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Calling him demon or hero, speaking from fear or admiration, the settlers told many strange tales of the ice-eyed gunfighter and his incredible deeds--and perhaps some of the tellings were even true.

Or perhaps the truth was stranger still.

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Details
Publisher	Writers Exchange E-Publishing
Author	Patricia Lucas White
Word Count	53, 882
Electronic Download Formats:	PDF, PDB (Palm/Ereader), HTML, LIT (Microsoft Reader), PRC (Unencrypted Mobipocket), RB (Rocket), IMP (Gemstar 1150), IMP (Gemstar 2150/Rocket 1200)
Price:	$4.95

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CHAPTER ONE The winter winds cried and mourned. The cold, inscrutable mountains kept their own secrets. The nights were dark and long, and when the fires had dwindled to ash and ember, the pioneers huddled close. They whispered fearsome tales of Lejube Rogue, the white Indian who ghosted through the untamed land seeking the man who had murdered his father and seduced his mother: the man Rogue had sworn to kill. Calling him demon or hero, speaking from fear or admiration, the settlers told many strange tales of the ice-eyed gunfighter and his incredible deeds--and perhaps some of the tales were even true. Or perhaps the truth was stranger still. Oregon, 1873 Shifting the Spencer carbine to the crook of his left arm, Rogue nudged Ghost with his heels. He urged the dapple-gray stallion up the narrow track, a deer trail meandering through the high Cascades, leading them in the general direction of their unknown quarry. The August sun was high, pooling shadows at the feet of the towering firs and pines, and already too warm for actual comfort. Despite the sweat that beaded on his forehead and the deer flies that weren't shy about feasting on his exposed flesh, minor discomforts didn't hold a patch to the rest of Rogue's worries. The forest distorted sound, muffled it, hid its origin, but Rogue wasn't completely deceived--he couldn't afford to be, not when his life depended on it. He rode on, slow and cautious, eyes narrow, seeing everything and appreciating nothing of the brooding forest's beauty. He would save that for later, when he found out who had been doing the shooting he had heard a little more than an hour before and knew the why of it. Likely it had been hunters, but he had to be sure. Where he was--high up in the volcanic mountains--was a long way from where folks usually hung out, but he had to be sure. A man like him didn't keep on living by taking foolish chances. The breeze, scarcely strong enough to flutter aspen leaves, carried a new sound; one that sent little shivers to dance on Rogue's backbone. He didn't know what it was, but he did know it wasn't right. Leaning forward, he tried to peer through the curtain of green that hid what lay ahead, but he could see very little. He sniffed the air. Dust and pine. Nothing out of the ordinary. The slither and drag sound came again, came from every direction and none, but it was close; too close to ease Rogue's mind or to keep the prickles away from the back of his neck. The prickles told him danger was near. Whuffling softly, tossing his head, Ghost took a single step forward before he stopped, nostrils flaring, ears back, and stared straight ahead. It was all the warning Rogue needed. Sliding off the stallion's blanketed back, Rogue was on the ground and moving between one heartbeat and the next, crouched low, heading toward the danger, not away. Less than six feet ahead of where Ghost stood, the deer path intersected a slightly broader, better-used track. It was scuffed and torn, with deep furrows gouged in its whitish-gray surface. Blood, wet and red, glistened on the huckleberry brush beside the trail, darkening in the hoof marks that scarred its floor. From somewhere off to Rogue's right came a rasping, choking sound. An ugly, hurting sound that shouldn't rightly belong to a human being--but probably did. Either that, or to a gut-shot critter dragging itself off to die. The sweat that trickled down the sides of his face and under the neck of his buckskin shirt was pure ice; so was the knot in his stomach. Feeling real sick, like something bad was about to happen, Rogue stepped out onto the broader trail. His moccasins cushioning his soundless steps, he followed the blood spoor to its source. A faint breeze whispered in the tops of the massive trees. A scrub jay scolded raucously. A gray pine-cutter chattered and scrambled up the trunk of a yellow pine. But Rogue's full attention was focused on the source of another sound--one that spoke of pain and dying. An odd sense of foreboding touched him even before Rogue saw the boy belly-crawling along the trail, leaving life's blood to mark his passage. The sense had no real name, but Rogue recognized it. He knew it was what the man of power, Eagle Flying, his teacher and friend, had seen in a long-ago vision, foretold as truth. Rogue's feet had already set him on the path to his own doom, and there was no turning back. A muscle jumping in his jaw, his pale eyes bleak, Rogue accepted the inevitable. He approached the boy, but only after he had swept the surroundings with a critical eye, examined every bush and tree for a lurking enemy. And did it all with the carbine at ready. The boy was alone. His hands, broken-nailed and bleeding, reached out, clawing at the earth. His young muscles corded as he dragged himself forward an inch or two at a time. One leg pushed, but the other, blood-soaked, trailed uselessly, the toe of his boot furrowing the ground as he moved relentlessly onward. "Kid?" Rogue called softly. There was no answer. The boy just stretched out his arms, dug his fingers into the gritty soil, and pulled himself toward some unknown destination. Leaning down, Rogue touched the kid's shoulder, felt the warmth of his blue shirt, the pain of the young body underneath, and said again, a little louder, but not loud enough to carry beyond their immediate vicinity, "Kid!" A young face, its features masked in blood and dirt, turned toward Rogue, and pale-blue eyes, pain-glazed and near madness, stared up at him. "Let me go," a cracked, still-high voice choked out. "I'll kill them. Kill them all." The head, topped with rough black hair, dropped down, and the boy reached out and began his slow, dragging movement again. And again fresh blood dripped from his wounded leg. Distancing himself from the fury that was beginning to burn within him, white-hot fury at the devils who had shot the boy and left him to die alone, Rogue reached down with his left hand. He took the boy by the shoulder, halting his progress. "Kid," he said, working at keeping his voice soft and gentle, "I don't know where you're heading in such an all-fired hurry, but you're hurt bad. You've got to stop long enough for me to do something about that leg." "No. Can't stop. They took--took...." His voice shrilled into silence. His hands convulsed and pawed at the ground, but he had reached the end of his strength. He gasped in a breath, his knotted muscles relaxed completely, and he slumped, quiet and still, face down in the dirt. Turning the limp body to its back, Rogue knelt on one knee and felt for the weakly throbbing pulse in the boy's tanned neck. The kid was still alive, if barely, but Rogue couldn't do any real doctoring in the middle of the trail--especially when the prickles in back of his neck were growing steadily stronger. Transferring the carbine to his left hand, Rogue picked up the boy as if he weighed no more than the gun and headed back the way he had come. Rogue whistled a single, low-pitched note to summon Ghost and the loaded packhorse that waited with him, and they followed him as he shouldered his way into a dense thicket of young fir. They pushed through the thick, yielding growth until they reached a sun-filled clearing near the middle of the stand of man-high trees. It looked like a good place to stay out of sight and do what needed doing. Partially carpeted in dry grass, it had a spring with water for drinking and washing, and something else Rogue hadn't expected but was real glad to see: the run-off from the spring bubbled into a sandy basin beside a large windfall and had cut its way into the earth. Heavy winter rains and melting snows had widened and deepened the channel, forming a shallow cave beneath the log. The boy moaned once when Rogue eased him down onto the matted grass. Working swiftly, not really sure how much time the kid had left, he leaned the Spencer against the log, jerked his bedroll off the pack animal, and spread it on the sandy floor of the cave. He carried the boy to the rough bed and slashed open the leg of his dirty, bloodstained pants. The kid had been shot, right enough. The bullet had torn through the thigh, ripping flesh and muscle, but as far as Rogue could tell, it hadn't touched the bone. Deep within the wound, a tiny blood vessel spurted red with every beat of the boy's heart. Even as Rogue probed the wound and cleaned bits of dirt from the injury, the blood flow weakened, slowing to the barest trickle. Rogue felt bleakness creep up from his heart, stare out his eyes, and harshen the planes of his face. He frowned, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The lead had slashed a long, jagged path, severed veins, and just about bled the kid dry. Very soon it would do what it was meant to do and kill him. Eagle Flying, a shaman and healer, had found Rogue dying in the desert, had healed his wounds, and had taught him much--but not enough, not nearly enough. They had been forced to part too soon, to part before young Patrick Scanlon (the boy Rogue had been) had the time to learn but a few of the ways of power. Or to master the power Eagle Flying swore he bore within himself: the power to heal, and more. Healing wasn't an easy thing to do, and he was ill-prepared, but he had to try. The kid wasn't more than eleven or twelve, skinny as a post, and too damned young to die. Rogue's own killing business would just have to wait.

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