Flight of the Hawk: The River
Page 24
Tylor threw the pole at Fenway—ran for all he was worth along the passé avant. He heard the pole’s impact, and McKeever’s bulk crashed on the deck as he tripped on the length of wood. Tylor pulled his short blade from his belt, took a deep breath, and let the adrenaline surge in his frightened body.
“Damn ye, laddie!” McKeever grunted under his breath. He staggered to his feet, his heavy weight pounding forward. Tylor crouched behind the corner of the cargo box—blade ready in his trembling hand as McKeever burst around the corner. Tylor leapt, slashed, and McKeever jumped back avoiding the sharp blade.
Tylor ducked as the heavy ax swished over his head to bite into the cargo box with a loud thump.
Tylor scrambled away as McKeever pulled the ax loose.
McKeever swung down. Tylor danced to one side, felt the rush of air as the ax hissed by his ear. McKeever caught the stroke short, and flailed the ax back and forth as if it were a switch. In the faint moonlight, Tylor could see the man’s teeth gleaming behind the beard.
“Ye’ve no place t’ run, laddie,” McKeever hissed. “With one stroke I’ll sever yer head, an’ be two thousand dollars richer t’ boot!”
McKeever leapt forward, the ax swinging in a deadly arc.
Tylor threw himself back, caught a heel, and tripped over the coiled cordelle as the ax laid open the front of his shirt and buried itself in the deck. Another couple of inches higher, and back, and he’d have been choking on his own blood.
McKeever wrenched the ax free as Tylor rolled forward—and thrust with his blade. Cold steel bit through McKeever’s leather pants and into the thick corded muscle beneath. The man hissed a curse, and Tylor scrambled to his feet, running for the passé avant.
McKeever let out a low moan as he pounded down the deck after him. Damn that man was fast. Tylor felt the thick fingers grab a handful of shirt. He could sense the ax being raised as McKeever hauled him to a stop. Death but seconds away, John Tylor heard himself cry out.
“Aye, laddie, ye’re dyin’ now,” McKeever whispered in the dark behind him. “I love this part. ’Tis god-like! Feel yer life in me hand, John Tylor? ’Tis mine now. Mine ferever!”
As McKeever tensed to bring the ax whipping down, Tylor threw himself out over the water, kicked hard against the cargo box, and toppled them both over the side.
He sucked a lungful of air before they hit the cold water. The flat of the ax head banged off his head—striking a shower of lights behind his eyes. Frantic, dazed, Tylor jabbed his knife out behind him and felt it catch in something. While bubbles and blackness rushed around his ears, he sawed his knife and felt the thick fingers come loose.
Coughing and thrashing, he came to the surface, looked out over the black water, and sawPolly as the current carried him past the boat’s hull. He struck out for shore only to see McKeever’s head pop up in front of him. Tylor dove.
A thick hand grabbed his leg. Tylor panicked and kicked. McKeever, relentless as the Devil, kept his hold.
Tylor’s head came up, and he glimpsed the ax as it raised. He kicked again, splashing as he struggled, felt his heel plant in McKeever’s face. Then he was underwater, surrounded by the curling blackness and the icy cold. The ax made an odd chug sound as it chopped into the water next to him. The blade missed, but the handle struck his arm. Hard. Knocked the knife from his grip.
He lost feeling below the shoulder.
He kicked away, the rush of fear filling him, energizing his muscles as he stroked for mid-river, his arm numbly responding. He shot a quick look behind to see McKeever—ax gone—swimming strongly, closing the gap.
“So, I’ll drown ye, wi’ me bare hands, laddie!” McKeever gritted through clenched teeth.
Tylor whimpered as he struggled against the leaden feeling in his limbs and fought his waterlogged clothing. He shot another look over his shoulder. McKeever was reaching out, the hand black against the night sky.
It came rolling out of the blackness, a twirling waterwheel of uprooted cottonwood. The black branches lifted and fell, dripping water as they spun and cavorted with the current. Tylor had a momentary image of splintered branches as they arched over his head and dropped, pulling him under, snagging his clothing. He was dashed down into the cold darkness, only to be raised again; then he was lifted out of the icy water, gagging, panting, gasping for breath as he coughed.
McKeever was beside him—his face a cast of terror. The Scot tried to orient himself, to determine what had happened.
Then they were dragged under by the rolling tree again, sucked into wet blackness in a surge of bubbles as their legs and arms were flailed by bending branches.
Heart pounding in fear, Tylor grabbed tight to a branch with his good hand, found a reassuring stability in the physical hold he had on the unforgiving wood. For what seemed forever, he fought his panic; then they rose again. The branch he held broke free in his iron fingers. As he hacked and spit, he saw McKeever clinging, paralyzed, beside him.
In one desperate, fear-driven, effort, Tylor raised the broken stub of a branch high—water cascading down his arm—and clubbed the heavy stub of wood down on Fenway McKeever’s head.
Tylor tore loose from the bobbing tree and thrashed out into the current. Fighting for air, he watched the giant tree rolling before him. He saw McKeever’s limp body rise up among the splintered branches, hang, and then sag as he was carried aloft and forward; then the dark form was plunged into the depths again.
Feebly, Tylor stroked his way toward shore. Exhausted, he pulled his body through the mud and onto the bank. There, he lay gasping. In the faint moonlight, the uprooted tree spun downstream in the black water—bearing its grisly burden.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
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The sun had barely illuminated the eastern horizon as Tylor shivered in the cold air. A storm had passed through just before dawn, dropping rain and hail. He pulled the sturdy sorrel horse up and looked back. Against the orange-pink of the fall sky, the wooded Missouri’s bottoms appeared black. A shimmering line of silver marked the river. Lights were already flickering where the morning fires were springing up. The new buildings were visibile only as dark squares. The Polly and the little boat, snugged safely to shore, could be seen as mere shadows.
His horse shook its head and stamped; the pack animal—tail-hitched behind—looked wistfully back at the camp they’d just left behind.
“Damn!” Tylor whispered, and rubbed his sore arm. He already had one hell of a nasty blue-black bruise. He straightened, kicked his horse ahead, and trotted west toward the rising uplands. The dark-purple horizon seemed forever distant across the rippling brown plain. From out of the west, the wind blew, pungent with the odor of grass and rain-damp soil.
“Hard to believe it’s all worked out,” Tylor mused to the morning. “Got the boats tied up tight again. Lisa’s set to tackle his problems with the Gros Ventre. That weaselly skunk McKeever’s gone to meet his maker. Poor old Andy Jackson’s missed his last chance to stretch my neck. As to Joshua Gregg, well, as the fur hunters say, ‘that coon’s plumb outa luck.’ ”
Where Will Cunningham rode beside Tylor, he laughed, and whooped at the top of his lungs, “Hooraw for freedom, boys!”
The bay the Kentucky hunter was riding swiveled an ear and snorted. Behind him, the rest of his animals followed, each bearing a pack.
“So,” Tylor declared, “somewhere down there to the southwest we’re going to find Indians, you say.”
“Reckon so,” Cunningham agreed.
“Well, Mr. Cunningham, let’s find some good ones we can trade with. I have to figure out how to be worth two thousand dollars to the booshway.” As he said it, he remembered the dream, and the flight of the hawk.
Gray Bear hunched on the weathered sandstone outcrop and nodded to himself as a war party of Arapaho followed the false trail he’d laid to the cottonwood-choked stream bed. A triumphant smile twitched his lips as the Dog Eaters splashed into the shallow water and bucked the current to the oth
er side, spreading out among the trees, searching for sign.
Gray Bear rolled over on his back to look up at the blue morning sky. The broken, summer-tan land around him was dotted with a curious kind of cedar. Though the country looked flat and without feature, the grassland was rough enough to give his weary little band of Shoshoni a feeling of security missing in the rolling open plains they’d traversed.
Yesterday, they’d killed three more calves to add to their growing stack. The women had already fleshed them, and rolled the hides in ash, brains, and urine. As they proceeded, they would continue the tanning process. The meat would keep their bellies full for a couple of days as would the chokecherries and buffaloberries that were ripening.
A new spirit rode with his little band. It was good; the vision was stronger. Gray Bear had dreamed of the brown-haired man again last night. He was just over the horizon somewhere. The feeling was strong in his bones. They would find the Taipo.
Gray Bear sighed and sat up, grabbing his ankles and stretching his back. This group of Arapaho had been particularly pesky, driving Gray Bear’s band far north of his planned march. As ignorant as he was of the country, even he knew this was way beyond Arapaho range, that these lands were prowled by the Sioux, the Gros Ventre, and Mandan.
Singing Lark appeared, slithering down the slope on her belly as if she were a snake to avoid being seen by the Arapaho. She had feathery seeds stuck in her hair, and her hunting shirt bore grass stains, mud splotches, and sweat stains. She was grinning, her large white teeth prominent behind her sun-brown lips.
“They took the bait,” she said with a chuckle. “This time, they’ve lost us for good.”
“I think we’re close,” he told her, and winked. “I can feel it.”
There, somewhere, over the horizon, was where they would find the Taipo traders. There they would find a source for the thunder sticks. Where the sun now rose, they would find a new day for the people.
Gray Bear sang a soft medicine song as he wormed his way back over the ridge and out of sight. Then he trotted back to his horse, his soul filled with hope and certainty. He sensed the trader coming. The power was shifting, and somehow he knew that the Newe were not a dying people. Something was about to change. Knowing he would see it, participate in it, left him humbled.
High overhead, two red-tailed hawks circled each other before sailing gracefully to the east.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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W. Michael Gear is a New York Times, USA Today, and international best-selling author with over 17 million copies in print worldwide. His books have been translated into 29 languages. A Spur Award winning author, his western fiction has been taught in university courses in Western literature and anthropology. Gear lives on a remote Wyoming ranch where he raises trophy-winning bison with his wife—author Kathleen O’Neal Gear—two shelties, and a flock of wild turkeys.
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