Strongheart Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter 1 - Warrior

  Chapter 2 - Forbidden Love

  Chapter 3 - Lawman

  Chapter 4 - A Man Alone

  Chapter 5 - The Stage

  Chapter 6 - Returning

  Chapter 7 - A Pair of Buzzards

  Chapter 8 - The Chase

  Chapter 9 - The Widow

  Chapter 10 - The Gunfight

  Chapter 11 - The Haven

  Chapter 12 - The Evil That Men Do

  Chapter 13 - Showdown

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Taking a Stand

  “You’re barely able ta stand, partner,” Westbrook said. “Drop the hogleg, an I’ll let ya live.”

  “Mister, you’ll never touch that woman while there is breath in my body,” Joshua said. “You gonna start the ball or are you gonna talk me to death?”

  He saw the ears on Westbrook’s magnificent paint horse shoot forward, alert to something coming down the stagecoach road behind him. He figured the gang had come back and was slowly moving up behind him.

  Joshua made a decision. He fired, fanned the hammer back, and fired again, and saw a large stain of crimson in the center of Long Leg’s chest as he fell back, dropping his gun. Joshua immediately went to the ground, rolling to his right, toward the bloody corpse of Chancy, but on his way down he felt a bullet slam into the back of his left shoulder . . .

  Titles by Don Bendell

  CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DETACHMENT

  CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DETACHMENT: BROKEN BORDERS

  CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DETACHMENT:

  BAMBOO BATTLEGROUND

  STRONGHEART

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  STRONGHEART

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / September 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Don Bendell Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44305-7

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  DEDICATION

  I have six children and love all of them equally and dearly, but this particular book is about heroes, and one of my children is one of my biggest heroes, so I dedicated this book to her. My oldest daughter was born July 16, 1970, and I came up with her name, Jennifer Brooke Bendell, although now it is Brooke Bendell Stark.

  As a child, she was very athletic, loved dancing, all kinds, was very artistic, was an outstanding student, and got headaches anytime she rode in a car. A type-A personality, she was and is a perfectionist. Her mother and I divorced when she was nine years old, and sadly we spent many years apart. Brooke became the substitute mom to her younger sister and brother because her mother worked so hard.

  The two biggest things about her that always impressed me the most were her sense of adventure and her love for God. She still possesses both.

  After graduating from North Carolina State University with a degree in textile design, Brooke ended up as a Christian missionary serving in Central and South America, converting Muslims into Christians in India and Africa. In Africa, she got very ill and almost died. She had already almost died as a girl, when her appendix burst.

  Brooke married a wonderful youth minister and missionary himself, Burwell Stark, and they had two daughters. The first, Lindy, is a joy. Avery was in Brooke’s womb and at nine months when Brooke had a driver hit her head-on. Protectively clutching her swollen belly, Brooke slammed her face on the steering wheel. Also, she crushed her heel, and Brooke had been a dancing instructor for years. They had to pry her out of the car with the Jaws of Life and airlift her by Flight for Life to Duke University Medical Center, where Avery was delivered by cesarean section, blind and brain-damaged. Brooke was in ICU for days, and after many prayers, blood transfusions, and several surgeries, she pulled through. Avery was an angel and was given very special care by Burwell, Brooke, and Lindy for four years, but sadly she died one day during a seizure. She just did not come out of it.

  After that, Brooke lost another daughter at birth.

  Then, after dealing with her younger sister, my other daughter, coming down with multiple sclerosis unexpectedly, Brooke mysteriously came down with MS, too, just when she and Burwell were preparing to leave again for the mission field in Africa.

  She turned to God, as she has done so often in her life, and now, despite her setbacks, she has her own business near Raleigh, North Carolina, decorating homes and painting modern murals for homes and businesses. She has even rehabbed so she can now do some dancing. To her, MS is an inconvenience but not a reason to slow down.

  The life God gives each of us is a gift to us, but what we do with our lives is the gift we give back to God. Brooke has certainly been preparing a wonderful gift for her Creator. She is truly a survivor, and I cannot put into words the respect, admiration, pride, and love I have for her. Since it is entitled Strongheart, I dedicate this book to you, Brooke.

  Love, Dad

  “I would give no thought of what the world might say of me,

  if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of

  an honest man.”

  Sam Houston

  FOREWORD

  Previously, I wrote ten westerns, the Colt Family series, for NAL, a subsidiary of Berkley’s parent company, Penguin Group (USA). Lately I have been writing military thrillers because the western market was down
for some time, but I am still a real cowboy with a real horse and live in southern Colorado. On my wife’s birthday, March 20, 2009, my editor and friend, Tom Colgan, informed me that westerns are starting to make a comeback and asked me to switch to writing them again. Strongheart is my first new western for Berkley Books, and I am happy to be back in the saddle again. I hope you will escape with me back to a time when a man’s word was his bond, women were ladies and men were men, and you survived only if you were hardy. These were the people who made America.

  Like one of my writing heroes, the late Louis L’Amour, I ride my horse, Eagle, on just about every piece of ground I write about. In that way you get a better feel, a vision of the country, the smell of the sagebrush and the feel the sun’s heat baking a rocky canyon, while hearing the click of a horse’s hooves on rocks. I hope you like Joshua Strongheart as much as I do and come with me on an escape from computers, television, news stories, traffic, and our fast-paced society, to a time when our country was simpler, tougher, and more natural. Let’s take a journey back to the Old West, to the real America.

  Don Bendell

  1

  Warrior

  The warrior moved so slowly through the dense forest, he was barely noticeable. Up close, though, he was a marvelous specimen. He could look down and see the top of the head of almost any fellow Lakota Sioux he had ever been with. In fact, he had to look down at most people.

  Most items that he grabbed ahold of would move. They had no choice if he wanted to move them. His long black hair was braided this day, and beneath the red and black war paint, which obscured most of his face, his cheekbones were high, his jaw firm and strong, his lips thin, and his eyes special. Deep, dark brown, they looked very intelligent and, at the same time, like he was always ready to smile.

  They scoured the ground in front of him, sweeping left to right, right to left in ten-foot arcs, and every few seconds he would look to both sides and up in the trees. About once a minute, he would slowly turn his head and look behind to also watch his back trail.

  At the top of each bicep and the base of each bulging deltoid, he wore a tight leather band that made the cantaloupe-sized biceps look even larger.

  The bow looked tiny in his left hand as he knelt down to look closely at a track, which, like the others, looked like an upside-down letter V. As he examined the crispness of its edges, a slight movement caught his eye. A grain of sand had fallen from the edge of the V and down into the track. This deer was less than a minute ahead of him. There was also a small pile of round pellets. He picked up one piece of manure in his fingers and examined it closely. It was round like a tiny brown marble, but on one side there was a small groove. Although most people could not tell the difference between a buck and a doe by looking at their tracks, he knew that the trick was to examine their scat. Bucks have a tiny anal protrusion in their bowel tract that makes a faint groove in each piece of feces. He knew this was a very large, heavy deer just by the size and depth of the tracks, but now he knew it was a buck, which is what he wanted.

  The warrior turned and looked back into the deep green morass to his rear. Finally, she was noticeable. The young Lakota woman had been shadowing him at a distance and was very well camouflaged herself. But even at that distance, her great beauty was obvious, the long, shiny black hair, olive complexion, and dark eyes. He held his hands up to the side of his head, extended fingers sticking up in the air, the sign for buck deer or bull elk. She smiled and remained motionless. This warrior was helping her and her mother so much. He was tall, handsome, and, unlike so many braves, he truly cared.

  He moved forward slowly on hands and knees, his bow in his left hand. Every few seconds now he paused and looked. He spotted movement, as a large twelve-point buck grazed on buck-brush and tufts of grass a short distance to his front. It took him five minutes, but he rose to his feet and inched forward, the bottom of his bow now almost touching his hip. He moved with his left side forward, his right hand on the bowstring. The nock of the arrow rested between his index and middle finger, and his ring finger also curled around the string. He would not look directly at the grazing deer, as he knew that deer and most prey animals, as well as some learned and experienced warriors, had a sixth sense, a sense of knowing when a predator was staring at them. He watched a spot a few feet behind the deer, but from the corner of his dark eye he was looking for one movement. There is a nerve in deer that causes a slight twitch in their tail, a millisecond before they raise their head up. By experience alone, this brave knew that deer had a different type of vision than humans, one which allowed them to see only the graze beneath their head when their head was down grazing. He knew from experience and his childhood teachings that the deer, no matter how close he was, could not see him as a person even when its head was up, as long as he did not move at all. Each time the warrior saw the little warning flick in the buck’s tail, even if one foot was raised, he froze.

  A half hour passed and now he was so close that he had to squint when he froze, so the shine off his eyeballs would not spook the deer. His bow came up slowly, inch by inch, and while the buck’s head was down, he drew the arrow back.

  The tail twitched, and he froze. Most men could not have held the powerful bow at full draw for very long without their arms shaking from total exertion, but this man was conditioned and very disciplined. The deer’s head went down and the string slipped off his fingers, and he saw the arrow’s almost instantaneous impact as it tore through the buck’s left flank just behind the lower part of the left shoulder. It passed through the heart and then through the right lung, exiting the far side, as the buck leapt with the shock. He ran less than fifty feet, struggled, as the life drained from him, and lay still.

  The warrior prayed to the deer’s spirit and wished it well on its spirit journey. Then the young woman, who was closer to the age of a girl, came forward and watched his dexterity with the knife. He first removed the heavy musk glands on the inside of the buck’s back knees. Then he carefully cleaned the razor-sharp Bowie knife, knowing the smelly gland could taint the meat. She marveled at the heavily beaded and fringed sheath on his left hip, the giant shiny blade, the elk antler handle. He removed the testes and anus and again cleaned the blade thoroughly. He then cut through the pelvic bone and slit the belly all the way up well into the chest cavity. Next, he slit the throat, reached in and cut the esophagus, and then pulled the entrails out along with the lungs and organs.

  Walking to her village, she was amazed at how small the mighty buck looked across this brave’s shoulders. Soon, they were at the lodge, and it was hung outside to be skinned and butchered.

  Lila Wiya Waste, which meant “Beautiful Woman,” was his cousin. Because her husband had been killed by the great bear, she and her mother had nobody to bring meat to their lodges. When Joshua Strongheart came to her village, he helped her to hunt for the lodge, because he was her closest relative. She accompanied him, so she could learn. Joshua told her not to just marry again but to wait on a warrior who was worthy of her. She wanted to know how to be self-sufficient, for her cousin was not around the village circle very often, just a few times per year.

  The tall warrior grabbed his bag and headed to the nearby stream to bathe, clean off his war paint, and change clothes. The Lakota and their allies the Cheyenne and Arapaho were meticulous about bathing and keeping clean, and he was amused how so many racist wasicun, or “white men,” used expressions such as “filthy redksins.” The Lakota actually viewed many whites as being very dirty and unkempt.

  Thirty minutes later, he returned from the stream to the circle of lodges. Lila Wiya Waste looked with a great longing at him approaching. She wished he was not her first cousin, but wished more he would look at her the way the other braves did. He now was dressed in his normal manner and looked like a totally different person, a white man with Lakota features.

  His long, shiny black hair was no longer braided but hung down his back in a single ponytail, and it was covered by a black cowboy hat w
ith a broad, very flat brim and rounded crown. A wide, fancy, colorful beaded hatband went around the base of the crown.

  He wore a bonehair pipe choker around his sinewy neck, and a piece of beaded leather thong hung down a little from the front with a large grizzly bear claw attached to it.

  His soft antelope-skin shirt did little to hide his bulging muscles, and the small rows of fringe that slanted inaV shape from his broad shoulders to his large pectoral muscles actually served to accentuate his muscular build and the narrow waist that looked like a flesh-covered washboard.

  Levi Strauss had recently patented and started manufacturing a brand-new type of trousers made of blue denim, which whites were calling “Levi’s.” Joshua had bought a couple from a merchandiser. They fit tight with brass rivets and did little to hide the bulging muscles of his long legs.

  Around his hips, Joshua wore his prized possessions, one a gift from his late stepfather and the other a gift from his late father. On the right hip of the engraved brown gun belt was the fancy holster, with his stepfather’s Colt .45 Peacemaker in it. The gun had fancy engraving along the barrel and miniature marshal’s badges, like his stepfather’s own, attached to both of the mother-of-pearl grips. It was a brand-new single-action model made especially for the army in this year, 1873, and this one had been made to special order for his stepfather’s friend Chris Colt, who was a nephew of the inventor Colonel Samuel Colt.

  On his left hip was the long, beaded porcupine-quilled and fringed leather sheath holding the large Bowie knife with the elk antler handle and brass inlays. It had been left to him by his father.

  He wore long cowboy boots with large-roweled Mexican spurs, with two little bell-shaped pieces of steel that hung down from the hubs on the outside of each and clinked on the spur rowels as they spun while he walked.