O’Connor’s shoulders rose and fell.
“I bumped into him,” the sergeant said. “It didn’t amount to anything.”
“Made me spill my coffee and drop a biscuit.”
“There’s more coffee. And a little dirt getting on one of those biscuits isn’t going to hurt it.” O’Connor laughed. “Hell, that might give it a little more flavor. Those are some of the worst biscuits I ever ate!”
He sneered at Corporal Mackey as he made that last comment. The corporal’s broad, red face flushed even darker with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.
“That’s enough,” Davidson said. “It was an accident, anyone can see that. Everyone just go on about your business.”
“Sure, Lieutenant,” O’Connor said. “I was just waiting for MacCallister to get out of my way so I can do that.”
Davidson looked at Jamie and said curtly, “Well?”
Jamie was more accustomed to people getting out of his way. Not that he ever demanded such a thing . . . well, he might every now and then . . . but he was such a big, impressive-looking fella, folks just naturally stood aside from him.
On this occasion, though, he decided that he didn’t want to have a brawl with Sergeant O’Connor on their first night out here, so he said, “I was fixing to go get more coffee anyway.”
“That’s right, MacCallister,” O’Connor practically jeered. “If that’s what ye want us to believe so you can salvage a little of your wounded pride, that’s fine. I don’t mind bein’ the bigger man here.”
He mockingly waved a hand toward the fire where the coffeepot was staying warm. But as Jamie started to step past him, he added under his breath, “This ain’t over.”
“It sure as hell ain’t,” Jamie agreed.
CHAPTER 12
Over the next several days, as the expedition followed the North Platte River and then began to curve away from the stream toward the northwest, O’Connor kept his distance from Jamie. At times it seemed as if he actually went out of his way to do so.
Jamie wondered if Lieutenant Davidson had given the sergeant orders to avoid trouble. Even if that turned out to be the case, Jamie knew it couldn’t last. O’Connor was too belligerent, too full of unreasoning hatred, to keep it bottled up indefinitely.
One day while Jamie was scouting fully three-quarters of a mile ahead of the others, he spotted a dozen pronghorn antelope grazing several hundred yards ahead of him. The wind was in his face at the moment, carrying his scent away from them, but that could change without much warning. He swung down from his horse and left the reins dangling, knowing that the well-trained animal wasn’t going to wander off.
Before indulging his restless nature and setting off on this trip from home, he had bought a new Sharps rifle and fired it just enough to sight it in and get used to it. He pulled the rifle from its saddle scabbard now and started toward the herd of antelope on foot. He couldn’t risk getting too close, because the pronghorns had excellent eyesight to go along with their keen senses of hearing and smell. Those senses, along with their incredible ability to go from standing still to eye-blurring speed in almost no time at all, kept them alive.
Luckily, with the Sharps in his hands, Jamie didn’t have to get too close.
He stopped when he was still two hundred yards from the herd. The animals were grazing peacefully, unaware that a human being was so close by. That would be a shame for one of them . . . but the troopers would appreciate the fresh meat.
Slowly and carefully, Jamie went to one knee and raised the Sharps. A lot of men would need a stand of some sort to hold the heavy rifle steady, but Jamie was strong enough to manage just fine without one. He drew the hammer back, taking pains to keep it from clicking too loudly, and picked out a good-sized buck. As he settled the sights on the target, just behind the pronghorn’s right foreleg, the buck’s ears twitched. Some instinct had warned him, Jamie thought, so there was no time to waste. If this buck bolted, the whole herd would follow.
He squeezed the trigger. The boom from the Sharps rolled across the prairie like thunder.
At almost the same instant, the pronghorn buck sprang forward, but although that reflexive muscle action carried the animal a good dozen feet, when the buck’s hooves hit the ground again, his legs went out from under him and he rolled sprawling on the grass and didn’t move again. Jamie knew the buck was dead when he landed.
By this time, the rest of the herd was almost fifty yards away and still putting on speed. Jamie let them go. He’d done what he set out to do.
And now the next thing he did was reload the Sharps. He didn’t believe anyone was close enough to have heard that shot except the dragoons coming up behind him, but just in case that wasn’t true, he planned to be ready for more trouble.
Once the Sharps had a fresh round in it, he got his horse and led it closer to the fallen antelope. He pulled his knife and set to work gutting and skinning the animal. By the time he’d done that, Lieutenant Tyler was visible in the distance, riding quickly toward him.
Jamie stood up and waved to let the lieutenant know that everything was all right. Tyler pounded up to him and reined in.
“We heard a shot, Mr. MacCallister. Lieutenant Davidson sent me to find out what happened.”
“He should have sent a couple of troopers with you, anyway,” Jamie said. “In case I was lying up here dead with a bunch of Pawnee arrows in me and a war party waiting to ambush whoever came to check on me.”
Tyler frowned and said, “You mean he ordered me, alone, into a situation that could have been dangerous.”
“Yeah, but he probably didn’t intend to get you killed. He just didn’t think.”
Tyler didn’t look like that was much comfort. He said, “That possibility should have occurred to me, too.”
“More than likely,” Jamie agreed. “But lucky for both of us, I’m not dead and neither are you. Ride on back and tell the others to come on up as quick as they can. And tell Corporal Mackey there’s fresh meat for supper. It’s late enough in the day to go ahead and stop, and I’ll have antelope steaks ready for him to start frying by the time he gets here.”
The prospect of that put a smile of anticipation on Lieutenant Tyler’s face as he wheeled his mount and rode at a fast lope back toward the rest of B Troop.
* * *
An almost festive air filled the camp that evening. It was amazing how much some fresh meat could lift the men’s spirits, Jamie thought as he sat on the lowered tailgate of a supply wagon and used his knife to cut off and spear another hunk of steak seared black on the outside and oozing blood in the center, just the way he liked it.
Soldiers sat around the campfires talking and laughing, except for the ones who had eaten first and then gone on guard duty. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood . . . except for Lieutenant Davidson and Sergeant O’Connor. They were eating, too, but they did so in silence, O’Connor scowling and Davidson with a cold, disdainful look on his face.
When Davidson had finished his meal, he carried his plate and cup over to the wagon and dumped them in the bucket where one of the troopers would wash them later. He stopped in front of Jamie, clasped his hands behind his back as he was in the habit of doing, and asked, “How many more days will it be before we reach the Crow village?”
“We still have about a week to go, I’d say,” Jamie replied. “Maybe a day or two less if everything goes well. A day or two longer if we run into trouble.”
“What sort of trouble? Savages?”
“We’ve talked about that. You never know when the Pawnee will decide to act up. But there are other things that could happen. One of the wagons could break an axle. Not likely, but it’s possible.” Jamie glanced at the sky, where the vast sweep of stars scattered against the ebony ended abruptly over toward the western horizon. “There are some clouds moving in. This time of year, out here on the plains, some pretty bad storms can crop up.”
Davidson frowned and asked, “Do you believe that’s likely?”
&nb
sp; Jamie spotted a faint flicker of lightning in the distance.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Depending on how much it rains, there could be enough mud to bog down the wagons. We might have to wait a day or two to let the ground dry out.”
“I don’t want to wait,” Davidson snapped. “Whether the ground is muddy or not, we’ll be moving on in the morning.”
Obviously, the lieutenant had never seen a wagon bogged down to its wheel hubs. When that happened, a man could give orders until he was blue in the face and it wouldn’t do a damned bit of good.
Jamie sipped what was left of the coffee in his cup and said, “Reckon we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Davidson looked like he wanted to argue, but then he nodded and turned away. He went back to the other side of the camp to talk to Sergeant O’Connor.
Jamie looked to the west again, saw the glow from more lightning. It was too far away for him to see the actual streaks of electrical fire ripping through the heavens, but the flashes were visible as they reflected from the clouds. Jamie thought he heard a faraway rumble of thunder, too, but he wasn’t sure about that.
Every night, after the soldiers had settled down, Jamie ranged out about two hundred yards and made a circle around the camp, just to reassure himself that nothing unusual was going on. He did the same thing tonight. As he moved soundlessly through the dark, the wind picked up, blowing out of the west. It held a hint of coolness, and he smelled rain, as well. When he looked at the sky, he saw the clouds swiftly blotting out the stars as if those glowing pinpricks were being swallowed up by the gaping maw of some huge beast.
A storm was on the way, all right. Jamie had no doubt about that now.
He turned and headed back toward camp. He wanted to alert the guards and warn them that they’d need to hunker low to the ground as the lightning approached. Out here on these flat plains, a man standing straight and tall might be a tempting target for one of those deadly bolts. The rest of the men would need to get the horses to lie down, to keep them from being struck.
If the storm was as bad as Jamie was beginning to think it might be, those young troopers were in for a display of nature’s fury unlike anything they had ever seen before.
The wind was at his back, blowing hard with a rising moan as his long-legged strides carried him toward the camp. He saw the embers of the fires glowing faintly ahead of him. He was still about fifty yards from the wagons when a large, dark shape suddenly appeared out of the night and lunged at him. In the split second when he realized he was under attack, Jamie also knew the wind had kept him from noticing any sounds the lurker might have made.
The attacker grunted with effort. Jamie dived forward, figuring the man was swinging some sort of weapon at his head. That was pure instinct, rather than conscious thought, but it was correct. Something swished through the air and knocked the broad-brimmed brown hat from Jamie’s head.
The next instant, Jamie’s right shoulder rammed against the man’s thighs. He closed his arms around the man’s knees as the collision’s impact knocked the attacker over backward.
Jamie dug his knees against the ground and pushed himself forward. His right fist rose and slammed down into the man’s midsection. Then something clipped the side of Jamie’s head—the bludgeon, swung in a backhand, maybe—and sent him rolling away. The blow had enough power behind it to make bells toll loudly inside Jamie’s brain.
He came to a stop on his belly, raised his head and shook it for a second to get the cobwebs out of it, and pushed up onto hands and knees. A couple of yards away, the attacker was trying to get up, too. Lightning flashed, closer now, and the instant of stark glare revealed Liam O’Connor’s hate-twisted visage as he struggled to his feet. He had an ax handle gripped in his right hand. No ax-head was attached to the handle, but the sturdy wooden shaft was dangerous enough by itself. It could crush Jamie’s skull.
Darkness closed in again as O’Conner rushed toward Jamie, swinging the ax handle. Jamie took a fast step back to avoid it, and then lightning flickered again, showing him that O’Connor was slashing back and forth with the ax handle as he continued his charge.
Sometimes a strategic retreat was the smart thing to do, but the Good Lord had put only so much backup in Jamie Ian MacCallister. He was damned if he was going to turn and run from O’Connor. The lightning came a third time, and as it did, Jamie lunged forward and reached up to intercept the ax handle with his left hand. His fingers closed around the wood, and the muscles in his back and shoulders bunched as he stopped its swing and jerked O’Connor toward him.
Jamie’s right first shot out and landed in the middle of O’Connor’s face. With Jamie’s weight behind it, and the sergeant’s own momentum adding to the force, the impact jolted O’Connor’s head back so far it seemed that his neck might unhinge. The bottom half of his body continued moving forward, but his legs got tangled with each other and he went down.
Jamie had the ax handle now. After that stunning blow, O’Connor hadn’t been able to hang on to it. Instead of using it as a weapon himself, Jamie flung it aside into the darkness.
Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The bolts were closer now as the storm moved in rapidly. In the now almost constant glare, Jamie saw O’Connor climb onto hands and knees and pause there, shaking his head groggily. Jamie was a little surprised the sergeant was still conscious after that devastating punch.
“Stay down, O’Connor,” Jamie said over the rumbling echoes of the thunder. “Crawl back to the wagons.”
O’Connor pushed up, although he was still on his knees. His chest heaved as he said, “I don’t . . . crawl for anybody . . . you bastard!”
“You damned fool! That storm’s not far off, and sometimes lightning strikes out ahead of one like that. We all need to get down and stay down until it passes!”
“You can . . . go to hell!”
With that roared curse, O’Connor came to his feet and charged Jamie again. His fists were his only weapons now, but Jamie knew they could be deadly, too. Despite the threat of the approaching storm, he had to deal with O’Connor.
The lightning continued to flash. For long moments, its stark glare washed over the prairie and the two men battling like titans of ancient times. Then the lightning would stop, and for a second or two, impenetrable blackness fell over the world like a shroud, only to be rent asunder again by the next flash.
The heavy thud of fists landing on flesh and bone competed with the thunder. Jamie stood there, feet braced wide apart, trading punch for punch with O’Connor, absorbing the punishment the brutal sergeant dealt out in order to deliver some thunder and lightning of his own. The battle swayed back and forth, one man knocked on his heels only to recover and throw more punches.
This clash didn’t go unnoticed. Some of the troopers spotted them in the flickering glare and ran out from the camp, shouting. Jamie couldn’t make out any of the words, didn’t know if the soldiers were yelling encouragement or warnings. All his attention was focused on O’Connor.
Both of them were experienced bare-knuckles brawlers. There was nothing fancy about the way they fought. This was a battle of sheer strength and willpower . . . and endurance. Jamie sensed that O’Connor was moving a little slower now. The sergeant’s punches didn’t have as much snap and speed.
Jamie’s own stamina was waning, too, though. If he didn’t wrap up this fight soon, O’Connor might get lucky and land a decisive blow . . .
Instead, an eye-searing flash washed over them, and a blast louder than the roar of any cannon slammed into Jamie’s ears. He felt himself flying through the air, then he crashed into the ground with bone-jarring force. A sharp electrical stink stung his nostrils.
His brain was stunned, but the part of it still functioning knew that a lightning bolt had struck somewhere very close by. It hadn’t actually hit him, he supposed, or else he’d be dead now or at least unconscious. He looked around, halfway expecting to see Liam O’Connor’s charred corpse, but instead the sergea
nt was sprawled on his belly a few yards away, shaking his head. The bolt had missed him, too, but obviously not by much.
O’Connor’s mouth was open, but Jamie couldn’t hear anything. The tremendous blast had deafened him. Not permanently, he hoped. O’Connor looked like he was groaning. That made sense, since Jamie felt like doing the same thing.
A strong hand grasped his arm and lifted him to a sitting position. He looked up and saw Lieutenant Hayden Tyler silhouetted against the near-constant flickering that lit up the night sky. Tyler leaned over him and shouted something. Jamie caught only the last couple of words: “—all right?”
That was enough to tell Jamie that his hearing was coming back. He nodded. Tyler helped him to his feet. While the lieutenant was doing that, a couple of the dragoons lifted O’Connor from the ground.
“—back to the wagons?”
Jamie nodded again in response to that half-heard question from Tyler. He raised his voice and said, “Hurry, but stay low! Crouch over while you run!”
They started for the camp. O’Connor stumbled some, but the troopers helped him. More lightning bolts slammed into the prairie around them, but all the strikes were at least a hundred yards away. That luck might not last.
When they reached the wagons, Jamie was glad to see that the men had forced the horses to lie down and were stretched out on the ground with them, holding their headstalls. The horses were badly spooked but appeared to be under control so far. Someone in the troop must have had experience with lightning storms in the past and had known what to do, more than likely Corporal Mackey or the other teamster.
Lieutenant Davidson was waiting beside one of the wagons. He screeched at Jamie, “Why were you and O’Connor fighting?”
“He jumped me when I was on my way in,” Jamie replied. “You’d have to ask him why.”
He could hear fine again, which was a relief—even though it meant he had to listen to Davidson.
“You’ve caused enough trouble, MacCallister—” the first lieutenant began.
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