Read The Powder River for Free Online

a human being. Well, maybe a hummock twenty steps away would hide her from sight in one direction, from where the sun was rising.
    The pull came sharply this time, and longer. It felt like her insides were being firmly turned, as when she twisted a hide hard to wring the water out of it. After the pull she panted for breath.
    So. Rain admitted it: she was not going to walk on. She would bring forth the baby here. That would put her hours behind even the laggards with Brave One and Enemy. And she would be even more defenseless. She had heard that at Sand Creek, where the bluecoats massacred Black Kettle’s people, soldiers had bayoneted mothers’ wombs and ripped the babies out.
    The last hour she had felt by turns calm and racked with despair. When she despaired, she did not ask the powers for life for herself, or even for her child. She asked merely that she get the child out and lift it to the four directions, and hold it once to her small breast. She wanted to put her arms around her child, at least, before any soldier got to it. She wanted her child to breathe air and see the light, at least, to know that much of the world. When she despaired, that was all she hoped for.
    The pain came again. This time it was pressure, intense pressure on her abdomen. When she was a little girl, a horse had stepped on her chest, and she had nearly passed out. Now it felt like a hoof planted on her gut, bearing down, all the horse’s weight crushing her and her child.
    As suddenly as it came, it lifted off, and all was peaceful again.
    When she did not despair, when she was calm, she felt clear-sighted and easy enough. True, she was in danger. But she was too smart for the vehos . She would bring forth this child. She would hide as she needed to, and not permit the child to cry out. She would slip across the long miles and rejoin the Human Beings. And perhaps her dead husband, Red Hand, would somehow know there in the Starry Path where he lived now, and would have a full heart.
    The pain came. It felt like a hand in her guts—she yelled in her head that it was not the child’s hand. The fingers were grabbing, pulling, twisting. She felt sweat pop out on her face, and she was sure the sweat was blood. She gasped for air and got nothing. She gasped again, and breathed, and the pain quit. She felt peaceful, and exhausted.
    How much more, she wondered, how much more? She lay back, fully stretched out, and turned her cheek to the cool sand. How much more?
    The pain came in a great wave this time. She mounted the wave, riding higher and higher, still higher and still higher, endlessly higher. She clutched her knees and endured.
    Sergeant Breitshof reined in. He had seen something. He couldn’t see it now, but Karlheinz Breitshof had been on the plains a long time and wasn’t going to be fooled. Something had moved off to the right. And then maybe not—these plains could fool a man. Sergeant Breitshof had soldiered in this country for twelve years, and he had seen lots of things that weren’t there. The plains were too big and too dry and the sun glared off them too strangely. You saw ponds that weren’t there, buffalo that weren’t there, everything. And you didn’t see the goddamn redskins who wanted to kill you.
    Sergeant Breitshof had seen plenty of his comrades killed, and he had no damn-fool romantic notions about redskins.
    He swung down off his horse, picketed the beast, took his Springfield carbine, a trusty weapon left over from his Civil War action, and started hoofing. Like most cavalrymen, he hated being on foot. But on these goddamm short-grass plains you had to get down as far as you could and not skyline yourself for the savages.
    He started walking to the northwest. He was a big man, big-framed and big-paunched, and did not walk easily. But he moved like a professional soldier, cautiously, easing from hummock to hummock, squatting, watching, making sure he knew about whatever was over there before it knew about