“You make strong medicine, Sam Tucker,” she said softly. “It changes the beat of my heart and makes me dizzy here.” She touched her temple.
“You are frank and honest, as a child.”
“But no child. A woman worth many ponies. Can you make ponies speak, Sam?”
“Now you’re laughing at me.”
“I went to mission school, and I know scalps cannot talk.”
“You heard the Crow scalp speak.”
“And did I not say you make strong medicine?”
“Still laughing at me,” he said. He caught her wrists. He pulled her toward him. She struggled enough for decorum; then their faces were almost touching.
“There is a custom among the white people which makes the strongest medicine of all,” he said. “Would you like to learn its secret?”
“I think so.”
He bent his head and kissed her. It was unreal, the touch of lips so soft.
She gasped. “You do speak truly. I think it’s a very pleasant custom.”
“A little more practice,” he suggested, “and you’d be tops at it.”
“Tops?”
“The best. Nothing to equal you.”
“You speak with poetry. Like the singing brook.” She became serious, studying his face. “And like the brook you will run away. I must go now, or like One Who Turns Men’s Heads I will be made the fool.”
Strong Boy came out of the shadows. His lips were peeled back until his gums showed like curdled blood about his teeth.
He hurled himself on Sam and bore Sam to the ground. Moonlight glinted on a knife. Sam grabbed the descending arm. It was strong as a hickory bough. Sam brought the arm to a halt when the knife nipped the flesh of his throat. He tried to squirm from beneath Strong Boy. The Indian gripped his throat with his other hand.
Sam grabbed the Indian’s scalp. He pulled Strong Boy’s head down, trying to bash it against the ground.
Dimly Sam heard shouting, Singing Waters’ rising voice. Then the tramp of many feet. And Strong Boy was pulled off him.
Running Elk pushed through the warriors Singing Waters had summoned. Strong Boy writhed against the hands gripping him. “He comes to cheat us of a rascal and despoil our women!”
“Is this true, Tucker?” Running Elk asked.
“No. I come to free an innocent man, and there is only sweet music in my heart for Singing Waters.”
“You will give many ponies for her?” a middle-aged Indian asked. Her father, Sam guessed.
“I will have the ponies, greedy man!” Strong Boy broke in. “Singing Waters shall be mine, and my knife will taste the blood of this offspring of a goat!”
“He has challenged you, Tucker,” Running Elk said.
“He sure as hell has,” Sam said glumly.
At a nod from Running Elk, Sam was herded back into the village. There was a brief council; then Running Elk gestured and warriors drew back and one took a stick to make a large circle on the ground.
Strong Boy laughed and began stripping to his waist. Sam swallowed the cotton in his throat and did likewise.
“You will fight in the manner of our people,” Running Elk commanded. Sam’s hardware, including his knife, were taken from him. Strong Boy tossed his knife away and flexed his hands before him, showing silently how he would break the white neck.
Strong Boy pranced into the circle. Sam sighed and shuffled in behind the Indian. Strong Boy launched his attack as he had beside the creek, with the full force of his body.
Sam was prepared this time. He caught the Indian’s arm, hit him across the back of the neck with the flat of his hand. He hit him so hard the hand went numb, and Strong Boy fell on the ground. Sam looked at him in some surprise. He felt a little better. Maybe some of the starch was knocked out of the buck now.
It did not seem so. Strong Boy backed to get his breath, grinning evilly. He returned to the attack, strong as ever, but more wary.
He circled in a crouch and feinted. The movement failed to throw Sam off guard, but it threw Strong Boy out of position. Sam put a bear hug about Strong Boy and poured all his strength into his arms. He felt the ribs giving like hickory saplings. Strong Boy screeched with pain.
They stood swaying, the flickering campfires playing over their straining, half-naked bodies, while the village watched from outside the circle.
Strong Boy brought a knee up, and Sam staggered away, reeling. Strong Boy hit him with the full force of his body and they went down. Strong Boy threw a quick scissor-hold around Sam’s middle and now Sam could feel his own ribs giving under the pressure.
He grabbed and caught a moccasin. With set teeth, sweat streaming down his face, he brought the foot up and around, twisting it, eyes bugging as he stared at the foot and wondered if it were going to be pulled free. Then he saw the sole of the moccasin, and almost let go.
Strong Boy had been the rifleman who’d fled from Macklin’s Branch. Sure as sin, it had to be so. Across the sole of the moccasin was an old slit, repaired with fine thong. This very moccasin had left that footprint on the bank of the branch.
The knowledge brought a new surge of strength. With a bellow, Sam brought the foot up hard. Tendons snapped. Strong Boy screeched. Sam scrambled from the reach of Strong Boy’s hands and gained his feet.
The Indian tried to get up. Sam helped him, to an extent. He whirled Strong Boy around and around over his head until gasps of amazement rose from the village. Then Sam aimed Strong Boy at the hard earth and let fly. Strong Boy struck with a thud that shook the ground. The night became perfectly silent, and Sam stood gasping in the circle, the victor, with sweat and dirt caking his face and chest and fire running through his lungs as he tried to get air into them after Strong Boy’s squeezing.
Sam stood tall and straight and raised his head high. He glanced at the faces about him only long enough to locate Singing Waters.
She was weeping softly, and Sam knew thanksgiving when he saw it.
He gave her a wink; then his face became stony. In a thunderous voice, he spoke to Running Elk, “Disbeliever who has almost brought the wrath of the speaking scalp upon his own head, will you listen to the scalp now?”
“I will,” Running Elk said.
“Then fetch the scalp. Quickly! Move not as an old woman.”
One Who Turns Men’s Heads ventured to her son’s side, rubbed his forehead, but the ministration did not return him to consciousness.
The scalp was handed to Sam. He held it at arm’s-length, began shaking it, staring at it with impassive face. The Indians’ eyes all followed his stare. When every eye was focused on the shaking scalp, the tossing hair began to fling out words: “Fools, in your own midst is the traitor! It is Strong Boy who has conveyed the guns to the Crow.”
A gasp, a chorus of “How can it be?” rose from the village.
“Must I tell you everything?” the scalp demanded. “Are you not wise enough to ferret out Strong Boy’s motives yourselves? Perhaps he wanted money for many ponies. His own mother knew he was indulging in evil. But whatever his motive, he was with the Crow from whose head I was taken. You will find the corpse and Strong Boy’s footprints near each other on Macklin Branch. Together — Crow and Sioux — they tried to kill the white medicine man, but he, in his strength, courage, and great wisdom, thwarted them and came to you with truth!”
Strong Boy was trying to stumble to his feet. His mother helped him, a wrinkled old crone standing at his side as the men of the village moved toward them, Running Elk in the van. A change took place in the old, time-destroyed features of One Who Turns Men’s Heads. Her shoulders straightened. A light came to her eyes. Some of the wrinkles seemed to disappear.
She looked at the Sioux with all the venom and hate distilled through years of being despised and cast out and having her shadow spat upon.