Wilderness Double Edition 13 Page 14

  Winona choose her next words carefully. This was an important moment in Blue Flower’s life, even if the child did not realize it. A moment on which the girl’s whole future depended. A moment every wise parent was on the lookout for, and ready to guide their offspring through. “So. I was right. You are being selfish.”

  “What’s selfish about wanting to do someone a good deed?”

  “You are thinking only of yourself, not the welfare of our whole family.”

  “I was thinking of Zach,” Evelyn argued. She was bitter, and she did not care. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

  A cold blanket wrapped around Winona’s chest. Never, since the day her lovely child was born, had Blue Flower ever talked to her in such a tone. “I listen, Daughter. I listen with my ears. I listen with my mind. I listen with my heart.”

  “Hearts can’t hear.”

  “Yours does not, and that is the pity. For if you listened with your heart and not just your ears, you would see why your father and I have done what we have done. You would know we did it for your sake. Because we love you.”

  “Punishing someone, Ma, is a mighty peculiar way of showing how much you love them.”

  “Is it?” Winona thought back to when she had been Blue Flower’s age, and how she had felt about things. “Then let us talk about Blaze a moment.”

  “I’d rather not. That dumb old wolf is the reason all this happened. I wish he’d never come back. Dam him.”

  “He is the reason? Then we should indeed talk about him so I can learn how he is to blame.” Winona tried not to be too sarcastic. “Do you recall when Blaze was younger? How much fun you had playing with him, inside and out?”

  “Yes, I recollect it,” Evelyn said grudgingly. Those had been grand times. Running and wrestling and laughing the days away.

  “And do you remember some of the things he did that we did not like?” Winona listed them herself. “How he would wet on the floor? And chew on blankets? And gnaw on your dolls?”

  Now that Evelyn remembered best of all. One of her best dolls had almost been ruined when Blaze nearly tore off an arm and a leg. “He was too ornery for his own good,” Evelyn said.

  “A trait animals and people sometimes share.” Winona reminded herself to stick to the point. “What did we do to stop Blaze from doing those things?”

  “Well, whenever he wet, Pa would rub his nose in it and then kick him outside. When he chewed on the blankets and my dolls, Pa swatted him with a stick.”

  “We punished him, in other words?”

  Evelyn did not like the slant their talk was taking. Her mother could be mighty tricky when she wanted to be. “If you want to put it that way. Yes.”

  “I do. But it was done for the good of all of us, was it not? So the cabin would not smell of urine. So you and I would not spend hours mending blankets. And so your dolls would not be destroyed.”

  “You’re saying that you punished me today for the good of us all?”

  “Let us stick with Blaze for the moment. You agree with what I have said? That we had to do it for all our sakes?”

  “I agree,” Evelyn reluctantly admitted.

  “Did we punish him because we hated him? Do you hate Blaze for what he did to your Flathead doll?” Evelyn squirmed. “No, I don’t—”

  “Why did we punish him then?”

  “I don’t know. Because we liked having him inside with us. And for him to stay inside, he had to learn to behave.”

  “You’re saying we punished him because we loved him enough to want him to be part of our family? That we did it for the good of everyone?”

  “Yes, but—” Evelyn saw what her mother was leading up to. “It’s not the same as with me. All I did was go off alone. Which I’m not supposed to do, I’ll admit. But which would not have hurt anyone but me if something bad had happened.”

  “Oh?” Winona rested her hands on her knees. “Your father does not love you anymore?”

  “What? That’s silly. Of course he does.”

  “And me?”

  “You love me, too.”

  “What about Stalking Coyote? When did he stop caring for you?”

  “I reckon Zach does, although he sure has a strange way of showing it sometimes.”

  “Well, then. Since we love you so much, do you not think we would be deeply hurt if you were to be killed? Do you not think I would cry and cry? That I would go without food and sleep for many days? And want to die myself?”

  Evelyn saw tears moisten her mother’s eyes, and felt a lump form in her throat. She loved her mother dearly, more than anyone. She could not imagine life without her. “It would break my heart if anything ever happened to you, Ma.”

  Winona held her arms out, and Evelyn slid along the log to embrace her. They sat quietly, sniffling, for the longest while, until Winona kissed Evelyn on the head and said, “We are a family, precious one. If you are hurt, we all hurt for you. If you were to die, a part of all of us would die.” She paused. “We did not punish you to be mean. We did so because we love you, so you will not do what you did ever again. So we need not suffer. We did so for the good of all.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma. I truly am.”

  “I know.” Winona held her daughter closer, and rejoiced.

  “I’ll never go off again without asking permission first.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’d never want you or Pa to cry on my account.”

  “I thank you again.”

  “Now that I see what you meant, I guess there’s no need for me to do all of Zach’s chores for two months.”

  “You guess wrong.”

  “How about just one month then?”

  “How about three?”

  “Two is fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Mother and daughter drew apart, looked at one another, and laughed. They laughed so loud and so merrily that out on the lake, another mother and her five offspring took startled wing.

  It was hard to say who was more surprised by the violent turn of events. Zachary King had given the three warriors no cause to attack. He had bent over backward to be polite, even after the stocky one had insulted him. So when the man suddenly hefted his lance and charged, Zach was dumbfounded. He saw baffled anger etch the countenance of Tall Elk. The tall warrior yelled at the stocky one, who paid no attention.

  Louisa May Clark found her voice and cried out, revealing what she should have back on the ridge. “Stalking Coyote! These are the same Indians who killed my pa!”

  Zach had only a second to wonder why she had not told him sooner.

  The stocky warrior curled an arm to throw the lance. Snapping the Hawken to his shoulder, Zach aimed squarely at the man’s chest. He held his fire a moment, hoping against hope that the warrior would heed the tall one and rein up. But the stocky man came straight on, a mask of hate on his swarthy features. The same kind of hatred Zach had beheld in the faces of so many whites. Hatred of him because he was different. Because he was a half-breed.

  Zach stroked the trigger.

  The warrior had arched his spine and was about to let fly when the lead ball smashed into his sternum and flung him from his warhorse. He crashed onto his head and shoulders, rolled twice, and was still.

  The third warrior yipped and charged, notching an arrow to a sinew string.

  Zach had not wanted this. He had tried to avoid conflict, for Louisa’s sake. Now that it had been forced on him, he did what came naturally. He jerked out a pistol, trained it on the bowman, and fired before the warrior could unleash the shaft.

  This time the ball caught its target high in the forehead, blowing the top of the man’s head clean off. Momentum carried him onward another dozen feet. He swayed further and further until his legs lost their grip and he tumbled, bouncing to a disjointed stop.

  That left Tall Elk. He stared at the stocky warrior, then at the one whose body still convulsed. His face acquired a flinty cast. Uttering a war whoop, he flourished the
rifle and jabbed his legs against his mount.

  “Please! No!” Zach exclaimed. He did not want to have to kill this one, too. Tall Elk had not wanted to fight. They had no personal grudge, although for all Zach knew, Tall Elk might be the one who had rubbed out Louisa’s father.

  Zach whipped the second pistol from under his belt and pressed back the hammer. But he did not shoot. Not yet. “Don’t!” he hollered, gesturing.

  The tall warrior did not slow down. He pressed the stock to his shoulder and tried to hold the rifle steady, all the while thundering closer and closer. He was already so close he could hardly miss.

  “Please!” Zach shouted.

  Tall Elk’s thumb wrapped around the hammer.

  “I don’t want to hurt you!”

  The retort of a pistol was another surprise. For it was not Zach’s gun that discharged.

  Louisa had drawn one of hers seconds earlier. She did not desire to harm the tall warrior either. But neither would she sit there and let him hurt the one she loved. She fired, and then was jarred. Not by the recoil, by the thought she had just expressed. The one she loved? That was impossible! How could she love someone she had only met a day before? She was so shocked, she did not see the tall man fall. When next she looked, he was prone on the ground, trying weakly to raise an arm.

  Zach kneed the sorrel to the warrior’s side. A neat pink hole in Tall Elk’s chest showed he was not long for the world. “I’m sorry,” Zach said aloud, sliding the pistol under his belt. In sign he said, “I no fond kill you.”

  Tall Elk, incredibly, smiled.

  Sliding off, Zach knelt. “Great Mystery help your moccasins make track across sky,” he signed, then gripped the warrior’s hand.

  The tall man’s smile widened. He squeezed Zach’s hand with what little strength he had left. Another instant and his arm sagged, his eyes dimmed. He tried to speak, but no words came out. He exhaled loudly, his eyelids fluttered, and he gave up the ghost.

  “Damn.”

  Louisa hurried up, puzzled as to why Stalking Coyote was so agitated by the death of someone who had been about to slay him. Worried he might be upset with her, she said, “He would have killed you if I didn’t shoot when I did.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t be alive if not for him. He stood up for me when the others wanted to do me in.” Louisa did not glance at the fruits of her handiwork. She could not bring herself to look at the man’s face. Hopping down, she ran to where he had dropped the rifle he had taken from her the day her pa was slain. It was undamaged.

  Zach shook himself and stood. “What’s done is done.” They had a much greater problem. The other warriors would soon be after them. He began reloading the Hawken, advising Louisa to do the same.

  “We’re up against it, aren’t we?” she said. “It’s still nine against two.”

  “We have more guns than they do,” Zach said to lessen her concern.

  “Who are you trying to fool?” Louisa slid the ramrod from its housing. “My pa told me some bows can shoot as far as guns. And Indians can let fly with their arrows a lot faster than a white person can reload.”

  Zach did not deny it. His own hands flew as to the west the air was punctuated by harsh cries. He estimated they had five minutes to spare, no more. In half that time he had finished tamping powder and balls into all three of his guns, and was back in the saddle. “Hurry.”

  Louisa did not bother with her last flintlock. Wrapping the lead rope around her left wrist, she gripped her mount’s mane and swung up. “Lead the way, Stalking Coyote. Where you go, I go.” She said it lightheartedly, but she meant every word.

  Zach sensed as much, and her devotion touched him to his core. “I’m part white, you know,” he commented. “I have a white name. Zachary.”

  “Zachary?” Louisa rolled it on the tip of her tongue, savoring the sound as if it were hard candy. “What’s your last name?”

  Just then a knot of riders appeared on the crest of the ridge. Zach pointed, wheeled the sorrel, and fled. For the next hour conversation was out of the question. He held the horses to a gallop, only stopping to give them a breather when the sorrel showed signs of flagging.

  “Aren’t you pushing a little hard?” Louisa asked. Not on her behalf, but for the benefit of the animals. Once, over a year ago, she and her pa had had to outrun some hostiles out on the prairie. As scared as she had been, she would have ridden Fancy into the ground to get away. Her father, though, had set an example by pacing their mounts so neither animal wound up exhausted. The lesson had stuck.

  “A little,” Zach agreed. But he was doing so for her sake. He would not let the war party get their hands on her.

  West of them, tendrils of dust rose above a barren hill.

  “They’ll never give up, will they?” Louisa asked.

  Zach lashed the sorrel and hastened on. He had a plan. Not much of one, but it might work. Two hours later, when he halted again, he shared it. “We have to stay ahead until dark. They’re bound to make camp for the night. And while they sleep, we’ll push on. By sunrise tomorrow we should be too far ahead for them to ever catch up.”

  “Should be,” Louisa noted. It was risky. By daylight their mounts would be close to collapse, while the war-horses would be refreshed. She commented to that effect.

  “Don’t fret. There are ways to throw them off the scent,” Zach mentioned. “My pa taught me.”

  By afternoon’s end the sorrel and the packhorses were plodding along with heads hung low. But all trace of pursuit had disappeared. At a swiftly flowing stream Zach drew rein and announced, “We’ll rest until the sun goes down.” Which wouldn’t be long.

  Louisa ached in places she had never ached before. Her legs were so stiff it pained her to flex them, but flex them she did as she eased her bottom onto a grassy mound and lay back, her head propped in her hands. She could not stop thinking about the tall warrior. He was the first person she had ever slain, and she prayed to God he was the last.

  She wondered if the deed had sealed her eternal fate. According to her pa, anyone who broke a single one of the Ten Commandments was not likely to enter the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Was she doomed to Hell then? Did the Lord hold it against someone when they killed to protect a person they cared for? That couldn’t be. Didn’t scripture say the Almighty was merciful and just?

  Louisa gazed skyward. What else did it say? Wasn’t there something about the “Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”? Her father had been taken from her, and in his place the Lord had given her Zach. Or was she wrong in counting Zach as hers! He cared for her. Of that there was no doubt. But how much? How deeply? Was she expecting too much too soon? A shadow fell across her face.

  “Mind if I join you?” Zach had stripped off the saddles, then tethered the horses. As tired as the animals were, it was highly doubtful they would stray off, but better safe than sorry.

  “Be my guest.” Louisa sat up and adjusted her baggy shirt so it fit more snugly.

  Zach sat at arm’s length. All afternoon he had been mulling over how to say what he had on his mind. Now that the moment had come, he was tongue-tied.

  Louisa considered half a dozen things to talk about, and rejected each as childish or silly or both. But there was something she just had to know the answer to. “I never thought to ask. Is there a girl somewhere you’re fond of? Back in the States maybe? Or a Shoshone who strikes your fancy?”

  Zach laughed nervously. There were a few Shoshone maidens he was fond of. Nothing had come of it, though, mainly because he had not felt the deep stirring in his heart that his pa always said he would when “the right one came along.” He’d begun to wonder if it would ever happen. Now it turned out his father had been right. Again. Odd how the older he got, the smarter his father became.

  “There is?” Louisa said, not quite knowing what to make of his mirth.

  “No. I’ve never been partial to any girl.” Zach had to clear his throat. “Until now.”

>   “Oh.”

  Since she had broached the subject, Zach felt safe in asking, “What are your plans once we’re out of this fix?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Why?”

  Zach fidgeted, then feigned interest in a bug crawling over his moccasin. “You’re welcome to stay with us a spell. I’m sure my parents won’t mind. Ma always likes to have visitors.” He flicked the bug into the grass, annoyed he had not come right out and told her what was really on his mind.

  Louisa would like nothing more. But what if his folks did not like her? “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “You won’t.” Zach shifted so he was a little nearer. He liked how her hair curled around her ear, and how small the ear itself was. Dainty, like a tiny flower. “What about you? No fellas you’re fond of anywhere?”

  She looked right at him. “Just you.”

  Zach moved nearer still. “It’s a mite spooky. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Not even my wolf.”

  “You have a wolf?”

  “His mother was killed in an avalanche, so I took him in.” Zach could not take his eyes off her mouth. Her lips reminded him of cherries. Ripe, luscious cherries, like those he had eaten when his family visited St. Louis. He closed his eyes, thinking that when he opened them again her lips would be plain, ordinary lips. But no, they still resembled cherries, and they pulled at him like a magnet pulled at metal. “Would you be powerful upset if I were to kiss you on the mouth?”

  Louisa’s breath caught in her throat. “You want to kiss me?” The only people who ever had were her mother and father, and they always kissed her on the cheek or the forehead.

  “If it’s okay.”

  “I suppose it can’t hurt,” Louisa said nervously. She shut her eyes and puckered as she had seen her ma do many times. Every nerve vibrated like a piano string. She dreaded that she would faint and embarrass herself to no end.