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Two Eagles could only conclude that his killers had taken his body, perhaps to mutilate it.
It saddened him to think of such a thing happening to such a proud warrior . . . his cousin!
He had searched far and wide for that Sioux camp, but they had disappeared into the wind, and had never been heard of again.
Two Eagles had prayed often for his cousin’s spirit, hoping that it returned often to be among his people, even though his body was far away.
The hatred Two Eagles felt for the white eyes ran deep. The white eyes were killing hordes of buffalo as a way to discourage the Wichita from staying on the plains, where the buffalo had once been so plentiful.
Of course the Wichita hated to see such waste, but they no longer depended solely on the buffalo hunt as they had in the past. They ate other meats hunted by their warriors, and enjoyed the good fruits of their labor in their gardens.
Ho, the United States government had thought that once the buffalo went, so would the Wichita, saying that with the buffalo disappearing, in time there would also be no more red men.
But it was Two Eagles’s father who had boldly told the uniformed spokesman for the United States government that the Wichita did not always give the Great Spirit meat and he still favored the Wichita!
Two Eagles’s spine stiffened as he caught his first sight of a dozen bluecoats on horses. The animals snorted and blew their nostrils as they were made to ride onward in the blistering heat. Their riders must surely see Two Eagles alone and waiting for them at the edge of the village.
And then Two Eagles’s heart cried out within his chest as he caught his first sight of his uncle. He was being led by a rope looped about his neck as though he were an animal.
Two Eagles clenched his hands into tight fists at his sides when he saw how his uncle was being forced to jog, not walk. The leg irons that shackled him hit his ankle bones with each of his movements, and his hands were bound with chains.
Straight as an arrow, Two Eagles still stood there, even though he longed to run and help his uncle, who seemed unable to go much farther.
But Two Eagles knew that if he went beyond where he stood now, he might goad the soldiers into killing his uncle or Two Eagles, himself. They might then swarm into the village like mad hornets and kill everyone else.
So Two Eagles continued to stand there, watching and waiting, as the group came closer and closer. When his uncle was close enough for Two Eagles to see him fully, the numbness of the shock he was feeling became a hot rage. His uncle’s bare feet were bloody, with flies and gnats buzzing around them.
Two Eagles fought off the
nausea that came with seeing his beloved uncle being so mistreated, as though he were less than human.
Two Eagles’s body became even more rigid as the pony soldiers stopped only a few feet away. Short Robe’s gaze locked with his nephew’s.
Two Eagles could tell that his uncle’s will to survive until he was reunited with his people might be all that had kept him alive. One of the soldiers dismounted and lifted the rope from around Short Robe’s neck, then slapped him with it across the buttocks before remounting his horse. His uncle stumbled and fell to the ground at Two Eagles’s feet.
That was when Two Eagles saw his uncle’s back and the deep, bloody scars that must have been made by the lash of a blacksnake whip.
Holding back an even stronger urge to leap past his uncle and yank the soldier from his horse, then choke the life from the heartless man, Two Eagles gazed coldly into the soldier’s eyes.
“Why did you treat a helpless old man so inhumanely?” he asked, fighting hard to keep his voice steady, while everything in him cried out to lunge at that soldier and pull him from his horse, but not kill him with his bare hands. Instead, he would wrap his neck with the bloody rope that had held his uncle prisoner.
“Why?” the soldier said tauntingly. “Why did we bring this old geezer home in chains?” He laughed and held his face down closer to Two Eagles’s. “Because we could, that’s why.”
That response made the heat of hatred rush through Two Eagles’s heart so intensely, he had to reach deep within himself for the willpower to refrain from acting out his anger.
Instead, he could only watch as the mocking soldier wheeled his horse around and cantered away with the other bluecoats. In the next moments all the Wichita came from their lodges, stunned silent by how Short Robe had been treated.
Short Robe gazed up at Two Eagles. “Two Eagles . . .” he said in a voice that was hardly discernible. He continued his communication in the silent Indian way, signaling the Indian sign for “Everything will be alright.” He held his right palm down, fingers extended straight out, with his arm in a horizontal position near his heart, then made a swift motion forward about six inches.
Fighting back tears, Two Eagles knelt down and picked up a handful of sand. He tossed it at his uncle’s feet, causing clouds of flies and gnats to rise in the air from them.
He gazed into his uncle’s faded, old eyes, and nodded in affirmation of what Short Robe had said in sign language. Yet he knew that everything was not alright, for his uncle was too old to have been treated in such a way.
He knew that soon his uncle would die because of it!
A hunger for vengeance such as he had never felt before swept through Two Eagles!
Chapter Two
