Free Tie My Bones to Her Back by Robert F. Jones Page A

the spout into his open mouth. He winced, swilled the mouthful around through his teeth, and spat it into the fire. She saw that his hands were shaking.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “That verdammter red devil,” he said. “He killed those horse thieves last night, all three of them, and . . .” He was speaking in German again. She answered in kind.
    “And what? He saved our livestock, didn’t he? And maybe our lives as well. Shouldn’t we be grateful?”
    “It’s not that.” Otto glanced at her, then looked away. “It’s what he did after.”
    “Scalped them? I saw those scalps hanging from his belt last night. I know it’s barbaric, Pastor Koellner most certainly wouldn’t approve, but don’t white men take scalps, too? What’s . . .”
    “No, not just the scalps. It’s what he did after that.” Otto put an arm around her shoulders. “Look, Jennchen, these people are beasts. They don’t think the way we do. Not even when they’ve got good white Christian blood in them, as Tom does. They have no sense of decency, of pity, or of kindness. And none at all of guilt. They are heathens, barbarians, plain and simple. The men Tom killed last night were Shoshones, some folks call them Snakes. But these Indians weren’t even men yet, they were only boys, about your age. No, probably younger. Out on a horsestealing expedition. Out for a little fun. To make names for themselves among their people. Most of the so-called wars between these Plains tribes are nothing more than minor raids like this, a few young bucks sneaking in at night to steal horses or women, maybe lift some scalps while they’re at it. But the Shoshone and the Cheyenne are long-time enemies. They’ve been raiding, raping, burning, scalping, killing, and thieving from each other for ages now. Don’t bother to ask them why, they don’t know, nor do they care. They just love to do it.”
    He drank some coffee and sighed.
    “This is the ugly part,” he said. “When an Indian kills another Indian, he goes the whole hog. He not only ends the man’s life in this world, he makes sure the poor blighted heathen won’t have much fun on the Spirit Road either. After he’s scalped his enemy, if he’s got the time, he’ll gouge out his eyes, slice off his nose, knock out his teeth, yank out his tongue, cut off his hands and feet, take out his brain and lay it on a rock. They do tricks with other body parts as well. That way, when the dead man gets to the Happy Hunting Ground, he can’t see, smell, or talk with his comrades, eat buffalo meat, or even make babies. More important, without hands or feet or a brain to plan it with, he can’t take revenge on his killer when that unfortunate finally shows up in the sweet by-and-by. It has a warped sort of logic to it, I guess, if you believe in an afterlife, but the worst part is that after all this jolly whittling is finished, he’ll leave those items standing around on rocks or logs or on the victim’s body, to taunt the fellow’s friends when they find him later. The more grotesque the array, the better.”
    He put both his hands on Jenny’s shoulders, stepped back, and looked her in the eyes.
    “Don’t go down by the horses, Jennchen. Take my word for it. Our Tom has a fiendish sense of humor when it comes to the human anatomy. Let’s just pray that he never takes a notion to practice his heathen folkways on us.”
    Snakes, Jenny thought. She recalled the hand sign he had used. When Tom warned me to look out for “snakes” yesterday, he must have known those Indians were around here. That’s why he followed me with his rifle.
    “What was the Fetterman Fight?” she asked.
    Otto looked at her in surprise. “Why do you want to know?”
    “When Tom saw my rifle last evening, he said his father had had one like it, an older version, that he’d come by at some battle called the Fetterman Fight, up north of here somewhere.”
    “The Fetterman Massacre ,” Otto said. “Up in Wyoming