In the Season of the Sun (37 page)

Abigail gazed at Vogel in open acceptance. She hadn't been able to make out a thing through all the gun smoke and the commotion on the walls. She had descended the stairs and rounded the entrance to find Con Vogel kneeling by Harveson's body. The strong young German had picked Harveson up in his arms and carried him within the walls.

“I know now what he was trying to teach me, Abby,” Vogel said. “My father's influence means nothing here. In this country a man makes his own way. He carves his own destiny out of the great dream, casts his own shadow … if only I could tell him.”

Con Vogel embraced her. “I'll be here if you need me,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. He nodded a good-bye to Smead and then headed out across the grounds of Fort Promise on his way to the barn.

Abigail watched him go, seeing him in a new light. His arrogance seemed tempered at last. He moved like a man who knew where he was going. The rasp of wood scraping along the earth broke her reverie. Dog Bill Hanna rounded the corner of the house.

He was dragging a coffin.

Lone Walker tested the iron shackle circling his right foot and tethered to the back wall by a couple of yards of heavy chain. His hands were free. And why not? Nothing of any use lay near enough for him to grasp in this front stall.

The blacksmith's forge and tools were directly opposite him, tantalizingly laid out. Only he'd need about four times the length of chain that secured him to the wall.

His right leg throbbed; his entire lower torso felt battered and bruised. But nothing seemed broken. He'd gotten off lucky. The memory of his fallen friends sprawled below the stockade walls and blasted into butchered meat by the cannon fire had burned an indelible image in his heart.

Shadows momentarily darkened the entrance to the barn. Coyote Kilhenny, Skintop Pritchard, and Bear sauntered into the barn. The white men closed in. Only Bear held back, fearful of the Blackfoot's vengeance despite the shackle.

“C'mon, Bear, you red-nigger coward. He can't hurt you no how.” Skintop Pritchard drew a line in the dirt floor with the tip of his boot. “See here, the chain'll only reach out so far.” Pritchard drew his skinning knife, squatted down, and looked the prisoner in the eyes. “Of course, if'n he was to somehow get loose, I'd cut his liver out and feed it to the wolves.” He jabbed the knife toward the Blackfoot. The blade passed to within a few inches of the chained man's face. Lone Walker never flinched. His coolness only infuriated Pritchard all the more.

“I think I'll cut me out an eye, then you'll yelp, you sorry bastard.” Skintop Pritchard grinned and hunched in even closer. Too close.

Lone Walker sprang forward, caught the man's wrist, and threw him down. He wrenched the man's arm and forced Pritchard's own knife, still in his grasp, toward his own throat. A couple of seconds more would have finished him.

Coyote Kilhenny, teary-eyed with laughter, moved in and planted a kick under Lone Walker's ribs. The force of the blow knocked the brave against the barn wall. Pritchard scrambled to his knees.

“I'll kill you,” he shrieked. But he never got the chance. Kilhenny dragged Pritchard off, wrested the knife from his grasp, and tossed it over by the forge.

“What the hell, Coyote?” Pritchard fumed.

“This buck's worth more to me in one piece,” Kilhenny replied, slapping the dust and straw from Pritchard's clothes. “The red devils will be back. I figure seeing their big medicine maker alive and our prisoner oughta take the starch out of them bucks.” Kilhenny glanced around at the Shoshoni. “That is, if he's as important as Bear says.”

The Shoshoni glumly nodded. He preferred to see Lone Walker dead at the hands of Skintop Pritchard. Now the opportunity was lost. But there'd be another time, when Kilhenny was asleep or gone from the fort. Then Bear would do what needed to be done. And with Lone Walker's own long knife. Bear patted the hilt of the cutlass he had taken off of the Blackfoot.

Coyote Kilhenny squatted down just out of reach of the Blackfoot prisoner. The trapper rubbed his neck and jaw, scratched at his beard, then examined his stubby fingernails.

“Yes sir, I suspect you'd like to lift my hair about now.” Kilhenny unslung his water bag, a length of buffalo gut stitched with sinew, thumbed the wooden stopper loose, and offered Lone Walker a drink. “This is just to show I may be a treacherous son of a bitch but I ain't mean. Bear told me you parlay English, so don't try to trick me.”

Lone Walker took the water bag and tilted it to his lips and drank deeply. His leg ached and his throat felt dry as dust, but a sip of water seemed to help both feel a little better.

“The white Injun that came a-charging after me. Who was he?” Kilhenny liked knowing his enemies.

“My son,” Lone Walker said.

“Sure, and Thomas Jefferson was mine.” Kilhenny's lips curled back in a horrible semblance of a smile. “I'll ask you again. Who was he?”

“My son,” came the Blackfoot's answer.

“Now will you let me tickle him with a hot iron? He'll sing right enough,” Pritchard muttered.

“No. Not now. Let him think it over.” Kilhenny flexed his big, thick hands and then clenched them into fists.

“Your ‘son' and a couple of the other bucks rode off with my boy. Any harm come to him, I'll send you to the happy hunting grounds piece by piece.” Kilhenny stood and led the others from the barn.

Lone Walker didn't hear the threat. Jacob was alive! He'd escaped unharmed! The spirit singer felt the weight of the world lift from his heart. Jacob Sun Gift had escaped. He lived!

Coyote Kilhenny paused just outside the entrance to the barn as Con Vogel rounded the corral and made straight for the half-breed. The aristocratic young German beamed as he approached Kilhenny.

“He looks happy as the camp dog that made off with the guts,” Skintop Pritchard said to Kilhenny.

The half-breed nodded. “And smells fresh as a daisy.” Kilhenny hooked his thumbs in his waist belt and waited for Vogel to speak.

“They have Nate Harveson all laid out and ready for the box,” Vogel informed them. “It would be proper if you stopped by to pay your respects to Miss Harveson.”

“That gal has too much grit to lie to,” Kilhenny said. “She'd see through me in a second. She'd see how I was plumb satisfied Nate is out of the way. She might even take a notion I gave you the gun that killed him.”

Con Vogel's eyes widened in alarm and he looked nervously around as if the man expected Abigail herself to be standing by and able to overhear Kilhenny's remarks.

“For heaven's sake, Mr. Kilhenny.…”

“Laddie, you stopped doing things for heaven's sake the minute you killed Nate Harveson.”

Again Vogel glanced about and he held up his hands, pleading for Kilhenny to lower his voice. Kilhenny only chuckled and clapped the German on the shoulder. “Not to worry, my lad. You're one of us now. You're among friends. I've got me a jug of rum under my bed and we owe it to ourselves to finish off.”

Con Vogel shrugged and tried to maintain his false bravado. Kilhenny was right. He was among friends. Who was there to overhear? He fell in step with Pritchard, Bear, and Kilhenny, taking comfort that he had won a place for himself among their ranks. It never occurred to him to glance back over his shoulder and up at the open loft door, where a silhouette ducked out of sight.

For all Con Vogel's efforts, someone had listened and learned his deadly secret.

42

T
om Milam was dead. And if hell held a fate for him, it would be seeing his brother Jacob dressed out as one of the savages who had murdered their parents. Tom managed to will the sight away. There was a great realm of darkness to dive into. A place of Stygian gloom. A place of peace.…

My head hurts. How can I feel my head when I'm dead. I'm not supposed to feel anything. I don't understand
.

“Tom.”
Someone calling my name
. “Tom.”
Again? Why so insistent?

“Tom.”

Shards of light illuminated the darkness, partitioned oblivion into a patchwork quilt of shadow and brightness.

I hear. I hurt. Then I'm not dead
. Cool water bathed his forehead; he opened his mouth and sucked moisture from the cloth. Kilhenny and the boys must have ridden out to find him. Coyote was probably angry as the devil. Well, he'd been angry before. Tom lost consciousness, relieved his earlier vision of Jacob had been like a nightmare, nothing real. He was among friends now. And so blasted tired. Face them later. Later. Later.

Tom Milam woke. He tried to sit upright, winced, and gingerly probed the lump on the side of his skull with his fingertips. He froze in mid-motion with the realization he wasn't in the fort and the likes of Kilhenny and the trappers were nowhere to be seen. In their place, a Blackfoot warrior woman and an old blind brave sat across from him, firelight playing on their features. A couple of rabbits had been skinned and hung over the fire, and from the looks of them they were about done.

Tom dropped his hand to where his pistols should have been.

“I took your guns,” a voice said from the darkness beyond the firelight. “Lucky for you. Tewa would have put an arrow through your heart before you could pull your gun. I'd hate to lose you again, Tom.” Jacob stepped into the circle of light. He wore buckskin leggings and moccasins; his upper torso, burned bronze by the sun, rippled with muscles; his tangled mane of straw-colored hair spilled across his shoulders and down his chest. He was marked with the ceremonial scars of a Blackfoot warrior.

Tom's mouth hung open. He was speechless. And yet, behind all the savage trappings, this was indeed Jacob, his brother.

“That's about how I felt when I saw that ring hung around your neck.” Jacob crossed the clearing to kneel at his brother's side. “When I think of how close I came to …” He shook his head and slowly exhaled. Then he reached out to embrace his brother.

Tom pulled back, his face an angry mask, revulsion in his eyes. “I'd rather be dead than see you riding with them—riding against your own people.”

“These are my people,” Jacob said. “Blackfeet took me in when I was just about finished, protected me from the Shoshoni that killed our folks.”

“Shoshoni?” Tom blurted out.

“Among others, yes. Blackfeet ways are my ways now.” Jacob indicated the two sitting by the fire. “The old one is Two Stars. The girl is Tewa. She is close to my heart.”

Tom glared at them. Tewa matched his hatred with her own. She had no use for the white man. He was her enemy. But he was Jacob's brother, and this left her confused and uncertain as to what she should do—feed him or kill him.

“Shoshoni, Blackfeet, what's the difference? They murdered our mother and father, and now you've sided with them.” Tom propped himself upright. His right arm trembled with the strain.

“Not I,” Jacob said. “You look to your own saddle mates. Look to Coyote Kilhenny.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Kilhenny killed Pa.”

“You're lying … .”

“I saw him”, Jacob said. “I hid in the buffalo grass and watched it happen. He led them into an ambush, just like today. I saw him shoot Pa. That was the signal for the Shoshoni to hit the camp. It was a slaughter. And Kilhenny and a couple of his friends did their share.”

“Lies,” Tom snapped. “I'll stop you.” His hands closed around Jacob's throat in an attempted stranglehold. But Tom's strength faded fast. The world reeled and he slumped back on his blanket. “Lies,” he repeated, more a moan this time. His arms dropped to the blanket and his eyes closed.

Jacob sighed and returned to the campfire. He explained to Tewa and her grandfather what had happened.

“I did not understand his words, but I could tell there was much hurt in his voice,” Two Stars said, edging closer to the warmth of the fire. Even a cool night caused his bones to ache these days. Jacob rounded the fire and draped an extra blanket across the old man's shoulders.

Two Stars tilted his seamed face up as if he could see Jacob towering over him.

“The hand that saved the father slew the son,” Two Stars said. Jacob stiffened, expecting another admonition from the blind war chief. Two Stars caught the younger man's wrist. “Yet it is a good hand,” Tewa's grandfather continued. “I sense the All-Father in what has befallen us. To hate this hand is to hate the Great Spirit of Life that guides it.”

Two Stars reached out. “Granddaughter, your hand,” he said. Tewa moved closer to the old one and stretched forth her own. Two Stars took her hand and placed it in Jacob's. “Your father walks with the Above Ones, Tewa. He rides the wind. Let it be so. And do not walk the great circle of life with a heart full of hate.”

Tewa looked down at their joined hands. Then her eyes met Jacob's. A single tear left a glistening trail along her cheek. She did not pull away.

Jacob clung to her. Tewa's slim fingers entwined with his. She lowered her head, her lustrous wealth of dark hair spilling forward to hide her features. At last, his grasp opened, their hands parted.

“Maybe I better check on the back trail before sleeping.” Jacob rose from the fire, took up his rifle, and started off toward the edge of darkness. He paused on the periphery of light, then continued into the woods. Hidden here in the sanctuary of the forest, a mere two days ride from Fort Promise, it wouldn't do to be careless.

“Granddaughter,” Two Stars said softly. “Four eyes are better than two in the dark. Go to him.”

“But this one … his brother?”

“I will call you if he wakes.”

“How will you know?”

Two Stars said simply, “Sometimes no eyes are better than four. I will know.”

Tewa glanced at the unconscious man, then lifted her eyes to the forest trail leading out of the clearing.