But Zach never got to finish. A hail from the direction of the trail heralded the arrival of his father. Nate King had heard a shot, grabbed his Hawken, and raced to learn the cause. Spying them as they stood hand in hand, he cupped a hand to his mouth. “What’s going on? What was that shot about?”
Zach frowned, squeezed Lou’s fingers gently, then ran to show his father the rifle and explain.
Nate wasted no time in hurrying back up the trail, giving instructions as he went. “No more straying from the cabin. Stay close at all times. I’m going after them while there’s still plenty of daylight left, and I probably won’t be back until late. Zach, I’m counting on you to keep watch. Climb on the roof and stay there until sunset. If they come back before I do, all of you get inside and bolt the door. You can hold off a small army if need be.”
“Are you still fixing to leave in the morning to check on the Wards?”
“Need you ask?”
“Lou and I should stay here, then. Even if you get the pair who jumped us, someone has to protect our home.”
“We’ll see.”
The stallion was still saddled, tied outside the corral. Nate mounted and was wheeling the big black around when the door opened and out rushed Winona.
“Where are you off to?”
“Zach will fill you in.”
Nate lit out as if rabid wolves nipped at his heels. He had to cover a lot of ground quickly. Rather than waste precious time going to where Lou and his son had encountered the men, he angled to the north to cut their trail. Zach had said the pair rode westward. Assuming they were headed for the same general vicinity where he had heard them the night before, they had to cross a broad meadow a mile from the cabin. That was where he would pick up their trail.
In short order Nate was there. Four shaggy buffalo were grazing in the middle. An old bull placed himself between Nate and the cows, snorting and grumbling like a cantankerous old man. Nate kept one eye on it as he searched along the meadow’s west fringe. Freshly churned earth bore out his guesswork. The imprint of shod hoofs was plain as day.
“You’re mine, you mangy bastards,” Nate declared as he brought the stallion to a trot. The two men had been riding at a brisk walk. Apparently, they were convinced they had given Zach and Lou the slip and assumed they were safe.
For over half an hour Nate held to a pace that flecked the stallion with sweat. From a saw tooth spine dotted with firs he caught sight of the cutthroats who had dared invade his domain. They were taking their sweet time, jawing and grinning as if they didn’t have a care in the world. They were about to learn differently.
Nate traveled in a loop to the south. The country was more open and there was greater risk of detection, but it also allowed him to go faster, to swing wide and get in front of the pair. He had a fair notion of the route they would take: an old game trail that snaked toward the mountain where they had taken a shot at him. They must have a camp secreted there.
Whoever they were, they had made a grave mistake. They failed to realize Nate knew every square foot of the valley. Every single square foot. He had lived there for almost twenty years, crisscrossed it from end to end and side to side. He had used every trail, poked into every nook and cranny, explored every slope. He had been through every stand of timber, he had climbed the surrounding peaks. He knew where each spring was, each meadow, each patch of wild flowers and berries. In short, he knew the valley as well as he knew the back of his own hand.
So it was child’s play for Nate to get ahead of the interlopers, to reach a point where the game trail passed a rock outcropping, to tie the stallion and move along the side of the outcropping so he was in position when the dull thud of hoofs broke the stillness. Voices with a distinct southern twang preceded the duo.
“—wish we’d hear something. I can’t figure what’s takin’ ’em so long.”
“You never was a patient cuss, Vin. You know how they are. Ma ain’t one for makin’ mistakes if’n she can help it. She’ll want it all worked out in her head before they make their move. So quit frettin’. You get on my nerves sometimes.”
“Easy for you to say. You ain’t sparkin’ Cindy Lou like I am. I tell you, that gal is a temptress born and bred. She gets me so hot I can’t think straight.”
“That’s my sister you’re talkin’ about, damn you. I don’t hardly want to hear about you two frolickin’ in clover.”
“Do you reckon your ma will give her permission soon? It’s been a whole year since I done asked. Surely that’s long enough?”
“Ma makes up her mind in her own sweet time. Just don’t pester her or she’ll say no to spite you. She don’t like being badgered. Even Pa treads soft around her. Believe you me, she can be a hellion when she’s riled. I’ve got the scars on my back to prove it.”
“I saw that time she tanned you with a cane. How you didn’t let out a peep is beyond me.”
“We daren’t. If we cry out she hits us harder. She says a real man knows how to take punishment without flinchin’.” As the two men came around the outcropping, Nate strode onto the trail, his Hawken leveled. “I hope she taught you well.” He thumbed back the hammer.
Both riders were taken off guard. They wore filthy home-spun clothes and had on boots in desperate need of repair. Both sported beards, and their features were so alike they had to be related. The tall one on the right had rested his rifle across his thighs. The other rider didn’t have a long gun.
They reined up, and the stocky one started to reach for a pistol.
“Go ahead. Try,” Nate said. When the man froze, Nate took four paces backward. “Let your weapons fall. Do it real slow.”
Neither of them obeyed. “What the hell is this all about?” the tall one demanded. “Who do you think you are, anyway?”
“I’m the man who is going to blow a hole in you the size of a melon if you don’t do exactly as I say.” Nate half hoped they would resist. They had tried to kill him; they had tried to kill his son. They deserved to have their wicks blown out.
The pair swapped glances. The tall one nodded. Gingerly, they dropped their guns and knives, one by one. As the short man let go of his knife, he said, “Listen, mister. We’re just passin’ through, is all. We don’t mean anyone any harm. There’s no call for you to be treatin’ us like this unless you aim to rob us or some such.”
“Climb off. Step in front of your horses.”
“Like hell we will,” the tall one growled.
Nate swiveled the Hawken’s muzzle so it was squarely trained on the man’s chest. “One way or the other, you’re getting off. You choose.”
“You son of a bitch,” the tall one groused as he complied. “Here we are, mindin’ our own business. We’ve never done nothin’ to you. So what’s this all about?”
The other one stared wistfully at the pistols he had dropped as he moved in front of his mare. “Now what?”
“Get down on your knees.”
Wrath crackled on their brows as they did as they were bid. Glowering, the tall one balled his fists. “If’n you step close enough, I’m going to take that rifle and shove it so far up your ass, you’ll have to shoot out your ears.”
“Happy to oblige,” Nate replied, and before they could react, he sprang in close and bashed the Hawken’s heavy stock against the tall man’s face. Cartilage crunched, scarlet spurted, and the man doubled over, clutching his face.
“My nose! My goddamn nose! You busted it!”
“I’m just getting started,” Nate said. The short one tried to lunge upward, but Nate sidestepped and kicked him in the ribs. It pitched him onto his hands and knees. Not knowing when he was well off, the man shoved upward, only to be met midway by the Hawken’s stock. This time it was an ear that crunched like a handful of dry twigs. Howling, the man fell, a hand pressed over the ruin.
Nate backed off. “Now that I’ve got your attention, you’re going to answer some questions. We’ll start with your names.”
Some people truly never learned.
“Go to hell!” roared the tall one. “We’re not tellin’ you a damn thing!”
“Care to bet?” Again Nate glided in close. Again the Hawken streaked down. The tall cutthroat thrust a hand out to ward off the blow, but all that did was allow his fingers to take the brunt. One snapped with a loud crack. Shrieking, the man came up off the ground in a rush. He was almost as big as Nate and almost as wide at the shoulders, but his reflexes were nowhere near as quick. The Hawken thundered, and a slug ripped through his thigh.
One of the horses bolted.
Nate instantly palmed a pistol. Sidling to the outcropping, he leaned the Hawken against it. The stocky stranger had sat up and was gawking at the tall one, who rolled back and forth in a paroxysm of torment. A crimson stain was spreading down his leg and drops of blood dripped from a hand he had clasped to the wound.
Nate pointed the pistol at the stocky one. “Your turn. What’s your name?”
“Vin Coyfield.”
“Your pard’s?”
“Hap Coyfield.”
“You’re related.”
“We’re cousins.” Raw hatred etched Vin’s face. His ear was split wide, and his cheek and jaw were bright red.
“I heard mention of a mother and a sister. Where are they?”
Vin hesitated.
Nate was on him in a burst of speed, the pistol describing a tight arc that ended when it connected with the bridge of Vin’s nose. Vin shrieked, then rallied and threw both arms around Nate’s legs. But he did not grip them tight enough. Nate’s knee caught him full in the mouth and Vin fell, arms waving feebly.
Hap Coyfield had stopped rolling and snorting and was glaring at the mountain man. “Mister, you’ll suffer for this. God, how you’ll suffer! Worse than the damned in the pit. My pa will skin you alive, chop you into tiny bits, and feed you to the scavengers. Just see if he don’t!”
“Didn’t this pa of yours ever teach you not to make threats when you’re at the wrong end of a gun?” Nate saw Vin struggle to sit up. “You two have been spying on my family for close to a week. I want to know why.”
“Eat dirt, you bastard. I’d rather be buzzard bait than tell you a thing.”
“Suit yourself,” Nate said, and shot Hap Coyfield through the head.
Vin recoiled, then whimpered and scrambled toward the outcropping as if to seek cover. “Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus!”
Nate drew his second flintlock.
“Please, mister!” Vin pleaded while backing away. He scrambled up against the wall of rock and cringed in mortal fear of sharing his cousin’s fate. “Don’t kill me! For God’s sake, please! I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Honest!”
“Why were you spying on my family?”
“Our folks sent us. We were to keep an eye on you until we heard from ’em.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Why?”
Tears glistened as Vin nervously licked his lips. He looked at Hap’s body. “Promise not to shoot me if I say?”
“So long as you tell me what I want to hear, you go on breathing.”
“We’re fixin’ to settle in these parts. Cole, that’s another cousin, he’s taken a shine to your place. He wants it for his own. So him and that small Yankee woman can live by themselves. The rest of us will move into that cabin south of yours.”
Only someone who knew Nate King well would have noticed how his jaw muscles twitched, how his eyes glinted like flint. “The Wards? Are they still alive?”
“Last I knew. We were to wait for word. No one’s come yet, so I reckon they’re fine.”
“How many of you are there?”
Vin adopted a crafty look. “Only four. My pa, Hap’s ma and pa, and Hap’s sister, Cindy Lou.”
“What about the other one you mentioned, Cole? That would make five.”
Confusion rekindled Vin’s fright. He began to count them off on his fingers, muttering to himself.
“It doesn’t really matter.” Nate extended the pistol. He would find out for himself soon enough.
“Wait! What are you doing?” Vin pressed flatter against the outcropping and pumped his hands. “You said I’d go on breathin’ so long as I told you what you wanted to know! Don’t your word count for anything?”
“I’ve learned all I need to.”
“But you can’t just up and kill a person in cold blood!” Vin’s gaze drifted to Hap, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “All right. Maybe you can. But it ain’t right. What did we ever do to you? Are you mad because we spied on your family? Because of the shot Hap took at you?”
“No. That’s not why you have to die.”
“Then what?”
“You tried to kill my son.”
“I didn’t really mean to! Honest! Please, just let me go and you’ll never see me in these parts again!”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
A bald eagle soaring high on the brisk currents above the regal peaks soared higher when the blast of a pistol rumbled upward like a peal of thunder.
Winona King had everything set to go. Parfleches crammed with food. Spare blankets. An extra pouch of ammunition for each of them. Whetstones, flint and steel. Even her husband’s spyglass had been packed and placed on the table. So when the caw of a raven penetrated her sleep half an hour before sunrise, all she had to do was dress and fix breakfast while Nate saddled their horses and brought them to the front of the cabin. Little Evelyn tagged along to help him.
Zach and Louisa May Clark were also up, elbow to elbow next to the fire, whispering. Winona guessed what it was about. She pretended not to notice as she ran a brush through her long hair. A white man’s brush, not the kind she had used as a girl, the one she still had, crafted from a porcupine’s tail. Her grandmother had made it, sewing the tail over a long stick, then trimming the quills and stitching the seam with beadwork. It was so old, Winona was afraid it would fall apart.
The door opened and in came Nate. He had been uncharacteristically grim since he returned the night before, and Winona couldn’t blame him. The Wards had become dear friends. If anything had happened to them— She shut the thought from her mind and finished her hair. “I am ready when you are, husband.”
Zach and Lou stopped whispering as Nate walked toward them. They had been discussing whether they would be permitted to stay behind.
Zach slid his hands under his legs so no one would see him cross his fingers. “What will it be, Pa? Do you trust us enough?”
Nate had wrestled with the issue most of the night. Too worried about Simon and Felicity to fall sleep, he had tossed and turned until fatigue claimed him at four or so. “If a man can’t trust his own son, who can he trust?”
Zach tried to think as his father would. “You figure there might be more of those fellas close by. You figure they’ll come after us. But haven’t I proven I can hold my own? I’ve outfought Blackfeet, the Sioux.”
There was no denying that. But Nate had a much more crucial motive for the decision he had reached. “The two of you can stay. Someone has to look out for your sister. Your mother and I can’t very well take her along now that we know for sure we’re heading into trouble.”
Evelyn overheard. A lively, lovely child, she was growing up to be the spitting image of her mother. And as outspoken. “I’m ten years old now, Pa. I can take care of myself.”
“Of course you can,” Nate said. But in reality, of course she couldn’t. Against killers like the Coyfields she wouldn’t stand a prayer. Children always wanted to be treated as adults, to be given the same privileges, the same freedoms. They tended to forget that those privileges and freedoms were earned through hard experience, the very experience that molded a boy or girl into a man or woman. “But you’re to do as your brother says while we’re gone. I don’t want to hear you gave him any sass.”
“Me?” Evelyn said innocently. Her brother and she were forever squabbling, snipping at each other like a cat and dog. It wasn’t her fault Zach thought he knew it all and she knew he didn�
�t.
Winona picked up two of the parfleches. She hid the apprehension that had resulted in a night almost as sleepless as her husband’s. Like every mother, her innermost fear was of something terrible happening to her children. Most days the fear was buried deep, cloaked in the safety and normalcy of daily routine. But at times like this, when threats beyond her control confronted them, it roiled to the surface like scalding water in a geyser. And not all the composure she mustered could completely smother it.
Everyone filed outdoors. Nate stepped into the stirrups, then gazed south across the valley at a snow-crowned peak also visible from the Ward cabin. “We should be back in five days. If we not, head for Shakespeare’s. Tell him to go see Touch the Clouds. A war party of Shoshones will set things right if we fail.”
“You can count on me, Pa,” Zach pledged.
Winona kissed her daughter and son and went to mount. Catching herself, she stepped to Louisa and kissed the girl on the cheek. “Take care of my son.”
The last woman to kiss Lou had been her mother, ages before. For the first time since she had arrived at the Kings’, Lou felt as if she were part of the family. A tingly feeling spread through her chest. Simultaneously, her throat became constricted as if she had a cold. “I will, Mrs. King. I’d give my life to save his.”
Winona’s mare was raring to go. She hadn’t taken it for a ride in days. As she climbed on, it bobbed its head and took a few steps.
The mare’s eagerness was contagious. “Let’s go,” Nate said, kneeing the stallion. “It’ll take most of the day to get there as it is.”
“Be careful, Pa!” Evelyn called out.
“Always. And you remember what I told you. Behave yourself.”
Winona trailed her husband around the cabin. She shifted to see her children one last time. Headstrong Zach, so intent on being acknowledged a man. Adorable Evelyn, so innocent, so vulnerable. And – yes – sweet Lou, who had known more grief in her sixteen years than most people knew in fifty. Winona smiled and waved and prayed she would see them again.
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