Wilderness Double Edition 13 Read online

  Zach was breathing deeply and slowly. He had to stay calm. He couldn’t make a fool of himself. Propping the Hawken against the log, he took both of Lou’s hands in his. “I reckon you know what this is leading up to. I never thought I would say this about any woman, but I love you, Louisa May Clark. I love you with all my heart.”

  Lou tingled from head to toe. Finally her dream would come true! “I love you, Stalking Coyote.”

  Somehow, a feather or what felt like one had gotten into Zach’s throat, and he had to cough before he could go on. “I’ve already talked to my pa about us having a place of our own. But now I need to know if you want to live with me. Lou, will you make me the gladdest man alive by becoming my—”

  To the east a gun cracked.

  In a twinkling Zach was on his feet. “That was a pistol shot! Evelyn must be in danger!” Down the trail he flew, with one very perturbed young woman in his wake.

  Evelyn scooted up the trail faster than a jackrabbit, but it wasn’t fast enough. Jess Coyfield was rapidly gaining and would overtake her well before she reached the cabin. Stopping, she hurled the flintlock at him. As heavy as it was, it took all her strength, but she was rewarded with an oath when it hit his shoulder.

  “Damn you, gal! Don’t make this harder than it has to be!”

  Evelyn darted into the woods. Either he was making some sort of odd joke only adults would understand, or he was the stupidest person alive. Why would she make it easy for him to kill her? She weaved among the trees, seeking to lose him in the undergrowth. A glance revealed he was sighting down his Kentucky. Without delay, Evelyn angled to the right, putting a cluster of pines between them.

  Evelyn had spent countless hours playing in that area. Her goal was a cluster of boulders, her favorite hiding place when her brother was on the warpath. She would secret herself until Jess Coyfield gave up searching. Crackling brush told her that he was after her again, closing the gap quickly.

  “When I get my hands on you—!” he hollered.

  Evelyn was tempted to shout back, “You never will!” But that might have been just what the man wanted. He might have been trying to trick her so he would know where she was. Coming to a wide trunk, Evelyn dashed behind it and stood stock-still. She heard him barreling through brush, then the woods were suddenly quiet.

  He was listening, Evelyn guessed. He had lost track of her. So long as she didn’t move, she was safe.

  That was when a yell pierced the air from the vicinity of the cabin.

  “Evelyn! Evelyn! Where are you?”

  Cupping her mouth, Evelyn was going to alert her brother about the Coyfields. Movement not ten feet away silenced her. The skinny one was much too close. If she shouted, he would be on her before she could get away.

  “Sis! Are you all right! Answer me!”

  The worry in her brother’s voice surprised Evelyn. She would never have thought he cared so much.

  “Evelyn!” This was Louisa. “If you can hear us, please answer!”

  Evelyn would like nothing better. But Jess Coyfield hadn’t moved. What should she do?

  Zach was beside himself. He had rushed into the cabin, found it empty, and burst back out. He’d scoured the ground, but finding the most recent set of her prints in the jumble by the cabin was a feat that would daunt his father. So he had called out, his apprehension mounting when there was no response.

  Lou had never seen Zach so shaken up. She half hoped Evelyn was playing a prank, that Evelyn had fired the shot just to rattle them.

  Zach gazed toward the lake. His sister was always going there to watch the ducks or doodle in the dirt. It would be just like her to have gone again after he left, to spite him. He sprinted down the trail at breakneck speed and was halfway there when a figure materialized ahead, where the trail met the shore. A stocky, bearded man in homespun clothes, hunched over, shuffling like a wounded buffalo.

  “You there!” Zach shouted.

  The stranger snapped erect. A reddish stain on his right shoulder explained why he had been staggering. On spying Zach, he awkwardly jammed a Kentucky rifle to his left shoulder.

  Zach tensed to fling himself into high weeds, then remembered Lou was close behind him. The ball would strike her! Spinning, he tackled her just as the Kentucky thundered.

  Lou did not know what was going on. She did not see the man with the rifle until she was thrown to the ground.

  Her elbow cracked hard, numbing her arm. Lou tried to rise, but her arm gave way. The next moment Zach had her about the waist and literally hauled her into the undergrowth. His lips brushed her ear.

  “It’s another Coyfield! Stay down while I circle around.”

  On the other side of the trail, Evelyn heard the rifle shot and panicked. They were shooting at her brother! She hurtled around the tree, heedless of her own safety, and paid for her folly when a scarecrow appeared out of nowhere and snagged her on the fly.

  “Now I’ve got you!” Jess Coyfield gloated, dangling her by her wrist as if she were a varmint he had caught in a trap.

  Evelyn did what came naturally. She threw back her head and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Louisa May Clark had just seen Zach vanish to the east. She never hesitated when Evelyn’s cry rang out. Rising, she crossed the trail in a single leap. Off to the right, motion pinpointed where she would find Evelyn. A skinny man was brutally shaking her. Lou’s rifle seemed to spring up of its own accord. “Let go of her, damn you!”

  Jess Coyfield started, cast Evelyn down, and shifted, his Kentucky rising as his thumb locked on the hammer.

  He would have been better off dropping the rifle, too.

  Crouched behind a stump, Zach saw the wounded Coyfield hasten up the trail. The man held a pistol now and was moving much more briskly. Zach had heard his sister’s scream, but there was nothing he could do, not until he had disposed of this threat. Thrusting his Hawken onto the top of the stump, he aligned the sights with the man’s torso.

  The crash of a rifle to the south brought the Coyfield to a stop. It took all of Zach’s self-control not to spoil his aim by looking up.

  “Over here!”

  The man whirled. He squeezed off a shot without really aiming.

  Zach’s aim was dead-on.

  It was not quite half an hour later that Nate King galloped up to the cabin in a shower of earthen clods. He was astride a sorrel belonging to Simon Ward and had about ridden the animal into the ground. Before the sorrel stopped moving, he was out of the saddle. Nate took several strides, then saw Evelyn by the cabin door, playing with her dolls. She glanced up and smiled sweetly.

  “Hi, Pa.”

  Nate was too flabbergasted to do more than respond in kind. “Hi,” he said, looking right and left for evidence of their enemies. The whole ride back, fresh tracks had spurred him on. Tracks made by Jess and Bo Coyfield. Nate had been certain he would arrive to find three cold bodies.

  “You’re home sooner than we thought you’d be. Where’s Ma?”

  “She’s staying with the Wards for a while. We’re going to join her tomorrow.”

  Feeling foolish with his cocked Hawken trained on empty air, Nate lowered it. “Simon has been hurt, but he’ll recover. He should be back on his feet inside a month.”

  “That’s good to hear. I like him an awful lot.”

  “Anything happen while I was gone?”

  “Not much. Zach was being bossy. One of my dolls is having a baby.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, a couple of men tried to kill us.”

  “And?”

  “We killed them instead.”

  The tension that had driven Nate to the limits of his endurance melted away like snow under a hot sun. He had gone almost three days with hardly any sleep, and suddenly he was so tired, his legs felt wooden. “Where are your brother and Lou?”

  “Down at the lake. I wouldn’t bother them, though, if I were you.”

  “Why not?”

  “They told me that if I
went down there, they’d shoot me.”

  “What?” Nate turned to go have a talk with his oldest. But a gleeful shout made it unnecessary. It was the cry of a young woman who was supremely happy, whose fondest wish had just been granted, and who wanted the whole world to know.

  “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!”

  WILDERNESS DOUBLE EDITION #13:

  25: FRONTIER MAYHEM

  26: BLOOD FEUD

  By David Robbins Writing as David Thompson

  First Published by Leisure Books in 1998 and 1999

  Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2018 by David Robbins

  First Smashwords Edition: April 2018

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Our cover features Danger on the Santa Fe Trail, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission.

  Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri

  Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author

  About the Author

  David L. Robbins was born on Independence Day 1950. He has written more than three hundred books under his own name and many pen names, among them: David Thompson, Jake McMasters, Jon Sharpe, Don Pendleton, Franklin W. Dixon, Ralph Compton, Dean L. McElwain, J.D. Cameron and John Killdeer.

  Robbins was raised in Pennsylvania. When he was seventeen he enlisted in the United States Air Force and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant. After his honorable discharge he attended college and went into broadcasting, working as an announcer and engineer (and later as a program director) at various radio stations. Later still he entered law enforcement and then took to writing full-time.

  At one time or another Robbins has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year and a half in Europe, traveling through France, Italy, Greece and Germany. He lived for more than a year in Turkey.

  Today he is best known for two current long-running series - Wilderness, the generational saga of a Mountain Man and his Shoshone wife - and Endworld is a science fiction series under his own name started in 1986. Among his many other books, Piccadilly Publishing is pleased to be reissuing ebook editions of Wilderness, Davy Crockett and, of course, White Apache.

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