The Darkest Winter

by William W. Johnstone

  Then he relaxed slightly as he recognized some of them. They were Crow, he realized. Survivors of the attack who must have pursued the raiders.

  He glanced around to say something to Gray Bear but saw that the older man was no longer standing beside him. Gray Bear had gone over to one of the bodies and dropped to a knee beside it. Breckinridge bit back a curse. The dead man was White Owl. The Crow chief had been shot to pieces.

  Gray Bear rested a hand on White Owl’s shoulder and murmured, “I am sorry, old friend. We will find the men who did this.”

  “I was thinkin’ the same thing,” Breckinridge said.

  He left Gray Bear there mourning his friend and went with Swims Like a Fish to meet the warriors returning to the village. Several of them had been wounded, but not badly enough to keep them from going after the attackers.

  “Where did they go?” Swims Like a Fish asked.

  One of the warriors shook his head. “Along the creek toward the river. But the snow was too heavy. We could not follow them. Their tracks filled in too quickly.”

  “Blast it, they must’ve gone one way or the other when they got to the river,” Breckinridge said. “You couldn’t tell which way?”

  The warrior looked at him coldly. “That is what I just said, Breckinridge Wallace. We would not have returned if we had been able to pursue them, though they outnumbered us and some of us are wounded.”

  “Could you tell . . .” Breckinridge had to pause to take a breath. “Could you tell if they had Dawn Wind with them?”

  Another man said, “They were seen taking several captives with them. Some women, some children. I do not know if Dawn Wind was among them.”

  “She has to be. She’s not here in the village, and I didn’t find her body.”

  Breckinridge forced his voice to remain calm and level as he spoke, even though what he really wanted was to throw back his head and roar in anger.

  “What about the men who did this?” Swims Like a Fish asked. “There are bodies of white men and Blackfeet in the village. Did they attack together?”

  The first man who had spoken nodded and said solemnly, “The white men came first with their rifles and pistols, but the Blackfeet were right behind them. I myself saw the Blackfoot war chief called Machitehew, who led the other raid on our people. But the war chief this time was a white man.”

  Breckinridge held out a hand, well below his shoulder level, and said, “A fella about this tall, with big shoulders and a long black beard? He would have had another man with him, taller, lean like a wolf, a patch over one eye?”

  “Both of these men came among us and killed our people. They are as evil as Machitehew, whose very name means that his heart is filled with evil.”

  “Yeah, that’s Carnahan and Ralston,” Breckinridge muttered. “They won’t get away with this.”

  “How do you know that?” Swims Like a Fish asked.

  “Because before this is over, I’m gonna kill both of those bastards, and that son of a bitch Machitehew, too,” Breckinridge said.

  * * *

  Dawn Wind didn’t think she had been unconscious for long. When awareness seeped back into her brain, she was still draped over the bearded man’s shoulder, bouncing and swaying as he stomped along through the snow.

  She started to lift her head but then stopped. She decided it might be better if her captors didn’t know she had regained consciousness.

  Unfortunately, a jolt of pain that originated low in her belly stabbed through her, and she couldn’t hold back the cry that escaped from her mouth.

  It wasn’t just the pain, either. The location made her think something might be wrong with the child she carried, and that thought terrified her.

  The man carrying her stopped. He swung her down from his shoulder and set her on her feet. Her legs tried to fold up underneath her. She would have fallen if he hadn’t had a tight grip under her arms.

  “So you’re awake, eh?” he asked her. Before she could respond, he warned her, “Don’t spit in my face again, squaw. I don’t like that. And you won’t like what I do when I’m not happy.”

  The pain had eased a little, but not enough to reassure Dawn Wind that nothing was wrong. Fear still filled her. Since she was feeling a little steadier on her legs, she tried to pull away from him. He laughed and tightened his grip on her until she trembled from the cruelty.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  She spoke in the Crow tongue, telling him that he was the lowest, most craven dog that had ever slunk upon the face of the earth.

  He gave her a hard shake and said, “I know damn well that you speak English. Now tell me your name!”

  In a low, hate-filled voice, she said, “I am called Dawn Wind.”

  “You’re Wallace’s woman. Don’t bother trying to deny it. I’ve seen you with him. Where was he today?”

  “You will never find him. But he will find you.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on. My name’s Jud Carnahan. You’ve probably heard him talk about me.”

  Dawn Wind didn’t say anything, but he was right. She had heard Breckinridge speak of this man Carnahan numerous times, and he had never said anything good about him.

  The rest of the group had stopped when Carnahan did. When Dawn Wind glanced around, she saw quite a few white men, none with even an ounce of mercy on his face. Among them was the tall, gaunt man with the patch over his eye. Major Ralston, Breckinridge had called him, she remembered.

  There were also several Blackfoot warriors in the bunch, all with faces painted for war with red and black streaks. They looked just as coldhearted and vicious as the white men.

  Dawn Wind was not the only prisoner, either. She saw four other women and a handful of children, all clustered together, standing with their heads down in obvious terror.

  The Blackfeet probably intended to take the women back to their hunting grounds as slaves. The children might be taken into the tribe, or they might live out their lives as slaves, too. None of it would end well for any of them—Dawn Wind was sure of that.

  Of course, the white men might insist on keeping the women to use them, in which case their lives would be even shorter, as well as more brutal and degrading. She would find some way to end her own life, Dawn Wind vowed, before she would submit to the lusts of these monsters.

  “I’d still like to know where Wallace is,” Carnahan went on.

  Dawn Wind thought rapidly. She knew perfectly well that Breckinridge had gone hunting today with three other men from the village. They would return before the day was over and see the death and destruction that had been visited upon the band of Crow. Breck would search for her among the victims, and when he realized that she was not among the dead, he would come looking for her. She was certain of that.

  But if she could make Carnahan believe that Breckinridge wasn’t anywhere around here, he would have a better chance of taking the raiders by surprise.

  She lifted her head, jutted her chin out defiantly, and said, “He is gone. He went back downriver to spend the winter with his own people.”

  Carnahan frowned at her for a couple of seconds, then abruptly laughed.

  “Try another story, gal,” he said. “He was seen in the village just a few days ago.”

  “He left yesterday,” Dawn Wind insisted.

  Carnahan shook his head. “I don’t believe you. If he was going back East, he wouldn’t have waited until winter had set in to do it. He would have gone when his friend Baxter did. Not that he and that young buck who was with him ever made it down the river.”

  The implications of Carnahan’s words sunk in on Dawn Wind’s stunned brain. Without thinking about what she was doing, she grabbed the front of his coat and shouted, “What did you do?”

  “With Baxter and that young fellow with him, you mean?” Carnahan laughed again. “Oh, we killed them and took their pelts weeks ago. We’ve been jumping the other trappers when they try to leave this part of the country and adding their furs to our p
ile. I’m going to be the king of this country, Dawn Wind, didn’t you know that?”

  Grief squeezed Dawn Wind’s heart like a cruel hand. She was shaken to her core. Not only was her father dead at the hands of these animals, so was her brother. She had gone along from day to day, living her life, being happy with Breckinridge and looking forward to the future, and all along Running Elk had been dead and rotting . . .

  The pain slammed into her guts again. Her knees buckled. Carnahan kept hold of her right arm and tugged her along as the group started moving once more. She tried to walk but did more stumbling than anything else.

  “I don’t suppose it really matters where Wallace was today,” Carnahan said. “He’ll be along soon enough, looking for his little squaw.”

  “And when we get our hands on him,” the one-eyed man said, “he’ll die screaming. I’ll see to that myself.”

  Dawn Wind struggled to hang on to even a shred of hope. She had faith in Breckinridge, but the sorrow she felt at the deaths of her father and brother, as well as her friend Morgan and all the others of her people who had been slaughtered in the attack on the village, was almost too much for her to withstand. It overwhelmed her, numbed all her senses. She didn’t even feel the cold as she stumbled along through the snow.

  There were two things she could cling to, however. Two things she hoped would allow her to survive this ordeal.

  One was the hope that her baby was still all right, despite the pain she felt.

  The other was her longing to see these men die at the hands of Breckinridge Wallace.

  And if he didn’t manage to kill them, she would find a way to do it herself . . .

  Chapter 29

  Breckinridge didn’t waste any time getting ready to set out on the raiders’ trail. He had his rifle, his pistols, and his knife with him, along with powder horn and shot pouch.

  He also had the bow and the quiver of arrows. The few supplies he’d had in the burned tipi were gone, so he didn’t worry about them.

  He had what he needed to kill his enemies. That was all that really mattered.

  Bitter Mouth came up to him and said, “You are going after those men?”

  “Yeah, in just a few minutes.”

  The warrior nodded. “I will come with you.”

  “Your woman is dead,” Breckinridge said, knowing his words were blunt but not seeing any other way to express it. “You need to stay and mourn her.”

  “No, I need to come with you and help kill the men who did this,” Bitter Mouth replied. His customary good humor was gone now, banished from his face—and his soul—perhaps forever.

  Breckinridge understood the way his friend felt. If he had found Dawn Wind dead when they got back to the village, he would have set out for revenge, too. He couldn’t deny that opportunity to Bitter Mouth.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “I will be ready,” Bitter Mouth said.

  Gray Bear and Swims Like a Fish walked up in time to hear that grim declaration. Gray Bear said, “We are ready, as well, Breckinridge. We spent the day hunting sheep with you. Now we will hunt men.”

  “Although they are more animals than men,” Swims Like a Fish added. He gestured at the destruction around them. “Not even wolves would do something like this.”

  Breckinridge agreed. It took a special sort of evil to carry out such an atrocity, and animals didn’t really have that in them.

  Humans did, though. Some of them were the worst predators of all. Jud Carnahan and Gordon Ralston certainly fell into that category.

  The bodies of the slain villagers had been picked up by their loved ones, who were now preparing to lay them to rest. Breckinridge and the warriors who went with him wouldn’t be there for those rituals. Their concern was with the living, not the dead.

  Gray Bear reported that four more women and five children were missing from the village. It was assumed that they had been taken captive, along with Dawn Wind.

  The bodies of the white men and Blackfoot warriors who had been killed in the attack would be dragged into the woods and left for the wolves and mountain lions. They deserved no consideration or dignity in the eyes of the Crow, and Breckinridge couldn’t argue with that. He might have pitched the corpses into a ravine, but that was as far as he would go, and then only if there was time—which there wasn’t.

  Several of the men who had pursued the raiders earlier volunteered to accompany Breckinridge and the others. Breck told the wounded ones to remain in the village and have their injuries tended to. He wasn’t trying to be kind. He just didn’t want them slowing him down.

  The final group totaled ten men, including Breckinridge. He could only guess at the size of the force they were going after, but he knew he and his companions would be outnumbered. He didn’t care about that.

  If there had been a hundred enemies or even a thousand, Breckinridge would have charged straight into them to save Dawn Wind.

  At the same time, he had to be smart, he warned himself as he and the others started along the creek toward the Bighorn River. He couldn’t afford to give in to emotion and get himself killed. That wouldn’t do Dawn Wind and the other captives any good.

  For once he needed to be smart instead of reckless. There was a time to throw caution to the winds, but he might have to be patient and wait for it.

  That was going to be hard. Damned hard.

  The snow was still falling as they tramped along. In places it had started to pile up in deep drifts. It covered the ice that had formed along the edges of the creek.

  Even though Breckinridge had been upset that the first group of pursuers had turned back earlier, he could understand why they had. There were no tracks to follow. The snow had covered them all.

  He tried to keep a close eye on both sides of the creek, looking for any sign that the raiders might have veered away from the stream with their captives.

  Gray Bear pointed to the trees they passed, which grew thickly along the banks, and said, “See how the snow is undisturbed on the lower branches? No one has brushed past them.”

  “I’m glad you’re with us, Gray Bear,” Breckinridge said. “I can use all the help I can get when it comes to trackin’.”

  “We will find them, my friend,” the older man said. “We will never stop searching until we do.”

  * * *

  Dawn Wind had lost track of the time. It seemed like many hours had passed since the attack on the village, perhaps even days. She knew logically that wasn’t the case. They had covered quite a few miles from the Crow village but hadn’t been traveling for days.

  At least the pain in her belly had subsided gradually. It was just an intermittent dull ache now. Worse was the cold, which had overcome her previous stunned state and by now had crept into every muscle and bone in her body.

  She had been inside her father’s tipi when the attack began, so she wasn’t dressed to be trudging along in a snowstorm. Nor were the other captives, some of whom appeared to be half-frozen by now. The children were having an especially hard time of it, shivering and stumbling as they were prodded along by their captors. Dawn Wind wanted to comfort them, but there was really nothing she could do.

  Anyway, Jud Carnahan still had hold of her arm most of the time, keeping her close to him.

  At one point, maybe to distract herself from her misery as much as anything else, she said to the bearded man, “Why do you hate Breckinridge so?”

  “He has only himself to blame for that,” Carnahan replied. “The first time we ever met, I offered him and Baxter the chance to throw in with us. They were too good for that, though. Instead they tried to steal from us.”

  “I do not believe that! Breckinridge Wallace is not a thief.”

  Carnahan laughed and said, “Well, actually, you may be right about that, girl. My friend the major hates Wallace even more than I do. It’s possible he was responsible for what happened. I believe he has a grudge against Wallace going back to something that happened in St.
Louis, before we all headed west. But what I do know is that Wallace has been getting in my way ever since, and when a man does that he’s my enemy, now and forever.”

  Dawn Wind looked around. The group was scattered out. Major Ralston was somewhere behind her and Carnahan, she thought. He wasn’t close enough to have heard what Carnahan had just said—not that it made any difference. Carnahan wasn’t afraid of the one-eyed man, although perhaps he should have been. Just thinking about Ralston made Dawn Wind feel even colder inside.

  “What are you going to do with us?” she ventured to ask.

  “Right now we’re going back to my camp,” Carnahan replied. “We’ll probably all stay there until the weather improves. I don’t know what Machitehew will want to do after that. More than likely, he’ll decide to go back where he came from and take his men with him. That’ll be up to him.”

  “What about . . . the prisoners?”

  “He can take the children with him. I’ve no use for the pups. Maybe he’ll turn them into good little Blackfeet, for all I care. But you’ll stay with us, and at least some of the other women will, too. My men wouldn’t stand for anything else, and we still outnumber Machitehew and his savages.”

  Carnahan had hold of her arm, and he must have felt the shiver that went through her at his words. That prompted a laugh from him.

  “Don’t worry, girl,” he went on. “I won’t turn you over to Ralston and the others. You’re the bait in the trap for Wallace. I’d rather keep you nice and healthy. That’s why you’ll be staying right by my side.”

  Maybe that should have relieved some of Dawn Wind’s fear. Carnahan probably meant it that way. But it didn’t.

  They had reached the Bighorn River earlier, turned south, and proceeded along it for miles. It was rough going, especially in the drifting snow. They reached another creek and followed it, leaving the river behind. After another freezing, exhausting eternity, Carnahan pointed to the dark mouth of a canyon up ahead on the left.

  “That’s going to be your new home for a while,” he told Dawn Wind. “It may be pretty primitive, but I promise you, it’ll be better than being out here in this snowstorm.”