Wilderness Giant Edition 5 Read online

  A tiny spur of bone poked at an angle above the break. Nate pried it back and forth with his fingernail until it came off. “That should be the worst of it.”

  Kendall had passed out, the knife still clenched in his mouth. Nate cleaned the wound as best he was able. Next he placed the Hawken, barrel up, against the leg. His tomahawk went against the other side, at the break. It took some doing to wrap the hide without disturbing the set bone, but at length he tied a bulky knot and sat back to inspect his handiwork.

  It would do, Nate decided, until he could make a proper splint. Rather than wake Kendall and go on, he let the man enjoy badly needed rest. His rifle across his lap, he sat up the remainder of the night, keeping watch.

  A band of bright pink highlighted the eastern horizon when Scott Kendall moaned and opened his eyes. Wincing, he began to rise.

  “I’d take it easy, were I you,” Nate said. “If any dirt gets in that break, you’ll be sorry.”

  “It’s morning already?” Kendall said sluggishly. Holding onto the barrel of his Hawken to steady his leg, he sat up and examined the improvised splint. I’m obliged. You did a right fine job.”

  “Care for some jerky?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  From his possibles bag, Nate took several pieces and passed them over. Helping himself to a sizable chunk, he hungrily took a bite. “I’m real sorry it had to come to this.”

  “Wasn’t your fault,” Kendall said with his mouth full.

  Nate felt differently, but said nothing. It never would have happened if he hadn’t been so pigheaded about recovering the damn hide.

  “I won’t be able to go on Ashworth’s expedition, but at least I’m alive,” Kendall said. “Somehow or other, I’ll scrape up enough money for Lisa and me to pay her folks a visit. The good Lord will provide. He always does.”

  The knot of guilt that had formed in Nate swelled. He had completely forgotten about the funds the Kendalls needed to go back east. Now they were stuck in the mountains, and all on account of him. A germ of an idea took root. He mulled it over as he helped Kendall to stand and gave him a hand mounting.

  Kendall gnashed his teeth and huffed and puffed, but he accomplished it on the first try. Holding fast to the saddle, he grinned weakly and said, “Good thing for you, friend, that I only weigh about two hundred and forty. Imagine if I was really heavy!”

  Despite himself, Nate chuckled. He rigged the lead rope so that the sorrel would follow his stallion and the packhorse brought up the rear.

  For the better part of the morning the two trappers traveled to the southwest. Nate watched Kendall closely. The man from Massachusetts dozed several times, but always managed to stay upright.

  Noon found them in the shade of a cleft knoll. Nate allowed himself a few sips from the water skin, then let Kendall drink to his heart’s content. He examined the leg. It had swollen to twice its normal size and was mildly discolored above the broken bone. Nate picked at the flesh to insure it wasn’t gangrenous.

  Kendall tried to make light of his predicament. “Maybe you want to stomp on it a few times to see how it holds up?”

  Nate was eager to reach his cabin as quickly as possible. He pushed the horses, but not so fast as to cause Kendall undue suffering. Even after the sun went down, he rode on, refusing to rest until almost midnight.

  “By tomorrow at this time you’ll be snug in a bed.” Nate said as they turned in. Since there had been no hint of pursuit, he judged it safe to catch some sleep himself.

  “I wouldn’t want to put you out on my account,” Kendall said. “We’ll make a lean-to near your cabin and make do.”

  “Try a harebrained stunt like that and I’ll bust your other leg.”

  Kendall cocked a bushy eyebrow. “You’re not related to my missus by any chance, are you?”

  “No, why?”

  “Just wondered.”

  The next morning Kendall’s forced levity was absent. Overnight the leg had swollen even more and the discoloration had spread a few inches. Nate mimicked a marble statue as he removed the strip of soiled hide and replaced it with a new one. He did not want his worry to be apparent.

  The wound was infected—not seriously yet, but Nate had to reach Winona before another day went by. She was skilled with herbal treatments— remedies unknown to white doctors, yet every bit as effective.

  Kendall did all right until the middle of the morning. Nate happened to look back and saw that he had dozed off for the ninth or tenth time and was slowly sliding to the right. Another few seconds and the man would fall. Wheeling, Nate came alongside just in time. He looped an arm around the trapper’s midsection.

  “What?” Kendall said, awakening.

  “You were about to try to stand on your head,” Nate said.

  “Maybe you should have let me. In my condition, it’d be easier to walk on my ears than my legs.”

  The afternoon turned out to be extremely hot. Nate held the horses to a walk, never more than arm’s reach from his companion. His earlier estimate turned out to be wrong. There was no way they would reach the valley by midnight. His best guess was that they would arrive by the next afternoon. That meant another night without treatment for poor Kendall.

  A dry wash offered a safe haven. Nate discovered that his friend had a fever, and he stayed up as long as his body held out, placing one wet cloth after another on Kendall’s hot brow. By morning, the fever was worse and Kendall was so weak that Nate had to tie him on the sorrel.

  More hours of plodding across the shimmering grassland went by. Nate was glad when the foothills framed the plain in the distance, even gladder when he made out Long’s Peak. Named for an army lieutenant by the same name, the highest peak in the central Rockies was located due south of his hidden valley. Whenever Nate saw it, he knew that home and hearth were not far off.

  The climb was grueling. Nate had to go slow because Kendall was too weak to ride unassisted, even tied on. They made painstaking progress. It was late afternoon when they cleared the gap that brought them down to the valley floor within sight of the lake.

  Kendall swayed with every step the sorrel took. Nate had to ride next to him and hold onto Kendall’s shoulder. When still a hundred yards out, he hollered, “Hello, the cabin!”

  The door opened within moments. Winona and Lisa Kendall came out. One look was all it took to bring the pair on the run. Zach was not far behind, and he helped Nate get the stricken mountain man down.

  From then on, the women took over. Winona shooed Nate and Zach out and told them to be handy in case they were needed. Nate made for the lake to get a drink, but stopped when his wife reappeared.

  “Husband,” Winona said urgently, wishing they had a few quiet moments they could spend together, “we need pannonzia.” That was the Shoshone word for yarrow. Her people boiled the whole plant for use as a poultice.

  “I know where to get it,” Nate said, and jogged off. Her tone inflamed him with urgency. Evidently, Kendall was at death’s door.

  “What about me, Ma?” young Zach asked, eager to be helpful. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Dabi segaw,” Winona said.

  “I will fly like the wind,” Zach promised in the Shoshone tongue and raced northward.

  Winona went back in. Lisa Kendall, as pale as the sheet on which her husband lay, stood by the bed, gripping his hand. Vail Marie was against the wall, petrified with fear for her father. Winona would have liked to have told them that Scott Kendall would be fine, but she had never told a lie in her life and it was far from certain that he would pull through. So she said, “I have treated broken bones before. Most are nothing to worry about.”

  Neither wife nor daughter responded. To take their minds off Kendall, Winona said, “We will need hot water. A lot of it. And I am low on wood.”

  “Leave it to us.” Lisa beckoned to her offspring, then hastened through the doorway.

  From a wooden peg, Winona took a beaded parfleche and set it on the table. She removed
a small clay bowl, an egg-shaped rock she used to grind leaves and sometimes entire plants into a fine powder, and packets of herbs she had collected.

  The family’s coffeepot rested on the coals in the stone fireplace Nate had constructed many winters past. Winona emptied the grounds and swished the pot clean with a slender brush fashioned from porcupine quills.

  It wasn’t long afterward that Lisa and Vail Marie returned bearing a full water skin and busted branches. Lisa started a fire. In short order the coffeepot was boiling over.

  Winona was about to go see what was keeping her husband when Nate showed up with the yarrow. Not knowing exactly how much she would need, he’d brought enough to treat the entire Shoshone tribe. He handed it over without comment and stepped to the bed where Kendall’s wife and child held the brawny trapper’s calloused hand.

  “Don’t fret none. My wife can mend him if anyone can.”

  They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. The anxiety their faces mirrored was eloquent evidence of their innermost feelings.

  It was another half hour before Zach arrived. He’d had to venture farther afield to find the plant his mother wanted. No one noticed him, at first. They were crowded close to the bed, observing his ma. He went over to see what she was doing and had to choke down bitter bile.

  Winona had removed the crude bandage, exposing a hideous wound. More black and blue than the normal hue of human flesh, it gave off a rank odor. Pockets of pus rimmed the edge. In one spot, the bone was exposed, and around it the flesh had festered to where it was downright putrid. Winona was cleaning the wound with a thin knife, cutting away strips of decayed skin and puncturing the pus bubbles.

  Zach feared he would be sick. Placing the plant on the table, he hurried outdoors and greedily gulped fresh air. A hand fell on his shoulder, causing him to nearly jump clean out of his moccasins.

  It was Nate. Since his wife knew ten times more about doctoring than he did, and Lisa and Vail Marie were ready to render any aid Winona might need, he had left everything in their capable hands. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure,” Zach said, adopting a casual air. “Why wouldn’t I be, Pa?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who is as green as one of those caterpillars you like to catch and squish.”

  “I am not, am I?” Zach rubbed his throat and averted his face to hide his embarrassment.

  “Being a mite squeamish is nothing to be ashamed of,” Nate said. “It’s when your heart turns so hard that the sight of blood no longer bothers you that you have to worry.”

  Father and son strode to a large log at the border of the clearing that fronted the cabin. Nate sank down with a sigh, wearily rubbed his eyes, and somberly contemplated Long’s Peak. “I did that man wrong, son,” he said.

  “Pa?”

  “Mr. Kendall wouldn’t be lying in there at death’s door if I hadn’t been as cocky as a bantam rooster.” Nate plucked a blade of grass and stuck it between his teeth.

  Zach could tell his father was upset but he was not quite sure why. “His horse stepped on him. How can you be to blame for an accident?”

  “Because the man was doing me a kindness and he wound up paying dearly,” Nate said. “I owe him, son. And there’s only one way I can think of to pay him back.”

  “How’s that?”

  Nate changed the subject. “If I was to go away for a spell, would you do me a favor and look after your ma and sis?”

  Disappointment and worry stabbed deep into the boy. “Where are you going? And for how long?”

  “North a ways. I can’t rightly say when I’ll be back. It all depends on how things go.”

  “Can’t I come too?” Zach asked. “I’d behave myself, honest. And I’d do whatever chores needed doing with no complaints.”

  Regret tore into Nate’s heart like a two-edged sword. He removed the stem and crumpled it. “I’d like nothing better, son. But your ma is going to need your help more than me. The Kendalls will be here for quite a while. Winona will need for you to keep food on the table and your eyes skinned for hostile Indians.”

  Zach had a strong suspicion where his father was off to, and he would rather have been bitten by a rabid raccoon than miss out. But he had been raised to cherish his family above all else, to always put their best interests before his own. “You can count on me, Pa,” he said dutifully.

  “I knew I could,” Nate said, affectionately ruffling his son’s long hair. “Now what say we go catch some fish for supper?”

  A flame-red sun roosted on the majestic western peaks when they tramped up the trail to the cabin. Zach carried six large fish; Nate had their poles. On a stump near the corral, the boy sat and palmed his butcher knife. “I’ll have these cleaned in no time.”

  Nate walked to the window to peek in. As he passed the door, a shadow filled the entrance.

  Winona King wiped her hands on a cloth and answered her husband’s questioning gaze with a shrug. Kendall’s health was out of her hands. She had done all she could, thoroughly cleaning the wound and applying a poultice. Whether Scott Kendall survived the night depended on his will to live.

  Winona glanced over a shoulder. Lisa and Vail Marie were perched on chairs beside the bed.

  They were not about to go anywhere until assured that Kendall would be all right.

  “Can you take a break?” Nate asked.

  After twelve years of living with Grizzly Killer, Winona could read her man easily. It was obvious that he had an important matter on his mind. “I have done all I can. What troubles you?”

  Taking her by the elbow, Nate moved to the northeast corner of the cabin so that their son would not overhear. “How soon before Kendall will be back on his feet?”

  “If he heals with no problem, he will be able to stand in about one moon. But he will not be able to run or ride or trap for at least two moons. The bone was almost shattered.” Winona’s lovely eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I have to make good for what happened.”

  It took a few seconds for his full meaning to sink in. Winona’s breath caught in her throat. “You do not owe him your life.”

  “It’s an entire brigade. Sixty men. I’ll be as safe as if I were home with you.”

  “I know of two brigades that were wiped out almost to the last man,” Winona said. “And even if all goes well, you will not be back for a whole year. No, husband, I will not stand by and let you do this.”

  “I have to.”

  “Then I will go with you.”

  “Someone has to look after Kendall, and you’re the only one who has doctored folks before.”

  “I will teach Lisa how to use my herbs. It is not difficult.” Winona folded her arms. “There is no changing my mind on this. Besides, I know something you don’t. You must take me whether you want to or not.”

  “How so?” Nate said, his confidence shaken by her smug attitude.

  “Scott Kendall was not the only one Ashworth hired. Lisa and several other women are to cook for the men and handle other chores.” Winona traced the outline of his square jaw with a finger and smiled. “So you see, husband, where you go, I go—even into the heart of Blackfoot country.”

  Six

  If there was one lesson married life had taught Nate King, it was that a woman always got her way in the end. A man could argue and cajole, he could reason and plead, he could even rant and rave if he didn’t mind making a complete yack of himself. But in the end, the wife’s will invariably won out. Any jasper who claimed to the contrary was only fooling himself.

  In this instance, Nate fervently wished he had been able to prevail on Winona to stay behind. As they wound down a game trail toward the Green River Valley, he twisted in his saddle to soberly regard his wife. She grinned merrily, as if they were on a pleasant family outing instead of on the verge of committing themselves to a venture that might well result in all their deaths. Strapped in a cradleboard on her back was little Evelyn. Behind them rode Zach, who looked as happy as a bear in a be
rry patch.

  “Quit pouting, husband,” Winona said in her precise English. “We have made up our minds. Now we must live with our decision. What will be will be.”

  That was another thing about women that got Nate’s goat. They could be as logical as a college professor when it suited their purpose, and they were always right even when they were wrong. A man could argue until he was blue in the face and never get them to admit as much. They’d close their ears and go on about their business not hearing a word he said. It was downright irritating.

  Sighing, Nate faced around. It would do no good to bring up the subject again, so he might as well bow to the inevitable and make the best of a bad situation.

  They had left the cabin several days ago. Descending to the foothills, they had traveled north to the Sweetwater River and across South Pass, then to the northwest to the Green River Valley.

  It was vast and fertile, the site of more annual rendezvous than any other spot in the mountains. About six years earlier, a man by the name of Bonneville had built a fort at the confluence of Green River and Horse Creek. Dubbed Fort Nonsense by the mountaineers because it was too cold in those parts in the winter to maintain a garrison, it had since been abandoned and was mainly used as a storage site during rendezvous.

  From a bare spine overlooking the river, Nate could see the bench on which the old fort stood. North of it a new structure had been erected, a small stockade around which bustling activity was taking place. Near the stockade were over two dozen Indian lodges.

  “Absarokas,” Winona said, making no attempt to keep her dislike of them from her tone.

  Nate promptly reined up. No one had said anything to him about Crows being involved with the Ashworth expedition. The Shoshones and the Crows had long been bitter enemies. Often, they attacked one another on sight. He was not about to expose his wife and children by taking them down there until he knew exactly what was going on.

  Veering into a stand of saplings, Nate halted in a clearing wide enough to contain them and their two packhorses. “Stay here and keep out of sight until I see whether it’s safe.”