Blood Hunt (A Davy Crockett Western. Book 3) Read online

  “I didn’t mean to,” Flavius apologized, and grumbled, “Stupid place to put a tree, anyhow.”

  Davy set to loading his rifle. He had to be careful not to give himself away. The warriors were roving south of the tracks they had made, and had not yet seen the broken pine. As he capped the powder horn after pouring the proper amount down the barrel, he saw the leanest of the two meander northward.

  “If he sees our scuff marks, it’s root hog or die,” Flavius whispered. He fixed a bead on the skinny one, his thumb curled around the hammer.

  “Don’t shoot unless I say to,” Davy directed, busy with a patch and ball.

  Rebecca was gnawing on her white knuckles. “Please, no!” she said quietly. “No more killing on my account!”

  “I’ll bet you can’t wait to get home to Peoria,” Davy remarked softly, and was puzzled when she started as if pricked with a pin and her eyes grew wide with consternation. What was that all about?

  Davy forgot about her when the lean Atsina abruptly squatted and ran a hand over a patch of grass. At a word from him, the second warrior hastened to the spot. They consulted, and the lean one let out with a yell that brought He-Bear and the rest of the war party to the top of the slope.

  “We’re in for it now,” Flavius breathed.

  So it seemed. He-Bear limped down to the pair and inspected whatever they had found. Straightening, He-Bear surveyed the lower portion of the hill, his eyes roving over the saplings and on to dense vegetation to the south.

  Flavius held his breath. Six against two were awful odds. Davy and he would drop two before the war party reached them, then it would be close-in fighting, knife and tomahawk work, and the Devil take the slowest.

  Davy finished loading. Aligning the rifle, he centered the sights on He-Bear’s broad chest just as the Atsina moved toward the saplings. This is it, Davy thought.

  Then, to the south, a rifle shot echoed. The warriors all turned to scour the woodland below. They talked excitedly, growing more animated when the duller retort of a pistol rolled across the valley.

  He-Bear glanced down the slope, then out over the woods. Davy touched his finger to the trigger, ready to put a ball between the Atsina’s eyes if he made the wrong decision.

  “Look! They’re leaving!” Rebecca whispered.

  That they were. The war party loped southward, He-Bear at the rear, his stiff leg slowing him so that he was the last to disappear into the verdant vegetation.

  “We’re safe!” Flavius gushed, letting out his breath in a whoosh. He was so happy, he forgot himself and clapped Rebecca on the back.

  “Not yet we aren’t,” Davy said. Nor would they be until they reached the settlement.

  “What were those shots?” Rebecca inquired.

  Davy wished he knew. “No telling. Norval, Cyrus, and Kayne are out there somewhere. And a larger rescue party is supposedly on its way. Or maybe more Indians are in the area.”

  “More Sauks, most likely,” Flavius said. “It’s a shame we don’t have wings on our feet like that Hermes feller our teacher told us about.”

  “Better yet, we could use a winged horse like that Pegasus,” Davy joked.

  Flavius sat up. He wanted to kick himself for plumb forgetting an important tidbit of information. “Our horses!” he blurted.

  “What about them?”

  “The Atsinas left them tied to a tree about half a mile north of the hill!” Flavius recollected. “If we can get to them first, those buzzards will eat our dust.”

  “Let’s go.” Davy boosted Rebecca to her feet. Her lips were compressed tightly, as they would be when someone was extremely upset and attempting not to show it. “Anything wrong?” he quizzed.

  “No. I’m worn out, is all.”

  Flavius was his jovial self now that their escape was assured. “That makes two of us, ma am,” he said. “I’m so hungry, I could eat an elk whole, antlers and hooves and all.”

  “Since you know where the horses are, you guide us,” Davy suggested, and fell into place behind Rebecca. Unaccountably, she dragged her heels, often hanging back when Flavius tried to set a brisk pace. It slowed them terribly. A trek that should have taken less than ten minutes took twice that long.

  As near as Flavius could recall, the horses were in a glade fringed by a blackberry patch on the east and a mammoth maple on the west. He had not bothered to memorize any other landmarks, since at the time he had been bound and gagged and was constantly being prodded by a lance held by a warrior who took perverse pleasure in tormenting him.

  So it took a while for Flavius to get his bearings. When the emerald crown of a maple hove into sight to the left, he slanted toward it. Maples that size were few and far between. It might be the right one.

  Flavius was so eager to reach the horses and get out of there that he barged through any brush and weeds in his path, making more noise than he normally would.

  “Quiet down,” Davy scolded at one point, but it was like talking to a brick. His friend plowed blithely on. Davy contented himself with keeping one eye on their back trail and the other on Rebecca Worthington.

  The blonde acted more depressed the farther they went. Repeatedly she cast longing looks into the trees, as if in hope of seeing something—or someone.

  Davy was at a loss to explain her behavior. Common politeness, prevented him from prying, but when, for the tenth time, she gazed fervently into the trees and pouted, he could not contain himself. “What’s eating at you, ma’am, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Rebecca gazed straight ahead. “Nothing,” she said stiffly.

  Davy figured that was that, but in half a minute she cleared her throat and asked a question that no one had ever posed before.

  “Are you happy with your life, Mr. Crockett?”

  “Tolerably so, I reckon,” Davy confessed. “I have a wife who darns my socks regularly, a passel of sprouts that keep my head spinning, and a comfortable cabin to live in. What more can a fellow ask for?”

  “That’s your definition of happiness, then? A family and a home?”

  “Something wrong with that?”

  Rebecca’s long dress snagged on a bush, and she had to tug it loose. “No. Not at all. You’ve found your niche in life and you’re content. I envy you. Not many can make the same claim.”

  Since she had broached the subject, Davy felt at liberty to ask, “How about you? Are you happy with your life?”

  She bowed her head. Her hair covered most of her face, hiding her features when she said in the voice of a girl of ten or twelve, “I wish.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Living our lives as we see fit is a luxury most of us are denied, Mr. Crockett. Circumstances dictate what we do, not personal choice.”

  Davy disagreed. “A body can do whatever they want if they set their mind to it. Your life is your own. You can’t live it the way others say you should or you’ll always be miserable.”

  “How true,” Rebecca said rather sadly. “But it’s different for you, Mr. Crockett. Being a man, and all.”

  “You’ve lost me again.”

  Rebecca glanced back at him. “The rules are different for women. We’re supposed to keep our place, to be obedient daughters, to always do whatever our parents want. We’re not given the same freedom men are. And that’s not fair.”

  “Comes a time when every person is old enough to move out on their own. Then you can do what you want.”

  A bitter laugh rippled from her velvet throat. “Oh, if only that were an option! But my parents, Mr. Crockett, see things differently. Before the year is out, they want me married off to a man I can’t abide.”

  “Put your foot down,” Davy said. It was a lame suggestion, but what else could she do? Other than leave home without her parents’ blessing, and try to make do in a world that gulped innocent young women into its merciless maw and spit them out battered and broken?

  Rebecca laughed louder. “Really, Mr. Crockett. If you knew my father, you would appreciate how ridi
culous that idea is. Festus Aloysius Worthington does not take guff from his offspring. Ever.” She rubbed her left cheek. “The last time I had the gumption to sass him, he slapped me so hard I nearly lost a couple of teeth.”

  “I’m sorry for you,” Davy said, and meant it. He never had cottoned to women-beaters.

  “Not half as sorry as I am,” Rebecca said.

  Davy sought to cheer her by saying, “Don’t give up. So long as you’re breathing, there’s hope.” He saw Flavius slow down. “If a person wants something badly enough, they usually can get it. There’s no bucking someone who knows their own mind and won’t be stopped come hell or high water.”

  A pensive look came over her. “No, I guess there isn’t. All we have to do is be willing to face the consequences.”

  Flavius halted and chuckled. Ahead was the glade, shaded by the high maple. On the other side were the sorrel and the bay, calmly grazing. “I did it!” he exclaimed, tickled with himself.

  Davy moved past him, scouring the clearing. He was not taking any chances. Both horses raised their heads and stared at him, their ears pricked. “It’s safe,” he judged.

  “You can ride my horse, miss,” Flavius told Rebecca, since only the bay had a saddle.

  “I don’t mind riding double,” Rebecca said.

  A vivid image of trotting along with her glued to his back made Flavius break out in a cold sweat. Matilda would throw a fit if she heard.

  Davy walked to the sorrel and reached out to unfasten the buckskin cord the Atsinas had used to tether the mounts. A loud metallic click from the blackberry bushes to his right riveted him where he stood.

  “No one move!”

  Flavius rotated, bringing up his rifle. Seeing the dark hole of a muzzle fixed on him was enough to convince him to comply. He froze.

  Rebecca, however, did not. Squealing for joy, she dashed to the thicket. “Is it really you?” she asked, clapping her hands.

  From out of the growth strode Pashipaho. The stately Sauk held a rifle at chest height. “I knew that whoever won would come for the horses, and bring you. So I waited.”

  Davy was astounded when the blonde threw herself at the warrior and lavished his cheek and neck with passionate kisses. “I must have missed something somewhere,” he declared.

  Pashipaho wagged the rifle. “Put your weapons on the ground. I have no desire to harm you, so do not do anything stupid.”

  One by one, Davy set his collection down. Flavius hastily did the same.

  The Sauk visibly relaxed. Circling to the sorrel, he motioned for them to back up. “We meet again,” he said to Flavius, grinning. “I am glad to see you alive.”

  “As if you care!” Flavius responded. “You were all fired up to turn me over to the Atsinas to be tortured, remember?”

  Rebecca was leaning against the warrior, running her fingers along his turban. “He only did what he had to do to save me. Please don’t hold it against him.”

  Insight filled Davy like water filling a pitcher. Hadn’t John Kayne mentioned that Rebecca secretly cared for someone, and had for a long time? And that no one else in the settlement knew who the lucky man was? “The two of you have been in love for quite a spell, I hear.”

  The blonde and the warrior exchanged glances. “Who could have told you?” Rebecca asked. “We’ve kept it a secret from everyone, even our friends. We had to, or we both would have suffered.”

  “We must not hide it any longer,” Pashipaho said. “We should live our lives as we want. We will go off by ourselves and find a place where we can live in peace.”

  Rebecca stepped away from him, amazement and affection radiating from her like sunshine from the sun. “Do you mean it, Pashipaho?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s a dream come true!” Rebecca cried, and embraced him, inadvertently pinning his arms to his sides in the process.

  Davy glanced down. This was the opening he needed. He could pick up the rifle and snap off a shot before the warrior did, but he did not try. The Sauk had promised not to harm them, and he took the man at his word.

  Rebecca, giggling in childlike glee, turned, her hand gripping the warrior’s. “I want you to understand, Mr. Crockett. Pashipaho and I met years ago, shortly after my pa moved us here from Ohio. I’m not a big believer in Cupid or any of that stuff, but I fell in love with him the second I saw him.”

  “And I with her,” Pashipaho said in his cultured English.

  “For a long time nothing came of it,” Rebecca continued. “We’d look at each other, and we could tell how we felt, but we dared not let on. My pa would have broken both my legs if he found out. And Pashipaho’s people don’t much like whites.”

  “There is too much hatred on both sides,” the warrior remarked.

  Rebecca was positively bubbling with the need to share her tale. “Two summers ago, the settlement held a social. The parson invited a few friendly Indians. Among them were Pashipaho’s pa and ma.” Her voice acquired a dreamy aspect. “We avoided each other most of the dance. Then, somehow, we bumped into each other outside. Before I knew what was happening, I was in his arms.”

  “I was to blame,” the Sauk said. “She was so beautiful, with the moonlight on her hair and her face shining like the moon itself.”

  If ever Davy had met two people in love, these two qualified.

  “We snuck out to meet from time to time,” Rebecca said. “We always figured that we would work it out, that we would be husband and wife one day.” The light faded from her face. “Up until the morning my pa announced that I was to marry Cyrus Binderhorn, whether I liked the idea or not.”

  It was Pashipaho’s turn to become grave. “When I heard, my mind was in a whirl. I could not eat. I could not sleep. I did not know what to do.”

  “So you decided to steal her so she wouldn’t have to wed Cyrus,” Davy speculated.

  The Sauk nodded. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  Flavius had been listening with half an ear. Talk of romance invariably bored him, and now that he was not in immediate danger, his thoughts had strayed to food. “What did I tell you?” he said to Davy. “Doing right ain’t always bright.”

  “And doing wrong is?” Davy challenged. To the lovebirds he had more to say. “All this is well and good, but you’ve brought grief down on a lot of innocent people. Think of those dead men up on the hill. What about their families? What about the kin of the Atsinas who were killed?”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” Rebecca said. “Things got out hand, is all. If I could turn back time, I would. But I can’t, so now we have to make the best of it.”

  “I tried to avoid spilling blood,” Pashipaho remarked. “I did not want to give her people more reason to hate me.” He sighed forlornly. “Bad medicine has ruined everything.”

  Davy understood now why the Sauk had not harmed Rebecca’s father. And why Pashipaho had not allowed the other Sauks to take his life, or to slay Flavius. “What do you plan to do?”

  “We will go far, far away,” the warrior stated. “Somewhere the people do not know us. Somewhere we can live together in peace.”

  Flavius had heard some harebrained notions in his time, but theirs beat all. “Lord love a duck!” he declared. “What planet do you two think you’re living on, anyhow? Once word gets out how you misled everybody, the folks hereabouts will be mad enough to eat nails and spit tacks. They won’t rest until they hunt you down.”

  Pashipaho grew troubled. His brows knit, and he looked long and hard at the rifle he held, a rifle Davy recognized as belonging to one of the slain settlers.

  “Making yourselves scarce is best for everyone,” Davy said, his intuition blaring like the foghorn on a ship.

  “We’ll need your horses, though,” Rebecca said, moving to the bay. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  Panic welled up in Flavius. Without mounts it would take them a year of Sundays to reach Tennessee, and they did not have enough money between them to buy a single new animal. “N
ow, hold on there,” he protested. “We need those critters. Go steal someone else’s.”

  “Be reasonable. Where would we go to find them? Back at the settlement? At Pashipaho’s village?” Rebecca grasped the reins and grabbed hold of the saddle to pull herself up. “I’m truly sorry.”

  “Not sorry enough,” Flavius groused as she climbed on. There went his saddle and what few personal effects he had.

  Rebecca rode around the Sauk, who had not budged, then drew rein. “What’s wrong? Why are you just standing there? Mount up. The Atsinas will be coming to claim these animals before too long.”

  Pashipaho widened his stance, his dark eyes narrowing. “We should not leave witnesses.”

  “What?” Rebecca twisted. “You can’t.”

  “Think, dear one. Only these two know we are still alive. Only these two know we have taken the horses. If we shoot them, your people will blame the Atsinas. We will be free.”

  Davy tucked his knees a few inches, tensing to scoop up his rifle. Plainly, he had grossly misjudged the Sauk.

  “No!” Rebecca said. “You haven’t killed anyone yet. Why start now?” Her voice quaked with anxiety. When the warrior did not answer, she said, “If you shoot them, Pashipaho, you’re not the man I believe you are, and I want nothing more to do with you.”

  The Sauk frowned. Reluctantly, he slowly lowered the rifle. Lithely swinging onto the sorrel, he trotted to the northeast, the woman who had forsaken her own kind for the sake of his love at his side.

  Davy watched until they were out of sight. He did not attempt to grab a weapon, not with Pashipaho glancing back every few yards. When the horses were shrouded by growth, he summed up his feelings by flinging his arms heavenward and bellowing, “Damn!”

  “What now, partner?” Flavius asked.

  “What else?” Davy kicked the ground in anger. “They left us no choice. Without those horses, we might as well stay in Illinois. Were going after them.”

  “And if the lady and her man friend raise a fuss?”

  “We take what’s ours. One way or the other.”