The Book of Duels Read Online Free PDF

Congress, but I always did look good in the press, so I acquiesced, It shall be my honor, Mr. President, to serve at your behest and clear the way for peace and progress , but you, sir, shall know my cavalier genius and pin all four stars to my blue coat, the one Libbie will clean and press with her own hands—now the guns’ ivory handles lie cool against my skin and before me stands myassassin, the man I have missed with each damn shot—he levels his rifle and all I have left is this one prayer: perhaps a single bullet lies hidden in the guts of these guns. So heave-chested and steely-eyed as the morning sun, I aim my sidearms and charge, high-stepping through the water, the wind cooling my skin as I squeeze the triggers on these empty chambers, squeeze them as gentle as if they were Libbie’s pale hands.
    His last bullet, Lord, has found its mark and passes through every folding drape of my brain and I fall back again and see the sky one final time before the cold water clouds my eyes but it does not hurt, Libbie, I swear, not a bit compared to never having you sew epaulettes square on my shoulders again.

Ptebloka Ska (a.k.a. White Cow Bull), 28,
    Oglala Sioux Warrior
     
    I had soaped myself in bull lard against the cool waters of the Greasy Grass, where I swam this morning ahead of battle with the bluecoats, and I was lying naked to the loincloth in yucca and sage grasses when like the hawk they bushwhacked us—crossed the coulee upstream unannounced and raided our camp—I crawl behind the rocks where I had stood my weapons, wanting only the head of their leader, Long Locks, who years ago kidnapped fair Mo-nah-se-tah and forced his baby inside her and though I have spoken to her only through the open flaps of her teepee, I love her and have wished in my best heart to walk with her under a courting blanket and make her my wife, but she has rejected me because I said I would even welcome her bastard blond boy, the one they say twins Long Locks’s likeness, so last night I sang the suicide song and I danced till the drums and my heart were one and I came out here to war with no belief I would ever return alive to my tribe, and since I cannot find the man I want, that coward and rapist, I will, in his stead, have the head of another, so I blast from his saddle the first pink man who rides through the cottonwood trees and the water weighs down the buckskin clothes he wears to hide his hairy body but he rises from the river like Great Medicine itself, his voice growling like a wolf as it eats—one brave white man at last—I freeze and let him fire his bullets but they will not have me—they fly by whistling like notes played through an eagle-bone flute—and so he charges and I put my next shot straight through his skull and shrill andtake my hatchet for a coup, hoping some Sioux will later tell Mo-nah-se-tah of my courage.
    Like a lover, his half-Sioux traitor collects him in his arms and I drop my rifle and I catch by its mane the dead man’s pinto and spring to its back and heft my hatchet high and holler the war cry Crazy Horse has taught us to live by: Hoka hey , I shout, hoka hey: it is a good day to die, but an even better day to kill .

Mitch Bouyer, 39,
    Custer’s Chief of Scouts, Half French & Half Sioux
     
    W hen Custer went down, I hopped from my rack-of-bones pony and ran in after him, my heart tight as a fist in my throat, yet fore I could reach him he rose and charged into the hornets’ nest and still I followed and the warrior stood awfully still with clumps of earth and prairie grass clinging to his skin like Wakantanka’s own revenge—bullets and dogs are everywhere and Custer’s head explodes against my face, a chip of bone blinding my right eye, and I catch his falling corpse and some bastard calls to me, Let him go, you goddamn half-breed , and kicks me loose and takes him away—the earth under the water trembles as the braves thunder by on horseback, routing the whites who scatter like