Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (29 page)

   
“Samuel!” Dear God he was half-dead, so emaciated and cut up it was a wonder he was still alive. What could have happened to him? She knelt beside him, cradling his head on her lap all the while screaming for help.

   
Micajah was the first one to reach her, his long brawny legs eating up the ground in devouring strides. “Sparky gal, yew all right?” He saw her crumpled on the ground, sobbing, and his heart stopped for an instant, until he realized she was tenderly stroking the man’s face, holding him protectively.

   
She looked up at him with tear blurred eyes. “Oh, Micajah, it’s Samuel. He’s burning up with fever. He’s been starved and beaten—”

   
“Hush, now. Hit’s not thet bad. He’s jest been out in th’ woods afoot fer a spell,” he said, kneeling beside her to examine the tall dark stranger while a crowd of Osage clustered around them, looking on curiously.

   
“He’s been run pretty skinny. I seen more meat stuck on a cook stick then he’s got left on his bones.” Micajah picked up each of Shelby’s feet and checked the raw festering soles. “If’n these here wuz moccasins, they’d have holes clean up ta his ankles.” He ran his big hands up Samuel’s legs and arms, then his torso, probing for broken bones and serious cuts and punctures. “Damn, child, this here’s one hell of a uglified mess!”

   
“He’s burning up with fever and that slash on his side is awful looking. Will...will he live?” she gulped out, holding her breath.

   
“Reckon I seen worse.”
But not damn often
, he added to himself, noting that for all her words of scorn and betrayal, his Sparky still seemed awfully attached to this young Long Knife. “He needs some tendin’. I done taught yew ‘bout herbs ‘n sech. Reckon yew feel up ta helpin’ me fix him up?”

   
“What do you want me to do?” she replied, her voice steady even though her heart still pounded fearfully.

   
“Thet’s my gal.” He looked up to where Iron Kite stood, scowling down at the white man Ember Woman held so lovingly. Speaking in Osage, Micajah made a series of requests.

   
Soon they had carried Samuel to the lodge of the Peace Chief, Pawhuska, whose head wife was steeping cherry bark, a fever reducing infusion. Several of the other Osage women gathered around, eager to help tend the hurts of Great Bear’s friend. Olivia politely, but firmly shooed them away and took the woven basin filled with fresh water to bathe him herself.

   
Micajah assisted her, examining the nasty head wound, crusted with dried blood that matted his hair. “This here might cud be bad—but hit won’t matter if’n he wakes up,” he hastened to add. Then he started checking countless angry red cuts and scratches marring Samuel’s skin. “Them on his arms ‘n chest ain’t nothin’ ta worry over,” he said, beginning to tug down what was left of the tattered buckskin britches.

   
“What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

   
He sensed Olivia’s embarrassment but ignored it. “We got ta see if’n he’s taken any pizen around his privates. Hit’ll kill a feller quicker ‘n anythin...or make him wish he wuz dead, anyways.”

   
Olivia could not stop staring at Samuel’s body. How pale his skin was below the waistband of his pants, almost as white as her own! Her eyes followed the slide of pants over the hard washboard of his belly, tracing that enticing narrow vee of body hair that seemed to travel like an arrow from the pelt on his chest downward to the black bush between his legs where his sex lay exposed as Micajah methodically examined him.

   
She remembered with scorching intensity how big and hard the now flaccid and innocent looking shaft had felt when he had loomed over her in the confines of the tent. She wet her dry lips and asked hoarsely, “Is he hurt…there?”

   
“Onliest thang serious, sides bein’ half-starved, is his haid ‘n th’ knife slice here in his side,” the old man said, pressing along the red swollen edges of the slash, which oozed a vile looking pussy liquid. He rolled Samuel onto his right side and raised his left arm, stretching open the deep ugly wound. “Hit’s in need ‘o some cleanin’, then sewin’. Yore right good with buff’lo skins. Reckon yew cud sew up a man?” He cocked one shaggy grizzled eyebrow and studied her pale face with shrewd brown eyes.

   
Olivia almost swallowed her tongue. “Sew him up?” she squeaked. “I—I suppose so.” She looked at the angry slash and felt her gorge rise, an unusual occurrence since learning to live in the wilds with Micajah. But gutting and skinning bison and deer were quite different than working with a man’s flesh and blood, especially when that man was Samuel Shelby.

   
“Wall, don’t fret jest yet. First off we gotta poultice hit ‘n git th’ fever down.” Then he swore to himself. “Damned if’n I didn’t fergit my medicine bundle when I packed up my possibles.”

   
“Don’t the Osage have the same herbs and such?”

   
“Some, not all, but whutever they is, they’ll have ta do till we kin git him back ta th’ cabin.”

   
Olivia continued to bathe his body, taking special care with the deeper cuts and the infected slash on his left side. When she got to his raw, lacerated feet, she nearly wept, realizing what he must have endured.

   
Micajah went in search of the tribal healer to secure what herbs he could to stave off further infection and help Shelby fight the fever. After conferring with Sun Carrier, Micajah waited while the old man prepared his potions. Just as they were about to leave the medicine lodge, Pawhuska entered.

   
Dismissing Sun Carrier and several of the women, he turned to Micajah and said, “I would speak for your ears alone.” The tall old man’s hawkish countenance was grave. He was past sixty winters, a great age among the Plains Indians, yet his hair for which he was named, was thick and shiny as January snow. A great beak of a nose was balanced by a strong square jaw. His brow was high and straight and his eyes were fathomless ebony. He studied Johnstone intently as he took a seat on a big pile of buffalo robes before the smoldering fire in the center of the lodge. Then he gestured for Micajah to join him as he prepared a pipe for them to share.

   
“My brother White Hair does me honor,” Micajah said in Osage as he hunkered down on the soft skins and took a puff from the proffered pipe.

   
“I would speak of the Long Knife Ember Woman discovered. The father in Washington will not be pleased to find one of his soldiers near death in our camp.”

   
Micajah’s shaggy eyebrows rose fractionally as he passed the pipe back to Pawhuska. “He wore no uniform. How do you know he is a soldier?”

   
“The one called Samuel Shelby visited our village many months ago, wearing the blue coat of a soldier. My daughter Meadow Dancer came to tell me she recognized him, although he is so badly hurt no one else has.”

   
Micajah scratched a gnarled hand in his bushy beard. “What did he want of my Osage brothers when he was here last?” Sparky had speculated about Shelby’s mysterious reasons for leaving Lisa’s party to search for the Osage.

   
“He searches for the one he calls the Englishman, but that is not what he told us,” Pawhuska replied with startling candor.

   
It had been Johnstone’s experience of Indians—and he had much—that they seldom spoke directly to an issue but rather skirted around it obliquely, alluding to the point with metaphoric language, approaching it gradually. He nodded, waiting to see if the old chief would say more.

   
Pawhuska obliged him. “He. made a fine speech for our elders, asking that we remember our treaty with the father in Washington. He said that the Englishman would come among us spreading lies and making empty promises.”

   
“And has he?”

   
Pawhuska nodded his head. “Yes, and he returns. There are young men among my people who have listened to the words of this Englishman...and drunk the firewater he brings,” he added bitterly. “There will be a war between the Americans and the English, I think. And my people will be squeezed between the two.”

   
Isolated as he was, Micajah had heard vague rumors of such from the occasional trader or trapper whom he encountered in the wilderness. He felt sorry for the Osage, for all the tribes. Whenever white governments went to war, it was always the Indians who lost the most. “Will you choose sides or not?” he asked.

   
“I have touched the feather. My pledge was made to the Americans. But”—Pawhuska leaned forward earnestly—“I am one old man. A chief, yes, but still there are many voices who will be heard at our council fires. The young warriors grow tired of seeing more and more white settlers cross the Father of Waters, pushing us farther and farther away from the great rivers, toward the setting sun. Some elders on our council listen to their complaints.”

   
“Then you believe the Osage may choose to fight against the Americans,” Johnstone said.

   
“I will do what I can to stop it.” He smiled sadly. “Not because I believe the father in Washington is better than the father king across the great ocean. But your great chief is closer and it is his children who will remain after the war is fought, not the English.”

   
Micajah digested all that the wily old man had told him...and what he had not told him. Since Pawhuska had spoken plainly, he decided to follow suit. “Why do you tell me this, my friend? I am not a bluecoat. I have no part in the white men’s wars.”

   
“I wish you to take the Long Knife Shelby away from our village. He is sick and unable to speak for himself before the council. I fear for his safety when the Englishman comes and I would not see him harmed.”

   
So that was the way the wind blew. Micajah knew the Osage put great store in spit and polish. Shelby had probably arrived last summer dressed in his best blues, but now he had reappeared in rags, feverish and wandering in the wilderness, perhaps chased by the very English agent who was coming to speak before the Osage council of elders.

   
Johnstone cleared his throat. “I can see your point. He would make a poor showing against his foe right now and those hotheads who want to join the English might just carry the day, if they knew who he was.” And they might well kill Shelby as well as him and Sparky, since they too were Americans. “We will take him to safety. Can you prevent your daughter from telling anyone else about Shelby’s identity?”

   
The old man simply looked at him.

   
“Good.”

   
The two men rose and bowed to each other gravely and Micajah took his leave. There was much to prepare and little time in which to do it.

   
By dawn the next day they were ready to set out. Micajah had rigged a travois to a stout packhorse which was a gift from Pawhuska. On it they carried Samuel while their own horses were laden with their booty from the buffalo hunt. No one but old White Hair and his daughter Meadow Dancer knew that their unconscious passenger was an emissary of the great father in Washington. With luck, it would stay that way.

Chapter Fourteen

   
Samuel felt as if he were on fire, thrashing and rolling to escape the flames that seared his body. Someone must be prodding him with a burning firebrand. Osage torture? He struggled to open his eyes and focus on his tormentor, but emerging from the blackness was impossible. Then he felt a small cool hand touch him softly, pressing him back down, a low naggingly familiar voice speaking French endearments. A woman’s voice. Not his mother, nor Liza. Certainly not Tish. Who? Then blessed oblivion claimed him again and he drifted.

   
Olivia felt tears sting her eyes as she held him in her arms lest his fevered thrashing tear open the healing stitches in his side. He was in such awful pain. She could still feel the pressure of the needle puncturing his skin, the pull of the thread as it drew the ragged sides of the wound back together. What it had cost her to stitch his living flesh was beyond imagining.

   
Thank God, he had remained unconscious most of the time. When she was half-finished, he had awakened and Micajah had restrained him, holding his body still so she could complete the task. At least that boded well for his coming out of the head injury, and blessedly, he had quickly fainted once more.

   
Micajah had assured her he was too feverish to really be awake and would remember nothing of the pain when he recovered, but she had been white and shaking after forcing herself to complete the task. She waited until he lay very still once more, then continued peeling away the poultice adhering to the wound. The redness and pussy swelling were gone.

   
“Micajah’s strange ideas really do work,” she murmured to herself as she cleaned the healing slash with compresses of warm water, then applied fresh herbs to the area.

   
She had been dubious when Johnstone had gone to the river and brought back a jar filled with an evil slimy gray substance, saying that it was a certain cure for infections. She had been horrified when he had explained that it was frog eggs.