s stupidity and this was one of them.

“That’s not what I meant. They’ve been dead hours. They’ll smell and have started to swell.”

“So hold your nose.” Venom turned away before he shot him. He was in a foul temper. Thanks to the delays, the girl and her green-clad friends were now hours ahead. He went over to the Kyler twins, who were standing by their mounts.

“You two are the best trackers I’ve got after Rubicon. I want you to go on ahead. Track the girl and her party, but don’t let them see you. Leave marks for us. We’ll come along as fast as we can.”

Jeph nodded at the mounds of earth. “You reckon one of them is the black, don’t you?”

“Unless he killed a couple and went on after the rest, but he’d never have bothered to bury them.”

“The girl and her green Indians must have jumped him,” Seph said.

Venom scowled. “Rubicon always did what I told him, and I told him not to tangle with them. If he’s in one of those graves, then yes, somehow they caught on that he was tracking them and killed him.”

“They ain’t harmless then,” Jeph said.

“Whoever said they were?” Venom gestured. “On your way. Keep your eyes skinned. I don’t care to lose you two, too.”

“Don’t worry about us. The black only had two eyes and two ears. We have four.”

“Too much confidence can get you killed,” Venom cautioned.

“Better too much than too little,” was Seph’s rebuttal.

They climbed on and rode off. Venom watched until they were out of sight, then stepped to where Potter, Tibbet, Calvert and Ryson were scooping the fresh dirt away with their hands. Potter’s face was twisted in disgust.

“It’s only dirt, you idiot,” Ryson chided.

Potter wiped a sleeve across his sweat-speckled brow. “It’s what’s under the dirt. The dead spook me.”

“Why? What can they do to you?”

“It’s how they look. Pasty and bloated and all. I can’t stand to touch them. It gives me shivers.”

“If it wasn’t that you can shoot and cook, you’d be worthless,” Calvert put in.

Potter stopped scooping. “Here now. Why are you mad at me? What did I do?”

“You’re breathing.” Venom stabbed a finger at the mound. “Dig, damn you. I don’t intend to stand around here all day.” He scoured the plain, then sat down a few yards away with his rifle across his legs.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Tibbet said while scooping.

“What?”

“The girl took the time to bury them. She must know we’re after them, but she did it anyway.”

Venom leaned back. The sun was low in the west. They only had an hour or so of daylight left. “That’s the difference between people like her and people like us. It tells you a lot about her.”

“How so?”

“We wouldn’t have bothered. We’d have left these two to rot, even if one is Rubicon, and pushed on.” Venom paused. “This girl couldn’t bring herself to ride off and leave them lying there. That shows she’s got a good heart. She went to the trouble to plant them, knowing every minute she delayed was a minute closer we came. That shows she’s got grit.”

“A good heart and grit won’t stop her from being dead,” Ryson said.

“No one is to harm her unless I say,” Venom warned. “I might have another use for her before we kill her.”

Several of them laughed.

Potter mopped his brow again. “Say, how do we know she’s not in one of these graves?”

Venom gave a start. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Here!” Tibbet bawled. “I found a hand!”

“Get excited, why don’t you?” Venom said. “It’s the body the hand’s attached to that I want to see.”

They dug with renewed vigor and in no time exposed a young Arapaho warrior, his hands folded across his chest, his face so pale he was whiter than a white.

“Cut in the neck,” Tibbet observed aloud.

Venom stood and went to the body. “The last of the four we jumped. We don’t have to worry about word getting back to the Araphaos. Uncover the other one.”

It took barely a minute. Rubicon’s features were waxen, his mouth curled in a grimace. His arms, too, had been folded across his chest, and his eyes were closed.

“He looks like he’s sleeping,” Potter said.

“He is. Forever,” Calvert remarked.

Tibbet squatted and indicated a red stain on Rubicon’s shirt. “He was stabbed. They jumped him, I bet. He’d never let them get close enough, otherwise.”

Venom turned to his mount. “Let’s go. We still have daylight left.”

“Don’t you want us to bury them again?” Potter asked.

“I’m not the girl. I don’t have a good heart. Let the coyotes and the buzzards fatten their bellies.” Venom’s saddle creaked as he forked leather and hooked his feet in the stirrups.

“Even Rubicon?”

Venom sighed. “Haven’t you gotten it through your head yet? You’re only of use to me while you’re breathing. Once you stop, I don’t give a damn what happens. Now get on your damn horse and quit asking damn stupid questions.” He took the lead. They wouldn’t be able to go far before darkness claimed the prairie, but that was all right. Morning would come soon enough.

“Tomorrow you’re mine, girl,” Venom vowed.

Evelyn rode until well after the sun went down. She would have pushed on until midnight, but little Mikikawaku could barely sit her saddle and the rest of the family showed signs of severe fatigue. Reluctantly, Evelyn stopped in the middle of a basin and announced, “We’ll spend the night here.”

Dega touched the gash in his temple. “It good we stop. I not feel well.”

Evelyn was worried he had a concussion. She swung down to help him dismount.

“I do it my own self.” Dega refused to be weak in front of her. He slowly alighted, then had to lean against his horse when dizziness threatened to buckle his legs.

“Are you all right?”

“I fine,” Dega lied.

Tihikanima put her arm around her son’s shoulders. “Sit,” she directed. “Let me look at your head.”

“I just told Evelyn I am fine, Mother.”

“You try too hard to impress her.” Tihi examined the wound and touched a dry drop of blood. “You were fortunate he struck you with the flat side of the tomahawk.”

Dega sank onto his back and placed his forearm across his forehead. “I want sleep.”

Evelyn opened her parfleche. Inside was a bundle of pemmican and another that contained herbs her mother used to heal and cure. The Shoshones had treatments for all sorts of ailments and injuries. Everything from grinding sagebrush leaves into powder to use on the rash on a baby’s bottom to balsam root to ward off ticks to the fuzz from prickly pear cactus for removing warts.

At the moment Evelyn was looking for what the Shoshones called unda vich quana. They used it on wounds. She crushed a dry leaf in her palm, then went over and knelt next to Dega. “I have something here that will help you.”

“I drink or eat?”

“Neither. I have to rub it on. It’ll hurt some, but in a while the pain will go away.”

“What did she say?” Tihi asked.

Dega translated.

“Tell her I will take care of you. I have medicine in my pack.” Tihi went to rise but Dega gripped her wrist.

“I thank you, but I would like her to treat me.”

“You choose her over your mother?”

Dega didn’t say anything.

“I have nursed you since you were an infant. Every scrape, every bruise, the time you burned your fingers in the fire, the time you broke a finger when you fell from a tree, the time you sprained your ankle and it was so swollen you could hardly walk on it, and many more.”

“No son ever had a better mother.”

“Then why her over me?”

Evelyn had listened to the exchange in growing puzzlement. “Is something the matter?”

“All be fine,” Dega assured her.

“Why does Tihi look upset?”

“She not like me hurt.” To his mother Dega said, “It is not her over you. No one can ever take your place.”

“Yet you want her to dress your wound.” Tihi unfurled and sadly remarked, “Every mother knows this day will come. It is not a day we look forward to.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The day when another is as important as a mother in her son’s eyes, or more so.”

“I am your son. I will love you forever. Nothing can ever change that or come between us.”

“You will take a wife and enshrine her in your heart as you once enshrined me,” Tihi said. “It is the way of things. I have known this and thought I would accept the change, but it is harder than I expected.” She tenderly touched his head. “I do not like it, Son. I do not like it with all I am.”

Dega had never seen his mother this way. He was troubled, but he took it for granted she would accept his interest in Evelyn and be her normal self again. “She is my friend, Mother. What harm can it do?”

“She is more than that. Whether you admit it to yourself or not, I am second in your eyes now.” Bowing her head, Tihi moved off.

“What’s the matter with her?” Evelyn asked.

“She not happy we fight, we run.” Dega had told more lies in the past few moments than in all his life put together.

“We’re not done with either,” Evelyn predicted. She bent and carefully rubbed the crushed leaves into the gash. Dega winced but bore it stoically. “Now you lie here while I make some tea.”

“What good that be?”

“You’ll see.” Evelyn had brought her mother’s coffeepot. She didn’t think her mother would mind since her mother and father were away in St. Louis having her father’s rifle fixed. She filled it with water from the water skin and set it on the fire to heat. From her bundle she took pieces of dogwood bark and dropped them in the water. Then she went back to Dega. “It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

“You treat me nice.”

Evelyn almost said treating him nice came easy because she cared so much. Instead she said, “It’s what friends are for.”

Dega had more he yearned to say to her, but his tongue was oddly frozen. Coughing, he forced out, “You best friend me ever have.”

“I ever had.”

“Eh?”

“Your English. You wanted me to correct you, remember?”

“I sorry. I try so much, but white tongue hard.” Dega averted his face in shame.

“Don’t feel bad. A lot of Indians say the same. My mother speaks it so well because she has a knack for languages.”

“Blue Water Woman talk good, too.” Dega referred to the Flathead wife of Shakespeare McNair.

“She’s had decades of practice. Marry a white girl and stick with her twenty years and I bet you’ll speak English as good as Blue Water Woman.”

“Which white girl?” In Dega’s eyes there was only one.

“Oh, any will do,” Evelyn hedged, and just knew she was blushing. “I better check on the tea.” It wasn’t anywhere near done, but she opened the coffeepot and looked in and put the top back on. “The tea’s not boiling yet.”

Over at the horses, Waku was stripping a saddle. He glanced up as his wife joined him. “Did you hear? She makes tea for us. She is a good girl, that one.”

“She makes tea for our son,” Tihi corrected him. “He has cast me aside in favor of her.”

“What are you talking about? Degamawaku loves you as much as he ever has.”

“So he says. But my spirit is troubled, husband. When we get back to King Valley and our lodge, I must think long and hard and decide whether I like the change in him.”

“And if you do not?”

Tihikanima feigned an interest in the stars.

“I do not see why it bothers you so. Tell me. Would you feel the same if she was a full-blooded Shoshone?”

“I am not a bigot.”

“Then let it drop. Interfere and Dega will resent it. Besides, if they are truly in love, you can never drive them apart.”

“Never say never, husband,” Tihikanima said, and smiled.