Red Prophet Page 0,61
till they were half-dazed and their cheeks were bleeding inside and out.
One Red babbled something, and they gave him Al's shirt. He slashed at it with his knife, and then rubbed it on Al's bleeding face. Must not have got enough blood on it, because he took his knife and slashed right across Al's forehead. The blood just gushed out, and a second later the pain hit Al and for the first time he did cry out. It felt like he'd been laid open right to the bone, and the blood was running down in his eyes so he couldn't see. Measure yelled for them to leave Al alone, but there wasn't no chance of that. Everybody knew that once a Red started in to cutting on you, you were bound to end up dead.
Minute Al cried out and the blood started coming, them Reds started laughing and making little hooting sounds. This bunch was out for real trouble, and Al thought back to all the stories he heard. Most famous one was probably about Dan Boone, a Pennsylvania man who tried to settle in the Crown Colonies for a while. That was back when the Cherriky were against the White man, and one day Dan Boone's boy got kidnapped. Boone wasn't a half hour behind them Reds. It was like they were playing with him. They'd stop and cut off parts of the boy's skin, or poke out an eye, something to cause bad pain and make him scream. Boone heard his boy screaming, and followed, him and his neighbors, armed with their muskets and half-mad with rage. They'd reach the place where the boy'd been tortured, and the Reds were gone, not a trace of a track in the wood, and then there'd come another scream. Twenty miles they went that day, and finally at nightfall they found the boy hanging from three different trees. They say Boone never forgot that, he could never look a Red in the eye after that without thinking on that twenty-mile day.
Al had that twenty-mile day on his mind now, too, hearing them Reds laugh, feeling the pain, just the start of the pain, knowing that whatever these Reds were after, they wanted it to start with two dead White boys, and they wouldn't mind a little noise along the way. Keep still, he told himself. Keep still.
They rubbed his slashed-up shirt on his face, and Measure's hacked up clothes, too. While they were doing that, Al kept his mind on other things. Only time he ever tried to heal himself was that busted leg of his, and then he was lying down, resting, plenty of time to study it out, to find his way to all those small places where there was broken veins and heal them up, knit together the skin and bone. This time he was a-scared and getting pushed this way and that, not calm, not resting. But he still managed to find the biggest veins and arteries, make them close up. Last time they wiped his face ou a shirt, his forehead didn't gush blood down to cover his eyes again. It was still bleeding, but just a trickle now, and Al tipped his head up so the blood would ooze on down his temples, and leave his eyes clear to see.
They hadn't cut Measure yet. He was looking at Al, and there was a sick look on Measure's face. Al knew his brother well enough to guess what he was thinking, about how Ma and Pa trusted Al into Measure's keeping, and now look how he let them down. That was crazy, to blame himself. They could've done what they were doing now at any cabin or house in the whole countryside, and weren't nobody could stop them. If Al and Measure hadn't been going off on a long trip, they might still have been on this very road at this very time anyhow. But Al couldn't say nothing like that to Measure, couldn't do much except to smile.
Smile and, as best he could, work on healing up his own wound. Making everything in his forehead go back to the way it was supposed to be. He kept at it, finding it easier and easier to do, while he watched what the Reds were doing.
They didn't talk much. They pretty much knew what to do. They got the blood-smeared clothes and tied them to the saddles. Then with a knife one of them carved the English