10. As one squaw stands poised to drive a sharpened wooden post deep into my cunt with a heavy stone while another positions the post between my spread legs, I peek out … hanging upside down … between their legs at a distant telltale cloud of dust on the horizon. But I am not alone; the dust cloud has caught the attention of others.
Some of the Sioux have made the same discovery and are sounding the alarm. Custer and the 7th Cavalry are coming. The Warriors scramble for weapons and ponies. The squaws drop both stone and post on the ground, and I narrowly escape being impaled.
Sitting Bull is here, there and everywhere, shouting orders. The warriors divide into two groups, each of which rides off to outflank and ambush the approaching cavalry column from left and right. Meanwhile the women move quickly to release Siss, Messaline and me from the posts between which we had been spread-eagled and so cruelly tortured.
Too weak to resist, the three of us are dragged through the camp and out onto a low grassy knoll where the approaching column will be sure to spot us. There we are thrown down onto three waiting crosses made of lodge-pole pine
As I am laid out, flat on my back, on one of the crosses … arms outstretched and held in place by the women along its rough-hewn crossbeam … the Indian who calls himself "Hanging Tree" casts his shadow over my prostate form. In one hand he holds a hammer, in the other a fistful of iron spikes.
"My God, you are going to crucify us ... you are going to raise us up as ‘bait’ to entice Custer and his men into a trap!" I exclaim.
"Very perceptive," he replies as he kneels alongside me, reaching out with one hand to press the point of an iron spike against one of my slender outstretched wrists. The ringing sound of hammers striking iron, accompanied by Siss' frenzied curses and screams, comes from one of the crosses to my right.
"No, wait!" I shout, raising and turning my head so that I can look him directly in the eye, "crucifixion is a biblical thing. How would these savages possibly know anything about it?"
He smiles, and says as he raises his hammer, "I told you. I lived among the whites when I was young, remember? And they sent me to the missionary school, where I sat for hours every day entranced by the crucifix on the classroom wall"
"So you ...." but before I could complete my thought he brings the hammer down, driving the shaft of the spike with a single blow straight through my wrist and deep into the soft wood of the crossbeam. I wail and scream. He steps over my still-arched body to nail my other wrist.
The sounds of hammers on nails, and the pitiful screams of Siss and Messaline blend together in my ears, as he positions the second nail, and drives it home with another powerful blow. A spray of blood spatters across my face and heaving chest.
“Please, I beg of you,” I sputter as he comes around and swiftly forces the sole of one of my feet down on the upright beam and then presses the other foot down on top of it. I try to kick but am too weak. Seconds later a third spike is driven through both of my feet, breaking bones and cartilage and causing unbearable pain. I buck and twist, and scream my lungs out, all to no avail … I fall back, helplessly pinned by the spikes to my cross.
Glancing to my right, I see my two friends rising up on their crosses, faces contorted with pain, naked bodies sliding down as their crosses are righted and shoved into waiting holes. Then my own cross begins to move with a shudder. I am being raised as well and a feeling of absolute terror passes through my consciousness.
When my cross hits the bottom of the hole in which it will rest, I am thrown violently forward, arching out and falling to one side, blood streaming from the holes in my wrists and darkening the light-colored wood beneath my feet. A moment later I lose control of my bladder, and warm pee runs down my legs.
It’s done, we have been crucified. Hanging Tree, the squaws and the old men who assisted in our nailing and raising, fade away, back to the encampment to feign normal life ... leaving the three of us high on our crosses, to twist and writhe obscenely in full sight of the approaching cavalry column, which has now crested the nearest hill.
I push and pull myself up shakily, intending to shout a warning, but all that comes out is a croak. Through teary eyes, I can see Custer in the lead of the column, wearing a light buckskin jacket over his blue uniform, holding one hand in the air to signal a halt.
Just then Wragg jumps out of his hiding place in a nearby copse of brush, running forward, waving his arms at Custer and his men, yelling at the top of his lungs “it’s a trap!” An arrow zings by me and finds it mark in Wragg’s back, sending the Englishman sprawling to the ground.
Mounted warriors rush in from all sides. Custer orders his vastly outnumbered troopers to dismount and form a defensive position on the top of the hill. For several minutes the fight rages furiously. Then it’s over. Custer and his men are down, and dismounted savages are whooping and shouting as they strip the cavalrymen of their clothing and set about the grisly task of collecting scalps.
Jubilant, the victorious Sioux dance about our crosses through the afternoon and into the evening hours. The area around us is filled with celebrants. High on our crosses, we struggle against gravity and the nails that pin us to the wood, exhausting ourselves in the hot sun until we hang limp, sweat-sheened and panting, heads lolling back and forth, waiting … half-conscious … for death to take us.
In my last lucid moment, I look down to see Hanging Tree looking up at me and my friends. I think I detect a sign of sympathy in his eyes, but then again maybe I am just hallucinating. I lift my head to look away, and just in time … out of the corner of my eye … I see Wragg crawling away into the night.
I hope he survives to chronicle what happened here today. Perhaps he will even submit it to the editor of the big Chicago daily that sent me out here. Then I rest my chin on my chest and close my eyes, knowing that the secret of Custer’s little big horn, dies with me, never to besmirch his legend.
Some of the Sioux have made the same discovery and are sounding the alarm. Custer and the 7th Cavalry are coming. The Warriors scramble for weapons and ponies. The squaws drop both stone and post on the ground, and I narrowly escape being impaled.
Sitting Bull is here, there and everywhere, shouting orders. The warriors divide into two groups, each of which rides off to outflank and ambush the approaching cavalry column from left and right. Meanwhile the women move quickly to release Siss, Messaline and me from the posts between which we had been spread-eagled and so cruelly tortured.
Too weak to resist, the three of us are dragged through the camp and out onto a low grassy knoll where the approaching column will be sure to spot us. There we are thrown down onto three waiting crosses made of lodge-pole pine
As I am laid out, flat on my back, on one of the crosses … arms outstretched and held in place by the women along its rough-hewn crossbeam … the Indian who calls himself "Hanging Tree" casts his shadow over my prostate form. In one hand he holds a hammer, in the other a fistful of iron spikes.
"My God, you are going to crucify us ... you are going to raise us up as ‘bait’ to entice Custer and his men into a trap!" I exclaim.
"Very perceptive," he replies as he kneels alongside me, reaching out with one hand to press the point of an iron spike against one of my slender outstretched wrists. The ringing sound of hammers striking iron, accompanied by Siss' frenzied curses and screams, comes from one of the crosses to my right.
"No, wait!" I shout, raising and turning my head so that I can look him directly in the eye, "crucifixion is a biblical thing. How would these savages possibly know anything about it?"
He smiles, and says as he raises his hammer, "I told you. I lived among the whites when I was young, remember? And they sent me to the missionary school, where I sat for hours every day entranced by the crucifix on the classroom wall"
"So you ...." but before I could complete my thought he brings the hammer down, driving the shaft of the spike with a single blow straight through my wrist and deep into the soft wood of the crossbeam. I wail and scream. He steps over my still-arched body to nail my other wrist.
The sounds of hammers on nails, and the pitiful screams of Siss and Messaline blend together in my ears, as he positions the second nail, and drives it home with another powerful blow. A spray of blood spatters across my face and heaving chest.
“Please, I beg of you,” I sputter as he comes around and swiftly forces the sole of one of my feet down on the upright beam and then presses the other foot down on top of it. I try to kick but am too weak. Seconds later a third spike is driven through both of my feet, breaking bones and cartilage and causing unbearable pain. I buck and twist, and scream my lungs out, all to no avail … I fall back, helplessly pinned by the spikes to my cross.
Glancing to my right, I see my two friends rising up on their crosses, faces contorted with pain, naked bodies sliding down as their crosses are righted and shoved into waiting holes. Then my own cross begins to move with a shudder. I am being raised as well and a feeling of absolute terror passes through my consciousness.
When my cross hits the bottom of the hole in which it will rest, I am thrown violently forward, arching out and falling to one side, blood streaming from the holes in my wrists and darkening the light-colored wood beneath my feet. A moment later I lose control of my bladder, and warm pee runs down my legs.
It’s done, we have been crucified. Hanging Tree, the squaws and the old men who assisted in our nailing and raising, fade away, back to the encampment to feign normal life ... leaving the three of us high on our crosses, to twist and writhe obscenely in full sight of the approaching cavalry column, which has now crested the nearest hill.
I push and pull myself up shakily, intending to shout a warning, but all that comes out is a croak. Through teary eyes, I can see Custer in the lead of the column, wearing a light buckskin jacket over his blue uniform, holding one hand in the air to signal a halt.
Just then Wragg jumps out of his hiding place in a nearby copse of brush, running forward, waving his arms at Custer and his men, yelling at the top of his lungs “it’s a trap!” An arrow zings by me and finds it mark in Wragg’s back, sending the Englishman sprawling to the ground.
Mounted warriors rush in from all sides. Custer orders his vastly outnumbered troopers to dismount and form a defensive position on the top of the hill. For several minutes the fight rages furiously. Then it’s over. Custer and his men are down, and dismounted savages are whooping and shouting as they strip the cavalrymen of their clothing and set about the grisly task of collecting scalps.
Jubilant, the victorious Sioux dance about our crosses through the afternoon and into the evening hours. The area around us is filled with celebrants. High on our crosses, we struggle against gravity and the nails that pin us to the wood, exhausting ourselves in the hot sun until we hang limp, sweat-sheened and panting, heads lolling back and forth, waiting … half-conscious … for death to take us.
In my last lucid moment, I look down to see Hanging Tree looking up at me and my friends. I think I detect a sign of sympathy in his eyes, but then again maybe I am just hallucinating. I lift my head to look away, and just in time … out of the corner of my eye … I see Wragg crawling away into the night.
I hope he survives to chronicle what happened here today. Perhaps he will even submit it to the editor of the big Chicago daily that sent me out here. Then I rest my chin on my chest and close my eyes, knowing that the secret of Custer’s little big horn, dies with me, never to besmirch his legend.
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