This, the 30th Chapter of Thunder-Boy, is 24 pages long at 6,238 words and will be posted in five installments.

When Three-Rivers called down the fire Jay’s whole being had lit up, hoping beyond hope that he was to end his life here, in this primal land, where his bones belonged. He felt a deep snarl escape from his chest as he charged over the hill and into the bare thickets beyond. Twelve of the remaining sixteen pursued him. Never once did he turn his head or stop and look. He listened with the ears of a wolf and tasted the air with the same keen wet snout. He loved the chase, either as hunter or prey. Being the hunter or the hunted was more exhilarating than any other experience.

Pump hard for a few miles to spread these redskins out. Separate the bucks from the fawns.

Within a few hard miles he was through the rolling woodlands that bordered the Ohio River in what would become southern Indiana and into the bottomlands that pan-caked out to the north. The forest here had been turned into parklands and thickets by controlled burning. There would be an expanse of open old-growth woodlands adjacent to thickets that would produce berry bushes to attract game. The thickets were really just the remnants of abandoned corn fields and pumpkin patches.

Just keep a steady pace and that will stretch them out. Separate the stags from the bucks.

By late afternoon he only had two strong runners at his back. Then he heard the heavier man, about a half-mile back, pull up with a groan—probably a torn ham.

The faster runner doubled back to check on his man and then came on strong, really trying to close the distance. He had an hour to go until dusk and decided to test this buck and pick up his pace. He ran hard for a patch of open land to the northwest and made enough noise so that there was no chance of this guy losing his trail.

Listen to this boy come! Open up and leave him behind. Put it on him and make him fail.

When Jay Bracken had plenty of time for introspection during the course of a physical pursuit that actually tested his extreme prowess then the back of his mind as he called it, or his subconscious as some shrink might call it, opened up to his conscious self. At such times, few as they were, the back of his mind always consisted of Pa Bracken’s trailer, at his wake after the cave-in, with Mom and Ma crying in the kitchen and Dad speaking quietly to him in the dining room. As always, during this look within, the flimsy kitchen door at the back of his mind opened up to admit all of the lesser men who had guided him during his life after the death of Pap and Dad.

None of these had actually been present at the wake, but they did arrive now, raiding Ma’s cooler for what was left of Pa Bracken’s Iron City beer and then taking a seat on Pa’s old couch in the living room to watch TV. The TV show was always the same, being the Misadventures of Jay Bracken, upon which these men had much to comment on. Now as always he was struggling with himself on the TV screen in Pa’s living room as the assembled mentors of his misguided orphan life discussed his character: there was his older Brother Randy pointing out that he could always be counted on to “make the meathead move”; and sifu Raphael commenting on his “lack of focus and sensitivity”; sensei Hansen pointing out his “overaggressive nature”; coach Stackhouse talking about how he was “really a quitter on the inside”; and Mister Fred who would point out to them all that “he might not be the brightest fighter, but he has heart—a real crowd-pleaser.”

He was skirting a matted-down thicket and listening to his remaining pursuer gain on him. He let the man catch up as they crossed the small prairie. He began to turn to look behind him when he caught a glimpse of a bison, and another, and another, raising their heads from the snow-covered grass to watch the progress of the two small apes running across their dinner table.

You should make friends with this other hunter and take a bison back to his people—make a life with these people rather than fleeing or killing.

Dad?

For answer he heard Randy’s sardonic laughter echoing through the back of his ravaged mind. In a rage he poured on the speed and left the flagging brave far, far behind. Within seconds he was nearing the next tree-line and the warrior was falling behind, barely able to breathe. Then it came to him, a call that he had often made, an invitation to damnation that some unfortunate souls had answered in the past, in many pasts. The frustrated warrior had stopped and screamed, with what seemed his final breath. It was a long sharp ape-like cat-call, a screeching whoop that died in the man’s chest as Jay slowly turned.

Why did you have to go and do that Brother? It’s war now. Do you know the price if you lose?

The man’s ragged breath came to him across the snow-covered prairie. He could hear the snorting of the bison to his right as they lined up a hundred yards off to stare like comatose sentinels. The warrior was tall and muscular with a finely adorned top-knot above a plucked skull. He cast aside his bow and arrow case and brandished his short thrusting spear in his left and feathered tomahawk in his right.

Jay had long since discarded his empty arrow-case, and kept his bow slung across his back and chest. He drew his espada and threw away the scabbard, deciding then to use the Spanish blade to mark this worthy man’s grave. This was the kind of rare occasion for which such a weapon was useful in the wilderness. After this duel he would just require his hunting arms. The rest did not deserve the consideration of being dispatched with such a fine blade. He held his tomahawk in his left hand. When they came to within three paces the man locked eyes with him and said a few words—a greeting, a warning, a threat, his name, a question?

As Jay was considering the possible meaning of these words a deep slathering snarl escaped from his chest, drool splashed his thighs, and the thick matted hair on his back and shoulders stood straight up.

Topknot was momentarily stunned but recovered as soon as Jay leaped right and high-stepped left. When he switched into a lunge Topknot was already jumping over his long steel blade and thrusting for his neck with the flint-headed spear. Jay turned his right shoulder back and leaned to the left so that the well-aimed thrust passed over his right shoulder just below his ear. He beat the spear to the outside with the riser of the espada and brought up his tomahawk to meet Topknot’s own tomahawk blow that was descending toward his face diagonally. Jay squatted deep with his reverse pivot and slashed up into the man’s right elbow, cleaving the sensitive joint but missing the brachial artery. Topknot’s tomahawk flew from his now useless right hand and tore open Jay’s left cheek.

Top-knot had no quit in him. He simply growled and began stepping around with his left foot to bring his spear back in for a thrust. Before the stunned Cherokee warrior completed his reverse pivot—his weight now being on his right leg as he stepped around his planted right foot with his left—Jay ran his espada completely through the man’s right thigh, splitting the quadriceps muscle, scrapping bone, and continuing through the hamstring to pin the man’s leg to the frozen ground.

Top-knot still kept coming with his spear thrust. Jay released his grip on the sword hilt and grabbed the haft of the spear as he smashed the man’s extended wrist with the back-knob of his tomahawk. Topknot crumbled to the ground, pinned like an insect to some geek’s collection board; helpless with a shattered right elbow and broken left wrist.

Jay straightened up and looked down into his beaten foe, who glared up at him defiantly, even offering his throat for the knife stroke he thought was coming. For a moment he felt as if Mom and Dad were watching him, so he belted his tomahawk and retrieved the man’s arrow case and slung it over his back. The man looked at him with a question in his eyes so Jay responded with words the other could not possibly understand, “If ya get from dis fix ya deserve ta live. I’m leavin’ da espada and taken dese. Hopefully it won’t lacerate yer femoral artery when ya draw it out.”

He began walking down the back-trail with a taste for blood in the back of his throat, wanting to get away from where Mom and Dad could see his doings before he began feeding his hunger. The man turned with much suffering and spoke two pleading words. Jay stopped, turned, and looked back into his eyes. “I were wonderin’ if ya knew what ya risked when ya challenged me—guess not.”

He turned to head back toward his failed pursuers and the man said one pleading word. When Jay looked back the man was grinding his teeth and exposing his throat for the killing blow. Jay walked back to him, took out his own plain steel tomahawk, cast it aside, and picked up Topknot’s distinctively adorned flint-bladed hawk-feather tomahawk. The man held his throat exposed as his blood stained the snow. Jay simply belted the tomahawk as a prize. “I’ll take dis instead a yer scalp.”

He resumed his walk down the back-trail and the man’s pleading voice came one last time. He turned in the stark half-light and looked into the man’s watery pleading eyes. “So, she’s worth dyin’ for aye? Well bro I’m sure I’ll know ‘er when I see ‘er—fine as anything I bet. I’ll treat ‘er right.”

Jay continued down the back-trail toward the big fallen man a mile back, as Topknot wailed behind him.

Topknot yelled back into the deadening woods, warning his man as Jay stalked the back-trail. Just as night was falling he came to the man’s position. Apparently he had turned a knee or ankle and could barely stand. He was leaning back up against a monkey-ball tree, his bow at the ready. Jay knew he had the greater effective range, so he stopped short and loosed an arrow into the man’s good leg before circling wide and leaving him behind.

All of this mercy is unbecoming Bracken. I hate to sound like a liberal, ‘but leave no enemy behind’.