Golden Hawk 2 Read online

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  A quiet stream under the Comanche moon … leaping savages … knives flashing in the firelight … brutal, shameful death …

  Ripped from the bosom of their slain parents and carried off by the raiding Comanches, Jed Thompson and his sister can never forget that hellish night under the glare of the Comanche moon, seared into their memories forever. Years later, Golden Hawk now, his vengeance slaked, pursued relentlessly by his past Comanche brothers, Jed is driven by only one purpose: to recapture his sister from those who would bend her proud beauty to their savage will.

  Golden Hawk. Half Comanche, half white man. A legend in his time, an awesome nemesis to some—a bulwark and a refuge to any man or woman lost in the terror of that raw, savage land.

  GOLDEN HAWK 2: BLOOD HUNT

  By Will C. Knott

  First published by Signet Books in 1986

  Copyright © 1986, 2020 by Will C. Knott

  This electronic edition published October 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Series Editor: Lesley Bridges

  Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books

  Original cover paintings by the artist R.S. Lonati can be bought at BLITZ publishing company. Contact: [email protected]

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  HAWK PULLED HIS appaloosa to a sudden halt and turned in his saddle. A distant cry had come to him above the pounding of his pony’s hooves, and as he lifted his craggy profile to listen, he resembled a startled bird of prey.

  It was getting warm, but spring had not yet arrived this high in the Rockies, and over his buckskins he wore the wolfskin jacket his sister had made for him the winter before. Out from under his wide-brimmed hat his blond hair reached clear to his shoulders. This golden mane was one reason why his Comanche captors had named him Golden Hawk.

  Hawk kept himself perfectly still as he listened. And then he became aware of the awesome silence that had fallen over the timbered slope. No bird sang. The constant, rapid chittering of scolding chipmunks had stopped. Even the soft moan of the wind high in the pines had faded away completely. It was as if all the world had heard that faint cry and was listening for it along with Hawk.

  The call came a second time—from the other side of the ridge Hawk had just crossed.

  With the ease of a Comanche, Hawk slipped from his mount. Lifting his plains rifle from its saddle scabbard, he loped swiftly back up onto the ridge. Sable Hair Woman, her black hair flung out in a dark plume behind her as she rode, was galloping across a long open meadow toward him. When she caught sight of his powerful, broad-shouldered figure standing on the ridge, she waved frantically. “Hawk!” she called. “Wait!”

  Hawk had said his good-bye to the daughter of Joseph Bear the night before. Yet here she was, riding like fury to overtake him. It could only mean trouble. He glanced alertly about him. Every slope was now suspect—each patch of timber, each pine-studded ridge.

  He was still looking warily about him when Sable Hair Woman flung herself from her lathered appaloosa and ran up to him. “Comanche!” she cried.

  “Of what band?”

  “Kwahadi!”

  Hawk nodded. He did not really have to ask. Any Comanches this far north had to be Kwahadi

  searching for him. The Kwahadi were bound in everlasting enmity to him, and only his death—his slow death—would satisfy them.

  “How many?”

  “Too many for the Golden Hawk. Six, maybe seven!”

  “How do you know this?”

  “They came to our village. Many of our warriors were off to hunt the buffalo when the Kwahadi come to our village. They tell my father they come in peace. But when they learn my father has shared his lodge with the Golden Hawk, they say he must tell them which way you go.

  “Did he?”

  She shook her head proudly. “No. So Kwahadi beat him, then take many ponies and ride off.”

  “And you came to warn me.”

  “Yes.”

  Hawk said nothing. Sable Hair Woman had thought only of him. Since she first pulled him from the snow the winter before, more dead than alive, she had been a faithful and willing friend and lover. He had been fever-ridden and close to death, and it was she who had saved him. And later, without so much as a murmur, she had accepted the fact that his need to find his sister made settling down with her Nez Perce people impossible.

  Now, in her overwhelming concern and eagerness to warn him, Sable Hair Woman must have surely led those seven Comanches straight to Hawk.

  “You have warned me, Sable Hair Woman” he said gently. “Now you must return to your village—and your father.”

  “But he tell me to come after you.”

  “And you have done so.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then flung her arms about him. He held her tightly, feeling the excited beat of her heart and the lovely suppleness of her body against his. He thought once again of how much he would miss her.

  He released her. She straightened her shoulders proudly and said not a word, though he knew she had hoped he would ask her to remain with him. Turning, she mounted up and with a single, brief wave rode back down the slope, this time keeping her pony to a walk. Hawk stood on the ridge, watching until she was almost ready to disappear into the distant line of timber on the far edge of the clearing.

  As he was about to turn back to his pony, he saw four Comanches break from the timber before Sable Hair Woman and swiftly encircle her. Arrow after arrow plunged into her body. As she slipped from her pony, it bolted into the timber and vanished. The Comanches followed the pony, all except for one—a tall warrior with a single black crow feather stuck in his headband. Defiantly, he raised his fist at Hawk’s distant figure, then vanished into the timber after his comrades.

  Hawk felt cold, icy fury.

  The killing of Sable Hair Woman had been an action planned solely for his benefit. They could have let her ride back to her village; she had accomplished her purpose. She had led them to Hawk. But the Comanches preferred to kill her in plain sight of the Golden Hawk—fully aware that she was a woman he had favored.

  Hawk tethered his pony, then ducked back over the ridge and loped across the clearing, his long, easy strides taking him swiftly to the distant line of timber. Coming upon Sable Hair Woman’s crumpled, arrow-ridden body, he paused and knelt by her side. One arrow, mercifully, was lodged in her heart. He bent and kissed her cold forehead, then slipped into the timber after the Comanches.

  They had come a long way for him. He did not want them to wait much longer without meeting him personally.

  Close to nightfall, Hawk peered down through pine branches at the Comanche with the single black fea
ther stuck in his headband. He was unusually tall for a member of the Kwahadi band, and Hawk had no trouble recalling him. Born of a Mexican slave woman and a full-blooded Comanche, he was called Walking Crow. Like Hawk, he always kept himself aloof, and like most warriors of mixed blood, he was eager to gain honor in battle in order to prove he was as fierce and cruel as any full-blooded Comanche.

  During the years Hawk and his sister had spent with the Kwahadi band, Walking Crow was renowned for leading murder raids into Mexico, where his ferocity to his mother’s people astounded even the Comanches. Suffering from a severe battle wound when Chief Two Horns led his expedition into Mexico, Walking Crow had not been able to join Two Horns. Hawk was certain that Walking Crow had boasted to every warrior in the Kwahadi band that if he had been a member of Two Horns’ ill-fated expedition, he would not have allowed the Golden Hawk to escape.

  Despite their black war paint, Hawk instantly recognized all of the six other Comanches squatting around the campfire with Walking Crow. At one time or another he had encountered each one of them as he tended the Comanche herds or spent time in the village with his sister Annabelle.

  When Little Fox did not return last winter, the Comanches must have assumed he had failed to take Hawk’s scalp. So now, under Walking Crow’s leadership, they were here to accomplish what had been impossible, not only for Little Fox, but for so many other Kwahadi warriors. Hawk should have felt pride at having warranted such a large war party. But he did not. Having seen these butchers cut down Sable Hair Woman, he felt only a simmering fury.

  The Indians’ muttering conversation died slowly as darkness fell over the clearing. Their pipes finished, the braves went to their blankets. Walking Crow sent one brave to guard the ponies, a second to a spot on the slope on the far side of the campfire, and another past Hawk’s tree and up the slope behind Hawk. Then Walking Crow took his blanket and found a level place near a large boulder about twenty feet from the campfire. The rest of the Comanches remained near the fire.

  As bait for the Golden Hawk, Hawk had no doubt.

  Crouched on the branch, he waited patiently for another hour, then climbed higher, swinging lightly to another tree, and a moment later dropped silently onto the forest slope’s pine-carpeted floor. He found the Comanche who had passed under his tree easily enough. The brave had not eaten much, and like all Comanches in a war party, he slept very lightly. As Hawk approached him from the slope above, the brave woke suddenly, flinging off his blanket, and came erect, his knife gleaming dully in the moonlight. Hawk flung himself through the air, crashing into the brave and slamming him down onto his back. Keeping his left hand clapped firmly over the brave’s throat, Hawk buried his bowie hilt-deep into the brave’s stomach. The Indian twitched only once, then lay still.

  Swiftly, Hawk backed into the timber where he waited to see if any in the war party below had been alerted by the sounds of the scuffle. Satisfied at last that he had not raised an alarm, Hawk moved higher into the timber, then circled around to the far slope for the other brave. He found this one sleeping with his mouth open, his rifle in his arms. Hawk took the rifle from the astonished brave and slammed its stock into the side of his head. The single blow was enough to kill him.

  Hawk moved across the slope until he came to the sentry guarding the horses. He was the best of the lot, sleeping with his back to a tree trunk, and so alert that he jumped up twice and peered carefully at the slope, then went down to check on the horses in the arroyo below him.

  When he came back from inspecting the ponies the second time, Hawk was in the tree above him. The Indian leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes. Hawk dropped, both feet crunching down on the brave’s shoulders. As the Indian sagged under Hawk’s weight, Hawk bent and with a single blow of his fist punched him unconscious, then slit his throat.

  Without a word, Hawk waved the ponies back down the arroyo. As soon as they were going in the right direction, he waved his hat and let out with a long, piercing Comanche yell. Already spooked, the ponies bolted out of the arroyo and across the moonlit clearing. Far ahead of them Hawk glimpsed a long slope, leading down to a distant stretch of prairie.

  To make sure they went that far, Hawk let loose a second Comanche war cry, then ducked into the timber.

  Immediately after he sent the ponies on their way, Hawk returned to his own pony, then rode back early the next morning. He had no trouble finding, then following from a distance, the four remaining members of Walking Crow’s war party as they headed south, Walking Crow in the lead.

  Of all the plains Indians, the Comanches were the most dependent upon their horses. Hawk had seen warriors use them simply to go from one lodge to another. Now, struggling along on foot, they cut a pitiful sight. Their short, squat torsos and comically bowed legs made them look ungainly, even ridiculous. From fearsome knights of the plains—capable of striking terror into any interloper, red or white—they were now reduced to Stone Age cripples, stumbling along over the rough terrain, glancing furtively over their shoulders as they fled.

  Keeping far enough behind, Hawk waited for a moonlit night. He wanted Walking Crow, but only after the brave who had raised his fist to Hawk found himself alone, isolated, waiting for Hawk’s knife to fall. Three days later the moon was full enough for Hawk to make his second attack.

  The four Comanches were huddled about their campfire. One of them was sitting up with his rifle to keep guard. Mounted just below the ridge line above them, Hawk waited until the moon climbed to its highest elevation, then he lashed his pony to a gallop and rushed upon the camp. The guard was on his feet in an instant, rifle to his shoulder. Hawk shot him in the chest with his Walker and kept on riding. His pony struck one brave in the chest, slamming him back into the fire. As the pony cleared the flames, Hawk swung the barrel of his Hawken like a saber, ripping another Comanche open all the way to his spine, slamming him back with violent force against Walking Crow. Both Indians reeled backward.

  As he galloped off, Hawk did not look back.

  Standing upright in plain view, Hawk looked down the slope at Walking Crow. After Hawk’s attack, the Comanche had remained in the encampment, where he spent most of the day burying his companions. Since the moment he sighted Hawk watching him from the ridge, he had been singing his death song, his face covered with black war paint.

  Hawk glanced at the sun. He had an hour left of sunlight. That would be enough time. He urged his horse down the slope toward Walking Crow. The warrior, still singing his death song, sat cross-legged by the fire.

  Within twenty yards of Walking Crow, Hawk pulled up. Surrounding the Comanche warrior were the recently dug graves, covered by mounds of fresh earth.

  Walking Crow got to his feet.

  In fluent Comanche, Hawk said, “You are prepared to die, I see.”

  With a slight inclination of his head, Walking Crow admitted this. Hawk was impressed by the savage’s unflinching manner—and the cold, ironic glint in his anthracite eyes.

  “I could shoot you from here. My rifle and revolver are loaded. Why do you think I would get down from this horse to do battle with you?”

  “Because the white one is filled with hate. He wants to feel his fingers around the throat of the man who killed his woman.”

  “That is true, Walking Crow.”

  Walking Crow straightened his shoulders. He had only his long hunting knife in his hand.

  Hawk smiled coldly. “But then it would give Golden Hawk as much pleasure to blow off both Walking Crow’s knees. Or send hot lead through both his eye sockets. After that he could easily dismount and scalp him, rip off his manhood, and piss on his medicine bags.”

  Walking Crow paled. As Hawk well knew, the Comanches believed that scalping annihilated the human soul—even worse, that a Comanche’s mutilated spirit would arrive in the Land Beyond the Sun in the same condition as when he left this world. This was why the plains Indians were such experts at mutilation.

  “Then do it, Golden Hawk. I will not
plead.”

  Hawk was impressed. Walking Crow had killed Sable Hair Woman in plain sight of Hawk simply in order to give him pain. It had been wanton and cruel, and a perfectly logical thing to do from the standpoint of Comanche warfare. Yet the savage had courage and was not afraid to die. He had waited here for Hawk all day and now stood with only his knife to protect himself from Hawk’s wrath.

  “I will not kill you, Walking Crow.”

  “Why?” The warrior sounded offended.

  “I want you to take a message to Buffalo Hump. Tell him that I will kill no more of his people. That I wish only to take my sister back from the Blackfeet. There has been enough killing.”

  “I cannot do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Buffalo Hump blamed himself for your escape—and for the death of Two Horns and the other warriors you killed. He now rides out to find his death with the Osage. He will take many of the hated Osage with him.

  Hawk took this in, surprised—and somewhat dismayed. For many years Buffalo Hump had been his sister’s father. And when Hawk had Hawk had come to the chief for help, the old man had not turned him away. Still, it was Buffalo Hump who had sold his sister to the Comancheros. Still, the old warrior had had a long life and might yet return with many Osage scalps.

  Hawk nodded solemnly. “Then there can be no peace between the Kwahadi and Golden Hawk.”

  “Not until you are dead. I have come to see to that.”

  Hawk dismounted and threw his Hawken and the big Whitney Colt to the ground. Then he unsheathed his bowie. It was foolish, he knew, but Walking Crow was right. To avenge the death of Sable Hair Woman, Hawk would like very much to feel his fingers around this savage’s throat. And he was well aware that a Comanche warrior believed that death by strangulation meant his soul would wander forever in the dark netherworld between this world and the next.

  Hawk spread his arms. “Well?” he said. “Here I am. Take me if you can.”