“What conduct?”
“Your treasonable conduct?”
Dances With Wolves smiled.
“You think I’m a traitor?” he said.
The lieutenant’s voice rose angrily.
“Are you willing to cooperate or not?”
“There is nothing for you to do out here. That’s all I have to say.”
“Then we have no choice but to place you under arrest. You can sit here and think your situation over. If you decide to cooperate, tell Sergeant Murphy, and we will have a talk.”
With that, the major and the lieutenant left the supply house. Sergeant Wilcox detailed two men to stand guard at the door, and Dances With Wolves was left alone.
Kicking Bird stalled for as long as he could, but by early afternoon, Ten Bears’s camp had started the long march, heading southwest across the plains.
Stands With A Fist insisted on waiting for her husband and became hysterical when they forced her to go. Kicking Bird’s wives had to get rough with her before she finally composed herself.
But Stands With A Fist wasn’t the only worried Comanche. Everyone was worried. A last-minute council was convened just before they pulled out, and three young men on fast ponies were sent to scout the white man’s fort for Dances With Wolves.
He’d been sitting for three hours, fighting back the pain in his battered face, when Dances With Wolves told the guard he needed to relieve himself.
As he walked toward the bluff, sandwiched between two soldiers, he found himself repulsed by these men and their camp. He didn’t like the way they smelled. The sound of their voices seemed rough to his ears. Even the way they moved seemed crude and ungainly.
He peed over the edge of the bluff, and the two soldiers started him back. He was thinking about escape when a wagon loaded with wood and three soldiers rumbled into camp and skidded to a stop close by.
One of the men in the wagon bed called lightheartedly to a friend who had stayed in camp, and Dances With Wolves saw a tall soldier amble over to the wagon. The men in the bed were smiling at one another as the tall man came near.
He heard one of them say, “Look what we brung ya, Burns.”
The men in the wagon took hold of something and heaved it over the side. The tall man standing below them leaped back frightfully as Two Socks’s body landed at his feet with a thump.
The men in the wagon leaped out. They taunted the tall man as he backed away from the dead wolf.
One of the woodcutters cackled, “He’s a big ‘un, ain’t he, Burns.”
Two of the woodcutters lifted Two Socks off the ground, one taking his head, the other his back feet. Then, accompanied by the laughter of all the soldiers, they started to chase the tall man around the yard.
Dances With Wolves covered the ground so quickly that no one moved until he’d slammed into the soldiers carrying Two Socks. In short, chopping strokes he pounded one of them senseless with his fist.
He sprang after the second man, knocking his feet out from under him as he tried to run. Then his hands were around the man’s throat. His face was turning purple and Dances With Wolves saw his eyes begin to glaze when something struck him in the back of the head and a dark curtain dropped over him again.
It was twilight when he regained consciousness. His head was throbbing so hard that he didn’t notice at first. At first, he only heard a light rattle when he moved. Then he felt the cold metal. His hands were chained together. He moved his feet. They were chained, too.
When the major and lieutenant came back with more questions, he answered them with a killing glare and spat out a long string of Comanche insults. Each time they asked him something, he answered in Comanche. Finally, they tired of this and left him.
Later in the evening, the big sergeant placed a bowl of gruel before him.
Dances With Wolves kicked it over with his manacled feet.
Kicking Bird’s scouts brought the dreadful news in around midnight. They had counted more than sixty heavily armed soldiers at the white man’s fort. They had seen the buckskin horse lying dead on the slope. And just before dark they had seen Dances With Wolves being led to the bluff by the river, his feet and hands in chains. The band went into evasive action immediately. They packed up their things and marched out at night, little groups of a dozen or less, heading in all different directions. They would rendezvous days later in the winter camp.
Ten Bears knew he would never hold them back, so he didn’t try. A force of twenty warriors, Kicking Bird and Stone Calf and Wind In His Hair among them, left within the hour, promising not to engage the enemy unless they could be sure of success.
Major Hatch made his decision late the same night. He didn’t want to be bothered with the thorny problem of a savage, half-Indian white man sitting under his nose. The major was not a visionary thinker, and from the first he’d been baffled and afraid of his exotic prisoner.
It didn’t occur to the shortsighted officer that he could have used Dances With Wolves to great advantage as a bargaining tool. He wanted only to get rid of him. His presence had already unsettled the command.
Shipping him back to Fort Hays seemed a brilliant idea. As a prisoner, he would be worth much more to the major back there than out here. The capture of a turncoat would stand him in very good stead with the top brass. The army would talk about this prisoner, and if they talked about the prisoner, the name of the man who caught him was bound to come up just as often.
The major blew out his lamp and pulled up his covers with a self-satisfied yawn. Everything was going to work out nicely, he thought. The campaign couldn’t have asked for a better beginning.
They came for the prisoner early the next morning.
Sergeant Murphy had two men pull Dances With Wolves to his feet and asked the major, “Should we put him in uniform, sir, spruce him up some?”
“Of course not,” the major said sharply. “Now, get him in the wagon.”
Six men were detailed for the trip back: two on horseback up front, two on horseback in the rear, one to drive, and one to guard the prisoner in the wagon bed.
They went due east, across the rolling prairie he loved so much. But on this bright morning in October there was no love in Dances With Wolves’s heart. He said nothing to his captors, preferring to bump along in the back of the wagon, listening to the steady clank of his chains as his mind considered the possibilities.
There was no way to overpower the escort. He might be able to kill one, or perhaps even two. But they would kill him after that. He thought of trying it anyway. To die fighting these men would not be so bad. It would be better than landing in some dismal jail.
Every time he thought of her, his heart would begin to crack. When her face would start to form as a picture in his head, he forced himself to think of something else. He had to do this every few minutes. It was the worst kind of agony.
He doubted that anyone would be coming after him. He knew they would want to, but he could not imagine that Ten Bears would compromise the safety of all his people for the sake of a single man. Dances With Wolves himself would not do that.
On the other hand, he felt certain they had sent out scouts and that they knew by now of his desperate situation. If they’d hung around long enough to see him leave in the wagon, with only six men to guard him, there might be a chance.
As the morning dragged on, Dances With Wolves clung to this idea as his only hope. Each time the wagon slowed to gain a rise or lurched down into a draw, he held himself breathless, wishing for the swish of an arrow or the crack of a rifle.