Wilderness Giant Edition 5 Page 5

  The Cheyennes and Arapahoes had lost fully half their number. Those still alive were holding their own and were retreating into the trees on the other side of the clearing, fighting every step of the way. Many were locked in grim struggles with Pawnee foes.

  Confident that the Indians were too occupied to notice him, Nate rose up from concealment and ran toward the oak. Slowing when he spotted one of his flintlocks, he grabbed it up. The other pistol was close by. He took a step to retrieve it. Suddenly a feeling deep within him caused him to glance toward the conflict.

  Three Pawnees had seen him. Surprise lining their painted faces, they glanced at once another. At a word from the stockiest, all three charged. Two held clubs, the stocky one a lance that he poised to cast.

  Nate fired from the hip. The flintlock boomed and bucked and the heavy lead ball lifted the warrior clean off his feet and flung him a half-dozen feet to sprawl in a disjointed heap. The other two vented howls of outrage and leapt forward, their clubs upraised.

  Dropping to one knee, Nate palmed the second flintlock. In a blur, he swiveled the piece out, clicked back the hammer, and stroked the trigger. The muzzle belched smoke and lead. The foremost Pawnee lost an eye in an explosion of gore and fell to the earth. That still left one very mad warrior who roared like a beast and aimed a hasty blow at the mountain man’s head.

  Tucking at the waist, Nate executed a shoulder roll. The club glanced off his arm, inflicting a sharp pang, but nothing worse. Nate swept up onto his feet next to the warrior. Before the man could strike again, Nate bashed him across the nose with a pistol. The Pawnee teetered, blood spraying into his eyes. Nate struck with the other flintlock. Stunned, the man tried to bring up the club; so Nate waded in, battering the warrior senseless, reducing the Pawnee’s face to a shattered wreck. Only when the warrior groaned and pitched over did Nate relent.

  Meanwhile, the fight raged on. Most of the Indians were in the cottonwoods, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes giving ground grudgingly, the Pawnees strung out in a crescent, trying to encircle their enemies without success.

  Nate seized the moment. Wedging the pistols under his belt, he darted to the pile. He no longer cared about the packs of jerked meat. Getting out of there alive with the hide would be enough to suit him.

  Stooping, Nate wrapped both arms around it, rose, and turned. It wasn’t all that heavy, but it was bulky. He couldn’t carry it with just one arm. Making sure that no other Pawnees had spotted him, he sprinted toward the high grass. Two minutes were all he needed to reach the gully; then all he had to do was throw the hide over the packhorse, tie it down, and head for the hills.

  A wolfish yip was Nate’s first inkling that things were not going to go as he wanted. Two Pawnees had spotted him. He plunged into the grass just as they gave chase. Hunched over, he zigzagged over twenty feet, then hunkered down to see if the Pawnees had given up. They hadn’t. Spaced mere yards apart, they were heading straight toward him, looking right and left.

  Like an antelope fleeing a pair of predators, he bounded deeper into the grass. He deliberately angled away from the gully in order not to lead them straight to Kendall. Retrieving the hide had been his brainstorm. He had to deal with the situation himself and not endanger his friend.

  One of the Pawnees bayed and the couple came after him, their supple forms flowing over the ground like copper-skinned bloodhounds.

  Nate ran as fast as he could. The smart thing to do was to drop the heavy hide so he could go even faster, but he refused to abandon the blasted thing after all he had gone through to recover it. Weaving wildly to try and throw his pursuers off, he covered approximately a hundred yards, then abruptly dived onto his side.

  The drum of moccasins let him know the pair were much too close. Nate made no noise. Provided all went well, they would run right past him and not realize he had given them the slip until he was long gone. Once again, Fate thwarted him. The pair halted so close that he could hear them pant from their exertion.

  Nate craned his neck. Their dusky figures were framed by the paler tapestry of stars and sky. They whispered urgently back and forth; then one pointed to the south and they hurried off.

  At last something had gone Nate’s way. Once their footsteps faded, he rose and headed for the gully. Whoops and shouts rose from the belt of vegetation, a testament to the sustained savagery of the battle.

  A large shape unexpectedly loomed before Nate. He drew up short, sighing in relief when it nickered and galloped westward. Jogging onward, he presently came to the gully and scanned the bottom for Kendall and their horses. They were nowhere to be seen.

  Wondering if maybe he had misjudged the spot where he had left them, Nate moved along the gully rim. He only had to go fifty feet to verify that he had been right. Since he couldn’t see the man from Massachusetts deserting him, there was only one logical explanation. Kendall had heard the uproar and gone to help him.

  Dreading that the other trapper had paid the supreme price for his own pigheadedness, Nate raced toward the trees. His arms were growing weary from toting the hide, but he held on anyway.

  A fire still flickered in the clearing, casting an eerie glow over the corpses. The swirl of combat had gravitated dozens of yards from its point of origin and none of the principals were visible, although Nate did catch sight of a few warriors as they darted from cover to cover.

  Kendall was another story. Halting, Nate rotated on the heel of his right foot a full 360 degrees. He surveyed the clearing, the wall of vegetation, and the plain. It was as if the earth had swallowed his friend and their mounts, not leaving a trace.

  Nate was leery of lingering for fear the battle would spill into the prairie and engulf him. Yet he couldn’t leave without Kendall. He slanted to the right, thinking that maybe the other trapper had circled the clearing and he would do the same.

  Where the Pawnees came from, Nate never knew. One second he was working silently along, his senses primed, certain that no one else was within fifty yards of him. The next, a shrieking banshee rose up out of the grass and a club rained down. Nate would have died then and there if not for the hide absorbing the brunt of the blow. The impact pushed him backward, but he was unharmed.

  The second Pawnee was only a few steps behind the first. He lunged, overextending himself, and missed. In a twinkling Nate grabbed the club, pivoted, and pulled. It was the same as if he had shot the warrior from a slingshot. The Pawnee flew headlong into the grass, tumbling end over end.

  It was a momentary respite. Like a cat hurled through the air, the warrior bounced back onto his feet. Side by side, the two stalked Nate, who gave ground, matching them stride for stride.

  The mountain man was upset with himself for not reloading his guns when he had had the opportunity. He had drawn the tomahawk, but it would do little good him if both Pawnees pounced at once, which they were girding to do. Sharing sly looks, they separated so that they could come at Nate from two directions. Nate kept glancing from one to the other, trying to tell by their body posture when they would spring.

  It was not Nate’s night. As he took another step, his heel hooked on a clump of grass. He tugged to free himself, and in so doing he nearly lost his balance when the clump pulled up out of the ground.

  Yowling like coyotes, the Pawnees were on him. Nate looked up as they began to arc their clubs up and around. He was in no position to defend himself.

  “Try me on for size, you murderous devils!”

  From out of the night galloped Scott Kendall. The mountain man had his Hawken tucked to his shoulder. It spat flame and one of the warriors dropped like a poled ox. The other spun. Kendall clubbed him full in the face, felling him where he stood. Wheeling the sorrel on the head of a pin, he beamed at Nate. “So here you are! I was about to light a bonfire to get your attention.”

  “My horses!” Nate said, anxious to get out of there before more Pawnees appeared.

  “Yonder,” Kendall said, nodding to the northwest. “I left them there when I saw you were in tr
ouble.”

  Nate saw the stallion and the packhorse close to the clearing. Picking up the buffalo hide, he was off in a flash.

  Kendall rode alongside him, reloading the Hawken. “Tell me something, friend. Do you make it a habit of getting into scrapes like this over something as silly as a buff hide?”

  “Not as a rule, no.”

  “Good. Because between you and me, hoss, you had me worried. Shakespeare McNair once told me that you have the darnedest luck of any man he’s ever known, and I’m beginning to see what he meant.”

  Whether that was a compliment or not, Nate never got to ask. In the trees, a death scream rose above the general uproar. Nate was glad when he reached his horses. Heaving the hide onto the pack animal, he started to lash it in place.

  “What about your jerky?” Scott asked.

  “No time,” Nate said, tying furiously.

  “Are you sure? It won’t take but a minute—”

  Whatever else Kendall was going to say was lost in the commotion caused by a group of Indians who exploded from the cottonwoods into the clearing. Five Cheyennes and two Arapahoes were locked in a fierce struggle with at least ten Pawnees.

  “Do we take sides?” Kendall asked.

  “We do nothing except get out of here,” Nate replied. He wasn’t finished tying, but it would have to do. Grasping the lead rope, he boosted himself into the saddle and turned to depart. He should have known it would not be that simple.

  “Pards of yours?” Kendall said, pointing.

  How the man could joke at a time like that was beyond Nate—especially since four Pawnees were bearing down on them like a pack of rabid dogs. And Nate still hadn’t reloaded. “Damn!” he fumed, reaching for his Bowie.

  Quick as thought, Kendall drew one of his pistols and tossed it over. “Here, catch. And if we get out of this with our scalps where they should be, remind me to take your advice the next time you tell me I don’t need to go somewhere with you.” The big trapper slapped his legs against his sorrel and charged straight into the Pawnees, firing the Hawken on the fly.

  Nate was right behind him. He saw a warrior go down with a hole the size of a walnut in his neck. The sorrel trampled another. Then Kendall was in the clear, swinging wide to skirt the knot of clashing men beyond.

  A tall Pawnee barred Nate’s path. He was notching an arrow to the string when Nate’s shot penetrated his jaw. Deflected by the bone, the lead tore up through the neck and blew off the lower half of an ear as it exited.

  At a full gallop Nate, thundered past the Pawnees and the battling warriors. He lit out across the prairie, thankful to be alive, and he did not slow up for over a mile. The first thing he did was give the pistol back to Kendall and commence reloading his own.

  “It’s too bad you don’t want to go on Ashworth’s expedition,” the other mountaineer remarked wistfully. “We work well together.”

  “I almost got you killed.”

  “True. But lucky for you, I don’t hold grudges. Besides, now I have a tale to tell at the next rendezvous that will top them all.”

  It was no secret that the trapping fraternity was fond of swapping stories that most outsiders branded as outright lies. Jim Bridger, for instance, liked to tell about the time he visited a petrified forest where petrified birds sang petrified songs. Another trapper by the name of Baker claimed that he once had come on a hairy giant over eight feet tall who smelled like a passel of skunks holding a contest to see which one could stink up the landscape the worst.

  “Just so you don’t mention my buffalo hide,” Nate said. “I don’t care to be the laughingstock of the rendezvous.”

  They were in good spirits since they were safe. Nate treated himself to pemmican that Winona had packed and passed out some to Kendall. “I hope you won’t hold it against me that I don’t want to go with Ashworth,” he said. “But that greenhorn is liable to learn the hard way that most people fight shy of the Blackfeet for a reason.”

  “I’ll agree that a small group of trappers wouldn’t last as long as a frog in a snake den,” Kendall said. “But sixty well-armed men can hold their own against any number of warriors.”

  Nate had his doubts, and he hated to see his newfound friend go off and get himself killed. “Remember the Missouri Legion?” he asked, referring to an attempt by an army colonel to punish the Arikara for an attack on another trapping expedition. The good colonel had sallied forth from the settlements with over 200 men of the U.S. Sixth Infantry, several swivel guns, and two cannons. En route, he added over 700 Sioux to his force. Yet the wily Arikaras outfoxed him and fled unscathed.

  The ill-fated effort had done more to hurt white prestige among the warlike Plains tribes than any other single event in the short history of the untamed frontier.

  “That was different. Their leader was an idiot,” Kendall said. “Ashworth is made of sterner stuff. If you’d only meet him, you’d see for yourself that he’s not afraid of man or beast.”

  Courage was commendable, Nate mused, if it wasn’t taken to an extreme. “I just hope you won’t regret your decision.”

  Kendall had pulled a few yards ahead. Glancing back, he was going to respond, when from the grass in front of his horse rose a sound that sent a chill through both trappers and caused the sorrel to rear in panic. Nate’s stallion also shied, while the pack animal whinnied and attempted to run off.

  The sinister, hollow clatter of a rattlesnake’s tail always had that effect on horses.

  Five

  As the black stallion snorted and plunged to one side, Nate King firmed his grip on the reins and applied more leg pressure to bring his mount under control. The big black pranced a few feet, then calmed enough for Nate to turn to the packhorse, which was kicking its hind legs so hard that the buffalo hide had started to slide off. Nate hauled on the lead rope with both hands, taking up the slack. The animal tried to toss its head and rear, but couldn’t. Stymied, it stood stock-still, its flanks quivering. Nate was fortunate. No real harm had been done by the fleeting panic.

  But Scott Kendall did not fare as well. His sorrel shot straight up into the air and came back down with all four legs as rigid as boards. Kendall had been twisted around, facing Nate, and before he could get a better hold, he pitched to the left and was nearly unhorsed. Through sheer grit he held on, and he might have scrambled back up into the saddle had the rattler not slithered off into the grass right under the sorrel’s nose. The horse launched itself skyward again. When it hit, the jolt sent Kendall sprawling.

  Nate saw the sorrel vault upward a third time. “Look out!”

  Scott Kendall tried to roll out of the way. He almost made it. His left leg, though, was under the horse when those four heavy hooves thudded onto the ground, and one of them caught him on between the knee and the ankle. The resultant crack was like a gunshot. Kendall arched his spine, his mouth wide, but he did not scream in anguish as most would have.

  Swiftly, Nate moved in. Goading the stallion up next to the sorrel, he bent and gripped its dangling reins. Tugging, he guided the sorrel away from his prone friend. Once Kendall was safe, he hopped down and ran over. He was going to ask how bad it was, but there was no need. He could see for himself.

  The hoof had split the legging, sheared through flesh as if it were so much paper, and snapped the bone like a dry twig. A jagged section of tibia, glistening dull white in the starlight, jutted from the ruptured skin. Surprisingly, there was very little blood.

  “Oh, Lord!” Kendall said, his hands clasped to his leg above the break. “I haven’t hurt this bad since the time I fell off a cliff.”

  Kneeling, Nate gingerly probed with his fingertips. “I’ll have to set this right away.” If he didn’t, infection might set in. Once that happened, Kendall stood a very real risk of losing the leg.

  “Do what you have to, hoss,” the other mountain man said through clenched teeth.

  There was only one problem. Nate scanned the prairie but there wasn’t a tree in sight. It might be hours before
they spied one, and they couldn’t afford to wait. Sliding his tomahawk from under his belt, he placed it beside Kendall, then did the same with Kendall’s Hawken.

  As he drew his Bowie and stepped to the pack animal, Kendall said, “After all we went through, you aim to use that? There must be something else.”

  “There isn’t,” Nate said flatly. Untying the robe, he set it flat and unfolded it halfway. He inserted the tip of the Bowie at one end, four inches from the edge, and sliced upward until he had a length of hide over three feet long. Cutting it off, he added it to his growing collection. “That was the easy part.”

  “I know,” Kendall said. Flat on his back, he was caked with perspiration and barely able to keep his eyes open. “You’d better hurry or I’m liable to pass out on you, and then it will be that much harder.”

  Nate fetched their water skin. At last he was ready. Seating himself facing Kendall’s left foot, he lightly wrapped his fingers around the man’s ankle. “You might want to bite on something.”

  Kendall drew his own knife, stuck the hilt between his teeth, and nodded. “Ready when you are,” he said, the words slurred.

  Bracing his feet against Kendall’s upper leg, Nate steeled himself, then yanked sharply with all the power in his shoulders and arms. Kendall stiffened, his head quaking, his veins bulging, his face flushing. The leg popped straight. The broken bone slid back under the skin. Nate kept on pulling, knowing he had to get it just right or Kendall would spend the rest of his days a cripple.

  When his arms tired, Nate eased off, squatted, and moved to the break. Since he couldn’t build a fire out there in the open with a Pawnee war party on the prowl, he slid his fingers into the wound, probing to determine if the bone had realigned properly.

  It hadn’t. The bottom section was slightly higher than it should be. Nate worked his palm into position, then pressed. It gave reluctantly, rubbing down over the upper section until the two halves were locked together.