Comanche Dawn Read Online Free PDF

into the Red Canyon, and Shadow thought of Deer turning into a four-legged.
    â€œDid you hear my story, Grandson?”
    â€œYes, Grandfather. That is a good story.”
    â€œYes. It is an old story. Even older than I am.”
    As Shadow laughed with his grandfather, he saw his uncle, Black Horn, riding up from the trail ahead on the only horse in the band unencumbered by a pole-drag. Black Horn carried his lance in his right hand, while the rawhide thong of his stone-headed war axe remained looped around his left wrist. His bow and arrows were in his bow case and quiver, strapped upon his back. Each cheek was painted with two bright yellow stripes, with a single red stripe standing on his forehead.
    Shadow checked to make sure the two lodge poles were tied securely where they crossed in front of him. He tested the buffalo-hide straps tightened around his mount’s girth and running under the horse’s neck. He looked over his shoulder to see that the bundle of hides for his lodge remained tightly packed.
    It was an uncle’s place to be stern and strict, and Black Horn took this responsibility more seriously than most. “Nephew! Let your grandfather go ahead! Do you not see the trail getting narrow?”
    â€œYes, Ahpoo, ” the boy said, using the term of respect for a father’s brother. He lifted his reins from the deer antlers where he had draped them and slowed his horse to let Wounded Bear go ahead. His uncle fell in line after him as Shadow’s little brown horse stepped stiffly down to the steepest part of the trail. Behind him, the boy heard the widely spread ends of the lodge poles dragging against both sides of the narrow red rock chasm through which the old trail ran.
    He looked over his shoulder to make sure the poles would not get broken, and to judge his uncle’s expression. His eye caught a mass of feathers rising above the canyon rim, followed by a face streaked with horizontal bands of red and yellow paint From stories the elders had told, he recognized the distinctive upright shape of the headdress as that of a Northern Raider. He had heard many tales of these cruel and evil people who painted their feet black in the belief that the paint made them run faster, but this feathered and painted warrior was the first Northern Raider he had seen with his own eyes, now standing no farther away than a deer could leap, drawing a bow.
    The boy gasped and then, realizing that the arrow of the enemy warrior was aiming at Black Horn, cried, “Ahpoo!”
    By the time Black Horn caught his nephew’s eye, slipped from his horse, and spotted the Northern Raider on the canyon rim, the bowstring had spoken. Black Horn drew his battle-ax back to throw as the arrow point hit him, but because Shadow had warned him, and he had begun to react, the cruel barbed war point only lodged in his upper arm. The wound seemed to give him strength to throw his axe, and it sped true, glancing off the top of the Raider’s shield and smashing into the enemy’s jaw with a crack that sounded like someone breaking buffalo bones to get the marrow. The axe itself bounced off the enemy and slid back into the canyon.
    Shadow felt his horse lurch as he had never known, heard the enemy war cry rising. The walls of the Red Canyon seemed to spin around him as he looked for the sources of the horrible new noises that sounded like a whole war party on the rimrocks above.
    Black Horn was breaking the arrow shaft from his arm, the wound gushing blood. The wounded enemy warrior on the canyon rim had stumbled back, out of view. Now the smell of blood hit Shadow, and the boy saw a red stream pouring from his horse’s neck where an enemy arrow had driven deep.
    Instantly figuring the path this arrow must have taken, he glanced up at the other rim of the red chasm and saw a second Raider, reaching now for the next arrow in his quiver.
    Black Horn’s rattling battle scream mingled with a wailing song