October skies

As the smoke cleared and the shot echoed off the trees around the camp, he realised Keats was standing right next to him holding the end of his barrel up and to one side.

‘What?’

The old man called out a sharp challenge in the harsh, percussive language Ben now recognised as Ute. There was no immediate reply. As the last tendrils of smoke from his gun drifted up and out of sight, he noticed that the dark cross-shaped smudge remained before him.

It stood perfectly still now.

He noticed another dark smudge to the right of it, and another.

Keats called out again. And this time, after a moment’s hesitation, a reply echoed back, a young man’s voice with the brittle sound of fear in it. There was another, much longer reply from someone further away. Keats listened with his head cocked, and then replied.

He turned to Hussein and Ben. ‘Lower your guns. Them Indians we met last week? They’re comin’ in.’

CHAPTER 53

28 October, 1856

The Paiute emerged from the mist like half a dozen ghosts. Ben watched the nearest of them step cautiously forward, becoming gradually more defined through the thinning wisps of cold air.

He held a weapon in each hand; a tamahakan in one, a knife in the other.

Keats barked something out, and the Indian stopped where he stood in the snow. The other five joined him and Ben noticed two of them struggling with something held between them. As they drew nearer and their outline became more distinct, he could see it was a body.

The sound of Ben’s shot and Keats’s barked challenge was drawing others from around the camp. He could hear the crunch of feet on snow and the smothered sound of questioning voices emerging from the mist.

‘Tell the Indians I’m a doctor. I can take a look at their man,’ muttered Ben, shouldering his rifle. Keats nodded and uttered a phrase in Ute. The nearest Paiute to Ben seemed to be the one to whom the others deferred. He appeared to be no more than eighteen or nineteen — a man, just. The others, closer now, he could see were a few years younger.

They struggled to understand Keats, the leader cocking his head and frowning.

From a few feet behind him, Ben heard Broken Wing call out sharply, making the language sound far less ugly than the guide had.

Ben pointed to the body. ‘Can you tell them I can look at him?’

Broken Wing nodded and spoke at length to them. There was an exchange amongst the young men, and then the eldest nodded. The others stepped back from the body as Ben warily approached. He knelt down and by the wan light of early morning, most of it lost behind the carpet of mist, he quickly inspected it.

An older man, much older. He was dead, his skin cold and clammy.

Ben looked up at Keats and Broken Wing. ‘Dead.’

Blood, congealed and sticky, had flowed down out of his grey-streaked hair and across his face and neck. Ben carefully probed the matted hair and found a jagged section of bone held by a flap of scalp, and a hole.

‘A blow to the head, a small penetration. I suppose something like a pickaxe, or,’ he said, gesturing at the tamahakan held by the nearest Paiute, ‘one of those might have done this. I would say he died several hours ago.’

‘Ask them what happened,’ said Keats to Broken Wing.

The Shoshone spoke briefly, and the eldest Paiute spoke at length, making up for the gap in their shared vocabulary with elaborate hand gestures that seemed to tell as much of the story as the words. Keats had told Ben that Ute was a universal language shared by the Paiute, the Shoshone, the Ute and several other tribes west of the Nevadas, but they each spoke their own language, a bastardised hybrid of their shared tongue; consequently there was plenty of room for misunderstanding.

Broken Wing turned to Keats. ‘He sssay, white-face demon, it hunt

…’ He struggled to find words in English, then finally relayed the rest to Keats in the version of Ute they seemed to share well between them. The crowd was growing; one huddle Keats’s party, another Preston’s people, warily emerging from their end and suspiciously regarding the others. Keats nodded, digesting it all before turning to Ben, stroking his beard distractedly for a moment.

‘What did he say?’

He spoke quietly, for Ben’s ears only. ‘He said somethin’ about a white-face demon has been… well… huntin’ them. Playin’ with them, last few days.’

There was a ripple of disturbance amongst the gathered people as Preston pushed through to the front. He took one look at the body, his face frozen, expressionless.

The Paiute spoke again with Broken Wing, who translated for Keats.

‘He said the white-face demon’s been watchin’ them for the last two days, and then this morning, as they were spread out foraging, it attacked their elder, White Eagle. They found him already dead.’

There was a murmuring amongst those close enough to hear what was being said. Ben looked up at them to see women and children, their faces all radiating fear as they stared at the young Indian men.