Wilderness Double Edition 27 Page 8

  Felicity prepared a bed for Peter. She folded several blankets and set them one atop the other. Simon tenderly laid the boy down, and together they covered him with another blanket, leaving only his head exposed. He stirred once and mumbled and then went back to sleep.

  ‘To be so young and innocent,’ Simon said.

  ‘You are still an innocent,’ Felicity said. ‘It is part of the reason I married you.’

  This was news to Simon. ‘A grown man can hardly be called innocent.’

  ‘In your heart you are,’ Felicity said. ‘You are good and decent, two qualities that go hand in hand with innocence.’

  Simon was disposed to debate the point, but just then Zach swung onto his horse. ‘You’re off already?’

  ‘I want to reach their camp before daylight,’ Zach said. It would take hard riding.

  ‘Can’t you rest a little?’ Felicity urged. ‘By the time you get there, you will have been up all night.’

  ‘The sooner this is over, the sooner you can get on with your lives,’ Zack’s replied. He gave them his final instructions. ‘Stay in the canyon. Keep the fire small. The only Indians that know of this spring, so far as I know, are the Shoshones, and this time of year they’re up in the Green River country. This is Ute territory so there is always the chance some Ute might happen by.’

  ‘We’re on good terms with them,’ Simon mentioned.

  ‘Even so, mention my pa’s name. He’s a friend of theirs. Like as not they won’t harm you.’

  Simon glanced at the high walls and his mouth went dry.

  ‘Animals are another matter. Deer and such will stay away because of the fire, but a fire doesn’t always scare off a grizz. If you hear a bear, make the fire bigger and make a lot of noise. Whatever you do, don’t shoot it unless you can see it and make sure you hit its vitals.’ Grizzlies were notoriously hard to kill. Zach had heard of instances where a grizz was shot fourteen or fifteen times and still would not go down.

  Felicity gazed at their sleeping son and fought down a surge of anxiety. ‘Don’t worry about us, Zach. We’ll be fine.’

  ‘How can I help but worry? You’re my friends.’ Zach grinned, then jabbed his heels against his sorrel and rode down out of the canyon. The Wards were competent enough, but he did not like leaving them alone.

  In order to get back to them that much sooner, Zach rode faster than he normally would. He was taking a risk. Fallen trees and other obstacles abounded, and should the sorrel break a leg, calamity loomed. But he stayed alert, and the sorrel was as sure-footed as always, and half an hour before sunrise found him warily climbing the boulder-strewn west slope of the flat-topped hill. Above, the glow from the campfires that had burned all night gave the illusion dawn was breaking.

  Well below the crest Zach drew rein and slid down. No trees were handy, so he used a picket pin, a wooden stake he had whittled from a pine branch, to ensure the sorrel did not wander off. Then he stalked higher.

  The whites were remarkably careless. Instead of patrolling the rim, as they should be doing, the sentries were closer to camp, one near the horse string, another to the south but standing near a fire, a perfect target.

  Zach was tempted to run off their horses and whittle them down one by one. But he was not out to wipe them out. He wanted to drive them off. His idea was to kill a few and then give voice to war whoops and make enough other noise racket to convince them a large war party had descended on their camp. Odds were, they would flee back to the wretched civilization that spawned them.

  Zach counted four females: an older woman in a flowing dress, the lord’s wife, he figured; two women in uniforms whom he took to be servants; and a young girl, no more than sixteen and quite pretty. The niece, Simon had told him. A china cup and saucer were in her lap, and she was delicately sipping, as if she were having tea on a city terrace instead of in the dark heart of the wilderness.

  Zach would not harm the women. He did not count coup on females. He watched them for a few minutes, particularly the young one; then he flattened and crawled to where he had a clear shot at the sentry who was warming his backside.

  Zach felt no qualms as he wedged his Hawken to his shoulder. These people were invaders. They had waltzed in out of nowhere and were trying to force the Wards from the farm they had spent years building. That Lord Kilraven was in charge was a meaningless distinction. The others were either related to him or worked for him and were there to do his bidding, which made them as much to blame as their lord and master.

  Still, the instant before he squeezed trigger, Zach shifted the bead a hair so he shot the sentry in the shoulder and not squarely in the chest. The impact of the heavy-caliber slug spun the man halfway around. Simultaneously, Zach let out with war whoops a Comanche would envy. Then, whirling, he bounded down the slope to the sorrel. He yanked out the pin, vaulted into the saddle, and galloped toward the bottom, expecting at any moment for rifles to boom and lead to whistle past his ears. But no shots rang out.

  At the base of the hill, Zach reined to the right and raced around it until he was directly below the tents. He rode halfway up, dismounted again, and catfooted to the top. No one was anywhere near. He could not see what was going on on the other side, but from the shouts and the sounds of men scurrying, he had some idea.

  One of the tents was aglow with the light of a lantern. Running over, Zach drew his knife and thrust the tip into the canvas at shoulder height. He cut a slit down to about his ankles, and peered in. The tent was empty. A bed was on one side, a small dresser on the other. He grinned at the sight. They sure loved their creature comforts.

  The lamp on the dresser interested Zach more. Slipping inside, he picked it up and raised it overhead. He was about to dash it on the bed when the front flap parted and in walked the pretty young girl.

  Edwin Ryker was uneasy. He had agreed to track down Zach King and the Wards for five thousand dollars, and five thousand was a lot of money. But it would be of no use to him if he were dead, and tangling with the likes of Zach King was a surefire invite to an early grave.

  Ryker had never liked Zach much. Part of his dislike had to do with the high regard in which the Kings were held. Nearly everyone—from the Bent brothers and St. Vrain at the trading post, to the mountain men who roamed the high country, to the friendly tribes of the mountains and the prairie—had the highest esteem for Nate King and his family. A much higher esteem, Ryker reflected, than they ever showed for him.

  Another part of his dislike had to do with the fact Zach King was a half-breed. Ryker did not care for breeds, and he was not alone. They were widely looked down on. A lot of folks believed that mixing white blood and red blood tainted the offspring. Breeds were notorious for being hot tempered and violent. And while Ryker knew more than a few who were as peaceable as anyone else, he believed as the majority did, that breeds were bad medicine.

  Which brought Ryker to the third reason he disliked Zach King. Zach had gone and married a white woman. A sweet gal Ryker had seen a couple of times at Bent’s Fort, but a gal with no more brains than a turnip. Not if she wed a breed. Especially not when the breed was a confirmed man killer.

  A lot of frontiersman killed. That was nothing new. Most had to at one time or another in order to preserve their lives. But Zach King was different. He had made wolf meat of more enemies—or counted more coup, as the redskins liked to say—than anyone. Or so gossip had it, and where breeds were concerned, Ryker was willing to believe whatever was said about them.

  Ryker had plenty of reasons to want to plant Zach King and plenty of reasons to go about it in a way that ensured he would live to spend the money Kilraven was paying him.

  Not that Ryker liked his high-and-mighty lordship any better than he liked Zach. Kilraven was puffed up with self-importance and went around bossing others as if it were his God-given right. Men like that deserved to be taught some humility.

  All this and more filtered through Ryker’s mind as he sat by a small fire near the Ward cabin, sipping cof
fee and waiting for daylight. The men Kilraven had left with him were asleep, all except Meldon, who sat across the fire, nipping from a flask.

  ‘What do you have in there? Whiskey?’

  ‘Bitters,’ the Brit said.

  Ryker gazed to the east. It would not be long. A faint hint of gray marked the black vault. He sipped more coffee and caught Meldon staring at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I was just wondering why you live as you do.’

  ‘I don’t live any different than you,’ Ryker responded.

  ‘How can you say that? You wear animal skins. You shoot, butcher, and eat your own meat. You roam land infested with savages and wild animals.’ Meldon shook his head. ‘You most definitely do live different than I do, governor. I buy my clothes from a shop in Liverpool. I like to eat at a pub. And the only savages I have to deal with are my seven kids.’

  ‘A man does what he has to,’ Ryker said.

  ‘There has to be more to it than that,’ Meldon persisted. ‘Most people like to go to bed at night knowing they will still be alive to go to bed the night after.’

  ‘What can I tell you?’ Ryker rejoined. ‘You like what you like, and I like what I like.’

  ‘You are a far braver bloke than I am, Yank. Me, I want to enjoy old age, and rock in a rocking chair with a grandkid on my knee.’

  ‘Old age has never interested me,’ Ryker said. ‘Hobbling around on a cane is not my idea of living.’

  ‘When you get yourself a wife and kids, you won’t think that way,’ Meldon commented.

  Ryker thought of Zach King’s wife and grew warm with anger. Casting the coffee in his cup to the ground, he stood. ‘Wake your pards. We’re heading out.’

  ‘But the sun isn’t up yet,’ Meldon noted.

  ‘So what? You’re to do as I say, and I say wake them.’ Ryker slid his tin cup into a parfleche and tied the parfleche to his horse. He checked his rifle and his pistols, then had to mentally twiddle his thumbs for fifteen minutes while the Brits prepared to head out. ‘Took you long enough,’ he grumbled when Meldon announced they were ready.

  Ryker knew that Zach King had led the Wards south. He figured they would turn west and swing around the far end of the valley, and he was right, as the tracks revealed by the predawn light proved.

  ‘Have you any idea where they are heading?’ Meldon inquired as Ryker swung back on his mount.

  ‘Maybe they have a hankering to throw snowballs at one another.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Zach King will take them somewhere he thinks is safe,’ Ryker said. Somewhere up in the heavy timber, he imagined, gigging his horse parallel with the tracks. The trail was as plain as plain could be, and that troubled him until he realized Zach had no reason to expect a tracker was after them. If it went on like this, he would catch up in no time. The five thousand dollars was as good as his. He smiled, thinking of the many splendid ways he could spend it.

  The sky was rapidly brightening. Soon dawn would break and the sun would rise.

  ‘Mr. Ryker, sir!’ Meldon suddenly exclaimed.

  Ryker glanced sharply around. ‘What?’

  ‘There! Look there!’ Meldon pointed to the northwest. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘Dear God!’ one of the other men cried out.

  Ryker could not resist an oath. A huge bonfire appeared to have been lit on top of the flat-crowned hill.

  But it was no bonfire.

  The tents were burning.

  Eleven

  Zach reacted in the blink of an eye. He assumed the girl would scream, and if she did, he’d be up to his neck in Brits. Accordingly, the instant she looked up and saw him, he was on her. He had the lamp in one hand and his Hawken in the other so he did the only thing he could; he jammed the muzzle against her side and warned, ‘So much as let out a peep and you’ll be sorry.’ In the next heartbeat he hurled the lamp at the bed.

  The girl’s manicured hand flew to her throat, but she did not scream. Her eyes widened as flames flared on her bedspread. Crackling and multiplying with remarkable swiftness, they spread like a miniature wildfire.

  ‘My quilt!’ the girl squeaked.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Zach gruffly demanded, gouging the barrel harder. ‘I said not a peep.’

  Apparently she did not take him seriously, or did not care. ‘‘You brute! You terrible heathen brute! My grandmother gave me that quilt.’

  ‘How nice for you,’ Zach said, and grabbed her wrist. ‘You can tell me all about it after we are in the clear.’ Whirling, he hauled her toward the slit he had cut in the canvas but she dug in her heels.

  ‘No, you don’t! I am not going anywhere with you, you foul savage!’

  ‘Care to bet?’ Zach slugged her. He did not use all his strength, but he clipped her solidly on the jaw with enough force to cause her knees to buckle and her unconscious form to pitch against him.

  Flames had engulfed the top of the bed and were licking at the tent. Already it was giving off smoke.

  Zach shouldered on out, the girl a limp sack of flour. She did not stir, not even when he draped her over his saddle and swung up behind her.

  From the other side of the tent came a panicked, ‘Oh Lord! Look there! One of the tents is on fire!’

  Zach slapped his legs against the sorrel and reined to the west. He looked back when he was out of rifle range and grimly smiled. Judging by the flames shooting into the dawn sky, the fire had spread. With a little luck it would burn every tent Kilraven owned.

  Zach goaded the sorrel into a gallop. He was about to race around the next hill when a rifle cracked and lead thudded into the earth in his wake. The shot came from off to his south, not from the flat-crowned hill. Dimly, he made out half a dozen riders hell-bent to cut him off. Where they had come from, he couldn’t begin to guess.

  Zach breathed a trifle easier when he put the next hill between him and his pursuers. He was even more pleased when he plunged into thick forest. They would have a hard time catching him now.

  The girl did not stir. Zach began to worry he had hit her too hard. He needed to check her pulse, but her wrists hung limply out of reach. It would have to wait. So would rejoining the Wards until he was sure he had given those who were after him the slip.

  Zach was pleased at how well it had gone. If the Shoshones guarded their villages as poorly as Lord Kilraven did his camp, they would have been wiped out long ago.

  On he rode. He saw no sign of the men who had shot at him. Evidently he had lost them.

  To be safe, Zach pressed on for another quarter of an hour. A groan alerted him his captive was at last reviving. Drawing rein, he slid down and lowered her beside him. Her eyes opened, and for a few seconds she stared in confusion.

  ‘Where am I? What is going on?’

  Suddenly she remembered, because she swung an open hand at Zach’s face. But her reflexes were molasses compared to his. He caught her arm and twisted, provoking a yelp.

  ‘None of that, white woman.’

  ‘Who are you?’ the girl demanded in her delightful accent.

  ‘I am a Blackfoot,’ Zach said, continuing his deception. ‘Our war party attacked your camp.’

  The girl snorted. ‘Put a sock in it, you lying sod. You are no more a bleeding Blackfoot than I am. You’re him. The one my uncle and our guide were talking about. You’re Zach King.’

  Astonishment rendered Zach speechless.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I, you pathetic duffer? You thought you could pull the wool over my eyes, but you can’t.’

  ‘How’d you know my name?’ Zach got out.

  ‘I told you. Our guide or scout or whatever you frontier types call yourselves, he figured it out. He had Owen describe you and right away tumbled to who you are.’

  ‘Does this scout have a name?’

  The girl chortled. ‘Of course he has a name. Everybody has a name, don’t they? What do you use for brains, anyhow? Curdled milk?’

  Now that he was over his initial surprise, Zach
could not resist a flood of anger. ‘What is it?’ he snapped.

  Amazingly, she was not afraid. ‘My. Aren’t we feeling formidable today? Honestly, as a terror you would make a great cowpat. You don’t intimidate me, not the least little bit.’

  ‘What is your name? Can you spit that out without prattling like a ten-year-old?’

  ‘Well, I never,’ the girl said. ‘For your information I happen to be Cadena Taylor, Lord Kilraven’s niece. His favorite niece, I might add, in case you have dastardly designs.’

  ‘Are all British females as ridiculous as you?’

  Cadena puffed out her cheeks as might an agitated chipmunk. ‘Oh, that is just ducky. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Ridiculous, am I? Says the primitive who runs around in smelly animal hides.’

  ‘The scout,’ Zach sought to bring her back to the subject at hand. ‘You mentioned a scout working for your uncle.’

  ‘That I did, you pushy twit. Ryker. Edwin Ryker. He runs around in animals skins, too, which does not say a lot for American fashion sense.’

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about? What does fashion have to do with buckskins?’

  ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all, which is my whole point. Try to keep up. I apologize for taxing your dullard intellect, but I am making this as simple as I know how.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Zach had met some silly people in his time, but this girl outdid them all.

  ‘Why do you keep bringing our Lord and Maker into this? Must you blaspheme with every other breath? I should think you would have more important matters on your mind.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ Abruptly spinning her around, Zach pressed her against the saddle. ‘Stand still.’

  ‘I bloody well will not!’

  The hilt of Zach’s knife molded to his palm. In a blur he pricked her neck with the tip. ‘I won’t tell you twice. You are treating this as a lark when it is serious. Give me trouble and you will find out exactly how serious.’

  ‘You are the meanest person I have ever met,’ Cadena said. But she did not move or try to break free.