Comanche Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page B

that came from Shadow’s grandfather, old Wounded Bear. Looking down the chasm, the boy saw his blind grandfather slinging his old pogamoggan —his war club—to ward off any foe who might come to finish him. An arrow shaft protruded from the old man’s ribs, and he bled onto his leggings as he valiantly slung the club and shrieked his death song.
    Shadow spotted a third Raider now, the one who had shot his grandfather, already fixing a second arrow on his string.
    The little brown horse under him was trying to back up, but the lodge poles prevented it. Shadow found himself sliding from the horse, taking cover behind the body of the animal so the Raiders could not shoot him. He heard two bowstrings thump—the first sending an arrow that caused Wounded Bear to groan in the midst of his death song. The other arrow sped straight toward Shadow as he shrank behind his pony, but it glanced off the antlers lashed to his lodge poles, angling harmlessly away.
    Another arrow sang, and Shadow glimpsed it as it flew from Black Horn’s bow toward the enemy warrior who had shot the boy’s little brown horse and had tried to shoot Shadow himself. This arrow struck the side of the Raider’s head and lodged there, causing the warrior’s braids to fly wildly as he vanished behind the red rock rim.
    Now his mother, River Woman, was screaming, and Shadow saw the third Raider sliding into the Red Canyon with a knife to take Wounded Bear’s scalp lock. The old war club missed as the Raider pounced on the old man and stabbed with his knife. The Raider tried to take the scalp, but a large red rock hit him on the shoulder.
    Shadow saw the Raider turn on his mother as she picked up another rock, and he knew he must act. At his feet, he found a large rock, spotted with the blood of his own brown pony. He picked up this rock and held it over his head as he heard the hooves of Black Horn’s mount clattering behind him.
    He threw the large rock and it landed short but bounced, as the Raider was below him on the trail, and caught the Raider on the back of the knee, whirling him. Shadow saw the eyes of the enemy lock onto him and flash an age-old hatred, but Black Horn was coming.
    The boy fell aside as he saw his uncle bounding on foot over the lodge poles and over the wounded brown pony—over everything clogged in the narrow chasm as he screamed his love of war and his hatred of enemy invaders. He had scooped up his battle-ax. Its heavy head of freshly flaked flint had been lashed with shrunken rawhide to the feathered and painted handle as fast as the horns to the head of a buffalo bull. It circled high, like the sun, then came down on the painted Raider.
    The enemy raised his shield, but the axe snapped its wooden rim and stunned the warrior, who fell onto his back, continuing to slash with his knife and even reaching for an arrow from the quiver on his back.
    The jagged flint edges circled overhead again and cracked the skull of the enemy, glancing and peeling back hair and skin which flopped over one ear.
    â€œFinish this one!” Black Horn said, handing his war axe to River Woman. “And the one above, with my arrow in his head. I am going to fight the others!”
    Shadow’s uncle scrambled back over the dying brown pony to his own mount. The boy went toward his grandfather, lying bloody and motionless against the canyon wall, but stopped when he heard the first blow by his mother.
    Looking up, he saw River Woman’s eyes blaze with a fury he had never seen. She lifted the axe again and crushed the ribs of the dead Raider. She lifted it again and broke an arm. Again, into the groin of the corpse. With every blow, she grunted and screamed at once, never taking her seething glare from the corpse of the Raider who had killed her father.
    In this moment, Shadow absorbed the True Humans’s great and lasting hatred for all their many enemies, and it fixed itself deep in his heart, ever to