The Darkest Winter Read online

  Judging by the sudden flare of anger in her dark eyes, she did. She let out a little snort, shrugged his hands off her shoulders, and backed away, then stood up. She barked something at him and gestured toward the wound in his side.

  Breckinridge nodded and said, “I’ll be careful with it, I sure will. And thank you again for takin’ care of me.”

  Sunflower sniffed, then turned to leave the lodge. She flung the deer-hide flap closed behind her with enough force that if it had been a door, it would have slammed.

  When she was gone, Morgan let out a whoop of laughter, then sat up, controlled himself, and said, “I reckon it’s a good thing we’ll be moving on in the morning. I’m not sure how friendly the Ioway will be toward us now that you’ve turned down that expression of Sunflower’s gratitude.”

  “Aw, go to hell,” Breckinridge muttered. He picked up his buckskin shirt from where it lay beside him and frowned at the rip and the bloodstain that the knife had left behind. “She probably wouldn’t be interested in mendin’ this shirt and tryin’ to wash some of the blood outta it, would she?”

  Morgan started laughing and fell over again.

  * * *

  The dog that had tried to warn the village about the kidnappers the night before had been knocked out by a butt stroke from a rifle but seemed to be fine the next morning. Breckinridge was glad of that. He had always liked dogs.

  Mohasca told him about that when the chief showed up at the lodge, along with a couple of older women who brought breakfast for Breckinridge and Morgan. One of the women also changed the poultice on Breck’s side and bound it up again. There was no sign of Sunflower, so Breck figured she didn’t want to see him anymore.

  “You will go on to the mountains this morning?” Mohasca asked as he sat cross-legged on one of the robes.

  “We plan on startin’ in that direction,” Breckinridge replied. “It’ll be a few weeks before we get there, though.”

  “Sunflower was very grateful to you for saving her from those evil men.”

  “Yeah, I, uh, know she was,” Breckinridge said. He looked down at the fire. “I tried to make her understand I was glad to do it and that she didn’t owe me nothin’ in return.”

  “She does not agree.” Mohasca cocked his head a little to the side. “But considering everything, it is good that you and your friend will be leaving soon. It would cause unhappiness for you to remain for very long.”

  “Well, we sure ain’t plannin’ to cause anybody to be unhappy, are we, Morgan?”

  “No, we never intended to do anything but spend the night, anyway,” Morgan said. “We thank you for making us welcome, Chief.”

  “The spirits brought you here to save Sunflower,” Mohasca said solemnly. “Now they call you on to the Shining Mountains.”

  “They sure do,” Breckinridge agreed. “That’s where our destiny is waitin’ for us.”

  A little later, as they were preparing to leave, Morgan said quietly, “Destiny? That’s a pretty strong word for a fur trapping expedition, isn’t it?”

  “You never know what’s waitin’ for you on the other side of the hill until you go and see for yourself,” Breckinridge said.

  As they were about to get into their canoes, many of the village’s inhabitants gathered on the shore to watch the departure. Mohasca stepped out of the crowd and said to the two white men, “Those evil men are probably ahead of you on the river. You would be wise to watch for them.”

  “They won’t know me and Morgan had anything to do with what happened,” Breckinridge said. “I don’t reckon they got any better look at me than I did at them.”

  His size might give him away, though, he thought. After all, one of them had called him a monster.

  “Men such as those have a dark shadow in their hearts,” Mohasca said. “They need no reason to do evil other than the fact that they can.”

  Breckinridge nodded and said, “Reckon you’re right about that. We’ll keep our eyes open for ’em, won’t we, Morgan?”

  “Of course,” Morgan said. “Breck’s always alert for trouble.” He chuckled. “But it seems to find him anyway.”

  They pushed the canoes out until the craft were floating, then climbed in and took up the paddles. As they stroked away from the shore, a commotion broke out among the watching Ioway. The crowd parted and Sunflower broke through. She stood at the edge of the water and called after Breckinridge and Morgan. When Breck looked back, she smiled and waved.

  “Appears that she forgives you,” Morgan commented from the other canoe.

  “And I’m glad of it,” Breckinridge said as he returned the wave. “No need for any hard feelin’s.”

  “What about those fellows who tried to kidnap her?”

  Breckinridge’s face hardened as he turned forward again and stroked away from the village. “Now, them varmints, I might have a grudge against,” he said.

  * * *

  The journey upriver continued. As Breckinridge expected, within a few days the wound in his side was almost completely healed. He had been blessed with great recuperative powers to go along with his strength.

  Sometimes he wondered if his physical prowess meant that, to balance things out, he had gotten less than his fair share of thinking ability. But then he remembered that he could read and write and cipher fairly well, while a lot of folks couldn’t. He might not have a lot in the way of book learning, but he figured he wasn’t exactly a fool, neither.

  They passed other Ioway villages but didn’t stop at any of them. Leaving that territory behind, they traveled through the lands of the Omaha, the Pawnee, and the Ponca, tribes that were peaceful enough as long as no one threatened them.

  Breckinridge and Morgan stuck to the river, making camp on its banks when they stopped at night and staying away from the Indian villages. They even paddled out to the center of the broad stream whenever they passed one of the collections of lodges or tipis.

  They hadn’t seen any other white men, which came as a bit of a surprise to Breckinridge. Of course, it was still early in the season, he reminded himself. He and Morgan had been among the first trappers to leave St. Louis and head for the Rockies. There would be hundreds more coming upriver behind them.

  One evening as they sat next to their small campfire, Breckinridge said, “We’ll be gettin’ into Sioux country in the next day or two. Be best if we stop early, get some hot food and coffee in us, then push on for a spell and make cold camps. I’d just as soon not show a light at night.”

  “They’re hostile?” Morgan asked.

  “More so than the tribes downriver. Of course, you can’t never tell what a Injun’s gonna do. He might act friendly as can be one day and try to lift your hair the next.”

  Morgan’s eyes widened. “They take scalps?”

  “From what I hear, they’ve started to. Didn’t used to be that way. I reckon they picked up the habit from them damn Frenchies who come down from Canada. Heard a fella back in St. Louis talkin’ about how the French trappers put out a bounty on Injun scalps. I can believe it.”

  “I’m kind of attached to my hair. If you think cold camps are best, that’s what we’ll do.”

  The terrain had gotten a bit more rugged, the hills to the west more pronounced. The next day, as Breckinridge and Morgan paddled along, Breck called to his friend, “Look over yonder. On top of that hill about five hundred yards away.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Morgan said. “You have sharper eyes than I do. What is it?”

  “Couple of fellas on horseback, just sittin’ there and lookin’ in this direction.”

  Morgan lifted his paddle out of the water and paused in his stroke. “Sioux?”

  Breckinridge did likewise and said, “Can’t think of nobody else it could be. Best go back to paddlin’. We don’t want ’em knowin’ that we saw ’em.”

  The two men resumed their powerful strokes and sent the canoes forward against the current. Morgan said, “Do you think they’re going to attack us?”

&nbs
p; “I ain’t spent enough time out here to be sure about things like that. I’m hopin’ they’re just curious. We’ll keep on bein’ careful. Might ought to start takin’ turns standin’ guard at night.”

  “That sounds like a good idea to me,” Morgan said. “I don’t like the idea of being watched.”

  “Better than bein’ shot at,” Breckinridge said.

  They stopped in the late afternoon, made a tiny, almost smokeless fire from buffalo chips, and had a brief meal before starting upriver again. After they had paddled for a couple of miles, Breckinridge started looking for a good place to make camp. He hadn’t found one yet when he suddenly lifted his head and gazed intently ahead of them.

  Morgan saw the reaction and said, “What is it?”

  “Listen,” Breckinridge said. “Hear it?”

  From somewhere upriver came the sharp rattle of gunfire.

  Chapter 6

  For a moment the two men sat there with the current pushing the canoes slightly downstream. Morgan asked, “Are we going to get mixed up in this, Breck?”

  “I don’t reckon we’ve got much choice,” Breckinridge replied. “If we were in a tight spot, we’d want somebody to come along and give us a hand.”

  “We don’t know anything about what’s going on up there.”

  A fighting grin flashed across Breckinridge’s face. “Like I said back in that Ioway village, the only way to find out is to go and see.”

  He dug his paddle into the water and sent the canoe ahead again. A few yards away, Morgan sighed and did likewise.

  Up ahead, the river made a long, lazy curve to the left. As Breckinridge and Morgan drew closer to it, Breck could tell the shots came from the other side of the bend. He pointed to some trees that grew down close to the water. Shadows were already starting to gather underneath them.

  “Let’s put in to shore over yonder and go ahead on foot,” he told Morgan as he angled his canoe toward the trees. “If we go paddlin’ around that bend, we’ll be out in the open where we’d be spotted.”

  Morgan nodded his agreement and followed Breckinridge toward the tree-lined bank.

  It took only a few minutes for them to reach the edge of the river. They got out, boots splashing in the shallow water, and hauled the canoes up onto the bank. Then, taking their rifles, they trotted through the grove.

  Breckinridge led the way, weaving around tree trunks. When he approached the edge of the growth, he halted and dropped to one knee, staying in the shadows. Morgan came up on his right and knelt behind one of the trees.

  “Can you tell what’s going on?” he asked in a whisper.

  Breckinridge’s eyes scanned the scene before him. The ground sloped gently to a wide, parklike area along the river before rising again to a tree-covered hill. Off to the left, a thick stand of brush blocked the end of that swale.

  To the right lay a large campfire. Six canoes were pulled up on the bank near it. That would have been enough to identify Carnahan’s party, even if Breck hadn’t spotted the squat, bearded leader stretched out in a shallow depression, aiming a rifle at the brush. Flame belched from the weapon’s muzzle as Jud Carnahan fired.

  The rest of the men were scattered around the camp, trying to take advantage of whatever meager cover they could find. A few lay among the canoes, for what little good that would do. The thin hulls of the craft wouldn’t stop a rifle ball.

  Luckily for them, the attackers hidden in the brush didn’t seem to have any rifles, Breckinridge realized after watching the battle for a moment. Instead, arrows flew through the fading light, arching in to land among the besieged trappers. Breck couldn’t tell if any of the men had been hit yet.

  “Looks like Carnahan and his bunch run smack-dab into an ambush,” Breckinridge said.

  “Why don’t they just get in their canoes and push off?” Morgan asked. “They could get far enough out in the river that arrows wouldn’t reach them.”

  “Because the damn fools unloaded a goodly portion of their supplies before the Injuns jumped ’em,” Breckinridge said as he nodded to the crates and sacks sitting around the camp. “If they pull out, the Sioux will get their hands on those goods. What they can’t use themselves, they’ll destroy so the trappers can’t use ’em.”

  “And Carnahan doesn’t want to push on to the Rockies without provisions. Well, I guess that makes sense. Like you said, though, it was foolish of them not to just take what they needed out of the canoes and leave the rest.”

  “This fella Carnahan must be a greenhorn,” Breckinridge speculated. “Might be his first trip west. A fella can be plenty tough back East and not know the first blessed thing about survivin’ out here on the frontier.”

  “I wasn’t the least bit tough, and I’ve survived out here.”

  “That’s because you and me sorta learned together,” Breckinridge said with a grin. “Now, let’s figure out what we’re gonna do.”

  “I’d say we can go back to our canoes, paddle all the way over to the other side of the river, and keep going. Carnahan’s party is large and well armed. That’s probably why they thought they could build such a big campfire and get away with it. They weren’t worried about drawing the attention of the Indians.”

  “You mean we ought to leave ’em to fight their own way outta this mess?”

  “Some of them are the ones who tried to kidnap Sunflower!”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Breckinridge said. “Even if that’s true, the others might not’ve known anything about it.”

  “You saw them back in St. Louis. Did any of them look innocent to you?”

  Morgan had a point. Breckinridge hadn’t liked the look of the men with Carnahan, especially that fella with the saber. All of them had looked perfectly capable of stealing an Indian woman away from her people and having their brutal way with her.

  But Breck and Morgan didn’t know. Breckinridge had been forced to go on the run because he’d been blamed for something he hadn’t done. It stuck in his craw to turn the other way and let somebody come to grief when they might be blameless in this instance—no matter how much of a sorry son of a bitch they might have been otherwise.

  Anyway, he’d always had a hard time turning his back on a fight.

  “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said. “We’re gonna work our way west through these woods until we can get behind those Injuns and come in through the brush. We’ll set up a big ruckus, and maybe they’ll think they’re caught between two forces and will light a shuck outta there.”

  “Do you really think that’ll work?” Morgan asked.

  “Well, we’ll probably have to kill a few of ’em. But there’s at least a chance we can spook ’em into runnin’. As long as they ain’t cornered, Injuns won’t fight when the odds are against ’em. They’d rather call it a day and come back to fight some other time.” Breckinridge glanced at the sky. “There ain’t a whole lot of light left, neither, and they don’t like to fight in the dark. Some folks’ll tell you they won’t fight at night, which is a damn lie, but they don’t cotton to it much.”

  Morgan sighed and said, “All right, you’ve persuaded me. I just hope we’re not making a huge mistake.”

  “Me, too,” Breckinridge said. “If you want, you can go back to the canoes and wait for me. If I don’t come back after a while, you can head on without me.”

  “Blast it, Breck, you know me better than that!”

  “Yeah, I reckon I do,” Breckinridge said. “Come on.”

  They stole through the grove of trees, staying deep enough that the gathering shadows concealed them. The Indians in the brush probably weren’t paying any attention in this direction, anyway. Their wrath was focused on the group of trappers who had made camp beside the river.

  After they had gone a quarter of a mile, Breckinridge motioned to Morgan. In some open ground behind the brush thicket, a couple of young braves stood holding the woven bridles of a dozen ponies. They were looking toward the battle, and in their excitement, they weren’t
aware of anything else going on around them. Breck and Morgan could have killed both of them with rifle shots before the Sioux youth knew what had happened. Morgan hefted his weapon and gave Breck an inquiring look. Breck thought about it for a second, then shook his head. He gestured for Morgan to follow and burst out of the trees, charging toward the two youngsters holding the horses.

  The white men had to cross about thirty yards to reach the two Sioux. Breckinridge hoped to cover most of that distance before the horse-holders heard him and Morgan coming.

  However, they had made it only halfway before one of the young men glanced over his shoulder. Breckinridge saw the Indian’s eyes widen in surprise. He let out a startled yelp to his companion. Both of them swung around to meet this unexpected threat.

  Unfortunately for them, they hesitated in taking action, evidently unsure whether to let go of the ponies’ leads and grab for their bows. That gave Breckinridge the time he needed to take two more huge bounds. He dropped his rifle, spread his arms wide, and launched himself in a diving tackle that swept both young men off their feet. As they all sprawled on the ground, Breck grabbed both Indians by the throat and banged their heads together hard enough to knock them out.

  The ponies, loose now and spooked by the commotion, stampeded, scattering in several different directions as they charged away.

  Morgan had paused to pick up Breckinridge’s rifle and now thrust it back into his friend’s hands as Breck got to his feet. “The rest of them will have heard those horses take off,” Morgan said. “Some of them will come to see what happened.”

  “Let’s go meet ’em,” Breckinridge said. He plunged into the brush with Morgan right behind him.

  Breckinridge had gone only a few feet when a burly Sioux painted for war loomed up in front of him. The man yelled angrily and swung a tomahawk at Breck’s head. Breck ducked under the weapon and lashed out with his rifle stock as he came up. The brass butt plate slammed into the Indian’s jaw. Breck both heard and felt bone shatter under the powerful blow. The warrior dropped, out cold.