“I don’t understand,” said Lucia.
“You don’t even speak Sioux,” said Chance. He must leave. He must be hard with her.
“No,” said Lucia, hurt, “I don’t.”
He turned from her and, slowly, recoiled the rawhide lariat and tied it to the saddle.
“I’m sorry I don’t speak Sioux,” she said.
Chance turned to face her. “I’m glad,” he said.
“But I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “I’m going to leave.”
Chance hoisted himself into the saddle.
He looked down at her, the blanket wrapped about her shoulders, her face lifted to his.
“Do you know why Buckhorn, the little boy, kills snakes?”
“For sugar,” she said.
“No,” said Chance, “because someone whom he likes very much is afraid of them-he is afraid they will make her go away.”
Chance turned the horse, kicked it in the flanks, and rode from the white-boarded school, leaving behind him a young, blue-eyed woman who stared after him.
“Good-bye, Mr. Chance,” she whispered.
Chapter Nine
It was a dark, bitter rider who left the white school on the hill, his horse moving easily, the shadows in the silver light moving like spiders beside him.
Through the cactus and the sage in the December night on Standing Rock he rode, not noticing much of anything, keeping the horse always west.
They were long, cruel hours, and Chance would not make them easier.
He cursed himself for running, but knew that it was what he must do.
He was not a killer and he would not go back and kill.
He must leave Grawson to pursue, and he must forget the girl.
She had been brave, that girl, to have risked a hand in the games of men, and simply because he had been kind to a child, because he had stopped long enough to care for an injured boy.
Did she know the danger in which she had placed herself? Could she really understand a man like Grawson, understand that, cheated of his prey and knowing it, he might kill her as easily as the paw of a puma can fall across the neck of a fawn? But Grawson would never know her part in this. It was Indians, simply Indians. Running Horse had seen to that.
My Brother, Running Horse.
The girl had been in her way beautiful, and she had been lonely, so lonely, lonely as Chance was lonely.
They had listened to one another, not just looking and nodding, but hearing and understanding, and caring.
And, Chance told himself, she had held him, no matter what she said. She had cried out and kissed and touched, though she might deny it for a hundred years.
We might have loved one another, thought Chance, in a different time and place.
Chance stood up in the stirrups under the moon.
“I don’t want to run!” he cried aloud to the prairie. And all the hatred and frustration that had built its slow fires in his heart over the weeks burst ugly bright in his body and he wheeled the horse to face the backtrail and his boots tensed to hurtle the animal into a gallop back to the school, back to the soddy, to fight to the death those that followed him and would kill him, to kill them or die and if he lived, to go to the soddy and say to the girl, “My name is Chance. I’ve come back.”
But Chance turned the horse again, west, enraged, weeping. Run, run, run.
The horse snorted.
Startled, Chance looked up. There was a ridge not more than fifty yards from him.
On the top of this ridge, clear and black against the moon, was a rider, an Indian, who carried a lance, winged with feathers; on his left arm was a buffalo-hide shield, from which hung five streamers of leather. With him were five braves.
The man lifted his arms, with shield and lance. He called out, “I am Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse.”
Chance remembered the Indian girl in the camp of Sitting Bull. She had spoken to him. “Sing your death song,” she had said.
Chance threw back his head and not knowing why laughed like a madman.
“You bastards,” yelled Chance, “I love you, you dirty bastards!”
It was the end of it. No more running. The end of it. It was over.
With a wild shout Chance kicked his horse up the ridge toward the Indians.
They were waiting for him to turn and run.
He didn’t.
Chance was in the midst of rearing, snorting horses, sprawling bodies, screams of surprise.
At point-blank range Chance jerked twice on the trigger of the heavy Colt.
One brave fell backward blindly, pawing at his face, not reaching it.
Another, grabbing his gut, rolled over the neck of his pony and fell under the hoofs of the animals.
Chance jerked the trigger of the Colt again but the hammer struck on the rim of a bad cartridge and Drum’s lance thrust through his shirt and Chance could feel blood inside but the lance ripped through and came free and another brave was behind and Chance swept the barrel of the Colt back and caught him in the throat and he dropped off the rump of his pony with a noise like gargling.
They were scattered.
Two were dead; another was dragging himself into the sagebrush.
About thirty yards off, the other two braves and Drum were gathering together, to come at him, and Chance yelled again, insanely, jerked his horse around and charged them. This time the knot of Indians broke with startled yelps and each rider separated, and they melted into the prairie, each one taking a different direction.
Chance found himself alone on the top of the ridge.
He had won.
Chance walked his horse down the other side of the ridge.
There was no point in being targeted against the sky.
It would be stupid to chase the Indians, and Chance wasn’t stupid. But he had been lucky, he knew, damn lucky.
Not being afraid of dying he had done pretty well.
He knew that if he had run he would have been dead by now.
It hadn’t even occurred to the Indians that he would attack them. They had wanted the hunt, the chase, making it last, then cutting him down when they pleased.
Drum hadn’t even taken his rifle out of the buckskin sheath across his pony’s back.
He had wanted to use the lance.
Drum would not make that mistake again.
It occurred to Chance, incredibly, that he was hungry. He pawed through the saddlebags on Grawson’s horse, but there was no food there. Chance wondered idly if there had been. Perhaps Grawson had taken it with him, to eat while he watched. Chance recalled Lucia’s offer of food. Pinned down in the soddy, tense, waiting, he hadn’t eaten. He wished he had. Even a piece of bacon would be all right now. He wouldn’t build a fire, too dangerous. He could eat it in the saddle, raw.
The various digestive juices, the names of which Chance recounted dismally to himself, were working on his stomach.
A jack rabbit lit out of the brush almost at his horse’s feet and took its long bounding trajectory across the prairie.
Chance urged the horse after it and thought of taking a shot at it, and then thought the better of it. The shot would mark his position if there were any of the braves about. At last the rabbit entered some brush and seemed to stay there. Chance dismounted, picked up a rock and approached the brush. There didn’t seem to be a rabbit and, poking around, Chance found the hole. He threw the rock away disgustedly. Then he lay on his belly and reached his arm down the hole. It was a damn sight deeper than the reach of his arm. Chance stood up and disgustedly slapped the prairie dust from his clothes.
His horse was browsing about ten yards off and Chance walked over to get it and the horse moved ahead of him, and Chance moved after it and the horse found something else to eat, always about ten yards further away than Chance happened to be at the time.