Wilderness Double Edition 13

by David Robbins

  “Won’t Ma be shocked?”

  “To put it mildly,” Nate answered. Winona never had liked the notion of taming wild animals. “Wild things are supposed to be wild,” she maintained. Having a dog was one thing. A wolf’s place was in the forest, not in front of a hearth.

  Evelyn stepped back and clutched at her throat. “Oh my gosh, Pa! I almost shot him! I almost killed sweet Blaze!”

  “He was lucky,” Nate said, thinking of how close he had come to burying his knife. “Let’s hope your brother gets back before Blaze takes a notion to go gallivanting off again.”

  From the end of the lake rose frantic shouts. “Evelyn! Evelyn! Where are you?”

  “We’re over here, Ma!” Evelyn responded, and tittered. “Come have a look-see! You won’t believe who’s here!”

  Winona had heard a faint scream, then a gunshot. She had been out of her chair and out the door before the shot faded, her Hawken in her hands. Down the trail she had raced, so afraid for her daughter she could barely breathe. Now, hearing Evelyn reply, she felt some of the fear subside. The rest was replaced by resentment when she ran out of the woods onto the shore and spied the cause of all the ruckus bouncing up and down between her husband and her child as they walked toward her. “It cannot be! Him?”

  “Him,” Nate said, and chuckled. His wife rarely displayed anger, so to see her fit to kick the wolf was highly entertaining.

  Evelyn threw an arm around her four-footed friend’s furry neck. “Aren’t you glad to see him again, Ma? Doesn’t it make you want to cry for joy?”

  “I could cry, yes,” Winona said drily. It wasn’t that she disliked Blaze. The wolf had saved her life once, and she would be forever grateful. But she never felt comfortable having it around, especially having it in the cabin.

  Her feelings stemmed from her childhood, from that awful winter when heavy snow had been packed deep, half as high as the lodges, and there had been so little to eat that many of her people had perished. In the dead of night she had been awakened by terrible screams, shrill whinnies and shouts. Her father had rushed off. Her mother had comforted a frightened sister.

  Winona had wandered outside, and there beheld a scene from her worst nightmare. A pack of hungry wolves had crept into the village, after the horses. Several of the latter were down, the wolves biting at them, heedless of the warriors who so desperately sought to stop the slaughter.

  One horse was her own. A pony, a dun her grandfather had given her. Four starving wolves ripped at its belly and neck, tearing off large strips of skin and ‘flesh. Her father was trying to save his own warhorse. There was no one to help her horse.

  Winona grabbed a stick from the pile kept handy for the fire, and rushed to the pony’s rescue. She swatted and hollered, but the wolves were too hungry to be afraid.

  Her pony fought bravely, its hooves knocking wolves away again and again. But it was one against four. And once the wolves had the horse hamstrung, the end was inevitable.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks, tears that froze before they reached her chin, as Winona stood and watched her sweet horse being devoured alive. She wept and wept and wept. And wept some more. Her mother found her, whisked her inside, and tried to soothe her. But Winona had not been able to eat or sleep for several days. She had loved that pony. And ever since, she had not been very fond of wolves. Not fond at all.

  “Can Blaze sleep with me tonight, Ma, since Zach is gone?” Evelyn was asking. “Please! Oh, please!”

  “Maybe he will not want to be indoors,” Winona said hopefully.

  “Oh, he will! He always loves to curl up by the fire with me. It will be so much fun!”

  Winona could think of another word to describe it. She caught her husband smirking, and wagged a finger at him. “Not one peep out of you.”

  “Yes, dearest.” Nate had learned long ago that when a woman was in one of those moods, it was best to walk and talk softly until the storm passed. Or better yet, move away. He racked his brain for an excuse to leave for a while.

  “Pa’s right,” Evelyn declared. “It’s a shame Zach isn’t here. He’d love to see his old friend again.”

  “Your brother should be back soon,” Winona said. Seldom was Stalking Coyote gone more than a week, even on an elk hunt. “He’s probably on his way home even as we speak.”

  “I hope so,” Evelyn remarked, then clasped a hand over her mouth. What had she just said? She should wash her mouth out with soap!

  Nate gazed off across the stark peaks. He prayed his son was all right. Granted, Shoshone boys were allowed to hunt on their own when they were as young as ten or twelve, and Zach was almost eighteen. But his heart still jumped into his throat every time Zach rode off. Perils were many in the wilderness. He never knew if he was watching his son ride off for the last time.

  “Well, until Zach gets back, Blaze is all mine,” Evelyn declared. “I can’t wait to see if he remembers how to fetch.”

  Winona sighed. “I can’t wait to see if he remembers that he must not lift his leg indoors.”

  Nate chortled, but his mind was still on Zachary. Where are you, son ? he wondered. Wherever it is, I hope you are well.

  At that exact instant, Zachary King was twisting to one side and flinging himself toward the ground. The butcher knife streaked past his chest and imbedded itself in the earth.

  Louisa May Clark was on her feet in a bound. She ran toward her pistols. The Shoshone – or whatever he was – would undoubtedly shoot her before she could lay a finger on them. But she would rather die fighting than be a captive in his village for the rest of her life.

  Zach realized what she was up to. Pushing onto his hands and knees, he coiled, then leaped, tackling her about the shins. He did not want to hurt her, but she had no such compunctions. As she toppled, her fists rained on his head and shoulders.

  “Let go! Let go of me, consarn it!” Louisa tugged and wrenched, but her legs were in a grip of iron. Her flintlocks lay a few feet away. If only she could reach them! She clawed at Stalking Coyote’s eyes, but raked his cheek instead.

  “Calm down, damn you!” Zach railed. Holding onto her was like trying to hold onto a wildcat. She was slight of build, but wiry and strong. It didn’t help that her clothes were so baggy. Trying to get a firm grip was akin to gripping a sheet that billowed in the wind. He winced when her nails raked him, blood seeping from the furrows. “Will you listen to me?”

  Lou was beyond listening. She would kill him or he would kill her. She did not care which. Deep down, she secretly hoped he would get the upper hand. That there would come an end to her torment, an end to the horrible misery her broken heart could no longer bear.

  Zach had both arms around her waist, and was clawing higher to pin her arms. She resisted tooth and nail, going so far as to sink her teeth into his forearm. Yowling like a stricken cub, he jerked his arm away and felt searing pain. “Simmer down!” he pleaded.

  Louisa attempted to knee him in the groin but missed, her knee grazing off his inner thigh. Suddenly he flipped onto his side, swinging her with him, and slammed her onto her back. “No!” she cried, but he was not to be denied. Scrambling atop her, he pressed her arms flat while pinning her legs with his own. “Let me go!”

  They were face-to-face, chest-to-chest. Zach was flushed and breathing heavily, only partly from the exertion. “You’re safe with me!” he exclaimed. “I’d never hurt you!”

  “I won’t be made a prisoner in any village—” Lou began.

  “That was a joke!”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t serious. Honest. I thought it would make you laugh.”

  Louisa blinked. “Are you insane?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You’re holding someone at gunpoint and you joke about dragging them off against their will to God knows where?”

  Zach laughed, but even to him it sounded as empty as a hollow gourd. “I live with my folks east of here a ways. Me and my sister.”

  Louisa became v
ery aware of the warmth of his body. Of his warm breath on her cheek. And of his eyes, his fascinating eyes, so deep that looking into them was the same as gazing into a bottomless pool. She shifted to relieve a cramp, her chest rubbing against him in a manner that made her all tingly inside, startling her to her core.

  Zach showed as many teeth as a raccoon that had just caught a crayfish to prove he was sincere, to demonstrate he was not her enemy. Her blue eyes mesmerized him. They shimmered, like the surface of the lake near the cabin. They were the loveliest eyes he had ever seen. It was bewildering. What was wrong with him that he should find a white girl attractive? He tried to speak, but his throat seemed to be clogged with sand. After coughing several times, he offered, “If you promise to behave, I’ll let you go.”

  Louisa was in a quandary. She did not know what to do. She would like to take Stalking Coyote at his word, but dare she trust him? “Will you give my guns back?”

  Zach hesitated, weighing his welfare against how she would likely take a refusal. “Only if you give me your word that you won’t shoot me.”

  “What makes you think I’ll keep it if I do?”

  “I’ll just have to trust you,” Zach said earnestly. He was, in effect, putting his life in her hands. Maybe he was insane.

  “You’d do that?” Louisa said, touched by the gesture but still unsure. He had to have an ulterior motive. For the life of her, though, she could not guess what it might be.

  “Do we have a deal?” Zach was growing uncomfortable. Her nearness was doing things to his body, making his skin itch and sparking twitches and stirring below his waist.

  “Deal,” Lou declared, but she felt a twinge of regret when he rose and lowered his hand to help her up. She promptly strode to her pistols. Once armed, she felt safer. Safe enough that she turned her back to him to deal with the elk morsels, which were singed. Removing the spit from the flames, she wagged it. “Hungry, Stalking Coyote?”

  Zach was famished. He had to try four times before he could pry a piece off the stick, the meat was so hot. Blowing on it, he nibbled the edges, and when his lips and tongue could stand the heart, he bit into the chunk with relish. “Thank you,” he said with his mouth crammed full.

  “No need to be grateful. It’s your elk.” Lou selected a piece for herself. For a while neither of them spoke. She, mainly because she felt uncomfortable. Although she could not say why.

  Zach broke the silence. It was odd, but he was intensely curious to learn more about her. “Is Lou your real name? Or were you trying to pass yourself off as a boy?”

  “Both,” Lou admitted, and revealed her full name. “The ruse is for my own benefit. What do you think would happen if the trappers in these parts learned I was female?”

  “You would be up to your neck in suitors.” Zach had seen how white men pined for feminine company, particularly the company of their own kind. But white women were as rare as gold west of the Mississippi. So the mountaineers took Indian wives, or else bartered for the privilege of having a maiden live with them a spell.

  “Suitors I can do without,” Lou said. “I’m too young to be thinking of marriage or courting and such.” She quickly added, “Unless I meet the right person, that is. Someone I think highly of.”

  He glanced at her, and she applied her teeth to the meat. What made her say a thing like that? The Shoshone was liable to think she meant him.

  Zach bit into another piece to keep from asking the question her comment spurred. What did he care what it took for her to think highly of someone? She was nothing to him. Just another helpless white. Circumstances had thrown them together, and they would soon part. That was it.

  “So what’s next?” Louisa bluntly asked.

  “Tomorrow I’ll head home. You can tag along. My mother will take real good care of you. And my father will set to it that you get to wherever you want to go.”

  Louisa thought of her promise to her pa that she would look Nate King up. Maybe she should accept Stalking Coyote’s offer instead. If only she could be convinced that trusting him was in her best interests!

  Zach stuffed the last of the morsel in. “Dam it all. I plumb forgot.” He turned to the horses.

  Lou was alarmed. “Where are you going?”

  “The elk,” Zach said. “If I don’t butcher it now, there won’t hardly be any of it left by morning.”

  “But it will be pitch dark in less than an hour.”

  “Then I’ll have to work fast.” Zach forked leather, nudged to the sorrel to the packhorses, and snagged the lead rope. He saw Louisa’s features crease, and he smiled. “I’m not about to run off on you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “I know you wouldn’t abandon me,” Louisa said. Yet she knew no such thing. So how could she make such an absurd claim? She marched toward the log. “Give me a minute. I’ll saddle up. I can help.”

  Zach immediately responded. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble on my account.”

  Then he shook his head at their antics. A short while ago they had been tearing at each other like cats and dogs. Now they were being polite as could be. Why? He reined the sorrel around and gazed toward the ridge. Even at that distance and in the gathering twilight, the enormous shape climbing toward the crest was impossible to miss. “Look!” he shouted, and slapped his heels against the sorrel.

  “What’s the matter?” Louisa called out.

  “The ridge! Hurry, or it’ll drag the carcass off!”

  She looked, and gasped. Stalking Coyote was galloping off to stop the one creature her pa had told her must be avoided at all costs.

  It was a grizzly.

  Seven

  Zachary King had no idea what he was going to do when he reached the ridge. He only knew that he was not going to let the grizzly devour the elk. It was his elk. He had spent days tracking it. All that effort was not going to be for naught. Not if he could help it.

  Zach let go of the lead rope so he could ride faster. The pack animals would not stray far. Neither was ornery enough. Angling to the left, he came up on the ridge in the same way he had before. The bear had disappeared over the crest. Zach slowed when he gained the base of the slope, and rose in the stirrups. Trees and boulders concealed the spot where the elk lay.

  He was taking a godawful chance. His pa had warned him how nasty-tempered grizzlies were. How ferocious the massive brutes were when riled. And how no one could predict how they would react in any given situation because no two silvertips ever reacted the same.

  Ever since Zach was a toddler, everyone had been telling him that his father was the greatest killer of grizzlies who ever lived. Zach had pestered his father to learn exactly how many he had slain. But Nate could never remember, or so he claimed.

  Zach suspected his father was just too humble to ever boast of his deeds. So Zach had asked Shakespeare McNair. His “uncle” had pegged the total at seven, but allowed as how he “might have missed a few since I’m getting long in the tooth and my memory isn’t what it used to be.” This from the man who could quote the works of William Shakespeare. Any play. Any sonnet. Anytime.

  Zach reined toward a more open part of the slope in case the silvertip rushed him. He climbed slowly, well aware the bear would hear him coming long before he saw it. But it just couldn’t be helped.

  Gathering twilight compounded the problem. The sun had not yet set, but had dropped below saw tooth peaks to the west, producing the effect of sunset. Lengthening shadows shrouded the undergrowth.

  The bear could sneak up on Zach, could be right on top of him, before Zach realized it. For their size, grizzlies were incredibly quick. Over short distances anyway. They could run down a man, even a horse, and disembowel either with a single swipe of their ponderous paws. But while they possessed great strength, they lacked stamina. They tired easily, and would give up the chase if they did not catch their quarry swiftly.

  Zach wedged the Hawken to his shoulder. It was powerful enough to bring down a silvertip with one shot if that sh
ot hit a vital organ. A very big if.

  A loud snort from above confirmed the grizzly was up there. Zach slanted to where the slope was not quite as steep, and went higher. Suddenly the sorrel caught the bear’s scent and shied. Zach firmed his grip on the reins. They went on, the sorrel’s ears pricked, its nostrils wide.

  A brown hump appeared, bobbing up and down. Zach rose in the stirrups again, and could see the grizzly’s shoulders and part of its hindquarters. The monster was tearing into the elk, intent on its feast and nothing else.

  Zach moved closer, and the sorrel nickered nervously. Zach tensed, but the silvertip was making so much noise it didn’t hear. Soon he was near enough to observe its enormous jaws shear into the elk’s soft flesh with the ease of a hot knife shearing into butter. Bone crunched and splintered.

  The sorrel’s front hoof struck some loose rocks, which clattered down the slope. Grunting, the silvertip stopped eating and reared onto its hind legs. It was gigantic. Eight feet high, possibly more. Dark eyes fixed on horse and rider, and it vented a thunderous growl.

  Zach reined up. Was the bear warning them to leave? Or was the growl born of anger at being intruded up on, and was the brute about to attack? When it did not move, Zach waved an arm and yelled, “Shoo! That’s my meat, damn your hide!”

  Another growl was the grizzly’s response. It shifted, tilting its nose upward, and sniffed loudly.

  Zach slipped a hand to a pistol. A shot might drive it off. If not, if it had the opposite effect, he would wheel the sorrel and ride like the wind, counting on the slope to lend him the extra speed needed to elude the heavier, clumsier bruin. He pulled the flintlock from under his belt, pointed it at the ground, and rested his thumb on the hammer.

  The silvertip dropped onto all fours. Zach feared the worst, but the bear turned and shuffled toward the top of the ridge, apparently unwilling to contest ownership of the carcass. Something a hungry bear would never do. So it must have eaten recently, fortunately for Zach.