Hawthorne: Tales of a Weirder West by Heath Lowrance Read Free Book Online Page B

animal wander off a ways. He pulled the Schofield from its holster. He listened for any indication of life, heard none.
    Army
, he thought. The Indians weren't supposed to be here in the Black Hills anymore, not since the Treaty last year, but they were goddamn stubborn. And their stubbornness got them slaughtered. Just like a hundred times before. Not just the braves, but women and children, too. The Army didn't seem to care who they killed, just as long as the Black Hills were open to them and closed to the Indians.
    He wandered the camp, stomped out several small fires still smoldering. There were about thirty dead, all of them sprawled out facedown, no blood anywhere.
    He holstered his gun, knelt down over the body of a woman, and turned her over.
    Her face was emaciated and skeletal, dry eyes bulged out of their sockets and teeth bared in a horrible, contorted grin. Her body was stiff and brittle, like an old corn husk left out in the sun.
    The front of her torso was covered in spider webs.
    He stepped back from her, walked a few feet to another corpse, this one belonging to a man, and turned it over with his boot.
    The body weighed next to nothing. It too was dry and stiff and bone thin, as if all the juice had been sucked out of it. The arms and part of the chest were laced with spider webs, also.
    No, this wasn't the work of the Army. Not this time.
    A few feet further on, he came across another woman.
    This one was different. Still the same shriveled body, but her face was gone. It looked as if something had burst forth from her head. The inside of her skull was like a hollow, dry bowl.
    Spider webs covered her.
    In the sparse woods around the camp, something moved, snapping twigs and scuffling through dead leaves. Hawthorne drew his revolver, spun to face the direction of the noise.
    His gray eyes scanned the area, saw nothing. And then he heard another breaking branch to the right, caught a quick glimpse of someone trying to move furtively through the trees.
    Hawthorne gave chase. Whoever it was gave up all pretense of stealth and ran.
    It was a Lakota boy, about sixteen, and he moved like the wind. Hawthorne picked up the pace, tearing through the woods after him.
    The boy scrambled up the incline of a small hill, leaping over fallen tree trunks and skirting around the ancient conifers and spruces. Hawthorne stayed on his tail, though just barely. The boy angled off to the left, cutting across the side of the hill. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Hawthorne closing in. He suddenly changed course, veering down the hill again.
    It was a bad decision. Hawthorne's longer legs carried him down the incline faster, and he cut the boy off near the base of the hill, barreling into him.
    They both tumbled down. Hawthorne grabbed the kid by his long hair—he wasn't wearing a shirt, so hair was the only option—and pulled him up to his feet. The boy fought, throwing sloppy punches and trying to kick Hawthorne with his buckskin moccasins.
    Hawthorne cuffed him on the side of the head and some of the fight went out of the boy. Hawthorne gripped the kid's hair, shook him. "Stop it."
    The boy spit at him, a nice fat glob on the jaw. Hawthorne slapped him again.
    The boy was small, but lithe, with the build of most Lakota and transplanted Plains tribes Hawthorne had seen. He said something sneering in his own language
    "I don't speak Lakota. Talk English."
    The boy had lost his will to fight and stopped struggling, tears shone in his eyes. "What makes you think I speak your ugly language?"
    "What happened to your camp?"
    "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
    "Tell me anyway."
    The tears were running now, but the boy's face was twisted with anger. He said, "
Iktomi
."
    "What?"
    "The
Iktomi
. They are what happened to my camp. To my family."
    Hawthorne didn't know what
Iktomi
meant, but decided he wouldn't get anywhere trying to find out more just then. He said, "Did anyone else survive?"
    "What do you care? It's just more