A long stick, once a whipstock, rose from the front of the wagon bed. It had been sharpened and thrust under the wrist skin of a human hand--a dried hand, not of a white man, but a red. A half-corroded bracelet of copper still clung to the wrist.
"If I read signs right, that's why!" commented Bill Jackson.
"But how do you explain it?" queried Hall. "Why should they do that? And how could they, in so close a fight?"
"They couldn't," said Jackson. "That hand's a day an' a half older than these killings. Hit's Sam Woodhull's wagon. Well, the Pawnees like enough counted 'coup on the man that swung that hand up for a sign, even if hit wasn't one o' their own people."
"Listen, men," he concluded, "hit was Woodhull's fault. We met some friendlies--Kaws--from the mission, an' they was mournin'. A half dozen o' them follered Woodhull out above the ferry when he pulled out. They told him he hadn't paid them for their boat, asked him for more presents. He got mad, so they say, an' shot down one o' them an' stuck up his hand--fer a warnin', so he said.
"The Kaws didn't do this killin'. This band of Pawnees was away down below their range. The Kaws said they was comin' fer a peace council, to git the Kaws an' Otoes to raise against us whites, comin' put so many, with plows and womernfolks--they savvy. Well, the Kaws has showed the Pawnees. The Pawnees has showed us."
[pg 88]
"Yes," said the deep voice of Caleb Price, property owner and head of a family; "they've showed us that Sam Woodhull was not fit to trust. There's one man that is."
"Do you want him along with your wagons?" demanded Jackson. He turned to Wingate.