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The white man was trying everything he could to stop their survival.
Laying her rifle aside, Joylynn lifted the binoculars to her eyes and surveyed the death and devastation below. She had to make certain they were all dead, especially Mole.
She saw a lone soldier move slightly, and realized that he could only be about eighteen years of age. She was torn about what to do, for she had not known the soldiers could be so young.
She hated to think he might have been downed by her own bullet.
Yet he was still alive.
She flinched when she saw him look in her direction.
She knew he could not see her, but she could look into his eyes. There was a pleading look on his face, as though he knew he was being observed.
Suddenly she realized that she could not leave this young man to die a slow death, and she certainly could not shoot another bullet into him. Nor could she allow anyone else to. Surely this young man had survived for a purpose.
“High Hawk, look through the binoculars,” Joylynn said, quickly handing them to him. “A . . . a . . . young man, oh, much too young to be with the soldiers, has survived. Look. You will see. Please, we can’t shoot at him again. Somehow . . . it . . . doesn’t seem right.”
High Hawk was torn, too, when he looked through the binoculars and saw the boy’s age. There were so many of his own young braves of that age who would have gladly taken up arms to defend their people just as this young man had probably believed he was doing. He had not realized he was part of a plan to completely annihilate the red man.
“We will go get the young brave and take him to our shaman,” High Hawk said, handing the binoculars back to her. “If he survives, he survives. If he does not, he does not. We will take him with us. Time will tell what his true fate is meant to be.”
“What if he lives and is well enough to return home? Will you allow it?” Joylynn asked, remembering how it felt to be a captive.
“Should he survive, I will accompany the young man back down the mountain and hope that he will be so grateful for having been allowed to live, he will not spread the word as to where he has been. I will blindfold him so that he will not know the paths that could lead him back to my people.”
Having heard High Hawk’s plan, some of his warriors came to him, frowning. They told him that they did not agree.
High Hawk ignored them, taking other men with him to get the lad. Joylynn accompanied them, for she felt she must take one last look at Mole, to make certain this time that he was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Joylynn was stiff with apprehension as she approached the bodies of the soldiers and Mole. All were dead except for that young soldier. She and High Hawk went immediately to him and looked down at him from their saddles, finding him unconscious, but breathing.
High Hawk and Joylynn dismounted beside the young man while the warriors rode slowly around the campsite, checking the dead to see if there might be others who were alive.
“He must be worse than I thought,” Joylynn said as she knelt on one side of the young man, while High Hawk knelt on the other. She glanced up at High Hawk. “Is . . . he . . . dying?”
“No, I do not think so, for the wound that I see is not serious enough to kill anyone,” High Hawk said as he ripped the boy’s torn pants away from his wounded leg. “He must have fainted from fear of all that happened here, for no bullet entered his leg. It just grazed the flesh.”
“But there is so much blood,” Joylynn said, shuddering at the sight. Not wanting to see all of the dead, not even Mole, she did not look past the young man. She knew that w
hen Mole fell from the horse, he had already been dead from the direct hit to his chest.
She swallowed hard, still in disbelief that she could have shot anyone in cold blood, yet she had. She had downed more than one man today with the accuracy of her aim.
She kept telling herself that she had saved innocent people by having done this. Had these men been allowed to live, they would have hunted down High Hawk’s band of Pawnee until they found and killed them.
“Blood does spill even from a wound such as this, but it is a little wound compared to others,” High Hawk said. “He is awakening.”
High Hawk and Joylynn watched the young man’s eyes slowly flutter open. Fear appeared in them when he saw High Hawk, an Indian, kneeling beside him.
In his panic, he had not yet noticed Joylynn.
He was trying to stand, but fell back down when he tried to put weight on his wounded leg.
“Please don’t be afraid,” Joylynn murmured, bringing his wide eyes to her as he sat there, trembling. In them she saw surprise and curiosity.
She watched his eyes slowly move over her, noting that she was dressed in Indian attire.
