The Killing Blow

by J. R. Roberts

  “They’re after a man named Mark Ordell.”

  “That’s right. He is the white man who worked for the soldiers and killed many of our people. He killed most of my family. Howlett says you are after the same man.”

  “Howlett? Is he the man who travels with Crow and Three?”

  She nodded and also smirked.

  “What’s so funny?” Clint asked as he found himself grinning as well.

  The Indian woman’s face was already pretty, but she turned absolutely beautiful with that little smile. “His name is Three Eyes, but Howlett only calls him Three. If he knew how close you were, Howlett might just call him One.”

  “That’s funny. Speaking of names, what’s yours?”

  “In your tongue it would be Rain.”

  “That’s very pretty.”

  “I brought you some food, but I can see you don’t need it.”

  “You’re welcome to some,” Clint offered. “It’s not bad, if you like rabbit.”

  She reached into her pouch and took out a few cakes that were about the size of biscuits. Handing them over, she allowed her fingers to brush against Clint’s hand and slowly drag along his skin. She felt even softer than she looked.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “The man my brother seeks is looking for him, Howlett and Three Eyes,” Rain said. “I do not think he is looking for you. If you are seeking this same man, I think you will have an easier time finding him.”

  “If that’s the case, I just might.”

  While Rain nibbled at a piece of the cooked rabbit, Clint ate one of the cakes she’d brought. It was a sweet mixture of corn, flour and sugar that melted in his mouth.

  “The man is at a cabin not far from here,” she said. “I think he’ll be there for a while.”

  “I know where that cabin is. You’re sure he’s there?”

  “Yes. I saw him there myself on my way here. I was not sure if I should tell my brother about it. He has been craving blood ever since my family was slaughtered. Part of me wants to go with him and kill the man who did those terrible things. Another part just wants to keep my brother from getting himself killed as well.”

  “Revenge tends to lead to a lot more blood being spilled.”

  “And you are not after revenge?”

  Clint shook his head. “I’m out to learn what happened. All I know is that a lot of innocent folks were killed and if this man was the killer, I can’t just let him go about his business.”

  “He is the killer,” Rain said. “I know because I saw him kill my people and cut the scalp from their heads. But that was a long time ago and no white men seem to care about it anymore.”

  “I care,” Clint said. “Why else would I be out here in the woods when I could be in a warm bed by a roaring fire?”

  “Because white men were killed, too,” Rain replied. “That’s why Howlett is on this hunt.”

  “Well, I’m not Howlett. No man deserves to be hunted and killed like an animal. No man and no woman, no matter what color their skin is. You hear me?”

  Slowly, she nodded. The smile returned to her face, along with something else that Clint recognized. That extra something was the look of someone who’d just found what they’d been looking for. Clint had examined enough people’s faces to know when he was being studied. And he could see that he’d just passed her test.

  “I will help you,” she said while nodding. “But only if you promise to not harm my brother.”

  “I’ve got no fight with your brother, but all of those men seemed ready to make a fight with me. I can promise to hold up my end, but I won’t allow them to kill me.”

  “That is all I can ask.” Holding her chin up, she said, “My brother will know better than to start a fight with an honorable man.”

  “Then there won’t be a problem.”

  Rain got to her feet. “I must go back. Our village is a long way from here.”

  “Do you have to go so soon?” Clint asked as he stood and took hold of one of her hands.

  Rain seemed hesitant at first, but then looked up at Clint with that pretty little smile. “It will be a cold night. Perhaps it would be better if I stayed to keep you warm?”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Rain’s dress was all one piece and slid down over her breasts with just a few pulls from Clint’s hands. Her dark nipples became hard the moment he touched them and she leaned her head back to let out a deep sigh. Soon, she was struggling to get her arms free so she could wrap them around the back of Clint’s neck.

  Clint moved his hands along the sides of her body, feeling the smooth curves of her waist and hips. Her body was warm and moved easily in his grasp. As he slid his hands up along her naked back, he could feel her hair brushing against his arms.

  While savoring Clint’s touch, Rain traced her fingers along his back and then worked her way to his bare chest. Soon, she was the one undressing him and she pulled Clint’s jeans off while crawling back on all fours. She then spread out her dress and knelt on top of it, waiting for Clint to join her.

  The sky overhead was a dark red as Clint once more wrapped his arms around the slender Indian woman. As her naked body pressed against him, she could feel his cock growing harder. Rain spread her legs just enough for his rigid penis to fit between them and start rubbing against the moist lips of her pussy.

  Clint reached down to cup her tight buttocks and pull her in closer. After kissing her powerfully on the lips, he turned her around and cupped her breasts in his hands. She reached over her shoulders to play with his hair while Clint rolled her nipples between his fingers. Soon, she was leaning forward so that she was once more on all fours with Clint directly behind her.

  For a moment, Clint looked down at the beautiful sight of Rain in front of him. Her black hair spilled over her shoulders and the supple line of her back curved perfectly to the slope of her raised buttocks. Rain turned to look at him over her shoulder, begging Clint with her eyes to not keep her waiting for one more second.

  With one hand on the small of her back, Clint guided his cock between her legs until he found her tight, wet pussy. He eased into her just a bit, grabbed her hips with both hands and then slid the rest of the way into her.

  Clint could feel her tremble with pleasure during that first thrust. The second time, he buried himself all the way inside of her, which sent an even larger shiver up Rain’s spine. She pitched her head back and dug her fingers into the ground while lowering her shoulders and raising her backside to accommodate him.

  Rain rocked back and forth, clawing at the ground and writhing as Clint pounded into her. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying out as Clint’s rigid penis swiftly brought her to climax. When she felt her orgasm envelop her, she gathered up her leather dress and bit down on it until the sensation passed.

  Clint could feel her muscles constricting around him and he drove all the way into her until she was trembling with pleasure again. When she looked back him this time, Clint saw an even greater hunger in her eyes.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  Clint did as he was told and let Rain put him right where she wanted him.

  “Now,” she whispered, “lean back.”

  Supporting himself with both arms, Clint leaned back as Rain stood with her legs on either side of his hips and lowered herself down onto him. At first, it seemed that she might sit on his lap. Then, she spread her legs and leaned back until her feet were behind Clint and they were facing each other.

  Rain supported herself with one arm and used her free hand to guide Clint’s cock into her. As soon as he slipped past her moist lips, she eased her hips forward and took every inch of him inside of her. From there, Rain leaned back the rest of the way and used both arms to support her much like Clint was doing.

  Both of them moved their hips in a slowly building rhythm. When Rain leaned forward, she could grind against Clint until he thought he would explode. When Clint leaned forward, he was able to thrust
into her with sharp, powerful strokes.

  They were both leaning toward one another when their orgasms came. Clint stared into Rain’s eyes and pumped his cock into her. He could see her legs and arms trembling as her climax drained all the strength from her body.

  Still hard despite his climax, Clint got to his knees and lowered Rain onto her back. He then got on top of her and rode her while Rain squirmed slowly beneath him.

  A few hours later, she did some riding of her own.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Despite the fact that he was lying on the ground with his back to a rock, Clint woke up feeling rested and in good spirits. The first thing he noticed after opening his eyes was that Rain was no longer in the camp. That wasn’t too big of a surprise. What did surprise him was the fact that he couldn’t move.

  Clint’s arms were bound by something. His heart jumped in his chest. Looking down, he saw that he was wrapped snugly in a blanket woven from a thick cotton and decorated with Indian designs. Laughing at his initial reaction to Rain’s kindness, Clint sat up and unwrapped himself from the blanket.

  Just to be on the safe side, he checked through everything else in camp until he was certain Rain had left him just the way she’d found him. Even though his gut told him she had good intentions, it never hurt to double-check.

  This time, like plenty of others before it, Clint’s gut was right.

  According to Lisa Ordell’s directions, Mark’s cabin wasn’t far from the river. After finishing the cakes that Rain had left, Clint gathered up his things and followed the river north.

  He knew Ordell could be tracking him at any time. For that matter, he knew Ordell could have been following him since he’d left Westerlake. But Clint also knew that Ordell was a good enough hunter to do his tracking without being seen. The only things that Clint could do was to be ready for when he was found.

  Clint was ready.

  There was no mistaking that part of it.

  Even as he let Eclipse gallop along a stretch where the river roared over some high rocks, Clint kept one hand on his gun. When he didn’t have his Colt ready to draw, he had his rifle out and lying across his lap. His eyes had even become better at sorting through the different kinds of movement that was always going on around him.

  He no longer twitched when a small animal bolted from its den or a bird was flushed from its branch.

  Clint had caught sight of a few movements he couldn’t quite pin down, but didn’t see enough to fire a shot. Rather than dwell on what those things could have been, he kept his eyes and ears open while riding toward Mark Ordell’s cabin.

  It was just past noon when he reached a bend in the river that Lisa Ordell had warned him about. Since the cabin was supposed to be near the bend, Clint doubled back a ways, climbed down from the saddle and approached the spot again on foot.

  Keeping the rifle in his hands, Clint stalked through the trees and kept the sound of running water to his right. Before too long, the trees thinned out and gave way to a clearing with a small cabin pieced together from logs and sod right in the middle of it.

  Clint stopped short of stepping from the thicker clumps of trees so he could take a careful look at that cabin. It was small enough to only have one room or possibly two very cramped ones. There were slits in some of the walls that were just the right size for rifle barrels to poke through, which would have been perfect for hunting any animals bold enough to step into the clearing.

  At the moment, there wasn’t any sign of life around the cabin and no barrels poking from any of those slits, so Clint moved carefully from the cover of the trees.

  Every step of the way, he could feel his heart racing in his chest.

  The closer he got to that cabin, the higher he raised his rifle. By the time he was close enough to touch a sod wall, the rifle was pressed against his shoulder and he was sighting along the top of its barrel.

  Tentatively, Clint leaned forward and took a look through the closest slit. What little he could see through the narrow opening was marred by the dust set into motion from his own breathing. At the very least, he could tell there was nobody standing close to the wall. Clint kept his back to the cabin and slowly leaned to the side so he could get a look into one of the windows.

  The glass was cracked and dirty, but he was able to see inside much better than he could through the rifle slit. He was right about there only being one room inside the sod walls. He was also right about there not being anyone inside.

  Still keeping his guard up, Clint went to the door and pushed it open.

  The hinges were well oiled and the only sound the door made was the bottom lightly brushing against the floor. Clint pushed the door all the way until its handle bumped against the wall. Only then did he step inside and start to do a quick search of the cabin itself.

  All he found was a bare minimum of supplies and a small stash of food kept in a pantry on the wall. Clint opened a small bag of coffee and dipped his finger into it. The beans were still relatively fresh. There were also some strips of bear meat, which were enough to let Clint know that Mark Ordell had been there fairly recently.

  Now that he had the information he’d been after, Clint busied himself with making certain everything in the cabin was exactly how he’d found it. Every last bit of food was put in its place and every spare item lying about was set in its spot.

  Clint was forced to sweep away the footprints he’d made upon the dusty floor, but was fairly certain the sod roof would drop enough fresh dust to put things right again.

  After that, Clint left the cabin and did a careful search of the surrounding area. He found further evidence of Mark’s presence in the form of fresh horse droppings near the river. Even though he looked around for other tracks, Clint didn’t get his hopes up that Mark would leave any.

  He wasn’t too surprised when he found no tracks or even a broken branch to let him know if Mark was still nearby or which way he might have gone.

  Clint did find something Mark left behind. It was a trap made from a large branch bent back into a tight bow with several sharpened stakes tied to the edge. Unfortunately, Clint only found the trap once his boot was caught up in the triggering snare.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Clint felt the snare as just a small tug on his right boot when he’d started to take his next step. Looking back on that moment, he didn’t know if he stopped because of a last-minute suspicion that Mark might have set up a trap to guard his perimeter or if he’d spotted the snare from the corner of his eye.

  It really wasn’t that important at this point. Looking back on it, however, Clint realized that that one step had just made his life a whole lot more complicated.

  The business end of the trap was the branch with the sharpened stakes. It was bent back so far that it nearly wrapped all the way around the tree to which it had been nailed. Each stake was at least a foot long and sharpened to a wicked point. The branch itself was at the height where, if sprung, it would catch Clint somewhere in his lower stomach or groin.

  The longer Clint stared at the trap, the worse it looked.

  And just when he thought it couldn’t look worse, Clint noticed the thin rope used for the snare was snagged upon his boot. Clint tried to slowly move his foot back, but the rope only came with him. When he tried to set his foot down again, he felt the rope tighten and start to pull free from where it was laced.

  Clint froze in an awkward position between steps. His left leg was bent and his right foot was lifted a few inches from the ground. Once he stopped moving, he could hear the creak of wood as the branch strained to straighten itself out.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Clint muttered as he looked around for an easy solution.

  By slowly lowering his foot, he was able to find what little slack there was in the snare. Unfortunately, there wasn’t quite enough for him to set his boot all the way down. That was because his forward momentum had carried his leg just far enough to pull the snare completely taut.

  Clint eased his
leg back while keeping his foot over the ground. Even after he’d brought his leg back, however, the rope didn’t come free. Gritting his teeth with frustration, Clint bent at the waist and reached down with one hand to try and pull the rope away.

  His fingers gently closed around the snare, telling him immediately why he was having so much trouble.

  Instead of a plain rope, the snare was actually a length of barbed wire with strands of rope wrapped around it. The rope was probably only there to keep the wire from glinting in the light. A little more checking told Clint that at least two barbs were snagged in the cuff of his jeans. One of them had even dug into the leather of his boot.

  Testing the snare with his hand also let Clint in on another piece of news. The wire was too taut to have been simply strung across the path. It also resisted him too much when he tentatively tried to pull the barbs free. Clint took a moment to study the trap some more and found the spot where the wire was connected to the trigger holding the branch in place.

  Right below the trigger, there was a counterweight just large enough to keep the wire taut while still being easy to hide. That way, the trap could be sprung if someone pulled the wire forward and set off the trigger or if someone cut the wire and dropped the counterweight.

  If he hadn’t been standing on one foot, holding his breath to avoid getting impaled by several stakes, Clint would have been impressed by Ordell’s ingenuity. It was a hell of a trap. Now that he’d been standing in that spot long enough, Clint could see a few more camouflaged snares strung at intervals farther up the path.

  Suddenly, Clint felt himself start to wobble. Whether due to an odd breeze or just a twitch in his leg, he felt his balance shift and he immediately held out his arms to compensate. Clint was just in time to keep himself from falling, but he could tell he’d brought the snare to the brink of pulling the trigger.