He tied the small bag back on the cottonwood wand.
Chance got to his feet and looked out over the prairie. Of course the prairie here looked no different than it did for a hundred miles in any direction. Chance wondered how far he had ridden. How far he had come.
He wondered if the little marker, if that was what it was, had been put up by a drunken cowboy, or perhaps by a child or farmer. But what for? If someone had left extra tobacco for the next traveler, there might well have been a note, or something. At least the tobacco should have been more clearly marked.
Someone might have ridden past and not even noticed.
Vaguely, for no particular reason that he could determine, Chance thought of the mariners of ancient Greece, pouring oil and salt into the sea before a voyage-and of the Romans, giving the first drops from their goblet to the gods, the pouring of the libation.
Chance wondered why he should have thought of these things.
Then, suddenly, Edward Chance felt cold on the prairie.
I am now in another country, he said to himself. I have passed a boundary.
He looked at the little bag of tobacco.
An offering, undoubtedly.
But an offering of whom, to what gods?
Where am I, wondered Edward Chance.
You are in a country, said his own voice to him, whose gods are not your gods, whose gods you do not know, whose gods are not friendly to you.
I’ll camp, said Edward Chance to himself, and move on after dark. There’ll be a moon tonight. In a few hours I’ll be away from this place.
About a hundred yards to his right Chance saw a clump of cottonwoods, fringing a low, sloping valley between the rounded hills of the prairie. Probably a creek, he thought. Water, and a place to camp till dark. Then I’ll move on.
Chance led his sorrel toward the trees, and in them found a small leg of a creek, not more than a yard or so wide. He let the horse drink, but not too much. He wanted to move on, and soon, as soon as it was dark.
Among the trees, grateful for the cover, and suddenly feeling weary, as well as hungry, Edward Chance unsaddled his horse and tethered him to a tree. He then put some rocks together and built a small fire between them and opened and heated a can of pork and beans, using the same can later for coffee.
After finishing, Chance lit a small briar pipe which he had purchased in Saint Louis, the fourth day after he had fled from Lester Grawson.
Chance had not smoked much in the East but now, somehow in the solitude and loneliness of his westward journey, the small wooden pipe, giving him something to fumble with, something warm, something with slow, unhurried smoke, had seemed to be welcome to him, and so he had smoked.
Chance, pipe between his teeth, spread a blanket under a tree, not far from where his horse was tethered. Then, using his saddle for a pillow, he pulled off his boots, and lay down, looking up at the sky.
The sky was peaceful, blue, untroubled.
Chance watched the smoke from the little briar curl upward, slowly, softly.
Going nowhere, thought Chance, and not minding.
Suddenly Chance sat upright.
The noise.
Where had it come from? A noise, a human noise; something like a soft cry, an ugly almost inaudible cry, from somewhere through the trees.
Chance rolled on his belly and drew the Colt.
It was quiet, and he waited for some minutes, not hearing the noise again.
The leaves of the cottonwoods above him rustled. He heard the soft splashing of the creek as it moved over and around rocks.
Then Chance heard the noise again, the noise of a human being, in pain, suffering.
Without holstering the Colt, Chance laid it next to his face and put out his pipe, shoving it in the pocket of his corduroy shirt. Then staying as low as he could, he pulled on his boots. He then picked up the Colt and, moving on his elbows, crawled toward the sound. The grass tickled his neck and the Colt, after a minute or so, seemed heavy in his hand. His palm was sweating and his grip on the weapon was less sure. He put the weapon down, dried his hand on the grass, picked it up again and inched forward.
Taking advantage of bushes to his left he continued for several minutes to-move slowly forward. He felt the bushes scratching at the back of his shirt. At last he worked his way over a tufted hump of ground, and could look down into a small grassy clearing beyond. It was well hidden, and lay not more than sixty yards from where he had thrown his blanket and saddle.
There was no movement in the clearing, and for an instant Chance had simply assumed it was empty, and that the sound came from elsewhere.
Then he saw it.
Not more than twenty yards away.
In the center of the clearing there was planted a cottonwood pole, green and springy, about eighteen feet high.
Around this pole, in a circle, the grass had been beaten away, torn from the ground by the footsteps of a human being.
In the late afternoon light Chance squinted, trying to make out more clearly what he saw.
In a fork in the pole was a bundle of branches wrapped in bark. Hanging from the pole were several objects: a tiny bundle of sticks, from which dangled little bags, perhaps of tobacco; a piece of meat, judging from the insects that swarmed on it tied in the shape of an animal what appeared to be a rawhide doll; and what was unmistakably a human being.
Chance sucked in his breath.
A young Indian was fastened to the pole by two long, taut strips of braided rawhide. These rawhide strips were fastened to pegs of wood which had been forced under the lateral muscles of the Indian’s chest. His chest had been cut open. Then the pegs had been thrust in, behind the muscles, and fastened at both ends to the two rawhide strips that ran like twin carnival streamers to the tip of the greenwood pole.
The young man was hanging back, his weight dragging against the pegs under his flesh.
His naked chest and belly were covered with blood, some of it fresh and red, much of it dry and caked. Hanging backward, the Indian had his hands extended like stone toward the lowering sun. His eyes, half closed, seemed to stare blindly at the sun, not blinking.
He wore a breechclout, which, like the rest of his body from the chest down, was stained with blood. From his back, adding to the weight against the pegs under his chest muscles, hung a buffalo-hide shield. On his sweating head, the man wore a porcupine quill headdress and each of his wrists was circled with a bracelet of twisted sagebrush.
Chance shoved the Colt back in his holster. He must cut the man down. He knew that, even if he were interrupting some form of primitive execution.
Drawing out the knife he wore at his belt, Chance rose cautiously to his feet, but did not go immediately into the clearing. Rather, quietly, he circled the clearing, establishing to his satisfaction that only he and the young Indian were in the vicinity. Only then Chance approached the young Indian, who seemed more dead than alive.
Then Chance was at the Indian’s side. He was a young man indeed, probably less than twenty. Slowly the head of the young man turned toward him. If he saw Chance he gave little sign of it. But when Chance lifted the knife to cut the rawhide strips the Indian’s hands gently pushed him away.
“Good God,” thought Chance, “he doesn’t want to be cut down.”
Chance tried once more and once again the Indian’s hands pushed away Chance’s hand.
Chance inspected the man’s chest, and even his table-hardened stomach, familiar with ugly, hazardous facts of surgery, retracted for an instant, making him briefly nauseous.
The pectoral muscles were nearly torn through.
Chance cleared his head and took a deep breath, and was once again the physician.