Behind came the sound of men running through the snow, breathing hard, their heavy clothes rustling.
Yakima glanced at Faith, swinging his right arm wildly. "Goooo!"
Sitting on his butt, he clawed his Colt .44 from the holster beneath his capote and cocked it, then kicked himself around. The two men were heading for him, trudging through the knee-deep snow, holding their rifles straight up and down before them, eager grins on their unshaven faces—one wearing an engineer's pin-striped cap, the other, a high-crowned, snuff-brown Stetson and a bulky buckskin coat.
Brindley and Higgins.
Yakima fired a shot. Brindley screamed and grabbed his right thigh. Higgins dove for cover and Yakima threw himself left as another heavy-caliber slug tore up snow and sod where he'd been sitting.
Yakima rose to his left elbow, setting his jaw against the pain searing his left arm, and extended the revolver in his right hand. The man with the rifle—the bounty hunter, Wit Bardoul—was too far away for the short gun, but he fired two shots, anyway.
One shot plunked into the spindly cedar to Bardoul's left, while the second drilled a rock below him and to the right. The bounty man flinched and scrambled back behind the rocks capping the rise.
Yakima flexed his wounded arm. It felt as though the bullet had gone through without breaking the bone. Cold blood soaked his coat sleeve, adding a fine chill to the burning pain.
He rose to his haunches and looked behind him as the man on Brindley's right, Higgins, fired his Spencer from the cover of a low cedar, the smoke wafting, the bullet whistling over Yakima's shoulder and plunking into the snow twenty feet upslope.
Yakima returned an errant shot, looked around quickly. A shallow coulee lay about twenty feet straight ahead, between him and Bardoul. As Bardoul and Higgins stitched the air around him with whistling lead, Yakima bolted forward, running hard and diving.
What felt like a bee buzzed around his left ear and snapped a sage shrub.
He smacked the bottom of the depression on his right shoulder, pain hammering his left arm. He lifted his head, glanced back to where Higgins hunkered behind the snow-draped cedar.
Brindley was thrashing around in the snow, beating his gloved fists against the ground and cursing loudly.
"Come on out and get it over with, breed!" Bardoul called from the stone barricade in the opposite direction.
Quickly, Yakima thumbed open his six-shooter's loading gate, plucked out the spent cartridges, and replaced them with fresh from his shell belt.
A low rumbling sounded, as if a train were chugging somewhere in the distance.
Ignoring the sound, Yakima stretched his pistol over the depression's lip, thumbing back the hammer and aiming at the gray sombrero and broad, bearded face showing above the snow-tufted rocks capping the hillock.
Bardoul was forty yards away. Adjusting for distance, Yakima fired. The slug ground into the rock below and to the left of the bounty hunter's head, and, cursing, he jerked down behind the natural barricade.
Yakima couldn't lie in the depression forever. He had only so much ammunition. He had to make his move now or shake hands with the devil soon.
As the man behind him fired, blowing up snow at the depression's lip, Yakima leapt to his feet and sprinted toward the hillock.
He raised the revolver, triggered a shot. Bardoul returned fire. Yakima dodged the bullets stitching the air around him, ducking and swerving, leaping cedars, extending the pistol before him, firing and trying to keep the bounty hunter from drawing a steady bead.
He fired four shots, then five.
When he was twenty yards away, his sixth smashed the shooter's rifle with an angry clang. Sparks sizzled along the barrel and over the hammer. Bardoul screamed and tossed the rifle away, as though he'd suddenly found himself holding a striking diamondback.
The rumbling grew louder, the ground shifting and sliding beneath Yakima's moccasins. Out of the corner of his right eye, he could see something large and white seeming to plunge toward the ravine.
Not breaking stride, Yakima turned his head. A wave of snow, dislodged by gunfire from the rock face above the clearing, was rumbling toward him, bending and snapping pines in its wake.
The avalanche seemed to get caught in the back of his mind, a secondary consideration.
First, Thornton's men ...
Fury boiling through him, Yakima pushed off the snowy ground, leaping toward the rock barrier while sliding his broad-bladed bowie knife from its beaded leather sheath on his left hip. As his left foot landed atop the wall, he adjusted his grip on the knife so that the blade angled down.
The snow was like an ocean wave, roaring toward him. He could feel its cold breath, hear the trees groaning and snapping under its weight.
Before him, Bardoul was down on one knee, snarling, his rifle lying several feet away. The bounty hunter was trying to grab his pistol from beneath his buffalo coat, but the long barrel was caught in the curly hide.
Bardoul cursed loudly, enraged eyes snapping wide, silver front teeth flashing inside the gray of his scraggly beard.
Yakima flew toward him.
The snow caught him in midleap. Before him, Bardoul was swept away in a blur, replaced with white. Yakima felt the air driven from his lungs as the snow picked him up and hurled him in the same direction as the bounty hunter.
In less than a second, he was rolling and tumbling amid the snow chunks, beaten and pummeled, feeling like a cork in a raging millrace.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lying flat on his back beneath the leaden snow, Yakima swam up from unconsciousness and immediately felt as though a giant were kneeling on his chest. He opened his eyes. Rather, he tried to open his eyes.
The snow was so heavy, pressing on every inch of his body, that he could hardly lift his eyelids. It didn't make any difference. All he could see through the slits was darkness.
Panic raking over him, he sucked a breath. His lungs expanded only a hair, drawing snow up his nose and down his throat. He choked, tensing, feeling the panic grow, sending a ringing through his ears as his heart pitched like a bucking bronc. He jerked his legs and arms, trying to get some space around him, room to breathe.
But it was like trying to swim through wet adobe. He could move only a couple of inches.
Somewhere above, as though from a long way through water, Faith was calling his name.
Yakima's heart pounded harder. He bunched his lips and funneled his strength into his right leg and right wrist, drawing the wrist up along his thigh, then angling it up and, grinding his foot into the snow for leverage, lifting that arm from the shoulder.
Grunting with the effort, choking at the snow in his mouth and nose, he began raising his arm against the leaden weight above.
"Yakima!" Faith screamed, bounding into the knee-deep snow blanketing the ravine in scalloped drifts and chunks. She whipped her head around at the pine branches protruding here and there like human limbs from the snowslide.
From the rocks fifty yards away, she'd watched the avalanche sweep into the ravine, literally erasing Yakima just as he'd leapt toward the bounty hunter, Wit Bardoul. She'd sloughed through the snow to where she'd last seen the two men, and now she saw only the tops of rocks protruding from the crusty snow chunks.
"Yakima!" she shouted, turning her gaze toward the pines at the ravine's far side, in the direction the snow would have swept him. "Can you hear me?"
She continued calling his name as she trudged through the knee-deep snow, turning her head frantically from right to left, breathing hard. Finally, just as hopelessness began to wash over her, a crackling sound rose behind her.
She spun around, hair flying. Thirty yards away, near the edge of the ravine, a gloved hand protruded from the snow, forming a fist, snow capping the glove. The hand disappeared. A moment later, it reappeared with a crusty rasp, snow flying out from around it.
"Yakima!"
Faith scrambled over and dropped to her knees. She squeezed the fist and bega
n scooping the snow away from around it, trying to gauge where his head would be. She dug deep, scooping the snow toward her until a red-tan shape appeared.
Yakima's face rose from the snow as though from the surface of a lake.
"Hahhhh!" he grunted, bolting up to a sitting position, spitting and blowing snow from his mouth and nose. He tipped his head back and took a deep, grating breath.
Faith leaned toward him, placed her hands on both sides of his head, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. "I thought you were gone!"
He sucked another breath, then another, the hoarseness slowly leaving his voice, his breath evening out as oxygen pumped through him freely once more. She could feel him shaking, saw the blood-soaked left coat sleeve and the small, ragged hole. His legs were still covered with snow. She began brushing it away.
"We have to get you warm. I'll build a fire."
She pulled away, but he grabbed one of her arms. "Where's Bardoul and the others? You seen 'em?"
"No." She looked around, frowning. "They're under the snow somewhere. Best place for 'em." She placed her own hand over his as he clutched her forearm. "Come on, Yakima. You're shaking like a leaf."
"Wait." He released her and stood, snow flying off of him. His wet buckskins clung to him. The snow stuck to his coat and breeches in white patches, already crusting in the cold air.
He began to, slog through the snow, his wet hair flying around his head, the wounded left arm hanging straight down at his side.
He stopped, staring into the trees, then moved down the slight slope toward the edge of the ravine. Faith followed him. When he stopped, she sidled up to his right shoulder, followed his stare.
Ten feet away lay Bardoul. Only his head, neck, and about six inches of chest protruded from the snow. His greasy pewter curls swirled lightly in the breeze and his brown eyes were glassy with death.
His head was tilted against a small pine as if he were just resting there. Yakima's bowie knife protruded from the left side of his neck. Liver-colored blood bathed his neck and shoulder, staining the snow around his head.
Yakima stepped forward and placed his good hand against the man's forehead, bracing himself as he dislodged the bowie knife with his right. It sprang free with a wet sucking sound, blood stringing onto the snow.
Faith felt her stomach roll up, and she turned away sharply, covering her mouth, trying hard not to vomit. Yakima cleaned the knife in the snow, sheathed it, then put his right arm around Faith's shoulders, drawing her to him, leaning unsteadily against her.
She shoved against him, semi-supporting him as he looked across the snowslide glistening wanly in the opalescent light, back toward the trees where he'd first spied Thornton's hostlers. They were probably under the snow somewhere.
He was shaking harder now from the damp chill and blood loss.
"I saw a cabin through the field glasses," he said, urging her forward. His voice shook slightly. "We'll go there... build a fire."
They slogged through the snow, heading for the horse and the mule staring at them from the rocks above the slide.
"A big fire," Yakima said, laughing dryly.
He dropped to a knee and had a hard time, even with Faith's help, climbing out of the snow. When they made it to the paint and the pack mule, they were both breathing hard, Yakima doing all he could to keep from passing out.
Faith helped him onto his horse, then mounted the mule. Slouched in his saddle, Yakima looked around, his vision blurring, but he managed to take a reckoning, then touched his heels to the paint's ribs.
"I think we should stop and build a fire," Faith said as they made their way through a branching ravine.
Barely able to keep his chin above his saddle horn, Yakima shook his head. "Up this high... storms move in fast. Cabin's best."
The cabin he'd seen through the field glasses had looked abandoned, with no smoke ribboning up from the chimney, no stock in the adjoining paddock. As they brought their horses to a halt at the edge of a clearing and stared at the cabin before them, the place indeed looked derelict under the good foot of snow mantling its sod-and-log roof. To the right, fifty feet from the cabin, snow-tufted sluice boxes snaked down to a rocky wash, sections of the contraption collapsed and buried.
"Come on," Yakima grunted.
He gigged the horse forward.
At the front door, he half fell from his saddle, awkwardly shucked his Winchester from the boot, and stepped through a knee-high snowdrift to the front door, glancing with satisfaction at a low woodpile hunkered against the front wall and peppered with bird tracks and mouse droppings.
He nudged the timbered door wide with his rifle barrel and surveyed the sparse furnishings arranged around the earthen floor. The snowdrift continued over the threshold for four feet. Shuffling through it, Yakima looked into the gray shadows, spying a sheet-iron stove and a bed beyond the table formed by four pine stumps and peeled poles strapped together with shrunken rawhide.
"Nice little den," he called over his shoulder, setting the rifle against the wall near the stove and collapsing onto the bed of braided rawhide. He rolled onto his side and hunkered down in his damp coat, shivering. "I'll build a fire in a minute."
He closed his eyes for a lot longer than he'd intended. When he opened them again, the room was warm, almost hot, and Faith sat at the edge of the cot, nudging his right arm and tugging at his soggy four-point capote.
She was calling his name gently. "... have to get you outta these wet clothes, and I gotta have a look at that arm..."
A fire thudded in the stove, making the iron creak and groan. A pan of snow sat atop the stove, sending steam tendrils to the low rafters, from which sod roots hung like spiderwebs. The snowdrift had been swept out of the cabin, the door closed, their gear piled here and there on the floor. The cabin had obviously been occupied by miners—mining gear hung on the walls, and on a shelf by the door were a scale and pestle for rough assays.
The veins had probably pinched out, and the miners had abandoned the place in disgust, leaving their implements for anyone else who wanted to try their luck.
Yakima looked at Faith sitting beside him. She'd removed her own damp clothes. A blanket draped her naked shoulders, partly exposing her full, pale breasts, which swayed and jounced as she tugged at his coat.
He heaved himself up to a sitting position and winced at the pain in his stiff left shoulder as she pulled his coat off his frame. Soon she'd removed his boot moccasins and every stitch of his damp clothes, and he lay naked upon the cot. She rolled him this way and that as she padded the cot with blankets, then draped a fur robe over him. His body felt like cold rubber. He heard his teeth clacking lightly. The robe wrapped him like a cocoon.
"You're a good nursemaid, lady."
She'd peeled the robe back to inspect his arm. "Looks bad."
"Bullet went all the way through. I don't think the bone's broke."
Her breasts were in his face. He could feel the warmth of them, smell the moist, floury fragrance. A nipple grazed his cheek as she leaned close to inspect the gelled blood in the wound.
He lifted his arm and reached a finger to the nipple, but before he could touch it, the fatigue, his inner chill, and the warm cabin conspired to pull him toward the still depths beneath the day's raging current.
He woke a couple of times, barely, when she washed and dressed his wound. She prodded him awake again to spoon some hot canned tomatoes into his mouth, then again when she climbed under the robe and rubbed her warm breasts against his back, the nipples raking him like tender flower buds. She pressed her lips to his back, then snuggled against him.
Faith slept then, too, fatigue washing over her. She hadn't been out long, however, when she opened her eyes.
She lifted her head and stared over Yakima's right shoulder at the front door. She'd forgotten to turn out the lantern and snuff the two candles burning in tin cans. Dim light shuttled shadows to and fro. Yakima snored deeply.
Had his snores awakened her?
Faith slipped quietly out from under the robe and off the bed, adjusting the robe over Yakima once more before pulling on her jeans and slipping into her fir-lined moccasins.
Under the heavy cover, Yakima breathed deeply, sound asleep.
She didn't want to wake him. The horses might only be stirring at a raccoon or some other night creature. Besides, he needed to sleep. It was her turn to take care of him.
She didn't take the time to button her shirt, but donned her coat, securing one button over her chest, then grabbed her carbine. As she headed for the door, she glanced at the lantern. She'd leave it burning, so any possible intruders wouldn't know she was onto them.
Cracking the door, she peeked at the glittering yard, over which a billion twinkling stars arched, then stepped out and quickly, softly latched the door behind her. She stood quietly, looking around and listening, her breath puffing around her head.
Fifty yards ahead, the horse and mule stood like statues inside the corral, staring into the snow-dusted scrub before the cabin. Faith hefted the rifle in her hands, swallowing her fear, then turned to her left, crouched beneath the window, and stole along the cabin's east side.
At the rear of the shanty, she slowly rammed a fresh cartridge into the Winchester's breech, gritting her teeth against the metallic scrape, which sounded as loud as a blacksmith's hammer in the quiet night. Then she tramped through the snow to the cabin's west rear corner.
She looked straight out from the shack. Nothing there but the ruins of an old corral protruding above the snow, a small stone springhouse and, beyond, a low, cedar-studded bluff.
She peered along the cabin's west wall to the front. About halfway between her and the yard, a pile of unsplit pine logs—about five feet high, six feet wide, and covered with a good foot of pristine snow—abutted the cabin wall. Faith bent low and ran to the pile, doffed her hat, and edged a look over the top, hearing the soft scratching of a mouse somewhere within the loosely piled logs.
The Lonely Breed : A Western Fiction Classic (Yakima Henry Book 1) Page 18
