The Scourge of God

The prairie rose and fell, rose and fell in long swales; it was hot now, enough to make Rudi unpin his plaid and fold it into a saddlebag, and it leached out the land until everything looked like a green-brown vacancy, with only the occasional sagebrush for visual relief.

"You know what that is they're circling?" Rudi said, cocking an eye at the buzzards.

"I've got a strong suspicion. Same as last week… oh, well, we can water there."

"And my folk can change out of their armor, so they could."

"Yeah, it looks heavy," Red Leaf said. "Sort of inconvenient, having to stop and get in and out of it, I'd say. With our gear you can be ready to fight anytime."

"It is a bit of a nuisance, I'll grant. But worth it in a stand-up fight, the which is more common where we come from."

The Indian nodded. "I can see that. Less room to run and dodge out on the West Coast."

The whole group proceeded cautiously. More buzzards rose from the ground as they crested the low rise. The two buffalo ahead were very dead, mostly eaten and buzzing with flies; from the smell it had been a couple of days ago. The bones and heads lay near the edge of the muddy little stream-it would dry up later in the summer, but for now it still held a slow trickle between banks of grass thicker and greener than that on the uplands to either side, with a few cottonwoods just coming into leaf. It also made the ground soft enough to hold prints; you could see clearly where the ambushers had pounced from the cover of a clump of rabbitbrush, and the splashing, thrashing fight it had been until two young bulls were brought down.

Epona danced a little nervously until Rudi ran a soothing hand down her neck. He swung to the ground, looped up the reins from her hackamore, and turned her loose; the big black mare mooched a few yards upstream and dipped her muzzle into the muddy water, being naturally too intelligent to drink down current from a body. He looked at the ground more closely, and caught a faint rank odor, like a neglected catbox. The killers had been messy feeders, too, even before the birds and coyotes had gotten to work. Several of the broad-winged scavengers were circling resentfully overhead, waiting for the irritating humans to go away and let them get back to serious eating.

Even in the midst of his a

Sure, and she's a better introduction than a friendly dog, Rudi thought.

Red Leaf dismounted in turn, and handed his horse over to one of the teenagers in breechclouts; the Sioux war-party had little apparent discipline, but organization seemed to appear like mushrooms after rain when they needed it. From what he and Virginia had said, the Kit Foxes were a brotherhood devoted to defending the tribal borders, and also a social club that organized everything from dances to marriages and acted as a police force besides.

"I'd say that's a tiger's prints," Rudi said, squatting for a moment and tracing the great plate-broad pugmarks with a finger. "But you don't have tigers hereabouts, I'm thinking. And there's at least four different animals, and tigers don't hunt in packs."

"No," Red Leaf replied. "We've got plenty of lobos these days, some grizzlies just lately, but no tigers. We do get goddamned lions, of all the crazy things, the past few years. They follow the buffalo north from Texas and New Mexico when the snow melts; now I hear some of them are wintering in the Black Hills. They breed like rabbits; only rabbits don't have fangs and claws and four hundred pounds of attitude."

"It doesn't look as if they'll take more than you can afford," Rudi said.

There was a herd of several dozen bison not half a mile away, a bachelor herd of bulls cropping at the new grass, and shedding their winter coats. That made them look tattered, but they were plump and healthy. He could see pronghorns from here as well, and some horses that were probably mustangs, and elk, mule deer, cattle that were probably also at least half-feral. When the travelers startled waterfowl out of the little stream, their wings had made a momentary thunder.

This was a spare land compared to the Willamette, but next to some of the deserts Rudi had crossed since he came east of the Cascades it swarmed with life.

Red Leaf glared at him. "It's the principle of the thing!" he said. "And they go for horses and stock as well. People too, if they get a chance, probably."

This Red Leaf was well named; he could use some time in Chenrezi Monastery, Rudi thought. He's a frustrated man, and lets that make him angry. Or to be sure, a spell with Aunt Judy…

"Sure, and it's not my fault," he pointed out.

"You white-eyes were always importing things. Starlings and tumbleweeds were bad enough, but lions?"

Rudi chuckled. "You could scarcely expect the ones ru

Ignatius came up, telling his beads with his left hand and looking around with the mild intelligent pleasure he showed at any new thing.

"Safari Parks, I think, Rudi. Those are lion prints? Fascinating! There's an empty ecological niche here for an open-country predator that can take down full-grown bison, I suppose, since the extinction of the American lion ten thousand years ago. They must be gradually adapting to the colder climate."

"… those Safari Parks to know the Change was coming," Rudi pointed out.

"My Order's information is that dozens of species have naturalized themselves and are spreading rapidly-giraffe, camels, ostrich, emu, baboons, rhino of both varieties, eland… no elephants, alas. And of course tigers over much of the continent-"

Immigrants all around. And speaking of white-eyes… the Mackenzie thought.

He cocked an eye at Red Leaf's followers as they attended to watering their horses and the remount-herd. About a quarter of them looked much like their leader; broad square strong-jawed faces, narrow-eyed, high-cheeked and big-nosed, with ruddy-brown complexions. A third wouldn't have suggested Indian at all as far as appearances went, if it weren't for the braids and feathers and fringes-there were several blonds and one tall, ski

And Red Leaf's son Three Bears looked suspiciously lighter than his father, too. Folk had moved about a good deal almost everywhere after the Change, settled where they could and mated as inclination and necessity dictated, with little time or attention at first to spare for the old world's notions of who was what.

The which it would probably not be tactful to mention, he thought. Sure, and there are enough Mackenzies who have similar delusions about being the ancient Gaels themselves. In the long run, believing makes things like that near-as-no-matter true.

"And I'm part-Indian myself," he added. "One-eighth, to be precise about it; one-quarter, for my father."

Red Leaf snorted. "Cherokee, I suppose? Damn bunch of mutts."

"No, Anishinabe. Ojibwa," Rudi amplified, before he caught Ingolf's covert shushing motion.

A ringing silence fell. Red Leaf said: "You ever wonder why we're called Sioux by the wasicun… you guys… oh sacred guest?"

"No," Rudi said politely. "I know that you call yourselves Lakota. It means friends or allies, doesn't it?"

"Yeah; because we're the only friends we've got. Nadewisou is what the Anishinabe called our ancestors-Sioux is what the English made of the French try at saying the Ojibwa word. Like what we called telephone tag, when I was a kid, only through three languages."

"Ah, now, isn't that curious, and it's always good to learn new things. What did the word itself mean?"

" Nadewisou? It means… oh, something like treacherous little rattlesnakes. It's not a compliment. We weren't so fond of them either."