3

When he first saw Hoss starting to bring Joe his way, Adam felt the knife digging into his throat again. It seemed with each step Hoss took, the knife went deeper. Finally, Adam closed his eyes and prepared himself for the inevitable. This was it. He had no doubt his life was about to be brought to an end at the hands of a…boy. A boy who should be at home with his family, learning how to hunt and fish. What was he doing out here? What were they all doing out here, alone, away from their tribe?

The questions pulled his eyes open again. Adam realized then he could see something more than the anger that had been burning into him since this whole thing had started. What he saw wasn’t fear, though. He might expect young boys to be afraid of death and killing, but not once had the boy in front of him shown any signs of fear. No, this was something else. Suddenly, while the boy behind Adam was adding his own shouts to a heated conversation with his tribe mates, Adam saw that the urgency in the boy’s tone came through as desperation in the gaze of the other one—the boy who’d been glaring so coldly at Adam he had no trouble believing this boy was as eager to cut Adam’s throat as the one behind him.

And then the shouting stopped. The look of desperation turned icy once more as the boy in front of Adam gave him one, final murderous glare.

Once again, Adam closed his eyes. “Our Father,” he began to pray silently, “who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done—”

The pressure on his throat fell away.

Startled, Adam let his eyes flutter open again as he began to sense the boy behind him moving away. And then Adam realized they had both moved away, leaving Adam free to pull himself back into a sitting position and raise a hesitant hand to the stinging cuts in his throat.

“Thank God.” Pa’s voice echoing the words in Adam’s thoughts, he finally allowed himself to face his family.

Pa was on one knee in front of the log, positioned between Adam and Joe, who was seated on the log perhaps two feet to Adam’s right. Joe was looking at him with something more than pain in his eyes, something…deeper. Fear, Adam decided. In Joe, Adam saw the fear none of these boys had shown. But it wasn’t the boys Joe was afraid of. No, Adam knew better than to believe that. It had to have been what those boys had almost done. Joe was afraid because he had come too close…far too close to having to watch Adam die a particularly bloody death.

It was strange then for Adam to realize he had probably been less afraid than the rest of his family. He even came to realize why. It would have been harder for them to watch him die than dying itself would have been for him. For him, it would have been over in moments. For them…it probably would never really be over until it came time for each to join him.

Adam opened his mouth, feeling the need to offer words he couldn’t seem to find…until Pa drew his attention away by dabbing at the blood on Adam’s neck with a wet neckerchief.

“Deeper than I’d prefer to see,” Pa said softly. “But clean enough.” Pa closed his eyes and took a long breath, his jaw clenching briefly before he went on. “It was a sharp, smooth blade. I suppose we can be thankful for that.”

Seeing fear in Pa’s gaze, too, Adam tried to dispel it with a smile, but like his missing words, he couldn’t seem to find a smile within him. Then he saw Hoss standing behind Pa with his eyes closed but aimed up toward the sky, and Adam’s smile seemed to come of its own accord. Whether Hoss was expressing relief or offering a prayer of thanks, Adam’s middle brother had clearly been the first to move past the fear. He could probably teach them all a thing or two about faith.

“Ben?” Doc Martin’s voice pulled Adam out of the strange fog of his thoughts and back to a reality that remained no less dangerous than before. “They still won’t let me near either of your boys!”

“You come,” the leader commanded. “Now!”

Preoccupied as he’d been, Adam had failed to notice the other boys preparing to leave, but now he saw two of them leading the horses into the trees. Though the saddles had been left behind, it seemed the boys had loaded the horses with everything else: Blankets, saddlebags, rifles, even the doc’s medical bag, which he had always refused to go anywhere without…everything except Hoss’s frying pan and the coffee pot.

“Wh—” Adam was surprised to finally find a word, only to lose his voice. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Where?”

“Come!” The leader’s glare was even more determined than the one Adam had been facing until now.

“First we need to bandage Joe’s arm!” Pa argued. “And Adam…. Hoss, too. I won’t have them—”

Hoss? Adam returned his attention to Hoss, finally noticing the small spots of blood dotting his shirt. So all those pokes with that spear had managed to draw blood, Adam realized. He supposed that should not surprise him, but it did. The point of the spearhead had to have been honed nearly as sharp as the blade that had been pressed against Adam’s throat.

“Now!” The leader finally brought his own spear to bear. He touched its tip against the back of Pa’s neck.

“We’d better do as he says,” Adam said, meeting Pa’s worried gaze and trying to give him back a determined one of his own. We’ll figure something out along the way, he willed his own to say.

XxXxX

The Indian boys did not have horses of their own. None of them even bothered to mount the Cartwrights’ horses or Doc Martin’s borrowed gelding. Instead, the horses were led by two of the boys. That left eight, armed boys to prod five, full grown men on a hike through a thickening woods. Adam might have liked those odds if it hadn’t been for the fact each of those armed boys had put away their knives and spears in favor of loaded handguns and rifles.

Such fire power shifted the odds considerably. Doc Martin’s field of expertise had probably left him ill-prepared to dodge bullets. And Joe…. That arrowhead was still in Joe’s arm. Every step he took was jostling its jagged edges, constantly ripping and tearing at his flesh. Walking to Joe’s right, Adam saw fresh trails of blood every time he looked Joe’s way…until the sleeve of Joe’s shirt became so saturated it was impossible to distinguish old blood from new.

For a long while, Joe was able to match the quick pace set by the leader of this small band of determined and deadly Indian boys. It helped that the boys’ strides were shorter than those of their chosen captives. The pace was challenging, even so, and all that blood loss was bound to slow him down eventually.

The first time Joe stumbled, Adam was quick to step in front of his brother to take hold of his good arm. He waited until Joe was steady and then cautiously pulled away, moving to Joe’s left so he could react more quickly if Joe stumbled again. The second time, Adam grabbed hold of Joe before his brother even had a chance to reach out for him. When he gave Adam an appreciative smile, his eyes looked tired. Pain and blood loss were clearly stealing his strength, and it took much longer to steady him. Adam didn’t dare let go until a shout from the lead boy drove one of the others between Adam and Joe, forcing them apart. Even then, he made sure to match Joe’s slowing stride and kept his eyes more on his brother than on the path ahead.

The third time Joe stumbled, Adam couldn’t reach him. He watched helplessly as Joe dropped to one knee, instinctively reaching for support from a startled Indian boy who refused to offer it. Instead, the boy pulled back the hammer on Joe’s own handgun and aimed the barrel at Joe’s head, shouting something in his native language. Too weak to fight, Joe did the only thing he could; he glared up at the boy with as much rage as the other boy back at the camp had sent Adam’s way the entire time that knife had been held to his throat.

“He’s losing too much blood!” Adam shouted. “Let us bandage that wound and then put him on one of the horses!” Panting nearly as much as Joe now, he cast his gaze toward the head of the trail, finding Pa and Doc Martin towering over but unable to move past the boys blocking their way. And then Adam looked to the rear of the group to find the leader moving toward him with Hoss in tow, surrounded by the same three boys who had hounded Hoss back at the camp.

The silence that followed the leader’s slow, steady approach filled Adam with a disturbingly familiar sense of dread. He could almost feel that knife at his throat again, only…only this time he knew a different kind of fear, the kind his family must have felt for him, because this time he felt it for Joe.

XxXxX

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