Flight of the Hawk: The Plains

by W. Michael Gear

  “You don’t know that. The might of the British empire—”

  “Is meaningless out here, Dawson.” Tylor gave the man a knowing squint. “Britain has enough on its plate dealing with Napoleon. I don’t give a fig who wins the war. I could care less. The Americans are coming. Not the army, not the fur companies, but the people. Like a great wave, they’re going to wash over everything.”

  “That’s absurd. It’s nothing but wind, buffalo, and grass. Who’d want the plains?”

  “All those farmers back east who are raising corn, pigs, and too many kids. And these are unruly Americans, not ‘subjects.’ Any time you get three or more of them together, they just can’t turn down the itch to form a government. No matter whose territory they’re in for the moment. That’s the thing neither the British, nor French, nor Spanish understand. I suspect that Jefferson, Jackson, and some of the others do, but in the end, it will be the tide of people that determines who holds the land.”

  “So, what should I do about it?”

  “Nothing.” Tylor turned his eyes back to the distant Dukurika Mountains. “But it’s your life. Like we discussed before, you’re free to live it like you want.”

  Dawson chewed at his lips, still staring south with those haunted and guilty eyes.

  “My advice? Come with us. Winter with the Shoshoni. Then, come spring. You can figure out what you’re going to do.”

  With that, Tylor reined his black mare around. “Come on, wife. Let’s go see the Hot Water Stand. Maybe splash around in the hot springs.”

  She shot him a knowing smile, flipped her black hair back over her shoulder, and started down the long slope that led to the red sandstone hogbacks below.

  When Tylor glanced back, Dawson was following in their tracks. But the expression in the young man’s face was listless, somehow mindful of a man who had lost his soul.

  Under his breath, Tylor whispered, “Discovering that you are entirely free is a terrible thing, Mr. McTavish. The rare few can fully embrace it. But for most people, it’s too terrifying to endure.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Gray Bear should have been elated. Like the rest, he should have been screaming his triumph to the crystalline-blue skies, shaking his fists, waving the long-haired black scalp from his slain enemy. He should have been singing, his breast fit to burst with the hot thrill of victory. That exaltation should have been bred into his blood—legacy of a thousand generations of Newe.

  Instead, as he led the way down the gentle slope on the north side of the Owl Creek Mountains, a feeling of wary disquiet filled him.

  He couldn’t get the images out of his head. What he’d done, seen. The terrible thing he’d wrought back on the pass. Oh, he’d had the moment of exultation as he triggered his gun, saw the Pa’kiani jerk at the bullet’s impact. He’d been the sixth man in line. Shot through the center of his body, the Pa’kiani had slumped off his horse’s side as the animal reacted to the thunder of gunfire. The Pa’kiani had hit the ground like a bag of rocks.

  The banging of the guns was somehow faint in Gray Bear’s memory. The welling wall of blue-gray smoke. The Blackfeet warriors tumbling from spooked horses. The few who remained in their saddles had been stunned, dazed, unable to comprehend. Before they could react, Dark Horse’s bowmen had rushed over the ridge top, stopping only to shoot, rip another arrow from their quivers, and shoot again.

  After it was over, as the Pa’kiani horses were gathered, as the last of the wounded Blackfeet were dispatched with war clubs and arrows, Gray Bear had walked the length of the ambush. One by one, he’d stared down into the faces of the dead. They lay trampled in the bloody snow. Some barely more than boys, others older, expressions gone slack, eyes sightless, mouths agape as blood drained from their punctured bodies to melt the calf-deep snow.

  He had kept telling himself, over and over, These are the men who killed Soft Dawn, Willow Stem, Yampa Root, and poor young Tidy Frog. One of these men urinated in the sockets of Three Feathers’s gouged-out eyes and stuffed those severed genitals into his mouth.

  Filled with hate, they had been coming to kill Gray Bear’s people. And, filled with hate, Gray Bear and his warriors had destroyed them. Right there in the narrow confines of the pass.

  But after having walked among the bodies of the dead, having looked into their sightless eyes, and watched his warriors cut the dead apart and scatter their limbs to bleed out in the snow, he just felt numb.

  Not even a night’s sleep could still the anxiety in his breast.

  “Worried?” Aspen Branch asked where she rode by his side. “I can see the torture in your eyes.”

  “Where does it end, Grandmother? I know it goes back to the Beginning Times. We kill them, they kill us, we kill them. Is it endless? Or does it ever stop? And, if it does, who stops it? Them? I don’t think so. They hate us from all the times the Newe murdered them from on horseback while they were on foot. We took their women and girls, made slaves of them. Made them bear our children. Then they got horses and aitta. They murdered us in our camps, took our women and girls, made them slaves, and made them bear their children.

  “That chief, the only reason he chased us the way he did was because he hated us. Wanted us all dead. Somehow his hate was powerful enough to convince his warriors to follow him this far into the winter and this far from their homes.”

  “And his warriors died.”

  “He didn’t. He got away. Filled with even more hate because we lived and his warriors died.”

  She frowned, the lines in her wrinkled face rearranging. “I felt his hate. That’s what I used against him. Power can be turned upon itself. He wasn’t strong enough to turn it back at me.”

  “Then I guess I had better be very thankful that you were there with us.”

  She gave him a squint-eyed, knowing look. “Yes, Taikwahni, you should. But part of the puha was yours. It gave you the wisdom to use the aitta in a way no one else would have thought of.”

  She chuckled. “The finest of leaders are those who don’t want it.”

  Gray Bear looked back at the line of warriors, twenty-one of them and the captive horses they’d taken, including Three Feathers’s beloved gray war horse. His men rode with their rifles across their saddles, singing the old victory song that had been on the lips of his ancestors all the way back to the Beginning Times.

  Sticks with scalps waved back and forth in time to the gait of the horses. All in all they made quite a caravan as the horses cut a deep trail through the powdery fetlock-deep snow.

  And the chewing sense of wary unease lay like a stone under Gray Bear’s heart.

  When the trail opened into a wide swale, Will Cunningham kicked Cobble forward, snow puffing from under the big horse’s hooves. He pulled up alongside, Cobble matching Moon Walker’s dogged plodding. Cunningham shot a long look at Gray Bear. Gave a nod to Aspen Branch.

  “You look pretty darn grim,” Cunningham said, half in English, half Shoshoni. “I’d a thought ye’d a lost that fight instead of shot the ever-loving stuffings outa them Blackfoot bastards.”

  Gray Bear winced, sucked at his teeth, then said, “I know that Tylor would understand. But you might have a sense for it.”

  “For what?”

  “Back on the pass. What happened there. Our world changed, Will Cunningham. Since being at Lisa’s post, I’ve had the feeling.” He touched his chest. “Here. Inside. The knowledge lives that nothing will be the same. It was the way we destroyed the Pa’kiani.”

  “Three of them got away.”

  “Twelve of them did not.” Gray Bear snapped his fingers. “Like that, ten Pa’kiani were dead. In another five heartbeats, Dark Horse’s warriors rose, and their arrows took down the rest. By the time we could reload the rifles, the Pa’kiani were dead or fled. All but that poor scout. And you shot him off his horse as he came riding back to see what happened.”

  Cunningham narrowed an eye, squinting against the glare off the snow. “Felt bad, shooting that kid.”


  Gray Bear tried again. “Is this what war is coming to? It was not even like clubbing rabbits in a net. There is effort to that, you have to exert yourself. Look the rabbits in the eyes as you kill them.” He lifted his right hand, twitched his finger. “That’s all it took. No work. No effort. And they were dead. Never had a chance.”

  “Better them than us.”

  Gray Bear gestured his futility. “I do not think human beings should have this kind of power. These aitta, they are the sort of thing Coyote would have invented.”

  Aspen Branch chuckled in bitter agreement.

  Cunningham nodded, beard working as he chewed at his lips. “I don’t know the right or wrong of it. I’d say it just is, coon. Sort of like my wife dying. It just happens. One minute ye lives one way. The next something’s changed, and ye’ll have to figger out how to live different. I think I foller the line of yer thinking here. Suddenly your world just got a might more spooky.”

  Gray Bear grunted his understated assent.

  “But, coon, back in the white world I come from, entire armies fight that way. Think a couple thousand men, lined up, marching up to each other. And a couple thousand rifles fire at once. The sound louder than thunder in a summer sky. It’s an old reality for white folks.”

  “My people are not white folks.”

  Cunningham—a deep sympathy behind his brown eyes— said, “I’m sorry. Deep in my heart. But a storm is headed yer way, and whether it’s brought by the Blackfeet, the Arapaho, or Crow, it’s going to break right over the people’s heads.”

  “How do we avoid this?”

  “Can’t. All you can do is know it’s coming and figure some way to be on the winning side when it breaks.”

  “How do we know this winning side?”

  “It’s whichever one the Taipos is on.”

  “That might be difficult. You people upset things.”

  “Then I’d say the Newe need a smart leader like you, Taik wahni, to help them make the right choices.”

  “I’m just a hunter.”

  “Uh-huh.” Cunningham pulled a carrot of his wonderful tobacco from his pouch, cut a bit from the twist, and plopped it in his mouth. After getting it juicing, he spit, then said, “Masterful job setting up that ambush. Me? I think the people have a damn fine leader.”

  “Did you want something? Or did you just ride up here to depress me?”

  “See, yer learning. Fact is, I been thinking about that Silver Curl. Sits wrong with me to think of buying a woman. This child don’t hold with slavery. But she’s been shooting me these looks. You know, like that a woman gives a man when she’s interested.”

  Aspen Branch chuckled under her breath, a knowing smile on her old brown lips.

  Gray Bear told him, “You killed two Pa’kiani. Two of those horses back there are yours.” And one of them was the gray that had belonged to Three Feathers. Cunningham had shot the warrior who was riding him. “But one horse would do. I’d offer Dark Horse the mouse-colored one that scout boy was riding. I would like to trade you for the gray. It once belonged to a friend of mine.”

  Cunningham nodded, as if thinking it through. “The gray is yours.”

  “In exchange for . . . ?”

  “A gift, coon.” A twinkle grew behind Cunningham’s eyes. “That’s what friends do for each other. Me? I ain’t going back to the white world. Maybe I’ll stay, assuming that’s all right with the people.”

  What friends do for each other?

  Gray Bear, his heart somewhat mollified after the carnage back on the pass, smiled. “I thank you for the gift. I am sorry it sits wrong with you to buy a woman, but Cunningham, as ugly as you are with that hair all over your face? That sickly color of skin and weird pale eyes? Stupid as you are about the way a well-mannered Newe man should act? The only way you are going to get a woman is to buy one.”

  “I can make you a love charm,” Aspen Branch told him. “Say, in exchange for a string of those blue beads in your trade. Make you irresistible to Silver Curl.”

  Cunningham ignored her, eyes on Gray Bear. “You saying no woman would take me?”

  Gray Bear shifted his attention to Aspen Branch. “If you take his beads in return for a love charm, that’s theft. Nothing. Absolutely nothing, could make Cunningham attractive to a self-respecting woman.”

  “ ’Tarnal hell.” Cunningham almost spat the words.

  In return, Gray Bear just gave the man his most placid smile.

  CHAPTER 47

  To lie back and float in the hot water as steam rose around his body was a sensation Dawson McTavish couldn’t have imagined. Adding to the miracle, he watched snowflakes fall from the frigid gray sky to vanish in the heat. Not even in his wildest dreams. Well, maybe if he’d been in the throes of a terrible fever and half out of his mind, but never when he was in possession of his wits.

  Yet, here he was. Floating on his back, naked as a newborn, body as warm as it would be on the hottest day. Didn’t matter that his beard and hair were frozen in the cold air. The idea that hot water would just bubble up from the ground was like magic come true.

  The problem was that he was here, living the magic. Joseph’s lonely body lay out in the snow, under a pile of rocks. Cold, frozen. Dead.

  As he stared up at the stormy sky, little fits of wind stirred the thick cloud of steam rising around him. As it did it wove shapes and images, phantasms that alternately haunted or teased him.

  Raised Catholic like he was, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were demons in the mist. Come to judge him for his failures. The only thing he was sure of was that he’d been played for a fool. The central character in his own tragedy. That he’d been a coward all along. Right up to the moment he’d smothered Joseph.

  All the determination, the dedication and will to succeed that had driven him when he departed for the Missouri, had been a lie. Mere self-deception. He had failed from the moment Mc-Keever had stepped into camp.

  How worthless can a human being be?

  The moment of his fall had been when McKeever slammed Matato to the ground. At that instant, Dawson should have stood, raised his Bond, and shot the cowan bastard dead.

  He clamped his eyes shut, thinking, But I was afraid.

  “Thought it was better to have believed McKeever’s lies, and lived.” That was the falsehood he’d told himself . . . and Joseph.

  Poor Joseph.

  That was the failure that damned him beyond redemption. Reaching out, suffocating his best friend. Dawson could lie to himself, tell himself he’d acted out of sympathy for his beloved friend. But he hadn’t. He’d done it for himself, because he couldn’t bear to sit for days and watch sweet Joseph die. It had all been about him, what he could or could not stand.

  Blinking at the sweat that ran down his forehead, he lifted his right hand—the hand that had murdered his best and most trusted friend. He studied his fingers, pruned by the water. Flexed them. Let his eyes follow the patterns in his palm.

  How did a man redeem himself after falling so far?

  Joseph’s face formed in the steam, smiled in the most ghastly manner, and twisted away with a breath of breeze. The pain of that moment when Joseph stiffened and finally went limp lay upon Dawson like a granite weight. And the worst of it was that Joseph, kind Joseph, had he still been alive, would have forgiven him. Dawson could almost hear his voice: “We played it as best we could. Who’d a thought the man was a devilish liar like that?”

  Wasichu, too, had died as a result of Dawson’s negligence. As much as he wanted to blame Singing Lark for shooting the Santee, she’d been out there. Had heard McKeever’s order. His command that if she gave him trouble, Wasichu was to kill her. Couldn’t fault the woman for protecting herself or her husband.

  “My fault. If I’d shot McKeever in the back that morning when he killed Matato, we’d be on the Missouri, in some Teton lodge, doing our jobs.”

  And there was Wide Crane. In the Indian trade, killing was always a risk. Something he’d considered him
self prepared to do. Then, when it finally came, he’d been so shaken that the shot he’d aimed at Wide Crane’s heart had blown out the man’s hip. And that from less than six paces.

  Bad enough that he had fallen apart so entirely; he couldn’t help but relive the moment he’d stood over Wide Crane’s body. Seen the blood, the look of agony that had fixed on the man’s face as he died.

  I knew him. Ate at his side, laughed at his jokes.

  Dawson flexed his trigger finger, remembering the feel as the Bond rifle bucked in his hands.

  Matato, Joseph, Wasichu, Wide Crane, Stone Otter, and Red Bear Man. Dead.

  Men who would be alive but for Dawson McTavish’s cowardice and culpability.

  Joseph’s whimpering moans as he fought to rip Dawson’s hand from his mouth and nose echoed in Dawson’s ears. Until he died he would relive those moments as his best friend struggled, the arrow tearing sideways in his guts. His lungs sucking at Dawson’s palm and fingers.

  Dawson exhaled, as if he could drive the shame from deep inside.

  Good men are dead, and Fenway McKeever rode away free and clear with a pack of expensive SouthWest Company trade.

  “I should have gone after him.”

  “A man alone? You’ll be dead within a fortnight at most, by tomorrow at the earliest.” Tylor’s words from the Spirit Canyon camp haunted his ears.

  True, Dawson hadn’t been dressed for the cold. Wouldn’t have known where to look. McKeever’s trail would have been long vanished in the blowing snow out in the flats.

  So, where would the bastard have gone?

  Would he have headed east, back toward the river, figuring he could continue with his insane plan to corner the river fur trade? Tylor made no bones about the fact that McKeever had deluded himself into believing he could become the king of the Upper Missouri. Or would McKeever remain here, in the west, knowing that Tylor was still on the loose. That to ever obtain his two thousand from Joshua Gregg, he was going to have to take Tylor’s head back to North Carolina himself.