Wilderness Double Edition 25 Page 8

  Shakespeare had never been afraid of the dark, so he never gave it much thought. The wilderness at night was the same as the wilderness during the day, only without sunlight. Different animals were abroad and different birds gave voice to different cries, but the forest itself was no different, and he always felt at home in the deep woods.

  Yet on this particular night, Shakespeare could not dispel a persistent unease. He felt much like a mouse let loose in a barnyard to amuse a farmer’s cats. To amuse himself, and take his mind off occasional stealthy rustling, Shakespeare quoted his namesake at random. “I will not excuse you,” he chided himself. “You shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve you; you shall not be excused.”

  In the recesses of the primeval mountains, an owl hooted.

  “You boggle shrewdly,” Shakespeare quoted. “Every feather suits you.” Among his peers the owl was widely regarded as the wisest of the aerial denizens, a sentiment Shakespeare did not share. He liked to ask, “How wise can they be if they always ask the same question?”

  Timber closed in about him on all sides, mostly pines with a smattering of deciduous trees. A carpet of needles cushioned his steps, and he made no more sound than a panther. As a precaution he stopped often to listen. His ears were not what they once were, but he could still hear the low cough of a cougar or the growl of a bear where others could not.

  Stars blossomed. The moon was rising, but it would be a while before it shone in all its lunar glory.

  The loud snap of a twig brought Shakespeare to a stop. He trained his rifle in the direction the snap came from, but after several minutes went by and he was not attacked, he continued down the mountain, muttering, “Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”

  The trees thinned, and Shakespeare spied the distant light of a cabin. “So near, a raven could reach it in an hour, but so far, two-legged sloths like me take a day— or night, as the case might be.”

  Shakespeare was thirsty and hungry and tired, but mostly thirsty. He remembered the long drink he took from the spring before setting out, remembered the cool sensation of the water on his throat. “Would that we could carry springs in our possibles bags,” he remarked, and grinned. “I’ve lost my horse and any claim to be intelligent but not my sense of humor.”

  After that, Shakespeare became so absorbed in thought that he did not say anything. He dwelled on Blue Water Woman and fondly recollected the many happy times they shared. He also recalled their trials and disappointments, chief among them the fact they could not have children. Whether it was him or her they could not say, but something was not as it should be. All their parts worked, to put it delicately. Yet they had tried and hoped and tried some more until finally they admitted it was a forlorn cause.

  Thank goodness for Nate. Shakespeare loved him as the son he never had, and adored Nate’s kids as if they were his grandchildren. It tickled him no end that they called him Uncle Shakespeare.

  Zach’s fifth birthday came to mind. Shakespeare had brought the boy a toy rifle he’d carved from a maple limb. Zach had been delighted and ran around pointing it at everyone and everything and making a sound that was supposed to be a gunshot but sounded more like the squeak of a mouse.

  Winona had gone over to Zach and bent down to tenderly ask, “Aren’t you forgetting something, little one?” And when Zach looked at her in confusion, she whispered in his ear.

  To Shakespeare’s immense delight, the boy dashed over to him, threw both arms around his legs, and thanked him for the gift, exclaiming, “I love you, Uncle Shakespeare.” Zach then ran off to shoot the stove, and Shakespeare excused himself to go outside. His eyes were misting and he had a lump in his throat. As he stood there composing himself, a hand fell on his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” Nate had said.

  Misunderstanding, Shakespeare responded with, “It was nothing. Only took me a month to whittle.”

  “I meant thank you for the gift of your friendship.”

  It ranked as one of the two or three happiest moments of Shakespeare’s life. Little did he know that by Zach’s sixteenth year a change would come over the boy, and he never again said those words Shakespeare treasured.

  Evelyn, on the other hand, said “I love you” all the time, but she was female, and females were generally mushier than males.

  “Mushier?” Shakespeare now said aloud. “Is that even a word? If not, I should get credit for its invention.” Chuckling, he switched the Hawken from the crook of his left arm to the crook of his right. In days of yore he could carry it all day and all night and not feel a twinge, but these days his arms cramped if he held it too long, and he had to switch back and forth.

  “How ironic,” Shakespeare observed, “that of all life’s betrayals, our own body should betray us the worst.”

  Old age did not suit him. Shakespeare could do without the aches and pangs, without the cricks in his joints and the gout that flared when he overindulged in food and drink. He could do without getting tired so easily. Once, his stamina had been boundless, a vast roiling sea of energy that filled his every fiber. These days the sea was a creek, a small creek, at that, and he had to take a lot of naps or the creek dried up completely.

  Shakespeare gazed at the multitude of sparkling stars.

  “Whoever came up with this old-age business was a glutton for punishment.”

  At the mention of glutton, Shakespeare stiffened and scoured the woodland. He had not been paying attention as he should. Yet another sign of his advanced years.

  The forest lay quiet under the firmament. Other than a doe he spooked and a bird that took startled wing, he saw no wildlife. He heard things, though, and his imagination always attached the same cause. But he had made it this far without being attacked, so his imagination, likely as not, was wrong.

  Shakespeare’s knees hurt. Of all his body parts, they betrayed him most often. Hardly a day went by that they did not remind him of his age, and hardly a day went by that he did not curse them for the foul fiends they were.

  “Thou ruthless sea, thou quicksand of deceit, thou ragged fatal rocks,” Shakespeare quoted, and sighed.

  Almost simultaneously, a low grunt issued from out of the undergrowth to the south, not a stone’s throw away.

  Shakespeare stopped dead. A lot of animals grunted: grizzlies, black bears, elk, mountain buffalo, and the creature he hoped to avoid until he had a horse under him again. Whatever it was, it knew he was there, so keeping quiet was pointless. “Is that you, you great capering eater of carrion?” He launched into another quote. “A devil in an everlasting garment hath him, one whose hard heart is button’d up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough; A wolf, nay, worse.”

  As if in answer, the thing growled.

  “It is you, isn’t it,” Shakespeare said with certainty born of a musky odor that tingled his nose. He felt half-relieved the confrontation had come. “Or one of you, looking for a meal.”

  The thing moved, a vague outline against the inky vegetation, a hint of size somewhere between that of a dog and a bear. But it did not attack. It growled again, long and low.

  “Trading insults, are we?” Shakespeare asked, centering the Hawken. “Why, you’re thrice a fool! I have the Bard for ammunition, and his insults are sharper than your claws.” He didn’t shoot. He might wound it and wounded meat eaters were doubly dangerous. He needed a clear shot.

  As if it read his thoughts, the thing disappeared. It was there one heartbeat, gone the next.

  “Come back and fight, you coward!” Shakespeare bellowed. He wanted it where he could see it.

  The woods were completely silent.

  Shakespeare was in a quandary. He couldn’t stay where he was; the thing would sneak up on him and pounce when he wasn’t looking. He couldn’t go after it, either. In the heavy timber it had the advantage of sharper senses. That left one option. He lowered the Hawken, and ran.

  It galled him. Shakespear
e had never run from a fight in his life. But only a fool threw his life away and that was what it would amount to. He veered around a tree and had to jump over its fallen twin.

  Fifty yards lower, Shakespeare came to a cluster of boulders. He raced in among them, ducked behind one of the largest, dropped onto his right knee and wedged the Hawken to his shoulder. When the wolverine came bounding after him, he would drop it in its tracks.

  The wait was a test of nerves. Shakespeare figured the beast to come on slowly, relying on its nose not to lose him, but when more than two minutes passed and it did not appear, he knew it was not going to.

  Perplexed, Shakespeare waited another couple to be sure. Then he slowly unfurled. Could it be he was mistaken? he wondered. Had it been something else? A black bear, maybe? Had he jumped to the wrong conclusion?

  Beyond the boulders was more forest. Shakespeare kept one eye fixed behind him, but he was not pursued. Whatever it had been, it was gone. Relief coursed through him, as well as annoyance at his antics. His imagination was playing tricks on him. He was seeing wolverines where there were none.

  Shakespeare had no intention of mentioning it to Nate; Horatio would tease him. Nor would he tell Blue Water Woman. She had a tendency to overreact. She was also a master at making him feel incompetent, another of those female traits that made men want to scream.

  Some of Shakespeare’s unease evaporated. He reminded himself the valley was big as valleys went, more than seven miles in circumference, and that the wolverines roamed adjacent valleys as well. The odds of running into one were about the same as being struck by lightning.

  The lit window in Nate’s cabin was a sole beacon far below. Neither Zach’s cabin, nor Shakespeare’s showed any hint of habitation. Both were dark. That puzzled him, until he realized they all must be at Nate’s. No doubt Blue Water Woman was enlisting their aid to hunt for him.

  ‘That’s my gal.” Shakespeare chuckled. He could depend on her. In a crisis she always stayed calm. “But soft!” he playfully quoted. “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 then she.” He paused. “Of course, it would help if I could see her.” That struck him as so funny he indulged in a belly laugh that died prematurely.

  Out of the night came the crackle of dry brush, so loud that whatever made it had to be close.

  Whirling, Shakespeare brought up the Hawken. He held his breath to steady his aim, but he had nothing to shoot. The woods had gone quiet again.

  “Damned devious varmint,” Shakespeare grumbled. He was tired of the cat and mouse game. “Are you related to my first wife?”

  Nate would wonder why he was talking so much, but there was a method to Shakespeare’s antics. The sound of the human voice was so alien to most animals that it spooked them. Although wolverines were as fearless as any creature that ever drew breath, he hoped his chatter would confuse the one shadowing him and gain him time to reach the valley floor where the open grass favored him and not his furry adversary.

  Evidently it worked because Shakespeare was not attacked.

  Soon he came to what he took to be the top of a slope. A gust of wind buffeted him as he went to descend. He glanced down, and saved his life. He had nearly stepped over the edge of a sheer bluff over a hundred feet high.

  Shakespeare broke out in a cold sweat. Gingerly backing away, he turned to follow the rim. He could not say what prompted him to look back. But when he did, there it was, the dark eyes in the bearish head glittering demonically. A trick of the moonlight, yet Shakespeare could not suppress a shudder.

  “Well, well, well,” he said as casually as if he were talking to his wife or Nate. “You finally showed yourself, eh?”

  The wolverine slunk nearer. Its rounded ears, its powerful body, its thick legs, its wide paws with their curved claws, its bared, glistening fangs; the predator was a living portrait of ferocity.

  Shakespeare had the Hawken pointed at the ground. He slowly started to level it but stopped when the wolverine snarled and coiled. Freezing, Shakespeare braced himself, but the glutton did not spring. For the moment it was content to study him as he was studying it.

  “You don’t quite know what to make of me, do you?” Shakespeare began inching backward. “I must be ugly by your standards but you’re no beauty by mine.” He chuckled, provoking another snarl. The wolverine took a step toward him but stopped when he said, “You sure are a touchy cuss. Must be the stink. Is it hard to find a sweetheart when you smell almost as bad as a skunk?”

  The wolverine let out a strange cry, half growl, half hiss.

  “What was that for? Poking fun at me like I poke fun at you?” Shakespeare grinned, and was dumfounded when the wolverine’s thin lips split in a sinister imitation. His amazement turned to shock when he heard an answering cry. Not from far away. From directly behind him.

  Shakespeare half turned.

  A second wolverine was crouched eight feet away.

  The first one had kept him occupied while its sibling snuck up unnoticed. Now they had him boxed in on the bluffs brink.

  Shakespeare uttered the understatement of his life. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

  Ten

  Zach King reacted instantly to the terrified whinny; he hurtled down the slope in long bounds and was in among the firs before the whinny died. He heard a cry from Louisa but he did not have time to stop and explain. He must save the horses if it was not already too late. Lou would be all right until he returned.

  In the wilderness horses were invaluable. They enabled those who owned them to travel widely and rapidly, to reach water that much sooner and find game that much more easily.

  The coming of the horse had completely changed the Indians. Tribes that owned them possessed a great advantage over tribes that did not, so it was not long after their advent that there was a mad scramble to own large herds. Horses were power, as demonstrated by the Blackfeet to the north and the Comanches to the south.

  Zach had been taught to ride shortly after he learned to walk. Much of his life had been spent on horseback, and he regarded his horse as essential as his rifle and his knife. He would protect it—or in this instance, them—with his life if he had to.

  Premature twilight shrouded the firs. The sun had not yet set, but the firs were so high and grew so close together that only random beams penetrated the gaps in the silent ranks. A cushion of pine needles was underfoot, but Zach was moving so fast he could not help making noise.

  Another whinny drew Zach unerringly toward the source. He slowed to move silently and take whatever was after the horses by surprise. He was sure it must be a wolverine.

  The firs abruptly thinned, and Zach came to a slope sprinkled with thickets and boulders. Below, its back to one of the boulders, was Lou’s sorrel. His horse was nowhere to be seen.

  The sorrel had its rump to a boulder and was flailing its front hooves at a pair of predators trying to get at its belly and bring it down.

  Halting in surprise, Zach snapped his Hawken to his shoulder to take aim. The pair were wolves, not wolverines. He had seen wolf sign from time to time since arriving in the new valley but this was the first time he had set eyes on them. A male and female, they took turns darting in close and snapping at the sorrel’s legs and stomach.

  Zach felt a twinge of regret at having to kill them. He had a wolf as a pet once, when he was a boy. He’d raised it from a cub. For years they had been inseparable, until the wolf’s nature would not be denied, and one day it went off to answer the call of the wild and never came back.

  He fixed the sights on the male but the wolf did not stand still long enough for him to take a bead. It kept darting from side to side and in and out as it sought to cripple or disembowel the sorrel.

  The terrified horse was tiring. If Zach could tell, so could the wolves, and they pressed their attack with renewed ferocity. He had to do s
omething. The sorrel could not hold them off much longer.

  Jerking a pistol, Zach pointed it at the ground and thumbed back the hammer. He did not try to hit the wolves since it was not a sure thing he would. That, and he was thinking of the wolf he raised.

  At the blast, the pair whirled.

  The tableau froze. The piercing eyes of the wolves seared Zach like lances. For a moment he thought they would attack. Then the male wheeled and loped to the south, and the female trailed after. Just before entering the trees, the male paused and looked back, and Zach, on an impulse prompted by fond recollections of yesteryear, raised his arm and smiled. Then they were gone.

  The sorrel, meanwhile, was galloping to the east, toward the valley floor and the corral.

  Zach gave chase but he stopped after only a short way. He could not hope to catch it. “Stupid animal,” he muttered.

  The crackle of brush warned Zach a new element had intruded. He turned, thinking there were more wolves, but the winsome figure that burst from the firs had two legs, not four, and the most beautiful eyes on the planet. Eyes alight with anger.

  “What’s gotten into you, running off on me like that?” Lou demanded. “What in God’s name were you thinking?” She had been astounded when he left her all alone. Husbands were not supposed to do things like that.

  Zach pointed at the retreating form of her mount. “I wanted to spare you from sore feet.”

  “Are both horses gone?” Lou asked, looking around. “They are, aren’t they? Wonderful! So much for my bright idea about a picnic.”

  “We’ll collect the blanket and the food and head down.” Zach handed the Hawken to her and commenced reloading the spent pistol as they climbed. He told her about the wolves. “I hope they don’t make a habit out of trying to eat our stock. I would rather not kill them if I can help it.”