Golden Hawk 3, page 1
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Born to whites, but raised by the Comanches, Golden Hawk had a single-minded mission to rescue his golden-haired sister Annabelle from savage captivity and sexual enslavement. But now Golden Hawk was at the crossroads, faced by cruel choices. A wagon train he had to save from sure death was headed by a cotton-mouthed preacher he hated. The Indians he had to battle were led by a warrior chief he had to respect. And the beautiful Indian Singing Wind and the gorgeous auburn-haired Alice Gentry, who both wanted him, were hard to choose between, as each worked her special brand of sexual sorcery. Golden Hawk had never met an enemy he could not outfight or a woman he could not satisfy—but now he had to decide fast on which foe and which female he should take on …
GOLDEN HAWK 3: GRIZZLY PASS
By Will C. Knott
First published by Signet Books in 1986
Copyright © 1986, 2021 by Will C. Knott
This electronic edition published January 2021
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Lesley Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Original cover paintings by the artist R.S. Lonati can be bought at BLITZ publishing company. Contact: kaegelmann@blitz-verlag.de
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.
Chapter One
IT ALL HAPPENED so fast Hawk was unable to save the Indian.
He had been moving down a steep slope, his eye on the Crow and on the elk the Indian’s flintlock had brought down, when a monstrous male grizzly charged out of the brush, heading on a beeline for the downed elk and the Indian. It was close to winter, the grizzly’s most ravenous feeding time as he readied himself for his long sleep, and the scent of the freshly killed elk had evidently drawn him on the run. Before the hapless Indian could get out of the way, the bear sprang upon him and began to maul him fearfully, the bear’s great talons ripping the Crow from shoulder to crotch while his canines closed about the Crow’s head and face, tearing at them with a terrible fury. The blood spurted from the Crow’s wounds, darkening the bear’s silvery pelt.
Hawk plunged down the rest of the slope and dashed across the small clearing to where the Crow and the grizzly were locked in their terrible embrace. His rifle was already charged. Slamming the Hawken’s muzzle against the bear’s head just behind the ear, Hawk pulled the trigger. The rifle detonated, but a second before it did, the bear turned his head, knocking aside the barrel.
The round struck the bear’s snout, ripping through it. With a howl of pain and outrage, the grizzly released the Crow and went for Hawk. Backing up hastily, Hawk pulled out his Walker and emptied his last four rounds at the great humped beast. All four rounds slammed into the bear’s chest. They slowed the beast momentarily, but they did not stop him. He swiped the empty Walker from Hawk’s hand, the bear’s eight-inch talon opening a flap of skin clear to Hawk’s elbow.
Ignoring the wound, Hawk unsheathed his bowie and stood his ground as the bear charged. One vicious swipe of the bear’s right paw opened Hawk’s left side. And then the great beast was upon Hawk, crushing against him with terrible force. Hawk felt a rib crack under the enormous pressure as he began to plunge his knife into the enraged beast’s back and neck. Over and over his blade slipped deep into the bear’s hide while the awful, crushing pressure of the bear's grip increased. Hawk felt another rib snap as he continued to slash at the bear with no visible effect. Suddenly, as if annoyed with Hawk and the game he was playing, the grizzly stepped back, caught Hawk with his left paw, and flung him aside like a piece of carrion.
Hawk landed heavily on his back, managing somehow to hang on to the bowie. Dazed, bleeding from his wounds, he stared up at the slavering, bleeding jaws of the huge carnivore, no longer confident that he or his bowie could do anything more than irritate this monster. But the bear had been wounded, perhaps mortally. His chest was a tangled black mat of fur from the gunshot wounds.
The problem was that the animal didn’t really know how badly he was hurt. Rearing unsteadily up onto his hind legs, he uttered a fearsome roar, then came down hard onto his four feet and shambled woozily toward Hawk, peering meanly at him out of small, squinting black eyes, evidently determined to finish him off. Scrambling to his feet, Hawk looked about for a tree. But there was none close enough.
He looked back at the bear and saw—beyond the grizzly—the Crow stirring to life despite his fearsome wounds. On the ground behind the bear, the Indian snatched up his bow and fitted an arrow to the bowstring. Seeing this, Hawk moved quickly backward, keeping himself between the bear and the Indian. The bear followed, shuffling doggedly toward him, his shattered snout dripping.
Suddenly the bear roared in pain and swung about. The Crow’s arrow had plunged deep into the grizzly’s rectum. Taking advantage of the bear’s momentary confusion, Hawk ran forward and leapt onto his back. Leaning over the bear’s great hump, he plunged the long blade of his bowie repeatedly into the side of the bear’s neck. Yet even when the blood gouted from the bear’s neck, proving Hawk had severed his jugular, this appeared to have no effect on the huge animal.
Swinging about wildly, the bear dislodged Hawk and flung him to the ground. On his feet in an instant, Hawk raced desperately for the slope, hoping he could make the timber halfway up. A grizzly could not climb a tree, but by this time Hawk was wondering if he could either. With a great bark of anger, the grizzly took after him. Despite his own wounds and the searing pain in his chest from the two cracked ribs, Hawk neared the slope. The ground began to shake behind him as the great bear gained on Hawk. Then came the sound of something very heavy striking the ground.
Hawk glanced back.
The grizzly was down, his full length stretched out on the grass, his massive body covering an astonishing patch of the meadow. His head lifted for an instant and his small, beady eyes focused on Hawk. Then he let his head fall forward.
There was a single great, weary shudder, and the grizzly lay dead at Hawk’s feet.
Slowly Hawk sank to the ground. As soon as he caught his breath, he examined his wounds. He was astonished at the clean precision of the long slashes that covered his body. On his right arm the neat rip ran from the base of his thumb clear to his elbow. Blood oozed steadily from it, gradually encasing the arm in a dark carapace. His left side had been opened up as well, and his left thigh was also encased as the blood mixed with his buckskin pants leg to form an even harder shell. Each intake of breath was a problem, sometimes causing him to cough, which in turn led him to spit up blood. The broken ribs must have punctured a lung, and the exertion of his run for the slope had seriously aggravated his condition.
Still, he was alive. His condition was perhaps not much better than that. But it was enough, and he would take it.
Hawk got carefully to his feet, not an easy task, as he was trying hard not to inhale or exhale too deeply. He would have to bind his ribs before long, he realized, or he might end up with a collapsed lung. He had seen Comanche warriors home from raids suffer terribly and sometimes die when that occurred. Once on his feet, Hawk moved carefully around the fallen bear and over to the Bannock Indian.
The Indian was still alive, stretched out on the ground, the bow still clutched in his hand. He lifted his head to look up at Hawk, and Hawk gasped. The grizzly had torn off the Indian’s scalp from crown to eyebrows so that a great raw flap of it hung down over his face. Long, gaping slashes down the length of his body had laid the Crow open like a fish readied for the coals. A portion of his spine showed through at one spot and farther down Hawk caught a glimpse of the man’s gray intestines flecked with blood working out from under his body, in time with his labored breathing.
The Crow must have been in considerable pain, but he uttered not a word of complaint.
Hawk spoke to him in Comanche, but the man could not speak Comanche and so replied in his own tongue. Hawk shook his head. He could not follow this particular Crow dialect, though he was now becoming almost fluent in Crow as well as some Blackfoot and Nez Perce dialects, too. Since his wound made it impossible to use sign language, the Crow spoke in a crude English, the effort to speak obviously sapping his strength. “Me .. . Crow Feather.”
“I’m Jed Thompson.”
“No. You Golden Hawk.”
Hawk was, as always, surprised and even disturbed at his widespread fame—or infamy. There was not a tribe in the Plains or in these high Rockies that did not know of him, it seemed—and of his relentless quest.
“Have it your way,” Hawk said to the Indian.
“Can you move? I have a cabin not far from here.”
“No. I not move. I die here. You bury me. Put rocks on top.”
Hawk understood. The Crow did not want his body dug up by wolves or coyotes and his gnawed remains flung to the winds. If that happened, what survived would not serve him well in the next world.
“I will do that,” Hawk assured him. Looking down at the torn figure, he felt only sadness t
“My woman … “ the Crow said suddenly, grimacing in pain, his hand clutching tightly at a tuft of grass.
“Where is she?”
Hawk waited for him to reply. Abruptly, the grimace on the Indian’s face softened and his hand slowly released the tuft of grass as his torn body gave up the ghost.
Winter was coming on. Hawk had few provisions. Here before him was enough meat to last him a good while. Somehow, despite his wounds, he would have to butcher the elk and the bear and contrive to bring them back to his cabin a good mile from where he now stood. Unfortunately his horse was back in the cabin’s corral and he dared not leave these two slaughtered animals untended while he returned for it.
Using his bowie, he ripped his buckskin shirt into strips, bound up his wounds and his ribs as securely as he could. Then he dragged the dead Indian’s body up onto a ridge, covering him with boulders so any marauding coyotes or wolves would not be able to disturb the corpse before Hawk could return with a shovel to bury him properly.
Back at the small clearing, he began the bloody task of butchering the animals. He flung aside the guts and organs for the coyotes and wolves, and as he worked, he kept alert for any more hungry grizzlies. Working as swiftly as he could in spite of his wounds, he soon strapped the choicest portions of the dressed meat onto a makeshift travois fashioned from long pine branches. His Hawken resting on his shoulder and his empty Walker Colt thrust into his belt, he dragged the travois through the timber to the abandoned cabin he had found two weeks earlier. He hung the meat on a hook above the fireplace inside the cabin, mounted his horse, and dragging the bloody travois behind him, rode back in hopes of retrieving what little meat he had been forced to leave behind.
But before he reached the clearing, he realized he had taken all he was going to from those two carcasses. Still in the timber, he pulled up and watched through the trees as another, smaller grizzly tore into the elk’s remains while two large timber wolves kept a respectful distance. At last the bear left, dragging off the elk’s carcass, leaving only the dreadfully soiled coat of his fellow grizzly behind for the wolves. Snarling delightedly, the wolves laced into it, tearing what little flesh remained.
Hawk rode out of the timber. The wolves glanced at him. Hawk did not want to shoot them. He had never tasted the meat of a wolf and had told himself he would do so only when he was desperate. One of the wolves took a piece of the grizzly’s matted hide in his mouth and dragged it off into the timber; the other wolf followed after him.
By this time Hawk was not feeling too well. His wounds had broken open—they had never been completely closed—and the blood oozing from them was constant. He knew he could not go on forever bleeding like this. At the same time, his chest appeared to be on fire. Glancing up the slope at the spot where he had covered the dead Indian’s body, Hawk wondered whether it might be wiser for him to forget his promise to the Indian and ride back as quickly as possible to the warmth of his cabin.
The fact that he would even consider such a thing shamed him. Buried deep in Hawk’s consciousness was the primitive necessity of seeing to a decent burial for a fellow warrior, especially when it meant honoring his dying request. Whether this need sprang from his white or his Comanche heritage he had no idea—but it did not matter. Hawk felt it powerfully, and without further internal debate, he slid himself carefully off his horse, pulled free the shovel he had stuck into his rifle scabbard, and hauled himself wearily up the slope to where he had covered up the Indian. Some of the smaller stones had been dislodged, but there was no sign that the body had been disturbed. Evidently the pungent aroma of the freshly butchered meat below had been too sharp a lure for the wolves.
Slowly, laboriously, Hawk dug the Crow’s grave. He was coughing blood almost continually by the time he completed it, and there was a hot, searing pain in his throat—as if he had swallowed scalding coffee. Hawk almost passed out while pulling the stones off the dead Indian so he could drag him into his shallow grave. But he kept to his task doggedly. As he labored, he became aware of the large, soft flakes drifting out of a uniformly gray sky.
At last he uncovered the Indian’s body. It had become quite stiff by this time, and Hawk felt a little foolish as he tried to pull the body into the grave. Ants had already come for the feast and some of them left the cold body and began exploring Hawk’s torn arm, beginning with his wrist. He dropped the stiff corpse and tried to brush off the swift ants, but was dismayed to see many of them vanishing into his wounds.
Suddenly weak, he sat down heavily and a moment later felt his head strike the ground behind him. He blinked dazedly up at the clouds, feeling his face grow damp from the thousands of large wet snowflakes that blotted out the sky. Dimly, from the bottom of the slope he heard his horse whinny up at him questioningly. He was thinking of his warm stall in the barn back at the cabin.
Hawk tried to call out to him, but nothing came.
The urge to close his eyes for just a minute was overwhelming. Immediately he drifted off. When he regained his senses, he was aware of a shadow moving above him. Another damned grizzly, he thought, grabbing for his Colt and opening his eyes. Intense black eyes above high cheekbones in a dark, round face were peering down at him. An Indian woman. At once Hawk remembered that the Crow had mentioned her.
Abruptly, she straightened up and stepped over him. He turned his head to follow her progress. She stooped over the Indian’s body and with a quick deftness Hawk envied, she dragged the stiffened corpse into the grave. Then she took up the shovel and began filling it, the blade picking up as much snow as gravel. Then she piled the wet rocks onto the grave, lugging still heavier boulders onto it.
Finished at last, she slumped down, one arm draped over the cairn, and began to wail, striking herself repeatedly and tearing at her hair.
Hawk saw that the woman had no intention of mutilating herself and that her grief, though obviously genuine, was not entirely overwhelming. He struggled to a sitting position and waited until she was done.
At last, deftly braiding the hair she had just tried to pull from her head, she came over to Hawk. “You hurt bad,” the Indian woman told him calmly. She didn’t look like a Crow, but she spoke in the Crow tongue.
Hawk’s replied in Crow, telling the woman that the same grizzly that had killed her husband had mauled him as well.
She shrugged. “I am not blind. The marks of the grizzly’s claws are on you. You die too if I not close your wounds. But my lodge is many moons from here.”
“How are you called?”
“They call me Singing Wind.”
“I am Hawk.”
Again she shrugged. “Singing Wind know this.”
“Do you have horse?”
“Yes. The horse of my dead husband.”
“My cabin is not far from this place. Help me mount my horse and I will lead you to it.”
She reached down, took Hawk’s hands, and helped him regain his feet. For a moment, the world spun queasily about him. He felt so lightheaded, he wondered why his head didn’t spin off his shoulders and vanish into the snow-laden sky.
Seeing his unsteadiness, Singing Wind stayed close beside him, her hand on his back. She was almost as tall as he was, Hawk noticed.
By the time they descended the slope and reached his horse, the snow was half a foot deep, sifting down out of a milk-white sky more thickly with each passing second. There was not the slightest trace of a wind. Singing Wind’s horse was tethered close to Hawk’s. With one casual heave, she boosted Hawk into his saddle and pushed the shovel into his rifle scabbard, while he groped for the reins. She thrust them impatiently into his hand, then mounted her own horse and looked to him for the direction he had promised.
Head down, he let his mount have its lead, and the horse promptly started through the timber, heading for home.
The cabin’s roof was snow-covered by the time they reached it, and night was coming on. The long ride had refreshed him somewhat and the steadily falling snow was like a gentle benediction. It was so silent as they rode through the timber, Hawk swore he could hear the snow falling.
