“I am tired,” Winona was shouting at him, “I am tired!”
“Get up!” yelled Running Horse.
“I am warm now!” shouted Winona. “Go on! I am tired! I will find you later.”
Running Horse then began to strike her with his open hand, again and again, savagely.
Winona looked at him blankly, almost incredulously, then her eyes betrayed bewilderment, incomprehension at his cruelty, then pain, and then her face and body burned with feeling, with shame, under his blows. Her mouth bled, a red trickle across her snow-encrusted lips.
“Get up,” said Running Horse.
“Yes, Husband,” said Winona, struggling unsteadily to her feet.
Then together the three of them, Winona now in the center, single file, pulling their ponies, leaning into the wind, continued to force their way northward through the snow.
The next day the wind died and, although more snow fell, the cold relaxed, and a deep, gentle white covered the prairie.
Sheltering themselves in a grove of cottonwood trees, Chance and Running Horse at last built a fire, taking the risk that even Running Horse now granted was permissible. The horses, tied by their reins to cottonwoods, knocked the snow from these trees as far up the trunks as they could reach and peeled the bark in long strips with their front teeth. The sound of their feeding made Chance feel even more hungry.
Winona stood up near the fire and listened. Then her face beamed. “Spotted Buffalo,” she said to Running Horse. “Listen.”
Both men listened.
In the near distance, possibly no more than seventy-five yards through the trees, they heard a plaintive, soft lowing. Three or four cattle had taken refuge in the trees last night, trying to escape the blizzard.
“Wakan-Tonka is kind at last,” said Running Horse, wading with his knife through the snow toward the sound.
Winona, Chance and Running Horse remained in the grove for a day before moving on, waiting for the snow to stop falling. The next morning, the first of January, New Year’s Day, 1891, they led their horses from the trees and continued their journey north to the Bad Lands.
A few hours later, two men, on large-boned army horses, rode into the cottonwood grove. Their big horses stepped through the snow with comparative ease. The men wore greatcoats and fur caps, carried rifles and led a provisioned pack horse.
“This is where the rancher saw the smoke,” said Corporal Jake Totter, dismounting and kicking at the embers of the dead fire. He scratched his ear carefully under his fur cap. His squarish face looked satisfied.
“They aren’t far ahead now,” said Grawson. There was victory in his heavy voice.
“I think you’re like to crazy to go after that feller so goddam quick,” said Totter. “I near froze last night.”
“You had a tent and fire,” said Grawson.
Totter looked around himself uneasily. “There’s probably Injuns around,” he said.
“They’re running,” said Grawson. “Running.”
“They might stop,” pointed out Totter.
“You want to get the man that shot you, don’t you?” jabbed Grawson.
“I don’t aim to get myself shot getting’ him,” said Totter.
Corporal Jake Totter wasn’t too happy with law officer Grawson. There was something strange about the big fellow, and the side of his face, the way it moved sometimes. It made Totter nervous. And the big fellow didn’t seem to have much common sense. Totter was not the brightest man in his unit but he’d been on the prairie long enough to know how to be careful. Grawson wasn’t. Totter had no particular hankering to meet up with Sioux stragglers after Wounded Knee. For his money, he’d prefer to be back in Good Promise, on leave, to go to the saloon, to see Nancy upstairs, who’d said she liked him. I might marry that gal, someday, thought Totter. But there wouldn’t be any leave, or any drinks, or any Nancy, if Grawson got them both scalped. Vaguely Totter wondered about putting a bullet in Grawson. They’d probably never bother digging it out. They could take it for a Sioux bullet anyway. He could say Indians did it. What was Chance to him? He wouldn’t mind shooting him, or getting him and giving him to Grawson, but it didn’t really make that much difference to Totter. Totter made more difference to Totter. If he never saw Edward Chance again Totter would not have much minded. Live and let live, said Totter to himself.
“Mount up,” said Grawson.
“Yes, Sir,” said Grawson, climbing into the saddle.
“If we get Chance by sundown,” said Grawson, “I’ll give you a month’s liquor as a bonus.”
Totter grinned. “That’s a lot of likker for me, Mister,” said Totter.
“After I get through with our friend Chance,” said Grawson, “you might feel like getting drunk for a month.”
“Hell, I’d celebrate,” said Totter.
Totter pulled his horse back beside Grawson’s.
“No,” said Grawson, “you first,” gesturing ahead.
Totter shrugged and led the way, the two men riding from the cottonwood grove, following the tracks in the snow, the tracks of two ponies and one shod horse.
Late in the afternoon, Chance, Winona and Running Horse could see the jagged rim of the Bad Lands rearing in the distance. In the snow it looked like the teeth of broken jaws.
“I’ll meet you later at the old camp,” said Chance. “I want to see Lucia first, down at the Carters’.”
Chance had thought that he would not see the girl again, but now, being so close, he knew that he would not resist, foolish though it might be. He must see her again, if only once more.
But Running Horse was looking at him, his eyes sad. “My heart is heavy for you,” he said.
Suddenly Chance’s heart seemed to stop beating, went cold.
He forced his horse through the snow, wildly, up to the top of a slope, from which he judged he would be able to see the Carter homestead.
Gasping, its flanks sore from the blows of Chance’s boots, the horse stopped bewildered turning on the top of the slope, trampling the snow, snorting, and Chance jerked it around and searched the valley, seeing back in the trampled snow some quarter of a mile away the black shell of the Carter soddy. The roof had been burned; there were no livestock in sight; a wagon was overturned in the yard.
“Lucia!” cried Chance at the top of his voice, and kicked the horse, driving it down the slope toward the soddy.
Running Horse and Winona followed him, slowly, not wanting to be there when he first reached the ruin.
At the door of the soddy Chance leapt from the back of his horse and stood in the threshold. The door of the soddy, marked with the blows of rifle stocks and hatchet scars, hung broken on its leather hinges.
Inside the wind had blown some soft snow over the ashes of the fallen roof, making the place seem calm and white. Under a charred beam, dusted with snow, lay the scalped body of Sam Carter, his little shape crumpled into a crooked heap, still wearing its Christmas shirt, a red wool shirt, the collar of which was too large.
“Lucia!” yelled Chance.
She was not in the soddy.
Running Horse looked through the opening where, perhaps yesterday, the door had been locked.