King Blood(15)

It is unforgivable to steal from family. From others, it is all right, even commendable. Though Old Ike's thinking, as regards the latter, was not quite so liberal as it once had been.

At any rate, they had been shamed – and even now they waited to mete out stern punishment to the guilty ones – and out of their deep hurt they acted as they did. To divert one another. To boldly prove that they were above hurt. For it is insulting to offer pity to a man, and disgraceful to appear to be in need of it.

Tepaha stirred the fire in the potbellied stove. Old Ike poured drinks for them and lit a cigar, and held the match for his friend.

Though their brotherhood was by choice, rather than the accident of birth, a stranger might have thought otherwise despite their differences in coloring. For they had been together for so many years and in so many places, sharing the same thoughts and deeds, that, in their necessary adjustment to one another, each had borrowed of the other's mannerisms and expressions, and now they had come to look quite a little alike.

Much of the time, even their talk was strikingly similar, Ike's alleged English even becoming a trifle broken. He was almost as fluent in Apache as Tepaha; also in idiomatic Spanish. And they spoke in both languages frequently – often sounding so much alike that it was hard to tell when one finished and the other began.

Old Ike shaved his head regularly, while Tepaha's hair grew to the lobes of his ears; and he wore a beaded band around his forehead whereas Old Ike wore a sombrero. But both men were clothed in calf-hide jackets, and levis. And both were shod in blockheeled Spanish boots; and protruding from the right boot of each was the worn haft of a gleaming knife.

As Old Ike sighed, unconsciously, Tepaha demanded another reading of the letters from crazy Osage lawyer. Brightening, Old Ike hauled the letters from his pocket, and both chuckled over them as they were read yet another time.

'Damn' crazy Osage,' Ike concluded. 'Says right here that Critch is plenty fine fella, got plenty o' money. Then he tries to claim Critch stole a stinkin' fifty dollars from him! What kind of God damn' sense does that make?'

'All Osage crazy,' Tepaha nodded wisely. 'Critch do right to steal money.'

'Well, I don't know as I'd say that, but…'

He shook his head, lapsed back into silence, his mouth sagging. Tepaha requested another reading of the letters. Old Ike ignored him. Nor could he be baited into another quarrel.

And, then, at last, when Tepaha was at his wits' end to help his friend, inspiration came to him. From far back in the all-but-forgotten past it came, and it proved highly effective in rousing Old Ike from his reverie.

'Huh! What the hell did you say?' He glared beetle-browed at Tepaha. 'What d'ya mean, I et him?'

'I mean,' said Tepaha, with simulated spitefulness. 'I mean what I say. You eat Osage.'

'That's a God damn' lie! I never et no one, Indian or white! I don't hold with eatin' people!'

'Eat 'em, anyway. You eat – Wait!' He held up a hand, chopping off the incipient outburst from his friend. 'Take yourself back many, many years. So many years, until that good time when we were young. Remember it, Old Ike – the night we saw Geronimo for the first time? The night we were brought into his lodge at lance-point? We had come up from Tejas to _okla homa,_ the Land of the Red Man…' *c*

They had crossed Red River, the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas, that morning; losing their pack-horses and supplies to the river's quicksands, almost losing their lives as they fruitlessly tried to free the screaming animals. By luck and by God, as the saying was, they had somehow managed to get their mounts into deep water and swim them to the north shore. But their powder was a muddy mess, useless for their long Sharps rifles. And it was snowing; and the frozen short-grassed prairie was barren of game.

Tepaha dug into the dry center of an ancient buffalo turd, and got it lighted with his steel and flint. They fed the flame with more dung, and dried their clothes enough to keep them from freezing. Then, they headed north again, unarmed save for their knives, their heads ducked against the blowing snow.

By night the storm had become a blizzard. But there was the faint smell of smoke ahead of them, the scent of cooking food; and rocking in their high-pommeled saddles, they urged their trembling horses onward. An hour passed. The smell of food and smoke was still ahead of them. And around them, all-but-inaudible in the howling wind, were sounds. Sounds that were felt rather than heard. Shallow breaks in silence which Ike and Tepaha had trained themselves to become aware of and to interpret for what they were, as requisite to life.

Silently, they drew their knives. At virtually the same instant their horses reared upward, startled as their bridles were suddenly grabbed by unseen hands. Then – Well, nothing, then. Nothing more than a couple of butted lances, which connected solidly with the skulls of Tepaha and Ike King and knocked them senseless from their saddles.