tip entering the young warrior’s right eye and bursting out the back of his head.
The second warrior drew back his own string and let his arrow fly.
Almost casually, the Outcast sidestepped. His hand a blur, he drew another arrow from his quiver and nocked it, and it was in the air heartbeats after the other’s missed. His didn’t. It caught the young warrior in the chest and spun him around.
That left the warrior with the club; he shrieked like an enraged mountain lion and bounded forward, the metal spike raised high. He was fast, but he wasn’t faster than the arrow that penetrated his throat from front to back and left him on his knees, gagging and spitting blood.
The Outcast drew his tomahawk. The young warrior saw his shadow, glanced up, and tried to raise the strange club. The Outcast swung. His tomahawk bit deep, splitting the young warrior’s forehead in half.
Wrenching the tomahawk loose, the Outcast stepped to the warrior he had shot through the chest. The man was thrashing and groaning. The fear of dying was bright in his eyes.
“You should have let your betters be,” the Outcast said, and struck.
The scent of blood hadn’t spooked the pinto as it would some horses. The Outcast slid his bow and quiver into his sheath and climbed back on. He stared at the bodies. Once, he would have scalped them, back when he was as young as they were and as foolish. He glanced at the sky. The vultures would come soon. They always did.
The Outcast went to ride on and caught himself. He was becoming careless. He dismounted, and pulled his arrows from the bodies. He also took the arrows from the quiver of the second warrior.
The strange club with the metal spike interested him. Bending, he hefted it. He was surprised at how light it was. It would be formidable at close quarters. It was too big for his parfleche, so he tied it on along with his bow.
On he rode.
The Outcast had been heading south for several moons now. Why, only the Great Mystery could say. He was deep in rugged mountains that reminded him of home. Mantled in thick timber, they were so high that some of the peaks were ivory with snow even though it was summer.
Presently the Outcast came to a valley with a large lake. From the heights he spied the wooden lodges of white men. His face hardened, and he placed his hand on his tomahawk.
He had found the lair of enemies.
Chapter One
If Zachary King lived to be a hundred years old, he would never understand women. No, he reflected. Make that a thousand. Their minds worked in strange ways. Female logic was no logic at all.
Take this latest instance. There was enough venison and elk meat in their larder to last weeks, but Louisa insisted he go and kill a grouse for supper. A grouse! When she knew he didn’t like to pluck all those feathers. Lou loved grouse meat, though, and she was making a special meal, so she insisted he bring home a grouse and nothing else.
Zach stood on a slope a quarter of a mile above the lake at the center of King Valley and stared at his cabin on the north shore. Smoke curled from the chimney. Lou was baking a blackberry pie, one of his favorites. It mollified him, somewhat, for having to kill the grouse.
On the west shore stood his father’s cabin, empty at the moment. His pa and his ma had gone off to St. Louis to have his pa’s Hawken repaired.
On the south shore was the cabin of Shakespeare McNair and his Flathead wife, Blue Water Woman. Smoke rose from their chimney, too.
On the far east side of the lake stood the lodge of the Nansusequa, a friendly family of Indians from the East. They had gone off to the prairie to hunt buffalo. To Zach’s considerable surprise, his sister, Evelyn, had gone with them. She hated to hunt. She hated to kill things. Yet off she went. She told Zach she was bored and needed something to do, which amused him considerably. The real reason she went was a young Nansusequa by the name of Degamawaku.
With everyone gone except Zach and Lou and Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman, the valley was quiet and peaceful. It was the middle of the summer and there wasn’t much that needed doing. Zach could relax and take it easy for a change—if it weren’t for his silly wife and her craving for a stupid grouse.
Zach sighed and resumed climbing. At that time of year and that time of day the grouse were in heavy woods where few meat eaters could get at them. He moved slowly, his thumb on the hammer of his Hawken. Around his waist were a brace of pistols, a Green River knife, and a tomahawk. Louisa liked to tease that he was a walking armory, to which he always retorted that he was still alive.
Zach wore buckskins and moccasins. With his long dark hair and the fact that his mother was a Shoshone, he knew that from a distance he appeared to be an Indian. His green eyes gave away his white inheritance.
Zach stalked as silently as a wolf toward a shelf where the grouse liked to roost. He spied circles in the dust, which told him he was close; grouse liked to give themselves what his pa called “dust baths.” This made no sense to Zach. How could it be a bath if it got them all dirty?
At a cluster of pines, Zach crouched. He scanned the vegetation, alert for movement. Grouse could move quickly when they needed to and take wing in a heartbeat. He was about to move on when a
The largest were two feet high. Their feathers were usually a dusky blue, which accounted for their name. The females weren’t as colorful as the males, who had bright orange over their eyes and orange and white on their chest. When courting, the males put on quite a display. They puffed up and fanned their tails and made a booming sound that could be heard a long way off. When he was a boy he’d asked his pa how they did that, and his pa had explained that grouse had pouches in their necks that filled with air and deflated to make the booms. Zach saw the pouches for himself the first time he carved up a grouse for a meal.
The
Zach placed each foot carefully, alert for dry twigs that might give him away.
A tree blocked his view. Zach peered around it and a tingle rippled down his spine.
There the grouse was, perched on a stump not twenty feet away. A male, but it wasn’t puffed up. As he looked on, it tilted its head back and let out more whoops.
As slow as molasses, Zach raised the Hawken and wedged the hardwood stock to his shoulder. Just as slowly, he thumbed back the hammer. He half feared the click would send the grouse into the air, but the bird went on whooping.
Zach gently squeezed the rear trigger to set the front trigger. He lightly placed his finger on the front trigger. All it would take was slight pressure. He fixed a bead on the grouse’s head. The body was a bigger target, but the ball would make a mess of the meat. He held his breath and steadied the barrel, and when he was sure, he stroked the front trigger.
The Hawken belched smoke and lead, and the grouse suddenly had a neck with no head attached. The wings flapped a few times in reflex, and the body keeled over. A few kicks of its legs, then the blue grouse was still.
Zach smiled and walked toward the dead bird. Louisa would be pleased. He lifted the grouse by its feet; it was a plump one.
Blood dripped on one of his moccasins, and Zach’s smile faded. Lou didn’t like it when he came into the cabin with blood on his clothes. Setting the grouse down, he cut a whang from his sleeve and tied off the bird’s neck so he wouldn’t get any more on him.
Throwing the bird over his shoulder, Zach started down the mountain. He had gone a dozen strides when he drew up short. “I’m so eager to please her, I’ve turned foolish.”
Zach put the grouse down. He uncapped his powder horn and commenced to reload his rifle. His pa had
