7

Hoss felt sorry for the boy.

The little guy had come looking for Hoss, and found his tribesmen instead. Or they’d found him, more like. And from the looks on that one fellow’s face, the one Hoss figured must be the chief…well, that boy had a lot of things to explain. Hoss had no doubt all that talking was about why a white man was there, in a burial ground, taking care of things he had no business taking care of.

He knew they were just trying to figure the truth; and the truth was that boy couldn’t have told them any different than Hoss already had himself. He was pretty sure the boy said some bad things about Hoss and his family, maybe even about the doc, things that might explain why the boy had been carrying that spear, and why Hoss had all those bloody, poke-holes in his shirt. But he was also pretty sure those Shoshoni men could see the difference between a grown man’s honest words and a growing boy’s tendency to make his own actions sound a bit bigger and better than maybe they actually were.

At least, Hoss hoped they could see the difference. That difference might be the only thing keeping them from killing Hoss right there. It wouldn’t take much to get any number of those men to sink a tomahawk into his skull, judging by what Hoss saw in their eyes.

The boy’s eyes said something different, though. Hoss could see he was nervous, and it wasn’t just his tribesmen that caused it. The boy cast worried glances at the bodies. Hoss couldn’t blame him, and even felt some fear of his own, aside from his concerns about what those Shoshoni warriors might do. A man couldn’t find himself surrounded by death and not feel a touch of fear. Had to be even worse for a boy.

While the sky went from blood-red, to purple and then finally to black, Hoss waited for decisions to be made, decisions that could affect him, even though he was given no part in the deciding. He found himself listening to words he couldn’t come close to understanding. Still, he was able to recognize when the conversation went from angry, to thoughtful, to funny, and then back to angry again.

“Why did you stay?” The chief’s sudden shift to English caught Hoss off-guard. It took him a moment to realize he could actually understand the man.

“Why’d I stay? What, here you mean? In the burial ground?”

The chief bobbed his head just once. “You could have left when the boy was not watching over you.” He scowled down at the young fellow.

Hoss saw the boy look to the ground, shamed. “Aw, you can’t blame him for keepin’ away from all this death. It can’t have been easy on any of ’em, watchin’ these folks die like they did. They just…they needed some help, is all.”

The chief’s studied Hoss for a long while, and then reached toward him, pinching a bloodied piece of Hoss’s shirt between his fingers. “He did this?”

“Yessir.” Hoss nodded.

“You…allowed him to do this?”

Hoss sighed. “I reckon I did. I didn’t want to cause a ruckus. Those other boys, the older ones, they got a lot of hate in them right now, a kind of hate that can make ’em do things they ought not to do. I didn’t want to give ’em any reason to go on and do ’em.”

“What things?”

Hoss met the man’s dark gaze. “Things like killin’ my brothers.”

The chief said something in his own language without turning away from Hoss. When the boy answered in quick, clipped words, Hoss found the boy’s tone reminding him of Little Joe, years ago, after Joe had gotten into his first fist fight. Pa wasn’t happy, but Joe just wouldn’t back down; he knew he’d had no choice but to trade punches with that other boy, no matter what Pa said about letting his anger get the best of him.

Just like this boy reckoned he’d had no choice. But with this boy and his pals, anger hadn’t been the only thing driving them to do what they’d done. They’d been trying to save folks’ lives. Hoss couldn’t really fault them for that, despite what they’d done to Joe, and what they’d come close to doing to Adam. Hoss didn’t like it; he had plenty enough anger in him, too. Even so, he really couldn’t fault them. And he couldn’t see how the chief could fault them, either.

Hoss looked hard at the chief’s eyes, hoping to see whether the chief faulted him at all, but that man had about the best poker face Hoss had ever seen; he wasn’t giving any clues at all.

And then the chief turned away. He shouted some Shoshoni words to his men and made gestures that told Hoss they were either going back to their little village, or toward the path where Hoss had found tracks leading out, tracks that had to have been left by the outlaws.

A moment later they started moving toward the village, pulling Hoss right along with them. But from all the cold glances that moved toward the other path, it was clear they would be going after those outlaws soon enough.

Hoss found himself grateful to see none of those glances shifting back his way. He sure wouldn’t want to be one of those outlaws when these angry warriors caught up with them.

XxXxX

Hoss and his little shepherd had been gone a long while. Too long. Full night had already fallen, and everyone in the village seemed edgy. The boys kept pacing and whispering amongst themselves, eyes straying to the woods where their friend had gone, or to where Adam and his father were still moving from wickiup to wickiup, tending to the injured men, women, and even children they had been conscripted to help. Those straying eyes were pretty good at avoiding one particular wickiup, however; none of the boys wanted to go near the one into which Doc Martin, Joe and the boy in charge had all disappeared well over an hour earlier—the same one in which the tribe’s medicine man lay dying. It had been made clear to everyone—Adam and his father, included—that no one was allowed inside other than those who had already been admitted; and the boys were more than willing to obey that command. In fact, they seemed eager to stay away. They also seemed eager to spread out and look for their missing friend; but without their leader to guide them, they were apparently unwilling to make such a decision.

As eager as the boys were to keep their distance from the wickiup, Adam and his father were even more eager to get inside. Since Doc Martin had gone in with Joe, Adam had grudgingly acquiesced when the boy’s hand had pressed lightly against his chest in a silent demand that he stay out. But the longer he and his father were forced to wait, the more his patience wavered.

“I don’t know about you,” he said to his father while he dabbed a damp cloth at the cuts in his neck to cool the sting, “but I’ve had enough of this waiting.”

Pa sighed, shaking his head. His gaze moved from Adam to the wickiup and back again. “I’ve had enough since the moment we were told to wait out here.”

“What do you say we—” Adam’s words were cut off by a commotion in the northeast corner of the clearing.

The hunters had come home.

XxXxX

Hoss was having a hard time sitting still. As soon as the hunters had arrived home with the rewards of their kill, a couple of folks got right to work cooking up some of it. They probably hadn’t eaten much since the attack, and Hoss, well…the smell of that meat cooking made him realize he hadn’t eaten anything at all since those boys had made that little attack of their own. It was a good thing they’d waited until after Hoss had managed to eat up all of his trout before they’d interrupted what had been about the finest lunch Hoss had had in a long time. Now, his belly was sore both on this inside and the outside; right then, it was the inside that bothered him the most. But when he figured it was about time to start dishing out all that good cooking, when the whole tribe—or what remained of it, anyway—had gathered up to eat it…well, that’s when everyone just stopped what they were doing and got real quiet.

Hoss noticed they were all looking toward that wickiup where Pa was sitting with Joe.

“He’s finally sleeping, Ben,” the doc had said when he’d stepped out earlier. “Sleeps the best thing for him right now. It’d be best if you didn’t disturb him.”

But it looked like a disturbance was about to happen whether the doc wanted it to or not. Two men, including the chief himself, were going inside.

“What do you reckon that’s all about?” Hoss said softly to Adam, who was sitting beside him.

Adam shook his head slowly from side to side, his eyes locked on that wickiup like he was studying it real hard. “I don’t know. Could be they’re just checking on their medicine man.”

“Could be,” Hoss agreed softly.

When the old woman who had been sent inside to tend to the dying man came back out a moment later, Hoss thought maybe Adam was right.  But then Pa came out, too.

Hoss rose before he even knew what he was doing; he could tell Adam rose up right behind him. “What’s goin’ on?” he asked as soon as his pa got close enough to hear him.

Pa gave a wary glance over to the tribesmen sitting nearby, and then cocked his head, gesturing for Hoss and Adam to follow him out of ear-shot. “Joe’s still sleeping,” he said as he wiped sweat from his brow. “It’s so hot in there I can’t tell if he’s getting feverish or not. But I can tell you one thing: that medicine man of theirs is sleeping pretty soundly, too. It’s starting to look like he might pull through.”

“That why the chief went in there?” Hoss asked. “To see how he’s doing?”

“I imagine so.” Pa nodded. “He didn’t seem particularly interested in Joe, although he made it clear he didn’t want anyone else in there with them. What’s on your mind? Hoss?”

The mention of his name pulled Hoss back into the conversation. “Sorry, Pa. I was just wonderin’. Don’t it seem like these folks are waitin’ for their chief to do something, or maybe say something?”

Pa glanced around. “It could be they’re simply waiting for him before eating, out of respect.” Clearly, Pa wasn’t too concerned about it. “Where’s Paul?” he asked then.

“He’s still in with that little girl,” Adam said. “She’s getting worse.”

Pa got real focused, then. Instead of looking around at everything like he’d been doing a moment earlier, he started looking at nothing at all, like he was focusing on something no one else could see. When he slowly turned his attention back over to Hoss and Adam, his eyes had a sad look to them. “If I live to be a hundred,” he said in an equally sad voice, “I’ll never understand how anyone could bring this kind of harm to people, but particularly to children.” He spat out that last word like it didn’t fit in his mouth…like it was something he should never have had to say.

“I know what you mean,” Adam said. “The trouble is, those outlaws probably don’t even think of Indians as people.”

Hoss cast a quick look to the Shoshonis nearby. “You’d best not say that, Adam,” he whispered harshly. “I don’t think these folks would take too kindly to hearin’ it.”

“I didn’t say that was my own opinion.”

“You really think any of ’em is gonna stop to ask if it’s your opinion before they come at you with one of them tomahawks? Or maybe even a knife, to finish what that boy started back at our camp?” Hoss looked pointedly at the cuts on Adam’s neck, making it clear what he was talking about.

“Hoss is right.” Pa’s back went real straight and stiff, like he was one of them soldiers over at Fort Churchill coming to attention. “While we’re here we need to watch everything we say. Everything. We don’t need to invite any more trouble than we’ve already found.”

“I think we can give them a little more credit than that, Pa,” Adam said. “They know we’ve done everything we can to help them. And besides—”

Hoss didn’t wait for his brother to finish. “They also know we might not have done any of it if they hadn’t threatened you and Joe.”

Adam took a deep breath. “And besides,” he said again, emphasizing the words to show Hoss shouldn’t have interrupted him, “they’re not exactly treating us like prisoners. At least not anymore.”

“Not now, maybe.” Hoss’s gaze finally found what he’d been scanning the crowd to see. There was one Shoshoni man among them who was not staring at the wickiup—he was staring right back at Hoss instead. “But that don’t mean we ain’t prisoners. And it sure don’t mean they trust us.”

Not long after that, the chief came back out by himself. He didn’t say or do anything, he just stood outside of that wickiup, like he was waiting for the other fellow to come out, too. Hoss figured that was kind of strange, the chief waiting for someone else. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Then he realized the chief wasn’t just standing there; he was looking at Hoss and his family. No. Not just looking. He was staring at them. The tribe got even quieter then, quiet enough that Hoss was sure even a whisper would be too loud. He swallowed whatever words he’d thought to say, and noticed more eyes looking their way.

It must have been about five or ten minutes passed like that, the longest ten minutes Hoss could ever remember. And then the chief raised his arms and made some sort of great announcement to the tribe. It was almost like Moses parting the Red Sea, the way he got that sea of calm, quiet folks to rise up and get all loud. They started shouting and yipping and cheering, and then, just like that, it was time to eat.

When Hoss looked to Adam, his brother shrugged. “Whatever it is,” Adam said, “they’re happy about it. Let’s assume for now that’s a good thing.” But Hoss could see in his eyes Adam wasn’t about to drop his guard.

“Yeah. Maybe; but we’d best stick close even so.”

Hoss felt Pa’s hand on his shoulder then. “You two stick close.” His eyes were locked on that wickiup. “I’ll see to Little Joe.”

But when Pa reached the chief, he pulled Pa along with him into the thick of his tribesmen. And then Hoss and Adam were pulled into it, too. It was made clear they were expected to share in whatever it was these folks were celebrating. Whenever any of the Cartwrights looked over to where Joe was, more food or drink was forced on them until even Hoss was stuffed so full he welcomed the first chance he got to close his eyes.

XxXxX

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