He smiled broadly. He had saved the meat without having to tangle with the bear. And he had a fine story he could tell when next he visited the Shoshones. How he had made a mighty grizzly back down. He would be the envy of the other boys his age.
Just then, unexpectedly, Louisa May Clark trotted over the crest.
“No! Go back!” Nate bawled.
The bear stopped and raised its huge head in alarm at being caught between the two of them. To its way of thinking, they were trying to trap him. So it reacted as would any cornered animal. It roared and went after the girl.
Louisa had saddled Fancy as rapidly as she could. But Stalking Coyote had been out of sight by the time she trotted from the stand. She had been surprised to find the packhorses grazing unattended, and had taken the time to round them up and tie them to convenient trees. Then she had sped toward the ridge. Anxious over Stalking Coyote’s safety, she had gone up the near side instead of around to the east.
Lou had gone slowly once she reached the slope. She had planned to take her sweet time and peek over the top without showing herself. But when she’d heard Stalking Coyote yell, and had not quite made out what he said, she’d leaped to the conclusion he was in danger. Up the slope she’d flown, to trot on over the crest and discover the grizzly not twenty feet below. Zach was much lower, and safe. She hiked an arm to wave to him.
The bear charged.
Louisa cut the reins and fled. She did not know how fast grizzlies were, but she had every confidence Fancy could outrun it. Fancy could outrun anything. The mare streaked on down the ridge at a reckless rate, dirt and rocks cascading out from under her hooves.
A backward glance showed the bear had just reached the top. Lou grinned and lashed the reins. Fancy would leave the critter in the dust. She avoided boulders, a log, and several trees, winding through them as skillfully as a Comanche.
Zachary King, meanwhile, was lashing his own mount upward. In his mind’s eye he saw the silvertip swat the girl from her saddle and rend her limb from limb. Frantic, he galloped over the top, and was elated to behold Louisa alive and pulling well ahead of the grizzly. He yipped for joy, and waved.
Lou heard the cry. Twisting, she smiled and straightened to return the gesture, to show she was safe. For several seconds her gaze lingered on Stalking Coyote. And so it was that she failed to spot an obstacle directly below. A deadfall, downed trees all jumbled together on top of one another. Only when Fancy whinnied did she look. She hauled on the reins, but there was no avoiding it.
The mare launched herself into the air. In a graceful arc Fancy sailed up and over. Or tried to. The piled trees were too high. Fancy’s front legs cleared them, but not her rear legs. A sharp crack, a jarring lurch, and the mare cartwheeled.
Louisa clutched at the saddle as the world spun upside down. In a twinkling she was flying; she had been thrown clear. Tumbling end over end, she felt a severe pain in her side, another in her leg. Her shoulder smashed onto the ground, and she rolled. It sounded as if an avalanche cascaded down the slope in her wake. But it was something else, as she learned when she slid to a painful stop.
Dust clogged her nose, her mouth. Louisa sputtered and coughed and tried to sit up, but a tremendous weight on her lower legs held her down. She swatted at the roiling dust, then groped lower. Her hand brushed the saddle. She heard the mare nicker.
“Fancy?” Louisa said between coughs. Bending, she saw the horse struggling to rise. Struggling weakly. Blood oozed from a nostril, and a ragged gash marred the mare’s shoulder. “Please, no!”
Fancy was more than a horse. She was Louisa’s friend. The only friend Louisa had had during those long months spent trapping with her father. Every day without fail, she had taken Fancy for a ride, talking to the mare as she would to a boon companion. Every evening without exception, she had brushed the mare’s mane and tail and fed Fancy handfuls of sweet grass.
Fancy mustn’t he hurt! Louisa pushed and prodded, but she could not extricate herself. Placing her elbows flat, she heaved backward. Her legs moved an inch, if that. She braced to try again. Then went as rigid as a board.
Beyond Fancy an enormous hulking form had materialized. A nightmare made real. The grizzly had skirted the deadfall.
“Oh, God!” Louisa exclaimed. She erupted in a frenzy, doing everything and anything she could think of to free herself, to no avail. The mare was just too heavy. Helpless, trapped, she watched, aghast, as the shaggy behemoth lumbered to a halt a few yards away. Eyes as black as the pits of Hades burned into hers, then settled on the mare.
At that same moment, on top of the ridge, Zach smacked his Hawken against the sorrel and hurtled down the slope to the girl’s aid. His heart had seemed to stop when her horse had spilled. He’d lost sight of her, his view blocked by the deadfall, but he’d seen the bear run faster and had guessed its intent.
Zach’s chest was constricted; his temples pounded. It would take him twenty to thirty seconds to reach them. An eternity. More than long enough for the silvertip to reduce Louisa to a quivering mass of pulped flesh. Please, no! he prayed, without realizing he was doing so.
Fancy neighed shrilly in abject fright. Louisa kept pushing against the saddle, but it was like trying to move a five-ton boulder. The grizzly moved closer, its gigantic head swinging from side to side. Lou grabbed for both pistols, finding to her dismay that one was gone. Leveling the other, she aimed at the center of the bear’s forehead.
“Leave us be!” Louisa shrieked. But she might as well have been throwing wads of paper. The silvertip paid no more attention to her than it would to the buzzing of a bee. She had to shoot, even if she only wounded it and incited it into a rage. She had no choice.
The hammer was a blur. The flintlock hissed like a snake, spewed smoke and flame – and that was it. “A misfire!” she railed, grasping her powder horn. A minute was all she needed! In a minute she could reload. She could save Fancy and herself. But she did not have that minute. She did not have ten seconds.
The bear had caught the scent of pulsing blood, and was sniffing like a hound on a fresh trail. A paw the size of Louisa’s head flicked out. Claws as thick as her thumbs sheared into Fancy’s side, and the mare squealed, a squeal remarkably like a woman’s.
Zach King thought it was Louisa. He was going so fast that a misstep would result in grave injury or much worse, but he prodded the sorrel to go even faster. He did not care what happened to him. Saving the girl was all that counted. Saving her at all costs.
Again a paw ripped into Fancy. Louisa was beside herself with mingled fury and fear. Her fingers flying, she continued to reload. The silvertip swung a third time, and crimson spray spewed every which way. Somehow a couple of drops got into Louisa’s mouth. She tasted warm, salty liquid, and nearly gagged.
Fancy was thrashing and kicking, wheezing and spitting blood. And bleeding, bleeding heavily from deep punctures that had partially exposed several ribs. The mare made a valiant effort to stand, and succeeded in getting her legs under her. But when she rose onto her knees, the grizzly snarled and struck, razor claws slashing into her neck. A red torrent gushed.
Louisa had stopped reloading to scramble backward again. Fancy had risen just enough to remove most of the pressure on Louisa’s legs. Spotting a sapling, Louisa wrapped both forearms around it for leverage. Her shoulders strained to their utmost. Much too slowly, she pulled herself toward the tree. Fancy whinnied again. The bear roared. Something wet and slippery slapped against Louisa’s cheek, then plopped to the grass. It was a strip of flesh.
Suddenly Louisa’s legs were free. She rolled onto her back, then sat up and looked to see how Fancy was faring. Fancy was dead. Head limp, neck skewed at an unnatural angle, the mare had succumbed.
The silvertip’s front paws were on Fancy’s chest, and the bear was staring at Louisa now. She froze. She did not breathe. Not even when the grizzly’s head dipped low enough for saliva dribbling from its lower jaw to fall onto her face. Its fetid breath fanned her. It sniffed
some more.
Louisa recalled a trapper telling her that bears lived by their sense of smell. Their eyesight was supposedly poor, their hearing no better than average. Their sense of smell, though, was extraordinary; they could detect a whiff of prey hundreds of yards away. They were, as the grizzled old trapper had phrased it, “these awful eatin’ machines attached to the best noses this side of a bloodhound.” The trapper had shared an interesting notion. Whenever he found bear sign in an area he was trapping, he always sprinkled dirt on his buckskins and rubbed it all over his skin and hair. “Dirt is the one thing those demons won’t eat,” he had explained, “so I figure if I smell like dirt, they’ll leave me be.”
It was too late for Louisa to try the same ruse. She resisted an urge to bolt. The bear’s head hovered inches above hers, and it was still inhaling deeply. Maybe it would ignore her. Maybe it would turn to the mare and she could sneak off.
The grizzly started to turn. It placed one paw on the ground, and was lowering its mouth to Fancy, when it unexpectedly stood stock still and stared right at Louisa. She could not imagine why. She had not moved. Or so she assumed until she blinked for a second time. And the moment she did, the silvertip emitted a thunderous roar and attacked.
Louisa blindly scrambled backwards. A blow that would have separated her head from her body instead reduced the sapling to slivers. She pumped her limbs in a whirlwind of desperation, half crawling, half sliding out of the bear’s reach. But not for long. The silvertip was up and over Fancy in a nimble-footed bound. It tramped toward her, in no particular hurry. Why should it be? It had her dead to rights and knew it.
Pushing to her feet, Louisa sprinted to the left, toward an open space. She had never run faster in her life, but she was molasses compared to her pursuer. A paw clipped her on the shoulder. The impact smashed her like a broken doll to the earth. Dazed and weak, she craned her neck to look back.
The silvertip was almost on top of her. With deliberate, weighty tread, it stalked closer, steadily closer, seeming to fill half the sky.
Louisa knew she was a goner. She had thought she would be happy when her time came, but she wasn’t. Now she would pass on to the other side of the veil and rejoin her folks, but Lord help her, she did not want to. Not yet. She regretted not being able to tell Stalking Coyote good-bye.
“NOOOoooooooo!”
The cry was from Zach King’s throat by emotions he did not fully understand. He had the Hawken flush with his shoulder, and when the silvertip swung toward him, he fired.
The ball penetrated between the brute’s forelegs. It missed the heart and the lungs, but it distracted the grizzly from the girl. Slavering and yowling, the grizzly reared as it had done earlier.
Zach switched the reins to the same hand that held his rifle so he could flourish a pistol. The .55-caliber smoothbore could drop most any animal at close enough range. He tried to take a steady bead, but the sorrel’s rolling gait caused the muzzle to rise and fall. He squeezed the trigger anyway, then hunched forward, not letting the sorrel break stride.
Louisa thought she must be mistaken. It did not appear as if Stalking Coyote were going to stop. A collision would be as harmful to him and the horse as the bear. Stupefied, she saw her would-be rescuer set his jaw in grim determination, saw him flick the reins, saw the fear in the sorrel’s eyes.
The horse slammed into the grizzly with the force of a battering ram, and the bear tottered backward. Ungainly when erect, it could not keep its footing and toppled, landing in brush that buckled under its immense frame.
Zach’s mount nearly did likewise. Slipping and sliding, it careened into a tree, almost unhorsing him. They slid another thirty feet before coming to a halt in a shower of dirt and dust. Zach whipped out his other pistol, then brought the sorrel around to confront the silvertip again. “Run!” he shouted at the girl, bewildered when she did not listen.
Louisa couldn’t run. She couldn’t stand. Her legs were mush, her mind little better. Her shoulder had not been tom open, but it throbbed with agony. “I can’t!” she replied. “Save yourself!”
The bear had risen on all fours, and glared balefully. Zach kneed the sorrel toward Louisa, hoping he could sweep her up behind him and get out of there while the monster was collecting its wits. If it had wits to collect.
Snarling viciously, the silvertip exploded out of the crushed brush. “Stand up!” Zach bellowed. Louisa tried, but her legs refused to cooperate. She did thrust her arm overhead so he could grab it on the fly.
Zach was not about to risk dislocating her shoulder or breaking a bone. He slowed, bending down, his arm curled. Right away he realized Louisa was too low to the ground for him to catch hold of her. So he straightened and reined up, overshooting her by a few yards. Vaulting to the ground, he raced over, scooped Louisa up, and turned.
The sorrel was so close, yet so far. Zach sprang toward it and grasped at the saddle. As his hand found purchase, the horse shied. Not from him, but from the silvertip, which would be upon them in another few moments. Zach lost his hold and stumbled to his knees, holding the girl close.
Louisa saw the slavering bear. “Save yourself!” she repeated. Burdened by her, she knew, Stalking Coyote could never escape. “Please!”
The very idea that he would abandon someone in a crisis went against Zach’s grain. It was contrary to everything his pa had taught him, everything Uncle Shakespeare believed, and the ideals by which Shoshone warriors were expected to live. “Never! If we die, we die together!”
It was the bravest thing Louisa had ever heard. She threw her arms around his neck, pressed her cheek to his, and wished they had been able to get to know one another a whole lot better. He aroused sensations in her no one ever had. Feelings that excited and scared her. Feelings she would never feel again, because in a few seconds both of them would be dead.
The grizzly’s horrid maw yawned wide. Yet it was not them the bear was after. It veered toward the sorrel – and was met by clubbing hooves. Instead of fleeing, the horse fought back. Bucking its rear legs furiously, the sorrel kicked the silvertip again and again and again. The thud-thud-thud of hooves on bone was like the pounding of a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. Three times the grizzly sought to grapple with its prey, and each time those flashing mallets drove it back.
Blood poured from a gash over the beast’s left eye. There was a ghastly furrow below the right ear. And then a hoof crunched against teeth, and two fell out.
The griz had had enough. Growling in a fit of foul temper, it whirled with unbelievable agility and loped to the south, shaking its squat head every so often as if to clear it. Just before entering the forest, it halted and looked back. With a final snarl of defiance, the lord of the Rockies was gone.
“Thank God!” Louisa breathed, clinging to the one who had risked his life for hers. Mere days ago she would never have let herself be so close to a boy. But this felt natural. It felt right. “And thank you, Stalking Coyote. You almost got yourself killed on my account. I’ll never forget what you did.”
“Thank my horse,” Zach said. New emotions roiled within him. He felt grateful, awkward, happy, upset. Yet how could he feel all of them at the same time? It was preposterous.
The sorrel pranced back and forth, snorting and kicking as if it were eager to tear into the silvertip again.
Seconds dragged past. Zach was in no hurry to stand, or to let go of Louisa. He savored the interlude, trying to recollect the last time he had felt so ... pleasant... in the presence of a female. It had been six years ago, when he had been captured by the Blackfeet and befriended by a Blackfoot maiden. She had been special, just like Louisa Clark.
What was he thinking? What had gotten into him? This was a white girl, a member of the very race that despised him the most. In the eyes of her people he was a “breed.” The same as saying he was “worthless.” Hadn’t he vowed that he wanted nothing to do with whites? Weren’t they all bigots?
Well, not all His father wasn’t. Uncle Shakespear
e wasn’t. Scott Kendall wasn’t. And there were others who treated him with the respect every person was due no matter what their skin color might be.
Coughing, Zach looked down at Louisa. She was looking up at him. Their eyes met, and locked. Zach did not say anything, afraid of breaking the spell.
For her part, Louisa was as content as content could be. Her harrowing escapade was forgotten. Being adrift in a sea of wilderness was forgotten. She would never forget her father’s gruesome death, but at the moment, for the first time since it happened, it did not weigh heavily on her mind. Happiness had claimed her.
The sorrel shattered their special moment by nudging Zach hard enough to make him pitch forward. To avoid falling on top of Louisa, he had to release her. His out-flung hands stopped him from landing on his stomach, and he started to rise in anger. Merry laughter brought him up short.
Louisa thought his expression was comical. He looked as if he was set to finish the job the silvertip had started. Once she started laughing, she couldn’t stop. She went on and on, laughing until it hurt, laughing until tears glistened on her cheeks and she could not laugh any more.
Zach joined in, pleased she was so happy, but sensing there was more to it than what the sorrel had done. When she eventually stopped, he helped her stand. “I’ll take you back to camp, then tend to the elk.”
“Nonsense. I’m fine,” Louisa said. A barefaced lie. Her shoulder was next to useless. “It wouldn’t be fair for you to do all the work.”
Zach disagreed, but he did not argue. He did insist she stay on the sorrel while he stripped the saddle and blanket off the dead mare. “From here on out you can ride one of the packhorses.”
Louisa avoided staring at Fancy. Her friend was gone, and that was that. To get emotional over it would be childish. Yet she was glad when Zach deposited her saddle on a boulder, to be retrieved later, and they rode on over the crest to examine the elk’s carcass. A few more moments and she would have burst into tears.
The silvertip had taken giant bites out of the elk. A whole haunch was nearly gone. Enough remained, though, to last the King family for a month, so Zach’s hunt had not been wasted. They carved it up, working side by side until long after the sun had relinquished the heavens to twinkling stars.
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