Chapter 2

 

 

I didn’t die that night, or the next, as it turned out. I couldn’t understand Apache, but it seemed like a couple of the Indians wanted to kill me and Red Eagle wouldn’t let them.

Red Eagle was the one who had murdered Mama. I saw him do it, strangling her with his bare hands. I saw everything, from where I was hiding out in the pigsty.

See, Papa and I had been out doing the chores. He turned and gave me an odd look, like there was a lot to say but he didn’t know where to begin. Then he just said, “Stay inside here, boy.” He shook me a little, so I’d know he meant business. “You hear me? Don’t come out, no matter what.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He walked out of the shelter we’d just finished up two days earlier. I saw, then, what he’d seen: a line of Indians up on the ridge beyond the clearing where our cabin sat.

I think Papa knew what was going to happen, because when he left, he looked back one more time with a kind of sadness in his face. I almost followed him out of that shed right then, but I didn’t want to disappoint him.

That was when the Indians came riding down off that ridge, whooping and yelling, and Papa stopped trying to act like there wasn’t nothin’ wrong. He took off runnin’ toward the house, yellin’ for Mama. I heard the door scrape as Mama opened it.

“Robert! Robert!” she screamed. But by then, those devils had killed Papa. They rode down into the front yard of our cabin and tomahawked him, his blood shooting up like a fountain of red. Mama, she came running on out the front door, down off the porch.

That was when Red Eagle jumped down from his horse and grabbed a-holt of her. He was laughing, and his arms were covered with Papa’s blood. He wiped it off on Mama’s dress, and she spit on him. My Mama spit! I hadn’t ever imagined she’d do any such of a thing, cause she was usually so proper about everything.

“Warrior Boy,” Red Eagle said, now, watching me from the cooking fire. “You are not afraid, are you?”

He spoke to me in pretty good English, for a demon.

“Why do you not speak?”

Because I don’t want to. But I didn’t answer him, even then. He got up and walked over to where I hunkered down, sitting with my legs drawn up as I leaned against a big rock. My hands were still tied up and it was a good thing for him they were. Because there in the darkness, with the cooking fire lighting those evil faces around me, I still figured I might be able to lunge up and choke the life out of this one varmint that had killed Mama like he done. If my hands was untied, which they weren’t.

He leaned up real close to me then, breathing into my face. He smelled like pure meanness, covered with sweat and old blood. I thought about takin’ up where Mama’d left off and spitting at him. I could have spit right in his face, he was so close, and I wouldn’t even had to’ve moved an inch.

I didn’t, though. I just looked at him, and I didn’t turn my eyes away, even though I felt like I was looking into Satan’s face and it scared me, down in my gut.

Papa always said, “Look a man in the eye, friend or enemy, so they’ll know you mean what you say.” Even though I hadn’t said nothin’, I wanted to let him know I wasn’t gonna back down from him. That made me feel like I had a belly full of snakes twistin’ around. But I thought about all he’d done to Papa, and Mama and Lisbeth, and I wished all over again that he’d untie my hands for just a minute.

Red Eagle took out a knife, then, real slow like he was tryin’ to scare me. I tried not to act like it did, but I kept thinkin’ about what he did to Lisbeth. He’d used this same knife; I remembered, and never would forget, the handle on it, carved from bone, and the unwieldy length of the blade. Something told me that bone wasn’t from any animal.

He brought it up slowly to the rope that tied my hands, almost, I thought, as if he’d read my mind…

He slipped the blade between the loops of rope and I looked down at it. In the dim light, I could see a ridge of rusty stain along the edge. My sister’s blood. He had not even bothered to clean it after he’d cut her. I felt a wail of mingled sadness, and anger and loss start in the pit of my stomach where the snakes had twisted earlier. It grew and did some looping and wrangling of its own deep inside me where the hollowness had been for the past week, ever since it had happened. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to make a sound. And not because I was afraid of this red-skinned son-of-a-gun, either.

I just didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how he’d opened up a place in my soul that wouldn’t never heal or stop hurting, even if I lived to be a hundred. Which, since I was his prisoner, I probably wouldn’t live to be.

So I held that cry down and I didn’t let it out. It took everything in me to keep from it. I was shaking so bad I felt like a leaf in a tornado. I felt like I was going to fly apart. He cut the ropes and they fell to the ground beside me.

Next thing I knew, Laughing Wind was telling Red Eagle to kill me. Course, I couldn’t understand what he was saying—not all of it—but I didn’t have to know Injun to know that Laughing Wind wanted to see my blood on Red Eagle’s blade.

Right then was when I got my prayer answered. I’d about given up on God by then. I prayed when they was killin’ Mama and Papa and Lisbeth. When I lost my head and come running out of the pigsty, I didn’t have another thought of prayer. I was too mad. And too crazy. When you see somethin’ like that happen, you can’t just hide. I knew Papa woulda tanned me good if he’d been alive to take care of that kind of business. But there was no more life left in him than in a dried up husk of a locust in August.

So, I’d forgot about the prayin’ I done back a few days ago, that God would save me. And I figured He’d forgot about it, too. But, I guess I was too quick on the draw ’bout losin’ my faith, cause He sent me deliverance in His own time, and in His own way.

Red Eagle was about to do just what Laughing Wind had been pushin’ him toward doing. I could see that Red Eagle wanted to make Laughing Wind be quiet, and if it meant killing me, that was probably what was going to happen before the night ended. He brought up the knife close to my face.

“Do you see this, Warrior Boy? The blood of your sister still stains my blade. I have killed your mother, and your father. Your sister was killed by one of our bullets. Your family is dead. You are all that remains. And tomorrow, when the sun rises, you will not see it.”

He made a quick move, lunging toward me like a tiger. He reminded me of that big animal in another way, too. His eyes were angry and had a flat look to them. Papa said when a man or beast gets that kind of a look to them, they ain’t got nothin’ to lose. That’s when you better be wary.

Well, I was more than wary, but I couldn’t do a dern thing about it—not any of it. I was still shaking from just holding in so much of everything. Which I couldn’t do a dern thing about, neither.