Totter looked off where the tracks led. “I ain’t riding into the Bad Lands,” he said.
Grawson mounted, loosening the carbine in his saddle boot. “A month’s liquor is a lot of liquor,” he said.
“Not if you ain’t alive to drink it,” said Totter.
Grawson drew the carbine from the boot. “There’s only three of them now,” he said.
“Where they’re going,” said Totter, “there may be fifty of ’em. I ain’t going into the Bad Lands.”
Grawson checked his weapon, released the safety. “You’re on special orders to me, Corporal,” he said.
“I ain’t going there,” said Totter.
The carbine rested across the saddle, casual. “Yes, you are,” said Grawson.
“Not me,” said Totter.
“I guess you don’t understand, Corporal,” said Grawson, “that’s one of those special orders.”
“Go to hell,” said Totter. “I ain’t going.”
Totter saw he was looking down the barrel of Grawson’s carbine. When Grawson pulled the trigger it would hit him about two inches over the belt buckle.
“If you ain’t going, Corporal,” said Grawson, “I’m going to leave you right here.”
“You can’t go shooting a white man,” said Totter, his voice stumbling, his eyes not leaving the penny-sized hole at the end of the carbine.
“I wouldn’t,” said Grawson, “but Indians might-right here.”
“I’m coming,” said Totter.
“Ride ahead, Corporal,” said Grawson.
Cursing under his breath, Totter turned his mount toward the Bad Lands.
“You’re crazy, Mister,” he said over his shoulder.
Totter heard the hammer snap back on the carbine, as though it was jerked, the way Grawson’s face moved sometimes. The hair lifted on the back of Totter’s neck. Then no bullet came and he rode on, his hands shaking on the reins.
As the two men rode from the Carter soddy they passed, not noticing it, a sign drawn in the snow, two circles connected with short lines, and an angle pointing toward the white ridges in the distance.
In about a half hour Totter and Grawson were making their way through the first arroyos of the Bad Lands. They had ridden a few minutes, down the bottom of one arroyo, when Totter stopped.
“I thought I heard something,” he said.
“Keep going,” said Grawson.
Totter kept going.
Then in about a minute he stopped again. “There it is again,” he said. He looked around. Everything seemed still. “Snow,” said Totter, “snow slipping into the arroyo.”
“The wind pushed it off,” said Grawson.
Totter looked at him, and at the carbine which had not been returned to the saddle boot.
“Let’s go, Corporal,” said Grawson.
“There ain’t no wind,” said Totter.
Grawson gestured with the barrel of the carbine.
Totter, his face white, trembling, watching, moved his horse slowly ahead.
It was dusk in the Bad Lands when Chance, Winona and Running Horse reached the camp.
For the past few minutes they had heard the light tap of a tom-tom, getting louder as they approached it.
“It’ll give their position away,” Chance had said.
“No one will hear,” Running Horse had responded.
Chance realized then that the young Indian was right. There were no soldiers within miles. The Carters, even if they might have heard, were dead.
A woman’s scream carried over the snow, through the cold air.
“Lucia!” said Chance, kicking his horse forward.
Running Horse turned his pony into Chance’s path and the two animals struck shoulders, snorting. “No!” said Running Horse, sternly. “No!”
Chance’s face contorted with agony.
“No,” said Running Horse gently, putting his hand on Chance’s arm.
Together then he, with Winona, following Running Horse, continued down the arroyo, following the sound of the tom-tom. At last, turning a final bend, they passed two grim Hunkpapa guards, and came to the camp.
It was in a small canyon, something like a box canyon except that at the far end there was a cut, giving access to another arroyo beyond. The walls of the tiny canyon were pretty steep, and the place, like the arroyos, was sheltered from the wind. Finding such a retreat in the Bad Lands, had Chance and Running Horse not known where it was, might have taken days.
In the canyon the snow had been trampled down over a space about twenty-five yards wide, circling out from the leeward wall of the canyon. That wall was fringed with makeshift shelters, mostly contrived from blankets, sticks and brush.
Toward the center of the canyon was a large fire, lighting the walls of the canyon. It had already melted the snow back in a wide, damp circle. It was muddy near the fire. It was too large a fire for the uses of the camp. Chance judged, correctly, that it was a council or ceremonial fire, and the wood it fed on might have been carried, some of it, from as far as the Carter soddy.
About thirty-five Indians, few of them women and children, were gathered about the fire. The men were sitting on brush and blankets. The women and children stood behind them.
Most of the women wore the signs of mourning. They had cut their hair; their faces were smeared with dirt and their clothing had been torn. Some had cut open their cheeks and arms, and heavy blood clots marked the wounds that would become scars.
The children, Chance noticed, did not run about as Indian children normally did, busying themselves here and there, getting into whatever trouble they might find. Instead they stood by the women, clinging to them, afraid to let go.
He did not see Lucia; but he had heard her cry; she was somewhere here.
He must wait.
Chance hoped that more of the Indians might find their way across the prairie to this retreat, or others like it; he did not understand at that time how few Indians had escaped Wounded Knee.
At least there would be food in the camp, meat; Chance remembered that the Carter livestock had not been in evidence, what there had been of it.
Lucia was nowhere to be seen, but he had heard her cry; she was somewhere here.
He did not like to look at the eyes of the children.
He must wait.
Old Bear sat a little forward of most of the warriors, his eyes staring into the fire, not really seeing it.
Chance noted that Drum, too, was not present, nor any of the young warriors who habitually followed him.
Perhaps Lucia was with Drum, and his men.
Chance’s fists clenched.
Then he saw, suddenly, revoltingly, in a clear place near the fire, scalps, hair and skin, heaped on the ground. Lucia had screamed. It was a dark, loose pile, grisly, matted, stained with brownish reds, some of the hair stiff, the whole pile rather damp from the mud and snow, droplets glistening here and there on it, lying in the mud near the fire. Many scalps. More, Chance noted than those of the Carters alone. Lucia. She had screamed. I heard her. No. None of the scalps blond. None blond. None. Not blond. And Chance took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly, his hands trembling. Lucia, he told himself, is still alive.
Old Bear stood to welcome Winona.
She went to him, standing before him, and Chance could see that the old man was happy beyond happiness, though hardly did his expression change. “Huh!” he said to her. Winona inclined her head to him, gently. “Huh!” said Old Bear again, and motioned for her to go and stand with the other women, and the children, which she did.
Running Horse took his seat as a warrior, a bit behind Old Bear. The young Indian motioned for Chance to sit beside him. None of the braves objected to Chance taking that place. Drum was gone, and his young men, and the rest of the Hunkpapa, or most of them, had long ago come to accept Chance as a part of their camp; he was Medicine Gun; even the Minneconjou who were there did not protest his presence, remembering him from before, from the camp before the march, from the march, from Wounded Knee. Indeed, though Chance did not understand it at the time, the fact that he had been at Wounded Knee, with them, was important to these people. They would say to one another, in years afterward, when a child might ask, or a stranger, “Yes, Medicine Gun, he was with us at Wounded Knee.”