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SKY-EYES-4 "Sky Eyes"
(Part #4 of 4) by Carl Corley
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Chapter Nine
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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.
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Chapter Ten
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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.
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Chapter Eleven
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"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.....
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{End of file: SKY-EYES-4 This is the end of this story!}