Flight Of The Hawk: The Plains: A Novel of the American West by W. Michael Gear

Author:W. Michael Gear [Gear, W. Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781647345198
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2021-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

That first storm had left a couple of inches of snow. The one that followed, two days later, dropped almost six. Each time Singing Lark managed a different kind of shelter that, with the buffalo cow hides, allowed them to sleep warm and dry.

With the arrival of cold weather, Singing Lark had immediately changed her direction of travel, turning them west. Or as near to it as they could come. She would follow a drainage to its head, hurry them across the open summit, and into the head of another drainage on the other side. When that one began to veer in the wrong direction, she hustled them over the divide and into yet another drainage.

It was sinuous work, but that night they camped under a tilted sandstone outcrop that was barely wide enough for both of their bodies.

The following day they reached the Powder River, as Singing Lark called it. When they crossed the leaf-strewn floodplain they found tracks winding through the sagebrush just back from the cotton woods. A lot of horses moving at a quick clip. Fresh in the still-muddy silt.

After studying them for a bit, Singing Lark told him, "Four tens of horses. Not long ago. Maybe a hand of time."

"Ridden?"

"Yes. See how straight the track lines? Horses, left to themselves, go back and forth." She made a sinuous motion with her hand. "Take their time. Some go here, some go there."

"Headed north. Pa'kiani?"

She shrugged, worried eyes staring at the cottonwood-choked bottoms down which the horses had vanished. "Can't tell, gwee. Crow horse? Arapaho horse? Blackfeet horse? All have the same shape feet, yes? Only men make different style of moccasins."

Didn't matter that they might have already passed. For all Tylor and Singing Lark knew, the riders could be waiting just on the other side of the trees, or someone might be following. Maybe to catch up with the rest.

Singing Lark pushed them forward mingling their tracks with the others, then after a couple hundred yards to confuse their trail, veered off onto the carpet of fallen cottonwood leaves. Winding through the gray trunks, she crossed to the river, splashing into the Powder. Tylor stared at the water as they crossed. The stuff looked opaque. Like light brown milk. He couldn't see so much as an inch into the surface.

"What's the plan?" he asked.

She jerked her head back. "Moving horses make tracks, gwee. We keep making tracks and someone will follow. We go to a place where we don't make tracks."

She took them into a small creek, then turned the horses upstream, splashing in the little brook and occasionally forcing their way through the overhanging brush until she encountered a low gravel bar. She dismounted, leading the horses, one by one, around the back side of the gravel bar, then up onto the bank. Tylor watched in amazement. From the stream, given the way Singing Lark threaded the horses around the gravel, not a single track could be seen.

From there, she led the way up

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