“Yes.”
“What about my people?”
“I will tell them what happened to you.”
“You will kill them too.”
“If I can.”
Michael was halfway round the tent when he saw someone coming stealthily toward him. He did not experience fear, but he understood that he could die. He let the man pass by and reaching through the darkness he caught the man’s hair, jerked back his head, and with his knife hand drove the blade past his clavicle and into his heart. Just as quickly he drew back the knife and the blade swept the man’s throat and his blood gushed from his neck. Another man came by, his arms full of goods. Like all thieves he could not help himself and clung to what he’d stolen. Michael clapped him fiercely on the sides of his head and burst the drums in his ears, then kicked out his legs and beat him to his knees. He pulled the man’s own knife from its sheath and drove its blade into the man’s heart.
He waited the slow passage of quiet time. Then a horse stamped and snorted. With the second Sharps, he squatted on his heels and let it slide beneath the waters of the creek and then he moved on to the peninsula.
The horses raised their heads, their ears pitched forward. From his stud, he picked out Kershaw, an exceptionally big and strong and biddable horse. His sides were sleek from good feed and with his strong hips and broad chest he needed a half mile of running to warm to his work.
The other horses were frantic, whirling and rearing and pulling at their pickets. He cut some free and others he pulled the pickets and let them drag. Then he mounted Kershaw. With the reins over his elbow, he patted Kershaw’s neck to quiet him. He shortened his grip and leaned forward in the saddle, shifting his weight over the withers. He carried his Winchester in one boot and a .50-caliber Sharps in the other. Buckled around his waist was a belt with forty-two cartridges and another over his shoulder and dozens more loose in his coat pockets. He thought to go east down the creek, but Kershaw shied and balked, and from the east there came a gunshot and then another. He loosened the revolver in its holster and on direction Kershaw spun like a top. Again he shortened the reins in his hands and then he gave Kershaw his heels. With ears laid flat back, with a half turn, he got the horse into his stride. Kershaw stretched his head out and champed at the bit.
The first gallop lifted Michael and pushed him back and he returned himself forward again. To his right and left the horses ran with him, tossing their heads and needing to run with Kershaw. They came up from the peninsula and bore in the direction of the camp. They passed through it and were aimed for the crossing and the wagon road and the bluff beyond.
Drawn across the creek there was a brace of armed horsemen. He drew his revolver and when he came on them they behaved as surprised. He heard the wheep sound of an arrow, the shaft flying past his head. Then, coming off the bluff, was the red dog through the air and into their midst. The red dog latched onto a man’s cheek and hung upon it and would not let go until it tore away when they splashed into the creek.
Michael touched with his knees and the horse whirled. He fired the revolver and shot one of the men through the forehead. He fired again and another man went down. A horse reared and the rider fell hard to the ground. Flash succeeded flash as Kershaw chafed at the bit. The red dog was a swirl of fury at the feet of the spooked and frightened horses. The men could not see the red dog bounding from side to side. They could not shoot as their horses reared and ran and they were dashed to the ground where the red dog did his savage work.
Michael dug in his heels. Kershaw sprang forward and went clattering across the creek and took the slope up the wagon road where they gained the level of the plain.
The men fired after him, but they were shooting uphill and their aim went over his head. The trailing horses were mixed in the chaos. The three-pound iron pickets snapped at the ends of their ropes and the horses slewed about and kicked in the air to rid themselves of the pickets. Their hooves kicked and scattered stones down the hillside as they made to escape the pickets flying behind them and follow the leader on the plain.
On level ground, Michael loosened the rein and Kershaw broke into a gallop. He threw his body to the off-side, hanging on by a leg, and Kershaw shot clear of the bluff and they were running west upon the plain that stretched for furlong upon furlong. Behind him he heard the panting and snorting of the other horses and they plunged on through the sea of darkness.
As the crow flies, they were four hundred miles from home and Elizabeth was out there somewhere and he had to find her.
Kershaw reeled suddenly and stepped stiff-legged into a hole with a sickening jar and was flung forward to the ground. Michael threw himself back and jerked up on the reins. The horse reared up his shoulders and struggled to find his footing. Michael slid to the ground into the flat dark silence to see Kershaw’s left foreleg dangling below the knee. Michael took up the leg and felt the bone inside the skin. His cannon bone was shattered.
Head held high, the horse struggled once more to walk and it was painful to see the animal as it limped about in its crippled condition. The other horses, their nostrils distended, their ears pointed forward, came in close. They walked to surround Kershaw, nosing his flanks and sides. Kershaw pricked his ears and made a thrumming noise in his throat and it was if he knew his time was over. Michael held the horse’s face against his own. He looked into his eyes. The horse nosed him and rubbed its head against him and made another muffled sound. Michael stepped away and looked to his back trail. He listened for the drum of hoof strokes on the hard plain. From the place of camp something was set afire and there was a red glow pulsing beneath the darkness. How many miles were they from camp, he wondered and figured it was three, four at the most and the carry of sound through the atmosphere. Michael removed the saddle from Kershaw and one last time the horse tried to walk.
Michael went to Starbuck. He spoke to the horse quietly, gently, and the horse stood for him as he bridled it and spread the blanket. He lifted up the saddle and cinched it tight. He knew he could not shoot Kershaw for the sound of the gunshot and he could not leave him to be dragged down by the wolves and disemboweled alive. He looked into the horse’s trusting eyes and thanked him for his strength, courage, and speed.
“They can’t hurt you now,” he said, and he raised the point of his knife to Kershaw’s throatlatch at the base of his jaw. With a sharp thrust he drove the knife blade deep. The horse made a stifled groan and Michael wrapped his arms around the horse’s head as it collapsed and carried it to the ground. After that it did not take long.
He regained his seat and leaning along Starbuck’s neck they veered north and broke into a gallop and were swept along as if by the darkness itself. The free horses ran with them and they entered the long and lonely hours of night.
Chapter 35
When he’d almost overtaken her, Starbuck drew down to a hand-gallop, twisting his head a little toward Khyber. He checked the horse and it broke into a trot. He called to her and the trot became very slow. As she reined Khyber to a halt to face him he heard the hammer drawn back on a revolver.
“Who comes there?” she cried, and she saw it was Michael. Running with him there were other horses: Concord, Boston, Worcester, Granby.
“How did you find us?”
He shook his head. He didn’t know to explain. He just did.
“What did you see?” she said, her voice a hollow of sound.
“Do not ask me that,” he said.
“Aubuchon?” she said, a terrible sadness clutching at her heart.
“They are gone,” he said. His face was that of a man come from a bad dream. “They are all gone. Every one of them.”
Starbuck heaved a deep sigh, his returning self-possession. He blew his nostrils in a loud snort as he recovered his wind.
“We must ride,” he said. “We must keep them at a long distance if they should come for us.”
“Yes,” she said. When she could she’d go down on her knees and bitterness in
her heart she would remember the dead.
Starbuck lowered his head, laid his ears back, and bunched his mighty muscles. He smoothly lunged out ahead of Khyber and she let him run a stretch and then she followed, Elizabeth forward in the saddle. They put their horses at it and moved on in the night across the open country. The time was so vast, the horses laboring on. They kept on at a hard gallop, scattering the herds of antelope and buffalo that closed in behind them and crushed and ate the evidence of their route.
The horses tore through the cold air as if weightless. They trembled in every limb with danger and fear. They rode at a killing pace, the hooves thundering, the tails streaming on the wind, their broad chests flecked with white foam. Michael felt the horses’ hearts beat quick and tremulous and he dared not spare them. They had to ride the heart out of them for the sake of their lives. They never once drew rein until the horses were at their extreme, panting and foaming and hundreds of miles yet to go.
The blackness of the night turned to gray and it was near daybreak when he slackened their pace and assumed a more collected canter. When they rode into the dawn world the wind rose with the sun and the day became warm and windy with cloud skeins of pure white drifting across the sky. They would halt to rest. He reined back the horse and brought out his field glass. Standing high in the stirrup irons, he turned in the saddle to look east where the brightness was. He looked west where the darkness was and then he looked south. Elizabeth turned in the saddle to look also, a hand on Khyber’s rump and she gasped. Michael’s shirt was as if a blouse of crimson with the blood that drenched him.
“It’s not mine,” he said, and she felt relief and thankfulness. In the thin white light she saw how tired his face, his look of concentrated thought and resolute determination. He patted the swelling veins in Starbuck’s arched neck. Now that he could see, speed was nothing to him and he’d make no attempt to keep it up. For the next while they would husband the strength of the horses and hold them well within themselves, so they might run again with the onset of darkness. They dismounted to relieve Starbuck and Khyber. He brought the glasses to bear and scanned again, sweeping his eyes, inch by inch, along the line of the horizon, until the entire circuit had been completed.
“We should change horses,” she said.
“Not yet,” he said.
He stood with his back to her as he studied the south horizon. She pressed his shoulders gently and then held herself against him. The smell of the horse’s blood was on him.
The sun was coming hot and the air was watery with evaporation. Three more horses came in to make seven: Bayard, Marengo, and Diamond. They’d lost their picket pins and he cut away the ropes they dragged.
“Who were they?” she said.
“Whitechurch,” he said, and it was another lesson in business, a secret revealed. One way or another men like Whitechurch would get what they wanted.
“Do you think they are coming?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
Through the yellow haze of the morning they could see the line of a river. They walked on a little longer before they mounted again and rode toward it. He did not want to stay where they might be seen, and if they were seen, it was an imperative they not have the river at their back but to their front for the widest sight lines.
By now the whole country was bright with a white light. Between them and the river there was an undulation in the land. They descended, then rose on its other side, and then they could see for miles, the clear atmosphere shrinking the distance. It must have been thirty miles with no tree, no bush, no landmark, only swell after swell of the solitary plain.
They turned back to the river and from over the water came the breath of morning and the horses scented it. He checked Starbuck and scrutinized the crossing. He calculated it to be two hundred yards across. It was a shallow braided river meandering across sandbars where willows grew and driftwood snagged. He studied the contour of a bar, the ripples on the surface, the water gurgling as a subcurrent rose to the surface.
He watched the loose horses as they descended the gradual slope to the water and stood to their bellies in the eddies with footing that seemed firm, their noses buried beneath the surface.
“Keep both your feet out of the stirrups,” Michael said. “She will not go down, but if she does, slide back and hang to her tail and let her swim you out.”
Starbuck went forward at an angle to the current, testing the sand with each step and Khyber following closely. The air above the water was surprisingly cold. Midstream the current bore down on them with all its volume. Starbuck stumbled and regained his feet. They bumped onto a ragged island, crossed it, and entered the water again. They struggled on until finally, the crossing complete, the horses climbed over a sandbar and onto the far bank. She could not know how relieved he was with the river now between them and whoever might follow.
They left the cover of the bottom and climbed slowly to a grassy bench on the far bank where they commanded a view of the river as well as the trail. When Elizabeth dismounted Khyber walked up behind her and nuzzled her shoulder.
Two does started from the violet shadows of the brush in the bottom, one of which he shot with the Winchester. Trotting out behind them was the red dog. His face and jaws were bloodstained and the blood clotted his back and coat and the hair on his breast. He was cut four inches long across his back. It was a fresh wound and still bled.
Then came Sabi, her long coat mudded and thick with cockleburs. One ear was pinned back and her feet were cut and hot. She lay down on her side, her panting tongue lolled on the ground. She could go no farther.
“Sabi,” Elizabeth cried as Michael dismounted and went to her. He felt her heart and bones and let her drink water he spilled into the palm of his hand.
It was here they would off-saddle for a spell. Michael loosened the horses’ girths and slid the saddles to the ground. The horses sighed deeply. The high bank was covered with grass and the horses cropped the blades, quietly whisking their long tails.
He washed out the red dog’s wound and swabbed it with carbolic acid, all the while keeping ceaseless vigilance. He doubled one leg under and sat upon it while he concentrated on closing the wound with six neat stitches and then more carbolic acid. Occasionally the red dog looked into his face and seemed to understand what he was doing.
He then sharpened his knife and took Sabi in his lap. He shaved the worst knots and tangles from her tail and hide. He unpinned her ear and washed her face. He found her moccasins in the saddlebag. He carried her to the doe that she might lick the restorative blood.
They took turns going down to the river, drinking and bathing their faces and necks with the cool water. When Elizabeth touched the glittering water it was so cold and her skin so parched she was stung by it. Her face and hands were burned from the sun as if by fire. Slowly her parched and cracked lips cooled and her nose and eyes were soothed. She drank a little and when she climbed the bluff Michael fed her pieces of liver from the doe.
Down at the river, Michael let the water run through his fingers, his eyes roaming the barren land. He took one last drink and went back up the bank. Elizabeth shut her eyes and rested her head against Starbuck’s saddle. She missed the ever-faithful Aubuchon and could only think his blood was on her hands. She understood he died because of her willfulness. So many had died because of her.
“Aubuchon?” she said.
“There was no torment to be seen. His face was at rest.”
“Oh,” she said, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
Michael looked across the river from under his shading hand. He knew soon enough would come the foaming horses and riders on their backs and then there was something out there.
When he saw them he could not count their numbers for the golden haze on the horizon. He knew he needed to keep a regular interval between them, but he wanted them closer and when they were he placed the big rifle in position across Khyber’s saddle. He watched the figure of a horseman pacing back
and forth. He looked like he was trying to decide whether to come on or stay back and at four hundred yards he decided to stay back.
In the blue distance another was working his way closer. He was behind a swell in the ground and coming on an oblique angle. He was lying flat down on his horse’s back and then he slid to the offside. Michael dropped his right knee on the ground, took aim, and fired the Sharps, and the five-hundred-grain bullet struck the horse in its cervical vertebrae. Its shape collapsed in the air. Then came the loud boom and the smoke floating away in the air to the south and he saw that he’d killed the rider through the horse’s neck.
Elizabeth started. She felt a shudder go through her. She’d just seen a man killed. Starbuck picked his head up and snorted. Michael had already reloaded the rifle. The rider at four hundred yards brought his horse forward a few steps. Michael shot him and reloaded again.
Above, the sky was blue and cloudless. There was something sweet and balmy in the transparent air. The tears were welling up in her eyes again. She felt haunted by death and guilt and the fear of damnation.
“It’s not your fault,” he said in a voice faraway.
“These men are on my conscience,” she said.
“What’s done is done,” he said.
“Can you see them?” she said. “Do you think they will stop?”
“I hope not,” he said, and it was then she understood why he dallied. Down here there were no consequences for killing men. He’d kill them down here where nobody cared.
Water, earth, and sky glowed as if they had been set on fire. The river was cast red as if dyed with blood.
Michael and Elizabeth were on the move again galloping a little east of north, pushing on. Sabi rode in his lap and the red dog loped along beside. The strong-lunged horses had regained their wind and this time when they rode they settled into a never-tiring lope, the other horses running with them.
Michael kept vigil on their back trail and their flanks. Some were too quick and made off before he could get a shot, but not often. From time to time he turned and rode in their direction and watched them scatter and each time upon dismounting from Starbuck, he leveled the Sharps across the saddle. He permitted them to come close and then he fired and killed and they rode on again.
Savage Country Page 22