Long Knife Read Online Free PDF Page B

brought help to General Clark, eh?”
    The Indian nodded, rode close to the wagon, stopped, and pointed at the stained bundle in the back.
    “That is the leg of Clark?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “What will you do with it?”
    “Well, we’ll … we’ll just dispose of it.”
    “Two Lives will take it,” he said.
    “What, you bloody heathen!” cried the younger medicine man, rising to his feet and raising his whip. Two Lives lookedinto the young man’s eyes until they fell and he lowered the whip and sat down.
    “Why the devil would you want that leg?” said the older medicine man.
    “Hear me: I am alive because of the Long Knife. For more than thirty years I have been alive because of him. My people have been at peace with the Americans because of him. Now he is alive because of me. I should have these bones for my people. You are only going to throw them away.”
    The older medicine man looked at the younger one, then at the long bloodstained bundle in the back of the wagon. He turned in the seat and, straining, lifted the bundle. “No,” he said, “I was not going to throw it away. I was going to keep it myself.” The assistant looked at him in surprise. “But,” he went on, “I see that it would be right for your people to have it. Here.”
    Two Lives took the bundle. It was heavy. The smell of it made the pony step about nervously. Two Lives and the old medicine man looked into each other’s eyes.
    “Good,” said Two Lives. He turned his pony and vanished among the leaves of the forest.
    Dr. Ferguson was quiet for a while as the wagon rattled on down the mossy road. Then he exhaled and clapped his palms on his knees. “Well,” he said. “I tell you, Jack. There’s one to amuse your grandkids with someday.”
    “Damned savage deserves that rotten limb,” grumbled the young man. “Probably his nasty poultice that infected it.”
    The surgeon gazed at him, thoughtfully. “Well, there’s no way of knowing, but I doubt it. Anyhow,” he sighed, “that’s some souvenir for ’im, it surely is.”
    A FTER SUNSET THAT EVENING, FOUR FINE FIDDLERS FROM L OUISVILLE came up to Clark’s Point to join the drummers and fifers. For an hour into the night, marching around the house by torchlight, they serenaded the general, with music gentler and more elegant than the martial tunes they had played in the afternoon.
    He lay between clean sheets on the bed in his bedroom, feeling very weak. Lucy had set a chair beside his bed and she stayed there quietly in the candlelight, talking with him when he wanted to talk, going to fetch things when he asked for them, and seeing that his visitors did not stay long enough to tire him. The Gwathmeys had come up, his eldest sister Ann Clark Gwathmey and her husband Owen Gwathmey, who in the faceof the general’s suffering was for once not complaining about his boils. They beamed at the general and hardly knew what to say. At last he raised his hand and said, “Is my little sweetheart here?”
    “Aye,” said Ann. “On the porch. We weren’t sure as you’d want a child in.”
    “Would you fetch ’er here, please?”
    The girl, just ten years old, was brought to the bedside, wide-eyed, freckled, and red-haired, coming with a strange, awkward step which betrayed a conscious effort to restrain her customary joyous rush to him.
    “Ah, Diana!” His eyes lit up and he held his hand to her.
    She worked her mouth for a moment, then said, “I came to see you.”
    “I’m real glad, Missy. Now, I’ve a hard day, and I’m not the best company. But tomorrow maybe I’ll tell you a good story.”
    She smiled and tugged at his hand. The strange terror of the moment was suddenly gone. “What about, Uncle George?”
    “Why, maybe I’ll tell you a story of an Indian chief named Two Lives. And maybe he’ll sit with us and help me tell it.”
    Her blue eyes shone and she turned to her mother for confirmation. “That sounds real fine, doesn’t it?” said Ann Gwathmey.