Wanted

Chapter 20

As soon as he started walking towards them, the woman on her pony started to head for the bank. Still aiming her rifle at Edwards, she made her horse move without holding onto the reins that lay lazily over the neck of her pony.

Jeremiah had told them that the Indians had a different relationship to their animals and the land, and John was wondering if she was able to communicate with her horse through some kind of a magic mind link. Instinctively John changed direction also and followed her ashore. As she reached the edge of the water, she suddenly kicked her horse into the sides making it quickly jump up onto the bank and disappear behind the treeline and John followed her. He found her no longer on her horse but crouching down behind a large boulder with the rifle trained yet again on Edwards.

He too could see Edwards and was wondering if he had made the right choice. He hoped they were not going to shoot the man or worse. He suddenly remembered all the gory stories he had listened to in the past.

Even Jeremiah had hinted at it. "Different tribes have different customs. Some friendlier than others, I wouldn't want any of them as my enemy though," Jeremiah had told Walls in front of the other man's fireplace that night.

He watched how Edwards looked in their direction and then lowered his gun. Could he still see him?

When they were all still standing in the water, Edwards had told him to get behind his horse and he almost did. He probably would have had Edwards not told him to think about his wife. He didn't really like Edwards but he wasn't the worst, not like the Blacksmith, and not like his wife. 'They'd make a great pair,' John mused. He heard the splashing of hooves through the water that pulled him back into reality. He held his breath in fear of what might happen next and watched how the Indian on his horse charged at Edwards, shouting something he could not understand and holding his gun high in the air as if he was trying to scare away a wild animal. It worked, for Edwards rapidly turned Goliath around and fled the scene and then he could see neither of them anymore.

He heard the Indian man's cry another few times in the distance. He could still hear the horses galloping in the water, but no shots were fired which reassured him that Edwards got away. The woman than jumped back onto her horse. She stretched her hand out for him to climb on behind her but even if he had wanted to, he couldn't. There were no stirrups to put his foot in and he had no strength left. Exhausted, he sat himself down onto the ground, resting his head on his forearms, until the man came back on his horse a few moments later.

John looked up at the man whose facial expression was stern, and got frightened again. He was young enough but not as young as Alfred or Edwards' stable boy. Mid thirties maybe. John knew he was no good at judging a person's age. He usually made people much older. 

They talked to each other in their own language. The man sounded annoyed and looked down at John with angry eyes, so that John questioned his sanity for having made the choice he did. All the horrific stories adults had told them, and they played out on the street came flooding back into his mind. Would they keep him as a slave? Or worse, were they going to torture him? He had heard the Indians killed their captives slowly, over days, often using fire to inflict as much pain as possible. Were they going to boil him, skin him alive? Sacrifice him to their god and eat his liver? He heard they made no difference between man, woman nor child. Would they really do that to a child? His mind raced a million miles an hour. Maybe he should have taken his chances with the woman and her 'shits-oil'. It wasn't really all that bad, was it?

"Come!" the man commanded and offered him his outstretched arm, leaning down towards John who was still sitting on the ground. He wanted him to climb up on the back of his horse behind him.

Relieved that the man spoke English, John found his words again. "Ah no, Mister. You're good. I go alone, thanks very much," he told the man, declining the man's hand with a wave of his own from where he was sitting.