************************************************************************* SKY-EYES-4 "Sky Eyes" (Part #4 of 4) by Carl Corley ************************************************************************* Chapter Nine ------------------------------------------------------------------------- One balmy afternoon a scout from one of the smaller villages reported to Neshoba that a white man's wagon train was making its way up the Natches trace so Neshoba gathered a small war party and rode off to intercept it. He left Vik in the honeymoon lodge, guarded by the young virgin girl who had lain the bluejay pillow on the marriage bed. They called her Winona, and she was one of the fairest girls Vik had ever seen. None of the classic creoles from New Orleans could hold a candle to her for beauty and grace, nor any of the sublime, statue-like actresses who had trod the stage with him. She was like a young doe, her black eyes bright, beckoning; her plaited hair in two neat braids down each side of her heart-shaped face. No Indian brave of the Choctaw clan would do an unheard of thing, beat a squaw: he may work her in the fields, expose her to all kinds of carnal pleasures, impose upon her every known hardship in this primitive existence, but he would never strike her. Should he do so, henceforth he would be called a squaw for fighting with a woman; suffer total disgrace. So when Neshoba left a female to guard his love tent he felt secure in his decision. And he was doubly certain of Vik. But Vik, young, easily impressed, born of a long line of Vikings who took their pleasure with women, not men, bowed to the inevitable. Winona smiled at him when he thrust his head out of the tent entrance, and that was enough for a youth with the fire of the Vikings running through his blood. He invited her into the tent and began to court her, harmless at first, drawing on his memory of the way he had teased and flirted with the gay courtesans from the Square in the French Quarter. But, Indian men do not pay court to Indian maids: they merely take them. So his advances naturally were interpreted as a prelude to carnal debauchery. She slipped out of her doe-skin jerkin and lay on the white goose feathered bed for him to follow suit. He did. Before he realized what he was doing, he had taken off his clothes and was lying beside her. He began to fondle her naked breasts, kissed the huge nipples, which resembled twin black-eyed susans. The more he kissed the more she squirmed against him. He got an erection, got quickly upon his knees, spread her soft thighs and penetrated her womb. The moment it entered, like an eel in a cave of mud, she locked her legs around his buttocks, her arms around his neck, tightly but lovingly, and they became a flury of emotion there on Vik's marital bed, sinking into the white downy softness, as he rose and fell against her smooth groin, jabbing without mercy, as her virgin womb opened its lips for him, like the sweet innocence of a babe crying for its mother's nipple. In the doing he did not think of betraying Neshoba. It is not the nature of the male. In sex he thinks only of sex. Nor did he consider the consequences should Neshoba find out. Neither in forethought a male capability during sex, not that he did not love Neshoba but all the love he possessed, but man is not monogamous. He will stray if sex is the dominant factor. That Vik should share sex with this young, doe-eyed creature was only natural. She was there, in his tent, and he was ready. Too, in some deep recess of his conscience, he was only bowing to his nature, throwing a morsel to his enormous sexual appetite. When he was through with her he compared her sexual potentials with Neshoba's and found them in the order of the mouse and the lion. She was no more than a shadow on the wall compared to Neshoba's fierce, voracious flame, a dull faded vervain to his scarlet and wild bergamot that grows in the black bear's cave. But in all her shy innocence, her eagerness to comply with his momentary needs, she remained something to him electric and beautiful and he had no way of knowing what ills would befall her because of his wanton act. That evening, when Neshoba arrived, his shoulder pierced by a rifle ball fired delivered by a cavalryman riding trail with the wagon train, he learned with awe and dread his mistake. One of the young braves, jealous of the virgin Winona, told of her presence in the honeymoon lodge. Neshoba killed him on the spot. Then, weary, sodden with fatigue and loss of blood, he stalked into the tepee. "How could you do this?" he cried in a welter of tears, his dark moody eyes burning into Vik's, as he sank down on the white bed. "How could you be with a woman - a squaw - when you are mine to the bone?" Vik went white. "Kill me too," Vik muttered, realizing fully what he had done in an unthinking moment of folly. And that was what it was, sheer folly; an act to fill a void of boredom. But how could he explain this to Neshoba? How could he explain this to the man who thought he owned Vik body and soul? "No! No!" Neshoba growled, shaking his sweaty head until his black mane went up in sails. "Death is the black door. There is no pain, no longing, no love in death. Death is too quick for the likes of you, Sky Eyes! Too easy a punishment. Too quick! How can I make you suffer - you - who I love more than I love my mother and my god? How can I make you feel what I am feeling now, burning inside because your hands have touched a woman, because your lips have touched a woman, because your loins have touched a woman? He rose from the bed, flung his arms into the air, lifted his head with a mournful cry: "By all the gods! How can I burn out your heart, wound your spirit - as mine is wounded! Spare me this pain... oh, Abba Inca... spare me this pain!" "I love you, Neshoba, truly," Vik said with a trembling voice. And he lay a hand on Neshoba's shoulder, touched the bullet wound, seeing the black powder stain around the oozing wound. "Love!" Neshoba cried, flinging his hand away. "Do you, Sky Eyes... do you know of love?" He sank down on the bed again in a storm of emotion, his shoulders shaking with sobs, his black hair in sooty, blood-stained tangles "Do you know, Sky Eyes, what it is for a man of the forests like me, an animal, to love someone like you? Do you know what it is to lie at night, with you in my arms, praying to the gods to keep you safe, for me? Do you know how I have crept out at night, while you were asleep, to walk where the doe goes, praying that I may learn of your beauty, the way your beauty clutches itself on my heart, robbing me of peace? Do you know that each time my horn gores you I know the end of passion will soon come and that I will have to wait and long and crave you over and over again? Did you know that ever time a bird sings, or an owl hoots, or a wolf bays or my stallion neighs that my love for you goes deeper and deeper into my soul? No, Sky Eyes, you do not know these things. You cannot know the love of an animal. You cannot know the love of an Indian for a white man, one as beautiful as yourself, or the hatred, for love and hate are horns of the same goat. Why - Sky Eyes - why, I beg you, tell... why did you go to another - a woman?" "I am a fool," Vik cried to him, in massive agitation. "A stupid blind fool. Oh Neshoba, if only I had known, if only I have really and truly known you felt like this, that your heart was so brave, so beautiful, so good, so noble." Vik sank beside him, took hold of his bleeding arm, his breath coming hot, pumping like a thing mad in his lungs. "You did not know," Neshoba moaned, still sobbing brokenly. "Did not my loins tell you, did not my lips speak of it, did not my horn deliver it with farm more meaning than my words? The voice is nothing. The heart and body are everything. When I gore you, even once, I am giving to you everything that is my love, like I give into death when I cast my lance, string a bow. My heart aims straight, for my love for you is true, and truth finds its target. One kiss of my burning lips and yours and you must know, should have known, for my mouth devours our love, as the fires devours the forests, as the serpent devours its own tail, swallowing itself as I swallow our love. My soul, my love for you, Sky Eyes, is the tip of my tongue and the tip of your beautiful body. I gave you all of myself. What more can I give?" "Oh... nothing! Nothing more," Vik said, the hot tears streaming down his face, dripped of the end of his chin. "Neshoba, give me another chance, let me prove to you how much I care, how much I love you. Let me tend your wound, let my tongue cleanse it, wash away all your pain, let me show you with my own body that Winona means no more to me than a feather means to an eagle." Neshoba grabbed his hand, held it firmly against his heart. "Love me, Sky Eyes. Lick away this fire that burns wild in my heart, quench it with your tongue, put it out, or this pain will devour me. Oh, Sky Eyes, lift this hurt from me. Cut it out of my heart. Make me well again. Make my love for you pure and white again, like the call of the rock dove out of the wilderness. Do not hurt me more. Do not give yourself to any woman, nor man, but keep yourself for me. I deserve you, Sky Eyes, for I - I love you more." "I know that now," Vik said as he rose and began to strip Neshoba of his warring clothes. "No one, ever, man or woman, shall have me but you." With Neshoba naked down to his riding boots, boots stolen from the white man, Vik began to wash his shoulder wound with his tongue, cleansing away the powder stain and dried blood, the grime of the trails, the sweat from his glands. And as he cleaned, the act merged into his love of the chief, devouring the fierce and wanton love, with searching eyes and lips; his probing tongue washing away Neshoba's grief, the wrong he had committed against him, praying as he cleansed for things to be right with them in the future, that Neshoba would forgive him for his idiot's folly. And when he was through, Neshoba's body, his loins, his arms, his chest gleaming like marble in the half-light, he took a gourd of ginseng oil and anointed him from head to toe, slipping off his boots, which he wore so proudly, and kissing his toes and ankles. Then he combed back his long tasseled hair and tied it with a thong of rawhide at the nape of his neck. In this ministering of love, Neshoba fell asleep, and Vik standing back, viewed him, half submerged in the mountain of white furs trimmed with the tails of squirrels. And in his shame for what he had done, his new martyrdom vaguely in his mind and feebly evident in his conscience, he saw here a new god lying in veneration - a god surely in his own right, pure as sunlight, wholesome as maize, as crystal as water. Above all else pure in heart. Vik lay down beside him, put his arms around him, and kissed him on the lips, but the next morning when he rose, he rose to a new side of Neshoba - vengence. And he remembered what Neshoba had said the night before, that love and hate were horns on the same goat. At high noon, Neshoba came to the tepee and bade Vik to follow him. He led the way to a hidden valley which lay between two well worn trails and was rarely, if ever, entered. There, tied by her shoulders hung Winona, the wet rawhide throngs going up into the multi-colored leaves of a slick-barked sycamore. She was completely naked and yet alive, though her eyes were rolled back to the top of her eyes, her breath but a low, hissing intonations, her complexion a sickly green. Her breasts had been sliced clean from her body, and long streams of blood ran from them, down her legs, and dripped on the leaves until they were drenched a livid red. A rattlesnake, huge of proportion, and still alive, had been thrust up her wound, head first, and was tied about her groin by strips of hide. It hung, wreathing, giving her the appearance, at first glance, of being male rather than female. She was a hideous sight, and Vik winced when he saw her, and knew that the snake was slicing out her womb, infiltrating her entire body with venom so lethal she was already a pale green. "You have done this, Neshoba," Vik said faintly gritting his teeth against the nausea of revulsion that set his nerves on edge. "Why? Why?" "My love for you," he answered, not glancing once at him. "But that poor girl," Vik cried. "Why punish her? I am the one at fault - not her." "I did it to punish you, not her," Neshoba responded sadly but without seeming concern for Winona. "And I will do this to every woman who ever touches your body. If it be a man, then the punishment will be worse." Vik knew instinctively that Neshoba would do whatever he said he would do. And though he was deeply flattered that this handsome savage loved him so, he felt sick and stained by the depth, the awesome quality of that love. And he turned to go. "Once thing more," Neshoba said, halting him. Vik paused, and Neshoba came up to where he stood. their eyes met, and there were strange, fleeting lights in them, and with those lights pain and sorrow and something vaguely akin to heartbreak. Vik looked up at the Indian as if really seeing him for the first time, and saw then how pale he looked, how drawn his lips, how furrowed his brow. Something was troubling him, not just the folly of yesterday, the torture of this girl, but something deep, and vital. Something tragic and profound. "Do you truly love me, Sky Eyes?" he asked, his black eyes hot and shining in the dense afternoon light. "As a woman would love a man?" Vik did not have to hesitate. "Yes, Neshoba, I love you... truly. When I first was brought here I loathed you and all your kind, because I was frightened of you I suppose, what you would do to me, since Rafe and the stage driver. But I have grown to love you, Neshoba, truly love you. You have become the most wondrous person in my life. Just don't change anything. If you do - if you do, Neshoba, it will break my heart." Neshoba's expression looked even more grim. "I love you too, Sky Eyes, but all that is spoiled for me now," he said in a whisper, bowing his dark head. "Spoiled like the ripe melons left in the fields to rot. I am poisoned on your love. I am sick inside. All the days in my life I will haunt these woods robbed of peace." He raised his eyes, looked squarely into Vik's. "I love you, but I will not touch you again... ever!" Wearily, gutted with inexplicable heartbreak, Vik climed out of the dismal valley where Winona drew her last breath; where his noble love stood like a vengeful wraith of the stone age, an entity without identity, going thence to the honeymoon lodge, the home that was no longer home, if Neshoba his brave, his knight, was not there to share it with him. But far into the night, as he lay sleepless on the soft feathery bed, when the moon was full and turning to luminous gauze the lonely, desolate world outside, a shadow fell across the entrance. It was Neshoba, come to lie with the vessel of love he had forsworn. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter Ten ------------------------------------------------------------------------- But, though Neshoba slept in the tepee that night, he did not claim his portion, nor any other night in the immediate future. Moodily, in an awesome silence, he slumped on a mountain of pillows on the opposite side of the tent. But during the night Vik could hear him tossing and turning, and many times at dawn he would be gone, out hunting or riding or just walking through the woods, occupying his thoughts on other things, though Vik with a sick heart mourned their love, their worship of each other's bodies. Vik, lonely now, lost, empty for Neshoba's love, their long conversations, their pleasant times together, moped about the camp, hoping that something would happen to jolt Neshoba into once more speaking his love; something that would forge a compromise, that they might resume their life where they had left off on the dreadful day Winona was murdered. Sometimes, during meals, going to and from the tent their hands would touch, their shoulders would brush, and something maddening and defying would run through Vik's every vein, shuddering his heart. When such things happened, he longed desperately to fall into his arms, lean his head against the broad shoulders, cry out his heartbreak, but the chance never seemed to present itself so that he could sit with Neshoba and speak his love, tell him how he longed to be swept up in his strong, bronze arms, to feel his hot lips on his, to feel all of him in the love bed at night. But Neshoba's grave silence, his haunted eyes, his stealthy manner froze Vik's heart. This man was not going to speak, to laugh, to love... again. At first, Vik thought that his oath had been no more than words out of jealousy. Oaths were made to be broken, the same as laws. But as the dull days wore on, abrading his nerves, robbing him of heart, Vik grew to accept the idea that Neshoba had meant what he had said. Love him or not, Neshoba had no intentions of making love to him - or involving his body in sex. When Vik cried out of his tortured system all he could cry, he tried to brace up, make the best of a gruesome situation. At first he attempted striking up friendships with the other young men-braves of his age, but the killing looks Neshoba gave him during such casual encounters, adviced him chillingly to leave well enough alone. So he began to riding "Dove" along the outskirts of the encampment. He did not bother to ask Neshoba, for he felt strongly that Neshoba knew he would not attempt escape, that he sensed the magnetic hold he had on his Sky Eyes, and Vik set a casual air upon his outings. One day, as he rode out of camp he happened to notice Neshoba talking to a young brave on a spotted pony, and he knew that he was being followed, that Neshoba was keeping in touch on his movements, his counterfeit freedom. This spurred Vik to accept the possibility that Neshoba still did care, enough anyway not to want to lose him entirely. This eased his own throbbing heart, but only little. He was still sick in mind and body, and dreaded each night in the tepee as much as he yearned for it, for he knew painfully that Neshoba would be there - dominating his lonely life with his dark, grave beauty, a beauty now denied, and nothing could be more maddening, Vik considered, than having to live with someone you loved day by day and yet not be able to touch. "Neshoba, take me, take me, please," he said one night after a lonely day reading his boring books and plays, with Neshoba absent for two days and nights on a raiding party, and so rapt with joy on his return he could no longer be silent. "I will keep my word," was Neshoba's answer, an answer that came across the tent to him in a gutteral whisper, and it tore into his heart. He lay and cried the balance of the night. And when he arose the next morning Neshoba was gone and, flinging himself on the feathery bed, the same bed where they had made love so often, he sobbed anew. And he promised himself tiredly that he would never ask him to touch him again. Exiled now in his heart, torn by loss of love and loss of hope, Vik began to stay away from camp as much as possible. Taking one of his books - a thing dulled and jaded for him now compared to that glorious life with Neshoba, when they had loved, wallowed in their lust, he would ride down to the river and sit in the warm sunshine on an outcrop of stone and read. It was on one of these days that he sat, swinging his bare feet in sparkling water, musing at a mocking bird's song in the top of a tall pine that he was startled out of his senses. He had taken to thinking about the outside world more and more, now that he had lost Neshoba and the wild fire they shared together. Seated in the dappled shade, he would take out the memories from his mind and thumb through them one at a time, like leafing through a cherished album; and some awareness of that society he had left behind began to slip back into his consciousness. At times, especially in Neshoba's absence (and he was absent often these days), Vik longed for the old life more than he liked to admit. He missed the theatre, the dressing, the making up, the footlights, the wild parties, the gaiety, the laughter. And he wondered forlornly sometimes what had possessed him to accept this primitive life with Neshoba. But one in the tepee at night and he beheld with hungry eyes Neshoba's naked body sprawled aloofly on the soft leather pillows, he knew why he had remained, why he would never posses the courage to put "Dove" to a fast gallop and rid himself of the Choctaw nation, of Neshoba, and these people he once considered too base, so utterly savage. As long as there was an ounce of hope left in his heart he could not leave Neshoba behind. He had to stay. Every fiber in his heart dictated that he stay. So, as he sat that lonely, dreary day on the protruding stone, a book in his lap, his mind lost, torn between the two worlds in which he had lived and loved, his white stallion suddenly bolted. With the bridle at trail, he bounded through the woods towards camp, his hoof beats on the soft mold like the rapid pounding of Vik's heart. Suddenly he stood, dropping his book in the river. It made a noisy splash as it struck the greet waters and as Vik bent to retrieve it, a man came out of the woods and stood in the clearing. It was Rafe! "God! I thought you were dead!" Vik cried, staring at Rafe as he forded the river and came upon the rock, convinced he was seeing a ghost. "Ah thought so too, once," Rafe said, with a sudden grin. He took hold of Vik, embraced him warmly. They stood then for a tense moment, staring at each other, believing yet not believing. "Them blasted heathens left me for dead," Rafe said, taking off his hat and showing Vik the scar left by the tomahawk. "I lay there all night, then next morning staggered back to Fort Adams. What about you?" Vik told him, in broad strokes at first, then in minute detail, leaving out nothing except his relation with Neshoba. "Them red bastards didn't - er - mistreat you, Vik boy?" Vik shook his head. "They have been good to me, Rafe." Rafe gave him a skeptical look, then eyed him from head to foot. "Why the hell you dressed like that: like an Indian?" At that Vik realized how repugnant he must look to a white man, to Rafe; how strange - naked except for a loincloth and the beads Neshoba had fashioned for him from shells and teeth, and the white goose feather thrust in his long blond hair. "I... I have become one of them," he broke of sadly, thinking of him and Neshoba together, their primitive love, their happiness. "The hell you have, boy!" Rafe stormed, his black eyes suddenly glinted maliciously. "You're white, and you'll always be white. You're no heathen, boy, never will be. You're like me... say you're like me." Their eyes met. Vik's flinched. "Things have changed, Rafe, since last we were together. I just don't know. I don't know." Rafe frowned. His lips twisted down in a sardonic arc. His eyes suddenly lost their merry sparkle. "Vik! Ah been through hell trying to get here to fetch you back home, holy hell! Ah want you, boy, with me. Ah want you, always. You understand that?" "I understand," Vik answered, nodding his head. "And I appreciate you thinking of me to want to save me from the - from them..." His voice dragged as he thought of Neshoba. He couldn't say heathen, nor Injun nor savage, nor any of the apporbrious names applied to the Choctaw people. He had stated the truth. They had been good to him and he could no longer condemn them, as did other white men. "Ah've come to take you back, Vik," Rafe said, his voice trembling now, almost a stutter. "Maybe they have been good to you. Oh Ah'll be better to you, boy, better'n anybody. Like Ah said, Ah want you for myself. Ah need you, Vik. Honest!" Vik looked up into the reckless black eyes and knew he was speaking the truth. And the sound of his voice, so deep, so vibrant, so cajoling - his tumbled black hair, his dancing eyes all but enticed Vik back into the white man's world, that other world Neshoba had taught him to hate. "Do you really care so much, Rafe?" he asked, merely playing with words. "You know damn well Ah do," Rafe answered, his eyes more serious not, more demanding, even threatening. "Ah like to went out of my mind that morning when Ah woke up on the Natchez trace and found you gone, the stage driver with a tomahawk in his skull. Ah was more hurt by that than Ah was by the wound in my head; heart-hurt over knowing you had been taken by them red sons-of-bitches." Vik asked, with solemnity in his voice. "How did you know that I was alive, that I was here?" "There was a raid on a wagon train not long ago. The leader wore your gold watch around his neck. It was still shiny bright, bright as a new penny, and Ah guessed right off that he had it but recently, for no Indian would have kept it in mint condition. And Ah figured you have it to him, so as to signal folks outside that you were in there with them, still alive. So Ah came to get you, to take you back with me." Vik dropped his eyes. He knew the leader was Neshoba, and his face flushed crimson when he thought how Neshoba had come by his gold watch... the watch his mother had given him. He thought for a moment, listening to the water running in a secretive whisper over the smooth stones, the wind brushing through the heavy-limbed trees, the blue-jays having a love battle in a sweetgum tree, and he pondered whether to tell him the truth and get it over with or to think up some plausible excuse, something that would justify his motives. Finally, he whispered, swallowing hard: "Well, you have made a trip for nothing. For I'm not going." "What!" Rafe shouted, unwary now. He had no knowledge of lurking Indians set on Vik's trail by Neshoba to spy on him. "Have them Indians raddled your brain or something?" "I... I like it here," Vik stammered, battling his conscience for proper words. "All my life I suppose, I have looked for this kind of peace, this primeval paradise, and never found it till now. I think all men look for it, some time or another during their lives. The simple things, Rafe, the soil, the dark heart of the earth, the way these gentle people live in truth, honesty, nobility - their kind of love." "Don't talk like that," Rafe said, bowing his head. "Ah can't stand for you to say such things, with no love in your voice for me. When you say such things you seem so far away, so distant, like Ah can't ever reach for you, and Ah can't stand it another minute, Vik, if Ah know Ah can't have you again." "So much has happened, Rafe, so hellish much, things you may understand. I care. I care a lot, but things happen you can't explain, people... you don't always love the same person, especially when... when you're not with them." "Ah love you... and Ah ain't been with you, not seeing you made no difference how Ah felt. If Ah was away from you a hundred years Ah'd still care. Ah'll always care... don't you know that?" Vik nodded dismally, and thought of Neshoba with a wild pain in his heart. If only he had known for sure whether Rafe had actually died that day during the stage holdup; if only he had not gone on living, loving Neshoba, believing Rafe would never come to save him, that he would never see him again... alive, then - then, he might have felt different, might truly have been glad to see Rafe now, alive, wanting him, loving him; eager to take him out of all this savage half-world; from Neshoba, who claimed his heart, his mind, his soul. But not it was too late. "Rafe," he whispered, looking up at him, his heart in his eyes. "You won't want me always. Someday you'll find a woman, a good woman that you will love, who will love you, bear your children. I could never be what you want, not really. Maybe you think so now, but you will change, in time. We all change." "Not me," he whispered. "Ah won't ever change my mind about you, Vik boy, never." He lifted Vik's chin with one huge dark hand and their eyes met, strange fleeting lights in them, and if Vik had not loved Neshoba so overwhelmingly, so thoroughly, he would have considered himself the luckiest of men. But, compared to Neshoba, what was Rafe? What was any man? "Kiss me," Rafe cried, his wanton lips just below Vik's. "Kiss me once, and you'll leave this place with me, leave these red heathens and their murderous rages and their stealing the white man blind." Suddenly, an old haunt invaded Vik's tortured heart, sending him back to that wondrous night at Fort Adams when he had lain in the bed with Rafe. And now after he had thought him dead, after he had given up completely, he had come back, as handsome as ever, as gallant, as reckless and provocative. He was back, so warm so near, and wanting him, wanting to free him from the curse of his Choctaw captivity. And Neshoba seemed so far away now, so dim in his mind, as if he had never existed at all, really; a savage who refused to touch him at all, to kiss him, to lie with him, to say the simple but necessary words to him, the words all people yearn to hear from their lovers. 'I may never have Neshoba again,' he thought dismally to himself, remembering, as if from some crazy nightmare, the tragic, forlorn day Neshoba had made the oath in front of him and the dying Winona - swearing never to touch him again. Sadly, as if the sun had faded behind the clouds, leaving him standing in shadowed chill, he knew that Neshoba never would. In his heartbreak, his despair, he looked up at Rafe once more, saw his burning eyes on him, his red lips, felt Rafe's warm body pressing into his, felt Rafe's arms go suddenly around his waist, and all love for Neshoba, all the sorrowful bonds fell loose. Their lips met, burned into each other's, melted like hot was. "Ah'm going to take you with me," Rafe murmured, sliding his lips over Vik's again and again. "You're mine. You'll always be mine." Vik nodded, they tore themselves apart, and they forded the stream. But once on the opposite side, Rafe pointed to the hill which towered like a wall up the valley's edge. There, black on scarlet, sat an Indian on an ebony pony. One of Neshoba's watchdogs! "Let's hurry," Rafe cried, as they scampered through the underbrush. Without horses to aid their flight, they both ran as if their souls were in their feet, ran with bursting hearts. The wild cry of freedom rang in Vik's ears, now that he had crossed the barrier in his heart, had made his final, fatal decision. He knew with a sense of terror that the brave would double back and make his report to Neshoba, and that only through Rafe's cunning as a scout would they ever gain that precious freedom both wanted so desperately now. Through leaves and thorns and springy vines and reeds they sped now, unwary of their own physical harm, only that they reach Fort Adams at last. Huge outcroppings of stones impeded their wild flight, hills had to be climbed, streams forded, thickets of briar and vine must be crossed, fields as flat as a table to span and they managed this with the desperation of pursued animals, going until every nerve felt flayed; until they could no longer catch breath; until they fell in their tracks, but go on they did. Neither pain nor breath, wounds nor hunger, thirst nor privation were important - only life! Freedom! It was theirs, if only they abandoned every emotion, exerted every physical strength, though sodden with fatigue and weariness; it was theirs if they could go on and on, never faltering, never lagging, like the fox before the hounds, never doubling back on their scents, but going, going, going into the wind, into the very face of death. At last, mercifully, they tore out of the thick woods, climbed a green hill, like Christ, Vik thought, fleetingly, going up the ascent to Calvary. Once at the top they could see Fort Adams. Rafe reassured, urged him on, encouraging, teasing him into super-human effort. But at the top, weak of breath, drenched in sweat, with limbs a-tremble, they both halted abruptly, as the apparition ahead stabbed their eyes. Atop the hill stood Neshoba, his face a mask of murderous rage, a shining knife in one hand, his lethal tomahawk in the other. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter Eleven ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Do I have to kill you a second time, white-dog!" Neshoba bellowed like an ape, as he charged down the hill at Rafe. "You'll never kill me the first time, you red bastard!" Rafe shouted back as they charged together in mortal combat. Vik's every nerve stood on edge, demanding of his emotions something for which he was not prepared. Moving away from them, into the shadow of an oak he waited, panting, out of breath, so weary from the long, fear-filled flight he could hardly stand, let alone aid in the struggle. And he wondered frantically how Rafe, in such sodden fatigue, could defend himself against such a warrior as Neshoba - this beautiful savage giant, more beautiful now to Vik than he had ever been before. With Rafe breaking Neshoba's hold on him, both men sprang back. The silence was broken by bellowing challenge from Neshoba. At the sound of it, Rafe swung to face his foe. The hour had come. They hour had come that came to every man in love, the struggle over the being they lusted for, and both men lusted for Vik. With a cry that roared from hill to hill and awoke every sleeping animal for miles, Neshoba bared his teeth and made a savage rush forward. His face then, caught up and framed in a wild entanglement of black hair, was a picture of murderous lust. Rafe did not bulge. In his own rage he was a frightening image of his ancestors. In determination and, perhaps love, he was more than the Indian's match. Because it was clear that Neshoba, for all his primitive fury, weakened a little after each rush, and fear mixed with rage in his constant bellowing. Neshoba had never faced an enemy that did not give ground - at least no enemy that walked on legs. But each advance for both men was shorter than the one that proceeded it, and an instant later they become monsters, locked in a death struggle and matched in strength and ferocity. They fought, Vik thought as he trembled for them both, with the deadly singleness of purpose of the wild beasts of the earth. They fought, not to maim or to frighten, but to kill. And Vik, who watched tearfully, sensed that this struggle would see the death of one of them. Which one? Inflamed with rage now, masculine rage, the most awesome frenzy of all, they bit into flesh, and the smell of warm blood and the taste of it redoubled their fury. With grasping feet, with rending hands, with hard fists, with knife and tomahawk, they strove to tear on another limb from limb; to choke breath off, to gouge eyes from their sockets, to strip cheeks from bone like rotten bark from a dying tree. And to Vik, crouched like a small, defenseless animal, the most terrible thing was not the sight of them but the sound of their voices. It was a sound he knew that impelled all beasts that heard it to flee for their lives. The clearing echoed. With arms and legs flinging, the ground shook, the grass formed waves like a tossing sea, and leaves and twigs came down around them. It was an awesome sight to Vik, two men in love with him, both lusting for him with a power even he could not gauge, though he had lain with them both, and loved both. Surely one would die because of him, and at this moment, fearing to lose either one of them, they became in his terrified young eyes the most noble of men, the most courageous, the most daring. They were fighting for their lives but, not so much their lives as their sexual rights to him, the right that to one in death... would be denied. And in this crucial hour something of the wild savage rose to the surface in Vik, too, some unnamed thing, some primeval fury he never realized he possessed. In that moment he became as the girl in the caves, whose body would be the prize - the victor's spoils. And he waited with bated breath, waited like one from the stone age: rapt, moved, but immobile, almost in a hypnotic trance - a male-woman of stone. Though it seemed a million years to him, he did not have long to wait. In one last desperate plunge, his whole body galvanized into the last remaining thread of strength, springing forward with raised tomahawk and a scream so wild it shook the trees, Neshoba buried his feathered weapon into Rafe's bobbing skull. Vik screamed, then like a savage woman, as Rafe, clutching his head with hands red with his blood, fell face downward into the grass. A hoarse cry of agony burst from his lips - his body thrashing like a freshly-killed chicken for a moment. Now, Rafe lay still his face in the spreading pool of his life's blood, his dark, reckless eyes staring in horror. Vik's hot tears fell as he crouched over Rafe's sobbing feebly. Like a wild man, streaming with sweat, his naked body gleaming like a wet gourd in the light fast turning to dusk, Neshoba caught Vik roughly by the wrist, dragged him away from the body of Rafe and faced him toward the walls of Fort Adams far below. "There is your white man's world!" he screamed in jealous rage as he pointed a long finger in that direction, still holding Vik in a vise-like grip. "If that is what you want, then go! Go, Sky Eyes. You are free!" Thwarted now that he was to have neither men, Vik rose to his full height in a last gesture of dignity and gazed sadly down the hill. He could make out movements - activity; armed soldiers in hastily dugout breastworks, cannon, several wagons and horses, a stage, men running about, dust flying, could hear faint voices. somehow it meant nothing, it was something alien to him, as alien and unimportant as the Indian encampment when he had first entered it long ago. "Is that what you want?" Neshoba demanded again, and, turning, Vik faced him squarely. Never had the chief looked so magnificent, with his long black hair in wild tangles, his breath heaving, his slick thighs and forearms shining in the late sun. And his eyes, how wild and reckless they shone and they glared down at him in defiance, rage and triumph. "There is nothing for me here anymore," Vik said faintly in answer, his heart, his mind, his body now drained of all emotion. He did not want to return to the fort and if he returned to Neshoba he would only be going to added misery and heartbreak for himself - a cold bed in a honeymoon lodge where there could be no more honeymoon. "You had the world, the universe with me," Neshoba spoke, spreading his hands wide, his knife in one hand, his bloody tomahawk in the other. "I would willingly give you my kingdom. Every bird, every beast, flower would pay homage to you for the love I bore you in my heart. I am a savage, Sky Eyes, but a savage's love is love still, and there is music in my heart." Vik bent on him a long, sad look. How dark and beautiful he was standing their in the fading light, the stygian shadows of the trees casting strange patterns along his smooth broad shoulders, his heavy thighs. And how terribly sad to look upon him, wanting him so desperately, yearning with bursting heart, a heart grown wild and unprincipled because of his coldness. How deplorable to lose love, the greatest loss of all. "Why do you say this now," he asked, probing for some word, some sign that would force his love to speak his mind. "Why do you speak of love when you have grown so cold, so cruel in your lack of it?" "Oh, Sky Eyes," Neshoba muttered, almost shame-faced, his arms still spread, bearing the agony of him nailed to the cross, "the Indian has his laws. Pride in manhood. Pride in bravery. But though the red man is not like the white man in most ways he does share one fault - the grievous fault of jealousy, the rage of it. And I am no different, Sky Eyes. I became blind with rage and jealousy when you lay with Winona, touched her, made love to her. That is why I had to kill her, to render her flesh like stone, to make her ugly and unclean, so that you could never again look upon her as fair and wanted. I did it for you, our love together. I did it to keep you for myself." He stopped talking, came slowly up the hill to where Vik stood. "It is such an aweful thing to be jealous, Sky Eyes, to burn for someone as I burn for you and yet, want to cut out that burning from within you. You betrayed our love and I wanted to hurt you in some way, as you had hurt me. I wanted you to deny yourself, in my denying you my body, my love, you would grow to understand how my savage heart hurt, pained, twisted in agony. But I love you still. You must know that." "A love without bodily love, without embrace, without sex," Vik grated, defiant as a man who yearns for his own eternal desires. "What kind of love is that, Neshoba? What kind of love would I have if I turned my back on Fort Adams, my white world forever, and came with you?" "As it was from the very beginning," Neshoba whispered, sinking to his knees, his arms out in the eternal gesture of appeal. "To live our love again, from the beginning, moment to moment, moon to moon, darkness to darkness. Riding your pony, hunting, swimming, bathing in the sun, eating, cooking, laughing, weeping, lying with you in the pallet of white feathers, burning your heart with my mouth, burning your loins with my horn, filling you with the honey of my body, taking the honey from yours with my lips, my tongue." He began to moan. "Mischa Mokwa... Mischa Mokwa!" (Follow the bear) "Come with me, Sky Eyes, again into the land of Hiwannee and the Kewannee, be my bride of eternity. Lie with me, love with me, let us devour one another. Let our hearts sing the yearning song of the dove. Let our bodies join like the honeycomb of the bee, waxed together, wrapped in the wet of our tongues like the silken skin of the butterfly. Let our hearts burn like two embers in a fire. Let our loins shiver like the wind through the willows. Let us forever go hand in hand, even into the tomb of my ancestors where surely you will be honored; to lie together, side by side in the burial mounds, in that holy ground of Abba Inca. Come..." He rose, wiped the blood from his tomahawk and went down the hill and into the dark green oblivion of the trees. Vik, stunned to silence, his heart pounding, his every nerve vibrating to his awaited fate, considered. Below lay the white man's world, his world, and for a thoughtful moment he let his mind wander, his childhood, his ambitions for the stage, the glitter, the fancy clothes, the wild parties, the handsome men, the beautiful, desirable women. Then, he thought of Neshoba, a naked savage. He thought, too, of how clean he had looked at times when coming to him on the white feathery bed with the bluejay pillow, how his freshly-washed body shone all dark, all glowing brown; how his plaited hair looked like oiled leather, how his teeth glittered like shell, religiously cleaned with sassafras twigs; how he had smelled of jasmine, crushed stewartia, of mountain laurel; how he looked naked, savage, but so beautifully savage, and how he had made love, his powerful warmth, his undivided fervor for his small pleasures, his anxious lust, his divine fulfillment, his after limpness, so wonderfully warm in the mansion of his love, so considerate, yet so mysteriously demanding and provocative. No man on earth, white man, red man, civilized or savage, did such things without loving to distraction. Vik glanced once more towards Fort Adams, shed a dry tear for half of his life he had won and lost there. Then, obedient as a squaw, he turned, and without looking back, followed Neshoba into the dark wilderness. .....The End..... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- {End of file: SKY-EYES-4 This is the end of this story!}