Into the Wind_A Love Story

by Jaclyn M. Hawkes

  The horse beneath him felt somehow familiar and as he puzzled over that, he heard the sound of gunshots off to his left. He looked up to see muzzle blasts and realized that they weren’t pointed at him and the girl. Then he recognized the sound of Lars’ Winchester. The horses behind them veered off the trail and Lije smiled in the dark in spite of himself as he whispered, “Lars. Thank you, brother. Now get out of there.”

  He prayed nonstop as he heard shots returned and then heard the sound of a bullet whistling past his own head as they ran pell mell through the blackness. Of a sudden, both horses hesitated, and then Lije saw the shine of water. The girl almost went over the steel dust’s shoulder as it slowed before leaping into the stream in front of them and beginning to splash through. The stream was deep and even Lije was jostled as the horse beneath him took a sudden drop of two or three feet before plunging across in two strides and then scrambling back out the other side.

  The girl was clinging to the saddle horn of the stallion. She’d lost the shirt he’d covered her head with and her blonde hair was pale in the darkness as it blew out behind her. One shoulder glowed pale as well where her dress had been torn and Lije silently pleaded that she’d be able to hang on even though she was obviously struggling.

  Trying to gauge where they were in the dark, he rode ahead of the stallion and then turned off toward the west, knowing that the other horse would follow him. He had to get into those hills if he had any hope of losing the Indians behind them.

  When the ground began to rise up toward the foothills, Lije abruptly pulled up beside a steep bank and then waved her on when she would have stopped with him. Turning back, he jerked a rifle from the scabbard and quickly levered half a dozen shots toward the sounds of pursuit. Then he shoved the gun back into the scabbard and turned his horse back toward where she had gone, swearing at the burn of a bullet that seared across the point of his left shoulder. That was a close one. Too close, although the sounds of pursuit had definitely become further and fewer than they had been.

  The horse under him automatically followed the girl and he silently praised her when he realized she was indeed taking a trail that led up into the mountains on the west side of Grass Valley. He knew from the way that brave had looked at her that afternoon, that he would follow her to the death, but at least they had a better chance of losing him in the mountains than down on that bare, flat grass.

  Somewhere off to the left lightning flashed, illuminating her riding there in front of him and he suddenly realized the wind had picked up around them and was blowing with a vengeance. He glanced up at the mountains before them and was almost glad he was momentarily blinded. These mountains were steep and incredibly rugged. A thunderstorm up here would be hellacious. Still, that was preferable to having left the girl back there in the hands of those Utes. At least their horses were good trail horses, although even the best trail horses could panic in a mess like this.

  Another lightning bolt crashed off to the left again and this time he saw the tree it hit instantly burst into flames. Sucking in a breath, he tried to gauge if there was rain coming any time soon. It didn’t feel like rain. It felt like oppressive, hot, suffocating dry lightning that could turn this tinder dry mountain into a raging inferno in seconds in wind like this.

  The horse he was riding plunged up an incline and he could feel it starting to heave for breath beneath him. He was a big man and it wouldn’t take long to kill a horse running up a hill like this. They had to find a way to lose the Indians behind them or else they were going to be afoot. He glanced back and at that moment lightning flashed. He saw only two pursuers, but they were close. They were way too close.

  Pulling his six shooter, he snapped a shot at them and then another and heard a horse squeal in fright. Then there was only the sound of one horse behind him, but that one was shooting back. Lije snapped another shot and then turned back around to try to help his horse up the ever steepening trail, reloading as he went.

  In front of him, the girl was so close that his own horse was nearly stepping on the heels of hers and he heard her gasp as another shot sounded. From the sound she made, he knew it hadn’t just been a nervous reaction to the sound of the gunshot. She’d been hit.

  Wheeling his horse, he ripped his rifle out of the scabbard again and lifted it to his shoulder, steadying for a shot in spite of the bullets that were raining around him from the Indian. Lije squeezed off the shot and saw the brave go off his horse, but in the same instant, he realized there was another Indian coming up behind that one again.

  The unseated brave began to shoot toward them once more as Lije steadied for another shot. He took the afoot Indian first and this time he knew that particular brave wouldn’t be shooting anymore.

  Shifting the gun toward the oncoming horseman, he fired and then levered another shot into the chamber and fired again. The brave tumbled backward off his mount’s rump into the blackness, and Lije whirled his horse back toward the west and went after the girl, wondering how badly she’d been hit. How long would she be able to cling to her horse and ride like this through such a wild storm on this perilous trail? It was impossible to see anything in the inky blackness after the blinding strikes.

  Moments later, lightning flashed again, but now he could see nothing of a horse and rider in the trees or on the uneven trail, nor hear anything of her. He let his horse have its head, knowing it would follow the steel dust. Still, after several minutes, he heard and saw nothing but wind and his horse heaving for breath. He pulled up short, wondering what had become of the girl and the stallion.

  Finally, he heard the stallion and started on, but at almost the same instant, lightning flashed again, close and to their right. Both horses spooked just as he saw the girl. The steel dust shied to the left, away from the flashing lightning and instant crash of thunder. She lost her seat and went flying off the right side of the stallion and landed in a heap in the rocks beside the trail and was still. Lije’s horse shied as well and he pulled it around with an iron hand. The brush on the hillside above the trail on the right exploded into a wall of flame that swirled in the lashing wind.

  Racing to the fallen girl, Lije slid off, scooped her up out of the rocks and was back on the horse in only a few seconds. The frightened beast needed no urging to turn from the fire and begin racing back up the trail after the panicked, riderless stud. Lije could feel his horse heaving to breathe and he cursed the fact that they were both now on the smaller horse. The narrow canyon they were riding up seemed to have become a living tunnel of flame.

  The heat that had been oppressive became suffocating and Lije felt a lance of fear as he looked back over his shoulder. The swirling winds seemed to whip the flames into an inferno that raged in every direction. Fear of pursuit was nothing compared to the terror of that searing red-orange wall.

  The horse beneath him began to shake as it struggled to leap up the trail carrying double and he glanced down at the girl in his arms. She was either knocked out or dead and he had no chance to even check which it was as they raced for their lives up the brushy canyon. In the dark and the billowing smoke he couldn’t tell what was ahead past the eerie dance of the light from the possessed flame. He prayed yet again for a way to escape the inferno. They had to get off this trail or the fire would overtake them within moments.

  The girl in his arms began to cough and though he knew it was because she couldn’t breathe in the thickening smoke, he was still incredibly grateful to realize she was at least alive. Ahead he saw a shadow in the smoke and then the steel dust materialized out of the billowing wraith. As Lije watched, the huge stallion suddenly veered off to the left of the trail. As his horse followed it, Lije drew a huge cleansing breath of clearer air as the two horses went up an intersecting draw that led directly into the wind and away from the fire.

  Once out of the smoke, the two horses slowed to an agonizing walk and Lije reached to pat the poor beast that bore them, knowing each step was now a gargantuan effort. If they hadn’t been in
the bottom of a steep and brushy little ravine, he would have gotten down and switched horses or even walked. As it was, it was more vital to get this girl away to somewhere safe where he could finally check on her injuries than to save the struggling horse.

  As the horse fought for each shaky step, Lije placed one hand on the girl’s head and gave her a priesthood blessing and then continued to pray. He was incredibly grateful that he’d come to the Paiute encampment today.

  After what seemed like hours, the draw finally topped out onto a ridge. Lije carefully dismounted and then stood with the girl in his arms as he leaned against the steel dust. Lightning was flashing all around them now, but the horses were exhausted and hardly even flinched as Lije rested for a moment and tried to pull her blouse back over her shoulder and chest where it had been torn free.

  He would have simply put her down and rested for longer, but the fire was still frighteningly close, and the storm was gaining fury. The roiling black cloud bank the lightning revealed finally spurred him into mounting the steel dust and moving on. They had to find shelter.

  Once mounted, Lije pointed the stallion toward a fold in the hills in front of them, hoping to find something they could shelter under or beside that would keep them out of the wind and rain that was sure to come. Wondering what had become of Lars, he hoped with all of his heart that he had gotten away. Lije knew without that second horse and Lars’ help, he and the girl would have been caught for sure.

  After a lengthy search, at the very apex of the fold in the hill, Lije found what he’d been hoping for. There was a space behind a huge boulder with an overhang that had room enough even to fit the horses’ heads into it. Lije tiredly rode into it and was grateful to find that the roar of the wind was muted in the depth of the void.

  Dismounting, he gently laid the girl to the side of the space, checked to make sure she wasn’t in danger of bleeding to death immediately, tied the exhausted horses to an exposed tree root and then ventured back out into the wind to find wood for a fire. Once that rain hit, it was going to get cold, but everything on this mountain was going to be soaking wet.

  With several huge armfuls of wood retrieved, he started a fire, unsaddled the horses, laid both saddle blankets out and then dug into the pack on the back of his saddle for his bedroll. Gently, he lifted the still unconscious girl onto a softer bed.

  Knowing that she’d been shot somewhere, he stretched her out and tried to figure out where she was bleeding. The sage green riding habit she wore had been torn when he’d first seen her with the Indian brave that afternoon, but tonight it was literally tattered and he worried that all of this damage hadn’t happened just in their mad flight through the dark. He desperately hoped some horrible thing hadn’t happened to her at the hands of the Utes before he’d gotten back to her.

  There were spots of blood over the whole of it and although he was trying to be respectful of her privacy, he ultimately gave up and simply dug in his saddle bag for his spare shirt. Removing the remnants of her blouse, he gently wrapped the clean shirt around her.

  The bullet had hit her on her back, somewhat under her arm and Lije was horrified to realize it hadn’t exited. The bullet hole was a bloody mess and he couldn’t tell which direction the bullet had traveled. He looked at her beautiful, pallid face laying there in the firelight and desperately hoped she was going to live after getting away from her captors. At least she seemed to be able to breathe okay. If the bullet had hit a vital organ, she would have been in even worse shape.

  The rain finally hit with a roar of wind and then a crash of thunder that made her jump, even out cold. Lije pulled a blanket close around her and then hesitantly put a finger tip inside the hole to try to tell which way the bullet had gone. It appeared to be angled almost to the side and he carefully felt where he thought it might have been headed and realized the bullet was there under her arm, in the muscle that covered her ribs.

  He made the discovery and then grimaced, knowing it had to come out of there and wondering if it could wait until he could get her to a doctor or if he was going to have to be the one to take it out. For now, he simply pushed a folded bandana tight against it and held it until the bleeding stopped.

  The oppressive heat left the air almost instantly with the rain. It became uncomfortably cool and Lije worried about her chilling. He pulled her closer to the fire and then covered her with the blanket as he continued to work over her. At least the rain provided water to clean her up with. It took only about a minute to fill his tin cup when he set it out under a rivulet running off the boulder.

  It was deep in the night before he’d finally gotten most of the blood washed off and checked her for other injuries. She had bruises on her face, the side of her mouth was cut and her right hand was frightfully scraped, its little finger swollen and black and blue. She had a deep cut in the side of her head, probably from her fall into the rocks, that took nearly half an hour to get to stop bleeding.

  When he finally took her boots off, her right ankle was also swollen and bruising and Lije winced, knowing that that injury was very possibly his own fault. That may have been what had hurt her as he’d pulled her along to get away into the dark.

  The one thing that was encouraging about her condition was that her underclothing appeared to be relatively unscathed compared to the shape her dress was in. He hoped desperately that that was an indication that the Utes hadn’t hurt her more than the obvious injuries she had. The tales of what the natives did to captive women were horrible.

  The rain pounded the mountain woodland, but the little hollow behind the house sized rock stayed remarkably dry as the wind continued to swirl. The sound of the rain was actually wonderfully comforting. Lije knew that although he was holed up on the side of a mountain with a gravely injured girl, at least that driving rain was washing out the tracks that would lead the Utes right to them.

  He gingerly bathed the girl’s wounds with water he’d heated in his tin cup, bandaged what he could and then carefully splinted her little finger with a stick, knowing it would be much more painful to do it when she finally woke up. If she ever did. She was in terribly rough shape, especially for how elegant the now tattered riding habit she’d been wearing was.

  He fingered the gray green cloth and wondered where she had come from. What in the world was a finely dressed Danish girl doing out in the middle of the desert in southern Utah Territory with the Indians still restless from the Black Hawk War? And where were the others she’d been with? He hoped there were no more strikingly beautiful women held captive in some other place on this violently stormy night.

  Feeling unbelievably tired, Lije chewed on a piece of venison jerky and then rinsed out his tin cup and drank rain water from it. It had turned out to be a long day. A much longer day than he’d originally planned for, and he’d planned for a long one.

  Sitting down beside the girl and the fire, he slipped off his boots, set his gun close by and then sighed. Even tired, the horses would warn him if there was someone or something about. He prayed, checked the girl one last time, then tucked the blankets snuggly around her and laid down close enough that he could check on her again in the night. That was the nice thing about God. He was always there, even if you were to Hades and gone back up in the mountains in the middle of a slashing storm.

  Lije turned onto his side toward her with another tired sigh, feeling for some reason as if the storm had tucked them into a safe cocoon. He really hoped Lars had made it away okay.

  White Stone felt the rain start coming down and looked up at it briefly and then looked down at the bloody hole in his side. Raising his arms to the sky, he gave a yell of anger to the deluge that had just let loose upon his stringy, black head. What manner of medicine was this? The most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on gone in not just a raging fire, but then rain! And him shot in the process. All of the Gods must be angry with him this day.

  And to one warrior. A single warrior with hair almost the same color as hers had taken her from
right under his very nose. The big golden warrior with the great horse. White Stone should never have been so superior to the others of his prize as they’d been laughing and eating in the wickiup tonight. He should have tied her up more securely and maybe right inside with them all. But then he remembered the way the others had been looking at her as well and decided that no, tying her in their midst would have been bad medicine. Never had he seen such hair.

  He’d been watching that crazy wagon train of people who had acted so strangely out in the desert. He’d never seen the kinds of things they’d carried in those wagons. And so poorly guarded were they. The four women had been as if they were inviting his people to take them. Only the dirty white man had tried first.

  White Stone had been watching when the dirty man had made his move toward the woman with the golden hair. The dirty man had simply shot the fancy man who spoke so strangely and reached out and taken hold of the girl, only she had been ready for him. As he had reached for her, she had reached into his holster for the same gun he’d shot the fancy man with. She shot the dirty one in the belly as he’d tried to subdue her and then threw the gun away.

  The dirty man had been completely shocked and looked down at his belly. Then he struck the woman a mighty blow across the face, sending her shining hair cascading down from its holdings like a silken waterfall before the dirty man had fallen himself, cursing the beautiful golden girl bitterly.

  The dirty man’s friends had looked down at the cursing man and before they had a chance to look back up, the other fancy man had a gun on them all—a pretty, polished gun that had appeared out of nowhere. The dirties had been afraid and let the fancy man help the women onto horses. They had gotten clear out of their camp while the fancy man stood there with his gun on the others.