Damnation Road by Max McCoy Read Free Book Online

many battles with other tribes and with the blue-coated soldiers, sacred birds and animals, and stars falling to earth. There were holes in the story, however, because in places the buffalo hide was ripped, or chunks had rotted away, and these offenses had been patched with whatever had been at hand—canvas, burlap, blankets, and even portions of a quilt or two.
    On the far side of the lodge were several horses, picketed. It was a sorry lot of animals, except for one chestnut mare. Her dark eyes followed Gamble as he made his way past.
    When Gamble had trudged all the way around again to the east-facing entrance of the lodge, he encountered a thin white man in a full-length elk robe. He was bald, and an earring dangled from the lobe of his left ear. When he smiled, a gold front tooth caught the light of the winter sun.
    â€œWelcome, friend.”
    â€œWelcome to what?” Gamble asked.
    â€œWhatever you want it to be,” the stranger said. “My name is Burns and this is my place. Something, ain’t it? Used to belong to an old Kiowa warrior by the name of Laughing Bear. Now it’s mine.”
    â€œLaughing Bear?”
    â€œThe old fool never accepted the terms of the Medicine Lodge Treaty or defeat after the Red River Wars,” Burns said. “For thirty years they have tried to keep him on the reservation down at Fort Sill, and for thirty years he kept jumping the reservation, coming up here to this old buffalo hunting ground he knew as a boy. But come on in out of the cold wind, friend, where we can talk and warm our old bones by the fire.”
    Burns held the shieldlike buffalo skin door aside and Gamble ducked in, then fastened the door after him. Gamble parted the tattered ozan , an inner partition that helped keep out the cold and prevented incautious shadows from being cast on the outer lodgeskin.
    The lodge fire was well-banked. On the stones around the fire were pots and pans, cups, and food—beans and bacon, sugar and salt, a can of Arbuckles coffee, canned peaches. On the other side of the fire was a line of wooden crates turned on their sides and stacked to make shelves, and the shelves were filled with whiskey bottles. On top of the crates were three or four lacquered trays which held opium pipes, bowls, and other paraphernalia. The bowls were ceramic, and were about the size and shape of doorknobs; most were decorated with dragons, lotuses, or Chinese characters.
    At the edge of the firelight, near the ozan , were a half-dozen flickering opium lamps. Beside each lamp was a shadowy and furtive figure, humped beneath blankets or reclining with their pipes cradled in their arms. Most were asleep. Two of them stirred as if in a dream, fidgeting with their pipes.
    One of the opium smokers was a woman of indeterminate age, with pallid skin and a tangle of chestnut hair. Around her waist was something that looked like a snakeskin. Her dull eyes lingered on Gamble, then she skewered a ball of opium with the tip of a steel needle and thrust it over the chimney of her lamp. Once the pill was heated to an orange glow, she transferred it to the bowl of her pipe and then wrapped her lips around the stem, sucking the vaporized opium into her lungs. Her eyelids quivered in the kind of ecstasy that Gamble had only seen before when a woman achieved sexual gratification.
    He forced himself to look away, and followed Burns.
    Sitting beside the fire, absentmindedly tending it with a hickory branch, was an Indian girl of thirteen. She was wearing a Chinese robe in vivid red silk and a Mandarin hat of the same color was perched on her head. Her legs were drawn up beneath her, revealing a pair of slender feet with bright pink soles.
    â€œWhat’s with the getup?” Gamble asked.
    The girl’s dark eyes flashed.
    â€œCouldn’t find a real Celestial outside Denver or Oklahoma City,” Burns said.
    Gamble glanced cautiously around before taking the wicker chair that Burns