Stewart screamed, the cry tearing his throat, but Daniel couldn’t help him. The darkness was coming over fast, and he was falling into it. He was grateful he couldn’t feel the blows any longer….
He awoke to a dark sky. There was a fire somewhere. He turned his head to see it. A sick wave of nausea rolled over him. Daniel choked back bile and swallowed. If he threw up now, he would strangle to death for certain.
He knew he had been there a while; the cold from the earth had seeped up into his body and left him numb. He tried his arms and legs—a little feeling, but not much. He was staked out flat on his back at the edge of the camp. They had nearly beaten him to death, but they had left him alive. Now that was bad news, for sure, he thought. Getting killed by Shawnees was one thing. Not getting killed was something else.
“Daniel?”
“John? My God, are you all right?”
“I’m alive, Dan. I….” Stewart’s voice broke. “I wish to hell I wasn’t!”
“Hang on, now. Don’t give it up, boy.”
“I can’t help it, Dan.”
“You can. You can if you try. You know what they done to Blue Duck? Is she still alive?”
“I don’t know. They was—Ohhhh, Jesus!”
Daniel jerked at the terrible cry. Turning his head as far as he could, he saw the big Shawnee squatting down to his left. There was a grin on his face, and he was doing something to Stewart’s belly.
“Bastard! Leave him alone!” Daniel shouted hoarsely. The Indian turned and gave him a curious look. Holding the knife up high, he made a jerky motion in the air, then reached down and grabbed his own genitals and grinned. Daniel got the picture. “You want to do some cutting,” he yelled angrily, “just let me up off here and give me a knife! You and me’ll go at it good!”
The Indian started to answer when a pair of leather-clad legs stalked up next to his face. “Well now, Mr. Boone, it sure has been a while.”
Daniel’s heart came up in his throat. He stared up at the gaunt features of Henry Flint. All hope of dying easily faded fast. “You been a long time comin’,” said Daniel. “I was afraid we was goin’ to miss each other.”
Flint spread his pale lips into an easy laugh. “By damn, I’m goin’ to enjoy kiln’ you, Boone.”
“Every dog’s got his pleasures.”
Flint’s eyes clouded. He bent down close, till Daniel could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Guess you already know most of the tricks I got in mind, Boone, seein’ as how you been around Indians a spell. You want to hear some of ’em, or just wait and get surprised?”
Daniel looked at him. “Flint, you’ll do what you got to, an’ there ain’t much I can do about it. I’ll ask you this. Is there some way I can talk you into killin’ the girl and my friend here quick?”
Flint’s eyes went hard and he spat in Daniel’s face. “The girl was mine, Boone, you know that? Ol’ Will tell you? I had my eyes on that one a long time. Watched her grow from a child. Came in and crossed the mountains special, just to see that pretty little body goin’ naked in the creek.” He paused, and his eyes seemed to flicker as they caught the light of the fire. “You know what I was thinkin’ all that time. I’ll wait, I said to myself. I’ll just bide my time till that one gets ripe enough to pick. She’s growin’ pretty for Henry Flint, only she don’t even know it.”
Daniel felt a chill run up his spine. God A’mighty, Flint had forgotten Daniel was there! His eyes had no color at all—only the pale touch of a fire that raged in his soul.
“You ruined her for me, Boone. You know that?” Flint’s face stretched into a mask. “You dirtied her up ’fore I could even touch her once! Goddamn! What you think I’m goin’ to do to you for that?”
The poor bastard is crazy, thought Boone, just as crazy as a man could be. “We already talked ’bout that.”
“No, you don’t know,” Flint said softly. “You think you do, but you don’t. Not really.…” Flint looked up suddenly, and Daniel saw the white, round little face at his shoulder. Billy Girt! He’s still got Girt with him! The sight of the man startled him nearly as much as Flint had.
Billy Girt beamed. “Howdy, Dan’l. You feelin’ all right?” He cackled and winked at Flint. Flint never took his eyes off Boone.
“You can do what I said, Billy. Just that, and nothin’ more. You hear?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Flint,” Billy said - quickly. “Won’t do a thing more, cross my heart.
‘Pine, then. Let’s see if you do.”
Girt walked out of sight and came back with a brand from the fire. The wood crackled orange and red. Billy puffed out his cheeks and carefully brought it back to a hot, glowing yellow. Then he squatted down and grinned at Daniel. “You kilt two of my brothers, Boone. I’m goin’ to have your eyes for that. Mister Flint says I can.”
“Not now,” Flint corrected. “I didn’t say right now.”
Girt’s face fell. “Like the man says, Dan’l. You goin’ to have to wait.” Billy blew once more on the stick, then pulled up Daniel’s shirt and calmly laid the brand on his chest.
Daniel didn’t try to hold back. He screamed and howled and thrashed against the terrible, burning pain. The fire ate into him, blackened his flesh and drove its hot, searing agony through every fiber of his body. He knew he couldn’t take it. One more awful second was more than he could bear. Still, the fire gnawed through him, starting a thousand new islands of pain wherever it touched.
Jesus God, he thought, it can’t hurt more’n it does!
His thoughts blurred. There was nothing but pain. The hurt was everything. He let himself fall, drifting in the sweet, agonizing tide.
Flint cursed, shoved Girt aside and kicked the coals off Daniel’s chest. “Goddamn fool!” he raged. “You kill him, and you’ll take his place down there!” Girt whined and stumbled away; Flint cast a last look at Boone. “You get a good sleep, now. We got a right big day ahead.”
Daniel had no way to know how long he’d been unconscious. But a terrified scream awoke him from his sleep.
There was no way to shut his ears to the sound. He knew what they were doing to her, knew the horrors that caused her ragged cries of pain. He knew every detail because Flint told him. “We’re touching her here now, Boone … doing this to her now….”
Once, Flint had the Shawnees bring her up close. Girt held a torch so Daniel could watch, and Flint went to work on her. There was nothing Daniel could do but watch. When he tried to close his eyes, they only hurt her more.
The whiskey was making them careless, impatient, hurting her so much that she scarcely had the strength to cry out. Once, her voice stopped abruptly, and Daniel prayed they had killed her. Finally, though, Flint brought her around, and she screamed all the more.
Again Daniel drifted into unconsciousness. When he finally came to, his body was so cold he could barely feel the pain. The only sound was the sharp crack of an ember in the fire. Nothing else. He struggled against the dull press of cold that numbed his mind. Was it over? Was she dead? Squeezing his eyes, he brought the sky overhead into focus. There was a faint touch of color in the east. Good Lord, already? He strained to turn his head. There was nothing there. Nothing but darkness.
Slowly his head cleared and his mind chilled with a terrible, nameless fear. He searched about frantically for the nightmare that had trailed him up out of sleep. It was there, somewhere, above him, past his head. Inching up behind him was a soft, animal-scratching on the earth.
He nearly cried out when it touched him. He stiffened and tried to shrink back from it. It seemed to snake out blindly and find his arm. It stopped there, groped a moment, then slid coldly down to his hand.
When the blade touched the cords at his wrist, he strained up and saw her. Bile rose to his throat, and he bit his lips hard to keep from screaming. He turned away quickly, then forced his eyes back. He had to remember this. All of it. Everything they had done to her.
He wanted to hold her, let her cry the hurt away, but it was too lat
e for that. The girl who had pressed her own warm body against his was no more. In her place was this ragged piece of meat.
Then, suddenly, all his feeling seemed to drain away. There was nothing to feel now. He was as dead and cold as Blue Duck. He felt neither anger nor hatred toward the sleeping figures. A great, soothing calm filled him. There was something he had to do. What he thought or felt didn’t matter. Not now.
He took them one at a time. Moving quiet as death from one dark mound to the next. The first Shawnee was lying on his back with his mouth open. Daniel’s blade whispered quickly across his throat. The second warrior opened his eyes, looked up drunkenly, and Daniel strangled him, crushing the man’s throat with one quick, wrenching motion of his hands.
There were two, maybe three more Indians. He couldn’t be sure. They were somewhere on the other side of the fire. Flint slept alone just beyond them. Boone crawled quickly around the circle on his belly. Daniel drove the knife into the first Shawnee’s heart, abruptly stifling a loud snore.
“Huh? Wha … ?” Someone sat up straight and stared. Slipping a hand down hard over his mouth, Daniel swiftly drove him back to the ground. Billy Girt’s eyes widened in terrible fear.
“You know who it is, don’t you?” Daniel whispered. Billy nodded, and Daniel rested the blade on his chest, then pushed it in deep.
Girt’s body stiffened, and he groaned against Daniel’s hand. Then, a rifle cracked. A warrior cried out and jerked his hands up to. his face. Stewart had taken the gun from one of Daniel’s victims. The other Indian took one look and scrambled for the brush. Daniel sensed Flint coming and rolled just as a tomahawk dug the earth near his head. Daniel twisted, kicked out and sent the renegade sprawling. Springing to his feet, Flint whipped out his knife. But when he saw death all around him, he paled.
“I couldn’t wait till morning,” rasped Boone. “Let’s get on with it now.”
Flint feinted and Daniel lunged his blade, cutting a long arc in the air and forcing Flint hard against the trees. When Flint saw the line of blood on his chest, he cried out and staggered back. He knew then that Boone would kill him. Never had he feared a man he’d met, but this was not a man who faced him now. When Boone came at him again, Flint jabbed viciously with his knife, then turned on his heels and plunged into the trees.
Daniel went after him. But when the sun finally came up, whatever had kept him going abruptly left him. The pain and the cold rushed back and brought him to his knees. A cry squeezed from his lips. He stumbled through dead brush, every step an agony that threatened to drop him into darkness.
Flint was up there, moving fast and making no effort to cover his tracks. Daniel knew what his quarry was doing—choosing the roughest ground to travel on. If there was a flat place to run, Flint would choose a hill. When the woods grew thin, he would double back and tear through a dense and tangled thicket.
He’s right, too, Daniel thought dully. I can’t take a hell of a lot more of this.
The smart thing to do would be to go back, find Stewart and take out after Flint on the Shawnee horses. There wasn’t any way Flint could lose him then.
He’s smart, though, Daniel thought. He’s too damn smart, and I can’t give him any more time.
The sun was up high, but it shed no warmth. A fierce wind had picked up in the mid-morning, and the cold was blowing in fast. Daniel couldn’t feel his hands anymore. He held them up before his eyes. They were pale and crusted with blood. He peered at the top of the ridge, reached for the cold stone again and forced his body another foot.
It wasn’t far to the ridge, just a few yards. He could get there and maybe get out of the wind and … rest a minute … just shut his eyes for a….
“No!” He bit his cheek until pain brought him fully awake. If he stopped now, even for a minute, he would go to sleep and freeze to death. He would likely die anyway, but not while Flint was alive.
With the last strength he could muster Daniel pulled himself over the lip of the ridge. The raw flesh of his chest scraped stone and he nearly passed out. “Can’t … not yet ….
He raised his head, blinked, and stared wearily at the worn moccasins, the buckskin legs, the tail figure of Flint towering over him. Daniel’s heart sank. He cried out, cursed his weakness, strained to start his limbs moving.
Flint laughed. “You sure are a hell of a climber, Boone. Damned if you’re not. Didn’t think you was ever goin’ to make it.”
“Didn’t… think you was ever goin’ to … stop runnin’ ’way,” gasped Daniel.
Flint kicked him solidly in the head. Moaning, Daniel sprawled on his back. The renegade came down fast, straddling his chest and pinning his arms.
“Haven’t got near as much time as I’d like,” Flint said with a malicious grin, “but I reckon this’ll do.” He held the knife under Daniel’s eye and flicked it. Daniel yelled as the blade opened his cheek. Flint’s pale eyes went wide with pleasure. Reaching quickly with one hand, he grasped Daniel’s hair and tugged. “I’m goin’ to scalp you while you’re still alive to feel it, Boone. Then we’ll work our way down to your belly.”
Flint shifted forward to bring the blade to Daniel’s head, but when Boone felt the weight leave his arm, he jerked it hard and slammed his fist into Flint’s mouth. Flint grunted. The knife clattered away. Then the renegade swept Daniel’s hand aside and wrapped strong hands around his throat. Daniel clawed blindly for Flint’s face. Then, as his vision faded under a veil of red, Daniel gasped, reached out blindly and jabbed hard.
Flint let out a ragged yell and fell away, one hand clasping a raw and bloody eye. Daniel gulped voraciously for air and again saw light. Flint raged and came at him.
Daniel stumbled back, caught himself, flailed the air as his foot came down on nothing. He heard his own cry in the wind and knew he was tumbling off the ridge through emptiness.
Chapter Seventeen
Just before dark, Stewart found Daniel lying on the bank of a shallow stream, his head inches above the cold water. Stewart was certain he was dead until he noticed the slight heave of Daniel’s chest. A big storm was blowing in fast, bringing frigid wind and rain from the north. Hefting Daniel on his shoulders, he searched out a limestone cave, built a fire, and stripped Boone naked. Throughout the night and the next day he fed wood to the fire and tried to rub the life back into his friend. Daniel was still alive the next evening, but Stewart was sure he wouldn’t last through the night.
Early in the morning, Daniel began raving and thrashing about—a good sign, Stewart decided. Either that or the last throes of a dying man. He wrapped Boone in a buffalo blanket and tightly strapped him in with rawhide. He couldn’t bear to look at the pale, drawn features under the heavy covers.
In the morning Daniel opened his eyes and looked at Stewart. “Did you bury her?” he asked weakly.
Stewart looked over at him, startled to find his friend still alive. “Dan’l, I would have,” he said gently, “only I couldn’t find her. Flint or one of the Shawnees must’ve hauled her off somewhere. I’m sorry.”
Daniel sighed and closed his eyes. “They didn’t leave me much, did they, John?”
“No. I guess they didn’t.”
Stewart kept him down for a whole week, feeding him broth a mouthful at a time, and later, as much meat as he could take. At least, Stewart decided, they both might make it now. He’d had the presence of mind to grab what he could from the camp, including a couple of long rifles and some lead and powder, without which, they couldn’t survive. Game was getting scarce, and it was all a man could do to track it in the cold.
He wasn’t worried any longer about Flint or the Shawnee. There was no sign around, and he was sure they had hightailed it north. With any luck, neither would reach home alive. He had taken their horses and guns. If the cold didn’t kill them, starvation would, and Stewart didn’t give a damn which.
It was difficult to even think about that terrible night—even harder to put it out of his mind. Daniel, he knew, thought of little
else. Day after day he sat huddled by the fire under his robes, staring blankly into the distance. Stewart knew his friend was still back there, staked out on the ground, listening to the girl.
But Boone never spoke about that night, and Stewart was glad he didn’t. He wondered if Daniel remembered what he had done, what he had turned into for a while in Station Camp.
When the weather cleared and Daniel’s strength returned, they moved off southwest, away from Station Camp and below the Warrior’s Path. There was no trail to follow, but Daniel insisted the others would come this way. Stewart was sure they had kept going, clear back through the gap to North Carolina.
“They’re here,” Daniel insisted. “They’re still here somewhere.”
Not if they got any sense, thought Stewart.
“What day you think it is?” asked Daniel. “I’ve plumb lost count.”
“January somethin’,” said Stewart. “Not much past the first of the year.”
Daniel nodded silently. Peering about, he could see the far-off shadow of the Cumberlands, the Endless Mountains. From here they were a dark blur on the horizon, almost the same color as the winter sky. Stewart was right, he decided. The new year had come and gone, passed without his noticing. It was 1770 now, the year he had set aside for his own. He would come riding back to the Yadkin, pack horses straining under their load, and wipe out every goddamn debt he had. Lord, what a day! The skins, and one thing more—the fattest pelt of all hanging from his belt—the rich, vast land of Kentucky.
Daniel stirred in the saddle and the dream died, fading quickly into the bleak landscape. That was all gone now, dead and behind him. Kentucky had robbed him blind and nearly taken his life in the bargain. That, and more. It had ripped a piece of his soul with a cruel and bloody knife, leaving him cold and empty inside. The other wounds would heal, but that one would take awhile. Maybe, he thought, it would never go away.
Daniel Boone: Westward Trail Page 12