Fear Weaver by David Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

he has killed more of the silver tip bears than any man, white or red. It is said he has counted many coup.”
    “Are you afraid?” Mad Wolf sneered.
    For a moment Small Otter appeared ready to strike him. Instead he said, “If you truly think I am, we will set all our weapons aside except our knives and you can test my courage.”
    It was Black Elk’s turn to grin. With a bow and arrow they were all about equal in skill. Mad Wolf wasbest with a lance. Double Walker, so big and so strong, was formidable with a war club. But with a knife Small Otter had no peer.
    “Do not take me so seriously,” Mad Wolf said. “As for Grizzly Killer, yes, he has counted many coup. They say he has killed Sioux. He has killed our brothers, the Bloods and the Piegans. He has killed Black-feet. He is a great warrior.” His face lit with the passion that inspired him more than any other. “Think of our fame if we kill him.”
    “Think of
your
fame, you mean,” Double Walker said. “You are the one who wants to count more coup than any Blackfoot who ever lived.”
    “I make no secret of that. We are warriors. Warriors kill. The more we kill, the greater we are. I will be the greatest one day. Our children and our grand-children and our grandchildren’s children will sing songs about me.”
    “Here he goes again,” Small Otter said.
    Black Elk held up a hand. “Enough. If Mad Wolf wants to kill Grizzly Killer, I wish him success. My interest is the girl, Golden Hair. But Mad Wolf and I cannot kill the white Shoshone or steal the white girl alone. Are you with us? Are we together in this?”
    Double Walker shook his war club. “I am with you.”
    “Good.”
    Small Otter scowled. “We have been friends since we were little. We have grown together. We have hunted and played and gone on the war path together. So yes, I am with you. But I want it known I do not think we are doing right. I have a bad feeling.”
    “You always have bad feelings,” Mad Wolf said.
    Black Elk slung his bow across his back. “Then we are agreed. We must hurry. The whites are making for a pass high up that will take them to the other side of the mountains. But I know another way. A faster way. We can get to the other side ahead of them and catch them unprepared.”
    Hurriedly they mounted. With Black Elk in the lead, they rode south along the edge of the forest until they came to a game trail pockmarked by elk and deer tracks. It led up a long slope to a wall of rock well below the summit. The wall had a break in it, a break barely wide enough for a horse, but it brought them to the other side of the mountain well before the whites could hope to make it through the high pass.
    Drawing rein, the four Blackfeet surveyed the maze of peaks and shadowed valleys. All was deathly still, even the wind. Not so much as the chirp of a bird reached their ears.
    “I do not like this country,” Small Otter said.
    “There must be much game,” Double Walker remarked.
    “And plenty of ghosts.”
    Mad Wolf rolled his eyes. “Not that again.”
    “Only a fool is not afraid of ghosts. You know as well as I do that they like forest and rivers. Look below us. What do you see? Forests, and in the distance a river.”
    “I see smoke,” Double Walker said, and pointed.
    Rising out of a shadowed valley below were gray tendrils that writhed and coiled like snakes. The valley was thick with timber and dark with gloom thanks to sheer red cliffs that hemmed it on three sides. One of the cliffs had been split long ago by a mighty cataclysm.
    “A village?” Small Otter wondered.
    “Not enough smoke,” was Black Elk’s opinion. “It is a campfire.”
    “We should go see,” Mad Wolf proposed.
    The game trail wound down into the dark valley. They were just entering the dense forest when Double Walker thrust out a muscular arm. “Look there!”
    A dead cow elk lay on her back, her legs wide, her belly ripped open. Ropy loops of intestine and other organs had spilled out,