Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 36

Ptebloka Ska (a.k.a. White Cow Bull), 28,

Oglala Sioux Warrior

I had soaped myself in bull lard against the cool waters of the Greasy Grass, where I swam this morning ahead of battle with the bluecoats, and I was lying naked to the loincloth in yucca and sage grasses when like the hawk they bushwhacked us—crossed the coulee upstream unannounced and raided our camp—I crawl behind the rocks where I had stood my weapons, wanting only the head of their leader, Long Locks, who years ago kidnapped fair Mo-nah-se-tah and forced his baby inside her and though I have spoken to her only through the open flaps of her teepee, I love her and have wished in my best heart to walk with her under a courting blanket and make her my wife, but she has rejected me because I said I would even welcome her bastard blond boy, the one they say twins Long Locks’s likeness, so last night I sang the suicide song and I danced till the drums and my heart were one and I came out here to war with no belief I would ever return alive to my tribe, and since I cannot find the man I want, that coward and rapist, I will, in his stead, have the head of another, so I blast from his saddle the first pink man who rides through the cottonwood trees and the water weighs down the buckskin clothes he wears to hide his hairy body but he rises from the river like Great Medicine itself, his voice growling like a wolf as it eats—one brave white man at last—I freeze and let him fire his bullets but they will not have me—they fly by whistling like notes played through an eagle-bone flute—and so he charges and I put my next shot straight through his skull and shrill and take my hatchet for a coup, hoping some Sioux will later tell Mo-nah-se-tah of my courage.

Like a lover, his half-Sioux traitor collects him in his arms and I drop my rifle and I catch by its mane the dead man’s pinto and spring to its back and heft my hatchet high and holler the war cry Crazy Horse has taught us to live by: Hoka hey, I shout, hoka hey: it is a good day to die, but an even better day to kill.