Alex Archer - Tribal Ways

Annja liked her chances of evading the Iron Horse People in the dark. Whatever they might like to pretend, they weren’t their ancestors, wild children of the wind, grass, sun and moon. They were products of the same modern cell-phone and flat-screen culture as she was.

She neared her car. And suddenly men stood from behind it. The bar sign’s jittery pink glow glistened on faces painted black.

And on the knives and hatchets in their hands.

From the footsteps and angry shouts she understood a bunch more bad guys had crowded in between the vehicles behind her. She’d fled just in time.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a brighter light stretched across the gravel from the direction of the bar’s sagging facade. The front door was opening.

A male voice bellowed, “Dog Soldiers!” Then a lot of shouting erupted inside the bar in a guttural language she didn’t understand.

That was the most fortuitous diversion she could ever have hoped for. She had a flare of hope that the sudden discovery of the Dog Soldiers, whoever they were, and the consternation that caused among the Iron Horse People, would cleanly cover her getaway.

She heard handgun shots popping from the parking lot. The deep hard-edged boom of a shotgun answered from inside the bar.

Annja never broke stride. She had her plan and she followed through. She ran straight to the back of the bar, cut around behind it and then, when she was sure she was out of everybody’s sight, beelined right up a low ridge nearby and was gone with the wind.

Even though Annja’s GPS built into her phone stayed AWOL, she was not lost.

She could see the bright yellow glow of Lawton to the east. The clouds actually made that a better beacon by providing a handy surface for the lights to reflect off. As long as Annja kept that glow, the largest in the vicinity in any direction, on her right, she knew she was heading north toward the graded-earth country road and eventually the highway.

She wondered whether the two groups of crazy outlaws back at the bar might sort things out enough to give chase to her. It was so frigid in the wind and rain that it felt as if her bones would break. She knew the bikers might be the least of her problems.

Every time the chill grew intolerable she picked up the pace a notch.

Even though she reckoned later she hadn’t been hiking even twenty minutes—after what seemed an eternity—she reached the county road. She walked on, hoping to eventually get a signal on her cell phone.

Approaching from the right, a quarter mile off, she spotted a pair of headlights.

Coming out of the east made it unlikely the car was chasing her from the bar. There was always the frightening possibility that it might contain reinforcements for either set of her enemies.

That concern died away as she saw the Lawton sky-glow refract through the light-bar atop the car as it neared her. It slowed as if to come to a stop beside her.

Even before it did, Annja recognized, illuminated by the multicolored lights of the onboard computer and dashboard, the indefatigably cheerful face of Lieutenant Tom Ten Bears.

“Little cold out to be hitchhiking, ain’t it, Ms. Creed?” Ten Bears asked.

“Yes,” she said, hugging herself tightly against the biting cold. She wasn’t really in the mood for a lot of ironic repartee.

“Hop on in and get warm, why don’tcha?” he asked.

She could think of any number of reasons why she wouldn’t, actually. None of them was as compelling as either getting out of the cold or putting the symbolic bulk of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol between her and the bikers and midnight ambushers. She wasn’t naive enough to believe a lone trooper in a cruiser would necessarily deter them. But along with his .41 Smith & Wesson, Ten Bears had a radio.

She settled into the passenger’s seat. Beaming between his uniform collar and his peaked cap, Ten Bears put the cruiser back in gear and drove off along the county road at a just-over-walking pace.

She regarded him through narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Small world, huh?”

“Small world,” he agreed. “Welcome to Indian country, Ms. Creed. Not much goes on here that folks don’t see. What they see, they like to talk about. Especially when you’re a white-eyes from outside. And most especially a real nice-looking lady white-eyes, if you get my drift.”

Annja knew full well that the coming of any stranger would spark gossip in a tight-knit community. While Annja didn’t think of herself as particularly beautiful, she knew that her tall, lean-muscled, leggy form tended to attract added attention that, say, a dumpy fifty-year-old bearded archaeologist would not.

“I heard some things got me kind of concerned,” the lieutenant said. “I checked your motel but you weren’t there. Them Comanche County deputies told me you’d left the dig site right around sundown. So I wondered if you hadn’t broken down along the way. Or something.”

Or something, she thought. But carefully did not say.

“The breakdown scenario. My rental car died on me. I just managed to ditch it in the parking lot of the Bad Medicine Bar.”

“Hoo,” Ten Bears said. “Tell me you didn’t go inside?”

“No cell-phone coverage out there,” she said. “I didn’t think I had much choice.” She shrugged. “The reception I got didn’t exactly make me feel welcome. So I left.”

He laughed at that. “Them boys rowdy you up some?” he asked.

“Let’s say I got out of there before things got really out of hand,” she said with a grin.

“You’re a big TV star and all. Anything happened to you, it’d reflect poorly on the department and the Comanche Nation. Also you seem like a nice lady, if a bit idealistic,” he said.

“Thanks. I think.”

“See, there’s something going on in Indian country. Mostly western Oklahoma and northern Texas. Something not so good. We got some people here, young people, who are kind of on the radical side.”

He glanced at her. “You met some of them tonight. Iron Horse People Motorcycle Club.”

“I see.” She tried to keep her tone neutral.

“They got a rival bunch,” he said, “call themselves the Dog Society. Both sets want to live in the good old days, you know? Ride around whooping and hollering and shooting buffalo. They don’t much like the government. Okay, nobody does. They are also not too fond of the white-eyes.”

He drove a moment in silence. To their right the land began to pitch up into rough granite hills. Ten Bears didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. That he was heading away from Lawton didn’t particularly alarm Annja. She had fairly well-honed survival instincts. She didn’t sense anything sketchy from Ten Bears, just concern.

She knew he wasn’t telling her everything. Police never told outsiders everything about a live investigation. It didn’t mean much.

“Most of all they don’t like each other,” he continued. “There’s trouble between ’em. Regular trouble. Lots of bad blood. And it’s getting worse.”

“I don’t ever see anything about this on the news,” Annja said.

“I hope you don’t, Ms. Creed.” He looked at her. “I hope you won’t be going public with it.”

“Not much danger of that,” she said with a little smile. “I’m an archaeologist, not a reporter.”

“Nation’s trying to keep it all quiet. So’s the state. The Comanche Nation’s got this new casino opening up in a few days, you know. Your young bloods, the radical-traditional types, aren’t happy about that. It’s Indian business and white-eyes don’t much care. Anyway, if word of the problem does get out, what with the whole continuing terror hysteria and all, it’s just going to bring more grief to Indians without calming the passions that are causing the problems.”