Savage Courage

“Please don’t do that,” she begged, pale from knowing that nothing she said would stop him.

“Get on that horse and turn your eyes away,” Mountain Jack shouted. “I don’t like making a woman faint, and, sweet thing, if you watch me scalp the young man, I swear you’ll faint dead away.”

Her heart pounding, a sob lodging deep within her throat, Shoshana quickly mounted her steed.

She inched her horse away from the death scene.

She was tempted to sink her heels into the flanks of her steed and try to escape, but she knew that Mountain Jack wouldn’t allow it.

Her own rifle, which lay only a few inches from his knee, might even be used to kill her.

“I need to ask you somethin’ before scalpin’ the lad,” Mountain Jack said. “I figure you’re Apache, but why is an Apache squaw like you dressed as a white woman? Why did you turn your back on your people to live in the white world?”

Shoshana refused to answer him.

She sat stiffly in the saddle, awaiting her fate; poor Major Klein’s was already sealed.

She cringed and covered her ears with her hands in order not to hear Mountain Jack cutting the scalp from Major Klein.

Tears splashed from her eyes when she remembered the young man’s kindness. Then Mountain Jack told her she could open her eyes and turn around, that the scalping was done.

“It’s time now to hurry back to my hideout,” Mountain Jack said, ignoring how Shoshana still refused to look his way.

He slid the scalp into his saddlebag, grabbed up Shoshana’s rifle and secured it with his other firearm in his gunboot, then mounted his steed and rode over to Shoshana.

“Did you hear me say it’s time to ride to my hideout?” he snarled. “Do as I say, pretty thing, or else. Follow me and don’t try and escape. You’re nothing to me, so it would not mean anything to me to shoot you.”

He shrugged. “Either you cooperate with me or your scalp will join the young major’s real quick like,” he said tightly.

Swallowing hard, Shoshana gave him a quick glance, then snapped her reins and rode alongside him as he made a wide swing left and rode toward the mountain.

Shoshana thought about how her life had changed so many years ago in her homeland; now she was h

ome again, and tragedy had struck once more.

She lowered her eyes and prayed that someone would come soon and save her, for she feared what was going to happen to her now more than she feared actually being scalped.

She would rather be dead than to have that filthy man touch her in any way!

Chapter Seven

Is there within thy heart a need

That mine cannot fulfill?

—Adelaide Anne Procter

His eyes ever searching for the elusive panther, Storm had traveled halfway down his mountain, yet he had seen no trace of it or its den anywhere. He was ready to turn back, but decided to take one last look with his spyglass.

He had found the spyglass along the trail many years ago and had discovered just how useful it was. Things he saw so distinctly through the glass could only be dimly perceived with the naked eye.

He drew a tight rein and reached inside his parfleche bag. With one sweep of his hand he had his spyglass up to his eye and was slowly scanning the mountain from side to side.

Still he saw no sign of the panther.

From his horse he could see farther below him, where some time ago the land had been scarred by lightning. He would never forget seeing the huge billows of smoke from the lookout at his stronghold, and then the flames.

Far down away from his stronghold, where the land stretched out away from his mountain, fire had spread in leaps and bounds, continuing until rain began falling in torrents, soon killing the flames.