Then he heard a smacking sound like a heavy rock dropped into mud, and the pelting of rock and soil stopped abruptly. Clearing his vision with a fast, desperate swipe of his left hand, Kane opened his eyes just in time to see Le Loup Garou plummet straight down toward him.
Instinctively Kane swept his right arm up and out. The Roamer chief fell directly onto the upthrust blade of his combat knife. Le Loup Garou hung there for a moment, folding in the middle, transfixed by the fourteen inches of steel piercing his solar plexus. Kane felt and heard the point grate against the spinal column.
Black eyes wide, they showed no expression but confusion. The man’s mouth gaped open, and a sharp spur of metal glinted at the back of his throat. Bloody bubbles formed on his writhing lips. They popped, and liquid strings of scarlet drooled down onto Kane’s face.
Making a wordless utterance of disgust, Kane heaved the body aside, letting it drop heavily facedown onto the ground beside him. For the first time, he saw the long wooden shaft projecting at an angle from the back of the man’s neck, at the base of his skull. The arrow was tipped with bright red feathers.
Looking around, trying to work his knife free from Le Loup Garou’s guts, Kane kicked at the heap of dirt trapping his legs. He calculated the arrow’s trajectory and turned his head in that direction. Through a momentary part in the dust cloud, he saw a rangy form standing atop the tall, primary pile of rubble that had fallen from the gorge wall.
The man’s long black hair fell in two braids halfway to his waist, and he appeared to be wearing fringed buckskin. What Kane could see of his face was painted in bright yellow jagged designs, like lightning bolts. He held a wooden bow in his right hand. He stood about thirty yards away, well within arrow range, and he held the high ground.
The man didn’t nock another shaft. He gazed at Kane in silent surmise, then called out, ” Wopila, hota wanagi! Wopila !”
A breeze wafted a streamer of dust in front of him. When it dissipated, the man was gone.
Kane exhaled a deep breath, then determinedly began to dig himself out. He was free to his thighs when he heard the crunch and scutter of feet above him. Dirt and pebbles pattered down, covering the part of his body he had just cleared. He swore loudly.
“Kane?” demanded Grant, his voice hoarse from inhaling dust. “Where the hell are you?”
“About six feet under if you’re not careful,” he called out.
Grant cautiously leaned over the edge of the earth fall, then shouted over his shoulder, “I found him.”
Carefully climbing down, eyeing Le Loup Garou’s arrow-impaled corpse dispassionately, Grant kneeled beside Kane. Brigid joined him a moment later. Both of them were so coated with gray dust they looked like wraiths.
As they helped to dig him out, Kane tersely told them what had occurred. Grant nodded. “I figured the Indians were on their trail. Guess they got their people back and their revenge at the same time.”
Kane kicked his legs loose, crawled back a few feet, then unsteadily rose. “The bowman yelled something at me. Probably a threat to do me like the Wolfman the next time he saw me.”
“What did he say?” Brigid asked.
Kane repeated the words, stumbling over the pronunciation. To his surprise, she laughed. He asked, “What’s so funny, Baptiste?”
She slapped at the layer of dirt covering his clothes. Dust puffed up in little clouds. “He wasn’t threatening you. He was thanking you.”
Kane raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you speak Indian among your other languages.”
“I don’t, but when Lakesh told us our nearest neighbors were Sioux and Cheyenne, I read the Lakota-to-English dictionary in the database.”
She didn’t add that she’d memorized it. She didn’t have to. Brigid Baptiste’s eidetic memory had proved useful more than once over the past few months.
“What did he say?” Grant asked.
“I can’t be sure, never having heard the language spoken, but I think he said, ‘Thanks, gray ghost. Thanks.'”