The Loner
Authors: Genell Dellin
ENELL
D
ELLIN
The Loner
Cherokee Warriors
Gunfire tore the heart out of the sweet spring afternoon.â¦
Black Fox tried to make himself stand up and walkâ¦
Black Fox still hadn't closed his eyes when the firstâ¦
Future escape aside, she still couldn't stand it. She wasâ¦
She threw back the covers and, moving slowly, sat upâ¦
Cat woke with a start from her napâa restlessâ¦
Something crashed in the woods somewhere not far behind herâ¦
During the next few days, Black Fox thought he mightâ¦
Black Fox lay on the bed with his boots onâ¦
Cat woke with the sun shining on her face. Thatâ¦
She reached out and touched him, laid her small handâ¦
Cathleen's heart beat so hard and fast it nearly smotheredâ¦
Becker and his men didn't stop until nearly dusk, whenâ¦
Halfway to the cove, when Cat had made it hasâ¦
Cat's feeling of being abandoned multiplied itself a hundred times.â¦
The moon was high and glinting off the water whenâ¦
Now Black Fox felt as if he were the oneâ¦
After the wagonsâfilled, respectively, with prisoners and with whiskeyâhadâ¦
“Whoa, Dunny Girl, we're home.”
Cherokee Nation
West April 1877
G
unfire tore the heart out of the sweet spring afternoon. Spooked by the sudden noise, Black Fox Vann's young horse tried to bolt out of the woods. Black Fox put a stop to that foolishness while he listened with his practiced ear.
Six or seven rounds, at least. By two different guns. On the edge of the town or just outside it.
He settled Gray Ghost Horse back into his long trot and moved him on out, even though the colt no longer wanted to go in that direction. He finally did it, though, and without the comfort of a
murmur or a soothing word because Black Fox was still listening.
Nobody was in the trees just ahead of him, not running toward him to attack, anyhow. Nobody was coming at him from behind.
Despite that, he squeezed the gray with his legs and sidepassed him off the trail and into the trees. A lawman was always a target, and half the population of the Nation, good men and bad, recognized him on sight. He'd been a Cherokee Lighthorseman for too many years to travel incognito ever again.
The fusillade erupted in earnest, sounding much closer now. More guns than two and more rounds fired than he could count. So. It had nothing to do with him or his presence here on the outskirts of the town of Sequoyah. It was just some trouble that had burst out into the open.
He glanced at the sun and then urged the gray into a short lope. He needed to see the situation and decide whether to take care of it before sundown or stay hidden to keep trailing The Cat.
A grim smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Nobody actually
trailed
The Cat, not for more than a short distance at most. What he was doing was trying to guess where the boy might be and get there at the same time.
The nagging regret pulled at him. It was a shame The Cat had turned killer. Until then, Black Fox had been willing to cut him some slack in his
Robin Hood thievery of giving to the poor, since there were so many, much worse men to hunt and bring to justice.
The shooting, sometimes sporadic and sometimes nearly solid, kept up for a minute or more. Then it paused for a second, resumed, and seemed to go on forever without stopping. Black Fox saw the flashes of firing muzzles as he reached the edge of the woods, and when he did, he realized that all the action was taking place at his destination, Tassel Glass's general store.
He rode up to a spot behind a thick-trunked old sycamore tree on the side of the road into Sequoyah and sat his horse. Hudson Becker, a white man, and his mixed gang (white, black, and Cherokee) of thieves and bums were shooting up Glass's store. A small war between bootleggers, looked like. Tassel Glass was a rich, prominent Cherokee who was commonly called chief of the bootleggersâmaybe Becker was trying to take over the title from him.
Window panes lay shattered over the front porch, glinting in the low sun's rays. The barrel of pickles that sat just outside the door spouted little rivers of juice from the bullet holes that pocked it.
The screened door burst open and a small figure flew out of the store. He raced across the porch and into the yard on feet that seemed to have wings. Black Fox watched him with an amazement almost greater than his alarm, but the boy himself was un
fazed. He kept running, dashing through the flying bullets on a straight line without zigzagging or hesitating, headed for a horse standing saddled at the east edge of the store property.
More shooting sounded, this time from the west. Black Fox gave it a glance and saw three riders arriving at a gallop with big, powerful Tassel Glass in the lead. His fringed turban and white old-style shirt made him unmistakable, as did his huge bay horse. Tassel Glass, chief of the bootleggers, fired his handgun as he came.
Even so, the boy was still running unharmed, even though the hail of bullets came from two directions now. He was nearly to the horse.
It must be The Cat. Though only a few had ever seen himâand those for no more than a glimpse as he was fleeing the scene of one of his exploitsâthey all said he was a young boy, afraid of nothing, riding a lightning-fast yellow dun.
Well, that horse would have to run like wildfire to be faster than the boy was on foot.
And The Cat was as brave as he was fast. The firefight raging around him might as well be a stomp dance, for all the fear he showed.
The Cat vaulted from the ground into the saddle with the dun already moving out. Dashing away, the small rider drew his handgun from the holster on his hip, twisted in the saddle, and fired back at Glass and his men. They were riding into the melee without slowing at all.
The dun horse bounded across the road like a scared rabbit with the boy lying low over his neck. The two of them disappeared, crashing into the woods not a hundred yards from where Black Fox sat.
“Go, Ghost!”
His horse leapt in pursuit as if he'd been a lawman's mount forever and the last thing Black Fox saw, on the very edge of his vision, was blood blossoming on Tassel Glass's white shirt and him tumbling from his horse. He could've been shot by anybody there. Or he could be The Cat's second killing.
Or he might not die after all.
The Cat was plowing through the trees, clattering over the rocky ground with reckless abandon and Ghost stayed on the trail of the noise with a vengeance, but Black Fox never got another sighting after he saw his prey enter the woods. He searched ahead, scanned the trees and the shadows mercilessly as the gray plunged forward but The Cat had vanished.
The noise of his flight was fast growing fainter and fainter. Finally, Black Fox had to stop and listen for a moment. He headed to the northeast, which was as good a guess as he was going to get.
He clenched his jaw. The direction he picked had better be right, because he'd have to catch the boy before dark or lose him entirely. That child was fast.
Black Fox bent low in the saddle and urged the big horse on, letting everything fade completely away from his mind as his instincts took over. He opened every sense he possessed to protect himself. Limbs reached to snatch him from the saddle and rocks and sudden drops and rises in the forest floor waited to make the gray's feet stumble. He couldn't afford a mishap. This was the only chance he'd had at The Cat during the entire two weeks he'd been looking for him and he wasn't going to let him get away.
In a way, though, he wished he
could
let him go. He'd already dreaded the sickening chore of taking a young boy in to be hanged and now that he'd seen how small he was, and how unfalteringly brave, it would be worse. If only it hadn't been a deputy marshal The Cat had killed, and a white man to boot, he could've taken him in to a Cherokee court. But any crime in the Nation involving a white man fell under the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal court in Fort Smith, and Donald Turner had been deputized by Judge Parker himself.
Besides, a Cherokee court would hang him for shooting somebody in the back just as fast as Parker would.
Black Fox knew this kind of thinking was death to a lawman and a lawman was all he was. He hadn't earned his reputation by going soft on criminals just because they happened to be young and he wasn't going to start now.
He rode for another mile or two without hearing a sound from the forest up ahead. Dusk was falling, and deep in the woods it got darker even faster. The gray was proving his mettle by moving among the trees like a silent fogâthe reason Black Fox had named him Gray Ghost Horseâbut still there was no Cat in sight.
Black Fox strained his ears but he heard nothing. Even the night birds were silent. He hoped it was because their peace had been disturbed by The Cat's passing. Or by The Cat's presence somewhere nearby.
He was trying so hard to see into the twilight ahead that he barely had time to duck when the gray carried him beneath a low-hanging branch of a maple tree. It slapped him in the face. With wet leaves. They hadn't had rain for a week.
At that moment, he smelled the coppery scent of blood. When he wiped his fingers across his cheek, they came away smeared and when he held them up in the fading light he saw the tint of red.
Every nerve in his body went on alert. He bent from the saddle to search the ground just ahead of his horse and rode that way for a dozen yards. The gray jogged out of the trees and into a small clearing that lay at the foot of a short limestone bluff. A creek burbled over a rocky bed.
A stone's throw ahead stood a horse, his heaving sides catching glimmers of the dying light. With one wide glance, Black Fox saw that it was
the little dun standing over a small figure lying on the ground. The Cat wasn't moving at all.
Black Fox dismounted, led the gray a little closer, then dropped the reins and left him. He drew his gun as he ran to The Cat, but he needn't have bothered. The child had passed outâfrom loss of blood, no doubt. He'd been shot in the shoulder and he was bleeding all over the grass.
Black Fox pulled his bandana from his pocket and staunched the blood as he took in a long, ragged breath. At least he'd found the kid in time to save him.
An ironic smile twisted his lips. Yeah, in time to save him so he could take him in to be hanged.
He moved The Cat out of the puddle of blood and laid him on some dry grass nearer the bluff, then started quickly gathering wood for a fire. The kid was small-boned and lightweight. He had his hat tied on as carefully tight as a cinched saddle. He was clean-cut and clean-shaven, and his well-worn clothes were much cleaner than those of most outlaws who lived in the woods and were always on the run. How had such a boy gotten himself into such a dangerous business?
He didn't appear to be Cherokee, but he might be from a family that had intermarried for a long time. Many members of the tribe no longer showed much Indian blood.
Black Fox made himself quit thinking. This was just another bad man, no matter his race or his
size or his age, and now he was caught and all Black Fox needed to consider was how to get him from here to Fort Smith. That couldn't happen until the kid could ride, so he'd better get enough light to see by and examine that wound.
He went about building the fire quickly, close to the creek because he'd need water, and if he got into digging out the bullet he might need more and wouldn't have time to carry it far. When he took his camping things from his saddlebags, he filled both the cooking pot and the coffeepot because a person who'd lost a lot of blood needed warm liquid to drink.
Bringing the still unconscious boy into the flickering light, Black Fox laid him down and untied the bandana. The Cat moaned and he worked faster, hoping to get the bullet outâif that had to be doneâbefore he came to.
The bleeding was slowing down. Good sign. The wound was in the flesh near the armpit and might be a clean one. He needed to look at the other side of it to see. Quickly, he unbuttoned the boy's shirt and peeled it back. And froze.
His slender body was already wrapped in a bandage, around the chest. The only blood on it was what had come from the new wound. Black Fox grasped the tucked end of it and started unwinding the wide strip of cloth.
The Cat was already hurt before he got shot? He had made that incredible run to his horse with
an old wound in his chest and then had ridden this far with another one added to it?
The binding fell away and Black Fox stared, trying to get his mind around the shocking sight. The Cat had beautiful, white breasts tipped with rose nipples. The Cat was a
girl
?
Heat surged up his neck, embarrassment that he'd invaded her privacy like that, and he pulled her shirt back over her. But his jaw set hard.
The little vixen. What kind of a deal was this? How in the
hell
could The Cat be a girl?
But there was no mistaking those beautiful breasts. She must've fooled everyone by cutting her hair short like a boy's.
He started untying the hard-knotted hat strings, seeing for the first time by the firelight that long dark eyelashes curled against her cheek. Damn!
Why hadn't anyone ever mentioned
those
before? At least then he'd have had a notion he was chasing a girl. He'd never seen a boy with lashes like that.
He reached for his pocketknife and cut the stubborn leather strips so he could take off her hat and wad it up under her head so she could rest more comfortably. The minute he pulled at the hat, a mass of curly red hair spilled out.
The Cat was a girl who hadn't even worked very hard to conceal it. She had fooled everybody in the Nation without even trying.
That truth rocked him back on his haunches to
stare some more, willing it not to be so. But it was. And she was beautiful, even though her face was pale as milk in the firelight. As if to make up for that, her hair grabbed the glow from the fire and gleamed a darker auburn.
“Dear God,” he muttered. “It'll be even worse to take a young
girl
in for Judge Parker to hang.”
To his shock, she answered him.
“Ride away,” she muttered thickly, “and you won't have to worry about that anymore.”
He looked into her half-opened eyes.
“And you'd die right here,” he said. “You nearly bled to death already.”
“No skin⦔ she said, then stopped to get a breath, “â¦off your nose.”
Her eyes closed completely.
Black Fox went back to looking for a bullet exit hole, throwing the binding loosely over her breasts while he began taking her blood-soaked shirt off her. Woman or not, he was the only one here to take care of her.
Cathleen needed to jerk away from him and jump up and run but she couldn't even lift her hand. She needed water but she couldn't say it and she needed to get away from the burning pain in her shoulder more than she needed air but she couldn't even turn her head.
What blood was left in her veins was rushing to her brain, screaming danger, yelling for her to escape, to get to her horse, to do something. She
needed to think what to do and do it because this man was taking her shirt off. He must be either a lawman or a bounty hunter.
