Wilderness Giant Edition 5 Page 2

  Brilliant pink, yellow, and orange hues flared above the distant snow-capped peaks as the blood-red sun relinquished its hold on the darkening vault of heaven to a rising sliver of pale moon in the east.

  Nate King scanned the foothills bordering the Rockies for some sign of the stray without result. Free of the weight of the packs that would slow it down, he mused, the animal might be halfway to Mexico.

  Twilight claimed the prairie. A few stars heralded the myriad yet to sparkle. As was customary at that time of day, the wind increased, ceaselessly rustling the grass. A wavering howl fluttered to Nate’s ears, the first of many he would hear during the night, a signal that the wolf packs had commenced their nocturnal wanderings. Nor would they be alone. Night time was when the larger predators, the grizzlies and the cats, were abroad.

  Nate wasn’t worried. He had spent more nights than he cared to count alone in the wild. His trusty Hawken, crafted for him by brothers of the same name in St. Louis, could drop any animal—provided he hit it in the right spot. In addition to the .60-caliber rifle, he sported a brace of pistols wedged under his wide brown leather belt. Both were smooth-bore, single-shot .55-caliber flintlocks. At close range, they had almost the same stopping power as the Hawken.

  Slanted across Nate’s wide chest were a powder horn and an ammunition pouch. As well as his possibles bag. In a beaded sheath crafted by his wife, slung on his left hip, snuggled a Bowie he had obtained at Bent’s Fort. Tucked under his belt above his right hip was a Shoshone tomahawk, a gift from one of his wife’s kin.

  In short, Nate King was loaded for bear. He was supremely confident that he could hold his own against anything that came at him. Nor was his attitude unique. Those who made their living as trappers had to be as rugged as the mountains in which their quarry flourished. The Rockies tempered men much as a forge tempered metal, dissolving the weak into the dust from which they were spawned and molding the strong to the consistency of steel.

  Survival of the fittest, some might say, and they would be right. It was the same way with the wild things. Nature was a cruel mistress, bestowing continued existence on those creatures that adapted to her harsh demands and denying it to those that failed to cope. It was a bitter lesson— one Nate King had learned well.

  The mountain man’s instincts told him that it was time to turn around. Wheeling the stallion, he hastened to where he had left the pile. By then it was so dark that anything more than a dozen yards away was a murky blur. He almost missed seeing the pile.

  Rather than build a fire and advertise his presence, Nate opted for a cold camp. After stripping the packhorses and tethering them to picket pins to insure they would not imitate their wayward fellow, he unsaddled the stallion and gave it a thorough rubdown using handfuls of grass.

  Jerked buffalo meat sufficed for supper. Tepid water from a half-full water skin quenched Nate’s thirst. Then, spreading out his blankets next to his belongings, he reclined on his back, propped his head in his hands, and admired the dazzling celestial display.

  Lulled by the deceptively serene surroundings, Nate dozed. He dreamed of Winona, his beloved, and of Zach and Evelyn, his son and daughter. In his dream, the four of them were by the lake near their cabin when they heard rustling in the brush. Growling broke out, the guttural snarls of unseen stalkers. In his dream, Nate had forgotten to bring a gun. He stepped in front of his family to protect them just as a horde of shadowy shapes hurtled out of the brush and pounced on them.

  Abruptly, Nate King woke up. Clammy sweat plastered his forehead and neck. He raised a hand to wipe them, then tensed as an ominous growl issued from the grass.

  Pushing up into a crouch, Nate grasped the Hawken. He did not need to see the beast that had made the sound to know what it was. Wolves were out there, ringing him, taking his measure.

  They had caught the scent of the hide and the meat, and they were hungry. The stallion and the packhorses stood rigid, ears pricked. They had tangled with wolves before. They knew what to expect.

  Nate detected a hint of movement and brought the rifle up. Usually wolves bolted at the sound of a shot. But not always. To be on the safe side, he wouldn’t fire unless they left him no choice.

  One of the pack animals whinnied. An inky form, slung low to the ground, had materialized out of the night, at the fringe of the cleared space in which Nate had made camp. He swiveled to cover the lupine intruder and the wolf promptly retreated into the grass.

  The rustle of slinking bodies grew steadily closer. Made bold by the lack of resistance, the wolves were tightening the noose, closing in until they were near enough to converge on Nate and the horses in a concerted rush.

  Nate could not let that happen. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he bellowed, “Light a shuck, you uppity varmints! Go pester someone else!”

  Sometimes the mere sound of a human voice was enough to drive wild animals off, but not that time. The wolves continued to constrict the circle, their dark silhouettes distinct against the backdrop of lighter grass.

  The moment of truth had arrived. Nate had no other option. Elevating the Hawken, he trained it on a particularly large wolf visible at the clearing’s edge. There was always one wolf in every pack that was the leader. Drop the leader, the conventional wisdom went, and the rest would scatter.

  Nate yelled again, giving the wolves every chance to get while the getting was good. The big wolf brazenly slunk into the open, creeping toward a packhorse. Another wolf appeared. Then a third. Aiming slightly behind the lead wolf’s front shoulder, Nate pulled back the hammer, held his breath to steady his arms, then stroked the trigger.

  At the crack of the shot, the big wolf leapt straight up into the air, spinning as it did, and vented a piercing howl that must have been heard a mile off. It hit the ground on its side with a pronounced thud, breaking into violent convulsions. The other two promptly turned tail.

  Loud crackling in the grass assured Nate that the entire pack had taken to its heels. Rising, he marked their retreat until the noise dwindled in the distance. Satisfied they were indeed gone, he sat and hastily reloaded the rifle.

  For over an hour Nate stayed awake, vigilant. It was highly unlikely the wolves would circle around to test his mettle again, but the shot might have been heard by unfriendly human ears. Only when he was convinced that no hostiles were sneaking up on him did Nate lie back down with the Hawken resting across his chest.

  To the west, faint with distance, a grizzly coughed. To the south, coyotes erupted in an eerie chorus. Somewhere to the east, a bird shrieked in avian terror, its cry choked off to twitters and tweets that soon ended. All ordinary sounds.

  Gradually, Nate felt the tension drain from his sinews. He drifted off. If he dreamed again, he did not remember the images when he awoke shortly before dawn. Rising, he stretched, then paced to warm himself. More jerky made a tangy breakfast. Packs went back on the pack animals, the saddle on the black stallion. The hide and extra packs Nate arranged in a low pile and covered with grass.

  As the sun greeted the new day, Nate King forked leather and resumed his hunt for the stray. Were it not that he needed the troublemaker so badly, he would have let it traipse off to wherever it wanted and been gladly shy of the gadfly.

  By the middle of the morning Nate reached the pine-covered foothills. There, he discovered the horse had turned due south. He did the same, angry because the contrary animal was leading him ever farther from home. Soon, though, Nate’s anger evaporated, replaced by intense curiosity— and not a little anxiety.

  The strays trail bisected another. The new one had been made just the day before by three unshod horses heading northwest. It bothered Nate for two reasons. Unshod mounts usually meant Indians, and coming from the southeast as they were, the Indians were probably hostiles. Worse, they were heading in the general direction of the remote high valley that Nate called home. The addlepated stray had turned to the southeast.

  Nate gazed out over the rippling prairie, thinking of the cache. It would have to
wait. He was not going after the stray when his family might be in peril. Without another moment’s hesitation the mountain man cut the black stallion to the northwest and trotted on into the foothills, giving a sharp tug on the lead rope to urge the pack animals along.

  Nate paid close attention to the sign. Of the three horses, one was a big stallion like his, another a mare, and the third, based on the size of its hooves, a small horse, perhaps a mustang similar to those he had seen ridden by Comanches down in the Red River country. The three rode in single file, the stallion in the lead.

  An hour later Nate found where the trio had stopped for the night, on a narrow shelf watered by a small spring. Moccasin prints bordered the soft earth rimming the water, those of a man larger than Nate. They were the only obvious tracks, and Nate did not linger to search for more, not once the style of the moccasins became apparent.

  It was a little-known fact that no two tribes fashioned their moccasins exactly alike. The Pawnees, for instance, preferred footwear wider across the ball of the foot than anywhere else. Crows wore crescent-shaped moccasins. Kiowas liked theirs to have pointed tips.

  The tracks at the spring had been made by a Comanche. There could be no mistake. It confirmed Nate’s hunch about the mustang and filled him with keen dread. .

  Comanches were the scourge of north Texas.

  Fiercely independent, they had resisted the inroads of the Mexicans for years; they were just as fiercely trying to drive the white man from their domain. Although generally stout of stature, they were sterling horsemen, widely considered to be the very best on the plains. For the life of him, the trapper could not imagine what the trio was doing so far from their established territory.

  Of more immediate concern was the threat to his loved ones, and with that uppermost in mind, Nate raced ever higher, recklessly pushing the pack animals to go faster than was prudent. He was glad when a gap between two mountain ridges appeared above because it was the entrance to his family’s haven. Spurring the stallion on, he came to the opening and beheld the large valley he knew as well as he did the backs of his own hands.

  No sooner had Nate King set eyes on it than the crisp air was shattered by the blast of a rifle.

  Two

  No one knew when the practice started, but the hardy men who made their precarious living as trappers liked to refer to the lush high mountain valleys as parks. Having special names for things was a trademark of the mountain men. They called themselves mountaineers. They referred to beaver hides as plews and mountain lions as panthers. It was just another example of their colorful character, a rare blend of raw courage, unquenchable thirst for life, and, above all, the ability to adapt, that made them so unique.

  Nathaniel King was a master at adapting. He had carved his own personal niche out of the wilderness in a spectacular park rimmed by snow-crowned mountains. A broad lake provided his family with crystal-clear drinking water as well as fish and fowl for their supper table. Deer, elk, and lesser game were in abundance. There were only three trails into the park, one from the southeast, one from the northeast, and a secret route to the west used only by Indians until Nate King came along. The southeast trail was the gentlest of the three, threading down a series of switchbacks and across the rolling valley floor.

  Nate streaked down it, recklessly driving his horses in order to reach his cabin as quickly as possible. A thin tendril of smoke above the pines pinpointed its exact location close to the west shore of the lake. A second shot echoed off the surrounding peaks as Nate came to the bottom and lashed his reins like a man possessed. In his mind’s eye he envisioned his wife and children being set upon by the three bloodthirsty Comanches and viciously slaughtered.

  Figures moved along the lake. Nate let go of the lead rope and sped toward them. The packhorses would be all right alone until he could come back for them. His family was more important.

  It had long been Nate’s secret fear that one day he would return from a trapping trip or elsewhere to find his loved ones butchered or missing. He was no blind optimist. He knew the many dangers that might arise at any time, any one of which could snuff out the precious lives of those who meant more to him than life itself. Every free trapper had to live with the same ever-present possibility. It was an inevitable fact of life in the Rockies, the price paid for freedom.

  Suddenly Nate glimpsed one of the figures moving swiftly through the brush toward him. He slowed and brought up the Hawken even as he anxiously scanned the shoreline for sign of his family.

  The figure made no attempt to use stealth. Crashing through the underbrush like a bounding buck, it slanted toward the mountain man to head him off.

  Nate rounded a knoll, skirted a thicket, and came to a small clearing. He reached it just as the figure dashed into the open on the other side. Elation coursed through Nate’s veins and he sprang from the stallion.

  “Pa! You re back!” young Zachary King cried. Dashing up, he threw his arms around his father and squeezed tight. He would never admit as much, but he always fretted terribly when his pa went off alone. “I was just fixing to do some target shooting and saw you coming.”

  A dozen questions were on the tip of Nate’s tongue. Where were the boy’s mother and sister? Had they seen any sign of Comanches? He forgot about them the next moment as a much larger form burst from the trees.

  Nate’s reaction was automatic. Pushing his son aside, he leveled the Hawken and began to curl back the hammer. Only then did he realize the newcomer had a bushy beard and could not possibly be an Indian. Belatedly, the man’s features registered, and Nate blurted out in surprise, “Kendall?”

  Scott Kendall was a fellow member of the elite mountain-man fraternity. His reddish beard creased in a warm smile as he said, “Howdy, hos. It’s been a spell, I reckon. This coon is glad to see you. Give me your paw.”

  Nate shook, noting the iron strength in the other’s grip. As best as he could recollect, the last time he had run into Kendall had been at Bent’s Fort several years earlier. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “A business proposition,” Kendall said. “Why not make yourself to home and I’ll tell you all about it?”

  Nate was eager to reach the cabin, but the safety of his family took priority. Surveying the lake, he said, “First things first. Have either of you seen any sign of Comanches hereabouts?”

  “Comanches?” young Zach said, recalling the time they had traveled to Santa Fe and encountered a band along the way. Never in all his twelve years had he seen anyone who could ride like Comanches could. The warriors and their mounts had seemed as one, able to do feats he had never before witnessed.

  “I came across some tracks,” Nate said, stopping when Kendall chuckled heartily.

  “Sheath your claws, friend. You and yours are safe. The only Comanches in these parts are the two on my feet.”

  Glancing down, Nate was flabbergasted to find that the other mountaineer wore a pair of genuine Comanche moccasins. “What the devil?”

  Kendall lifted a leg to show the footwear off. “Comanches used to come to Bent’s Fort now and then to trade. I was in need of new moccasins one day and took a shine to these. They shed water like a duck’s back and are thick enough to last a coon’s age.”

  Nate thought of the mare and the pony. “You brought your wife and daughter along?”

  “Sure did,” Kendall said. “They’re up to the cabin, visiting with your missus.”

  Tension drained from Nate like water from a sieve. “Let’s fetch my packhorses and we’ll join them.”

  Zachary King fell into step between the two strapping men. He imitated their carefree swagger and cradled his Hawken in the crook of an elbow exactly as they did theirs. The men shared a hearty laugh over Nate’s having been all upset for nothing, but Zach didn’t see where the situation had been all that funny. What if it had been real Comanches? he asked himself. His ma, Evelyn, and he would have been in a fine stew.

  Nate led the black stallion by the reins to g
ive it a breather. He was intensely curious to learn why Kendall had paid him a visit, especially since they were no more than casual acquaintances, having met at the fort and a few times at the annual rendezvous.

  As best as Nate could recollect, Kendall hailed from Massachusetts. So did the man’s wife, a hardy pioneer woman who had braved the perils of mountains life for about a decade. Nate had to ponder a bit before he could recall her name. “How is Lisa faring?”

  “Just fine,” the bushy-bearded trapper responded in his booming voice. “She was as happy as a lark living at Bent’s place, and she’s even happier now that we might be going back to Boston.”

  “You’re calling it quits?” Nate asked. It wouldn’t surprise him, if so. Even though Kendall had struck him as the sort who loved living in the mountains, it was an all too true fact that few were able to bear up under the strain.

  The actual numbers were sobering. Two out of every three who ventured to the Rockies perished within five years. Of those who survived, only one in ten stayed more than a half-dozen years. It took a rare soul to endure the unrelenting onslaught of the elements, savage beasts, and equally savage men.

  “Not at all,” Kendall said. “She’s been after me to pay her kin back east a visit. I’ve put it off since we never have any money to spare. Now, thanks to Richard Ashworth, we have a chance to earn all we need for the trip and then some.”

  “Ashworth?” Nate said. “I don’t believe I know the gent.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Kendall said. “He only showed up at Bent’s Fort about a month ago, fresh from New York City.”

  “Does he aim to make his mark trapping?”

  “You could say that,” Kendall said, and smiled enigmatically.

  For a while they hiked in silence, and presently they came to the south shore of the lake, which they followed around to the west. Ducks, geese, and brants frolicked on the water. Gulls wheeled and squawked above it. The birds raised a racket with their constant cries.