After the Thunder (11 page)

The blow rocked Walks-With-Spirits back on his heels, but only for a moment, and then he returned it to Jacob’s cheekbone with a force that drove him to his knees. When Jacob touched his face and brought his hand away bloody, he let out a great, keening howl filled with fury and pain.

“You stinking, ignorant, low-down woods skunk,” he screamed. “If my face is scarred, I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, do you hear me?”

Walks-With-Spirits stood over him like an avenging angel.

“You are the low-down one who doesn’t deserve to be called a man. A real man doesn’t mistreat a woman.”

Jacob struggled to his feet.

“I’ll shoot you just like I shot your precious pet coyote,” he shouted, his breath coming fast and hard. “You never saw me then, and you’ll never see me when my bullet is meant for you.”

Walks-With-Spirits froze as he stood.

“You? You are the one who shot Taloa? Why would you do such a thing?”

“To show the superstitious, old-fashioned ones the truth,” Jacob shouted, panting for breath as he pulled out his shirttail and held it against his bleeding face. “I proved to the whole Nation that your animal is flesh and blood, that it’s a coyote like any other and that you are a flesh-and-blood man like any other!”

Walks-With-Spirits stayed still, terribly still.

“No, you’re not a man like any other,” Jacob cried, his voice rising to an ugly screech. “The wild animals are your brothers because you’re no smarter than they are. You don’t deserve to call yourself a man.”

Walks-With-Spirits ignored that.

“You would bring pain to an innocent animal, make it suffer and bleed for no better reason.”

It was a flat statement of surest truth. His deep, calm voice held clear menace, it held a cold, hard promise of retribution.

“The reason was good, good for the Nation!” Jacob cried. “Clinging to the old ways will do nothing but hinder us from living in a white man’s world.”

“So,” Walks-With-Spirits said, “you admit that you are a cruel coward.”

Jacob lunged at him weakly, fists clenched, then stopped and clapped his hand to his bleeding face as if the wound prevented him. He spat on the ground as if he had to clear his mouth to be able to speak.

“You can’t call me a coward!”

“I just did.”

Walks-With-Spirits still spoke in that unusual, cold way that held everyone there spellbound. He held his ground without giving an inch.

Still, Jacob didn’t quite dare to hit him.

“Well, I shot your coyote, and I’ll shoot you next,” Jacob yelled, furiously. “You don’t deserve to
live
, you interfering idiot!”

“
You
don’t deserve to live,” Walks-With-Spirits said, in a loud and taunting voice that turned from cold to hot in a heartbeat. “The Great Spirit abhors every breath you draw since you mistreat every creature that is weaker than you!”

“I’ll treat my women any way I please,” Jacob shouted haughtily. “None of that is anything to you.”

Walks-With-Spirits drew back his fist and hit Jacob again, hit him with a blow that made an awful thudding sound as it knocked him back to the ground. This time he didn’t get up.

Walks-With-Spirits extended both arms out over Jacob and in a magnificent, ferocious gesture swept them up and held them toward the sky. He spoke in a terrible voice that cracked through the woods like lightning.

“Listen! Now you walk pathways that are black.

“You will be lonely and then you will be traveling to the Nightland.

“Jacob Charley, your spirit is dwindling. Your soul is blue.

“May the next evil thought in your mind squeeze out the breath from your body, forever.”

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

The terrible curse was horrible to hear, magic pronounced in a spirit of vengeance was the conjury most feared.

But worse than that was the fear-stunning sight of a good medicine man doing bad medicine, that was the most evil, most forbidden magic of all. Seeing and hearing such a thing struck everyone there helpless and dumb.

Then Walks-With-Spirits bent, picked up a stick, and in the same motion scooped the end of it through the earth where Jacob’s spittle had landed. He brought it up
and held it high as he straightened to his full height, his amber eyes blazing.

Now he had some of Jacob’s saliva. Now he could use it to strengthen the curse, he could take it to running water at dawn and cast the spell again. Then it would be even more deadly.

Cotannah felt her soul sink into the ground.

She was the one who had caused him to cast this bad medicine. She had started all this madness.

Walks-With-Spirits stepped over Jacob’s prone body, bent and picked up her jacket, strode straight toward her. A hard trembling ran through her to watch him come.

It stopped when he stood over her because he scared her so much she couldn’t even breathe. His eyes held her impaled on the sharp sword of his anger, his face was the fiery visage of an avenging angel. For one heart-stopping instant she thought he would strike her, too.

His eyes were like pieces of burning amber, brighter than the light from the torches that flickered on his face. Amber, awe-inspiring eyes.

His copper-colored skin stretched tight with wrath over his chiseled cheekbones, blood streaked a dark, diagonal line across his face. He looked wonderful and terrible and capable of anything.

An ache sliced through her heart like a sword’s blade: She didn’t know him, she didn’t know him at all.

She spoke before she knew she could, astonished that she could talk because she was so scared.

“I thought you only did
good
medicine.”

A new emotion came into his eyes, something she couldn’t name.

“So did I.”

His full lips tightened into a flat, thin line.

“Put this on,” he said.

Then he dropped her jacket into her lap, turned on his heel, and left her.

E
mily came running toward her, crying out, over and over again, “Cotannah, oh, ’Tannah!” Tay called to Walks-With-Spirits, who turned to walk toward him.

Then Emily was there beside her, helping her up, pushing her arms into the sleeves of the jacket. Over Emily’s shoulder, Cotannah glimpsed Peter Phillips offering a hand to Jacob, still prone on the ground.

Her fingers were trembling uncontrollably but somehow she pulled the jacket together across her bosom and buttoned it up all the way to the neck.

Then Aunt Ancie and Auntie Iola and Hattie swooped down on her.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for modesty?” Iola said, her voice a scornful bark.

“Look here at the trouble you’ve caused, Missy,” Hattie blustered loudly. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

Ancie didn’t say a word, but her face was stiff with disapproval. Her small black eyes popped furiously.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Cotannah cried. “Jacob wouldn’t let me go …”

“Oh, ’Tannah, you’re shaking all over,” Emily cried, hugging her close. “Dear Cotannah, did he hurt you? Oh, Lord, your screams are still ringing in my ears. We’ve got to get you to the house. Right now, right now!”

And so they did, to the house and into a hot bath and then her bed, with Emily chattering all the time and trying to keep the others from making reproving remarks, trying to keep her from listening to the sounds from downstairs and from the yard as the guests for the nut-gathering party gathered themselves together and shouted their opinions instead of picking up pecans. Finally, Emily dared to face down the older women bustling about the room. She shamed them for blaming Cotannah’s dress and behavior for Jacob’s boorish attempt at forcing himself on her.

“Remember what ’Tannah has been through in the past,” Emily scolded. “And remember that she was trying her best to get away from him. Why else would she have screamed like she did? She was telling him ‘no.’ Why else would he have been trying to force her?

“Look at her wrist! He nearly pulled her hand off! The poor dear can hardly use it at all!”

So Ancie, Iola, and Hattie’s recriminations subsided—for the moment, at least—to dire mutterings as they applied hot poultices to her wrist and ointment to the knot on the back of her head and made her drink an herbal tea. At last they left her, but with one last parting shot from Iola.

“You’ve stirred up the whole Nation tonight, causing this fight, and causing a good man to make bad medicine. Besides that tragedy, all we’ll hear for days and days now is those same old arguments about whether the
alikchi
is a witch or not. Starting tomorrow, I’m
taking you in hand, young lady, just as your brother asked me to do.”

Cotannah closed her eyes against that horrendous prospect, squeezed Emily’s fingers in gratitude, and let the tea carry her off into sleep.

She woke suddenly, with her blood pounding in her ears signaling danger and her arms and legs tight, ready to run. She sat straight up in bed, eyes open, peering wildly into the darkness.

Tall Pine. She was at Tall Pine. Emily and Tay slept just down the hall, Aunt Ancie and Uncle Jumper were here.

No one was attacking her.

She breathed in deeply and forced the air back into her lungs as she pulled up the lavender-scented sheet she’d thrown off in her sleep. But still she didn’t feel safe. Something was terribly, grievously wrong.

Then the whole evening came flooding back, and guilt bore down on her like an oncoming train. She had caused a good man great harm. She had caused him to scorn her and hate her.

Or
was
it hate and scorn in that last look he gave her?

Shuddering, she wrapped the sheet tight around her and closed her eyes but she could still see Walks-With-Spirits, his face terrible in fury, holding up his arms, putting the curse on Jacob. And him such a healer at heart! He was probably miserable with regret right now.

Or was he still in a fit of fury about what Jacob had tried to do to her?

Was his heart still full of vengeful turmoil? And oh, dear God, would he do even more harm—to himself, as well as to Jacob—by using Jacob’s saliva at dawn to strengthen the death curse?

He was blaming her, the same way the aunts were, she knew it. She had caused it all.

Never in her life had she felt such guilt.

Maybe she had done some bad things, like leading Tonio to think she cared more for him than she did, but she’d never before wronged someone as purely good as Walks-With-Spirits.

Suddenly, her feelings and thoughts began shifting inside her. They were like large, flat rocks moving against and on top of and under each other, starting to shape her mind and her self into a new configuration. Her breath came faster.

This had happened to her before, at the Academy in Arkansas when the lecher, Headmaster Haynes, cut her clothes off her body with his whip and soiled her skin and her soul with his greedy, lascivious eyes. It happened to her again that day on the
rancho
in Texas when the
bandidos
ran their rough, dirty hands over her skin and forced their stinking tongues into her mouth.

But this time was different. This time all the horror and all the cataclysmic changes, inside of her and out, stemmed from something she had done.

Somehow that realization strengthened her, in spite of the guilt and regret it laid on her. But why did it have to be bad that she had caused?

The old, sick feeling ran through her. Did that mean there was something wrong with her as she’d suspected for so long?

Walks-With-Spirits knew. He had looked straight into her soul the first time they met. And at the horse races, when he’d said she was degrading herself. And then, this evening, when he’d stood towering over her.

Had it been scorn, disgust for a person with something wrong inside, that he’d been feeling?

Yes. Hadn’t he sounded scornful as anything when he’d told her to put her jacket on?

Walks-With-Spirits could tell her what was wrong with her, if he would.

The thought settled one of the shifting rocks in her head and froze her whole body, as well. She needed to find out, once and for all, or the rest of her life would go on just the way it was now.

But he had been in such a fury, he had looked so scary, he had been so angry with her! Going to see him now at his cave would be like bearding a lion in his den.

Still she had to face him again, if only just to thank him. Her sense of honor demanded that.

Besides, Walks-With-Spirits had helped her twice now, maybe saved her very life twice, and she owed it to him to try to help him. His spiritual life, his life as a healer, was in danger because of her, and she ought to try to keep him from making it all worse by using Jacob’s saliva at the water at dawn.

If she got there and found that he was still furious with her, that he wouldn’t listen to her, the least she could do would be to thank him. And then her guilt would be lessened because she’d know that she had tried.

She had to change her ways, get herself in hand before Iola did. She had to take responsibility for her actions because she was sure enough going to have to learn to take the consequences of them. Iola and Tay, on Cade’s orders, would see to that. Nobody would protect her anymore.

And she didn’t want them to. She wanted to be a grown-up, capable woman, a real woman in the old Choctaw way as Cade had said. If she didn’t change her ways, she’d always be no more than a spoiled child and she’d never really be in charge of her own life.

Plus, she would always feel something was wrong with her, and she wouldn’t know what.

She swung her feet out of bed, reaching with her toes for the cool plank floor, throwing off the sheet and feeling for her chemise all in one swift motion, then she ran to the window to look out into the night. There was a nearly full moon, starting down toward morning. She could reach Buckthorn Ridge before dawn if she hurried.

Never, at any time had Walks-With-Spirits been so far from sleep in the dark, when most creatures were meant to rest. He had run for hours up and down the ridge, both sides of it, through the trees and along the creek, trying to wear himself out so he could drop off into oblivion. Or into dreams. Even horrible nightmares would be better than this fury that set every nerve in his body afire.

But he didn’t even feel tired. He forced himself to the floor of his cave, anyway, stretched his stiff body out onto the length of his pallet, unfolded the muscles that kept knotting and jumping all over his body.

What had ever possessed him? He’d done bad medicine right in front of half the Nation. He’d been so filled with hatred that he’d nearly killed a man with his bare hands. He’d lusted after Cotannah so much that he’d longed to grab hold of her, jerk her body close to his, and kiss her senseless.

What an idiot he was!

What a bad shaman, ungrateful for the powers given him by the Great Spirit!

He was nothing to Cotannah except a handy rescuer whenever her silliness got her into trouble. She was nothing to him except a weaker creature he had saved from a stronger one. She was none of his business. He couldn’t be working himself into a frenzy over her.

And he couldn’t, God knew, be doing black medicine because of her.

The sick disappointment coursed through him again. How could he have done such a terrible thing? The ones calling him “witch” would cry it even louder. What if their ranks grew, now that he had behaved like one? What if his healing powers were taken from him? What if his good work was finished almost before it was begun because he had used the evil charm?

But the worst thing of all was that in one stubborn corner of his heart he wasn’t even sorry! In that one corner, he still wished that he had killed Jacob with his own hands, right then and there.

Oh, God, what was this ungenerous feeling that had sunk its claws into him like an owl’s into a ground squirrel? Could it be jealousy, this wild wishing to rip Jacob away from his life and his home and hurl him off the face of mother earth?

He was lost, he was lost forever from goodness, if he didn’t cleanse his heart and soul and fill them with love. He must seek the help of the Great Spirit and hope the spirits of Chito Humma and Sister Hambleton also would come to his aid in trying to regain his balance and peace. Now. He must begin trying now.

He closed his eyes and threw his arm across them. Even though the interior of the cave caught very little of the moonlight, this complete darkness would make it easier to look into his own self, his own soul, easier to root out these poison weeds of hatred and agonized confusion that had sprung to life, full-grown, in his guts.

But, immediately, Cotannah’s face appeared on the backs of his eyelids, her dark eyes shining huge with shock and horror. She, too, had been stunned to see him put the death curse on Jacob Charley.

She, too, had wished he could take the black words
back—he would never forget the sound of her voice saying, I thought you only did good medicine.

At this moment, in his mind, she looked very real, as real as when she sat staring up at him standing over her. It had taken all his strength, even after the horror of what he’d just done, to take his eyes off her beautiful bosom glowing pale in the dark shadows thrown by the trees. That memory made his blood grow hot for her even now. Even while regret twisted his insides into a knot.

How could he have been looking at her in the very next moment after casting a death charm?

But he couldn’t stop remembering how she looked. In his thoughts she looked so real that he imagined he could hear her voice.

“Hello, the cave! Walks-With-Spirits, are you there? Will you please come out and tell Basak to let me pass? It’s Cotannah.”

He dropped his arm and sat straight up.

She
was
here! It was another example of how truly upset his balance had become. If he hadn’t been so wrought up, he would have felt her coming through the woods.

It’s Cotannah
.

As if he wouldn’t know that the instant she spoke!

A great white anger surged through him, washed his confusion clean. He couldn’t regain his balance as long as she was around; he couldn’t hear the spirits outside him or within. He had to get rid of her, she had no right to be here, no right at all.

He got to his feet, strode across the cave, and stepped out of it into the night. He saw her by the light of the moon and went toward her, walking beneath the trees.

“Cotannah. What are you doing here?”

She jumped and whirled to face him, which made him ashamed he had deliberately startled her. His words,
harsh and forbidding, echoed from the rocks of the ridge.

For a moment there was silence. Such a silence that he could hear his own heart.

“You didn’t have to scare me to death, sneaking around quiet as a shadow!” Then, after a moment, she said, “I came to talk to you.”

The sound of her voice coming out of the night was a windsong in his ears, but it sent a storm through the rest of his senses: lightning made of desire to reach for her struck his touch, thunder made of longing to look at her forever rolled inside his sight, rain made of tears fell bitter on his tongue, smell of winter coming rushed strong into his nostrils. She would blow him away, this storm of a woman-child, Cotannah, if he didn’t drive her from him right now. He couldn’t risk his powers because of her.

Yet he already had.

And now she’d come here to torment him some more.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said angrily. “Go away.”

But he started walking toward her anyway.

She stood waiting for him, beautiful and still in a pool of moonlight. A dozen new, vehement, unnameable feelings rose in him.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting me here,” she said, and he had never heard her sound so purely sincere—and so sad, “but at least let me thank you for saving me again.”

Did she want to talk to him that much? So much that it made her sad for him to send her away? No. He was only a convenience for her.

“I had no choice but to save you,” he said. “You called my name, screamed for me to help you.”