8

Joe came awake to the smell of smoke and the familiar, soft pop of embers being cast away from the logs burning in the small pit beside him. He didn’t really remember falling asleep, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d used the last of his energy to remain not only conscious but also alert while Doc Martin had worked on his arm. With the arrow wedged into bone, the doc had had to use a fair amount of his own strength to pull it out, and then he’d gone digging for stray bone chips. Joe would have welcomed succumbing to oblivion rather than enduring the doc’s constant tugging on the insides of his arm; but that boy…that young Shoshoni who had been responsible for everything…that boy’s eyes had remained locked with Joe’s through it all, from Doc Martin’s first cut to the final stitch.

Determined not to show any more weakness than he already had, Joe had refused to look away. He had used that boy’s gaze as an anchor, keeping him locked to where he was, and to why. In those eyes, he had relived the nightmare of watching a knife being held to Adam’s throat. He’d heard again and again his pa’s anxious pleas, and the boy’s cold commands. He’d felt Adam’s supporting grip as he’d stumbled on the trail, and heard Hoss’s cautious whispering from behind the tree at his back. That boy, that young Shoshoni…boy…had controlled them all with the effectiveness of a warrior. Yet he’d had no control over Joe in that wickiup. It wasn’t until the boy had left, drawn away by whatever ruckus had been going on outside, that Joe had allowed his eyes to drift closed.

However long Joe had slept, the night was still thick. The glow beyond the small doorway told of a campfire that was being actively fed, and…he could smell meat cooking. Curious and stirred to hunger, Joe used his good arm to slowly push himself into a sitting position. He noticed his right arm was now secured to his chest by wide strips of supple leather, which he found to be far more comfortable and effective than Hoss’s belt had been.

Hoss. Joe smiled, knowing exactly where he would find his brother; he would just need to follow that sizzling, juicy smell of meat.

“You have challenged Guyungwi’yaa.” The words were spoken in the firm voice of a man clearly younger than the grandfathers Joe had heard in the village.

Startled, Joe tensed and then instantly regretted the effect as it pulled at the muscles of his damaged arm. A small intake of breath was the only reaction he allowed himself as he gave his attention to the other side of the small fire, where someone was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the medicine man.

The word was familiar. “Guy-yung-wi-yaa?” Joe repeated as his eyes focused past the pain, slowly showing him the profile of a man with long, black hair and the posture of a warrior at the peak of his strength.

The warrior turned his head from the medicine man to meet Joe’s gaze, but he said nothing.

“You mean the boy?” Joe went on. “The one who took charge?”

The warrior looked away again, giving his attention back to the medicine man—or seeming to, anyway. “The one who…took charge, as you say, began to believe he was ready to be a man. Others begin to believe as well. His father believes him ready to take a warrior’s name.”

“What do you believe?” Joe asked.

The warrior looked at him again. “I believe he will be a great warrior, and a leader of our people. But his day is not today.”

“Why did you say I challenged him?”

The warrior looked away and went silent.

“I didn’t,” Joe said after a long, quiet moment. “I couldn’t challenge him. He challenged me. He challenged my whole family. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be here.”

“No. You are here because the tso’ape delivered you to Guyungwi’yaa.”

“The jo-ap-e?”

“The ghosts of nanewenee, those of my people who were killed. The tso’ape delivered you to Guyungwi’yaa, as Mumbi’chi delivered Guyungwi’yaa to you.”

“Who?”

“Mumbi’chi.” The warrior cast his hand over the still figure before him.

“Your medicine man?” Joe said softly. “No. I’m sorry. He wasn’t with them. He couldn’t leave this wickiup. His injuries were too severe.”

“Mumbi’chi dugani da’ga.”

“He…he’s dying.”

The warrior smiled. “Your medicines do not understand.”

“I also do not understand.”

“Mumbi’chi sleeps now, but it is not the sleep of the dead. Tomorrow the wisdom he has taken from the tso’ape will lead us to the white men who killed my people, nanewenee.”

“How? He’s been too ill to speak.”

“Did he not call to Guyungwi’yaa?”

“Yes, but….”

“Perhaps Mumbi’chi challenges you.”

Growing more confused with every statement, Joe studied him in silence.

“As you challenged Guyungwi’yaa,” the warrior went on.

“No!” Joe shouted without intending to, frustrated by the man’s cryptic words. “I told you,” he said more softly, “I never challenged him. I never had the chance.”

“Chance is a word for white men.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say. I can only tell you those boys did not have to threaten us. We would have helped. All they had to do was let us know they needed it.”

The warrior looked Joe’s way once more. “As you would expect a Shoshoni, or a Paiute, or an Apache to help, if you needed it?”

Joe thought back to Adam’s words earlier, when his brother had made him consider what he would have done, and what he would have been prepared to do if he had been a young boy burdened with the responsibility those Shoshoni boys had carried.

“If you were trying to protect your family,” Adam had prompted, “and you were the only one who could….”

“I’m sorry.” It was all Joe could think to say.

The silence persisted far longer this time. Joe focused on the crackling fire and started to wonder at a similar silence outside. Was everyone else asleep? He’d thought they were cooking, but cooking meant eating, and eating meant people were gathering, and whenever people gathered, they would be talking…wouldn’t they?

“How?” Joe asked finally. He waited until the warrior met his gaze again, and then continued. “How did I challenge Guyungwi’yaa?”

“You made him question himself. He no longer knows if he is ready to be nabidengedaigwahni… if he is ready to be a warrior.”

As Joe looked into the warrior’s eyes, he remembered what he had seen in the boy’s while Doc Martin had been working. If that had been the gaze of a boy questioning his own strength, then men would have reason to fear the warrior he was to become.

XxXxX

Somehow the fire got hotter. It wasn’t any brighter, and Joe couldn’t remember anyone adding more logs; but it was hotter than it had been. Too hot, in fact. The smoke was thicker, too. He could feel it swirling through his head, making him feel almost like he was floating, like the air was water…he was buoyed up in a calm, hot sea.

When he realized the silence had grown as thick as the air, he remembered he’d intended to go outside. He’d been hungry; hadn’t he?

Joe looked to the Shoshoni man sitting beyond the fire, and saw that the man’s eyes were closed. That must mean their conversation had been brought to an end. What had they been talking about anyway? It was strange that Joe couldn’t remember. Must be the air, he decided. He should go outside. A deep breath of the clean, cool, night air would clear his head. But when he tried to stand, his legs refused to support him; it didn’t help that the ground had developed an odd tilt to it.

“H-hey,” Joe called out in a voice too small to penetrate the smoke. “Hey,” he tried again.

The warrior must have heard him. The Shoshoni man’s eyes came open, and his lips parted…but the words he spoke had no meaning for Joe.

Joe couldn’t even tell the man he didn’t understand; he could find no words of his own. Then his eyes slipped closed, and it didn’t matter anymore.

XxXxX

Someone was chanting. Joe heard unfamiliar words spoken in a low tone, the voice rhythmically rising and falling to the soft beat of a single drum.

He opened his eyes just enough to see the Shoshoni man facing him. The warrior was tapping a stick lightly against the ground. The ground? But Joe was hearing a drum, wasn’t he?

No. He was hearing many drums. They were coming from outside. And people started screaming then, too. They were shouting and screaming so loudly they almost drowned out the sound of the drums.

And then suddenly, without rising, without moving, somehow Joe was out amongst them…and then he discovered they weren’t drums at all. What he was hearing was the sound of hoof beats. Hoof beats and gunfire. He was in a dull, gray dawn…or dusk…in the middle of the clearing, in the middle of a battle.

No. It wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre. At least twenty faceless men on horseback were slaughtering the tribe.

A crying, little girl reached out for Joe. He tried…he tried so hard to whisk her to safety, but he couldn’t move. He watched as she fell, her eyes going white and empty, a red bloom of blood spreading across her brown, leather dress like it had never been brown at all.

No! Joe cried out. But he had no voice, and there was nothing he could do to stop those men. He couldn’t fight them; he had no weapons. And he couldn’t move. And they weren’t even men at all, were they? No. They were ghosts…or specters, or something not human. They were real enough, but they were not human.

No! Joe cried out again and again. But there was no one to hear him. There was no one left except for him. He was alone in the gray time between night and day, maybe even between life and death. He turned around in slow circles, proving out the emptiness of this not quite living place. There were no bodies, no horses. There was only him.

No! he cried more softly, knowing he had witnessed the end of something important, something he had no hope to change. He cried until a small, strange call answered him.

He followed the sound to the trees, and there, behind the tree where Hoss had whispered to him earlier, he found a single, wild turkey.

The bird looked at him as though it understood, as though it knew what Joe had seen, it knew and understood in ways Joe never would. And then it waited for Joe to walk away…only…he wasn’t walking at all. He was floating. Floating in a calm, hot sea…until he came awake in a smoke-filled wickiup, his eyes drifting open to find a Shoshoni man looking curiously at him.

XxXxX

This story is posted in chapters, to move from page to page, click the next page number below.