As if Scott didn’t have enough to worry about, smoke now billowed from the pile. And with no wind to disperse it, a thick roiling cloud was slowly sinking toward the bottom. He grabbed a large branch and flung it, shoved another, flipped a third. Yet, as fast as he worked, it wasn’t fast enough.
Scott inhaled deeply a moment before the acrid cloud enclosed his head. It blinded him, stinging his nostrils even though he wasn’t breathing. He groped at the wood, scattering some with a powerful sweep. But not enough. For when he reached across to see if he could touch the other stake, it was still out of reach.
Bracing his free hand under him, Scott levered himself, trying to sit up. He could rise only five or six inches. And when he did, searing flames nearly singed his face. His eyes poured tears, his lungs were clamoring for air.
Scott grabbed for the knife, or where he thought the knife should be, but his fingers closed on grass. He searched in a small circle, certain he had the right spot, but it wasn’t there.
Desperate, Scott probed madly, running his hand back and forth. Pain seared his torso, pain from a biting flame. His flesh felt fit to explode. Weakness afflicted him due to the terrible heat, and he sagged, thinking his end had come.
“Pa! Where are you? Don’t die! Please!”
Vail Marie’s plaintive bawl did more than any gust of wind ever could. Marshaling his strength, Scott surged upward one more time, throwing himself against the wood like a living battering ram. Excruciating heat buffeted him. Flames danced before his eyes, even as red and orange claws sizzled at contact with his skin.
Abruptly, the wood gave way, spilling backward, sweeping most of the flames with it. The majority of the branches were now on his legs. Unless he extricated himself immediately, they would be burned to the marrow.
Scott had to take a breath. He couldn’t hold air in any longer. Exhaling, he lowered his mouth to the ground where the smoke wasn’t as thick. But it still made him sputter and hack.
Gripping the second stake, Scott tugged. The Indians had embedded it deep. More than one person was needed to pull it out. But Nate was gone, and the Utes had their hands full staying alive.
Scott was on his own. It was do or die. Filling his mind with an image of Lisa and Vail Marie, he wrapped his hand around the stake, bunched his shoulders, and propelled himself upward.
The stake still wouldn’t budge.
Nate King slowed within two bounds of leaving the clearing. The tall warrior had seemingly vanished like a ghost. Or had dropped down low and was waiting for someone to come within reach of his knife.
Palming his second pistol, Nate slunk into a cluster of cottonwoods that bordered the stream. A heel mark showed he had guessed correctly.
From the clearing rose lusty shouts, wavering screams, and a child’s screams. The crack of a twig was almost drowned out. Nate spun, just as a knife flashed at his neck. By a sheer fluke the flintlock was rising and the knife smashed against it. Nate leaped to the right to gain room to shoot, but the tall warrior was on him like a wolf on a ram, the cold steel glittering as it weaved an invisible tapestry.
Nate was given no chance to use the pistol, exactly as the tall warrior planned. The knife never slowed, never gave him an opening. Constantly retreating, Nate backed into cottonwood after cottonwood.
Without warning, Nate’s heel slipped on an incline. He had reached the bank. Seeking to throw himself to the left, he felt his foot lose traction on the slick ground. Down he went, the tall warrior on him before he could rise higher than one knee.
Steel spanged off steel. A foot slammed into Nate’s chest and he was knocked into the water. The man attacked again, a two-legged wolverine who wouldn’t relent until his quarry was lifeless.
Flat on his back, water rushing past his ears, Nate evaded a jab at his throat. He shoved the pistol’s muzzle against his foe’s ribs and fired, but it had gone under when he fell and all he heard was a dull click.
The tall warrior sprang back, then grinned wickedly as he realized the gun was useless. With renewed ferocity he waded in, delivering a flurry of strikes, slashes, stabs. Nate defended himself as best he was able, deflecting some with the pistol, dodging and ducking others, and all the while retreating in the face of the onslaught. He bumped into the opposite bank and shifted as the blade lanced at his heart. Hurling the flintlock at the warrior, he rotated and scrambled to the top before the man could recover and sink icy steel into his back.
Nate looked for a limb to use as a club and spied a suitable branch, but the warrior pounced before he could reach it. Weaving, skipping right and left, he avoided swings that would have reduced him to ribbons. The longer it went on, the more reckless the warrior became. He pressed Nate relentlessly, the blade always in motion, slicing, hacking, cleaving.
Their clash carried them in among pines. Slipping behind a broad trunk, Nate kept it between them, going right when the warrior did and left when his foe reversed direction. The warrior grew more and more angry, overextending himself when he lunged.
It was the moment Nate had waited for, the moment he had gambled he would live long enough to exploit. For although he had left the Hawken beside the pyre and both pistols were spent, he still had his long knife in its beaded sheath on his hip. He’d made no attempt to draw it, and in the swirl of frantic battle Nate figured the tall warrior had forgotten it was there. If the man had ever noticed it at all.
Now, as the warrior came at him from the left, Nate glided backward around the bole, luring the man after him. Nate waited for the warrior to lunge, for when he was off balance and his chest was exposed. That was when Nate’s hand swept up and out, clasping the Green River knife. The long blade was close to the pine, so the warrior wouldn’t see it until too late.
In his fury at being foiled, the man uttered a vicious snarl. It changed to a startled grunt, then a gurgling groan, and he looked down at the weapon buried to the hilt between his ribs. Surprise widened his eyes. Grabbing it, he yanked the blade out. With it came a scarlet geyser, a fountain that turned the soil underfoot bright red.
Nate was crouched low in case the warrior came at him again. It was well he did, because the man howled and did just that, raining blow after blow. Nate retreated, losing the shelter of the pine. He went fifteen feet, but no farther.
There was no need. The tall warrior had stopped short and was gasping like a fish out of water. From his abdomen down he was caked crimson. Staggering, he stared at Nate and said something in his own tongue.
“Just die,” Nate responded.
The man obliged. Legs turned to wax, he oozed to the ground and lay on his side, blank eyes fixed on the one who had slain him.
Straightening, Nate exhaled and hastened to reclaim his knife and pistol. That done, he jogged toward the clearing.
The sounds of battle had died.
Uncertain who had won, Nate approached cautiously. As he stepped into the clearing, the first sight to greet him was that of Swift Elk, bloodied but victorious, taking the scalp of the enemy he’d defeated.
All the enemy warriors were dead. Two of the Utes, as well, with a third severely wounded.
The fire still burned, although most of the wood had been scattered widely about as if by an explosion. The right-hand stake had been ripped from the earth and broken in half.
Several blazing brands were near the Hawken. Nate wiped the rifle off, then faced the deliriously happy trio at the clearing’s edge.
Scott Kendall had never been happier in his life. Tears of joy flowed over his ruddy cheeks as he hugged his darling wife and sweet daughter close. No words were spoken. None were needed.
Nate walked over, slowing when Swift Elk rose, beaming, and proudly waved the grisly trophy. “Your father will be proud,” Nate signed.
“I am proud,” the young warrior said in Ute, “to call Grizzly Killer my friend.”
Scott and Lisa were still locked in a tender embrace, but Vail Marie had stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “I think their mouths ar
e locked together, Uncle Nate,” she commented as he stopped.
“It’s called being in love.”
“Have you ever kissed Aunt Winona like that?”
“Not often enough, I think.”
“Everything is all right now, isn’t it? We’re safe, aren’t we?”
“Everything is fine,” Nate said, lifting the girl into his arms. “Let’s leave your ma and pa alone awhile. What would you like to do?”
“Are you any good at pulling trees out of the ground?”
“How’s that again?”
“Samson and Pa can do it. I bet you can, too, if you try real hard.”
Nate King’s laughter rolled off across the woodland, and in the trees a robin began to warble merrily.
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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