Dancing Cloud laid Boyd down on the ground. He peeled aside the black cape to see how badly he was wounded. When he saw that it was only a flesh wound, he sighed heavily with relief.
He started to rise and enter the battle but stopped and stared at
what he had never expected from his warriors. Those who had not been killed were so furious over their brothers’ deaths they were scalping the downed Yankees.
A throaty cry sliced the air, a cry that seemed frozen in time. Dancing Cloud looked quickly around and found Clint McCloud standing there, his eyes filled with the horror of what he was witnessing.
Dancing Cloud was torn with what to do. He did not want his warriors to continue scalping. Yet if he took the time to stop them, this one lone survivor would escape.
For a moment Dancing Cloud and Clint McCloud’s eyes met and held, their eyes speaking words of hate that their mouths could not at this moment say.
Then Clint McCloud grabbed one of the Confederate horses, mounted it, and rode away.
Dancing Cloud grabbed his pistol and took a steady aim on the fleeing man. One shot rang out and he realized that he had not killed the Yankee.
But he was certain that he had shot him square in the thigh of his left leg. The Yankee would lose a lot of blood. Gangrene might even set in before he reached a hospital.
Clint McCloud looked over his shoulder and shouted at Dancing Cloud as he rode into the veil of fog. “You savage!” he cried. “I’ll get you. Some day I’ll find you and you will pay. Not only for shooting me, but for allowing your savages to scalp . . . my . . . men.”
His voice trailed off.
Dancing Cloud turned and stared down at the bloody massacre and swallowed hard. The scalps that had been removed had been tossed in a pile. One of his warriors was setting a match to them. The others watched, their faces somber.
Boyd leaned up on an elbow and stared blankly at the fire as it burned into the leaden sky. “My God,” he whispered. He became pale and gaunt as he shifted his gaze and looked at the men who had died needlessly. “The war is over, yet it is not, or perhaps never shall be.”
Dancing Cloud knelt on one knee and examined Boyd’s wound again. “This should be seen to soon,” he said. He looked slowly around at his dead brethren, and at those who were wounded. He felt helpless since he had no way to gather herbs to doctor his friends. Nor was there a white man’s hospital nearby. And all medical supplies had long been used up.
“There is no bullet lodged in my flesh. I’ll be fine,” Boyd said, groaning as Dancing Cloud helped him up from the ground. “And you?”
Dancing Cloud’s eyes met with Boyd’s. He became humble again in the presence of this man whose heart was big. “Because of you I am alive,” he said thickly. “I owe you a debt that I may never be able to repay.”
Boyd nodded and smiled. He held his shoulder as he began walking toward his men. “We’d best see what we can do to get everyone back on their feet who can stand. Their loved ones are waiting on them,” he said. “Thank God we at least got this far without being totally wiped out by bushwhackers.”
Dancing Cloud watched Boyd move through the wounded, and dead. He vowed to himself to find a way to repay this man for his kind ways.
Some way.
Some time.
Some how.
He would find a way to repay this man for saving his life.
He turned and looked into the rolling, thickening fog. Beyond that wall of gray, high up in the Great Smoky Mountains, his people waited.
* * *
His head bobbing, occasionally drifting off to sleep in the saddle, his shoulder now numb from the loss of blood, Boyd was only scarcely able to recognize his way back to his plantation. He had parted ways with his regiment and was on his way home.
The rain had stopped and the sun was out, revealing to him that the land was scorched as far as his eyes could see.
Not only did he witness the charred remains of all of the farmhouses that had stood in the way of the Yankee soldiers, he saw way too many bodies of innocent people, children and grown-ups alike, to stop and bury them.
And he didn’t even have the strength to see to the Christian burial for those unfortunate people. He scarcely could stay in the saddle now from lack of sleep, food, and medical attention.
Yet he kept on going, the fears mounting inside him now over what he was going to find when he reached his home. He doubted there would be any home left to recognize.
He choked back a sob and wiped tears from his eyes.