Cry of Eagles Read Online Free PDF Page A

it high, showing it to Chokole and the others before he shook the blood from it.
    Across the room, Taza sliced off the scalp of a whimpering girl with one swift motion. She shrieked as Taza shook blood off her torn scalp so that she was covered with crimson droplets from head to toe, as though she’d been outside in a red rain.
    Then Taza drove his knife into her belly, and the girl passed out. The blade opened her stomach with ease. With his free hand he pulled the white girl’s intestines and organs through the wound, making a grisly popping sound, scattering coils of purple intestine across the floor. Taza held the liver in one fist, squeezing blood and bile from it. Then he let out a war whoop and threw it against the cabin wall.
    Chokole knelt over an older man whose chest still rose and fell slowly. With practiced skill she cut off his eyelids so it appeared he was staring at her, even though pain had rendered him unconscious.
    Otoe, a seasoned warrior of many battles with the bluecoat soldiers, pulled another dying white man by his hair over to the fireplace, where an iron pot held boiling beans. He swung the pot hook out of the way quickly, so as not to burn his hands, for like Naiche and the others he was hungry, and the beans would be eaten as soon as the killing was finished.
    Otoe dropped the unconscious white man’s head into the hot coals and flames. He looked over at Naiche and grinned as the man’s hair and face burst into flame, evoking a moan from what was left of the dying man. In Apache he said, “We will eat the brain of our enemy along with his pot of beans.”
    â€œIt is good,” Naiche muttered, searching the cabin floor for a final victim.
    A soft groan from outside reminded him of the boy who fell at the base of the cabin wall. He strolled through the doorway, his knife tip dripping blood, to slice the scalp from the last of the enemy.
    The white boy was conscious, watching him as he seized a fistful of his curly blond hair.
    â€œNo, please no!” the boy yelled.
    Naiche’s wicked grin was his only reply as he swept his blade across the wounded boy’s forehead. Blood squirted all over Naiche’s arms and hands, and the scent of it, even the feel of it, was good. The warm liquid steamed in the chilly night air as he held his hands up to the sky and gave a harsh cry of joy.
    Chokole came outside. “All are dead,” she said in the softest of voices, with no hint of the ferocity revealed by her actions only minutes before. “These white-eyes are like all the others. They die like cowards, screaming, trying to hide under their wooden beds. Geronimo speaks truth when he tells us the white-eyes have no stomach for fighting. We will drive them from our lands when Geronimo gathers more warriors and guns.”
    It was true, Naiche thought as he shook the bloody scalp dry and hooked it through his belt. He spoke to Chokole in the darkness while the others began carrying flour and sugar and other foodstuffs outside to be loaded on the settler’s horses and mules. “The repeating guns are what make the white soldiers strong,” he began. “When we raid the fort and take these guns for our own, the bluecoats will stand no chance against us. They are not brave men. Their repeating rifles give them the strength of ten men. We must have Winchesters and many bullets, and more brave warriors who are not afraid to slip away from the reservation to follow us in a fight to defeat the enemy. As we speak, Isa is moving from one lodge to another at the fort, talking to warriors who want freedom, to live in the old ways. Isa promises many will follow him, and they will bring repeating rifles and bullets into the Dragoons to our secret place.”
    â€œIt will be good,” Chokole agreed. “With many-shoot guns, we will defeat these white-skinned cowards easily.”
    Naiche watched Taza bring haltered mules and horses from the corrals behind the