Sword of Vengeance (27 page)

“The hell you will,” Tibbs snapped. He set the jug down between the scimitar and the warrior’s outstretched hand.

Wolf Jacket froze at the sound of a pistol being cocked. Tibbs had dropped his left hand to the smoothbore weapon lying beside him. The weapon was cocked and primed, and though he did not bring it to bear, the flintlock’s presence was warning enough. Wolf Jacket wanted the long knife with its fire eye. All he had to do was kill Tibbs to get it. But the white man was his only link with the British and their guns and powder and shot. He hesitated on the brink of violence. The Eye of Alexander held him transfixed in its blood-red stare.

The long knife was power. Once its spirit magic was in his possession, there would be none to stand against him or challenge his leadership. Men like Runs Above and Blue Kettle had been too outspoken of late. They also had questioned his attack on the Choctaws, and other Creeks had begun to listen to them.
Somehow, I will have the long knife, when I no longer need this white man. Then I will rid myself of Runs Above and Blue Kettle.

The Creek war chief relaxed, curled his fingers around the neck of the clay jug, and poured the contents onto the ground by the coals. He settled back and began to eat. His shell necklace rattled with each movement, and a trickle of juices glistened at the corner of his mouth. Thunder rumbled like cannon fire beyond the walls of his lodge.

Tibbs stared ruefully at the puddle slowly soaking into the ashes and earth.

“A waste of good whiskey,” he muttered.

“White man’s poison, another gift that kills my people,” the Red Stick replied.

“You don’t seem to mind the gift of our guns,” Tibbs reminded the Creek war chief.

“That’s because we can kill you with them,” Wolf Jacket said, setting his bowl of roasted meat aside. “Kill and kill with the guns you give us until the white man no longer travels our rivers or hunts in our forests. Until you are driven back to your great villages to the north.” Wolf Jacket grinned, and veins stood out in stark relief along the shaved sides of his skull. In battle, he would smear the shaved areas with a paste of yellow warpaint made from bear fat and sulfur. “Do not worry, Bill Tibbs. You have nothing to fear. You are my brother, eh?”

“Sure I am,” Tibbs answered. He found a wooden bowl and served himself some beans with a gourd dipper. He squatted down alongside his guns and the Eye of Alexander. “Sure I am.”

Outside the lodge, the slanting downpour at last resolved to a trickle and then ended. A half hour later the sun appeared, but only as a bone-white orb peeping through a somber veil of clouds. Beneath its baleful glare, a chorus of dogs began to yip and growl and paw at the mud-covered body of a Choctaw girl, quite naked, quite lifeless.

B
Y MIDNIGHT THE WIND
had scoured the thunder-heads from the sky, and all that remained of the previous day’s storm were a few spectral clouds abandoned like gossamer ghosts and doomed to haunt the moonglow, to drift silently across the face of time. Stars reflected upon the rain-swollen surface of the Tallapoosa shimmered and danced as Kit McQueen lowered himself into the river. He paddled with his left hand, keeping a firm right-handed grip on the cane basket that carried not only his own firearms but those of several warriors who had preceded him into the river here at the easternmost tip of the Red Stick village at Horseshoe Bend.

The cold water cut right through his weary state and revived him from the effects of the forced march that had brought them to the river. He wasn’t the only one to suffer the shock of emersion. A few yards upriver he heard Iron Hand O’Keefe mutter a curse as the Irishman lowered his bulk into the river. Kit briefly smiled. It was all the humor he could manage. After all, the Choctaws might be walking right into a trap.

It all depended on how many guards had been stationed by the dugouts and how watchful they were.

Kit glared at the sky as the moon lost its cover of clouds and turned the river’s black surface a molten orange, making the host of Choctaws little more than bobbing targets. Kit braced himself for the inevitable burst of rifle fire and the shouted alarms that would arouse the village and bring a thousand Creek warriors down to the riverbank. He groaned inwardly, ruing the day he had ever volunteered O’Keefe’s people for this rear assault. And yet, the Choctaws, true to Raven’s word, had jumped at the chance to attack their enemy.

Kit shifted his gaze and saw Young Otter gain the opposite bank. Kit leaned into the water as the mud underfoot dropped off where the river deepened. He kicked and pulled a sidestroke, dragging the basket in his wake. Another half dozen braves joined Young Otter on the peninsula. This was the moment of truth. Heart throbbing in his chest, Kit struggled against the current; he fought the river and won.

Suddenly his feet plunged into the muddy river bottom, and he slogged the remaining few yards up onto dry land. He dragged the basket onto the shore and left it alongside one of the Creek dugouts. He crouched low and took a moment to catch his breath, unable to believe the Red Sticks hadn’t found them out. The outlying earthen lodges began a mere stone’s throw from the tip of the peninsula.

He grabbed the “Quakers” out of the basket and made sure each of the heavy-bore flintlocks was loaded and primed. Then he helped himself to an extra pair of pistols. The Choctaws around him hurried to retrieve their own guns.

Kit chanced revealing his position to a Creek sniper. He stood and studied the shoreline both upriver and down. He estimated there must be at least fifty dugouts that had been dragged up onto the riverbank just in this area alone. But he did not spy one single guard.

“The Red Sticks do not fear us. They think we have no heart for fighting,” Young Otter whispered.

Iron Hand O’Keefe came slogging toward them. Water dripped from his greasy buckskins, and his silver hair was matted to his head and shoulders. He carried a Kentucky rifle in the crook of his arm. Pistols and ax were tucked in the belt that circled his waist.

“By heaven, I can’t figure it,” he said, keeping his voice low. The big man stabbed a thumb in the direction of the Creek village. Smoke curled from their cane roofs. Obviously the village wasn’t deserted. He had already covered one circle of ashes that might have earlier warmed a lookout. The violent storm might have driven the Red Sticks to shelter.

“Maybe it is the work of the Above Ones who have blinded the Red Sticks to us,” Young Otter offered.

“They think we’re still two days’ march from here,” Kit said. “Come morning they’ll know different.”

“This damn silence worries me more than if they’d posted guards,” O’Keefe complained. He wiped a thick hand across his mouth. His breeches were soggy and uncomfortable. “Soaked on the outside and dry as grandpa’s bones on the inside.”

“Best we spread your people out along the point,” Kit suggested. “We can use the dugouts for cover.”

Young Otter nodded and with a couple of his companions trotted off to pass the word to the Choctaws and the Cherokees as they emerged from the Tallapoosa. The warriors of both tribes wasted little time in arming themselves, and then they set to work, building a makeshift barricade by stacking the dugouts. It was all the elder warriors could do to keep the young warriors from charging the Red Stick encampment right then and there. But cooler heads at last prevailed. Once the dugouts were rearranged, even the hotheaded warriors settled down to await O’Keefe’s signal.

Kit sat beside the Irishman and, leaning against a dugout, stretched out his legs. He guessed sunrise was about three hours away. He was grateful for the opportunity to rest. But there was something he had to bring out in the open.

Ever since leaving Fort Strother, he had wanted to speak to O’Keefe about his daughter. But there had been too many excuses along the way, and each time he found himself alone with the Irishman Kit faltered, courage failed him.
This is hardly an appropriate time
, he thought,
on the verge of battle.

Time was running out. And so these wee hours of the morning would have to suffice. He took a breath, tightened his resolve, and spoke.

“O’Keefe?” Kit glanced at the man at his side. “We need to talk. Well, I do, at any rate.”

“Do you, now?”

“Yes. It concerns Raven and me.”

“Oh. …” the big man replied, and stroked his chin with his fearsome hook. “And it’s about time, I’ll warrant you. Never seen two carry on so, as if they think a man can’t see them, sneaking off to be alone.”

“Then you know?”

“See here, Lieutenant McQueen, I lost my hand, not my eyes,” the Irishman answered sternly. “If a lesser man had tried to take my daughter, I would have slit him open and flung his innards to the treetops.” O’Keefe shrugged, then folded his arms across his massive chest. “Trouble is, I like you. So I reckon once the two of you cool down enough for you both to think with clear heads, you’ll do right by one another.” O’Keefe leaned over, and his voice became deadly serious. “Don’t you be going and getting your skull split today. Raven would shoot me on sight if I let that happen.”

“I’ll try my best,” Kit replied.

Images of the girl flashed through his mind from the first moment he saw her, defying Wolf Jacket along a flood-swollen creek, to the last, when he said goodbye and she watched him ride from Fort Strother on one of Jackson’s own horses. Kit felt as if he had crammed a lifetime into the space of a few short months. What were her final words spoken, the poignant, private moment before he joined the column of volunteers? Her eyes were moist as she entered his embrace in the fragrant stillness of her father’s lodge.

“I half expected you to grab a rifle and follow us, despite your father’s objections,” Kit had said.

“Once I might have,” Raven had answered in all honesty. “But not now, when our hearts and our flesh have been one. You would be worrying about me and not looking after yourself when some Red Stick knife might find you. And take your life. And mine.”

Outside the walls of the lodge an army of Tennesseans, Choctaws, and Cherokees had begun its march toward destiny. And Kit’s place was among them. It had taken a selfless act of courage for Raven to hold him close then send him on his way.

Kit rested now, finding comfort in memories of Raven’s brave smile, the pride shining in her eyes, and the warmth that would never leave him.

Kit McQueen and Iron Hand O’Keefe sat together in silence. Minutes lengthened into an hour. One hour become two. And gradually the stars faded and the sky shed its night shade. A blush appeared above the forest east of the Tallapoosa. A scarlet tanager perched atop a ceremonial pole in the center of the village heralded the onset of morning with its piping song.

“I love her,” Kit told the Irishman as if they had just ended their conversation minutes, not hours, ago.

“Yes, lad,” O’Keefe replied. His eyes were closed, but he hadn’t slept a wink. “I know.”

Both men stood together, and three hundred Choctaw warriors, who had waited so long for this moment, rose from the ground and started forward.

Their day of vengeance had arrived.

Like some Roland upon his horn, O’Keefe sounded a blast loud enough to wake the dead. At their war chief’s signal the Choctaw rushed the village. Several of the warriors held torches and paused to set afire the first lodges they came to. Kit could smell the aroma of burning cane and hear the crackle of the reeds as the flames devoured them, spreading up and over the lodges. He dashed headlong toward the center of the village.

Creek warriors, alerted by O’Keefe’s horn and the rippling gunfire, swarmed from their lodges, angry as wasps. The Choctaw advance slowed as more and more Creeks hurried to defend their village. Soon the Creeks would outnumber the attacking Choctaws three to one. If Jackson’s volunteers delayed their assault on the palisade, O’Keefe’s warriors would be overwhelmed and annihilated.

Rifle fire rattled throughout the village; powder smoke blotted out the rising sun. Kit raced past one lodge and headlong into a tomahawk-wielding Creek warrior looking for someone to kill. The two men shoved clear of one another. Kit fired his rifle and blew the warrior back against the lodge wall.

The warrior slid to the ground, his legs outstretched and blood pumping from a hole in his chest. A chunky young woman with bruised features crawled out of the lodge. She straightened and stared at Kit for a brief moment; then, noticing the warrior Kit had shot, the woman rushed forward and grabbed up the fallen man’s tomahawk and began to strike him with it about the head and shoulders. Kit hurried off to rejoin the attack, leaving the Choctaw captive to her own grisly revenge.

Wolf Jacket rubbed the sleep from his eyes, snatched up his red coat, rifle, and tomahawk, and bolted out into the encampment, with Bill Tibbs close behind him. Powder smoke stung their eyes but didn’t blind them to what was going on. The village was a flurry of activity as the lodges emptied themselves of red warriors scrambling en masse to block the attacking Choctaws and drive them back to the river.

From out of a mob of Red Sticks, Runs Above veered toward Wolf Jacket and the white man at his side. The gray-haired warrior trembled with anger as he confronted the war chief. No longer would he be cowed by Wolf Jacket. No longer would he couch his defiance, but speak it plainly and openly.

“The Choctaws and Cherokees have come against us. See what your pride and your foolishness have done!” he shouted.

The old warrior pointed his rifle toward the sound of the gunfire and the flames rising up from the burning lodges. At least a third of the encampment was already engulfed by the blaze.

“Blue Kettle and his brothers of the Hawk are dead. They were killed by those who should have been our allies. You will answer for it! We follow you no more!” Runs Above was finished. He had enemies to slay. The gray-haired warrior turned away and with rifle in hand rushed off toward the east end of the encampment and the spreading flames.

Wolf Jacket impassively watched the warrior depart. In all the confusion and gunsmoke and screaming, one more death wouldn’t be noticed. He snapped up his rifled musket and squeezed off a shot.