that. . .' Even in the flicker of the small Indian fire, it was clear to him she'd been beaten. Probably, January guessed, raped as well.
Her mouth twisted in a sidelong expression as she read his thought in his voice and replied, 'Nothing I didn't get from my daddy and his drunk friends, a long time before I met Mick Seaholly. I'm not a little flower, Ben. Like a fool, I tried to get off a shot, and the powder didn't flash. I should have headed straight for the river like you did. By the time I ran for it they were coming in from both sides of the island. Pia got away.' Her voice wavered, ever so slightly, as she said it: hope that dared not speak its own name, lest it break what strength was left her. Briskly, she went on, 'They put me on a horse and came straight after you.'
January turned his head to look at where the others lay. He could see Shaw's eyes were open - the man must have a skull like granite - but Hannibal hadn't stirred. 'See the others are all right,' he said softly. 'Thank you for the water.' No sense asking her the intentions of their captors: those were clear enough, in Dark Antlers's eyes when he glanced their way. There was a chance they'd take Veinte-y-Cinco with them when they rode on, if the band was short of women. He'd heard how captive women were sometimes treated, and it seemed to depend on the personalities of the Indians involved, and how ready the woman was to settle in to become a drudge like the Indian women mostly were.
He watched her now, kneeling beside Hannibal with her dark hair hanging down over her face like a curtain, sponging his bloodied face with a corner of her torn skirt. Hannibal, who'd done nothing, sought neither profit nor vengeance, but had joined the party on the off-chance that he could be of some use to his friends.
Hooves in the darkness. Veinte-y-Cinco's long nose caught the firelight as she swiveled on her heels. A dozen riders came into camp, bareback on their painted horses. The woman rose at once and went to bring food to the warriors, to lead the horses away to where a fair-sized herd, by the sound of it, was tethered among the trees upslope. She had clearly learned her duties in the camp and probably guessed that making herself useful was her only chance to avoid being killed with the men. Iron Heart turned in their direction, said something to Dark Antlers. Dark Antlers clearly reported that five men had been killed in taking the prisoners, and the war chief's pock-marked face twisted with anger. He strode toward them; when Veinte-y-Cinco came out of the darkness and asked him something he simply struck her aside, with such force that she fell.
He kicked Shaw twice, full force in the ribs, dropped to his knees beside him, dragged him up into a seated position by his long hair and shook him, his knife in his hand. 'Who have you told about Boden?' he demanded. 'Who else knows?'
'I don't know,' replied Shaw quietly. 'Didn't take much work for us to guess. Likely, others did, too.'
'What others?'
'You gonna go after an' kill them, too?'
'Yes.' The chief's face was like a wooden mask, half eaten- away with acid. 'If I must.'
'But your plan was to kill everyone,' said January. 'Wasn't it?'
Iron Heart looked toward him, his knife blade still laid on Shaw's throat. 'Yes,' he said. Then he shoved Shaw away from him to the ground.
'Although most of the people in the camp weren't anywhere near the South Platte when your family died.'
'It is not vengeance only for my family, white man.' Iron Heart crossed to where January lay, stood over him in the firelight, his bare chest, bare arms, silver knife-blade clothed in the low red light. 'Or only for my people, lying among their lodges with their bodies eaten up by birds and animals, dying so swiftly there was none to sing their death songs nor to remember their names as they died. Since I was a boy not old enough to gather firewood by myself, I have seen those whom the white man has pushed out of their homes: the Delaware who lived by the Eastern Sea, the Cherokee, the Houmas. They passed through our land, and they all said the same: the white man is too lazy to build