Wings of the Hawk

by Charles G. West

  The shock of LaPorte’s words exploded inside Trace’s head. He had always assumed that his father’s death was the result of bad luck—a chance meeting with a Blackfoot war party. LaPorte’s taunting boasts were sufficient to light a fuse in the young boy’s mind. Blinded by the rage that suddenly overflowed within him, Trace rushed headlong into the sneering giant. Although this was the result LaPorte had hoped for when he baited the boy, Trace was quicker than the huge man anticipated. He felt the sting of Trace’s knife as it split the skin of his abdomen, searing its way up under his ribs.

  Again LaPorte roared. This time he feared he might be mortally wounded. But like the grizzly he resembled, his wound only made him more dangerous. Cursing and grunting, he clamped Trace in a deadly vice, crushing the air out of the boy’s lungs. Trace fought to escape the powerful arms, but he was helpless against the wounded man’s grip.

  “Damn you,” LaPorte gasped, spitting bloody foam with each word, “you may have kilt me, but I’m takin’ you to hell with me.”

  He rolled Trace over, pinning him to the ground. Trace tried to pull his knife out of LaPorte’s ribs but his arms were pinned beneath him, trapped by the big man’s massive weight. His face contorted with the pain from the knife buried under his chest, LaPorte raised his knife hand to deliver the killing thrust. Driven by pure determination and sinewy strength, Trace wrestled one arm free and caught LaPorte’s wrist, blocking the brute’s attack.

  For the moment, they were at a desperate stalemate. Half on his side and crushed under LaPorte’s weight, Trace was unable to free his other arm. He strained against LaPorte’s wrist, the knife blade only inches from his chest, while LaPorte clamped down on his throat with his other hand—a hand like a vise that gripped tighter and tighter until Trace could no longer breathe. Still he fought to hold on, but the horribly contorted face of LaPorte began to blur and Trace knew he was close to losing consciousness.

  Seconds before sliding into total darkness, Trace heard the sound of a hollow drum, followed by a loud grunt from his assailant. Again the dull thud of the drum, and suddenly the hand clamped around his throat released and LaPorte rolled over on the ground. Confused and gasping for breath, Trace rolled away from LaPorte’s body and tried to get to his feet, but he sank back to one knee, too weak to stand. His head was still spinning, and he was unable to grasp what had taken place. When his head cleared a bit, he saw a shadowy form standing over LaPorte’s body, holding a large tree limb. It was the Snake girl.

  Then he was startled to hear someone running through the brush behind the girl, and Frank’s voice came through the darkness. “Are you all right, Trace?”

  “I guess so,” Trace replied, his voice hoarse as he rubbed his aching throat. He got to his feet and approached the girl, who was still holding the tree limb in her hand and talking excitedly. His knowledge of the Snake dialect was sketchy, so he relied on sign language to convey his thanks, signing it several times, but she gave no indication that she understood. When she continued to chatter frantically, Trace turned to Frank for help. “What’s she trying to tell me?”

  Frank, still panting from his sprint through the bushes, took a moment to catch his breath. “Dammit, I’m too old to be running like that.” He held his hand up to quiet the distraught Snake girl. Turning back to Trace, he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t git here sooner, boy. I shoulda knowed there was somethin’ queer about this little meetin’.” He said a few words to the girl in her tongue, then translated her excited chattering for Trace. “She says she didn’t mean you no harm. LaPorte told her daddy that he wanted to play a joke on a friend of his’n. All she was s’posed to do was tell you to meet her in the woods, and he would give her some beads and vermilion, and her daddy some whiskey.”

  “You mean she wasn’t gonna be here at all?” Trace asked.

  “Reckon not.” Frank exchanged some more words with the girl, who had calmed down by this time. “She says she decided to sneak out and see the joke played on you, and when she come up through the woods, she seen LaPorte ’bout to murder you.”

  Trace considered Frank’s words for a few moments, then asked, “How do you say thank you in Snake?” Frank pronounced the words, and Trace turned to the girl and repeated them. She nodded and hung her head shyly. “Ask her name,” Trace said.

  “Her name is Blue Water,” Frank translated. “Says her daddy’s name is Broken Arm.”

  “Blue Water,” Trace repeated. “I owe her my life.”

  “I reckon,” Frank agreed, “’cause that big son of a bitch was damn shore about to put you under. And I was a step too late to help you.” He glanced at the Snake girl and then back at Trace. “I got to thinkin’ about you traipsin’ off in the dark like a lovesick buffalo, and that lowdown skunk just lookin’ to catch you away from camp.”

  “He killed my pa,” Trace said, his voice low, barely above a whisper. “He was with that bunch of Blackfeet that jumped Pa and Henry Brown Bear.” He looked over at the huge body for a moment, thinking how close he had come to death, realizing what a valuable lesson he had learned that day. No matter what might be said or done to him in the future, he promised himself he would never again lose his head in a fight. It had almost cost him his life this time. His thoughts were interrupted by the touch of Blue Water’s hand on his arm.

  “I must go now. I’m glad you were not killed,” she said, as Frank translated. She turned to leave, but then paused. “Do you have a wife?”

  Frank answered her, and she nodded and smiled before disappearing quickly into the shadows. When she had gone, he translated the last bit of conversation for Trace. “What did she wanna know that for?” Trace asked.

  “I don’t know, but if I was to guess, I’d say you ain’t seen the last of that little gal.” He reached down and grabbed LaPorte’s hands. “Come on, let’s drag this damn buffalo out in the open so’s we can get a look at him.”

  “What are we gonna do with him?” Trace asked. He was unsure whether or not they should report his death to someone in the camp.

  Frank looked with some amusement at the boy. “Why, hell, whadaya wanna do with him? Give him a funeral? We could notify his next of kin, but I don’t know how to git in touch with the particular family of polecats he come from. Now, grab his other arm.”

  Frank propped his rifle against a tree, then reached down to take hold of LaPorte’s arm. Suddenly the huge renegade’s hand lashed out like a striking rattlesnake, too fast for Frank to react. Recoiling from the sudden flash of the blade in the moonlight, Trace was stunned to see the knife buried deep in Frank’s belly. In that horrible instant that seemed frozen in time, Trace’s brain recorded a scene that he would never forget. Frank, doubled over in pain, clutching at air as he crumpled to the ground—the great bearlike monster seemingly roaring back from the dead, the side of his face covered with blood—and Trace’s knife still embedded under his ribs, as he reached for Trace’s throat.

  Caught in the monster’s crushing grip for the second time, Trace fought for his life, his hands the only weapon left to him. Unable to break LaPorte’s death grip on his windpipe, Trace struggled to get a hand on the knife buried in the man’s abdomen, but LaPorte managed to hold him away from it. Straining face to face, Trace looked into LaPorte’s searing eyes—wild and glazed—as if the man was already gazing into hell. Trace had the desperate feeling that he was fighting a man already dead, a demon determined to take him to hell with him. Summoning strength from deep within, Trace fought back, equally determined to prevail. Gradually he forced LaPorte’s arms back until he could almost reach the handle of the knife protruding from the monster’s gut. Just as his fingertips brushed the butt of the knife, LaPorte, in one final act of defiance, called upon all of his brute power, pushing Trace back again, releasing one hand, and ripping the knife out of his abdomen. Roaring with pain and anger, he raised the bloody knife and struck downward toward Trace’s back.

  Inches from Trace’s shirt, the blade was suddenly frozen as LaPorte’s wr
ist was seized, stopped cold in Frank Brown’s hand, and held there immobile. “I’ve had about enough of you,” Frank muttered between clenched teeth. With his other hand, he stuck the barrel of his pistol against LaPorte’s eye and pulled the trigger.

  Trace wrenched free of the dead man’s grip and fell back onto the ground, LaPorte’s blood spattered across his face. Coughing as he strained to catch his breath, he hurried to Frank’s side. Frank, having expended the last of his strength to dispatch LaPorte to hell, sank back exhausted. “I think the bastard kilt me,” he said with great effort, as Trace frantically pulled the bloody buckskin shirt away and tried to stop the bleeding. From the other side of the trees, he heard Buck call out, “Trace! Frank!”

  “Over here,” Trace called back, and moments later Buck came plunging through the thick brush.

  “Ah, damn. . .” was all he could say at first when he saw his old partner lying on the ground, his head supported on Trace’s arm. “Frank, damn. . .” Words failed him for once in his life.

  “Shut up, Buck. It’s bad enough without you gittin’ all slobbery over me.” Although he was in great pain, Frank could not help but chide his longtime friend.

  Buck dropped to one knee to examine Frank’s wound, then glanced at Trace and asked, “You all right?” When Trace nodded that he was, Buck immediately started gathering Frank up in his arms. “Help me carry him. We’ve got to git him back to camp.”

  After Trace and Buck carried their injured partner back to the river and made him as comfortable as possible, Buck did the best he could to clean Frank’s wound and try to stop the bleeding. Frank stubbornly fought to stay awake, firm in his belief that once he went to sleep he might never wake up. Buck fussed over him, arguing that he needed rest in order to slow down the bleeding, but Frank refused to cooperate.

  “Trace,” Frank rasped, “you’d best go back out there and find that bastard’s horse before one of them Injuns gits it.”

  Trace was surprised. He hadn’t given a thought to confiscating LaPorte’s property, being more concerned with Frank’s welfare. It had been one hell of an ordeal for him as well. He had almost met his maker twice in one evening at the hand of LaPorte, and he could still feel the vise-like grip that had threatened to crush his windpipe. “To hell with his horse,” he mumbled.

  “Frank’s right, Trace. That’s the way of things out here. It don’t belong to nobody else, and you and Frank damn sure worked for it. Don’t make no sense leavin’ it for somebody else to find.” Buck took Trace by the arm and walked him to the edge of the clearing, where his words could not be heard by Frank. “I swear, it looks bad, Trace. That bastard gutted poor Frank right proper. I ain’t got much hope for that wound to heal.”

  Trace felt a deep compassion for Buck, and he sincerely wished he could offer some hope for Frank’s recovery, but he was no more optimistic than Buck. “There ain’t nothing we can do for him but try to make him as comfortable as possible—then just wait and see.”

  “I reckon so,” Buck said, sighing loudly and shaking his head. “You’d best go on and find that horse.”

  Trace hesitated. “Are you sure we wanna do that? Ain’t you afraid there’ll be some trouble when everybody sees we’ve got LaPorte’s horse and goods? They might think we just murdered him for his plunder.”

  “Ain’t gonna be no trouble,” Buck hastened to reply. “Ever’body’ll most likely be damn glad somebody finally put him under. Besides, these trappers know murder ain’t me and Frank’s style. If anybody wants to know, I’ll tell ’em what happened. LaPorte finally jumped on the wrong trapper, and he got his ass kilt for his trouble. ’Course, we could go over yonder and dig a great big hole in the ground—throw ol’ LaPorte in it with all his rifles and plunder—hell, even shoot that big gray horse of his’n and throw it in too. But what good would that do anybody? Just be a waste, that’s all. Now you go on, and I’ll stay here with Frank.”

  Buck pulled the saddle off of LaPorte’s horse and emptied the dead man’s pack on the ground. Among the items laid out for inspection was a little embroidered bag with the initials L.C.M. stitched on it. “Well, ain’t that sweet?” Frank clucked, propped up against a tree, watching Buck. “Wonder what poor bastard lost his scalp for that?”

  When Buck felt the weight of it and heard the distinct clink of metal when he picked it up, his interest was spiked for sure. He opened it and counted out thirty gold coins. “Dadburn, Trace, you’ve come into a fortune.”

  Trace had stood apart from Buck while he searched through LaPorte’s possessions, examining the rifles and pistols, powder and ball, plus some odds and ends like tobacco and jerky. Now Trace realized that they considered LaPorte’s property to be his. The thought of taking a dead man’s things, like buzzards over a carcass, didn’t sit well on his conscience, but he agreed that it made little sense to leave it to someone else. “I don’t want all that stuff,” he said. He was especially thinking about the big buffalo gun that had killed his father.

  “It’s yours to do what you want with,” Buck said.

  “We’re partners, ain’t we?”

  “Why, shore we are, boy, we done told you that,” Buck replied.

  “Well, then, I say the stuff that’s usable belongs to the partnership. The gold coins get split ten apiece—and the horse goes to Blue Water for saving my neck.”

  That settled, the gear was packed away with the rest of their supplies and Trace saddled the spotted gray again. Buck, watching the boy saddle the horse, warned, “You best be sure you let ol’ Broken Arm know why you’re givin’ that horse to Blue Water, lessen he thinks you wanna marry her.”

  “I will,” Trace assured him.

  * * *

  Trace could almost feel every eye upon him as he led the big gray horse through the gathering of Snake lodges. Even though these Indians were friendly toward the trappers—at least for the present time—and had come to rendezvous to trade, Trace still felt as if he was walking through a hostile camp. In every direction he looked he was met by a blank stare, for they all knew the big spotted gray. When one old man glanced up from the pipe he was busy carving, Trace stopped and, talking in sign, asked the location of Broken Arm’s tipi. The old man pointed to a lodge several yards away where a warrior sat, eating from a large iron pot hanging over the fire.

  The Indian continued to eat, dipping into the pot and retrieving long strips of boiled meat, watching the approaching white man intently. When Trace led the horse up before him and stopped, Broken Arm got to his feet and offered the customary greeting of friendship, although there was no outward appearance of welcome in his stern expression.

  Trace returned the greeting and, by signing and the few words of Snake dialect he remembered, told Broken Arm that he had brought the horse as a gift for his daughter. He emphasized that the gift was for Blue Water, and not for Broken Arm in exchange for his daughter. For it would have been an insult to offer only one horse for a girl so beautiful and virtuous.

  “Ahh,” Broken Arm responded, somewhat relieved. Then, looking back toward the entrance to the tipi, he called out, “Blue Water, come.” He offered Trace some food while they awaited the appearance of his daughter. In a few moments, a woman appeared at the entrance, but it was not the girl. The look of distress on Trace’s face made the woman smile. She looked back inside the tipi and said something. A moment later, Blue Water stepped out into the sunlight.

  Trace felt a flutter deep inside his chest and he sensed a flush creeping up behind his ears. She seemed even more radiant than she had been the day before, when she had come to his camp. He knew then that rewarding her for saving his life was not the real purpose of his visit. In truth, he simply had to see her again.

  Blue Water smiled shyly at him, then lowered her gaze to avoid meeting his eyes. Her mother stood beside her beaming proudly as they waited to hear what the young white man came to say. Broken Arm told his daughter that the horse was a gift for her. She understood the intent of the gift and, raising her eyes, nod
ded to Trace, her eyes looking directly into his for the first time.

  Trace felt his knees weaken as he met her gaze. Her eyes, soft and dark as a young fawn’s, set his thoughts whirling, leaving him flustered and barely able to concentrate on Broken Arm’s words. The Snake warrior was speaking to him in broken English. “Word come you kill LaPorte. LaPorte big medicine. How you called?”

  “Trace,” he replied.

  “Trace,” Broken Arm repeated the name several times until it felt comfortable on his tongue. Then he smiled and nodded vigorously. “Now Trace big medicine.”

  The news of LaPorte’s death had already circulated throughout the Indian camps, although there had been no fuss or cries from anyone discovering his body. Trace supposed that Blue Water must have confessed her late-night rendezvous. It was obvious that her father trusted his daughter’s word, for he showed no anger toward her. And he seemed satisfied that Trace had no intentions toward Blue Water beyond rewarding her for her bravery. As common courtesy demanded, he insisted that Trace sit with him and eat. Trace would have preferred to decline the older man’s offer, but to do so would have been rude, so he sat.

  At her father’s bidding, Blue Water offered the pot of boiled meat to Trace, her eyes steadily gazing into his as he picked a strip of meat out of the thin mixture. He was sure there was a more intimate message in those deep eyes. Or was it just his imagination? A fantasy born of his own desire? His mind was in a state of confusion. At his young age, he could have no thoughts of “trapping a squaw,” as the trappers termed it. And yet his mind was filled with thoughts of this bright young girl and with a strong desire to be near her. He wanted to express his feelings toward her somehow, but his nerve failed him and he could not find his tongue. So he sat there feeling dumb while Broken Arm talked about the season and the buffalo and several other things that Trace would not remember. Blue Water, meanwhile, went into the tipi and returned with an otter skin that she had evidently been working on for some time. Seated off to one side, so she was always in Trace’s line of vision, she worked away silently and steadily, seeming to pay the fumbling white boy no mind. Every time he stole a glance in her direction, however, she caught him at it and met his gaze with her soft, smiling eyes. Finally he took his leave of the family, still unable to speak directly to the young girl.