The early-morning cold brought Toohmah shivering from a shallow sleep haunted by dreams of his first days on the reservation. He lay motionless, listening, peering through slitted eyes to assure himself that only the chilled air was responsible for disturbing his troubled rest. Other than a constant wind that blew from the north, nothing stirred about him.
The Nermemuh shoved from the ground to shake off the residue of the disquieting dreams. The sudden movement was a mistake. He groaned. Hot nails drove into the joints of his body to awaken the throbbing pain of arthritis. Slowly now, he stretched his stiff limbs. Disregarding the pain in his fingers, he rubbed and kneaded his calves and thighs until he could flex his legs with no more than needlelike twinges.
While he massaged life back into his arms, Toohmah scanned the blue-gray pre-dawn sky. No clouds drifted overhead to blot out the last stars of night, yet the air was moisture laden. The false spring of the past weeks had died during the night, he realized. The winter would return in its full howling strength before sunset. The moisture and cold would combine to bring snow to Palo Duro.
The aged brave shivered. An unprotected man would not survive the coming storm. He remembered the buffalo robe tied to the saddle abandoned in the tributary canyon, longing for the moth-eaten fur to warm his bare shoulders.
From the saddlebags beside him on the ground, he extracted a black woolen shirt and slipped it on. He left the baggy white man’s trousers within. They provided no more protection from the cold than his leggings and would restrict movement should he have to make a hasty retreat from his position.
Next, he took two boxes of cartridges from the leather bags and set them at his feet. When and if they were needed, the spare bullets lay within easy reach.
A low rumble that mounted to a loud, angry growl rolled through his belly. His hand rummaged through the saddlebags, seeking a forgotten portion of jerky. Toohmah’s hand withdrew, empty. His stomach protested again. He ignored it. There was nothing else he could do.
Lifting his rifle, he double-checked to make certain it was fully loaded, then rested the weapon on his crossed legs. His gaze rose up the canyon wall to the rim above. Loneliness filled his breast. Had Quinne found a rancher’s horse? Did he now ride to Mexico and freedom? The aged warrior refused to consider the alternatives; they would rob his decision to remain within Palo Duro of its purpose, its meaning.
He shivered again. The canyon appeared distant and alien this morning. Gone were yesterday’s comforting memories. Palo Duro was but an eroded abyss of rock and sand that no longer held a place for the Nermemuh. The Comanches were a dead nation. The land was a living thing that brought forth life each spring. It had no use for the dead, except to absorb their flesh and bones to fertilize the grass and trees.
Toohmah looked eastward, unable to shed the darkness that shadowed his spirit. The Sun Father lifted his fiery body above the horizon. The lone brave reached down and cocked his rifle. And he waited.
The sun woke Younkin. He pushed to his elbows with a disgusted grunt. He had not meant to sleep this late. He glanced to the horses standing undisturbed, tethered to the scrub oak. The scout sat up and rubbed his arms. The morning’s chill penetrated to the bone, despite his fleece-lined coat. Wind gusted over the canyon’s rim, its icy breath nipping at the exposed flesh of his face. He cursed. The unseasonably warm spell had ended; winter had returned. The air carried a warning of an approaching blue norther.
Younkin shuddered when he stood and picked the saddle blankets from the ground. Palo Duro was no place for a man during a blizzard. Last winter, three hunters had been trapped in the canyon’s rocky maze when a snowstorm struck. They had frozen to death before they could find their way out of the immense gorge.
Rifle and blankets in arm, Younkin carefully picked his way down the sandy incline. Reaching the horses, he saddled the bay and left the black mare bareback. Dead men needed no saddles, and he intended to bring the Comanches out of Palo Duro dead.
From a saddlebag, he took his remaining box of cartridges, emptying it into his coat pockets. When he located Black Hand, there would be no time to search for ammunition. Checking that the Winchester carried a full load, Younkin mounted the bay. He then reached down and untethered the mare’s reins. Rifle in the crook of his left arm and leading the mare with his right, he clucked the bay forward.
Wind-whipped dust and sand raked across the gorge. Here and there, dust devils swirled like miniature tornadoes, leaves and grass caught in the whirling columns. Younkin paid them no heed, his gaze constantly surveying the canyon’s walls.
A mile from the boulders that had sheltered him in the night, he sighted four low-circling buzzards. Below them, along the foot of the south wall, he saw the pile of rocks partially hidden behind three boulders.
Dismounting, he removed three of the larger stones. A pleased, mirthless smile curled his lips as he gazed down on the face of the brave buried under the rocks. The odds had suddenly improved. Only two Comanches awaited him up the canyon.
Younkin replaced the rocks to keep scavengers away from the body until his return. He then found a dried oak branch and drove a jagged end into the ground to mark the burial site. Even in heavy snow, he would be able to locate the marker.
Younkin searched the ground around the grave and shook his head. Any tracks left by the Comanches last night were gone now. His own boot prints were quickly erased by the wind. A trail would have made things easier, but it was of no consequence. Black Hand and the remaining brave were ahead of him, and he eventually would find them.
Younkin walked back to the horses and climbed into the saddle. His eyes roved over the gorge. Nothing. He nudged the bay forward.
Toohmah squinted against the morning, his eyes low to avoid the blindness that came from staring into the face of the Sun Father. He had not considered the sunrise when he selected the position, but there was nothing he could do to escape the glare. The Whites would come out of the east, and he had to face them. He would win Quinne the time necessary to escape into the land of the Mejanos.
The old brave’s eyes widened; his heart raced in a thudding rhythm. Adrenaline coursed through the Nermemuh’s veins.
A horse and rider rounded a bend in the canyon four hundred yards from the boulders that concealed the Comanche. The White led a bareback horse beside him.
Toohmah resisted the impulse to lift his rifle and squeeze off a quick round. Others could be with the man. Better to catch them all by surprise.
The lone rider covered half the distance to the aged warrior, and still no other Whites followed. Toohmah’s gaze narrowed. Younkin! Even at the distance, he discerned the scout’s age-ravaged features. A smile eased over the Comanche’s lips while he lifted his rifle to his shoulder. Only Younkin had survived last night’s attack: one White man between him and the freedom that awaited beyond the canyon’s rim. He took a bead on the rider’s chest. His finger curled about the trigger and squeezed.
Younkin felt the shudder run through the bay before his mind registered the rifle’s report. The black mare reared and wheeled, wrenching her reins from his grip. In full stride, she ran back toward the mouth of the canyon.
The bay stumbled. Vainly, Younkin attempted to kick free of the stirrups and leap from the saddle. The horse dropped from under him, rolling to its side. The scout went down, right leg pinned beneath the dying animal’s ponderous weight.
The exploding sound of rifle fire echoed through the gorge. Sand flew into the air as bullets hammered into the ground in front of the trapped scout.
Squirming, kicking, Younkin wrenched at his leg to dislodge it from beneath the bay. Pain lanced through his foot like liquid fire. Gritting his teeth, he pulled; inch by inch the leg worked free.
Bullets peppering the ground about him, he sighted the dropped Winchester. He pushed to his feet. Agony seared white-hot through his right foot and ankle. They gave way beneath his weight, throwing him back to the ground. Broken! The foot and ankle were broken.
He moved rather than waste time on a curse. On hands and knees, he scrambled to the Winchester, then rolled behind a low mound of sand and talus at the foot of the canyon’s south wall. Flat on his stomach, he pressed close to the sand, trying to sink below its surface. The din of rifle fire abruptly died. Apparently the pile of dirt and stone hid him from his attacker.
Attacker! The realization of what he had thought came to him. There had been only one rifle firing. He faced but one Comanche. He smiled, despite the desperation of his position. It was Black Hand out there. He knew it. The other brave had either been killed last night or had deserted the old Comanche when he recognized Palo Duro’s dangers.
Younkin lifted his head. Six hundred feet in front of him, sunlight reflected off a single rifle barrel poked over a boulder. The scout ducked back as a howling gust of wind threw sand into his face. He blinked, clearing his eyes.
Scooting to his side, Younkin cocked the Winchester and edged its barrel atop the talus mound. He glanced up. Clouds, like massive black mountains in the sky, moved in from the north. He could almost feel the temperature dropping degree by degree. The norther was upon them. Little time remained until it unleashed its frozen fury.
Younkin sighted along the rifle’s barrel with a curse. He could not get a clear shot at the Comanche. The boulders provided too much cover. For the moment, their positions presented a stalemate.
Peering over the stony pile, Younkin called out in the Comanche tongue. “Toohmah, the time of running is over. There is no more time for you. Soon the soldiers will come and you will die. The time of red man fighting white man is long passed. Surrender and you will be returned to the reservation unharmed.”
Younkin’s lie reverberated through the canyon. The old Nermemuh smiled while he reloaded his rifle. A hangman’s rope awaited him at the reservation. His gaze played over the canyon. Thirty feet to his right lay a rounded boulder with a bush like cedar growing before it.
He looked back to Younkin’s position. The scout was wrong. While either of them lived, there was still time for fighting. Perhaps here, alone within Palo Duro, they would fight the last battle. If so, it was fitting that he face the scout. Of all the enemies Toohmah had faced, red, black, and white, none evoked the hate he held for Younkin. None had provided the satisfaction he would feel when he killed the man. That the scout lived after all these years proved his greatness and power. No man could ask for more than that in an adversary.
Toohmah’s head turned back to the cedar-hidden boulder, his mind formulating a plan. Before the day was out, he would prove his own might by taking the man’s scalp.
Younkin’s voice rolled up to him, again demanding his surrender. With a high-pitched, yapping war cry, Toohmah pushed to his feet and fired two rapid shots toward the rocks that hid the scout. Then he darted toward the cedar.
Younkin saw the blur of movement. His finger squeezed the trigger, firing on instinct rather than taking a clear sight on his target.
Black Hand twisted in midair under the bullet’s impact. He hit the ground, dropping behind a bushy cedar. Dead? Younkin fired three rounds into the evergreen. The shots whined off solid rock. The scrubby tree concealed a boulder.
If the Comanche lived, he now held a vantage point to pick Younkin off. The scout’s gaze ran over the canyon. The dead bay’s body offered the only close cover. He hesitated in making a move, unsure whether the Comanche lived or not.
Something cold and wet fluttered against Younkin’s cheeks. He glanced up. Snow. In light flurries, it fell from the cloud-darkened sky. Time was running out. He had to do something. His head moved back to the bay’s body.
Huddled behind the boulder, Toohmah cut a sleeve from his black shirt. Snowflakes in ever-increasing numbers pelted his exposed skin to melt and run in icy rivulets. He lifted his right leg. Blood oozed from the round bullet hole high on the interior of his left thigh. He wrapped the sleeve tautly about the wound and tied it in a knot. Later he would give it the care it required. Now, there was Younkin.
“Toohmah, I know I hit you.” Younkin’s voice eddied up the canyon. “There is no time left for fighting. Surrender and I will tend your wounds.”
“Tejano, your aim has not lessened with the years,” the Nermemuh called back. “Were I a younger man, I would now be worried about my ability to please a woman and produce sons. Since I am old, I have no such worries.”
Toohmah leaned on a side and pushed his rifle’s barrel through the dense cedar limbs. He cursed the gods who had forsaken him. Younkin still was not visible.
“Come tend my wound, Tohobaka ... then I will tend your grave,” Toohmah continued. “It will give me great pride to kill such an old enemy.”
Broken foot or not, Younkin had to run for the bay. He could not wait until the Comanche started shooting. In a crouch, he pushed upward. His right ankle flared with burning pain, but it held him: sprained, not broken. He hobble-ran for the horse.
The old brave’s rifle barked. Searing and heavy, the shot hammered into Younkin’s left shoulder. He staggered under the impact, then stumbled forward to fall behind the bay. Two more shots rang out. He felt them thud harmlessly into the horse’s carcass.
“Now we are equal,” Toohmah shouted. “We both carry the other’s mark.”
“No Comanche is my equal!” Younkin grimaced. His blood felt hot as it flowed from the wound and spread down his chest. He glanced to the cedar. Black Hand remained hidden. “The Comanches are snakes that I grind under my boot heel.”
Laughter echoed off the canyon’s walls. Toohmah answered, “No, Younkin, we are equals. We are the same man wearing skins of different colors ...” Younkin groaned as he wedged a hand inside his coat and shirt to press a handkerchief to the shoulder wound. His eyes batted, trying to keep the snow that swept into the canyon from them.
“... Our time is past, Younkin. The world no longer holds us in its open palms. We have been turned away from life. Only death awaits us, but it is too slow in coming. Here, within the canyon, we have hastened death to us.”
“I’ll hasten your death, you bastard!” Younkin called back.
Again the old Comanche laughed. “And I yours. What more could men such as you and I ask for than to die at the hands of their oldest and mightiest enemy? Among my people, a man is measured by the strength of his enemies.”
Black Hand’s insane words resonated within Younkin. They shared more than each other’s wounds. He tried to shake off the barrage of thoughts that assailed his mind, but they persisted, forcing him to confront their truths. What place was there for the Comanche in a world that spawned horseless carriages and flying machines? Nor did it offer a niche for a man whose abilities it no longer needed.
Younkin wiped melting snow from his face. Black Hand had escaped the reservation to find a world that had died twenty-eight years ago. For Younkin, the old brave’s trail provided the road to a time that had been stolen from him when the people of Haas stripped away his badge.
Beyond the difference in red and white, past the years of hate that had molded them, they were like mirror reflections of one another. They were but two old men seeking a life that no longer existed, a time when they both understood the world that surrounded them. The kinship was inescapable.
“Measure a man by his enemy’s strength?” Younkin called out, sensing the tangled twines that had interwoven their lives through the years. “Then I am the mightiest of men!”
“And I.” Toohmah grinned. He could barely see the fallen horse through the cascading snow. A coat of white covered the gorge’s floor. Along the canyon’s south wall, the wind whipped the fluffy whiteness into thick drifts.
“All things must end,” he heard Younkin shout. “If we do not end the fighting, we will both die in the storm. Surrender, and I will see that no harm comes to you.”
Toohmah heard the sincerity in the scout’s voice, but what could one old man do to protect him from the soldiers? The aged Nermemuh shook his head. He would not, could not, return to the reservation and the blue-coated guards. His spirit would not be confined again; these brief weeks of freedom had been too sweet. “No, Younkin. The fighting will end when one of us lies dead. Then the snow will claim the one who remains. Such is the way brave enemies should die, on a battlefield with honor. It is a good day for dying, Younkin. Come, let me bring yours.”
“The mare ... the one that bolted down the canyon,” Younkin answered. “She can carry one of us from Palo Duro. She can’t have gone far.”
Younkin paused, his mind racing. He had no intention of freezing to death while they both waited to pick the other off. There was a chance to end the standoff, a slim one, and it was weighted in his favor.
Black Hand had never faced a man one-to-one with only his gun to back him. He had.
“Face me, Toohmah,” Younkin challenged him. “Crawl out from behind your rock and face me like a man. The one who lives will have the mare to ride out on.”
Warrior to warrior, alone on the battlefield; Toohmah nodded his silent approval. The scout offered him the chance he wanted, the opportunity to kill the man who had butchered his wife and child. If he failed?
There would be no shame in such a death. It would be the death of a Nermemuh brave, not an old man rotting on the white man’s reservation. He tested his left leg against the ground. Pain erupted anew through the thigh, but it would support him.
“Stand and face me, Younkin,” Toohmah answered the challenge. “Stand and face the brave who brings you death!”
Younkin crawled to his knees, his temples apound with the sound of his pulse. Through the falling veil of white, he saw Black Hand’s form rise and step from behind the cedar. At last, he would close the door to his past. When it was over, he would ...
His thoughts faltered as old doubts crept into his mind: the fear, always the fear. No, he told himself, feeling the fear flow from his body, replaced by an inner serenity. The snows would make a cleaner tombstone than the straw and manure that waited in the stable.
Younkin rose, standing full height. He held his rifle muzzle down at his side. Black Hand limped toward him in a lopsided gait. The Comanche’s rifle hung at his side.
Squinting against the falling snow, Younkin stepped around the dead bay. His gaze focused on the brave’s rifle for any indication of movement.
Black Hand’s barrel inched upward, as though he hoped to raise the weapon without Younkin’s noticing. The scout swung the Winchester up in one fluid motion. His finger tightened about the trigger. A single shot blasted, its roar tearing through the howl of the wind.
Black Hand staggered back a half-step. He swayed, his body shuddering. Without a sound, he collapsed into the whiteness.
Rifle cocked for another shot, Younkin lifted the barrel and trained it on the still form. He waited, a minute, two, unwilling to approach the brave until he was certain no life remained within his ancient frame. Black Hand did not stir. A pink hue seeped from beneath his body to tint the snow around his chest. Younkin moved forward in short, cautious steps.
Fire and ice; fire raged in the Nermemuh’s chest while ice caressed his flesh. He felt his bowels and bladder relax, emptying themselves as death approached. A silent curse worked from his mouth, voicelessly spoken to the snow. Fortune had chosen to honor the scout. The double-edged blade of the nenuhpee had fallen. Soon his life’s blood would drain from his heart. There had never been a means to escape his vision, never.
A weak smile touched Toohmah’s lips. The Valley of Ten Thousand-fold Longer and Wider waited for him. The spirits of long-dead companions gathered there to greet him. How glorious the reunion would be if he could boast of sending his mightiest enemy to the pits of the white man’s hell.
He sensed rather than felt the rifle within his numb hand. He sucked at the air, but it evaded him, refusing to fill his lungs with its strength. It did not matter. He struggled against the river of fire and ice that sought to sweep him away to lift himself on an elbow. The trembling barrel of his rifle rose to center on the manlike form that approached through the falling white. His finger curled around the trigger and pulled.
The slug slammed into the center of Younkin’s chest. He stumbled backward. In an involuntary reaction, his finger squeezed. The rifle fired. Black Hand’s head snapped back, a shower of red splattering over the snow. Then, he lay motionless in the cold, white carpet once again.
Amid the pain, Younkin struggled to keep his eyes open. Damn! He had not seen the old brave move, and he had been staring at him. Had it been the snow? Had he blinked? Damn! He hurt. But he still lived. He took a step forward, his boot finding only open air. He collapsed face down in the snow.
Through the tearing agony that rent his chest, Younkin swam to lift his head. Black Hand did not move. His last shot had finished the brave, had closed that last door. The saline taste of blood filled his mouth when he tried to smile. Damn!
Gathering his strength, he attempted to rise. All he managed was to twist his head to the side. In the distance, he saw his hand, still clutching the Winchester. Slowly he released the weapon, his fingers sliding from it. His palm opened to the sky. Snowflakes pelted down to cover his hand. Younkin closed his eyes, surrendering to the comforting numbness of the cold, allowing the snow to cover him in its white blanket.