“You are burning!” Miki cried.
Flames were eating at the rope but not fast enough. Winona smelled charred hemp, then charred flesh. She did not know how much more she could take. She started to raise her feet out of the fire but shoved them back in again. A few blisters were preferable to being dead.
The streams became thick coils. Winona was sure her feet were being roasted to ruin. The pain was worse than any pain she ever felt, and that took some doing. She had known the pain of childbirth, the pain of bullet and knife wounds, the pain of animal bites, the pain of sickness. This was worse than all of them.
Finally, Winona could not bear it any longer. She jerked her feet clear and rolled, and kept on rolling. The rope that held her to the boulder had burned clean through. So had several of the loops about her ankles. She kicked, and her legs were free.
Flames still sprinkled her moccasins. Acting quickly, Winona rubbed them in the dirt, back and forth and side to side. Within moments the flames were extinguished. But the pain persisted.
Spent from her exertion, Winona lay still, gathering her strength. Her moccasins were black in spots. She refused to take them off and inspect the harm she had done to herself. That could wait.
Dimly, Winona became aware the girl and the young warrior were both whispering urgently. She roused and rose on an elbow. Belatedly, she heard what they already had, smacks and scrapes and scritching, as of crutches striking the ground. The sounds grew steadily closer. Drinks Blood was returning.
“Everyone ready?” Nate King asked. The eastern horizon was bright with the promise of the new day although the sun had not yet risen. He was on his bay, Shakespeare on the white mare, Lou on a roan, Blue Water Woman on a dun she was fond of.
Shakespeare raised a hand toward the heavens and recited, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them!”
“Was that yes?” Nate asked.
“Most assuredly, Horatio. I have girded my loins for battle, and am all of one cloth.”
Nate shifted in the saddle toward the three Nansusequa, who stood at the corner of his cabin. He had offered to let them have their pick of his extra horses, but they had declined. Their reason astounded him; they had never ridden horses before. They would search on foot.
“Remember,” Nate said. “Three shots in a row means one of us has found something. Come on the run.” Wakumassee fingered the flintlock Nate had given him. “Three,” he said. They had practiced loading the pistol until Waku was fairly certain he could do it.
“I hope there are enough of us,” Louisa commented. “From what you’ve said, these scarred devils are worse than the Blackfeet.”
“What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?” Shakespeare quoted. “Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, and he but naked, though locked up in steel, whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.”
“What did you say?” Lou asked.
Blue Water Woman reined her dun close to the sorrel. “See what I must put up with day in and day out?”
Nate was in no mood for banter. “Let’s ride!” he barked, and assumed the lead, bringing the bay to a trot as they crossed the clearing and plunged into the woods. He had barely slept a wink all night. Then, as now, worry twisted his gut like a blade. He could not shake the feeling that something awful had happened, or was about to happen.
Blue Water Woman proposed that she and Louisa search the timber lining the valley floor while Nate and Shakespeare climb higher, but Nate and Shakespeare were against the idea.
“Eight eyes are sharper than four eyes,” was how McNair summed up his objection.
Nate had them spread out. He insisted they stay within sight of one another at all times. They must take every precaution. The Heart Eaters would be out for blood, and there was no telling how large a war party they were up against.
That the Heart Eaters were back upset Nate to no end. He did not want a repeat of what he had gone through with the Utes. For years the Utes had tried to drive him and his family from their previous home because it was at the fringe of Ute territory. They constantly had to be on their guard. He had hoped that things would be different here, that he had discovered a sanctuary safe from all hostiles. He should have known better. In the wilderness, nowhere was ever truly safe.
It was the price Nate had to pay for that which he valued more than anything else, namely, his right to live free. Not the false freedom civilization offered but the freedom to do as he pleased without being accountable to anyone or anything other than his own conscience.
All those years Nate spent growing up in New York, he never gave much thought to the fact that he had to abide by laws and rules imposed by others. Everyone else did, and he was just one of the many. If asked back then, he would have said that the laws were necessary, that without them, society would break down. Laws kept the lawless in line.
It never occurred to Nate that he was, in effect, confined in an invisible cage of insidious devising. He must abide by the dictates of politicians and others in high authority to whom laws were a means of controlling those under them. Since the control was so subtle, and supposedly exercised for the common good, the vast majority of people accepted it as inevitable.
Only later, after Nate had come to the Rockies with his uncle and experienced his first taste of true freedom, did Nate awaken to the difference. Laws were a leash, and having the leash removed opened his eyes. He came to believe that no one should have the right to lord it over anyone else.
It was a belief shared by the Shoshones, among others. Nate saw a degree of irony in the fact that most Indians lived more freely than the whites back in the States who regarded them as inferior.
A whinny from the bay brought Nate’s musing to an end. Chiding himself for being careless, he rested the Hawken across his thighs. They were climbing a wooded slope, Shakespeare to his right, the women to his left. Their eyes ceaselessly in motion, they searched for any clue to the whereabouts of the missing.
An hour went by. Two hours.
Nate headed in the general direction of the stream where he had lost the tracks the previous day. When they reached it, he stayed on the south side with Lou while Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman crossed over. They had paralleled the ribbon of water a short distance when Blue Water Woman called out and pointed.
Nate and Louisa crossed. They had found where Evelyn’s abductor, Waku’s son Dega, had left the stream. The trail led into spruce. There, Dega had set Evelyn down. Nate breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his daughter’s tracks. She had been alive and well up to that point.
Nate and his companions rode faster. Evelyn and Dega had made no attempt to hide their tracks. They had angled back to the stream and headed west. Nate was in such a hurry to catch up that he nearly rode past the spot where the pair had stopped. Drawing rein, he leaned down. “Look at this.”
Shakespeare had caught sight of them, too: more of those strange circles, like the ones they had found near their cabins. “Deucedly peculiar,” he remarked.
“What are they?” Louisa wanted to know.
“Do you think they have anything to do with the Heart Eaters?” Blue Water Woman asked.
Nate had not considered that, but he could not see how. The only footprints were those of Evelyn and Dega. He climbed down. A pair of long furrows drew his interest. He ran his fingers along one, trying to figure out what made it. His best guess was that something had been dragged or pulled up the bank. At the top the furrows ended and the strange circles resumed.
Judging by the tracks, Evelyn and Dega had examined the circles and furrows at some length. But they had not followed them. Instead, the pair headed in a different direction.
“Maybe we should split up,” Shakespeare suggested. “You take Lou and go after Evelyn. Blue Water Woman and I will follow those circles. I’m mighty curious to find out what makes
them.”
“We stick together,” Nate said.
“Need I point out there has been no sign of the Heart Eaters?”
“Need I point out what we went through up at the pass?” Nate countered. “We stick together,” he repeated.
Shakespeare chuckled. “You make a most excellent grump.”
As Nate expected, Evelyn’s and Dega’s tracks eventually brought them to the clearing Waku had described. It lay bright and stark under the midday sun. They dismounted to give the ground a close scrutiny.
Suddenly Louisa gasped. “Over here! Is this what I think it is?”
Red drops speckled the grass.
“Dry blood,” Nate said, his gut churning. He found more, a lot more, enough to convince him that either Evelyn or Dega had been badly wounded. His heart in his throat, he found where they had fled the clearing. The tracks clearly showed his daughter had been supporting the young Nansusequa.
“Who attacked them?” Lou wondered.
“Here’s a clue,” Shakespeare said grimly. He was staring at patch of bare earth near his feet.
Nate went over. “More of those damn circles.” He swore luridly, a reaction to the dread that seized him.
“How long ago were they here?” Louisa asked. She was nowhere near the tracker the men were.
“Some time before midnight would be my guess,” Shakespeare answered.
“That long ago?” Lou said, aghast. “Then we might be too late.”
Nate was thinking that very thing.
Twenty
Winona had no time to free her hands. Nor, with Drinks Blood almost to the opening, did she dare try to bolt. With two options denied her, her agile brain settled on a third. Hurriedly, she kicked the burnt shards of rope behind the boulder she had been tied to. Then she quickly lay on her side, her legs bent behind her to give the impression her ankles were still bound and she was still secured to the boulder.
Seconds later the scarred warrior emerged from the vegetation, his visage as hideous as ever. The rope harness was snug on his powerful chest. Once again he was dragging someone.
Winona looked, and the blood in her veins congealed to ice. Horror was to blame, a horror so profound and so overwhelming it paralyzed every nerve in her body. Horror such as only a parent could feel on seeing one of her children at death’s threshold. One glance at the person being dragged was enough to conform that, if she was not already dead, she was close to it.
Evelyn lay as still as a corpse. Her hair was disheveled, her dress streaked with dirt and grass stains— and blood. Her eyes were closed, her mouth parted. There was no sign she was breathing. As if that were not heart-wrenching enough, Evelyn’s skin was a ghastly yellow color, as if she had rubbed herself with dandelions—or been the victim of a potent poison.
Winona remembered a Shoshone warrior who had turned yellow. He had taken an arrow in the ribs, and the barbed tip had turned out to have been dipped in a dead animal. Despite the best efforts of Shoshone healers, the warrior had died an agonizing, lingering death. Without thinking, Winona blurted, “Blue Flower!” Drinks Blood was removing the rope harness. Sneering, he threw it down, tucked his crutches under his arms, and came over. But he was careful not to get too close. His fingers flowed in sign language. “Question. Happy see daughter?”
Nearly losing control, Winona shrieked, “What have you done to her? Why does she look that way?”
Drinks Blood laughed. He had not understood but he was enjoying her distress. “Question. You want hold?”
“Of course, damn you!” Winona fumed. “I want to know what you have done to her.”
Grinning, Drinks Blood signed, “Watch daughter die. Watch me cut.” He made a chopping motion. “Make many little parts.”
Winona rarely lost her temper. Among her family and friends and fellow Shoshones she was admired for her calm bearing. It was said, and rightfully so, that when all others around her were losing their heads, she always kept hers. Her son and daughter could count on one hand the number of times she had yelled at them. Her husband could count on one finger the number of times she had cried.
But Winona became emotional now. She more than lost her temper. A searing blaze of white-hot rage seized her. All she could think of was Evelyn, her sweet, precious Evelyn, dead or dying, slain by the abomination in front of her. Consequently, she did what any mother would do, which, in her case, made it all the more remarkable. Screeching like a bobcat, she whipped her body around and slammed her legs against Drinks Blood.
Her attack caught the Heart Eater unaware. The force of her blow sent him tumbling in an ungainly somersault that ended with Drinks Blood thudding onto his belly in the dust. He lost both crutches. But such was his iron resilience that he did not stay down long. In the time it took Winona to scramble to her feet, Drinks Blood shook his swarthy head to clear it and heaved onto his stumps.
For tense moments they glared their mutual hate: Drinks Blood’s the hate of one who regarded those not his kind as his natural enemies to be slain at will, Winona’s the hate of a mother whose most cherished treasure had been desecrated.
Winona’s hands were still bound, but that did not stop her. She threw herself forward, lashing out with a well-aimed kick.
Even without his crutches, Drinks Blood was far from helpless. He had lost the lower half of his legs but not his natural agility or his exceptional strength. As her foot darted at his throat, he scampered aside, using his hands and stumps for leverage, in a display that would have dazzled a white acrobat or wrestler. Her kick missed, and at its apex, when it was still in midair, Drinks Blood flicked a steely hand, seized her ankle, and gave a brutal twist.
Pain exploded in Winona’s leg. She felt herself being upended and was helpless to prevent it. Down she went, dumped on her back, but none the worse for the upset. Instantly, she rolled onto her side to regain her feet. It was her one advantage over her adversary. But she was only to her knees when a stunted cyclone ripped into her with battering force.
A hand clamped onto Winona’s throat. A fist smashed into her eyebrow, into her jaw. She spun the upper half of her body around in an effort to dislodge him, but the Heart Eater grabbed hold of her black tresses and clung.
Winona tried to butt Drinks Blood in the face, but he jerked his scarred visage aside. The fingers in her throat dug deeper and she abruptly found her breath choked off. Sputtering and gasping, she pushed erect, then almost tumbled when his shifting weight threw her off balance.
Drinks Blood was aglow with bloodlust. He pummeled her face and neck, seeking to pound her into submission. He did not resort to his knife or his club, which suggested he wanted her alive to sate his perverse pleasures.
Blood was in Winona’s eyes. Her chest was on the verge of bursting. Unless she shook him off or dislodged him, Drinks Blood would subdue her and bind her legs and she would be back where she had been. That must not happen. Evelyn’s life was at stake. Desperate to break free, Winona glanced anxiously about. The high wall of the bowl-shaped cliff gave her an idea. A wild idea, an insane idea, but it held a glimmer of hope, and Winona would grasp at anything, however thin the straw. She launched herself at the rock wall, her head low, her shoulders hunched for what was to come.
Drinks Blood still had his five-fingered vise on her throat and his stumps clamped to her chest. Smirking sadistically, he glanced over his shoulder, guessed her intent, and sought to push clear.
Winona was expecting just that. Sucking precious air deep into her lungs, she bit down on his wrist, shearing her teeth through skin and flesh. Clear down to the bone she bit, and locked her jaws tight.
Drinks Blood howled, more from rage than pain. Swearing vehemently, he tugged and pushed and did all in his power to break her grip. He failed.
A blur in the morning shadows, Winona slammed into the cliff. She had the fleeting impression that every bone in her body had been shattered, every organ ruptured. Then she was on her back in the dirt, her ribs on fire, her body a welter of torment, wh
ile beside her flopped and flapped that which did not seem entirely human.
Caught between her and the cliff, Drinks Blood had impressions of his own; blinding, excruciating pain, his body crushed worse than when the pass had fallen on him, his lungs spurting blood. He thrashed and flailed, unable to stop himself. Then the pain began to subside, if only a little, and he discovered that he was not crushed at all, but only severely bruised, and that the blood dampening his nose and mouth was not from burst lungs but from his bleeding nose.
Winona started to rise. A callused hand snatched at her dress and she backpedaled. Whirling, she ran for the opening. If she could escape, she could free her hands and come back. But she had taken only a few steps when forearms banded with muscle looped around her ankles. She stumbled, recovered, and had her legs pulled from under her.
The fall was painless compared to slamming into the cliff. Winona rolled, or tried to, in order to get back on her feet. She felt Drinks Blood’s grip loosen and she smiled to herself, thinking that in another few moments she would be in the woods where he could never catch her. Then she felt something else: hands digging into her flesh, using her body as a ladder.
Drinks Blood was climbing up her back.
Winona threw herself down on top of him. He grunted but held on. She whipped to the right and then the left but could not throw him off. Suddenly an arm was around her throat. Panicked, she scrambled to her knees and slammed back down, but he planted his stumps, and she could not fall on him a second time. Meanwhile, the arm around her throat constricted.
To be so close and be thwarted drove Winona into a frenzy. She flung herself from side to side, she spun, she kicked, she tried to butt him with the back of her head. She did all that and more, but she could not stop her chest from heaving and the world from fading. She had the sensation of pitching into a dark well, and as she plummeted, she cried out in the depths of her being, “I am sorry, daughter! I have failed you!”
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