David Robbins - The Kalispell Run

“If I’d wanted you dead,” Rainbow stated, “you’d be dead. I’m a crack shot. I just wanted you out of commission, unable to give us any problems on the way to the Citadel.”

“Did you know they were your people in the hospital?” Geronimo questioned her.

“No, I didn’t,” Rainbow replied.

“You took a big chance,” Geronimo said. “What if the ones after me weren’t Flatheads? What then? They could have killed you and your daughter and taken the SEAL.”

Rainbow shrugged. “Life is full of risks. You take what comes your way and do the best you can.”

“Really?” Lone Cougar innocently challenged her. “Then why didn’t you stay in Kalispell and take what the rest of us did?”

“You know why,” Rainbow snapped, angered by the insinuation.

“Golden Bull ordered us out. He wanted the Princess safe. As it was, we’re fortunate to be alive today.”

Lone Cougar stared at Star. “Ahhh, yes. Our sweet little Princess, destined to marry the heir apparent. We can’t let anything happen to you.”

“And don’t you ever forget that,” Rainbow said in a threatening tone.

Geronimo spotted a rusted road sign ahead, on his side of the roadway.

Highway 35, it read. He caught a glimpse of a large lake through the trees over Lone Cougar’s shoulder. Was it Flathead Lake, the big one on the map? He cleared his dry throat. “What do you hope to accomplish at the Citadel?”

“Like I told you,” Rainbow said, driving carefully, “we need to learn what happened to my people, find out where the soldiers have taken them.”

“You’re just going to drive up to the front gates and ask?”

“Don’t be stupid!” Rainbow replied. “We’ll hide the SEAL and reconnoiter on foot. Thousands of people don’t just vanish! The army must be holding them somewhere. We’ll find them,” she stated confidently.

Geronimo rested his head on the top of the seat and closed his weary eyes. This is certainly one terrific mess you’ve gotten yourself into, dimwit!

Blade is missing. The transport has been commandeered by hostile Indians. And now you’re shot…

Hostile Indians?

How could he ever have seriously considered leaving the Family to live with the Flatheads? They may be Indians, like himself, but there any resemblance ended. They viewed him as an outsider, and rightfully he was.

So what if he was the only Indian in the Family? The Family loved him, cherished him as one of their own, respected his personality, and honored his ability by appointing him to Warrior status. Strange, wasn’t it, how the grass did always look greener on the other side of the fence?

“Look!” Lone Cougar exclaimed, pointing directly ahead.

Someone was standing in the center of Highway 35, waving his brawny arms, attempting to stop the transport.

Rainbow leaned over the steering wheel. “I know him!” she stated, disbelieving her eyes. “How’d he get here?”

Geronimo, roused from his reflection, gazed at the tall figure in front of them and tensed.

It couldn’t be!

“He isn’t going to interfere!” Rainbow vowed angrily, and floored the accelerator.

Thirty yards separated the SEAL from their target as the vehicle picked up speed.

Forty.

Fifty.

“No!” Geronimo lunged at Rainbow, but Tall Oak was quicker. The Flathead reached over Star and grabbed Geronimo’s good wrist, preventing him from obstructing Rainbow’s purpose.

Sixty miles an hour and climbing.

The man in front of them still stood in the middle of Highway 35, a puzzled expression on his face.

“The fool thinks Geronimo is driving!” Rainbow said, elated.

Geronimo, weakened by his wound, unsuccessfully attempted to wrest his wrist from Tall Oak’s grasp.

Sixty-five miles an hour.

Star drew her body forward, against the console, away from the struggling Geronimo and Tall Oak. She looked at the dark-haired man with his arms over his head, and dawning recognition caused panic to register on her countenance.

“Mom, no!” Star screamed. “It’s Blade!”

Rainbow laughed maliciously.

He was in the lotus position, hidden in a stand of trees only fifteen yards from Plato’s cabin. From his vantage point, he enjoyed a clear field of view to both the front and back cabin doors.

The long night, thankfully, had been uneventful.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi listened to the morning sounds: the cool morning wind stirring the leaves, various birds greeting the new day with songs of vitality and thanksgiving, gray smoke drifting from several of the cabin chimneys as individual families prepared their initial daily sustenance, voices raised as many Family members walked to the open space between the six concrete Blocks for a period of exercise and worship, and a woman in one of the nearer cabins singing the words to “Day by Day.”

Why would anyone in their right mind want to change the peaceful environment the Home afforded its residents? What was the alternative?

The barbarous cruelty permeating every aspect of life in the outside world? Who would favor savagery over tranquility? If you had a system that worked, why mess with it?

Rikki thoughtfully stared at the katana in his lap. His chosen profession, as a dedicated Warrior, sometimes entailed the use of violence in the performance of his duties, but that was different. Violence utilized constructively, to preserve the standards of truth, beauty, and goodness, was not a moral evil; violence used destructively was.

Did that make Napoleon evil?

Rikki fondly recalled his philosophy classes in the Family school. What was it Confucius wrote? “Clever talk and a domineering manner have little to do with being man-at-his-best.” And the Buddha was quoted as saying:

“A man should hasten toward the good, and should keep his thoughts from evil.” And didn’t one of the Proverbs say “the way of the wicked is as darkness”?

Napoleon, so it seemed, was intentionally courting a darkness of his own devising, and exalting his ego, his vanity, over the welfare of the Family and the safety of the Home.

Why?

What made Napoleon tick?

Did it really matter?

No.

As a Warrior, as a defender of the Family, he had a duty, and his duty eclipsed any and all other considerations. His was not to reason why; his was but to kill or die.

Rikki enjoyed the many books in the Family library dealing with Oriental subjects. They suited his temperament, his inner nature, like a glove over a hand. From earliest childhood, he’d spent countless hours in the library perusing volumes on Oriental reasoning and the martial arts.

Others in the Family evinced a decidedly Christian bent to their religious proclivities, and some preferred the Koran or The Circles, but he found his orientation centered on Zen.

To function as the perfected swordmaster was his only goal in life.

Ironic, wasn’t it? If he’d been born before the Big Blast, before the nuclear holocaust had torn the fabric of existence asunder, he would have found himself in a sterile society, devoid of spontaneity and originality, a world designed to shape every person into the same mindless mold of cultural conformity.

He despised the very concept.

It had taken a nuclear conflagration to return—or was it advance—humanity to a free level of expression, where a man, or woman, could openly nurture the realization of his or her own unique personality without government interference or social imposition by those who claimed to “run things.”

Years ago, Plato had given a seminar on “Life Before the Final Folly,” an insightful examination of daily living before the Third World War. Rikki had never forgotten it. Why had the people let themselves be manipulated by those in “power”? Why had they allowed every aspect of their daily existence, from the food they consumed to the clothes they wore, to be dictated by others? And what about the ones in authority? Why had they sought to control everything? Whether it was by the passage of a convenient “law,” or by the terrible force of “peer pressure,” either you conformed or you were branded an outcast, a misfit with no redeeming social value.