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Seeing many arrows lodged in the walls on the left side of the corridor, Two Eagles realized just how angrily the Sioux had fired them from their bowstrings.
He wondered what these pony soldiers had done to this band of Sioux to create such hatred.
He did not think about that for long, for he had spotted someone on the floor in a room to his left, where candles had burned down to their wicks on a sprawling table covered with a white cloth. He could see food on platters and cups turned over, from which a brownish liquid had spilled onto the white cloth.
But most of his attention was on the man who lay lifeless there on his back. An arrow had pierced the strange-looking medals on the man’s blue jacket, and blood had stained them.
Two Eagles looked cautiously from side to side.
When he felt sure that no one else was left alive there, he stepped into the dining room and knelt beside the dead man.
An instant revulsion flowed through his veins, for he was looking onto the face of the very colonel he had despised. This man had the blood of his uncle on his hands, for Short Robe had told him that Colonel Creighton, himself, had made some of the scars on Two Eagles’s uncle’s back when he had heartlessly beaten him with the whip.
“And so the Sioux took the satisfaction of killing you from me,” Two Eagles said between clenched teeth as he glared at the dead colonel. “But the important thing is that you are dead and can cause no other man humiliation or pain.”
Hardly able to look on the face of the white man any longer, Two Eagles hurried to his feet and went out into the corridor where Running Wolf was kneeling beside a woman and studying her as though he had never seen a woman before.
Two Eagles went and knelt beside him, now understanding why his warrior was so curious about the woman. None of his people had seen many black-skinned people, and here one lay in a pool of blood, an arrow protruding from her chest.
He watched Running Wolf reach a hand to the woman’s face, then draw it quickly away.
“Her skin is soft to the touch, but . . . but . . . so cold,” he said, visibly shuddering.
“Her skin is cold not because of its color, but because she is dead,” Two Eagles said solemnly. He placed a hand on Running Wolf’s shoulder. “Hiyuwo, come. Let us find what we came here for and then return to our village. I have had enough of this place. Never before have I seen as many dead as I have here today. It is good that our people are not a warring people, for I would not have the stomach for such as this.”
“Nor would I,” Running Wolf said, swallowing hard. “It is good that we have solved our problems in a peaceful way. But today . . . ?”
“Ho, we had planned to leave that peace behind us today in order to avenge my uncle and those of our friends who were terribly wronged by Colonel Creighton and his men,” Two Eagles said, rising. He looked at the doors that lined the corridor. “Let us find what we are here for, quickly. Hiyu-wo, come. Follow me.”
They hurried from room to room until they finally found the one they sought—the colonel’s study.
“It has to be here,” Two Eagles said stiffly. “Our scout, Fire Eyes, who the colonel did not know was a friend to us, saw it here.”
Together they began searching, throwing books from shelves, opening and emptying the drawers of a massive oak desk, until they came to a closed, windowed piece of furniture.
Slowly Two Eagles opened the glass doors, again finding books that stood stiffly, side by side.
Angry that he still had not found the jar with the chief’s head in it, Two Eagles began tossing books from the shelves.
He stopped short, his eyes wide, when the lowering sun’s rays came through a broken window and settled on a jar that had been hidden behind the books. It was covered by a maroon scarf.
“This . . . must . . . be it,” Two Eagles said as he slowly pulled the scarf away.
His stomach churned when he found eyes, locked in a death’s stare, looking back at him, from sockets that had sunk into the bone. Only a few remains of flesh clung to the skull.
Two Eagles swallowed hard, turned his eyes away and closed them. Then he looked at Running Wolf, whose stomach had betrayed him after only one look at the face of an old friend.
Running Wolf was bent over and vomiting.
Then, breathing hard, Running Wolf wiped his mouth clean with the back of a hand and gazed in apology at his chief.
“Do not feel wakan, bad, about what you did,” Two Eagles said, reaching a comforting hand to Running Wolf’s bare shoulder. “My stomach rebelled, too, but just did not go as far as yours did.”
“How could the white leader do this terrible thing to such a wonderful, admired, and powerful chief?” Running Wolf asked, gulping hard. “Please cover it. I do not want to look into those eyes ever again. There . . . there . . . is such pain there. Think of the misery he endured before . . . before—”
“Do not say any more,” Two Eagles said thickly, quickly covering the jar with the scarf. Slowly, almost meditatingly, he wrapped the fabric securely around it.
When he turned to leave, his eyes settled on something else that the sun’s rays seemed to purposely illuminate. He gasped when he saw several scalps hanging along the far wall.
