Wilderness Double Edition 14 Page 6

  Lou rode westward in search of the elusive trail. It had to be there somewhere. She went farther than she thought was necessary and still came across no evidence of it. About to turn around and retrace her steps, she stumbled on a cluster of small boulders.

  Just as Lou pulled on the reins, a crisp rattling sound broke out right under the mare’s forelegs. Reptilian predators were also abroad at night, and one of them, a rattlesnake, was showing its displeasure at nearly being trod on.

  The mare reacted as horses usually did. It snorted and reared, then wheeled and bolted. And there wasn’t a thing Lou could do to stop it. She hauled on the reins, but the animal refused to halt. Her right arm stretched to the breaking point, she sought to cling to the reins to Zach’s dun. But she also held Zach’s Haw-ken in the same hand, and she couldn’t get a solid enough grip on the reins. To her dismay they were wrenched loose, and she was off like a shot, speeding into the vault of darkness on the back of a spooked animal that wouldn’t heed her if their lives depended on it.

  Which they did.

  Into the forest they plunged, low limbs threatening to pluck Lou from her perch or bash in her skull. Branches tore at the mare, adding to its panic. But the greatest danger was from logs and large boulders, deadly obstacles that could cause the mare to tumble.

  Lou didn’t yell for fear the wind would bear the sound to the top of the bluff. She did say softly, urgently, over and over again, “Stop! Whoa! Slow down! Slow down!”

  The mare was too scared.

  If Lou had her druthers, she’d let the horse run itself out. But she had to stop it before an accident occurred. She threw her whole weight backward and thrust her feet against the stirrups, but it was like a fly seeking to stop a rabid badger.

  Part of the blame lay with the two rifles. Lou couldn’t exert her full strength with both hands burdened by Hawkens. She regretted not tying Zach’s onto the dun. She regretted it even more when, as the mare sped around a tree, a branch struck her elbow with jarring force, rendering it numb, and Zach’s rifle slipped from her grasp.

  “No!”

  The cry was tom from Lou against her will. She glanced back to see where the Hawken had fallen but couldn’t spot it. When she faced front again, she barely had time to duck to avoid the sweep of a limb.

  As Louisa straightened, the mare vaulted a log. Another branch loomed out of nowhere, and although Lou tried to sink beneath it, she was struck across the shoulders and ripped from the saddle. Like a child’s rag doll, she was thrown to the ground, dashed onto her shoulder, the impact jolting her to her core.

  Lou was dimly aware of hoofbeats receding into silence. Well, not quite total silence, for not far off a wolf howled and her own body hammered to the beat of her wildly pumping heart, a hammering as loud as the howl. Lou also realized she had lost her rifle, but finding it had to wait. She needed to take stock of her injuries.

  It was a long while, though, before Lou could do anything. Her arm wouldn’t move. Her whole side prickled with pain. And deep in her chest it hurt when she breathed. She lay quietly, partly in shock, unwilling to believe the calamity had happened. Gradually, sensation returned to her arm. She moved it in small circles, which lessened some of the pain in her side.

  Rolling onto her back, Lou stared up through the canopy of trees at a patch of stars. When she was a little girl she’d liked to makes wishes on stars. She would lie in her bed and gaze out the window, marveling at their number and brightness. They always had a comforting effect, maybe because, when she was three or four, she had asked her grandmother what stars were and her grandma had told her they were angels. For years afterward that was how Lou imagined them, and it soothed her to think the angels were up there watching over her.

  They didn’t comfort her now. Tonight, the stars seemed to mock her. They were so far away, so elusive, just like Stalking Coyote. Without her help, he would likely die. And she had ruined what might be her best chance to save him.

  Grunting, Louisa sat up. Her chest had stopped hurting, which was a good sign, but her arm tingled fiercely, which wasn’t. She tried to lift it over her head and nearly cried out from anguish.

  The mare was gone. The dun was missing. Zach’s rifle might be lost, and hers along with it. She was hurt and alone and stranded afoot in the middle of the wilderness in the dead of night. What else could possibly go wrong?

  As if on cue, from the depths of the forest came the ponderous tread of a heavy beast. Thick brush crackled and snapped. Lou groped at her waist and was relieved to find her flintlocks still there.

  The thing in the woods uttered a rumbling growl such as only one creature in all the Rockies ever uttered. There could be no doubt what it might be.

  The beast stalking toward her was a grizzly.

  Five

  Zach King would have dearly loved to have pistols in both hands so he could defend himself, or to be able to race into the night ahead of the hail of lead certain to seek his life now that Vince Kendrick’s band knew his secret.

  The big man himself was confused. “Zachary King?” he repeated quizzically to Ben Frazier. “What kind of name is that for a Shoshone?”

  The old trapper tittered like it was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “He’s not a full-blooded Shoshone, you fool. Any fool could tell just by lookin’ at him that he’s half white, half Indian. Or didn’t you notice his eyes are green?”

  “Green?” Swearing, Kendrick dragged Zach closer to the fire and roughly bent Zach’s head so the firelight was full on his face. “I’ll be damned! They are.”

  Ed Stark was incensed. “Now that I think about it, he’s never looked any of us directly in the eye. All this time he’s been playing us for dunces. And laughing at us behind our backs.”

  “Well, we’re going to have the last laugh,” Kendrick said. To demonstrate, he drove his fist into their captive’s stomach.

  Zach doubled over, the breath whooshing from his body. Pinpoints of light swam before his eyes. He was in torment, but he couldn’t blame Frazier. The old man had been through hell, had been tortured to the point where he wasn’t thinking straight. Otherwise, Frazier would never have blurted the truth. And apparently the old-timer realized his mistake, because as Kendrick cocked a fist, Frazier called out for him to stop.

  “Harm that boy and you’ll have the whole Shoshone nation down on your heads!”

  “I’m not falling for the same trick twice,” Kendrick snapped. “This uppity breed claimed he was an Ute, and that they would do us in if we harmed so much as a hair on his head.” He elevated his fist higher. “I’m going to beat him to death with my bare hands.” Frazier glanced at Zach, his eyes pleading for forgiveness. Then his expression changed to one of seeming indifference. “Go ahead. Kill him if you want. I just pray I live long enough to see his pa turn you into worm food.”

  Kendrick paused. “His pa?”

  “Nate King. Surely you’ve heard of him? The Indians call him Grizzly Killer. He’s as famous as Jim Bridger and Jed Smith.”

  “King?” Kendrick said. “I’ve heard that name before.”

  Ed Stark, always more quick-witted, interjected, “Don’t you remember? When we were at Bent’s Fort about four months ago? Some of the mountain men were swapping yams. One brought up this King feller. Said he’d killed more silvertips than anyone. That he’s friendly with most of the heathens. And that he’s one of the best trackers alive. They say he can track an ant across solid rock.”

  “Those fools were talking in their cups,” Kendrick said. “This ’breed still dies.”

  Elden Johnson, who rarely had a word to say unless spoken to, had words to say now. “Hold on, Vince. I saw a couple of horses behind us, remember? It could be one man, leading a spare.”

  “It could be Nate King,” Stark clarified, “after his boy.”

  Kendrick’s massive fist slowly lowered, and he shoved Zach to the ground. “Following us, is he? Waiting for the right time to strike? To free you?” Kendrick surveyed the darkne
ss. “He might be out there right this minute, spying on us.”

  “Probably is,” the old trapper agreed. “When it suits him, he’ll pick all of you polecats off, one by one. He’s not only a fine tracker, but also a crack shot. Won a heap of shootin’ contests at the rendezvous. Why, I’ve seen him put a ball through the center of a coin no bigger than your thumbnail at fifty yards.”

  It was obvious Kendrick was still inclined to pound Zach to a pulp, but he merely glared and said, “Then I reckon you get to live a while longer yet, ’breed. Your pa won’t do anything so long as we can put a bullet into your noggin if he tries.”

  Stark was deep in thought. “This explains why our ambush didn’t work. Nate King is too canny to blunder into our gun sights. To bushwhack him, we need to come up with a better idea.”

  Pudgy Cyrus Walton was actually relieved. “This sure takes a load of worry off my mind. It’s nice to know no savages are going to sneak into camp in the middle of the night and slit our throats. We can get some sleep.” He hastily threw in, “Can’t we, Vince?”

  “I guess we can, at that,” Kendrick said. “But I want two men on guard at all times. Frank and Billy will take the first watch.”

  “Don’t forget that food and water you promised me,” Ben Frazier said. “I’m so hungry, I could eat a whole buffalo raw.”

  “We’re not about to let you starve, old man,” Kendrick responded. “You’re too important.” He nudged Zach with a toe. “Which is more than I can say for you, ’breed. As soon as we dispose of your pa, your turn is next. You’ll be days dying.”

  Zach remembered what Kendrick had done to the old trapper, and didn’t doubt it.

  A grizzly!

  Of all the beasts in the mountains, grizzlies were the most formidable. Undisputed lords of their domain, they were as widely feared as they were fearless. They roamed from the highest peaks to the lowland valleys, always in search of food to appease their never-ending hunger. As huge and heavy as buffalo, they were impossibly hard to kill thanks to thick bones and dense sinews. Their teeth could crush a man’s thigh in one bite. Claws over four inches long added to their bestial arsenal.

  The mere mention of grizzlies had always sparked terror in Louisa. They were more akin to an unstoppable force of Nature than flesh-and-blood animals. Many were the stories she had heard of clashes between trappers and the great bruins, invariably with fatal results for the former. Oh, there was Hugh Glass, mauled so severely by a griz that his companions felt sure he would die, so they abandoned him, just up and walked off to let him greet the Almighty on his own. Only, Glass didn’t die. Through sheer willpower he crawled to an Indian village and miraculously recovered. But he was one of few exceptions. By and large, to confront a silvertip was to court death.

  Another exception, the most remarkable of all, was Stalking Coyote’s pa. Grizzly Killer, he was called, because he had slain more of the great monsters than anyone, ever. Once, Lou had asked him how that could be, and Nate had smiled and said, “Shakespeare McNair likes to say I’m a grizzly magnet. He thinks I draw grizzlies like a magnet draws iron. But I think it had more to do with my being one of the first trappers in the Rockies. Bears were everywhere back then. Hardly a week went by that I didn’t run into one or two. I tried to fight shy of them, but grizzlies don’t appreciate good manners.”

  Lou had laughed at his joke, but she wasn’t laughing now as the ponderous tread of enormous paws grew closer, ever closer. The bear was so near, she could hear the heavy breaths it took, like the working of a bellows in a blacksmith’s shop. She had a fair idea of where it was, but the darkness shrouded it in a stygian mantle her eyes couldn’t pierce.

  Her every impulse was to rise, to flee. But outrunning a grizzly was as improbable as outrunning a horse. Which was how fast grizzlies could move when they wanted to.

  Besides which, Lou wasn’t in any condition for a life-and-death race. She hadn’t regained full use of her arm, and the agony in her side had yet to abate. Petrified, she listened to the shuffling, wheezing bear, mortally afraid it would catch her scent.

  As if it had read her thoughts, the grizzly abruptly stopped and sniffed. Not once, but repeatedly. She tried to convince herself it smelled the mare, not her, and that at any moment it would wander off on the mare’s trail and leave her be. But the sniffing went on and on, and there was no denying why. It knew she was there, somewhere. It just hadn’t pinpointed her yet.

  The prospect of being eaten by a grizzly churned Louisa’s innards. She imagined its ghastly fangs shearing through her soft flesh, imagined the bear gulping great chunks of her with zestful enthusiasm.

  Oh, Lord! Please let it go away! Lou prayed. But either the Almighty had too many other prayers to answer at that moment or her appeal didn’t ascend high enough into the heavens, for the very next moment the grizzly lumbered in her general direction. And now she could see it. A great dark bulk against the vaster darkness of the night, a colossus of might and unrivaled ferocity whose sole purpose in life was to eat, eat, eat, to devour anything and everything it could catch. It would surely catch her, too, if it located where she was, which it was trying to do by continuing to test the air and swinging its gargantuan head from side to side.

  Lou began to tremble uncontrollably, then willed herself to stop. The grizzly’s sense of smell was reputed to be far sharper than its eyesight, but the bear was close enough now to detect the slightest movement.

  It advanced a few more weighty strides, then tilted its head back, nostrils flaring. A gurgling growl escaped it, as if it were frustrated by its inability to peg where she was.

  Maybe the lingering scent of the mare partially masked hers, Lou mused. She saw it lower its nose to the ground and amble back and forth, each step bringing it nearer, steadily nearer. Lou resisted an impulse to scream. Inwardly, she railed at the behemoth, shrieking, Go away! Go away! Go away!

  The grizzly kept on coming.

  Louisa tensed for the inevitable. The bear was going to find her. It was only a matter of time—mere seconds, in fact. She could shoot it, but she’d never heard of an instance where a pistol brought one of the shaggy titans down. All that would do was make it mad. And if a normal griz was hard to kill, a berserk one was unstoppable.

  She had to flee. There was no other alternative. Lou rose onto the balls of her feet. Wedging her pistols more firmly under her belt, she braced her hands on the ground for extra leverage. She could smell the bear now, smell its beastly, musty scent, like that of a rug left out in the rain. She could see the dull glint of its fathomless eyes as they swung toward her. And she knew, instinctively knew, that the bear had found her at last.

  Instantly, Lou rose, spun, and ran for her life. She ignored her tingling arm, her hurting side. She ignored a muscle spasm in her left leg, a spearing pang in her shoulder. She must run or she would die. It was as simple as that. Whipping around a pine to put it between them, Lou pumped her legs in a flurry, speeding recklessly on into the forest. A boulder had to be avoided, a log vaulted. She had gone twenty yards before she mustered the courage to glance over her shoulder. With every fiber of her being she prayed the bear had not given chase, but once again her prayer fell on deaf divine ears.

  The grizzly was barreling after her, pacing itself, its huge shoulders and hump rippling with dynamic power apparent even in the dim light.

  “Oh, God!”

  Lou redoubled her effort, flying along as if she were about to take wing. Her chest ached worse than ever. Fear was part of the reason. Fear so potent, it pulsed through her very veins and threatened to dash all rational thought on the rocks of sheer panic. But she must keep her wits about her! Her wits were her sole edge. For although the grizzly was massively strong, it was no smarter than a cow. Its gut ruled its every waking moment, not its brain.

  But then, when that gut was housed in a steely body capable of destroying anything that lived, of what need was a keen intellect? The grizzly knew what it wanted—her—and it was coming after her with the
single-minded determination of its kind.

  How long Lou ran, she couldn’t say. She marveled that the bear didn’t overtake her right away, and suspected it was in no great hurry because it believed it had her dead to rights, as it were. It was taking its sweet time, waiting for her to collapse. Then it would finish her off at its leisure.

  Suddenly Lou stumbled. She cried out as she pitched forward, her outflung hand preventing total disaster. Heaving upright, she continued to run, run, run. Almost at her heels now was the grizzly. Its breaths were loud in her ears, drowning out her own. The thump-thump-thump of its paws matched the tempo of her thudding feet. Her skin crawled in expectation of being rent by granite teeth.

  Louisa thought of Zach and wished things had turned out differently. She had been looking forward to being his wife, to partaking of the heady nectar of unbridled love, to having children and rearing a family and growing old together. It had been the grandest dream of her life, and now it would never be. Cruel Fate had decreed that her days would end shy of her twentieth birthday. Her marker would be a bleached pile of bones lost amid vast woodland somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountains.

  To die was horrible enough. To die never knowing bliss as Zach’s wife was horror beyond horror. Never again to feel his tender touch. Never to experience the rapture of delicious passion. Never to be made whole in the mutual union of genuine love.

  Another boulder had to be skirted. Lou’s legs were flagging despite the dictates of her will. She had gone about as far as she could go. Soon she would be completely spent, completely at the grizzly’s mercy.

  Lou gave wing to her third and final prayer, a petition that wherever Zach was, he might somehow know her dying thoughts were of him. That on the threshold of meeting her Maker, she was thinking of the greatest gift her Maker had ever granted her. “Oh, how I loved you!” she squandered precious breath saying.