Wilderness Double Edition 13 Page 16

  The sun was about gone. In the gorge the darkness deepened rapidly. So much so that, in short order, Zach could not see the outcropping. Neither could the warriors see them. “If you want to get some more sleep, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “Sleep?” Louisa repeated. If she didn’t know better, she would swear he was jesting. How could anyone sleep on a bed of talus? With hostiles nearby, eager to slit their throats?

  Silence claimed the gorge. Total, nerve-numbing silence. It was broken by loud voices, then the pounding of hooves.

  “What are they up to?” Louisa asked.

  They were doing what Zach would do were the situation reversed. “They’re sending a man on around the gorge to see if he can get above us.”

  “What for? To keep us pinned here until morning so they can pick us off?”

  “Why should they bother, when all they have to do is start a slide?” Zach regretted being so forthright when her fingers dug into his wrist.

  The mental image of being buried alive by a flood of talus was enough to give Louisa the shakes. To take her mind off it, she occupied herself loading her rifle. And pondering. They had done their best, but it had not been good enough. If this truly was to be her last night on Earth, she wanted it to be special.

  Zach was depressed. He had let Louisa down, and she would pay for his failure with her life. Now they would never get to know each other better. He looked at her again, on the sly, admiring her beauty.

  Louisa took an eternity to screw up her courage. She sidled next to the boulder, turning so her back was against it. Inadvertently, she set some stones to sliding, but only a few. High atop the gorge the wind was whistling. “I never thought to end my days like this,” she said.

  “We’re not worm food yet.”

  “The breeze is picking up,” she mentioned.

  “So it is.”

  “Without blankets we’ll be half froze by morning.” She snuggled closer. “Unless we find some way to keep warm.”

  Zach dutifully draped an arm over her shoulders. He lost all track of time as they sat cheek to cheek, ear to ear. When she turned and her lips molded against his, he responded in kind. This kiss was even more wonderful than the first. He would have loved for it to last all night long, but a sound high overhead intruded.

  Louisa had heard it, too. “What was that?”

  “A horse.”

  “The warrior must have found a way up then.” Louisa sank into despair. “We’re as good as dead.”

  Hooves clomped. The horse nickered, and was answered by another past the outcropping. Someone laughed. The war party had revenge almost in its grasp.

  In frustration Zach smacked the boulder and declared, “I’d give my right leg for a fighting chance.”

  On bended knee, Louisa cupped her hands and prayed. She was still mad at God for the loss of her pa, but she still believed. As she had done so many times when prospects were bleak, she called on the Almighty for help.

  As if on cue, a shriek rent the night. A shriek torn from the throat of the man on the rim. A horrible scream that rose to a soul-rending pitch, then strangled off to a low whimper broken by loud sobs that eventually died.

  Zach did not know what to make of it. He tensed when stones and the like began to rattle down from above. Something was descending the talus. “Don’t move!” he whispered to Louisa. The racket grew louder. Whatever it was, the creature went by the huge boulder without stopping. Zach could see – something – at the limit of his vision. Something on all fours, gliding like a ghost.

  The warriors below jabbered excitedly. One of them hollered up to the man on the rim, but there was no answer.

  A rumbling growl filled the gorge.

  What happened next would live in Zach’s memory as long as he did. A shot answered the growl. But it must have missed. Horrendous snarls erupted, so intensely savage that Zach would have sworn a silvertip had ripped into the four men. Confusion reigned. The warriors screeched and bellowed. Horses whinnied and stamped. The whole time, those fierce snarls peeled off the high walls like the raving of a beast mad with rabies. Louisa clutched Zach’s arm in fright, and he could not blame her. He heard a lone horse gallop off, heard a wavering wail and the death rattle of a victim.

  Then all was still.

  “What was that thing?” Louisa asked breathlessly.

  Zach did not know. But they were about to find out. Whatever it was, it was now coming toward them.

  Evelyn was digging in the dirt with a tool her father used to punch holes in hides and leather when a footstep brought her head up. A calloused hand lowered.

  “You’re already in enough trouble. I didn’t think you wanted to get into more.”

  “Sorry, Pa. I was going to put it right back.” Evelyn placed it in his palm.

  Winona was there, too. She had seen their daughter take the swell-end jack from the tack shed, and had informed Nate. Jointly, they had decided enough was enough. Evelyn must be taught a lesson once and for all. Winona was going to take away her dolls for six months. Suddenly Evelyn pointed. “Say, who are they, Pa?” Nate gazed to the west. A pair of riders approached, leading another horse. The setting sun framed them with a golden halo. He had to squint to see clearly. “I don’t rightly know.”

  Evelyn was on her feet. “It’s Zach! And there’s Blaze beside him! But who is that other boy? And why is Zach riding a dun instead of his sorrel?”

  Nate had a better question. Why were Zach and the other boy holding hands?

  Winona had been staring hard at the second rider, and now divined the truth. Her hands flew to her throat. All thoughts of punishing Evelyn were forgotten.

  Caked with dust and grime, Zachary King proudly reined up in front of his parents and puffed out his chest. “Ma, Pa.” He got right to the point. “I’d like you to meet Louisa May Clark. The woman who is going to be my wife.”

  Nate and Winona looked at one another, then at their son, then at the young lady. They were speechless.

  But not Evelyn. She giggled and clapped and bounced up and down. “I’m so happy for you!” She paused. “Does this mean you’re going to move out?”

  WILDERNESS 26

  BLOOD FEUD

  One

  A serpent was loose in the Garden of Eden.

  Simon Ward discovered it quite by accident. A mare had broken her tether and wandered from his homestead. So for most of that sun-drenched morning he had tracked the contrary animal, finally coming on her in a glade. She was grazing, unaware of his presence.

  Dismounting, Simon cat-footed through the pines. This made the third time in as many months he had to fetch the mare back. She was becoming more of a bother than she was worth. Maybe, at the next rendezvous, he would offer her for sale or trade. Let someone else have the headaches.

  Simon was clad in a worn shirt and patched pants bought in Boston over a year and a half before. In his left hand was his trusty rifle. His waist was adorned with two flintlock pistols and a butcher knife. He would have liked to add a tomahawk to his arsenal, as his mentor had done, but he had not yet had occasion to obtain one. Maybe he could do that, too, at the next rendezvous.

  The annual gathering of trappers had to be experienced to be believed. Simon was not a trapper and had no desire to be, but anyone could go to the rendezvous. Hundreds of Indians from various tribes attended. So did missionaries, traders, and the few settlers who called the majestic Rocky Mountains home.

  Simon was one of the latter. Not all that long ago he had been a clerk at a mercantile in Boston, Massachusetts. Inspired by tales of the wonderful adventures awaiting those hardy enough to brave the wilderness, Simon had headed west with his new bride. That they lived long enough to reach the Rockies was due more to Providence than any skill on his part. That they were still alive was largely due to the mountain man who had taken Simon under his wing and taught him the skills needed to stay alive.

  One of those skills involved being able to move through the woods as quietl
y as a great cat. Simon was not an expert at it by any means, but he was silent enough to stalk within eight feet of the mare before she detected him. For that, the wind was to blame, for it shifted at an inopportune moment and bore his scent right to her.

  Snorting, the mare glanced around, spied him, and tried to bolt. As she lunged into motion, so did Simon. Taking three bounds, he hurled himself at the lead rope, which hung from her neck and trailed a good half-dozen feet behind her. His clawed right hand wrapped tight, but not before the rope had given a sharp jerk and tom skin from his palm.

  Letting go of the rifle, Simon gripped the rope with both hands and stubbornly clung on. He had to dig in his heels to keep from being upended. “Whoa, there, you infernal dolt!” he hollered. “Where in blazes do you think you’re going?”

  The mare, dubbed Sugar by his wife, whinnied and tried to tear free. Simon stood his ground. Calling the horse Sugar, he mused, was akin to calling a grizzly Sweet. Both had similar dispositions. He had lost count of the nasty bites and kicks Sugar inflicted. Were it up to him, he would cut her up for painter bait, but his wife was too tenderhearted to permit it. More the pity.

  Simon advanced, changing his tone, speaking softly, soothingly. Sugar bobbed her head and stamped, but stood still. Seizing the halter, he wagged a finger in her sassy eye. “One more fuss, just one, and so help me, wife or no wife, you’ll be in a mountain lion’s belly faster than I can say Andrew Jackson.”

  As if she understood, Sugar bowed her head. Some might think she was being penitent for her sins. Simon knew better. She was watching him like a hawk, waiting for him to turn his back so she could take a bite out of his backside. Smiling, he tugged on the rope, then hiked a hand to cuff her. “Felicity isn’t here to protect you now, you four-legged hussy. So be careful, or else.”

  Just then Simon’s gaze strayed to the nearby ground, to a patch of bare earth in which there was a clear footprint not his own. Alarmed, he bent over it. Visitors to the Garden of Eden, as he called the lush valley in which he had settled, were rare. His mentor and his mentor’s wife came by once a month, as regular as clockwork. Occasionally, a white-haired old mountaineer older than Methuselah stopped for a visit. Otherwise, except for a rare trapper or trader now and then, Simon saw little of other white men. So he expected the track to be that of an Indian.

  Only it wasn’t.

  Indians never wore boots, and this was clearly a boot print. Simon wasn’t the best tracker in creation, but he knew a square heel print when he saw one. The toes pointed to the east – in the direction of his cabin. Based on how clear the impression was and on the absence of dew marks, Simon concluded the print had been made earlier that very day, maybe about the same time he started out on his search for the mare.

  The thought of a strange white man lurking in the vicinity of his lovely wife goaded Simon into hurrying to his sorrel and quickly mounting. The mare in tow, he brought the sorrel to a trot.

  Once, Simon would not have worried in the least. Back in Boston he had been the most trusting person alive. He had believed everyone was basically honest, basically decent. That no one ever really wanted to harm another soul. In Boston it was easy to believe that. Boston was civilized. The rule of law held sway.

  In the wilderness things were different. Here the only law was survival of the strongest, the most agile, the cleverest. Life was a constant struggle; tooth and claw and cold steel pitted men against each other and the elements. Here there were men who would as soon kill a stranger as look at him, for something so paltry as a few coins in his poke. Or less savory reasons.

  Simon had learned his lesson the hard way. His beloved had been captured by slavers. If not for the timely help of his mentor, she would probably be the wife of a Comanche warrior or living in virtual slavery south of the border.

  Learning the truth about human nature had shocked Simon. Two decades of culture and polite society, two decades of church and Sunday school, had given him the illusion people were much nobler than many actually were. Truth was, some men were beasts. Truth was, some women were beasts. And they liked being that way.

  Simon could never understand people like that. His upbringing had been devoted to the Golden Rule: Always do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He was always nice because he liked being nice, and he wrongly assumed everyone else felt the same.

  Ahead rose a hill. To catch a glimpse of his cabin, Simon rode up and over, pausing on the crest. The Garden of Eden was crescent shaped, tapering at the east and west ends. A deep stream split the valley from northwest to southeast near the middle. On the east bank, across a gravel ford, stood the cabin. From the hill, a distance of only a mile, he could see it clearly, see the smoke curling from the chimney and other horses in the large corral. Of his wife there was no sign, but that was not uncommon. Simon figured she was indoors, doing one of the hundred and one chores each of them must do daily.

  Applying his heels, Simon rode into the forest and made a beeline for home. In his haste he made a mistake. He realized too late the smart thing would have been to follow the tracks. Now he had lost them, and it would be sheer luck if he spotted the intruder unless the man was right out in the open.

  Simon tried to think as his mentor would think. Staying calm was foremost. He had lost count of the number of times his mentor had advised him to keep his wits about him in a crisis. “In a tight fix a body needs to think clearly, and you can’t if you’re flustered. Train yourself to stay calm and it will give you an edge.”

  Simon tried now. He took deep breaths. He tried to force his body to relax. He imagined the tension draining from him like water from a sieve. It did no good. A tiny voice at the back of his mind screamed at him to hurry, hurry, hurry. In his mind’s eye he saw his darling wife being savagely assaulted. It set his heart to hammering, his blood to racing. He could no more stay calm than he could stop breathing.

  Minutes crawled by as slow as snails. Simon almost yipped for joy when the sorrel burst from cover in a meadow west of the stream. On the opposite side was the cabin, peaceful and picturesque. He thought of shouting but did not want to alert the intruder in case the man was close by and had not spotted him.

  Holding the rifle ready for use, Simon reached the ford. He started across, then reined up. In the soft earth where the bank had long before collapsed was another footprint, a clearer, complete print. Dread spiked through him. He raced to the other side, dismounted on the fly, and bolted for the cabin.

  Shoving on the wooden latch, Simon flew inside. There were only two rooms: a living room and kitchen combined, and a nook for their bed. His wife was not at the stove, not sewing, not in her rocking chair. Darting to the nook, he confirmed she was gone.

  Stark fear welled up. Simon ran back outside, around the cabin, scouring the flatland in which it was nestled and the dark forest beyond. Nothing. Not a trace of her. A glance at the corral showed all the horses were accounted for, including the one she favored. So she had not gone for a ride.

  Panic threatened to steal Simon’s reason. Standing still, he clenched his fists and willed himself to stay calm, to think, think, think. Should he jump back on the sorrel and search for her? No! Searching blindly would be stupid. He must find her tracks. They would tell him what he wanted to know.

  Starting close to the cabin, Simon roved back and forth. Right away he discovered a problem. There were so many fresh tracks, tracks she and he had made earlier, all jumbled together, it was impossible to tell which set were her last ones. Maybe his mentor could do it, but Simon was not skilled enough.

  Simon did not give up, though. He walked in overlapping circles. Since she had not taken her horse or gone to the open grassland to the east and north, he concentrated on the area adjacent to the stream. His hunch was rewarded. A solitary set of his wife’s small footprints led to a spot where she often went to fill their water bucket. He found the imprint of a knee, where she had knelt to dip her hand in and take a sip. From there her tracks bore to the south.
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br />   Evidently, Felicity had paralleled the stream, strolling casually along. That encouraged him, until he came to a place where two new footprints appeared. The man he had trailed had been hiding in tall grass. Now the man was stalking her, following Felicity without her being aware.

  Their tracks led toward the forest.

  Felicity Ward was a frail slip of a woman with sandy hair and a clear complexion. Despite her size, she was a bundle of tireless energy. She worked from dawn until dusk six days a week, doing menial tasks that once would have appalled her. Housework never held much appeal. Cleaning and mending clothes and the like she had always equated with utter drudgery. If someone had told her that one day she would be a contented homebody, she would have told them they were crazy.

  Yet she was.

  It was hard to admit that there had been a time when she would rather buy ready-made clothes than fashion attire from scratch. That she would rather send tom garments out to be stitched than stitch them herself. Or that she would rather dine out than prepare meals. She had surely been a typical modem Bostonian.

  Felicity could not say exactly when the change took place. It had not been on the long trip from Boston to the frontier, when she had spent many an hour debating whether she was the most foolish person on the face of the planet for going along with Simon’s harebrained notion. It had not been during the arduous trek across the prairie, when she had seldom been able to bathe or wash her hair and their meals consisted of fresh-killed animals dripping blood. No, the change had not come about until they claimed the valley as their own and built their cabin.

  There was something about having a home. Something about owning land all their own. Feelings she had never known she had – or could have – overwhelmed her. She wanted to make their haven as nice as it could be. She wanted to keep it clean and neat, to add to it, to always make it better. In short, she had become exactly like her mother.

  Initially, that concerned Felicity. When she was younger she vowed she would never turn out like her mother. She thought her mother lived the most boring life imaginable, a slave to housework, a victim of perpetual boredom. “Not so, child” was her mother’s response when Felicity made a comment to that effect. “I do what I do for all of us because I want the best for my husband and my children. And when you do deeds out of love, you are rewarded with a happiness so pure, you can scrub a floor and whistle while you work.”