Lashan suddenly got to his feet. "Max? There's somebody out there!"
Turning swiftly, I slid through the brush and hit a path on the run. So far I thought I had made no sound, but behind me I heard a shout.
"All of you! Out there! Get him! Alive, if you can, but get him!"
Down the path I fled, knowing not where it led except that the general direction was toward Compass Creek. Turning from the path, I slid through a gap in the trees and ran desperately. Pulling up sharply, I heard a rustliing in the brush before me. Turning, I ran on, but slower, not knowing where to next expect an enemy.
A narrow, natural avenue through the trees opened. The clouds had broken, and there was a faint light. Dimly I could see, and I plunged on. If they took me now, it meant not only death but that they would use me, somehow, to force an opening of the gates.
Turning sharply right, I ran up a track that ran along a creek bed. The Tusquitee, I thought. The sky had clouded over again. Turning again, I started up a steep, rocky slope. I was hurrying, wanting to get back, to warn them of the impending attack. I saw an opening and plunged into it. Suddenly there was a sickening feeling of collapsing earth; a bank gave way, and I fell.
A sickening sense of failure and fear. I brought up with a terrific jolt, my skull rapped a rock, and that was all.
A groan, and a groan stifled. A feeling of chill, a sense of being wet, and a dull throbbing in my skull. My eyes opened on a gray world, low gray clouds, a grayish-black bank of mud rising above me and the crumbled edge over which I had fallen. It was not much of a fall, and I had landed in soft earth and water at the creek's edge. If only my skull had not rapped against that rock.
Heaving myself to a sitting position, I sat there while my head buzzed. It was daylight. What hour I knew not. Our enemies had not found me, or I should be either dead or a prisoner.
Shakily I got to my feet. The trail where I had been running was obviously long unused and had been undercut by the creek at high water. My head ached frightfully, and my neck was stiff. One knee had been bruised, also.
Looking around, I judged that the creek beside which I had fallen lay somewhere on the north slope of Piney Top, and to get back to the fort by the quickest route would be over the top of the ridge, roughly a climb of some two thousand feet, the last thousand feet very steep indeed.
Carefully I looked all around. The place where I had fallen was a small creek bed littered with stones and logs and scattered debris from the mountains above. The creek was only a couple of feet wide, a few inches deep. It was thickly walled with timber and brush right to the edge of the bank, and the mountain rose abruptly just beyond a curve in the stream bed.
There was no sound but that of a mockingbird singing in a tree a short distance off. I turned and started toward the mountain and almost fell. My knee was hurt worse than I had believed. My eyes swept the ground for a stick to be used for help in walking. Seeing nothing of the right sort, I staggered on, rounding the bend to find a broken branch about six feet long and an inch to two inches thick lying at the stream's edge. Taking it, I started on.
It was slow going. My head throbbed at every step, and my knee was stiff. It hurt when I walked, but there was no help for it.
Was I too late? Had Bauer made his attack? In an agony of fear, I pushed on, working my way through the laurel and up the slope. It was slow, painful work, with my leg so stiff it was awkward to walk. Yet at last I came to a low saddle with Piney Top on my right.
Grasping a branch for support, I stared through the leaves at the valley of Shooting Creek. The fort was still there. Slow smoke rose from its chimneys, and all was still. From where I stood, no scene could have seemed more peaceful with the slow smoke rising and the sound of the creek stilled by distance. The fields lay easy under the sun, an island of cultivation in the vastness of the wilderness around.
Nothing yet. Or had it all been done? Had the fort been taken, our people slain? I could not believe it. Surely there would be some sign, some evidence of it, and there was none; But I was still far away, at least two miles in crow-flight distance but more than three miles on the ground and the way I must go. Not less than an hour, perhaps more.
Painfully I hobbled on, seeking the best route down the mountain. My knee had swollen, binding my pant leg as it stretched the buckskin.
To return was all I now thought. My venture had been for nothing. I had hoped to find some way, some means for creating havoc among them. I had done nothing but get myself hurt, and the news that they meant to attack would come too late to be of help now.
The mountainside was steep and the forest thick. It was at least two thousand feet of descent, but carefully I eased through the laurel and stopped under a huge old maple, lightning struck in some bygone time. Listening, I heard nothing. Soon the noise of the creek would make it doubly hard, for they did not call it Shooting Creek for nothing.
There was much fallen wood here, dead branches from the tree, and some great slabs of bark. A signal fire? It would only serve to let Bauer and his crew know where I was, and my own people might misread the signal and think me in trouble. They might try to reach me and so expose more of our strength to disaster.
What I did I had to do alone. And I had to trust to Yance and Jeremy, to Kane O'Hara and the others, to keep the fort. My task now was somehow to get down the mountain and into the fort.
Ferns grew waist high about me, and there was a tangle underfoot that I managed badly with my game leg. The continued silence from below worried me. There was no sound, no shot. Nothing.
What could have happened? When I stopped again, it was in a clump of yellow birches growing around an outcropping of rock. Sitting down on a rock, I took my knife and cut a thin slit in my legging to ease the swelling and constriction. It helped.
Wary, I studied the mountainside below me and tried to see into the trees beyond the creek, but I saw nothing. A wood thrush skimmed past me and lighted on a branch almost over my head, regarding me with curiosity.
The clouds seemed to have broken, and here and there sunlight streamed through. Rising, I started again to limp my way through the forest. My move to somehow attack Bauer and his men had come to nothing, and I would be lucky to get back alive, all because of that fall into the gully.
Already the day was fading, and with darkness my chances of getting to the fort were greater, my chances of getting in much less. My fears grew. What had happened?
So far as I could see, and my vantage point permitted me to see into the enclosure, I saw no movement either in the yard or on the walls. Yet at the distance it was unlikely I could make out the figure of a man unless he was moving, and then only the movement would be visible.
Taking up my staff, I worked my way down the slope, traveling diagonally along it through the timber and brush. By the time I neared the bottom, shadows were long in the narrow valley.
Our fort lay no more than three hundred yards away now and scarcely half that distance from the edge of the trees, yet that was where Bauer's men would be if they had not begun their attack.
My leg throbbed, as did my head, although that ache had dulled as the day went by. Yet even my leg had loosened up some due to the constant movement and the release of constriction by slitting my legging.
Longingly I looked toward the fort. There were no lights. I told myself it was too early, yet it would be dark in the cabins, and there should be lights if anyone were alive to light them.
The valley around the fort was empty. Nothing stirred, nor was there any suggestion of movement.
Now was a time when I could use the help of the Nunnehi, the immortals that dwell beneath the mountains and rivers of this strange, wild land. The Cherokees spoke of them, whispered of them rather, with many a glance over the shoulder and into the shadows, for none knew when they might be about.
Suppose the fort had been deserted? That Yance had led the others into the forest? Yet that made no sense, as we had too much at stake in that small fort, all our famili
es; our stored grain, jerked meat, whatever we had gained by our hard years on the frontier, were there or in the scattered cabins.
Yance was a shrewd one. Deliberately he might be playing possum, watching for a chance to make a strike that would destroy Bauer and all that he stood for.
Aware that I had been in one place too long, I moved, easing my way through the tangle of brush and trees near the clearing. A faint whisper of movement alerted me. Knife in hand, I looked all about. Something was moving nearby. Some crawling sound. Drawing back, I put my back against the trunk of a huge old maple and waited.
Waited, knife in hand.
Chapter XXIV
My body was flattened against the maple, a big old tree at least three feet through, so my back was well covered. I gripped the staff in my left hand, but the knife I carried low, cutting edge up.
Whoever was coming was a woodsman. I knew that by the way he moved. Something stirred in the leaves not three feet away. A sudden lunge and I could have the blade into him, but I was never one to start shooting or cutting on something I didn't see. There are would-be hunters who will blaze away at anything that moves, but I must see and identify.
He was rising from the ground, and I knew he sensed my presence. He knew something or someone was close by; it is a feeling one gets.
I took a careful step forward with my left foot, putting the end of the staff firmly on the ground, ready to cut upward with the knife.
A hand, then the rough outline of a head. Starting forward, I suddenly froze in place. I knew that-!
"Yance?" I breathed the word.
He came through the leaves as though materializing from them. He was grinning widely. I could not see his eyes, but his white teeth showed his smile.
"Worried about you, lad. Where've you been?"
"Waiting for you," I replied softly. "What's happened?"
"Jeremy's holding the fort. We're hoping to get them out in the open. Get them to thinkin' maybe we've slipped away. No fires, no lights, everything quiet and ready.
"Me an' the Catawbas, we didn't take to bein' cooped up, so we slipped out. We're all here, holdin' fast. If they rush the fort, we'll take them from behind, and I think they're fixin' to."
He moved closer. "You all right?"
"I took a fall."
We waited together, listening. It was good to have Yance there beside me, for we had been a team since we'd been old enough to travel together.
"How's Diana?"
"Worried about you. She's got herself a couple of pistols hard by, an' she's ready." He turned to look at me. "You picked a good one, Kin. She'll do."
It was dark now, but the clouds were broken, and here and there we could see a scattering of stars. The air had grown suddenly cool. I sheathed my knife for the moment, drying my hands on the front of my buckskin shirt. The night was very still, and we waited, listening, our ears seeking out the unnatural, unexpected sounds, but there were none. It reassured me that the Catawbas were out and around, for they were good men and great warriors.
We could but dimly see the stark black line of the fort against the sky and the huge old trees that lay just beyond it. From where we now lay the fort was only slightly more than a hundred yards away, the ground open. Only on the north side had we allowed the trees to grow close to the fort, as the half-dozen trees left standing there provided shade during the hotter months.
It was quiet. Yance put his lips close to my ear. "Kin? I'm scared. Something's wrong!"
My eyes were on the line of the wall against the sky. A breeze stirred the branches in the chestnut trees beyond the wall. I could see the branches move slightly against the sky.
Suddenly I swore bitterly. The branches moved! But there was no breeze!
"Yance! They're coming over the wall!"
And then I was running. My injured leg forgotten, I lunged from the ground and ran for the fort, Yance only a step behind me.
As we ran, we saw several men round the corner of the fort just as the gate swung wide. "In here!"
There was a shot from inside the fort, then a scream and another shot. Men were crowding at the gate, and Yance and I reached it on the run.
A burly bearded man, pistol in hand, turned to shout. At that moment there was a flash of light from inside, a pistol that missed fire, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of his shocked expression as he recognized me, and at that same instant I ripped him, low and upward. He let out a gasping cry, and I shoved him back, grabbing for his pistol with my left hand. He let go of it, falling back, and then I was past him and in the gate.
Yance was at my shoulder. "Sackett here!" I yelled not wanting them to shoot into us, and I heard Jeremy's answering shout.
How many there were of them I never knew. It was cut and shoot. I fired my pistol, then threw it at a head that loomed before me and had the satisfaction of seeing it bounce off a skull. Yance was down, then up. A wicked blow, a glancing one, opened a gash in my skull. My head rang with the blow, but I kept my feet.
Pulling back, I looked wildly around, seeking Bauer, but he was nowhere in sight. The door to my house stood open, and I sprang past the fighting and ran to it.
"I wish he was here," Bauer was saying, "to see you die."
He held a pistol in his hand, and he was facing Diana. "I am here, Max," I said, and he turned sharply.
He was not one to dally but was ready for instant action. His eyes caught me as his ears registered my voice, and as he turned, he fired.
Yet his shot was too quick; anticipating it, I had lunged to his right. I felt the heat of the blast and the fiery sting of powder grains on my cheek.
He turned sharply as I lunged at him and struck down with the pistol barrel. Missing my skull, the blow came down across the top of my shoulder, and only the thick muscles there kept me from a broken bone. As it was, my right arm was stricken numb for the moment, and the knife dropped from my hand.
He came at me then, a small smile on his lips, for he was sure he had me. The look in his eyes was almost amused. He had his knife low and ready, the pistol in the other hand now. Warily I backed away, watching my chance.
The room was large for the time and place, but the fireplace, where lay fire tongs and poker, was across the big table from me and hopelessly out of reach. There was no nonsense about him now. He was coming in for the kill, and I had only my bare hands with which to face him. He worked me into a corner, and there was no chance to elude him, although I had brought him away from Diana.
One thing I knew. Somehow I had to kill him, for if he killed me, Diana would die in the next moment. From outside there was a confused sound of fighting, shouts, and the clash of arms. There were several shots. They needed me out there, too.
Bauer took a wicked slash at my stomach, which I evaded by a leap backward that brought me up hard against the wall. He lunged with the knife, but I sidestepped away along the wall and got into the open again. I feinted a rush, but he merely smiled. He moved quickly, cutting left and right. He ripped a gash in my hunting jacket and scratched my arm. The numbness was almost gone now. I backed away again, and he came on and thrust hard.
Slapping his knife hand aside with my left hand, I grasped his wrist with my right and threw my left leg across in front of him and spilled him over that leg to the floor. Desperately I tried to wrench the knife from him, but his grip was strong. We rolled over on the floor, and I was up first. He was too strong and too heavy on the floor. To fight him, I had to be on my feet.
He came up fast, and my kick missed his head. My heel hit solidly against his shoulder, but he only missed a step and came on. He slashed at me, and I hit him across the mouth, throwing a kick at his kneecap that missed, and then he was on me. I went down before his attack, and then he was atop me and holding my throat with one hand and coming down with the knife. Somewhere he had lost his grip upon his pistol.
The knife came down hard, and I twisted my head only in time. The knife hit the floor, and I hit him with my fist with a blow that turne
d his head and momentarily stunned him.
Throwing him off, I leaped to my feet, and he came up, knife in hand. Diana suddenly called "Kin!" and tossed me the poker from the fireplace.
I caught it deftly. It was two and a half feet long with a point and a hook, also sharply pointed. Holding it ready, I moved in. He leaped at me with the knife, and I thrust hard with the point of the poker. It caught him coming in, and the point went in all of two inches low on his right side. He jerked back, but twisting the poker, I caught the hook in his clothing and jerked hard. His shirt ripped, and the hook tore a bloody gash--not deep-- across his belly.
From outside the noise of fighting had ceased. His smile was cool. "It is too late now," he said. "My men have won. Give her to me and that letter and you shall go free and we'll not burn your fort. After all, there are other women."
My poker held ready, I made no reply. His knife was not a small one but a fifteen-inch blade, thick and heavy. Blood was staining his shirt from the wound on his right side, and there was an angry streak of blood along the thin cut on his belly.
The poker, for all its usefulness, was unwieldy, and if his wounds bothered him, there was no evidence of it. He was an unusually strong, agile man and obviously was no stranger to hand-to-hand fighting. Suddenly Diana screamed, "Kin!" Lashan was in the doorway, pistol in hand. As my eyes caught him, his pistol was lifting to take dead aim at me. I could not hesitate nor even take the time to think, I simply tossed up the poker, caught it by the middle, and threw it as a spear.
The poker struck him even as he fired, deflecting his shot by only a hair. The ball struck behind me, and I saw Lashan fall, and the next instant Bauer was on me, thrusting and stabbing. Whether he had hit me, I did not know, but his blade was bloody. Back hard against the wall, I grabbed his head by both ears and jerked his face down as I butted up with my skull. I felt his nose crunch, and then I shoved him off and swung a right fist at the point of his jaw. It caught him off balance, and he fell backward to the floor.
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