Chapter 4

Jake turned to Pale Horse, who was also sitting rigidly, and said: "I value new friendship. Don't want spoil with violence. Your man insult me, insult all white men. Worse, insult my woman. Young man important to you? Or can I kill him?"

The crowd went quiet, apart from the man in question who shouted that no white man would kill him especially one who was protecting a diseased woman who sold herself to white men.

Pale Horse was obviously rigid with anger. "He is one of my tribe, and even the man of my daughter I am ashamed to say, but he is nothing but trouble. He should not have said what he did, especially after I told them to keep quiet. Fight him if you must, but in a fair way. Let us see if can fight as hard as he can talk."

The young man kept shouting that there was no way a white man could beat him in a fair fight, but white men had guns and he just had his knife. However, even with his knife he would win.

Sue bent down and spoke to Jake again, and they obviously had a deep but brief exchange. Jake then stood up.

"I decide that I not kill young man today."

There were jeers from the man in question and some from his group of friends.

"He insult me, but not me who kill him today. He insult Sue worse. I give her what she ask and let her kill him instead."

The whole crowd went quiet, even the noisy lout.

"Your man like chance against me with knife. Now he face Sue with knife and prove words."

Pale Horse stood up. "This is not wise. He will kill your woman."

"Don't worry," Jake replied. "I can kill him, and Sue better than me."

Jake then said something in that other language to Sue, who took out her revolver and handed it to him, leaving just the two knives on her belt.

"What is that language that you speak with her?" Pale Horse asked.

"Her own language, Comanche."

The crowd went quiet again. Although they had never seen a Comanche, that tribe had a certain reputation.

People were starting to gather to one side of the fire circle, forming a ring in which the fight would take place. Jake and Sue went to stand in the ring, while Pale Horse and his party took their places at the front of the crowd. Jake turned to the Shoshone leader.

"We can still stop. If you value warrior, then he apologise and Sue stand down."

"He said what he said, it is too late now. Don't worry, if your woman wins I will not blame her. His name is Bent Stick, and he has always been a problem. However, you should worry for your woman as he is annoying but a good fighter."

Bent Stick was even then preparing for the fight. He took off his vest, leaving him bare-chested, and was flexing his muscles as he limbered up. His knife was in his hand, nine inches of needle-pointed steel with a wooden handle. He turned towards Sue, switching the knife from hand to hand as he tried to confuse and intimidate her.

Sue unbuckled her gun belt and passed it to Jake. He holstered her revolver, which he had been holding since she gave it to him earlier. He offered her knives to her, but before she took one she turned towards Bent Stick and took off her own jacket. Her firm young breasts stood proud and she shook her chest at him, making them bounce.

"Perhaps this will distract him," she said.

She then took her knife from its sheath. Over thirteen inches of sharp steel, with one concave and one convex edge, it gave her at least as long a reach as Bent Stick although it was a heavier, and therefore clumsier, weapon.

The two young people faced each other across the open space, surrounded by the whole tribe. Jake thought that Sue looked magnificent, tall, slim, bare-chested and confident.

Bent Stick, on the other hand, seemed to have lost his cockiness. Faced with the aggressive girl with the huge knife, he had realised what a situation his mouth had got him into. Still, she was only a girl after all, and not even from his tribe. No, she was a Comanche, and they were meant to be very good fighters. But he hadn't heard stories about their women being good fighters, and if they were, he would have, wouldn't he?

While all this was going through Bent Stick's mind, Sue was moving. She crouched and slid diagonally, partly approaching Bent Stick and partly circling him. He was trying to watch her. He had always been taught to watch his opponent's eyes, not the knife. When the attack came, the eyes would show it. However, no-one ever told him about breasts, and he couldn't help watching them as well, which took his eyes, and his mind, off both Sue's eyes and her knife. Her breasts were firm, and the nipples hard, and they jiggled as she moved and it was most distracting.

Sue was watching his eyes, however, and she could see that they were flicking about, not sure what to do. She decided to act so she darted in diagonally and, as he made a sweeping motion with his knife, she changed direction but kept moving forward. Bent Stick tried to recover, swept his knife back, and just caught her left breast with the very tip.

A red line appeared but blood hadn't had time to flow before her breasts were pressed hard into his chest. He felt them, and the sudden sharp pain in his stomach that was almost too much to bear. His hands dropped under reflex to the wound as Sue pulled back and, when both his arms were out of the way as he clutched his injury, she swept her knife sideways under his chin and cut his throat back to his backbone.

Bent Stick was dead before he hit the ground. The whole fight had taken less than a minute.

Sue stood back, breathing hard. Blood dribbled from the nick on her breast, and she had more blood on her stomach where the wound she had inflicted had splashed her.

The crowd was deathly silent for a moment, with good reason, then it let out a roar. Granted, one of their own tribe had died, but he hadn't been well liked by most people. And everyone realised that they had witnessed something special.

Jake leant over towards Pale Horse. "Now you see why she better than me," he said. "I have no breasts!"

Pale Horse smiled as Jake picked up Sue's vest and took it to her. He draped it over her shoulders and gave her a hug. She stood firm, she didn't collapse against him as she knew she had to look strong, but she was glad of the comfort. This was different from the other men she had killed. One was done in the heat of the moment as he grabbed her, another she had shot when she and Jake were attacked. This was not the same - this was a cold, prearranged duel, and she felt emotionally drained.

Pale Horse came over to the two of them. "It was well done," he said to Jake. "She fought well. It is not the first time for her?"

"She killed four men before," Jake told him, "But all white men. This first of her own people. Hard for her."

"Come," Pale Horse told him, and led them both away to his own tepee. There his wife, Speaks Loudly, was already waiting to take Sue inside. She had warm water to wash off the blood, and some salve that the healer had given her for the cut on her breast.

The tribe was still gathered, talking about what they had seen. A young girl knelt by Bent Stick's body but she was shouldered out of the way by his cronies who carried his body away to prepare it for burial. The girl just stayed there, head down, sobbing.

Pale Horse looked at her, turned to Jake, and said: "We have a problem."

"What that?" Jake asked him.

"When a man is killed in an honour fight, his possessions belong to the winner. His horse, his weapons, and his women. This is my daughter, Grey Cloud, and she was Bent Stick's woman. So now she belongs to your woman. But a woman cannot own slaves so what do we do? I have never known this before."

"How did daughter be with Bent Stick?" Jake asked him.

"Bent Stick's family are friends of my family, and his grandfather is an important man in the tribe. They were promised when they were very young, before we knew what he was like. There was nothing I could do. She was not happy and I think he beat her, but there was nothing I could do."

Grey Cloud knelt in the circle of earth, where Bent Stick had died, and wept. Not because she was sorry he was dead - she had wished for that often enough in the last six months, but because she now had no idea what her future held.

Her father was Pale Horse, chief of this tribe of Shoshone. But her mother had died when she was nine, and although she knew her father loved her, he couldn't look after her and show her what she needed to know. So the other women of the tribe taught her to cook, and to sew, and break and make camp, and wash clothes, and everything a woman needed to know. But they did it as a duty, without affection. And they didn't teach her about men.

So when she was married to Bent Stick, as had been arranged when she was very young, she had no idea what to expect. She had been told about sex, what men wanted and how to present herself, so the night after the wedding she had known to get on her hands and knees and let him do what he had to do. But she hadn't been prepared for the pain when he did it, and for the way he beat her on her back and bottom, and the way he pressed her down into the sleeping furs and reached round and squeezed her breasts until they hurt.

He did it every night after that, and she was covered in bruises because if it. But he made her wear long sleeved shirts to cover them, and she was ashamed to ask anyone if it was normal, so she came to accept it.

And now even that small order in her life was gone. What would she do? She couldn't go back to her father, no other man would have her after Bent Stick. She would become an old woman quickly if she didn't die of starvation with no-one to look after her.

So she wept.

Jake looked at the crying girl and said to Pale Horse: "It no problem. Sue win your daughter. Sue my woman. So I take your daughter too. Woman of my woman is my woman."