Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [4]
But Scoresby and company had turned tail and begun retreating for all they were worth—for their split-second assumption was that Todd, being closer to the rampaging herd, had already been more or less obliterated. Later, a search party would be sent out to recover his mangled body. Scoresby had a very cut-and-dried approach to decision-making, with his own survival ranking very high. He rode like the proverbial wind.
Todd, meanwhile, was too unhinged to have a strategy just then (perhaps ever again). He was relieved, of course, not to have been ground into the grass, but he was also perplexed by the lack of dust in the air in the wake of such a torrent of hooves and horns. He had, as noted, never seen such large bison. And he had never seen so many bison of any size at one time. But he had most assuredly never seen so many bison of any size disappear so fast. That concerned him—for a fleeting moment, almost as much as the dawning awareness of how alone he now was. For a man used to knowing and paid to know where he was and where others should go, he was now acutely conscious that he had no idea that he could trust anymore, save that others should not go where he was just then, and that he would have been very happy to be elsewhere—anywhere else. Even Turnip.
Nevertheless, he tried to compose himself in accordance with his military training—recalling as much the words of his scoffing, colicky father as those of his remote and safe captain. He had to meet the situation, whatever presented itself, with some semblance of dignity and astuteness. He had, after all, been chosen for this post and this particular assignment. He took stock.
No horse. Comrades scattered. And … and …
If the bison that had materialized on his side of the creek were surprisingly no longer in sight, the others across the way were still very much in position. To Todd’s utter consternation, they were now sitting as if awaiting instructions. Each and every last one of them was turned to face the man with the falcon, like expectant children waiting for a storyteller to commence.
The young soldier was forced to conclude that he was in the single most awkward, irritating, and sheer shit-frightening situation he had ever been in. But he was wrong, for the next moment brought about a change of mind. A loss of mind, he feared. He had thought that the land across the water flow had been steepening, as impossible as that seemed. All too soon, however, he became convinced, because a ridge formed above and behind the man on the donkey … and others appeared. Not ridgelines. Others.
He had been prepared to see at any given moment the silhouettes of a Sioux scout party, but he was not at all prepared for the vision he was having now, still sprawled on the ground where he had fallen. The surveying and engineering training he had, his whole Turnip-raised practical hog-and-potato background, forced him to classify the arriving visual information as a delusion—some pathetic personal breakdown in perception and courage. But the more he gasped openmouthed at them, the more foreboding his surmise became: he was confronting something—or, rather, things—that really were there. The shock waves of this realization shot him to his feet.
Appearing on the emerging hillcrest was a spiral chain of figures arranged in a kind of military formation, he presumed—but what kind he could not say. A severely worrying kind. There were Indians—Sioux and other tribes he could identify. There were also Negroes, but not dressed as any he had ever seen. They wore bones … and bright colors … and … there seemed to be some women, too. Various colors