Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

“Can I take a shot at them, Pa?” Bobbo yelled.

“No, leave them be,” Hadley yelled back.

“Raise the dead, way they’re yammering,” Bobbo said.

Standing just this side of the wagon, between it and the fire, Minerva was brushing her hair, counting the strokes.

“Drive a man crazy with that countin out loud,” Hadley said.

“Thirty-three-thirty-four, thirty-five...”

“You’ve had too much to drink, Min.”

“Thirty-six, hush, thirty-seven...”

The wolves were still howling.

“Let me take a shot at them, Pa,” Bobbo called.

“Leave em be, son,” Hadley said.

Bonnie Sue had already crawled under her blanket. “Does anyone in this family have any notion of sleeping tonight?” she asked.

Annabel giggled. She’d taken off her bodice and skirt, and was walking barefooted in her petticoat, toward the dark side of the wagon. “Whyn’t you let him shoot one of the critters?” she said. “Otherwise, they’ll be at it all night long.”

“Ain’t there nobody planning to sleep tonight?” Bonnie Sue asked.

Annabel giggled again.

“Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine,” Minerva said.

A little distance from the fire and the wagon both, not so far from either so that the wolves would get her, Annabel lifted her petticoat and let down her drawers and was preparing to pee when she heard what sounded like a whistle or a pipe, one of them wooden pipes the mountain people back home were all the time whittling. She peered into the darkness and could see nothing. It occured to her that not a moment before she’d seen the moving shadows of the wolves, had even been able to make out their eyes gleaming in the darkness. She couldn’t see nary a wolf now, nor did she hear them howling anymore.

“Bobbo?” she called.

“Yeah, Sis?”

“You hear something just—”

Somebody grabbed her from behind. She screamed, and urine ran down the inside of her leg and then stopped abruptly. He pulled her over by the hair, flat on her back, her underdrawers bunched around her ankles. She saw him only upside down. His face was painted with a grinning red mouth, feathers were in his hair. He had a tomahawk in his hand. She screamed again, and tried to scramble away, but he pinned her to the ground and straddled her as he would a pony, and then put the tomahawk down and reached for something at his belt.

She grabbed for the tomahawk at once.

Her fingers closed on the leather-encased haft and she swung the thing like the simple hatchet it was. His hand was coming up from his belt; there were leather thongs in it. He dropped the thongs and tried to protect his face, the fingers of his hand widespread. The sharp flint edge of the tomahawk cut through two fingers and struck him clean between the eyebrows, splitting open his forehead. Blood spurted out of him like a fountain. Annabel screamed and let go the hatchet.

She was still screaming when she came around the wagon tongue, pulling up her underdrawers. There were three more of them, one of them painted blood red like the one she’d just split open, another blue, the last a color seemed brown or black. Her father lay on the ground just near the back of the wagon, blood pouring from the side of his head. Bonnie Sue was on the bottom of an Indian straddling her same as she’d just been, only this one was wearing a beaded shirt. Bonnie Sue kicked and punched at him, but he had his forearm pressed hard against her throat and she was choking. Annabel ran to the fire, pulled a flaming stick from it, and ran back to where the Indian was on top of Bonnie Sue. He had a knife in his hand, he’d pulled a knife from his belt, Jesus, he was going to kill her!

She pushed the burning stick at his naked arm where the shirt ended, and the Indian let out a yell and jumped off Bonnie Sue. Annabel threw away the stick and started running. She could hear horses out there someplace; there’d be more Indians on them in a minute. The one she’d just poked with the stick grabbed her arm, swung her around, and punched her full in the face. She heard something snap inside her nose, and fell to her knees in pain, her hands covering her face. Blood was pouring from her nose. Where was the Indian, where’d he...? She turned, saw him running back to where he’d dropped his knife. He picked up the knife. It was a metal knife, the firelight glittered on its edge, he was coming back to where she sat with her petticoat tented over her knees.

Almost without looking at her, he stuck the knife in her and pulled it out again.

She felt only pain like she’d been burned, and then saw blood spreading into the white petticoat, and clutched for the wound. Blood welled up between her fingers. He pulled her hair away from her face, and brought the knife to her forehead. She thought: Please, no, and tried to scream but could not find the strength, and could not raise her hand to stop him. He slit the flesh across her forehead, just below the hairline, and was beginning to peel back her scalp when Bobbo shot him in the back. Feathers and beads exploded between his shoulder blades. He fell forward onto Annabel, his hand releasing the knife, the blade still caught between the scalp he’d been lifting and the skull beneath it.

The other two Indians had hold of Minerva, the one of them wearing the wolfskin and the other with his face painted entirely blue. Bobbo couldn’t reload, they gave him no time “to reload. He ran to where his mother was trying to fight them off, and swung the stock of his rifle at the back of the one with the wolfskin, but the Indian was strong and fierce and shrugged off the blows like they were flies annoying him. Minerva was holding to the wagon wheel with one hand, and with the other she was hitting them with her hairbrush. The Indians kept talking to themselves all the while they tried to pry her loose from the wagon wheel, and finally the one with the wolfskin began punching her repeatedly in the chest, and the one with the blue face turned on Bobbo with a knife and came at him with the blade extended toward his gut.

Bobbo reached for the Indian’s thrusting hand instinctively, ignoring for the moment the knife that was clutched in it, grabbing for the wrist the way he’d grabbed for Will’s or Gideon’s when they were rassling, pulling the Indian toward him, using the force of his own momentum, and at the same time bringing his knee up into the Indian’s groin. The Indian’s eyes opened wide in the painted face. Bobbo saw the face an instant before he dropped the knife. As Bobbo stooped to pick it up, he thought: He’s no older’n me . His hand closed around the bone handle. Maybe younger, he thought. The Indian was doubled in pain on the ground, his hands clutching his balls. Bobbo plunged the knife blade deep into his chest. He raised the knife and plunged it again. And then another time. Then he turned away and vomited into his hands.

Behind him, the Indian with the wolfskin pulled Minerva off the wagon wheel, looped one arm around her waist, and began dragging her toward where she could hear horses whinnying and pawing the earth. They had torn her petticoat up the front during the struggle and her breasts were exposed; she was embarrassed that her son would see her this way. Oddly, she felt neither fear nor anger. She knew only that this Indian painted red was trying to take her someplace she didn’t want to go. Stubbornly, she resisted. Kicking, striking with her closed fists wherever she could reach him, she resisted with every ounce of strength she possessed. She could still feel the pain where he had struck her between the breasts, but she struggled fiercely until he hit her again full in the mouth, splitting her lip and causing it to bleed, knocking loose two teeth, which she spat with blood into her hand. He knocked her hand away from her mouth, and the teeth went flying. He caught hold of her wrist, dragged her into the darkness. She could see four painted horses. He unhobbled one of them and threw her over a blanket stinking of sweat and piss, and then swung himself up over the horse’s back and made a clucking sound to the animal. She knew then that unless she did something at once, unless she found the will and the strength to stop him, he would take her wherever he wished. She thought suddenly of the patroon Jimmy Jackson. The horse was in motion.