Nate had heard enough. Stalking down the incline, he rejoined his family. As his wife rushed to embrace him, he saw Azul and Martin off by themselves, shoulders bent, talking in secret. What was that all about? he wondered.
Winona was overjoyed to have her man back alive and well. Dread had numbed her every second he was gone. Dread that she would hear an ominous rumble, and the roof of the tunnel would come crashing down.
Losing Nate would devastate her. She would not remain in their cabin if that ever happened. The memories would be too painful to bear. She would burn it down and go live with her own people. Zach could become a full-fledged warrior, if that was his wish. Evelyn would one day marry the man she desired, and be master of her own lodge.
As for Winona, there would never be another mate for her. In her heart of hearts she knew that Nate was the only one she could ever love. Without him, she would rather live her days out alone, treasuring fond memories of their happy years together.
“Husband,” Winona said softly, wrapping both arms around his waist.
“Wife,” Nate said, reciprocating.
Evelyn was all smiles. “What was it like in there, Pa? Did you see any gold?”
“It was scary,” Nate admitted. “And yes, I did. Lots and lots of it. Enough to make Varga one of the richest men in the world.”
Zach hung back, uncomfortable with making a public display of his affection. “I hope Varga chokes on it,” he said bitterly. He was sick and tired of being held captive, of being told what to do and when to do it. Most of the Vargas treated him as if he were the same age as his sister. Diego was the exception. They would talk on occasion, whenever Ignacio and Don Varga were not around to shoo Diego away.
By coincidence, the youngest Varga was hobbling toward them on his crutch. Sheepishly, he said to Nate King, “Forgive the intrusion, señor, but my father sent me to get the lantern.”
Nate had forgotten to hand it over. Untangling himself from his wife, he said, “Here. Take it.”
Diego propped himself on his crutch, raised the glass, and blew out the wick. “I am sorry for what my padre forced you to do,” he mentioned. “It was not right that he make others do something he would not do himself.”
“Too bad your father doesn’t share your sentiments,” Nate said.
“He is not himself, Señor King. Before we sailed from Spain, he was always kind and considerate of others. This gold business has changed him.” Diego turned to go, then faced Zach. “Were it up to me, my friend, I would free you. But I dare not help you. My father would never forgive me.”
Zach’s bitterness spilled over. “It seems to me that your family is always making excuses. When are you going to stand on your own two feet?”
“It is not that simple.”
“Another excuse,” Zach said. “But that’s okay. You go on fooling yourself. And when your pa gets around to having us killed, it will be on your shoulders.”
“Mi padre will not harm you. Hasn’t he told you as much?”
Nate had been listening and interjected a remark. “I wish I shared your confidence, Diego. But you just said yourself that your father has changed in the past few months. And not for the better.”
“Why would he hurt you? Once he has the gold, he will have no cause to.”
“He’ll have all the reason in the world,” Nate disagreed. “You’re forgetting that you are on American soil. If the American government were to learn what he has done, there would be hell to pay. Remember, he doesn’t have official approval to be here.”
“Why would they be upset? He has done nothing wrong?”
“Hasn’t he?” Nate countered. “Your father has held us against our will. He’s provoked a war with the Utes by wiping out a Ute hunting party. He’s violated American sovereignty. I’d bet my poke that he’ll be in hot water if word gets out.” He stared at the boy’s father, who was conferring with Azul and Martin. “The only way for him to make sure that it doesn’t is to dispose of anyone who might raise a fuss.”
Diego gnawed on his lower lip. “My father would not do such a thing,” he insisted, but his tone lacked conviction.
Zach got in the final word. “After what he did at Sandy Lake, how can you be so sure?”
The youngest son hobbled toward his family, his head bowed in thought. At the ramp he looked over his shoulder, apprehension caking his features like so much icing. His father called his name and he hobbled on, his shoulders stooped.
“I feel sorry for him,” Winona said. He was a good boy caught in a bad situation, his manhood hanging on the decision he must make. Would he be true to his own convictions, or would Diego go along with his father no matter who suffered?
“1 feel sorrier for us,” Nate commented, sitting.
Evelyn had lost interest in the discussion. What would be, would be. No amount of fretting could change that. So she stepped to a low boulder and hopped on top of it to see if she could spot her horse among the string. Instead, she caught sight of a heavyset figured shambling toward them. “It’s Rosa!” she cried.
Of all the servants, Rosa the cook treated them the best. Twice a day she brought food. Sometimes, like now, she would bring a water skin. She also held a loaf of bread.
Nate had a hunch that the cook had taken a shine to his daughter. On several occasions Rosa had slipped Evelyn sweet cakes when no one was looking. Rosa also liked to ride beside Evelyn, although Don Varga frowned on it.
The trapper had not been surprised to learn that she had a husband and four small children in Mexico. Evelyn must remind her of her little ones, he had concluded.
The cook did not speak a lick of English. But her cheerful nature and ready smiles more than made up for it. She was partial to bouncing Evelyn on her knee, the two of them laughing and having a grand old time.
Winona was glad for the water. She passed the skin to her children, then to her husband, and finally took a deep drink herself.
Nate held out his hand for the water skin. Leaning closer, he said quietly, “Tonight is the night.”
Fueled by the massacre, for days they had been plotting an escape. Both of them were keenly aware that they must get away before it was too late. Soon the Utes would show up in force, and Varga would rue the day he entered their territory. There would be no reasoning with the Utes, no parleys, no truces. Swarms of warriors would descend on the expedition like a swarm of locusts on a ripe field of grain, and by the time the Utes were done, not a single Spaniard or Mexican would be left standing.
“Tonight,” Winona said. What they were planning might cost their lives, but it was better to be slain fighting for their freedom than to be slaughtered like buffalo in a surround.
Nate wagged a finger at his son, and when Zach came over, he repeated what he had told his wife.
“At last!” Zach exclaimed. Since the day they were taken captive he had been itching to do something. “But I wish you would let me trick the guards instead of sissy.”
“They’ll never suspect Evelyn” was Nate’s reply, praying he was right. Putting his daughter in danger went against his grain. Should she be harmed, he would never forgive himself.
Winona could read her husband’s features as easily as he read books. “Trust her, husband. She is young, but she can do what has to be done.”
“It’s not her I fret over,” Nate said. It was one of the guards proving too quick on the trigger. It was the innermost fear of every parent made real: losing a child.
Watching the cook play with Evelyn, Zach said, “What about Rosa and Diego and the others who have been kind to us? Is there anything we can do to save them, Pa?”
“We’ve warned them. That’s all we can do.”
“Why not offer to take them with us?”
“Be realistic, son. How many do you honestly think will go? Most of them are convinced that we’ve exaggerated the danger. Maybe they like us, but they trust their patron's judgment more than they do ours. Our hands are tied.”
Zach glanced at Va
rga’s daughters. Seated on folding camp chairs, with servants behind them holding brightly colored umbrellas to protect them from the sun, they chattered merrily while snacking and sipping drinks. In his mind’s eye he saw fair Luisa, her trim body riddled by bloody ash shafts. A lump formed in his throat. “There must be something,” he insisted.
Nate shared his son’s yearning. It was perfectly human, perfectly understandable. But the four of them could no more prevent the wrath about to fall on the expedition than they could stop a raging storm or block the path of a towering tornado. Manuel de Varga had set forces in motion no one could withstand.
“It’s a crying shame,” Zach said.
That it was, Nate conceded. He sought words to console his son, but what could he say? Everyone had to pay for their mistakes. It was the first law of the wild. Neither humans nor animals were immune. A buck that went on grazing when the scent of painter was heavy on the wind paid for its lapse just as assuredly as Varga would. A quote came to him, one from his childhood, one as true then as it had been when it was uttered centuries ago: “As we reap, so shall we sow.”
Twenty-Two
Blue Water Woman closed her eyes, lowered her chin to her chest, and braced for the worst. Grass lashed her. Weeds battered her. Any moment that would change. She would be in the thorny brush and it would rip her to ribbons.
Loud crackling arose. They were there. A cry escaped her as lancing pangs seared her shoulders, her arms, her legs. It felt as if she were being cut by dozens of knives, all at once. She kept her head down, her eyes closed to protect them. Yet that did not spare her face. A stinging pain in her left cheek, another in her forehead, produced trickles of blood.
She could feel her dress being torn and rent. Her thigh flared with anguish. Her left forearm throbbed. The drumming of the speckled horse, the crunch of brush, were loud in her ears. Suddenly the crunching stopped. She was being lashed by grass instead of being slashed and gouged.
Blue Water Woman looked up. They were through the patch of brush! She had survived, but it was only the first pass. Rope was looping around to plow through again.
She strained against the rawhide that was digging into her chest, but it was hopeless. She could not loosen it or burst it. Suddenly rolling to the right, then back to the left, she tried to gain enough momentum to maybe be wrenched free.
Rope saw what she was doing and laughed. Out of the corner of an eye, she spotted Hook Nose about sixty yards away, observing. He made no attempt to stop Rope. With Stout gone, her fate was sealed.
Unknown to her, though, a white-maned figure was sprinting madly toward them. Shakespeare McNair ran as if he were running a footrace with death— which he was. His blood had stopped in his veins at the sight of his wife being dragged through the brush. He was not going to let it happen twice, not if he could help it.
Shakespeare closed on the warrior who was watching the torture. The Ute’s back was to him. He had to get near enough to cast his heavy crude spear, no more than ten feet, preferably less. But he could not help making noise, as fast as he was running. He was still thirty feet away when the warrior glanced over a shoulder.
The Ute’s eyes widened in surprise. Recovering, he wheeled his mount and grabbed a bow that was slung over a shoulder. His other hand shot to the quiver on his back and he snatched at an arrow. In his haste, he gripped two. He had to transfer the extra shaft to the hand that was already holding the bow, and that took precious seconds. Swiftly, he nocked the arrow he intended to use to the sinew string.
Shakespeare was fifteen feet out. Much too far to make a successful cast. But he threw the spear anyway, without breaking stride. It arced high, but not high enough to impale the warrior in the chest. It would hit his horse.
The Ute had a choice to make, and only a heartbeat in which to make it. Unleash his shaft or save his warhorse. Jerking on the reins, he brought the animal around in a tight half-circle. The spear went flying harmlessly past. Quickly, the warrior brought up his bow.
By then, Shakespeare was close enough to fling himself upward. His arms wrapped around the Ute’s waist, batting the ash bow to one side. Clamping hold, Shakespeare twisted and heaved, flinging the warrior as if the man were a child’s rag doll. The warrior crashed to earth with such force that the bow went flying and the Ute lay momentarily insensate.
Shakespeare twirled. The other warrior was nearing the brush. Blue Water Woman was striving mightily to break loose, but she could not possibly do it before she was subjected to another harrowing ordeal. He turned to the horse to mount and fly to her rescue.
Hands gripped his ankles. Shakespeare looked down. The Ute on the ground had recovered and was clawing at a knife in a beaded sheath. Shakespeare kicked to break the man’s grip, but the warrior held on and yanked, spilling him to the turf. The knife sheared at his throat and he flipped backward, pushing into a crouch even as the Ute did likewise.
The warrior stabbed, down low. Shakespeare grabbed the man’s wrist. The Ute gripped his other arm. Locked together, they grappled. They were evenly matched; neither could gain the upper hand. And every moment they struggled brought his wife that much closer to the thorny brush. A bestial growl of frustration passed his lips.
At that very instant, Blue Water Woman saw the brush appear and tucked her head as she had done before. None too soon. It felt like a red-hot poker was plunged into her right shoulder. Another gashed her ribs. A third pierced her thigh. She was ripped across the chin and mouth. Her forehead was opened.
She realized that Rope was dragging her through the thickest part. Her knee was spiked by exquisite agony. Her back was cut. She knew that she was bleeding profusely, that even if she lived through this second pass, she would rapidly weaken. There would be no surviving a third time.
The brush gave way to grass. She sagged, as much from relief as from fatigue and pain. Rope was grinning wickedly and swinging wide to approach again.
Blue Water Woman sobbed. She did not want to die like this. It had been her dream to live a good many years yet, to enjoy McNair’s company for as long as the Great Mystery was willing. Now that dream was dashed. And the saddest part of all was that her husband would never know what had happened to her. His torment would be worse than hers.
Sixty yards away, the man that she valued more highly than her own life was flat on his back, the young Ute on top, the Ute’s keen blade lowering slowly but steadily toward his throat.
The Ute’s face was beet red, his veins bulging. He was exerting every ounce of energy he possessed.
Shakespeare was barely able to hold the knife at bay. He tried to push the warrior off, but the man clung tenaciously to him. Shifting his legs, he hooked his right one under the Ute’s left shin. Then, bending upward at the hips, he flipped the warrior to the left and rolled with the motion so that he wound up on top and the Ute was on the bottom.
The warrior snarled and strove to thrust his weapon into Shakespeare’s jugular. Shakespeare drew his head back. In doing so, he spied an object lying on the ground close to them. In a twinkling, he released the Ute and dived, grasping it and spinning back again.
The Ute had come up off the ground in a rush, his arm hiked to deliver a fatal blow. His eyes were ablaze with bloodlust. A split second later, the right one was filled with something else.
Shakespeare McNair drove the arrow he held up and in. The barbed point sliced into the Ute’s pupil, rupturing the eyeball and tearing on through into the brain cavity.
As if jolted by a bolt out of the blue, the Ute went as rigid as a broom handle and staggered backward. Feebly, he gripped the arrow and tugged. His shattered eyeball slid down the shaft, oozing gore in its wake. Like a poled ox, he fell onto his backside and sat, his lips moving but no words coming out.
Shakespeare did not waste another second. Darting to the man’s mount, he seized the reins before it could run off, vaulted on top, and sped toward his wife.
Blue Water Woman felt herself going faster. Rope was gaining speed to dra
g her through the brush for the third and final time. She was so weak, she could barely raise her head. Blood from her forehead had seeped into her eyes, and she blinked to clear them.
A strange thing happened. Rope glanced at her and smirked, knowing as well as she did that he was about to finish her off. But his smirk died when his gaze drifted past her.
A look of baffled rage came over him. He hauled on the reins, bringing the speckled horse to a stop. Wheeling, he flung the rawhide rope to the ground, or tried to, for he had wrapped it around his right wrist and it would not come off. He had to unwind it first.
Hammering hoof beats approached. Blue Water Woman figured it must be Hook Nose. Yet if so, why was Rope frantically tugging at his bow? It was slung across his chest and had caught on his quiver.
A piercing war whoop rent the air. Not a Ute war whoop, or the peculiar yipping cry of the Sioux, or the bellows of the Blackfeet. It was a war whoop unique unto itself, one she had heard before, one that set her heart to fluttering and her hopes to soaring.
Flashing into view came Hook Nose’s mount. But Hook Nose no longer rode it. A berserk buckskin clad avenger with hair the color of snow bore down on Rope like a charging bull buffalo. Rope gave up trying to unlimber his bow and started to turn the speckled horse. He never made it.
Shakespeare McNair rammed into the warrior’s mount broadside, at a full gallop. There was a rending crash and both animals went down, squealing and flailing. Shakespeare jumped clear, rolling when he hit. Catlike, he was on his feet before the Ute. Lowering his shoulder, he catapulted into the warrior’s chest, bowling him over.
Rope groped for the hilt of his knife. He was shaking his head, blinking furiously. Snaking backward, he scrambled onto one knee.
Shakespeare would not be denied. His foot caught the Ute flush on the jaw. As the warrior struggled to stand, Shakespeare scooped up the rawhide rope that was still attached to the man’s wrist. Holding it in both hands with a foot or so of rope between them, Shakespeare bounded behind his foe. A deft flip, and a loop settled around the warrior’s throat.
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