Winter Rain (20 page)

Then he remembered the taste of his rage as he knelt
over the bleeding Boothog Wiser back in Nebraska, in the end killing Jubilee Usher’s lieutenant before he could allow himself to flee with his daughter. Hattie.

Here in the cold he keenly sensed the loss of her, wanting again the soft, warm touch of her as he embraced the skinny girl teetering on the verge of womanhood there on the Kansas railroad platform, sending her east to St. Louis—far from harm, far from this wild, cruel land that had become his prison.

Four, maybe even more of them, had Jonah tallied for himself already as he drew closer and closer on the trail of Jubilee Usher, closer to reclaiming his wife from those who had ripped his family apart. He lay there now in the dark of that moondown, brooding on how much easier the killing got when he thought of these men as nothing more than animals: beasts who were meant to die. Easier it was for him to pull the trigger or use the knife, to do what he had to do when he thought of the Mormons as—

The scrape of boot soles on the sandy soil leapt out at him from the darkness.

Muffling the sound against his body, Jonah lightly brushed his thumb back across the hammer of one of the big .44-caliber pistols, then the other hammer, to assure himself they were cocked. His eyes strained beneath the dim starshine now that the moon had fallen. The sky was quickly whirling to the coldest time of the day—the moments before the first faint strands of gray would emerge out of the east. And with this wind blowing the way it was, torturing the sage … he was thankful none of the Danites could smell him bellied down in the darkness.

Ten feet away the man stopped and turned slowly, as if himself trying to make something out of the night. From the hole he punched out of the starry skyline, the gunman carried a rifle across the fold of his left arm.

“Bolls!” the man whispered harshly.

There came no answer.

Jonah knew he wouldn’t have much time to act if the Mormon grew nervous. He might just up and turn, shouting a warning back at the other four who lay sleeping like black humps of coal on the prairie, their feet to that shallow fire pit.

“You asleep, Bolls?”

And when no answer came, the man there to relieve the watch started to turn again. Jonah slowly raised his pistol—wishing he could do this another way: use his knife as Two Sleep had on Bolls, the first guard, lying somewhere out there in the darkness. It would be quieter, and every bit as efficient.

“Where you, Bolls?”

He wouldn’t have much more time, a heartbeat or two only—

As the guard turned his back on Hook, Jonah rose from the sage, pistol flung back at the end of his arm. He could knock him in the head if he could cross the ten feet before the man heard him.

The guard whirled back, rifle coming up to block the barrel of Jonah’s pistol as it fell to graze the side of the Mormon’s head, slashing downward against flesh and bone. The fury of his attack caused the guard to stumble backward a step as Jonah clumsily lashed out with the pistol in his left hand. Swearing, the guard brought the rifle down. It spat bright, blinding fire, the bullet keening wildly into the black of desert night.

It had passed close enough to make Hook fling himself onto his belly and pull a trigger himself, aiming by feel—like that night with Major North’s Pawnee scouts, clustered among the baggage of Chief Turkey Leg’s Cheyenne camp when the young Cheyenne warriors came charging out of the blackness. Now he saw behind the muzzle flash a second bright blast from the guard’s gun as the Mormon was flung backward.

Only one thing would have made the man arch backward like that.

Jonah knew he had hit him.

Behind the roar of those three shots came the frightened cries of the nearby horses and the rustle and grunt of men clearing their blankets and canvas bedrolls, hollering out questions and orders, chambering cartridges in their weapons, one of them kicking dirt onto the red embers.

When a gunshot rang out, the muzzle flash caught the corner of Jonah’s eye. The fire tender pitched headlong across the remnants of the uncovered embers. He wasn’t moving.

“Out there!” one of them shouted, pointing into the darkness.

Three of them fired a succession of shots.

“Careful! Hines—go see if we got ’im.”

“Me? In the dark?”

“There’s five of us—”

“Four, Cap’n.”

“Four then, by God! And there’s likely less of them out there or they’d rushed us. Goddamn Injuns!”

Another shot rang out on the far side of the camp, causing the horses to cry out, hammering the ground in their hobbles, tearing against their pickets. Jonah knew Two Sleep had moved like mercury spilled on a table after his first shot had killed the fire tender.

“They’re after the horses!”

A pair of shots rang out as the gunmen whirled in a crouch to the west—all but one of them. The one that Jonah had failed to see. Hook rose from the blackness of the sage again, intending to take them in the back. And to his left as he did, Jonah heard the
click-chunk
of the hammer an instant before the night whited in muzzle flame.

The bullet stung his left wrist, snarling past his belly.

Like something hot he lost the pistol in that hand, felt
it spinning to the ground, still intent that he would not lose the one in his right despite the pain that came to his belly as the wind whined past, kicking dust into his eyes. Another shot collided with the flaky sand at his side, the flash bright and searing in the deep of desert blackness. The gunman moved slowly toward him. Then a third shot as Jonah rolled, hearing the whispering hiss before it too screamed into the ground where his head had been a heartbeat before.

Behind him arose the rattle of more shots shattering the twenty-five feet to the fire, dying as the cries of men and protests of their horses split the dark. Finishing his roll, Jonah raised his gun hand—hearing the unearthly war cry of the warrior.

“It’s Injuns, Slade!”

“Kill ’em, Charlie! Kill ’em all!” the man coming for Hook cried out.

Hook fired as the steps loomed closer. He heard the bullet hit, that unmistakable sound of a wet hand slapping putty. Then the grunt of the gunman.

Still, the Mormon came on after only a moment’s hesitation.

“Sonofabitch—I’ll have your balls!” the man grumbled, and fired into the blackness, then fired again.

A third time the hammer fell on an empty cylinder as Jonah steadied his pistol and aimed it at the black hole punched out of the starshine in the high desert night sky.

He fired. Heard the bullet smack soddenly into its target—the wind socked out of the man. Jonah heard him take one more step, then another, grumbling liquidly as he came.

“Slade?” a voice called from the far side of the fire. “Slade?”

Then the voice was cut off, gone garbled and wet—choking. Like a man drowning in his own juices.

He heard the one called Slade pull a second pistol, cocking it in the growing silence of that blackest of time
when night was prepared to give itself to the first seduction of day.

“Get you … you red sonofabitch!”

Where had he hit the man? Jonah wondered. The way the bastard cursed, that thickness to his words spoke of fighting down the pain. But—that he was still moving.

Hook fired his last shot into the darkness, then rolled back in the direction he had come, struggling to drag a second, loaded cylinder for the pistol from his coat pocket.

Without time to move the man was atop of him, collapsing to his knees soddenly, snatching Hook by the collar of his coat and yanking his face up close. He weaved a bit, putting the muzzle of his pistol into Hook’s face, wobbly.

“You … you ain’t no Injun,” Slade spat, his tongue thick with blood. “Who the hell are—”

With the plunge of the wide blade, Hook watched the Mormon’s night eyes grow big as Sunday saucers.

Jonah grunted as he fought to drag the big skinning knife the full width of the gunman’s belly, feeling at last the warm, syrupy blood gushing over his hands as he disemboweled the Danite crouched over him.

Dark fluid gushed from the man’s mouth as he struggled to find the words, sputtering. Until finally …

“The … the goddamned farmer.”

T
HE PALE-EYED WAR
chief had made sure the two boys had homes and families when first they were brought to live with the Kwahadi. They were not only cared for and fed, but taught the way of the Antelope Comanche as well. They learned about weapons and riding, how to hunt the dwindling herds of buffalo, to stalk deer and antelope and turkey. They grew better with every season in the rough-and-tumble wrestling that was nothing less than preparation for the killing arts of making war on the white man.

Jeremiah longed for the day he would be allowed to go on his first war party.

Eleven summers old he told his adopted father he was now, and learning more of the language from Bridge every day, forgetting more and more of his own as the seasons turned. Like his brother Zeke, Jeremiah hungered to ride out on the raids, to come back bearing the red-hued scalps,
draping themselves in glory with the rest of the young warriors.

“But first,” the pale-eyed war chief explained, “first you must learn patience. Learn all you can while you wait. When it is time, you will ride with me.”

“And bring back scalps?” Jeremiah had asked.

“Yes. Many scalps, Tall One.”

Jeremiah had liked his name from the start, when it was given him by Bridge, his adopted father, many seasons ago. Only rarely did he have reason to recall his Christian name. Fainter still in the recesses of that old life was his family name. He could not remember the last time he had said it with his own tongue, or heard his brother use it. They no longer spoke much English to one another. Having grown so accustomed to using the Comanche, they used the tongue even when by themselves. It had been a long, long time now since anyone was wary and watched them. No longer was anyone concerned that the two boys would run off, try to escape.

How silly that would have been, Tall One thought. The People had rescued the two boys from pain worse than any death a youngster could imagine. While the white marauders and the Mexican comancheros had toyed with and tortured the two brothers, the wandering Kwahadi had given the white children shelter, food, a purpose to learn—had given them family once again.

Their new family replaced that which the freebooters had destroyed more than three years before. It grew harder each day for Tall One to remember the faces of his mother, his sister, harder still to recall the face of his father. Seven years gone now. Tall One had been only four when his father walked away from that tree-ringed valley, marching out of Jeremiah’s life.

“Do you remember Papa?” he had asked of Zeke in those early days among the marauders, the comancheros, and finally here among the Antelope People.

Young Antelope could only shake his head. It made sense that there remained no memories: he was something on the order of two years old when their father marched off to fight the war.

It all seemed so far away, and utterly meaningless now—something that made Tall One ultimately angry at his father. If anyone was to blame for what had happened to the farm and their family, to their life together, if anyone was to blame, Tall One figured, it was their father. Had he been there when the freebooters rode in, things likely would have been different. No one would have gone through the pain they had.

But for the past two winters now, he and Antelope had a new home. Zeke was a runner. At nine summers he was faster than many of the older boys. So it was when the names were chosen, Antelope fit Zeke best. Tall One seemed to grow more and more overnight now, his toes repeatedly punching holes out the end of his moccasins, his leggings shrinking with the coming of each new moon, so it seemed. They had taken to their new life with unsated appetite. And with all they learned about the Kwahadi, the more they forgot of what life they had lived before.

That remained like another lifetime for Tall One. Like it belonged to another person. It was, after all, a story he but dimly remembered: that story about … yes, his name was Jeremiah. Again, his other name came harder. And the face of his father, hardest yet to recall.

For the longest time Tall One was unable to figure out exactly who these people were. He recalled what the Mexicans called the band of warriors on the morning the brothers were captured by the horsemen far out on the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plain of the Texas panhandle country.

The Mexicans called the horsemen Comanche.

Yet the warriors and their women never used that term. Instead, they referred to themselves as The People,
and seemed to have some fuzzy and descending hierarchy for all the rest of the tribes and other-skinned people. Over the seasons Tall One came to discover that there were other bands of The People: Honey-Eaters, the Waterhole or River Pony, and Hill Falls Down, while the Buffalo Followers and Root-Eaters were among the most populous of the bands. But these Antelope, these Kwahadi, seemed to wander wider and farther than all the rest put together. Even so, never did they journey within sight of the white man’s forts nor the territory the white man had established for the Indian nations.

The Antelope People stayed free, hunting buffalo, ranging long distances to kill the infringing white settler and steal his spotted buffalo, his horses and wagon mules. Then they returned to the nomadic villages to dance over the scalps, make love and more babies, sing their songs, and cast new lead bullets before riding out for more attacks on the white man.

“It is a glorious life,” the pale-eyed war chief explained to a large circle of young boys, each of them naked but for his breechclout, painted according to his youthful imagination, and gripping his juvenile spears and bow, war club and crude iron knife. Each one hungrier than the next to be a full-fledged Kwahadi warrior.

“There are only our people out here,” he taught them. “The rest are enemies we must be rid of. Grow strong, my young friends,” the war chief instructed them, striding over to Tall One. “There will come a time when each of you is called to make war on our enemies.”