If he could have seen it coming, would he have stopped them? Could he have stopped them in time? His life flashed before him with every blow to the face, with every scratch from cheek to cheek, temple to temple and every scream.
Chris would scream, and yell out and carry on any way he could but he stopped as the beatings severed and he wouldn’t make another sound when his captures would threaten to cut off a limb. Chris knew it was no use talking with the Indians, telling them he was no threat. That he was just a man living on his land and trying to make a life for himself. No matter how many times he tried to make peace, someone came running at him, shoving a knife around his face, teasing him, making him scream.
Chris didn’t know how long he’d be gone from the world. He didn’t think to ask, and he didn’t want to for the pain he’d might receive in return. They wanted him silent. They wanted him powerless, and they wanted him dead.
After hours, maybe days of torture and constant screaming from outside the tent, Chris caught a whiff of a fire’s smoke coming through the tent’s flaps. He felt a raw binding around his wrists around his backside and he knew his eyes had been fairly beaten to knock him out. He had a pain in the middle of his back, hot to the boiling point. Something had happened to him to wind up in a place like this under the arrest of Indians.
What had he done? Why had these people brought him here, beat him, and left him alone to discover his wounds? Chris felt a drip of blood fall from his eyes when he thought were tears. He winced and that only caused greater pain. He couldn’t feel around his face for other wounds he knew he had but the pained expressions alone alerted him he had a cut above his right brow and that was where the droplets of blood came from.
Chris tried to cry out but nothing came use of it because a binding stuck hard in his mouth. He only moaned and caused what noise he could from the pain he was going through.
He then heard muffled voices coming from outside the tent. Voices he wouldn’t be able to recognize even if he tried. He didn’t know anything outside this dark tent and the wind and the smoke gave him little information other than he was captured, taking a beating, and was now held bind to a chair in the core of the tent.
Chris tried to open his eyes further to look at the surroundings, to see where he was. To see if he could find anything that might be of use to help set him free. The place was dark, cold, and near empty. He took a deep, rattled breath when his gaze landed on a pile of buffalo skins in the corner, smelling raw and fresh. Flies buzzed around the pile and that only made Chris want to vomit of what he had left in his belly.
He looked around the place a little more before realizing the wind coming in through the closed tent flaps chilled him to the bone. He looked down at his body and noticed his clothes had been badly burned and ripped. He was missing his hat and his shoes were gone, causing his bare feet to tremble from the cool wind.
Chris cursed under his breath, trying not to lash out completely. If he had, if he wanted to, he would meet his fate and whoever had him in this place would come back and finish what they started. They would kill him and that would be the end of Chris Larabee for good.
Chris didn’t like this open feeling of never seeing his friends again. Of what he could remember, he was alone and when he woke up he was here and still alone. He then remembered the knock on the head and many hands searching his clothes, his body for anything they could grab and steal. He was in and out of consciousness and barely had a hand on anything much less his strength to push away the thieves. And then another blow to the head, and a cut to the face and he was out for the count.
His back ached, and he tried to stretch what he could in the chair for relief but came up dry. Chris wondered they must have dragged him on a dirt, rocky road to get where he was now, and there must have been scratches up and down his back for him to put any pressure for comfort on the chair.
Chris dropped his head forward and leaned out instead of in to get somewhat comfy, but he had been beaten and to try and get comfortable was just about as useless as getting a call of water. Chris swallowed down a puddle of saliva under his tongue and prayed the self-made liquid would wet his scratchy throat.
The voices outside the tent grew louder to where Chris could make out every word. He could have if they were speaking English. To add to the throbbing, the enemies were not and Chris gave up trying to follow.
The tent flaps flew open then, catching a ray of the setting sun on Chris’s bruised face. Just as Chris looked up to see who entered, the person left before he could catch a glimpse of him.
Chris wanted to cry out again but again couldn’t because of all the binding. He wanted to know why he was there, why he was beaten, and now why his limbs were tied together. Did they see Chris as a threat without his gun since they had taken that too? Chris did have his strength but the way he felt and looked, he was up to no physical fight.
Chris let out a bottomless groan and dropped his head back down to his lap. He took a deep, relaxed breath, moved his face to his shoulder to get rid of any loose tears in his eyes, leaking on his face. He took another deep breath to only this time smell something again foul. He looked up and in the corner where the man who had just entered and saw another pile like the buffalo skin but smaller. From the sunlight coming out of flap opening where it had not been entirely closed as before, Chris caught a sight of three man scalps.
Fear for his own life Chris did cry out but got nothing in result. He was so tired, so beaten, so famished he didn’t think about anything or anyone but his life and the life he left back home in Four Corners where the people he cared for the most were, and the Seven gunslingers who might never find him. For once in his life Chris admitted he was scared and nervous and anxious as to what will happen once the tent would fill with onlookers from the camp. When his captures would come in and finish what they started.
With his head bent and ready to take the final blow, the flaps of the tent did fly open and four men gathered inside with a few extras outside the tent standing guard. Chris saw this from their shadows and he didn’t bother to look up and into the eyes of his enemy. Just as he thought.
Chris held his breath, waiting for the first attack. As his lungs begged for air, he released his breath but kept his head still and down. The men inside kept their distance from Chris as they continued their outside discussion to inside voices. Chris wanted to understand what they were saying, but couldn’t. He didn’t speak their language and that was the bottom line. It was a fault in his life he wasn’t further educated. He had tried to teach his own son in case of any emergency but Chris discovered his teachings couldn’t even help him.
Before Chris knew it, his head was yanked up with a rough tone telling him in English to look at him. Chris wouldn’t obey and kept his eyes closed for fear of what the enemy might see and use his pain, his grief, his tears against him, and do something worthwhile to make him cry.
The man balled a fist full of Chris’s dirty blond hair and yanked harder and Chris yelped and bit down on the rope in his mouth for relief. He opened one eye and looked at what the other men in the tent were doing: one had a smirk on his face, and another tall, stern man watch from a distance to see the winces sprawled on his face. Then Chris heard the sound of a switchblade open and to his horror screamed and screamed in his head to not take his scalp. To let him live at least until he knew what he had done wrong to these men, to their people.
Chris groaned loudly, biting harder on the rope as the blade came closer to his hair. He slammed his eyes shut and screamed out this time but in relief when the man holding the blade cut free a handful of his hair. Chris breathed easier now when he saw the man drop the cut pieces of hair into a wooden box and shut the container loudly in Chris’s face.
With his eyes still closed tight, Chris heard laughs from the entrance and within the folds. The man put his blade back into his pocket then handed the box over to a young woman outside the tent and he took off without a thought.
“What to do now, Hiamovi?” Kuruk asked.
The high chief looked down at the wounded gunslinger, mopping in his own despair. “Wait.”
Kuruk looked away from his chief without question. Wait was what he wanted and wait was what they will do until the box was set in the hands of someone who will speak out on the gunslinger’s behalf. Someone who will come after him and fight the war the Blackfoot tribes have been waiting for. It didn’t have to be a big war, just a war of satisfaction that the white men, too, suffer.
Without knowing the gunslinger’s name, Hiamovi knew he was a man in charge like him, a man of somewhat importance, and a man who needed to know the meaning of suffrage.
It had been two days since his kidnap. If not by now someone had to be looking for him. And when they find him....to Hiamovi’s grief and uncanny desire they would find nothing but scraps of the man Chris Larabee was.
To be continued....