Blood Hunt (A Davy Crockett Western. Book 3) Page 4

  “She must have had a heap of suitors,” Davy said. “How did Cyrus win out?”

  For a while Kayne did not answer. When he did, he spat the words as if they were tacks. “Festus, her father, has the final say. And Cyrus’s pa owns the trading post.”

  A few feet to the rear, Flavius could not help eavesdropping. The connection eluded him. “So? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “So Cyrus’s pa is the richest man around. Once he passes on, Cyrus, an only child, inherits the whole boodle. Festus likes the idea of having a rich son-in-law.”

  Flavius was appalled. “He’s forcing his daughter to marry that ox? How does Rebecca feel about the arrangement?”

  “She’s not the type to air private grievances. But she did confide to my youngest sister that she can’t stand to be in the same room as Cy. The rumor is that she cares for someone else, that she’s been secretly in love with this other man for a long time.”

  “Who’s the lucky man?” Flavius inquired.

  “No one knows. My sister thinks it must be someone who’s been at the settlement quite a spell, because Rebecca let it slip that the man she adores was one of the first to greet her family when they arrived.”

  Davy’s hearing was second to none. He never missed the distant crack of twigs or the slightest inflections in a tone. “How long have you been at Peoria?” he quizzed.

  “Longer than most,” Kayne said, and let it go at that.

  The rescue was taking on whole new dimensions. Troubling dimensions, because men who were ruled by their hearts instead of their heads frequently made fatal mistakes.

  How many other members of the rescue party, Davy wondered, felt as Kayne did? It had not dawned on him before, but all the rescuers were young except for Norval, Festus’s brother. Were they all smitten?

  Kayne slowed to better read the tracks as they crossed a stretch of rocky soil.

  “Why didn’t her father join you?” Davy asked.

  “He wanted to, but he had a gash in his head the size of your thumb. Kept seeing double. In a few days he should be fit enough to travel, and he promised to follow us with a dozen more men.”

  By then their trail would be cold. Even if they were guided by a man of Kayne’s caliber and savvy, it would be many days before Festus’s bunch joined them. By then Rebecca’s fate would be sealed.

  The afternoon crawled by, weighted by millstones. Every now and again Kayne or Davy cut bark from a tree to guide Norval and the boys.

  Flavius fell a little behind. It had been a coon’s age since he last covered so much distance so briskly, afoot, and his muscles protested. His legs stiffened up on him.

  The chattering of an irate squirrel made Flavius wish he could squeeze off a shot. Just one. He could see the animal prancing on a high limb, taunting him. He envisioned it skinned and cleaned and chopped into bits, simmering enticingly in a pot.

  The war party from Canada had stuck to a winding game trail for a while. Flavius followed along, giving scant regard to his companions until he raised his head and there they were right in front of him. Both had stopped and were gazing at something ahead.

  Curious, Flavius shouldered between them. Someone gasped, and he realized it was him. For jammed onto the top of a long length of trimmed branch and left smack in the game trail for them to discover was the severed head of the Sauk warrior whose body had been thrown into the stream.

  The lips had discolored, the tongue was protruding. Glazed eyes were fixed blankly on them. Flies buzzed thickly around the gory trophy.

  The warrior had been young, no older than twenty-five. High cheekbones framed a large, hawkish nose. An odd turban like affair had been wound across his brow and around his head.

  “What in the world is this for?” Flavius said, his stomach churning.

  “It’s a warning,” Davy guessed. “They know someone is after them and they’re telling us to give up, or else.”

  “Why’d they pick this spot?” Kayne said.

  “No special reason, I imagine,” Flavius responded.

  Davy had his doubts. Indians rarely did anything on a whim. He surveyed the woodland and smiled to himself. At that point the forest thinned. A gap in the trees enabled him to spy a hill a quarter of a mile away. Anyone on it would be able to see them. Not clearly, mind, but well enough to know how many they were, and whether they were white or red. “They’re onto us,” he said.

  Kayne tore his eyes from the head, saw the hill, and flushed in anger. “Damn! I should have swung wide. We’ll never take them by surprise now.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” Davy said. “They’ll expect us to continue along the game trail. What if we don’t?”

  Comprehension lit Kayne’s countenance. “It’ll be risky. There’s no telling how many are lying in wait for us.”

  Once again Flavius was unsure of what they had in mind. But he was positive that he wouldn’t like it. Davy had a knack for getting them into hot water. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’ll keep going a ways,” Davy said. “Two of us will break off when the woods hem us in and circle around behind the hill. The third man will jog on up the trail, sort of as bait. With any luck, the war party won’t realize what we’ve done until it’s too late.”

  Flavius’s mouth became as dry as a desert. “Which one of us will be the decoy?” As if he couldn’t guess.

  “If you don’t want to, just say so,” Davy said. “We’re just a mite more spry than you, is all.” It pained him to be so brutally blunt, but lives were riding on their ruse.

  “I need this like I need a pig in my hip pocket,” Flavius muttered. Setting himself up as a living target was nit-brained. Yet if it saved the woman, he’d make the sacrifice. “I reckon I’ve got it to do,” he reluctantly acknowledged.

  Davy squeezed his friend’s arm and said, “Go slow and make enough noise to convince them the three of us are together. Stop if you have to, but only when you can’t see the hill.”

  “Just don’t dally,” Flavius said. They moved on, leaving the head where it was. Flavius held his breath until he had gone by. He was so thirsty, he could spit cotton. Moistening his mouth, he voiced one of many worries. “What if you get delayed? What if I should get there before you? They’ll pick me off as sure as God made green apples.”

  “We’ll reach the hill first. Trust me,” Davy said with complete confidence.

  Flavius’s palms were growing slick. Crockett had not let him down yet, but there was a first time for everything.

  To soothe his friend, Davy remarked, “It’s the only way. Remember my motto.”

  “‘Always be sure you’re right, then go ahead,’” Flavius quoted. If he’d heard that once, he’d heard it a million times. Which was all well and good for Davy, who was as brave as any man who ever popped out of a woman’s womb. Flavius had no shortage of courage himself, but by nature he was as jumpy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Situations like this frazzled his nerves something awful.

  The trail entered dense growth. John Kayne paused. “Here’s where we part company. Take these.” Pulling his flintlocks, he gave one to each of the others.

  “We’re grateful,” Davy said sincerely.

  With a nod, Kayne veered to the left, vanishing like a ghost amid the foliage. Davy smiled at Flavius, then veered to the right. Immediately he ducked low, darting from cover to cover.

  Avoiding birds that might be scared into flight and squirrels that might chatter to high heaven, Davy looped toward the far side of the hill. He tried not to think of Flavius, alone, easy pickings.

  Think of Rebecca, he told himself. She mattered most. That he did not know her was unimportant. It was his duty.

  The woods thinned out again close to the side of the hill. Davy had to pick his route with extreme caution. Darting from boulder to log to tree to bush, he came to a narrow gully slashed out of the hill by erosion. It angled upward, affording ideal cover.

  Having the pistol was a comfort, but Davy had no
illusions about the outcome should he stumble on the entire war party. Whether he ever held his wife and kids in his arms again depended on how stealthy he could be. Avoiding dry twigs and grass, he hastened around a boulder. Shocked, he drew up short.

  Six feet away stood an equally dumbfounded warrior painted for war and armed with a glittering lance.

  Chapter Four

  Honed by a lifetime of wilderness living, tempered by clashes with beasts and bloodthirsty men alike, Davy Crockett’s reflexes were second to none.

  So it was that when the dumbfounded warrior recovered his wits, lowered the metal tip of his long lance, and speared it at Davy’s chest, Davy sidestepped and countered by slamming his pistol across the warrior’s temple.

  Firing a shot was out of the question. It would alert the rest of the war party to his presence, and leave him with an empty, useless weapon.

  The Indian’s knees buckled, but he did not go down. Shaking his head to clear it, the warrior swung viciously at Davy’s midsection, the keen blade missing by a whisker. In spinning, the man exposed his side. Wedged under the cord that held up his breechclout was a tomahawk. Davy’s own tomahawk.

  In a flash Davy snatched it and brought the blunt end crashing down on top of the Indian’s head. Like a disjointed puppet whose strings have been cut, the warrior sprawled forward and lay still.

  Davy glanced up the gully. No other Indians were visible. Stooping, he dragged the warrior back around the huge boulder. Lacking rope, he stripped off the man’s leggings and used the warrior’s knife to cut them into strips. After binding the Indian’s wrists and ankles and gagging him, Davy squatted.

  How had his own tomahawk come to be in the man’s possession? The only explanation Davy could think of was that it had been taken from one of the Sauks during the fight at the stream.

  So now Davy had three weapons. Or did he? A hasty inspection of the pistol revealed that it was undamaged and primed to fire.

  Davy resumed climbing. He exercised more stealth than ever before, his back to the gully wall in case he was jumped, ready to flee at a moment’s notice if the main band appeared.

  Davy neared the top of the hill. The gully narrowed to a jagged cleft that rose another ten feet. There was barely room for him to fit, but fit he did, squeezing in and climbing.

  The going was arduous and unbearably slow. Grains of dirt trickled from under his moccasins, and once a tiny rock dislodged and fell with a muffed thud. But he reached the top unchallenged and poked his head up.

  A grassy rectangle dotted with trees made for a park like setting. Davy did not want to expose himself until he was confident unfriendly eyes were not observing him, so, clambering out, he crawled to an oak and cautiously eased onto his knees.

  Somewhere a robin chirped. To the east flitted a yellow and black butterfly. The aromatic fragrance of wildflowers filled the air.

  It was so peaceful, so quiet, that Davy was inclined to think he had been wrong. The war party had no intention of springing an ambush. A single warrior had been left behind to watch the back trail, that was all.

  Then someone coughed. Davy spun around, and off through the high grass he glimpsed a buckskin-clad form prone on the green grass. The man was gazing into the valley, no doubt at Flavius.

  Like a panther stalking prey, Davy advanced. The knife remained in his sheath, the pistol tucked under his belt. For close-in, quiet work, he preferred the tomahawk.

  The young warrior was dressed as the man in the gully had been: in a breechclout, leggings, and high moccasins. A shaggy mane of shoulder-length, raven hair was adorned with a single eagle feather. His cheeks and forearms were streaked with alternating bands of red and yellow paint.

  The significance of the marks eluded Davy, as did the identity of the tribe the warrior belonged to. The Indian was taller than most, sinewy and whipcord tough.

  At the last tree Davy halted. To reach his quarry he must cross a ten-foot open stretch. It would help if John Kayne were there to back him up, but there had been no sign of the settler. What was keeping him?

  The Indian shifted, rising onto one knee. From beside him he lifted a bow. Strapped to his waist was a slender quiver packed with arrows. Sliding a shaft out, he nocked it to the sinew string and took aim at something below.

  At Flavius, Davy feared. Throwing caution aside, Davy charged. He fairly flew, yet even so, the warrior heard him and spun before he could strike. The arrow tip swiveled, aligning itself with his chest. He saw the bowstring jerk back.

  Davy flung himself to the right just as the string twanged. The shaft whizzed past and thunked into the oak. Driving himself forward, Davy sprang, his blow missing the warrior but smashing the second arrow the man had drawn.

  Snarling, the Indian hurled the shattered shaft at Davy’s face, then vaulted erect and skipped to the left, putting distance between them in order to nock another arrow.

  Davy could not allow that. Pouncing, he slashed at the warrior’s wrist, but the Indian dodged aside. A swipe of the tomahawk nicked the ash bow but did not prevent the man from yanking out a third shaft and applying it to the string.

  Another second and the warrior would let the arrow fly! Davy dived-and tripped! Jarring his elbows and knees, he looked up at the gleaming arrow tip and beyond it at the gleam of fierce triumph that lit the warrior’s dark, smoldering eyes.

  Davy saw one of those eyes explode outward, as if in slow motion. Along with it, part of the nose and cheek ruptured, spraying flesh and blood over the warrior’s chest, over the grass, and over Davy. The blast of a rifle echoed off across the valley.

  Pumping scarlet, the warrior swayed. The bow and arrow clattered at his feet. Somehow he was able to take a shambling step, then keeled over.

  Davy straightened, wiping his face with a sleeve. On the far side of the hill stood John Kayne, smoke curling from the muzzle of the Kentucky rifle. Kayne waved and ran toward him.

  No more Indians materialized. Davy stepped to the edge but did not see Flavius. Plucking grass, he wiped bits and pieces of flesh off his buckskins. Blood smeared his left sleeve and his shoulder. He needed to take a dip in a stream soon, or before long he would stink worse than a polecat.

  Kayne reloaded on the move. “You’re lucky I showed when I did,” he declared. “I’d have been here sooner, but the north side of this hill is a sheer cliff. Took me forever to climb.”

  Davy stripped the dead warrior of a knife, as well as the bow and quiver. “See any others?”

  “No, but I crossed their trail. The main party headed northeast. None of Rebecca’s tracks were mixed in with theirs, so she must still be on horseback.” Kayne nudged the body with a toe. “It would help if we knew what tribe these jaspers are from, but I’m still stumped.”

  “Maybe our prisoner can shed some light,” Davy said.

  “You caught one?”

  “See for yourself.”

  The warrior had his back to the gully and was doubled over a tooth-edged rock. Frantically rubbing the deerskin that bound his wrists, he had almost succeeded in slicing one of the strips in half.

  “No, you don’t, hoss,” Davy said, pushing the man backward and kicking the rock. “You’re going to answer some questions before we let you go.”

  Cradling his rifle, Kayne stabbed a finger at the warrior. “You can’t be serious. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. If we let him live, he’ll be back again someday to pillage and rape.”

  Davy hunkered facing the prisoner, who glared defiance. “Do you savvy English?” he asked. When that prompted no reply, he resorted to the Creek tongue. He wasn’t fluent, but he knew enough to get by. “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  The warrior spat on him.

  “See?” Kayne said. “There’s no reasoning with these savages. Let’s get going. Rebecca is more important.”

  “Hold on.” Davy had another idea. Recently, while held captive by the Nadowessioux, or Dakotas, he had learned some of their finger talk, or sign language, as some called it.
“Question?” he now signed. “You called?”

  Comprehension animated the warrior. But with his wrists bound, the best he could do was wriggle his fingers.

  “Cover him,” Davy told Kayne. “I’m fixing to parley. Don’t shoot unless he tries something.”

  “Sure you know what you’re doing?” Kayne asked skeptically. Nonetheless, he backed up a few feet and leveled his rifle. The click of the hammer being cocked stiffened the warrior, who recoiled.

  “We no harm you,” Davy signed to put the man at ease. “I free you, but you sit still.” Untying the knots took longer than he had anticipated. He had bound them so tight, he had to pick and pry for minutes on end. Once done, he slid backward to keep temptation, namely himself, out of the warrior’s reach.

  Sign language, Davy had learned, was wonderfully simple and logical, but it did have its drawbacks. For one thing, only the equivalent of what white men called nouns, adjectives, and verbs were used. The fine points of speech that his teacher had been so insistent every educated person must learn were missing.

  So if he wanted to say, for instance, that “five boys are walking toward camp,” in sign language that came out as, “Five boys walk camp.” There were no signs for “are” or “toward.”

  As Davy had done in the Sioux village, he now did here. Mentally, he filled in the missing words as he went along, which made it easier for him to understand what the warrior was saying. “Question. How are you called?” he began.

  “Thunder Heart,” the warrior signed.

  “What tribe do you belong to?”

  The man’s hands moved fluidly. Some of the signs Davy knew, others were new to him. But the gist of it, Davy felt, was “My people are known as the Men With Big Bellies.”

  Davy frowned. He must have misunderstood, so he tried again. The warrior repeated the same gestures, and Davy could not decide if they meant “Men With Big Bellies” or “Big Men with Bellies.” Either made no sense, since neither Thunder Heart nor the man Kayne had shot was unusually big or had a big stomach. “Where are you from?”