Suddenly he heard a footfall overhead, and the boards creaked and trembled. Anton called out hoarsely. He did not know who was up there, and did not really care either. He yelled out again at the top of his voice this time. He heard the scrape of wood, and then he could see daylight outlining the trapdoor. Slowly, creakingly, the trapdoor was lifted. Gray light shafted into the hole. Anton saw a bronze face and raven-black hair.
‘I am Chante,’ the woman told him. ‘I belong to Jed Bliss.’
Anton stared at the squaw and rapidly blinked his eyes. ‘I am sure glad to see you, ma’am.’
‘Please, you come quick,’ the squaw pleaded. ‘You save my man, please!’
Anton Kozlov hauled himself out of the stockade’s cellar. Plastered with dust, he sat for a moment inhaling pure air. Not losing a moment, Chante told him what had happened with the five male settlers and the troopers.
She concluded, ‘. . . the lieutenant and the other soldiers rode out of here pretending to be settlers. They took all women in a wagon. The lieutenant say we would be sold in Mexico.’ She smiled. ‘Soldiers do not tie good knots. Chante slip free when wounded guard fall asleep. Please hurry! My man burns!’
Anton stood up. Slapping the cellar dust from his buckskins, he strode outside. The chill evening wind carried the screams of tortured men.
‘No good for me to talk to Iron Crow,’ she explained. ‘That is why Chante come straight to cellar. You are a warrior, an old warrior, but still a warrior,’ she said. ‘Iron Crow will listen to you.’
‘I will do what I can, but make no promises,’ Anton said.
He loped across the parade ground in the fading light. The gates were just as Judd had left them, wide open. Motioning Chante to stay in the stockade, Anton walked outside. Beds of hot coals lit the five bodies from below. Three of the suspended men were writhing. One hung limply. The last man held his body taut and motionless. Smoke curled languidly around them all. Cold, terrible fury gripped Anton as he paced across the flat. According to Bliss’ squaw, Judd had condemned these innocent men to death by torture for the vile crime he and his blue-coats had committed. Not content with this evil, he also planned to assign decent, respectable women to a life of miserable debauchery.
Judd Reed was a man without a conscience. They shared a love for the same woman, one as a son and the other as a husband, but the similarity ended right there. Right now, he hated Judd Reed enough to kill his former stepson.
As he approached the fires, most of the warriors were lounging on the grass, content to eat, talk and watch the five men dying.
Iron Crow had called off the hostilities, but that did not make Anton Kozlov a welcome guest. As soon as they saw him, several braves leapt to their feet to surround him. Anton kept walking, shouldering his way through the growing crowd.
Ignoring the brandished weapons, Anton made straight for Iron Crow. The chief sat among the elders, in the flickering glow of the first torture fire. As he stepped into the firelight, Anton glimpsed the squirming body of Chante’s man, Jed Bliss. The front of his uniform hung in charred, smoking tatters from the raw, red flesh of his chest and belly.
‘Kozlov – help me—’ Bliss begged.
As Anton walked around the fire, Iron Crow looked up without expression. Beside him sat Plenty Arrows, the brave who was to marry his granddaughter.
‘I come in peace, Chief Iron Crow,’ Anton said.
‘Why do you come at all?’ Iron Crow demanded. ‘Did you not run away with the rest of the white-eye settlers?’
‘Chief Iron Crow, the men who rode away were not settlers. They were the soldiers you sought,’ Anton explained.
The old chieftain stared at him with unblinking eyes.
‘What is the paleface saying?’ Wind Shawl wheezed.
‘We were tricked, and so were you,’ Anton said bluntly. ‘The guilty soldiers held us at gunpoint. I was thrown into a cellar. The settlers were forced to put on the soldiers’ uniforms to fool you.’ He looked around at the incredulous tribal elders. ‘You are torturin’ innocent men. The real soldiers rode out with that wagon. The settlers’ women are in that wagon too, and the soldiers mean to sell them in Mexico.’
Iron Crow climbed to his feet. He looked at the writhing body of Jed Bliss and then at the four others. He nodded slowly.
‘This paleface speaks with a forked tongue!’ Wind Shawl accused venomously, pointing a shaking finger at Anton.
‘Ask Chante. She is a Crow who escaped from the wagon,’ Anton Kozlov challenged. ‘She waits at the stockade gates.’
‘My blood brother, Looks at the Bear, said you are a good man,’ Iron Crow asserted. ‘That is enough.’ He turned to the enraged shaman and said, ‘Iron Crow bids you to be silent!’ He addressed the circle of braves. ‘Cut down the paleface prisoners.’
Wind Shawl screeched his fury, but the warriors hurried to obey.
‘The prisoners are all alive,’ Yellow Hawk told Anton. ‘They would not have died until the fifth day.’
‘Kozlov, we will pursue the real murderers,’ Iron Crow vowed as his braves brandished weapons again. ‘We will hunt them down and bring them back to burn on our fires.’
‘Let me speak, Iron Crow,’ Anton requested as Bliss was carried from his fire.
The Paiute Indian chieftain nodded his head slowly. ‘Iron Crow listens.’
‘The killers are headed for Mexico,’ Anton said. ‘By now, they know of Chante’s escape. They will play it safe and go quickly towards Mexico, through the long valley you call the Canyon of the Dead.’
Sudden stillness gripped the camp.
‘The sacred place!’ Yellow Hawk whispered.
‘The spirits of the dead still live there,’ Wind Shawl muttered.
‘Bad medicine!’ another withered Paiute elder added in a hushed voice.
‘My braves will not ride into the Canyon of the Dead,’ Iron Crow said firmly.
‘But we can wait where the canyon ends,’ a Paiute Indian called Sky Raven suggested. Anton had heard of this man from past dealings in the area.
‘Hear me,’ Anton said. ‘Those men raped and murdered your maidens. In that way, they dishonored you. Now they have caused innocent settlers to be tortured and have stolen the valley women.’ He raised his right fist. ‘Now they have dishonored white men also.’
Iron Crow nodded sagely. ‘This is so.’
‘The Canyon of the Dead is not for you, but I will ride there with any white settlers who can ride with me,’ offered Anton.
‘There will be two such men,’ The Paiute leader predicted. ‘The silent paleface and the one who bellows like an angry bull.’
‘Chief Iron Crow, the time for torture is over,’ Anton Kozlov told him. ‘You want justice. The white settlers want justice. Let that justice be swift and sure.’
The chieftain contemplated Anton’s pronouncement.
Finally, he said, ‘It shall be so, Anton Kozlov.’
Anton went from fire to fire. The last of the roasted settlers, Will Alvord, had just been cut down. He swore and tried to stand, only to collapse in pain. Jed Bliss lay weeping in the grass. Grayson Weathers was badly burned and simply lay where the Paiute Indians had placed him. Dave Calhoun reared up as Anton approached. Reverend Burt Roberts was the last on his feet.
‘I am goin’ after those lousy sidewinders before they sell the women in Mexico,’ Anton addressed the settlers. ‘I am lookin’ for anyone willin’ to join me.’
At first, all he heard were Bliss’ sobs of pain.
‘Count me in, Anton,’ Reverend Roberts volunteered. ‘It is the Lord’s work!’
‘I will ride with you,’ Calhoun said simply.
Anton turned to the Paiute Indian chief. ‘You were right, Iron Crow. Two are ready to ride. However, they will need clothes and we will all need horses and guns.’
‘Yellow Hawk will see that you have all you need,’ Iron Crow delegated.
Only minutes passed before Anton Kozlov was astride a pinto pony. Like Calhoun
and Roberts, he was also given a rifle and ammunition.
‘Thank you, Chief Iron Crow,’ Anton said, making ready to ride.
‘Yellow Hawk and a war party will ride for four days and nights to wait south of the sacred place,’ Iron Crow said. ‘If you fail, they will stop the bad men there.’
‘We will not fail, Iron Crow,’ Anton proclaimed.
‘We will care for these men you leave behind,’ the elder Paiute called Sky Raven promised. ‘They will be walking when you return.’
They rode out under the rising moon. Preacher Burt Roberts grunted in pain whenever they crossed rough ground. Dave Calhoun winced but no sound escaped his thin, bloodless lips. Leaving the camp behind, they cut across the flat to follow the wagon tracks.
Anton drew rein briefly by the stockade gates and called, ‘Chante, go to your man. He needs you. Don’t be afraid, Iron Crow’s warriors will not harm you.’
On the edge of the Paiute Indian camp, Plenty Arrows watched them ride out. The eyes of the man who had been betrothed to a princess were inscrutably dark.
Chapter 9
Clash in the Canyon
The forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought,
He would have well becom’d this place, and graced
The thankings of a king. . .
Cymbeline
Coming out of the pine-dotted pass, Anton Kozlov led the riders into a long, deep-walled valley. This was a wild place, and it offered no welcome to living men. The crater-like canyon was believed to have been formed from the collapse of the Mount Mazama volcano. One legend that Anton had heard many years before from the Klamath Tribe, witnessed the eruption due to a great battle between Chief Llao – of the Below world – and Chief Skell – of the Above world, where the battle ended with the destruction of Mount Mazama. Another legend claims the water came from the tears of wolves. It was the catapulted volcanic ash miles into the sky that expelled so much pumice and ash that the summit soon collapsed, created a huge smoldering caldera.
Eventually, rain and snowmelt accumulated in the caldera, forming a lake. Wildflowers, along with hemlock, fir, and pine, recolonized surroundings. Black bears and bobcats, deer and marmots, eagles and hawks returned to the canyon.
Heading out of a thicket, Anton saw the first skeleton. The chalk-white bones were resting on a frame of interwoven branches. Hollowed eyes stared at the three white men as they rode past. Probing deeper into the valley, they saw coyotes slinking away from rotting flesh. They circled the bones of six Indians.
Suddenly a scream echoed out over the valley.
‘Dear God!’ the preacher whispered, drawing rein. His face was ashen. ‘What – what was that?’
‘It did not come from no dead Injun,’ Dave Calhoun assured him.
‘It is a woman,’ Anton said. ‘I would say Clara Weathers is giving birth.’
They followed the wagon tracks. Another high-pitched scream tore the night apart as the three riders splashed across a creek and headed due south beside the fresh wheel ruts. Another coyote slunk across their path.
Anton Kozlov glimpsed the hooped canvas of the Conestoga wagon and halted his pinto pony. Lifting his rifle, Calhoun drew rein and waited for Reverend Burt Roberts.
‘They are just down there,’ Anton indicated. ‘We will leave the horses here. Reverend, you move straight in and get yourself set up behind that boulder over yonder. Calhoun, we will circle the camp.’
They dropped from the backs of their ponies, and Calhoun and Anton headed into the tall, spiky grass. Soon they could make out four men seated around a very small fire. One man sat apart from the rest, smoking a cigar. The wagon creaked, and Clara cried out in pain. Anton and Calhoun began to drift around to the opposite side of the camp. They reached a towering pine.
‘This is your spot,’ Anton indicated to Calhoun softly.
‘Fine,’ Calhoun agreed without hesitation.
‘We will need to be careful, so no stray lead goes into that wagon full of women, understood?’ Anton said.
‘Kozlov,’ Dave Calhoun murmured, ‘killin’ used to be my business. None of my bullets will stray off target, I promise you that.’
Anton saw the harsh truth in the settler’s eyes. He crawled through the grass to a rocky slab overlooking the camp. Snatches of conversation drifted up to him.
‘Hell!’ Trooper Hal Yacey croaked. ‘Would somebody shut that damn woman up?’
‘She won’t be loud much longer,’ Tuck Gravens said. ‘Anyway, she will sell better when the kid’s born and she is back to normal size.’
‘Please . . . please let me go.’ It was Lucy Doniphon’s voice now.
Looking down his rifle, Anton spotted her, bound hand and foot in the shadows of the wagon.
Judd Reed took a swig from his whiskey bottle.
‘Forget about that squawking bitch,’ he said. ‘I figure it is time for you and me to start getting acquainted.’
‘No!’ she cried, her body shrinking into the grass.
Judd grabbed her hair and pulled her ruthlessly to her feet. He set the bottle down carefully and grabbed at her bodice. The two top buttons popped and flew into the tall grass.
Anton wormed across the flat ledge as Lucy’s blouse fell away from the lush curves of her full breasts. Judd’s eyes glittered with lust. Anton reached the edge of the rock balcony, and a split moment later, Calhoun stepped out from behind the pine.
It was Hal Yacey who howled a frantic warning. ‘Lieutenant!’
Anton Kozlov’s rifle boomed and Trooper Hal Yacey was silenced for good. The trooper crashed forward into the cooking fire, smothering the flames like a wet sack. Gravens and Ben Copeland were on their feet already, but Reverend Burt Roberts triggered. Gravens caught the preacher’s slug high in the shoulder. Tottering like a crazy drunk, he tried to level his .45. Cool as death, Dave Calhoun took aim and killed the trooper with one shot.
Copeland had his back against a wagon wheel. He held one rifle to his shoulder, and had another in reserve. Bullets raked the clearing and skipped from the rock ledge just inches from Anton’s face. The frontiersman raised himself on his knees and took deliberate aim. His two bullets tore into Copeland’s heart. Only two soldiers remained now. Judd had not fired a shot. Instead, he grabbed Lucy and held her struggling body in front of him.
‘Loomis! Shoot, damn you trooper!’ he bellowed.
‘No, Lieutenant, I won’t. . . .’ Alan Loomis decided, tossing away his gun, knowing he could not throw away his guilt.
‘You yellow little snake!’ Judd Reed screamed in fury.
He had one arm clamped across Lucy’s throat holding her like a vice. His free hand held a Colt .45.
‘Die, you coward!’ He raged and turned his gun on Alan Loomis.
The young trooper lurched forward with blood welling from his mouth.
Judd backed away from the fire, dragging his squirming human shield with him.
‘I am getting out of here, and I am taking this woman with me,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t try to shoot, and that goes for you, too, Reverend, unless you want to kill this woman. . . .’
There was a dull, sickly thud. Judd’s six-gun fell from his outstretched fingers and dropped to the grass. Glassy-eyed, the lieutenant began to sway from side to side. Lucy Doniphon stepped away from the cavalry officer. Without her support, Judd Reed pitched headlong with an arrow embedded deeply between his shoulder blades.
‘Plenty Arrows is not afraid of the spirits of the dead,’ the young brave said. ‘The woman I love now dwells among the dead.’
He slid his second arrow back into the buckskin quiver and nodded disdainfully at Judd’s spread-eagled body. ‘Once a man like this is dead, his evil dies with him.’ The white men watched him in incredulous silence.
‘Go in peace, Plenty Arrows,’ Anton said finally. ‘You ride with much honor.’ The warrior nodded and went on his way.
Just then, Henrietta Roberts emerged from the Conestoga wagon. She alone had been allowed to act as midwife to Cla
ra Weathers. Now she held up two wet, slippery babies.
‘The Lord be praised!’ she announced. ‘Twins – a boy and a girl and all healthy!’
The preacher strode towards her, yelling the good news that all the men were safe. Anton saw Plenty Arrows vanish like a specter – fittingly enough in the Canyon of the Dead – and then Lucy was in his arms. He kissed her – his mind raced to his long-dead wife, Lesya and he hoped she would approve – and held Lucy, feeling her heart beating against his chest.
‘I meant what I said, Anton Kozlov! I wished you were the man I had come out here to marry!’
He kissed her willing mouth again as the others made ready to leave. His thoughts of his late wife remained in his thoughts and he could feel she would be OK with him finding love again.
‘Reverend Roberts will have a new home to raise, same as all of us,’ Calhoun said. ‘But I am sure he will find time for a wedding.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Anton said, trying to be humorous.
‘The age difference does not bother me, Anton,’ Lucy whispered to him, sensing his apprehension.
The mountain man wrapped his buckskin coat tenderly around her bare shoulders, and then he spotted Socks – his sorrel – tethered to the wagon. Next to Lucy, his horse was his most treasured friend. Lucy followed him as he went towards the horse who greeted them with a whinny. They both patted the horse’s head and stroked its mane.
Somehow, Anton knew they were going to be riding double, back to Devil’s Canyon and his tiny cabin – and that thought did not bother him at all.
But first, Anton knew they would have to make one stop before returning to his cabin.
Chapter 10
Fort Bighorn
The garrison of Fort Bighorn had time to recognize its weariness. The men on watch along the catwalks yawned and fidgeted. Those in reserve wrapped themselves in blankets and lay close around their fires to sleep. But their slumbers were not restful. Again and again, they started to wake to ask what was happening as they had all seen the fires burning and smoke rising from the old stockade.
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