Merline Lovelace Read Free

trapped these mountains for forty years,” Chartier murmured, as if reading his mind. “Always I find peace here, where the rivers run and the eagles fly. Just this morning I tell my little Louis, it is here, on this ridge, where I wish to be buried.”
    Unless his little Louis sprouted a considerable set of muscles in the next few years, Daniel thought wryly, the boy would have a time of it hauling Chartier’s carcass up to this high bluff.
    “How much farther to these Viking marks?” he asked, feeling the pinch of his responsibilities to his men.
    “Not far,” Chartier replied. “We climb past those rocks and—”
    The Frenchman broke off, freezing in place as a high-pitched scream split the air. It was a sound like no other, a frenzied cry that stopped Daniel’s heart. Whipping around, he brought his musket barrel up and thumbed back the hammer. The trapper did the same, his watery eyes searching the slope behind them.
    A small shower of snow from the branches of a massive pine was their only indication that the danger came not from below, but from above. By then, it was too late.
    With another high-pitched scream, the mountain cat leaped from an overhanging bough. Fangs bared, claws outstretched, it was a blur of tawny fur and fury.
    “Mon Dieu!”
    Chartier barely had time to fling up an arm before the snarling, slavering cougar landed on him. Daniel fired off a shot that spouted a blossom of red in the beast’s side, but the wound only goaded it to greater fury. Locked together in a tangle of thrashing legs and slashing claws, Chartier and the cat rolled over and over, the cries of one as terrible as the cries of the other. Daniel tossed his musket aside, pulled his hunting knife from its leather scabbard and leaped into the fray.
    When the beast finally gave a last, tormented cry and went limp, Daniel scrabbled to his knees. His chest heaving, he used both hands to pry apart the animal’s locked jaws and free the Frenchman.
    Chartier fell back against the reddened snow. What was once his face was now raw, unrecognizable pulp. Air whistled from his throat, torn open to expose glistening white tendons. Blood pumped from the gaping wound. Panting, Daniel dropped back on his heels. He’d seen enough battle wounds to know the next breath or two would be Chartier’s last.
    Through his haze of agonizing pain the Frenchman recognized the same awful truth. His one remaining eye fixed on Daniel. With an effort that brought blood spewing from his lips, he whispered a few tortured words.
    “Take care…of my Louis.”
    “I will.”
    “Swear…it!”
    “I swear.”
    A red bubble formed on Chartier’s lips. Before it burst, the Frenchman was dead.
    Daniel stayed hunkered down beside the body. Warm blood drenched his hands. Cold air stabbed into his lungs like a bayonet. After the cougar’s high-pitched screams and the fury of the attack, the sudden silence thundered in his ears.
    He dragged in another shuddering breath and swiveled on his heels to view the dead animal. The cougar’s ribs stuck out like barrel staves under its tawny hide. If there was a pound of flesh anywhere on the beast, Daniel couldn’t see it. What looked like a bent and broken foreleg gave some clue to its near starvation. The creature couldn’t run, couldn’t chase its normal prey. But it could pounce.
    Slowly, Daniel pushed to his feet. A soldier’s life was precarious at best. Between bouts of boring garrison duty, he stood a good chance of being blown apart by a British cannonball, taking a Spanish bayonet to the gut or losing his scalp to a warrior from one of the fierce tribes that roamed the forests and plains. Even here, in this land of majestic beauty, violent death was just a heartbeat away. Daniel’s glance swept the snow-capped crags, dropped to the ribbons of silver glistening far below.
    Chartier would get his wish. He’d be buried here, where the river ran and the eagles flew.
     
    Grunting with the effort, Daniel