Seven Days to Hell

by William W. Johnstone

He could think of one way, Tall Tree suddenly realized.

  It would be even better to kill Flamehair slowly, to torture him for hours or even days, until the part of him left alive barely resembled anything human and he was screaming in agony for the sweet relief of death.

  That thought put a smile on Tall Tree’s face.

  Water Snake, who hardly ever spoke, was in the lead because he was the group’s best scout. He signaled a halt, then turned and motioned to Tall Tree, who joined him. Water Snake pointed to what he had seen.

  Several hundred yards away, a buckskin-clad figure moved across a small open area. Tall Tree caught only a glimpse of him, but that was enough for him to again recognize Flamehair.

  Tall Tree understood now what was going on. After Water Snake had pointed out the white man to Big Head and Bear Tongue, Tall Tree said, “Flamehair is after the same buck we are. Should we allow him to kill it and take it back to whatever squalid little farm he came from?”

  “No!” Big Head exclaimed. “We should kill him.”

  Bear Tongue said, “I thought you wanted to hunt.”

  “I do, but Flamehair is only one man. We can kill him and then kill the buck.”

  “Even better,” Tall Tree said, “we can let him kill the buck, then we will kill him and take it for ourselves and our friends back at camp.”

  The other three nodded eagerly, and he knew he had won them over.

  Now they were stalking two different kinds of prey, one human, one animal. Tall Tree knew that eventually they would all come together. He sensed the spirits manipulating earthly events to create that intersection. His medicine was good. He had killed many white men. Today he would kill another.

  Tall Tree knew the trail they were following led to a small clearing along a creek that wildlife in this area used as a watering hole. Before his people had been so brutally torn away from their homes, so had they.

  It was possible Flamehair knew of the spot as well. He came to these hills frequently, and it was likely that he was well acquainted with them. Tall Tree decided that was where he and his men would set their trap. The buck would be the bait.

  They circled to reach the creek ahead of the buck and concealed themselves in the thick brush a short distance downstream from the clearing. A fallen tree lay across the creek. Tall Tree had looked at that log before and suspected Flamehair had been the one who cut it down.

  As they waited, Tall Tree began to worry that the buck wasn’t really headed here after all and would lead Flamehair somewhere else. In that case Tall Tree would just have to be patient and kill the white man some other day.

  But he was looking forward to seeing if the man’s blood was as red as his hair, and he hoped it was today.

  A few minutes later he heard the buck moving through the brush and felt a surge of satisfaction and anticipation. He had guessed correctly, and soon the white man would be here, too. He leaned closer to his companions and whispered, “Try not to kill him. I want to take him alive and make his death long and painful.”

  Big Head and Bear Tongue frowned a little at that. They had killed plenty of whites, too, but not by torture. Water Snake just nodded, though.

  A few more minutes passed, then the buck appeared. Almost immediately a shot rang out, and the buck went down hard, killed instantly. It was a good shot. Tall Tree spotted the powder smoke on the far side of the creek and knew that if all they wanted to do was kill Flamehair, they ought to riddle that spot with arrows.

  Instead he motioned for the others to wait. He was convinced he knew what the white man was going to do next.

  He was right, too. Flamehair appeared, looking even bigger than Tall Tree expected, and stood on the creek bank reloading his rifle, apparently unconcerned that he might be in danger. Reloading after firing a shot was just a simple precaution that any man took in the woods. Any man who was not a fool.

  The other three warriors looked at Tall Tree, ready and anxious to fire their arrows at Flamehair. Again Tall Tree motioned for them to wait. A cruel smile curved his lips slightly as he watched Flamehair step onto the log bridge and start across the creek. He raised his bow and pulled it taut as he took aim.

  This was the first time he had gotten such a close look at Flamehair, and a shock went through him as he realized the white man was barely a man at all. For all his great size, he was a stripling youth.

  That surprise made Tall Tree hesitate instead of loosing his arrow as he had planned. He wanted to shoot Flamehair in the leg and dump him in the creek, which would make his long rifle useless and ruin the rest of his powder.

  Instead, as Tall Tree failed to shoot, Big Head’s fingers slipped on his bowstring and it twanged as it launched its arrow. Big Head’s aim was off. The arrow flew at Flamehair’s red-thatched head, missing as narrowly as possible.

  But somehow it accomplished Tall Tree’s goal anyway, because as Flamehair twisted on the log, possibly to make himself a smaller target in case more arrows were coming his way, the soles of his high-topped moccasins slipped. He wavered there for a second and fought desperately to keep his balance, but it deserted him and he toppled into the stream with a huge splash.

  Tall Tree forgot about his plan to capture Flamehair and torture him to death. All that mattered to him now was that this white intruder on Chickasaw land should die. He leaped up and plunged out of the brush as he shouted in his native tongue, “Kill him!”

  TWO

  Breckinridge had good instincts. They told him where there was one Indian there might be two—or more. He knew he was an easy target out here on this log, so he tried to turn and race back to the cover of the brush on the creek’s other side.

  Despite his size, he had always been a pretty graceful young man. That grace deserted him now, however, when he needed it most. He felt himself falling, tried to stop himself, but his momentum was too much. He slipped off the log and fell the five feet to the creek.

  He knew how to swim, of course. Like shooting a gun, swimming was something he had learned how to do almost before he could walk.

  So he wasn’t worried about drowning, even though he had gone completely under the water. His main concern was the charge of powder in his rifle, as well as the one in the flintlock pistol he carried. They were wet and useless now. The powder in his horn was probably all right, but he figured his attackers wouldn’t give him a chance to dry his weapons and reload.

  Sure enough, as he came up and his head broke the surface, he saw four Chickasaw burst out of the brush. Three of them already had arrows nocked, and the fourth was reaching for a shaft in his quiver.

  Breckinridge dragged in as deep a breath as he could and went under again.

  He still had hold of his rifle—it was a fine gun and he was damned if he was going to let go of it—and its weight helped hold him down as he kicked strongly to propel himself along with the current. The creek was eight or ten feet deep at this point and twenty feet wide. Like most mountain streams, though, it was fairly clear, so the Indians could probably still see him.

  Something hissed past Breckinridge in the water. He knew it was an arrow. They were still trying to kill him. He hadn’t expected any different.

  When he was a boy, he had befriended and played with some of the Chickasaw youngsters in the area. The medicine man Snapping Turtle had sort of taken Breckinridge under his wing for a while, teaching him Indian lore and wisdom. Breck liked the Chickasaw and had nothing against them. He didn’t really understand why the army had come and made them all leave, but he’d been sorry to see them go.

  Not all the Chickasaw had departed for Indian Territory, however. Some of them—stubborn holdouts, Breckinridge’s pa called them—had managed to elude the army and were still hidden in the rugged mountains, venturing out now and then for bloody raids on the white settlers. Breck figured he had run into just such a bunch, eager to kill any white man they came across.

  He had known when he started into the hills that he was risking an encounter like this, but he had never
let the possibility of danger keep him from doing something he wanted. If that made him reckless, like his pa said, then so be it.

  Now it looked like that impulsiveness might be the death of him.

  His lungs were good, strengthened by hours and hours of running for the sheer pleasure of it. He had filled them with air, so he knew he could stay under the water for a couple of minutes, anyway, probably longer. He had to put that time to good use. Because of the thick brush, the Indians couldn’t run along the bank as quickly as he could swim underwater. All he needed to do was avoid the arrows they fired at him, and he had to trust to luck for that since he couldn’t see them coming while he was submerged.

  Breckinridge continued kicking his feet and stroking with his left arm. Fish darted past him in the stream, disturbed by this human interloper. It was beautiful down here. Breck might have enjoyed the experience if he hadn’t known that death might be waiting for him at the surface.

  He didn’t know how long he stayed under, but finally he had to come up for air. He let his legs drop so he could push off the rocky bottom with his feet. As he broke the surface he threw his head from side to side to sling the long red hair out of his eyes. When his vision had cleared he looked around for the Indians.

  He didn’t see them, but he heard shouting back upstream a short distance. He had gotten ahead of his pursuers, just as he’d hoped, and once he had grabbed a couple more deep breaths he intended to go under again and keep swimming downstream.

  That plan was ruined when strong fingers suddenly clamped around his ankle and jerked him under the surface again.

  Taken by surprise, Breckinridge was in the middle of taking a breath, so he got a mouthful of water that went down the wrong way and threatened to choke him. Not only that, but he had a dangerous opponent on his hands, too.

  He could see well enough to know that the man struggling with him was one of the Chickasaw warriors. He must have jumped off the log bridge into the creek and taken off after Breckinridge as fast as he could swim. The warrior was long and lean, built like a swimmer. He slashed at Breck with the knife clutched in his right hand while keeping his left clenched around Breck’s ankle.

  Breckinridge twisted away from the blade. It scraped across the side of his buckskin shirt but didn’t do any damage. His movements seemed maddeningly slow to him as he lifted his other leg and rammed his heel into the Indian’s chest. The kick was strong enough to knock the man’s grip loose.

  The Chickasaw warrior shot backward in the water. Breckinridge knew he couldn’t outswim the man, so he went after him instead. If he could kill the Indian in a hurry, he might still be able to give the slip to the others.

  Breckinridge had never killed a man before, although he had been in plenty of brawls with fellows his own age and some considerably older. This time he was fighting for his life, though, so he wasn’t going to have a problem doing whatever he had to in order to survive. Before the man he had kicked had a chance to recover, Breck got behind him and thrust the barrel of his rifle across the warrior’s neck. He grabbed the barrel with his other hand and pulled it back, pressing it as hard as he could into the man’s throat.

  The Chickasaw flailed and thrashed, but Breckinridge’s strength was incredible. He managed to plant his knee in the small of the Indian’s back, giving him the leverage he needed to exert even more force.

  The warrior slashed backward with his knife. Breckinridge felt the blade bite into his thigh. The wound wasn’t deep because the Indian couldn’t get much strength behind the thrust at this awkward angle, but it hurt enough to make red rage explode inside Breck. The muscles of his arms, shoulders, and back bunched under the tight buckskin shirt as he heaved up and back with the rifle lodged under the warrior’s chin.

  Even underwater, Breckinridge heard the sharp crack as the man’s neck snapped.

  The Chickasaw’s body went limp. Breckinridge let go of it and kicked for the surface. As soon as his enemy was dead, Breck had realized that he was just about out of air. The stuff tasted mighty sweet as he shot up out of the water and gulped down a big breath.

  An arrow slapped through that sweet air right beside his head.

  Breckinridge twisted around to determine its direction. He saw right away that the other three Chickasaw had caught up while he was battling with the one in the creek. Two of them were on the bank even with him, while the third man had run on downstream, where he waited with a bow drawn back to put an arrow through him if he tried to swim past.

  They thought they had him trapped, and that was probably true. But the realization just made Breckinridge angry. He had never been one to flee from trouble. He shouldn’t have tried to today, he thought. He should have stood his ground. He should have taken the fight to the enemy.

  That was what he did now. He dived underwater as the two Indians closest to him fired, but he didn’t try to swim downstream. Instead he kicked toward the shore, found his footing on the creek bottom, and charged up out of the water bellowing like a maddened bull as the warriors reached for fresh arrows.

  The rifle wouldn’t fire until it had been dried out, cleaned, and reloaded, but in the hands of Breckinridge Wallace it was still a dangerous weapon. Breck proved that by smashing the curved brass butt plate against the forehead of the closest Indian. With Breck’s already considerable strength fueled by anger, the blow had enough power behind it that the ends of the crescent-shaped butt shattered the warrior’s skull and caved in the front of his head. He went over backward to land in a limp heap.

  The other Indian loosed his arrow, and at this range Breckinridge was too big a target to miss. Luck was with him, though, and the flint arrowhead struck his shot pouch. The point penetrated the leather but bounced off the lead balls within.

  Breckinridge switched his grip on the rifle, grabbing the barrel with both hands instead, and swung it like a club. He was proud of the fancy engraving and patchbox on the stock and didn’t want to break it, but pride wasn’t worth his life.

  The Chickasaw dropped his bow and ducked under the sweeping blow. He charged forward and rammed his head and right shoulder into Breckinridge’s midsection. Breck was considerably taller and heavier than the Indian was and normally would have shrugged off that attempted tackle, but his wet moccasins slipped on the muddy bank and he lost his balance. He went over backward.

  The Chickasaw landed on top of him and grabbed the tomahawk that hung at his waist. He raised the weapon and was about to bring it crashing down into Breckinridge’s face when Breck’s big right fist shot straight up and landed on the warrior’s jaw. The powerful blow lifted the Indian away from Breck and made him slump to the side, momentarily stunned.

  Breckinridge rolled the other way to put a little distance between himself and the enemy. As he did an arrow buried its head in the ground where he had been a split second earlier. The fourth and final Chickasaw had fired that missile, and when he saw that it had missed, he screeched in fury and dropped his bow. He jerked out a knife and charged at Breck.

  As he rolled to his feet, Breckinridge snatched up the tomahawk dropped by the Indian he had just walloped. He dodged the thrust of the fourth man’s knife and brought the tomahawk up and over and down in a blindingly swift strike that caught the warrior on the left cheekbone. Breck intended to plant the tomahawk in the middle of the man’s skull and cleave his head open, but the Indian had darted aside just enough to prevent that fatal blow.

  Instead the tomahawk laid the warrior’s cheek open to the bone and traveled on down his neck to lodge in his shoulder. Blood spouted from the wounds as he stumbled and fell.

  Breckinridge would have wrenched the tomahawk loose and finished off the injured Chickasaw, but at that moment the man he had punched rammed him again. This time the impact drove Breck off the bank and back into the creek. He floundered in the water for a moment, and by the time he was able to stand up again the two surviving warriors were disappearing into the woods. The one who had just knocked him in the stream was helping the wo
unded man escape.

  Breckinridge felt confident that they didn’t have any fight left in them. He might not have admitted it to anyone but himself, but he was glad they felt that way. He knew how lucky he was to have lived through a fight with four-against-one odds . . . especially when the one was an eighteen-year-old youngster and the four were seasoned Chickasaw warriors.

  There was no telling if other renegades might be in the vicinity, so he figured he’d better get out of the hills and head for home pretty quick-like.

  He wasn’t going back without his quarry, though, so without delay he gathered up his rifle and started for the clearing where the buck had fallen. It would take time to put his rifle and pistol back in working order, and he didn’t think it would be smart to linger that long.

  When he reached the clearing the buck was still lying there, undisturbed as yet by scavengers. Breckinridge stooped, took hold of the carcass, and heaved it onto his shoulders. Even his great strength was taxed by the animal’s weight as he began loping through the woods toward home.

  He thought about the four warriors he had battled. Two of them were dead, he was sure of that, and the one he’d wounded with the tomahawk probably would die, too, as fast as he had been losing blood.

  What would the fourth man do? Would he go back to the rest of the renegades—assuming there were any—and tell them that he and his companions had been nearly wiped out by a large force of well-armed white men?

  Or would he admit that all the damage had been done by one young fella who hadn’t even had a working firearm?

  Breckinridge grinned. Lucky or not, he had done some pretty good fighting back there. He knew now that in a battle for his life he would do whatever it took to survive. He wondered if he ought to tell anybody the truth about what had happened. Chances were, they wouldn’t believe him.

  But he knew, and he would carry that knowledge with him from now on.

  * * *

  It was all Tall Tree could do not to cry out in pain as he leaned on Bear Tongue while they hurried through the forest. He was weak and dizzy and knew that was from losing all the blood that had poured out from the wounds in his face, neck, and shoulder.