Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (27 page)

   
He felt a dull ache from a club striking the back of his right shoulder, then a series of other splintering pains to his head and upper body as he weaved and dodged, flinging the loose coat sleeves before him. He set his mind to ignore everything else and concentrate only on freedom at the end of the line. When he had almost gotten through it, a white-hot sheering agony suddenly sucked the air from his lungs as a skinning knife slashed deeply across his left side. Samuel flung his tunic away, hitting the warrior on the opposite side full in the face. He clenched his jaw and sucked in a big breath of air, willing the red haze before his eyes to abate as he lunged past the last man.

   
So far he was still on his feet, but for how long? Not allowing himself time to consider his throbbing injuries, he walked across the clearing and up the hill into the field beyond. Spiky thistles bit into the soles of his feet and the sharp edges of dry prairie grass slashed his ankles and the tops of his feet with myriad tiny cuts.

   
Shelby willed himself to feel nothing. He knew the lean graceful Osage prided themselves on having swift runners. One as tall and powerful as Man Whipper would be fleet as a deer and enduring as a mustang. He must outdistance all the rest before he could turn and face that lone adversary.

   
Mercifully, the prairie meadow was broken by several stands of timber. If he could disappear from their view, they would have to split up their pursuit. Cunning, as well as endurance, would be needed here.

   
He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other until he cleared the oak tree. Then without a backward glance he broke into a swift sprint. A series of loud whoops sounded behind him, signaling that his foes had taken up pursuit. The hunt was on and this time Samuel Shelby was the prey, not the predator.

   
The long stretch across the hard dry plain was thistle filled and pockmarked by prairie dog holes. He was forced to run flat out, risking not only the continued pain from the sharp thorns but also the chance of slipping into a warren and going down with a broken ankle. Yet he dared not look down. All he could do was expend every ounce of his will in that first great burst of speed.

   
With his long legs and powerful chest, Samuel had always been a swift runner but never before had he been forced to run for his life. By the time he neared the first wooded section of land, his sides began to stitch and he felt a slow burning sensation in the muscles of his legs. Soon his lungs felt as if they were afire. Every breath became an exercise in excruciating agony. But still he did not slow down. When he reached the trees he zigzagged through the heavy brush growing between them until he hoped that his pursuers could not be certain in which direction he had turned.

   
At last he slowed, blinking his blurred eyes in the damp gloom of the woods. Avoiding the dead trees and rotted stumps blocking his path, he cut sharply to the left, remembering that way lay a fork in the Niangua River he had been following before he camped last night. If he could reach it, he might be able to hide his trail and slake the burning thirst that seared his swollen tongue and throat.

   
Clearing the woods he again fell into a ground-devouring all-out run, hearing the yelling and the crashing in the brush behind him. His pursuers had drawn closer! The ground fell away now, a long gradual slope down to the marshy willow-shrouded reaches of the river. As his momentum caused him to pick up speed he thought his lungs would explode in his chest.

   
Feeling a cool wetness on his burning chest he glanced down and saw that his nose was bleeding so profusely it had stained his whole upper body with sticky red blood. The evil slash inflicted on his side had already soaked his breeches. He felt light-headed, dizzy. Only the beckoning coolness of the river kept him pounding on until he broke into the timber. By now he had lost at least half his pursuers, judging by the noise of pounding feet behind him. He took no time to look back and count.

   
The sound of the river was sweet music. The cold current ran swift and, in spots, deep enough to conceal a man...if he were lucky to find such a spot. Samuel hit the water in a flat, shallow dive. The icy contact numbed the pain throbbing through every inch of his body but the shock of it nearly caused him to black out. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of water and looked around. Soon they would be on him. He could run no farther.

   
But he could float. A small pine tree had broken loose from the bank in one of the sudden rainstorms common to the plains. As it floated by, he seized hold of it and hung on, struggling to hide himself amidst its boughs so that he would not be visible from the riverbank. The dense spiky green branches served as cover. He submerged his body and held onto one small limb, coming up only to gulp quick painful breaths of air, then slip back beneath the surface.

   
The current was swift with several rocky rapids, twisting along the wooded valley floor. If only he could hang on until he was carried downstream far enough, past his pursuers, he might reach the fork where the Niangua ran into the Osage River. He heard Man Whipper yelling orders to several of his warriors, then nothing else.

   
Samuel was not certain how long he was under water or how he had kept his hold on the branch, but gradually the rushing current slowed and blended with another countercurrent. Had he reached the fork? With superhuman effort he raised his head through the pine boughs and looked around. It must be the Osage River. Untangling himself from the sanctuary of the tree was difficult but he worked his way free and began paddling to shore.

   
He stood in the shallows, bloody and bruised, his vision blurred and his head ringing, trying to focus on which direction he needed to take when a triumphant cry echoed from the bluff overhead. Man Whipper, panting with exhaustion but otherwise unscathed, stood with knife in hand, ready to lunge down the embankment at him.

   
Bracing himself, Shelby waited, sucking air into his tortured lungs. Every breath cost him dearly as the slashes and bruises covering his body throbbed and pulled each time his chest rose and fell. He stood alone on the bare muddy bank of the river, without a weapon, waiting.

Chapter Thirteen

   
Man Whipper began sliding down the grassy slope of the bank, still winded but grinning. “You are clever...for a white man, but I have won this race. Now I will take your scalp to Pardee.”

   
“I don’t think so,” Shelby said, scooping up a fistful of mud from the shallows and flinging it full into Man Whipper’ s face before he could duck aside in his headlong downhill rush.

   
The Osage cursed and clawed at his eyes with his free hand, still holding the knife out in front of him, slashing in an arc to protect himself until he cleared his vision. Samuel stepped forward on the rocky bank and reached down, picking up two jagged fist-sized stones. Clutching one in each hand he stepped back from Man Whipper and let the first one fly. It caught the Osage in the center of his forehead, flinging him backward onto the bank. He rolled up, dazed, still clutching the knife. But before he could rise, Shelby hurled the second stone hard and fast. It struck square in the center of the big man’s chest.

   
Man Whipper grunted, struggling to draw breath but before he could do so, Shelby was on him, his hand seizing his foe’s wrist, smashing it back against a rock until the Osage dropped his knife. They rolled across the ground, both punching and gouging, each trying to come up on top of his foe long enough to finish him. Shelby’s wounds were bleeding profusely again but the much smaller injury to Man Whipper’s forehead poured blood freely into his eyes, blurring his vision.

   
He lashed out at his foe while groping for the lost knife. Samuel saw it first, just out of reach. If he could only get free long enough to lunge to his right he’d have it, but the Indian’s legs were entwined with his as they thrashed.

   
At last Shelby came up on the top near the knife but Man Whipper’ s palm skimming the ground to his left seized the weapon first and raised it with a loud cry. The sound died on his lips when Shelby’s right hand came smashing down into his throat with a dagger of another sort. A sharp sliver of jagged shale pierced the warrior’s windpipe, and Samuel twisted it until it broke apart in his hand. By then a fountain of blood gushed out of the wound, along with a long, slow sigh as Man Whipper’s spirit departed his body.

   
Shelby climbed to his feet and looked down at the dead man who still clutched the knife in a claw-like hand, eyes staring sightlessly at the bright azure of the morning sky. The exhausted soldier bent double, his hands resting on his knees as he sucked in air.

   
“Yeah...you won the race...but I won the rock-throwing contest.”

   
He pried the knife from the lifeless fingers and shoved it in his belt, then began stumbling up the embankment.

* * * *

   
Dawn glowed on the horizon, pale golden with deep crimson streaks emblazoned into the inky vault of the heavens. Olivia licked her lips nervously and rechecked her gear again. She felt almost naked, stripped down to nothing but a sleeveless buckskin vest and knee-high britches, her concessions to modesty among the Osage hunters who wore only breech-clouts. Everyone had shed the excess weight of clothing as well as stripping their mounts of all saddle gear. The specially trained buffalo ponies carried only small blankets held on their backs by soft, wide rawhide strips. A hackamore and the rider's knees were the only means by which they were guided during the mad melee of the hunt.

   
Soon. It would be no more than a few moments until they rode out. She checked her carbine for what seemed the hundredth time. After nearly six months of intense practice she could load, prime and fire the weapon from the back of a galloping horse as skillfully as most of the men she had observed. Micajah said she was a natural born shot, just as she had always been a natural born rider.

   
“Jest remember whut I tole yew ‘n yew’ll do right smart,” he murmured to reassure her. “Stay off ta th’ side near th’ river. Gives yew room to move if’n one o’ them bulls decides ta charge out.”

   
“And always aim just behind the shoulder for the lights,” she parroted, remembering all the lessons learned over the summer of hunting deer. But nothing compared to the thrill of joining their Osage friends from Pawhuska’s village in the largest late hunt for the mighty buffalo. Midwinter was the season for taking large middle-aged bulls, summer the time for young bulls and heifers, but this was when the fat sleek cows provided the best meat. Yesterday they had scouted the large herd on this open stretch along the Missouri River. Everyone was primed for action.

   
Micajah watched his Lil’ Sparky, hiding his misgivings beneath the surge of pride he felt in her. What an extraordinary young woman she had proven herself to be since he rescued her from that bear last spring. He had taught her to shoot and cook and survive in the wilderness, but there was nothing he could teach her about horses. She had the gift of communicating with critters of all sorts, from his antisocial hound, Dirt Devil, to the beautiful little ebony mare he had bought for her from a band of Sioux. Olivia had spent the summer working with the spirited horse until it obeyed her every command, whether by a touch on the hackamore or the slightest knee pressure.

   
The Sioux had already trained the mare to run buffalo and he had taught his Sparky everything he knew about surviving a hunt. Still, he was frightened for her. But she had her heart set on bringing down her own animal. And, perverse heathen that their Osage friends could be, several of them thought his white “boy-daughter’s” participation would bring good medicine for the fall hunt. He vowed to stay close on his big buckskin gelding in case anything unforeseen should happen.

   
Then Traveling Rain, the hunt leader, gave the silent signal for the riders to split into two parties and head quietly toward the peacefully grazing herd. The hunters were downwind and with luck would get within yards if everyone rode in a slow, even line making no sudden move. As they flanked the milling buffalo herd on two sides and closed in, each participant picked out his target. Olivia selected a small, plump young cow near one end of the herd and drew close, closer...

   
When the wind shifted, one of the bulls caught the scent of the hunters. Everything erupted in chaos as the herd metamorphosed from a peaceful browse to a pell-mell plunge across the flat open plain. The hunters kneed their steeds into a gallop and loud yips and cries of excitement sounded over the dull roaring thunder of stampeding hooves.

   
Olivia, mindful of Micajah’s admonitions, kept away from the thick of the melee where dust rose in billowing clouds, and men wove their horses in wild patterns between the running buffalo. Leaning low on horseback, the hunters sighted in on the spot just behind the shoulder, using their heavy caliber rifles to puncture lungs or if very lucky to score a direct shot to the heart.

   
Few of the big beasts went down easily and many were blood mad, veering to attack their tormentors with demented fury and sharp, deadly horns. She waited for a clearing in the herd when the fat cow she had chosen came into her sights, then carefully aimed and squeezed the trigger. To her delight the cow simply collapsed, a clean kill.