In the Season of the Sun (3 page)

“I tried to hold 'em up, but Walks With The Bear took it in his head to come on.”

Coyote Kilhenny wagged his head and acknowledged those behind him but never took his eyes off Joseph Milam. The half-breed pulled a big bore pistol from his bandolier. “The old sod in the tam is Pike Wallace; he knew my father. The one next to Wallace is Skintop Pritchard. Now don't be a damn fool, Joseph. Me and the boys aim to wake the others, take what we will, and send your people on their way.”

Joseph Milam knotted his fists. They were betrayed! A dream, ended, came crashing down around him. All of Joseph's hopes … New Hope. The name reverberated in his mind, mocking him now, louder and louder until he could bear it no longer.

“Now I don't like much what I see in your eyes, my friend,” Kilhenny said. “A peaceable man like you is licked before he's begun.” He cocked the flintlock and centered the weapon on Joseph Milam's chest.

Joseph counted the men at the edge of the clearing. The families in the wagons just might have a chance if they were warned. Joseph Milam grinned and started toward Kilhenny.

“You think because I'm a man of peace I won't fight for my dreams,” Joseph said. His thoughts were of his boys and Ruth and gave him the courage to do what must be done. “You're the fool, Kilhenny, and a black-hearted one at that.”

“Stand or die, Joseph Milam,” the half-breed warned. His finger tightened on the trigger.

“‘Be strong and courageous,'” Joseph said, quoting Scripture. “‘There is a greater power with us than with him.'” Joseph slowly closed on the guide, who stepped back as he approached. “‘With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us fight our battles.'”

Joseph lunged, clawing for the half-breed's throat. Kilhenny cursed and squeezed the trigger. The gun in his hand roared and jetted black smoke and fire, which singed the chest of Kilhenny's attacker.

Joseph Milam landed on his back, trying to comprehend what had happened. His chest was blackened and singed by gun smoke, and from a gaping wound blood seeped like an overflowing volcano rimmed with pink froth. There was more gunfire now, but it sounded so distant. Joseph heard a woman scream and prayed it wasn't Ruth. He hoped the rest of the families were giving a good account of themselves. Sun in his eyes. Overhead, a bank of lazy clouds adrift.
God, how far away the sky!
It was as if he were sinking into the earth … no, into some vast and timeless river, flowing on, flowing … ever … on.…

Jacob watched silently as his father died. He stood like a statue, numb in his tracks, and sucked in a lungful of sage-scented air. He saw the white men and Shoshohi emerge from the trees and advance on the wagons; he saw Coyote Kilhenny block Joseph Milam's route to the river beyond the trees, pull a gun from his bandolier, and aim it at Joseph; and Jacob saw his father try a last desperate attack, forcing the treacherous trail guide to fire and alert those still asleep to the danger.

Jacob wanted to scream, but he couldn't find his voice; he wanted to run, but his legs were rooted in place. So he watched from the bluff, not more than fifty yards away, as Joseph Milam was blown backward against the hard earth, his arms splayed wide, looking more like a cast-off rag doll than the man of power and commitment he had been in life.

Kilhenny's henchmen led the Shoshoni in the attack. All need for stealth was gone now and only a sudden vicious assault would assure them of victory. Pike Wallace waved his tam like a banner and loosed a wild highland yell as Skintop Pritchard and the Shoshoni opened fire. As flames jetted from muskets and rifles, Walks With The Bear echoed Pike Wallace with a savage war whoop of his own. Bullets rent the canvas wagons and splintered wood as the startled inhabitants of the prairie schooners staggered into the dawn's light, some of them critically wounded and blood staining their bedclothes. Some of the men and women took up their guns and fired into the mass of warriors sweeping down on them. As brutal hand-to-hand fighting broke out among the wagons, the war party that had ridden past Jacob and Tom arrived at a gallop, following the sound of battle.

The six braves rode pell-mell into the fray. They fired rifles and loosed arrows as the settlers tried to make a stand. One woman, a short, thickset matron, gathered her children around her like a mother hen her brood.

“Mrs. Beaufort,” Jacob muttered beneath his breath. Her husband, a man of average height and stature, a schoolteacher whose talents were more for debate and intellectual exercise than combat, vainly struggled to reload his rifle. Skintop Pritchard ran up to him and knocked the rifle from the teacher's grasp. Beaufort staggered back, unable to comprehend a man of such violence. He tried to reason with the renegade. Pritchard only grinned and gutted Beaufort with a long-bladed knife.

A Shoshoni brave scattered the children around Mrs. Beaufort and silenced the screaming woman with a brutal blow from his war club.

Jacob looked away and spied Ruth Milam, nearly naked and kneeling by her husband's corpse, directly in the path of the onrushing horsemen.

“Mother!” Jacob shouted. “No! Run! For heaven's sakes, this way.” He waved his arms and tried to attract her attention. He was running along the bluff now, trying to get into her line of sight. She stood over her dead husband and faced the six braves bearing down on her. She raised a long-barreled pistol, aimed, waited a moment, then squeezed off the single shot.

One of the warriors doubled over, flailed at the mane of his war pony as if to pull himself aright; then tumbled to the ground. It was only a matter of seconds and the remaining five reached the woman. Ruth calmly awaited them and her small delicate frame disappeared beneath the flashing hooves of the horses.

“No!” Jacob screamed as his mother was obscured in a momentary swirl of dust that the wind at last brushed away to reveal a shapeless huddled form skewered on a war lance. The mounted braves rode straight for the wagons. “No!” Jacob screamed again and dragged his knife from his belt. Too much, he had seen too much. He would fight and he would die this day, but first, by heaven and hell, he would exact revenge.

The earth trembled beneath his feet and he whirled around to find a mounted warrior bearing down on him. Only then did reason temper his fury and he remembered counting seven braves out on the prairie. And here was the seventh. The brave rode a pinto stallion. The Shoshoni horseman carried a war shield and a rifle. Raven feathers fluttered from the brave's black hair. His face was garish behind a mask of red and yellow markings, and on his shield was the design of a yellow hand with black fingers.

Jacob's knife blade flashed in the sun. Thirty feet away the warrior leaned forward and leveled his rifle as he charged the youth.

“Come on, you red devil!” Jacob shouted, tears streaking his dust-caked cheeks.

The rifle belched smoke and flame. Jacob tried to duck and heard the roar of the gun an instant before the slug slapped against his skull. Searing pain, the world tilted crazily and shattered into a million pinpricks of light, each a miniature sun burning against a backdrop of blackest night. Then the darkness grew and one by one engulfed the tiny iridescent stars until at last only one remained.

2

“‘A
nd in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel,'” Kilhenny read aloud. “‘So that the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the heavens and the beasts of the field and all the men that are upon the face of the earth shall shake at my presence and the mountains shall be thrown down and the steep places shall fall and every wall shall fall to the ground.'” The half-breed closed the worn leather-bound Bible and shading his eyes gauged the hour of the morning by the sun looming balefully in the eastern half of the sky like the blank unseeing eye of one of those Coyote had betrayed.

He lowered his gaze to take in the carnage, the lifeless twisted bodies strewn amid three smoldering wagons. The remaining two had been spared the torch. The Shoshoni had loaded one with goods, the other with their captives, five children ranging in age from four to nine. The Indians had the horses as well and were already departing for their village beyond the Green River far to the west and north of the massacre site.

Kilhenny tossed the King James into the nearest fire. “Well, Joseph Milam, you had your shaking too. And by your own hand is the deed done.” Coyote watched as the flames that had charred the wagon frame lapped greedily at the pages of holy words. “I planned to strip you of goods and money and be on my way. You forced me to start the ruckus, and see what it bought you and your kinsmen. Nothing but early graves.”

“You talking to that wrecked wagon, Kilhenny?” Skintop Pritchard rode up leading Coyote's horse. Blood caked the right sleeve of his shirt. Old Pike Wallace had doctored the younger man's wound and cauterized the ruptured flesh with gunpowder.

Pike Wallace walked his own mount up alongside his bald companion. The older man led a string of horses taken from the massacre site.

“The younker here is fit enough to ride. The slug passed clean through. I burned the hole and sealed it off. And durned if he didn't seem to enjoy it,” Pike added with a wag of his head.

Skintop Pritchard laughed aloud and straightened in the saddle. His grin revealed a row of yellow crooked teeth. He tugged at the gold earring in his ear and appraised Kilhenny.

“How much we take off these bastards?” he asked.

“There was nary a bastard among them,” Kilhenny remarked. Now that the melee had ended he could afford regrets. The slaughter had sickened him. Still, Milam had made his own bed and now he'd rot in it. Coyote spat the taste of slaughter, of burned flesh and spent powder, from his mouth, wiped a hand over his rust-red beard, and swung astride his horse. Walks With The Bear, the Shoshoni war chief, noticed him and left the wagons to ride across the clearing toward the half-breed. A couple of other braves followed him and helped themselves to the horses Pike had taken charge of.

The Shoshoni handed Kilhenny a leather pouch.

“As we agreed, my brother. I take the captives, the horses, and the guns. Here is more of the white man's trade stones.” The war chief pointed to the pouch Kilhenny held. “I found this tied about the neck of one of the children.” Walks With The Bear looked at the other two men, his expression inscrutable behind his mask of war paint, then back to Kilhenny. “It has been a good day, my brother.” His chest swelled and he breathed deeply, taking in the stench of charred wood and dry blood, sage and the dusty odor of the beckoning plains. “You ride to Wind River with us?”

Kilhenny shook his head and gestured to the south. He hefted the pouch, unfastened it, and peered at the contents. Probably another three or four hundred dollars, he estimated, liking the weight of the silver dollars.

“Me and the boys'll drift on down to Santa Fe,” Coyote told the Shoshoni leader. “And have us a time.” He dropped the pouch into a saddlebag and tied it shut, the combined savings of Joseph Milam's party.

Walks With The Bear raised his war shield, its markings of red and black dabs of paint smeared with dirt. The rawhide surface of the shield was pocked from a stinging barrage of bird shot. Walks With The Bear twice struck the shield against his rifle.

“Your enemies are mine, Coyote,” he said and whirled his horse around and galloped after the members of his war party, who had already begun to string out along a trail, driving the captured horses up from the corpse-strewn campsite.

“We really headin' for Santa Fe?” Pritchard said, licking his lip.

“I said we were,” Kilhenny replied. “Just as soon as I check things out.”

“What things, laddie,” Pike Wallace inquired. He wanted to waste no time in fleeing this place of death.

“Milam's two boys, Jacob and Tom, went hunting. Reckon I better find 'em. No tellin' what they may have seen,” said Coyote Kilhenny. And the half-breed rubbed a hand over his red beard and waited for the war party to wind upward out of sight.

Then he motioned for Pike Wallace and Skintop Pritchard to follow him. Kilhenny's partners were anxious to leave the carnage behind. And they'd follow Coyote anywhere; after all, he had the money and only a fool would let the half-breed out of sight.

It didn't take long to find Tom Milam. The ten-year-old boy was breaking a path through the tall grass with the barrel of his rifle as Kilhenny and his men skylined themselves on the bluff overlooking the Platte River camp of the Milam party. Smoke from the burned-out wagons still clung to the air, discoloring what would have been an azure backdrop.

Tom Milam halted and shielded his eyes, fearful he had stumbled onto more of the war party that had passed him a quarter of an hour ago. He turned to run, determined he would not be captured like the poor helpless children riding in the stolen wagons. Then young Milam recognized the rust-red beard and broad-shouldered silhouette of the Milam guide and started toward Kilhenny at a run.

“I kill him now?” Pritchard grinned and cocked his rifle.

Kilhenny watched the lad come running, waving, calling Coyote by name. Tom was a good listener, the only one of all the Milam party to fall completely beneath the half-breed's spell.

“Coyote?” Pritchard said. “I can down him from here.”

“Put the rifle away,” Kilhenny said. The smaller man looked across the stock of his rifle in surprise. “The hell you say?”

“There's been enough killing today,” Kilhenny replied. “Ain't you had your fill, man?”

“It's crueler to leave the boy out here alone. He'll starve for sure,” Pike Wallace spoke up. He ran a hand over his leathery countenance. “Listen to me.”

Kilhenny nudged his horse's flanks and the animal started to descend toward the plains. “The boy's coming with me,” he said.

“What? Are you crazy?” Skintop Pritchard blurted out in astonishment.