Chapter 5

The hospital in Arthur, Kansas, was a typical government facility of the time. It was of wooden construction, even though the wood had to be hauled in from miles away, and it rambled on with seemingly miles of corridors connecting ward after ward holding 20 beds, each. Most of these wards held Army veterans who were recovering from a lost leg or a lost arm, though a few had multiple limbs missing. By now, all of the Civil War veterans had moved out, and the wards were now filled with victims of the Indian Wars.

Many of the ambulatory patients were pressed into service as assistant nurses, since a lot of the jobs could be done with only one hand, if it was a strong one. There were no armed guards anywhere to be seen, except at the ceremonial gate where they were posted to greet visiting dignitaries. Now that the Indian Wars were winding down, or so they thought, there was no need for a fully functional armed guard.

That was why the attack by the combined Sioux and Cheyenne war party was so devastating. Two or three Indians attacked each ward and there was really no way to defend against them. The Indians attacked with lances and tomahawks, and the defenders had only bedpans and crutches to try to ward them off. Rarely, an Indian was rendered unconscious by being hit in the head, but his attacker was quickly dispatched by another Indian. On the other hand, the men assigned to the ward fell right and left to the murderous efficiency of the attackers.

Both Fire Bringer and Shadow heard the cries of pain and anguish and TPed to the originating site without delay. They quickly "froze" every Indian as they came to him to stop the carnage. Unfortunately, only two or three of the hundreds of victims of the attack were going to survive. These three were put in the stasis of the poke to wait while the rest of the situation was handled. It took them about 20 minutes to get the situation under control and assemble the frozen Indians in an open field called the parade ground.

The hospital administrator and two of his aids were also transported to the field to listen while the Indians were questioned. Fire Bringer quickly found and isolated the war chiefs for interrogation. They couldn't learn much, since the Indians insisted that they had been sent to massacre the soldiers by their shamans. One war chief did volunteer the information that his shaman received a dream message from Tezcatlipoca ordering him to send the warriors from his village to a rendevouz with the other Indians to stage the raid.

Fire Bringer and Shadow grabbed onto the mention of Tezcatlipoca, recognizing a reference to him in the orphanage raid. When asked why they agreed to raid the hospital, the universal answer was that it was in revenge for the many Indian camps that had been raided by the Whites. "Many Indian camps" was a canard, though some had been raided unjustifiably, so Fire Bringer's ire was somewhat mitigated by that thought; however, he did transport these Indians to the wilds of African jungle as punishment.

There was no way to keep this raid a secret, even if Fire Bringer had wanted to, so the newspapers had a grand time with blowing the story up to being a much, much worse raid than it actually was. Congress went wild with punitive plans, but they did not know who to punish. The actual perpetraters had been dealt with, except for the shamans, but hanging them didn't do much to cool the public ardor. The only solution was for the War Department to order that all Indians be either diven onto reservations or killed—no exceptions.

This was an impossible order to enforce, and everybody should have realized that. However, politics rarely have anything to do with real life, so the order stood. General Crook was ordered to implement the order, so he reluctantly set out to follow the ridiculous order, even though he knew that the task was impossible. He commanded the center of the force moving against the Indians while Col. John Gibbon commanded the southern wing and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer commanded the northern wing of the force.

Custer was the ideal choice from Tezcatlipoca's point of view. Custer was reckless and sure that he was smarter than any savage could possibly be. As a result, he pushed ahead of the planned schedule and outran his supporting forces. He was determined to catch up to the Indians before they could "escape." He attacked a superior force of mixed Sioux and Northern Cheyenne and found himself trapped in a positon impossible to defend. His command was wiped out by the Indians who, unknowingly, did the US Army a great favor by removing one of their most stupid field commanders. The massacre also drove the public to demand an even harsher treatment for the Indians.

"Tezcatlipoca, you have done an outstanding job! I don't know how I can adequately reward you for your fine work. We'll just have to look for something suitable."

"Thank you, Dread Lord Satan. Your praise is enough for me. But I would be pleased to accept any small reward You might deem appropriate.

Fire Bringer and Shadow were distracted by an event very close to home which kept them from stopping the slaughter of Custer's detachment. There was a special election being held for a new county judge, and the man most likely to be elected to the position was a rarity among the current judicial system. This man was honest and conscientius, two qualities that were badly needed at this time. Beelzebub had expended a lot of effort in promoting his own candidate, and he had no intention of letting this election get out of hand.

A band of hooligans was preparing to kidnap the honest man's family to force him to withdraw from the election. By the greatest stroke of luck, Shadow happened to discover the plot and called on Fire Bringer to help her prevent the kidnapping from happening. They knew of the plot, but did not know any of the participants. They had to find some solid information to work with before they could do anything to stop the plot. Of course, they could have removed the man's family from the scene by cacheing them in a poke until the election was over, but the family refused to cooperate with that.

The family members were all adults, so they were convinced that "they could take care of themselves," and no amount of sweet reason could convince them otherwise. The candidate was also sure that Fire Bringer and Shadow were worrying about nothing and simply would not take their warnings seriously enough.

Shadow and Fire Bringer were busy with other things on the night that the kidnappers struck. All of the family were in bed at their ranchhouse and soundly asleep when each person was awakened by four men at the bedside with drawn guns. None was so foolish as to try to resist when they were facing four drawn pistols, so they were forced to get dressed and accompany the kidnappers to five separate hideout locations.

The wife, three daughters, and a son were all being taken to separate cabins or shacks in the boondocks to be held until after the election. The candidate was attending an election rally some miles away from his home and both Fire Bringer and Shadow were present to protect him. They admitted later, to themselves, that this had been a foolish maneuver, and one of them should have been keeping an eye on the ranchhouse. They were in the process of tracking down the kidnapped people on the day that Custer had committed his last stupid act, so they had been too distracted by the distress of the people they were searching for to be sensitive to the problems of the Army.

As soon as the missing person was found, he or she was transported home and the kidnappers on site were pushed into the poke for later punishment. The kidnapped people were recovered so fast that the candidate did not even know of the crime until after the rally and he had been returned home. His wife and children met him with a harrowing description of their ordeal and high praise for how quickly and neatly they had been rescued by Shadow and Fire Bringer. This kidnapping had been a very bad mistake by Beelzebub, because the candidate was able to use a description of the kidnapping in his campaige speaches which won him a lot of sympathy vote. Ultimately, he won the election in a breeze.

"Well, Beelzebub, what do you have to say for yourself? You really blew that special election for the judge I was counting on winning."

"Dread Lord Satan, I don't have any excuse, but I do have an explanation. I was totally unaware that there was something like a sympathy vote. I had never heard of it, since none of my worshipers possess a trace of sympathy toward anything. All I can say is that it won't happen again, now that I know what to look for."