Wilderness Double Edition 26 Read online

  “You and your stomach.” Hiram grinned. “No wonder women think the way to win a man is with food.”

  “In my case it was,” Elmer said. “My Hannah is the best cook I ever came across. Better than Ma, even.”

  “Now, now,” Hiram chided. “Your missus is as sweet as sugar, but Ma is the best cook ever.”

  “I will be sure to tell your wife you said that.”

  “Abby would be the first to admit she’s not a wizard with the stove,” Hiram said. “The first biscuits she made me were so hard I used them to pound nails.”

  The brothers chuckled.

  Elmer filled his tin cup with steaming hot coffee, sipped, and gave a contented sigh. “How much farther, do you reckon, before you’re satisfied?”

  “We need a spot with trees and water. We can’t build cabins without timber, and the water goes without saying.”

  “We’ll find a spot,” Elmer said. “There has to be one.”

  “The last timber we saw was along the Platte,” Hiram reminded him. “Maybe we should build there. It’s not much, as rivers go, but it flows year-round, and there’s plenty of game and fish to be had.”

  “It is close to the trail to Oregon country,” Elmer said. “It wouldn’t be like we were in the middle of nowhere.”

  “And closer to Bent’s Fort and any supplies we might need.”

  “Our wives would like it better there than here,” Elmer added.

  They were quiet awhile, and then Hiram said, “What do you say? Are we in agreement? Do we write to Shipley and tell him we have changed our minds? That we like the notion of a cabin along the Platte River better than a little house on the prairie?”

  “We are in agreement,” Elmer said.

  “Then tomorrow we head back to Bent’s Fort,” Hiram said. “After we rest up some, we’ll scour the Platte for sites.”

  They were in good spirits when they fell asleep, but the same could not be said when they woke up. Hiram, as usual, was the first to sit up, stretch, and admire the dawning day. Astonishment tinged with dismay brought him to his feet with his rifle in his hands.

  “Elmer! Wake up! The horses!”

  Always slow to rouse from slumber, Elmer mumbled, “What? What are you on about?”

  “Our horses are gone!”

  “They’re what?” Elmer sluggishly rose on his elbows and gazed in the direction his brother was gazing. With an oath, he shot from under his blankets as if fired from a catapult. “Where are they?”

  “How should I know?”

  “But I hammered in the stakes myself,” Elmer said. “I tied the knots. The horses couldn’t pull loose.”

  Hiram bent over one of the stakes and held the length of rope still attached to it so his brother could see. “These were cut. Someone snuck in during the night and stole them right out from under our noses.”

  “Without waking us up?” Elmer was incredulous.

  “We’re stranded afoot.”

  “Maybe we can spot them,” Elmer said, and ran toward the hollow’s rim. His brother shouted for him to stop, but Elmer paid no heed. The steep incline slowed him, but he pumped his legs harder and gained the top.

  “Damn it, wait!” Hiram bellowed.

  Elmer shielded his eyes from the glare of the rising sun and anxiously scanned the prairie in all directions. The only sign of life was a few birds flitting about in the near distance. “Damnation!”

  Hiram churned up the slope and stopped, puffing for breath. “That was stupid, running off like you did. You know as well as I do what those cut ropes mean. We have to stay on our guard.”

  “I’m fine, aren’t I?”

  There was a buzzing sound, and an arrow caught Elmer high in the right shoulder. The jolt spun him half around. He stared at the feathers in disbelief. Then the agony struck.

  “Elmer!” Hiram cried.

  Another ash shaft tore through Elmer’s left thigh even as a third transfixed Hiram’s right arm. Hiram dropped his rifle. Frantically backpedaling, they threw themselves down the slope. Hiram rolled, clutching his right arm to his side. Elmer hit on his left thigh and cried out. At the bottom they shakily rose and faced the rim.

  Unlimbering a pistol, Hiram looped his other arm around Elmer to help him stand. “We’re in it deep, brother.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Elmer gasped.

  Shoulder to shoulder they retreated toward the charred embers of their campfire. No arrows sought their flesh. No war whoops rent the air.

  Elmer was struggling to stay conscious, Hiram trying in vain to glance in four directions at once.

  “Where are they?” Elmer winced. “Why don’t they show themselves?”

  “They’re in no hurry. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “I wish we could pull these arrows out,” Elmer said.

  Hiram looked at the shaft that had pierced his bicep. Blood stained his shirt, and the stain was spreading “They’re good, whoever they are.”

  “How do you figure?” Elmer asked. “They missed our vitals.”

  “They weren’t trying to kill us,” Hiram explained. “They want us hurt and weak so they can take their sweet time finishing us off.”

  “Sweet Jesus.” Elmer’s face was as pale as paper. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He gripped his brother’s shirt. “I don’t want to be tortured.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “We should run for it before we lose too much blood. Then it will be too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” Hiram said, and nodded.

  Mounted warriors had appeared on the rim. Two to the north, one each to the east, south, and west. The warriors had arrows nocked to sinew strings but made no attempt to use their bows.

  Elmer pointed his flintlock but did not shoot. “Which tribe are they, do you reckon?”

  “Comanches.”

  “Oh God,” Elmer said. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.”

  One

  He was white, but there was much about him that was red: his shoulder-length black hair, his beaded buckskins, his moccasins. The sun had burned him darker than most whites, with the result he looked almost red. But the beard gave him away. The beard, and his green eyes, twin emeralds that swirled with the untamed currents and haunting eddies of the wilderness.

  He was white, but he was dark. He was tame, but he was wild. He was at home in two worlds, that of the white and the red, yet he lived in neither. He had carved his own niche, a niche for him and his loved ones, and he would live no other way.

  His white name was Nate King. Nathaniel King, to be specific, after the apostle in the Bible.

  His Indian name, a name bestowed on him years ago by a Cheyenne warrior but now the name by which a dozen tribes called him, was Grizzly Killer. Of all the white men who ever lived, of all the red men who ever were, he had slain more grizzlies than any other. Not by choice. Not by design. In the early days of the beaver trade, when grizzlies were as thick as ticks on a Georgia hound, whimsical fate had thrown him into in the path of grizzly after grizzly It had been fight or die, and he was fond of breathing.

  White by birth, Shoshone by adoption. Two worlds, the white and the red. Two worlds at war with one another. Two worlds that refused to get along. Refused to extend the hand of friendship, preferring instead the bloodied fist of battle. Mutual loathing was the order of things, so that many thousands of whites hated the red race for no other reason than they were red, and many thousands of red men and women hated whites because they were white.

  Two sides, always at each other’s throats. Two sides, despising one another so fiercely, they waged relentless conflict. Two worlds that had one trait in common: their deep-rooted hatred.

  Nate King hated neither. He had lived as a white and he had lived as a red, and he had discovered the two were much more alike than either was willing to admit. They shared similar hopes, similar fears. Strip away the different clothes and the different customs and they were, at their core, people. Ordinary people.

&n
bsp; Nate considered himself ordinary. Others might disagree. He had sacrificed the prospect of becoming an accountant at a prestigious New York firm to travel west. In the Rocky Mountains he began a new life, that of a free trapper. When the demand for plews peaked, he remained in the mountains. They had become as much a part of him as his blood. He was one of the first to become known as a Mountain Man, a hardy new breed that dared any peril in the pursuit of personal freedom.

  Nate did not mind being called that. He lived in the mountains, and he was a man. A man with a devoted wife, a lovely Shoshone named Winona who had borne them two children, a son, now married, and a daughter.

  Nate’s wife was the reason, on this scorcher of a summer’s afternoon, with the blazing sun the only splash of color in an azure sky, that he reined his dusty bay to a stop on a low rise and gazed down on the destination he had ridden ten days to reach. “There it is,” Nate said to the bay. “A lot of bother to go to, if you ask me, but if it makes her happy, then the bother was worth it.”

  Built on the Arkansas River, Bent’s Fort was best described as an adobe castle. The siblings who built it, William and Charles Bent, along with their other brothers, bestowed the name. Their partner in the enterprise, Ceran St. Vrain, bestowed his aristocratic manner and a flair for business. The Bents and St. Vrain were typical of most whites in that their purpose was to make a lot of money trading with the red man, but they were not typical in that they did not look down their noses at their customers.

  Far from it. William Bent had been adopted by the Cheyenne, just as Nate had been adopted by the Shoshones. Bent had taken another page from Nate’s book and married a Cheyenne maiden. A chief’s daughter, no less.

  The fort, which was not a military post and was not manned by soldiers, was neutral ground. A place where warriors from sundry tribes came to barter. Often the warriors were enemies. Anywhere else, they would fly at one another with the urge to count coup roaring in their veins. But not at Bent’s Fort. It was understood that any tribe that broke the truce would be banned, and the fort was the source of dearly desired articles tribes could not obtain anywhere else.

  Nate had been amazed the first time he set eyes on the trading post. The years had not diluted his amazement.

  It was huge. The outer walls were more than three feet thick, rendering them impervious to bullets and arrows, and close to fifteen feet high. The front and rear walls extended one hundred and forty feet, the side walls close to one hundred and eighty. Within those walls was room enough for a two-hundred-man garrison and several hundred animals.

  The comparison to a castle was not romantic whimsy. Perched atop the northwest and southeast corners were round towers eighteen feet across manned by lookouts with artillery pieces. Several times a year the field pieces were set off. To celebrate holidays, the Bents and St. Vrain claimed. But they also did it to intimidate the Indians, and it was remarkably effective.

  Entrance to the fort was through a wide gate in the center of the south wall. A gate that was kept closed for safety’s sake. Near the door was a small square porthole. Those wanting to be admitted had to first show themselves at the porthole under the watchful eyes of the lookouts in the southeast tower and the sentries on the ramparts.

  The small wooden slat slid aside at Nate’s knock. A ruddy face bristling with a red beard and grimy with dirt and sweat peered out.

  “Who are you, then? You don’t look entirely white and you don’t look completely Indian. But you’re certainly not red with those green eyes of yours, or I’m not an Irishman.”

  “My name is King. I’m here to see Ceran St. Vrain.”

  “How is that again?” the man said. “Sure it is that Mr. St. Vrain does not personally meet with every rascal who pays us a visit, whether red or white or in between.”

  “You must be new,” Nate remarked.

  “Finnin’s the name, and yes, boyo, I’ve been here two months. I intend to be here many more, which is another reason I cannot rush off to do your bidding. I like me job.”

  “He won’t fire you for fetching him,” Nate said. “He’s expecting me.”

  “Well acquainted, are you?” Finnin said with ripe sarcasm. “Next you’ll be spinning a yarn about supping with him on occasion.”

  “I’ve known Ceran a good many years,” Nate confirmed. “He and I have shared a table, yes.”

  Finnin chuckled. “Is that so? And what was your name ag—” He caught himself, and blinked. “Did you say King?”

  “That I did, boyo,” Nate said, smiling.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance be the gentleman I’ve heard so much about? The one who brought elk meat last winter when everyone was starving.”

  “One and the same,” Nate admitted. “I was telling the truth when I said that Ceran and I—” Nate stopped. The ruddy face had disappeared. There was a commotion, and a scraping sound as the bar was lifted. He gigged the bay on through.

  “Welcome, Mr. King,” Finnin said with a bow and a flourish. “Bent’s Fort is at your disposal.”

  “You change with the wind.”

  “I deserve that. But no, sir, I’m not as fickle as most any female. It’s just that I have me orders.” Finnin studied him. “So you’re the great man. The legend. Up there with Bridger and Carson and Shakespeare McNair.”

  “My best friend and mentor,” Nate said.

  “Is that so?” Finnin was genuinely impressed. “That makes you doubly famous, then. I’ve heard Mr. St. Vrain mention you. All about how you saved his life once.”

  Nate went to ride on but Finnin had more on his mind.

  “Is it true what folks say, sir? That you’ve killed more of the giant silver-tipped bears than any boyo since Adam?”

  “So rumor has it.”

  “Humble, are you? Well, that’s nice. It truly is. But if you have done only half the things people talk about, you have no cause to make so little of your accomplishments.”

  “If you say so,” Nate said. “But you shouldn’t believe everything loose tongues and liquor spill.”

  “The men who told me about you, sir, were as sober as the two of us are right this minute.” Finnin grinned and winked. “Make that you. I might have had a wee dram for breakfast to wash down me mush. And now that I think about it, I forgot the mush.”

  Nate grinned. He had taken a liking to the fellow.

  “Look me up later and you can treat me to a drink,” Finnan proposed.

  “Since it’s your invite, shouldn’t you treat me?”

  “I’m Irish. Finagling is in my blood. But I’ll gladly treat you if you get me drunk enough.”

  Nate chuckled. “I doubt I’ll be here all that long.”

  A short way in, buildings surrounded an open square. To the right was the blacksmith shop. Past it, the trading post proper. Along the inside of the west and north walls were corrals filled with milling horses and mules, a few oxen, and not a few cattle.

  As usual, the post was awhirl with activity. A large party of traders bound for Santa Fe were buying supplies. Mingling with the traders were settlers, frontiersmen, and friendly Indians: Crows, Nez Perce, a number of Cheyenne, but no Shoshones.

  The hitch rail was lined with mounts. Nate tied his bay to the near end. After stretching to relieve a cramp low in his back, he cradled his Hawken in the crook of an elbow and went in. He stopped in the doorway.

  The aisles between the shelves were packed with people. The shelves themselves were crammed with every item under the sun, or at least every item hardy travelers venturing into the heart of the unknown would need. Everything from ammunition to jerky to blankets to an assortment of knives. From bolts of cloth to tools, lanterns, and lamps. From harness and bridles to sewing needles, flour, axle grease, shirts, pans and more. A lot more.

  The clerks were hard pressed to keep up with demand. Scurrying busily about, they answered a hundred and one questions, or accepted payment.

  Nate took one look and promptly turned around. He did not see St. Vrain, which was j
ust as well. The press of human flesh was not to his liking. Backing out, he leaned against a post and debated where to look next.

  “I see you made it, Nathaniel.”

  Only one person called Nate by his given name. Smiling, he turned and held out a large, callused hand. “Ceran. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

  “Of course it is,” St. Vrain said. He was, as always, a fount of suave charm.

  The two of them laughed, and Nate said, “Still the same old Ceran. What can I do to repay you?”

  “Friends do not help friends for a reward,” St. Vrain said. “They do it because they are friends.”

  Nate did not want to seem too eager despite the long ride and his yearning to return home, so he asked, “How is Bill these days?”

  “As unflappable as ever,” St. Vrain replied. “Half the time he is off with the Cheyenne. He’s a lot like you. He has become so much like the Indians, he could almost pass for one. But I must admit that his lovely wife, like yours, is a priceless treasure.”

  “I’ll have to remember to call her that when I get back,” Nate quipped. “It will impress her.”

  “I suppose you are anxious to learn if your shipment has arrived?” St. Vrain asked. “Worry no longer. It has. Two weeks ago. I placed them in a back room for safe keeping. They are quite fragile, and I was afraid something might happen to them.” He motioned. “Follow me.”

  Nate threaded through the press of people in the post. A redwood among saplings, he towered a full head over most everyone else. With his broad shoulders and breadth of chest, he was a living portrait of raw vitality.

  “So how is that new valley of yours?” St. Vrain inquired. “The one you relocated to a while back?”

  “It’s everything we hoped for,” Nate answered. “We have a cabin on the shore of a lake. My son and Shakespeare McNair built their cabins nearby. There’s plenty of game, and so far we’ve only had a few encounters with hostiles.”

  “Only a few?” St. Vrain grinned. “But to be fair, judging from your past descriptions, it’s a veritable Eden.”