20

Slocum and Hevo didn’t have much else to do by way of preparation. Now was the time when Namid proved herself, and if she failed or decided she truly did belong with Spirit Bear, the drums that were now pounding in a rhythmic frenzy would most likely be the last music that Slocum heard. He had faith in his plan. He only wished he’d had more than a few minutes to put the plan together.

“You seem nervous, John,” Hevo said. While Slocum had been making his preparations and mulling things over, the Cheyenne had been dipping his fingers into mud from the floor mixed with blood from his wounds to make war paint, which he used to trace lines on his cheeks, forearms, and chest.

Slocum finished knotting a few strips of his shirt together, sniffed it, and winced. “And you don’t look nervous. That means you might be even crazier than those men outside.”

“I have faith in our cause. Even if we fall in this fight, we will have died in a righteous manner.”

“Yeah, well, let’s try not to die at all,” Slocum said while tossing over the strips he’d knotted together. “That way we can tell folks personally how righteous we are.”

Hevo chuckled and caught the shredded pieces of shirt. “You are no boasting rooster like the man Josiah, who stays behind to squawk to the women and children within those wagons.”

“Josiah. I damn near forgot about him.” Picking up another couple strips of fabric that had been knotted and soaked with as much water as he could sop up from the floor and windowsill, Slocum tied the strips together. Like the piece he’d made for Hevo, his strip was the length of a shirtsleeve with several other strips of cotton in layers. He smelled the fabric and winced at the pungent mixture of mold, dirt, and even dung that had been left behind by something that had lived up in the cabin’s rafters. “I hope that loudmouthed old man is doing all right.”

“Have faith, John Slocum.” Lifting his head, Hevo nodded at the subtle shift in drumbeats.

“Is Spirit Bear about to make his speech?” Slocum asked.

Hevo nodded.

“About damn time.” With that, Slocum placed the foul-smelling rags across the lower portion of his face and tied the ends tightly in back of his head.

Hevo did the same with his own makeshift mask, chanting a song in a low, growling voice while the Indians in the camp struck up a tune of their own.

Slocum could barely smell the cotton through the mess he’d smeared into the fabric. When the odor of the animal dung washed down his throat, he longed for the pungent stench of body odor or any number of things that could have been in the shirt before. Cold air blew through the cabin, stinging his chest like a set of icy nails dragging through his flesh.

Outside, the drums played and women made their rounds to the bowls and lanterns to add a granular mixture from bags they carried. One of those women was Namid and she went about her task without casting more than half a sideways glance at the cabin where Hevo and Slocum were hiding. Seconds after the mixture was added to the bowls, it was lit by torches. Lanterns flared as dust was added to the kerosene within them and the remaining dust carried by the women was cast into a large fire that had been built in the middle of camp. As soon as dark green smoke billowed from the flames, Spirit Bear emerged from the largest tent.

Decked out in his skins and wearing a headpiece made from the hollowed skull of his namesake, Spirit Bear looked more like a shape-shifting animal from Indian legend than any sort of man. He shook his staff, extended both arms toward the growing cloud of smoke, and began to speak in a powerful, wavering voice.

“What’s he saying?” Slocum asked.

Hevo watched intently, translating as if he was speaking from memory. “Tonight, we hunt!” he said. “Tonight we slaughter the white travelers who would disgrace our lands with their boots.”

At first, the answers from the warriors and Dirt Swimmers gathered around the fire were given as if they’d been well rehearsed. As Spirit Bear continued, the responses became wilder.

“Tonight we slaughter demons dressed in the skins of men!” Hevo translated.

The men near the fire threw their hands up and howled as if they fully intended to shred their throats with the effort. Spirit Bear went on, trembling with emotion.

“Do not see them as anything but the demons they are!” Spirit Bear continued. “Some may be small and some may have fairer skin, but they are all foul demons!”

Now the men on the periphery of the camp started shouting. They were closest to the wooden bowls that burned with the Dreaming Dust. Some fired their guns in the air while others began flailing so powerfully that they knocked into each other. Random fights broke out among them and a few looked around in a panic before running toward the hills, leaving the camp behind altogether.

Spirit Bear chanted, but none of the others chanted back. He shook his staff and chanted louder, which only seemed to create more of a panic among the men, who now ran in a frenzy of flailing arms and thrashing legs.

“Looks like a good time to join the dance,” Slocum said. He ran through the door and exploded from the cabin with Hevo following closely behind. The first time Slocum passed through a cloud of the acrid smoke, he held his breath beneath the mask he’d created. The smoke sung his eyes, causing tears to flow and a painful ache to take root at his temples. Whatever he was feeling, however, the men who breathed it in directly were feeling a whole lot worse.

Three men closest to the cabin saw Slocum and Hevo charge out and immediately turned their backs to them. Slocum had been expecting resistance right away, but hadn’t expected to see such well-armed braves scamper away like children who’d just seen a strange shadow in the corner of their bedroom. Hevo shifted his focus to a bare-chested warrior holding a tomahawk in one hand and a rifle in the other. Although the warrior held his ground, he cowered when Hevo hunched over and snarled like a wolf that had been raised in the lowest regions of hell.

The warrior tried to turn tail, but Hevo was already upon him. He snatched the tomahawk away and swung it viciously across the warrior’s throat. Even when the warrior dropped, his arms and legs thrashed wildly as if he was still trying to run away. Hevo knocked him out with a swift kick to the chin and then scooped up the warrior’s rifle.

Slocum emptied both barrels of his shotgun at a pair of warriors who rushed at him. Although his mask was doing a good job of filtering out the Dreaming Dust, it was making his hands shake so hard that he dropped the spare shells he meant to use to reload the shotgun. He found time to reload, simply because the warriors in his vicinity were too busy either fighting each other or bolting into the hills surrounding the camp to worry about him. When the shotgun shells were spent, Slocum found a few rifles that had been cast away by warriors too intent on escaping whatever visions they were seeing. He took one rifle and slung it across his back before picking up a Spencer model that had been decorated with tribal charms and feathers.

All this time, Spirit Bear continued to chant. He stood his ground in the thick of the smoke, wailing to the sky above and stomping the ground in steps that became heavier and faster with each second that passed.

Some of the warriors that Slocum and Hevo found next still had some fight left in them. Whatever Namid had done to the Dreaming Dust made it difficult even for the most focused warriors to concentrate long enough to use their weapons. The ones who bore firearms couldn’t see straight enough to hit the broad side of a barn. Any shots they fired either hissed several yards over Slocum’s head or clipped one of the other painted braves and spun them around like broken marionettes.

Slocum kept his breaths shallow whenever possible. He focused on the putrid tastes and smells of the mask he’d crafted, hoping that some of the tangy scents he detected weren’t from wisps of the modified dust seeping through the protective layers. Taking in some of the smoke was unavoidable, however. Slocum’s vision began to blur and shadows started writhing as if they had lives of their own. Noises became a slurred mess within his ears until his own footsteps sounded like a snarling voice. By the time he’d fought his way to Spirit Bear, Slocum pitied the crazed wretches who’d gotten a real taste of the altered smoke.

“You . . . are . . . demons!” Spirit Bear hollered in slurred English. His eyes were wide beneath the bear skin hood, and his muscles trembled beneath his cloak. “White demons come to . . . eat my soul!”

“Just one white man,” Slocum replied.

Hevo yelped like a coyote as he shoved aside a pair of staggering warriors and hurdled a group of Dirt Swimmers who clawed at the ground in an effort to live up to their name. His eyes were so wide and his voice so powerful that Slocum wondered if too much of the poisoned dust had gotten into his lungs. Spirit Bear looked at the Cheyenne warrior and dropped to his knees to chant crazily as Hevo rushed toward him. When he arrived, Hevo grabbed hold of Spirit Bear’s headdress, raised his tomahawk, and then swung it with a mighty war cry. Although he stopped short of burying the blade into Spirit Bear’s neck, he lifted the headdress up and wailed as if he’d just slain the most fearsome beast the prairie had ever seen. He continued to shout as he kicked Spirit Bear over and held him down with that foot.

Many of the Indians in the immediate vicinity didn’t notice the performance right away. But when one of the warriors caught sight of Hevo standing over Spirit Bear, the man screamed. His voice caught the ear of others and silence worked its way through the camp like ripples in water.

Hevo stood with his prize in hand, glaring at any eye that dared to look in his direction.

Sensing a fear that was powerful enough to make the air feel like a taut bowstring, Slocum fired his rifle and shouted his own string of nonsense words. Any other time, the display may have been laughable. To the men who’d been affected by the smoke Namid had poisoned, Slocum may as well have been the devil himself.

More warriors ran away.

The ones who attempted to fire at Slocum and Hevo didn’t come anywhere close to hitting them. All Slocum had to do was fire a shot in their general direction to send that group running like scalded dogs.

Dirt Swimmers cast their netted cloaks aside and bolted from the camp.

Before long, Slocum, Hevo, and less than half a dozen others were all that remained. Those others were either sprawled unconscious on the ground or babbling like lunatics in an asylum.

The smoke was clearing. Hevo kicked Spirit Bear aside and walked toward the largest tent. A woman cried inside and he could not get to her fast enough.

Slocum stooped down to prop Spirit Bear up to a seated position. Once his skins were off and his ceremonial trappings had been stripped, Spirit Bear was nothing more than an old man with wide, clouded eyes. His cracked lips moved to form words that could not be heard. His hands trembled and panicked breaths caused his sunken chest to quake beneath filthy undergarments that most likely hadn’t been washed for months.

“Whatever you were trying to do,” Slocum told him, “it’s over. You’re through with your damn war. You hear me?”

Spirit Bear kept babbling his silent chant. Without an army to follow him and without anyone to listen to his big talk, he was exposed for what he truly was: a feeble, yammering old man. Slocum brought him to his feet and shoved him toward the livery that had been set up beneath a makeshift shelter.

By the time Spirit Bear was tied up and tossed over the back of a horse, Hevo was escorting Namid from the big tent. She was sobbing and rubbing her eyes. Hevo comforted her in their native language, but wouldn’t be heard for some time. Even so, he continued to try and calm her down as they rode into the hills.

* * *

They retraced their steps across the prairie. Along the way, they crossed paths with a few crazed Indians who were still feeling the effects of the Dreaming Dust. The ones that weren’t easily knocked out and tied up were convinced to run away by a few loud noises.

The following day, as they continued to ride, a few more Indians tracked them down. Slocum and Hevo had been watching for stubborn ones like that and managed to gun them down before they got close enough to do any damage. The fights were as short as they were one-sided.

“They are just animals,” Namid said. “Without Spirit Bear to guide them or bring them together, those men are nothing but wild dogs.”

“Looks that way,” Slocum said. “Soon as I get to an Army post or even a town with a telegraph, I can send word out to keep a lookout for them.”

“Considering all the suffering Spirit Bear has caused,” Hevo said while looking at the old man still tied up and draped across a saddle, “there will be plenty of white men who are more than willing to begin a hunt of their own. For once, I cannot blame them. Men like these make all tribes look like savages.”

“Well, there are plenty of palefaces out and about who make handsome fellas like me look just as bad,” Slocum said. “I’m just glad we were able to come out of that camp in one piece. Speaking of which,” he added while looking over to Namid, “what on earth did you do to that dust?”

Namid had recovered from her dose of the smoke, but had been withdrawn ever since. “I did as you asked. I made it . . . more.”

“What was the ingredient that caused all of that insanity?” Slocum asked.

“I do not know and I do not want to know. Spirit Bear showed the women how to mix the Dreaming Dust and he gave us the ingredients. He showed us the powders we needed to handle most carefully and those are what I put into the smoke when I mixed it for the last time. I put more than we should have used for three doses. Maybe more.”

“You convinced all the women to help you?”

She nodded. “All of us were in our own nightmares at the hands of those killers. When it came time for it to end, I knew the others would want to help.”

“Hopefully nobody else stumbles upon that stuff,” Slocum said.

“They won’t,” Namid told him. “We burned it all. Some of those killers who breathed in so much of it may never wake up from their nightmare.”
Slocum wasn’t about to pity the warriors and Dirt Swimmers who’d raided innocent wagon trains and killed good folks to steal their belongings, but when he thought about the madness that would grip them for the foreseeable future, he came awfully close.