43
“HOOK! GET BACK here!”
Most of the Rangers had to be in shock, finding themselves between two overwhelming waves of battle- frenzied warriors in those first few minutes of panic, only to watch utterly dumbfounded as the horsemen drew off their attack.
“Hook! Goddammit—you’ll be killed!”
Jonah heard Lockhart’s voice behind him as he vaulted the horse carcass and skidded down the loose, giving sand at the icy side of the arroyo. His high-heeled riding boots felt clumsy in sand as he plowed through, heading for the narrow stream, for the far side, for the village suddenly up, screaming and on the run.
Just who the hell was that outfit?
Goddamned soldiers, he grumbled—and they’d go and chase off the Comanche before he could get into the village to find the boys.
If the boys were still alive.
Chances were if the village found itself between the attacking Rangers and some soldier outfit, they’d slaughter any prisoners they still held.
The cold water lashed up against his bare skin, assaulting face and hands—as he ran flat out for the far side of the arroyo, aware for the first time of two dozen or more warriors racing along that north lip, skidding their ponies to a halt and dismounting on the run. In a blood fury.
Jonah turned to find out he was not alone. Behind him came a half dozen, maybe more, of the others. Every one of them firing their pistols and yelling at him, some even snarling at the warriors who had set up their own howl as they fired back and began dropping over the lip to spill into the snow-crusted arroyo, ready for some close, dirty fighting of it.
If he could just break through them, Jonah knew he could claw his way up the side and get into that village before the soldiers overran it. His boys—they might be mistook for Injuns in the dust and confusion by some green- gilled, nervous soldier who would shoot a white youngster by mistake.
A bullet hissed past his ear. He dropped on instinct. Jonah whirled in a crouch to find the warrior lunging for him at the same time the Comanche and Rangers closed ranks in a clattering collision that reverberated across the bottom of that arroyo. Hook rose to meet the screaming, painted demon hurling down on him like the master of hell itself.
The Comanche was young, strong. They grappled, stumbled backward. The warrior threw Jonah to the ground.
For a moment Hook stared up at the Indian’s eyes, not startled to find his enemy no more than a youth. The predictable foolishness of these young warriors—come back to cover the retreat of their village in the face of the soldier charge. The distant firing loomed closer still above the rim of the arroyo as he struggled with the warrior, who suddenly gripped a knife.
Glinting in the sun, it sailed overhead, then hung suspended there for a moment at the end of the youth’s arm. Jonah mightily lunged for that wrist with one hand, his right leaping to the Comanche’s throat, where he locked his fingers into a noose around the windpipe.
In but a moment Jonah sensed the arm weaken slightly, felt the shudder of his enemy as the Comanche fought for breath, clawing at the white man’s hand crabbed at his throat. Heaving himself up off his shoulders and hips, Hook desperately threw the strong youth to the side.
All about them men clashed and grappled in the thick of close quarters: grunting, crying out, cursing, yelling, begging for help. The smack of weapons against bone and sinew. The soggy slap of bodies pitched into the shallow, icy creek.
For that critical heartbeat the Comanche warrior lay gasping, his mouth a huge O, wheezing, coughing for breath as he rolled onto his side. Eyes wide with fury, hate, for the white man who had near killed him.
Hook threw himself atop the warrior as a war cry from beyond bit Jonah’s ears. All around him the rest of the fight faded as Hook landed on the Comanche trying to rise, wrestling his enemy back down, pinning the warrior by dropping a knee against the youth’s throat. Hook dragged the knife from the Indian’s hand.
With his left Jonah savagely yanked back on the man’s long hair, surprised to find it something other than black. He laid the edge of the blade under one ear as the wild eyes went wider, glaring into Jonah’s face.
Hook’s hand froze. He studied the hazel eyes, the sharp slash of nose, the crease of cheekbone no longer disguised beneath the war paint smeared in their combat. Hope. Fear. Desperation—
“Jere—…Jeremiah?”
As quickly the Comanche’s grunt of exertion faded. The warrior’s eyes stared back at Jonah’s face as the Indian stopped wrenching at the hand locked in his scalp, stopped yanking at the wrist and hand and knife pressed against his jugular. Jonah watched something like wonder, something of disbelief come into those eyes. Something almost familiar. The look he imagined Gritta would have in her eyes when at last he held her in his arms.
“P-pa?”
“Oh, dear Jesus …,” Hook whispered, his hands opening, releasing his son’s hair, letting the knife tumble into the sand. He could not take his eyes off the eyes of the one beneath him, seeing there the question, as well as the recognition, then the return of question and confusion.
Of a sudden there Jonah also saw the horror of something come to contort the face of his son.
“No-o-o-o-o-o!” Jeremiah shouted, drowning out everything else around them.
At first Jonah only sensed the dull pressure of it. No real pain. Just an instant of burning in his back, a metallic skittering along his ribs … then the cold.
A gunshot roared so close, Jonah flinched.
And the icy-hot pressure was gone, gone as quickly as he had realized it was there. For a moment he gazed back at the face of his oldest son, realizing that he was slipping, slowly releasing his grip on everything—losing consciousness.
Oh, God! his mind cried out, not sure if his lips really formed the words or not … dear God! To come this close. To hold Jeremiah so close and now to lose it all. Not this way, God. Not this way!
He had some distant recognition that men were shouting all around them now as Jeremiah heaved himself up on his knees, catching Jonah as he crumpled slowly, slowly, his lips moving wordlessly, muttering prayers … tears flooding his eyes.
As he closed them for that last time, Jonah recognized the tears in Jeremiah’s eyes, saw their tracks streaking down through the shiny, smeared, dust-furred war paint.
Tears.
Shrieking his powerful war song as he closed on the enemy, Antelope hurtled forward through the cascades of ice and stinging sand thrown up by others colliding, grunting, locked together in deadly combat. He had first to save his brother from this enemy ready to cut Tall One’s throat.
His own throat filled with the screech of the Kwahadi death song as he pistoned back his powerful right arm. At the end of that arm he brandished the haft of a long war club cruelly studded with three eight-inch iron blades. His father had given him that weapon when Antelope went on his first scalp raid.
Tall One’s eyes saw him coming.
Antelope’s brother yelled out, screaming something in the confusion and the noise as Antelope’s own blood hammered hotly in his ears. No worry—soon enough Antelope would save Tall One’s life.
In a white-hot fury he swung the war club downward with all the force he could muster in that arm and shoulder. Tall One pushed against his enemy at that moment: instead of burying the three blades deep in the white man’s back, Antelope struck the shoulder blade, slicing down against the collarbone itself. Blood spurted into the air flecked with icy crystals as the weapon slid deeper still through layers of muscle and tendon.
Still not deep enough.
Tall One screamed again, putting up an arm as if to stop him as Antelope drew the club back for a second
