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.'It will please me, to make a beginning tonight.'He walked away.An owl passed close over the camp, wings silent as the wings of Death; somewhere in the darkness some small thing squeaked in pain.I am a fool.January lay down again on his side.Only a fool would be troubled over that sense of a pattern broken, a detail disturbed, when the next hour would bring death in agony.Patiently, agonizingly, he began to work his wrists back and forth against the rawhide: it's leather.It will stretch.He wondered if Shaw were doing the same.We have to warn the camp.Boden would find some other occasion to broach his kegs of very expensive liquor, to keep Iron Heart's good will.He would need it, for the long hunt ahead through the wilderness.With those deaths, Iron Heart would be obligated to fulfill his part of the bargain.He twisted at the rawhide, until his fingers lost their feeling.On the mountainside the wolves howled, cold voices in the cold and empty darkness.I have to succeed in this.I can't let Rose spend the next year wondering what became of me.1 won't let her raise our child alone, as Bodenschatz made his poor Katerina raise hers.What had old Klaus Bodenschatz made of it, traveling all those thousands of miles at his son's behest? Ship and packet boat and steamboat up the brown Missouri, the dirty clamor of Independence after the quiet cobblestones of Ingolstadt? He was a scientist.Had he missed his greenhouses and his laboratory, the quiet order of his days? Had he carried a notebook, full of observations and descriptions?Had there been some friend waiting for him, whose voice he'd conjured for himself in those lonely miles? His son's deserted wife, his grandchildren? Or had he, like Franz, honed his life to a weapon of vengeance for that lovely daughter for whom he had never ceased to wear mourning?He wished to poison only Manitou, Iron Heart had said.And when Iron Heart and Dark Antlers had gone to watch the fight, the old man had left the Omaha camp - for the first time since coming to the valley, January knew: probably for the first time since he had joined the village back on the high plains.Had crossed Horse Creek on that fallen tree and scrambled up the wooded ridge.And now he lay in a shallow grave.Beneath his cheek, January felt the distant tremor of hooves.Boden.And when I can't give them any specific information about who might or might not know about the scheme to poison every man at the rendezvous, they'll start by carving up Hannibal - who, like old Bodenschatz, had wanted only to do the office of friendship.He turned to look toward his friend and saw, to his astonishment, that Hannibal was gone.Chapter 24In the same instant that January stared, rather stupidly, at the place where the fiddler had lain - how many minutes since last he'd looked? - he felt the blade of a knife slide between his bound wrists and part the rawhide like kitchen string.Beyond his feet he could glimpse Shaw lying suspiciously still.The hoofbeats strengthened in the darkness - the fire's glow had sunk to a red flicker no bigger than a hat - and the camp guard all looked in the direction of the sound.The other warriors rose, waked by the sound, gathering to welcome Charro Morales - Frank Boden - as he rode into the camp.And more silently than January could have imagined possible for a man of his own size, he rolled into the darkness where hands unseen were waiting to cut the thong that bound his ankles.A hand took his arm, guided him, stumbling, between trees of which he was barely conscious.He glanced back, saw that Shaw had disappeared from where he'd been an instant ago.Someone pushed Goshen Clarke's brass-studded rifle into his hands.The grip on his arm tightened - stand.He saw ahead of them the moving shadow of a bear, ambling between trees where a feather of moonlight glimmered.Turning his head, he saw Shaw then - or Shaw's angular silhouette against the reflection of the war camp's fire.Since those first days of travel up the Platte, every man in the wagon-train - and later every trapper he'd ever spoken to - had cautioned him: don't stand by the fire, you 'II show yourself up.And there was Charro Morales - Frank Boden - in his bright Mexican jacket and his town boots, standing by his horse, next to the fire, lit up as Bo Frye had been lit, gesturing and arguing with Iron Heart with the red-gold gleam painting him against the night behind him.January was conscious that this was what Shaw was looking at too, small head turned like a raptor bird's, the slouched lines of his body clumsy-graceful as a very old tomcat's as he brought up his rifle, for a perfect shot that he couldn't miss.And that would bring every warrior in the camp after them, afoot and within fifty feet of where they'd lain bound a few moments before.You can kill anything with one shot, Tom had said.You owe me, and you owe Johnny.There wasn't even the chance to say: Don't.because they were close enough yet to the Omahas that someone would have heard.Shaw stood for all of three full seconds with his rifle raised.Then he lowered the barrel, turned away, touched January's arm with one hand to move them all on up the hill.January could hear the sawing pain of Hannibal's laboring breath, and, in a moment's whisper of moonlight, he recognized that thin silhouette between the trees.He heard also the susurration of heavy fabric: Veinte-y-Cinco.In another blink of moonlight - they were following the trees, back east along the coulee - he made out the heavy shoulders and bear-like head of Manitou Wildman.Manitou led them up the dry creek-bed at the bottom of the gully - pale boulders, jumbled stone that wouldn't hold tracks
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