Wilderness Giant Edition 6 Page 6

  Shakespeare had slanted to the corral. “Their horses are missing,” he reported. “So is Blue Water Woman’s.”

  “Where could they have gotten to?” Nate asked anxiously. Turning, he scoured the valley.

  “They probably just went for a ride,” Shakespeare said. Inwardly, he was more worried than he let on. Winona and his wife relied on their mounts only for long journeys. When they wanted to go most anywhere in the valley, they walked.

  “Where would they have gone?” Nate responded. Not wasting another second, he climbed onto the stallion. “We’ll split up. You take the south half, I’ll go north. If you find anything, fire a shot into the air.”

  “Will do.”

  Nate cantered into the pines, moving in ever widening circles, seeking fresh tracks. None were evident, so he swung in wider loops, growing more frantic the farther he went.

  Ordinarily, Nate would have taken their absence in stride. But in light of the attack the previous night, he was deathly afraid the attackers had returned.

  It was the one serious drawback to living in the wild, his constant dread that hostiles or rogue whites would make wolf meat of his loved ones while he was away. It was a fear every free trapper lived with. That is, every trapper who had a wife and sprouts.

  The pines thinned. Nate bent low to better see the soil. There had to be tracks! There just had to be! Horses did not vanish into thin air. Coming to a knoll, he rode to the top and straightened in the stirrups. Still nothing. He prayed that McNair was having better luck.

  Unknown to the young mountain man, Shakespeare was at that moment on one knee next to a line of hoof prints that pointed toward the slopes ringing the valley to the south. As he rose, he gazed at the mighty mountain beyond.

  Longs Peak reared like a splintered crown, thrust high into the atmosphere, its double-peaked summit almost perpetually crowned by mantles of snow, for the weather at the top was always cold, often stormy. Blanketed by the purple gloom of pine forests, broken here and there by rocks upthrust by geologic upheavals ages past, it was a spectacle to stun the senses.

  Shakespeare had never much liked the mountain, himself. Nate thought it was “majestic” and “grand,” but Shakespeare was more practical minded. The peak was cold and stark and foreboding. No one had yet been to the top. Once, several drunken trappers had decided to try, but they only got about halfway up when it grew so cold, their feet went numb. The drunkest passed out, which gave the others the excuse they needed to give up in a manly fashion.

  They carted him back down, loudly telling one and sundry that someday, someday, they would beat that mountain at its own coldhearted game.

  Shakespeare had never understood the appeal of mountain climbing. It was popular in Europe, folks claimed. Rich people paid hundreds of dollars to be outfitted in special warm clothes and paid hundreds more for guides and helpers to tote their supplies and equipment. Using ropes and metal spikes, they scaled cliffs so sheer that mountain sheep avoided them. Undaunted, the climbers would forge to the summit, just for the honor of sticking a flag in the snow or leaving a personal article behind as a token of their triumph.

  Scores died every year. Some fell to horrid ends. Some froze. Many others lost limbs or portions of limbs or had their lungs cave in. It was hardly worth the bother.

  Shakespeare tore his gaze from the peak and mounted. Hastening on, he broke from the firs into a lush meadow, scaring a herd of deer. Bucks and does bolted in great vaulting bounds.

  The tracks went straight across the meadow. It was not the meandering, easygoing gait the women usually adopted when out riding. It suggested they were trying to get somewhere in a hurry. But where? And why?

  Shakespeare debated signaling Nate but decided against it. If the women and children had been taken captive, the shot would alert their captors. First, he would ensure they were safe.

  The rugged terrain taxed man and beast. The mare had a facility for negotiating narrow trails that rivaled a mountain goat’s, but even she balked when they came to a ribbon of a shelf winding below the rim of a gorge. A single misstep, and they would plunge to the jagged rocks below.

  Had the women and children really gone this way?

  No, for when Shakespeare surveyed the rim, he discovered where they had swung wide to go around the gorge instead of through it.

  Shakespeare rode with his heavy Hawken at the ready. There were Utes to think of, and grizzlies, and painters. He also kept his eyes skinned for rattlesnakes that might be out sunning themselves. Watching a shadowy hollow at the base of a monolithic slab, he rounded a bend and heard a squeal of childish glee.

  “Uncle Shakespeare!”

  Evelyn and Zach pounded up, showing more teeth than a glutton at a bake sale.

  “Is Pa with you?” the girl asked.

  “What are you doing way up here, anyway?” Zach asked. “We didn’t expect you back until dark, if then. Pa wasn’t about to give up until he caught those skunks.”

  Shakespeare rested his rifle on his thighs. Just coming around a far bend were the love of his life and Winona King. They waved and smiled, plodding merrily along.

  “Women,” Shakespeare groused under his breath. Here he was, worried half out of his skin, and they acted for all the world as if they were on a Sunday gallivant in a town back east.

  “What did you say?” Zach asked.

  “Do yourself a favor, boy, and don’t ever get hitched. You’ll stay healthier.” Shakespeare puffed loudly. “I swear, females are enough to make a man take to the bottle.”

  “Uncle!” Evelyn said in mock dismay. She knew how her white-maned uncle loved to tease.

  Shakespeare playfully tousled her hair, then swung the mare around to await the women. Pretending to catch sight of something above them, he quoted, “But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou her maid art far more fair than she.”

  Evelyn giggled hysterically. “Uncle Shakespeare, you’re so silly!”

  “Isn’t he, though?” Blue Water Woman said dryly.

  Ignoring the barb, Shakespeare exclaimed, “She speaks! Oh, speak again, bright angel! For thou art as glorious to this night, being over my head, as is a winged messenger of heaven unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him, when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air.”

  “More! More!” Evelyn pealed, clapping.

  Blue Water Woman shook her head. “Do not encourage him, little one, or he will go on like this for hours.”

  Deliberately, Shakespeare cried, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

  “Oh, please, husband,” Blue Water Woman said in that special tone typical of long-suffering wives. To Winona, she remarked, as if in pain, “See what I must put up with? Let us hope he does not get started on Hamlet—”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Shakespeare launched into, “To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”

  Blue Water Woman brought her sorrel up next to the white mare, reached out, and gripped her husband’s beard. “Enough!” she said, giving it a shake.

  “Don’t stop yet! More! Please!” Evelyn begged.

  Shakespeare pried his wife’s fingers loose and sniffed. “At least someone around here has a hankering for fine literature.” Reining the mare around, he said, “Come, children. I know when I’m not wanted.”

  Winona had been chuckling the whole while. As her doting offspring trailed their uncle, she said to her friend, “I have been meaning to ask you. Has your man always been so fond of William S., as Carcajou calls him?”

  “Not always,” Blue Wate
r Woman said. “We were not together at the time, but I have heard the story.” She paused to verify her husband was not listening. “Did you know Carcajou had lived forty winters before he learned to read the white man’s written tongue?”

  “No!” Winona said in surprise. At Nate’s request, she had mastered the strange squiggly marks the whites were so fond of, mastered them so well that she took turns reading to the children every night.

  The task had been daunting. The tiny squiggles were so different from the symbols her people painted on hides and rocks that trying to make sense of them had been like trying to make it through a maze blindfolded.

  Afterward, once she fully realized the wonderful gift her husband had shared, Winona came to marvel anew at the ingenuity of the whites.

  In many respects the two peoples were much alike; they loved, hated, ate, played, worshiped, made war.

  In as many respects, they were much different; the whites were like ants, always scurrying to and fro, always gathering things, always needing more, more, more. More money, more clothes, more land. As a people they were never content to sit still for very long. They were forever on the go, exploring where none had gone before, always seeking an elusive “something” that lay over the next horizon.

  Her people were content to stay in one general area, to savor the quiet rhythms life offered, to admire the horizon rather than ride over it.

  Oh, the women always wanted bigger lodges and the warriors always wanted more horses, but a woman who owned four garments was quite content with those four, while a warrior who had gone on ten or fifteen raids and acquired a sizable herd was content to stay in the village and let others risk life and limb to gain prestige.

  Reading books had given Winona fresh insight into whites, and the differences between the two peoples. The Great Mystery had blessed Nate’s people with a keen imagination and wanderlust, whereas her own kind were gifted with deep, abiding ties to Nature, ties so strong that many whites called it superstition.

  Many whites felt that her people were wrong to be the way they were, just as many of her people believed the whites were terribly wrong in all they did. But was it a question of right or wrong? Or was it simply that they were different, and should learn to accept the fact?

  “Winona? Did you hear me?”

  Winona jerked her head up. Shakespeare was riding beside Blue Water Woman, both staring intently at her. “I am sorry. What did you say?”

  “Zach told me that you heard shots? That you saw someone up on this ridge?”

  “Yes,” Winona confirmed. “I had gone to the lake for a bucket of water when there were two faint shots. When I looked up, I saw someone on a white horse.”

  “Thinking it was you, and that Nate and you might be in trouble,” Blue Water Woman said, taking up the account, “we saddled our own horses and rode up.”

  “It wasn’t me or Nate.” Shakespeare was bothered by the risk they had taken, but he did not point it out. They’d only scoff, or get angry at him for thinking they could not handle themselves. Women were funny that way. “Did you come across anyone?”

  “No,” Winona said. “A few tracks across the gorge. That was all we found.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Shakespeare said to himself.

  In a clatter of hooves little Evelyn trotted back to them and indicated the slope below. “Ma! Uncle! There’s Pa, waiting for us!”

  “Why does he look mad?” Winona wondered.

  “Oops,” Shakespeare said, and elevating his Hawken, he fired a shot into the air.

  Six

  The Kings and the McNairs were two miles from the prairie when the sun relinquished the sky to gathering twilight. A cool breeze from the northwest fanned the trees and stirred Blue Water Woman’s long hair as she shifted in the saddle to see the last rays of sunlight fade. “We will be late.”

  Shakespeare McNair shrugged. “Don’t blame me,” he said. His wife was a stickler for always getting places on time. It had to do with her upbringing. Flatheads prided themselves on being punctual, unlike, say, the Crows, who might show up half an hour or an hour late and think nothing of it. Shakespeare would never admit as much to Blue Water Woman, but there were times when he wished she were more Crow than Flathead.

  “It is not polite to be late, husband. You told the Vargas we would be there by sunset, and we will not.”

  “I’m sure they’ll save some food for us,” Shakespeare said trying to make light of it.

  “That is not the point.” For years Blue Water Woman had tried to instill in her man a more mature sense of social obligation, to no avail. It was like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. He was too set in his ways, too cantankerous to much care what others thought.

  “I’m sorry, wench,” Shakespeare said. “But how were Nate and I to know that you gals had traipsed off to the mountains? If you’d been at the cabin when we showed up, we would have made it to Don Varga’s camp on time.”

  Blue Water Woman looked at him. “Oh. So you blame us?”

  Shakespeare wanted to kick himself. If there was one thing a female was touchy about, it was being accused of doing wrong. Women never did anything wrong. It was the first and most important lesson a married man learned. “Of course not, love of my life. It’s just how things worked out. The Vargas will understand.”

  “I can hardly wait to get there,” Evelyn chimed in. Her dun was in front of the white mare, and she had been chatting gaily with McNair the whole way down the high valley. “Are the ladies really pretty? And do they really have the prettiest dresses you ever saw?”

  “Yep,” Shakespeare said with a grin. Then he quickly added, “Of course, they’re not nearly as pretty as Blue Water Woman. Or your ma.”

  “Why, thank you, sir,” Winona called back, having overheard. She was in front of her daughter, Zach and Nate in front of her.

  “This will be grand!” Evelyn declared. She loved going places. The annual rendezvous always dazzled her, with its many strange sights and smells, the air thick with excitement. She most loved to stroll among the traders’ stalls with her mother and finger all the gorgeous Hudson’s Bay blankets and jewelry and other trinkets the traders brought.

  Winona was as excited as Evelyn. She had enjoyed the trek to Santa Fe years ago, enjoyed meeting Spanish people and learning their ways. They were so supremely friendly, so relaxed, so wonderfully carefree, so different from her people.

  But Winona had to keep in mind what Nate had told her shortly before they left. He had taken her aside to voice his suspicion that two members of the Varga expedition were to blame for the attack on the cabin. She must stay alert, keep an eye on the children, and get them out of there at the first hint of treachery.

  “Ma, do you reckon these folks know Francisco Gaona?” Zach asked, referring to a close friend of theirs with whom they had stayed when they were in New Mexico.

  “It is possible, I suppose,” she said.

  Zach squirmed, eager to get there. His uncle’s passing comments about the pretty señoritas had kindled his curiosity. From what his uncle had said, the sisters were older than he was, which was a shame. But they were pretty, and that was what counted. In the past year or so, much to Zach’s surprise, he had grown fond of admiring attractive girls.

  During their last summer trip to the Shoshones, Zach had spent most of his time in the company of a maiden named Morning Dove. She had been a playmate of his since he was old enough to walk. Many a time they had splashed in the river and caught butterflies and dashed laughing through high grass, chased by others.

  This time it had been different. Morning Dove was not the same girl. She was taller, wider, fuller. He had found himself staring at her when she was not aware, a peculiar tight sensation in his chest. He had liked how her skin shone, how her hair glistened, how she swayed when she walked. These were things he had never noticed before.

  Nor was Morning Dove the only pretty girl to catch his eye. To Zach’s amazement, he had discovered that the Shoshone v
illage was chock full of pretty girls. Where they had all come from, he had no idea.

  Now here was a chance to see three pretty Spanish girls, and Zach was champing at the bit. “Do you know much Spanish, Pa?” he inquired.

  Nate had spotted several points of light on the prairie below. The Vargas had three fires going at once. He frowned. Advertising their presence was a grave mistake. Any Indians within five miles were bound to see the glow.

  At his son’s query, Nate turned. “Only a little,” he admitted. “Shakespeare speaks it, though.”

  “He speaks everything,” Zach said.

  Sometimes it seemed that way. Nate knew of no one who had learned more tongues than McNair. Shakespeare liked to say that anyone could learn as many languages as he did if they lived in the mountains as long as he had. But it was more than that. McNair had a knack for picking up new tongues, a rare talent that had served him in good stead.

  The trail wound into a wash between hills. Here the shadows were solid, the ground mired in pitch. Nate slowed, the clomp of hooves made louder by the close confines of the earthen walls. He stretched to relieve a kink in his back.

  Something moved on the north rim. Nate tensed, prickling with apprehension. They were boxed in. Should a grizzly happen by, the bear would rip through them like a tornado through a grain field.

  The shape moved again, rising slightly, enough for Nate to distinguish a head and two arms and a long slender object being pointed at his family.

  Nate did not call out. He did not ask who it was, or what they were doing. He did not waste his breath, not when the lives of those who meant more to him than life itself were at stake. Whipping the Hawken to his shoulder, he hastily fixed a bead on the center of the figure, curled back the hammer, and fired. “Ambush! Ride! Ride!” he bawled, wrenching the stallion to one side so the others could flee past him.

  Zach did not waste a moment asking what or who or where. He obeyed instantly, slapping his mount and galloping on down the wash, bending low to be a smaller target.