Chapter 19

Jean watched the girl retrieve her skinning knife from the neck of a dead man and wipe clean the blade with the blanket he was sleeping in down to the grip. She wiped her hand on the same blanket and caught Molet watching--her face, observable by dint of candlelight emanating from the ruined fort, made him look away. She had ruthlessly slayed two lower men in the old fort whilst they slept in their bunks, and while Molet felt uneasy about it Sebastian Tick was cackling.

In the dead of night there had been next to no resistance to meet them when they rode into Fort Labrador. Instead they found ivy growing on all the high, timber walls, beards of moss covering the barracks room and crawling up the tower and two men in a comfortable sleep. Inside the grounds were fairly trimmed and clear--Molet suspected this last victim was little more than a groundskeeper.

"This has to about do it for our heroes," declared Tick as he fetched a bundle of dynamite from the heavy satchel he carried. "I can't believe they was so close all this while and you never dealt with them before, Molet." He took the dynamite out of the barracks to the center of the desiccated wall and Molet followed after him. The girl Black Heart came along as well.

"Do your people use dynamite?" Tick asked her. During their day's ride south from the ranch Tick had ogled Black Heart in a way that disconcerted Molet, but he was glad to observe that Black Heart seemed unreachable in that respect and seemed to regard Tick as little more than a pest. They had made camp late in the previous afternoon and the whole while Tick peppered the poor girl with questions about "her people".

"My parents were Oglala and they died fighting Reno at the Rosebud," she told them. "It is bad luck to talk any more about it."

Molet suspected she was lying though he didn't blame her. Any further questions regarding "her people" ended in a sinister stare from Black Heart, and eventually Tick gave up and passed out. He liked his drink more than anything.

About Rice he had little to say. Molet tried taking about it with him but Tick showed little interest. Molet wondered what in all the word Tick cared about. His own ass, obviously, and doubtful anything else. Was Molet the same? Was Black Heart? Was everyone?

"That'll do for the watchtower, now for the barracks," Tick handed Molet a stick. "We'll light them altogether."

"As you say, boss," Molet took his over back to the barrack as directed. He walked inside first to have a look against Tick's growling protests.

"Let's just get the hell out of here already! Is you an archeologist or something, Jean? Christ!" Tick cussed him some more but Molet didn't mind.

Inside were five single mattresses, three occupied with corpses, in a Spartan room threadbare and smelling of earth. The floor was dirt and there was no insulation against the cold of the night. There was a desk and behind that a trapdoor opening to a cellar. Molet went over and opened the desk, finding documents, folders, tickets, envelopes. He took them all and stuffed them into his coat.

He lifted the trapdoor to descend into the cellar but before he could get more than a step down he sensed a presence. Looking towards the door where he'd come in he saw a shadowed figure flash between shafts of dim quarter-moonlight.

His right hand rested causally on the grip of his Schofield. "You want to see what's down here, too?" he asked.

There were no footsteps to be heard. The girl suddenly appeared over him, her face wreathed in the dark. She held an arrow notched to her bow.

"I don't think that's necessary," Molet said, indicating the arrow. He went down two steps and let go the ladder, landing with a thud on uneven clay. He couldn't see a thing. "You got a light, Black Heart?" He faintly heard Tick's chiding voice but could discern no words. He could guess well enough what the old man was saying.

The girl joined him with a makeshift torch, dabbed in animal fat for such a use, and aflame with greasy, jumpy light. There were crates down here, a wall mount with rifles, pistols, swords. There were arrows with eagle feather fletching, there was a tomahawk, a couple bows. On the floor next to this were a few boxes of munitions, one of them opened. .223 rounds, Rhinelander. These were old guns, too, Army single-actions and the like, from a decade ago, but all well-maintained.

"These weren't no more than a group of vigilantes, militiamen, what have you," Molet said to himself. Remembering the light he saw them with came from Black Heart, he looked back and said, "See anything here that you like?"

"No," the girl said.

Molet realized he hadn't heard her speak yet. "Why don't you take a closer look? There are some fine carbines here. Rhinelanders. Heard of them before?"

"I don't like Rhinelanders. I don't trust the loading mechanism. Besides, I'm faster with a pistol."

"If you say so. Let's get that old bastard down here and see what he says."

"Let's blow it," said the Ixopaw.

"I ain't blowing up free guns no matter how old they are. Let's see if we shouldn't take them."

They climbed out of the cellar to find Sebastian Tick. Black Heart remained within the barrack, scouring it for any more supplies or valuables--Molet doubted there were any--and Jean went outside to the centrifuge to find Tick.

"Hey, Blondie," Molet couldn't see him. Hadn't Tick only just been standing right here? "Old man!"

In the darkness strange shapes and shadows knitted the old fort. Even the movement of the ivy leaves suggested to Molet the flapping of an arm, and he investigated. The calm struck him, the silence stood out.

"Tick, where in the hell are you?"

Then the girl grabbed his elbow and whispered in his ear, "We must leave."

"Now, wait a minute. What's happening?"

"Come."

He was pulled out of the fort by Black Heart, and just as they crossed the threshold at the front entrance a quiet thwip grazed Molet's right ear. He ducked instinctively, as did Black Arrow.

"Cheyenne," Molet whispered, catching a glint of fletching in the moonlight.

Another swish and thump of an arrow colliding with the wooden gate.

Their horses, if still alive, were hidden in brush a quarter mile behind Fort Labrador. Before them were high, empty planes with small hills and dips in the terrain--it was from these natural covers that the arrows flew. Molet debated taking out his Schofield, but resolved to follow Black Heart and get a chance at staying alive. With the cover of darkness and greater numbers on their side, the troupe of Cheyenne--if Cheyenne they indeed were--would quite easily prevail.

Black Heart swiftly strode against the outer wall of the fort, and footsteps could be heard behind them, scraping against thistle and crabgrass. Black Heart's own movements were undetectable. Molet felt that each step he took made them a huge beacon, but he persisted.

Only two or three more arrows were fired, two of them well off the mark. The third, however, found report, embedding into Jean's leg.

He couldn't stop to examine it. He had called out when struck, and now they were going to be rushed. Black Heart whipped around, glaring, and noticed the arrow. She then yanked his shoulder, stood up and bolted towards the back of the fort, still holding the shoulder of his jacket. In this manner he was dragged along, trying to limp along at a good speed. He heard yelps and shouts from their attackers, meant to disorient and intimidate them.

"How many are there?" Molet knew it was pointless to ask, yet he couldn't stop the words coming out. They were being surrounded, he could feel it. Shadows still taunted him--somewhere out there Tick was had, dead and scalped. Or else he escaped without a word or warning and that would be like him. If that was the case, and Jean survived, he would see to it that Tick regretted his cowardice.

"Down!" grunted Black Arrow. She suddenly dropped from sight. "Down!"

Molet followed suit, collapsing awkwardly onto the ground, grabbing his leg. The white fletching was bright when it caught the moon, nearly aglow, and without hesitation Molet took hold of the shaft just below the fletching, gritted his teeth, and ripped the thing out. Blood streamed from the broadhead over his pants and over the grass. He whipped the arrow as far as he could away from them, an arc of blood trailing after it. Black Heart crouched beside him, holding a revolver.

There was a scream, a cry, a gunshot. Whooping, singing and fire. Molet ignored the fire in his leg and tried to see through the night. He could not see where the excitement was taking place, scanning as he did from East to West.

"Tick, your friend," Black Heart's voice disrupted him, "he has not fled us after all."

"It might be Tick, or it might be a patrol coming back for base."

A final scream soared through the night, pursued by a solemn return to crickets and distant wind gliding over open expanse. The calm lasted a short while until the galloping of many hooves began, distant and first but becoming powerful as they neared. Molet lay back flat in the sage grass and Black Heart kept her finger in the trigger guard of her pistol. Large black shapes appeared out of blackness and were headed straight for them. Backlit against the quarter moon and the faint light of Fort Labrador was a posse of the attacking natives on horseback, their weapons, sashes and kerchiefs protruding from silhouette like specters from an ancient battle as Molet found himself wondering for a moment of these were real, corporeal men or not.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Their horses came close enough that Molet had to shimmy away so as not to have his face stepped on by a hoof. The posse lingered near them as the riders exchanged terse dialogue in the Cheyenne language, before explosively setting off again, racing away to the west. Molet was in disbelief.

"What in all hell was that?"

"They followed us, obviously." Black Heart was on her feet, extending a hand for the injured Molet.

He waved her off, struggling for pride to stand on his own. Once up, he realized the injury to his right leg was severe enough to impose a limp, as he staggered nearly to a fall before Black Heart caught him and propped him back up.

"We must dress your wound," the girl said, moving to take a closer look.

Molet twisted and squirmed when he felt her fingers on him. "It'll be fine till we get back."

"It will get infected. Here." She reached into her person and said, "Look away, and don't scream."

"Christ, lady...Holy!" He bit into his forearm as it felt like she was sticking a fine, molten blade into his wound. Waves of dull aching swept over him then, and he spat as a way of screaming out over the plains.

"What in the hell did you just do?"

"That was yarrow, I rubbed some onto your leg. It should help accelerate the healing. My friend...showed me that when we were girls. It's no wonder she's a matron now."

"A what? I don't get all your injun voodoo, but I thank you."

"I could give you something for the pain, if you like."

He was about to answer when Sebastian Tick made himself known, laughing a hearty belly laugh as he approached the two of them. "What's all happening here, Molet? Got the little Indian girl on her knees, hehe. Didn't take you for the type."

Black Heart stood at once and Jean could feel the tension spring instantly into place. "You are a gentleman, Sebastian Tick. Nice of you to warn us of our visitors."

"There was no time. I knew you'd find a way to live. Besides, I popped them off, didn't I? Even killed a couple of them for you. Don't go thanking me too earnestly."

"Thank you, blessed savior. Thank you."

"Molet. Kid whom we've been burdened with chaperoning--let us return to Glory's Dawn. I should like to feast on Cheyenne blood tonight."

"What about the fort?" Black Heart was splitting from them, heading backwards. "We are to burn it down."

"Fuck it," Tick said. "Molet went and killed everyone who lived here, everyone who could shoot anyway. The Army's forgotten all about it. Let's go."

"But Drake wanted us to burn it."

"Girl, you speak damn good English for an Ixopaw, I'll give you that. But you speak too freely. I know Sid Drake and I know what matters and what don't. Let's ride, and no more questions."

"Come on, Black Heart. Let's move before more of them Cheyenne come back for the bodies."

"They'll pick em like buzzards, y'know," Tick said to Molet. Then he clapped, whistling for the horses.

"What about the dynamite, Tick? We gonna leave it where it lay and have some crack 49er find it?"

Tick laughed and shrugged. "Why not?"

Their horses came quiclkly, obediently, from a hundred yards out. Black Heart and Molet were not so far from escape, though with the small moon and the thick blanket of night blocking starlight, the steeds might have appeared from anywhere.

Regardless, Molet strained to pull himself onto his mustang. Black Heart rode Rice's old mustang. Tick rode a standardbred he called Fenris. "I don't think I'll be able to get back on old Sarge if we have to dismount again," Molet said half-jokingly.

"Straight back for the ranch it is," agreed Tick, who was always antsy.

Black Heart made no response, and Molet laughed to envision her staring at the back of Tick's head, and maybe his own as well, the whole ride back. He decided he liked the kid, even if she did scare him shitless.

When Matthew Molet was a very young boy he saw his father kill a man. It was Matthew's first experience of death.

The man had been a worker--Matthew remembered the tattered jacket and mud-caked face, the dirty beard--and apparently an insufficient one. There had been an argument, some name-calling, then a fight, some shouting. Fisticuffs. Then death on the ground, a wrestling of two men fueled by emotion, a grand spectacle. He watched his father overpower a desperate foe, the worker's fists flailing and failing, falling and flippant, frail and forgotten, hands grasping at air as if to snatch it up and hold it--hands that went pale and still--a body lying still and his father lumbering over it, breathing heavily, himself covered in a scarlet makeup of mud and blood. Matthew watched as his father choked the life out of the man. A crowd was formed. Other ranch bands watching one of their cohort's murder, some of Drake's other guns, maybe Drake himself. Matthew couldn't remember if Drake was actually there or not, but most likely he was.

What he remembered most was the look on his father's face when, after making sure the flagrant ranch hand was subdued, he recovered his awareness of his surroundings and caught his son observing him--his father's eyes popped wide open, popping from that muddy, animalistic-looking face like two pearl eggs. His father was slack-jawed, heartbroken...for a moment. He rushed through the jeers and snare of the onlookers towards his son, swept him up in a single, elegant motion without pause or crook, and took him off to their lodging house, where Jean had been given a place to raise his boy by Drake, who was fond of young Matthew.

He remembered being afraid, not wanting the man his father had just killed to be dead. He remembered the smell of his father, and the sticky clay and mud imparted to Matthew by his father's embrace. Then the song:

"The battlements they walk,

Of paradise they talk,

The handsome rising star they hark.

Roads already worn

Clothes and baggage torn

Fancy-living fools they scorn.

Hear the baby moan

Skin as soft as foam

Taken to his resting home."

He was six years old then. He was fourteen now and his father still sang that when he was drunk and, depending on his mood, Matthew would join him time to time. His papa knew few songs and never danced. He rarely smiled, his humor was dry. He scared a lot of people. But Matthew saw a gentler soul. Matthew saw a different man.

His father rode up now on his horse Sarge, coming in as the late morning's bright rays made the whole land up in pinks and bright reds and greens. The day was warm but comfortably so. Matthew was lazing against the only hackberry tree on the property, drawing with pencil and paper, when Jean and Sebastian returned with the girl Black Heart.

Before they had all set out Jean had brought the Ixopaw over as he packed for his next trip to the fort. Matthew had been inside, working on his writing--he was trying to learn--and had been instantly fascinated with the girl. For one, he found her beautiful. Be it prepubescent stirrings, of which he was unaware and against which he was helpless, or a genuine striking beauty by Black Heart, or perhaps a flourish of her dress and garb as wholly natural and of the earth itself as was she, Matthew was quite taken. Jean at the time hadn't even known her name, and so neither did Matthew. He knew her only as the Indian Girl, but while he had certainly seen Ixopaw before--a fair number traveled to the ranch for one reason or another--never had he seen someone who captivated him so.

Watching her now as she dismounted and spoke with Tick and his father, she seemed full-grown with an air of self-importance Matthew himself craved. Yet she could not be more than two years older than he was. Her face, or what he remembered of it, was youthful, if a bit cold and distant. It was bright, well-groomed and smooth. She had full, red lips and amber eyes tipped with curling lashes. Her hair was sable black and fell like silk down her shoulders. Just to think of her filled him with urgent desire.

His father gestured for her to follow him as they departed old Sebastian Tick. Matthew at once set down his drawing and ran across the yard to meet them. They seemed to be headed towards one of the lodges, so Matthew intercepted their path, trying to appear natural--as if their crossing was happenstance.

He wished he had a cigarette to smoke, or a flask to drink out of. Instead he had a knife, and he produced it, hastily snatching a pebble off the ground to grind the blade on. He leaned against the fence there, kicked a boot back, and acted as if he was sharpening the blade, aloof and unconcerned.

When they came close enough his father said, "What in the hell are you doing, boy? You're gonna dull the blade that way."

Matthew looked up, confused. He tried not to stare at Black Heart standing a few paces behind his father. "What's that?"

His father reached forward and took the stone from Matthew, then tossed it above his head and over the fence line. "Didn't I give you a whittling stone already?"

"Yessir, but I lost it," Matthew lied. It was back in the old toolbox underneath his bed, where he kept his other drawings, carvings and a few holdovers from his childhood--for sentimental reasons.

"Doing that's a good way to dull your blade. Why ain't you helping the boys with the cattle run?"

"Gutierrez said I didn't have to, since he was taking them Army fellas you brought in. I wanted to go, sir."

His father took Matthew's hat off, pounded it with his fist and returned it to where it was--a gesture of affection, of sorts. Matthew's eyes naturally drifted to the fabric wrapped around his father's leg, saturated with dried blood the color of rust. "What happened, pa?"

Jean glanced down and away as if embarrassed. "Nothing major, just a flesh wound. Little blood is all. Black Heart here has done a fine job treating it, too. I almost forgot it was there."

Matthew stole a furtive look at Black Heart. She didn't seem to notice him and didn't reciprocate, instead her unflinching face stared straight past Jean at something else, something that probably wasn't even there. Seeing her so close again made his heart pound and his throat go curiously dry.

"Anyway," said Jean, "I'm gonna help get Black Heart settled in. She'll be staying with us for the time being, okay?"

Matthew stole another look--his mind raced and it was like his head was swirling. He fought to suppress a stupid, eager grin. "Alright, dad. Should I come help."

Jean shrugged. "What were you doing--drawing again?" He turned his head so that he was addressing Black Heart over his shoulder: "Matthew here likes to sketch things. He ain't bad, neither."

Black Heart finally looked at Matthew, a small smile curling at one end of her lips.

"That's right," he said. "I like to sketch."

"We'll be done soon enough, then I mean to rest a while. I was thinking tomorrow we could go riding."

"That would be something, dad."

They were off again and Matthew was standing by himself along the fence, watching the figure of Black Heart as she followed his father towards their bunkhouse. Girls were a funny thing--once you got one into your head it was all you could think about.

He noticed the jagged marks left on the blade of his knife by the pebble. He didn't care much--they weren't anything to be too concerned over. He shuffled over to his spot under the hackberry tree and picked up his paper. He had been drawing a simple horse but he didn't care to finish it just now. Instead he turned it over, for he had something new he wanted to draw.