Savage Courage (7 page)

Far down away from his stronghold, where the land stretched out away from his mountain, fire had spread in leaps and bounds, continuing until rain began falling in torrents, soon killing the flames.

But the rain had not come soon enough. There had been much damage done to the vegetation.

That had been two winters ago. The cycle of rebirth had soon started afresh.

Through the burned stubs of broken conifers, toothlike and stubbed, came the spears of grass and the shoots of shrubs. From the charred logs came curled ferns. Under the warm earth, the hot seeds cracked open and life began anew.

Today he admired the gleam of willow branches bending in the breeze far beyond the area cleared by fire.

He looked even farther, where the river’s roar turned into tireless lapping, where dipping out of the sunlight it slipped into the ground, whispering quietly.

Even now as he watched, herons lifted off, big-winged, from the water.

Then he moved his spyglass so he could see the adobe houses at Fort Chance. When he had watched the fort being built so close to his mountain not long ago, he had feared an eventual confrontation with the white pony soldiers.

But his scouts, who were clever at watching and learning things, discovered that the main purpose for this fort had nothing to do with the Apache who made their homes in his stronghold.

The pony soldiers were there to protect the arriving settlers, and the white-eyes who were already there. One of the dangers they guarded against was scalp hunters who preyed on white-eye and red skins alike. Mountain Jack was the worst of these. Thus far, he had successfully eluded the soldiers, as well as Storm and his warriors, who also wanted to stop the evil man.

Despite their familiarity with all the haunts of this mountain, Storm’s men could not find him. Mountain Jack remained free to kill.

Just then his eyes widened and he held the spyglass steady as it picked up some movement down below, far beyond the fort. Off in the distance he spotted the tiny mounted figures of a man and a woman.

“The scalp hunter!” Storm gasped out, his heart
thudding in his chest as he recognized the white horse.

He could not believe that the scalp hunter had come out into the open. Storm shifted his spyglass so he could see who was riding with the scalp hunter.

It was a woman, a woman of Storm’s own skin color!

Ho
, she was Indian, but dressed as a white woman.

Had the scalp hunter taken a bride? Was he taking her to his hideout? It caused a bitter bile to rise in Storm’s throat to think that a red-skinned woman would lower herself to marry the evil man who had taken the scalps of so many Apache.

“She must pay in her own way for deceiving her race,” Storm whispered heatedly.

His jaw tight, he put his spyglass back in his bag and continued downward on the mountain pass, but this time as rapidly as possible. The narrow pass was dangerous; one slip of a hoof and both the horse and Storm could fall to their deaths.

But he could not waste time. He could not let the scalp hunter get away. Finally. Finally he had a chance to stop the man’s evil ways.

He rode on and on, then stopped long enough to take his spyglass from his bag again to take another look.

His heart sank when he saw no signs of Mountain Jack, or of the woman. But now at least he knew where to look for them.

The scalp hunter had become careless, and surely because of the woman.

And the woman had also been careless. Choosing a man such as Mountain Jack had sealed her doom.

Then his sister’s warning came to him. Was this possibly the woman she had seen in the stars?

If so, he understood why his sister had warned him. This woman was surely a traitor to her own people.

He rode onward. He would not stop until he found the sandy-whiskered man’s hideout.

He would stop the man’s evil ways. But what of the woman? What would he do with her once he had her in his possession?

“She, who is a traitor to her people, will be my captive,” he said, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowed with angry determination.

I will not let thee go!
I hold thee by too many bonds.

—Robert Bridges

“It’s been too long since Shoshana left,” George said as he stood before Colonel Hawkins’s massive oak desk. “I told both her and Major Klein not to be gone for long. I most definitely made it clear to them that they weren’t to go far. I shouldn’t have put my trust in that major. He’s too young.”

“The major might be young, but when assigned any duty, even as simple as being an escort to a lovely lady, he is more reliable than most men your age,” Colonel Hawkins said reassuringly. “Go back to your quarters. Relax. If they don’t return soon, I’ll
send several of my most trusted men to find them and bring them back.”

“As simple as being an escort to a lady?” George spat out, stunned that the colonel was taking Shoshana’s safety so lightly. “You know the dangers out there.”

“I’m sorry if you’re unhappy with my choice of escort, but they weren’t going far enough to worry about and Major Klein had finished his chores yesterday. He was to be idle today,” the colonel said.

“What kind of chores?” George asked between clenched teeth. He immediately saw how uneasy that question made the colonel. He held his hand out, palm side toward the colonel. “No. Don’t tell me. I might be too tempted to floor you.”

“It’s good you’re having second thoughts before doing something so asinine, George,” the colonel said tightly. “As I said, I’ll send out several soldiers to find them and bring them back to the fort.”

“Don’t wait too long,” George said angrily.

He swung around and walked out of the room, his wooden leg seeming to be twice as heavy today since the burden he was carrying on his shoulders was so great.

His daughter.

How stupid he’d been to allow her to leave the fort at all!

But as headstrong as she was, he knew that had he
not given her permission, she would have set out on her own, without an escort, and that would have been even worse.

He went back to his house and to the window in the living room, where he stared at the open land stretching away from the fort. There was still no sign of Shoshana or the major.

His eyebrows lifted when he saw a huge contingent of blue-coated troopers ride from the fort on their big chargers.

“Why, he’s as worried as I am,” George whispered to himself. The colonel had gone ahead and sent the soldiers out to search for Shoshana without waiting any longer.

George watched the dust scatter from the hooves of the horses and continued to follow the soldiers’ progress until they rode from sight. He felt hopeful that the soldiers would find Shoshana and the major because he had seen two Apache scouts at the head of the search party. If anyone could find two lost souls out there in the wilderness, those scouts could do it.

All Apache were well acquainted with this country that their ancestors had inhabited since the beginning of time. These scouts surely knew every spring, water hole, canyon, and crevice.

George was beginning to feel better about the situation now. All he had to do now was practice patience.

“I won’t think the worst,” he mumbled. “I won’t.”

He got out the long-stemmed pipe. He gazed at it for a long time, remembering the very moment he had gotten it. He had been torn with conflicting feelings since he had already slain a good number of redskins before attending the peace talks.

Sighing heavily, he sprinkled tobacco into the bowl of the pipe, lit it, then sat down before a slowly burning fire in the fireplace. His eyes watched the flames rolling over the logs in a slow caress.

Oh, how often had he sat before a fire with Shoshana, popping corn in the flames, munching it as they shared a game of chess?

“She’s always been so smart,” he whispered, tears shining in the corners of his eyes. “Too smart to allow anything to happen to her, especially in this land of her ancestors. Shoshana, honey, come back to me. Do you hear? Come . . . back . . . to me.”

He sat there for as long as it took to smoke the tobacco in his pipe, then turned when he saw the reflection of a bright sunset paint the wall above the fireplace.

He paled when he realized how long he had been sitting there, reminiscing. The sun was lowering behind the mountains. Soon it would be dark and Shoshana had not yet been found and brought back to the fort.

“Good Lord,” he mumbled as he pushed himself up from the chair.

He laid the pipe aside, then left the house.

Just as he got halfway between his house and the colonel’s, he heard the thunder of hoofbeats arriving.

His heart thumping, he turned and saw soldiers returning to the fort.

His heart skipped a beat when he got a glimpse of something that turned his insides cold. The body of a soldier was draped across a horse, his . . . scalp . . . removed.

Unaware that the colonel had come to his side, George jumped when he spoke.

He turned to Colonel Hawkins and saw his deep frown at the sight of the slain soldier.

“I was afraid of that,” the colonel said, sighing heavily. “After you came to me worrying so much about your daughter and Major Klein, I sent the cavalry out to search for them. It seems they found the major, but not Shoshana.”

“The major . . . ?” George gasped out, turning and once again gazing at the slain man. He turned back to the colonel. “How do you know it’s him?”

“A scout came ahead and told me,” Colonel Hawkins said, his eyes wavering as they gazed into George’s. “George, someone apparently ambushed them. The major was killed and your daughter . . . abducted.”

“Lord . . . Lord . . .” George said, feeling light-headed as he thought about Mountain Jack and how
surely he was the one who had done this horrible, heartless thing.

“Most of the search party is still out there trying to find Shoshana, but the scouts lost the tracks early on,” Colonel Hawkins said. “They won’t give up, at least not until darkness makes tracking impossible. Then they will have no choice but to return to the fort or become victims themselves, of either the scalp hunter or hungry animals . . . or even renegades.”

As the soldiers drew rein a short distance from George and the colonel, George went to one. “Where did you find the major?” he asked thickly. “How far from the fort?”

“Quite a distance, sir,” the young soldier replied. “I’m sorry, sir, but there was no sign of your daughter anywhere. The tracks had been covered up. The one who is responsible for this killing is a clever man who is skilled at being elusive.”

George felt a burning rage enter his heart. He glared from soldier to soldier, then flailed an arm in the air as he shouted at them. “Get back out there! Find her! Don’t come back until you have my daughter with you!”

A strained silence ensued as the soldiers looked past George and stared at their colonel.

Colonel Hawkins stepped up to George’s side. “Must I remind you that I’m in charge here, and
that I am the one who gives out the orders?” he said tightly. “For now, we must lie low. We have a dead soldier to bury. As we speak, there are soldiers out there risking their lives to hunt for Shoshana. You can’t expect the whole fort to go.”

“I can’t believe my ears,” George shouted at the colonel. “You, and those who returned without my daughter, are yellow!”

Although it had been some time since he had mounted a horse because of his wooden leg, George yanked a soldier from his steed. He shoved his cane in next to the rifle in its leather case at the side of the horse.

Then after groaning and grunting, he finally managed to get himself in the saddle. He glared at the colonel, as if daring him to allow a crippled man to leave the fort alone, with darkness coming on.

“Oh, very well,” Colonel Hawkins grunted. “We’ll ride out together to find the rest of the search party. We’ll camp overnight and begin the hunt again as soon as it’s light. I don’t need two missing people on my hands.”

My face in thine eyes,
Thine in mine appear,
And true plain hearts do
In the faces rest!

—John Donne

Shoshana was made to travel in front of Mountain Jack up a steep, narrow pass that climbed from the valley floor up a rock-walled canyon.

She knew now that she was at the mercy of the sandy-whiskered man, for the only escape was down the narrow passageway, and he had made sure that she wouldn’t get the chance to flee by forcing her to ride ahead of him.

Her only hope now was that whenever they
reached their destination, however far it was up in the mountain, there would be a moment of inattention when she could turn her horse around and escape back down the mountain pass.

She had hoped that soon he would have to take a break to relieve himself in the bushes. She felt the need to do that, herself, but would not ask permission of him. After she escaped she would take care of her personal needs.

He had taken a drink from his canteen often. She knew there was whiskey in the canteen because she had gotten a sniff of it when he handed it to her, asking if she wanted a swig of firewater, as he had called it.

He had laughed when she declined, then told her that most Indians would kill for a drink of firewater. Then he’d scowled, saying that she was different, though, wasn’t she? She was a civilized savage!

Refusing to allow what he said to upset her too much, she had refused his offer. She hated alcohol, even the vile smell of it. And if she didn’t drink any, there would be more for him.

If he drank himself into a stupor and lost all sense of what he was doing, it would not take much to escape from him.

She saw even now out of the corner of her eye that he had taken another drink, then rudely burped and laughed raucously when she turned her head
quickly so that she didn’t have to look at his disgusting face.

“So you think you’re too good to share firewater with me, do you?” Mountain Jack said, sliding his canteen back into his saddlebag. “What else do you think you’re too good for, squaw? Don’t you know that those white clothes don’t really make a civilized person outta you? You’re a redskin through and through, no matter how you dress or talk. I’ll have a lot of fun with you, squaw. But first things first. I have business to attend to.”