Death Chants by Craig Strete Read Free Book Online Page A

matches all day long just to keep the heart fire lit."
    Forbes smiled. "I
had to help my ex-wife get her cat down out of a tree. The reason I'm late is because I'm such a
poor shot."
    "You always were a
gentleman. You never hit a woman with your hat on."
    Forbes tried to
hide the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He tried to straighten his back, get a grip
on himself. "What gets me ... I ... all these years . . . what I tried to do ... tried to say ...
how I carried myself ... I was so ... so damn afraid you wouldn't like me. Goddamn, I tried so
damn hard to be your friend. ... I hoped . . . why am I so goddamned dim that I have to wait till
the last reel to find out the truth?"
    "The truth only
waits for eyes not filled with longing."
    There was a silence
between the two of them. The thought hung in the air between them, like a bridge that spanned an
old, deep river they had always longed to cross.
    Forbes bent over
and got out two cans of beer. They were the last two cans in the sack. He opened them, held them
in his lap, a can in each hand. Red Horse was staring at him, his hands balled into
fists.
    Forbes peered into
the growing darkness of the day and said, "I think the matinee is almost over. We didn't ride off
into the sunset and we didn't get the girl."
    The old Indian put
his pipe in his shirt pocket with an air of putting it away forever. "I died in a hundred movies
and I never felt like I feel now that I'm actually doing it."
    "If it feels like
you've had to go to the bathroom for five years, and can't, you and me are in the same movie,"
said Forbes.
    "Death may turn out
to be funny. I hope not too damn funny. If there is a happy hunting ground and we go there, John
Forbes, it better by Christ not be a movie set."
    Forbes started to
take a drink from Red Horse's beer.
    "Hell, don't worry
about it. If it is, you're a personal friend of the director, and we'll get ourselves a rewrite." He lifted Red Horse's can of beer to
his lips. "I already got a good idea how to redo our death scene."
    Red Horse lunged
forward and grabbed his arm at the wrist.
    He said, "There is
no death, only a change of worlds." He snatched the beer can out of Forbes's hands. "AND IN THE
NEXT WORLD, BRING SOME OF YOUR OWN DAMN BEER."

The Game of Cat and Eagle
     
    The Marine band
played the Air Force hymn loud enough to scare the eagle.
    He wasn't happy in
the cage anyway—no eagle ever is.
    When I stepped off
the chopper at Camranh Bay, the caged eagle under my arm made me conspicuous.
    Colonel Ranklin, a
very correct soldier, impeccably starched, met me with a jeep at the end of the pier. The smell
of the harbor, a heavy tang of oil and salt water mingled with sewage, struck my
nostrils.
    "I have orders to
take you to your next transport," said Colo­nel Ranklin, saluting smartly.
    There was a look of
displeasure on his face. He expected possibly high brass, or somebody with a high covert status,
anything but a long-haired Indian with a caged eagle.
    I got into the
jeep, glad to drop the cage. I had a couple of wounds where the eagle had got at me through the
bars.
    "You are the
Mystery Guest?"
    "I guess so. I've
got a name, too—call me Lookseeker. You can't blame the code name on me. They always make a game
out of everything."
    "Right," said
Colonel Ranklin, climbing into the jeep. He threw the jeep into gear and we were off. He never
looked back, driving at a half-slow and very cautious pace through the dock area. We threaded our
way through what seemed like millions of tons of military cargo, awaiting
transshipment.
    He kept his back
straight; perhaps he had been born with a back like that, formed to fit against the
wall.
    There was a
coldness about him I didn't like, and he hadn't asked for proper identification or shown his own,
either.
    They had issued me
a standard sidearm, but I had turned it in. Where the eagle and I were going, guns wouldn't help.
But now, pondering