“I’ll meet you later at the old camp,” said Chance. “I want to see Lucia first, down at the Carters’.”
Chance had thought that he would not see the girl again, but now, being so close, he knew that he would not resist, foolish though it might be. He must see her again, if only once more.
But Running Horse was looking at him, his eyes sad. “My heart is heavy for you,” he said.
Suddenly Chance’s heart seemed to stop beating, went cold.
He forced his horse through the snow, wildly, up to the top of a slope, from which he judged he would be able to see the Carter homestead.
Gasping, its flanks sore from the blows of Chance’s boots, the horse stopped bewildered turning on the top of the slope, trampling the snow, snorting, and Chance jerked it around and searched the valley, seeing back in the trampled snow some quarter of a mile away the black shell of the Carter soddy. The roof had been burned; there were no livestock in sight; a wagon was overturned in the yard.
“Lucia!” cried Chance at the top of his voice, and kicked the horse, driving it down the slope toward the soddy.
Running Horse and Winona followed him, slowly, not wanting to be there when he first reached the ruin.
At the door of the soddy Chance leapt from the back of his horse and stood in the threshold. The door of the soddy, marked with the blows of rifle stocks and hatchet scars, hung broken on its leather hinges.
Inside the wind had blown some soft snow over the ashes of the fallen roof, making the place seem calm and white. Under a charred beam, dusted with snow, lay the scalped body of Sam Carter, his little shape crumpled into a crooked heap, still wearing its Christmas shirt, a red wool shirt, the collar of which was too large.
“Lucia!” yelled Chance.
She was not in the soddy.
Running Horse looked through the opening where, perhaps yesterday, the door had been locked.
“Lucia!” yelled Chance at him.
Running Horse shook his head.
“Did you find her?” yelled Chance.
“No,” said Running Horse.
“Is she outside?” yelled Chance, irrationally.
“No,” said Running Horse.
“Where is she?” demanded Chance.
“She is alive,” said Running Horse.
Chance drew a deep breath, the deepest it seemed to him he had ever drawn. His hands and arms trembled.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“She is not here,” said Running Horse simply.
“We’ve got to find her,” said Chance.
“It will not be hard,” said Running Horse, something strange in his voice.
The young Indian turned, and Chance, stumbling, followed him from the grisly soddy.
Outside, Running Horse pointed in the snow. There, a few feet from the overturned wagon, a sign was drawn, like a diagram in sand. It was a crude angle, and inside the angle were two circles, connected by small lines.
“It is the sign of Drum,” said Running Horse, speaking slowly, watching Chance’s face. “The pointed lines show which way the war party went. The sign is left to guide any of the Minneconjou or Hunkpapa who come this way.”
The angle of the sign pointed to the Bad Lands.
“All right,” said Chance, gathering himself together, trying to regulate his breathing. “Let’s get the horses.”
Running Horse put his hand gently on his arm. “If you want your woman,” he said “you must not rush to the camp. You must not try to fight. They are ready to kill anyone. If you try to take her away from them, you will be killed, maybe her too.”
“I’m going to get her out,” said Chance.
“There are braves, maybe twenty,” said Running Horse. “You do not even have your gun.”
Chance remembered he had dropped the Colt at Grawson’s command and Grawson had kicked it away. The Hotchkiss guns had opened up on the camp about that time and he and Running Horse had fled. He hadn’t had time to pick up the weapon. Between them they had one carbine, which belonged to Running Horse, and a handful of bullets, also belonging to Running Horse. Chance’s bullets, contained in the tiny loops on his gun belt, were useless unless he could find a. 45 caliber pistol.
“I do not think they will kill her,” said Running Horse, “at least not until after the Scalp Dance.”
“Scalp Dance?” asked Chance.
“Tonight,” said Running Horse.
“I’ve got to get her out,” said Chance.
“You must be wise as well as brave, my Brother,” said Running Horse.
Chance nodded. There was no question of bravery. Indeed, he was ready to act like a damn fool do anything. It would be hard though, to be wise, even to be patient, even to wait an hour.
Chance shook himself, looking at the soddy. There was work to be done here. The Scalp Dance, whatever that was, would not take place until tonight. There was time. Chance would force himself to wait. And there was work, there was work to be done here.
Chance found an ax and a shovel, and kicked the snow away from a small area about the size of the wagon box. Then he began to chop and cut at the frozen ground. Winona and Running Horse carried the bodies from the soddy and laid them in the snow. Soon Chance had cut and scooped out a shallow grave. He put the four bodies in the grave, composing their limbs as well as he could, and covered them, laying chunks of frozen earth on by hand.
“The spring rains,” said Running Horse, “will make the dirt soft.”
Chance went back into the soddy and took the back of a broken, burned chair. He carved: “Samuel Carter, Wife and Two Sons. Died Maybe New Year’s Day, 1891.” He didn’t know the names of the woman and the two boys. Someone probably knew. Someone would come sometime, and they could do things better. Chance, using the ax, sharpened the side slats of the chair and then, tapping with the ax head, drove his simple marker into the soil.
Finished, he stood up.
Running Horse and Winona, who had stood by not speaking, regarded him.
“I suppose I ought to say something,” said Chance. Neither of the Indians spoke.
“I can’t say anything,” said Chance. Running Horse shrugged.
Chance looked up into the blue, cold sky, watched a white cloud move past, some thousands of feet above, moved by the wind, the pressures and volumes of the air. Then the cloud was gone and the sky seemed empty to Chance, very beautiful, but not much concerned, and empty.
He looked down at the chopped clods of frozen soil, brown, black chunks; at the snow muddied by his boots; at the shovel he had dropped to one side; at the bit of a piece of chair that he had pounded into the hard soil at the head of the grave.
“I don’t think the coyotes will get them,” said Chance. “No,” said Running Horse.
Together the three of them, the two men and the woman, went to their horses, mounted and rode slowly through the snow toward the looming Bad Lands, leaving behind them the burned soddy and the turned soil nearby, a patch about the size of a wagon box.
Chapter Nineteen
“God,” said Jake Totter, steadying his horse near the Carter soddy. “I thought you said the Injuns was scared.” His eyes took in the desolate; calm scene, ending on the simple grave.
His horse shied, backing away, stamping the snow.
“What’s wrong with your horse?” asked Grawson.
“He don’t like the smell of killing,” said Totter. “I don’t either, leastways around here.”
Grawson pointed to the marker on the grave. “A white man did that,” he said. “Chance came this way.”
Grawson dismounted and went to some tracks in the snow. “Three horses,” he said, “two unshod, one shod.” He crouched down, looking at the sides of the prints, their relative sharpness. “Not over three hours old,” said Grawson. He stood up. “We got him,” he said.