Nathan Stark, Army Scout Read online

  Nathan stood up, breathing hard. “How many others are out there?”

  The Indian glared up at him in silence. Nathan tossed the Bowie end over end and deftly caught it by the handle. “I don’t mind cutting your tongue out—either for silence or a lie. Think before you answer.”

  The Creek scowled and started up from the ground. Nathan kicked him back to the earth.

  “How many?”

  “Only four,” the Indian answered sullenly.

  “You better be telling the truth.” Nathan gave a sharp, short whistle, and Buck headed toward them from behind the outcropping of rock.

  When the horse came to stand beside him, Nathan quickly searched for the short length of rope he needed and roughly rolled the Indian over onto his stomach. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  When the Indian was slow to comply, Nathan gave him a swift kick in the ribs. The Creek cried out in surprise and pain, and put his hands behind his back as Nathan had ordered. Quickly, Nathan bent, putting one knee in the Creek’s back, and tied the wrists together with the length of rope. Standing, he glanced up to see Cullen coming toward him, blood staining the side of his buckskin shirt.

  “Cullen—”

  “Just a cut,” he replied. “Let him get a little too close. Last thing he ever did.” He looked down at the crimson stain. “I’m gettin’ too old for this—gettin’ too slow.”

  The brave at Nathan’s feet cried out in frustration and anger at Cullen’s words.

  “Don’t move,” Nathan said quietly. He walked to where his pistol lay at the foot of a scraggly redbud tree and put it in his holster, then retrieved his rifle and the Indian’s tomahawk. He put the rifle into his saddle scabbard with a last, disgusted look at it, and then secured the tomahawk in one of his saddlebags.

  The Indian had inched his way over to where the bone knife lay on the ground. Nathan wasn’t sure how the Indian intended to make use of the weapon with his hands tied behind him, but he wasn’t about to find out.

  “Thought I said don’t move, Injun.” The pistol was in his hand, hammer cocked with a sinister click.

  The other man lay still at the warning.

  Nathan walked over and picked up the knife, wiping his own blood off of the blade on the Indian’s pant leg. Then he put the knife in the saddlebag alongside the tomahawk.

  He reached up and unknotted the bandana he wore, taking it from his neck and wrapping it around the gash the savage had given him on his forearm. He pulled the ends tight around the wound, cut shirt and all, with his right hand and his teeth. He’d gotten good at makeshift bandaging over the years.

  “Let’s have a look, Cullen,” Nathan said, turning toward his friend. “From the looks of it, he got you pretty good.”

  “This? Huh. I been gilled by a catfish worse ’n this little ol’ cut. This ain’t nothin’.”

  “Still, can’t have you bleedin’ all over everything while we’re traveling. Let’s take care of it.”

  At Nathan’s no-nonsense tone, Cullen whistled for his own horse, and gave Nathan a disgusted look. “You ain’t my nursemaid, Nate.”

  “How well I know it—and glad of it,” Nathan answered, a quick smile taking the sting out of his words. “Just easier on both of us if someone has the good sense to patch up your side and keep a little blood inside you, right?”

  “It ain’t that bad,” Cullen grumbled, turning his side away from the Creek’s view. “And one of us had the good sense to shoot that there rattler dead before he got his chance at you. You sure weren’t payin’ attention.”

  “Had my hands full, Cul. In case you didn’t notice,” Nathan answered gruffly. “But thanks for savin’ my hide. Hard choice—death by snakebite or tomahawk.”

  Cullen gave a short laugh. “You sure enough had yourself in a jam, come to think of it.”

  As Nathan applied a makeshift bandage from a strip of one of Cullen’s spare shirts, Cullen gave him a sharp look than nodded toward the brave. “What about him?” he asked in a low voice.

  Nathan glanced at the Creek. The warrior stoically waited for Nathan to kill him. He didn’t beg for mercy. In fact, he made no sound at all.

  “Never known you to leave one of them red devils alive before.”

  “Nope. Never have.” Nathan hadn’t realized until Cullen mentioned it that he had planned to leave the brave alive.

  Nathan tied off the bandage tightly. “That’ll have to do till we get farther on up the trail. We need to move on out of here.”

  “You gonna just leave this one behind, then?” Cullen persisted.

  “Want me to check the bodies for valuables or did you already do that?” Nathan didn’t look at Cullen.

  “I did it. Got it all. Got the weapons. Got ever’thing but the scalps.”

  Nathan nodded, ignoring the edge in Cullen’s voice. “We don’t need ’em.”

  Cullen’s head shot up, his gray eyes narrowing. “Never thought I’d see the day when Nathan Stark would pass up takin’ a redskin scalp.”

  Nathan finally met Cullen’s steady stare. “Count yourself lucky. You lived to see it. Do you need the money so bad you’re willing to carry those bloody hanks of hair up to Fort Randall with you or detour back over to Fort Smith? Two nearest places to collect on those scalps, you know.”

  Cullen pulled his hat off and wiped his forehead. “This heat must’ve got to your head, Nate. This ain’t like you at all.”

  “Maybe not,” Nate agreed. “Like I said—if you want to take those scalps and collect on ’em, I’ll head on up north to Fort Randall and let ’em know you’ll be along shortly—”

  “No need.” Cullen gave him a look that said he still believed Nathan was a bit touched in the head.

  Nathan gave him an easy grin. “Let’s get the hell out of here, pard. We’ve got us five ponies to sell. That beats scalps, any day.”

  “Kill me!”

  Nathan and Cullen turned to look at the brave who was still on his stomach, trying to look over his shoulder at them.

  Nathan gave a short bark of laughter. “Why?” He strode to where the Indian lay and turned him over with a boot.

  Black eyes glared up at him. Blood dried across the young warrior’s cheek from the cut Nathan had given him. More crimson was smeared across his mouth from the punch Nathan had landed squarely on his nose, breaking it. If an Indian could sport a black eye, this one did, and it was swelling shut.

  “Why should I kill you because you ask it?”

  “I could not avenge my brother and father . . . and the others. I am—”

  “So . . . you feel humiliated? Good.”

  You beg for death as my Camilla begged for her life—for the lives of herself and our child—

  “Kill me!”

  Nathan knelt over the Creek. “Remember my name every time you think of this day. I’m Nathan Stark.” He leaned closer and said distinctly, “Nathan. Robert. Stark. Indian killer. You’re the only one in fifteen years that’s lived to tell the tale. I let you live. You by God didn’t earn it! I could have killed you any time, you Muscogee scum!”

  “Then do it!” The Indian rose up on his elbows as far as he could, glaring. Only inches separated them.

  Nathan’s fists clenched. He cursed the fact that the damn repeater had misfired and the inconceivable chain of events that unforeseen action had set in motion. Why had he not been a split second sooner? Gotten that fatal shot off with the Colt? He should have ended the fight and been on his way.

  Indians, of any kind, weren’t worth wasting time, energy, or breath on. They weren’t real people. No one who claimed to be a human being could wreak the vengeful chaos and destruction as they did—with smiles on their faces and joy in their hearts.

  No one could kill an innocent young woman . . . a pregnant woman . . . and ride away joyfully having done something so heinous.

  No human being could steal children . . . his little sister, Rena . . . three years old. Was she even still alive?

  He shook hi
s head, clearing away the cobwebs of memories—memories that kept him going, kept him seeking vengeance for all of them from fifteen years past . . . his parents, his little sister, his wife . . . their unborn baby . . . and the other friends and neighbors who had lost family during the Pawnee raid.

  “Kill me, then, Nathan Robert Stark. I will come after you. Black Sun will kill you.” He leaned forward, straining toward Nathan that last impossible half-inch. “This, I promise you.” He spat in Nathan’s face. “I swear it!”

  Nathan wiped the spittle away with his shirt sleeve, then stood slowly. He understood. The warrior Black Sun was not so different from what he had been fifteen years ago . . . before the raid, the deaths, the kidnappings. Before the war . . . before his time in the army revealed his true calling. Scout. And Indian killer.

  Black Sun was of an age that Nathan had been when it had all started. He wouldn’t kill the Creek. Let him suffer as Nathan had. Let him plot his own vengeance for what had been taken from him. Let the young man face the coming days, wondering if there had been something—anything—he might have done to change the outcome of this day—the deaths of his brother and father.

  Let the Creek live.

  CHAPTER 3

  Nathan and Cullen mounted up after stringing the Indian ponies together and tying them to Cullen’s horse. They wound their way deeper through the San Bois.

  It was slow going with the five ponies, but they’d bring a good price, and neither man was one to leave an animal to suffer.

  Black Sun had been a wily one, and stronger than Nathan had anticipated with the anger born of his shock. Something else Nathan understood completely. After Camilla’s murder at the hands of those red devils, Nathan had felt as if he needed no food, no sleep, nothing but the need for revenge that raged through his soul.

  Black Sun would follow him. It had been a mistake to let the Indian live. Why had he? He refused to accept the kinship he’d felt when he looked into the savage’s face. They were nothing alike. Nothing. Except . . . Nathan knew, without a doubt, that Black Sun would follow him as soon as he managed to free himself from where he’d been left, trussed hand and foot.

  * * *

  Black Sun’s heart burned with revenge. Though he’d been spared, he knew he would be shunned by his people. He’d seen his father and brother murdered before his eyes, but had not been able to avenge them. He had not even been able to die fighting the men who had slain them.

  Instead, he’d been captured and tied up, left to watch as the man they called the greatest Indian killer alive rifled the bodies of Kikikwawason and Hasse Ola, who lay fallen in the prairie grass. Black Sun managed to crawl near the bodies where he found a rock with a sharp edge.

  He tried not to look at his father and his brother. Nathan Stark and the other man had been accurate and deadly with their rifles. Mercifully, his father and brother hadn’t suffered, nor had the others . . . but Nathan Stark wouldn’t be so lucky when he met his death. He was going to die very, very slowly. As would the man called Cullen.

  Black Sun was completely humiliated as the tears began. Hasse Ola—Rising Sun, named for the time of his birth—had been his best friend as well as his only brother. They shared similar names, because on the day of his birth, the spirits had obscured the sun, sliding blackness across it until only a ring of light remained for a short time, before the fiery orb returned from hiding. The brothers had always believed that a bond of destiny as well as blood existed between them.

  That bond had been abruptly and cruelly severed by the Indian Killer. Black Sun’s father and brother had been taken in an ambush. They’d had no chance to defend themselves, to fight and die like warriors.

  But he, Black Sun, would see that Nathan Stark and this Cullen met their end—and it didn’t matter how long it took.

  By the time Black Sun had painstakingly sawed through the rope binding his wrists, they were chafed and bloodied. He barely noticed, he was so triumphant in his success at getting his hands free. With fumbling fingers, he finally got the rope untied at his ankles.

  After a quick appraisal of his father’s and brother’s bodies, he saw that Nathan Stark had taken everything of any value, any usefulness, with him. He checked the bodies of Lamochattee and Chekilli, the two warriors killed by the white man called Cullen. Black Sun had no weapons. Stark and Cullen had gathered them all. He had no pony—again, the white demons had taken all. And on those ponies were the skins containing their water.

  Black Sun didn’t bother trying to wipe the dried blood from his face. He would wear it. The stickiness had gone from it, making it feel like war paint—and that was what it was to him.

  He had no way to collect the bodies of his father and brother, or the others. He had to save himself. He had to go back the way they’d come riding earlier . . . back toward the Creek encampment.

  His ribs groaned with every painful step. He hadn’t gone far when it came to him that his brother and father must be left for the coyotes and the wolves; to have their eyes pecked out by buzzards . . . to not have the warriors’ burial they were so richly entitled to.

  He drew in a mighty breath and a keening wail rose up from deep inside him, echoing through the flat prairie behind him, the nearby mountains, and the small hills in the distance, far away. He didn’t care who heard it. He’d fought a worthy enemy, and he was still alive.

  Bloodied, battered, bruised . . . and shamed.

  But alive.

  He would remove the shame. He would find Nathan Stark and Cullen, and he would kill them both. If it took to the end of his days, he would do it. To have to leave Hasse Ola and Kikikwawason behind was the worst of all.

  Nathan Stark had forced him to this path.

  Killing him would be a pleasure.

  * * *

  Nathan and Cullen had ridden several hours, stopping only to clean the cut on Nathan’s arm, check Cullen’s wound, and let the horses get a cool drink of water in one of the clear streams. The horses drank, and Nathan backed them off after a few moments, not wanting them to get too much water too quickly.

  The Indian ponies were surefooted and hardy, and it was easy to see they had been well-cared for. Nathan checked them over quickly while they were resting. They’d bring some extra supplies or go toward a new rifle, if a good deal could be found at the next trading post of any size on up the trail. What had happened during the fight had tempered his affection for the Winchester ’66.

  As he let the ponies have one last drink, he let Cullen rest while he filled their canteens and the ones on the other animals, just in case. They could make it to the next settlement, Statler’s Mill, by late tonight, if they pushed on, but the temptation to stop and make camp for the night in a couple hours was strong in Nathan.

  Maybe he’d lost more blood than he thought. He cut a glance at Cullen, who seemed to be holding his own. That gash in his side had to be painful. The thought of another night of eating jerky and most likely having a cold camp was enough to push them both over the edge. He’d see how he felt when they had made a few more miles, and then he’d have a word with Cullen. Cullen was tough, but he was right—they were both getting older.

  At least there were four Indians who wouldn’t be on their tail tonight . . . but that fifth one?

  Nathan shook his head. He should have killed Black Sun. Big mistake. He had made it this far in life by following one simple rule.

  Never leave an enemy alive behind you.

  * * *

  Statler’s Mill never closed. The settlement and the trading post were open for business—of all kinds—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Nathan had traveled that way a few times in the past. It was always the same—a defiant, lawless settlement in the Cherokee Nation that seemed to mock God by surviving and thriving. Anything could be bought and sold—from animal pelts to fresh fish; from a good, hearty meal to a fine wine; from a rifle to a woman—whichever a man might find himself in need of.

  But as late as it was, Na
than wanted nothing more than to see to Cullen and the horses, then grab some grub. Then he’d find a real mattress somewhere in a relatively clean hotel.

  Female company was the last thing on Nathan Stark’s mind. Once they got the horses stabled for what was left of the night, they could find a room at the Lucky Strike Hotel and stow their gear. It was a familiar place, and one of the cleanest and most reputable lodgings in town.

  At the late hour, no meals would be served in the hotel. They’d have to find a saloon that would rustle them up some kind of supper, whatever might be available or left over. Neither of them would be particular about the food, but both were hungry for something other than jerky.

  Though they’d seen rabbits and squirrels along the ride toward Statler’s Mill, they hadn’t wanted to risk the sound of gunfire while they were riding through the borderlands of the Choctaws, passing through the tip of the Muscogee Creek domain, and then into the Cherokees’ land. Statler’s Mill was still in the Cherokee Nation, but close to where the Miami lands bordered.

  Nathan shook his head at his own thoughts as he dismounted in the darkness in front of Anderson’s Livery. How much of his caution had been in not wanting to alert any nearby Indians . . . and how much had been not wanting to let the one who followed know where he was? He gave a disgusted sigh.

  Should’ve killed him ...

  Getting soft, Nathan?

  He scowled at his thoughts and looked up as the hostler on duty came toward him and Cullen, wiping his bleary eyes. Cullen dismounted gingerly with a grimace of pain. His hand went to his side, and then his eyes met Nathan’s.

  “You okay?”

  “Like I said, I’m gettin’ too old for this.”

  “Hep ya?” the hostler asked in a tone that said he’d like nothing more than to go back to his bed.

  “Need these horses fed, watered, and given a good rubdown,” Nathan directed.

  The man scratched his tousled head, cocking it to one side. “These Injun ponies?”

  Nathan’s gaze sharpened. “What of it?”