"Well, surely James left you something to live on?"
She tucked her lip under her teeth. She didn’t wish to disillusion the young man about his brother, but it didn’t seem to her that James had set aside a single penny. "It’s my understanding that his claim ran dry a while back, and I suppose most of his doctoring was done for barter."
Henry nodded. "I see." He rubbed thoughtfully at his beard. "Barter, you say?"
Something flickered in his eyes then, alarming her—a spark of dark amusement, a wink of evil—but then it vanished, and he only stared at her with that baleful gaze.
She nodded, blushing under his unwavering scrutiny. "I, I suppose."
"You suppose?" He pursed his mouth and blew out a long sigh. His eyes flattened. "So he left you nothing."
"I’m sure he didn’t mean to—“
"My gold-mining doctor brother left you nothing?" This time the sardonic edge to his voice sent a frisson of misgiving along her spine. He whispered, "You expect me to believe that?"
Mattie opened her mouth to speak, but could form no reply.
His abrupt bark of laughter cracked the air like thunder out of season.
She recoiled in surprise.
"You expect me to believe that!" He cackled as if she’d just told him the most uproarious joke. "He left you nothing!" he crowed. Then he suddenly sobered and slammed his fist on the table, startling the breath from her.
Mattie was completely unprepared for his sudden flare of temper, uncertain toward whom it was directed. She dropped the Dutch oven with a bang onto the woodstove.
"Nothing at all!" he snapped. "No coin? No note? Not even a store of gold?" The man was fast growing livid, his face purpling, the veins in his neck protruding like tree roots.
Shock froze Mattie to the spot.
His voice dripped with sarcastic venom. "How could he do that? How could that son of a bitch leave his wife-to-be with nothing?"
Mattie blinked. She was moving her mouth, but no sound came out.
"I’ll tell you how!" His mask of ire evolved into a terrifying leer. "He didn’t!" He paced back and forth in the small space, his boots making ominous thumps on the floor. "You’re hiding something from me, Missy," he said, wagging a finger at her. "You’re not telling me everything. I know full well what kind of riches my brother pulled out of the ground up here. Now are you gonna try to tell me he left nothing, nothing behind?"
The bitter taste of fear crawled onto Mattie’s tongue, and she cast a nervous glance at the rifle on the wall. He followed her gaze.
"Oh, it won’t come to that," he assured her, every trace of guilelessness completely eradicated from his face. "Because you’re gonna tell me where it’s hidden, aren’t you?"
Mattie swallowed hard. The man was clearly insane. She could see that now. And as dangerous as a mad bull. How could she have thought him a gentleman? How could she have trusted him so readily?
"Aren’t you?" he snarled, pulling a pistol from inside his coat and training it on her.
The gun was made of polished gold, and for a split second she thought it was a toy. But then he cocked it, and her heart vaulted into her throat. "But I don’t...there isn’t..." Would anyone hear her if she screamed? Lord, she didn’t dare try, not with that gun pointed at her.
"Don’t waste your breath, little Missy. Now I haven’t got all day. I want that stash, and I want it now."
Mattie tried mentally cataloguing all the nearby objects that might be used as weapons. A spoon. A pencil. Her biscuit cutter. Tins on the shelf. It seemed hopeless. Perhaps she’d try reasoning with him once more.
"Mr. Harrison, believe me," she said, her voice quavering, "he left nothing behind that I know of. Now if you would kindly put down your g—"
With a growl of rage, he swept his arm across the table, spilling the tin of wilted wildflowers across the floor.
Mattie’s heart banged like a sledgehammer against her ribs, and her mouth went dry. She had to do something, do something!
"Answer me, Missy." He advanced, and she backed away till her hip struck the shelf behind her. "I don’t have to kill you outright, you know," he warned. "I could just cripple you a little."
Holding her breath, Mattie sunk her hand surreptitiously into the flour sack. He took a step forward. She bit her lip. The barrel of the gun looked enormous. He grinned and took another step. Then in one brash movement, she tossed a fistful of flour into his eyes and dove out of harm’s way.
Henry howled in rage and clawed at his face, momentarily blinded. But he didn’t drop the gun. And there wasn’t time to get her rifle.
Casting desperately about, she lunged for the woodstove. She hauled the bubbling pot from the fire and flung its contents toward him, gasping as the hot cast iron seared her bare hands. He jerked in pain as scalding beans splattered his face and oozed down his suit. It only delayed him an instant, but it was long enough for Mattie to snatch a pencil from the floor and lurch forward beneath the weaving pistol.
She didn’t aim. She just plunged the pencil forward, wincing as it sank into yielding flesh.
His scream was hideous. She shuddered. Had she killed him?
She didn’t want to look. But her eyes were drawn inexorably toward him.
The pencil protruded obscenely from his belly, buried at most a few inches. There was no blood, not yet. And though he wailed in agony, the injury could not have been more than superficial. As she feared, in the next instant he yanked the instrument free with a yelp, pressing a fistful of shirt against the wound to stop the impending flow.
And then the shiny golden butt of his raised gun dove toward her, slamming into her temple.
She must have lay unconscious for a few minutes, long enough for him to rip linen from the bed to bind his wound, but not long enough for his temper to cool.
He yanked her up to her knees and pressed the barrel of his pistol against her forehead.
"I should just shoot you!" he raged, and for one terrifying moment, she glimpsed the madness in his eyes and felt the tremor of his indecision.
When he at last lowered the gun, it was only to slap her across the face. Hard enough to make her eyes water.
"Are you gonna tell me where that stash is, or do I have to beat the Holy Jesus out of you?"
"I don’t" she gasped, “know.”
He backhanded her, and his ring scratched painfully across her cheek. "Oh, I think you do."
Her heart fluttered like a panicked dove flapping its wings against a cage. "Believe me…if I had it..."
He held nothing back this time, plowing his fist full force into her chin and knocking her backwards onto the floor. Stars exploded across her vision, bright white, then dimming, dimming...
His boot jabbed hard between her ribs, turning her vision red, and she moaned, only half-conscious.
"Now let’s try again," he said with mock patience, jerking her up by the arm.
Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she couldn’t think or form the answer he wanted, even when he shook her hard enough to rattle her bones.
"All right!" he yelled, shoving her back down to the floor. "You want to play rough?" With the toe of his boot, he levered open the door of the woodstove. Inside was a split log, untouched by fire on one end, aflame on the other. He snatched it from the stove. "Everything you own is in this cabin, isn’t it? All your worldly goods?"
She cringed from the heat, too stunned to answer.
"You tell me where it’s hidden, or I’ll burn up everything, starting with these pictures here."
"No!" That woke her up. Whatever he did to her, however hard he beat her, it couldn’t possibly hurt her more than...
He grinned, edging the burning brand close to a drawing of the steamship.
"No!" Her drawings were her memories, her friends, her journey, her life. She had nothing else. She had to prevent him, but she didn’t know the magic words to make him stop.
He let the paper catch fire, and it was as if she were back in her uncle’s h
ouse again, watching her beautiful masterpiece melt into oblision.
"No!" she screamed, clawing at his arm. But he pulled away, and, one by one, he lit the pages. The edges of her sketches smoked and curled. Monkeys and quail and pines and deer alike flared, then turned to ash and drifted in gray flakes to the floor. She tried to tear them from the wall herself before he could reach them, but he knocked her across the cabin with the back of his arm, swinging the lit brand perilously close to her hair.
A cough tore at her throat. The pitch of the wall planks had caught fire and was smoking now, thickening fast.
"Where’s the gold?" he growled. "I’ll burn this whole house if I have to! Melted gold’s as good as any!"
He sneered and ignited the mattress. Flames leaped up from the ticking at once. In a flash of daring, Mattie managed to pull one drawing out from under the pillow, crumpling it into the pocket of her apron. Then she scrambled out of the way, inhaling a noxious lungful of smoke, and crept toward the door.
He lost his patience then and, throwing down the brand and his gun, snatched handfuls of her bodice and wrenched her to her feet.
"Where the hell is the stash!" he cried, shaking her so violently she feared her head might rock from her neck.
In a last defiant gesture, she spat in his face, and he lost the rein on his control. By the fourth punch, she could no longer feel pain. She couldn’t breathe in the smothering haze.
She vaguely sensed him dragging her out the front door and felt the sweet cool rush of fresh air as they emerged.
Behind her, the cabin crackled and hissed. Paper and wood and cloth and tin flared and melted in turn, and a gray cloud slowly curdled the twilight sky.
CHAPTER 20
Sakote broke through the cedars and looked up at the violet sky, where Wonomi had lit the first few star fires. He felt it again—that sensation of wrongness, the hunter’s instinct that something dangerous was nearby.
He shouldn’t be here, so close to the gold camp. His body still ached from the fists and boots of the white man and the injuries he’d concealed from the tribe.
He’d said it was finished, akina. That night he’d severed the bond between the Konkows and the whites. He’d shown the miners with his words and his actions that he would come no more. Yet here he stood, like a kicked wolf pup returning for more kicking, at the boundary of the willa’s world.
All because of Mati.
He’d tried to banish her from his thoughts. He knew he shouldn’t worry about her. The miners would take care of her, especially that big yellow-haired man. He saw in the man’s eyes that he would protect Mati with his life.
But Sakote hadn’t slept well in days. He’d lain awake beneath a moon as white as milkwood sap, remembering the way her eyes glowed like new grass and the sprinkle of freckles that crossed her cheek like stars, imagining the softness of her hair and the dizzying sensation of her blackberry-sweet lips pressed to his. He missed her laughter. He missed her scolding. He missed the fiery passion that darkened her gaze when she made her sketches.
And last night, when sleep finally came to him, he dreamed of Mati. She was the white eagle, flying above as always with her two eggs. But this time, her wing feathers fluttered and then bent, twisted by some unseen force. Wounded, she careened wildly through the sky. One of the eggs slipped from her grasp, and she screeched in despair as it broke upon the ground. And then she followed it, plummeting arrow-quick, her wings useless, her talons clawing the empty air, toward the earth, toward Sakote.
He awoke suddenly as if emerging from the kum, the lodge—his body beaded with sweat, his skin shivering. All day, he couldn’t purge the disturbing image from his mind. Finally, when he snapped at Hintsuli for asking him too many questions, his mother took him aside.
With her gentle voice and her calm manner, she prodded his troubles from him. And he told her everything. About his dream. About his encounter with the white men. And about Mati.
When he was finished, his mother sagely shook her head.
"My son’s path cannot be more clear," she said. "His heart knows the way." She grasped his hand solidly in her own. "He is meant to be with the white woman."
He would have answered her, but she held up her palm for silence.
"The world of the Konkow is changing," she told him. "My daughter lives in the valley with a settler. My youngest son plays with the toys of the white man. Perhaps this woman of my older son will bring peace between the whites and the Konkows."
Sakote wondered if there could ever be peace between their peoples.
"A man must follow the will of The Creator," she said. "He cannot ignore the messages of Wonomi, who speaks in dreams. If the white eagle is in danger, he must go to her."
Sakote nodded. In truth, his mother’s words relieved him. He felt like a hunter who’d traveled many miles to finally unload a heavy deer from his shoulders. He must go to Mati. His heart knew it. His mother knew it. And Wonomi told him so.
And so Sakote, his spirits light, had left just before the sun slept, stopping to pluck a bright bunch of poppies that he knew would give Mati pleasure.
But now, as the shadows of the evening began to paint the trees, he was troubled by that sense of danger. He slowed his pace. Something wasn’t right. The air was too still, and the forest animals were restless. He hadn’t yet come to Mati’s clearing when he recognized the smell of smoke.
It wasn’t the smoke of a cookfire. The scent was too strong, too heavy. It smelled like a brush fire or like the ritual fires of Weda, where baskets and clothing were burned in honor of the dead. But it wasn’t the season for lightning. And it wasn’t the time of Weda. The smoke seemed to come from the north, toward...
Mati’s cabin!
The flowers fell from his fingers.
He raced forward through the slapping branches, throwing care to the wind. Quail and chipmunks scattered from his path. His heart beat against his ribs, matching his headlong stride as he crashed through the manzanita. All the while, he prayed to Wonomi to keep Mati from harm. At last, he burst through the trees.
And froze.
His worst fears were confirmed. Before him, Mati’s cabin blazed with flame to rival the towering fires of Weda. Thick white smoke churned into the sky. The air shimmered with intense heat, like images in a spirit vision. Sakote’s gut tightened.
Mati. Mati might still be inside.
Unaware he was even speaking, he began to plead with Wonomi. “Please don’t let the white woman be in her hubo,” he murmured. “Please let her be safe.”
He lurched forward till he reached the cabin. A wave of searing air struck his face as snowy ashes settled in his hair.
He died a hundred deaths searching for her. Flames licked dangerously close to his flesh as he squinted through the fiery portal that was once her window. Smoke billowed around him as he frantically circled the blazing structure. He bellowed her name, but the sound was lost in the roar of the fire.
And then he spied hope. At the far reaches of the haze, past the jointed corner of blackening logs, flapped the hem of Mati’s brown dress. A booted foot appeared, then a pair of fine white hands, and finally Mati’s disheveled but unmistakable mane of tawny hair. She stumbled forward, and a knot of grateful tears strangled Sakote as he fought his way toward her.
She wasn’t alone. A man dragged her farther from the fire. The pair of them looked as if they’d met up with an angry bear. The man wheezed and stumbled through the smoke, clutching a bloody rag against his stomach. Mati’s skirt was torn, her hair had come loose from her braid, and her face was pale and streaked with blood. But she was alive.
The man had saved Mati’s life. He’d delivered her from harm. Sakote felt a twinge of shame that he hadn’t been there to rescue her, but his heart was too full of relief for regret. Closing his eyes briefly, he sent up a thankful prayer to Wonomi.
When he looked up again, he thought his eyes deceived him. He watched in horror as the man suddenly yanked a fistful of Mati’s hai
r and threw her to the ground. Shock took Sakote’s breath away. Disbelief paralyzed him.
Whatever the white man was, he wasn’t her rescuer. The brute kicked once, hard, at her still body. Pure fury raged through Sakote’s veins as he sprang forward. Before the man could rear his foot back to deliver a second blow, Sakote pounced on him like a yowling wildcat.
The man grunted beneath his attack. Sakote wrapped a vicious fist in the man’s hair and ripped a hank from his head, ignoring his scream of agony.
The man’s elbow jabbed backward, catching Sakote in the stomach. He doubled over, and the man’s boot stomped hard on the arch of his foot.
The pain scattered stars across Sakote’s eyes, but he shook them free like a wolf shaking off water. The man’s fist barreled toward his face, but Sakote caught it, twisting the monster’s arm savagely behind his back till it cracked.
And still the man fought. Spittle flew from his mouth. He cursed and wheeled on Sakote, one arm hanging useless at his side, the other swinging wildly. Then he swept his stiff boot beneath Sakote’s foot, knocking him backward onto the earth with a thud.
The man would have stepped on Sakote then, broken his ribs and squashed him like a beetle. But Sakote seized his raised foot and wrenched it sideways, throwing the man over.
And then the spirit of the vengeful grizzly came upon him. Relentlessly, he punched the brute, caving the man’s abdomen, crunching the bones of his nose and jaw. Sakote loosed his wrath like a bee-crazed bear until sweat dripped from his forehead and blood slicked his fists.
Only when the blinding red haze gradually dissolved did Sakote come back to himself. He looked down at his victim. Had that bloody mess been a man? Had he wrought such damage? He looked at his culpable hands, swollen and dripping with the man’s lifeblood. He hadn’t known he was capable of such violence.
And yet he would do it again.
The man had hurt Mati.
Mati! He staggered forward. She lay so quiet, so still.
"Mati." Her name rasped against his throat like frozen wind. He hunkered down beside her, cradling her limp head against his arm. "Oh Mati, don’t go from me." His chest tightened with pain. He brushed the hair back from her forehead and pressed his bloody fingers to her temple, feeling for a pulse. Thank Wonomi, her heart was still beating. But she didn’t waken.
Vote Then Read: Volume III Page 117