The Darkest Winter

by William W. Johnstone

  There would come a time, though, in the reasonably near future, when she would no longer be able to carry out these tasks. She would be too busy caring for someone else. Someone small and helpless who would need all her attention.

  She smiled to herself as she thought about the new life within her.

  She heard a footstep at the tipi’s entrance and looked up from the work in her lap. Her smile disappeared as she saw Isáa Sampa standing there, holding back the entrance flap. Through the opening, Dawn Wind saw that snow had started falling.

  “Dawn Wind,” Big Stump said, “I would speak with you.”

  “I have nothing to say to you, and you have nothing to say that I wish to hear.” She frowned regretfully. “We were friends once. I wish that could still be true.”

  He came a step into the tipi and let the flap fall closed behind him. “You have known since we were children that I wished for you to be my wife. Never did you tell me that this would never come to pass.”

  “Neither did I tell you that it would,” she responded. “I am not responsible for the things you believed, Isáa Sampa.”

  “I think you are.” He moved another step closer to her. “I think you enjoyed knowing that I loved and wanted you, whether you loved and wanted me or not.”

  The way he loomed over her made him seem even larger. She didn’t feel threatened by him, actually. She was the chief’s daughter and another warrior’s wife—she thought of Breckinridge as one of their people now—and she knew Big Stump wouldn’t dare hurt her. She didn’t think he would, regardless of who she was. For all his bluster, he had a good heart. But still, he made her nervous.

  She looked down at the mending with which she had been occupying herself and said, “I think you should go now. We have nothing to talk about.”

  “It is not too late,” he insisted. “We can still be together—”

  She stopped him by saying, “No, we cannot. I am with child. I carry Breckinridge’s son or daughter. A son, I think, who will be a fierce warrior.”

  Big Stump stared at her. She had suspected her condition for a while, and recently she had become certain of it, but this was the first time she had actually spoken so plainly about it. She carried Breckinridge Wallace’s child. That knowledge filled her with a fierce rush of pride.

  “So you see,” she went on after a moment, “there can be nothing between us except friendship—”

  Somewhere in the village, the sound muffled by the tipi walls but still audible, a woman screamed. A second later, the blast of a gunshot followed the cry.

  Dawn Wind leaped to her feet. Big Stump turned toward the tipi’s entrance. Confusion and alarm masked his broad face. He said, “What—”

  Dawn Wind tried to get around his considerable bulk. “I must find my father!” she said as more gunfire erupted outside.

  He caught hold of her and thrust her behind him. “Stay here!” he ordered. “I will protect you.”

  War cries sounded as well as the shots. The village was under attack. The guns told Dawn Wind that white men were involved. Her people’s only real enemies among the other tribes were the Blackfeet, and they had few firearms. Her thoughts went to the group of trappers with whom Breckinridge and Morgan had clashed in the past. Could her husband’s old foes have returned to strike at him at last?

  Suddenly, even as fear filled her, she was glad that Breckinridge had gone hunting today with Gray Bear, Swims Like a Fish, and Bitter Mouth. If he wasn’t here, then these evil men, whoever they were, couldn’t harm him.

  But her child . . . her child was in danger, and she had to make sure she protected that innocent life.

  Big Stump stood at the tipi’s entrance, clearly torn by emotion as he hesitated. He wanted to stay here and do everything he could to make sure Dawn Wind wasn’t hurt, but at the same time, as the shooting, shouting, and screaming continued outside, he wanted to go help his people fight off the raiders. Dawn Wind saw that and knew what she had to do.

  “Go, Isáa Sampa!” she said. “Go and fight for the Apsáalooke!”

  He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grimace. Their eyes locked for a second, and she saw in his gaze the love he felt for her. Under other circumstances, she would have wished that she could return it.

  But now, Big Stump turned back to the entrance, let out a cry of anger, and thrust the flap aside as he pulled his knife from its sheath. He took a hurried step outside—

  Then his head jerked back as a shot blasted very close by. Big Stump reeled backward through the opening, lost his balance, and fell. Dawn Wind stared down in horror at the black-rimmed hole in his forehead. Big Stump’s wide, dead eyes stared back at her sightlessly. As she watched, a worm of bright red blood crawled from the wound.

  More screams from outside shook Dawn Wind from the grip of the shock that had almost overcome her at the sight of Big Stump’s body. She bent and picked up the knife he had dropped. She would probably have to defend herself, and that was the handiest weapon.

  In fact, she was still tightening her hand around the knife when a burly shape appeared at the tipi’s entrance. The white man seemed almost as broad as he was tall, and a long black beard jutted down over his chest. Gray smoke curled from the muzzle of the pistol he held.

  “There you are!” he exclaimed. “I was hoping to find you unharmed, girl. You’re coming with me.”

  “No!” Dawn Wind started to back away. She held the knife in front of her.

  The white man stalked across the tipi toward her. The arrogant, confident grin he wore was barely visible under the bushy whiskers. His eyes gleamed with something akin to madness.

  “You’re not getting away,” he said. “You might as well put that knife down.”

  Dawn Wind circled the fire pit. She thought that if she could lure the man after her, then she could make a dash for the entrance. She had always been fleet of foot.

  He started around the fire pit, too, but as Dawn Wind lunged away from him, she realized his move was just a feint. He was ready for her. A swift leap brought him back in front of her, close enough to make a grab for her. She slashed at him with the knife as he did so. He blocked the blade with the barrel of the empty pistol, striking it so hard that the impact went up Dawn Wind’s arm and forced her to open her fingers. The knife flew out of her grip.

  With nothing to protect her now, all she could do was strike futilely at him with her hands as he grabbed her. He was so strong it was like trying to fight off a bear. He swung her off her feet, tucked her under his arm, and strode out of the tipi with her kicking and squirming, all to no avail.

  Dawn Wind stopped fighting as horror washed over her at the sight that met her eyes. Bodies were strewn everywhere, bodies of her people, of men, women, and children cut down brutally by bullet, knife, and tomahawk, their lives stolen from them. Dawn Wind screamed as she saw her father lying on his back, his chest a bloody mess where he had been shot several times. Not far away was the body of the old medicine man, Badger’s Den, hacked so badly with knives that he barely looked human anymore. All around, blood painted the snow red.

  As Dawn Wind watched, stunned, she saw one of the white attackers wielding a sword ram the blade through a woman’s body from behind. The tip emerged from her chest between her breasts. Her eyes widened grotesquely large as death claimed her. She collapsed, and her killer callously rested a booted foot on her back as he pulled the saber free.

  Then he turned toward Dawn Wind and her captor and said, “That’s Wallace’s woman. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, Major,” the bearded man said. “I haven’t seen him.”

  Dawn Wind had never seen anything more frightening than the one-eyed man’s face at that moment. He was the essence of pure evil. He said, “Wallace has to be here!”

  “It appears that he’s not. But maybe this one knows where he is.” The bearded man set Dawn Wind on her feet and grasped her shoulders painfully. “Where’s that big re
dheaded bastard?” he demanded.

  Dawn Wind’s fury overcame her fear. She screamed out her rage and then spat in the man’s face. His features twisted in anger. He let go of her left shoulder and used that hand to slap her. The brutal blow cracked across her face with enough force to twist her head around.

  “Don’t kill her!” the one-eyed man exclaimed. “She has to tell us where Wallace is!”

  “No, she doesn’t,” the bearded man said. A backhanded blow slammed Dawn Wind’s head back the other way. She felt consciousness slipping away from her. “All we have to do is keep her alive and take her with us. Then Wallace will come to us.”

  He punched Dawn Wind in the belly. That doubled her over, making it easier for him to pick her up again and throw her over his shoulder. Blackness washed over her mind, shutting out the terrible carnage around her. She was only vaguely aware of the motion of her head and dangling arms swaying back and forth a little as the man carried her away through thickening clouds of snow.

  * * *

  The snow was falling heavily by the time Breckinridge and his fellow hunters neared the village. They had cut poles from saplings, lashed the legs of the dead sheep to them, and now they carried the carcasses, one man at each end of the poles. They couldn’t move very fast that way, but their progress was steady despite the snowdrifts starting to form here and there on top of the several inches that remained from the last storm.

  The wind whipped this way and that. Breckinridge caught a whiff of smoke, then it was gone. Smoke was nothing to worry about. In weather like this, fires burned night and day inside the tipis and smoke always escaped through the small opening at the pinnacle of the dwelling.

  Something about this smoke, though, made the hair rise on the back of Breckinridge’s neck. It didn’t smell right. Not like just firewood burning, although that was mixed in there as well. He was at the back end of one of the poles, with Bitter Mouth at the front. Breck asked him, “Did you smell that?”

  Bitter Mouth looked back over his shoulder. “Smell what?”

  “Smoke.”

  “No, but we are getting close to the village. We will be there soon. You smell the cooking fires, my friend.”

  Maybe Bitter Mouth was right, Breckinridge thought. The unusual tang he had thought he detected in the smoke could have been meat roasting. Maybe the smell would come again and he could tell for sure.

  The next time it was Gray Bear who caught the scent, however. He stopped, lifted his head, sniffed, and said, “That is not right.”

  “What are you talking about?” Swims Like a Fish asked.

  Instead of answering directly, the older warrior said, “Put these sheep down. We must hurry on to the village.”

  “If we put them down, wolves may get them,” Swims Like a Fish protested.

  “Now!” Gray Bear barked. He lowered his end of the pole to the ground, and Swims Like a Fish had no choice but to do likewise.

  Alarm welled up inside Breckinridge. Clearly, Gray Bear thought something was wrong. Breck asked, “Did you smell the smoke, Gray Bear?”

  “The smoke is wrong,” Gray Bear said by way of reply. “I have smelled something like it before.”

  That sounded particularly ominous to Breckinridge, especially in Gray Bear’s grim tone of voice. Breck lowered his end of the pole to the ground and then unslung the rifle from his back. After checking to make sure it was loaded and primed, he broke into a run in the direction of the Crow village. Snow flew up every time his boots hit the ground. The other three men trailed behind him, also running. They readied their bows and arrows as they hurried through the storm.

  Through shifting rents in the curtains of snow, Breckinridge caught sight of leaping flames up ahead. His heart hammered wildly in his chest. Those weren’t cooking fires. The last time he had seen such large flames, some of the tipis in the village had been on fire during the Blackfoot raid.

  He had been told by the Crow elders that the Blackfeet would not return to raid again during the winter. After their previous defeat, they would have retreated to their own hunting grounds to lick their wounds and nurse their sour hatred. Breckinridge had assumed that White Owl and the other Crow knew what they were talking about, since they had been battling the Blackfeet for generations.

  But what if they were wrong? What if the survivors from that war party had been lurking in the area all along, waiting for a good opportunity to strike at their traditional enemies once again?

  That possibility roused fear inside Breckinridge. Fear for Dawn Wind . . . and for the baby she might be carrying.

  His long legs carried him even faster as he bounded over logs, weaved around trees, charged up ridges, and then leaped down the far sides. He left his friends behind. They couldn’t keep up with a maddened Breckinridge Wallace.

  As the wind gusted, more puffs of smoke practically slapped him in the face. The sickly sweet smell that was just hinted at earlier was strong now. That was human flesh burning, Breckinridge knew. Something terrible had happened.

  He burst out of some snow-mantled trees at the top of a rise. A long, gentle slope lay before him, and at the bottom of it was the Crow village, next to the partially frozen-over creek. Flames leaped from several of the tipis as fire consumed them. Other dwellings, already destroyed, were ugly black splotches against the snow. Dark shapes scattered around were bodies, Breckinridge knew. His stunned gaze went to the tipi he shared with Dawn Wind.

  It was ablaze. He thought he could hear the roar of the flames even from where he was, although that might have been just his imagination.

  “Noooo!” he bellowed, and then he charged down the slope, straight toward a scene that might have been ripped from the bowels of hell.

  Chapter 28

  The crackle of the flames filled the air, along with mournful, raw-throated wails from women who knelt next to the sprawled bodies of their husbands and children. When Breckinridge reached the village, he stumbled to a halt and looked around.

  Whoever was responsible for this massacre was gone. Breckinridge saw no enemies. At least, not any who were still on their feet.

  But here and there lay the bodies of white men killed in the fighting, along with a few painted warriors he recognized as belonging to the Blackfoot tribe. That made no sense, Breckinridge thought. He knew the faces of the white men. They had been members of Jud Carnahan’s party. Had Carnahan joined forces somehow with the Blackfeet?

  That was the only explanation that made any sense, although Breckinridge didn’t see how it could have come about. He didn’t waste any time pondering it, though. He shook himself out of his stunned reverie and hurried to the tipi he shared with Dawn Wind.

  The dwelling had burned down to ruins. The ashes still gave off a great deal of heat, and he knew he couldn’t walk among them, but he stood at the edge of the charred circle and searched frantically with his eyes for his wife’s body.

  He didn’t see anything like that. Relief washed through him, although it didn’t really do anything to temper the fear and dismay he felt.

  He turned and shouted into the snowfall, “Dawn Wind! Dawn Wind, where are you?”

  There was no answer.

  Breckinridge tightened his grip on the rifle and turned toward White Owl’s tipi. If Dawn Wind wasn’t here, it was possible she had been at her father’s dwelling when the attack began. Breck’s long strides carried him to the tipi, which still stood.

  A pair of legs clad in buckskin leggings and high-topped moccasins stuck out of the entrance. Breckinridge caught his breath for a second, then realized there was no way those muscular limbs could belong to Dawn Wind.

  He yanked the hide flap aside and saw Big Stump lying there cold and dead. The thickset warrior had been shot once in the forehead.

  Breckinridge felt a pang of regret at the sight. True, he had battled against Big Stump and wanted the man to leave Dawn Wind alone, but she claimed he was a decent man at heart, and Breck was inclined to believe her.

  He bent down to
peer through the opening. Dawn Wind wasn’t in the tipi. Again Breckinridge felt a mixture of relief and apprehension. If she wasn’t here, where was she?

  The men who had been with him had reached the village by now. Breckinridge heard a grief-stricken shout and turned to see Bitter Mouth kneeling beside the body of a woman. He grabbed her, pulled her up into his arms, and rocked back and forth on his knees as he cradled her limp form against him. Breck didn’t recall her name, but he knew she was Bitter Mouth’s wife . . . the one who had hinted that Dawn Wind was with child.

  That thought prompted him to dash back and forth amidst the burned tipis, the mourning women, and the bodies of the dead. Some of the women lay facedown, and they looked enough like Dawn Wind that he had to turn them over to be sure none of them were her.

  He didn’t find her, but his heart twisted painfully anyway at the death and destruction carried out here.

  Someone would pay for this, he vowed. He would see to that. And he would start with those bastards Carnahan and Ralston.

  Gray Bear came up to him and asked, “Have you found your wife, Breckinridge?”

  He swallowed hard and shook his head. “She don’t appear to be here. I . . . I don’t know where she could be.”

  But an answer to that had begun to form in the back of his head. An answer so terrible he didn’t want to even consider it, but now that he had searched the village for Dawn Wind without finding her, he had no other choice.

  The raiders must have taken her with them.

  A shout from Swims Like a Fish distracted Breckinridge from that awful prospect. He looked around to see the warrior pointing along the creek. Breck gripped his rifle tighter as a dozen warriors trotted toward the village.