Stormfeather Ch. 04

There was also the issue of how to properly address one such as her. To his mind, everything about her indicated someone out of the ordinary to him -- and he seldom if ever spoke to whatever might pass for ordinary women, it almost never happened. She had the ability to see him and his doings across distance and time. Whatever other abilities she might possess, it was fairly clear to him that she needed his help right now. The fact that she was lovely made this all the more difficult.

He felt ridiculous in these circumstances -- he doubted his ability to speak at the moment and cursed himself for all of the times that he'd held his tongue in solitude. It might have proven to him that he wasn't insane, not speaking to himself occasionally, but right now, he was fairly certain that he'd have stumbled over croaking out his own name during an introduction.

It's one thing to dream of someone specifically and quite another to find oneself almost face to face with that person with no warning. Amy hadn't expected to come face to face with anyone. Now she stood not five feet from the one that she'd dreamt about. She gasped and stared at him. He'd been a formidable-looking individual in her dreams, but now he looked even more so in the flesh.

She was of two minds for an instant. There was a part of her which more than anything wished that she might dare to close the gap, and reach out to touch the wide chest or rest her hand on his large shoulder for a moment, just to convince herself that he was real. But she didn't dare, and it made more sense to do the other thing. It wasn't what she'd have ever wanted to do in this circumstance, but she was already uncertain and nervous. Her pistol found its way into her right hand though she didn't pull back the hammer or draw down on him.

He held up his hand and waved his fingers as he shook his head, indicating that he didn't wish to be shot. He turned and whistled softly. The young horse's head came around the edge of the door. Amy recognized the markings at once. She'd seen this one's birth in her dream, and now the young stallion stood before her.

So it really was him, she thought, and wondered how this could have come to pass and where it would go. He made some quiet sounds into the ear of the large beast and it took off down the alley at a gallop. He smiled at Amy and beckoned her to follow him. With no better plan herself, she followed him to the old Spanish mission wondering what was in his mind and aching to have the simple luxury of speaking with him. Their circumstances and the speed of his pace precluded it.

The sounds of approaching hooves came to her ears and she looked to him questioningly. He touched her right shoulder lightly and indicated the partially open doorway of the building. Up to this point, Amy had been worried. With him here, even though it made no sense to her, she'd felt better. But at his touch, she found that she had fewer misgivings about what was about to happen. She wondered about it for a second and then slipped inside the old building, looking for the stairs to the upper floors. The stairway and upper ladder looked tired, but they bore her weight as she cautiously made her way to one of the two belfries above.

In another minute, Amy stood holding her brand new Winchester Model 1876 in the shadows of the belfry. It was one of the first of the new model to see Santa Fe and had been a special order for her, chambered for the .50-95 Express cartridge and sized to her measurements. It wasn't what she liked for precise long distance work -- that was the bailiwick of her Sharps rifle -- but the Winchester was a repeater, and the bullet could stop most anything smaller than a train locomotive.

When Amy hunted, she wanted something that would do the job with one shot. To her, there was almost nothing worse than having to track an animal which she'd only wounded. She was prepared to trade some of the meat for a clean, one-shot kill. She'd only had time to sight it in the week before, but her time sighting it in had told her a few things -- it handled well, pounded into her shoulder like a mule and it would more than likely knock down a buffalo, something that she never expected to hunt. She wasn't trying to feed a railway crew, after all.

With no one in sight for the moment, she looked down as he stood squarely in front of the ruined old mission in the town square. Amy wondered at the outcome of this. As the men approached, she stepped back into the shadows and found that she didn't like the look of them any more from where she stood than she had at a distance.

They were about to fan out to search for her, but noticed the solitary figure there in the street out front of the church.

"Let's ask him," one of them said.

"Why?" asked another of them, "He prolly don't speak no English."

"Hey, you seen a girl go by on horseback, she's dressed up as a boy."

He raised his eyebrows questioningly to them.

"That ain't no answer. You seen her or not?"

He held up his hand and stepped to the corner of the building to point down a street out of town before stepping back to where he'd stood with a hopeful smile at the men. Two men nudged their horses to follow him and peered off into the landscape bathed in the glow of the sunset behind them.

"Hey Thomas, I can see a cloud of dust from her horse. She's makin' a run for it!"

"I'm obliged to you," the largest of them said with a smile to the silent one. Amy watched in horror as he drew his pistol and shot the man in the chest. Several others followed suit, and the square rang with gunfire.

Amy didn't wait to see the effects of their gunplay. Her blood boiled instantly as she threw the loading lever forward and back. With the rifle up, she looked for her first target and the barrel obscured where she knew that he must now lie dying. He'd tried to help her and she hadn't even gotten a chance to speak with him, much less get to know him.

Though she couldn't see the reason from her perch, the men were absorbed in staring at the man with at least six bullets in him still standing there in the street. As the nearest of them moved their horses in a partial circle around him in curiosity, his hand began to move in some pattern. Amy only saw the men and wondered briefly why they'd want to keep shooting. From her point of view, she'd seen all that she needed to and made her decision that his death wouldn't go unanswered.

"You bastards!" Amy hissed quietly through gritted teeth with her rifle to her cheek. One of the shooters fell backwards from his saddle with a hole in his astonished face and the back of his head gone. She worked the loading lever and the empty casing spun up and away as the next round slid home into the chamber.

A sparkling ball appeared in the silent one's hand and shot out in a flat arc to land on the chest of the one who had shot first. He fell onto his face with a frantic scream as his horse panicked and bolted away. The man was engulfed in sticky flames within another second and writhed shrieking in the dust as his companions gaped.

Amy's rifle spat again and another one of them fell as the square echoed with the shots from her Winchester. One man looked up and saw her. He landed dead with the warning that he'd intended to shout still on his lips. Most of his heart and his left lung lay spattered in the dust behind him.

The rest of the men found themselves torn between looking frantically around for the unseen shooter and staring in disbelief at a man who should be dead. His cold smile as he pulled both the axe and the sword over his shoulders caused one of them to void himself in terror.

He moved with astonishing speed. One body sagged out of the saddle without a head to command it, and one tumbled to the ground with the ancient axe deep in his chest. Amy saw the motion and stared.

Amy would never have believed it as she watched him sprint to the nearer of the last two riders who only now realized that they'd better leave if they wished to continue to draw breath. Her eyes went to the rider for a second. His horse was in full gallop but it did no good. Something very dark and fast took him right out of the saddle from almost directly behind. The horse screamed and squealed in horror as it came to an abrupt stop before running back the way that she'd come, snorting to indicate her upset.

Amy watched him stand up from the crumpled heap thinking to try for the last rider. He looked back, up at her and saw her pick up her other rifle with a nod. She laid it on the adobe ledge and knelt on the floor behind it, estimating the range and setting the rear sight for a bit beyond that. After another second, the old Sharps rifle boomed out, and the bullet from the .50-90 Government round sped off to take the last rider off his horse. She took up her weapons and walked down to the street.

Amy went quickly from one entranced horse to the next and pulled saddles, saddlebags and bridles from them, swatting each one on the haunch as she went. The feeling of her hand broke whatever spell they were under and they ran off. She glanced for a second at the sword lying where it had been set down and her eyes went to the corpse lying on its side with its back to her. The sight made her stop momentarily to stare. It wasn't the sight of one dead man in a square full of bodies which had stopped her; it was the glint from part of the axe's edge protruding from his back. She couldn't imagine the strength required to drive a blow like that.

Amy went through the saddlebags looking for any ammunition which matched her weapons and then stood in amazement as he walked slowly back to her, dragging a corpse by one ankle with each hand. There were dark bullet holes in him as plain as anything -- more than one trickling a little of his blood, but he only winced a bit. Amy saw no wounds on his back. Nothing had gone through. He looked into her green eyes and after a moment's struggle he just said, "Thank you, Sheena."

At the sound of the name, Amy's jaw dropped.

While Amy stared at him with her mouth open in astonishment, he dragged the bodies and gear to the fire which still burned on the dead leader. With a wave from his hand, Amy had to step back from the heat of it. It wasn't a large fire she noted, the almost-white flames weren't tall, but they burned with intense heat, and there was almost no smoke. The last body landed on the heap after the axe had been wrenched out.

"You should get your horse," he said quietly. When she didn't move, he looked at her with raised eyebrows.

"You've been shot. What -- what can I do to help you?" Her astonishment was fading, at least for the moment. Now Amy was trying to hold back her fear for his survival. To her mind, he ought to be flat on his back.

He looked at himself for a moment and straightened with something of a forced smile, "It has happened before. Please, get your horse. We should leave this place."

Amy walked to the stable to get her mare, trying to sort out how any of this was possible. She'd mounted up by the time that she realized that he'd spoken English to her. At the outskirts of the empty place, she saw him sitting on the horse looking down at himself. She got as close to him as her nervous mare would allow and watched as he pulled a bullet free and tossed it into the bushes.

"Are you Stormfeather?" she asked him.

He looked at her with some surprise but nodded before looking at himself again. He didn't trust himself to say much more, and without the distraction of what he was doing at the moment, he knew he'd have been staring at her like an idiot.

"Thank you for your help," she said, "What are you doing?"

He grasped the end of another bullet and groaned quietly as he extracted it from his chest. "I do not like being shot," he said.

Amy gaped at the sight of it. It made no sense to her at all, but she'd seen him live through many things in her dreams of him. For now, she was glad that he was alive. The silence gave him the time he needed to formulate something coherent to give her as advice.

"You were riding east," he said, stopping to look at her. The sun was just down and the evening gloom spread rapidly around them. Looking at her with her hair no longer much hidden from the confrontation, he could only smile softly before he resumed his train of thought. "Keep on through the night that way. Tell no one what happened here."

She shook her head, "I don't think that I can in the dark. The road only leads to the town up ahead, and I'll have to go right through it to get where I need to go. I'd rather not do that tonight, though I really want to be past there."

"The moon rises soon," he replied, "and it is almost half. There will be enough light once you are used to it. I can lead you by another way and get you onto the road beyond the town by dawn if you trust me."

"How do you know my name?" she asked, "I don't go by it much."

He looked at her showing little expression for the moment, "I met a man on a farm east of here a time ago. His heart was failing him. I came too late to help much besides what I could do to take his pain from him. He told me of his daughter and how proud he was of her. We talked for a day, and he died. I tied him to his horse and led it near the town before the dawn. I cut him free and the horse took him there."

He looked at her with a little awe, but then smiled, "I have seen you before in a vision. I think that you must be his daughter. He said that your name is Sheena."

Amy nodded, "He was my father. He wanted Sheena as my name, but my mother wouldn't hear of it and it became my middle name. After her death, he always called me by that name."

She pulled on her gloves, "That farm is where I'm going and I'd rather not ride this road at night, half-moon or not. If you know of another way to go which bypasses Portales, please lead me, Stormfeather. You've probably saved my life and gotten hurt while doing it. How could I not trust you?"

With the answer to the question that he purposely had not asked, he smiled, "Follow me then. We need no road at all."

It went on all night, and Amy knew that there had been times that she'd dozed and woken with a start to resume the task of alternating between losing him in the darkness and riding right into him. At times, he'd quickened their pace and they galloped for short distances across more open areas before settling back down again. Amy stayed directly behind him. There wasn't space to ride beside him. It amazed her. She knew that the thin paths that they were on were not visible at all from the road when they were in view of it.

As the night wore on, she felt her weariness begin to take its toll on her, but managed to keep up fairly well. She began to wonder if horses can walk in their sleep, but daybreak found them still off the main road and on the path up the rise to the farm. Amy knew that her mare was bone-tired and she herself was not far from the same state, but Stormfeather and his large mount looked as though they were ready to head off on a real ride now.

"You know this path," he said, "Go on from here. Try to stay just off the path if you can. I will watch the road for a time and clear any tracks."

Amy nodded dumbly and began the slow ride up.

After ten minutes which felt like the passing of an hour, she reached the top and looked out with bleary eyes at the small scrub plain that her father's farm overlooked.

It looked the same to her, but something told her not to tarry long at any point where she might stand out against the background such as a ridge or in this case, the crest of the rise. Amy turned her horse aside and quickly made for the tree-line. She'd ride around the plain at least close to some cover. Within twenty minutes she was solidly back on her old stomping ground in a forest dell where she'd often come to play with her brother. She was about to ride around the last small rise to the fence when a thought came to her and she stopped.

She'd dreamt of him, and then learned that he really lived. By some miracle, he'd been at the old ruined town when she'd needed him, and now he'd just led her to her old family home. She found that she had a lot of questions that she wanted and needed to ask him now that they'd met. She looked back toward the crest.

He was there behind some trees looking down at the road and the path to the plain as he sat on his horse. He'd never said that he'd come back here, she realized. After all of this, she hoped that he wouldn't just ride off. Amy didn't know if her mare was up to it, but if Stormfeather turned to ride away now, she was determined to at least try to follow.

She was thinking about riding back to him when he turned and began to head for the farm using the same roundabout way that she'd come. Amy rode around the rise and pointed her horse to the almost full water trough that she saw with some surprise. She briefly wondered who kept it filled, but had something of an idea. That big horse needed to drink too. It would also explain the dirty stall in the barn the neighbor's letter had mentioned. So he was staying here, she realized.

If it had been anyone else, Amy would feel some indignation over it. Seeing as it was him, she only smiled to herself.