Path of the Dead
Page 17
“You think this is some movie, Husband?” he shouted back. “There is nothing to talk about! I have your wife, and you’re going to let me go. Then maybe I will give her back to you! If you don’t, then she will die, and it will be because of you!”
“I can’t let you leave the cabin with her!” Arthur shouted. “This is where it ends!”
Kanesewah glanced at the revolver hanging in its holster from the wooden peg beside him. “It amazes me how you play with your wife’s life! I would have thought she meant more to you than that!”
* * *
Abraham Fasthorse held his position in the trees. After getting to his vantage point and settling into position, he had replaced the warm glove on his right hand with a shooting glove, which left his fingers free to feel the cold. He wrapped his left forearm with his leather bracer, removing any possibility of the bulky winter camo interfering with his arrow’s flight. His breathing was calm and relaxed, his heartbeat steady, as he listened to the shouted conversation. As far as Kanesewah knew, only Arthur stood in his way.
“She does!” Arthur replied. “That’s why this is where you will die!”
Kanesewah pulled the revolver from its holster and stuck it in the front waistband of his pants.
“I have to hand it to you, Husband!” Kanesewah shouted. “I underestimated you! You are a worthy enemy. It’s a shame I will have to kill you!”
Sharon remained still, crouched on the floor near the old man’s body. Her eyes roamed the cabin for anything that would distract him long enough to let her break free and get safely across the snow to Arthur. Getting to the knife block was impossible, which left the coffeepot or the remaining soup sitting on the woodstove: both hot and able to deliver second-degree burns on contact. The lamp on the table was close at hand, too. She could grab it and toss it in the hope of breaking it by Kanesewah and covering him in burning kerosene. But if she missed, he would surely put a bullet in her, and her only hope then would be to die quickly, before fire consumed the cabin. Whatever course of action she chose, she would have to work fast and make every move count.
“Let my wife go and you don’t have to die tonight!” Arthur yelled.
“You don’t understand, Husband! I’m in no mood to bargain, and only one of us is going to die tonight!” Kanesewah glanced back at the woman crouched meekly on the floor, then returned his attention to the cracked door, held open by his foot. “What is it our ancestors used to say? ‘It is a good day to die!’”
Sharon sprang toward the stove. With the towel wrapped around her hand, she grabbed the handle of the bubbling pot and charged toward Kanesewah. He spun as she swung the pot with all the force she could muster. The scalding soup brought an agonizing scream as it plastered his face, causing him to stagger back from the door, waving his arms frantically in front of him. Dropping the rifle to the floor, he swiped at his burning face with one hand while he pulled the .45 from his waistband with the other. “You fucking bitch!” Shots rang out in the cabin, the bullets missing the kerosene lamp and slamming into the hundred-year-old log walls.
* * *
Outside, the gunshots echoed in the clear mountain air. Fasthorse quickly wrapped the strap on his Foldback release around his right wrist and buckled it. He pulled an arrow from the quiver on his bow, nocked it to the string, and held it with the index finger of his left hand while he flicked his right wrist and let the Foldback fly forward. Then, fitting the small hook of the release into the loop on his string, he drew the bow and felt the cams lock into position at the anchor point at the end of his pull. His left arm was steady, and his draw hand was positioned just below his right ear. He could smell the beeswax on the bowstring pressing against his right nostril. His index finger rested at the ready, on top of the release’s small trigger. He slowed his breathing and leveled his shot.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Show your ugly face.”
* * *
The gunfire from the cabin ended abruptly. Though Sharon could hear little above the ringing in her ears, she saw the Colt’s slide stick in the open position. This was her chance. Until Kanesewah could replace the magazine, he was out of rounds.
Quietly as she could, she darted around him as he thumbed the pistol’s release. She saw the empty magazine bounce lightly on the floor as she made a run for the door. She barged out the door and down the porch steps, into the deep snow. Kanesewah came charging out the cabin door after her, firing blindly as he ran across the porch.
Post-holing frantically through the snow, Sharon put four, five, six steps between herself and the pursuing terror before something grabbed her right wrist and jerked her violently backward, reeling her hard against its heaving chest. An arm clasped her torso with all the strength of a hydraulic vise.
* * *
Fasthorse felt the urge to let fly rising steadily within him and resisted it. Arthur had stood as soon as the door opened, resting the .338 on the tree trunk. He acquired his target and put it in the crosshairs, but one thing prevented both men from firing: Sharon’s body had now become her captor’s shield.
* * *
Ak’is made a low, guttural growl. The sound, resonating from somewhere deep within the animal, was unlike any that Arthur had heard before. He glanced down to where the animal had been standing, and looked up just in time to see him vanish into the woods on his right. “Good boy,” he said softly. He looked back down the scope at Kanesewah and Sharon, standing in front of the log cabin, backlit in the open doorway.
Kanesewah held the muzzle of a large pistol pressed firmly against Sharon’s head. “I am not afraid to die, Husband!” he yelled. “But I know she is! Now, come out and show yourself so we can end this!”
Arthur heard Sharon sneer, “I thought you never used a gun. Guns are for cowards, remember?”
Kanesewah pressed the muzzle harder into the soft spot behind her right ear, forcing her head to the left. “Shut up!” he growled. His eyes never left the woods. “Come on, Husband! Show yourself, or I swear I will pull this trigger and you can watch me splatter her brains in the snow!”
* * *
Abraham Fasthorse continued his slow, even breathing, keeping his sight eye still, ready for the fleeting instant when he would pull the trigger and let his arrow fly. He watched as Arthur lowered the .338, resting the buttstock in the snow and the barrel against the snow-covered tree trunk. Watched him take off his PTT harness and step slowly around the tree’s massive base, the snow crunching beneath his feet.
“Here I am,” he said, arms outstretched at his side, palms toward the sky. “Let her go.”
“NO!” Sharon cried.
Kanesewah jerked her back against him. “The dutiful husband,” he said. “The knight in armor willing to sacrifice his own life for his woman’s.” He tilted his head as if witnessing some curious animal behavior, then pulled the gun barrel away from Sharon’s head and leveled it at Arthur. “Touching, but I think I will put a bullet in you anyway and let you watch as I enjoy your woman!”
Arthur continued to step slowly forward, arms still outstretched at his sides. Fasthorse waited. His left arm was beginning to tire, but the stakes had just gone up, and he breathed new life into the muscle fatigue.
His eyes caught movement off to the right as Ak’is materialized at the edge of the darkened forest. An eerie growl rumbled up from his chest and through his bared teeth and fogged the cold air in front of him. The wolf-dog’s ears were laid back against his head, and his hackles stood on end. Fasthorse quickly returned his eye to the peep sight on the bowstring.
Kanesewah turned, distracted by the animal. “Call off the wolf!” he yelled. “Call it off, or she’s dead!”
Abraham Fasthorse knew that this was likely to be his only moment. At this distance, he had just two options: the right eye socket or the right temple—the only spots where an arrow could easily penetrate the human skull. Kanesewah’s instant of distraction by the wolf-dog ga
ve Fasthorse the third of a second needed for the arrow to cross the thirty yards that separated them.
He saw the fletching disappear into the shallow skin of the right temple. He imagined the three razor edges slicing through the medial lobe and the amygdala before emerging out the left side, just in front of the left ear. Kanesewah never knew that anything at all had happened. He simply ceased to exist.
* * *
Sharon felt the warm spatter against the back of her neck and left ear, then felt the arm around her torso relax and drop. His body listed right; then the knees collapsed and it crumpled into the deep snow. The revolver sank into the powder at Sharon’s feet, leaving a gun-shaped impression.
She saw Arthur bounding toward her, his snowshoes throwing up a small blizzard behind him. And she felt his arms surround her, his lips kissing hers ever so softly. Her legs buckled beneath her, and they sank into the snow together as she felt herself dissolve into great, heaving sobs.
Abraham Fasthorse stepped out of the darkness, bow at his side, and made his way to them. He placed his hand on Arthur’s right shoulder and breathed a sigh of exhausted relief as Sharon looked up at him. He smiled back softly and said nothing.
Ak’is pressed himself against her and nuzzled her face, the warm tongue licking the salty tears from her cheeks. She managed to wrap an arm around the huge head and pull it close, feeding on its warmth and burying her face in the thick fur.
Arthur kissed the top of her head and said softly, “And you said he was just my dog.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply and forever grateful to Richard Curtis, agent extraordinaire, who took a chance and believed in my work and my future. Thanks also to Mystery Writers of America and Kier Graff for their guidance while I struggled in the land of the unknowns. And to Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Lauren Maturo, and Gregory Boguslawski of Blackstone Publishing for their enthusiastic welcome into the fold. And, of course, my tremendous thanks to Michael J. Carr, my editor and true north, for helping me give my dream wings.