Fear Weaver by David Thompson

wearing clothes, I would take her for a buffalo.”
    To their utter bewilderment, the woman began to sing.
    Black Elk glanced at his friends. It was plain they shared his perplexity. “Be careful,” he cautioned. “This might be a trick.”
    The white woman smiled and sang and was not afraid, not even when Mad Wolf took a step towardher and made as if to shoot an arrow into her belly. “I will spare our ears.”
    “Wait,” Small Otter said uneasily. “I do not like this. What if her head is in a whirl?”
    “She must be alone,” Double Walker said. “No one else has come out of the lodge.”
    Black Elk didn’t know what to think of the white woman’s behavior. He realized that her singing was not really singing at all. She was chanting. But what she had to chant about was as great a mystery as her presence.
    “Do I kill this buffalo or not?” Mad Wolf asked.
    Black Elk was about to say it would be best if they silenced her when the white woman gazed toward the woods and clasped her arms to her bosom as in great joy. He looked to see what she had seen and his blood turned to ice in his veins. Shock sent him back a step. “Beware!”
    The others whirled.
    Mad Wolf instantly let fly with his arrow but the thing that had come out of the forest bounded aside and the arrow missed.
    “It is a ghost!” Small Otter cried.
    Black Elk disagreed. Whatever it was, it was flesh and blood. He snapped his bow up to let his own shaft fly.
    “There is another!” Double Walker shouted, thrusting his arm toward a second apparition.
    “And a third!” Mad Wolf warned. “Where do they come from? What
are
they?”
    “We must flee!” Small Otter exclaimed.
    Black Elk refused to run. He had never run from anyone or anything in his life; his bravery was a byword among his people. For him there was onerecourse, and that was to slay the things before the things slew them. Accordingly, his bowstring twanged—and the shaft flew wide of his leaping target.
    “Behind you!” Double Walker bellowed.
    Uncertain whether the warning was intended for him or one of the others, Black Elk started to turn. He was only halfway around when something slammed into his back with such force that he was driven to his hands and knees. He lost his bow. Pain racked him, but not enough to stop him from grabbing for his knife. Before he could jerk it from its sheath, his wrist was seized in an immensely strong hand. A stinging pain in his throat resulted in a warm, wet sensation spreading down his neck and chest. He became unaccountably weak, and pitched onto his side. Something tore at him and he couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.
    Black Elk saw Mad Wolf and Double Walker, both down and being ripped limb from limb. He saw Small Otter flee toward the white lodge. For a few moments he thought Small Otter would make it into the lodge, but the buffalo woman sprang with remarkable speed and ferocity and buried one of her long needles in Small Otter’s eye.
    Black Elk’s own eyes became wet and sticky with his blood. The world faded around him. The last sound he heard was a gurgling whine that came from his own ravaged throat.

Pinpoints
    “Do we go on, or do we stop for the night?”
    The question was posed by Peter Woodrow. They had descended a short way from the pass and were winding down a steep slope that severely taxed their mounts. The sun, low in the western sky, cast long shadows that were slowly growing longer.
    Nate King gazed to the southwest. In the distance were sandstone cliffs. If his memory served, that was where they would find the valley Sully had mentioned in his one and only letter to his parents. But getting there before night fell was impossible unless they could sprout wings and fly. “I say we find a level spot to make camp.”
    Ryker overheard, and disagreed. “Why stop when we’re so close? When we could have a roof over our heads tonight?”
    “I can give you a whole list of reasons,” Nate said. “One, our horses are