and swung into the saddle. The stirrups were too short for him and McCulloch had never understood why those damned fool Yankee horse soldiers survived riding on something as backbreaking and huevos-pounding torture contraptions like a McClellan. The horse showed a moment of anxiety, dancing around, but McCulloch eased it down to the edge, let the blood bay measure the distance, then rode it back up as far as he could. Turning the horse around underneath the piñons, he spurred it, and the horse showed no fear, no doubt. A moment later Matt McCulloch felt the wind, the freedom, the wonders of flying, and the horse landed, jarring him, but not spilling him. McCulloch laughed as he righted himself in the saddle and gave the stallion its head, letting him run by the bear and the dead Mexican and a hundred and fifty yards up the valley, before he turned the horse around and galloped back, slowing down about thirty yards from his black and trotting the rest of the way.
He swung down, tied the horse up a few feet from his black—so they could get to know one another—loosened the cinch and found the dead scalp hunter’s canteen. He sniffed. Yes, it was water, not whiskey. You couldn’t be sure about scalp hunters. He filled his hat with the lukewarm liquid and let the bay drink. Then he did the same for his black. Keeping the canteen, he went back to the unconscious Comanche.
And McCulloch went to work.
He jerked out the Comanche’s homemade knife from the white-bearded scalp hunter and went to the bear. For a rusted blade, the knife cut well. The Indian boy had honed a sharp edge on that old saber, and McCulloch carved up some fat and a little bit of meat. A few minutes later, he had a fire going. Then came the hard part. Using his own knife, he heated the blade, then removed his blood-soaked bandana, and placed the white-hot blade on the savage cut.
Flesh sizzled. The Indian boy screamed and tried to rise, but McCulloch’s knee had been placed on the boy’s chest. The pain quickly sent the kid back into deep unconsciousness. McCulloch heat-sealed the other serious wounds, found a needle in his saddlebags, plucked some hairs from the tail of his black, and stitched up the smaller cuts that weren’t so deep. The bear fat he placed on all the wounds, hoping that would suck out some of the infection, and he slipped a couple of small cubes of meat into the boy’s mouth.
After wiping his own brow and finding his own canteen to slake his thirst, McCulloch walked to the edge of the wooded hills and began searching until he found a piece of wood that would work all right—at least until he found a doctor, one who would actually treat an Indian boy.
McCulloch stopped. “What are the chances of that?” he said aloud, and looked at the small branch he held. None, he answered in his mind. A Comanche boy? Forget it.
After tossing that pathetic substitute for a splint, McCulloch went back into the woods and finally found something that would eventually do the job. He used the Indian kid’s knife to clear off the bark, and then his own to carve, cut, and whittle until he had what he needed. Satisfied, he took the branch back to the Comanche kid, measured it for length, nodded at how well he had guessed, and snapped the branch in half over his left thigh. After that, he shaved off the sharp edges with his knife and pounded down the ends against a lava rock. Finished with that part of the job, McCulloch stripped buckskin from white-bearded man’s leather britches, soaked the strips in the last of the water from the scalp hunter’s canteen, and returned to the still unconscious boy.
You break horses for a living, you know a few things about broken bones.
McCulloch steeled himself, hoped the boy was too out of it to feel what he was about to do, and tried to set the broken arm. It took a while, and the boy screamed after the first jerk, then shuddered, wet himself, and groaned. Rubbing his hand over the thin, bony, copper-skinned arm, McCulloch felt satisfied. He used a silk bandana he had found in the saddlebags of the blood bay, wrapped it over the arm, then placed the first of his whittled-down branches onto the upper arm and secured it with the strips from the dead man’s pants. The next branch went lower, also secured with buckskin leggings.
The boy looked like hell. No, McCulloch figured, he looked damned ridiculous. But by the Grace of God and if the kid’s puha—his Comanche power—was with him, he might live. McCulloch laughed. When a Comanche boy went out on his vision quest, he came back with a new name. So McCulloch decided it was time to give this kid a new name, too. Instead of Bear Killer, from how on he would be called Wooden Arm.
Suddenly, McCulloch felt hungry. He returned to the bear, cut off some more meat, grabbed his skillet from the saddlebag, and fixed himself some grub. After eating, he dragged the dead men to the edge of the hills, searched them, and lifted from their pockets anything he might need. Then he hauled some dead branches and left those covering the bodies. Another bear, or wolves, or coyotes would eventually find them, but McCulloch wasn’t going to waste his energy trying to dig a grave for two pieces of dirt who would not have even bothered covering him with branches had they won that fight.
Finally, McCulloch went back to what was passing for his camp. He threw some more wood—which would not send too much smoke into the sky—onto the fire, leaned back in the grass, adjusted his hat over his eyes, and slept.
* * *
He sat up with the Colt in his hand and saw the boy. The Indian boy had rolled over and gasped at the arm splinted in two places—forearm and upper arm—with tree branches.
The kid saw McCulloch, who holstered his gun and slid the plate of bear meat and fried fat over to the kid, along with his canteen.
The boy stared.
“I am called Matt,” he said, making the sign for everything but Matt. He signed Eat.
Eventually, the boy sat up and used his good hand, fingering bits of bear meat and fat into his mouth. He chewed, but rarely blinked, and his eyes never left McCulloch.
Night came. McCulloch built up the fire, found the bedroll on the blood bay, and spread that over the boy, who still stared. They supped on bear meat and McCulloch’s coffee, and slept, though only after McCulloch used some of the Mexican scalp hunter’s whiskey as painkiller for Wooden Arm.
The next morning, as the boy watched in silence and with cold black eyes, McCulloch checked the arm, nodded at his skills as a sawbones, and brought Wooden Arm coffee doctored with a shot of whiskey, and more bear meat. After what passed for breakfast, McCulloch busied himself the rest of the morning by rubbing down the horses, keeping a lookout for any riders—especially scalp hunters—and nodding at Wooden Arm every now and then.
It was after noon before the kid spoke.
Not that McCulloch understood more than a handful of Comanche words, but he stopped what he was doing and squatted in front of the kid.
He signed, How are you called?
The boy answered, but hell, McCulloch wouldn’t remember that if he heard it ten thousand and ten times. He said, “I will call you Wooden Arm.” Again he signed, I am called, then said, “Matt.”
“Watt,” the boy said.
“Good enough.” McCulloch smiled, then checked the boy’s wounds and arm.
The boy turned downright conversational.
In Comanche, “Why did you not kill me or at least count coup?”
McCulloch thought he got all of that. He answered with his hands and fingers, speaking as he signed, You saved my life.
The boy’s head shook. No, I protected me, he signed.
“You were hurt,” McCulloch said, and tried his best to sign, There is no glory in counting coup or taking the scalp of someone injured. He smiled and tried to add, But I would have had women singing in my camp had they learned that I counted coup on a Comanche brave enough to fight and kill an angry black bear.
He must have done a good job there. The hardness left the boy’s eyes and he smiled, then nodded, and muttered something in that rough tongue. He grinned at Matt and said, “Watt.”
Matt laughed. “Wooden Arm,” he said, and added with his hands, is my friend.
The boy straightened. He looked lost in thought,