Homecoming, page 5
But there was hope yet. Kiyo Kaga might awaken and try to stop him, in which case he would be entirely justified in splitting the chief’s head like an overripe melon.
Davy’s powder horn, bullet pouch, and possibles bag were piled close at hand. Davy slung each across his chest. The rifle posed a problem in that Kiyo Kaga had one brawny hand wrapped around the barrel. Grasping the stock, Davy tried to ease Liz loose. The chief clung on, mumbling in his sleep.
A whisper of movement forewarned Davy that his luck had run out. He made a stab for a pistol, checking his draw when he saw that it was Wawaneechotinka who had sat up, not one of the warriors. Shrugging out of the blanket, she rose onto her knees and extended her bound wrists.
Motioning, Davy indicated that he would help her in a moment. He was not giving up on Liz. Bending, he lightly brushed the tomahawk’s handle across the back of Kiyo Kaga’s hand. Kiyo Kaga shifted, exhaling loudly. When his breathing returned to normal, Davy tried once more.
The trick worked when his wife was snoring. Many a night he had been roused out of a pleasant dream by her sawing logs. Being a gentleman, he’d never awakened her or mentioned it to her the next day. He’d coped either by gently bouncing up and down on the mattress until she quieted, or by lightly touching her until she changed position, at which point the snoring always stopped.
A third time Davy rubbed the handle across the Fox leader’s hand. Kiyo Kaga seemed to stop breathing altogether, and for a moment Davy thought he would wake up. But then Kiyo Kaga rolled over, away from him, releasing the Kentucky.
Davy felt like a whole man again as he scooted to the maiden and swiftly slashed the cords binding her. To his consternation, she flung herself into his arms and pressed warm lips to his cheek. He smiled, then took her hand and headed for the sorrel. Once they were on it, there was no stopping them. Davy would have her back with her own people in short order and then go find Flavius.
They passed several sleepers, and had only one man to go by when the sorrel saw them coming and whinnied. The man promptly sat up, rubbing his eyes to clear them.
Davy swept the rifle in a smooth arc, but he was too slow by half. The warrior spied them and let out with a shriek that would have done justice to a banshee. The stock caught him above the ear and down he went just as other warriors leaped to their feet.
It would take too long to reach the horse, untie it, and climb on with Wawaneechotinka. Davy had no recourse but to grip her wrist and sprint for the trees. Angry shouts were flung at them. A zinging arrow missed him by inches as the foliage closed around them.
It was safe to say that Kiyo Kaga was fit to be tied. His bellows thundered above the confusion, whipping his warriors into pursuit.
“He say to kill you,” Wawaneechotinka translated.
Davy veered to the left, circling the clearing instead of making a beeline deep into the forest as the Fox men were likely to figure he would. A new ruckus broke out, and he glanced between some trees to see his sorrel rearing high, its front hooves flailing. The uproar had spooked the horse and it wanted to get out of there. Warriors were trying to stop it, but the tether had snapped and they could not snatch the reins or the bridle. A flying hoof slammed one man in the chest and he went down like a broken doll.
Kiyo Kaga roared instructions, gesturing savagely at the sorrel.
A lean warrior with a lance tried to slip in close, and received a kick to the collarbone that broke it with a distinct crack. Howling, the man flopped on the grass, clutching his injury.
Davy owed that horse a debt he could never repay. It had bought them the precious moments needed to effect their escape. He ran on, staying shy of openings until he was on the opposite side of the clearing from where he had plunged into the woods.
The sorrel had knocked another man down and was wheeling. Three members of the band lunged, but they could not prevent the animal from galloping into the darkness.
Kiyo Kaga was positively livid, his face so red it looked as if he were about to explode. Shoving men to the right and left, he ordered them into the woods.
Davy wished that the sorrel had run toward him instead of to the southeast. Nodding at Wawaneechotinka, he bent their steps northward, jogging until he had an ache in his side and could not travel another yard. The maiden kept up every step of the way, and never once griped about the pace he maintained.
By his estimation they were over a mile from the clearing. He leaned against a trunk, hands on his knees, sucking air into his lungs. All things considered, it had not turned out too badly. He’d lost his horse, but he still had his tools and rifle and—best of all—his hair.
Wawaneechotinka stepped up to him and tenderly stroked his cheek. “Thank you, Red Cheeks, for saving me.”
Davy grinned. “No need to make a fuss. It’s what knights in shining armor are supposed to do.”
“Nights?” Wawaneechotinka said, and craned her neck to appraise the celestial spectacle above.
“Never mind,” Davy said. He’d explain later, once they were safely in the clear. Straightening, he scoured their back trail, nearly jumping out of his skin when Wawaneechotinka molded her body against him and planted her mouth smack on his. Dumbfounded, he felt her velvet tongue trace the outline of his lips.
The maiden drew back, her eyes simmering coals.
“What was that for?” Davy asked, troubled that he already knew. He had enough problems to deal with, without her waxing romantic.
“You be brave man,” Wawaneechotinka said. “Good man.” Her finger found his ear and tweaked the lobe. “Kind of man I like. Kind of man I want.”
“Hold your horses,” Davy said, peeling loose before she did something they would both regret. “I have a wife. My second. Her name is Elizabeth Parton, and I took a vow to be true to her all my born days.”
Davy assumed that would settle it. The maiden would let well enough be and he could get on with the business of taking her to her people. He should have known better. Where women were concerned, nothing could be taken for granted. They were as unpredictable as tornadoes, as mysterious as the Northern Lights.
Wawaneechotinka draped her slender arms over his shoulders and swayed her hips in an enticing manner. “Your home is many sleeps from here. Why go back? Why not stay?”
“Land sakes alive!” Davy said. This was a new experience. He’d never been one of those men who had to beat women off with a club. More often than not his interest in particular women had been one-sided. Polly, his first wife, had not taken a shine to him until after a long courtship. Elizabeth had been more receptive, but secretly he suspected that her being a widow with two kids of her own had had more to do with it than his looks.
“I make you happy,” Wawaneechotinka was saying. “I give you many children.”
Just what Davy needed. Counting Elizabeth’s, he had six to provide for as it was. To buy time he said, “This isn’t hardly the best place to talk about your feelings. Let’s discuss it later, once we’re safe, shall we?”
To forestall her answer, Davy hastened northward. He’d wanted to rest a while longer, but under the circumstances he was willing to sacrifice.
Judging by the sky, dawn would come in two and a half hours. That should give them a substantial lead, since Davy had every confidence the Fox war party would not find their trail before first light, if then.
The north woods were serenely quiet, broken by the occasional grunt of a roving bear or the rarer screams of big cats. A chill breeze out of the northwest fanned the leaves.
Davy was not the least bit afraid. The forest was his home. He had been born and bred in the backwoods, and was more at ease there than he would be in a city or town. The habits of every creature were like an open book. Its plants and trees were old friends.
Since he had worn three-cornered pants, nature had always fascinated him. Some of his earliest memories were of going on “nature strolls” with his pa, who took him to a local pond so he could watch the turtles, frogs, and fish. Another was of an old maple tree out back of his pa’s cabin, a tree he clambered over from top to bottom and got to know as well as he knew the back of his own hand.
One of Davy’s most vivid memories was his first encounter with a bear. He’d been three years old at the time, or so his folks later told him. So young, yet it was indelibly branded in his mind.
He had been out back of the cabin playing in some dirt when an enormous black beast had ambled out of the woods. To his childish eyes the bear had been a huge, hairy cow, but a cow with tapered teeth, revealed when it sniffed at the dirt and sneezed.
Strange to say, Davy had not been afraid at all.
Not knowing what it was and thinking that it wanted to play, Davy had thrown a handful of dirt at it, and the bear had sneezed again. The sight of its muzzle and face sprinkled with earth had made him squeal in delight.
He had not known it at the time, but the squeal had brought his father to the back door. The next thing Davy knew, the bear’s skull had exploded in a shower of gore and blood, even as his mother was scooping him into her arms and whisking him into the cabin.
Davy remembered being taken out to see the dead bear later. Neighbors had been there, and his pa had been posing proudly with the trophy, saying that now the family would have enough meat to see them well into the winter. Davy had been praised for being so brave and facing the beast down.
It long bothered him. That old bear had been curious, not threatening. Sure, it might have gotten around to hurting him since bears were notoriously temperamental. But he always harbored the belief that his pa had been a mite hasty.
He never told anyone, but for years afterward he had a recurring dream in which the bear ambled out of the woods, knelt on its hind legs, and begged not to be killed. Every time he had the dream, he woke up in a cold sweat.
The last time he’d had it was a few days before he slew his first bear while on a hunt with his pa and uncle. Their dogs had treed a big she-bear and the two men had closed in to finish it off, leaving Davy where it would be safe.
Little had John Crockett realized that the she-bear had not been alone when the hounds gave chase. A two-year old cub, nearly full grown itself, had darted into a thicket and hidden until the four dogs went past. Shortly it emerged—and there was Davy, not twenty feet away.
Ordinarily, black bears would run from humans. This one had been frightened by the hounds and rattled by its narrow escape. So when it saw Davy, it must have thought that he was after it too. The bear did what any cornered bear would do; it rushed him.
How Davy got off a shot, he would never know. Everything happened so fast that he had fired and the bear was tumbling to rest almost at his feet before he quite knew what was going on. The shot had been made in pure reflex. Fortunately, by that age he’d spent many an hour target shooting, practicing so long and hard that he was widely considered one of the best marksmen in the county despite his youth.
His pa had crowed like a rooster for weeks on end. Every customer who visited the tavern had had to endure the elder Crockett boasting how his boy had brought down “the fiercest bruin that ever lived” with a single shot through the brainpan.
After that the nightmares had ended. Why, Davy never could fathom. But he was powerful glad they did.
Suddenly a loud grunt off to the left brought an end to Davy’s musing. Slowing, he surveyed the inky woods, and thought that he saw a bulky form flit from tree to tree.
“Bear,” Wawaneechotinka whispered, sounding upset.
“Don’t fret yourself,” Davy said. “I’ve made rugs of more bears than I have fingers and toes.”
“Silvertips also, Red Cheeks?”
Davy’s cockiness evaporated like dew under a blazing sun. Silvertip was a white expression for the most feared bears alive, brutes so immense and so savage that even the most experienced mountain men avoided them. Another name for their breed was grizzly.
Unlike black bears, grizzlies had no fear of humans. Men and women were simply another kind of prey to them, and they stalked humans just as they would any other animal that had the misfortune of crossing their path when they were hungry.
Davy had never tangled with one himself. From the stories he’d heard, he didn’t want to. A single shot rarely stopped a grizzly, not even a shot to the head, because a grizzly’s skull was tremendously thick and sheathed by layers of compact muscle.
Now here he was, afoot in uncharted country in the middle of the night with a lovely woman to protect, and a grizzly had caught their scent!
Wawaneechotinka gripped Davy’s arm so hard, it hurt. He put a finger to his lips and stood stock-still in the feeble hope that the bear would lose interest in them and wander off. But the moment he stopped, so did their mammoth shadow.
Davy could see the bear more clearly. It was as big as a bull, only wider across the shoulders, which were topped by a noticeable hump. The head was positively huge. It swung ponderously from side to side as the bear tested the wind.
“We must run!” Wawaneechotinka said.
“No!” Davy responded. Any woodsman worthy of the name knew that fleeing from a predator often triggered an attack. So far, the grizzly was keeping its distance, and Davy wanted to keep it that way.
Wawaneechotinka tugged on his arm, but Davy refused to budge. He was glad the wind was blowing from the bear to them or the grizzly might detect her fear. “Calm down,” he advised. “We’ll be all right so long as we don’t panic.”
The grizzly growled, then reared onto two legs. Davy swore that the creature was as tall as the trees. It was not the case, but it seemed that way. And the spectacle of a bear so gargantuan chilled the blood in his veins.
It was as if all the ghosts of all the bears he had slain over the years had combined into the unstoppable brute before him.
Davy tossed his head to dispel the nonsense he was thinking. The grizzly was made of flesh and blood and bone, just like every other bear. Like every other bear, it could be killed. He pointed Liz, but he did not fire. Only as a last resort would he let lead fly, since a wounded bear was three times as dangerous as one that was not.
Wawaneechotinka fidgeted like a stallion at a starting line. She still wanted to flee, and Davy did not blame her. His own legs were equally hard to control.
The bear might as well have been carved from stone. It neither moved nor made any sounds.
Davy’s palms were sweating. A gust of wind increased the chill gnawing through him. He fingered the trigger, pondering whether to slowly back off while they still could. The hoot of an owl to the south did not merit any interest. Not until it was repeated, closer and louder, and his trained ears registered that the cry had not been made by a real owl but by an adept human mimic. An Indian. It had to be a Fox. Somehow, the war party was tracking them.
The grizzly also heard the cry, with an unforeseen result. Dropping onto all fours, the silvertip shuffled toward them.
“Red Cheeks!” Wawaneechotinka gasped.
Davy stood so his body blocked hers. “I won’t let it hurt you,” he pledged.
“Not bear. There!”
Davy looked. The old saw about being between a rock and a hard place had never been more true. For swooping at them from out of the night was a pair of Fox warriors with upraised war clubs.
Chapter Six
When confronted by two evils, most men will pick the lesser.
Davy Crockett was no different. A choice between a colossal grizzly and a couple of warriors was no choice at all. No one in their right mind would go up against a grizzly, ever. He jammed his rifle to his shoulder and took a hasty bead on the foremost Fox.
The warriors did not slow, and it was just as well that they did not. From out of the undergrowth crashed the grizzly, plowing into the pair like a steam engine gone amok. A single swipe of a ham-sized paw decapitated the first warrior. His head flew end over end, spewing scarlet in its wake.
The second Fox attempted to spin, but the silvertip was on him with the speed of thought. A scream tore from him as he was thrown to the earth. The grizzly’s massive form hid him, but could not blot out his horrid screeches as teeth capable of crunching bone did so.
Davy was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe the grizzly had seen the warriors as a menace to itself. Maybe it regarded them as competitors about to steal its rightful prey. Whatever the case, the Indians had saved the maiden and him from the bear and the bear had saved them from the Indians.
Another wavering screech tore from the warrior’s throat as Davy sped off with Wawaneechotinka in tow. There was no need to spur her on. She fled as if demons from the pit of Hell were nipping at their heels.
Both of them knew that their lives still hung in the balance. The bear might finish with the Fox at any moment and come after them. And though enormous, the grizzly could speedily overtake them. Over short distances the great humpbacked bears were able to run as fast as horses.
Davy pumped his legs furiously. He lost track of which direction he was going. He simply ran, and ran, and ran. Limbs snatched at them. Rocks, logs, and roots tried to trip them. A branch jutting out of nowhere nearly poked out his eye. Yet he did not slow down until his companion started to have difficulty keeping up.
Wawaneechotinka was weaving unsteadily when Davy ducked behind a boulder the size of his sorrel, and hunkered down. His own breathing was ragged, his legs sore and wobbly. “I think we gave that varmint the slip,” he rasped.
The maiden said something in her own tongue, then caught herself and repeated it in broken English. “Never know with—” and here she used the Ojibwa word for bear, or so Davy assumed. “If it still hungry, we be dead.”
“I wish I may be shot if I ever give up without a fight,” Davy responded. “Don’t count us out until we’re worm food. As my ma was partial to saying, where there’s life, there’s hope.”
Her eyes the size of walnuts, Wawaneechotinka gazed fearfully into the murky forest. She shook from head to toe, then bit her lower lip and steadied herself.
