In the Season of the Sun (5 page)

“Tom's not here,” Nadine said, puzzled. “I was sure you both had been killed.”

Jacob's spirits plummeted.
Not here! Tom had to be here. If not, then where?

“What about Kilhenny?” Jacob asked, his tone darkening.

“Betrayed us,” Nadine sobbed. “He and his friends are the cause of this.” The girl shook her head, confused. “Kilhenny didn't come with us. He stayed behind with his friends.”

Kilhenny certainly had not been around when Jacob had regained consciousness. So he had left. Had he found Tom and taken him?

“We've got to free the others, Jacob. Bring up your folks and my ma and pa,” Nadine proclaimed. She smiled. Jacob's blood turned cold at the expression on her face. He could see clearly now even in the faint moonlight and could tell the girl's sanity was nearly shattered. She'd been beaten and raped and seen her parents hacked to death …

“Nadine, I came alone. There's no one but me.” Jacob tried to cover her mouth, to quiet her. It was the worst thing he could have done. The girl's eyes widened. She tore loose from his grasp and ran off though the tall grass. As she ran, her plaintive cry filled the night, calling for her mother and father.

“Oh God,” Jacob muttered and ran after her as the Shoshoni camp came sluggishly to life. The boy freed his knife and crashed through the buffalo grass in the direction of the horses. He gave no thought to stealth, not with Nadine running wild and hollering at the top of her voice. Back in the clearing, the braves staggered awake and fired a couple of rounds at the shadows as the captive children yelled for help. The poor innocents actually thought help had arrived.

Suddenly the Beaufort girl's outcry ceased. Maybe she'd returned to her senses. Not that it mattered now with all hell breaking loose at the wagons, Jacob decided as he charged through a break in the tall grass. At the sight of the horses dotting the moonlit plain, Jacob's spirits soared; he sighed in relief just as he stumbled over the body of Nadine Beaufort. The boy managed to slide to a halt. He sank to one knee and crawled to the fallen girl's side.

She lay on her back, her white flesh ghostly pale in the night, legs straight, one arm outstretched, the other draped across her small breasts. A shattered war club lay close by, glistening.

“Nadine?” Jacob said aloud and touched her head. He drew away in revulsion as his fingertips sank into broken bone and blood and brain tissue.

A war cry shattered the night and a Shoshoni brave leapt out of the grasses. Jacob fell back, startled, and the brave landed atop him and knocked the breath out of the boy. Iron-hard hands closed around his throat and the brave grunted as if in pain, then started to squeeze, a look of victory in his eyes that transformed by moments into an expression of astonishment, then dismay.

Jacob couldn't breathe and his head wound began to bleed anew and throbbed with the. intensity of a red-hot coal burning a fiery path along the side of his scalp.

He couldn't breathe! Not at first … then the pressure lessened … yes … the iron hands grew malleable … Jacob swallowed at last and now the crushing pressure eased from his larynx. The Shoshoni brave whose duty it had been to guard the horses pushed himself aright and stared with a dulled expression at the knife in his belly—Jacob's knife that he'd landed on by accident.

The big blade jutted from his belly and Jacob's hand clung to the grip. The Shoshoni grabbed young Milam's wrist and pulled, but he lacked the strength to free himself from the double-edged “toothpick.” He shuddered, doubled over, and fell on his side. Jacob kicked out, freed the knife, and got to his feet. He sucked in a lungful of air, his heart hammering in his chest. He stared at the bloody knife he held, at the man on the ground, then at the tall grass. He heard the noise of pursuit—dry grass being trampled, war whoops ringing out—drawing closer.

Something moved behind him. The boy whirled and started to slash out, but he froze in his tracks as a small, sturdy-looking mount, a gray stallion, raised its head, nostrils flared to catch Jacob's scent. Fate had chosen a steed for the frightened thirteen-year-old. He ran to the animal and freed its forelegs from the rawhide hobbles of its owner. The horse shied and tried to run, but Jacob caught his hand in the mane and by the stallion's lunging gait was swung astride the animal's back. Gunfire roared. The orange flames stabbed toward Jacob and spooked the stallion that was already startled by the unfamiliar-smelling boy clinging to its back.

The stallion flattened its ears and galloped off into the night carrying Jacob Milam deeper into the howling wilderness.

4

T
he ceiling of clouds came with the morning and had seemed impenetrable until noon when Lone Walker paused to survey the surrounding landscape, an immense and lonely windswept plain transfixed now by a single golden beam of sunlight escaping through a momentary rift in the dark cloud cover. Lone Walker remained motionless, a silent spectator to the phenomenon of sunlight and approaching storm.

The bay shook its head, long mane whipping out, and the pinto shifted its stance. Lone Walker sensed their wariness. It was an angry sky and he would do well to find some sort of cover, yet in this sun-stained moment found a magic to renew his sagging spirits. The Blackfoot no longer knew how many days had passed since he had ridden from Ever Shadow. His features were seamed and serious, his eyes worn from watching too many sunsets and sunrises, his limbs weary from wandering. Lone Walker had begun to question the purpose of the Above Ones who had set him on this journey in the first place.

The stream of sunlight bathed a knoll and perhaps as much as an acre of ground around it. The buffalo grass glowed and when the wind blew became like a sea of yellow fire lapping at the base of a rock-strewn, barren knoll. And on this bald hillock rising out of a sea of grass, a figure lay sprawled, his arms outstretched, his shaggy hair the color of the sun washed grasses.

Lone Walker frowned, then recognized at last what the sun had revealed to him. He started the bay toward the knoll. The Blackfoot's heart throbbed in his chest, all his senses alert, as he tried to discern between illusion and reality. A nudge of his heels and the bay broke into a gallop, and Lone Walker loosed a wild cry that rang out over the storm-threatened land. Lone Walker's journey was at an end.

A hundred yards became fifty then halved again until Lone Walker himself was bathed in the same pool of light as the unconscious boy at his feet. As the wind whipped the dust away, the Blackfoot swung down from the bay and turned the boy over and then gasped, realizing he had found a young white boy who appeared to be nearly the same age as Young Bull when he died. The Blackfoot straightened and searched the surrounding landscape, but saw no one. Nothing stirred save the windswept grasses stretching onward to meet the thunderheads darkening the horizon.

The pool of golden glowing light narrowed as the clouds overhead rearranged themselves to eradicate the escaping warmth of the sun. At last, only the brave and the unconscious boy remained illuminated on the hill.

Lone Walker knelt, placed his ear to the boy's chest, and ascertained that the young white man lived. But how had he come to this spot? By horse or afoot or perhaps as a gift of the sun? But a white skin, mortal enemy to the Blackfoot! Maybe the Above Ones were crazy this day. Yet what was a man to do but accept the way of things.

Lone Walker turned the lad over and scooped him up in his arms. “Sun Gift,” he said. “My son.”

5

J
acob opened his eyes, surprised that he still lived. As the world slowly slid into focus, he remembered riding for his life, clinging bareback to the Indian pony. His head no longer throbbed as it had during his night ride, no longer seeped blood to blind him, and the nausea that had finally caused him to lose his grip on the animal seemed to have abated.

He was alive. And except for a dull headache and an empty stomach, he felt all right. Jacob's vision cleared and overhead he saw the woven grass roof of a makeshift shelter. He shifted his frame on the blanket under him. Thunder rumbled. He heard droplets of water splashing in a puddle near the entrance, a crawl-through blocked by a blanket. On closer inspection the shelter appeared to be made of hastily woven grass covered by a blanket. The interior was circular, about four feet from floor to ceiling and perhaps six feet in diameter.

A water bag made from buffalo gut had been left close at hand along with a portion of dried meat on a swath of rawhide. Jacob reached for the water bag, then froze, realizing for the first time he wasn't alone. In the dull and meager daylight filtering through the entrance Jacob spied Lone Walker, asleep on the other side of the water and provisions.

The thirteen-year-old fumbled at his waist searching in vain for the knife his father had given him. Suddenly the Indian stirred and the blade of the “Arkansas toothpick” flashed in the gloom. Thunder cracked and Jacob started despite himself.

“You have slept for a day and a night and part of this day. I thought you might die. Instead the All-Father has returned you to life,” Lone Walker said in Jacob's own tongue. The boy did not budge an inch, expecting twelve inches of cold steel to plunge into his heart. He felt too weak to defend himself.

“I am Lone Walker,” the Blackfoot said, his long black hair framing his dim silhouette. Jacob gingerly touched his forehead and discovered a cloth bandage, moist with a paste of ashes and herbs.

Indians had murdered his mother and father. Hatred welled in his heart, rose to his throat as bitter as bile. In his hatred, he could find no reason for why this savage had tended his wounds.

“It will heal,” Lone Walker continued. He leaned forward, his dark eyes peering into Jacob's. “The wounds here, inside, only the coming and going of the moon can mend.”

Lone Walker could read the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust in Jacob's expression. The Blackfoot reached over and placed the knife, hilt toward the boy, alongside Jacob's blanket. Then Lone Walker stretched out on his own blankets, lay back, and listened to the wind blow and the rain fall. It had rained for much of the time since his finding the boy. Luckily, the brave had remembered passing the crudely built shelter and backtrailed to find it. He had ground-tethered both his horses and knew they would weather the drenching rainstorm, for the animals had been bred to a harsh environment.

“You are weak,” Lone Walker said. “Take food and drink and try to rest more. We have a long way to go.” The brave rolled on his side—his back, defenseless, to the boy. He lay still, pretending to sleep, but listening, and every sense alert to threat.

Jacob stared at the knife and his hands closed around the hilt. He wanted to avenge his parents, everyone he had seen murdered. And Tom, yes, his brother too for whatever had happened to him. And here was the opportunity. He rubbed a forearm over his features, felt again the carefully wrapped bandage. He looked down and saw the wound on his leg had also been cleaned and wrapped tight. The boy was confused. He wanted to lash out, and yet he did not move, could not move. Why? Gratitude toward a red heathen, maybe one of the very bastards who had trampled Jacob's mother.

Reason and emotion warred, with neither one victorious. He returned the knife to his belt. He gobbled down a morsel of jerked antelope meat, found it delicious, and finished what had been left for him. He drank long and deep from the water bag, set it aside, and lay back on the ground that trembled at the thunder. Jacob shuddered, closed his red-rimmed eyes, and tried to plan. Maybe he could not bring himself to kill his red-skinned benefactor, but Jacob intended to escape and if he stole the brave's food and horses in the process, so much the better. He waited … and listened … and waited for the storm to break, for the rain to cease, for the right time to act.

Jacob woke, saw he was alone in the prairie shelter, and wondered how long he had slept and where the Indian had snuck off to.
Why wait to find out?
His head no longer ached. He sat up and, encouraged, resolved to escape. Quickly as he could, Jacob gathered up the water bag, and his own pouch and wrapped the blanket he had slept on around his shoulders. He crawled out of the lodging and stood in the light of a clear blue sky, a bold sun burning on high, rain-freshened air fragrant with sage, a day to glory.

Lone Walker, a few yards away, sat facing a campfire. He was a short, solidly built man in buckskin leggings. His long unbraided hair streamed in the wind as he busily cleaned and gutted a jack rabbit. His voice rose and fell in lilting tones; he sang softly a prayer of thanks to the rabbit's spirit for nourishing the Indian. Jacob couldn't understand but found himself transfixed by the red man's hypnotic voice.

Lone Walker hung the fresh-killed meat on a spit above the fire. Blood sizzled and dripped onto the coals. He turned and spied Jacob and motioned for him to approach. Jacob looked from the brave to the pair of horses grazing out on the plain and back to the roll of hard muscles cording the warrior's shoulders and chest.

Jacob's legs almost gave out on him. He dragged one foot in front of the other and drunkenly lurched toward the fire. He might be as tall as Lone Walker, but the thirteen-year-old found little comfort in the fact. A man like this Indian could easily overpower a thirteen-year-old boy, especially one weakened from blood loss and exertion.

So Jacob did as he was told and made his way to the campfire and sat facing the brave, the fire between them. Jacob's hand was firmly clasped around the wooden handle of his knife.

“You still fear me?” asked Lone Walker.

“No,” Jacob lied. “How do you speak English so well?”

“I have not always lived in Ever Shadow. I have wandered, alone, like you, Sun Gift.”

“My name is Jacob,” the boy retorted.

“Jay-cub,” Lone Walker repeated. “Jacob … Sun Gift …” He nodded. “It is good.”