Too late.
His aim was true.
The cutting blow slashed through the two bowstrings, severing them both at once, the arrows falling limply to the forest floor, the bows left useless in the shocked hands of the Mescalero warriors.
Before they could even begin to draw breath, the blade was back, the needle point striking Fast Silver Hand just below the rib cage, driving upward and across, Doc giving his wrist the classic duellist’s twist as he pulled the blade down and out.
The young Apache’s guts spilled to the grounds. The man had only time to take a staggering half step backward before the blade, swifter than a striking rattler, had lunged a second, mortal time.
Bear Cub Running gasped at the sudden, shocking cold chill that spread through his lower body, burning like fire into his chest and lungs.
“He has—” he said, but his throat filled with pounding arterial blood and he began to choke on it, aware of it frothing from his open mouth, dappling brightly down across his naked chest.
Doc stepped back, panting as though he’d just run a swift quarter mile across a plowed field, watching the young men as they sank to their knees, like ruined marionettes, faces shocked, eyes protruding from red-rimmed sockets.
“I am sorry, boys,” he said, infinitely gentle. “I did not want it this way.”
There wasn’t going to be any need for a second strike at either of them. The lines were down, and life was a handful of pumping, failing heartbeats.
They fell simultaneously, Bear Cub Running rolling onto his back, sightless eyes staring up at the waving branches of the nearest sequoia, his hands clenched at his sides. His companion lay on his right, fingers moving slowly through the dirt, the nails snapping, his teeth grinding together for a few seconds before death closed everything down.
“I am truly sorry, boys,” Doc repeated.
He was genuinely grief stricken, though his heart told him that he had done the right thing. It had so clearly been their lives or his. Doc stooped and wiped the blood-slick blade in the loose earth.
THE HUNTING PARTY from Hopeville found the bodies less than half an hour later.
“Neat killing for a sick old man,” one of them said, examining the corpses.
“That cane of his held a sword,” Owsley said, spitting bitterly into the face of the nearest of the corpses. “Should have taken it away from the old bastard. Stupe of us!”
“Think he did this on his own, Brother?”
Owsley spun, nearly biting off the younger man’s head in his anger. “Course! Think the Blessed Jesus Christ came down with a cross and a switchblade and gave the old stupe a hand? Bodies are still warm. Can’t have been chilled more than an hour ago. Likely less.”
He spit again at the dead Apaches, then led the way at a fast trot along the path toward the still smoldering ruins of Mom’s Place.
RYAN SAT on the stoop of the cabin, his head thrown back, soaking in the morning sunshine, welcoming its warmth among the towering, dank trees. Behind him, Jak and Dean were sleeping on their beds. J.B. and Mildred were sitting in the matching chairs, on either side of the blackened fireplace, talking quietly. And Krysty was still lying unconscious, under a pair of striped blankets.
In the past hour there had been some improvement in her condition, and her breathing was steadier.
Mildred had been puzzled by the bleakness of her condition. “Not really like anything that I ever encountered before. Having to utilize the Gaia force has completely drained her resistance. But it’s not just physical. Krysty almost seems to have lost the will to live.”
And there had been nothing to do for her, other than the usual methods of life support: keeping her turned so that she didn’t suffer from sores, making sure that she drank some liquid by dabbing at her parched lips with a damp cloth of torn linen.
Wolfe had looked in once, standing in the doorway of the cabin, silhouetted like an etched shadow. His good hand fondled the stump of his amputated arm, his dark eyes locked to the motionless body of the redheaded woman on the bed.