In the Season of the Sun (42 page)

“Yes,” Tewa agreed, thoughtfully. “To follow the circle is to be open to the will of the All-Father, no matter how painful.” Her expression grew pensive, tinged with regret. “My father still walks in my soul at times.” She looked up at Jacob, her eyes moist. “Don't die, Jacob Sun Gift.”

Jacob didn't know how to respond at first, so he took her in his arms yet again and stroked her black hair and held her close. His doubts were hers. Love today was all the reassurance he could offer. Violence lurked in the wind. A time of reckoning was upon them all, and who would be left standing amid the bones of the rain?

49

I
t was the last day of April, the time of the Muddy-Faced Moon, when seventy-one men, five days out from Fort Promise, dismounted at the bottom of a long, narrow draw and waited for the first golden tint of sunrise to brighten the eastern horizon. The men grumbled among themselves, rubbed and stretched their weary limbs, and made a cold camp beneath the Douglas firs towering a hundred fifty feet overhead.

Kilhenny studied the lessening dark. One by one the stars winked out with the approach of dawn. He kicked a pinecone at a bull snake working its way upslope in search of prey. The reptile, which had been roused from its lair by all the activity, hissed and quickened its pace. It was impossible for the men to move noiselessly. Horses would neigh and choose to fight their riders for a time. However, any dust trail churned by the animals had settled during the past hour.

Kilhenny pointed to a solitary star in the northwest. “Lucifer, the fallen angel.” It seemed suspended above the range of hills that formed an entrance to Medicine Lake. “He points the way.”

“Fitting,” Tom muttered.

“You reckon we been spotted?” Pike Wallace asked, walking his horse up alongside Kilhenny and Tom Milam. Pike's eyes were constantly ranging the surrounding hills.

“We'd know by now,” Tom said. Pike chewed on the stem of his clay pipe, the tobacco tightly packed and unlit. Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “Don't worry, amigo. I aim to ride on and scout the pass.”

“Nerves,” Pike said indignantly. “I'll show you ‘nerves.' Boy, I was fightin' my way through redskins when you were still in knee britches.”

“I know. I was there, remember?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Pike stammered.

“But you're not going with me.”

“Take him,” Kilhenny ordered. “One of you stay to keep watch while the other brings word the pass is clear.”

Tom shrugged. He didn't like it. But too much of a protest would alarm a man like Kilhenny and arouse his suspicions. He pointed his horse toward the mouth of the arroyo. “Reckon you can keep up, Pike?”

“Watch my dust, boy,” Pike replied cantankerously.

Tom looked back at the rough-hewn parade of frontiersmen who followed Coyote Kilhenny into the high country. Each man was heavily armed with rifle and belly gun and an assortment of knives, hatchets, and tomahawks. A couple of roisters were busying themselves with the cannon under the watchful eyes of Iron Mike, who had assumed responsibility for the weapon. The gun carriage had worked loose and a rock had knocked a spoke loose from the wheel. All around Tom, the men readied themselves to ride into battle after a full night's march. Tom wondered if his brother, Jacob, really had a chance of stopping Kilhenny's army.

“You coming?” Pike called out.

Tom waved to the older man and started out of the arroyo.

“Be careful, lad,” Kilhenny said as Tom rode past.

“Like a bear in a beehive,” Tom replied.

Con Vogel threaded his way through the trappers and gingerly approached the half-breed, who was dozing beneath the evergreen canopy of a Douglas fir. Kilhenny's eyes were closed. His barrel chest rose and fell in a semblance of sleep.

Skintop Pritchard stepped forward to block Vogel's path. “Where you going, fiddle player?”

Con Vogel bristled at the man's tone of voice. Pritchard made plain his sneering disregard for the young German's talents.

“I intend to speak to Mr. Kilhenny. That is, if it's any of your business.” He tried to walk around Pritchard, but Coyote's henchman moved to block Vogel's path yet again. “Now see here!”

“He's sleeping,” Pritchard said.

“The devil never sleeps,” Con Vogel scowled. Kilhenny broke into laughter, though his eyes remained closed. “That's good, Con, my lad. Real good.”

“I want to talk to you. I want to know where I stand,” Vogel said, looking past Pritchard.

“You're standing in the High Lonesome,” Kilhenny said, sitting upright and looking directly at the aristocrat. “Blackfeet call it Ever Shadow. I call it mine.”

“Thanks to my help,” Vogel replied, lowering his voice. “or are you forgetting who put Nate Harveson out of the way? I think I deserve—”

“What?” Kilhenny said, crawling to his feet. He crossed to Vogel and put his face inches from the man's wind-burned features. “You murdered a man. So tell me, what do you deserve?”

“On your orders.”

“Did I ever give such an order, Mr. Pritchard?” Kilhenny asked of the man at his side.

“I'll swear you didn't. So will Pike. But we did see the fiddle player here shoot Harveson in cold blood.”

“By heaven, that sounds like a hanging offense,” Kilhenny exclaimed in mock horror.

“Yes sir. Murder's something they don't even build a gallows for. Any stout branch will do,” Skintop Pritchard added with relish.

Con Vogel studied the faces of the two men and with sinking heart realized once again he had cast his lot among brutal and unscrupulous men. But his instincts were that of a survivor. He had made his way across Europe living by his wits. In truth, his quick mind and driving ambition had brought him this far.… To the brink of disaster or wealth, it remained for him to insure his fate.

“Look, Mr. Kilhenny, all I want to say is that I have indeed proved myself. I trust my loyalty will not go unrewarded.” Though the German towered over the half-breed, it was Vogel who retreated as Kilhenny moved in closer still. Coyote Kilhenny reeked of sweat and bear grease. His rust-red beard and hair gleamed in the first new rays of sunlight like a wild, tangled mane befitting the king of beasts. Which in truth, Con Vogel silently noted, Coyote Kilhenny had become—a king among beasts.

“Don't worry, fiddle player,” said Kilhenny. “I'm a firm believer that a man ought to get what he deserves. Now you better load and prime your pistols. 'Cause the ‘devil' has work to do.”

Lone Walker sat hunched forward in the powder wagon, staring at the kegs of black powder and shot. His mind struggled to form some kind of plan, some way to ignite the powder and alert his people. He found it incredible that such a large force had approached unnoticed by the people of his village.

He listened to the muted conversation of the men around him. Not all were renegades. There were men simply eager to work the streams for beaver and prime otter pelts unmolested by Blackfoot raiding parties. Wiping out the village seemed one good way to end the Indian menace. All were hard men who followed Kilhenny because he'd proved himself capable. Coyote Kilhenny was one of them, for better or worse. Such men could see no further than prime pelts and a tidy profit at the end of a year's hard labor. It was future enough. They'd leave empire building to men like Nate Harveson and, now, Coyote Kilhenny.

Lone Walker shifted his weight and stretched the kinks out of his legs. He wanted to stand, but the trapper called Iron Mike had already knocked him down for such an effrontery. When Iron Mike wasn't laboring over the nine-pounder or driving the wagon, he was sharpening his knife and threatening to lift Lone Walker's scalp.

The shaman ignored such threats. Bound as he was with his hands tied behind his back, he had no other defense but an icy gaze and his own spirit song. Now, within the heart of Ever Shadow, Lone Walker once more began to sing. The words were almost inaudible. He had no sacred fire, yet so close to the holy places where he had offered prayer smoke in the past, Lone Walker knew the All-Father would hear his softly uttered plea.

He summoned the spirits of earth and fire to rise up and vanquish the men milling about the arroyo, who were taking little enjoyment from their hardtack and nary a cup of coffee.

One of the men, a trapper named Bud Ousley, heard the Blackfoot and shivered. He glanced at Iron Mike, who was greasing the axle on the nine-pounder's carriage.

“What's he singing?”

“This little beauty will have made some sweet music of her own before the morning's through,” Iron Mike said, patting the barrel. “Huh?” He looked up at his companion, stood, and walked along the wagon. He leaned on the siding and studied the brave. “Sing all you want, you red nigger, 'cause today, as soon as Kilhenny gives the word, I'm gonna take your hair. You know it, don't you?”

“What's he singing?” Ousley repeated. He was a small man with all the strut of a bantam rooster, though Lone Walker had taken to getting on his nerves of late. Ousley had a healthy regard for Indian customs and Indian ways, even more so since Walks With The Bear's dramatic demise.

“A death chant.” Iron Mike drew his knife and touched the point to Lone Walker's throat, then traced a path along his naked chest. The renegade chuckled and returned the knife to his belt. He glanced at Ousley. “A death chant, that's all.”

“For him?” Ousley removed his coonskin cap and dried his perspiring face on the sleeve of his Mexican shirt. “Or us?”

50

A
red-tailed hawk painted a series of lazy spirals against the azure canvas of the sky. Sunlight peeled the shadows back from the rims and washed the pass in amber light. Hoofbeats shattered the fragile silence and reverberated off the walls of the pass.

The two horsemen entered the Medicine Lake pass with their rifles at the ready. Twenty yards in, Pike Wallace took the lead to prove to Tom and perhaps to himself that he still was a man to ride the river with.

“Mighty quiet,” Pike observed and angled toward the slope and out of the center of the pass. “Better we ride the tree line.”

Tom studied the lordly ponderosas and the mass of underbrush fringing the hillside. Something … someone waited. Pike's eyes weren't as young as they used to be or he would have noticed. Tom hurried his own mount forward and caught up to Pike Wallace and headed the older man off before he'd climbed twenty feet. “What the hell, Tom?” Pike said.

“That's as far as you go.”

“What in blazes does that mean?”

“It means I'm giving you a chance to ride out of here. Ride out and head west and don't look back.”

“You talk like one of them Hopi Medicine men down in Santa Fe. Plumb crazy.” Pike tried to ride past Tom but the young man blocked him again. Pike had to fight his own mount and bring the suddenly skittish gelding under control.

“Look, boy, I don't aim to ride this pass without these here woods. Hell, they could be full—” Pike's eyes widened as a half-dozen braves led by Jacob Sun Gift walked their mounts through gaps in the bales of underbrush. Another pair of braves galloped down from the opposite hills to block off any escape. “Of Injuns,” Pike concluded. He lifted his rifle only to have Tom snatch the weapon away.

“We've been waiting for you, Tom.” Jacob was dressed for war, his bronze features streaked with red and yellow war paint. Raven feathers adorned his long yellow braids. He carried a rifle, though some of the men with him, and Tewa, carried bows.

“I'm here,” Tom replied.

“What about Kilhenny?”

“Waiting for me to lead him in.”

Pike Wallace stared at the young man beside him in total amazement. He couldn't believe his ears. “Tom?” the old man spoke in a raspy voice, his mouth gone dry. “Laddie-buck, what have you done?”

“Nothing but what Kilhenny did to my parents on the bend of the Platte. You remember, Pike, don't you?” Tom said as Jacob and the warriors closed in. Tom tilted his wide-brimmed hat back on his forehead and hooked a thumb in the pocket of his faded, waist-length
vaquero
jacket.

“You always took my part against Skintop back when I was just a kid,” Tom told him. “Here's your chance. The only one you'll get. Ride out.”

“Coyote's gotta be warned,” Pike said.

“I'm giving you your chance to live. Take it.”

“I gotta hand it to you, Tom. You learned your lessons well. Coyote couldn't have sold us out no better. You and he are chips from the same block of wood, yes sir.” Pike reached up as if to scratch his head, but he grabbed his tam and slapped Tom across the face, momentarily blinding him. He knocked Tom out of the saddle, whirled his gelding, and brought the tam down across the rump of his horse. He reached for the pistol tucked in his waistband. The gunsight caught as he tried to drag it free. An arrow flew past him, another pair buried themselves in his back, while a third pinned his hand to his gut. Pike pulled it free, cried out, and toppled from his mount. The gelding continued to pitch and buck all the way down the slope. The brave near the mouth of the pass cut the animal off, caught its reins, and led the horse away.

Tom Milam stood and brushed the dust from his coat and pants. He looked toward the warriors with their bows and recognized Tewa among them. She was a regular little killer, he thought to himself. Then he walked down the hillside to where Pike lay sprawled on the blood-spattered grass. Pike groaned and opened his eyes a moment and looked up at the young man standing over him. His fall had snapped the arrows and buried the shafts deeper into his body.

“Pike …” Tom began.

“Get out of my way,” the dying man managed to gasp. He wanted to see the sky, just the sky one last time. He shuddered. His eyes glazed over in death. The shadow of the hawk passed over him.

Jacob brought up Tom's horse and waited in silence for his brother to remount.