Read Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04 for Free Online

it?” Nocona shouted, while he was still two hundred yards away.
    Black Snake shook his head and waved a hand in front of his face as if to chase away words he’d rather not speak.
    Nocona felt a chill then. It froze his spine and seemed to spread into the deepest recesses of his body.
    “Something’s happened. What is it?”
    Again, Black Snake flailed with his hands. He swallowed hard.
    “Tell me,” Nocona said gently.
    “The village … Osage … they … “
    “How bad?”
    “Bad.”
    Black Snake looked at him then, his eyes suddenly welling up. “White Heron,” he said. “Little Calf … “
    Nocona tilted his head back just a little. Then he nodded.
    “Both of them?” he asked.
    Again, Black Snake nodded. “Both of them.”
    Shaking his head slowly, then faster, Nocona said, “All right. Bring the horses. I’m going on ahead.”
    “You can’t. The Osage might be …”
    “I hope so,” Nocona said.

Chapter 5
    N OCONA FELT THE WIND in his hair like a pair of ragged claws, tugging and scratching at him, as if it meant to tear his scalp from his head. It seemed as if all his fears, everything that had haunted his late nights, had gathered up ahead of him like some deadly flock of predators, and he plunged headlong toward it, knowing that it was too late, and not caring. He had to see for himself if each of those fears had come to roost.
    He rode without regard to anything, even the gallant pony beneath him. If the horse played out, he would run, and when he could no longer run, he would walk, and then he would crawl on bloody knees, if that’s what it took. But somehow, no matter how, he would reach the village.
    Twice, he passed bands of stragglers, but skirted them rather than stop and learn another few bits and pieces of the horror that awaited him. He knew the fury of the Osage, how terrible theirvengeance could be. He had seen the ruins of the friendly Kiowa camp the year before, and knew that what awaited him would be every bit as bloody and as terrible as that slaughter.
    His heart was hammering at his chest in unison with the pony’s hooves, and when his heart would race ahead, he would lash the horse with a rawhide quirt, sometimes even pounding on its chest with a fist to squeeze every last bit of speed from the laboring animal. And sometimes, taking a deep breath to try to still the pounding beneath his ribs, he would hear a drumming in his ears as his blood raced through him looking for some way out, some way to vent the unbearable pressure, the way a raging flood will find the tiniest crack and begin tearing at the walls that tried to hold it in.
    It was near sundown by the time he entered the valley of the Arkansas River. The village was not that far away now, but he raced on, as if the carnage ahead were some kind of giant magnet, pulling him faster and faster the closer he came to its irresistible force. The sun had paled, its waning orange seeking refuge behind a haze that spread from one end of the valley to the other. He glanced up at it, telling himself he could not be sure whether it was natural or the residual smoke from a village laid to ruin. But that was a lie. He knew.
    He was following the river now, the pony keeping to the sandy bank where the grass was thinner and the rocks were more easily seen. Thesluggish current was dyed orange by the sunlight, stretching two hundred yards to his right, a sheet of cloth broken here and there by the leap of a trout, its own back a darker orange as it spasmed in a violent arc before landing with a slap like that of clapping hands.
    In the back of his mind was the thought that the Osage could be haunting the riverbank, waiting to pick off stragglers. It was a remote possibility, because even the fearsome Osage knew the fury of the Comanche, and would likely not wish to linger too near the flames of that rage.
    Deep inside him, a voice kept whispering, repeating over and over the wordless hope that the report was wrong, that some mistake