Kirby positioned himself better behind the tree and quietly went to the bathroom. If a bean is a bean, the boy thought, what’s a pea? A relief.
Preacher just wouldn’t shut up about it. “Out in the deserts, now, them Injuns get downright mean with they fun. They’ll cut out your eyes, cut off your privates, then slit the tendons in your ankles so’s you can’t do nothin’ but flop around on the sand. They get a big laugh out of that. Or they might hang you upside down over a little fire. The ’Paches like to see hair burn. They a little strange ’bout that.
“Or, if they like you, they might put you through what they call the run of the arrow. I lived through that … once. But I was some younger. Damned ifn I want to do it agin at my age. Want me to tell you ’bout that little game?”
“No!” Emmett said quickly. “I get your point.”
“Figured you would. Point is, don’t let ’em ever take you alive. Kirby, now, they’d probably keep for work or trade. But that’s chancy, he being nearabout a man growed.” The mountain man tensed a bit, then said, “Look alive, boy, and stay that way. Here they come.” He winked at Kirby.
“How do you know that, Preacher?” Kirby asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wind just shifted. Smelled ’em. They close, been easin’ up through the grass. Get ready.”
Kirby wondered how the old man could smell anything over the fumes from his own body.
Emmett, a veteran of four years of continuous war, could not believe an enemy could slip up on him in open daylight. At the sound of Preacher jacking back the hammer of his Henry .44, Emmett shifted his eyes from his perimeter for just a second. When he again looked back at his field of fire, a big, painted-up buck was almost on top of him. Then the open meadow was filled with screaming, charging Indians.
Emmett brought the buck down with a .44 slug through the chest, flinging the Indian backward, the yelling abruptly cut off in his throat.
The air had changed from the peacefulness of summer quiet to a screaming, gunsmoke-filled hell. Preacher looked at Kirby, who was looking at him, his mouth hanging open in shock, fear, and confusion. “Don’t look at me, boy!” he yelled. “Keep them eyes in front of you.”
Kirby jerked his gaze to the small creek and the stand of timber that lay behind it. His eyes were beginning to smart from the acrid powder smoke, and his head was aching from the pounding of the Henry .44 and the screaming and yelling. The Spencer Kirby held at the ready was a heavy weapon, and his arms were beginning to ache from the strain.
His head suddenly came up, eyes alert. He had seen movement on the far side of the creek. Right there! Yes, someone, or something was over there.
I don’t want to shoot anyone, the boy thought. Why can’t we be friends with these people? And that thought was still throbbing in his brain when a young Indian suddenly sprang from the willows by the creek and lunged into the water, a rifle in his hand.
For what seemed like an eternity, Kirby watched the young brave, a boy about his own age, leap and thrash through the water. Kirby jacked back the hammer of the Spencer, sighted in the brave, and pulled the trigger. The .52 caliber pounded his shoulder, bruising it, for there wasn’t much spare meat on Kirby. When the smoke blew away, the young Indian was face down in the water, his blood staining the stream.
Kirby stared at what he’d done, then fought back waves of sickness that threatened to spill from his stomach.
The boy heard a wild screaming and spun around. His father was locked in hand-to-hand combat with two knife-wielding braves. Too close for the rifle, Kirby clawed his Navy Colt from leather, vowing he would cut that stupid flap from his holster after this was over. He shot one brave through the head just as his father buried his Arkansas Toothpick to the hilt in the chest of the other.
And as abruptly as they came, the Indians were gone, dragging as many of their dead and wounded with them as they could. Two braves lay dead in front of Preacher; two braves lay dead in the shallow ravine with the three men; the boy Kirby had shot lay in the creek, arms outstretched, the waters a deep crimson. The body slowly floated downstream.
Preacher looked at the dead buck in the creek, then at the brave in the wallow with them … the one Kirby had shot. He lifted his eyes to the boy.
“Got your baptism this day, boy. Did right well, you did.”
“Saved my life, son,” Emmett said, dumping the bodies of the Indians out of the wallow. “Can’t call you boy no more, I reckon. You be a man, now.”
A thin finger of smoke lifted from the barrel of the Navy .36 Kirby held in his hand. Preacher smiled and spat tobacco juice.
He looked at Kirby’s ash-blond hair. “Yep,” he said. “Smoke’ll suit you just fine. So Smoke hit’ll be.”
“Sir?” Kirby finally found his voice.
“Smoke. That’s what I’ll call you now on. Smoke.”
Three
Preacher hopped out of the wallow and walked to a dead buck. He bent down and removed something from the dead Indian’s belt. A Navy .36. He tossed the pistol to Kirby, along with a sack of shot and powder.
“Here, Smoke. Now you got two of ’em.”
Kirby felt more than a little foolish with his new nickname. He did not feel at all like a man called Smoke should feel. Tough and brave and gallant and all that. But he smiled, secretly liking his new name.
Off another dead Indian, Preacher took a long-bladed knife, in a bead-adorned sheath. He tossed that to Kirby. “Man’s gotta have a good knife, too.”
Then he pulled his own knife and began scalping the dead bucks.
“Good God, man!” Emmett protested. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Takin’ hair,” Preacher said. “I know a tradin’ post that pays a dollar for ever’ scalp lock a man can bring in. Fifty cents for a squaw’s hair. But I don’t hold with scalpin’ wimmin. I won’t do this to a Ute or a Crow — lived with ’em too long, I reckon — but I just purely can’t abide a Pawnee.”
Emmett grimaced at the bloody sight but kept his mouth shut. He had heard that Indians had not been the originators of scalping, but the white man. Now he believed the story.
Kirby looked on as Preacher took the Indian’s hair. He was both horrified and fascinated.
Neither Emmett nor his son had ever seen a warlike Indian. There had been a few down-at-the-heels Quapaw Indians in Missouri when Emmett was growing up — and were still a few around — but they were not warlike. Father and son moved closer to take a look at their recent enemy.
Preacher had finished his grisly work. Surprisingly, to Kirby, at least, there was little blood from the close haircut.
“They don’t look so mean to me … not now, anyways,” Kirby said. “They just look … kinda poor.”
“They ain’t poor,” Preacher contradicted. “Don’t you believe that for a second. Most of the time they eat right well. Buffalo steak’s nearabouts the best meat in the world, I reckon. And pemmican.” He rolled his eyes and Kirby laughed at the old man’s antics. “Well, you ever get a chance to eat some pemmican, you see what I mean. Tasty. Indian goes hungry, it’s his own fault. They won’t grow no gardens. They think that’s beneath ’em. Warriors and hunters, not farmers. So to hell with ’em.”
“Do you grow a garden, Preacher?” Kirby asked.
“I been known to from time to time. But I ain’t no gawddamned sodbuster, if that’s what you mean.”
“See, Pa.” Kirby looked at his father. “He can cuss. Why can’t I?”
“Hush up, Kirby.”
“What’s that about cussin’?” Preacher asked.
“Never mind,” Emmett said.
Kirby was growing accustomed to the dead braves. They did not bother him now. His stomach had ceased its growling. “What’d you call that food? Pem … what?”