Shadow River Read Online Free

blood-smeared arrow shaft. He found the metal head intact.
    â€œYou’re lucky, Childers,” he said. “If this was a flint head, pieces of it could have broken off deep. I’d have been digging it out a little at a time, the next hour.”
    â€œLucky me,” Childers said halfheartedly. He looked at the iron arrowhead himself.
    â€œUsually the warriors only give their kids stone heads, for hunting. They keep the iron heads for themselves, for killing us white devils.”
    Burke had walked up as soon as he saw the arrow was out of Childers’ shoulder. He stood bent, palms on his knees, looking at the arrowhead.
    â€œWhat do you suppose it means?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Sam said. “It could mean the warriors have enough rifles and pistols, they can afford to give the war heads to their sons for hunting.”
    â€œRifles, huh?” said the Montana Kid, he and Black venturing in closer. “How far are we from this buried gold?” As he spoke, he looked all around, back across the desert floor below. The wavering afternoon heat had cut the vision across sand flats by half. Anything moving over a mile away was lost in the rising, swirling heat.
    â€œTwo days,” Sam said, “three at the most, depending on what pushes us forward or holds us back.” He pitched the arrow across Childers’ lap. “Here’s you a souvenir,” he said.
    Childers picked up the arrow and flung it away.
    â€œI won’t need reminding of it,” he said.
    Sam placed a folded bandana on the bleeding wound and pressed Childers’ hand on it. He twisted another bandana and tied it around the wound as Childers removed his hand from it. Black stood watching, his hat brim tied flat against his hat crown with a strip of rawhide.
    Sam looked off and up at a higher switchback trail circling in the distance above them.
    â€œWe need to get up there before dark,” he said. “Whoever’s coming this way across the sand should be getting here about dark. They can’t make any more time than we can on these hillsides.”
    â€œYou mean we’ll get on up there and camp the night real quietlike?” Burke asked.
    â€œNo,” Sam said. “We get up there and rest our horses for a while and move on. We ride all night. Tomorrow we’ll cross more desert, put some miles between us and them, maybe shake them off our trail. Right now they’re curious about us. But the curiosity will wear thin when they see how hard it is to catch up to us.”
    â€œI’ve heard ’pache can track a ghost across running water,” Black said.
    â€œSo you want to give up, throw ourselves on their mercy. Maybe we could ask them where we can and can’t go?” Montana said critically.
    â€œI’m just saying, is all,” said Black. “The ’pache ain’t people to be fooling with.”
    â€œDon’t make them bigger than they are,” Sam said.
    â€œYeah, we’re gunmen ourselves,” said Burke. “We don’t bow and scrape to nobody. Am I right, Jones?”
    â€œYeah, why not . . . ?” Sam looked all around, taking stock of the hills, the winding trails. “Besides, we’re so deep in the Mexican Desert hills now, we’re going to be ducking and fighting them whether we go forward or turn back.”
    The Montana Kid chuckled, seeing the look of trepidation on Stanley Black’s face.
    â€œHell,” he said, “if this gold was too easy to take out of here, I expect I wouldn’t think it worth my time.”
    â€œYou’re talking crazy, Montana,” Black said.
    Sam wiped his knife blade back and forth in the dirt and shoved it down into his boot well. He walked toward his dun and the spare horse.
    â€œLet’s get moving,” he said over his shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll all try to keep our guns quiet.”
    â€œBe advised, Jones, if