Wilderness Giant Edition 6

by David Robbins

  Sitting up, Shakespeare swatted pieces of grass from his buckskins. There was no doubt about it. Obtaining a weapon was crucial.

  Once a suitable period had gone by, the mountain man cautiously rose. The meadow was tranquil, the woods were peaceful, but that did not mean a thing. In a crouch he continued on, not really feeling safe until the forest shielded him.

  He was more hungry than ever. His stomach sounded like an agitated painter, the way it carried on. A rabbit added insult to injury by letting him get so close that he could have beaned it with a rock had there been one handy.

  Always Shakespeare traveled lower. He had not been through this area in ten or twelve years, but he had a fair idea of where he was. The spectacular view from a rocky spine proved him right. To the southeast glistened a large body of water. Sandy Lake, some called it, which fed into Sandy Creek.

  As he descended the spine along a trail favored by mountain sheep, glittering rock detoured him to a vein of quartz. Broken pieces lay thick on the ground. All he had to do was select the one that suited him. It went under the top of his other moccasin. Now he could start a fire whenever he so desired.

  Most of the morning was spent reaching a slope that overlooked the lake from the northeast. Intervening trees prevented him from seeing much of it.

  Coming up on a path frequented daily by deer and elk, Shakespeare made good time. He planned to fashion a spear, use it to kill a deer, then fashion a bow and use it on the renegades if they tracked him this far.

  At the bottom, when still a quarter of a mile from the lake, Shakespeare noted that the ground had been torn up. Ascribing it to buffalo, he did not give it much attention until he started across and the imprint of a shod hoof stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.

  Dozens and dozens of riders had gone by, no more than a day or so before. It had to be the Varga party, Shakespeare guessed. What a stroke of luck! Don Varga would help him out, maybe outfit him with a horse and rifle. And Varga might even know what had happened to Blue Water Woman and the Kings.

  Gone was any thought of food or water. Changing direction, aglow with his good fortune, Shakespeare hastened after the expedition.

  Nineteen

  “It is here somewhere!” Don Manuel de Varga declared. “It has to be!” Anxiety contorting his features, he intently scanned the sheer walls of the gorge through which they were riding. “The map says so!” he added, shaking the parchment at the mocking heights.

  Nate King did not reply. Varga was beyond caring what he or anyone else said. The change that had come over the Spaniard was appalling.

  Gone was the smug confidence, the air of self-righteous authority, the aspect of power and elegance that Varga had worn like a suit of armor. Little by little, day by day, cracks had appeared in that armor, cracks that widened and lengthened until the armor began to peel from Varga like the skin from an orange.

  Don Varga was a shell of his former self. He had not slept decently in days. He rarely ate anything, and even then, he would only nibble on a piece of bread or cheese. Dark bags under his eyes accented his haggard appearance.

  At times Varga had a feverish gleam in his eyes. But Nate doubted that it was due to illness. No, the fever was of another variety, the kind that men suffered when their lust for riches eclipsed all else. “Gold fever” was how some folks referred to it. And Varga had the worst case that Nate had ever seen.

  “I will find it!” the Spaniard grated through clenched teeth. “After coming so far, I will not be denied!”

  Three days had gone by since they left the lake. Three days had been spent scouring the lower slopes on the south side of Long’s Peak, without results.

  It was a maze. Here nature had carved mighty gorges and sculpted sheer cliffs. Ravines and ridges crisscrossed one another. Talus slopes were deadly traps for riders and pack animals alike. In wooded areas deadfalls were common, tangles so thick that it took forever for the expedition to find a way through.

  Varga raised his glistening face to the afternoon sky. “You won’t thwart me!” he railed, shaking the map again. “Not even you can stop me!”

  Nate did not ask who Varga was talking to. Sadly, he turned away, shifting to check on the column.

  Immediately behind them rode Ignacio and Martin. The older brother wore his concern for his father on his face, but Martin was oddly composed and calm, unaffected by his father’s slow disintegration.

  Farther back were Winona, Zach, and Evelyn. Evelyn saw Nate looking at them, smiled cheerily, and waved.

  The mountain man waved back. How amazing small children were! he reflected. They did not let despair weigh them down. When beset by hardship, they always bounced back much faster than adults.

  Their soaring spirits could not be bound in chains of worry and desperation.

  Zach was not taking the ordeal nearly as well. Nate was troubled by the sullen mood his son had fallen into. It was not like the boy, and he did not know what to make of it.

  If the strapping trapper could have peered into his son’s mind at that moment, he would have discovered the cause. Zach was upset with himself for letting his family down when they needed him the most.

  Back when Varga first took them captive, Zach had harbored the notion that he would soon find a way to free them from the Spaniard’s clutches. But as day after day went by and no opportunities arose, he grew more and more upset. The failure, he felt, was his.

  If he were a true warrior, it should not be taking him so long. True warriors never failed. A true warrior, he had always believed, never gave in to enemies, never stopped trying to come out on top. True warriors succeeded.

  It bothered him, too, that the Vargas treated him as if he were a mere child. Don Varga, Ignacio, Martin, even Maria and Francisca, they never addressed him as an equal, never spoke to him like they did to his pa and ma. For the most part, in fact, they ignored him, just as they did Evelyn.

  To be fair, Zach had noticed that they did not treat him any differently than they treated Diego. Diego’s opinion on things did not matter. In family councils around the campfire, he was never asked his viewpoint.

  Zach did not like to be treated that way. By Shoshone standards, he was at the threshold of manhood. He had counted his first coup, hadn’t he? Why, in another few winters he could take a wife if he so wanted—and if his pa let him.

  This was not like the time he had been captured by the Blackfeet. It was strange, he thought, that the mortal foes of his mother’s people had treated him more decently than the Vargas were doing. The Blackfeet had adopted him as one of their own, had valued his insights, had given him the run of their village. There had been a maiden who took a shine to him, which suited him just fine since he’d had a powerful hankering for her company, as well.

  Thinking of maidens turned Zach’s thought to Luisa. He often caught the youngest daughter giving him looks on the sly. Initially, she had turned away in embarrassment. But of late she met his gaze with a frank appraisal of her own. Her friendly smile was an invitation to talk, but the few times he had tried, either Ignacio or Martin had snapped at her to stay away from him.

  Zach hated Ignacio. The man treated him the worst of all of them. Zach daydreamed of planting a lead ball in Ignacio’s brain, or of slitting Ignacio’s throat while he slept.

  Especially galling was Ignacio’s habit of referring to him as a “breed.” Bitter experience had taught Zach that many people despised him simply because he was part white and part red. Half-breeds, he had learned, were universally frowned on by his father’s kind. Fewer Indians shared the prejudice, although still too many to suit him.

  Zach never had understood why. What difference did it make if his father was white, his mother Shoshone? Why hold a grudge against him for something over which he had no control?

  Zach had never confided in his parents, but one of the reasons he was more inclined to go live with the Shoshones than the whites once he was old enough had to do with this very issue. Why go live among people who wou
ld look down their noses at him just because his skin color was not the same as theirs? Why subject himself to being called vile names, and spit on, and worse?

  A few yards in front of him, Winona put a hand on the small of her back and arched her spine to relieve a kink. Her gaze rested on her children. Evelyn grinned, but Zach wore a dour mask that grew worse with each passing day.

  It worried Winona. Until the previous winter, her son had always been so carefree, so full of vim and vinegar, as Nate would say. Of late, though, he had been prone to surly spells, most noticeably at the last rendezvous when he had almost gotten into a fight with a man who made a comment Zach did not appreciate.

  An added burden was her son’s growing lust for warfare. Zach yearned to be a mighty warrior, a trait shared by many Shoshone boys his age. But in him there was a subtle difference. Her motherly instincts told her that he was becoming too preoccupied with bloodshed and battle. The next time she visited her people, she would have Touch The Clouds and Drags The Rope talk to him. Two of the bravest warriors in the tribe, they could perhaps change his outlook.

  “Ma, will we stop soon?”

  Winona turned to her daughter. “I cannot say. It is not up to me.” They had been in the saddle since sunrise. Don Varga had not rested at noon, as was his custom. Nor had he done so for the past three days. The closer they came to the mine, the harder the man drove himself and everyone else.

  “Too bad it isn’t,” Evelyn said. She was sore from so much riding, which she never imagined could happen, not as much as she loved horses.

  Ever since her parents had given her a frisky pony for her very own, horses were all Evelyn thought about, all she dreamed about. Her favorite toy was a horse crafted from buckskin, sticks, and real horse hair, given to her by a Shoshone aunt. At home she played with it for hours on end, straddling it with her toy doll and pretending she was out riding like the wind.

  A harsh command from the front of the column brought the weary men and women to a halt. Don Varga glared at the world as if it were arrayed against him, and swore in Spanish. In English he said, “The map must be correct. We will find the Beak. We will!”

  Once more Nate made no response.

  “Where could we have gone wrong?” Varga wondered, and unrolled the parchment. Aloud, he translated, “Due south of the highest peak is a gorge with red rocks at the mouth. Up it is a landmark I call the Eagle’s Beak.” Varga frowned. “That is all the captain wrote. What do you suppose he meant?”

  Nate shrugged. He had never heard of any landmark by that name, and he had mingled freely with Spaniards who came to trade at Bent’s Fort, a trading outpost to the southeast, the only one of its kind for hundreds of miles around.

  “What could he have meant?” Don Varga repeated. A curt gesture moved the column forward, Varga craning his neck and constantly swinging from side to side like a heron stalking frogs and fish.

  Around a bend appeared four runners. The Maricopas were on their way back after having scouted ahead, as ordered. Chivari was in the lead. Whatever he told the Spaniard sparked more cursing.

  “Why is this happening?” Varga asked the heavens. “Why have you turned against me?” To Nate, he said, “Chivari tells me that the gorge ends several hundred yards ahead. They did not see any sign of a mine.”

  Nate glanced at the high walls. It occurred to him that they had boxed themselves in nicely. With only the one way out, they would be trapped like rats should a hostile war party get wind of them. Being hemmed in made him uneasy. “Let’s try farther west,” he suggested.

  “No!” Don Varga said. “We will check every square inch. I must see that the mine is not here with my own eyes.” He nodded at the Maricopas. “Do you honestly think I would trust the word of these miserable wretches?”

  Nate followed when the Spaniard put spurs to the Arabian. He did not point out that this was the third gorge they had searched, and that they were no closer to finding the mine than they had been out on the prairie. The map had mentioned a gorge with red rocks, all right, but there were many gorges in that area, and sandstone was common. Locating the right one could take days, if not weeks.

  Nate trotted around the turn. Varga was staring at the base of the right-hand wall, which was as blank as a child’s chalk slate. Nate looked up, to the left, and whistled softly.

  Far above, perched on the smooth rim, was a stone outcropping. Carved by wind and erosion, it bore a remarkable resemblance to the beak of a gigantic bird of prey.

  “Look yonder,” Nate said, pointing.

  Manuel de Varga stiffened. Whipping his mount, he galloped to a jumbled collection of boulders of varying sizes that lined the base of the left wall. He flew from the saddle, racing in among them.

  Nate was only a few steps behind. He heard an elated outcry, swept past one of the largest boulders, then dug in his heels in astonishment.

  A square black maw gaped darkly, framed by ancient timbers. An incline of excavated dirt led up to it, while beside the opening sat two weathered wooden ore carts. To the left of the entrance was a giant pile of discarded worthless rock.

  Don Varga stood as one transfixed, mouth agape. Tears welled up in his eyes and seeped from their corners to moisten his cheeks. “I have done it!” he breathed. Then, pumping his arms at the blue vault that crowned the gorge, he shouted in near-hysterical triumph, “I have done it!”

  Others were filing through the boulder field. Ignacio was foremost, and like his father, he shed tears of joy. Martin, as usual, was unfazed. Beyond an odd smirk, he showed no emotion. Maria, Francisca, and Luisa giggled and clapped their hands and hugged one another.

  “Bring lanterns! We are going in!” Varga said, dashing up the incline with all the enthusiasm of a child who could not wait to open the gift he had just been given. His family and many of the vaqueros surged forward, a wave of greed washing against the rampart of stone.

  “Wait!” Nate hollered, bringing everyone up short.

  Varga was a few steps from the opening. “What is wrong?” he asked impatiently.

  Nate shouldered through them, up to the entrance, and rose onto the tips of his toes. He pried at the overhead beam with his fingernails. A sliver the size of his little finger came off in his hand. “This wood is rotted. Go rushing on in, and you’re liable to bring the whole tunnel crashing down on top of your heads.”

  The Spaniard took the silver. It crumbled when he pressed it between his palms. Swallowing hard, he stared at the supports. “You are right. In my haste, I nearly got all of us killed.”

  Ignacio’s brows pinched. “Why did you warn us, señor!” he asked. “All you had to do was keep quiet, and you would have been rid of us. You could have been free.”

  “Yes, I could have,” Nate said, and brushed past the perplexed eldest son to join his family. A hubbub broke out as Don Varga barked orders fast and furious and the servants and vaqueros hustled to comply. Nate strode to his wife, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “I am glad,” Winona said, and she genuinely was. Other men would have let the Vargas be crushed without a second thought. But not her man. It was not in his nature.

  From the moment they first met, Winona had known of her husband’s inherent noble streak. Marauding Blackfeet had been about to slay her when Nate had appeared out of nowhere, putting his own life in jeopardy to save hers. Few would sacrifice themselves for a stranger. Fewer still would then dismiss their courageous act as “nothing special.”

  His nobility was one of the traits that most attracted her. Maybe he was not the smartest man alive, or the most clever, or the handsomest, but there was no denying that he was achingly decent and honest and true.

  Other wives often worried that their husbands would be unfaithful. Or that their men would cast them aside for younger women. Not Winona. In her heart of hearts, she knew as surely as she did that the sun would rise each day and set each night that her man would never betray her trust, and never, e
ver discard her as if she were an old shirt that had outlived its usefulness.

  Some believed she had chosen unwisely in picking Nate. She could have chosen any warrior in the tribe as her mate, they claimed, and lived in the grandest of lodges, owned many furs and more horses than she knew what to do with. She could have lived her life in relative ease and luxury, as her people measured status.

  Winona would rather have Nate. She would rather have a man who adored her heart and soul than a warrior who valued his warhorses more than he did her. She would rather have a mate who would stand by her side through the worst of times than one who would run out on her on a whim. As silly as it sounded, Nathaniel King was everything she had ever wanted in a man, and more.

  The mountaineer who had won her heart steered his family to a small clear space. Winona passed out pemmican. As they slowly chewed, frenetic activity swirled around them. Everyone except the three vaqueros assigned as guards was bustling this way and that. Either they were setting up camp, or they were picketing the horses, or unloading supplies. A group of ten men took axes and pack animals and rode off to find suitable timber to use as beams and supports.

  Don Varga was rejuvenated. He was everywhere, snapping commands, giving detailed instructions, showing how he wanted certain chores done.

  Nate leaned against a boulder and was about to doze off when the Spaniard moved purposefully toward the mine entrance, the four Maricopas tagging along. At the opening Don Varga stepped to one side and gestured imperiously. Chivari’s response seemed to anger Varga, who shoved a lantern into the warrior’s hands and gestured more sharply.

  The Maricopas were none too happy, and Nate could not blame them. The rest were given lanterns of their own. Ignacio brought a rope, which was looped around the waist of each. Another rope was tied to the end of the first, yet another to the end of the second.

  Chivari stepped forward but hesitated just inside. For that he received a push from Don Varga. The Maricopa spun, livid, his hand on the hilt of his knife. For a moment the outcome hung in the balance as the warrior and the Spaniard locked blazing eyes. It was the Maricopa who backed down.