CHAPTER 43
The feeling was like a band was being tightened around Dawson McTavish’s chest. As if he couldn’t draw a full breath. His heart kept hammering at his breastbone, and his stomach felt sick. Like he wanted to throw up. And all the while a voice was screaming inside his skull: angry, scared, and afraid.
A voice that he didn’t dare allow to break through his tight throat.
“Dawson?” Joseph whimpered. “You’ll not leave me?”
“Not going anywhere.” Dawson stared past Joseph’s head to the falling snow where it was illuminated by the leaping flames of the fire. He sat in the shelter, Joseph cradled in his arms. The position was awkward given the arrow still protruding from Joseph’s gut. He’d been hunched forward, so the arrow entered just under the ribs, had cut down through the intestines, and from the angle and length of the shaft protruding, the iron tip had probably lodged in Joseph’s pelvis somewhere near the spine.
Any attempt to lay Joseph straight pulled at his guts and caused a terrible pain. The only thing Dawson could do was sit awkwardly cross-legged and support his friend so the arrow was mostly held straight.
“Hurts. Every time I breathe. Like a burning. Acid, you know? My belly’s on fire, Dawson.”
“Shush now. We’ll fix it. You heard Tylor. We’ll have to wait until morning. He says he’s got to have light to see to try and take it out.”
Joseph swallowed hard. “He’s lying, you know.”
“He’s done this sort of thing before.”
“I never heard him say that.”
“You were—”
“Dear God, I have to shit. No, please. Don’t let me. Please, no.”
“We can get your trousers off. I’ll just have to—”
“Please, no, Dawson. It’ll hurt too much. I’ll hold it. ’Fraid . . . ’fraid if I let go, it’ll all be blood. My guts will shoot out with it. Couldn’t . . . couldn’t stand that.”
Joseph swallowed hard again, shivering, whimpering with the pain.
Dawson kept his hold on his friend. Wondering how long it would take, knowing it could be days.
Tylor had been blowing wind, saying they’d need daylight to dig the arrow out. Of course that was a lie.
Sometimes it took as long as a week for a man to die from an arrow to the guts. A week. Seven long days of holding Joseph. Feeling his agony.
“ ’Member when we was back at Michilimackinac? When we was kids?” Joseph asked through a whisper. “Remember when we mixed gunpowder into old Jacques Beauchamp’s pipe tobacco?
“Never forget the look on his face when he touched that burning stick to the bowl. Singed his eyebrows and blackened his forehead. Remember how he jumped, dropped the pipe. His eyes was so wide I thought they’d pop from his head.”
“Would o’ been better if we hadn’t started laughing,” Dawson agreed. “He chased us over half the post. If he’d a caught us, he’d a beat us half dead.”
“Good times back at Michilimackinac. I’m glad your cousin, Robert, took it back from the Americans. Wonder how he’s doing attacking Detroit?”
“Don’t worry about Robert Dickson. He’s like an army all in one man,” Dawson forced reassurance into his voice as Joseph tensed, yipped in pain. The sound of his bowels emptying in his trousers could be heard.
“God, no. Please, God, no,” Joseph kept whispering.
“It’s all right,” Dawson soothed. “There’s a creek just yonder. I’ll wash them out in the morning.”
“It’s like a fire in my guts,” Joseph said weakly. “I just want to die, Dawson. I can’t stand this. I don’t want to die like this.”
“We’ll get you fixed up.”
“God, it hurts.”
Out in the snow, Tylor and the woman—not much more than a girl actually—appeared in the firelight. They were snow-packed, heads and shoulders along with the folds in their parkas clotted with snow.
Tylor stepped over as the Indian woman bent to Stone Otter’s body. Without hesitation she placed a foot on the dead Arapaho’s chest, grasped the arrow by both hands, and grunted as she pulled.
From where he sat, Dawson could hear the sucking sound it made as she pulled the iron point through the man’s lungs and out of the ribs. The wound gave off a hissing exhale as the dead man’s chest relaxed.
Joseph must have heard, for he began to sob.
Tylor bent down in the doorway, asking, “How’s he doing?”
“Joseph’s as strong as they come,” Dawson told him bravely.
“God it hurts,” Joseph barely managed to whisper. “Don’t let me die this way.”
“We’ll be trapping and trading yet,” Dawson told him. “You’ll see. Just like we’ve been. Friends forever, aye?”
“Scared. There’s a fire in my . . .” Joseph tensed, trying to keep from crying out, but like the corpse, a flatulent sound could be heard around the arrow’s shaft as gases vented from the wound.
Dawson did his best to keep his expression calm; when the smell of it came to his nose, it was all he could do to keep from throwing up.
Tylor’s expression, though shadowed, was worried. “Singing Lark and I are going to haul this last one out into the brush with the others. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“We’ll be here,” Dawson told him with false bravado.
Together he and Joseph watched as Tylor and the woman grabbed Stone Otter by the arms, pulled his corpse around in the snow, and dragged it out into the storm.
“It will be all right,” Dawson crooned. His own back was in agony. His muscles beginning to tremble at the strain of holding Joseph up so that the arrow didn’t pull.
“Please . . .” Joseph whispered. “I don’t want to die like this.”
A week. It could take a whole week.
Again the voice shrieked in Dawson’s head. He and Joseph, they’d been inseparable since Joseph had been six. Been through so much. How had they come to this place, only to have Joseph take an arrow through his guts?
A week. It could take that long . . .
I can’t stand this! God, make this stop!
CHAPTER 44
Gray Bear considered himself to be a mere speck—like a buffalo gnat, tiny and insignificant in a world of white. White sky, white land, even white air, for this high on the pass they were in the clouds. Adding to the effect, lightly falling snow drifted down to mix with Gray Bear’s frosted breath every time he exhaled.
He lay with his belly down in the snow, a snow-caked buffalo robe over his back. His position was on the crest of a rocky ridge. Before him was the narrow defile through which the trail passed. Most of the storm’s fury had spent itself in the night. Now the air had gone still, and if they had any chance of disaster, it would be because of the wind. That it might carry their odor down to the Pa’kiani.
He heard snow crunching, but didn’t break his cover as Dark Horse wormed his way up beside Gray Bear’s position. The man’s wolf-hide parka was dusted with snow. The lines of his diamond-shaped face were curiously softened by the weak light, his weather-browned skin black against the backdrop of white.
“Think they are coming?” Dark Horse asked. “Can’t see more than a half an arrow shot across the trail.”
“Five Strikes and Flat Finger said the Pa’kiani had followed them as far as the mouth of the canyon. The enemy knows the route we took. If they are not here by midday, we’ll send scouts to see. Hard to think they would have come this far, stayed this long away from their people, only to give up now.”
“Five Strikes said they barely stopped at our village site.”
“Why would they? They knew they were only a couple of hands of time behind us. That they came so quickly?” Gray Bear allowed himself a slight shrug. “I’d say they bit down on the bait.”
“Why? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe it doesn’t make any sense to us, but it must to the Pa’kiani. That war chief leading them isn’t to be underestimated. He’s kept his warriors on the
trail when we both know they’d rather be back in their villages up north. That takes someone with puha, or a special kind of personal charm. Some kind of fire in the soul. Whatever it is, he knows how to lead.”
“Does he, my friend? If he comes up the pass, he’s going to lead his party right into our ambush.”
“Tell me what my orders were.”
Dark Horse made a face. “You said he would send two scouts. To let them ride past if they didn’t discover us. Just let them go. Then, when the rest of the party rode through the gap, everyone was to count. You gave every warrior a number, put number one at the top, number ten at the bottom of the ridge. The warriors count back from the leader to the rider that has their number. Our warrior number six, counts to their warrior number six, and so on. Then, when you shoot, they shoot the warrior with their number.”
“As long as your people follow my orders, we will win this thing.”
“My people? You question them?”
Gray Bear gave a dismissive tilt of the head. “They just heard the words. They don’t really understand what I’m trying to do.” He paused. “Not any more than that Pa’kiani war chief will understand until it is too late.”
“This only works if they ride into the ambush.”
“Or, Black Horse, as you told me. It’s a terrible place to fight a battle.”
“Hope you are right.”
“That’s two of us.”
After a time, Dark Horse asked, “You think that Taipo will trade for Silver Curl?”
“Maybe. If the price is right. And if we ever get the time for him to figure out if he wants her.”
The sound of a hoof striking rock down in the canyon could be heard.
“Shhh.” Gray Bear nodded. “Now, slither back down out of sight. You and the rest of the archers will get your chance.”
Gray Bear’s heart began to pound. The notion ran through his head that this was as crazy as Coyote. So much could go wrong. The scouts could spot the ambush. Or, as the tension built, one of his warriors could squeeze too hard on a trigger. A premature shot would ruin it all. In their excitement, everyone could miss.
“You have to trust me,” he’d told his anxious warriors. “Like the buffalo hunts of old, this has to be done just so.”
Why would they listen to me when a line of enemies is riding past? It will be so tempting.
Snow crunched, someone climbing up beside him. Dark Horse with some last question? The man was going to ruin the whole thing.
“I said you’ll get your chance,” Gray Bear hissed. “Now get back to your—”
“Come to sing the Puha,” Aspen Branch’s hoarse voice was barely a whisper. “Going to concentrate the Power, call the Spirits to blind the Pa’kiani. That chief, he’s had the puha his way for too long.”
“Grandmother, I don’t want you here. All it would take is a single arrow, a bullet, and you’re right up here where—”
“I’ve made my puha, Taikwahni. No bullet will touch me.”
Gray Bear made a face. “Thank you, Grandmother.”
It couldn’t hurt. Besides, she’d been right since way back in Three Feathers’s camp in the Powder River Basin. He turned his attention back to the trail.
He could almost physically sense the moment the first of the scouts appeared out of the fog. A tension, electric as rubbed fox fur, ran up the line of hidden warriors.
A horse blew. He heard the distinctive sound of a hoof dislodging a rock.
Then he saw it: movement. A single rider, young, maybe in his middle teens. He rode with his blanket pulled tightly around his shoulders, wary eyes glancing this way and that as he followed the trail. From the direction of the breath puffing from his horse’s nostrils, the slight breeze was blowing up from below. That was a blessing, for it carried the scent of the Shoshoni away from the approaching Blackfeet and their horses.
The youth carried only a bow and arrows. His mouse-brown horse had a sure-footed gait. Seemed to have good wind given the climb it had just made.
His heart beating in his throat, Gray Bear almost trembled with anxiety. His blood was pulsing, muscles quivering with the tension.
Please. Please. Tam Apo, don’t let anything go wrong.
He could barely hear Aspen Branch’s soft voice, like the whispering of the wind. Her rising and falling tones sent a tingle of puha, of rightness along his skin.
By the time the youth had ridden past, beyond the ambush, into the fog and widening saddle where the canyon opened into the pass, Gray Bear’s jaws ached from the stress. As tightly as he’d had his jaws clamped, he considered it a miracle that he hadn’t cracked a molar.
The sound of horses—almost ignored in his half panic—grew louder from down below.
Aspen Branch’s whispering intensified.
Somehow, as the first of the riders appeared in his field of view, a sense of inevitability settled on Gray Bear’s shoulders. He took a deep breath, stilling his hammering heart.
He began counting as one by one, the Pa’kiani rode into view.
CHAPTER 45
The horses kicked a trail through fetlock-deep snow as Singing Lark, Dawson, and Tylor crested the summit of Spirit Pass. They had quite an outfit now: their own belongings, ten horses, one of the South West Fur Company trade packs, and assorted bows and quivers.
Looking back to the south, the view across the basin was stunning. Tylor was delighted when Singing Lark called a halt to rest the horses. He was able to turn in the saddle and stare back at the snow-white basin they’d left behind. It glittered a soft shade of blue in the low light of the winter sun. In the distance he could see the far-off low green mountains that Singing Lark called “Pine Stand.” Back to the east was the Black Mountain, and beyond it, the endless plains of the Platte.
Somewhere out there, Tylor hoped, Fenway McKeever was stiff and dead, ice glittering in his red hair and on his lashes, those terrible green eyes grayed and frozen through. He could imagine the man’s freckles, stark against the frost-pale skin of his face, the lips pulled back, ice crystals dancing on his teeth.
McKeever would have his arms pulled tightly about him, his body in a fetal position where the snow had drifted around it.
“Too good to be true,” Tylor muttered.
Then, looking to the north, it was to see another basin opening before him. The line of up-thrust foothills on the west gave way to the steep slopes of the Powder River’s Mountains. The tops were white, irregular, humped, and faulted above thickly forested shoulders, peaks, and valleys.
The basin before him stretched in a great open bowl, cut by ridges and drainages, bounded in the distant north by the low slope of a far-off mountain. A plume of what looked like steam could be seen down in the basin immediately to their left.
“What’s that?” Tylor asked.
“We call it Pagushowener, the Hot Water Stand. Steaming hot water boils from the ground beside the Pia’ogwe.”
It was to the west that—spectacular as the rest might be—the view actually took Tylor’s breath away. There lay a range of shining fantasy mountains that humbled the Alps: a broken confusion of high, sheer thrusts of stone. Snow-packed, majestic, like a hundred sawing peaks all risen into the sky, they stretched for as far as the eye could see.
The sort of mountains that would have awed Viking gods, and cowed Zeus himself.
“My God, that’s stunning,” Tylor uttered in disbelief.
“Those are the Dukurika’s mountains,” Singing Lark told him.
“People live in those heights?”
She nodded, resettling her rifle over the bow of her saddle as she stared thoughtfully at the distant mountains. “It’s a good life. I have relatives there. Far into those peaks, up at the head of the rivers, is a big lake and country where the hot water shoots from the earth. The Dukurika, the Sheep Eaters, have lived there since the Beginning Times. You want to get lost? That is where you go.”
“Maybe we will,” Tylor told her.
Dawson had ridde
n off to the side, staring back at the line of tracks they’d made leading out of Spirit Pass. His face was a conflicted study. Tylor could see the grief, the anguish, all frothing in confusion and mixed with a terrible guilt.
Tylor had been standing back from the fire, hidden by the falling flakes. He’d watched as Dawson McTavish had reached out, clasping a hand over his friend’s face and mouth.
Tylor had knotted his fists, had made himself stand there in the pattering snow, as Joseph Aird struggled, kicking, thrashing, and bucking. Had watched the young man’s arms flail ever more weakly as they reached back and clawed at Dawson’s head.
Had ordered himself to witness the final quivers as Joseph Aird finally relaxed, body limp, legs quivering.
Through it all, Dawson had kept his hand clamped over his friend’s nose and mouth. Even long after Joseph ceased to suck for breath. And not once did McTavish stop sobbing.
Sometimes the price of love was more than the soul could bear.
“Nothing you could have done,” Tylor had told the man later. “It was a blessing that Joseph was dead by morning. It’s a hard and terrible way to die, rotting away on the inside from punctured guts.”
But something had gone dead inside Dawson McTavish’s eyes. The man’s movements had been wooden, mechanical, as if some part of his brain had shut off.
Now Tylor walked his horse over, meeting the man’s eyes. “You changing your mind about coming with us?”
Dawson’s jaws clenched, his gaze thinning as he looked back to the south. “He got away with two horses and one of the packs. That’s South West Fur Company property. Took Joseph’s rifle. I was responsible. My cousin trusted me to bring the Tetons over to our side. I failed him. Failed us all.”
Tylor said, “Don’t know if this will help, but once upon a time, I served a cause that I thought was bigger than myself. It destroyed me. You’re a free man, Dawson. Go hunt McKeever if you want, but if he’s alive out there, and you can find him, he’ll kill you. If he’s dead, and you manage to stumble across that packhorse with its trade intact, you’re a man alone in the heart of Arapaho, Crow, and Shoshoni country. Not to mention that we saw a party of Blackfeet just before the storm. If you somehow, incredibly, make it back to the river, turn Black Buffalo and the Tetons to the British, the Americans are going to win in the end.”
Flight of the Hawk: The Plains Page 21