The Daughter, C.B. Cooper [great reads .TXT] 📗

Indian, trying to turn him over while he slid his new knife out of its sheath at his side. Bringing the big blade up he pressed it into the injuns throat, and then for the briefest moment, their eyes met, and held.
He was looking into the face of a boy, younger than himself by a few years, his huge dark eyes were afraid, silently pleading with Sam to spare him his life. And Sam did. He couldn’t bring himself to kill that young boy, so he had turned him loose.
The boy had scrambled to his feet and took off running, but just before he disappeared behind some bushes, he had stopped and turned to look back at Sam, and then he smiled and waved.
After he was gone, Sam had sat on the forest floor going over everything that had just happened, stopping when he thought back to the boys smile. It wasn’t a thank you for not killing me smile, it was more like a shit eating grin. Looking around, Sam realized that he’d been had. The damn Injun had took his hammer- again! “Son of a bitch!” he had muttered, and then smiled as he thought about it. He knew when he’d been bested, and he just had, by a boy no older than his little sister. “Son of bitch.”
Sitting down to supper that evening, Sam was hearing it from both ends. He had told his parents about the incident with the hammer, and they were mad. Not because he had lost the hammer, two times, and not because he had let the Indian boy get away, but because he had let his temper get the best of him and had chased the little thief blindly into the woods.
“I raised you up to be smart, to think on yor feet in bad situations, and then you go and do something stupid. Makes me wonder if you’ve ever heard anything I’ve told you.” his father said.
His mother had took a different approach, she just cried and made him feel guilty. “I can’t believe you almost killed yourself. There could’ve been ten Indians hiding back in those bushes, waiting to kill you dead! Dead!”
Sam had been trying to figure out a way to disappear, somehow just slide to the floor and slip between the cracks like spilt water, when his father said, “Shhh…listen.”
Everyone froze, trying to hear what Sam’s father was listening to, when they heard the sound of horses approaching. Lots of horses.
It didn’t take Sam long to scramble over to one of the gun ports, the rest of his family right on his heels. As he looked through the port hole, his blood ran cold and his mouth went dry. “Son of a bitch!” he’d croaked.
His father had smacked him in the back of the head, “Watch yor mouth!” and then he had shoved him out of the way so he could get a look. “Son of a bitch.” he whispered, then louder, “Get ready for an attack!”
In the next instant the solid little cabin was a bee hive of activity, as each member of the family raced to perform the drill that they had practiced so many times. Only this time, it was for real. Living right on the edge of Indian territory certainly had its distinct disadvantages, like being attacked by hostile Indians. But Sam’s father had built their home as sturdy as any frontier fort. Logs, two feet thick, made up the walls, planed by hand to fit snugly together, and sat on a rock foundation three feet high. The doors were four inches thick and reinforced with two wooden drop locks, it would take a person half a day to break through those doors. But best of all, in case the hostiles caught the cabin on fire, they had dug an escape tunnel under the cabin that was accessed by a hidden trap door. The hole dropped down eight feet then the tunnel ran about thirty feet to where they had built a small alcove stocked with food and water, enough to last them a few days.
Each person sat at a gun port waiting for a sign that would signal the attack. Sam and his father were manning the front of the cabin, while his ma and sister watched the back. Sam counted the grim faced Indians that were lined up at the edge of the yard. Fourteen. He recognized the leader, a chief by the name of Buffalo Hump, or Potsana Kwahip in Comanche, as he held up his arm, signaling to his men to stay put as he kicked his spotted pony forward. He rode up to the cabin alone and sat stoically, waiting to be acknowledged by the people inside.
Time ticked by slowly, what was probably just a few minutes, felt like forever, then his father had sighed, “Well, I reckon I ought to go see what he wants.”
“Pa, no! You cant go out there by yourself, it might be a trick.”
“I don’t think so, son. I haven’t seen any weapons, and their not made up for war, I think he just wants to talk.”
His father leaned his rifle up against the wall and headed for the door. Sam heard his mother gasp behind him, but she never uttered a word.
“Keep a sharp eye out, but don’t do anything foolish, you understand? Lets keep this as peaceable as possible, but any sign of trouble, you get ready to drop the bar down on the door.”
“Yes, pa.” Sam gulped.
He watched as his father opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. It being summer, it was still plenty light outside, so Sam had no problem keeping an eye on the line of Indians at the edge of the yard. He tried to keep up with the conversation between his father and Buffalo Hump, but since it was mostly in sign language, he missed a fair amount of it.
After a few long minutes, his pa called to him, “Samuel, come on out here. Leave the gun with yor ma.”
Sam thought that his father had looked so brave, walking out to face the red devils that awaited him. He hadn’t realized how much courage that took, until he had to do it himself. Standing with his hand on the door, and his heart threatening to explode in his chest, he felt like he was walking out to face a firing squad. Sucking it up, and taking a deep breath, he opened the door and walked out to stand by his father in the yard.
Smiling, his father told him, “Son, Buffalo Hump has come to thank you for sparing his son’s life today. It seems the boys of his village have made a game out of stealing from us. Counting coup, they call it.”
“We’ve been being robbed by a bunch of… kids?”
“Seems so.”
Just then, Buffalo Hump jumped off his horse and walked over to stand in front of him. The chief had looked as large as a mountain, and just as formidable. They each studied each other from head to toe, sizing each other up.
Sam was caught off guard when the big Indian’s hand shot out and gave him a violent shove. If he hadn’t steeled himself a split second before he was pushed, he’d be sitting on his butt in the dirt.
“Steady, Sam.” his father warned.
“What the hell was that for!” Sam asked his father, “I thought he wanted to thank me!” He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks as the anger settled in. Every nerve in his body started humming as he became instantly alert.
When the Chief’s hand shot out again, Sam was ready and knocked it to the side. And when the other hand came at his face, he was ready for that too, and blocked it as he ducked his head to the right.
Then, without thinking, he grabbed the knife at his side and dropped down into a crouch glaring at the chief, waiting for him to make his next move.
Beside him, his father was frantically trying to diffuse the situation, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Sam, settle down.”
He sensed movement behind Buffalo Hump, the string of Indians were slowly advancing towards them, still mounted on their horses but starting to fan out. But Sam didn’t dare look away from the chief who stood so close.
All of a sudden, the great chief’s face broke into a smile, and he nodded with approval. “You great warrior.” Clenching his hand into a fist, he thumped his chest once, “You strong heart. Great warrior.” Turning to his people, he spoke in his native tongue, as Sam cautiously replaced his Bowie. It surprised him, that Buffalo Hump, had spoken English so well and wondered where he had learned it. Then Sam had remembered his father telling him about the Indians taking white people, women and children especially, captive. The thought had brought a shiver up his spine.
One of the Indians slid to the ground and came forward. Sam recognized the boy from the woods. “You!” he said angrily, turning to his father, he said, “That’s the one that stole our hammer.”
The boy walked up and stood in front of Sam. Smiling, he shrugged his shoulders and held something out before him, it was the hammer.
Before he left, Buffalo Hump had looked down at him. “Till we meet again, Little White Warrior.”
As the Indians rode away that day, Sam had asked his father, “Do you think we’ll ever see them again.”
“I don’t know, son. Indians are notional creatures, just because you earned their respect today, doesn’t mean they wont cut yor heart out tomorrow. Remember that.”

In fact, they did cross paths again, just five years later. It was on a day that turned Sam Sharp’s world upside down, and changed his life forever.
He ran the silver blade slowly along the skin of his forearm, watching the fine hairs fall away, leaving nothing but a path of smooth skin in its wake. Satisfied it was razor sharp, he slipped it back into the sheath. Blowing out the light, he lay back in bed, shutting out the past and focusing on the future. He had to find Gracie. And then he had to help her. He knew that the only way anyone could truly be rid of their demons, was to kill them. Kill them all. Even if it meant tracking down and killing a hundred men, he would do it.
Sharp left early the next morning. The sun hadn’t even poked its head above the horizon yet, as Sam stopped beside the freshly dug grave of his old friend. After swearing that he would do whatever it took to help Gracie find the murdering bastards and get the revenge that would bring her peace, he set out for the long journey ahead.

He followed the obvious trail south for two days before things became complicated. He rode bent over in the saddle, studying the ground and reading the sign as well as any scholar reads a book. He could recite every move they made, like a storybook uses words strung together in a certain way to tell the story, he could take seemingly begien objects and paint a vivid picture in his minds eye of the events that had occurred. His father used to say that he could track the shadow of a bird across the prairie if he had a mind to.
But right now, tracking wasn’t the problem. The group of men he had been following had met up with an even larger group of men. From what he could tell, there was twenty seven men in all, quite a large number to have to deal with if they stayed