Wilderness Double Edition 26 Page 9

  “All these years,” Nate said.

  “Every minute of every day of all those years,” One-Eye amended. “And tomorrow my dream comes true. Tomorrow all those sleepless nights will be paid for in full.”

  Nate suppressed a smile. Jackson had inadvertently let it slip that they would live out the night. It was only about eleven. Six hours until dawn. Six hours to turn the tables.

  Shipley Beecher was saying, “I don’t understand. If you have hated him for so long, why haven’t you acted before now?”

  “I have my reasons,” One-Eye said a trifle defensively.

  “He could have died of old age before you got around to taking your revenge,” Shipley persisted.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” One-Eye said.

  The farmer did not know when to stay quiet. “The only reason I can think of, the only reason that makes any kind of sense, is that you’re scared of him.”

  “What?”

  “Are you hard of hearing? You must be scared of him. So scared, you couldn’t bring yourself to confront him.”

  “First your wife, now you,” One-Eye said. Taking two swift strides, he smashed the stock of his rifle against Beecher’s head. There was no warning, no chance for the farmer to defend himself. Beecher folded, and One-Eye went to bash him again.

  Nate started to take a step and found himself staring down the muzzle of the rifle.

  “Don’t be as stupid as him,” One-Eye rasped.

  “You won’t shoot me,” Nate bluffed. “You need me alive. You can’t torture a dead man.”

  “True,” One-Eye admitted. “But I can put a hole in your hip or your kneecap and still torture you to my heart’s content.”

  Nate stayed where he was.

  “That’s what I thought,” One-Eye said smugly. He backed off a couple of steps, then irritably growled, “What’s taking that female so long? She should have been back by now.”

  “Two hundred yards is a long way in the dark,” Nate said.

  “Not if you have any sand.” One-Eye peered to the south, his brow puckered. “Maybe she’s up to something. Maybe she thinks she can trick me.”

  Nate indicated the prone form in the grass. “She won’t do anything to endanger him.”

  “Let’s hope not. Because if she does, after I’m done with you and the idiot, I’ll do her in ways she has never been done.” One-Eye chortled lecherously.

  “You’re fond of making threats,” Nate observed.

  “So what? I almost always carry them out.” One-Eye began to pace. “I swear, if she doesn’t show her pretty hide soon, I’m liable to get mad.”

  Nate had met more than a few men who liked to hear the sound of their own voices, but few had been as enamored of their babble as Jackson. “Give her a few more minutes. It can’t hurt.”

  The sound of hooves shut off whatever retort One-Eye was about to make. “Finally!” he snarled.

  Cynthia was riding her horse and leading her husband’s, Jackson’s, and the pack animal. Reining up, she swung her leg over the pommel and slid to the ground. “Here they are.”

  “Did you come by way of China?” One-Eye snapped.

  “Where’s my bay?” Nate asked.

  “How in hell should I know? It’s a miracle I stumbled on these after the stampede. I never saw any sign of yours.”

  Cynthia saw her husband, and gasped. “Ship!” Bounding over, she knelt and clasped him to her. “What have you done to him now, you fiend?”

  “I rattled the pea he uses for a brain,” One-Eye sneered. “What you see in that tree stump is beyond me.”

  “My sweet Ship,” Cynthia said, and commenced crying. A few tears that turned into a torrent.

  “Enough of your blubbering,” One-Eye snarled. “I swear, women are nothing but a vexation. I’m about ready to give you the same treatment I gave him.”

  Nate was being ignored. He slid his right foot a few inches forward, then his left. Bunching both legs, he prepared to spring.

  But Jackson had the instincts of a puma. Whirling, he leveled his rifle. “Oh-ho! Nice try. Which will it be? Die now defending this cow? Or die slowly tomorrow? I’ll leave it up to you.”

  Nate straightened. He was tired of the cat and mouse, but he would choose life every time.

  “You have no idea how happy you just made me,” One-Eye Jackson said, and laughed.

  Seven

  Dawn had long been one of Nate’s two favorite times of the day. The other was evening, when the day’s work was done and his family gathered in their cabin to eat supper, relax, and rest. Some of his fondest memories were of those quiet hours when Winona sat in the rocking chair in front of the fireplace and sewed or knit while his son and daughter listened to him read.

  Dawn was special for a different reason. Dawn was the start of a new day. It instilled a sense of renewal, of the pulsing beat of life reborn. He would stand on his doorstep and watch the sky slowly brighten and listen to the forest fill with the chorus of bird and animal cries that betokened a profound yet simple truth. Life was for living.

  But on this particular day, Nate did not look forward to the dawn. This was one morning where he dreaded the rising sun and the heat the sun would bring with it. Because that heat might well kill him.

  Nate was flat on his back, his arms and legs spread-eagle, his wrists and ankles lashed to imbedded stakes. He had been stripped to the waist and his feet were bare. A few yards to his right, Shipley Beecher was staked out.

  It was One-Eye’s devious doing. The wily Jackson had made the farmer pound in the stakes and tie Nate down, then had Cynthia do the same to her husband, all the while Jackson stood back covering them with his rifle. They had balked, of course, and One-Eye had threatened to shoot Nate and Shipley. When they still refused, One-Eye threatened to shoot Cynthia.

  Now here they were, tied and at Jackson’s mercy, with the new day about to break.

  Cynthia was over by the horses, huddled in despair, her arms around her knees, her forehead on her arms.

  Nate thought he heard her weeping a while ago, but he could not be sure.

  As for the cause of their misery, One-Eye Jackson bubbled with sadistic glee. He walked around and around them, baring his teeth as a wolf would bare its fangs, and chortled. When a ruddy glow tinted the eastern sky, he stopped pacing and stood over Nate. “Ready for the last day of your life?”

  Nate did not answer.

  “Then again, you’re tough as rawhide,” One-Eye said. “You might last two, even three days. I hope so. The longer you last, the more you suffer.”

  “Let the farmer and his wife go.”

  One-Eye sighed. “Not that again. You’ve asked a dozen times. They die too. The simpleton, there, won’t last as long as you because he’s weak. The woman, well, let’s just say I have special plans for her.” He licked his thin lips.

  “I should have hunted you down and killed you long ago,” Nate said with keen regret.

  “Not you,” One-Eye scoffed. “Not the high and mighty Nate King, who always has to do what’s right, even if it costs another man his eye.”

  “I had to tell them.”

  Jackson’s grin vanished and his features contorted in rage. “Like hell! You could have kept your mouth shut! No one would ever have known, and I would still have both eyes.”

  Shipley Beecher was listening. “Tell who what? Does this have to do with whatever brought you to hating King so much?”

  “It has everything to do with it,” One-Eye snapped. “I lose my eye because of this self-righteous hypocrite.”

  “Hypocrite? You’re wrong, there. King strikes me as being an honorable man.”

  “Oh, does he really?” One-Eye responded, and turned. “Was he being honorable when he was making love to your wife?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, that’s right. You were asleep. You didn’t hear them. I did, and it about made me sick.”

  Shipley raised his head as high as he could. “You’re a liar. My wife would never
betray my trust.”

  One-Eye chuckled. “She’s a woman, isn’t she? And women are as changeable as the weather. Her exact words, as best I can recollect, was that she sees you through new eyes. You’re not the man she thought you were. She even told him that hitching her apron to you was a mistake.”

  It had grown light enough for Nate to see the farmer’s expression when Shipley looked toward Cynthia. It was the expression of a man whose innards had been ripped out.

  “Cyn? Is what he’s saying true?”

  The huddled form by the horses did not move.

  “Look at her,” One-Eye said. “Pretending she doesn’t hear you. Or maybe she’s afraid to answer, afraid to admit the truth.” He laughed. “Shall I go on? Shall I tell you the rest? How she is disenchanted with you? How her disenchantment grows each and every day?”

  “This can’t be happening,” Shipley said.

  “There’s more. You’re no poet, I hear. But King, he’s wonderful. He has more between his ears than you do.”

  Shipley sank back and closed his eyes. “I don’t care to hear any more.”

  “I don’t blame you. But you know I’m telling the truth. While you slept, your woman was trying to crawl into Nate King’s pants.”

  A shriek rent the air. None of them had noticed Cynthia rise. None of them had seen her suddenly hurl herself at Jackson. One-Eye spun just as she reached him. He swung his rifle behind him, apparently thinking she might try to wrest it from him, but she went for his face instead, raking it with her fingernails while screeching at the top of her lungs.

  “No! No! No! No! No!”

  Jackson nearly went down. He brought up his other arm to protect himself, but it was not enough. Cynthia opened his cheek, almost scratched out his other eye. He was forced to let go of his rifle and raise his other arm to ward her off. But she would not be denied. She pressed him, a she-cat on a rampage, her nails flicking, tearing. It was a wild, insane, glorious attempt, and if she had kept her head, if she had gone for his throat, she might have brought him down. As it was, she drove him back half a dozen feet before he recovered his wits. Balling his right fist, he caught her a good one on the point of her jaw and crumpled her like paper.

  “Damn you, bitch! Damn you, you stinking bitch!”

  One-Eye was breathing raggedly. Crimson furrows marked his left cheek and forehead. A deep scratch was a hair’s width from his eye. He glared at Cynthia, then hauled off and kicked her in the side, not once but several times.

  “Stop that!” Shipley Beecher cried.

  One-Eye looked up. “You’d defend her after what she did? Are you that much the simpleton?”

  “I don’t know whether she did or she didn’t,” Shipley replied. “She’s down and helpless. Leave her be.”

  “Remarkable,” One-Eye said. “Truly remarkable. If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand how people can be so dumb.”

  “You’ve never been in love,” Shipley said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I had a woman once. A woman as pretty as yours. A Shoshone.”

  “King’s wife is a Shoshone.”

  “That’s right. I met her back when I had two eyes. The woman I was with belonged to the same band.” One-Eye stopped and stared at the ground. “Little Fawn was her name.” He fell silent and stood as still as a statue.

  A groan from Cynthia goaded One-Eye into walking over and nudging her, hard. “Get up.”

  “Can’t you see she’s unconscious?” Shipley yelled. “Haven’t you hurt her enough?”

  “Mister, I haven’t even started.” One-Eye strode to his horse and returned with a length of rope. He tied Cynthia’s wrists behind her back, then kicked her and came over to Nate. “Didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, I trust.”

  “No such luck,” Nate said.

  The sun crowned the horizon. Already, the mild chill of the night was giving way to the warmth of the new day. Warmth that would soon transform the prairie into hell on earth.

  Jackson set his rifle down and slowly drew his bone-handled knife. His eyes glittering with the lust to inflict pain and suffering, he hunkered and smiled. “Well now. Where to begin?”

  Nate focused on a pillowy cloud high in the azure vault.

  “I aim to whittle on you awhile. Maybe cut off a few fingers and toes. Or how about your nose? Your wife won’t think you’re so handsome then, will she? Not that she will ever see you again.” One-Eye waited, then asked, “Nothing to say? You flapped your gums in the village that day. Remember?”

  “I had to tell them.”

  “Sure you did. Up there on your pedestal, looking down your nose at the rest of us. You had to butt in. You had to turn them against me.”

  “They let you live,” Nate said.

  One-Eye hissed and poised the tip of his blade over Nate’s chest. “Is that what they told you? That they let me go out of the goodness of their hearts? Stinking savages. I escaped. I passed out and they left me alone in the lodge. They didn’t reckon on me reviving so quickly. They had tied me up, but I had a knife hid under my legging. I cut the rope, made a slit in the back of the lodge, and lit a shuck before that cousin of your wife’s came back to finish me.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Nate admitted.

  “Did the Shoshones tell you what they did to me?”

  “They showed me your eye.”

  “And what did you do? Praise them? Did you think I got my just deserts? Was my eye worth what I did?”

  “I had no say in it,” Nate said.

  “More excuses.” One-Eye moved the knife above Nate’s face. “Enough. It’s time to take my revenge. Which eye should I cut out first? The right or the left? Or maybe I should do both at once.”

  Howeah of the Nemene held his war horse to a canter. He was close, very close, and he must not let the whites spot him. He had started out before sunrise and expected to soon overtake them.

  It had been Nocona’s idea. To send one warrior on ahead to spy on the whites. All of them wanted to do it, so Nocona plucked stems of grass and held the stems between his hands with only the ends sticking out, and each warrior had picked one.

  Howeah drew the short stem.

  Now here Howeah was. He looked forward to the end of the chase. To disposing of the whites and returning to his village. He missed his wife and sons. He would never admit it to his friends, but he would rather be in his lodge with his loved ones than seeking hair to hang from coup sticks.

  Soon Howeah straightened and peered into the distance. His eyes, the sharpest eyes of all the Wasps, had spied something: silhouettes outlined against the horizon. Their shape left no doubt. They were horses.

  Immediately, Howeah brought his own mount to a stop and swung off. His horse would stay where he left it. It was well trained. Unslinging his bow, he notched an arrow to the sinew string, crouched, and cat-footed forward.

  Howeah was well versed in the deadly craft of his formidable people. As he advanced he angled to the east so that he approached the whites from out of the sun. It was not long before he saw a white man moving about. Dropping onto all fours, he crawled until he heard the man’s voice raised in anger. That puzzled him. He wondered if the whites had spotted him, but there was no loud outcry or other signs of alarm.

  Exercising the skill of a stalking wolf, Howeah flattened and crept nearer. He heard another voice, deeper but quieter, that reminded him of the rumble of a bear. The horses were to his left. Since the breeze was out of the north, it carried his scent away from them. The grass thinned, and he slowed. Holding the bow in front of him, he parted the blades with consummate care so they would not rustle and give him away.

  Then Howeah saw them. Few times in his life had he ever been astonished. But this astonished him. For two of the white men had been stripped half naked and staked out, while the woman lay bound and unconscious.

  This was new. This was different.

  It interested Howeah greatly. He had never witnessed whites harm other whites. Yet pla
inly the skinny white with one eye intended to hurt the others. Howeah listened, wishing he spoke the white tongue, as the man with one eye railed at the others. Howeah watched, amazed, as the woman attacked the man with one eye and was brutally struck on the jaw.

  Incredible happenings.

  Howeah drank it in, enthralled. He found himself admiring the white with one eye. The man was like a rabid coyote.

  Howeah studied the other two. The short one had been shot and the wound left untended. The big one had more muscles than any man Howeah ever saw. The man with one eye did not like the big one. The emotion that twisted one-eye’s face said so.

  A lot of talking took place. The man with one eye became madder. The big man on the ground was surprisingly calm. Then the man with one eye squatted and held a knife over the big one.

  Howeah was riveted in fascination. He waited for the plunge of steel, the spurt of blood. But the man with one eye did not bury the blade. The man talked some more. Talked too much, in Howeah’s estimation.

  Howeah thought of his friends. He should get back to them so he could lead them to the whites. They would get this over with, and he could return to their village and his loved ones. But he stayed where he was, intrigued to learn what the white with one eye would do next.

  As it turned out, Howeah did not have long to wait, and it was not what he expected, not what he expected at all.

  “What did you say?”

  “There is a Comanche behind you,” Nate King whispered in case the watching warrior understood English.

  One-Eye Jackson laughed and could not stop. He laughed so hard, he had to hold his side. When his mirth subsided and he could finally speak, he sputtered, “That was feeble, mister. As old as the hills. A line my grandpa might have used in his day.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “You’re stalling, is what you are doing,” One-Eye declared. “But I’m not a yack like your friend, yonder.”

  “I don’t know how long he’s been there,” Nate said. “He’s watching you, and he has a bow.”