Sneak Attack

While Ehawee doesn't remember her dreams when she wakes the next morning, she is left with the feeling that they were troubled. After a moment, she realizes what has awoken her...Kohana has his arm over his face and is snoring loudly. She groans and looks around, wondering how close to daybreak it is. Judging by the light, it is barely daylight, but daylight nonetheless.

With a regretful sigh, Ehawee leaves the warm furs and goes outside to brush her pony. Then she begins preparing breakfast, noticing as she does so that some teepees are already coming down and being packed. Not wanting to be the last ones ready, she hurries her preparations and eats her own portion quickly before ducking back inside to wake Kohana. With a bit of a grin, she works her cold hands under the bear pelt and places them on his chest, figuring that should rouse him. He wakes with a start and grabs her hands to move them off of his naked flesh. She giggles and gives him a kiss. "Time to get up, my brave warrior. Or I'll have to take the teepee down on top of you."

He smiles. "Give me my breakfast, and I'll get up."

She grins, ducks back outside and brings his portion in. "I had a feeling you'd wake up hungry."

He eats greedily. "What's left to pack?" he asks in between bites.

"Just our sleeping furs and a few other tools. And the teepee, of course. It shouldn't take long."

"I'll start the teepee," he says, standing up. "You come help when you're ready."

She nods, and gets to work packing what's left of their belongings. Once this is accomplished, she steps outside to help Kohana. As they take down the teepee, she looks over in the direction of her father's teepee, wondering how he and Takoda are managing their first move without her. Awkwardly, from the looks of it. When she and Kohana have their teepee down, her father and brother are still working on theirs. Seeing that, she goes over to help them finish, a bit of a smile on her face. She is determined not to let Takoda assume she'll take care of it now and stop working, but she needn't have worried. Her brother does not shirk his duty, and soon they are packed up as well.

When the camp is ready, the people begin to file northward. Ehawee is happy to be underway, the winter camp now feeling unsafe in her mind, due to the incursion of the white soldiers. She walks with Magaskawee for a while, wanting some female company and figuring her sister-in-law might need some extra help, given her condition. Every now and then, Ehawee can't help glancing over at the newly widowed women, grateful beyond words that she isn't one of them. She hopes she never sees a white man again, but knows that isn't likely. There seems to be an endless supply of them, and she fears one day they will come and never leave. Such thoughts darken an otherwise beautiful spring day.

And the days slowly overlap, one after another. Magaskawee is in fine spirits and condition and requires little assistance. The warriors are still riding high on the success of their raid, and many a pony is decorated with fresh scalps. The weather continues to be beautiful. All seems well....

Then, on the fourth day out, Ehawee is startled to hear a shot ring out in the distance, off to the left, over and beyond a small hill. She turns in the direction of the sound, alarm showing on her face, then grabs her bow and arrows and moves quickly towards her pony. She isn't quite sure what's going on, or what she should do, but she figures that whatever it is, being armed and mounted can't hurt. Fortunately, Kohana has more ponies than possessions, so her wedding gift is unencumbered. As she reaches her pony, another shot rings out in the distance, and the thunder of hooves can be heard. Her tribemates begin to scatter, men for their ponies, women and children for the opposite hill.

Her heart beginning to hammer loudly in her chest, Ehawee jumps on her pony and hesitates for a moment, wanting to ride with the men towards whatever is approaching. But then she tells herself that the rest of the tribe must be gotten away from whatever is coming, and she turns her attention to that, looking for those who can't move quickly enough and transporting them to the opposite hill. As she pauses at the top of the hill to let her passengers get off, she looks towards the direction of the hooves, trying to see from her higher perspective what is coming towards them. Her heart sinks as she sees a cavalry battalion, outnumbering the tribe's warriors almost 2-1. It must have been lying in wait for them.

The soldiers begin to fire at anything that moves, men, women, children, horses and dogs. The warriors try to run interference, giving their women and children a chance to make a run for it. Ehawee looks around frantically for some kind of cover on the other side of the hill that she can direct people to, but there is precious little to be found, the landscape being mostly the rolling hills of the open prairie. As she sees the cavalry firing on the women and children, anger begins to burn within her, wiping out the fear she was feeling before.

Deciding that she can make more of a difference shooting at the soldiers than she can fleeing with one or two people, Ehawee races her pony towards the fight, firing at the closest soldiers from horseback as soon as she thinks she can hit them. Her pony responds beautifully to her knees and feet, and every arrow she fires hits its mark, toppling white after white from his horse.

Noticing her effectiveness, the white chief barks at his warriors. Several disengage from the main troop to fight her, and soon the bullets are whizzing around her. She turns her pony to flank the soldiers and draws aim on the lead man, hoping to force her pursuers to fire through some of their own troops in order to shoot at her. As her arrow flies true, her pony grunts and stumbles, but catches itself. As she kills six more whites, her pony seems to be slowing down. The bullets are still whizzing by her, but she is barely aware of them. For her, at this moment, there exists nothing beyond this seemingly endless fight, and the never-ending sea of whites that she must kill until they are gone, or she is dead.

One bullet finally bites into her left shoulder, turning her, but not knocking her from her mount. She cries out, or tries to, and realizes that she was already screaming, shouting her rage and anger at the soldiers without even being aware of it. She keeps her grip on her bow with an effort and does her best to ignore the pain and keep firing for as long she and her pony can manage, urging the poor thing to keep going. She looks for the white chief as she rides, wanting him dead most of all, but there are too many men now around her.

Ehawee fires her last arrow, and another white man falls. Her pony stumbles again, and this time falls. With the memory of her leg breaking beneath Kohana's horse during her vision flashing quickly before her eyes, she jumps clear and rolls to absorb her forward momentum. She is very nearly surrounded by white men as she gets to her feet. Just as one rides toward her with sword raised, he is shot, and pulls his horse down on top of him. As the terrified, now-riderless animal struggles to regain its feet right before her, Ehawee lunges for it, stooping to grab the fallen man's cavalry sword as she does so. When the horse regains its feet, she is securely in the saddle. Unfortunately, since it isn't an Indian pony, it does not respond to her feet and legs. As the horse lurches forward, she kicks at it experimentally, hanging on to its mane with one hand and keeping the sword ready to cut any white who comes near her in the other. It responds to her kicks, and as its nerves calm, it begins to obey her.

Ehawee charges into the whites, laying about her with the sword. She knows the end is close now, but she just can't allow herself to surrender...not to these people. She's determined to keep killing them as long as she can draw breath. The screams of men quickly mingle with her cries of anger and vengeance. Half a dozen men die by her hand before she sees the white chief, 25 feet away from her, take aim on her with his hand gun. She quickly tries to hang off the side of the horse, to duck beneath his shot, but as she moves to do so, she sees a sword heading toward her chest in a thrust. If she continues, she will be stabbed. If she stops, she will be shot. She must chose.

Deciding that the sword is the more immediate threat, she stops moving to the side and flattens herself against the horse's back, digging her heels into its flank. The shot rings out and she hears a bone shatter. A rib, maybe? If she had more time, she'd be able to tell. She figures it doesn't really matter, as long as she can keep moving. She'll be dead soon anyway, after all. The horse shoots forward, away from the swords and toward the white chief. She keeps herself flat against the horse while urging it to move as fast as possible, hoping to close the distance between herself and the white chief before he can fire again. She looks to see if he has any weapons besides the hand gun, and sees that he has a rifle and a sword, but neither are drawn. He shoots again, as Ehawee's horse closes on him, and the bullet flies past her head. He shoots again, and her left arm goes numb. Ehawee's horse slams into his before he can get off another shot, and both of them go down in a tangle of horses.

Ehawee must have blacked out for a short time. When she comes to, she hears the shouts of white men far away. Near at hand, she hears the raspy breathing of the white chief. He is pinned under his horse, just a few feet from her. She has lost her sword, and he his gun. He stares at her like she is some sort of demon. He tries to scrabble away, but he's still pinned. When Ehawee tries to move, she discovers that she is pinned as well. She glares at the white chief with hate in her eyes, viewing him as the architect of all that has happened. She tries to determine where she is pinned, and looks for her sword, hoping it is within reach. Then she hears several rifles cock around her head. The white chief says something then, loudly, to his men, and none of the rifles fire. A rifle butt comes down firmly on the back of her head, and for Ehawee, the world goes dark.

"Deadwood"
Ehawee's Page | Ehawee's Story

All text on this page is © 2001 by Kris Fazzari.

Last modified on May 30, 2001 by Kris Fazzari.