I shook my head, blinking my eyes. They had almost fallen shut.
This could not be. I must move. I must hunt him down, this warrior who awaited me.
Slowly, carefully, keeping to deepest shadow, I straightened to my feet. My game leg ached from the cramped position I had held for so long. Listening, I heard no sound. The shadows were deep. Carefully, I lifted a foot, took a step, and put it down ever so gently. With infinite care, listening after every step, I began to search the shadows.
Nothing …
Again I moved, and suddenly, from outside and some distance away, a scream!
A long, protracted scream, a cry of sheer agony, the last cry of a dying man!
Who?
Keokotah? I did not believe it. Rather someone he had found. Keokotah could die, but if I knew him at all, he would die in silence.
Carefully I worked my way through the shadows, spear poised for use, my hand only inches from my knife. My grip on the spear was firm. I did not want it wrenched from my hands again.
Something? Something there in the darkness. I drew nearer, the spear poised for a thrust.
It was a man sitting against the building, something dark over his legs. Leaning closer I saw his head was over on one shoulder, his eyes were wide open, and he was dead.
Dead? He was the one I had sliced in the fight. He had run to open the gate and then retreated here, to die. The darkness across his legs was blood, for my blade had cut him clean across the stomach.
Angry with myself for being held immobile for so long by a dead man, I walked back across the yard to the gate. The bar was firmly in place.
From the high ports I could see their campfires, and from afar, smoke rising into the dawn from the Pawnee village. The Pawnees had drawn off and not attacked again. Why, I had no idea.
Komi and her companions would be waiting in the cave, wondering, not knowing. My fear was they would venture out and so reveal their hiding place, which was a good one, even if lacking the pleasures of home. And sorely did I miss her.
There was a stirring, a preparation in the camp of Gomez, nor could I make out what was taking place there except that they were readying themselves for something. An attack upon me?
Gomez himself was riding to the fort, but he was alone. Out of arrow range he drew up and called out, “Sackett? We are going after your friends, yonder! When we have destroyed them we will come back for you. Have the woman ready. If you surrender her now, you can go free.”
Which of course was nonsense. He was a vengeful man and would kill me in an instant if he had me prisoner. Or he would do as promised and stake me on an anthill.
“You have lost men,” I said calmly. “You will lose more if you attack the Pawnees. You will return to Santa Fe with your tail between your legs like a whipped dog.”
“I will have her,” Gomez said. “I will have the woman.”
He turned his horse then rode off to join his soldiers, and I began to wonder why he had taken the trouble to inform me of his intentions. His men began to form up, and he put himself at the head of them. I wondered at the stupidity of the man. Fine soldier he might be, back in Spain, Flanders, or wherever the fighting had been, but you do not advertise your intentions when going out to fight Indians.
Several times he seemed to glance my way, and then I realized he was trying to lure me out of the fort to help my Indian friends, which could only mean that somebody waited nearby to move in the moment I moved out.
Carefully, my eyes searched the terrain, lingering on every clump of brush, every tree, ev—
There were two of them, two of his Spanish soldiers, and they were lying in wait not fifty yards from the gate. One held a musket in his hands and was obviously waiting for me.
In a land of Indians these men would not last long, for they were but poorly hidden.
I made ready my bow.
THIRTY-FIVE
The morning was clear and beautiful. The sun was still hidden behind the eastern mountains, but the valley was lovely in the dawning light. A few smokes lifted their slim columns toward the sky, but aside from Gomez and his soldiers, nothing moved.
Far down the valley some low clouds lay, and a few white puffballs of cloud lingered against the blue sky, each catching a rosy radiance from the rising sun. The soldier who thought himself hidden in the brush was eager. He edged forward, musket ready to aim, waiting for me to emerge.
His eyes were upon the gate, yet when I straightened up above the roof parapet the movement caught his attention. His head turned and he saw me, bow bent, arrow drawn back.
For a stark, shocked moment he stared, and I loosed my arrow.
There is no good time in which to die, but he must have seen my figure outlined against the morning sky, with mountains and forest behind me. Who he was I did not know, nor whether he had been born in Spain or in Mexico. No doubt he was a good enough man in his own world, and it was a pity he had to come into mine, and not by his own choice, either.
His last glimpse of this world was of the sky at dawn and my dark figure above the parapet. Could he see the bow? Could he see the arrow in flight?
He came erect suddenly, clutching at the arrow’s shaft, his musket falling among the rocks. He tugged, staring at me and perhaps hearing the quick scurry of his companion’s feet as he fled. My second arrow missed the companion, and I saw the soldier I had shot fall over the rocks.
Then I went down the ladder and to the gate and opened it. The sun was higher, the valley bathed in light. There seemed to be a stir of movement down near the cave where Itchakomi waited. Shading my eyes, I looked and saw nothing.
Only imagination. Suddenly and from a distance I heard a wild chorus of yells and then musket shots and a scream from a wounded man. The Pawnees had been lying in wait and had attacked before the soldiers were halfway to their village. The sides must have been almost evenly matched as to numbers, but the surprise had been complete.
Coming to a higher bit of ground, I stopped. All was confusion, dust, occasional gunshots, and then silence. The dust fell, and men had died and left their bodies on the sun-blessed hills.
Some horsemen rode away, fleeing the fight. Others scattered on foot, pursued by Pawnees.
Gomez, if he lived, had failed again.
Walking on toward the fight I came upon a scalped Indian, one of those who had come with Gomez. Then I saw two Indians holding a prisoner. It was Diego.
“He is a good man,” I told them. “Let me have him.”
They merely stared at me.
“This one is a friend,” I assured them, but they continued to stare, clutching his arms.
Asatiki, the old warrior, came toward us, and I explained. “This one is good,” I said. “He is my friend.”
“He fought hard against us.”
“Aye, he is a fighter. He did what he was supposed to do, and no doubt did it well, yet he did not wish to come against you and told me so. It was the other one, the one of the gray horse. He was their leader.”
“He got away.”
“I am sorry for that. He is bad medicine. This one is not.”
“He is their prisoner.”
“Are you not their chief?”
“I led the war party. I am their chief. I cannot command, only suggest. Each is his own man. He comes and goes as he wishes. They followed me because they wished, not because I demanded it. He is their prisoner.”
Again I turned to them. “Will you sell him to me?”
They did not reply, just waited, looking at me. When the attack on the fort had first taken place and the gate had been briefly open a horse had been ridden through, its rider killed. That horse still stood there on the stone-flagged court. “I will trade a horse for him.”
It was a horse I dearly wanted. A horse could make a difference in many ways.
“Good horse?”
“One of the best.” I had no idea. The horse had looked good at the one glance I had thrown his way. I had had other things on my mind at the time and no time to waste, but what horse trader plays down his stock?