By the time the raft grounded, just a few yards out into the stream, there wasn’t much left except a section of what might have been a footbridge, a broken rocker-box still holding bits of gravel from a mine, and a few kegs and barrels lashed into the mess with rope.
It was full morning by the time Falcon got them all to shore and counted them. Fourteen men, three women, and the bodies of two more dead men. Falconmuttered his amazement. Twenty-two people had ridden that torrent on a frail lash-up of floating debris that they had somehow assembled when the first rush of flood hit them.
Five had not survived, but somehow seventeen had!
He revised his count when one of the men waded out to the wreckage and brought back a wriggling, unhappy bundle in a wet quilt. A young woman screamed when she saw it, and ran to take it.
“Make that eighteen,” Falcon said.
It was only then, when he herded them all up the slope to caprock—some of them being supported or outright carried—that he realized the Indian boy was gone. Diablo stood alone up there, still tethered, but the dun was missing along with its saddle and Woha’li’s belongings. Woha’li had gone on alone, and left no sign where he was going.
The flood survivors were a dismal lot, battered and drenched. Several had injuries, but none appearedto be dying just yet.
“We tried to get out of the water at Outpost,” one of the men—a dark-bearded beanpole named Iverson—toldhim. “They came out with lanterns, and threw ropes to us, but we were ... just going too fast. All we could do was hang on.”
“You were crazy to be in that riverbed when you could see it was storming in the foothills,” Falcon said. He dipped his head for a moment, rememberingsomething Woha’li had said to him the day before.“Hade’ne-a equone unegadihi, ” he muttered.
Iverson blinked. “What?”
“It’s Cherokee.” Falcon shrugged. “It means something like, ‘that’s how the river kills crazy white people.’ ”
Morning had passed into evening by the time FalconMacCallister had the refugees tended and secure.Some of the injured rested in the shelter of the cut bank where Falcon and Woha’li had camped the night before, all the rest on the caprock shelf above.
They were a pitiful lot, cold, hungry, and exhausted.One of the men had cracked ribs, and he coughed up blood each time he awoke.
Falcon helped them as much as he could. He bound some of their wounds, set a broken arm, shared his little stock of foods, and saw to the setting of signals—a bright-colored blanket to wave and a ready bonfire for the night. He helped them bury the dead from the raft. Then he saddled Diablo and rode out, southward into the breaks.
He was gone for an hour and came back with a dressed-out mule deer and two antelope. He rode up to the refugees’ fire and dropped the meat, then unsaddled Diablo and turned him out to graze. It was too late to travel, and they still needed help. He would stay for the night.
“The water should begin dropping by morning,” he told them. “There’ll be people coming down from Outpost when they can, I guess.”
“They won’t come,” one of the miners said glumly. “Why would they? They probably think we’re all dead by now.”
“They’ll come,” Falcon said.
By first light of dawn he rode west, upstream along the high south ridge. It was three hours’ ride to the breaks across from Black Mesa, and it took another hour of signaling across the flooded river before they understood what he wanted. When he saw ridersheading east from Outpost he fired two shots into the air, mounted, and headed east again.
It was past noon when he returned to the survivors’camp. “They’re coming from Outpost,” he told them. “They’ll be on that ridge over there in an hour, and they’ll cross when they can. One of them’s a gent named Dawson. Tell him MacCallister said to help you. Tell him I’ll make it worth his while, if he wants to look me up.”
Seeing nothing more that he could do there, FalconMacCallister rode away, not looking back. He set his course east along the south rim of the Cimarron canyon, with the quartering sun and the crisp wind at his back. He paused only briefly at the cove where the two ex-cowboys—Tad and Pete—had stopped, then went on. Once he saw faint impressionsthat might have been the prints of Woha’li’s dun, but only briefly. The Indian boy had chosen to go his own way, and Falcon couldn’t fault him for that. The kid was hardly more than a lanky child, but who was to say when a boy became a man?
The thought brought back memories of his father. Jamie Ian MacCallister had been a man at Woha’li’s age. Raised by Shawnee Indians, he had learned the warrior’s way and learned it early.
Jamie Ian MacCallister had become practically a legend—aman feared by many, loved by some, and respectedby all who ever knew him. But to Falcon, the living legend had been, simply, Pa. Pa might have said that a boy becomes a man when he chose to.
And Pa had said some things about the Cherokee. To the Shawnee, they were “the ones who came before”or “those who were always here.” In Kentucky, the two peoples had fought for centuries, and they knew each other very well. “Spirit people,” the Shawnee called the Cherokee. The Shawnee were masters of camouflage, yet a Cherokee warrior, they said, could disappear—even from Shawnee eyes. Disappear... then strike with deadly force.
Woha’li was hardly a Cherokee warrior. The kid was only a cub. But then, a boy became a man when he chose to.
“Donada‘go-hui, Woha’li,” Falcon said. “Good-bye. Take care of yourself.”
He found where the wagon party had camped, up on the crest above the river’s bend, but the trail was cold now and he lost it a few miles east, above the breaks where stony gray-red clay defied tracks, and drift sand shifted with each breeze as it dried from the last night’s rain.
There were still only four men in the bunch. He knew that two had broken off, but had no idea where they had gone. He could only speculate that they were off on some errand, and might rejoin their buddies later.
He hoped they would. The images of that desolate gully up in the foothill slopes, and what he had found there, haunted him. Like an old scar, the memories of his beloved wife lived in him. Now these newer images were a torment, reopening the old wound, renewing the pain of it.
He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Those six men ... those brutal men! Somebody had something they wanted, so they took it.
The forlorn silence of that gully haunted Falcon. Five people had been murdered there—two men killed outright, three women raped and brutalized, then finally killed. And two of those had been young girls!
Six men had murdered those people, and six men should answer for that. Falcon didn’t intend to settle for four. The constant ache of Marie’s memory, he knew, was partly because he’d never had a chance to avenge her. Her killers were dead now, but Falcon had had no part in their deaths.
He felt a need to somehow atone—to set things right—and that need drove him as he rode the lawlessland, heading east.
A dozen miles east of the Cimarron’s bend, he made night camp beside a little stream and shook out his soogans under a deepening sky where stars were coming out.
He had lost the trail of the overland wagon somewhereback, and had not found it again. But he knew the direction they were going, and he knew what was there. Somewhere ahead, in the prairies of the neutral strip called No Man’s Land, was a tallgrass region known as the Haymeadows. And somewhere in that region was a place called Wolf Creek.
A lot of people seemed to be heading for Wolf Creek. If there was a spread being built there, as Dawson said, there’d be a settlement. And a settlementwould be a good place to look for the killers he was hunting.
Again he reviewed his images of the six, as Woha’li had described them. Two big men. Big! One of them was bald on top, above wide jowl-length hair, and wore his clothes like a city dude. The other big one had a full rust-blond beard and pale eyes. A little skittery man with snake eyes, big guns, high boots, and a lot of silver trim. A hunch-shouldered buzzard with an overc
oat and a shotgun. A cowboy with jug-handleears and a mashed nose. A squinty nervous rooster with a tied-down Colt.
Falcon could almost see them, just as the kid had. Again and again he had added details from observation,and from what the boy said.
By last light of evening, he looked skyward to see a nighthawk circling high—a swooping predator, graceful and deadly, spotting the nests of lesser fliers so it would know where to find them when the morning came.
“Towo’di, ” he muttered, then sighed with irritation.Even though he was gone, the scrawny Cherokeekid still deviled him.
Falcon didn’t expect to meet any travelers along this lonely stretch of prairie, and he certainly didn’t expect company. But even before he had saddled up the next morning he saw movement a couple of miles north.
Curious, he angled that way. For a time he saw nothing, the rolling lands hiding the distances. Then from a high swell he saw riders—a passel of them, moving southward in a hurry. It might have been twenty men, or sixty. They were spread far out, mostly in groups of three or four, and he could see they had covered some ground.
He was just scanning the terrain, trying to count them, when a bullet whined off stone twenty feet ahead of him and the ground there erupted in a shower of sand. Then the air seemed full of bullets, none of them close but all traveling in his direction. The crackle of gunfire sounded like both rifles and handguns.
With a kick he bailed out of his saddle, hauling out his rifle as he did, and hit the ground with its sights aligned. He could barely make out the forms of the shooters across veiled expanses of grass and sage, but he sent them some responses. The .44-40 spoke with authority, and though Falcon doubted he had hit anybody, the shooting stopped. Distantly he heard shouts and curses, and the drumming of hooves.
He stood, and saw no one where the shooters had been. A moment later, though, he saw a dozen or so riders hightailing it away, keeping low and making distance.
Whoever they were, they had changed their minds.
Diablo was nervous and skittish. None of the shots had touched him, but their whine had been like hornets,and he was in no mood to be reasonable. It took Falcon a while to coax him to lead, croon him down, and convince him that it was time to travel again.
He had barely settled himself into his saddle when the crest to his left sprouted soldiers. A dozen uniformedmen thundered down on him, carbines at the ready.
It was a cavalry patrol—a lieutenant and eleven men. The regimental colors were unfamiliar to him, but the red bands on their sleeves said state militia. Atop a grassy rise he reined in and waited for them.
They slowed as they approached, and fanned out a bit. When MacCallister made no move, they closed in. When they reined up, he was neatly flanked by nervous young soldiers to right and left.
The lieutenant—a bright-eyed young man with freshly shaved cheeks and polished boots—eyed him carefully, then walked his mount closer and looked him over again. A weather-seamed sergeant came to join him. The two of them eyed MacCallister like cats eyeing cream. They huddled together for a moment,leaning from their saddles to exchange whispers,and then the shavetail stepped his mount forward. “MacCallister?” he asked. “Is your name Falcon MacCallister?”
“I’m MacCallister.” Falcon nodded.
“I knew it,” the lieutenant said. “I glassed you, about the time those hooligans started shooting. The description fits. I’m Colegrave, sir ... John Colegrave, Lieutenant, Company A, Second Kansas. I have standing orders to locate you, sir, and escort you to Captain Burroughs. You’re to come with us.”
Falcon’s eyes narrowed at the youngster’s imperioustone. “Come with you where, lieutenant?”
“It’s about three days’ ride northeast of here, sir. Fort Dodge, in Kansas.”
“I’m no longer under obligation to the army,” Falcon said. “I completed my contract eight months ago. And I’m a little busy at the moment. I have other things to do.”
“That will just have to wait, sir.” The shavetail gestured,and carbines came up all around Falcon.
“What’s all this about?” he demanded. “What standing orders?”
“You’ll have to talk to the captain about that, sir. Now will you come with us voluntarily, or ...”
Falcon had learned long ago the uselessness of trying to argue with fresh lieutenants. With an exasperatedshrug, he flicked his reins. Diablo advancedon the smaller cavalry mount and the lieutenant was forced to back away. “Let’s go see your Captain Burroughs, then,” Falcon said. “And tell your men to rest those carbines before I get irritated.”
“Best do as the man says,” the sergeant said, quietly.“Don’t pay to push a man too far.”
NINE
The way to hide in a forest, Woha’li knew, was to be the forest. This bit of wisdom required some adapting, of course, for in all of his twelve years Woha’li had never seen a forest. Born just south of the Kansas town of Baxter Springs, he had been an infant when drunken yonegs came up from Texas with their cattle and their guns and their hatred of Indians.
Night riders killed Woha’li’s two older brothers and drove his family from its little farm in the rolling hills. For a time the family had lived among the tame Pawnee, while Woha’li’s father, Wili Hasusgi—known to the whites as Will Fisher—taught English at the Indian school. In the boy’s fourth year, though, wild Kiowa raiders led by Satank had caused much trouble. In the ensuing turmoil, Will Fisher was again driven away.
The only life Woha’li had ever really known was the catch-as-catch-can existence of a frontier scavengergoing from job to menial job and gathering buffalobones between employments. Though his father had taught him much of the old ways of the proud Tsalagi, Woha’li had little practical experience.
To hide in the forest, be the forest. To hide in sage and grass, then, he must be sage and grass. His rifle was small, and its range limited. To kill the yoneg murderers he must be close to them.
Belly down on the prairie, the boy called Eagle let his senses lead him as he slithered from dip to shallow swale, from clump to cluster. He was almost naked, and smeared from head to toe with gray mud. His dun horse and all his belongings were at least a mile away, hidden in a grassy gully. He wore only his old tar-soled moccasins and a swatch of feed sack belted as a loincloth. He carried his rifle, and had a handful of extra loads in a makeshift pouch.
A chill breeze played waves in the pale endless grass, and he moved with the waves, becoming part of them ... being the grass. His small size helped him in this. Only his mud-streaked hair and narrowedeyes showed above the grass as he slithered forward, closer to the path of the trundling overland wagon approaching from the west.
He had spotted the wagon hours before, when the sun was still ahead of him. A covered overland—a prairie schooner—its hind wheels as tall as a man and its rearmost bows twelve feet off the ground. The big wagon was nearly fifteen feet long and distinctlyswaybacked, like an old horse or the gunwales of a boat. Ten dray horses in harness—two to a span—pulled the rig as easily as one horse might draw a surrey, although the wagon’s total loaded weight could exceed ten tons.
Woha’li knew it was the same wagon, and he closed in on it cautiously. There were four men with it—three outriders and the driver. From more than half a mile away he recognized the men. They were four of the six who had killed his parents. Woha’li knew from MacCallister that the men had killed others,as well. The wagon they drove was a stolen wagon, and innocent people had died when they took it.
That was why the man called Falcon now hunted them. Woha’li had his own reasons.
He stalked the wagon as a wolf stalks wary prey—staying well away until he knew the lay of the land, then circling ahead to take advantage of the best ground.
Time was his friend, and the vast emptiness of the rolling prairies his ally. Calling up all the inherent skills of his ancient ancestors and the bits of lore he had learned from his father, the son of Wili Hasusgi let white ways fall from him like molting feat
hers and became as Tsalagi as any twelve year old could. As nearly as he could, in his mind, he tried to becomea danawa’yehi—a warrior, like the formidable didanawa-i of ancient times.
The gentlest of people, it was said, were the Cherokee. Yet the thought of didanawa-i—Cherokee warriors—even now could freeze the spirit of the fiercest Shawnee, the wildest Pawnee, or the most savage Comanche, and make their blood run cold. Like the mystic Leni Lenape—the Delaware—the Tsalagi were Spirit people. Other tribes and other peoples had learned the cost of underestimating them.
Woha’li knew little of all this. But as he eased up behind a clump of sage, atop a slight rise where wind and rain had etched the land in shallow gullies, he became the grass and the sage—so much so that a big diamondback rattler coiled in a shallow crevice six inches from his shoulder was no more aware of him than he was of it.
As motionless as the earth itself, Woha’li watched the men approach. One by one, he identified them. One of the two big ones—the an’da’tsi with the moon-straw beard and the pale blue eyes—was up on the wagon, driving the team. Three others—the bat-eared one with the flat nose, the long-coat buzzard,and the second big one, who seemed to be in charge—rode saddle mounts.
Carefully, Woha’li eased his rifle to his shoulder. Windsong covered the slight rasping sound at his side as the rattlesnake reacted to the movement, tightening its coil. Its dark tongue flicked in and out, sensing the body heat of a living creature close by. The snake’s tail twitched once, tentatively, as it readied itself to strike.
The boy knew, from the way the men were spread out, that he couldn’t shoot them all from here. But he might shoot two, or maybe three. He must number his targets in advance. The first shot would bring the rest down on him, and he must be ready for them.
The only one who couldn’t react instantly was the one driving the wagon. He was therefore the least dangerous. He would be target number four.
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