light came from a small window in the opposite wall up near the ceiling. The window was covered with woven iron, but it was high enough that a man could not reach it, even standing on a chair. St-Cyr edged forward until he was standing in the doorway, ready to bolt back the way they came at the slightest movement.
But the scene was almost tranquil—the shaft of light, the jailer standing quietly on one side of the room, his tunic now buttoned against the chill, and a figure on a bed that was suspended from the wall. It was a close room, perhaps two meters by three meters, but its height gave the claustrophobic St-Cyr great relief after the perilous journey down the low, narrow corridor. Out of nervous habit, he slid his notebook out of his coat pocket.
“Here is your Peau-Rouge, monsieur,” the jailer said, his voice rough-edged but almost hushed.
The first thing St-Cyr noticed was the long, dark hair. It was parted in the middle and fell past the man’s shoulders, almost to the small of his back. Even St-Cyr’s whore, Fortune, did not have hair so long.
“Charging Elk?” said St-Cyr.
The Indian turned to the sound of his name, but he did not look directly at St-Cyr. He seemed to be looking at the door behind the reporter. His eyes were dark and there were shadows beneath his cheekbones. His mouth was closed tightly, like a seam in a burnished leather glove.
At first, St-Cyr was glad that the Indian did not look threatening—in fact, he did not look capable of violence at all. In his black coat, buttoned to the neck, and short pants and slippers, he looked almost pitifully thin. His bare ankles seemed especially vulnerable. The more St-Cyr studied him, the more concerned he became.
“Does he eat?” he said.
“Like a bird,” the jailer said. “He eats his soup and drinks his tea—that’s about it. He leaves all the vegetables in his soup bowl. He has no taste for bread. I think the Peau-Rouge does not eat like real men.”
“I think he’s starving, monsieur. Look at him. Perhaps you are not feeding him the right food.”
The jailer, who had been almost civil since entering the cell, now rattled his keys against his leg and blew an abrupt puff of air, obviously angry. “We do not operate a restaurant here, monsieur. We are poor jailers. We do not sit behind fancy desks upstairs and decide whether we will have bouillabaisse or couscous for lunch. Perhaps gigue de chevreuil for dinner. No, we do not operate like that. This one will eat what the others eat—or he will go hungry.”
St-Cyr now looked at Charging Elk. “Do you understand English?” he said in English.
Charging Elk almost responded to the word “English.” But he remembered Brown Suit, the American, and his inability to communicate with him, and he remained silent.
“How can I help you, Charging Elk? Would you like something different to eat? Eat?” St-Cyr tried to will the Indian to understand with loud, correct pronunciation, but the Indian just stared at the door behind the reporter.
St-Cyr could feel the jailer’s impatience, and he knew that his time was just about up. But he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to make the Indian understand that somehow he would help him. And this was surprising to St-Cyr. He was not a cold man—he helped beggars with a sou every now and then; he gave his landlady a tin of very expensive foie gras for Christmas; he brought the old man who lived across the hall from him and was dying of consumption packets of pastilles and reports of new remedies that he read about in his newspaper. Still, he let little in the way of universal human suffering affect him.
But Martin St-Cyr was almost desperate to help Charging Elk. It was plain that the man was dying. He could be dead in hours or days and nothing would be known of him. The brutish jailer and his comrades would dump the body in a cart and wheel it out to Cimetière St-Pierre, where it would be buried in the indigents’ section without a cross or a name.
St-Cyr tried to identify what it was about the Indian that affected him so. Surely some of the other cells were filled with men in equally desperate circumstances. His own countrymen who were being held in such squalid conditions, possibly starving too. Even now, he could smell a damp, ashy odor that spoke of illness, even death.
Perhaps it was that the Indian could not speak any language but his own, and his countrymen were thousands of miles away on the other side of the earth, that made St-Cyr desperate to do something that would help the Indian survive, until at least his court date. But, as Borely had said, the courts were backed up, and the Indian didn’t look like he would last another day.
“Perhaps, monsieur, if I left a little money, you could see that the Peau-Rouge gets something substantial to eat? Perhaps some sausage and cheese and peasant bread?” St-Cyr dug in his pocket and found several francs.
“We do not dispense special privileges here, monsieur. He eats what everyone else eats.”
But St-Cyr was prepared for this response. He opened his wallet and pulled out a twenty-franc bill. “A little something for your time, monsieur,” he said, offering the bill.
The jailer glanced quickly, instinctively, toward the door; then he stuffed the bill and the coins into his tunic pocket. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Soon?”
“Oui, oui, monsieur. Soon.”
St-Cyr didn’t trust him, but there was nothing he could do about that. But there was something he could try to do about the Indian. About Charging Elk. He made himself think the man’s name. He made himself look into Charging Elk’s face. He was a man, a human being, and he would likely die if St-Cyr didn’t do something.
But for the moment, he could only drop his packet of Gauloises and a box of matches on the bed beside Charging Elk’s brown hand. “For you,” he said in English. “Don’t worry. I will help you out of this wretched place. Don’t worry, Monsieur Charging Elk.”
Charging Elk listened to the key turn in the lock and heard the bolt thrust home with a thin echo. Then it was quiet. He drew his feet up onto the bed and watched the newly disturbed dust motes circle and float in the shaft of light.
He had no idea how long he had been in the stone room of the iron house. In spite of the cold he had slept much of the time, and he had dreamed of home. In his dreams he saw the golden eagles soaring over the Stronghold; he heard the bark and howl of coyotes in the night; he smelled the sage in the spring wind, and the crisp chunks of venison cooked over an autumn fire; he cupped his hands in the clear stream of Paha Sapa and felt the cold water take his breath away as he splashed his sweaty face. He dreamed of home, and so he slept much. He saw his mother picking berries in the Bighorns and his father cleaning his many-shots gun in the lodge on the Greasy Grass. His brother and sister played games with rag balls and slim bones in the evening quiet of the big camp. And he and Strikes Plenty caught the winged hoppers they threw into the water for the slippery swimmers.
Sometimes the dreams ended in the blackness of night; sometimes in the light of the high window. Sometimes they ended happily; other times with images of soldiers attacking the big camp on the Greasy Grass, or with the people descending into the valley of the Fort Robinson, with its many soldiers and the big flag of America.
Once he dreamed of Crazy Horse, and the great warrior chief told him that one day he would go to that land where the sun rises, across a big water, where the favored wasichus came from. Crazy
