“She needs me,” I replied, avoiding her question.
“So do I,” Laurie said in a small voice.
“Do you?” I asked, laughing softly. “What would you do if you had me?”
“I’d love you, John McKenna,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“Do you really think you could be happy with me?” I asked seriously. “It wouldn’t be easy, being my woman. There will always be people like Willie Ryan who’ll look at you like you’re dirt because you’re with me. They’ll call you ugly names.”
“I don’t care what other people think,” Laurie said defiantly. “Don’t you think some of the people on the train have already made remarks about us, about the time I spend with you?”
“What people?” I asked angrily.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t intend to let other people tell me who to love. Do you?”
“No. Come on, I’ll take you back.”
“Kiss me first.”
“Laurie...”
“I’m not taking a step until you kiss me.”
Grinning, I gave her a chaste peck on the cheek.
She planted her hands on her hips and looked up at me, a challenge in her eyes. “Is that the best you can do?”
“For now it is. Come on, honey, before you get me into trouble.”
Late that night, after every one else was asleep, I sat on a tree stump smoking a cigarette and thinking about Laurie McDougal. She was good for me, and I began to think maybe I would ask her to marry me. I still had money in New York, enough to buy us a place and settle down; enough to buy Laurie anything she wanted, or needed. I wasn’t in love with her, not the way I had been in love with Clarissa, but I was fond of Laurie, and I was feeling the need for a woman in my life again.
I was thinking pretty much the same thing when I walked Laurie to her wagon several nights later. The camp was quiet save for a baby crying in the distance.
When we reached Laurie’s wagon, we stood outside, holding hands, reluctant to part. I don’t remember moving, but somehow she was in my arms. Her breasts were warm against my chest, her lips sweetly yielding when I kissed her.
Without thinking, I began to caress her, letting my hands slide over the nicely rounded curve of her hip and over the swell of her firm young breasts. Laurie moaned at my touch, and I pulled away, suddenly aware of where we were, and what I was doing.
“Laurie, I’m sorry,” I apologize gruffly.
“Don’t be,” she murmured, pressing brazenly against me. “I’m not.”
“Laurie...”
“I love you, John McKenna,” she declared her voice husky with desire. “I want to be your wife. Bear your children. I’d make you a good wife, John, honest I would.”
“Laurie, listen to me...”
“I know what you’re going to say. You think I’m too young for you, too young to know what I want. But I’m not too young, John. I love you. And I know you care for me.”
“Dammit, Laurie, of course I care. And if you’d just shut up...”
“Oh, John, I knew you cared!” she exclaimed joyously, crying and kissing me all at the same time.
My wandering days were over. We decided to get married in Idaho. Laurie’s Aunt Mapes lived there in a little town called Beaver City, and Laurie wanted her aunt at the wedding.
We sat up late that night, dreaming, planning for our future. Laurie was anxious for morning so she could break the news to her father and brothers, but before she had the chance, disaster struck the train.
Chapter 19
They came with the dawn, forty paint-daubed Pawnee warriors, their bronze bodies nearly invisible, so completely did they blend with the dusky earth and rust-hued rocks around our camp. Silent as the endless hills, they waited for sunrise.
I woke just before sun-up that fateful day, tense and alert without knowing why. A movement caught my eye, and I glanced to the left to see Fred Hobbs step out of camp. Moments later, I heard him urinating against a rock. Hobbs was a gangly youth, clumsy as the day was long. His only claim to fame was that he could piss farther and longer than any other man on the train. Unfortunately, it was not a talent he could boast of around the campfire.
Five minutes passed. And still Hobbs had not returned. I felt a quick shiver of foreboding as I rolled out of my blankets. Rifle in hand, I went looking for Hobbs.
I found him lying in the dirt, his throat slit, his scalp gone.
Muttering an oath, I fired two quick shots into the air, then headed for cover under the nearest wagon.
For many, my warning shots came too late. The Indians had infiltrated the south end of the wagon train, their long knives and tomahawks bringing swift, silent death. Entire families died in their sleep.
The bark of a dozen rifles and pistols shattered the early morning stillness as settlers, groggy-eyed with sleep, grabbed their weapons and began defending their families.
With the need for stealth gone, a great war cry rose from the throats of the warriors. It was a horrible, high-pitched wail, calculated to drive fear into the heart of the bravest man.
Other sounds were born as the battle progressed: the cries of frightened women and children, the pitiful shriek of a bereft mother, the agonized scream of a wounded horse, the shouted commands of Al Phillips as he sought to establish a line of defense, the harsh curse of a dying man.
And over it all, the ululating war cries that sent shivers down the backs of the settlers as they fought for their lives.
The discordant sounds of battle called to mind the battle fought long ago on the banks of Sand Creek, and for several seconds I stared at the scene being played before me, feeling all my old hatred for the vehoe bubble up inside me. But then I saw Al Phillips in hand-to-hand combat with a stocky brave. Ten feet away, a Pawnee warrior grabbed two of Milt Jacoby’s kids, while somewhere in the distance a woman screamed as her wagon burst into flames.
“Fool,” I muttered to myself. This was not Sand Creek, and these whites were not Colorado volunteers, but settlers. And while they were violating a treaty by crossing Indian land, they didn’t deserve to die.
Jacking a round into the breech of my rifle, I drew a bead on the Indian grappling with Phillips, slowly squeezed the trigger. The slug tore a good-sized chuck out of the back of the Pawnee’s head, and he went limp as a rag doll.
For a brief moment, Phillips stared at the dead brave like he’d never seen him before. Then, with a look of revulsion in his eyes, he scrambled under his wagon, dragging the warrior’s rifle with him.
I was lining up another target when a searing pain exploded in my left thigh. Swearing softly, I jerked around and put a bullet into the leering face of the warrior who’d nailed me with an arrow. The shaft, near two feet long, was embedded in my flesh, sticking out at both ends.
But there was no time to fret over anything as trivial as a leg wound, not when people were dying all around me.
The fighting seemed to have been going on forever, though in reality less than fifteen minutes had passed from the time I discovered Hobbs lying in the dirt.
“We’re losing,” I thought, but there was no time to worry about that, either. No time to wonder who’d been killed, or who was dying.
Aim and fire. Aim and fire. Reload, with no thought for anything else except that I was still alive, and determined to stay that way.
The fire was spreading, the flames devouring the canvas-covered wagons, driving the few surviving settlers out into the open to be picked off by the Indians.
I swore as Laurie streaked past me, her green eyes wide with terror, the hem of her long calico skirts ablaze.
I shouted, “Laurie, hit the dirt! Smother the flames!”
But she was too far gone in panic to heed my words, and she ran blindly on, screaming as a twisting finger of flame licked at her ankles.
Teeth clenched against the pain in my thigh, I darted after her, tackling her in a flying leap as she jumped over a wagon tongue, headed for the open prairie.
/> Pinning her body down with my right knee, I beat out the fire in her skirts, ignoring the agony that enveloped my hands as I smothered the last of the flames. She was lucky, I thought. Her numerous petticoats and heavy cotton skirt had kept her from being badly burned, and she seemed to be unhurt save for a few minor burns on her ankles.
I wished I could say the same. The skin was gone from both my hands. My thigh was throbbing with renewed vigor.
With Laurie out of immediate danger, I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see one or two Pawnee warriors grinning at me from over their gun sights as they prepared to send me to the Land of Spirits. To my surprise, none of the marauding Indians seemed aware of our flight.
Grabbing Laurie by the arm, I dragged her over the rocky slope that fell away from this end of the wagon camp. She let out a frightened cry that was cut short as we stumbled down the hill, coming to an abrupt halt against a pile of rotting timber.
“What are you doing?” she sputtered as I pulled her behind a dead tree.
“Shut up!” I growled, “Unless you want to bring those Indians down on us.”
She nodded her understanding, then looked at me askance as all firing ceased.
“What is it?” she asked tremulously. “What’s happened?”
“Fight’s over,” I answered grimly.
“My Pa...Ben and Ian...?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “Hush now.”
Five minutes went by and there was no sound from the top of the hill.
“Have they gone?” Laurie whispered.
“No. Listen!”
A thin, high-pitched whine rose on the morning breeze, growing louder and more intense, until it broke into a blood-curdling cry of unbearable agony.
Laurie’s face turned ashen as the agonized scream went on and on, rolling across the prairie, echoing like a soul in torment.
“What...who...?”
“It’s Phillips,” I said. “They’re torturing him.”
There was a brief silence, and then another cry pierced the stillness.
“Willie Ryan,” I muttered, but Laurie wasn’t listening. She sat with her head bowed, her hands pressed hard over her ears, her eyes squeezed shut.
Ryan uttered a last shriek, and then a heavy silence fell over the plains. Twenty minutes hobbled by, and when there were no fresh cries, I figured Ryan and Phillips were dead.
I touched Laurie on the shoulder. “It’s finished.”
She digested that for a few minutes, then asked, “What about the women? And the children?”
“They’ll be taken to the village.” I gestured up the hill. “Look.”
Laurie glanced up the hill, shuddered as she saw the line of bedraggled women and children being herded away from the smoldering remains of the wagon camp.
I felt a quick surge of relief when I saw Lucy Stoddard among the survivors. Her face was smudged with dirt and she looked frightened, but she didn’t appear to be hurt. She was a pretty woman, still of an age to bear children, and I knew she’d be all right. Some warrior would claim her as his own and adopt Jimmy into his lodge. I couldn’t help grinning as I thought of the pleasure Lucy would bring to that lucky warrior’s bed. Jimmy Stoddard walked beside his mother, his head high and defiant. In a few years, he would be Indian through and through.
A rising dust cloud rose ahead of the captives as several warriors drove the settlers stock across the plains.
“Do something,” Laurie begged. “Please, do something.”
“Sure,” I muttered sardonically. “You want me to take them on one at a time, or just ask them to surrender?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Are you all right?”
“Yes, thanks to you.”
“Good. Try and get some rest. When I’m sure the Indians are gone, we’ll go up and see if there’s anything left in those wagons worth saving.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like food. And something we can use for bandages. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”
“You can’t walk,” she said, and stared at the arrow protruding from my thigh as though seeing it for the first time. “You’re hurt. Bad hurt.”
“Yeah.”
“Shouldn’t we do something about your leg? And your hands?”
“I reckon.”
“What...what should I do?”
“Get rid of that arrow first.”
Laurie’s face paled considerably as she reached out and grasped the arrow. I clenched my jaw as she took hold of the arrow.
Drawing a deep breath, Laurie broke off the feathered end, sending vibrations along the shaft. I swore under my breath as a fresh wave of pain skittered down my leg.
She glanced at me, then took hold of the arrow, just behind the head, and pulled. Hard.
Lights danced in front of my eyes and I swore a violent oath as Lucy jerked the shaft out of my swollen flesh.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I’m all right,” I said. “You’re not gonna faint on me, are you?”
She shook her head.
“There’s some tobacco in my shirt pocket. Stuff some of it in those holes before you bandage me up. Here, use my kerchief.”
She quickly did as bidden, grimacing as she wrapped the bandanna around my thigh. The tobacco stung like hell, but it stemmed the bleeding right quick.
“What about your hands?” Laurie asked. “Shouldn’t I bandage them, too?”
“Not now.” The thought of having her bandage my hands, then trying to peel the material away from the burnt flesh on my palms made me break out in a cold sweat.
Laurie glanced up the hill, a pensive expression on her tear-stained face. “What will happen to Jimmy Stoddard and the others?”
“The women will be slaves unless some warrior takes them for his wife. The kids will be adopted into the tribe and raised as Pawnee.”
“That’s dreadful!”
“Beats dying.”
“Does it?”
I shrugged. “Depends on your point of view, I guess. Don’t worry, Laurie, they’ll be treated all right, as long as they do as they’re told.”
It was early afternoon when we made our way up the hill. Several hours had passed since the fighting stopped, but the air still reeked on smoke and seared flesh.
It was slow going. Walking was difficult for me, and I leaned heavily on Laurie. At the top of the hill, I dropped to the ground, resting against a charred wagon wheel.
The camp was a shambles. Blackened wagon covers flapped in the breeze. Sacks of food had been torn open, their contents scattered. Broken furniture littered the ground. A grandfather clock, miraculously unscathed during the battle, chimed the hour.
Lifting her tattered skirts, Laurie picked her way through the carnage, trying not to notice the bodies that littered the ground, grotesque and somehow obscene in the harsh glare of the prairie sun. Most of the dead had been stripped naked and scalped. A few had been horribly mutilated. Willie Ryan had been tied to a wagon wheel and used for target practice. At least twenty arrows protruded from his body. Al Phillips disemboweled body lay outside the circled wagons. His innards lay in a fly-covered pile beside him.
I sat in the shade, trying to ignore the growing ache in my hands, while Laurie went from wagon to wagon, searching for anything salvageable. I could tell by the look on her face that she felt guilty going through the belongings of her friends. Once I heard her mutter something about robbing the dead as she pulled a blanket and a can of bacon grease from the Hobbs wagon.
After thirty minutes or so, she had gathered quite a pile of goods: a length of almost clean white cloth for bandages, a half a sack of potatoes, a half-dozen tins of peaches, a couple strips of beef jerky, a small loaf of brown bread, a bonnet that was only scorched on one side, a knife, a tin plate, a canteen of water.
I noticed she did not go near her own wagon, undoubtedly fearful of seeing what the Indians had done to her loved ones.
“It’s
not much, but I think I’ve got just about everything worth saving,” she said, brushing a wisp of damp hair from her brow. “We’d best see to your hands now.”
At my nod, she reached for my left hand, gently prying my fingers open, only to stare in horror at what she saw. I guess it was pretty awful. My hand looked more like a slab of charred meat than anything human, and Laurie looked a little green around the gills as she began smearing grease over my palm.
“What happened to your little finger?” she asked. “Were you in an accident?”
“It was no accident,” I replied bitterly.
Laurie stared at me curiously, but I guess something in my tone made her decide not to pursue the matter further.
My right hand wasn’t burned quite as bad as my left, though very little skin remained on my fingers, and the palm was just one big blister. Laurie’s eyes filled with compassion as she loosely bandaged my hands. Then, with a small sob, she turned away and retched.
Awkwardly, I put my arm around her shoulders, wishing I could think of some words that would comfort her, but there were none. Only time would soften her grief and dull the memory of the horrors she had seen this day.
We spent the rest of the day in the shade of one of the wagons. Laurie slept the afternoon away, her head pillowed on my right leg, one arm wrapped around my waist.
Buzzards circled in the sky, gradually dropping lower and lower to the ground, until a few of the bolder ones landed near the bloated body of Al Phillips. It was funny, how graceful those big black birds looked in the sky, and how awkward and ungainly they were once they touched the ground.
I was glad Laurie was asleep. It wasn’t a pretty sight, watching the birds fight over the wagon master’s guts.
I knew we were taking a big risk, staying near the wagon train. The buzzards would draw the attentions of any other Indians in the vicinity, but I just didn’t have the strength to move. Heat shimmered in waves across the sun-bleached grass. Nothing moved on the horizon, save the flies and the buzzards, and the sweat trickling down my back.
The sun was turning the western sky to flame when I woke Laurie. She blinked up at me, her eyes blank, until she remembered where we were, and what had happened. Then the fear returned.
In the Shadow of the Hills Page 23