The Hunted Read online

  “Where to now, Charlie?” he asked himself, surveying the remnants of the camp. His right hand instinctively probed the side and back of his head. It touched crusted blood and above that, the still-raw wound. He must have taken quite a knock to the bean.

  How did he get overlooked? So many questions bothered him as he stumbled about the mess that had been their campsite. His boots caught a number of times on hunks of wood and what sounded like metal, but his primary focus was on trying to find anyone else—bodies, most likely—but so far he was relieved that he’d found no one.

  He resisted the urge to shout to them yet. Even though he’d been shouting earlier, now that he’d somewhat recovered his senses, he realized there was still the possibility that whoever had done this could still be around, possibly watching the camp, or had heard him and decided to return. Or they might show once the snow let up, in hopes of finding something of value.

  He was guessing. He had no idea what had happened or what would happen. He only knew that he was probably alone, probably had been left for dead. All around him Charlie saw smoking wreckage and for the first time in a long while he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  Chapter 23

  Soon the cold seeped even deeper into Charlie’s core and he knew that if he didn’t get a fire going soon he was sure to die. And that would be foolish, considering how much he had lived through.

  While there were still smoking boards, there must still be embers, and where there were embers, there would be easy fire. Easier than trying to make fire. He realized that since he still wore his big sheepskin-lined mackinaw, chances of his gear still being in his pockets—including his flint and steel and the box of matches he kept handy for lighting a fire, would still be there. Save them for when he really needed them.

  For now he would work to get a blaze kindled from what still lay smoldering around him. He kicked at the snow, grateful that it hadn’t turned to sleet and skinned over the top with a layer of ice.

  He would get a blaze going and then he would rummage for anything that might have made it through the fire, anything that might be useful to him, particularly if it was made of cloth. He sorely needed to cover his hands. His own fur-lined mittens were nowhere in sight.

  The blaze took less time than he expected it to. He hunched over it, feeling the life-giving heat force its way into his hands, his face. With the heat came the ache, dull and throbbing and persistent. He knew the warmer he got the more he would hurt. He would worry about tending to his wounds later. Right now he needed to be warm. The need for warmth overcame him quickly once he began moving around the devastated campsite.

  He looked up, squinting into the lead-colored sky, but could see no trace of the sun. He was usually pretty good about judging the time of day by shadows and the angle of the sun, and his own internal way of knowing such things. But now he had no idea what time it was.

  He was thirsty, that much he knew, so it was time for a drink. He scooped snow and managed to stave off the pangs of thirst for a little while. He’d warm his feet and knees before exploring more of the camp. Might be they left useful items behind. Maybe a tin can or a cup to melt snow in. Maybe even a sack of meal, flour . . . something.

  He made his way back to the spot on the wagon wreck where he’d awakened and cuffed at the snow. More burned boards, the charred turnbuckle and rope for cinching down loads. But there was something more there, back in what had once been the bed of the wagon, the very one he’d driven. It looked dark, of rough, thick-woven material. Where had he seen something like that before? He lobbed a short hunk of wood at it, knocked more snow from it. Yes, it was cloth, but it was too far out of reach.

  He eased his way back into the wreck, on his knees, his side aching. He’d have to look at that soon, tend to it somehow, and hope the wound didn’t become infected.

  “Better be something useful,” he mumbled. After a painful minute of grunting and inching himself forward, Charlie laid a hand on it, and the thick fabric under his hands, though charred, was recognizable to him. It was one of the carpetbags belonging to the sisters. He felt bad about rummaging in someone else’s goods, but the odds of them being anywhere nearby were slim to none.

  The brass clasps along the top of the case were blackened and the leather loop handles had been mostly chewed away by fire, but he dug at the clasps with his thumb and one of them popped open. It didn’t take him long to spread the bag’s jaws wide. Inside he found clothes, a small framed photograph of a man and woman, the glass covering it cracked from corner to corner. From the fashions it looked maybe to be a portrait of the girls’ parents. He could almost see something of Delia and Hester in each of the faces. Were they still alive, these people? He’d never asked.

  He reached into the bag again and pawed through. It would be asking too much to find a pair of mittens. Heck, he’d even settle for a pair of socks he might wear as mittens. So far, just women’s thin undergarments. Not many, and of sturdy cotton, but they would have to do. Then his fingers brushed something that didn’t feel like wood. It also had a bit of give to it. But it was hard, like a box. He dragged the bag closer to himself and peered in.

  Leather? A leather case, and with buckles on top. Charlie drew it out, and it required both hands. His left still troubled him, but he could flex it now and felt the necessity of exercising the hand. With every movement he was reminded of what felt like a wound in his shoulder. The case was longer than his forearm, and as wide as he could stretch his fingers apart. The depth looked to be four or five inches. And weightwise, it was a hefty thing.

  The heat had puckered the leather, changed the color from what looked to be a rich brown to the darker hue of a wad of used tobacco. “What could it be?” his deep voice rumbled in the dead-calm camp. Even the low crackle of the fire behind him had decided to pay attention, it seemed.

  Charlie slid his blackened, bleeding hand along the case top, then pried the buckles apart and pawed the top of the case open. Seated in custom compartments of rich green felted material was a handsome, well-tended, double-barrel shotgun, broken down into two sections, the butt and trigger mechanisms—all richly engraved with a dog-and-pheasant hunting scene and plenty of detailed scrollwork—and the side-by-side barrels, both gleaming in their obvious elegance. A snowflake touched the blued metal.

  Rarely had Charlie seen anything so finely made in his entire life. And never had it been so close to his own hands. It was a work of art, to be sure. And it occurred to him that it must be the family heirloom Hester had said she was going to give to Delia’s man once they got to Gamble.

  Charlie peered for long moments into the leather case. “Well, I’ll be damned all to hell. . . .”

  A thin, raspy voice from somewhere close said, “You’ll get there right quick—” The voice coughed. “If Hester catches you talking like that.”

  Charlie spun, the gun and case forgotten for the moment. He held up his two bloodied, grime-covered ham hands before him, ready to swing. “Who’s there?” he said, peering from the collapsed wagon into the snowy gray light. But there was no one to be seen. Just the smoking, wrecked camp. He heard a cough, sounded as if it came from below him. He looked down between his knees . . . and saw an eye staring up at him!

  “It’s me, Mr. Chilton . . . Delia.”

  Charlie shook his big bull head, but that only made the headache and spinning feel worse. “Delia? No, no, I’m imagining things.”

  “No, you aren’t,” came the voice, more frantic and pinched now. “But I can’t take much more of you kneeling on me.”

  Chapter 24

  “Did you see them?”

  “Yes,” said Blue Dog, nodding to his brother. “Whites are strange. I cannot figure out why they are so determined to work so hard to get to their deaths faster than ever. It seems that they cannot wait to die.”

  “Ah,” said Son of Cloud. “But they believe they are soon to be rich. They are h
urrying to their beloved money. It is all to the whites.”

  Blue Dog stood and stretched his back. “I do not care about anything they care about. I will kill them all as soon as they are close enough.”

  “Close enough to what, brother?” Son of Cloud paused in tying his blanket behind his cantle. He knew he would not receive anything but an arrogant smile from his brother.

  Son of Cloud rested a hand on the leather saddle, musing on the fact that it once belonged to a U.S. Army captain, a man who had thought their father, Fights With Storms, was an ignorant, friendly savage. That is what the man had said out the side of his mouth to his fellows, all the while smiling and nodding and holding up his hand in a friendly gesture. As the six white soldiers rode forward, the captain in the lead, all offering forced wide smiles, Fights With Storms had offered one in return and at the same time watched two dozen of his fellow warriors closing in on them from the sides, from behind, none of them smiling.

  Their father had kept the saddle and a few other pieces of the man’s gear and personal possessions. There was a photograph in the captain’s saddlebags of a woman with light hair, perhaps the gold color of dried grass. She had been pretty, their father had said, staring straight at him from the image, almost as if she knew what he had done to her man, daring him to find her and do the same to her.

  Instead he had been surprised to find her at the soldiers’ camp some miles away, and he had taken her for his own. He had said that he believed she had come to love him, but she had died within days after Blue Dog Moon was born. No one had known how she really felt, if she had loved the man who had killed her husband, the white soldier. Son of Cloud liked to think that he remembered her, but he knew that was impossible. He had been too young when she died. And now none of it mattered anyway.

  Son of Cloud shook his head and slapped the seat of the saddle. Such foolish thinking would get him nowhere but dead. And he could not let that happen before his brother. He had too much to do. He had to lure his hot-tempered younger brother from the road he had been traveling. The man was too much like their father, Fights With Storms.

  He also had died too young, and though the old men said he had been a mighty warrior to the end, in truth he had wasted his life attacking a mining camp alone. Fights With Storms had believed what the other warriors told him, that he bore the spirit of many dead great warriors.

  Son of Cloud knew the truth behind such things, knew such boasts and praise to be hollow. But his brother did not. Killing whites was a bad enough thing. Killing too many whites at once, such as he wanted to do in the mine camp of Gamble, was something else, something that would result in one thing—early death and wasted life. But how to convince his hot-tempered young brother?

  Son of Cloud looked across at the younger man who stared back at him, studying him, not smiling now. His blood, his brother, they of the same mother and the same father, and who shared so many traits and yet could be so different in so much of their shared lives. It was a puzzling thing.

  “Big brother,” said Blue Dog Moon. “You worry too much. I see it on your face. You seek to change me. You have said as much. I tell you now as I have told you in the past and I will no doubt tell you in the future—you cannot change me. I am formed and whole. And no person, white or brother”—his eyebrows rose—“will alter my path.”

  Son of Cloud turned to urinate on a tree. Over his shoulder he said, “That is true, Blue Dog. And that is also what makes you the man you are and what makes me worry. And so we travel in circles in our heads. You see?” He turned and smiled at the young man before climbing into the saddle. Blue Dog Moon was at once infuriating, yet, as no other person, he knew how to make him laugh. He was also a killer who seemed to enjoy the act, and that was the most troubling part of all.

  Chapter 25

  Despite his pained head and body, Charlie couldn’t seem to move fast enough to get off whoever it was who said he’d been kneeling on her. Could it really be Delia? Even as he lunged backward off the busted, charred wagon, snow and soot spraying in all directions, his mind fixed on the notion that he must surely be hearing things. Couldn’t be real—but whoever it was, whatever it was, knew his name, mentioned Hester! Said she was Delia. . . .

  He stood crouched by the end of the wagon. “Delia . . . is that really . . . you?”

  A thin white hand, grimy with soot, shot up between two charred boards, the fingers clawed and grasping.

  Charlie stumbled backward, his hoarse scream sounding animal-like.

  “Course it’s me,” came the voice, strained and grunting. “Now help me out of here.”

  It didn’t take Charlie but a moment to realize he hadn’t been hearing things, but the sight of that hand had nearly sent him howling and limping off down the snowy mountainside. But the voice, too . . .

  He lunged back to the wagon, pawing boards and snow aside, then a layer of scorched blanket, and there she was, the sickly young woman he’d scarcely exchanged but a few dozen words with the entire trip. “But . . . how?” he said, even as he tried to figure out how to lift her out of there.

  She didn’t wait for him as she worked to get a hand underneath herself, then pushed upward. “Don’t just stand there, Charlie. Help me!”

  He hauled her up out of the burned-out nest she’d been stuck in. “How?” he asked again.

  She stood wobbling before him, her hair singed to a frazzled fringe on one side of her head, her face, where it wasn’t smeared with greasy soot, red and shiny with blisters through the soot. She moved her arms slowly, saying, “Good thing you know who I am, otherwise you’d sound like a big old owl right about now.”

  “Huh?”

  “No, you’d be asking, ‘Who? Who?’” She seemed to find this amusing, because she smiled.

  “Delia.” Charlie bent low, and leaned close to her. “Can it really be you?”

  “It can and it is, Charlie.”

  He held her gently by the shoulders, still not sure what to think about all this. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear he was dead and this was some sort of odd combination of heaven and hell.

  “Now I’d appreciate it if you’d peel up those blankets I was in. I’m getting so cold I can hardly stand it.”

  He did as she asked, but kept shaking his head. “I don’t understand this at all, Delia.” He looked at her again, hoping somehow to verify that it really was her.

  “You don’t? How do you think I feel? Hester had me half knocked out with laudanum. Then that buffoon, Shiner, I think it was, started groping me. I tried to fight him, but I think he hit me.” She touched the side of her head.

  “Next thing I know I heard shouts and screaming or laughing, I don’t know which, and then I saw flames. I tried to get up, but between the laudanum and getting hit . . .” Delia touched her head again, and it was then that Charlie saw beneath the soot what appeared to be a big, welted bruise. “The last thing I recall, I was in an oven and I felt like I was burning alive.”

  “The snow,” said Charlie, nodding at the ground, as if that would explain everything.

  “What?”

  “Near as I can figure it, the snow is what saved us. Those boys set fire to the wagons and lit a shuck out of here. But the storm came on quick and helped douse the flames. Else-wise I figure our goose would have been cooked.”

  Delia didn’t speak, merely nodded and drew the damp wool blankets around her. In a small voice, she said, “Charlie, I . . .” Then her knees bent forward and she crumpled to the snowy ground.

  “Delia!” He rushed forward, ignoring the lancing pains in his side, shoulder, and head, all screaming for rest, for washing, for medicine and attention. None of that mattered at the moment.

  With the limp, featherlight girl cradled in his arms, Charlie looked around the mess that had been the outfit’s camp. He realized he had been wasting time in not kindling a bigger roaring blaze. He balanced her as
gently as he could on one knee and in the crook of his sore left arm. With his right, he snagged the blankets that had slipped from Delia’s shoulders when she fell. “Gonna be all right, girl. Hang in there for me.” He resisted the urge to slap her face, despite the fact that it was the only sort of doctoring he knew how to do.

  Charlie carried her to the remnants of the fire ring, her head and shoulders propped against a snow-slick log. He hurried to gather more still-smoking planks from the half-burned wagons, ignoring the blisters the hot boards raised on his hands.

  He piled them into a rough teepee shape and as gently as he could lowered himself down onto his knees. He was sorer than he’d been in a long, long time. What sort of beating had those boys doled out on him? Time enough to find out later. Right now he had to get this blaze really crackling. And within a couple of minutes, Charlie was pleased to see he had even more flames licking up into those boards.

  He chose the driest wood he could find, but it still spit and hissed, telltale signs of damp burning materials. A couple more trips to the burned-where-it-sat wagon and he had drier materials to work with. Then he concentrated on clearing away the biggest amount of snow from the side of the fire and slid the girl over as close to the warming blaze as he dared.

  She started to come around, but then dropped off again. He hoped it was only the hard experiences she’d lived through and not her illness, whatever that was. Hester had been cagey about it, but from what he could see and what he overheard, the girl had bouts of crippling pain that left her weak as a mewling babe. At other times, like when she’d nearly clawed her way out of the wagon wreck, she’d seemed nearly normal. Though anyone looking at her could tell Delia was far from normal.

  Before she’d been burned and blistered and smudged up with ash and soot, she had been skinny as a dancer in a painting, and pale as a parsnip, too much so. Looked like one of those girls who always stayed indoors. Except Charlie knew better. Heck, he reasoned, being sister to Hester, she knew she had to stay active and on her toes.