Davy Crockett 8 Read online

  Where were they now? That was the burning question. Davy hastened to where he had left Bowie, who greeted him with a nod.

  “There’s been a lot going on. They’ve been buzzing around like bees in a bonnet. More wood was brought in. One of the African women was taken into that long lodge.”

  “What about Flavius and Kastner? They’re in there somewhere. The sign proves as much.”

  “No trace yet.” Bowie indicated a gray-haired man talking to two younger warriors. “That old coot seems to give all the orders. He must be their leader.” Bowie gazed skyward. “Not much we can do until sundown. Unless you have an idea?”

  Davy had to admit he didn’t. Sneaking into the village in broad daylight would only earn them a turn in the cook pot. They had to lay low, which was awful hard to do knowing his best friend was a captive of cannibals.

  The next few hours were some of the longest of Davy’s whole life. Activity stopped when the Indians repaired to their dwellings, leaving a pair of guards in front of the main building and another at the rear. The latter acted bored and leaned against the building, his arms folded.

  The sun was ready to relinquish the heavens to stars when a commotion perked up Davy’s interest. The chief and two others had just entered a small dwelling. Someone was hollering—in English'.

  The leader reappeared. Moments later so did the other pair, bearing a familiar form.

  “Arlo!” Bowie whispered.

  The river rat was taken into the longest lodge. Quiet reigned thereafter. Davy did not take his eyes off that small dwelling, and was rewarded when a head poked out. A thrill ran through him. Flavius was alive! His friend looked all about, then ducked back inside.

  “So far, so good,” Bowie said. “But snatching them out of there won’t be a cinch.”

  An understatement, if ever the Irishman heard one. By mutual unspoken agreement they stayed where they were until the shadows congealed into twilight. Davy was rising onto his knees when the chief reappeared, decked out in the Indian equivalent of Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. A signal was sounded. Soon the villagers were filing into the main lodge. Bowie’s head snapped up. “I just noticed. They’re free.”

  “Who?”

  “The blacks. Their shackles are gone. The Indians must have done it to make better time on the trek here.” Bowie was pleased. “It will make our job that much easier. I’ll go for them while you fetch your partner.”

  “What about Arlo?”

  “What about him?”

  “We can’t let them do it. Not even to Kastner.”

  “Listen to yourself. The man is scum. He tried to kill Sam. He stole the Africans right out from under me. I don’t give a damn whether they eat him boiled or roasted. Neither should you.”

  “It’s just not right,” Davy insisted.

  “There’s a lot about this world of ours that isn’t right, Tennessee. People suffer. People starve. People are treated like dirt by those who think an accident of birth makes them better than everyone else.”

  “We can’t do much about all that. But we’re here. Now. And we can do something to help Kastner.”

  Bowie faced him. “You help him if you want. I won’t lift a finger. And don’t bother pointing out the error of my ways. I’m not much on turning the other cheek. Never have been. Maybe one day it will be the death of me, but if so, so be it.”

  “I’ll try and save Kastner then.”

  “Don’t take this personal, but you’re a damned fool if you do.”

  Davy tried to make light of his decision. “Heck. If I had a dollar for every damn fool stunt I’ve pulled, I’d be governor.”

  Bowie slowly rose. “It’s time. The last of them just went into the council lodge.” The frontiersman thrust a hand out.

  “What’s this for?”

  “In case either of us are maggot bait by morning. It’s been a privilege knowing you. You’ve stirred things inside me I thought were buried for good. Feelings about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  Touched, Davy shook hands. “Just don’t get carried away by it. Or next thing you know, you will go into politics. And folks will blame me for bringing you to ruin.”

  The big knife streaked from its sheath. James Bowie winked, then glided off like a panther, toward the pen.

  Davy produced the tomahawk and followed the taller man to the tree line. There, they parted, Davy to swing north, then east. The warrior who had been behind the long lodge was no longer there. A rosy glow spilled from a narrow rectangular opening six feet up on the rear wall. Not so much a window, Davy reckoned, as for ventilation. Tendrils of smoke wafted from it. The Indians were engaged in a singsong chant, and someone was sobbing.

  Davy crept from concealment. A strange noise from around the northeast corner caused him to spin and hike the tomahawk. But no one appeared. Puzzled, he dashed to the corner. The man he loved like a brother was locked in mortal combat with the warrior who had been on guard.

  Flavius was on his knees, the warrior’s hands clamped on his neck. Bit by bit, he was having the life strangled from his body. Flavius blamed himself for being a shade too slow when they confronted one another. The Indian had swung his war club, but Flavius had skipped under it and buried his knuckles in the man’s gut. It had been like hitting a sack of rocks. Before Flavius could say “Jack Frost,” the man was on him, fingers of banded steel about to crush his jugular like so much putty.

  Flavius thought his time had come. He couldn’t breathe. His vision swam. He was so disoriented, he thought that he saw Davy rear up behind the warrior, thought he saw the tomahawk glint dully. Then the world blinked black and he was falling. Or rather, sinking like a feather.

  So this is what it feels like to be dead, Flavius mused. A sense of great peace came over him. Lassitude rendered him as weak as a newborn infant. He had the sensation of drifting, like a cloud. Oddly, he was not scared. He had a conviction that at any second he would open his eyes and gaze on the golden spires of Heaven.

  A stiff wind buffeted his cloud. Flavius wanted to cling to something, but there was nothing to hold onto. He was worried that he would fall, that he would plummet all the way back down to Earth and be shattered into a million pieces.

  “Flavius? Can you hear me?”

  The voice sounded remarkably like Davy’s, but that couldn’t be. Davy couldn’t be in Heaven; he was still alive. “Are you an angel?” Flavius said thickly. “Come to take me to my reward?”

  “Hush, you jughead! Do you want the Indians to hear?”

  Indians? Surely there wouldn't be Indians in the Hereafter! Flavius opened his eyes. Above him was his friend’s face, etched with concern. “How in tarnation did you get to Heaven?” Flavius asked. “Did those Karankawas take you by surprise?”

  “I hate to disappoint you,” Davy whispered, “but I’m a likelier candidate for a pitchfork than I am a halo and wings.” Leaning down, he grinned. “Besides, you’re not shed of this life yet.”

  “Huh?” Flavius rose onto his elbows. Beside him lay the warrior who had been strangling him, the Irishman’s tomahawk embedded in his skull. “Oh. You saved me.”

  “Don’t sound so upset or next time I won’t.” Davy pulled his friend up off the ground, then placed a foot on the dead Indian’s face and wrenched the tomahawk out. “Are you up to running?”

  “Just you try and lose me,” Flavius bantered louder than he meant to. Appalled by his lapse, he covered his mouth and listened for an outcry. All he heard was chanting. In the distance a bird screeched.

  Davy shoved Liz against Flavius’s chest. “Take her. My pistols are caked with crud or I’d give them to you.”

  “What will you use?”

  “I can protect myself, don’t you worry.” Davy hefted the tomahawk, then turned and sped on around the lodge. Stopping under the opening, he rose onto the tips of his toes. The scene he beheld was like something out of the dawn of time, from an age before the first white man set foot on the North American continent.

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nbsp; The Indians were divided into three groups. In a wide aisle in the middle were the men, arrayed in twelve rows, facing their leader, who stood on a raised dais at the rear. Along the right wall were the women, dressed in short skirts, their hands primly clasped. Along the left wall were the children, meekly observing the ceremony.

  Two outsiders were present. Tied to thick posts in front of the dais were Arlo Kastner and the black woman. Both had been stripped bare. It was Arlo who sobbed nonstop, his cheeks slick with tears.

  The chief had both arms upraised, a knife in each hand. He led the chant, reciting a ritual that must have been as old as the human race itself.

  Between the posts and the front row of warriors yawned a gaping black hole A pit. How deep, or what arcane purpose it served, was a mystery.

  At a gesture from the gray-haired eider, two muscular warriors advanced. Both, Davy noted, gave the pit a wide berth. From within it came loud rustling.

  “What the devil is in there?”

  Flavius had pressed an eye to the opening’s lower edge. The question had risen unbidden, but he’d had the presence of mind to keep his voice low enough so only the Irishman heard. He shuddered to think that but for the grace of God, he’d be tied to one of those poles instead of the river rat.

  Davy noted that torches lined the walls; then he began to turn, to go help Bowie. He paused when the leader descended the dais and solemnly walked over to Kastner. The chanting reached a crescendo, every man, woman, and child taking part. As the tribal leader halted, it died.

  The only sound now was Arlo’s weeping. Sniffling, he said, “Please! I don’t want to die! Spare me and I’ll get you anything you want. Guns. Axes. Blankets. You name it. I can get it. Honest.”

  The leader touched the tip of a blade to the river rat’s forehead, to Arlo’s chest, to both shoulders.

  Davy tore himself from the tableau. He had to prevent what was going to happen next. But he had only taken a stride when a blood-curdling wail prickled his scalp. He looked back inside.

  Arlo Kastner had not suffered unduly. The hilt of one of the ceremonial knives jutted from his chest, a scarlet rivulet flowing to his navel. All the Indians were smiling, and they resumed chanting as the leader gripped the hilt firmly and sliced from side to side.

  Davy could not quite see what the man was doing. The African woman could, though, and her features mirrored unbridled fright. Within moments the chief finished and stepped to the right to wave aloft his trophy.

  It was Arlo’s heart!

  After giving a knife to each of the two warriors, the leader held the organ in his palms overhead. Intoning an incantation, he moved toward the pit, blood dripping onto his headdress and shoulders.

  Flavius had stopped watching. He could only abide so much. The image of that still-beating heart would linger in his memory for as long as he lived.

  At the pit’s rim the chief halted. Again he appealed to whatever gods his people worshiped while the rustling grew louder and louder. Then he tossed the heart into the hole. A rumbling growl filled the lodge, and as if it were prearranged, the people raised their voices in a new song.

  Davy nudged Flavius and sped to the pen. The blacks were not in it. They were gathered near an open gate at the southwest corner. Of Bowie there was no sign. Confused, Davy glanced toward the front of the lodge. James and one of the Africans were at the wide door, but they did not linger. Pivoting, they raced to the gate, the wrath of the Almighty crackling on Bowie’s brow.

  “Did you see? Did you see what was done to Arlo?”

  “I saw.”

  “We can’t let them do the same to that woman. We’re going to save her if we can.”

  “Twenty-one of us against a hundred?”

  “We’ll have the element of surprise. If we hit them hard and fast, we can cut her loose and be out of there before they mount a counterattack.”

  Flavius couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “It’s suicide,” he whispered. “You’ll get all of us killed.”

  “Don’t come, if you’d rather not,” Bowie said with no ill will. “She’s my responsibility anyway. All of them are.”

  “How do they feel about it?” Davy asked.

  Bowie had no need to answer. Every last African had stepped to the fence. The poles were held in place by loops of cord, which were quickly severed by the big knife Bowie had lent a curly-haired man with a thin bone through his nose.

  Flavius was dismayed. “Poles against war clubs? You won’t stand a prayer.”

  “That’s just it,” Bowie responded. “Didn’t you notice? Most of the warriors don’t have their clubs with them. Maybe it’s forbidden. So we do have a prayer.” He accepted his knife from the husky black. “This is N’tembo. He’s from the Congo. That woman about to have her heart cut out is his wife.”

  N’tembo could not hide his misery.

  James Bowie stared at the two Tennesseans. “So what will it be? Are you in or out?”

  Davy felt Flavius’s eyes bore into him. His friend would do whatever he did. And he must make up his mind quickly. The chanting had grown louder. Anyone with half a brain would refuse, but as Davy’s oldest sister, Betsy, always liked to joke, when the brains in his family were passed out, he was off coon hunting. “Count us in.”

  Eleven

  Flavius Harris wanted to scream. Not from pain. Or from fear. He wanted to scream because he was mad enough to chew rocks. Mad that after all he had been through on behalf of the Africans, after being captured and nearly strangled to death in an attempt to save their lives, they were going to get themselves wiped out anyway. And him along with them.

  Davy was as much to blame. They were partners. Whatever the Irishman did, Flavius would do. Davy knew this. So by agreeing to help Bowie and the blacks, Davy was putting both their lives in peril without even bothering to ask his opinion.

  It was unfair. Damned unfair. Flavius felt sorry for the black woman about to be sacrificed, but they had to be practical. They had little hope of saving her. In effect, they were sacrificing themselves. Noble, but needless. They should save the ones they could, and be thankful.

  Now Bowie and Davy were jogging toward the front of the medicine lodge. Flavius dogged their steps, regretting every one. Nervously, he fingered the rifle, and made a mental note. If anyone ever again showed up on his doorstep and asked him to go on a gallivant, he’d sic his dogs on them.

  Davy Crockett listened to the swelling volume of the chant, and prayed they would not be too late. A peek past the jamb revealed the leader was back on the dais, going through the same ritual as before with a new set of knives. Soon he was would descend and carve the poor woman’s heart out. “Ready?” James Bowie whispered.

  Davy glanced at the torches that lined both sides of the building, at the dry brush and limbs used in the construction of the walls. “I have a brainstorm,” he mentioned. “You go for the woman. I’ll see to it that the Indians have something else to worry about besides us.”

  Flavius did not like the sound of that. His friend was going to do something that would compound the danger for the two of them. He was sure of it. Yet he said softly, “I’m ready too. I’ll be right behind you, Davy.”

  Crockett shifted. “No, you won’t. Someone has to cover us. You hold back right here. When we have the woman and we’re on our way out, do what you can to keep those warriors off our backs.”

  Flavius was overjoyed. He’d be the safest—barring something unforeseen. Then a suspicion came over him, and he whispered, “Why me? You’re not doing this to spare me, are you?”

  “Heavens, no,” Davy fibbed. “You have Liz, is all. I have the tomahawk. Can I help it I’m a little better at close-in fighting?”

  The Irishman was a lot better, but Flavius did not quibble. “Oh. In that case, you can count on me.”

  James Bowie shoved his own rifle at the portly Tennessean. “You might as well have mine too. And my pistols, while we’re at it.”

  Flavius felt like a walking armory.
The extra-long gun he leaned against the wall. The pistols he slid under his belt, but loosely. “Be careful in there,” he cautioned. “If you need me to come in, just give a holier.”

  “Will do.” Davy saw the chief stride to the stairs. They could not delay any longer. Looking at James, he whispered, “Do you want to do the honors, or should I?”

  “She’s my responsibility,” the tall frontiersman stressed. Then he did a strange thing. He raised the big knife to his lips and kissed the blade. Next he winked at Davy, motioned at N’tembo, and charged. He did not whoop or bellow or roar. Silently, grimly, he crossed the open space, and was in among the last row of warriors, slashing and hacking, before they knew what had hit them.

  N’tembo and the Africans were right at his side, wielding their poles in a frenzy, clubbing, butting, pounding. Over a dozen shaggy figures were writhing on the ground when a woman screeched like a hawk, drawing all eyes to the melee. The warriors in the front ranks whirled to join the battle as other women screamed and children wailed.

  Davy angled to the right-hand wall. Seizing the first torch, he yanked it off its wooden pedestal and pressed the burning head to the dry wall. Immediately, the brush and limbs ignited. Hungry flames spread with astounding rapidity, smoke spewing outward.

  Davy dashed to the next torch and repeated the procedure. He’d counted on the Indians being too preoccupied with Bowie and the Africans to pay much attention to him, but he’d miscalculated. As he thrust the second torch at the wall, a lanky warrior sprang at him from behind. Spidery arms wrapped around his chest. Simultaneously, several women rushed over to help.

  Davy swung his whole weight to the left, waving the torch in front of him. It stopped the women in their tracks. With his other hand he swung the tomahawk down and back. He felt it sink into yielding flesh, heard a cry in his ear. The warrior’s grip slackened. A mighty heave, and Davy broke loose. Spinning, he whipped the tomahawk in a short slash that opened the man’s throat from ear to ear.

  The women renewed their assault, joined by five or six more. Short stone knives had blossomed from under their skirts. Davy used the torch to hold them at bay. But he could not reach the next pedestal. And he needed to set more of the wall afire quickly, in order to forestall a massacre of his allies.