Double Mountain Crossing (4 page)

Then the pain hit him even before he saw the orange muzzle flash or heard the reverberating crash of the big killing gun. He was thrown sideways, off balance, and his last arrow arced gracefully into the sky to clatter among the high branches before it began to fall, bouncing from limb to limb before it landed fruitlessly on the earth

As the ten gauge scattergun roared out time and time again to spatter buckshot in the timber all round him, Short-Lance crawled away. His right thigh was aflame with agony, and the zigzag trail he left on the forest floor was liberally smeared with his blood. Swift-Foot found him twenty feet from the tethered ponies, lying exhausted and bloody after dragging his crippled legs through the grass.

“You ran quick,” Short-Lance accused, teeth clenched against the pain.

Swift-Foot pointed to a huge black bruise that discolored his scrawny chest in the moonlight, “That bay horse, he packs a big kick. I got him into the timber but then he knocked me flat on my back and I thought he was going to stomp me but he turned and ran back to where the fight was. He was wild, that crazy horse.”

Short-Lance spat into the grass in disgust. “I think someone killed a skunk. Our medicine is bad. That white man fights like a grizzly.”

“Yes,” Swift-Foot agreed sadly, thinking of the fine bay with the black ears that would have won him renown among the tribe, “I think we got very bad medicine.
Polecat medicine.”

***

The sparks jumped across onto the fresh wood and burst into flickering light as Morgan raked through the embers of the fire. He set the coffee-pot on to simmer again, aware he would need all the help he could get to stay awake through the night. There was every chance the Kiowas would make another run to finish what they had begun. It looked like they needed fresh horses to take them wherever they were headed, so he had renewed the picket ropes to keep his two horses near, as much for his protection as theirs.

It had been a quick fight and he could not understand why they had quit and pulled out just when it seemed they had got the drop on him. He shrugged and poked at the coals. Those redskin
hombres
sure were funny creatures. Sometimes the slightest thing could spook them; an owl hooting or a freak flash of lightning.
Any damn thing.
Maybe they figured their medicine had turned bad on them, who knows? One thing he did know, and that was he was grateful they had given up when they did. He didn't fancy some cocky brave hanging
his
hair on the lodge pole of a Kiowa tipi.

He'd been lucky. The arrow he thought had gone clear through his arm had actually pinned him to the tree not by his skin but by the thick material of his shirt. The tip had ripped across the side of his upper arm, accounting for the pain, but it was only a flesh wound. It would heal easy and wouldn't prevent him working at his find. Hell, only an arrow through his heart would keep him away from that gold now. He'd fight mountain lions, grizzly bears and all the Indians the Nations could send against him, but the only way any of them would keep him from working on that gold vein would be to kill him stone dead.

The coffee was hot and he poured a cupful. It was thick and dark, bitter too but it tasted good. He drank and watched the shadows in the timber. If they were still out there he was ready to meet them head on.

The ten gauge shotgun, cool now, lay across his knees, loaded and ready.

***

“What do we do now?” asked Swift-Foot, looking down at his friend. Short Lance winced from the pain in his flayed thigh as he wiped away the blood. In the light from the tiny campfire he could see the black marks under the skin betraying the embedded buckshot. Hands clasped tightly round the burning pain, tears ran freely down his face.

“First you will have to get these bullets out of my leg with your knife. When that is done we will have to go back to the white man's camp and bring back the body of our leader.”

Swift-Foot noticed how Short-Lance had avoided using Comes-Walking's name. Now he was dead none of the Indians would ever refer to him again by it. However, the thought of returning to the site of the battle filled Swift-Foot with fear. Not even for the magnificent black-eared bay would he go back if he could help it. Short-Lance glanced up at him and Swift-Foot felt as if his friend could look right inside his heart and read his thoughts.

Short-Lance, although
himself
frightened, was adamant. “We will have to go back, Swift-Foot. We cannot leave his body. The white man will mutilate it and then leave it for the wolves to eat. Now we have tasted war, we must be as men and fight as the braves of our warrior
societies
fight. We must bring back our leader's body and bury him, then ride back to our people and tell Thunderhawk what has happened in this place. He will be much grieved and angry to hear of his brother's death.”

Swift-Foot considered this and knew his friend was right. If Thunderhawk came here and found the remains of his brother unburied it was likely he would take the scalp locks of them both in proclamation of their disgrace.

“You are right, my friend. These things we must do. The white man's big killing gun is much too powerful for us to stand against it alone. Our medicine is bad. Not one of us would ride back to the lodges of our families.” He peered down at his friend, observing the face of grim determination and his knuckles, white from the tightness of his grip on the wounded leg.

He unsheathed his scalping knife and turned it slowly in the flames, heating the steel cleanly,
taking care
no smudge marks formed on the honed blade. He watched, deep in thought about what he had to do,
then
when he was satisfied he turned to Short-Lance who glanced apprehensively at the weapon. “Take this,” he said.

“What is that for?” Short-Lance asked
,
looking at the rolled up strip of elk skin in his friend's outstretched hand.

“To put between your teeth.”

He took the offered comforter, but his eyes widened as the glowing blade neared his wounded leg.

***

Before daylight prodded into the glade, Morgan Clay added fuel to the tiny fire and topped up the thick java in the bottom of the coffee-pot with water from his canteen. The two horses were back on their feet and grazing peacefully. Throughout the hours of the night the bay had snickered once, but Morgan's vision had been unable to penetrate the solid wall of darkness.

As he waited for daylight and the coffee to boil, he sat and thought out his next move. The muscles of his shoulder and back were cramped from the position he had maintained, facing the glade with his back to the protection of the thick pine, and his legs were stiff from being stretched out in front of him. His mouth was tacky from lack of sleep and he was badly in need of a cigarette. He had refrained from smoking in the darkness, wary the arrow-shooter who had pinned him to the tree would use a glowing cigarette tip as a target. His wounded arm was not as bad as expected and he hoped the wound had congealed. In preparation for sunup he checked the shotgun, then passed the time putting his makings together.

The gloom was drawing off, the shapes of the two feeding horses growing solid in the eerie light. There was some mist, hugging the ground to add to the unearthly effect, and he knew the grass would be wet and sweet on the horses' tongues. He rubbed a hand along his grizzled jawbone, deciding to inspect the Indian at the other end of the clearing. He would know for sure then whether they had been Kiowas. After that he would have to start hunting up some sign.

But coffee and a cigarette first.

The blackened pot was hot to the touch and the thinned-down brew poured easily into his tin mug. He scowled when he scalded his mouth then smiled as the warmth spread in his stomach. After the first mouthful he reached an ember and fired his cigarette, leaving it between his teeth as he cupped both hands around the mug to draw the welcome heat into his body. When the cup was empty it was almost daylight, only a few patches of shadow resisting the inevitable. The ground mist was seeping away too, revealing the horses' muzzles as their mouths worked at the grass. Scattergun in hand, Morgan rose and cautiously skirted the edge of the clearing, making for the point where the dead brave lay in a shaded patch.

There was nothing there.

But bloodstained grass still bore the imprint of a human body. Moccasin tracks ranged all
about,
and long furrows dug by the brave's heels when they dragged him across the grass to the timber.
An hour, maybe less.
The rifle was gone too. Morgan followed the sign into the pines a few yards, then skirted back to emerge in the thicket where the arrow shooter had been. All of the bushes bore fresh pockmarks hacked out by buckshot, and the earth carried sign that told him the Indian with the bow had been wounded. Morgan breathed a little easier. It looked like they had withdrawn to regroup.

Morgan saddled his two horses,
then
picketed the bay further down the hillside where it would be safe before returning to the glade where he picked up the moccasin trail that led away from where the dead brave had been. He was careful to watch both the tracks and the timber as he rode the gelding, for the Indians, whoever they were, had made no effort to hide their trail. It wasn't even one of
those roundabout
and up and down routes that Indians usually make, if only for the purpose of making following them arduous.

It was only a short ride to the glade where two ponies had been tethered, probably during the attack judging by the patches of chewed grass. From there the trail led to the clearing where he had brought down the elk the day before. The carcass was picked clean of any meat even remotely edible and the hide had been taken. There were the ashes of a small cooking fire and enough horse droppings to show that the Indians had camped the night there.

That could only mean there had only been three of them, not a whole war party as he had feared. The one he'd killed with the ten gauge had been full grown and the one who'd tried to steal the horses had been a boy, but not the same one he seen while skinning the elk.
That
one must have been the arrow shooter.

Morgan spat into the cooling ashes. So, he'd killed one, the adult, wounded the arrow-shooter considering the blood in the other thicket, and the third member of the party was a boy too—the horse stealer. He shook his head. He'd never heard of that one before; a man and two boys hundreds of miles away from home. Only two ponies too, which explained why they had been more interested in stealing his horses than taking his scalp. He wasn't naïve enough to believe that if they'd succeeded in capturing the horses they would have left him alone. No, his scalp and the shotgun too would have been bonuses.

He mounted the dun and followed their trail, winding through the pines and the cottonwoods around the mountain until he came upon a place where the ground was churned up and a pile of rocks was heaped together. Resting in the saddle, he nodded. Now it made sense. The two boys had buried the dead brave facing west where he would have a good view over the sprawling mountainous land. He knew inside the burial place the Kiowa would be in a sitting position, his bow and arrows buried with him. The rocks were to keep the carrion eaters of the high country from devouring the body. The pony tracks were shallower there, indicating that only one rider was now mounted on each pony, and the trail continued to swing further round the mountain.

He tracked them for two miles across the slopes until the timber thinned, opening out onto grassy pasture land that stretched for miles. With the grass dewy, he didn't even have to bother riding any further, he could see the silvery tracks of the two ponies running in a straight line to the east. Squinting into the rising sun his old eyes could make out two distant dots, way across the prairie, and he knew from long experience that they were riders.

As he sat the dun gelding on the ridge he rested the ten
gauge
across the saddle horn and smiled. There would be no more trouble from that quarter.

The Kiowas were going home.

Unlike most cowhands, Morgan Clay knew how to swing an axe and swing it well. It took little time to cut through the new dam and reroute Sun Creek back onto its original course down the mountain. As soon as the dry creek bed was saturated the water ran freely. Using most of the debris from the now clear route he was able to rebuild the creek bank at the top, then sit and smoke as he waited for the watercourse to run dry.

Sweating, he retraced his steps down the steep mountainside to the crossing. Only a trickle of clear water now crossed the trail and that was diminishing even as he watched. Pleased with his handiwork he grinned and stood on the rock shelf for a moment before he knelt and wonderingly touched the smooth surface.

There it was, at his fingertips.

Gold.
Rich gold.
Golden
golden
gold.
It was a good feeling. This mountain was going to make him a rich man. No more scratching for a grubstake, taking odd jobs riding shotgun or driving wagons, whipping a bunch of scrawny, reluctant mules along some Godforsaken trail, throat choked by white alkali dust under the burning sun. No sir. No more riding the grub line in winter, coat collar turned up uselessly against the biting wind that made cotton of a buffalo robe overcoat. No more fighting off murdering Indians every time he rode off the beaten track. No more breaking foot thick ice on a creek in midwinter so the stock could drink, or getting soaked from his toes to his chin digging an ungrateful steer out of a ten foot snowdrift. He'd done all those things and worse besides when he'd been forced sell his allegiance to the owner of a ranch so's he could fill his belly and sleep in a warm bunkhouse.