The Arrow Keeper’s Song by Kerry Newcomb Page B

grunted, and sank to earth. “Trouble? Not much,” John Iron Hail said, bemused and shaking his head. He unslung his canteen and proceeded to trickle water across his companion’s bruised and battered face.
    Three flies upon the tabletop alighted and cautiously approached the crumbs of fry bread that had spilled from Seth’s plate. Seth’s hand darted out and closed like a snare. Then he slowly uncurled his fingers to make his count. A single fly crawled around his palm for a fleeting second and then took flight.
    â€œThere was a time you’d’ve caught all three,” said the young, attractive woman Jerel Tall Bull had employed to serve his customers.
    Seth looked up at Red Cherries, then glanced about the interior of the roadhouse. The rest of the tavern’s patrons were outside, gathered at the fighting pit, where they railed at the hapless combatants and wagered money on their brutal sport. For the first time since the loss of the Mahuts, Seth and the widow of Jordan Weasel Bear were alone.
    Red Cherries of the lilting laugh and teasing smile. Warm as summer to a lonely man’s cold heart. Like her name, ripe and sweet and inviting … but forbidden fruit whose taste had cost him dearly.
    She was achingly pretty and reminded Seth so much of his first wife, who had died shortly after Tom’s sixth birthday. Red Cherries, a Northern Cheyenne, had been given to Jordan Weasel Bear, Seth’s friend, for the sum of ten horses. Jordan, almost forty years the girl’s senior, could at one moment be kind and caring, and the next, abusive. He’d lost all three of his sons in the Indian Wars that were the aftermath of the Custer debacle. Jordan dulled his sense of loss with the white man’s whiskey. When the liquor fueled his jealous rages, Seth was always there to calm him down. Ironically, this act of friendship brought Seth and Red Cherries together. Over the months they also became friends, and then more than friends.
    â€œThere was a time when a Cheyenne woman would have lost the tip of her nose for taking another man to her husband’s blanket,” Seth replied.
    â€œI’ve been punished,” Red Cherries said. “I spent the last six months in Dallas.”
    â€œDoing what?”
    Red Cherries chuckled and indicated the interior of the tavern with a sweep of her left hand. “This,” she said. “And other things.” She shrugged, keeping part of her story private. “I had to stay alive. And it wasn’t like I had a man to care for me. No one exactly came forward after Jordan’s death.”
    â€œIt wasn’t my place,” Seth defensively replied. “Not after what we did.”
    â€œSeems like it was your place more than anyone else’s.” Red Cherries brushed a strand of hair back from her face and pretended she no longer cared. Perspiration beaded her lip, her brown eyes wide and luminous despite the building’s shadowy interior. She wore a loose-fitting embroidered cotton blouse and a Mexican skirt, whose billowing folds concealed her slender legs. Her features had lost the bloom of innocence—but, then, she was twenty now, a widow, and she had been to Dallas.
    Seth shook his head and sighed. He poured himself another drink and tossed it down, his throat numb from the half a bottle he had already finished off. He cast his eyes across the room. There was nothing fancy about Panther Hall. One wall was dominated by a bar and rows of glasses from behind which the Tall Bulls dispensed such curiously named libations as Old Bronc, Three Fingered Jack, and Thunder Water, along with the more traditional elixirs—rye whiskey, sour mash, beer, and hard cider. Seth had seen a cat go mad after lapping up a puddle of Thunder Water. But the whiskey was brought in from Fort Reno, and though it had a hard edge, the liquor had never made him froth at the mouth.
    The rest of the interior consisted of tables and