Wilderness Double Edition 26 Page 8

  Half the morning was spent tracking them down. Pahkah rode double with Soko and Howeah rode double with Nocona. Sargento loped at their side, his swarthy features made darker by his anger at the delay. Had his missing horse not been his favorite of favorites, it would have suffered the same fate as Pahkah’s unfortunate mount.

  They caught the horses without much problem once they found them. Howeah had to talk soothingly to his before it would let him touch it. He said that the horses running off was another omen, to which Sargento snapped, “You see omens in everything.”

  The next day they came on new sign, and it puzzled them. They followed the maker of the sign awhile, digesting the tidbits of information the tracks revealed, and at length they drew rein to consult.

  “It is one of the white men,” Nocona said, “and four horses.”

  “He came from the east,” Pahkah said, “and struck the trail of the whites who are on foot.”

  “Now he follows them,” Sargento said.

  “But he is not in a hurry to catch them,” Soko said. “He goes no faster than they do. It is strange.”

  “They are white,” Sargento said, implying that was sufficient to explain any and all strangeness.

  “One of the horses is heavy with packs,” Howeah mentioned. “Our women will be pleased.”

  Sargento smirked. “You always think of your woman.”

  “Are you saying I think of her too much?” Howeah replied.

  Nocona was quick to intervene. “Our women can wait. Our people can wait. Our minds must be on the whites and only the whites. There are more of us, but they are bound to have guns.”

  “Were it not for their guns,” Sargento said, “the whites would have been driven into the sea.”

  Nocona slapped his legs against his warhorse.

  They were eager, but they were not reckless. They did not goad their animals to the point of exhaustion. Not as hot as it was. Not with two of them riding double.

  That evening Soko dropped a rabbit with an arrow, a spectacular shot. The shaft sliced into the rabbit in mid-bound at a distance some of the younger warriors would not attempt.

  They ate well, washing the juicy meat down with water from their water skins. They washed it down sparingly.

  Later that night, as they lay talking, Howeah suddenly sat up and pointed. “There.”

  A blazing streak pierced the heavens.

  “A fire star!” Nocona declared.

  “The best omen of all,” Pahkah said.

  Sargento grunted in pleasure. “The whites we chase do not know it, but they will all soon be dead.”

  Six

  Day after day of plodding north. Day after day of the relentless burning heat. Day after day without sign of water. No streams, no springs, no rivers, nothing but the grass and the hard earth underfoot. The three of them would have died of thirst if not for Nate King.

  Dew saved them. Following Nate’s instructions, each morning at sunrise they soaked up the dew with strips of buckskin or cloth. It was never much. No more than a few handfuls. But those precious handfuls kept them alive. They supplied them with barely enough water to make it through the day.

  Hunger was more readily solved. They had their rifles and pistols, and game was abundant. But deer usually fled before they were in range, and smaller game proved frustratingly elusive. Shipley tried again and again to bring something down but could not. Once again, Nate King saved them. He seldom missed. When Shipley asked the secret to his success, Nate replied, “Stalk as close as you can and never fire until you are sure.”

  Cynthia grew increasingly quiet the farther they traveled. It got so Shipley repeatedly asked if she was all right. “You’re not acting like yourself,” was his assessment.

  To his many probes, Cynthia Beecher said she was fine. “Just worn out, is all. I don’t have breath to spare for chatter.”

  Shipley was satisfied, but Nate was troubled. The very next night, after Shipley had fallen asleep, Nate was taking his turn at keeping watch, sitting off by himself, when the grass rustled and the farmer’s wife sat down next to him. She did not say anything for a while, and he did not ask why she was there. He figured she would get around to telling him.

  “Do you ever make mistakes?”

  The whispered query was not entirely unexpected. Nate answered, “All the time. It keeps me humble.”

  “You make very few, in my estimation. If not for you, we would long since have died.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice at this,” Nate said. “When you must either live off the land or die, you learn to live off the land.”

  “It’s more than that,” Cynthia whispered. Her face was lovely in the moonlight, her hair as lustrous as corn silk. “You have a competence about you that is more than the sum of your experience.”

  “If you say so,” Nate said, making light of it.

  “You know what I am getting at, don’t you? I’m having second thoughts. Feelings I never thought I would feel.”

  Nate pretended to be interested in the stars.

  “He’s always been adequate. More than adequate in many regards. But ever since the incident with that scoundrel Jackson, I see him through new eyes. And I do not entirely like what I see.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself, and on him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he’s not the man I thought he was. Maybe hitching my apron to him was a mistake.”

  Despite a cool breeze out of the northwest, Nate’s skin became unusually warm. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You took a vow.”

  “That is what keeps me in line,” Cynthia whispered. She was staring at him, not the stars. “But I am more disenchanted every day, and I fear that before much more time goes by, the disenchantment will be complete.”

  “If you look for something you will find it.”

  “I know, I know. But I can’t help how I feel. A woman likes her man to be equal to every occasion, and he has fallen short.”

  Nate tore his gaze from the heavens. “No man can predict every happenstance. The best we can do is adapt.”

  “You adapt extraordinarily well. Ship does not.”

  “You’re being unfair. He’s never been west of the Mississippi, yet you expect him to be an expert.”

  “Not necessarily,” Cynthia hedged. “I just expect him not to get me killed.”

  The breeze gusted, and Nate sniffed the wind, hoping for a hint of moisture, but there was none. She did not speak so he did not, either. For a while, anyway.

  “I admit, I’m confused.”

  “The confusion will pass,” Nate said. He was uncomfortable, but he did not shoo her off. He wanted to clear the air. Her next broadside only clouded it.

  “Is it possible to love two people at once?”

  “Not the way you mean,” Nate said. He avoided meeting her gaze. The inner power females possessed was formidable.

  “How do you know? Has it ever happened to you? I am torn in two directions, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do nothing,” Nate said.

  “I’ve always thought that women who felt like this were fickle. That they were weak inside. I looked down my nose at them, I am ashamed to admit. Now that I’m in their shoes, I see I was wrong. It’s not whimsy. It’s not being weak. It’s the human heart.”

  Nate saw his opening. “There is only room in my heart for one. There will only ever be room for one.”

  “Now who is predicting?” Cynthia jousted. “I sense you are afraid to admit the truth.”

  “Your truth is not the same as mine,” Nate said flatly. “Your heart is not my heart.”

  “Point taken,” Cynthia conceded. “But it doesn’t change how I feel, and that is what it always comes back to. Feelings.”

  “They will fade in time,” Nate said. “Infatuations always do.”

  “Is that what you think this is? A girlish lark? I am a grown woman.”

  “And a husband you took to your womanly bosom. That is the core. That is the
crux. That is the truth above all other truths.” Nate thought he had settled it. He forgot the feminine penchant for a flank attack.

  “How is it you turn a phrase so nicely? You did not learn that trapping beaver or slaying grizzlies.”

  Nate did not want to, but he grinned. “I read a lot. I collect books. I have a library. Not much of one, since many of them were destroyed not long ago. But I am rebuilding it, slowly but surely.”

  “You have more between your ears than most,” Cynthia whispered. “I saw it in your eyes the day we met.”

  “Your husband is no slouch,” Nate rallied.

  “He is no poet, either. He doesn’t like to read. Never has. Books bore him. He would rather be doing something than sit and read.”

  Nate forgot himself. Reading was his passion, and he could not let it go undefended. “Has he ever tried The Iliad? Or The Deerslayer? Books have a life of their own. They take us to other times, other places. They let us see life through other eyes. They widen our own sight.”

  Cynthia smiled. “Nicely put, and a perfect example of what I have been talking about.”

  “The thing is,” Nate said, deciding it had gone on long enough, “I am spoken for. Above and before all else, I am spoken for.”

  “A woman can always dream,” Cynthia said softly.

  Nate went at it along another path. “He would die for you.”

  “And you would not?”

  “I would protect you as I would protect anyone. There is a difference. To him, you are everything. You are the reason he wakes up in the morning, the reason he wants more land. He has risked his life to make you happy.”

  “He has risked my life, as well.”

  “At your insistence, I understand,” Nate said. “He asked you to stay in Indiana. You refused. You nearly lost your life, yes, but the losing is your doing, not his.”

  “You have a gallant soul, Nathaniel King.”

  Of the sundry female wiles, it was the straightforward thrust Nate was most susceptible to, and he knew it. With that in mind, he replied, “I’m as ordinary as dirt.”

  Cynthia started to reply but recoiled as if she had been slapped at the very instant that metal touched the nape of Nate’s neck.

  “If I listen to much more of this, I will vomit. Keep your hands where they are, King. As for you, wench, yell for help and I will blow this gallant soul’s head off.” One-Eye Jackson snickered.

  Nate boiled with fury. Not at Jackson but at himself for letting himself be distracted. His lapse might cost them their lives.

  “I can’t believe how easy you made it.” One-Eye rubbed salt in the wound. “The mighty Grizzly Killer. Taken by surprise because some filly is making cow-eyes at him. And a married filly, at that. I must remember to look up your Shoshone squaw and tell her about your little romance.”

  Nate’s fury increased tenfold. He almost lost his hold over himself, almost whirled to attack Jackson even though the outcome was not in doubt. Jackson’s reflexes were the equal of his, and Jackson had no qualms about squeezing the trigger.

  “My, my. Look at you tremble,” One-Eye taunted. “Must be a nip in the air.” He chuckled, then said, “Woman, listen good. I want you to relieve Mr. King, here, of his armory. Stand where I can see you. Toss his rifle and both his pistols out of reach. The same with his pigsticker and the tomahawk.”

  “If I refuse?”

  “Why, then, I shoot him and gut you and then shoot your husband when he rushes to your rescue.”

  “You are despicable.”

  “Hell, lady, I’ll gladly lay claim to being scum if that will make you happy. You see, unlike you, I’m not hampered by scruples.” One-Eye paused. “Then again, you must not have any either or you wouldn’t be pouring your heart out to Grizzly Killer while your husband snores not twenty feet away.”

  “I hate you,” Cynthia said.

  “I’m flattered. I’m a good hater, myself. I’ve hated this big tub of righteousness for years now.”

  “What did he ever do to you?”

  One-Eye’s voice lost its humor. “Know what? You ask too damn many questions. Do as I told you and be damn quick about it or I’ll damn well kill the two of you for the damn well hell of it.”

  “You swear too much,” Cynthia said, turning toward Nate with arms out from her sides.

  That struck One-Eye as hilarious. He broke into a belly laugh but stifled it and said, “You sure do amuse me, Mrs. Beecher. Maybe I’ll take you with me. How would that be? The two of us, alone, with all these warm nights to while away?”

  “I would rather be burned alive.” Cynthia slid a flintlock from under Nate’s belt and threw it into the grass.

  “I haven’t kissed you yet. You might grow to like it.”

  Nate dearly yearned to end Jackson’s gloating, but the pressure of the muzzle on his neck did not slacken. “Quit insulting her,” he said, and received a hard blow to the back of his head that nearly blacked him out.

  “Did I say you could talk? Keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you. I’m hankering to pull this trigger like I’ve never hankered after anything in all my born days.” Jackson gouged the barrel hard into Nate’s neck. “You cost me my eye, you son of a bitch.”

  Risking another blow, Nate said, “It always comes back to that. And you always have it wrong. You cost yourself the eye. I just happened to be there.”

  For perhaps half a minute Jackson did not respond. Then he said with icy reserve, “Ever pull the legs off grasshoppers when you were a sprout? Or cut a snake and put it on an anthill?”

  “Can’t say as I did, no.”

  “You missed out. My point is that making you suffer will be one of the great joys of my life. I don’t want you to die quick. That would upset me something awful.”

  Cynthia stepped back. She had done as Jackson had commanded. “What now?” she asked. “Do I bind him for you since you’re too cowardly to do it yourself?”

  “My dear woman,” One-Eye said with a grin, “your childish barbs are wasted on hide as thick as mine.” He sidled to the left where he could watch them both. “Now, what say we waltz over and ask your husband how-does-he-do?”

  Nate’s head was throbbing. He gauged the distance between them but did not resist.

  Shipley Beecher was on his back, his head on his saddle, doing a remarkable imitation of a bull elk bugling. He stirred when Jackson kicked his leg but did not wake up.

  “This idiot wouldn’t last two seconds in Apache country,” One-Eye remarked. He kicked Beecher again, in the ribs.

  The farmer came out from under his blanket in befuddlement. “What in the world? Who did that to me?”

  One-Eye pointed his rifle at Shipley. “Not the sharpest of razors, are you? Throw up your hands or be shot.”

  It always took Beecher several minutes to rouse from slumber. He was one of those who could not wake up quickly if his life depended on it. Unfortunately for him, in this instance it did. Instead of throwing up hands, he stared in confusion at his wife, then at Nate, and finally at Jackson. Understanding filled his eyes, even as his hand flashed for a pistol.

  One-Eye shot him.

  Chance had thrown an opportunity at Nate, and he took it. Spinning, he threw himself at Jackson. He counted on being able to reach him before Jackson unlimbered a pistol. He was wrong.

  A flintlock blossomed as if out of thin air, trained on Nate’s middle. Bracing for the agony of being gut-shot, Nate drew up short. It saved his life. One-Eye had the hammer curled back, but he did not squeeze the trigger.

  “That’s close enough.”

  Shipley was on the ground, thrashing and gritting his teeth, a hand over the wound in his right shoulder. He did not handle pain well. He cursed. He mewed. He made inarticulate sounds.

  “What an infant,” One-Eye said. “He should be ashamed to wear britches.” Suddenly tensing, he demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Cynthia had dropped to her knees beside Shipley. Clutching his othe
r arm, she said, “Calm down, Ship! Calm down! You’re still alive and there’s not much blood. You’ll live.”

  One-Eye Jackson laughed. “Isn’t she the optimist?” He moved back a few steps, the better to cover them. “Now then. Suppose we get to it? Woman, I want you to fetch the horses. Walk south about two hundred yards and you’ll find where I tethered them.”

  “You honestly expect me to bring them back here?”

  “I expect you want your husband and your mountain man to live,” One-Eye answered. “So you’ll bring the horses, yes, and you won’t dawdle, or I’ll put lead into the two of them. Which will it be?”

  Her back stiff in resentment, her small fists clenched, Cynthia marched off to do his bidding.

  “Don’t get eaten by a bear!” One-Eye hollered after her.

  Shipley had stopped thrashing and groaning and was glaring at the lanky frontiersman. “If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will plant you.”

  Unfazed, Jackson responded, “Go ahead. Vent your spleen while you can. Because in an all-too-short while, neither you nor King will have tongues to vent anything with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  One-Eye winked his good eye at Nate. “Isn’t he precious? Have you ever met anyone so stupid?”

  “Why are you doing this to us?” Shipley Beecher asked.

  Bobbing his chin at Nate, One-Eye said, “Ask him.”

  The farmer shifted. “Well? Are you mute? Have the courtesy to make sense of this madness.”

  “I have nothing to say,” Nate said.

  One-Eye laughed coldly. “Guilty conscience? Have you been able to sleep at night? I haven’t. I have lain awake thinking of all the wonderful ways I could pay you back. They all had one thing in common. Would you like to know what it was?”

  “You’ll tell me anyway.”

  “Smart coon.” One-Eye grinned, and sobered. “The one thing they had in common was making you suffer as no man has ever suffered since the dawn of creation.”

  “You hate me that much?” Nate asked.

  “I hate you with every breath I take. I hate you with all I am. I hate you more than any hate that has ever been, and I will go on hating you until the day you die, or I do. Is that enough hate for you?”