Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Page 8

  “Do you know the story of A-koch-kit-ope . . . the one who the nápikoan call the ‘Medicine Grizzly’?” she asked as the conversation turned to the powerful and magic creature of which they had spoken the night before.

  “Nope, but I’d sure be happy to hear you tell it . . . and I like stories told around campfires . . .”

  He was going to add the phrase “by beautiful girls with the firelight flickering in their deep, dark eyes,” but he did not.

  “If it was a nápikoan story it would start with ‘once upon a time,’” she laughed.

  Cole laughed too. He liked her sense of humor and her ability to make word jokes in a language not her own.

  “Go ahead and tell it that way,” he said with a smile.

  “Okay, once upon a time, Stock-stchi, whose name means ‘Bear Cub,’ was telling stories about a war party he had led across the mountains to attack the Kotoksspi, the people who live over there to the west. You know, the people who the nápikoan calls the ‘Flathead.’ It was a warm summer night . . . not like this one . . . and he sent his wife to get water. She saw a stranger in the light of the moon.”

  Cole enjoyed the smoothness of her gestures as she signed the expression for getting water, then pointed to the moon.

  “The stranger was part of a raiding party from the Piik-siik-sii-naa people, who call themselves A’aninin.”

  “What does Piik-siik-sii-naa mean?” Cole asked.

  “‘Snakes,’” Natoya said.

  “‘Snakes’?” Cole repeated with mock indignation.

  “You white people call them by the name Gros Ventre, which means ‘big bellies,’” she laughed.

  Cole couldn’t help shaking his head with an ironic half grin. Outsiders from all sides seemed to have unflattering nicknames for the poor A’aninin people. Of course, people everywhere seem to have derogatory names for other tribes. He recalled the names that his fellow Virginians had for the freed slaves, and how the Lakota had named white people “bacon thieves.”

  “The Siksikáwa attacked the A’aninin before they could attack,” she continued, making a point of using the tribe’s name for its own people. “And they killed the whole raiding party except one man, who was a natoápina, a medicine man. They shot many arrows at him, but he could not be killed.”

  “Reminds me of what my people say about the grizzly,” Cole interjected, “that it can’t be killed.”

  “Exactly,” Natoya said. “You are understanding the story already. The man shouted that his name was A-koch-kit-ope, and he had powerful medicine . . . and the Siksikáwa believed he did. He said he would stay to guard his dead brothers so the Siksikáwa would not take trophies.”

  “Scalps?” Cole asked, more as a statement than a question.

  Natoya nodded, then continued.

  “The next day, they killed A-koch-kit-ope, but it took all of them to do it. They discovered that he had an apóhkiááyo claw . . . like the one you gave to me last night . . . tied into his hair. They realized that he had the spirit and power of the grizzly, and they were frightened. So they burned his body.”

  Natoya nodded toward their own fire and explained, gesturing as she did, how they captured all the embers that escaped so that they could destroy and contain his grizzly medicine.

  “Did it work?” Cole asked, entranced by the motions of her hands as she told the story.

  “No,” she said with a graceful shrug that eloquently added, “They should have known better.”

  “A-koch-kit-ope reappeared as the Medicine Grizzly,” she said, signing that it was a fait accompli. “This huge apóhkiááyo followed their trail and killed many of them the next time they made camp. When the Siksikáwa went back the next year to camp in the place where the story started, a large apóhkiááyo came into their camp the first night, scaring the horses and killing the dogs. The people were so scared when they saw it was A-koch-kit-ope. They did not dare to shoot at him. Even now, he is seen in the same place by a lake . . . deep inside the mountains. He is seen only by night, and he is never attacked because he is A-koch-kit-ope, the Medicine Grizzly.”

  Natoya-I-nis’kim smiled and reached to a narrow rawhide thong that she had around her neck. She pulled it from beneath the front of her buckskin dress and showed it to him. Woven to the end, in an elaborate and intricate pattern crafted by herself, was the grizzly claw that he had given her the night before.

  “Apóhkiááyo gave you the power of his spirit,” she said, the reflection of the fire twinkling in her eyes like stars. “And you gave that to me, and that was how you were saved from the Káínawa bullet today.”

  And that was the story told by the fireside that night.

  * * *

  BLADEN COLE AWOKE TO THE FEEL OF WARM BREATH against his cheek. His first thought was naturally of the grizzly, but this was not a grizzly.

  Had it been only two days since he had awakened to the hot breathing of the roan nuzzling him awake?

  Then, it was a snorting, nudging, rude awakening. Today—or, more properly, tonight, as no sun warmed the world—the bounty hunter opened his eyes to the most divine of apparitions.

  It was a phantom that drifted like sweet incense in the indistinct dimension between dream and dream-come-true.

  Above him in the moonlight knelt Natoya-I-nis’kim. Her body, the most perfect of bodies, was clothed as it had been at the moment of her birth. Her long, jet-black hair, freed from the tightly wound braids, moved and flowed freely and most elegantly in the light breeze.

  “Wake up,” the Siksikáwa maiden whispered in a tone as rude to the dreamer as had been the prodding of the roan. “We must go . . . quickly.”

  It was, alas, a vision that quickly melded into reality, as she moved to clothe her most perfect of bodies as it had been clothed yesterday.

  Their plan had been to start out at dawn, but Cole saw no dawn on any horizon, only the billion tiny campfires that dotted the heavens from edge to edge.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” he pleaded weakly as he watched her put on her buckskin dress and gather up her robe. He did not bother to look at the watch in his pocket, but guessed it to be no later than four.

  “We must go,” she insisted. “We must be in Moisskitsipahpiistaki . . . Heart Butte . . . at dawn. I wakened with a thought in my mind. As the words of three men coming were being told across this country, words of you are spreading as well. You have heard of them. They will hear of you. We must go quickly.”

  As much as he would have rather spent the next hour—or the next lifetime—watching her in the moonlight, Cole knew that she was right.

  They bade good-bye to the trader’s wife, who was making her way to the outhouse as they mounted their horses, and rode away, guided by the stars.

  * * *

  “KOKUMEKIS KOKATOSIX KUMMOKIT SPUMMOKIT!” NATOYA said happily, looking up.

  “Yeah, I agree . . . it’s fun to look at the stars,” Cole laughed, presuming that her words celebrated the heavenly spectacle of a clear night on the cusp of winter.

  “That is a saying we have,” she said, continuing to gaze skyward. “I guess it is sort of a prayer . . . asking the moon and stars to give me strength.”

  “I sort of guessed that,” Cole said, putting the stress on the phrase “sort of.”

  “They hated this prayer at the mission school . . . they wouldn’t let us say things like that. Finally an old padre came and asked about our prayers. At last, there was a black robe who understood . . . He thought it was splendid too.”

  “Me too,” Cole agreed, looking at the stars.

  “He was also one who understood about the nátosini, the power of Es-tonea-pesta,” she laughed, pulling her buffalo robe tight about her.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The maker of cold weather,” she smiled.

 
“Yeah, he’s sure working overtime tonight,” Cole agreed.

  In the predawn darkness, Es-tonea-pesta had the temperature near zero by the reckoning of the white man named Fahrenheit, but Bladen Cole felt sufficiently warmed merely by the presence of the girl named for the elusive Buffalo Stone.

  “Tell me about Double Runner,” he said after they had ridden for about another half hour.

  “His name is Isokoyokinni in Siksikáwa,” she said. “He is named for the footrace between the antelope and the deer. He lives nápikoan-style in a wooden house and takes in strangers. You can always find at least one nápikoan in his camp.”

  “The trader made him sound like as much of a scalawag as the scalawags he takes in,” Cole said.

  “I do not know this word.”

  “It means rascal . . . troublemaker.”

  “I do not think this of Isoko-yo-kinni,” she said. “He is self-important, and he likes to have property and nápikoan things, but he is not bad. I think the trader sees him as a rival. Not every nápikoan who sleeps in Isoko-yo-kinni’s camp . . . who rides in Siksikáwa land . . . comes to make trouble.”

  Cole nodded in agreement. He was a nápikoan who was riding in Siksikáwa land.

  Just as it was stirring to life for the day, they arrived on a bluff near the heart-shaped butte from which the settlement took its name.

  There were many tipis and a few clapboard buildings, making it a metropolis by comparison with the other places that Cole had visited in Blackfeet country. Around and among the tipis, a few women were stirring cooking fires to life while their men still slept. A couple of kids were running about, shouting and laughing.

  “You should wait here,” Natoya said. “I will ride down and see what I can discover.”

  She was right. A white man with a Colt on his hip would attract a great deal of unwanted attention. A lone Indian woman appearing in an awakening settlement would blend in seamlessly—so long as her own Colt remained discreetly concealed beneath her robe.

  Cole watched as she dismounted and led her horse through the fringes of the encampment. He could see her breath in the cold air as she spoke to the women who were cooking the morning meal. He could see her gestures and those of the women with whom she spoke.

  Demonstrating no particular urgency, she worked her way through the camp toward the cluster of wooden buildings.

  At last, he watched as her head turned directly, though very briefly, toward him. Her quick, though characteristically graceful hand gesture indicated that it was time for the nápikoan to ride into town.

  Following her lead, he came slowly and casually, winding his way, rather than riding directly toward the building near which she stood. His heart skipped a beat, however, when he saw her go inside.

  * * *

  GIDEON AND ENOCH PORTER SAT AT A TABLE EATING A porridge of venison, while Jimmy Goode poured a cup of coffee—a distinct rarity in Blackfeet country—near a cookstove, which was another rarity in this country. Double Runner, wearing a white man’s shirt and vest, sat at the table with the Porter boys.

  Their conversation stopped when the door opened and a young woman stepped in.

  “Oki, i’taamikskanaotonni,” Double Runner said, greeting her and bidding her good morning.

  “Tsa niita’piiwa, Isoko-yo-kinni?” she said politely and appropriately for a young person speaking to an elder, asking after his health.

  “Tsiiksi’taami’tsihp nomohkootsiito’toohpa, Natoya-I-nis’kim,” he said, recognizing her, and knowing that she was a relative of O-mis-tai-po-kah, whom he knew well, and saying that he was pleased to have her visit his home.

  “Tsiikaahsi’tsihp nito’toohs,” she said with a smile, replying that she was happy to be there.

  The white men sat in stunned silence, reacting to Natoya’s uncommon beauty as Bladen Cole had when he first met her.

  “Who’s this pretty little thing that’s just walked in here?” Enoch Porter said, pushing the tin plate of porridge aside and rising to his feet.

  “Sit down and finish your goddamn breakfast,” Gideon snarled at his impulsively brazen younger brother.

  “To hell with eatin’ breakfast,” Enoch said, taking a step toward Natoya. “I’d be wanting me a little taste of squaw.”

  “Tahkaa kiisto?” she said angrily, demanding to know who he thought he was.

  “Got a tongue on ya, doncha?” Enoch laughed. “Betcha this squaw knows how to buck.”

  “Sit down and leave her be!” Double Runner demanded, standing up and reaching for his rifle.

  “Don’t do it,” Gideon said, firmly gripping the gun and pulling it away from its owner.

  Turning to Enoch, he repeated his demand that his little brother sit back down.

  Again, his brother ignored him.

  “Gimme little kiss, squaw,” he said, grabbing her arm.

  As his face neared hers, the disgusting odor of his breath nearly gagged her, but she managed to let fly and spit into his face with as much force as she could muster.

  He staggered backward, momentarily stunned.

  “Oh, you are a fighter, you little bitch,” he said as he wiped his face with his sleeve. “If it’s a fight you want, a fight you shall have!”

  With a laugh, he seized and twisted her wrist, and her buffalo robe fell to the floor.

  With her other hand, she drew her old Colt.

  Without hesitation, as his eyes grew to the size of the plate from which he had been eating porridge, she squeezed the trigger.

  Cli-ick.

  The sound of the misfire echoed through the room, which was suddenly devoid of all other sound.

  Enoch angrily snatched the gun from her small hand and threw it hard across the room.

  Pushing her onto the floor, he grabbed roughly at her clothing and drew his knife.

  “When I’m finished with this pretty little doe . . .” he said, licking his lips and touching her cheek with the steel blade. “I’m gonna mess up this pretty little face so’s I’m the last one who ever lays eyes on—”

  His words were swallowed by the thunder of an explosion, followed immediately by another.

  The porridge of bone and flesh that had once been the back of Enoch Porter’s head distributed itself randomly on the far wall of the room.

  Jimmy Goode’s quivering hand lost its grip on his coffee cup.

  Gideon Porter’s hand went for his own gun.

  Bladen Cole’s reproachful advice, supported by a gun aimed directly at Gideon’s head, was that he should not do that.

  Chapter 10

  RELIEVED OF HIS SIDEARM, A SULLEN GIDEON PORTER SAT upon his horse, his wrists restrained by old army-issue prison manacles. The chain was looped through the gullet beneath his saddle horn, inextricably fastening him to the saddle. He bit his lip in reaction to the biting cold and to the bitter realization that he had been caught.

  He watched as his little brother, now a rapidly cooling corpse wrapped in a cast-off scrap of canvas, was tied across the saddle on which he had ridden into Heart Butte the day before.

  “Damn you, Enoch,” his brother hissed quietly. Had it not been for Enoch’s uncontrolled sadism, Mary Phillips would still be alive, and the cycle of events that had been neither anticipated nor desired by anyone would never have led to this humiliating moment.

  They had gone to a house to kill three men, but by Gideon’s reasoning, Enoch’s killing a woman with no good reason had ignited the fires of outrage that had put a bounty hunter on their trail—a bounty hunter who had apparently not feared following that trail into Blackfeet country.

  Gideon had assumed they would be safe in this land of barbarians.

  Gideon had been wrong.

  “Damn you, Enoch,” his brother hissed quietly. “Why the hell did you have to go after that damnable
squaw?”

  Had it not been for Enoch’s impetuous, hotheaded lust, there would have been three guns to take on the bounty hunter. At least there would have been two—because, after all, Jimmy Goode was good for nothing.

  Barely fifteen minutes ago, Jimmy had been enjoying a cup of coffee—poor coffee, but still coffee—but now both he and Gideon were manacled to their saddles in the icy arctic wind. Events had unfolded more quickly and with more complexity than the limited capabilities of Jimmy Goode’s mind could process.

  A squaw on the floor, and Enoch’s brains on the wall.

  A very angry squaw with Enoch’s knife, and Enoch’s manhood in Double Runner’s potbellied heating stove.

  Normally, Double Runner would have been displeased to have guests treated so harshly and blood spattered all around his parlor, but after what he had seen Enoch try to do to Natoya-I-nis’kim, he agreed entirely with the fate meted out to Enoch Porter by the bounty hunter.

  After what Cole had told him about them, Double Runner was doubly pleased to be rid of the surviving strangers.

  The Siksikáwa leader was also delighted that Cole had made the gesture of presenting him with Enoch’s finely tooled leather boots, a pair which Cole had seen him admiring. Double Runner was pleased with this favor and called for his son and two other young men to ride with the bounty hunter and his prisoners as far as O-mis-tai-po-kah’s camp.

  As they rode out, all were silent.

  There was nothing much to be said.

  The two outlaws rode in the center, their horses roped together, flanked by the Blackfeet men, who were as eager to see them going away to justice as the bounty hunter. Cole rode behind, where he could watch his prisoners. He was flanked by Natoya, who rode parallel to him at a distance of about a dozen yards.

  As Cole watched, over the first few miles, the taut muscles in her face gradually relaxed. Rage had turned to anger. Anger had been slowly but surely consumed by the soothing mitigation of retribution having been exacted.