The Darkest Winter

by William W. Johnstone

  Dawn Wind didn’t say anything. She just kept her head down and trudged on beside her burly captor.

  The whole group entered the canyon. Almost immediately, the biting wind was blocked for the most part, which was a relief. The snow still fell, but it swirled down more gently inside the canyon, which was about a hundred yards wide. Sheer walls, eighty or ninety feet tall, rose to rugged rimrock. Trees and bushes grew in the canyon, sticking up from the snow-covered ground.

  Night would fall early because of the storm and the thick overcast. Shadows had already begun to gather in the canyon. Dawn Wind could still see well enough to pick out the dark shapes looming ahead of them.

  They were cabins, she realized. To her eyes, they looked odd, since she was used to tipis, but she had visited trading posts in the past and had seen the sort of structures favored by the white men. She counted three of the buildings, one set a short distance apart from the other two.

  “That’s mine,” Carnahan said as he pointed to the cabin by itself. “And yours, for the time being, anyway. Who knows, once Wallace is dead, you may decide you want to stay with me and be my woman. I’m not as bad as you probably believe I am, you know. I can be gentle when I want to, especially with such an attractive morsel as yourself.”

  Dawn Wind suppressed another shudder. Was this man actually insane enough to believe that she would ever be with him willingly? That she would give herself to the man who planned to kill her husband?

  Thankfully, it would never come to that. Either Breckinridge would kill Jud Carnahan—or she would.

  The white men herded the other prisoners into one of the two remaining cabins. Some went in there with the captives while the rest took the other cabin. Machitehew and the Blackfeet had made lodges from the brush and took shelter there.

  That left Dawn Wind and Carnahan. He held tightly to her arm while he used his other hand to open the door of his cabin. He pushed her into the dim room and followed her inside, then heeled the door closed behind him.

  Embers still glowed in a crude fireplace on one side of the single room. Carnahan poked them to life and fed in wood shavings that caught fire and curled into tiny flames.

  He worked skillfully at the fire until he had a nice little blaze going. The reddish light from the flames spread and brought with it a faint but welcome warmth.

  “Take a look around and get used to it,” Carnahan told Dawn Wind. “You’re not going to be leaving for a while.”

  * * *

  By the time Breckinridge and his companions reached the Bighorn River, the light was fading rapidly. Gray Bear was not the only skilled tracker in the group, and their consensus was that the men they were following had stayed with the creek this far.

  “But we cannot continue to track them and have any hope of success in the dark,” Gray Bear told Breckinridge, “especially with no moon and stars because of the storm.”

  “Are you sayin’ we ought to camp here and wait for mornin’?” Breckinridge asked. He was tense and tight all over from worry.

  Gray Bear nodded. “This is what we must do,” he said. “Some of the men brought buffalo robes. There are enough for all of us. We will be cold, but we will not freeze.”

  “By tomorrow mornin’, any sign that’s left will be gone,” Breckinridge objected. “The snow and the wind will see to that.”

  “Any tracks are already long gone,” Gray Bear pointed out. “Following the creek was simply a guess based on the direction they were headed the last time they were seen, as well as the terrain. There has been no really good place for them to strike off in a different direction.”

  Breckinridge rubbed his jaw and frowned. “They went either upriver or down,” he said. “I’d bet my hat on that. You think that come mornin’ we might be able to tell which way?”

  “It is possible. But there is no chance in the dark.”

  “Then we make camp,” Breckinridge said with a curt nod.

  Stopping now meant that Dawn Wind would have to spend at least one night with Carnahan, Ralston, and the rest of that no-good bunch. It wouldn’t do her any good, though, for him to wander around aimlessly on a dark, snowy night and get lost, maybe fall in a ravine and break a leg or even his damn fool neck.

  Carnahan wouldn’t hurt her, he told himself. He had already started to consider the possibility that maybe Carnahan had taken Dawn Wind in order to lure Breckinridge after them. Carnahan might be planning a trap of some sort. If that was true, sooner or later he would need Dawn Wind alive. Her safety was the best card Carnahan had to play.

  “Let’s clear off some ground under the trees,” he suggested. “Maybe get a fire goin’. Blast it! I didn’t think to bring any food.”

  “I have enough jerky for both of us,” Swims Like a Fish said. “If it takes us several days to find our quarry, perhaps we can find some rabbits to roast. Or even a sheep.”

  Breckinridge thought about those bighorn sheep they’d been forced to leave behind when they realized something was wrong at the village. Losing them was a shame.

  But there had been much worse losses today, losses that might take a long time to heal, if ever. Bitter Mouth hadn’t said a word since they left the village. He was lost in his sorrow and anger and might never find his way back to the happy-go-lucky man he had been.

  By the time full night had fallen, Breckinridge and the other men were huddled around a tiny fire, buffalo robes wrapped around their shoulders. They gnawed on jerky and downed handfuls of snow and thought their own dark thoughts.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 30

  Under considerably different circumstances, the same thought was going through Dawn Wind’s mind. The fire had warmed up the inside of the cabin quite a bit, but frigid gusts of wind still clawed their way through every gap in the log walls. She shivered now and then as she sat on a crude bench next to an equally rough-hewn table.

  Carnahan brought a blanket over to her and wrapped it around her shoulders. The warmth was welcome, but if he thought she was going to thank him for the gesture, he was going to have a long wait for any such expression of gratitude.

  The only thing she would tell him would be for him to go to hell. She didn’t actually believe in such a place of eternal punishment, but white men did.

  Carnahan had a pot of coffee boiling. Dawn Wind shook her head when he offered her a cup. He brought her some salt pork and a biscuit. She turned her head away from the food.

  “If you’re thinking you’re going to get away from me by starving yourself to death, you can forget about that,” Carnahan said. “It would take too long, for one thing. This business with Wallace will be over before you’d have time to die from not eating. Besides, it would be foolish. Why punish yourself for something that’s not your fault? This war is between me and Wallace. You just happened to get caught in the middle.”

  She didn’t look at him or say anything. After a moment he sighed and went away, leaving the food on the table in front of her. She wanted to snatch it up. Her belly was painfully empty, clenching on itself, and she knew that eating would relieve some of the chill and exhaustion she felt.

  Even more important, the child growing inside her needed sustenance. Dawn Wind was still afraid that the rough treatment she had endured had injured the baby, but she had no way of being sure about that, one way or the other.

  For now, she had to proceed on the assumption that the child was still all right. For that reason, if for no other, she had to take care of herself.

  No matter how much she hated Jud Carnahan and didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of her cooperation.

  Still without looking at him, she picked up the piece of meat and began to gnaw at it. She pretended she didn’t hear his chuckle from the other side of the room.

  The cabin door opened, letting in a blast of cold air and snowflakes, along with Major Ralston.

  “Sentries are posted,” he reported.

  Carnahan turned sharply away from the fire and snapped, �
��Damn it, Ralston, knock before you come in here.”

  A sneer twisted the one-eyed man’s mouth. He said, “I just thought that after the tiring day we’ve all had, you wouldn’t be having any sport with the squaw just yet.”

  Carnahan took a step toward him. The man’s jaw clenched in apparent anger, making his beard jut out even more. For a moment Dawn Wind wondered if the two of them were going to come to blows. If they fought, she might be able to use that to her advantage and escape from the cabin.

  Yes, escape into a canyon where two dozen more cutthroats waited, and beyond that nothing but a dark night filled with falling snow and freezing temperatures.

  As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, she knew that if she fled from her captors tonight, they probably would find her body in the morning, frozen stiff.

  Unless Breckinridge was somewhere nearby, and they found each other in the storm. But that would require a miracle, and Dawn Wind decided that she couldn’t afford to wager her life—and the life of her unborn child—on such a slim chance.

  Carnahan must have made a decision, too—not to force the issue with Ralston. He grunted, shook his head, and said, “I want the men on guard to stay alert. I know it’s cold, but no huddling up and dozing off. For one thing, they might freeze to death if they did, and for another, we can’t rule out the possibility of Wallace finding us. The odds of it are very small, but I don’t want the bastard taking us by surprise.”

  “The men know that,” Ralston said. “We’ll be ready for him when he shows up.” He glanced at Dawn Wind. “I just hope he doesn’t decide the redskin bitch isn’t worth the trouble.”

  She looked away from him. She didn’t want to meet his gaze. His eyes looked too much like a snake’s eyes, full of cold, reptilian malice.

  With a dismissive tone in his voice, Carnahan told the major, “Let me know right away if anything happens.”

  “Of course.” Ralston turned and stalked out of the cabin, closing the door quickly behind him to keep more of the warmth from escaping.

  Carnahan came over to the table. “I saw the way you looked at him,” he said to Dawn Wind. “You’re afraid of him—and well you should be. I’m afraid of no man who draws breath, but if I was going to fear anyone, it might be Gordon Ralston. But you don’t have to worry. I’ll never let him near you.”

  That was how it started, Dawn Wind thought as she stared down at the rough table. Carnahan intended to play her fear of Ralston against her and win her over that way. It wouldn’t do him any good. But at some point she might have to let him think that it was working.

  She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and wondered if there would ever again come a time when she wasn’t cold and tired and hurting.

  * * *

  Under the circumstances, Breckinridge wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t sleep much that night, but the fact that he was basically a large, healthy animal came in handy again. He was able to put aside all the discomfort and worry and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep as he curled up in one of the buffalo robes.

  He woke when the sky was gray with the approach of dawn. It didn’t lighten much as the men hunkered on their heels underneath the trees and gnawed on strips of jerky.

  The snow had stopped sometime during the night, but the clouds were still thick and dark. There might be more snow later, Gray Bear said as he squinted up at the overcast.

  But for now, it was at least light enough to see, so after their meager breakfast the men set out to search for any signs of the raiders. Because they didn’t know which way their quarry had gone, they had to split up into two groups, one heading upstream and the other downstream.

  Breckinridge went upstream with the party led by Gray Bear. The men moved slowly along the riverbank. The snow was almost a foot deep, and it was deeper in the drifts, of course.

  The snow had not only piled up on the branches and on thick clumps of needles, it clung in places to the rough-barked trunks of the pines. Gray Bear studied the trees intently as the searchers passed them. He explained to Breckinridge that a man’s shoulder or arm might brush against a trunk and dislodge some of the snow, leaving a visible mark if someone knew what to look for. The same was true of the low-hanging branches.

  “I don’t know how much trouble Carnahan would go to when it comes to coverin’ his trail,” Breckinridge said. “I’ve got a hunch he wants me to find him so he can settle the score between us. That might be why he took Dawn Wind.”

  Gray Bear nodded solemnly. “If he wants to kill you, it makes sense that he would take what is most precious to you. He probably did not know that you would be away from the village yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I reckon that likely ruined his plans. But he’s smart enough to think of some other way to get back at me. That’s why I think he may be settin’ a trap.”

  “I have seen no sign yet,” Gray Bear said, “but the day has barely started.”

  Time passed, and as it did, Breckinridge felt the frustration growing inside him. Every hour that went by was another hour Dawn Wind spent in the hands of those devils.

  It was difficult to tell because of the gloomy day, but he thought it was late in the morning when they came to another creek angling off from the Bighorn River. Gray Bear raised a hand to signal a halt and then pointed at one of the trees as he said to Breckinridge, “Look there.”

  Breckinridge saw that the snow on the trunk had been disturbed at just about shoulder height. His pulse quickened as he thought about what Gray Bear had said earlier.

  “That means they came this way,” he said.

  “An animal could have brushed against the tree, but I do not believe that is the case,” the older man said. “We should send a runner back to the other men and find out if they have found any sign. If they have not, they should join us.”

  “That means waitin’ here most of the day,” Breckinridge objected.

  “We are too few to rescue the captives alone.”

  Breckinridge seethed inside, but he knew Gray Bear was right. As much as he wanted to go thundering up that creek in search of his enemies, it wasn’t the right play.

  “Maybe I should do some scoutin’ while the rest of you wait for the others,” he suggested.

  Gray Bear shook his head gravely. “Your decision is for you alone to make, Breckinridge, but I would not advise it.”

  Breckinridge muttered some curses under his breath but then nodded.

  “We’ll wait,” he said. “But whoever goes to fetch the others better not waste any time gettin’ there and back.”

  The youngest of the other three warriors in the group, a man called Beaver Tail, volunteered to run back and find the others. He took off at a trot through the snow. Breckinridge knew it would be the middle of the afternoon at the earliest before he returned with the rest of the warriors.

  Waiting had always been one of the hardest things Breckinridge had to do, and he knew it wouldn’t be any easier this time. Being patient went against his nature to start with. His concern over Dawn Wind and the other captives would just make it worse.

  While Beaver Tail was gone, Breckinridge and Gray Bear ventured up the creek to search for more signs, but only for a short distance. Gray Bear found several more places where the snow on trees or rocks had been disturbed and was more convinced than ever that their quarry had gone this way.

  So was Breck. He could almost feel Dawn Wind up there somewhere in the rugged terrain, the danger she was in and his desperate need to rescue her drawing him on.

  One of the men killed a rabbit with an arrow and built a fire to roast it. Breckinridge ate distractedly, even though he wasn’t hungry, because he knew the fresh meat would give him strength and stamina and allow him to continue the search.

  Later, he sat on a rock and tried not to think about what might be happening to Dawn Wind. Gradually he slipped into a reverie that threatened to turn into a stupor.

  His head jerked up sharply, though, when he heard someone calling
in the distance. He looked along the river to see Beaver Tail hurrying toward him, along with Bitter Mouth, Swims Like a Fish, and the rest of the group that had gone downstream.

  Swims Like a Fish clasped arms with Gray Bear and said, “Beaver Tail says you have found sign.”

  Gray Bear turned and waved a hand along the creek. “They went up this stream, I believe. You found nothing?”

  Swims Like a Fish shook his head. “No sign of anything. This is the right way. I can see that, too.”

  “Then what are we waitin’ for?” Breckinridge said. “Let’s go get those varmints!”

  Before it’s too late, he added silently. He wasn’t much of a praying man, but he sent up a fervent hope that Dawn Wind was still all right.

  * * *

  There was no bunk in the cabin, only a bedroll, but that didn’t matter to Dawn Wind because she was accustomed to sleeping on buffalo robes and wouldn’t have been comfortable in an actual bed. The night before, she had taken the blanket Carnahan gave her and curled up in a corner, ignoring his suggestion that she join him in the bedroll.

  For a moment she had thought that he might try to force her into his blankets with him, but then he had glared at her and growled, “Suit yourself.”

  She was relieved by that, but sleep proved to be elusive. As the fire burned down, she lay there staring into the thickening darkness and wondered where Breckinridge was. By now he would be on her trail, more than likely, but she hoped he would hole up somewhere and wait out the night and the worst of the storm.

  Finally, exhaustion claimed her and she dozed off, but her sleep was shallow and unsatisfying. Restless, she woke up several times while Carnahan was moving around, but she saw that he was just feeding more wood into the fire to keep it from going out.

  On each occasion, she fell asleep again. It was early morning before she woke up fully.

  Across the room, Carnahan snored in his bedroll.

  Dawn Wind lifted her head and looked around. She saw a line of faint gray against the door and knew it was growing light outside. Her muscles were so cold and stiff they didn’t want to work at first, but she forced her arms and legs underneath her and lifted herself from the puncheon floor.