Wilderness Double Edition 26

by David Robbins

  “Funny how we talk about him as if he’s a wild beast of some kind,” Lou remarked.

  “That’s how he acts. Didn’t you say he didn’t speak a word to you the whole time you were with him?”

  “I don’t think he can speak,” Lou said. “All he does is howl and roar and grunt.”

  “Then he is a beast, or the next thing to it.”

  A wolf raised a lonesome lament to the west and was answered by a kindred lupine spirit to the south.

  “I wish we were home in bed,” Lou said wistfully. “I wish we were warm and snuggly and without a care in the world.”

  “In a week we’ll be home,” Zach mentioned. Even on foot it shouldn’t take longer than that.

  “It might as well be a year.”

  Zach had seldom heard his wife sound so dejected. A yearning came over him to take her into his arms, but all he could do was squeeze her leg. “It’s not like you to give up. We aren’t dead yet.”

  “And I don’t want us to be,” Lou said softly. “I would give anything—”

  A hideous wail shattered the night, a wail of pain and rage in nearly equal measure. It rose to a shrill apex and then fell to a guttural growl that was snuffed out as abruptly as a candle. The silence that fell in its wake was all the more unsettling because it was total and complete.

  “Your stake!” Lou exclaimed.

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Then it’s not here yet,” Lou said, overjoyed. “Maybe now it won’t come at all. Not if it’s hurt and bleeding.”

  “Maybe,” Zach said. They should be so lucky. The thing, man, whatever it was, had shown remarkable persistence. It wanted Louisa, and he doubted it would relent this side of the grave.

  “We’ll give it another two hours,” Lou said. “If it isn’t here by then, it’s not coming.”

  “We’ll give it until dawn,” Zach disagreed. “Better safe than sorry, as my father never tires of saying.”

  Lou happened to look up just as a shooting star blazed across the heavens. “Oh, look!” she cooed. “My grandmother used to say they are a good omen.”

  Not the Shoshones, Zach remembered. Personally, he was not one to believe in omens, good or bad. They smacked of superstition. His father had taught him enough about the science of the whites to make him skeptical of various things his mother’s people took for granted. That the moon died and came to life again each month, for instance. That eating dog was bad, that eating roasted ants was worse. That worst of all was for a man to stay in a lodge with a woman when it was her time of the month. That weasel skin could ward off evil spirits. That if a woman took pine needles and ground them up and put them in a small pouch around her baby’s neck, the baby would always have excellent health. And so on.

  “What are you thinking?” Lou asked. “You got awful quiet.”

  “About omens and such.” Zach did not elaborate. He shifted his weight to be more comfortable, then placed the Hawken across his legs, his left hand always on it so it would not slip.

  “Have I thanked you for coming after me? I can’t recollect.”

  Zach had to laugh. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “In my heart I knew you would,” Lou said. “I can always count on you, come what may. Just as you can always count on me. I think folks call that love.”

  “Shakespeare told me once that love is a man sticking his head in a woman’s loop and asking for the privilege of being dragged through a bed of thorns.”

  “That sounds like something he would say. But you don’t hear him complain about being married to Blue Water Woman.” Lou sighed. “I hope you and I are as deeply in love as they are when we are their age.”

  Zach had an ear cocked to the wind. He thought he had heard the crackle of undergrowth in the near-distance.

  “The next time I suggest we go up into the high country on a lark, kick me,” Lou said.

  “The next time you can go by yourself,” Zach quipped. The crackling had not been repeated, but the skin between his shoulder blades was prickling as it sometimes did when his intuition flared in warning.

  “Do you ever regret taking me for your wife?”

  Zach twisted so he could see her face. “Keep up with the silly questions. Amusement is in short supply.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “That makes it even sillier,” Zach said. “Why do women ask things like that?”

  “You men do your share of silly stuff. Remember that night you thought you heard something skulking around our cabin and shot that poor chicken?”

  “It should have stayed in the coop where it belonged.”

  “Or how about that time you were fishing and you left your line in the water and your pole on the shore while you ran inside for a bite to eat, and when you were on your way back out, you saw your pole swim off into the lake?”

  “It was pulled in,” Zach corrected her. “The fish had to be as big as a whale. That pole wasn’t light.”

  “Then there was the time—”

  “I get the idea.” Zach cut her off. “We both do our share of silly stuff. But if we tallied them up, you would win.”

  “Says the male.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Zach was smiling, but his smile died at the suggestion of sound from close by the spruce. He glanced down but saw only darkness.

  “Only that for as long as there have been women and men, women have thought men are peculiar and men have thought women are peculiar.”

  “And the truth of it is that both are normal,” Zach finished for her.

  “No. Men are peculiar,” Lou said, and laughed. But she quickly sobered when the entire tree shook even though the wind had temporarily died. “What was that?” she whispered.

  An answer came from below in the form of a rumbling growl much like a grizzly would make, but this was no grizz.

  “It’s found us!” Louisa whispered,

  “That it has,” Zach said aloud. Whispering was pointless when the brute knew where they were.

  “What now?”

  “We sit tight and let it make the first move.” Waiting went against Zach’s grain. He would rather take the fight to the creature. But he had Lou to think of.

  The tree shook again, harder. Zach was impressed. He had chosen the spruce because it was big enough and sturdy enough to withstand an avalanche. The strength required to shake it was prodigious.

  “Go away!” Lou called down. “Leave us be!”

  “That won’t do any good,” Zach reminded her. “You said yourself it can’t talk.”

  “Not any language that I know,” Lou said. “Maybe it knows some other. Why don’t you try?”

  The shaking had stopped. Certain he was wasting his time, Zach hollered in every tongue he had even a passing acquaintance with: English, Shoshone, Flathead, Nez Perce, Blackfoot, Crow, Dakota, or Sioux as they were called, Apache from the family’s time in Santa Fe, and Spanish. He received no reply, not so much as a peep, until he said in Ute, “We come in peace.”

  A volcano erupted at the base of the tree, a cacophony of snarls and sputters and weird gibbering cries that brought to mind the ravings of a lunatic.

  “What did you say?” Lou breathlessly asked when the tirade ceased.

  Zach told her. He possessed barely a smattering of Ute, enough to dissuade any Utes he ran into from trying to lift his hair. Or so he hoped. Niwot, the young warrior who had courted his sister for a spell, had taught him. Zach frowned at the memory. He had liked that boy.

  The gibberish grew louder, attended by more shaking of the spruce, violent shaking, as if the thing in the bear skin was trying to tear the tree out by the roots.

  “Do you think we’re safe up here?” Lou dubiously asked.

  “He’d have to be as strong as fifty buffalo to topple us,” Zach confidently replied. “Nothing is that strong.”

  “You hope.” Lou’s lower lip began quivering and she bit it to stop. Her husband was right, of course. There was no animal anywhere that could
knock over a tree that size. Still, she remembered how ungodly powerful it was, and she could not help but tremble.

  “If it stays down there, all we have to do is wait it out until dawn,” Zach said. “As soon as the sun is up it will hunt cover and we can push on.”

  “I’ll be awful tired by daybreak,” Lou noted.

  So would Zach but he would do what he had to, up to and including throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her if need be.

  The creature fell silent.

  “What do you reckon it’s doing?” Lou whispered.

  “Picking its nose,” Zach responded. “How would I know? I have nothing in common with that thing other than an interest in you.”

  “You’re both male.”

  Despite their plight, Zach chuckled. “You have a high opinion of yourself, wench, if you think everything male wants you.”

  “Males always want females. It’s your nature. And stop calling me wench. You aren’t Shakespeare.”

  “Why can he do it and I can’t?”

  “All those white hairs of his give him the right.” Lou grinned.

  A tremor shook the spruce. Not a violent shake like before, but a mild, sustained ripple of movement, as if something were climbing it.

  “Oh God,” Louisa breathed, and put her hands on the pistols.

  Zach was staring straight down. He saw nothing at first. Then a bulk acquired nebulous substance at the limit of his vision. He pointed the Hawken but he did not shoot. He wanted it closer, so close he could not possibly miss, so close the force of the slug ripping through its body would blast it from the tree.

  “Can you see it?” Lou whispered. Her mouth was dry, her heart hammering. She was trying to be brave, she truly was, but her memories of the lair were too fresh, too vivid.

  “Hush,” Zach said. The wild man had stopped.

  “But can you see him?” Apprehension ate at Lou like acid. Her palms were damp with sweat, her mouth dry.

  “Make up your mind,” Zach said. “Is this thing an it or a him?”

  “I like your word,” Lou answered. “It is a Thing. A great, hulking Thing.”

  “Then that’s what we will call it.” Zach had the Hawken to his shoulder and his cheek to the stock. If only the Thing would keep climbing.

  “What is it doing?”

  “Watching us, I think. Maybe making up its mind what it’s going to do,” Zach said.

  “Where is it? I want to see.” Lou leaned out to see past her husband and nearly lost her grip. Her heart hammering in her chest, she clutched at a limb just in time.

  “Be careful up there,” Zach said without looking up. “You fall on me, we fall on the Thing, and we all fall to the ground.”

  “So long as the Thing is on the bottom when we hit.”

  Her comment spawned an idea that Zach discarded as loco, but it crept back into his mind, the image searing him with a promise of salvation. But would it really work? he wondered. He imagined letting go and dropping like a boulder on top of the Thing. At the least he would stun it. At the most he might break its neck. He might also break his own. There were a lot of intervening limbs, and the ground was no pillow.

  A new tremor agitated the spruce.

  Zach’s eyes narrowed. He peered down until they ached. There could be no doubt. The bulk had grown larger.

  The Thing was on the move.

  It was coming for them, and they had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Licking his lips, he thumbed back the Hawken’s hammer.

  Time to do or die.

  Fifteen

  Nate thought he understood. Since Neota had led the war party, Neota felt a degree of guilt over To-Ma being struck in the head by that Shoshone warrior during the raid. “You cannot blame yourself. In war a lot happens we cannot control.”

  “You do not understand. I did not speak with a straight tongue when I told you about To-Ma.”

  Nate was stunned. For Neota to admit he lied was remarkable; for Neota to lie, unthinkable. Nate had always regarded him as honest as the year was long, and then some.

  The story came out in spurts. Neota would talk awhile, then lapse into troubled silence until spurred by a question or two from Nate. Gradually the full truth was revealed.

  Neota had not wanted to take To-Ma along. But To-Ma’s father was a good friend, and out of that friendship was forged the seed of tragedy. Neota agreed they could go. As a precaution, he took the father aside and advised him to keep a close watch on his oversized son. To-Ma was clumsy and noisy and would not be at all reliable in a situation that called for stealth.

  All had gone well, though, until they dismounted to climb the ridge and spy on the Shoshone encampment. To-Ma had talked a lot on the ride there, but then, To-Ma had always been a talker. He could not seem to keep quiet for more than a few shakes of his mount’s tail. He chattered about the weather, about the raid, about the Shoshones, about everything and anything. It was annoying. It was more than annoying. Several of the older warriors asked him not to talk so much, Neota among them, but To-Ma babbled on.

  One night Neota drew the father from the fire and told him something must be done. The father apologized. To-Ma had always been that way. Ever since the boy learned to talk, there was no shutting him up. The boy could not seem to grasp there were times when talking must not be done.

  The father agreed to do what he could, but the next day was a repeat of those that had gone before.

  Then they came to the ridge. Neota picked the warriors who would go with him to raid the village. Those he did not pick were to stay behind and guard their mounts. One of those he did not pick was To-Ma.

  Neota had the rest of the warriors to think of. To bring To-Ma would needlessly imperil them.

  That should have been the end of it. They snuck close to the Shoshone village and were about to swoop in and help themselves to as many horses as they could drive off when To-Ma appeared and recklessly charged into the herd. He had not obeyed Neota. He had done as he pleased. And because he was big and clumsy and noisy, the Shoshones heard him and a general cry of alarm spread like a prairie wildfire throughout the encampment.

  The raid became a fight for their lives. Battling furiously, the Utes retreated in orderly fashion. With one exception. To-Ma refused to give ground. He stood like a boulder among pebbles and would not be budged. And because the other Utes would not desert him, it soon became apparent to Neota that unless something drastic was done, all of them would die.

  In the heated swirl of combat, the air filled with dust and shouts and cries of pain, none of the Utes saw Neota dart over to To-Ma. “We must leave!” he shouted at the boy.

  Spattered with blood and caked with sweat, a heap of enemies lying at his feet, the giant boy had laughed and said he was staying right there. “We can beat them!” he crowed. “We can beat them all!”

  It was preposterous. They were few and the Shoshones were many. As soon as more Shoshone warriors rallied, it would all be over.

  Neota was overcome with worry for his raiding party. The Utes were hard pressed. They could not hope to last much longer. Unless something was done, To-Ma’s childish stubbornness would cost them dearly. So Neota did the only thing he could think of to do. He looked around to ensure no one was watching. Then, picking up a war club dropped by a slain Shoshone, he glided behind To-Ma and hit the stripling on the back of the head.

  Neota never meant to harm the boy. He meant to knock him out. He called for help, shouting that the Shoshones had struck To-Ma down, and the father and others came and lifted the boy and whisked him down the ridge. To-Ma revived enough to ride, and Neota thought all was well. He had saved the war party from being wiped out.

  But later the full extent of the boy’s head wound became apparent. Pangs of guilt assailed Neota, but he could not bring himself to admit what he had done. The Utes thought the Shoshones were to blame. He let them go on thinking that, while doing all he could to help the father and the boy.

  Then came that terrible day when To
-Ma committed the most despicable deed an Ute could commit; he killed another Ute. Slew his own father by ripping out his throat with his bare teeth.

  There were calls for To-Ma’s death. Warriors who had known the boy since he was an infant and watched him grow winter by winter, warriors who had been close friends of the father, urged the boy’s destruction. It was for the good of all the Utes, they argued. To-Ma was too dangerous to be permitted to roam free.

  Neota agreed. The boy was a menace. He should be destroyed. But his was the deciding vote in council, and when the moment of decision rested squarely on his shoulders, when all he had to do was say he agreed and the matter would be taken out of his hands, he could not say the words. He could not pronounce death when his was the hand responsible for the boy’s affliction.

  Neota stood and gave a speech. Eloquently, he pleaded for the boy’s life, and because of his eloquence, and because he was so widely respected, the Utes conceded to his wish and banished To-Ma from their kind forever.

  Neota’s guilt was a crushing weight on his spirit. In the grip of despair, he moved about the village in a shadow state, blind to everyone and everything except his inner torment. The other Utes thought it noble of him. His grief, they said, was a measure of his affection for the boy’s father. He was praised for the lie he was living. He was held in esteem for an act so despicable, he could not bear to confess the truth.

  Neota had his wife to thank for bringing him out of himself. Her love for him was a tonic that restored his reason. The harm had been done. He could not go back and change the past. The future must be addressed, and to ensure that future, and ensure To-Ma never again took a Ute life, Neota proposed bringing the boy to the valley of bad medicine.

  Neota flattered himself he was doing To-Ma a favor. The boy would not want for water or food. The entire valley was his own private domain. And if there was no one to share it with, well, that was not Neota’s fault. He had done all he could. He left the valley with a clear conscience.

  Or so Neota told himself.

  His conscience was not convinced. From time to time he was plagued by his persistent guilt. He was an honorable man, and he had done that which was not honorable. The shame would bear down on him until he thought he would break under the strain, but he always shook it off and went on with his life as if nothing were amiss. His wife and his children took his occasional moodiness to be the result of the many burdens of leadership. He let them go on thinking that.