Wilderness Double Edition 11 Page 21

  “Never take anything for granted where your enemies are concerned.” Zach quoted. “Isn’t that what Pa is always telling us?”

  It was. Winona smiled as she tucked Evelyn into the cradleboard. At moments like these her son reminded her so much of Nate that it was as if he were a smaller version of her husband. He helped hoist the cradleboard onto her back and handed her the Hawken. “Thank you,” she said. In a good mood for the first time that day, she headed for the war party.

  “I wonder how Pa is faring?” Zach remarked.

  Just like that, Winona’s fine spirits evaporated. “We’ll know soon enough,” was all she would say.

  ~*~

  At that very moment the man they were both anxious about was bearing eastward at a steady trot. Since daybreak Nate King had held the stallion to a brisk pace in the hope that he would overtake Emmet Carter before the day was done. But as time passed he acknowledged that it might be wishful thinking on his part.

  The greenhorn was pushing the pinto mercilessly. They had not stopped once, near as Nate could tell. If Carter kept on the way he was doing, the poor horse would play out on him in a day or two. Until then, the trapper had to content himself with sticking to the trail and trying not to worry about his loved ones.

  To occupy himself, Nate tried to imagine what sort of man would betray his trust the way the greenhorn had. He’d done all in his power on the Easterner’s behalf, and look at how Carter had repaid him!

  The younger man’s upbringing probably had something to do with it, Nate reflected. From what he had learned, Carter’s folks had pampered him when he was little. They’d never made him do chores or work at odd jobs to earn money on his own. Consequently he’d come to think that anything he wanted should be his for the taking. Carter had been spoiled to the extent that he figured life owed him a living when actually it was the other way around.

  But the greenhorn’s lazy parents were only partly to blame. Carter had to shoulder a large measure of the fault for never growing past the selfish stage most younguns went through. There came a time when any growing boy had to accept full responsibility for his acts. Those who never learned this most important of all lessons went through life, as Nate’s grandmother had once phrased it, “as brats in men’s clothing.”

  Emmet Carter wanted to go home. So he figured that meant he had the right to do whatever he liked to achieve his goal. Killing was justified because it was in his own best interests. Stealing was acceptable because he needed what he stole. There was no ironclad right or wrong, in his eyes. He did as he pleased without regard for anyone else.

  Nate had known men like Carter before, mainly during the years he’d spent growing up in New York. City life, he’d observed, tended to breed selfish individuals much as alleys and basements and tunnels bred rats. He suspected that it had something to do with the fact that in cities, men and women had all their wants met simply by handing over a few dollars or a handful of coins. They never had to hunt game for their supper or for hides to make clothes. They never had to go without so long as they earned enough to make ends meet.

  In the country it was different. Rural folk not only had to earn a living, they had to butcher animals for food and cure pelts for clothes and do a hundred and one other things that city dwellers wouldn’t think of doing. Country folk were more in touch with the world around them, more in harmony with the cycles of nature and basic survival.

  Nate’s mentor, Shakespeare McNair, claimed that one day there would be more city dwellers than country dwellers. Nate hoped he wasn’t around to see that happen. The day it did, America would cease to be a country of basically honest, hard-working people who respected others as they respected themselves, and become a nation of selfish individuals who were always looking out for their own interests before all else.

  Shaking his head to dispel his train of thought, Nate buckled down to tracking. For the better part of the afternoon he pressed on through the high grass. He lost count of the number of rabbits he spooked and the number of frightened prairie chickens that took wing. Deer were common. So were roving coyotes and packs of wolves, which gave him a wide berth.

  About three o’clock Nate rode over a low rise and came on a fair-sized herd of buffalo. The snort of a bull was all it took to stampede the huge brutes southward. He reined up until the last of them were gone, then swung wide of the choking cloud of dust they had raised.

  The herd had trampled the grass to bits and their flying hooves had tom up the ground in spots, erasing Carter’s trail. Nate had to hunt for a while before he found it again, losing valuable time in the process.

  Well before sunset Nate foresaw that he wouldn’t catch up with the greenhorn that day. He slowed to a walk the last hour and stopped for the night in a buffalo wallow, where he got a small fire going. His meal consisted of jerky and pemmican.

  Before turning in, Nate walked to a nearby hillock and scanned the prairie ahead. No telltale glow gave Carter away this time. Either the man was learning from his mistakes, he hadn’t bothered with a fire, or he was farther ahead than Nate counted on.

  The big trapper slept fitfully. He kept dreaming of Winona, Zach and Evelyn, and imagining them in all kinds of peril. Well before the sun brightened the sky he was in the saddle, taking up the chase again.

  It was the middle of the morning when Nate located the spot where Carter had spent the night. The greenhorn had stumbled on a spring and shot a rabbit. So both the man and his mount were refreshed and raring to go. Catching them would be harder than ever.

  Nate rode on. So accustomed was he to always having his Hawken at hand that it felt strange to be without it for once. He still had the pair of polished smoothbore flintlocks, but they were only reliable at short range.

  Shortly before noon a brown hump appeared a few hundred feet to the northeast. At first Nate mistook it for a solitary buffalo, but as he drew nearer the creature heard the stallion and reared up onto its hind legs.

  It was an enormous grizzly. The mighty carnivore rumbled an ominous warning, its gaping maw wide, its giant paws cleaving the air as if it were eager to do the same to the mountain man.

  Nate never slowed but he did swing to the south. The monster watched him closely, and he feared that it might drop onto all fours and charge before he was a safe distance away. Grizzlies were as fleet as horses over short distances; he’d seen one topple a Shoshone warrior from a mount moving at a breakneck gallop.

  Suddenly the bear sank back down. The hump on its broad shoulders was the only part of it that Nate could see. The grizzly moved in his direction, then inexplicably changed course, hastened westward, and was soon lost to view.

  Nate stayed alert. Where there was one bear, there were sometimes more. Relaxing was out of the question until he had put two miles behind him.

  He had lost more time. Not much, but enough to insure that Emmet Carter would elude him a second day.

  Night caught Nate in the open. He made a cold camp, picketed the stallion, and curled up under a blanket with his arm for a pillow. It must have been two in the morning when a light sprinkle of cold raindrops fell, enough to awaken him and give him the chills. The rest of the night he tossed and turned.

  Stiff and bedraggled, Nate rose at sunrise. He ate on the go, a handful of pemmican which barely sufficed to satisfy his gnawing hunger.

  An hour later the trapper crossed a gully. Under an earthen overhang were the glowing embers of Carter’s fire. Scattered feathers showed that the greenhorn had eaten his fill of prairie hen.

  Nate was encouraged by the fact that he was only an hour behind his quarry. Apparently Carter believed that he had gotten clean away because the tracks were spaced much closer together; he was holding the pinto to a rapid walk.

  Raking the stallion with his heels, Nate did the opposite. From time to time he rose in the stirrups to scan the prairie ahead. The thrill of success sent a tingle down his back when at long last he beheld an ant-sized figure almost on the horizon.

  “Go
t you.” Nate said softly to himself. He reduced his pace by half to maintain the distance between them. It would be unwise to let Carter spot him just yet. He had to sneak close enough to overhaul the greenhorn in a burst of speed.

  All went well until noon. Nate kept the man in sight without giving himself away. Then a few low hills appeared, and Carter rode to the top of one and stopped. It was too far for Nate to see clearly, but it was evident the greenhorn had spotted him. The pinto wheeled and streaked on down the hill as if fleeing a prairie fire.

  There was no recourse for Nate but to ride flat out. He wound through the hills rather than up and over them and saw Carter about half a mile distant.

  Nate was a seasoned judge of horseflesh. He’d picked the pinto for his son because the animal had three qualities he admired most in a horse: a calm disposition, stamina, and speed. Now those same qualities were being displayed to his detriment, since the pinto was proving every bit as hardy as his own stallion. He gained ground, but not much.

  Presently a long line of trees testified to the presence of a stream. Carter gained cover. Nate tried to keep him in sight but couldn’t. He kept going and was well out from the cottonwoods when something tugged at the top of his beaver hat a fraction of a second before the sharp retort of the rifle wafted across the plain.

  Instantly Nate slanted to the north and executed a trick taught him by a Shoshone warrior named Drags The Rope. He swung lithely onto the offside of the stallion so that only his forearm and one foot showed. By peeking under the big black’s neck, he guided it toward undergrowth less than 200 yards from the point where Carter had disappeared.

  Nate thought he had thwarted the greenhorn, but he was wrong. Another shot rang out. The ball whizzed within inches of the stallion’s head. Carter was trying to kill it! he realized, and swung back up. Bent low, he zigzagged for sanctuary.

  Only one other shot boomed before Nate reached the undergrowth. There should have been two or three. Either Carter was as slow as molasses at reloading or he was conserving his ammo.

  As tall weeds and trees closed around him, Nate straightened. To the left grew a thicket. Behind it he reined up and ground-hitched the stallion. Drawing both pistols, he edged to the east until he came to the stream, another wide but shallow waterway called different names by different tribes. The Shoshones referred to it as White Bark Creek, as Nate recollected.

  Easing into the water, Nate hugged the bank and moved to the southeast. His intent was to catch Carter in the strip of vegetation between the stream and the prairie. Soon he came to a deep pool formed by a large tree that had fallen ages ago, partially blocking the flow. The water rose to his knees, then his waist. Since it wouldn’t do to risk getting the pistols wet, he sought a suitable place to climb out.

  That was when the brush above the bank crackled.

  Nate pressed flush with the bank and crouched so that only his head and his hands were above water. He heard footsteps, then a muttered oath.

  “Damn it! Where the hell did he get to?”

  Emmet Carter’s shadow materialized on the surface of the pool. Nate couldn’t see the greenhorn, even though the man was so close he could hear Carter breathing. The shadow shifted, and Nate was positive that the man had his back to the stream. He cautiously rose to his full height and extended both pistols, sure the man had blundered right into his clutches.

  But Carter was gone.

  Nate scanned the pool but there was no trace of his shadow. He lifted a foot and scraped it along the bank, seeking purchase. There was none. The mud was as slick as bear fat.

  Retracing his steps to a spot where the bank had crumpled leaving a wide cleft, Nate gingerly climbed a slippery incline. He paused every few seconds to scour the trees, but it was as if the earth had swallowed Carter up. Hunkering, he moved into a patch of high weeds and lowered onto his belly.

  Nate had to adjust his strategy to compensate for the advantage the stolen rifle gave Carter. The man could fire at him from a long way off, while he had to wait until Carter was within sixty feet of his position, preferably less.

  Not so much as a sparrow stirred anywhere. The shots had either scared the wild creatures off or silenced them, which worked in Nate’s favor. He could hear faint noises better. And any movement he spied would more than likely be the greenhorn slinking along.

  Soon something did move, in cottonwoods to the west. A flash of white and black hide revealed where Zach’s pinto had been hidden. Nate started to crawl toward it. As he emerged from the weeds the horse let out a loud whinny, which was answered by another horse. But it wasn’t Nate’s stallion.

  Whipping around, the trapper was startled to see five Indians nearing White Bark Creek from the east. Lured by the shots, they had come to investigate. They were well armed and had fanned out.

  Even worse, they were Lakotas.

  Seven

  Two days of travel brought the war party to Red Willow Creek. They concealed themselves deep in a band of timber and kept a constant watch on the surrounding prairie.

  As well they should. The place where they camped was less than forty miles from the junction of the South Platte River with the Platte itself, where Nate had anticipated they would find the Oglalas encamped at that time of year.

  It had been Nate’s idea not to follow the South Platte all the way from the Rockies to where it merged with the larger Platte. His reasoning had been that they were more likely to encounter Sioux along the river, so he had stuck to the open plain. He’d outlined his strategy to Winona prior to leaving their cabin, and she’d agreed with it.

  Now, deep in the heart of Lakota country with her young son and small daughter, Winona wished her man was at her side. She tried not to worry, but he had assured her that he would rejoin them well before the end of the second day. Sunset was not far off, yet he hadn’t appeared.

  To complicate matters, the Crows were restless. Being in the heart of enemy territory had put them all on edge. He Dog was the worst of the bunch. He paced like a trapped animal and snapped at his companions when addressed.

  Even Two Humps wasn’t immune. Many times he walked to a high stump at the edge of the clearing and climbed onto it to survey the sea of grass to the south. After the fifth time, he came over to where Winona rested with her children. “Where is he?” the warrior signed. “He should have been here by now.”

  “Grizzly Killer advised us to wait,” Winona reminded him, “so that is what we will do.”

  “But for how long?” Two Humps asked. “You know as well as I do that the longer we stay here, the greater the chance of our being discovered.”

  Bull Standing With Cow had been watching the exchange. “If the Lakotas spot us, they will rouse every warrior in the tribe. We will be chased all the way back to the Shining Mountains.” His features saddened. “I will never see my daughter again.”

  “We must be patient,” Winona stressed. “It is unlikely the Oglalas will come across us. We are too well hidden.” She gestured at Red Willow Creek. “There is plenty of water and grass for the horses, and we have enough pemmican to last several more sleeps.”

  He Dog stomped up. “I, for one, do not intend to stay here that long. Even if we do not make a fire, the Lakotas might find us. All it would take is for one of our horses to nicker when a war party or a band of hunters is passing by, or for the wind to shift.”

  Runs Against grunted in agreement.

  Outwardly calm but simmering inside, Winona said, “Are we so helpless that we cannot cover the muzzles of our horses when Lakotas are near? As for the wind, we are too deep in the trees for it to carry off much of our scent.” She paused and gave He Dog a haughty glance. “If I, a woman, am not afraid of the Lakotas, why should you be?”

  The stocky warrior thumped his chest and responded, “I am not afraid of the Lakotas or anyone else!”

  “Prove it,” Winona shot back. Then, cradling Evelyn, she gently rocked her daughter and refrained from looking at the Crows. One by one they drifted off unt
il only Two Humps remained. She raised her head.

  The leader was smiling. “You are wise beyond your years, my Shoshone friend,” he said, “and as sly as a fox.”

  Winona grinned, balanced the cradleboard on her legs, and replied, “Women learned long ago to rely on their wits when dealing with men.” Her grin broadened. “In a battle of minds, most men are unarmed.”

  Two Humps started to rock with laughter but caught himself and walked off chuckling.

  A few feet away, Zach leaned against his saddle, his rifle propped at his side. He admired the clever manner in which his mother had handled the situation and commented as much.

  “We are not out of the woods yet,” Winona said, resorting to a figure of speech her husband often used. “He Dog will pout until his patience is at an end, then he will cause more trouble. The next time, I might not be able to stop him from going off to find the Oglala village where Fetches Water is being held.”

  “He’s a damn jackass,” Zach stated before he could stop himself. Flustered, he hastily blurted, “Sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean to use such strong language in front of you.”

  “I have heard stronger, Stalking Coyote,” Winona said. “My ears will not fall off.” She slid her daughter from the cradleboard and playfully held her in the air while giving a little shake. The child giggled and pumped her legs as if anxious to walk.

  The Crows were huddled in two groups. In one was Two Humps, Bull Standing With Cow and Flying Hawk. The other included He Dog, Runs Against, Bear Ears and Yellow Owl.

  Zach stretched. He opened a parfleche and helped himself to a strip of jerky. It was the first food he had eaten all day. Although he would not let on to his mother, he was so concerned about his father that it had spoiled his appetite. “I’ve been thinking,” he mentioned between bites. “If Pa isn’t back by nightfall, do you want to go look for him?”

  Winona was of half a mind to consent but she answered, “Your father can take care of himself. We will do as he asked us and stay put until he catches up.”