Free Rampage by Lee Mellor Page B

were watching himself from afar. His head was pounding like a tribal war drum. Hefting his rifle, he fired into the boy’s skull, but the shot was not fatal. Swift Runner had seemingly become so inept at hunting that he could not even murder a sleeping child. Tears streaming from his eyes, Swift Runner frantically seized a knife and plunged it repeatedly into the boy’s torso, until the smell of blood pervaded the air. As the red rivers of life ran dry, Swift Runner bashed in his son’s head with a club, hastening his inevitable demise. He then went to work with the axe, butchering the corpse before cooking the slices of meat over the fire. Mouthful by mouthful, he consumed the child with an animal-like neutrality, leeching the marrow from his splintered bones. In doing so, he sated his hunger and re-established an inner equilibrium — at least for the time being.
    Swift Runner relaxed in front of the glowing embers, savouring the taste of blood and the smoke from his pipe. Then, leaving what remained of his first victim behind, he set out in search of the others. It wasn’t long before he caught up with his wife, his favourite son Red Hawk, and his three daughters. There must have been something in her husband’s demeanour which betrayed the presence of the Windigo, for Sun-on-the-Mountain lied and told him that his brother and mother-in-law had perished somewhere in the wilds. But Swift Runner saw right through her. Early the next morning, as she slept, he fired a bullet through her neck. She shuddered momentarily, then lay motionless. Hefting her body into his strong arms, he carried his dead wife into the firelight, where he carved her up like a deer. His two eldest daughters were murdered next, gazing up in terror as he rained savage blows onto their heads with his hatchet. Promising that no harm would befall him, he ordered the terrified Red Hawk to melt snow for his cooking pot, and set about chopping his daughters into meat. Together, Swift Runner and his son dined on the women’s flesh. All the while his last surviving daughter, a baby, lay helpless in the darkness. Still the Windigo’s belly rumbled. Cinching a rope around the infant’s neck, he strung her from a lodge pole, pulling down on her little feet so she would strangle quicker. Minutes later, she joined her sisters in the cooking pot.
    Whether it was hours or days later we do not know, but eventually Swift Runner followed his remaining family members’ tracks and found them asleep in the forest. He crept up on them like the sun over the horizon, knife in hand. The blade tore savagely through his mother-in-law before he shattered her face with a club. So silent was the attack that it failed to rouse his brother. At point-blank range, Swift Runner aimed and fired into the man’s head, killing him instantly. He eviscerated and sliced up the corpses, hanging strips of their flesh from the surrounding trees. Then he fed. Red Hawk watched passively. On the surface, Swift Runner had defied the odds, surviving the terrible winter famine. Yet so much of him had died alongside his family in those snows: his identity, his sanity, his future …
    The ducks returned with the spring, and Swift Runner and Red Hawk were soon dining on their succulence. The two were now nearing the Egg Lake (Lake Manowan) settlement, where Swift Runner expected to be found out and arrested for his horrendous crimes. It was time to dispose of the last witness. While they sat feasting around the fire, he plunged the blade into Red Hawk’s sternum, observing the spark drain from the boy’s gaping expression with a stony detachment. There was no need to cannibalize his son, yet he did so anyway, despite the plenitude of fowl. Forevermore, he would walk this earth as a Windigo; no flesh could ever satisfy him like that of humanity — a weak species to which he no longer belonged.
    Shoeing the Devil’s Hoof
    On August 16, 1879, Swift Runner stood before six white jurors, charged