Wilderness Double Edition #10 Page 16

  Only when the quartet had vanished into thick timber did Nate ride from cover and descend the far side of the spine, threading among tightly packed firs and deadfalls. At the bottom he swung to the south, holding the stallion to a walk. The three packhorses plodded along wearily, no doubt as anxious to reach their small corral as he was to reach his cabin.

  Often Nate stopped to look and listen. The stock of the .60-caliber Hawken rested on his right thigh. Made by the master craftsmen Jacob and Samuel Hawken of St. Louis, Hawkens were rapidly gaining a reputation as the most reliable guns ever made. Nate’s sported a smooth 34-inch octagonal barrel, a crescent-shaped butt plate, low sights, and a percussion lock.

  His pistols were also works of quality. Single shot .55-caliber flintlocks, they were almost as powerful as the Hawken at short range.

  All three were vastly superior to the trade guns given Indians. Fusees, as they were called, often blew apart or misfired or broke readily. They were of such poor workmanship that most Indians preferred to rely on their bows and arrows rather than the white man’s weapon of choice.

  Crowning Nate’s shock of black hair was a beaver hat. A Mackinaw coat lay draped over the back of his saddle. He was glad it was there and not on his person. A red coat stood out in a green forest like the proverbial sore thumb.

  The woodland thinned. Far ahead figures moved. Nate halted, his eyes narrowing against the glare of the high sun. The Indians were there, all right, heading due south now, the same direction he had to take.

  “Damn,” Nate said to himself and pulled in behind a briar patch. He had a choice to make. Should he play it safe, camp there until morning, and then go on? Or should he try to swing around ahead of them?

  As if he truly had much of a choice. The disturbing fact was that he happened to be less than ten miles from the cabin. If the warriors kept on as they were going, they’d probably get there before nightfall.

  Nate wished Shakespeare was along. The two of them had licked their weight in hostiles more times than he cared to count. As it was, he would have to rely on a sizable portion of pure luck if he hoped to save his family.

  Prodding the stallion with his heels, Nate angled to the left, moving parallel to the warriors. Mentally he reviewed the lay of the land in front of them—countryside he had traveled through so often he could ride across it at a full gallop in the dead of a moonless night and avoid every obstacle in his path.

  Nate marked the position of the sun, then turned his attention to the ridge ahead. That ridge overlooked the domain he had claimed as his own, a verdant valley three times the size of most, watered by a lake rife with fish and fowl, a virtual paradise.

  Presently Nate came to a hillock. Stopping shy of the crest, he dismounted, ground hitched the stallion, and crept to the top. From his vantage point he saw the warriors plainly. His mouth became a thin slit and his eyes as flinty as quartz.

  They were Utes.

  Like the Blackfeet, Piegans, and Bloods to the north, the Utes had made no secret of their dislike for whites. They regarded trappers as invaders and either ran off or slew every mountain man they found in their territory.

  Nate’s valley happened to be at the northern limit of the Ute range. Years ago, when Nate first settled there, the Utes had made annual raids in an effort to drive him off. They had failed.

  It was doubtful the four warriors were part of a war party; none were painted for war. Nate figured it was a hunting party, maybe younger warriors eager to count coup who had decided to test the mettle of the white devil they had heard so much about from older men.

  Nate had to stop them before they reached his valley. And since he would find no better spot to make a stand, he pressed the Hawken to his shoulder and fixed a bead on the back of the last warrior. It would be an easy shot. The Ute would never know what hit him.

  But Nate lowered the Hawken and stood. He had never been a backshooter by nature, a weakness some of the other free trappers had mocked him for having. To them, shooting an enemy in the chest or between the shoulder blades was all the same. As one voyager from Canada had so succinctly put it, “A dead enemy is a dead enemy. C’est la guerre, mon ami.”

  Swallowing hard, Nate planted both feet, made sure his ammo pouch and powder horn hung loosely across his chest, and cupped a hand to his mouth. From his lips issued the lusty war whoop of his adopted people, the Shoshones.

  The Utes wheeled their mounts and sat staring at him. Evidently suspecting a trick, they made no move to come toward him.

  Nate tensed, ready to leap for cover when they charged. They were just out of bow range. By the time they got close enough, he would be flat on his stomach, picking them off as fast as he could.

  The huskiest of the warriors broke ranks, riding slowly forward, his bow slung across his back, a lance held low at his side. He acted calmly, as if he were riding into his own village.

  Keeping one eye on the others, Nate cradled the Hawken in the crook of his left elbow. He wouldn’t put it past the Utes to try a trick of their own.

  The warrior drew near enough for Nate to see the man’s features clearly, and Nate allowed himself to relax. Grinning, he strode to the bottom of the hillock and used sign language to say, “It has been many moons, Two Owls.”

  The Ute chief whom Nate had befriended years ago reined up and smiled in genuine friendship. “Too many moons, my brother. Question. Your family is well?”

  “And growing. I have a girl now.”

  “Does your son follow in your footsteps?”

  “He tries.”

  “Then he will grow to be a man of honor, as is his father.” Two Owls turned somber. “Question, Grizzly Killer,” he signed, using the name by which Nate was known by a goodly number of tribes. “Have you had any trouble with my people in the past few moons?”

  The query surprised Nate. Ever since he had arranged a truce between the Shoshones and the Utes, who had been squabbling over a remote valley special to both peoples, the Utes had left him alone. They no longer made annual raids against him. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Some of the young hotheads think that you are to blame for the death of a warrior named Buffalo Hump and his family.”

  “I have not rubbed out a Ute since the truce.”

  Two Owls signed, “I believe you. But the younger ones do not know you like I do, Grizzly Killer. They still see all whites as our bitter enemies. Were it not for my influence, they would already have paid you a visit.”

  The knowledge made Nate wonder how long his family would be safe if anything were to happen to the chief. “Tell me of this Buffalo Hump.”

  “He was an old warrior, well past his prime. In his time he counted over twenty coup, and he was widely respected.” Two Owls lowered his hands a moment, his sadness obvious. “Every Thunder Moon he liked to journey to Dream Lake, where he went on his first vision quest when he was only fourteen winters old. He would take his wife and two daughters with him.”

  Nate knew of Dream Lake, a small, pristine jewel fed by runoff, one of the highest lakes in the Rockies. It was located about fifteen miles from his cabin.

  “This last time Buffalo Hump did not return as expected and warriors were sent to learn why,”

  Two Owls signed. His gestures became sharper as anger crept over him. “They found him and his family butchered. Things had been done to him that even we would not do to our enemies. His wife had also been mutilated. As for his daughters—” Two Owls stopped.

  “There is no need to go on,” Nate signed.

  For a minute the chief simply sat there, glowering at the sky. At last he sighed. “It was a great loss, Grizzly Killer. Buffalo Hump and I were very close. I relied on his wisdom during councils.”

  “There were no clues to who did it?”

  “One,” Two Owls signed, staring Nate in the eyes. “The warriors found a strange knife. It is no longer than my longest finger and folds in half so that the blade fits into a groove in the wooden handle.”

  The revela
tion was deeply disturbing. Until that moment, Nate had suspected that other Indians were responsible for the old warrior’s death since few whites ever ventured anywhere near Dream Lake. But based on the description, the knife found had to be a jackknife, and only whites carried them. Warriors preferred big-bladed butcher and hunting knives. Indian women liked smaller knives, but the blades needed to be rigid and thin for the sewing and hide work the women did.

  “Those who trap beaver carry this kind of knife,” Two Owls signed.

  “I know.”

  “Since Wolverine and you live closest to Dream Lake, the two of you were blamed. I came to talk to both of you. We went to Wolverine’s wooden lodge first but he was not there.”

  Wolverine was none other than Nate’s mentor, Shakespeare McNair, who in his younger days had been a regular hellion in battle and thereby earned the name.

  “I have not seen Wolverine in over a moon,” Nate signed, suddenly worried that whoever slew Buffalo Hump might have done the same to Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s Flathead wife, Blue Water Woman.

  Two Owls pursed his lips. “You did my people a great service when you helped us settle matters with the Shoshones. I am in your debt, Grizzly Killer. But I do not know how long I can hold the young warriors back. Many of them thirst for vengeance. The only way to put out the fires in their hearts is to find the ones who are truly to blame. Since your kind are the culprits, you would have a better chance of doing so than I would.”

  The chief was being as polite as could be, but the underlying message could not have been more sinister had he made a declaration of war. Either Nate tracked down the real culprits or the Utes would come against him in greater numbers than ever before, and there was nothing Two Owls could do to prevent it. His family wouldn’t stand a prayer.

  “I am sorry, Grizzly Killer,” Two Owls signed. “You have taught me that not all whites are bad medicine, but my people do not see you through my eyes.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “There is no way to tell. I will try to get word to you if an attack is planned.”

  Nate made the sign for gratitude, which was done by extending both hands flat, palms down, and sweeping them in a curve outward and downward.

  The war chief of the Utes grunted and rode off to rejoin his fellows. The quartet then trotted to the southwest. Nate stared until they were out of sight, his mind awhirl with the life-or-death situation his family faced. He wasn’t about to move, no matter what. Yet how was he going to find the guilty parties when they were long gone, their tracks no doubt long since obliterated by the elements?

  Hurrying over the hillock, Nate mounted the black stallion and applied his heels. He no longer cared how tired the packhorses might be. Winona, Zach, and Evelyn were more important.

  Twilight veiled the majestic Rockies in a gray shroud when Nate paused on the lip of a ridge overlooking his valley. The sight of the familiar emerald lake brought a sense of relief. He was almost home.

  Descending to the valley floor took over half an hour. He expected to see smoke curling from the stone chimney of their cabin, but when the log structure came into view, it appeared deserted. There was no smoke. The door was closed. The leather flaps to both windows were drawn.

  A kernel of fear formed in Nate—fear that he was too late, that a band of young warriors had already struck. He fairly flew the last quarter of a mile and sprang from the saddle before the stallion came to a standstill.

  Hawken in hand, Nate threw open the door and burst inside. The single large room was empty. No fire had been kindled in the fireplace. The supper dishes had not been placed on the table.

  “Winona?” Nate called out. “Zach?”

  Dashing back outside, Nate ran around to the corral he had built. It was as empty as the cabin. All the other horses were gone: Winona’s mare, Zach’s calico, and their extra pack animals.

  There could only be one explanation, and it practically froze Nate’s blood in his veins. A Ute band had struck, carted off his family, and stolen their stock.

  Racing to the stallion, Nate vaulted into the saddle and made a hasty circuit of the cabin, seeking sign. Thanks to the expert teaching of Shakespeare and Shoshone friends such as Touch the Clouds and Drags the Rope, Nate could track as well as any man alive.

  At the southwest corner of the corral Nate found where a lot of horses had made off briskly into the forest. The freshness of the tracks, indicated by clods of earth which had not yet had time to dry out, gave him hope. He figured the attack had taken place within the past hour. So the Utes couldn’t have gotten all that far.

  At a mad gallop Nate raced in pursuit. He left the packhorses standing near the cabin. They wouldn’t stray off, not with plenty of grass and water handy.

  By now the twilight had faded to the point where Nate could barely see the well-marked trail. He worried that darkness would force him to curtail his pursuit until morning. Thinking of his wife in the clutches of hostile warriors was almost enough to give him fits.

  Suddenly Nate sped into a meadow. At the opposite end something moved in the shadows.

  On looking closer, he beheld riders and seven or eight horses. Elated that he had come on the Utes so soon, he whipped the Hawken to his shoulder and charged, throwing prudence to the cool wind.

  The nearest rider raised a rifle. Nate curled his finger around the Hawken’s trigger and fixed a quick bead. He was about to apply enough pressure to discharge the black powder when the oncoming rider whooped in delight.

  “Pa! Pa! It’s great to have you back!”

  Nate King snapped the Hawken down and broke out in a cold sweat. In his unreasoning fear and haste he had almost put a lead ball into his own flesh and blood.

  The boy galloped to his father’s side, so overjoyed that he cackled crazily and slapped his thigh. “Land sakes, Pa. It took you long enough. Ma was getting a mite worried. I told her you’d probably gone plumb to Canada. You’ve always wanted to visit the North Country.”

  Laughing, Nate reached out and affectionately rubbed the youngster’s tousled dark locks. “You’re pretty near right, but I had to go up, not north. This time of year it’s hard to find elk at the lower elevations. I had to climb a mountain so high I could have spit on the moon from where I stood before I found the herd I was looking for.”

  “Shucks, Pa. There ain’t no mountain that high. Don’t try your tall tales on me. I’m getting too old to believe those preposterous stories of you.”

  “Preposterous?” Nate said, pretending to be flustered. “Where’d you learn a two-dollar word like that? Have you been hanging around that no-account McNair again?”

  “Pa!” young Zachary said. “Don’t let him hear you talk like that or he’s liable to get his feelings hurt.”

  “Son,” Nate said, “that old coon has a hide thicker than a bull buffalo’s. He’s happiest when he can be as feisty as a riled bantam rooster, and he’s feistiest when I’m picking on him. Trust me. Insults slide off his back like water off a duck.”

  Just then Nate smelled a tangy minty scent and looked up. The aromatic fragrance was one he had inhaled countless times since marrying the loveliest maiden in the Shoshone nation. Eleven years later, he still felt that way.

  Winona King’s features were as smooth as the day she had taken Nate for her husband. She wore a finely crafted buckskin dress, which she had made herself. Her raven tresses had been braided so she could strap a cradleboard to her back. Her white teeth flashing, she bent to give her man a warm kiss on the cheek. “We have missed you, husband.”

  “So I gather,” Nate said, pleased by her show of emotion. As a general rule, Indians seldom went in for such public displays. Matters of the heart were confined to behind lodge walls.

  “Did you bring back as much meat as we need to tide us over until winter?” Winona asked in her perfectly precise English.

  It was a source of pride to Nate that she had mastered his tongue much more thoroughly than he had mastered hers. She was ex
ceptionally intelligent. Shakespeare liked to say that Nate had married her for her intellect instead of her beauty, it being McNair’s belief that a man who wed a woman smart enough for two came out even in the long run.

  “I’ve brought plenty of meat,” he said, “but I’ve also brought word of a heap of trouble. We have to talk.”

  “First greet your daughter.”

  Nate moved the stallion forward a step so he could lean to the right. A small bundle of joy beamed at him from out of the cradleboard. She cooed when he pecked her cheek. “Goodness gracious, precious. How you keep growing. The next time I come back from a hunting trip, I expect you’ll have a beau.”

  Winona had the missing pack animals on a long lead. She swung her mare beside her son’s mount and together they headed across the meadow.

  “What the blazes are you doing out here anyway?” Nate asked as he fell into step beside her. “Did the packhorses get out of the corral?”

  “No,” Winona said. “They had been cooped up so long they were restless. We brought them out to the meadow and let them graze and wander a while.”

  “We would have been back sooner, Pa, but for that dam painter,” Zach said.

  “What painter?” Nate asked, all interest. Recently he’d nearly lost his life tangling with a panther, or mountain lion as some of the mountaineers called the big cats, and he had no interest in doing so again.

  Zach bobbed his chin at a slope to the south. “Up there yonder. A little before sunset it set to hollering and screeching and spooked two of the horses. I had to fetch them before we could head on home.”

  “We haven’t heard it in a while,” Winona said. “I imagine it has wandered elsewhere by now.” As if to prove her wrong, in the pines directly ahead of them, a caterwauling cry rife with menace rent the night.

  Three

  Men and women who are genuinely brave do not think of themselves in a time of crisis. It is an undeniable mark of true courage that, when danger strikes, the courageous are more concerned with the welfare of others.