Double Mountain Crossing Read Online Free

wanted to stay alive.
    He had scouted for the cavalry too, on the Union side during the Civil War, and he had ridden with many men who had become legendary scouts since. Most of the names had slipped away, but he clearly recalled Bill Cody, now making a name for himself as a buffalo hunter, last Morgan had heard. Cody had been seventeen then, riding for the Missouri Red Legs and they’d spent more than one night chewing the fat round a fire. He could see Cody in his mind’s eye, squatting on his heels by the dancing flames, pushing his long brown curls back from his face as he spoke about Indians. They’d argued about night attacks, and Cody’d said most of the tribes wouldn’t attack at night because they were afraid if they were killed their spirits would wander forever in the darkness, unable to find the beginning of the trail of stars that led to the happy hunting ground.
    The one exception he knew of was the Kiowas. They would attack any time they figured they had the edge. Any time at all.
    Morgan began to build himself a cigarette, sifting tobacco from his pouch onto the thin paper. Just my luck, he thought. When I find a bunch of the murdering red savages, I have to find Goddam Kiowas, and then hundreds of miles from their home range. How lucky can you get? He rolled the paper gently, shaping it, then stuck it down. Complete, he nipped the surplus tobacco from the ends and pushed the strands back into the tobacco sack. He placed the cigarette between his lips and leaned forward to pull an ember from the fire.
    The first arrow sliced into the pine tree, quivering with arrested power exactly where his throat had been the moment before.
    Cigarette unlit, Morgan rolled and went down on his stomach, the ten gauge scattergun in his hands. He blasted off the first chamber into the timber where the unexpected arrow had come from. Leaves were torn apart and bark splintered from the blast but another arrow split the air above his head. He pulled the trigger again, shooting to the right, and the butt of the gun punched into his shoulder with the recoil. He rolled and broke the gun, callused hands hasty as he plucked the spent cartridges and pushed in fresh ones.
    Across the clearing to his right, the bay, sultry as ever, was stamping and pulling at the picket rope, jerking his head, wall-eyed. In contrast, the dun gelding stood stock still. He was used to Morgan hunting from his back and his head only jerked a little, involuntarily, when the shotgun blasted out.
    Morgan switched his attention back to the timber and fired again, this time more to the right.
    Nothing.
    He eased the gun open and replaced the smoking cartridge. Better to replace one now, he thought, while he had the chance. As he brought the gun back to his shoulder an eagle feathered arrow gouged the earth, shaft buried six inches deep, a hairsbreadth from his face. He shot to the left, unsure in the failing light.
    In the thicket behind the two horses, Swift-Foot heard the second gunshot and decided to make his move while the white man was reloading. Concealed, he had been downwind of the horses and the breeze had carried his scent away from them. Now, he jumped forward out of the trees and sawed through the picket rope in two strokes. The dun side-stepped gingerly round him , wary of the boy’s strange scent, but the bay, free of restraint, began to plunge, hooves flying in all directions. Swift-Foot caught the rope as the bay reared, ducking below the iron-shod hooves churning only inches from his head. The boy directly beneath him, the bay whinnied shrilly.
    Morgan rolled and came up on one knee, the shotgun to his shoulder, searching for a gap between the milling horses to place his shot. As his finger took up the slack on the trigger he heard a bloodcurdling war whoop on his left. Faltering, he swung back and saw a Kiowa warrior full in his sights.
    Comes-Walking, seeing Swift-Foot in peril, had decided to step into the fight. Both boys