To the River's End

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  The dawning of the new day began to lift the darkness up from the thick forest. It gave him hope that he would now see more signs that would tell him which way they went. But there was nothing more to give him any indication of which way they had gone. He clinched his teeth in anger when he reached a fork in the stream he was now following and realized it joined the creek that ran north of the ridge. And that was the creek that the big trapper had come down that morning. If he continued, he would wind up right back at the pond at the base of the ridge. He was struck with the realization that he had been led in a circle, outfoxed by the white men. Every muscle in his powerful body tensed in anger, and he vowed anew that he would search every blade of grass if he had to. But they must die.

  Chapter 8

  “I swear, if I hadn’ta knowed better, I’da thought you was lost,” Jug declared when Luke offered an arm to assist him off his horse. “Danged if that weren’t the most roundabout way to get back to this camp I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well, you said you were all right,” Luke replied, “and your shoulder wasn’t hurtin’ too bad. So I thought you’d rather take the long way home, instead of bringin’ that Injun back with us to get another shot at you.”

  “If you’d found a couple more cricks to ride up, my shoulder mighta healed up by the time we got here,” Jug cracked. “Might be, we shoulda stopped and set a few traps in some of them streams.”

  “If it weren’t for the fact we’ve already trapped out all those streams between here and that ridge, I mighta given that some thought,” Luke retorted. Then becoming serious for a moment, he looked at Jug and said, “I believe we probably lost him. Whaddaya think?”

  “I feel pretty sure we did,” Jug answered. “He’d be showin’ up about now, if we didn’t. He sure messed up our trappin’ this mornin’, though, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir, he sure did,” Luke responded. “Now, we’d best take a look at that shoulder and see just how bad it is. Tell you what, why don’t you go on in the tipi and stir that fire up again while I take care of these horses? I’ll get a pan of water to heat up, and we’ll clean it up a little and decide what we can do to patch you up. I might need you with that crazy buck runnin’ around out there, lookin’ for us.”

  “I expect you might,” Jug said. “Although you’re the Injun killer in this partnership. I was gonna tell that Blackfoot gentleman that you’re the man he needs to talk to about killin’ Injuns. But he up and put a lead ball in me before I had a chance to explain it.”

  “What is it about you that makes Blackfoot Indians wanna shoot at you?” Luke asked.

  “It’s kinda the same thing that makes the saloon ladies wanna set on my knee,” Jug replied, stroking his beard. “They don’t get to see real mountain men as good lookin’ as I am. With the Injun bucks, they’re just afraid all their squaws will wanna run off with me.” Luke just shook his head and started taking the saddles off the horses. “We’re gonna need some breakfast, too,” Jug called back over his shoulder as he walked boldly toward the tipi.

  Luke shook his head and smiled as he watched the little man depart. I was afraid I’d lost him today, he thought. He acts like he’s proud he got shot. His mind switched back to the cause of their joking, very much aware that the fierce-looking Blackfoot warrior he saw from a distance that morning was no joking matter. Luke was certain that this Indian was not going to give up his search for the two of them. And he didn’t care how well hidden their little valley was, with whatever was driving him, revenge or pure hatred for whites, the Blackfoot was bound to stumble on their camp, sooner or later. For that reason, it was critical that they find him before he found them. But now, Luke thought, the first thing to do is to see how bad Jug’s wound is. He pulled the saddles off the two horses and released them to join the others near the pond.

  When he carried the two saddles into the tipi to place each one at the head of the owner’s bedroll, he found Jug carefully removing his heavy buffalo coat. He had restarted the fire in the middle of the tipi and already had a strong flame going. “Let me give you a hand gettin’ that shirt off,” he told him and together they managed to pull it up over Jug’s head while he remained as tightlipped as he could to hide the pain. Once they got it off, they both were in a hurry to inspect the damage. “Did you get a good look?” Luke asked. “If you’d get your nose out of it, maybe I could see it, too.”

  “Hell, it’s my dang shoulder,” Jug shot back, but he moved his head back so Luke could see it. “It don’t look too bad, but it’s startin’ to pain me a little. He did more harm to my blame coat—put a hole right through the fur collar and the hide coat.”

  Inspecting the wound carefully, Luke replied, “It’s a good thing he did ’cause all that buffalo helped slow down that rifle ball. I’ll bet that ball ain’t in you that deep.”

  “I ain’t sure I like the sound of that,” Jug asserted. “Sounds like you’re thinkin’ about diggin’ around in that hole, and I ain’t sure that’s necessary.”

  “Are you sayin’ you’d rather carry a piece of lead around in your shoulder than feel a little bit of pain?” Luke chided. “I’ll get a pan of water to heat up and we’ll clean that up, so we can get a better look at it.” He picked up the pan and went out to the waterfall to fill it. When he returned, he set the pan at the edge of the fire to let it sit for a while. “Is there anything left in that jug of yours?” He asked him. Jug said there was, but not enough to waste on a little hole that would heal up on its own. “Won’t need but a splash of it,” Luke said, “and that’ll help it to not get infected. I’ll put a little on my knife, too, to make sure you don’t catch nothin’ from those beaver I cut up this mornin’.”

  “Your knife?” Jug reacted at once. “You ain’t gonna be doin’ no cuttin’ on me.”

  “I might be able to dislodge that rifle ball, if it ain’t too deep. You druther I use my axe?” Luke was downright amazed to find the depth of the little man’s squeamishness, considering his typical tough-talking persona.

  In a short time, the water in the pan became hot, so Luke got some rags from his packs and cleaned the blood from Jug’s shoulder. He thought he could almost see the piece of lead in Jug’s shoulder. It looked as if the muscle the bullet had lodged in was already trying to reject the foreign object. He tilted the whiskey jug just enough to trickle some of the precious liquid onto his knifepoint. “Careful with that stuff,” Jug cautioned.

  “Hold still!” Luke warned. “I’m liable to cut your arm off.” He proceeded to insert the tip of his skinnin’ knife into the hole in Jug’s flesh. When Jug flinched with the sudden pain, Luke pushed the knife in, until he felt the contact with the lead ball. “There it is. Just what I thought, it ain’t that deep.” With Jug sucking his breath sharply through his clenched teeth, Luke made one more little thrust, enough to dislodge the ball and it came out with Luke’s blade.

  Relaxing immediately, Jug exhaled and said, “That weren’t so bad a-tall . . . dang!” He bellowed half a second later when Luke poured a shot of whiskey in the wound. “Whatchu do that for?”

  Luke gave him a big grin. “I just thought you’d probably enjoy a shot of whiskey right now. I’ll see if I can rig you up with a bandage for that wound.” He got the rest of the old bedsheet he carried for that purpose out of his packs. “You think you’re gonna need a sling to hold your arm up?” Jug said he didn’t think so. “Then I reckon that’s all I can do for you,” Luke said. “I reckon now I’m gonna build a pot of coffee and we’ll roast a little deer meat for breakfast.” He picked up the pot and went out to the waterfall to fill it. When the pot was full, he remained there for a few minutes to observe the new day. He turned and looked toward the west and the clouds moving in over the mountains, and he had a feeling it was soon going to be bitter cold. He turned back to focus his gaze on the grove of cottonwoods at the base of the mountain, and the meadow beyond the trees. He still thought it the perfect spot for their camp, but he also knew it inevitable that the Blackfoot warrior
would eventually find this hidden valley. Like any wild animal, he would prefer to go into his winter hibernation without the worry of a predator. “I’m gonna have to find that son of a gun, because he ain’t gonna give up searchin’ for me.”

  When he went back inside the tipi, Jug was roasting some venison strips over the fire, working one-handed, his right arm hanging limp and useless like a dead limb. “I was startin’ to wonder what happened to you,” he said. “Thought you mighta got out there and had heat-stroke or somethin’.”

  Ignoring the sarcasm, Luke responded seriously. “You know we can’t sit around in this camp and wait for that Indian to find us. We’ve got to find him first, and the sooner the better. I ain’t plannin’ to sit around here all winter, waitin’ for him to stumble on this valley. So after I have some breakfast, I’m gonna go see if I can pick up his trail, either where he came into that valley, or where we lost him when we were on the run. If I’da known you weren’t hurt that bad, I mighta set up an ambush and waited for him to follow us. Now I’m gonna have to track him. And after takin’ a good look at those clouds rollin’ in over the mountains, I think there’s a good chance we’re gonna get more snow tonight. So I need to get back to that valley while there’s still some tracks to see. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  Jug nodded thoughtfully as he listened to Luke’s comments about their predicament. When he was finished, Jug added his thoughts on the matter. “What you’re sayin’ is true, partner. That Injun has got killin’ on his mind, and with a savage like that, he ain’t gonna quit till he gets it done. So we need to get on his trail pretty quick. We’ll split up, so we can cover more ground.”

  Luke paused to think about that for a moment. “Maybe so, but maybe not today. Might be a good idea if you stayed here today and guard our camp, and I’ll go scout his trail while there’re still tracks to be seen.” Jug started to protest right away, but Luke stopped him. “Can you shoot a rifle? Can you even hold it up to your right shoulder to shoot it?”

  “If I had to do it to keep from gettin’ shot, I reckon I damn-sure would,” Jug answered. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my eyes, I could go with you and help you track him.”

  “That’s right, you could, but I still think it’d be best for you to stay here and keep an eye on the camp. If you needed to, you could shoot your pistol with your left hand. Reloadin’ might give you some trouble, but I could leave you my pistol, too.” He saw him starting to fret, so he couldn’t resist japing him. “You weren’t thinkin’ too good this mornin’ when he showed up. You shoulda stuck your left shoulder out to get shot, instead of your right one.”

  “I think I oughta be out there helpin’ you track him,” Jug insisted.

  Luke sought to encourage him, “Listen, that wound ain’t that bad. And I know it’s feelin’ stiff and painful right now. But if you take it easy with it today, you might be able to use it more tomorrow or the next day. If you don’t rest it for a couple of days, it might take a whole lot longer to start healin’.” He didn’t really have any idea if that would be the case or not. He just thought he didn’t want to have to worry about Jug getting caught in an ambush that he might have led him into. Let me go see if I can back-track his trail today. I might get lucky and find his camp. If I do, then we’ll decide how best to hit him. All right?”

  “Hell, I reckon,” Jug replied, “if that’s the way you wanna work it. Like you said, you can leave me with your pistol, too. If he gets that close to this camp, I can sure as hell handle a pistol.”

  “Good,” Luke said. “I’ll let Smoke take a little rest, he ain’t been rode that far, but he’d most likely appreciate a little grass and water. While he’s doin’ that, I’ll drink some coffee and eat some of that meat you’re cookin’ there.”

  When he was ready, he climbed up into the saddle, and he and Smoke headed out toward the creek that divided the meadow beyond the cottonwoods again. Once he was sure he had left no tracks out of their camp, he turned the bay gelding toward the mountain where they had been trapping that morning. To begin his scout, he decided he would try to pick up the Blackfoot’s tracks at the point where he figured they had managed to lose him. So he rode to the cross stream where he had purposely guided Smoke close to the bank to leave a single hoofprint. If he was lucky, the Indian would not be worried about covering his tracks at that point in his pursuit and might have been a little careless in hiding his trail. A quick look told him that the hoofprint he had purposefully left had not been disturbed, so he figured the Indian had not missed it and continued on. In that case, he would have wound up back at the bottom of the hill at the pond. Luke went straight back there, hoping to pick up a fresh set of tracks from that point, which would lead him to the Blackfoot’s camp.

  When he arrived at the bottom of the ridge and scouted the area where the two streams combined to form the pond, he found no fresh tracks that would tell him where the Blackfoot had left that area. So the Blackfoot had not followed the streams all the way back to this starting point. But surely, he had not followed the stream in the opposite direction, Luke thought, for that would have led him straight up a mountain. Now he’s got me confused, he thought as he turned Smoke up the stream again. There was nothing to do but follow the streams around again to try to find new tracks leaving the water. He couldn’t help the feeling that the Blackfoot warrior was laughing at him right then. You can’t out-Indian an Indian, he thought.

  This time, when he got back to the one hoofprint by the bank, he paused there a few minutes to scout the bank for any sign that Standing Elk had searched for more prints before continuing on in the stream. There were none. He proceeded on another thirty yards and stopped in the midst of a large stand of lodgepole pines. There, by a bank covered with a thick layer of pine needles, was where he and Jug had left the water. While the two horses had stood in the stream, Luke had hastily gathered pine limbs and branches to place on top of the pine straw before he carefully led the horses out of the stream. He had left them waiting a couple dozen yards away while he went back and removed the branches and returned the appearance of the bank to its original. Then they had angled across the slope, through the pines, heading for home.

  Returning to the spot on this second trip around, Luke was halfway out of the saddle before Smoke came to a stop. Unnoticed the first time, it now struck him that the pine needles had been disturbed since he had arranged them to disguise their exit from the stream. The Blackfoot had outsmarted him, and now, a sense of panic set in. Once they had left the stream earlier, they made less of an effort to hide their tracks until they were close to the camp. The Blackfoot assassin was on his way to their camp, even now. He and Jug had taken their usual precautions before actually entering the valley and their camp. But he was afraid the Indian would find it after their tracks led him so close to it. “Oh, Lord,” he prayed, as he jumped in the saddle. “I may have set Jug up for his death.” Asking Smoke for all the speed he could give him, he headed for the camp.

  * * *

  It had taken him longer than he would have liked, but when the tracks he followed stopped once he reached a small stream, Standing Elk sensed that he must be close to the white man’s camp. He took a few moments more to look over the way before him. The stream he had now come to appeared to run down into a grassy meadow to flow into a creek that split the meadow. With his eyes, he followed the creek back until it disappeared into a grove of cottonwoods. He felt almost sure that the camp he sought would lie beyond that grove of trees. From where he sat on his horse, he couldn’t see farther up the slope, so he decided he would climb up the side of the hill and approach the camp from above it. There might be a warm welcome for anyone approaching from the meadow.

  As he climbed up through the forest of fir trees, he was surprised to hear the sound of a waterfall. He cut straight across the slope until he came to the falls and stopped before riding out of the cover of the trees when he saw the horses grazing beside the pond at the bottom of the falls. Farther down the slope, beside the
creek formed by the waterfall, he saw the trappers’ tipi. It brought a smile to his face, for it was set up to face an attack from the front. He remained there for a short while to look over the camp. There appeared to be no one there, so he slid off his horse and advanced toward the tipi on foot.

  Inside the tipi, Jug pushed the back flap of their tent open just far enough for him to see the pond and the horses. It was something he did every once in a while in an effort to keep a watchful eye on the camp. But this time, he flinched when he saw Standing Elk trotting down toward him in a crouch, a Northwest Trade Gun in his hand. He almost choked to keep from exclaiming his alarm as he grabbed the loaded rifle he had by his side and poked it through the back flap. Working as fast as he could with one arm, he tried to sight it on the approaching warrior, cocked it, and pulled the trigger. The rifle failed to fire. In a real panic now, Jug reached for his powder horn. With every movement awkward because it was done with his left hand, he splashed some powder on the flash pan and tried again. This time the rifle fired, startling the Blackfoot warrior. He had not noticed the rifle barrel when Jug slid it out the flap, but the shot was far to the right of him. Thinking the shooter could not see very easily out the small opening in the back of the tipi, Standing Elk sprinted to one side and dived on the ground, rolling over and over until the angle was too much for the shooter to take aim at him. Without stopping, he came to his feet and lunged into the entrance of the tipi in time to grab Jug as he was reaching for the loaded pistol in his belt. Like a giant cat, the Blackfoot warrior attacked him, clamping an iron hand over Jug’s, so he could not pull the pistol, while he trapped Jug’s wounded arm to his side, rendering him helpless. He smiled in Jug’s face then, his own face only inches from Jug’s. “So, little dung beetle, I didn’t kill you the first time. This time I’ll make sure you’re dead.” He spoke in his native tongue, but Jug knew enough of it to understand what he was saying. Standing Elk squeezed harder and harder on Jug’s trigger finger until it finally fired. With the pistol still in his belt, the lead ball tore through Jug’s trousers, just missing his leg.