The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,109

rain just after the moon was new.'

'He lies!' shouted Bodenschatz. 'He is lying to save his own skin, and that of his murdering friend!'

Iron Heart glanced sidelong at him, expressionless. 'Let the black white man speak.'

'Is it true what you told me, Iron Heart,' said January, 'that the old medicine-man, Boden's father, left the lodges of the Omaha on the day that I fought with Manitou, with a bottle of poisoned liquor in his pocket? That he sought to poison Manitou the Spirit Bear in his own camp, because he had decided he did not wish to kill all the men at the rendezvous?'

'It was because he saw the child,' replied Iron Heart. 'The little Mexican girl who played cards at the liquor tent. She was out in the meadows near our camp that day, looking for feathers in the long grass. The old man said that he accepted that the women would die, who were harlots and had come here of their own accord to lie with men for money. But the child was innocent, he said.'

January reflected that Klaus Bodenschatz had obviously never seen Pia dealing faro, but let that pass. Across the open ground, he saw Veinte-y-Cinco silently take Hannibal's hand.

'He and I quarreled over this,' Iron Heart went on. 'It had been agreed that Boden would poison the liquor and give it away after the fight, but there was no victory. Men came back to the camp and told the old man of this, and also that Manitou had returned in anger to his own camp. When I came back to the tents of my people, the old man was already gone.'

'And you, Manitou.' January turned to the trapper, standing huge and silent among the warriors of the Crow. 'Did you meet the old man in the woods near your camp?'

'I saw the light of his lantern.' Manitou, also, had learned what the nations of the plains considered the honorable way of speaking. 'I had not known the man Boden in the camp, but his father I knew. The old man was the father of a woman that I loved, a woman I killed in a fit of madness, many years ago. He fired a pistol at me from hiding. I had my rifle, but I did not want to kill him. He had a second pistol, and in the struggle to get it from him I hurt him - broke his ribs, and broke his leg. I was angry already from fighting Winter Moon -' he nodded toward January - 'and I could see the fire of my madness beginning to flicker at the sides of my eyes. Still I remained long enough to tie up the old man's wounds. I tore up the shirt he wore, to brace his ribs and to bandage my own arm where his first bullet had struck me. I used his neck cloth, and strips torn from my own shirt, to put a splint on his broken leg. Then I made a shelter for him, knowing it would rain again, and built a fire to keep him safe from animals. I knew his son must be nearby and would search for him before long. I put my own shirt on him to keep him warm, and over it his waistcoat and coat again. Then I went to the camp of the Blackfeet. My brother Silent Wolf knows the ways to take the thunder spirit out of my brain, before I harm those around me. I was in their camp—' He frowned, trying to remember.

'Two nights. Then Tall Chief and Winter Moon came - Bo Frye, too, and the Beauty. They told me that old Bodenschatz had been found dead. I returned to my own camp and left the rendezvous.'

'So when you left the old man,' reiterated January, 'he was wearing your shirt - was this the shirt you had bought from Ivy and Wallach the day before?'

'It was. Black and yellow checks, cotton. Of good quality.'

'And his own shirt was torn up for bandages around his ribs?'

Manitou nodded.

'What was that shirt made of? What color was it?'

'White,' said the trapper immediately. 'Linen—'

'Like the one his son now wears?'

All eyes went to Boden, who snapped, 'This is all lies!' He turned to Iron Heart, caught him by the arm. 'This man talks nonsense, about what color our shirts are and who wears what. What does it matter? He will say anything—'

'And I will listen to anything,' replied the Omaha chief,