Running Elk’s lips thinned; he deliberated. But he was unable to keep his eyes from the talking scalp. “This you may do. You may speak as long as this twig burns in the fire.” He tossed a small branch on the glowing embers off to one side.
Sam tucked the scalp in his belt and turned to follow Running Elk.
He saw the girl Singing Waters watching him. She gave him a smile, and he had to gulp. Then Strong Boy moved to her side, glaring.
When they had passed, Sam asked Running Elk: “Her husband?”
“No. He fevers for her, but her father demands many ponies, and he is poor, the son of One Who Turns Men’s Heads and a brave who died of disease.”
Sam for some reason felt better, though he was plagued by the thought that he had years enough and more on him. Twenty-seven, last spring. High time he had a wife. And then the inevitable thought: Indian wife? Well, why not? She had been to mission school. Her English showed that. She knew the ways of his people. She could take her place among them.
Running Elk stopped before a tipi at which two braves stood guard, erect as the war lances held at their sides.
Sam pushed into the gloom behind Running Elk. There was the smell of earth and fresh sleeping boughs cut from the pines and firs. A gentle snore broke the silence.
Sam followed the snore to its source. Buffalo Biddix lay on his side, lips fluttering with each outgoing breath. With his bulk in repose, Buffalo looked like a peaceful, chubby child. His face was round, his hair a spare, limp silver, his nose a red button.
Sam nudged him with his toe. Buffalo suspiciously opened one eye, and then the other. He sat up quickly.
“Thought they had to come to put me through the ordeal,” he said. “How are you, boy?” He drew on his boots, stood up.
Running Elk said, “Until the twig burns.” and went out of the tipi.
“You old galoot,” Sam said, “can’t you stay out of trouble when my back is turned?”
“Just naturally follows me,” Buffalo said in resignation. “I am coming out of the mountain with a burro loaded with herbs when I make camp and find this case of guns stashed in a hollow beside the creek. Naturally I am surprised by this find, and I am breaking the case open to make sure, when I am set upon by three Sioux braves. Must have been tracking me. Nothing I say convinces them I am innocent as a baby. They bring me here. Out of past friendship, Running Elk tells me that I am to have a chance to tell them who left the guns there for me. No talk, and I’ll be put to the test by fire. Hell of a thought. They treat me pretty well, but they’re getting out of patience. Thought sure they was coming for me this time.”
It sounded about as bad as it could get, Sam decided. He gripped Buffalo’s shoulder. “When you didn’t show on Macklin Branch, I set out. Now I’ve found you, we’ll figure some way out of this.”
Buffalo scratched under his armpits. “We better figure fast. I ain’t hankering to carry on a conversation with their fire god.”
Sam went out, found Running Elk, and gave him the scalp. Running Elk clutched it close, assigned a warrior to show Sam to a tipi which would be his for the night, and hurried to his own tipi to converse with the Crow scalp. Sam watched the old chief’s departure with pursed lips.
Sam was in the tipi only a few moments when an old crone of a woman slipped in and let the flap of deerskin fall behind her.
She stood with lowered head, thin-bodied, her face a mass of wrinkles. She raised her face a little and when she spoke Sam glimpsed broken, yellow teeth. “I am One Who Turns Men’s Heads. Strong Boy is my son. I see the way you and the girl look at each other. You must take her away, white medicine man. She is bad for Strong Boy. He pants much for her, but her father demands many ponies.”
Sam studied the old woman intently. “You have not stated everything?”
“That I cannot do,” she said. “Enough to say that what a man yearns for he sometimes goes to great extents to get.”
“And your son does evil to gain the ponies with which to wed Singing Waters.”
“I do not say as much.” The old woman was uncomfortable, as if sorry now she had come. “You look at me strangely,” she said. “You think perhaps I am misnamed. But many years ago I bore my name well. I could turn any man’s head. My beauty could bewitch all men.” Her shoulders straightened somewhat in pride, then sagged again. “But it was a curse. I wanted what I could not have. I was never happy again. Far better had I been born ugly, as age has made me now. I want my Strong Boy to be safe and happy, not as I was.”
She slipped from the tipi silently as a shadow. Sam watched her shuffle across the compound. He saw the way she held her head down like a beaten cur dog, the way her people glanced aside as she passed. Some of them spat upon her shadow.
For a moment, Sam was gripped with pity for One Who Turns Men’s Heads In his imagination, he saw down her years, to a time when her beauty had been a flashing thing, a smug weapon. What a reputation the old girl must have earned for herself!
Sam was prepared for the advent of a warrior sent by Running Elk. He stood before the warrior and placed his fingertips on the Indian’s chest near his heart.
“Wait,” Sam ordered, “I will read what is in your heart without it coming from your lips.”
He threw back his head, closed his eyes. “Running Elk has sent you to bring me to his tipi because the scalp of the Crow will not speak.”
The warrior podded dumbly.
“Running Elk is impatient, but the scalp will not speak because Running Elk is holding an innocent man prisoner. The scalp can only tell Running Elk of the fire that will sear his eyes from their sockets when he harms the wearer of the buffalo jacket, and the scalp will not speak of that for it will anger Running Elk and cause him to destroy the scalp. The scalp will speak only when it can bring good tidings to the great chief, after he has released and sent the innocent man away with gifts.”
Sam pointed imperiously. “Go now to your chief and speak what I have spoken.”
The warrior dashed out. Sam wiped his forehead.
He ate antelope that night from the cooking pots of the Sioux, and it was handed him by an image from a dream, light as a thistle upon her dainty feet, her face lowered but not too low for him to see the flash of her smile. Running Elk watched him with narrowed eyes and Strong Boy with open hate.
Sam knew things were coming to a head. He could feel it in the air, sense it in the tribal council members who flanked their chief. Buffalo would either be released or put to the torture of fire to make him speak. If they decided Buffalo was guilty, then the white medicine man must be guilty as well. For an instant, the savory game almost curled in Sam’s stomach.
He kept his air and attitude aloof, but his eyes and face suggested friendship when he happened to glance at Running Elk. He harbored no ill will, but Running Elk was the one who must right a wrong. Sam hoped he got this feeling across without it being misconstrued.
He strolled toward the creek with the first light of the moon. His mind was heavy with the problem. Even if Buffalo was released and they rode from the camp in safety, there remained much. The rifle-running; the impending war clouds between Crow and Sioux, which would bring troops in, lead to war, and cost white scalps and red ones as well. Sam flinched from the prospect, being a peaceable man and believing that the country needed all the good, strong citizens it had, without killing any of them off.
Then he saw Singing Waters standing beside the creek, like a doe about to take flight. He walked slowly toward her. Strong Boy and I have one thing in common, he thought.
She stood warm and near in the darkness and he could hear her breathing and see the glint of teeth behind parted lips.