In the Season of the Sun (6 page)

“I kinda know what you're saying and I kinda don't,” Jacob said. His voice sounded dull and hollow. Too much had happened too soon. His mind could no longer comprehend the tide of rapidly changing events that had swept him away from every security and comfort and love he had known. Everything confused him, the fierce contrast of sun and sky, the limitless horizon, the long-nosed, rust-colored features of the warrior squatting across from him.

Kilhenny, damn his soul, had said no Indian could be trusted, that behind their inscrutable features there burned the blackest intentions. So had said Coyote Kilhenny, the Judas. And here was an Indian who looked at him with an expression that seemed utterly frank, a savage who had saved his life. Lone Walker spoke strangely but was hardly threatening. Jacob didn't know whether to stay by the fire or run like hell.

The aroma of sizzling meat decided for him.

While the rabbit on the spit turned golden brown, the Indian produced a handful of flat cakes made from dried chokecherries mixed with meal. Jacob found them delicious. He watched with unabashed curiosity as Lone Walker produced a basket-hilted cutlass, its blade shortened to no more than eighteen inches in length. He split the rabbit with the cutlass, half for the boy and the rest for himself.

“Where'd a fella like you come by that?” Jacob asked, staring at the shortened cutlass.

“Long ago,” Lone Walker said, eyes gleaming. “When I walked in a dream.”

Jacob tore a mouthful of meat from a leg bone. His cheeks bulged as he chewed, and as the juices rolled down his chin, he wiped them away on his shirt sleeve, then paused, hearing his mother in his mind admonish him for such poor manners. The memory saddened him. He cocked his head to one side, swallowed the food in his mouth, and narrowed his bronze eyes and stared belligerently at the Blackfoot.

“Do you ever say anything that anybody understands?” Jacob grumbled.

“Yes.” Lone Walker looked over Jacob's shoulder. “Our cookfire has attracted a guest.”

Jacob turned and sharply inhaled as he spied a horseman in the distance, looming closer, riding at a gallop through the glistening grass. Lone Walker picked up his elk horn bow and fitted an arrow to the sinew string. Jacob hadn't even noticed the bow lying in the grass. Its horn shaft was wrapped with hardened rawhide and an eagle feather dangled from either end of the weapon. But the horseman, an Indian with raven feathers braided in his hair, halted just beyond the range of Lone Walker's bow, raised his rifle, and called for the Blackfoot to put the bow aside. Lone Walker sighed and placed the weapon on the ground at his feet. He moved away from the bow but toward the cutlass nearby.

The Indian cautiously approached. Jacob's eyes widened in alarmed recognition. The mounted brave's features were garishly streaked with red and black war paint. He carried a rifle in one hand and a shield in the other. On the shield had been painted a yellow hand with black fingers. This was the brave who had shot Jacob and left him for dead!

Jacob forced his knees to quit shaking. He was frightened but resolved not to show the fear tearing at him. Here was one of the killers who had massacred the Milam party. Kilhenny had escaped and the other renegades too. Jacob's mother and father were dead. Perhaps Tom as well. Now this brave had come to finish the job. So be it. But he wasn't going to take Jacob Milam without a fight.

“He is Shoshoni,” Lone Walker softly remarked, glancing at the boy. Then he returned his attention to the man on horseback, who spoke haltingly in the Blackfoot tongue using a common form of signing to fill in the gaps. The Shoshoni spoke in a clipped, angry tone of voice, gesturing from time to time at Jacob. When the man paused, Lone Walker took the opportunity to explain.

“His name is Black Feather. He tells me that you killed his brother and stole one of Black Feather's horses and that he found the horse a half day's ride from here and it was dead.”

In the dark of night Jacob had ridden blindly into a prairie dog village, a portion of prairie virtually riddled with burrows and mounds. The gray had caught its hoof in a burrow and broken its leg, and Jacob had been forced to slit the animal's throat to put it out of its misery. He had stumbled through the morning hours and collapsed on the knoll where Lone Walker had found him.

Black Feather continued to speak. Jacob watched him and studied Lone Walker's expression as well, for he was suspicious of both men. Black Feather concluded his speech. Again Lone Walker interpreted.

“He intends to take you to his village where you will be his mother's slave to make up for the life you took.”

“And if I won't go?” Jacob asked as he stepped away from the campfire. Black Feather's horse moved toward the boy, forcing him to retreat onto the plain. Jacob saw a couple of scalps, one in particular, a bloody knot of long brown hair that reminded Jacob of poor crazed Nadine Beaufort.

Suddenly the fear left him and in its place welled fury and a thirst for vengeance. Jacob's eyes flashed with fiery hatred as he stared up at the horseman looming tall and terrible in his war paint and buckskins, with his war shield and rifle. As Jacob backed away, feeling the brown stallion's breath on his cheek, the thirteen-year-old slipped a hand in his pouch and closed it around the dried remains of the rattler he had killed in what seemed like a lifetime ago. He searched and found what he wanted, grabbed ahold of the reptile's tail, dragged it from the pouch, and gave the “rattles” a furious shake right underneath the stallion's nose.

Black Feather's steed reacted like any good mountain pony. It reared back, pawed the air, pitched, bucked, and swung about in a circle so tight that Black Feather was thrown completely clear. Jacob too had to leap out of harm's way. The Shoshoni fell on his shoulder, and with the skill of an accomplished fighter rolled and scrambled to his feet, rifle still in hand. The rawhide shield had broken on impact as it cushioned his fall. Black Feather charged through the dusty wake of his startled horse. The Shoshoni loosed a blood-chilling cry and raised his rifle as Jacob, his own knife in hand, cocked an arm as if to hurl the double-edged blade at the Shoshoni. The rifle barrel loomed ominously large, centered on the boy's chest. Jacob steeled himself for the shot.

The next second, in a blur of motion, Lone Walker dove through the air and knocked Black Feather off his feet. The rifle spat flame toward the sky as the two braves struggled to the ground, kicked clear of one another, and scrambled to their feet.

Black Feather swung the rifle like a club. It was a vicious swipe that would have caved in Lone Walker's skull had he not darted out of the way. The Blackfoot lunged in with his shortened cutlass. Black Feather parried and metal clanged as the rifle barrel glanced off the hilt of the cutlass. Both men retreated a step, each waiting for the other to commit himself. Black Feather feinted with the rifle butt, slashed with the barrel. Lone Walker lunged inside and caught the rifle in the middle of the barrel, then threw himself backward, dragging the Shoshoni forward. Lone Walker planted his right foot in Black Feather's gut and flipped him over.

The Shoshoni landed hard on his back, the wind knocked out of him, and for a few seconds his reflexes jammed. He struggled to rise. Lone Walker leapt astride the brave, arm raised. The brass guard of the cutlass gleamed in the sunlight, then the blade swept down to pin the Shoshoni to the earth.

Black Feather groaned and clawed at Lone Walker's shoulders, then his hands fell back to the ground, his arms outstretched and limp.

Jacob watched this without moving. Still in a state of shock, he did not speak. In truth, he hardly breathed as Lone Walker sang a death chant for the man he had killed. And when the Blackfoot had finished his prayer song, concluding with a chant of thanksgiving to the All-Father for his victory in battle, he stood and, noticing Jacob close by, walked over to the boy. And the warrior's wise sad eyes searched the youth as if they were peering into his very soul.

“Why did you help me?” Jacob asked.

“Would a father not help his son?”

“My father is dead!”

“My son is dead,” Lone Walker spoke calmly. He reached out and lifted the boy's hand that held the knife and placed the point of the blade against his chest. Jacob could take his life. For this moment Lone Walker was completely defenseless.

The horses, the weapons, everything was his for the taking. All Jacob had to do was kill the man standing before him, shove the knife home and be done with it. But the knife wavered in his grip and Jacob lowered his head and turned away. His shoulders bunched and his whole form seemed to shudder as he fought back the tears. Then he let go and cried for his parents and his inability to avenge them, for Tom, and for himself, because he was truly lost now.

The Blackfoot warrior crossed to the young boy's side and placed his hands on his shoulders. Jacob straightened, and the tears subsided. He knew then, he had done the right thing. The hatred in him burned, but it no longer consumed.

And Lone Walker spoke.

“Now my son is alive,” he said. “Now your father is alive.”

PART II

Tom Milam's Story

6

November 1840

O
n the Feast of All Souls, the celebration of the dead, it was business as usual along the Road of Kings in Santa Fe. Men drank themselves into oblivion or were helped along the way by pistol, knife, or cudgel in dark alleyways or bleak stalls. Men whored and reveled in fantasies realized for the gleam of a silver coin. And in no establishment along the Road of Kings was the laughter louder, the music more gay, or the women more willing than at Ma Cutter's Cibola Cantina. If the sins of the world could have been distilled into a drink, it would have been bottled and served at Ma Cutter's.

The Cibola was a sprawling single-story hacienda with a high-ceilinged spacious saloon dominating the street facade while the other three sides of the square offered rooms for the discriminating gentleman who wished to consort with one of Ma Cutter's girls. Brick walkways crisscrossed the courtyard in the center of the Hacienda and were lined with luminarias. In the center of the grounds, where a whole side of beef turned on a spit over a pit of fire, Ma Cutter herself, a broad-beamed wench, personally supervised the roasting steer. Her red hair was piled atop her head and pinned in place. Her cheeks were powdery and seemed unnaturally pale. Her eyes were quick and darting as she took in the surrounding scene. Now and then she paused to castigate a slothful servant or to caution one of her girls, “her doves,” to be extra nice to a particular individual.

Tonight, her worried gaze was fixed for the most part on the saloon. Even for its size the place was crowded. She could imagine the scene, smoky rafters overhead while at the bar her usual patrons must worm their way through a human barrier of the most dangerous sort, a host of free trappers down from the Sangre de Cristos and some even from as far as the Wind River range to the north.

Ma Cutter was so busy calculating the damage such wild men might inflict on her furnishings she never noticed the buckskin-clad form of Coyote Kilhenny stealing up on her. Clasping her immense stern in a fierce hold, Kilhenny thrust his groin against the folds of her velvet gown and rubbed against her fleshy buttocks and bellowed his pleasure.

Ma Cutter almost leapt into the fire pit in surprise and started to reach for the butcher knife she kept secured in a sheath dangling from her apron. Then she recognized Coyote and slapped at him with her large wooden basting spoon instead, a much less lethal weapon.

“Now here's a woman for me!” Kilhenny roared. His rust-red hair was slicked smooth against his skull; his beard glistened with water and smelled of vanilla. Time had streaked his beard with silver, but his shoulders were unbowed, still hard as stone, and he laughed and turned Ma Cutter in his arms and even managed to lift all two hundred twenty pounds of her a couple of inches clear of the ground. “Keep all them skinny little gals you run here,” Kilhenny said. “They be schooners, Ma. But you, ah, now you're a Spanish galleon.” He nuzzled the fleshy rolls of her neck. Ma Cutter laughed and grabbed him by the chin whiskers and kissed him on the lips.

“You lying honey-dipped old half-breed bastard,” Ma said. “Maybe tonight I'll just make you draw to a long suit, call your bluff and see if you're”—and she grabbed his crotch—”up to it.”

“I'd die happy.” Kilhenny winked.

“Just as long as you didn't go limp,” Ma Cutter cautioned, then she slapped him on the rump with the spoon and returned her attention to the meat. “Now be off and see to your men. And mind you, Coyote Kilhenny, I hold you responsible for any damage to my property, be it a bed or a bedmate. Be warned, Don Rafael Rodrigo, our new alcalde, has little use for Anglos. Worse, he is too damn devout and wishes to close the Road and drive us out.”

“The good folks of Santa Fe would never stand for that.” Kilhenny took a knife from his belt and peeled a strip of meat from the roast. Red juices dyed his chin. “Don't worry, I'll keep clear of Rodrigo. I'd hate to ruin my welcome hereabouts.”

“Wait till it's cooked,” Ma Cutter complained.

“It's dead, it's done.” Kilhenny grimaced, stuffing the morsel into his mouth. He pinched her left buttock and sauntered off toward the saloon.

“Hey, where's that boy of yours? You haven't let the redskins put him under have you?” Ma Cutter called out.

Kilhenny paused, turned, and flashed a grin. “The only Injun I've seen put Tommy under was a Paiute squaw and she put him under her blanket. Made Skintop mad as a mud dauber in a drought too 'cause he fancied the squaw for himself.” Kilhenny stroked his beard and wagged his head, remembering how Tom and Skintop had almost come to blows over the Paiute girl. He wasn't sure exactly whose life he had saved that day in August. Skintop was strong and mean, but Tom, at twenty-one, was slim and wiry, quick as a shadow, lethal as a snake.