AT TWILIGHT TWO SOLDIERS DRAGGED HIM into camp, his face bloody. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
“Found him by the river, sir, hiding in the grass,” one of the soldiers told the lieutenant. “He’s Sioux. Had an eye on our horses.”
They’d already bound the Indian boy’s hands behind his back and now forced him down against the side of a wagon and tied him to the sturdy axle. His bruised, bloodied face made me think of Samuel, and I felt a sorrowful squeeze inside my throat.
Lieutenant Frye looked the boy over without a flicker of compassion. “Were there any others?” he asked his two men.
“Not that we saw.”
“Does he speak English?” the lieutenant asked.
One of the soldiers shook his head. “Or won’t.”
“Bring Duellist here,” the lieutenant said.
The top of a distant butte held the sun’s last light, like a beacon. When Duellist saw the Sioux boy, his normally genial face hardened into a mask. He squatted down and said a few words. The boy glared mutely, then spat on him. Duellist wiped away the spittle, then struck the boy hard across the face.
I gasped. “Was that necessary?”
“You shouldn’t watch this, my dear,” my father said, trying to usher me away, but I shook off his hand with a scowl.
“Don’t feel sorry for him, Miss Cartland,” said the lieutenant. “We’re going easy on him, compared to what his own people do to horse thieves. I knew a trapper who traded with the Sioux. One night they caught a Crow Indian in their corral. First they shot him off his horse, then the braves came and counted coup on him—are you familiar with that practice? They gain honor from striking their enemy with a stick before scalping him. And then the women came with axes and chopped him up and scattered the pieces hither and thither.”
He made a motion with his hand like sowing seed in a field. It made the carnage he described all the more revolting. I was tired of Lieutenant Frye and his instructive little stories about the Indians.
Duellist turned to us. “He says he didn’t come to steal horses.”
“Lying,” said one of the soldiers who’d dragged him in. “Horses are like gold to them.”
Quite a crowd had gathered. I was amazed at the change the Sioux boy’s presence made in the men. Not just the soldiers but the Yalies. They stood taller. They talked louder. Their jaws hardened. They were ridiculous.
Duellist and the boy had another exchange. The Pawnee scout turned to my father.
“He says you took the heads of the dead. He saw it.”
“Ah,” Papa said.
I’d never forgotten that mirage-like horse and rider I’d spied on the ridge. We had been watched. Guiltily I wondered exactly how much he’d seen.
Duellist said, “He wants them back.”
The Sioux boy was speaking more fiercely now.
“One of the dead was his father,” Duellist said.
Papa must have seen my stricken face, because he said, “‘Father’ may be a rather vague term for these people. A term for a relative, or even an elder.”
“We should return them,” I said.
He frowned. “We have no proof any of these men were truly related to him.”
From a distance Mr. Landry jotted notes.
The boy was speaking again to Duellist. The Pawnee scout grunted, turned to us.
“He says you also took something from his father’s body—a tooth.”
My father and I glanced at each other, and I felt sickened by our complicity. I’d stood by as bodies were decapitated—maybe even the body of this boy’s father. Yes, I’d objected, but maybe not strongly enough. And then I’d made everything much worse by stealing from the body. With a twist of self-loathing, I knew I would do it again, for that tooth.
“He can tell us,” Papa whispered to me, and his expression was nakedly covetous. “He can tell us where he found it.”
Before I could react, he hurried off. I saw him duck into his tent. He came back with the black tooth in his hand. He crouched close to the Sioux boy and put the tooth on the earth. The boy’s eyes blazed. It was obviously an object he knew well.
Papa said, “Duellist, will you translate for me, please? Now, where did your father find this?”
Duellist relayed the question, but the boy just stared defiantly into the distance.
Duellist cuffed him on the side of the head.
“No, no!” said my father. “That’s not necessary, please.”
From his pocket, my father pulled a silver dollar. “Tell him if he tells me, I will give him this.” He put it on the ground.
With his foot, the boy kicked the coin away and unleashed a torrent of angry words.
I admired his defiance very much, when he was surrounded by dozens of soldiers, defenseless.
Duellist said, “He says the tooth should be with the body, and you are thieves, and they will smash any bones you find, just like the big ones they broke yesterday.”
Triumphantly I looked at my father. “The Bolts had nothing to do with it!”
“That’s of no concern yes yes to me right now,” he said. He showed no signs of remorse. If anything his face had hardened, and I could tell from his mouth, the forward jut of his neck, how very angry he was.
Pensively he stood, hands clasped behind his back, and stepped over to the lieutenant. “I know this boy is your prisoner, and you will deal with him as you see fit. But to know where that tooth came from would be a very good bit of information. The skeleton of that creature would be a great prize for me and our nation. Can you think of any way we could . . . induce him to talk?”
“They’re stubborn,” the lieutenant said, “and they’re proud.”
“We could give him a good thrashing,” said Daniel Simpson.
I looked at him in revulsion; at the same moment my father sternly said, “That won’t be necessary. We’re not savages. What you can do is fetch the heads. They’re in the storage wagon.”
Was he planning on returning them after all? But I felt a slithering unease. Papa crouched down once more, staring at the boy. The boy stared back. If he was intimidated or frightened he did not show it.
Daniel returned with the burlap sacks, and my father motioned for him to unwrap them. One by one, the three heads were set before the boy. I watched his reaction, saw where his eyes rested. When I glanced at Papa, I saw he’d noticed too. Far right. The boy’s father.
“If you tell me where the tooth was found, I’ll give you back the heads and the tooth.”
I wasn’t at all certain my father was sincere, but the boy had no doubts.
“He says he doesn’t trust you,” Duellist said. “He thinks you are a liar, like all the other Wasicu.”
Wasicu. This was what the Indians called us, according to the lieutenant. The word actually meant fat-taker—the person who was selfish enough to take the finest part of the animal for himself.
My father chuckled coldly. “Very good. Well, yes yes tell him, please, Duellist, that he’s destroyed something very important to me. Those bones were my property, and he needs to give me something in return. A trade. He needs to tell me where I can find the bones belonging to that tooth. That’s fair.”
He spoke with measured calm, but I sensed a terrible undercurrent beneath his words.
Once again Duellist translated; the Indian boy said nothing. I didn’t see what more my father could do, but he went and picked up a shovel leaning against the wagon.
“Professor Cartland,” said Mr. Landry, “I urge you not to hurt this boy.”
I looked at the journalist in surprise and gratitude. I didn’t feel quite so alone anymore.
“You are a journalist, Mr. Landry, are you not?” my father said quietly. “Then I suggest yes yes that you observe, and not participate.”
“Papa,” I said, taking a step toward him. I put my hand on his arm, could feel his muscles tensed.
“Don’t worry, my dear; I’m not going to harm him.”
He let the tip of the shovel rest very lightly atop each skull in turn, like he was playing a counting game.
“These are, after all, just bones.”
His knuckles whitened as he drove the shovel down into the head on the far left, again and again, shattering the skull and upper jaw. Horrified, I stared, not at the mangled remains, but at my own father, who was suddenly unrecognizable to me, his face so clenched, eyes narrowed and furious.
“Now,” he said, his voice strained, “I will not ask you again. I want to know where that tooth came from.” He let the shovel rest on the head of the Sioux boy’s father, the blade tip-tapping the forehead, the nose, the hole of the ravaged mouth.
He looked at the silent boy—“No?”—and lifted the shovel high.
“Stop it!” I cried.
The Indian boy strained forward, shouting, and my father pulled back.
Duellist began translating haltingly, cutting the Sioux boy short to ask questions of his own. “He says the place is almost a full day’s ride up the river. There is a butte taller than all the rest. At its base is a coulee with several big rocks like . . .” He made a curving shape with his hands, as though describing a toadstool.
“A hoodoo,” said Lieutenant Frye.
I’d seen them. They sprouted plentifully from the ground here: a pillar of rock supporting a large stone cap, sometimes very teetery.
“Near these,” Duellist went on, “is where the tooth was found.”
“Is he telling the truth?” my father asked Duellist.
Duellist looked at the boy hard and then said, “I don’t know.”
The Sioux boy spoke again.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He wants to be released now, with the heads and the tooth.”
“Tell him tomorrow,” my father said. “After he’s led us to the place.”
“You lied to him!” I protested.
“Only so he doesn’t lie to us,” he replied patiently.
The lieutenant said, “I don’t want to keep him any longer than that, Professor. His people will come looking, and I’d rather avoid a fight, especially with you and your daughter here. It’s not something you’d want to see.”
“I understand, Lieutenant. Would you be willing to send a detail with us?”
“Professor, we’re at your disposal. But you realize he might be leading you into an ambush—or straight into an Indian camp.”
“It did yes yes occur to me.”
“But it shouldn’t be anything my boys can’t handle,” the lieutenant said. His grin was confident. “We’ll send Duellist and Best-One-of-All with you too.”
The Sioux boy was shouting his outrage. I heard the word Wasicu again.
I rounded on Papa. “Are you even planning on returning the heads and tooth?”
“We’ll see what tomorrow holds.”
He bent down and picked up the tooth; he nodded at Daniel Simpson to bundle the heads back up. The Sioux boy bellowed louder, and Duellist gave him another clout across his face.
“Stop hitting him!” I shouted.
The boy’s manacled hands made it impossible for him to wipe away his tears, so he set his face into a fierce mask. He’d been caught. He’d lost his horse. And now he was humiliated and tied up before a Pawnee, one of his sworn enemies.
I looked over at Landry, still writing notes with a grim face. I wondered how much of this would make it into print.
“My dear, don’t look so forlorn,” my father told me. “This time tomorrow we might be standing before the bones. Imagine that yes yes. There they’ll be, all curled up in the rock like a slumbering giant.”
I pulled away from him. I didn’t want him calling me “my dear.” The way he’d treated that boy was monstrous.
But I must have been monstrous too, because even now, even after all I’d seen tonight, when Papa mentioned the slumbering giant, I’d felt a pulse of excitement and thought: We can wake him.
The rifle’s crack gave me such a jolt I almost spilled off my pony. It sidestepped nervously, nickering.
“Stop there!” a voice shouted.
As we approached Cartland’s camp, it was properly dusk, and I hadn’t seen the soldier’s blue uniform until he stepped away from one of the wagons.
“It’s Sam Bolt!” I shouted. “From Professor Bolt’s camp!”
“Just making sure,” he added when I came closer. “Wasn’t aiming at you.”
After the treatment I’d had at their quarry, I wasn’t so sure. I wondered what kind of reception I was going to get from Cartland.
“We caught a Sioux trying to steal horses,” the soldier said.
I glanced at Ned. Our Sioux? I was amazed the Indians had dared come so close. They must’ve seen there were dozens of soldiers.
“Just one?” Ned asked.
“There might be more of them around. Lieutenant’s put a double guard on tonight.”
Why would he risk getting caught? Unless he was acting on his own, maybe ignoring the others. I thought: The boy.
“Four of them paid us a visit earlier,” Ned said.
“That’s why we came,” I said. “To warn you.”
“Bit late. But tell the lieutenant.”
Ned and I picketed our ponies and made our way into the camp. Orderly rows of tents, some round, some rectangular, were enclosed within the perimeter of their wagons. A simple corral had been created. They’d dug a proper privy. A chimney jutted from their cookhouse tent. Some men were hammering together crates, tending horses, cleaning tack. I saw one of the students, Simpson, carrying a burlap sack into one of the wagons. I glimpsed the inside and spotted plenty of small open boxes and a little desk.
I was relieved to find everything so safe and orderly. On the way here I’d had terrible images of a burning camp, massacred bodies strewn everywhere.
I stopped when I saw the Indian boy tied against a wagon. An officer with a doctor’s case knelt in front of him, trying to clean the ugly wound on the boy’s face. But he kept jerking his head from side to side, shouting and spitting. Eventually the doctor gave up. Closing his case, he stood and gave me a nod.
“Proud people,” he said. “Won’t let himself be helped.”
The Indian boy stared at me scornfully for a moment, then back down at the earth. I wondered what he thought of me. A liar? Part of Cartland’s crew? I wanted to explain but didn’t know how. I was shocked at how bloodied and swollen he was. He seemed a lot smaller down on the ground, arms yanked back.
“I owe you a sincere apology, Samuel.”
I looked up to see Professor Cartland strolling over with the lieutenant.
“We have the real vandal here, as you see. I hope Friar wasn’t too hard on you—though from what I saw, you punch above your weight. Your father’s son to be sure.”
His words were friendly enough, but his smile was forced.
“He visited us first,” I said, nodding at the boy, “with three others. They went through our things pretty thoroughly. I think they were looking for heads.”
I didn’t say any more; I wanted the rest to come from him. He didn’t disappoint me.
“So they were.” He told a breezy version of how they’d collected the heads. He didn’t mention the tooth. “I suppose smashing our quarry was their way of getting back at us.”
“Do you think it might be an idea,” said Ned, “to give back the heads and let the boy go? Might make a more peaceable atmosphere for all of us out here.”
“Thank you for your advice, Mr. Plaskett,” the professor replied stiffly. “We’ll be releasing him tomorrow.”
“We just came to warn you,” I said.
“And we’re much obliged,” said the lieutenant. “You’ll stay the night. Not a good idea to be out after dark tonight. There should be dinner before long.”
“We’ve already eaten, but thank you,” said Ned.
“Have a second dinner,” said the lieutenant affably.
By Cartland’s sour expression I could tell he wasn’t happy about this. Maybe he was worried we’d sneak around and peek at his finds—which was exactly what my father wanted us to do.
“That’s very hospitable,” Ned said.
When I saw Rachel, I kept my face tight because I worried it would betray the sheer happiness of seeing her again.
“Miss Cartland, hello,” I said. I watched her eyes as they traveled across my bruised face.
“I hope your face isn’t too badly off,” she said.
“I’m fine, thank you. Ned and I just came over to let you know there were Indians around. But you’ve already figured that out.”
“Yes, but thank you very much.”
“I’m sorry about what they did to your quarry.”
“There’s a few things to salvage, I hope.”
It was hard to think very well, because I was so hungry to look at her and try to breathe in her scent, but she was too far away. She was very good at this pretend formality.
After dinner I went to get my bedroll from my horse. And as I was coming back through the shadowed camp, Rachel appeared suddenly at my side.
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” she said.
There were a few soldiers and students around, but as long as we walked cordially side by side, no one was paying any attention.
“I’m all right. It made me sick to see those bones. After all the work you did.”
“Well. There are more fossils out there.”
“And you’ll find them. You’re like a divining rod.”
She grazed my fingers with hers. How simple a touch was. Heat coursed from my ears and cheeks. I wanted to take her and kiss her.
“I’ve missed you,” I said quietly, but my heart beat loud in my ears. I felt like I was running too fast down a hill. Could only go faster to keep from falling over. “I’m sorry for the mean things I said last time. I’m an idiot. Did you know that since meeting you, there hasn’t been a single day—not even a single hour—when I didn’t think of you?”
Looking straight ahead, she said quietly, “You make regular appearances in my thoughts too.”
“I played that word game with myself. It was terrible.”
This made her laugh. “Well, you’re not very good at it.”
“No, I meant every word just reminded me of you.”
“Every word?”
“Every word!”
She shook her head. “You’re absurd.”
“I missed your smell. That place at the base of your neck.”
I glanced over and even in the twilight saw the dark bloom in her cheeks.
“Don’t make me blush,” she said.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep. It was like you were haunting me. Once I begged you to let me sleep, and you did.”
“Ridiculous,” she said. “Listen. The tooth I took, it belonged to the Sioux boy’s father. That was his body we beheaded. His own father was the one who found the Black Beauty.”
I was so startled I had to force myself not to turn to her. This very boy was the son of the man who’d owned the Black Beauty and ridden it into battle. “He told you all this?”
She nodded. “Papa’s making him take us to the place it was found.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
I kept walking, looking straight ahead. On my way here I’d made a plan—a bold and crazy one. Now I saw it crinkling up like a scrap of paper in a bonfire.
“Why would he help you?” I asked.
“Papa says he’ll give him back the tooth and heads.”
“Will he?”
“I don’t think so.”
It was a physical pain, a clenching up below my ribs, to think of the Black Beauty going to Cartland. And this, too: I’d always imagined Rachel and me finding it together.
“Did he say where it was?” I asked.
“He described a place upriver, near some hoodoos.”
“Which are everywhere. It’s probably a lie—I don’t see why he’d help you.”
“That’s why Papa’s making him come with us.”
I hesitated a moment, then said, “Better hope he doesn’t get free tonight and steal the heads and tooth.”
She nodded toward a covered wagon. “Even if he found the specimen wagon, he’d have trouble getting the tooth from Papa’s tent.”
“He keeps it inside his tent?”
Professor Cartland himself came into view and stared at me in a way I didn’t like. I said good night to Rachel and found Ned. We settled down around the fire with some of the Yalies and listened to them sing, and even joined in on a few songs. But all the singing was just background noise in my head as I made my own plans.