In the Season of the Sun (36 page)

And now, quite unexpectedly, the end. Nate Harveson's head drooped and bowed him forward as he died.

A time for killing, a place for dying, and Kilhenny's men would not be denied. Riflemen streamed from the blockhouses and emptied their guns at the remaining Blackfeet. The trappers on the stockade walls crammed powder and shot down the heated barrels of their rifles and loosed volley after volley at the fleeing warriors. An acrid pall blotted out the sun, the stench of powder smoke burned the lungs, eyes watered from the black grit that spewed from the muzzles of the Hawken rifles.

The tribal elders lay sprawled in attitudes of death below the walls of Fort Promise. The corpses of another ten braves littered the trampled earth between the blockhouses. Grape-shot and rifle fire had taken a deadly toll. Yet it could have been worse. The remaining two thirds of the braves who had journeyed from Ever Shadow had escaped Kilhenny's trap and were riding for their lives, right toward Tom Milam and the men hidden in the draw.

Tom watched as the braves charged past the fort and streamed out onto the plain. It was time to bring his men into play, to strike hard and finish off the survivors. It was time, once again, to avenge his parents' death. And yet he gave no command as the Blackfeet attempted to escape the massacre Kilhenny had arranged.

A shadow fell across him and he turned expecting to find Dog Bill Hanna. Instead, reedy old Spence Mitchell spewed a stream of tobacco juice and leaned on his rifle. He cocked a thumb toward the men in the draw. More than half their number were walking their horses up the draw, following the contour of the land and heading toward the woods. Dog Bill Hanna rode at the head of the buckskin-clad column.

“That sumbitch Hanna is taking them others out of the fight!” Mitchell exclaimed.

“I've got eyes,” Tom retorted.

“Well, ain't you gonna stop 'em?”

“Why?”

Spence Mitchell stared at the younger man in amazement. “Why?” Mitchell wiped a forearm across his mottled beard and shook his head. “What the hell's got into you, boy?”

“Something I never knew I had.” Tom rolled over on his back, folded his hands behind his head, and studied the limitless expanse of sky. The rifle fire had slackened, but the thunder of hooves rumbled in the earth.

“Well, you and your conscience can go straight to hell!” Spence Mitchell scrambled down to the bottom of the draw, where the remaining ten men waited uneasily for someone to give them the word to charge the fleeing braves.

“What's going on, Spence?” one of the men growled.

“Nothin',” Mitchell replied. “Follow me, lads. Let's take us some Injun scalps.” The ten cheered and urged their horses up the side of the draw. Tom listened to their wild war cries. He expected they'd get more than they bargained for. Gunfire rattled on the plain.

Tom Milam kept his back to the fray as he climbed to his feet and returned to his horse, ground-tethered in the bottom of the draw. Tom was uncertain of his course for the first time in his twenty-one years.

As the past bound him to Kilhenny, so did the future hold Tom Milam to a fair skinned girl with eyes of the darkest emerald and hair the color of rain glistened earth.

Jacob Sun Gift riding at a gallop, poured a charge of black powder down his rifle barrel and followed the charge with a smaller caliber lead ball that he seated in place by slapping the rifle butt against his thigh. The load would do for short-range work. He didn't have time for anything else, not if he wanted to save Two Stars' life. The blind man could only ride where his horse took him, in this case right toward Spence Mitchell and another grizzled trapper by the name of Dan Pugh. Neither of the trappers guessed the old one was blind, nor would it have mattered. As the other men from the draw pursued the fleeing party of Blackfeet, Mitchell and Pugh roared in triumph and bore down on Two Stars.

Their horses were fast. But Jacob's gray mare was faster. The animal plunged across the rolling grassland. The trappers raised their rifles. Two Stars pulled blindly on the reins and stopped not twenty feet from the white men. He seemed to sense the presence of others and stretched out a crooked staff he carried. The raven feathers adorning the staff fluttered as he waved it to and fro.

Both trappers suddenly realized their enemy was sightless. Pugh grinned and sighed on the brave's chest.

Jacob came at them from behind, his gray mare covering the distance with tremendous strides. Jacob Sun Gift loosed a wild cry. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Another trapper joining the contest? Three to one made for lousy odds. But with Two Stars' life at stake, Jacob had no choice.

Spence Mitchell and Pugh wheeled their mounts and fired wildly at the white Indian charging toward them. Jacob crouched low, leaning forward on the neck of his horse. The trappers dodged to either side, clawing for their pistols. Pugh was the closest and Jacob raised up, fired, and dusted the trapper's buckskin jacket with a lead slug. Pugh dropped off his mount. Jacob reached Two Stars and planted himself between the blind man and Spence Mitchell's pistols.

Jacob shouted for Two Stars to crouch as low as possible and struggled to point the old one's mount in the right direction. Jacob whirled as Mitchell fired. He tensed at the gunshot, expecting the impact of a bullet.

Instead, Spence Mitchell had fired into the air. A feathered shaft sprouted from his neck. A few yards off to his right Tewa notched another arrow, raised her elk horn bow, then held her fire. Spence Mitchell clawed at his skewered throat and screeched. It was a horrid sound. The trapper toppled from horseback and landed on his side. His legs pushed him along the ground for a couple of feet as he choked on his blood and then died.

“What has happened?” Two Stars said.

“Everything,” Jacob muttered. He led Two Stars' horse to Tewa, who wore a look of surprise when he handed her the reins.

“I've got to go back. Lone Walker, Standing Elk, the others …”

“Dead or captured. I saw.”

“No.”

“There is nothing you can do,” Tewa replied. “They are taken and there is nothing you can do but die.”

“Then I'll die,” Jacob said angrily, loading his rifle.

“Would Lone Walker wish it so?”

Jacob stared at her, suddenly hating this woman because she spoke the truth. And he didn't want to hear the truth. Not now. He looked back toward the fort and saw a heavily armed body of men emerge through the front gate. He didn't know whether Lone Walker was alive or dead. But there was nothing to be done for it now except ride like hell.

“Aayiii!”
he screamed, loosing the pain that welled in his chest. The gray mare broke into a gallop. Tewa followed, leading her grandfather in a race against death.

They needed cover and they needed it fast. Jacob spied the draw not fifty feet away and headed for it, drawn by necessity, and the inevitable hand of fate.

Tom Milam kept his gelding to a loping gait as he worked his way along the draw and out of the way of the escaping braves. The heavy exchange of gunshots to the north and west suggested Spence Mitchell and his boys had gotten a lot more than they bargained for. Tom figured the bastard got what he deserved. Then again, they probably all would. Now there was a chilling thought.

Tom studied the tracks left by Dog Bill Hanna's bunch and decided they'd followed the draw all the way to the edge of the forest. Not Tom Milam; he hid from no one. A sharp tug on the reins and the gelding responded, dug its hooves into the soft earth and started up the side of the draw.

Jacob appeared on the rim, and charged down almost on top of the gelding. Tom kicked free as the horses tangled and lost their footing and tumbled down into the bottom, rolling over each other, neighing in terror, hooves flashing in the air.

Jacob launched himself as well and, landing on his side, rolled and allowed his momentum to carry him to his feet. He charged through the dust, eager to revenge himself for Lone Walker and the others. Tom braced himself on one knee, couldn't find his rifle, and grabbed for his belly gun. Jacob moved in for the kill, raised his rifle, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. His fall must have knocked the firing cap loose! Tom yanked the pistol from his belt. Jacob leapt forward and swung the Hawken like a club. Tom tried to duck and fired off balance. The heavy octagon-shaped barrel slapped his skull and shattered sunlight into an astounding array of colored splinters flung like daggers toward his eyes.

Tom Milam fell backwards into the draw. Jacob tossed his rifle aside, drew his double-edged “Arkansas toothpick,” and leapt atop his unconscious foe. The side of Tom's face was shiny with blood. Jacob straddled him and raised the broad blade of his knife, poised to strike.

“Kill him!” Tewa brusquely gave her verdict as she led Two Stars into the draw. She leapt down and gathered the reins of the gelding and the gray mare as the frightened animals struggled to stand, miraculously spared from serious injury. She glanced around at Jacob, arm raised, unmoving. Tewa hurried to his side. “Kill him,” she repeated. She stepped around him and for the first time looked into Jacob's bloodless expression, as if he were face to face with one of the Above Ones. In one hand he held his knife, in the other a fragment of Tom's shirt that had torn away in Jacob's fist. As the knife's lethal length flashed in the sun, so did the serpent ring gleam brightly against the fallen man's chest.

“Kill him,” Tewa snapped, vengeance in her voice.

“No,” Jacob whispered, lowering the knife in his hand.

“Why?” Tewa asked, astonished by his actions.

Jacob looked up at her. “This is my brother.”

41

H
iram recited from Jeremiah. The words sounded appropriate to him and he hoped they would comfort the young woman standing by the corpse of her brother stretched out upon the long oaken table in the shade of the summer kitchen.

“‘Let my eyes stream with tears day and night without rest, over the great destruction which overwhelms the virgin daughter of my people, over her incurable wound.'” The black man's voice wavered a moment. But Thalia touched his arm and encouraged him and Hiram continued. ‘“If I walk out into the field, look! those slain by the sword; if I enter the city, look! those consumed by the hunger. Even the prophet and the priest forage in a land they know not.'”

“Well spoken,” Mose Smead added in a whisper as he stepped past the black couple and crossed to Abigail's side. She looked up as he approached. The riverboat captain was surprised to find her eyes dry, though her features were pale and drawn, the muscles tense along her jawline and neck. The captain reached over and tucked a Bible into the dead man's hands and patted his cold fingers. “Sleep in peace, son.”

“Hiram put the fresh suit on him,” Abigail said. “All the better to hide the wound … the blood.”

“Death is never pretty. But it is final. It puts an end to things,” Smead said and shifted his stance.

The sound of a hammer and saw continued to break the stillness of the afternoon. Dog Bill Hanna had volunteered to build a coffin for Nate Harveson's burial. The other casualties, like Spence Mitchell and the men who had followed him, were summarily wrapped in blankets and planted six feet under. The Blackfeet had suffered a different fate. Kilhenny, in his wrath that so many had escaped, ordered the dead braves to be stacked like cordwood and burned.

Only Abigail had insisted her brother have a proper coffin and when Dog Bill stepped forward to offer his services, she gratefully accepted.

“A powerful lot of dying happened today,” Smead sadly observed. “And now it's all come crashin' down. I've a good crew. You say the word and we'll fire the engines and build us up a good head of steam and be ready to take you out of this cursed country.”

“I'm not leaving.” Abigail brushed a few strands of hair back from her features, her green eyes afire with determination.

“What? My dear, are you mad? You've lost your brother today, and that young hot spur you'd taken a fancy to.”

“Tom Milam isn't dead,” Abigail replied. “Mr. Hanna saw him carried off by some of the Blackfeet. Perhaps they intend to trade him for the man they've got chained in the barn.”

Even in her grief, Abigail had been observant enough to notice Kilhenny, the Shoshoni called Bear, and half a dozen men bring in a warrior they had dragged out from under his dead horse.

Later, Dog Bill Hanna had passed along information he'd gleaned from Walks With The Bear that the Blackfoot's name was Lone Walker, a revered shaman and leader of his people.

Tom's capture had only added to the day's calamitous results. Yet he hadn't been killed outright. There had to be a reason for his being carried off. Abigail could only speculate that the savages intended to exchange him for Lone Walker. In the face of her brother's demise, Abigail had to have something to cling to, even something as fragile as hope. It was better than nothing. In the span of a few minutes, her whole world had come crashing down around her. And yet Abigail stood, holding back the tears. Now, in view of so many people, it was time to show strength. If her world had crashed, so be it, still Abigail Harveson wasn't broken.

Abigail sensed someone behind her, turned, and saw Con Vogel standing a few feet away. He'd washed the powder smoke from his broad handsome features and donned his best clothes. He'd wet his blond hair with water and brushed it flat against his skull without a part. His eyebrows all but disappeared, so fine and fair were they against his smooth high forehead. He held his hat and reverently moved in under the roof to stand alongside Abigail. He placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I can't believe he's dead. Even seeing him, now, like this, I can't believe he's dead.” Vogel sighed, drew close to the body, and lowered his head as if in prayer. After a few moments of silent invocation, he looked at Abigail. “God, I feel as if I'm to blame. I was standing right there. It happened so damn quick. He was running to cover. Why he turned I don't know, but he stopped to look back. I saw him fall. It was terrible.”