CHAPTER 9

Pita’s face was a horrified mask. Featherskill’s eyes narrowed. Had he heard right?

“Sweet Sam. Oh-na-Tami tore his head off. Blood everywhere.” Pita rambled on, his voice broken. “He followed some steers into the woods, trying to—I heard a roar. Found him.”

“Inkada,” the Kid said. “Take this man back to the ranch. See if Sally has some whiskey in the house.” Pita was not faking his fear, his horror. Something had gotten hold of the other Coos, something strong, bloody, merciless.

Inkada rode beside Pita who was just barely able to cling to the pommel. The Kid’s eyes were flat and cold as he watched them ride.

“That’s the end of it,” Ray said. “The Coos hands, the few that are left, will never come back.”

“It’s in our laps,” Kid Soledad said.

“We’re sticking?”

“We are.” The Kid nudged Khamsin forward. Montak lagged, turning back in the saddle to watch Inkada and Pita.

“This beast. Inkada says he has seen something like it,” Ray commented.

“He has. In the Himalayas. I too have seen a beast such as this. But they are shy, retiring, Ray. Let’s find the spot where Sweet Sam was killed. I want to see it.”

They climbed the low hills, following the tracks of Sam’s horse. To the west, clouds gathered over the deep green sea. High, rolling clouds, they had rain in them. The pines were deep, virgin trees, many a hundred feet high and more, five feet through the trunks.

They passed a brindle steer which was grazing passively on low brush. There was a spot of blood on its flank, not its own.

They found Sam in a narrow canyon, and it was not a pretty sight. Kid Soledad stepped down and shook his head, examining the body, the tracks in the rich brown earth.

“I was wrong,” Ray said. “Wrong entirely. This was no man who did this.”

Kid Soledad nodded, his own thoughts collecting. Sam had been yanked from his horse, apparently, dragged into this brush clotted draw and savagely attacked. No man had done it—Ray was correct about that—Sam’s head had been torn from his body. It would have taken great strength to do that. Great, brutal strength. It was stalking the forest, whatever it was, and it had taken man-blood.

“Let’s track it, Ray,” Soledad said. Ray nodded calmly. Montak’s eyes opened a little wider.

“I want you to go back, Montak,” Kid Soledad said.

Montak would have liked to go along, but he nodded. He carried no guns—he had vowed never again to carry them—and to be unarmed against this beast would be deadly.

The clouds were stacked high into the sky, rolling ominously over. Montak turned and rode for the Double T, taking Sam’s remains with him. Featherskill shivered slightly, watching the big man. A peal of thunder echoed through the dark forest.

“We’d best ride, Kid. If it rains, we’ll lose the tracks.”

Soledad nodded. He wanted this beast—this Oh-na-Tami. Yet he wondered if it would make a difference to Sally’s predicament. Would the Coos come back if the beast could be captured or killed? Or would they wonder how many more of the beasts there might be in this forest?

The thing had killed. Like a man-eating wolf, or tiger, like a man gone rabid, it must be killed now so that it would kill no more.

The two men rode silently through the deeply shadowed forest, following the deep, massive footprints across the dark earth. A light mist began to fall through the trees.

Wango’s head came up sharply. The crow hopped forward into the candle lit cave.

“Anyone?” Wango asked.

“Only an Indian this time. Yet there are signs of other men.” Blackschuster took off his black cloak, frowning at the sight of the blood stains on it.

“We’re falling behind schedule,” the magician said. He stood at the cavern entrance, studying the falling gray rain. The wind had picked up as well, and it pushed the rain into the cave, dampening Blackschuster’s hair and face. He mopped his forehead and returned to the cave, cursing in Sikh.

The silver was here, but reclaiming it was proving to be more difficult than Blackschuster had expected. He had hoped to be into Oregon and out within a week. Yet it had not worked out, and now there were others growing increasingly interested in the area. It did not seem possible they could know of the silver—what then did they want in this isolated wilderness?

“No matter. I will drive them off. Like the Indian.” He stood over the casket, talking softly to the woman who slept there. The woman he could only keep in this way. There. Again her eyelids twitched. The silver must be recovered and quickly.

“Sleep on, dear Kirstina.” He did not know what he feared more if she ever awakened: watching her age, seeing her return to that cowboy, or having to see once again that scorn in her obsidian eyes. He sometimes dreamed of that, remembering the hot pride in her eyes that day Danjisha had delivered her.

Again her eyelids moved, her hand seemed to tremble, her lips to part slightly. Outside the rain had begun in earnest. A gray screen covered the cold earth, the roaring sea. Blackschuster covered the casket with the velvet cloth.

Kirstina slept on. The single image filled her mind. All of life frozen in that brief moment. She had stepped into the garden. Blue dragonflies winged low across the ponds where white lilies floated slowly past. Roses in full bloom brightened the brass trellises. Her mother was beside her, holding her hand. The Yahif awaited their approach. Glancing back she saw the balcony where the tall stranger waited.

Smiling she turned back to the company, dressed in their finery. Then a flash, a cloth across her mouth and nose. Denjisha!

Then all of it had frozen. The dragonflies hanging still in the air. The trees, swaying in the breeze halted in their motion. It would not continue. Life would not resume its natural unfolding. Happiness froze; sounds hung on a single pitch.

She slept on, locked eternally into that moment which would not pass. From time to time a single, quick movement occurred. She noticed the flicker from the corner of her eye as a leaf trembled, a dragonfly’s wings slowly altered position. It seemed at times that it would gain impetus, that things would regain their natural rush toward completion; yet something always happened at those moments to freeze all of time once more.

And so she slept.

Kid Soledad rode on through the rain, Khamsin slick, muscular beneath him. The tracks had grown faint. This beast, this plodding animal, was no trick. It dipped into hollows, breaking brush as it sought to hide its trail.

Ray worked slowly up the opposite hillside. Soledad could just see him through the timber. A heavy rain now fell. Cold drops of water dripped from the trees. The footing was sodden and treacherous.

Soledad circled. The tracks had broken off, vanished. As if the beast had taken to wing. Most likely the rain had erased the sign. Yet the possibility was there. This beast, this terrible Oh-na-Tami could be a beast he knew very well.

Lightning flared and struck the tip of a massive pine, igniting a short-lived, sulphuric fire in the treetops. The wind beat at his clothing, pasting it to his damp body. Nothing. The thing had vanished.

Ray rode a zig-zag course across the pine-studded slopes. He had seen the Kid once, by the glare of lightning, yet that had been sometime back. He plodded on, the roan not liking the weather or the scent of the trail.

Then he heard the small sound. The chink of steel against stone. Ray waited, listening closely as the wind shrieked in the pines and the rain slanted down. It came again.

Frowning, Ray turned his horse upslope, toward the sound. It was not the beast, yet what else, who else would be in this forbidden area in such weather? Ray hesitated. He sat on a long, rocky bench overlooking a deep valley. The rain dripped from his hat brim. Whoever it was they were on Double T range, and he was riding for Double T just now. That made it his business.

“Let’s have a look,” he told the reluctant roan. “Maybe we got us some rustlers down there.”

He looked around once more, but he had lost the Kid entirely in the rain. He wound through the trees, the roan moving hesitantly. A thin tendril of smoke rose through the pines and was lost against the slate-gray of the sky.

The roan’s hoofs made no sound against the pine needles. The brush scratched at Ray’s pants, and the rain continued to sweep across the forest. He dipped into a shallow, gravel-bottomed arroyo where already water had begun to run, then clambered up the far side. Breaking from the underbrush into a clearing beyond, he was in the enemies’ camp before any of them realized what had happened.

Three men were grouped around a low smoky fire. Ray’s hand dropped for his gun instantly, for he recognized two of them—the man called Pitt, and Rafer Jacklin.

Surprised by the intrusion, it took Jacklin’s crew a moment to react. Ray drove his horse across the clearing, scattering pots and tools, the shoulder of the big roan knocking Pitt sprawling as he came up with his pistol.

He fell into the fire, scattering sparks. Ray was across the clearing in two bounds, Jacklin’s curses following him.

“How’d he find us?” Webb asked. Pitt was crawling miserably from the fire, clothing smoking.

“I don’t know,” Jacklin muttered, “but I swear I’ll have that man.”

Webb had heard such boasting before in his time. Jacklin’s voice had a frustrated edge to it, but his tone was far from confident. Maybe it was the stories of Nate Thorne who had arrived yesterday from Portland. Nate knew of the Kid, all right, but he also had some interesting things to say about Ray Featherskill. The blond man was no shirk himself. Jacklin had been used to swaggering, bullying; now he was going to have to play some with the big boys.

“I think my shoulder’s busted,” Billy Pitt moaned.

Jacklin swore again, deeply, surveying the wrecked camp, Billy Pitt who sat holding a useless arm. Their last coffee pot had been trampled flat. Webb was cinching up his saddle.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jacklin shouted. His hair hung in damp strands across his broad forehead.

“Gettin’ out of here,” Webb said mildly. “That man takes a notion, he’ll turn around and have us cold.”

Jacklin nodded slowly. He strapped Billy’s arm tightly to his body and helped him into the saddle. Then, guns in hand, they rode toward Bear Harbor. Let Duggan decide what he wanted to do. These men of Sally Talleyrand’s were getting too close now. Maybe it was time to open the war chest.