Black Eagle

by Charles G. West

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

A man must fight to protect his own in this classic western from Charles G. West...

When old-timer scout Jason Coles ended the rampage of renegade Cheyenne Stone Hand, he quit tracking outlaws for the army for good. Settling down with his wife and newborn baby, Coles plans to spend the rest of his days on his ranch raising horses. But that dream is savagely torn from him as his ranch is burned to the ground, and his family is abducted by the bloodthirsty Cheyenne Little Claw, out to avenge the death of Stone Hand. Now, with the lives of his family at stake, Coles must once again strap on his revolvers to hunt a merciless killer...

“Rarely has an author painted the great American West in strokes so bold, vivid, and true.”—Ralph Compton

Release date: August 1, 1998

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 224

Sample

CHAPTER I

She heard the shrill cry of a hawk as it wheeled high above the valley and she paused in her work to listen. Looking up from the antelope hide she had been scraping, she shielded her eyes with her hand as she gazed toward the ridge that formed the south wall of the valley. She was at once alarmed. Months usually passed between visits from strangers yet this was the second time in two days. And both days Jason was away from the valley. She counted six of them as they descended the slope to the valley floor where they paused and seemed to be considering whether to continue or not.

She had always liked the fact that their little valley was so remote that very few people happened upon it. Jason had scouted these mountains for years before he found it and decided that this was where he would raise his horses. Named Magpie by her father, an Osage chief, she had lived with her sister and her sister’s husband until they were killed by the Cheyenne renegade, Stone Hand. It had been over a year since their deaths and during that time Magpie had come to know that happiness could follow grief, for her love for Jason Coles had blossomed from the first time she saw the tall white scout. And her joy was complete when he asked her to go with him to his valley. Shy and bungling when it came to speaking of love, he never expressed his feelings, but Jason loved her. She was certain of that. He did not have to put it into words. His gentle way with her was reassurance enough.

Jason did not think her name, Magpie, suited her—a thought that always puzzled her—he preferred to call her Lark. She found herself smiling each time she thought about her husband. Jason had assured her that she was indeed his wife, although there had been no ceremony, Indian or white. She remembered his stern indifference to the baby at first. Jason didn’t seem to care much for children and he could hardly be faulted for his attitude toward little Bright Feather. The child wasn’t his. It wasn’t hers, for that matter, but they had adopted it and taken it as their natural son. It amused Lark to see how, during the course of a year, the boy had wormed his way into Jason’s heart although Jason would never admit it. Bright Feather was a good baby, never cried much, and Jason was too softhearted toward helpless little creatures of all species to remain indifferent to their son.

She returned her attention to the six riders across the valley. What did they want? This was Ute country and the Utes knew they were there but they had left them alone until recently. Only the day before, while Jason was away in the mountains hunting, two young Utes had stolen into the valley and tried to run off with their horses. Jason had brought those horses all the way from the Bitterroot country where the Nez Perces had developed a breed like no other. Appaloosas, Jason called them, and he had traded for fourteen, all strong and fast. And these two warriors, no more than boys really, had managed to open the corral and drive them out before she even suspected their presence.

When she heard the horses running, she ran out to see what was wrong. Seeing the two Utes on their ponies, driving Jason’s horses, she ignored any danger to her own frail body and ran in front of the herd, waving her arms and yelling at the top of her lungs. She had managed to turn and scatter most of the herd but the Utes got away with three of them. They didn’t come back for the rest, evidently satisfied to escape with three of the unusual horses.

When Jason returned, he immediately set out after the stolen horses, after rounding up the rest of the scattered herd. That was yesterday and he was still not back.

She watched the six riders as they moved toward the cabin and hesitated at the edge of the stream, cautiously surveying the cabin and the tiny corral. “Jason,” she murmured in a worried whisper, “I wish you were here.” Maybe, she thought, they will do no more than watch at a distance like others have done, and then move on to leave her in peace. She glanced at the cabin where the baby was quietly playing, then back toward the riders. They entered the water and splashed across.

She considered grabbing the baby and running but she knew she would not get far before their ponies would run her down. Maybe this was a bigger raiding party, coming to steal the rest of Jason’s horses. Then her anxiety gave way to anger, for Jason had worked hard to train his horses and she decided, if that’s what they came for, they will pay a price for them. She got up and went to the baby, carried him into the cabin and got the Spencer rifle Jason had taught her to use. Determined to protect her husband’s property, she went outside the cabin and waited for her visitors.

As the six riders approached the cabin, one of them held up his arm in greeting and she relaxed a bit. She now recognized three of the men as Cheyennes from the reservation at Camp Supply. She had often seen them at the agency when she lived there with Raven and Long Foot. Something about one of the other men looked familiar as well, although she did not recognize him at first. He appeared to be the leader of the group and there was a fierceness in his face that made her uneasy.

“What brings you this far from the reservation?” she called out to them. Although a rare occurrence, it would not have surprised her to see a group of hunters happen upon Jason’s valley. It was unusual, however, to see reservation Indians from as far away as Oklahoma territory.

They did not answer her question but continued walking their ponies slowly until they were standing before her. Then the fierce one spoke. “Why do you greet us with a rifle in your hand? Have we threatened you?”

“I don’t mean to offend you,” she answered. “I thought at first you might be Utes, coming to steal my husband’s horses.” She put the rifle back inside the cabin door. “If you are hungry, I have some meat that I boiled this morning.”

Without answering, the Cheyenne dismounted. His companions followed his lead, looking around them as they did, as if searching for something instead of looking in idle curiosity. Lark hurried to her cookfire and pulled a large pot from the ashes where the venison was warming. She turned to find the man, who was obviously the leader, standing right behind her. He was a young man, solidly built, with an air of arrogance about him that warned Lark to be cautious even if he was not an enemy of her people, the Osage. As she gazed into the deep piercing eyes of the young warrior, eyes that even now seemed to be measuring her, she recognized him—Black Eagle—the young man who had all but worshiped Stone Hand. It was Black Eagle who had secretly passed a knife to the notorious Cheyenne murderer and effected his escape from the army prison. She was shocked. In one year’s time, he had been transformed from a boy to a fearsome warrior. She warned herself to be cautious and polite and hoped they would eat and then be on their way.

“Where is Coles?” he asked.

“My husband is away,” Lark replied. “He will return soon.”

He turned to his companions who were gathered around the pot of boiled meat. “Coles is not here.” He turned back to face Lark. He was obviously annoyed that the scout was away. “I will deal with Coles later. Now I am in a hurry. Where is the child?”

Lark’s eyes widened with fear and she shook her head indicating she didn’t understand. The Cheyenne had no patience for this. He lashed out at her with his hand, striking her across the cheek. “I have come for the son of Stone Hand! Where is he?”

“He is my baby! Stone Hand is not his father!” she screamed as he raised his hand to strike her again. “You must go now. My husband will be here soon and he will kill you.”

The man sneered at her. “Coles is a dead man. I, Black Eagle, will tie his scalp to my lance.” At that moment, one of his companions came from the cabin, carrying the boy. Black Eagle nodded toward the horses. “Take him on your pony. We will kill Coles after we have taken the son of Stone Hand to Sitting Bull’s camp.”

“No,” Lark screamed and she snatched the child from the hands of the warrior and ran toward the stream.

Black Eagle ran after her and caught up to her before she reached the shallow water. With one mighty blow, he caved the back of her skull in with his war axe. Lark fell, killed instantly, still clutching the child to her bosom. Black Eagle took the screaming child from her arms and handed him to one of his companions. He stood, staring down at the dead woman, for a full minute. Then he took his bow from his shoulder and strung an arrow, drew it back and released it, planting the arrow between the dead woman’s shoulder blades. It would serve as a message to Coles. “Osage bitch,” he sneered, venting his contempt for the woman who had chosen to live with a white man. “Burn the white man’s house,” he ordered while he dipped into the pot of boiled meat.

* * *

Jason Coles was mad as hell. He had traded fair and square for those horses, had traveled all the way to the Bitterroot country to haggle with the Nez Perces for them. He had worked with them to take the wildness out of them, worked too damn hard to let a couple of half-grown Utes run off with them.

Possibly, he allowed, he had gotten too careless since he had enjoyed relatively peaceful times in the little valley he built a cabin in. He was in Ute country but he had been left pretty much at peace since he was one man, alone with wife and baby, and seemed to want nothing more than to be left alone. He hunted for no more than he needed to survive and he hadn’t plowed up the land or tried to fence it in. The Utes had given no indication that they resented his presence.

More than a year had passed since he had left Camp Supply and the business of scouting for the army. Maybe he was losing his edge, he couldn’t say. He was mad as hell but his anger was directed at himself, not at the two young Ute warriors who had run off with three of his best horses. Hell, he thought, that’s what Indians do, steal horses. To them, it’s an honorable thing to do. It just gets my goat that they snookered me . . . three purebred Appaloosas, and they would most likely have gotten the rest if Lark hadn’t scattered them. Poor little Lark, he thought, so upset that she had let three of his horses get away. He had tried to reassure her that there was little she could have done to prevent it. As it was, it was her actions that kept them from getting away with the whole herd. He hated having to leave her and the baby alone but he had to hunt. There was no way to avoid it.

After assuring her that he was not angry with her over the loss of the three horses, he had to take the time to round up the other eleven horses and put them in the corral before he could start out after the stolen ones. They had a few hours start on him but he didn’t have any trouble tracking them . . . two Indians with three extra horses left a pretty wide trail.

They had left his little valley at a gallop but after clearing the north ridge and picking up a trail by the river, they settled into a leisurely pace, as if unconcerned about being followed. Jason speculated that they were of a mind that figured two to one odds were in their favor, even if the white man did try to come after them. Well, that might be so if the white man wasn’t Jason Coles.

He shifted his position just enough to get off of a root that was threatening to punch a hole in his belly. He eased his rifle up beside him, taking care to avoid raising his head above the rim of the coulee he was lying beside. He checked to make sure he had not dragged the muzzle in the sand when he crawled up to this position. Turning his head to look behind him, he noted the position of the sun. It wouldn’t be long now, maybe another thirty minutes and it would be setting on the hills in the distance. He would wait until it was sitting right on top of them. Then he would move in with the blinding rays at his back.

While he waited, he studied the camp below him. Two braves, they both looked young. They evidently felt they were in little danger, having gotten away with the horses while the white man was up on the ridge, hunting. Jason figured they must have been lying around, watching until they saw him leave. Seated before a small campfire now, they were doing a great deal of talking and laughing. Probably congratulating themselves for being so slick.

He looked back again to check on the sun’s progress, still another fifteen minutes or so, he figured. Nice of them to make an early camp, he thought, permitting him to catch up to them before dark. Long Foot would have argued that it was best to wait until dark, then slip in and kill them while they slept. He might have been right; it might be the easiest way to do it. But Jason couldn’t see the need to murder two young boys for doing what they were born to do. Besides, he preferred to have at least an hour or so of daylight to herd his horses back toward home before having to make camp. Even as familiar as Jason was with the country surrounding his valley, it might be a bit foolish to attempt to negotiate some of the mountain passes in the dark, leading a string of horses.

The thought of Long Foot brought a mental picture of the Osage scout, slumped over in the saddle as he rode, so that he always looked like he was sleeping. He missed Long Foot. Long Foot was gone now, cut to pieces by the Cheyenne renegade, Stone Hand. He died trying to avenge the murder of his wife. Jason’s last job for the army was to track the murdering savage down. He found him and he killed him and stuck his head up on a pole in front of the Cheyenne agency. That didn’t make him any too popular with the sizable faction in the Cheyenne village that had come to regard Stone Hand as something of a spirit. Well, he thought, they sure as hell found out he was as mortal as any other man when they saw his ugly head riding on top of that pole. It was a damn shame, and a helluva price to pay, losing Long Foot and his wife. Killing Stone Hand was something he had to do, but it didn’t take up the slack of losing his friend.

One of the young warriors got to his feet and stretched, said something to his companion and walked a few paces away from the fire to a dead tree lying on the ground. Using the log as a platform, he stepped up on it and, pulling his breechclout aside, squatted to empty his bowels. Jason could see the bright light of the setting sun shining directly in the young man’s face. I don’t reckon there’ll be any better time than right now, Jason thought, while he’s doing his business. I’ll see if I can’t help him move his bowels a little faster.

Jason slowly rose to one knee and raised his Winchester to his shoulder. He brought the front sight down to bear on the bone breastplate of the squatting Indian, hesitating there for a second before lowering the sights to rest on the bark of the log between the man’s feet. As he took a breath and held it, he couldn’t help but smile before squeezing the trigger—if he wasn’t careful, he might make a squaw out of him.

The rotten log exploded under the Indian’s bottom, stinging his behind with pieces of flying bark. At almost the same time, he heard the sharp report of the rifle. As a result, he fell backward, his feet straight up in the air, his arms flailing the wind in an effort to grab something to catch himself. He landed on his back, hard, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Thinking he had been shot in the butt, he lay stunned for a few moments.

Not waiting to see the results of his first shot, Jason turned and placed his second shot in the campfire before the other Indian. Taken by surprise by Jason’s first shot, this young warrior had not had time to get to this feet. Jason’s bullet shattered a burning fagot in the fire, sending hot ashes and sparks in a cloud over the startled young man. Screaming in fright, he rolled away from the fire and tried to get to this feet. In the meantime, Jason scrambled down the side of the coulee, cocking and firing as he ran, tattooing the sand around the Ute, causing him to stumble and fall flat on his face.

“Stop!” Jason roared, his rifle trained on the Ute closest to the fire. The young man sat up and raised his hands in surrender. Jason glanced at his companion by the log, who slowly rolled over on his knees and started to crawl toward a thicket near the stream that cut the center of the coulee. In one quick motion, Jason whirled and fired, cocked, fired again, sending sand flying in front of the Indian’s face. Realizing Jason could kill him long before he reached the cover of the thicket, he turned and raised his arms like his friend.

Aiming to save as much daylight as he could, Jason didn’t waste much time in securing his captives. After making sure he had taken all their weapons away—two bows, two scalping knives, and two war clubs—he sat them down, back to back, and tied them up with some rawhide rope they had used to hobble the horses. Once the Indian ponies were cut loose from their hobbles, it didn’t take a lot of encouragement from Jason to run them off. That done, he returned to his captives and emptied a hide water bag over the rawhide rope to tighten the knots. Then he took the scalping knives and threw them as far as he could toward the thicket.

“Well,” he finally announced, not concerned if they could understand English or not, “I reckon that’s about all I can do here. I figure two intelligent boys like yourselves can probably manage to work together to find one of them knives and maybe cut yourselves loose before you starve to death . . . or the wolves find you.”

With his string of three Appaloosas behind him, he set out for home. It would take a day and a half in daylight. He hoped to make a couple of hours at least before it got too dark to travel.

* * *

Jason sat down on an outcropping of rock and studied his back trail. From his position, high up on a ridge that ran the width of the mountain pass, he could see the valley he had just come through for a good four or five miles back. There was no sign of anyone trailing him. He didn’t expect there would be but he checked his back trail just the same. He climbed back in the saddle and continued. Half a day and he’d be home. He thought about what would be waiting there and it brought a smile to his face.

Her name was Magpie but Jason called her Lark because of her constant bright and cheerful disposition. He figured she was too pretty to be called Magpie anyway. As he thought back on it, it seemed she was the one who made the decision that they would live together—but he certainly didn’t put up a fight. It had been a good year for him and while it was hard to say whether or not he truly loved her, he was strongly fond of her and she made him a loving wife. One thing that was certain in his mind, when he was away from her he missed her. The baby was almost two years old now and growing like a weed. Even though he was not Jason’s, he began to grow on him until the little beggar had kinda gotten a hold on the scout. He smiled to himself when he thought about how far Jason Coles had come in a year’s time. He had always been a loner, unable to see any woman in his future. Now, here he was, a sure as hell family man, nailed down to one place for the first time in twenty years. The picture in his mind of Lark caused him to nudge his horse with his heels to pick up the pace.

At first he thought it was a thin wisp of a cloud. Then he realized it was smoke, a thin trail of smoke, stretched out by the wind. And as the hawk flies, it was coming from the direction of his cabin. At once he became concerned. There was nothing in that direction but his place. He wasn’t sure what it could mean but he didn’t like the look of it. His valley was still several hours away. He pushed the horses harder, short of a full gallop.

Closer by two hours now, he still had the ridge north of his valley to climb. The smoke was constant though not a heavy dark smoke, like something blazing. Instead, it was a thin, pale column that drifted lazily upward until reaching the winds over the hilltops where it stretched out horizontally.

His horse labored to make his way to the top of the ridge, almost stumbling once before gaining the level terrain. From here, Jason could see the floor of his valley . . . and what he saw sent a bolt of lightning up his spine. The charred remains of his cabin glared at him, a great black sore in the green of the valley floor. A steady stream of brown smoke wafted upward from the still-smoldering timbers.

“Lark!” he roared involuntarily, his heart now pounding on his ribs, and he kicked his horse hard with his heels. Unconcerned with caution, he descended into the valley as fast as the Appaloosa could manage without stumbling. At a full gallop, he crashed through the stream and charged across the remaining hundred yards of grassy bottom. He pulled the Appaloosa up sharply before the smoldering ruins, hitting the ground running before the horse had fully stopped.

“Lark!” he called out desperately while pushing his way into the mass of charred timbers, shoving half-burned beams out of his way in a frantic effort to find what he dreaded to find. She was not there. He prayed this meant she had been abducted and was still alive.

His face and arms black with soot and ashes, he staggered out of the desolate remains of his cabin. He looked toward the corral. The gate poles were thrown aside, his horses gone and no sign of her or the baby. He looked left and right. There was no one in sight in the whole valley. Judging by the smoldering timbers, the cabin had probably been burned the day he left to recover his horses. Was it part of the plan? Had he been deliberately led away from the cabin? Thinking back on the circumstances of the previous two days, he found it hard to believe the two young Ute warriors were up to anything beyond stealing horses. Whose work was this then? Utes? After leaving him in peace for a year, had they decided to drive him out? Maybe they were telling him to leave their country. But why not come after him then instead of the woman and child? He had had very little contact with the Utes, occasionally he would sight a hunting party skirting his valley. Usually they merely paused and watched from the ridge tops before disappearing again. Only twice had anyone actually ridden down to his cabin. They had seemed friendly enough and he had traded some coffee and tobacco with them and they had given him some news of the world outside his valley. Could they have changed their minds about allowing him to remain? Many questions, no answers.

He called out Lark’s name as loud as he could, over and over for several minutes, hoping she might still be hiding in the long grass of the valley. There was no answer but the echo of his voice. In his anxiety, it seemed to be mocking his pathetic cries for the young Indian girl. He felt the emptiness of his valley, a feeling he had never experienced before, even when he had first come here alone. He must find her. He must hurry to switch his saddle to a fresh horse and search for her. But first he needed water to quench the thirst created by the hot ashes of his cabin and to clean some of the soot from his face and arms. Pulling his rifle from the saddle boot, he walked to the stream. There he found her. Just over the edge of the creek bank she lay, facedown. The blood that had been a pool under her head was now dried a crusty black; the back of her head was caved in so that pieces of her skull showed through her black hair, tangled with dried blood. There was one arrow in her back.

Jason fell to his knees, his head spinning. The shock of finding her like this hit him like a blow from the war axe that had killed her. His lungs felt like they were going to explode and he felt the tears start in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Little One,” he moaned. “I’m sorry. I should have been here.”

He started to pick her up but found he couldn’t bring himself to move her. Suddenly drained of all strength, he sat down beside her on the creek bank, staring at her body. He sat there for the better part of an hour, looking off toward the far end of his little valley, then back at the lifeless body beside him. Finally, he forced himself to get a hold on his emotions and see to the business of burying his wife and trailing her murderers.

“The baby!” he blurted, just at that moment realizing he had been so grieved over the death of Lark that he had given no thought to the infant. They must have taken the child!

Painfully he forced himself to regain his composure. Soon his mind began to take in and assimilate the signs left by the raiders. The one arrow left in Lark’s body did not kill her. A war axe did that job. The arrow was left behind purposely so he would know who had taken her life. Someone wanted him to know who killed her. He only had to glance at the markings on the shaft to know it was Southern Cheyenne, probably some of the bunch that had jumped the reservation at Camp Supply. There were enough hot-blooded young warriors there that might want to avenge the death of Stone Hand. Jason could think of no other motive for the senseless killing of the young Osage girl. The loss of Lark was even more bitter because he knew that she had been killed only because he had not been there. They had obviously come for the baby but he knew part of the plan was to kill Jason Coles.

Since it was plain it was not their work, he decided he would ride to the Ute village to see if they could help him. Although they were not at war with the Cheyenne, the Utes were not overly fond of them.

He carefully wrapped Lark in a buffalo robe and stitched it up with some sinew. Close to the ruins of his cabin, on a little rise in the valley floor, he dug a grave and gently laid her in it with her head toward the eastern ridge. He choked a lump down in his throat as he shoveled dirt over her body, a body that seemed even smaller in death. Such a tiny thing, he thought, as he tried to imagine her as he had last seen her alive, her parting words the same every time he left the valley to hunt, “You come back, Jason Coles.” He had to smile . . . as if anything could have kept him from returning to her.

The only thing left standing in the cabin was the fireplace. He loosened some stones from it and covered her grave with them. When he had finished, he stood over the grave for a while until he decided he had done all he could for her. Once again he apologized for not being there when she needed him most. He turned to leave, then hesitated a moment to add, “I’m sorry I never told you I love you.”

The trail was almost three days old by the time he started toward the north pass. They had left his valley in that direction. Since they were driving ten of his own horses, it was hard to determine exactly how many Cheyennes were in the party. He guessed maybe five or six, judging by the tracks, skirting the main trail. After making the climb up the north ridge, he paused for a brief moment to take one last look back at his valley. He knew then he would never come back here. There were too many hard memories attached to the valley now. This was the second time he was leaving to avenge a death and search for the child. The first time had been to track Stone Hand after the savage had slaughtered Long Foot’s wife and abducted the baby. Now, once again, he was on the trail to try to recover the baby from the savages. He turned the Appaloosa’s head north and nudged him with this heels. He had made an honest effort to settle down, worked hard at it, but Jason Coles’s ranching days had spanned less than two years.

CHAPTER II

The trail seemed to head toward the Ute village. He had never been to the Ute camp but he knew where it was. He had been told by a member of one of the two hunting parties that had visited his cabin that their chief, Two Elks, had settled his people on Wild Horse Creek where it bends back on itself. Jason knew the spot, and the trail he had been following for the better part of three days seemed to indicate the Cheyennes were heading straight for it.

As best he could recollect, he figured to be about a half day’s ride from the point where Wild Horse Creek pushed its way out of the mountains and curled around a couple of small foothills, almost meeting itself again. He would have to keep a cautious eye from here on in. With the way the Indian situation had heated up during the past two years, a man could never know for sure what kind of reception he would meet with any of the tribes. His situation wasn’t helped by the fact that he was a lone white man with a string of four Appaloosa ponies. He wouldn’t ride in with such fine-looking horse flesh if it wasn’t ne