Some kind of big bird.
Had to be.
Easing his way, he reached out and pulled the stems and spikes back. Two fierce yellow eyes glared up at him, the pupils black and violent. The wickedly hooked beak was open, the narrow tongue flicking with each desperate panting breath.
A hawk. Young. Redtail if Tylor was any judge. The bird’s yellow eyes were fixed on his, hard. Frightened.
“It’s all right, Will. Got a hawk here.”
Cunningham had caught the mare and was trotting his way.
The hawk tried to scramble back, one wing dragging. The bunched grass tangled around it.
Tylor’s move was instinctual. He pulled off his shirt and threw it over the wounded hawk. Pressed it down. With care he managed to untangle the taloned feet from the thick grass stems and lifted the struggling bird.
“What in ’tarnal hell you doin’?” Cunningham asked. “Yer gonna get yerself sliced to ribbons when that thing comes loose of that shirt.”
“It’s got a hurt wing.”
“Well, let the damn thing go before it lays you open to the bone.”
Tylor chuckled, getting a hold of the bird’s lower legs above the feet. He could feel the creature’s terror through the thick folds of his old worn shirt. The hawk twisted, stuck its head through a rent in the fabric, and glared into Tylor’s eyes. But for the confining cloth, it would have bit a chunk out of Tylor’s arm.
“You outta yer mind?” Cunningham asked, pulling up on the horses. “Cain’t keep a wild critter like that. Not on the trail anyway. Not without no cage.”
“I’ve seen this hawk before, Will. In a dream. Like this, I was staring into its eyes. I tell you, I’ve dreamed this. Seen it fly again.”
“Now yer tellin’ me you got second sight?” Cunningham’s amused smile bent his bearded lips. Cobble stamped uneasily. Tylor’s mare was looking worried, nostrils flared, eyes white at the edges as she watched the bird.
“There was an Indian,” Tylor told him. “In the dream, he handed me the bird. This bird.”
“Don’t see no Injun, coon.” Cunningham propped his rifle on the saddlebows and used his knife to cut a chew from his carrot of tobacco. Around the dry leaf, he said, “An’ ye ask me? One hawk pretty much looks like another. Least a ways, I cain’t tell the difference atween ’em.”
“I tell you, it was this hawk.”
“An’ jist how’s we supposed to know this Injun?”
“Round face, short hair. He’s a muscular man.” Tylor tightened his hold as the frightened hawk struggled to break free. “He has kind eyes, Will. But desperate. Like he needs something from us. He reaches out.”
Cunningham got his quid juicing, spit a stream of amber off into the grass. With a barked laugh, he said, “Got to tell ye, Tylor. Yer hang-fire full of surprises. Now, what in hell are we gonna do with that damn hawk?”
“You’ve got those leather strips in your pack?”
“Yep. Them’s my wangs.”
“Well, step down here. Help me tie these legs. And we’ve got to set that broken wing.”
“Do all that and not get ripped into bloody slices?”
“Well, hell, Will. I never promised you that riding with me wasn’t without its risks.”
Where she lay in the grass, Singing Lark watched the two Taipo as they mounted their horses.
Her heart was still pounding in her chest. Nothing, in all of her young life, compared with this. Not even the time she’d sworn she’d seen Pa’waip, the Newe Spirit known as Water Ghost Woman who lured men to their deaths. Not even the time she thought she’d heard Cannibal Owl flying through the midnight-dark winter sky.
At first, she’d figured she was either about to die, or suffer an even worse fate. Captured, raped, and enslaved. The wind had blown right down her back to the tall Taipo’s horse. Peering through the screen of grass, she’d seen the man’s mount pinpoint her hiding place. Seen him pull the animal up and squint in her direction.
She’d been close enough to hear the Taipo’s soft words, uttered in a strange language. Then, just as she’d thought everything lost, the smaller rider had circled, flushed a hawk, and been bucked off his horse.
In the confusion, distracted as they were, Singing Lark had snaked her way through the grass, circling to the side, well downwind.
“Did one carry a hawk?” Gray Bear’s words echoed in her head.
Singing Lark swallowed hard, then lowered her forehead to rest on the sweet-smelling grass. In all of her dreams, she had never dared to imagine that she would have the honor of serving a puha-filled taikwahni like Gray Bear. A leader who could dream such powerful visions.
“I have to get back,” she whispered, the thrill of it tingling in her guts. “I have to tell him that, yes, these are the Taipo we have been sent to find.”
CHAPTER 6
“What in hell ye reading, coon?” Will Cunningham asked as he sat cross-legged before the fire. They had made an early camp in a hollow, a sort of bowl in the grassy slope above the Grand River. A couple of cottonwoods shaded the depression, leaves clattering in the west breeze. The horses were hobbled down below, grazing, tails switching against the flies.
Cunningham was working on repairing one of his reins. The leather had worn where it attached to Cobble’s bit. Cunningham had cut off the distressed section and was using a steel awl to poke holes, then coax sinew through them as he secured the rein to the bit.
“I’m reading Caesar. The Gallic War. Odd. I didn’t remember his Latin being this good.” Tylor closed the book. Made a face. “Either that or my own has gotten as intolerable as his.”
“Latin, coon?”
Tylor set the book aside, glanced up at the sunset rays that shot patterns through the leaves overhead. “My father, though a fully committed American, insisted that I be educated at Oxford in England. Latin and Greek were required. I had a tutor as boy. As a scholar? Well, how about we leave it at the fact that I wasn’t outstanding when it came to letters.”
“That what led you to treason?” Cunningham glanced up from his stitching. “Being in England?”
“No. That was all Aaron Burr. Charming rogue that he might be.” Tylor paused. “Will, tell me, if you and I are Americans, is it treason for us to instigate a rebellion among Spanish subjects in lands claimed by a foreign crown? And what is treasonous about forming a country based upon that foreign revolution? Especially if it is outside the United States? If its formation is not detrimental to the United States?”
Cunningham’s beard wiggled uncertainly as he glanced at the hawk where it perched atop one of the packs. The bird’s legs were bound, the wing immobilized by an improvised splint. That piercing stare missed nothing.
Tylor gestured to make his point. “It’s not like Aaron Burr was acting against the interests of the country by leading a revolt against the Spanish government in Texas, let alone Louisiana territory. Which, you must remember, is where we’re sitting right now. Would it be treason if we declared and established the nation of Will, John, and Hawk? Wrote a constitution, and declared ourselves the government?”
“Don’t know. Hadn’t thought of that. Burr was tried, wasn’t he?”
“And acquitted by Justice Marshall and the Supreme Court.”
“So why’d it all come out so wrong?”
Tylor ran absent fingers over his book, his eyes on the hawk as the creature matched stare for stare. “Aaron Burr is an enchanting scoundrel. A true silver-tongued devil. Always his own worst enemy. But for shooting Alexander Hamilton, he’d have ended up as president. That he had no chance after the duel rankled deep down in his soul. If he couldn’t be president of the United States, he’d forge his own country to lead.
“Aaron is remarkably adept at selling grand schemes, but he doesn’t have a fool’s clue about the details. And, ultimately, ill prepared, undermanned, and without even the basics of supply, his invasion of the Spanish lands and the creation of his new nation would have failed. Not to mention that J
ames Wilkinson betrayed us. And there, my friend, lies the true villain of the piece.”
“Why’d Burr pick you?”
“I knew Anthony Merry from my time in England. He was the British Minister to the United States. Merry hates anything having to do with America. He told me once ‘Democracy is what you get when the offal of society is allowed to float to the top of the barrel.’ He particularly despises Jefferson. Seems that on Merry’s first state visit, Jefferson received him wearing only his bath robe. Spent the entire meeting tossing a slipper up and down with his foot, kept trying to catch it with his toe.”
That brought a smile to Cunningham’s lips. “This Merry. Overstuffed popinjay, eh?”
“But just the right person to approach if you want a British fleet to sail into the Gulf of Mexico to back a revolution in the Spanish lands. It would be a chance to do to the Spanish what the French did to the English at Yorktown. Think of North America like a game of checkers. Canada in the north. America in the middle. Spain in Florida on the southeast and covering the southwest. Russia in the northwest. Burr’s country would carve a pro-British ally out of the Spanish southwest—a block to America’s westward expansion. Not only that, the British would like nothing better than to see another country formed in North America that helps the Spanish and French empires disintegrate.”
Tylor paused. “I never heard if Merry succeeded in talking the crown into sending the fleet. I was out west.”
“That was when ye went to Santa Fe? Larned a bit of Pawnee?”
“Aaron was in communication with allies, people in Santa Fe, Nacogdoches, and New Orleans who were betting on his success. Wealth and power were afoot. Aaron figured to have as much as forty thousand acres of what’s now Texas wilderness under cultivation within a couple of years. The trading permits alone would have made men rich.”
Tylor smiled. “It wasn’t just getting in on the beginning, picking my own lands, building my empire, it was the chance to see the west for myself. Learn the secrets, get a feel for the land and people.” He tapped the side of his head. “Knowledge. That’s where the true power lies.”
“Making you what?”
“Minister of State? Vice president? One of the inner circle? One of the richest and most powerful men in the western hemisphere? An American lord?” He tapped his copy of Caesar. “Like the author of this book once thought, it’s not a new idea.”
“Yer still looking for that? Out hyar?” Cunningham gestured around at the waving grass beyond the tree-and-brush-lined hollow where they camped.
Tylor frowned at the watching hawk. “I had my chance, Will. Gambled everything. My wife, reputation, estate, wealth, future, even my life. I lost. Spent eternity in Jackson’s hole and came within a whisker of being hanged.” He shook his head. “After paying that price, I’ll be thankful if I can just vanish into the wilderness where no one has ever heard of me. Exile myself to the farthest reaches of men. That’s my penance. The deal I’ve made with God.”
Cunningham grunted, then tugged on his repaired rein to test its strength.
The way the hawk cocked its head, it might have been considering Tylor’s words. Then, as if to make a statement, it ruffled its feathers, lifted its tail, and squirted white excrement onto the pack top.
“Looks like that rabbit you fed it done run through,” Cunningham noted.
“I wasn’t sure the bird would eat,” Tylor told him, taking his book and stuffing it into his oiled bag.
The sounds of evening could be heard as the wind slowly ebbed, no longer rattling the leaves in the trees around their small camp. Insects shone as the slanting sun glowed in their wings. The horses stood in the grass below, heads down, tails flicking back and forth.
“The way he stripped that rabbit down to bone, I’d say that coon ain’t eaten in days.” Cunningham laid his repaired bridle and bit to the side. He started to reach for the sack that contained his tobacco and pipe, but then froze.
At the same time Tylor was aware of the horses as they pulled their heads up, ears pricked, nostrils flaring. Their stare fixed on the east, and they turned, shifting uneasily.
East? Downwind.
Tylor scuttled the half step to reach for his rifle. Cunningham—doing the same—collected his long Pennsylvania gun. The thing was beautiful, stocked with tiger-stripe maple, the brass work polished.
Cunningham’s beard twitched as he rocked his jaw back and forth, his thumb on the forty-caliber rifle’s cock.
“What do you think?” Tylor whispered, his own thumb on the cock of his crudely butchered fifty-four caliber gun. On his previous trips into the west, he’d learned the advantage of a short-barreled rifle. This one, thick-wristed and awkward, appeared to have been an early attempt by an aspiring gunsmith. The original rifling at the muzzle had been worn from rust and ramrods. Tylor had had the gun shop cut the forty-two-inch barrel back to a mere thirty, and found the rifling to be quite crisp.
More to the point, when clean and tightly patched, it shot inside eight inches at one hundred paces. Good enough for a buffalo—or a man—at those distances.
“What do you think?” Cunningham asked.
Tylor followed the horses’ gazes and heard his mare’s soft whicker.
“Nothing moving out there that I can see. Thing is, Will, we’re down here in this hollow. No telling what’s just up over that grass.”
“If it comes to trouble, John, we got to keep at least one rifle loaded. If’n I shoot, ye hold up lessen she’s Katy bar the door. Don’t touch that jack handle off ’til I’m loaded and primed.”
“I’m with you, Will. No one wants to charge a man aiming a loaded rifle.”
The evening sounds had gone oddly silent, the horses even more uneasy as they stomped, whickered, and shifted.
“Jack handle?” Tylor asked, as a nervous sweat dampened his neck.
“That damn rifle’s about arse-ugly enough it looks t’ be a jack handle. Reckon the feller that made it was just taking a break from his usual trade.”
“And what trade would that have been?”
“Why, makin’ jack handles, naturally.”
Tylor grinned despite the uncomfortable feel of his heart thumping against his breastbone.
The horses reacted first, going tense. They shifted their gazes upwards, toward the head of the hollow.
Movement.
Heads appeared over the grass. East and south. They advanced slowly. Indians for sure. Warriors with bows raised, arrows nocked, they slowly descended into the hollow.
“Hold!” Tylor shouted, standing, picking the oldest and closest, a man with slightly graying hair, his face painted red with black lines on the cheeks, the left one scarred, an anticipatory grin on his face.
Tylor settled the silver-blade sight on the man’s chest, again calling, “Stop!”
The old warrior lifted a hand, the others halting in their tracks.
“Who are you? What people?”
The others were looking to the older man. Good call on Tylor’s part to figure him for the chief.
Cunningham stepped up beside Tylor and said, “Keep him covered, coon.” Then he lowered his rifle, using hand signs to ask, “Who you?”
The war chief called a quick order; two of the young men to the side started to edge around between Tylor and the horses.
Tylor spun, covering the most threatening, crying, “Damn you, I’ll kill him if he takes another step!”
The young warrior stopped, a flickering of excitement behind his eyes, as if he knew it was just a matter of time.
Cunningham was signing, adding aloud, “And yer a gonna die next, chief.”
The older warrior continued to grin, signing in return.
Tylor kept his rifle pointed at the anxious youth; their eyes locked, the fool kid daring him to shoot.
“From the signs, these are Arapaho.”
“Thought Manuel Lisa had a couple of traders, Champlain and Lafargue and his crew, keeping the Arapaho happy.”
�
�Well, Tylor, they ain’t hyar. They’s just the two of us, four horses, and these packs full of trade. With you and me dead, who’s gonna tell the tale?”
“That chief won’t if he dies, and this kid goes with him. Then we’re killing as many as we can before they take us down.”
Cunningham signed, making the downward cut of the hand that indicated, “That’s the end.” Then he had the rifle back in position and settled on the chief’s chest.
As Tylor let his finger caress the trigger, he experienced an odd sense of inevitably. His soul had gone airy. It would all end here. He’d shoot the kid through the top of the chest, and before the smoke cleared, he was going to charge the next young man to the right. If he could swing the jack handle, smash the young man down, he might be able to make it all the way to the third man. Might have a chance at beating him to a pulp.
“I figure I can get three, Will. You take the chief and lay into whomever you can. Maybe, we kill enough, the ones remaining might run.”
“ ’Bout our only chance,” Cunningham agreed, no more than ten paces separating the muzzle of his rifle and the chief’s chest.
At the corner of his vision, Tylor was barely aware of the chief still signing. Cunningham was shaking his head no.
“Says if we give him the packs and horses, we can walk away,” Cunningham translated.
“On foot out here? We’ll end up just as dead, and we don’t take any of them with us.”
Cunningham let loose of his trigger just long enough to make the tapping-fist sign for “kill” and then pointed at the chief before replacing his finger on the trigger.
“Bit of a standoff, don’t you think?” Tylor’s mouth had gone dry. Flies were buzzing around his head. Irritating little bastards, and he didn’t dare break the spell by waving them away.
With a barked order, the Arapaho chief took a step back, making the sign for “Go in peace, it is finished.”
Across the short paces that separated them, Tylor could see the youth’s disappointment. The kid ground his teeth, mouth working as he silently mouthed what had to be obscenities. Nevertheless, he and the others began to back away.
Flight of the Hawk: The Plains Page 3