Wilderness Giant Edition 6 Read online

  Spanish Slaughter

  When the United States was still a new nation, it took immense courage for mountain men like Nathaniel King to venture into the untamed wilds of the Rocky Mountains. But despite the never-ending dangers and hardships, a few bold adventurers struggled to survive and create a life for themselves in the wilderness. To them any risk was worth the greatest treasure of them all … the ability to live free.

  To others, though, freedom was not enough. When a Spaniard and his party set out to find a legendary lost gold mine, they needed a guide, the best in the mountains. Convinced that only Nate King could lead them through the deadly wilderness, the Spaniard forced the mighty mountain man to make the journey … a journey that would take every ounce of skill and courage Nate had if any of them were to make it back alive.

  Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane.

  One

  Nate King sat up with a start. Alarmed, he scanned his family’s cozy cabin. Bathed in the rosy glow of tiny fingers of flame dancing in the fireplace were the sleeping forms of his son, Zach, and his daughter, Evelyn. Each lay in an opposite corner, bundled in thick bear hides.

  Beside Nate, his wife stirred and muttered. Nate glanced down at Winona’s beautiful features. She was still asleep, her long raven tresses framing her head like a luxuriant dark halo.

  What had awakened him? Nate recalled having a bizarre dream about strange, bloodthirsty creatures. One had the body of a man but the head of a bull, and was nearly impossible to kill. The thing had charged him, snorting loudly, wicked horns gleaming. Although Nate emptied his guns, the creature just kept coming. The monster had been almost on top of him when Nate woke up.

  Nate smiled sheepishly. So that was the reason, a stupid nightmare. It served him right for eating a late snack of pemmican and wild onions. Relieved, Nate lay back down, idly scratching his bearded chin.

  Gradually, his powerful body relaxing, Nate drifted off. He was almost sound asleep when a series of thuds and a high-pitched nicker snapped him bolt upright again. His piercing green eyes swung toward the window, paned with precious glass brought all the way from St. Louis.

  When the whinny was repeated, Nate quietly slid from bed and padded in his bare feet to a chair. Over it were draped his buckskin shirt and leggings. Under it were his moccasins.

  Despite the chill at that altitude at night, Nate donned only the leggings. If something was after their horses, he would have to get outside right away.

  Propped against the doorjamb was his prized Hawken, crafted by the famous brothers of that name. Grabbing it, he cracked the door and listened. Wind whispered in the pines. To the north, in the distance, a wolf howled. It was answered by another far to the west.

  Nate slipped from the low cabin, keeping his back to the wall as he cat-footed to the right toward the rough-hewn corral. In it were their four mounts and three packhorses.

  At the corner, Nate paused. The horses were clustered in the center, ears pricked, staring intently at the inky forest that ringed the homestead. Something must be out there, stalking them, he figured.

  Nate frowned. He had cleared their secluded valley of big predators years ago. From time to time, however, a painter or a grizzly would wander into the pristine paradise and take up residence. Whenever that happened, he tracked them down and disposed of them. They were simply too dangerous, especially the grizzlies, to be allowed to live in close proximity to his loved ones.

  Nate’s razor-keen senses probed the murky woods. Whatever prowled the night was not making any noise. With the limitless patience of a true hunter, he waited, watching the horses. They would tell him when the beast was near.

  Sure enough, in under a minute Nate’s black stallion stamped a hoof and tossed its head. It was a signal for the others to act up.

  In among the trees, a twig snapped. Nate instantly crouched, his thumb curling back the Hawken’s hammer. He wished that he had thought to bring his pistols, as well. A single shot seldom dropped a charging grizzly, if that was indeed what lurked in the darkness.

  A broad-shouldered, powerfully built man, Nate King was not the least bit scared. He had tangled with grizzlies before. So often, in fact, that he was known as “Grizzly Killer” by the tribes who inhabited the region.

  Still, grizzlies were never to be taken lightly. Enormous brutes, some five to six feet high at the shoulders and weighing up to a thousand pounds, they were the lords of their domain. Notoriously hard to kill, they sported claws over four inches long and teeth that could crush the thickest bones, or a human skull, with frightening ease.

  The big stallion stomped again and moved a few feet toward the rails. It peered intently at a thicket fifty feet away.

  Nate did the same. He trusted the stallion’s hearing, which was vastly superior to his own. A hint of vague movement stiffened him. He pressed his cheek to the rifle and sighted down the barrel. Fixing a bead in the dark would be a challenge, but he must not miss.

  Something flitted from the thicket to a tree. Nate was startled to see a two-legged silhouette. It wasn’t a wild animal, after all!

  Nate’s mind raced. Who could it be? He had made peace with all the neighboring tribes, even the Utes, who claimed the valley as part of their territory. It had been ages since any Indians gave him trouble.

  Maybe it was Blackfeet, Nate speculated. Or one of their allies in the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Piegans or the Bloods. All three tribes hated whites. For years now they had made wolf meat of every mountaineer they came across.

  It was rare, though, for Blackfoot war parties to rove this far south of their usual haunts. Rare, but not unprecedented.

  Nate prayed it wasn’t the case. His deepest, abiding fear was that one day his family would be caught unprepared by hostiles, and slaughtered. The fear was not unfounded, since many whites, some friends of his, had suffered just such a grisly fate.

  The figure moved again, to another tree. Whoever it was, the man was circling around to the front of the cabin.

  Holding his fire, Nate eased onto his belly. Stygian shadows at the base of the wall effectively hid him. The nocturnal stalker was in for a nasty surprise.

  Then another form, much nearer, separated itself from a large boulder. Nate shifted to fix a bead, but the man went to ground behind a log.

  A faint noise sounded. To Nate’s utter dismay, it came from inside the cabin. Someone must be up. Maybe Winona had woke, found him gone, and noticed the door he had foolishly left open. Knowing her, she would immediately rise to investigate.

  An awful mental image of his wife being transfixed by arrows as she stood framed in the doorway galvanized Nate into rising into a crouch and backing toward the door.

  Neither of the figures was visible.

  Maybe it would be all right, Nate told himself. Maybe Winona had not made the noise. Maybe she was still sound asleep. Maybe—

  Hinges creaked. The door swung wide. “Nate?” Winona King whispered. Moments ago she had rolled over in bed and sleepily reached out to drape an arm across her husband’s muscular chest. Only, he had not been there.

  Concerned, Winona had roused herself. Discovering the door cracked sparked more worry.

  Now, rifle in hand, Winona stared into the benighted woodland, her hair fanned by a gust of wind. She took a cautious step. Common sense dictated that she be extremely careful. As her people, the Shoshones, had learned the hard way, in the wilderness mistakes usually proved fatal.

  Out of the corner of her eye she registered motion. Someone was slinking along the base of the cabin toward her! He sprang! Pivoting, she brought the muzzle up.

  Nate King, fearful for his wife’s safety, tackled her around the shins, his shoulder brushing against her gun. It was well
he bumped it, for the rifle went off in his ear, discharging a ball into the earth.

  Too late, Winona had recognized who it was. As she fell, a whizzing object flashed overhead and embedded itself in a log. She landed flat on her back, a quivering arrow in the space her chest had occupied a heartbeat ago.

  “Get back inside!” Nate bellowed, giving her a push as he heaved to his knees and swung to confront their attackers. A rifle flashed in the dark, spewing smoke. A bullet slammed into the wall at his shoulder.

  Taking a hasty bead, Nate fired into the center of the smoke, then backpedaled into the cabin as another arrow cleaved the crisp air. It narrowly missed his head.

  Winona had flung herself indoors. Darting to their table, she procured a pair of pistols and dashed to her man’s side. “Here,” she said, taking his Hawken and shoving the smooth stocks into his brawny hands.

  In the far corner, young Zachary King jumped up out of his bedding and rushed to his parents. “What’s happening, Pa?” he cried. “Who’s out there?”

  From under a pile of bearskins in the other corner rose little Evelyn. Where city-bred girls her tender age might have screamed or cringed in terror, she took in the situation at a glance and promptly ran to her mother’s side to be of what help she could.

  Nate King pressed a shoulder to the jamb and peeked out, seeking sign of their attackers.

  “Who the blazes is out there?” Zach repeated anxiously.

  “I don’t rightly know,” Nate whispered. “Now, hush.”

  The woods were unnaturally still. All the wildlife in the valley had gone quiet.

  Winona, bent at the waist, moved to the wall where their ammo pouches and powder horns were suspended from pegs. She began reloading the Hawken and her rifle, measuring how much black powder to use by the feel of the grains in her palm.

  Winona took great pride in her ability. Few Shoshones owned rifles; those who did were all warriors. And few of them were as skilled as she was, thanks to her husband’s tutelage.

  It had been Nate who insisted she learn to shoot. As in everything else, she had proven to be a fast learner. On occasion, she even outshot him, and he was accounted a first-rate marksman by the mountain man fraternity.

  Fighting alongside him came as natural to her as breathing. From an early age, Shoshone girls were taught to stand by their men in a crisis, to be brave in the face of adversity. It was essential if the Shoshones were to survive, for they were a warrior society at heart.

  Warriors garnered positions of leadership and prestige by counting coup in battle. Women were required to master crafts necessary for the upkeep of a lodge and the welfare of their families, but they were also expected to show as much courage as their mates when the need arose.

  Nate was mystified by the silence. War parties usually made all sorts of racket to intimidate their enemies. Where were the wild war whoops, the frenzied screeches, the lusty yips of adversaries eager to take scalps?

  In the midst of the dense foliage, a rifle boomed. The ball smashed into the jamb inches from Nate’s cheek. Flying slivers stung him as he jerked back.

  “Watch out, Pa!” Zach cried. Eager to do his part, he glided to his rifle, which he had leaned in the corner before retiring. A Hawken, like his pa’s, it was a .40-caliber instead of a .60, but it shot just as true.

  Zach looped to the other side of the doorway. “Anything?” he whispered.

  Nate shook his head. It proved a mistake. The movement drew a buzzing shaft, which passed a finger’s-width from his ear, missing his startled daughter by a cat’s whisker, and shattered against the stone fireplace.

  “Whoever it is must have eyes like an owl,” Zach commented.

  Nate nodded. “Get down,” he told Evelyn, and after she obeyed, he sidled to the window and placed an eye against the lower edge.

  “It’s too bad Shakespeare isn’t here,” Winona said. The person whom she referred to, Shakespeare McNair, was a fellow free trapper and the best friend Nate ever had. Most of what Nate knew, his vast knowledge of woodlore and wildlife, he owed to McNair, whose fondness for the English bard had earned him the unusual nickname.

  That very morning, Shakespeare and his wife had left after an extended visit. Nate mused wryly that the two extra guns would sure come in handy right about now.

  “Maybe they’ll give up once they see that they can’t get at us,” Zach remarked. The log walls were too thick for lead balls and arrows to penetrate. Fire might drive them out, but anyone foolish enough to rush the cabin with a burning brand would be picked off before he got close enough to fling the torch.

  Winona finished reloading and brought the heavy Hawken to her husband. “Here.”

  Nate tucked the two pistols under his wide leather belt, accepted the rifle, and said, “Keep your eyes skinned out front.” Hurrying to a narrow slit carved at shoulder height in the north wall, he lifted a flap of deer hide that covered it and gazed at the thick foliage beyond the clearing in which the cabin stood.

  The slit was a new addition, one of a half-dozen gun ports patterned after those at Bent’s Fort. Nate had carved them six months ago, with Zach’s help, prompted by dread that one day a war party might trap his family in the cabin and burn it down around them.

  The tops of trees bent to gusts of wind. If anyone was out there, they were well concealed.

  Nate stepped to the next port, and the next. “Not a sign,” he grumbled.

  “Fat lot of good it’ll do the vermin, Pa,” Zach declared. “At first light, let’s rush on out. We can hunt each and every one down and give them a taste of their own medicine. What do you say?”

  Nate King sighed. He couldn’t fault his son for being impetuous and overconfident. Typically, most youths his age were. The young always rushed in, where wiser heads exercised caution. “We’ll wait and see,” he responded.

  In the gloom, no one noticed Zach’s disappointment. It was not the Shoshone way to wait meekly to be slaughtered. When a village was raided, the warriors always carried the fight to their foes.

  Many an evening, Zach had sat around a roaring campfire, listening with other Shoshone boys to seasoned warriors relate their exploits in war.

  There would come a day, Zach had vowed, when he, too, would be a great warrior, just like Touch The Clouds and Drags The Rope and Buffalo Hump. And his father.

  It pleased Zach to no end that his pa, an adopted Shoshone, was reckoned among the bravest. On numerous occasions he had heard how his father once rallied the entire tribe against a marauding band of Blackfeet. How his pa once saved countless lives, and risked life and limb in the bargain, to arrange a crucial truce between the Shoshones and the Utes. And how his father had slain the largest grizzly ever encountered in the central Rockies, a monster that had terrorized the Shoshones for years.

  Yes, sir! Zach proudly reflected. He would make his father proud of him, or he would die in the attempt.

  Nate returned to the door. Winona was at the window; Evelyn was huddled under the table. For the moment they were safe enough.

  Their mounts and the pack animals were another matter. Among some tribes, a warrior was accorded as a high a coup for stealing a horse as for slaying an enemy. The war party was bound to try to sneak into camp, and Nate mentioned as much.

  “I will keep watch over them,” Winona volunteered, and moved to a slit in the south wall.

  It was the best they could do. Nate hunkered, cradling the Hawken. Closing the door would offer more protection but deprive him of an unobstructed view of the area in front of the cabin, so he left it as it was.

  “Is everyone’s mouth as dry as mine?” Zach asked.

  Evelyn took that as her cue to go to the water pail kept on a counter under the window. Taking a dipper off the wall, she brought a drink to her brother, giving the entrance a wide berth when she crossed the room. It was not much, but she was helping out, which she yearned to do more than anything else.

  “Thanks, sis,” Zach said.

  Nate smiled at t
hem. For siblings, they got along well. None of the bickering so common among the children of his kin back in New York. None of the constant spatting that drove a parent to distraction.

  Nate could not get over how much his daughter had grown in the past year. It seemed like just yesterday she had been a chubby little cherub in a cradleboard. Except for her curly hair, Evelyn was the spitting image of her mother, which pleased Nate no end.

  “You’re welcome, Stalking Coyote,” Evelyn said, calling Zach by his Shoshone name, as was her custom. Her Shoshone name was Blue Flower, which she favored over her Christian one, just as she was partial to Shoshone customs over those of her father.

  Nate did not mind. He wasn’t one of those who forced his outlook on life down the throats of his offspring. The way Nate saw it, children were a lot like flowers. They should be lovingly tended and nurtured but left pretty much free to grow as they saw fit.

  Within bounds, of course. Nate would not tolerate disrespect. Sassing Winona or him was not permitted. Nor could his children shirk their daily chores. They were required to perform them without complaint.

  Indistinct movement in the woods brought Nate’s musing to an abrupt end. He brought up the Hawken but had no definite target. Settling back, he craned his neck to take a gander at the heavens.

  Judging by the position of the Big Dipper and the North Star, it was close to three in the morning. In another hour and a half the sky would begin to brighten, heralding a new day.

  Minutes dragged by as if weighted by millstones. Nate kept expecting the war party to make a move, but nothing happened. Perhaps the warriors were waiting until daylight to make a concerted rush.

  Over by the south wall, Winona did not let down her vigilance. Their enemies would need only a few moments to drive the horses off, so she must not let her attention stray.

  Zach hoped that the warriors would act soon. The waiting ate at his nerves like a termite through wood. He was impatient to count coup.

  In due course the eastern half of the firmament blushed pink. One by one the stars were swallowed by slowly spreading sunlight.