Blood Feather, page 11
He made his way down the alley running parallel to Main Street behind the numerous businesses. He came out at the end of the alley and turned south on Fifth Street and to the corner of Main Street. Staying in the shadows, he slowly made his way down Main Street to the first saloon, where four cavalry mounts were tied outside. Quickly, Blood Feather emerged from the shadows and went to each horse, checking it. Cavalry saddlebags were fashioned out of top-grain cowhide and had three straps with buckles holding the flap securely down. It took Blood Feather tense moments to figure out how to unbuckle the straps, but he did, and from the third saddlebag he pulled out a pair of binoculars.
A horse turned the corner into Main Street, and a man on a cremello mare trotted down to the second hitching rail in front of that saloon and then dismounted, tied his horse, and entered. He did not see the sevenfoot-giant lying in the shadows, large knife in his hand, next to the sidewalk by the cavalry horses. If he’d known who was there, all he’d have had to do was draw the Russian .44 he carried and blast into the giant mass of insanity several times, but he was unaware of the lurking danger.
The man went inside the noisy saloon, and We Wiyake moved quickly and quietly back to the corner of Fifth Street and turned north. He moved slowly, quietly through the shadows by all the houses, and in an hour was back at his perch on Razor Ridge, now armed with binoculars, which would help him to survey Annabelle Ebert’s house more readily.
Joshua Strongheart really was starting to feel himself again. His broken arm had healed pretty well, as had many of the aches and pains from the grizzly attack. He could not believe how many scars he had for a man so relatively young, but he also felt it meant there was a good chance he had received his share of scars for a lifetime. He also was amazed by the fact that both he and his natural father bore the scars of a grizzly bear attack. He wondered if that had ever happened in history or ever would again. The hot springs really seemed to help him recuperate, and he was enjoying the time in the water.
A young man brought him a message from Western Union, and he had the youngster bring him his trousers and gave him a tip, which brought a smile from the boy.
He read the reply from Lucky, which read:
No sightings of killer STOP 2 draft horses stolen STOP 1 in Colorado Springs area STOP 1 in Auraria STOP Good report on Comanche STOP Investigate Colorado Springs theft STOP See local sheriff STOP Good luck STOP
Joshua dried off and headed to his room, deciding he had to leave in the morning, before daybreak. He would leave a note for Belle at her café. He would also be unseen by Blood Feather, but of course he did not know that. Joshua figured to be gone close to a week. It was a forty-six-mile ride to Colorado Springs, and he would also need to visit the location where the draft horse was stolen from, interview witnesses, and see if he could determine if it was stolen by We Wiyake. In the meantime, he knew that Lucky would assign another Pinkerton to check out the draft horse theft in Auraria.
It was well before daybreak when Strongheart took off toward Colorado Springs, first heading east toward Pueblo but soon turning north toward Colorado Springs on the well-worn stage coach road that would take him along the base of the foothills to Pikes Peak. He did not want to push Gabe too hard after all the traveling they had just done. He would go halfway or more to Colorado Springs and camp for the night, then go on the next day.
At daybreak Missy and Belle emerged from the house and walked toward downtown, holding hands and chatting. We Wiykae watched with his new binoculars and could not remove his eyes from “the little one touched by the Great Spirit.” He kept watching and caught glimpses of them walking west on Main Street and then saw them opening the front of Belle’s café and entering. He figured that Strongheart must be asleep inside the house. Blood Feather napped and waited all day, and then he noticed that Gabriel was no longer in the barn. Now he knew that Joshua had left sometime, maybe while he slept. That did not matter to the killer, though. He had his plan and would soon carry it out.
That night, when the café closed, looking through his glasses Blood Feather watched Annabelle lock the door and leave with Missy. Even at that distance the two were obviously happy. Belle had found the note on her back door from Joshua that morning, so she knew he would be back soon, and she was thankful for that. She was also grateful for her niece’s company. Although Missy was not actually her niece, she seemed like one, and to Missy, Belle was the same as an aunt, not her mommy’s cousin.
Over the past several days, the psychotic killer had been watching people going to other people’s houses. They would knock on the front door of the house in every case. Someone usually answered, and they would enter the house. Although We Wiyake had not lived in a circle of lodges since he was a teenager and had been on his own in the wilds all that time, he remembered that this was similar to what the Lakota did. If you went to someone’s teepee and wanted to visit, you would scratch your fingernails on the outside of the buffalo-hide housing next to the door.
He crept through the rocks to the hiding spot where he kept his big draft horse picketed. He placed the war bridle, the white man’s saddle, and the blanket on it, and affixed the parfleche he carried his supplies in, as well as the rifle he had but seldom used, a Henry repeater, and a bow and quiver of arrows. Behind the saddle he had his giant buffalo coat tied.
He now started back down the mountainside toward Annabelle’s house. Being careful to stay among the shadows, the giant made it to her yard in just over an hour.
From the edge of the yard, he could see movement through the windows. Then, as he inched through the shadows, he could hear the faint sounds of laughter coming from Belle and Missy.
Creak! He froze as a streak of light shot from the front door of the neighbor’s house across the street. A man walked out the door. He was wearing a six-shooter and walked directly at Blood Feather, who was only armed with his giant knife. His pace was fast, and Blood Feather stood still in the shadow of the several hardwood trees in the yard.
His hand squeezed the handle of the giant knife, but then the man simply reached down and picked up a stick horse sitting on the edge of Belle’s front yard. He turned and walked back to his house.
Blood Feather’s expression remained unchanged, as always. He moved slowly forward and finally looked through a window. Belle was seated near the front door, and Missy was on her lap smiling intently as the beauty read to her from a book.
We Wiyake moved around to the front door of the house, checking the dark street in both directions. There was no light in front of the house, just deep shadows of the trees, so he stood back a little in the darkness. His ham-sized fist reached out, and as he had seen the wasicun do, he rapped lightly and politely on the door. His other hand held his giant knife.
Belle was startled by the sound, and Missy jumped off her lap.
Bellle stood up and smiled at Missy. “I wonder who is visiting at this time?”
She looked through the small window but could not make out the figure in the shadows. Smiling, she flung the door open, and We Wiyake’s giant hand came out of the darkness and grabbed her by the throat, pushing her back into the room. Missy screamed as she looked up at the giant monster whose head was touching the ceiling. Annabelle tried to scream, but nothing would come out of her mouth because of Blood Feather’s grip. She looked down at the giant knife blade and her heart beat in her ears; she felt weak in the knees and could not swallow or breathe.
The little girl started to run, and Blood Feather reached out with that gargantuan arm and snatched her up with one hand, pulling her up to his chest, where he held her tight. She screamed bloody murder, and he raised the knife to her throat. When she stopped screaming, he lowered it.
The sight of this behemoth would have been enough to make most women unable to speak at all. We Wiyake stared at Belle with those deep, dark, blank eyes. His head touched her ceiling, and he wore leather-fringed leggings, moccasins, a breechcloth, a few feathers in his long black braided hair, a buckskin war shirt, and that giant knife, which would almost have been a broadsword to a normal-sized man.
Missy silently sobbed in his massive arm, and as frightened as she was, Belle rose, jaw set.
She said, “Do you speak English?”
He just stared at her with that blank look. Summoning all her courage, she stepped forward, hands outstretched, to take Missy out of his grasp. The knife came straight up and cut away the front of her clothing, which fell off to both sides. She pulled it together covering herself, and her immediate thought was that she was now going to get raped, too. But she noticed that his eyes never dropped down to see the brief glimpse of her nakedness. He seemed to have no interest, and that she immediately sensed with a great deal of relief.
He stepped toward her and Belle’s heart skipped a beat. She did not know what to say or what to do. She was almost paralyzed with fear, and all she could think of was not to make him angry or he might snap Missy’s neck like a twig or even dash her against the fireplace. Belle wondered why he had stepped closer, and suddenly his arm swept up with blinding speed. She could not react, and the heel of his hand struck her on the point of the chin. She sailed backward through the air and felt her back hit the wall, and the room started spinning. Before she slid, unconscious, to the floor, she felt panic as she saw Wi Wiyake open her front door and step into the night with Missy in his arm.
9
Taking Flight
They moved through the shadows, and Missy knew she had to not yell. She could just sense it. She had stopped sobbing now. Now the little girl’s mind was focused on survival.
He moved effortlessly and tirelessly through the rocks up the hillside and finally to his hiding place and his latest stolen draft horse. Missy had never seen a man so large in her life, and now she was seeing a horse that also was much bigger than any she had ever seen. He climbed up into the saddle and put her in front of him. They rode down the other side of Razor Ridge, to the road that wound its way out of town and up Eight Mile Hill. It would slowly climb up another thousand feet. However, We Wiyake was only going part of the way up that road, then back over the rocks to the area on the town’s west end, where Strongheart usually stayed. The river was down there, and he forded the mighty Arkansas right after entering the steep-walled Grand Canyon of the Arkansas, which decades later would be renamed the Royal Gorge. He headed toward the egress of Grape Creek, where it poured into the big river, and he would follow the creek up to higher ground in the mountains.
Blood Feather had picked this route from his hideout up on Razor Ridge, simply because he saw that it was rocky, and he was on a gigantic draft horse, which would have been very easy to follow on normal soil.
Missy was so tired when they finally stopped, well after midnight, and camped briefly. She saw high rock walls all around them, and We Wiyake built a larger fire than normal to keep the little girl with the special medicine warm. He bound her wrists and ankles with leather thongs and placed her close to the fire, covering her with his winter robe. She slept very soundly despite her fear.
Although she did not know it, he named her Wicicala Waka, which is pronounced Wee Chee Cha-La Wa-Kahn and means “holy girl.”
* * *
When Annabelle opened her eyes, she did not know where she was. Everything seemed foggy. She went out her back door and to the outhouse, then returned. Once inside again, she realized that she had been watching her cousin’s daughter, Missy. Then the appearance of Blood Feather came back to her, his cutting of her dress, slamming her against the wall, and then, remembered with horror, the sight of him carrying Missy out the door.
Belle got weak in the knees then sick to her stomach. She ran out the front door and emptied her stomach in the front yard. Quickly, she ran across the street and banged on the front door of the neighbor who’d come out earlier.
He opened his door, gun in hand, and Belle was bawling and shaking. He holstered his pistol and set his night lamp down and held her upper arms.
“Annabelle!” the man said. “What is wrong? Come in! Come in!”
His wife walked in wearing a nightgown and robe and put coffee on the stove. She handed Belle a hankie.
Between sobs Annabelle said, “I musn’t cry. We must hurry. My cousin’s little girl, Missy, has been staying with me for two days now. Tonight a gigantic Indian knocked on my door and abducted her, and knocked me out! You have to help me, Clancy.”
The man’s wife let out a gasp of astonishment.
Clancy said, “How long ago did this happen, Annabelle?”
She thought and shook her head, saying, “I don’t know. I was knocked out. When I came to, they were gone. His head touched my ceiling, Clancy. My ceiling is seven feet tall.”
Clancy whistled and said, “Martha, you stay with Annabelle and take care of her. I will get help! The sheriff must raise a posse quickly!”
Belle started sobbing again and said, “It is obviously the brutal assassin named Blood Feather who Joshua has been after. He is the same killer who murdered Joshua’s friend, the Pinkerton agent, up on Road Gulch Stage Road. When Joshua was mauled by the grizzly, he was looking for his friend’s body. I must get ahold of Joshua.”
Martha said, “If anybody can find them and save her, Mr. Strongheart can.”
While she comforted Belle, and they spoke about what had happened, Clancy was out rounding up two sheriff’s deputies, and they got a dozen men together. One was a Ute Indian who was an expert tracker. These men were loaded for bear and anxious to go after this renegade who stole a little girl.
Sheriff Frank H. Bengley, who was helpful when Joshua had his big shoot-out in Florence, showed up and immediately swept Annabelle into his arms and tried to comfort her.
She said, “Thank you so much for coming this late at night, Sheriff. Can you try to get word to Joshua? He is in Colorado Springs.”
He said, “I will send a telegram immediately to the El Paso County sheriff. Don’t worry.”
Men stood in the yard with torches while the Ute tracker began searching for Blood Feather’s tracks and sorting out the trail. An hour later the entire posse followed the tracker up the side of Razor Ridge.
Belle spent the rest of the night at the neighbors’ with no sleep. Strongheart arrived the next day before noon. Gabe looked well lathered. Clancy summoned him to his house and told Joshua he would get a stable boy to come and take care of Gabriel. Joshua handed him the money to pay the young man and went into the house.
Belle saw Strongheart walk in the door, and she leapt up from the Victorian couch and threw her arms around his neck crying. They kissed fervently and then he set her back down gently. Martha brought him a cup of coffee, and Belle told him all she knew.
This hit home hard with Strongheart. Although Belle had not been kidnapped, she could have been, and her innocent little charge, Missy, had been. This was his fear. The reason why he should not marry her. Now it had come home to roost.
Within an hour, Gabe was saddled and Joshua was downtown looking for a deputy.
He found one and spoke to him, learning that the posse had tracked We Wiyake to the mouth of Grape Creek and had headed up that gulch. Strongheart took off at a trot.
The Grape Creek drainage ran northeast from the Sangre de Cristo mountains near Westcliffe to Cañon City, pouring out into the Arkansas River right at the finish of the treacherous stretch of white water at the end of the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas. The drainage consisted of very scenic wild terrain, and the area had brook trout–filled pools and riffles in the high, forested ridges south of Cañon City, with elevations varying from 6,400 to 9,600 feet. There was much colorful vegetation, including sagebrush, rabbitbrush, cholla cactus, and yucca in the canyon, as well as piñon-juniper woodland, ponderosa pine, and Engelmann spruce forest, along with typical forest meadows at higher elevations.
There were many predators in the Grape Creek area, from grizzly bears to a high concentration of mountain lions, black bears, bobcats, coyotes, and many eagles, hawks, and falcons. Attracting the predation were high densities of mule deer, elk, and many types of smaller mammals.
The drainage was very rugged, with high rock walls in many places, lots of overhangs, caves, and a few unforgiving narrows along the creek, making it a rough ride for horseback riders, a very rough ride of thirty miles or better. What concerned Joshua was the fact that Grape Creek had many excellent ambush spots where the killer could hide and pick off posse members easily.
He pushed Gabe up the drainage quickly, at a mile-eating trot most of the time, figuring that being on the easy trail of the posse would be reasonably safe, as Blood Feather would be more likely to ambush the posse or individual members than someone trailing them.
Strongheart rode into their night campsite a couple hours after dark.
Blood Feather went high up into the rocks to make a campsite, where he built a smokeless fire in a large jumble of rocks with a flat caprock overhead. The fire reflected off the three rock walls and gave a lot of comforting heat. Missy was very hungry and ate heartily of the bowl of food Blood Feather handed her. She knew there was meat in it and wild vegetables but didn’t really want to know what it was. She ate a second bowl.
Strongheart sat across the campfire from the sheriff, while both men drank coffee.
Joshua said, “Well, Sheriff, I wanted to give Gabe some time to rest, drink water, and eat some grain and graze. I need to saddle up and get going though. I will be riding well ahead of you and the posse.”
The sheriff said, “Well, Joshua, I know there would be nothing I could say that would stop you. If we can hear shooting, we will come running. Best of luck. We have a lot of grub. Why don’t you take some extra with you?”
