William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

Wild stirrings shot through the crowd, a storm of potential energy yearning to be released.

“A true vision!” Red Hand bellowed.

The braves chafed at the bit, straining to break loose, but Red Hand shouted down the rising tumult. “The Great Spirit has shown us the Way—kill the Texans! Take up the Fire Lance! Kill and burn until the last white has fled from these lands, never to be seen again! The buffalo will once more grow thick and fat! All will be well, as in the days of our fathers!”

Brandishing his lance, Red Hand shook it at the heavens. Pandemonium erupted, a near riot. The hollow basin became a howling bedlam as the wild crowd went wilder.

So great was the uproar that, in the tipis, the women and children marveled to hear it. Any outsider, red or white, hearing it crashing across the plains, would have taken fright.

Red Hand hopped down off the ledge that had served him as a platform and stepped back into the shadows, partly withdrawing from the scene while the disturbance played itself out. His henchmen followed.

Presently, order was restored, if not peace and quiet. The braves settled down, in their restless way.

Red Hand put his head together with his five-man cadre, giving orders.

Carrying out his command, Sun Dog and Little Bells moved around to the east side of Arrowhead Rock, where a lone tipi stood off by itself in the gloom beyond the firelight. Sun Dog lifted the front flap and went inside.

A moment later, a figure emerged headfirst through the opening as if violently flung outward, falling facedown in the dirt at Little Bells’s feet.

Sun Dog reappeared. He and Little Bells bracketed a sorry figure, grabbing him by the arms and hauling him to his feet. The newcomer was a white man in cavalry blue. A Long Knife, one of the hated pony soldiers!

There was a collective intake of breath from the mob in the hollow, followed by ominous mutterings and growlings. As one, they pressed forward.

The captive wore a torn blue tunic and pants with a yellow strip down the sides. He was barefoot. His hands were tied in front of him by rawhide strips cutting deep into the flesh of his wrists. He sagged, legs folding at the knees. He would have fallen if Sun Dog and Little Bells hadn’t been holding him up.

He was Butch Hardesty, a robber, rapist, and back-shooting murderer. He had a system. When the law got too hot on his trail, he would enlist in the army and disappear in the ranks, losing himself among blue-clad troopers and distant frontier posts. When the pursuit cooled off, he would steal a horse and rifle and go “over the hill,” deserting to resume his outlaw career. He’d go about his business until the law started dogging him again, once more repeating the cycle.

In the last years of the War Between the States, he worked his way west across the country, finally winding up at lonesome Fort Pardee in north central Texas. He deserted again, and had the extreme bad luck to cross paths with some of Red Hand’s scouts. He’d been doubly unfortunate in being taken alive.

He’d been beaten, starved, abused, and tortured near the extreme. But not all the way to destruction. Red Hand needed him alive. He had a use for him. Hardesty was taken north, to the conclave at Arrowhead Rock. Kept alive and on hand—for what?

Out of the tipi stepped a weird hybrid creature, man-shaped, with a monstrous shaggy horned head.

Coming into the light, the apparition was revealed to be an aged Comanche, pot-bellied and thin-shanked. He wore a brown woolly buffalo hide headdress complete with horns. He was Medicine Hat, Red Hand’s own shaman, herbalist, devil doctor, and sorcerer.

Half carrying and half dragging Hardesty, Sun Dog and Little Bells hustled him to the front of the rock. Medicine Hat shambled after them, mumbling to himself.

The cavalryman produced no small effect on the crowd. Like a magnifying lens focusing the sun’s rays into a single burning beam, the trooper provided a focus for the braves’ bloodlust and demonic energies.

Hardesty was brought to the stake and bound to it. Ropes made of braided buffalo hide strips lashed him to the pole with hands tied above his head. Too weak to stand on his own two feet, the ropes held him up.

When Comanches took an enemy alive, they tortured him, expecting no less should they be taken. Torture was an important element of the warrior society. How a man stood up to it showed what he was made of. It was entertaining, too—to those not on the receiving end.

Hardesty bore the marks of starvation and abuse. His face was mottled with purple-black bruises, features swollen, one blackened eye narrowed to a glinting slit. His mouth hung open. His shirt was ripped open down the middle, his bare torso having been sliced and gouged. Cactus thorns had been driven under his fingernails and toenails. Twigs had been tied between fingers and toes and set aflame. The soles of his feet had been skinned, then roasted.

Firelight caused shadows to crawl and slide across Hardesty’s bound form. He seemed as much dead as alive.

Black Robe now went to work on him with a knife whose blade was heated red-hot. It brought Hardesty around, his bellows of pain booming in the basin.

Badger shot some arrows into Hardesty’s arms and legs, careful to ensure that no wound was mortal.

Each new infliction was greeted with shouts by the braves. It was great sport.

Hardesty was scum and he knew it, but he played his string out to the end. His mouth worked, cursing his captors. “The joke’s on you, ya ignorant savages. I ain’t cavalry a’tall. I’m a deserter. I quit the army, you dumb sons of bitches, haw haw! How d’you like that? Ya heathen devils.”

A few Comanches had a smattering of English, but were unable to make out his words. All liked his show of spirit, however.

“The gods are happiest when the sacrifice is strong,” Red Hand said. “Make ready for the Fire Lance.”

Medicine Hat muttered agreement with a toothless mouth, spittle wetting his pointed chin. Reaching into his bag of tricks, he pulled out a gourd. It was dried and hollowed out, with a long neck serving as a kind of spout. The end of the spout was sealed by a stopper. Pulling the plug, he closed on the captive.

Hardesty slumped against the ropes, head down, and chin resting on top of his chest. He looked up out of the tops of his eyes, his pain-wracked gaze registering little more than a mute flicker of animal awareness.

Red Hand moved forward, out of the shadows into the light. It could be seen that his face was freshly striped with black paint.

War paint! The sight of which sent an electric thrill surging through the throng.

Red Hand motioned Medicine Hat to proceed. The shaman’s moccasined feet shuffled in the dust, doing a little ceremonial dance. Mouthing spells, prayers, and incantations, Medicine Hat neared Hardesty, then backed away, repeating the action several times.

He held the gourd over the captive’s head and. began pouring the vessel’s contents on Hardesty’s head, shoulders, chest, and belly, dousing him with a dark, foul-smelling liquid. Compounded of rendered animal fats, grease, and mineral oils, the stuff was used as a fire starter to quicken the lighting of campfires. It gurgled as it spewed from the spout.

Groans escaped Hardesty as his upper body was coated with the stuff. Medicine Hat poured until the gourd was empty. He stepped away from Hardesty, who looked as if he’d been drenched with glistening brown oil.

Red Hand moved forward, the center of all eyes.

The shaman was a great one for brewing up various potions, powders, and salves. Earlier, he had applied a special ointment to the spear blade of Red Hat’s lance. The main ingredient of the mixture was a thick, sticky pine tar resin blended with vegetable and herbal oils. It coated the blade, showing as a gummy residue that dulled the brilliance of the steel’s metallic shine.