Night of the Coyote (The Coyote Saga Book 1) Read online

  “I was trying to reach Scalped Ridge, but the bleeding had sapped too much of my strength. I grew weak and could go no further, so I found this place and prayed. My prayers were answered.”

  “Which God did you pray to?” Ethan asked, trying to gauge her sense of humor. The perfect whiteness of her weak smile brightened him in spite of their dilemma.

  “Both of them,” she said. “The white Quaker God and the Great Spirit. I did not wish to take any chances. If you know of any others I might pray to, please tell me. I fear we shall need all of the gods in every heaven and happy hunting ground before this night is done.”

  He placed his hand on Skye’s forehead. She was burning up. “With all due respect to your gods, Skye, I think we’re going to have to help ourselves out of this one. The first thing we’d better do is to get that arm wrapped. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He returned soon with several ponderosa branches and a belt, shirt and pair of trousers he had stripped from the dead man. He knelt down beside Skye and warned her. “I’m going to help you turn over on your back. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but it’s going to hurt like hell.”

  “You do not have to swear, Ethan. I understand what must be done. And do not worry, I shall not cry out. I do not wish for our enemies to find us. Please talk with me when you bind my arm. . . . It will help.”

  Carefully, slowly, he helped her roll over onto her back, and then he worked the flannel shirt around her forearm, wrapping it tight to cushion and steady the protruding bone.

  “The man I killed,” he said, as he continued working on her arm, “was not more than thirty feet from this spot when I first saw him. It’s a miracle he didn’t find you here.”

  “He had not been here long,” she said, her voice quavering. “These men are not trackers or they would have found me long ago. It was an accident he was near this place. But very fortunate for me, as it turned out. Several of the men passed by me shortly before sundown. They, of course, would have deduced where I was going. I suspect they finally realized what may have happened and sent one or more of the men back. This man appeared very nervous. I could hear him pacing. He may have been lost. Most men, white or Indian, are cowards in the darkness. It is unlikely they are searching for me now, especially with the storm moving in.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right. They’ll be trying to get back to their horses and find a place to hole up. Odds are they’ll wait till morning to take up the hunt. They’ll figure you won’t go far on foot. Do you think they know you’re hurt?”

  “It is likely. I fell against a tree after Razorback was shot. I was stunned for at least several minutes, and then I crawled away into the trees. The gunman would have seen that.”

  “Why were they after you?” Ethan asked.

  “One cannot be certain, but I believe it may be because of something I said to Mr. Webb.”

  “Webb? What do you mean? Which Webb?”

  “Gideon Webb.”

  He had never heard her speak so meekly. “What were you doing talking to Gideon Webb? And where?”

  “I went to see him at the Circle W.”

  “That was a damn stupid thing to do,” he said, forgetting the gravity of her condition. “Why, on God’s earth, would you go to see Gideon Webb?”

  “I found something in the ashes of the Harper house.”

  “You mean the bones.”

  “That, too. But this was something I was certain belonged to the Webbs, presumably Clete Webb.”

  “What was it?”

  “A gold pocket watch . . . a very expensive one, I would judge. It was somewhat charred and tarnished, but the Circle W brand was engraved on the case.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you went to Webb’s. Why didn’t you just bring the watch back to town?”

  She hesitated then looked up at him sheepishly. “I . . . I was angry with you, Ethan . . . or I thought so at the time. I suspect I was more angry at myself for being such a child. Anyway, impulsively, I decided to confront Mr. Webb with the watch. I had heard such good things about him. Even you had told me that he had a reputation for being an honorable man. I thought if I confronted him with evidence that his son was implicated in the killings, he would see that nothing could be served by further bloodshed.”

  Ethan was incredulous. “You gave Gideon Webb the watch?”

  “Oh, no, I did not do that. I hid it between loose foundation stones at the southwest corner of the Harper house. I simply told Mr. Webb that I had found such a watch, and that it was evidence to be used against his son.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He appeared very calm about it all. He expressed surprise and insisted there had to be some other explanation and stated he knew nothing about any gunmen. I was certain he was lying; still, I found him very much a gentleman. In fact, if I may say so, there is a quality about him, a strength, that I found quite magnetic, almost seductive. I must admit that Gideon Webb is the kind of man a woman would like to believe.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No, I did not. Several times, he asked me to produce the watch, and his interest was more than casual. I could tell it was causing him some dismay. It is not so difficult to understand that a man might resort to drastic measures to save his own flesh and blood. I do not excuse him for it; I simply understand.”

  “Did he make any threats?”

  “Never. He just said he would give due consideration to my information and would make a decision soon. He suggested I turn the evidence over to the sheriff. That is precisely what I intended to do when I left the Circle W. I returned to the Harper ranch to pick up the watch, and I had just started to get it from its hiding place, when I heard horses. So, I left the watch where it was and rode away. I thought I would return, but, of course, they did not give me the opportunity.”

  Her breathing was deep and rapid, and he could sense the tension in her body. The pain that racked her had to be close to unbearable.

  Cutting some strips from the legs of the scavenged trousers, Ethan secured the sticks about the padded arm and used the remnants of the trousers to make more cushioning and to fashion a crude sling. He used the belt to bind Skye’s upper arm tightly to her body. When he was finished, the arm was as nearly immovable as he could make it. Unfortunately, he thought, that did not overcome the terrible truth that he had been unable to set the bone. He would try that later.

  But the more he learned of her injury, the more grave his doubts about his ability to help her.

  Now he assisted her to a sitting position and sat down beside her, wrapping his arms about her shoulders and supporting her there, giving her time to shake off some of the dizziness he knew she would be feeling from the loss of blood and hours of lying on the ground.

  Suddenly, as if it had been waiting for Ethan to complete his task, the wind wailed like a howling wolf through the trees, and a scattering of heavy raindrops burst from the Skye. “How do you feel now?” Ethan asked.

  “Better. I can walk. We must go.”

  “The pain?”

  “It is not so bad now.”

  She was lying; he could hear it in her weak, trembling voice. He could feel it in her taut, shivering body. Never had he wanted so much to share someone’s burden, to carry all of someone else’s agony. It was a strange feeling for one who had walked most of life’s trail alone.

  He did not have time to ponder. With good luck, it was an hour to reach any haven on Scalped Ridge, and he had no reason to expect good luck.

  He helped Skye get to her feet. She was wobbly as the newborn colt she had helped deliver the night before. He did not even try to argue with her. He knew she would walk until she fell. After that, he would do what he had to do.

  28

  IT HAD TAKEN several hours for Ethan and Skye to accomplish the grueling trek up the narrow deer trails that ended at Scalped Ridge. Rain had exploded from the sky, spilling to the earth in sheets and torrents that had made the climb slippery and treacherous. Skye had faint
ed dead away no more than a half hour after they embarked. Ethan had scooped her into his arms, abandoning one of the rifles, balancing the other precariously across Skye’s hips as he trudged through the storm.

  Finding a cave had been the easiest part, and now, as the flames of the fire he had lit began to bite at the wood and send forth the sweet fragrance of pine smoke, Ethan surveyed the cave. It was no more than seven or eight feet deep, perhaps five feet at its highest point, with a ceiling that tapered to an opening of less than three feet.

  The entrance was half hidden by an outcropping of rock, forming a crude portico that helped keep the cave bone dry. Beneath the cave was a steep shale-covered incline that dropped off some fifteen feet to the deer trail Ethan had traveled the last stretch of their journey. The cave fortress would be nearly impenetrable from attack, but they could not withstand a siege of any duration. Food was nonexistent. With his hands, he had dug four small pits on the loose rock outside the cave, forming small cisterns to collect rain water. He hoped that the rock beneath was not too porous to retain water.

  Shortly, he would shape a crude cup from a chunk of cedar. In any case, the water supply was scant and could be cut off by any attackers.

  The worst of it was that Skye’s condition left them with no time.

  As the damp wood dried and the hot breath of the fire began to warm the cave, Ethan took another look at Skye. She stirred restlessly now. Her unconscious state, he surmised, was the result of weakness and exhaustion and pain, not the effects of the simmering fever that was only beginning to gnaw at her. The fever would do its damage later with the inevitable infection that would threaten both limb and life. Her entire body shook spasmodically, but he, too, felt like he had just emerged from a mountain river in January.

  He pulled off her moccasins and peeled off her rain soaked breeches and shirt and stretched them over logs to dry before he took off his own and did the same.

  He lay down next to Skye, giving the warmth of his body to her backside as she slumbered facing the fire, knowing that false modesty or any imagined impropriety were foolish when their survival was at stake.

  In spite of his determination to keep a vigil, he too surrendered to sleep. He awoke when the fire died down, and after building it up again checked their garments to find they were fairly dry. He got dressed and made a clumsy attempt to get Skye into her trousers, when her eyes opened.

  “Ethan?”

  “It’s all right, Skye, you’re safe. I was drying out your clothes.”

  She was struggling like a turtle on its back, trying to get up, and he moved to help her. She appeared somewhat rested and stronger, but he knew her improvement was temporary, for when his hands touched her bare flesh, it was like holding them over hot coals.

  “It’s easier to take off another’s clothes, than to put them back on, is it not, Ethan?”

  Her mind was working. She was not delirious—yet. “I won’t argue that. If you’ll help me, maybe together we can get you dressed.”

  He helped her worm into the trousers and her tattered shirt. Some women, he thought, would be horrified at the notion of being undressed in their sleep under such circumstances. Skye seemed unembarrassed by her naked state, accepting his actions as he had intended them, as a sensible approach to solving an immediate problem. The Sioux in her perhaps? Indians did not seem to share the white man’s uneasiness about unclothed bodies. Many white people were afraid of their bodies, and they hid that fear behind something they tried to call morality. But the naked body had nothing to do with morality.

  “You’re thirsty,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He made five trips outside to the water cisterns to fill the hollowed-out wooden cup before Skye waved it away. He drank the last one himself and then moved in next to the fire a few feet away from Skye.

  “The wind’s died down,” he remarked. “It’s still raining, but it has slowed some. It should clear off not too long after daylight. I’ll see what we can do about clearing out of here then.”

  “The men will be looking for me, Ethan. Perhaps for both of us if they found the man you killed. We have no horses. You cannot carry me all the way to Lockwood.”

  “I’ve thought about that. I won’t wait for them to come to me. . . . I’ll stalk them. We’ll take their horses. We can make Lockwood by early afternoon. I’ll get you to Henry Weintraub.” He sucked in his breath. “Skye, I don’t think I can set that arm. I’d need another man to help. Even then—”

  “I know you cannot, Ethan.” Her voice was soft and steady. She appeared strangely serene. “I told you before, it is very bad. I have seen such things—and it is unrealistic to think that we will make it to Lockwood by this afternoon.”

  “We can, and we will.”

  She smiled benignly and reached up and caressed his cheek with her fingers. “You are a brave man, Ethan Ramsey. A strong man. Yet there is a gentle side to you that I regret I have not yet learned to know.” She withdrew her hand and gazed pensively into the fire. “I wonder what might have happened with us? Perhaps it is better that I shall never know.”

  “Skye, damn it! What in the hell are you talking about? You sound like—”

  “Please, Ethan, do not swear. It is very unbecoming. You are an educated man and should be able to choose suitable words to express yourself.”

  “Then quit talking like that.”

  “Ethan, I am going to die. It is out of our hands.”

  “Skye, that’s nonsense. And it is not out of our hands.”

  “Do you believe in heaven, Ethan?”

  He could see the pain in her eyes, but otherwise she seemed unperturbed. This conversation she persisted in upset him. But she was facing death. She was entitled to talk about it, even though he was determined not to let her die.

  “I don’t know if I believe in heaven,” he said honestly. “I don’t believe in hell, not in the fire and brimstone sense. If there’s an afterlife, it’s probably nothing like the preachers describe it. But it warms me to think my soul might meet up again with old Ben Dobbs and a few others I’ve cared about on this earth.”

  “I have decided to go to the happy hunting ground with my people.” Skye said. “I shall call upon the Great Spirit of the Sioux in my last hours. I am closer to their God. If you do not care for the heaven of the white people, Ethan, you may come to see me in the happy hunting ground.”

  Her eyes held his in the shimmering light, and he saw a sadness and longing that overwhelmed him. “I’ll plan on meeting you there someday. But your Great Spirit is going to have to wait a long time before either of us shows up.”

  “Ethan, you are a very stubborn man.”

  “You used to be pretty damn stubborn yourself. It’s not like you to give up so easily.”

  “Ethan, would you mind holding me?”

  He moved next to her, put his arms about her and let her lie back against his chest. He raked his fingers through her long, sable hair, thinking how beautiful it was, even damp and tangled.

  “Ethan, I do not know if I shall pay your fee,” she murmured.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “The last thing I’m concerned about is my fee, Skye.”

  “You must think about your fee, because I have employed you . . . and you have not been doing your job.”

  “Haven’t been doing my job? What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “I have wondered about that. How is it that you found me?”

  “Red Horse and I went out to the Harper place and picked up your trail there. We could tell you left in a hurry.”

  “Did you tell me earlier that you had found the remains?”

  “Yes. We learned some other things, too.” He told her about Dr. Weintraub’s autopsy on the Harper bodies.

  “I apologize, Ethan,” she said after he had finished. “You have been working. The body at the Harper house, do you think he was Grant Richards?”

  “Possibly. Very likely, if he’s truly missing. Not that it explains anyt
hing. You realize that Gideon Webb must have sent those gunslingers after you?”

  “Yes, it appears I was foolish to go to him. When I heard the riders coming to the Harper ranch, it was from the direction of the Circle W. The men, no doubt, saw me riding away from the Harpers’. They did not follow me immediately, though. I waited in the trees a quarter of a mile above the ranch and watched. They scattered out and seemed to be searching for something—I suppose they were looking for the watch. I do not think they found it. When they broke away from the Harper ranch, there was no doubt they had decided to come after me.”

  Her voice began to drag like a person talking in her sleep as she related the story. “There was no way I could get past the men and make it to Lockwood. I decided to seek refuge in the mountains with my people.”

  Her head dropped against her chest. “Ethan,” she said, her voice trailing away, “when I die, take me into my mountains. Do not place me under a cold mound where I will be caged by earth and gobbled up by worms. Bury me in the way of the Sioux on a platform close to the sky, near Waconda. And free. Promise me.”

  “I promise. But you are not going to die.”

  She did not respond, and his body went numb with sudden, cold fear. He released a sigh of relief when he felt the rise and fall of her labored breathing. She had drifted off to sleep or into unconsciousness. Whichever it was, he would not disturb it for it was the only anesthesia for her pain.

  He lay her down next to the fire and worked his saddle bags under her head for a pillow. He tossed the last of the firewood on the fire and bent over and kissed her softly on the lips. “You won’t die,” he said. “I won’t let you.”