Mountain majesty 7, p.9
Mountain Majesty 7, page 9
The giant shot the club up, then down. Second Son dived to one side and heard a thump above her. She rolled when she hit. The club thudded into the ground, missing her by a fraction. Pushing to her feet, she barely avoided a third swing.
Suddenly Second Son had the opening she needed. The giant’s side was fully exposed, his arm bent away from her. Taking a short step, she rammed the blade into his ribs. It should have stopped him in his tracks, or at the very least made him howl with pain and rage. Yet neither occurred. Instead, he dropped the club and was on her before she could draw the blade out, his massive arms encircling her waist and hoisting her into the air.
Second Son threw back her head and opened her mouth to voice a cry that would bring Cleve at a gallop, but the breath whooshed from her lungs instead of sound. She struggled fiercely, trying to yank her arms free. She kicked wildly. And she had no more effect on the giant than a mosquito would have on her.
A pale face filled the warrior’s swimming vision. Agony lanced her chest. Her lungs were seared as if by fire. Second Son tried to butt the man in the nose but could not find the strength. She made a last, valiant attempt to turn the tide by kneeing him in the groin. Then the black of night engulfed her, and the last sensation she experienced was of something wet and sticky touching her forehead.
Chapter Eight
BILLY-WOLF BENNETT’S eyes were not the only ones to fill with fear on beholding the wall of smoke. Eagle Stays in Air had been rubbing down his favorite warhorse in front of his lodge when the animal jerked its head from his grasp and nickered. The horse had never misbehaved before, which was partly why Eagle relied on it more than any other horse he owned. He took a step back to regard it quizzically.
In doing so, Eagle glimpsed the prairie to the west of the village and felt a chill constriction in his chest. A thick, wide wall of smoke ran from north to south for hundreds of yards, ran from practically the edge of the river to well past the southern end of the encampment. And thanks to the prevailing wind, which on nine days out of any given ten blew in from the northwest, the flames making the smoke were rushing toward the lodges.
Eagle was amazed that no one had noticed sooner, but then it was the quiet hour of the morning when most of the women were inside. And most of the men, he was acutely aware, were off on the great elk hunt with Singing Wolf.
“Fire!” Eagle yelled stridently. “Fire in the grass! Gather your little ones and whatever else you can carry and flee for your lives!”
In his excitement, Eagle Stays in Air did not question the cause of the blaze. All that mattered was the safety of his people, especially the women and children left in his care.
Eagle ran to the next lodge and threw the flap wide without bothering to announce himself. Inside, Wears Red, his niece, was sliding her infant into a cradle board. “Hurry!” Eagle coaxed. “Try to cross the river before the flames reach us.”
Others had taken up the hue and cry, and worried Tsistsistas were scurrying every which way. Men were herding frightened horses, women herded anxious children. The village dogs were left to fend for themselves, their yips and barks adding to the uproar.
Eagle stood near the center of the village and jabbed a finger at the river. “Across the water!” he shouted. “It is our only hope!” He ran off to help where he could, while all around him utter bedlam engulfed the camp.
The din was so loud that it woke up Twisted Leg. In her condition she tired all too easily, and of late she had been taking several short naps throughout the day. She rose on her elbows, bewildered by the racket, and wondered if an enemy war party was to blame.
Twisted Leg heard the word Fire, and thought she understood: one of the lodges was ablaze. She had to roll onto her side and push with all her might to get to her feet. Holding a hand over her swollen belly, she hurried to the entrance and leaned down as far as she could to peek out.
Her lodge, like the others, opened to the east. Twisted Leg did not see a fire. She did spot Eagle Stays in Air. Many of her people were gathered around him and more came every moment. He was advising them to stay calm, saying he would lead them to safety across the river.
Twisted Leg thought she had better hurry. If the Tsistsistas were abandoning the village, she did not want to be left behind. Turning, she hastened toward a parfleche filled with pemmican and other food. It would not do for her to go without nourishment for very long; she had the baby to think of.
Suddenly Twisted Leg heard many loud popping sounds, attended by screams and screeches. She did not know what to make of it until she was bending to go through the opening. To her horror, Eagle Stays in Air and eight or nine others were lying in spreading pools of blood. More popping sounds rose above the din, sounds she realized must be rifle fire, and more Tsistsistas dropped, some dead when they hit the ground, others wounded, groaning and writhing in torment.
The village was under attack! Twisted Leg was so scared, she couldn’t collect her wits. Should she hide in the lodge and hope the raiders overlooked her, or should she head for the river as Eagle Stays in Air had advised? She wished Lightning were there, for he would know what to do. He was always so calm in times of crisis.
Twisted Leg bit her lower lip, hard. She had to be the calm one now, because if she fell apart, the innocent child in her womb would pay the price.
Another step disclosed a fire raging to the west. A heavy shroud of smoke swirled ahead of the roaring blaze, pushed into the village by the wind. Twisted Leg’s nostrils filled with the acrid odor. She beheld four lodges being rapidly consumed by crackling flames, witnessed some of those flames leap from a burning lodge to another, which until that moment had been untouched.
But the fire was not the worst of the nightmare. Advancing into the village in skirmish order, barely visible in the thick smoke, were white men, laughing fiends who shot down Tsistsistas in cold de-light.
Twisted Leg saw a little girl, named Yellow Petal, rush screaming into the open. She never heard the particular rifle that fired, but she did see the little girl’s brains explode out the front of her head. Yellow Petal crashed down and slid a few feet in the dust.
The whites were exterminating the Tsistsistas! The numbing insight made Twisted Leg feel faint. She sagged against the lodge. Why would any whites do such a thing? her brain shrieked. Didn’t they know that Yellow Hair, one of their own, lived with the Burning Heart Band, was, in fact, an adopted member of the tribe?
Twisted Leg saw an old warrior charging the whites. It was Bear Shedding, armed with a bow, his gnarled fingers hardly able to hold it. He spotted her and smiled encouragement.
This time Twisted Leg heard the twin gun blasts. They came from close behind her lodge. Bear Shedding was flung like a crumpled doll onto his back and made no attempt to rise. She would be next if she did not get out of there.
Once, six winters ago, long before Twisted Leg became Lightning’s mate, she had nearly lost her life during a Pawnee raid. The raiders had been after horses, but when caught in the act, some had been cut off from their fellows and forced to flee through the heart of the village instead of out across the prairie as they would have preferred.
She had been in her father’s lodge, sewing. On hearing war whoops and harsh cries, she had limped outside to see what was going on and nearly blundered right into a fleeing Pawnee. The young warrior had been as startled as she, and without thinking, he had elevated a war club to smash in her head. For a few moments she had stared into the grim face of death.
Then an arrow had pierced the Pawnee’s chest. Lightning appeared at her side, asking if she was well, and when she blurted that she was fine, he pushed her back inside and ran off to fight. It had been her earliest true inkling of his affection.
Twisted Leg had lived, but a day did not go by that she did not recall that young Pawnee’s face and the fear that had welled up inside of her when he raised that heavy club of his.
That fear was nothing compared with the fear Twisted Leg now experienced. This was only the second time her life had ever been in danger, and she discovered that it made her knees like mush and her stomach chum with butterflies.
Still, Twisted Leg would not let her fear get the best of her. She had spent a lifetime conquering a cruel infirmity, building an ordinary, respectable life for herself through the sheer force of her will. She had refused to be branded a worthless cripple when in her heart and soul she was as unfettered as the wind.
Now that iron will served Twisted Leg in good stead. Girding herself, she shuffled eastward as rapidly as she could. As always, the limp slowed her, but she willed herself to ignore it and go faster. All around her was chaos. Bodies littered the ground. Panicked Tsistsistas, mostly women and children, ran every which way. The men and older boys had rallied to resist the whites, but there were not enough of them and few had bows. Tipis burned brightly, like oversized candles. The smoke was so thick she could have cut it with a tomahawk.
Twisted Leg reached the next lodge and hurried around it to put it between her and the vicious white men. If she could put a few more behind her, she might be able to slip northward into the brush lining the river. From there she could easily cross to the far side.
In her haste, Twisted Leg nearly tripped over the bloody body of Wears Red. She was about to go around it when an infant wailed and the bundle in the cradle board moved. Quickly, Twisted Leg stooped. The baby was alive and unharmed. She stripped off the cradle board, her fingers flying. Tearing the last strap loose, she rose with the cradle board clutched protectively in front of her. The infant kept on bawling, too terrified to be soothed no matter how gently she talked or held it.
The delay had proven costly. A glance showed Twisted Leg several whites within a stone’s throw of where she stood. She ran awkwardly on, hopping unevenly every other step, for it was impossible for her to run with a steady, smooth gait, and she was so heavy with child and doubly burdened by the cradle board that she could not hop well. She passed another lodge, made for a third.
Somewhere to Twisted Leg’s rear, a white man yelled excitedly. A rifle boomed. Simultaneously, an invisible fist slammed into Twisted Leg’s right shoulder. She was sent stumbling and fell to her knees, but somehow she managed to keep her hold on the cradle board so the baby wouldn’t be hurt.
Stunned by the blow, Twisted Leg glanced down at herself and was horrified to see blood streaming from a hole in her beaded buckskin dress. It took a moment for the reality to sink in, and it was as if a bolt from the heavens had struck her. She had been shot!
Twisted Leg shifted. A white man thirty feet away was hastily ramming a lead ball down a rifle barrel. She resisted a wave of dizziness, pushed erect, and lumbered on by the next tipi. Acting on impulse, she turned to the side. The move saved her life. The rifle blasted again, but the ball ripped into the lodge instead of into her.
It would take the man a bit to reload, Twisted Leg knew. She hurried toward the river, plunging into a wispy smoke cloud rather than going around it. The terrified infant began to cry louder, its tiny arms and legs pumping in agitation. “Be still, little one,” Twisted Leg whispered. “They will hear you and know where we are.”
Weakness came over her, whether from the blood loss or the shock, Twisted Leg could not say. She willed her legs to keep moving, but her body slowed of its own accord. Frantic for the lives of Wears Red’s baby and her own unborn child, and for her own life as well, she looked back to see if the white man was still after her.
No, he wasn’t.
A different man was.
Twisted Leg went all numb inside. This new one wasn’t white. He was smaller and darker and his face was a cruel mask lit by sinister glee. He had a rifle tucked to his shoulder, but he did not seem to be in any rush to shoot. No, he was playing with her, letting her fear mount in order to feed his sadistic pleasure.
Unexpectedly, the smoke thickened, burying Twisted Leg in its depths. She couldn’t see the cruel man and he couldn’t see her. Encouraged, she limped off. The river was not all that far away. She might escape yet.
Twisted Leg’s left foot struck an exposed root. Pausing, she saw that she had reached the brush, and that the smoke was gradually dispersing. She hunched down as she hiked on, her bad leg lancing pain through her whole body but nowhere near as much as the shoulder wound. The front of her dress was now drenched.
A few more steps and Twisted Leg was in the clear. The river flowed in plain sight up ahead. Holding the cradle board closer, she hobbled toward her goal. She was the length of a lance from the water’s edge when a mocking laugh made her breath catch in her throat.
Julio Cardenas Morales took precise aim. He was thinking of a saying the gringos had, something about killing two birds with one stone. Well, Morales was going to go them one better. He was going to shoot three with one lead ball.
That the pregnant woman was a cripple meant nothing to him. That she held an innocent infant meant even less. The idea of mercy was so foreign to his nature that he never entertained it. The concept of compassion was as alien to him as the concept of doing honest work for a living.
Morales saw the woman’s pleading eyes, saw her start to mouth an appeal to be spared. Her stupidity was almost laughable. His finger curled around the trigger and the rifle thundered. The cradle board fell from her limp fingers and she landed heavily on her side. He thought she was dead, but when he advanced to make certain, she moved her head to look at him.
Those eyes of hers bothered Morales. There was something about them, an element that made him feel as if all the rottenness and vileness of existence festered within him. It was disturbing, this feeling. He had to stop her from staring. Setting down his rifle, he pulled both of his smoothbore pistols and stood over her.
“Puta. You get what you deserve, eh?”
The woman merely stared. Sadness etched her calm features, sadness and a tinge of regret.
Morales could not bear to have her look at him like that any longer. He extended the right pistol and shot her in the breast, then extended the left and shot her in the belly. He had half a mind to draw his butcher knife and slice open her stomach.
Someone began calling his name. Morales jammed the pistols under his belt, scooped up the rifle, and headed back, reloading while he walked. The firing had died down, except for an occasional shot. Flames crackled loudly; every lodge in the village was burning, just as Morales had intended.
The fire itself had leaped from dwelling to dwelling, but the ground around the tipis was largely untouched, since most of the grass had long since been grazed off or worn down. To the south of the encampment, the burn was still in progress, flames sweeping in a broad line to the southeast.
No doubt the prairie fire would burn for days, reducing hundreds of thousands of acres to charred ruin. Many hundreds of animals would be slain, rabbits and prairie dogs and perhaps a few buffalo, burned to a crisp. The mental picture made Morales smile.
Rafe Hancock materialized out of the smoke, several other renegades trailing him. All were coated with soot and grinning like kids given the birthday present of their dreams. “I reckon we bagged most of them, Julio,” he declared. “No sign of that boy, though. Or of Bennett and his squaw.”
Morales listened to the loud wails of despair, the groaning and moaning of the wounded. “Amuse yourselves. Finish off those still alive. Check all the bodies—”
“Lookee there!” Red interrupted urgently, pointing. “One of the bucks is coming back!”
Over a quarter of a mile distant a lone Cheyenne warrior raced madly toward the devastated village. His quirt rained down on his mount without cease.
“Look at that jackass,” Rafe said. “He’s so worked up about the vermin he calls kin that he ain’t watching out for his own self.” He raised his rifle. “He’ll be easy to pick off once he’s a mite closer.”
“Don’t waste the lead,” Morales said.
“How’s that, boss?” Webber asked.
“Wait and see.”
They complied, and relished every moment. They saw the fire line leap to the north, consuming the dry grass at an incredible rate. Within no time the blaze had spread out over a front hundreds of yards in length and kept on growing by scores of feet a second. At the same time the wind swept the line steadily eastward, toward the onrushing warrior.
“Don’t that idiot see he’s in for it?” Webber wondered. “Look at ’im. He’s not slowing at all.”
“Maybe he thinks he can jump the flames,” Red said, and snickered.
“Or maybe he just don’t give a damn,” Rafe mentioned. He would never admit it to the others, but he sort of admired any man – even a stinking Injun – who would put the welfare of his own before all else.
Morales chuckled. “He’ll never make it.”
And the Mexican was right. The warrior galloped straight at the billowing line of flame and smoke. At the last possible moment he tried to sail his mount up and over. It was a brave effort, but the one thing horses feared more than anything else was fire and this horse proved no different. No matter how superbly trained it might be, the intense, searing heat and the blinding, stinging smoke make it balk at the worst of all times. It slid to a stop in the very middle of the flames, then reared.
“He’s done for now,” Red declared.
The animal’s anguished whinny carried clear as a bell across the plain. They saw the warrior topple into the flames, try to rise, and be blanketed by smoke. The horse fled, much of its hide burned, its tail ablaze.
“Ain’t that a hoot!” Webber laughed. “I bet a pack of lucky wolves will be tastin’ fried horseflesh before the day is done.”
Landis had joined them and witnessed the warrior’s demise. “Pardonnez-moi, mes amis,” he piped up. “But if one Indian come back, maybe more be on their way, non? Maybe many more, I be thinking.”
