As the three warriors gathered around it, it became clear what they had found. Two objects that had appeared to be dead limbs sticking out from the clump were actually two arrows protruding from the corpse of Wounded Horse, one from his gut, the other from his back. His body was lying on its side, on top of Crooked Foot, whose throat was gaping open as if screaming out his pain. None of the three searchers uttered a word at once, such was the shock of finding this gruesome discovery and realizing at once that they were not alone in these mountains. The belated reactions of Two Toes and Yellow Rock were to look around them anxiously for signs of an ambush, even though the bodies were covered with snow and had obviously been lying there for quite some time. Bloody Hand’s initial response was to rake some of the snow away from Crooked Foot’s body with his foot to make sure the woman’s body was not under it. “She has found some friends,” he declared and stepped back a couple of steps while he considered that possibility.
He tilted his head back and gazed up the steep slope of the hill. They were no doubt following the woman’s tracks up the hill. Did she know there was something up the hill? He asked himself, then answered it immediately. She had no way of knowing. She was just running blindly. But now what has become of her? He stepped back to the bodies and took hold of the arrow in Wounded Horse’s back. He tried to pull it out, but the arrowhead was frozen solid in Wounded Horse’s back, so he broke it in two. He stepped back again to examine the shaft. After a minute, he declared, “These markings on the shaft are Blackfoot.”
“Don’t they know they are killing their own people?” Two Toes asked, still looking around constantly, expecting more arrows at any second.
“Blackfoot have hunted these mountains for many years,” Bloody Hand told him. “Maybe the Crows have been hunting here, too. I think our brothers were killed by Crows. Then he wondered if he had made a mistake when he thought earlier about the Crow woman wandering lost and aimlessly in these mountains. Maybe she knew where she was running to, after all. The thought only added to his desire to catch her. “Come!” He said then. “We must go back and warn the others that there are Crow hunters here. We’ll take our dead back to our camp. We must give them a proper burial.”
They loaded the stiffened bodies of Crooked Foot and Wounded Horse on the horses and led the horses back to the camp where the reaction was one of total alarm. The bodies were set aside to be dealt with after a pow wow over the cause of their deaths. Bloody Hand’s conclusion that the killers were Crow, seemed to make sense to the others. Evidently, they had killed some Blackfoot hunters and that accounted for the Blackfoot arrows. “It is more important that we stay here now until we find these killers,” Bloody Hand said. “It is no longer a question of finding the woman. We have dead men to avenge. I think there are only a small number of these hunters. If there were more of them, they would attack our camp. But that would be suicide for the few cowards who are sneaking around in these hills hoping to attack lone Blackfoot hunters.”
“What Bloody Hand says is true,” Crazy Wolf said. “We must find these cowards who killed Wounded Horse and Crooked Foot. They must die.” He did not say it, but he was thinking that their deaths could be directly attributed to Bloody Hand’s obsession for this Crow woman. If his mind had not been filled with thoughts of the woman, they would have been well on their way back to their village, and Wounded Horse and Crooked Foot would still be alive. “It is my feeling that we should start guarding our camp at night,” he continued. “And when we go to search for these Crow hunters, we should never go with less than four of us. And make sure that at least one of those four has a gun. I don’t know if the Crow hunters had guns before this, but we know they have guns now, since both Wounded Horse and Crooked Foot had guns.”
“As always, Crazy Wolf’s words are wise,” Bloody Hand said. “Let us first honor our dead.” In line with the older man’s advice, four of the warriors went up the valley beyond their camp until they found a suitable ravine with trees tall enough to serve as the two dead warriors’ burial platforms.
After they managed to assemble the platforms for their dead as best they could under the circumstances, they returned to their camp to discuss their next move. “As for me,” Bloody Hand declared, “I will not leave this place until I have found the cowards who ambushed Wounded Horse and Crooked Foot. But I cannot tell another man what to do. A man must do what his heart tells him to do.”
“It would be wrong to let the deaths of our brothers go unpunished,” Crazy Wolf spoke then. “And these Crow hunters need to see that they are not allowed to hunt in Blackfoot territory. I stand with Bloody Hand. We must kill these Crow devils and avenge our two warriors.”
“Crazy Wolf speaks for my heart, too,” Two Toes spoke then. “They must be avenged, but it is getting very cold. I think we should move our camp away from this riverbank and find a place with better protection for us and our horses.” His statement was met with grunts of agreement from the rest of the warriors. So it was quickly decided to move the camp in the morning and to set up guards for their present camp throughout that night.
* * *
Back at the little tipi by the waterfall, Luke had no way of knowing, but his plan to try to persuade the Blackfoot party to think they were being attacked by some other tribe of Indians, was working. He would have liked to check to see if they had discovered the two bodies he left for them to find, but he couldn’t do so without leaving a fresh set of tracks for them to follow. The snow made it difficult for him to try to keep an eye on the war party, but he felt he had to know what their intentions were. With the odds against him and Jug in numbers, he didn’t care much for the idea of just sitting there, waiting for the war party to find them. His thoughts were interrupted then when Willow came to the corral in the trees to tell him she had cooked his supper and wanted him to come eat it while it was hot.
“I look through your supplies and find a sack of cornmeal,” Willow told him. “Jug say that okay,” she hastily added and paused.
When he realized she was asking if that was all right, he smiled and assured her. “Sure, that’s okay. I told you, you’re part of the family now. You don’t have to ask about lookin’ in the cookin’ supplies. I reckon you saw that cornmeal had never been opened.”
She favored him with a big smile then. “I notice, so I make some corn cakes to eat with your elk meat.”
Luke cocked his head and grinned. “Well, now, that surely suits my taste,” he said.
It obviously pleased her. “Jug say I make Johnny-cakes,” she replied.
“That’s right, that’s what we call ’em,” he said. He was already seeing the advantage of having a woman along for the winter, especially when they were waiting it out in one place. They anticipated keeping their camp right where it was now, even after the ice melted, since they found themselves right in the middle of enough potential to trap all they could manage to pack out. They were already thinking it time to create a hidden cache where they could keep their made beaver packs until they were ready to take them to rendezvous next summer. In fact, Luke already had a spot in mind, near the top of a narrow ravine on the backside of the hill their camp was located on. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “let’s go try out those Johnny-cakes.”
“Good thing you decided to come eat,” Jug crowed when Luke and Willow came back to the tipi. “I believe I coulda finished that whole plate full of ’em.”
Not sure he was japin’ Luke, Willow immediately assured him. “I would make more for you.”
“He’s just makin’ chin music,” Luke told her. “If he tried to eat that whole plate of cakes, he’da blown up.” His comment was good for a laugh from all three. “Ain’t you gonna eat any of these?” Luke asked Willow, when she sat down with the antelope hide she had been working on, content to watch them enjoy the meal she had prepared.
“I eat one before,” she replied. “I have to be sure they taste good.”
“Well, they do,” Luke responded. “They truly shine. Ain’
t that right, Jug?”
“They surely do,” Jug answered, amused by the way Willow’s face reflected her satisfaction for their praise. What, he wondered, were they to do with this young Crow woman, if they were able to make it back to rendezvous with their top notches still intact? Looking at the two young people, he couldn’t help wondering if he might find himself without a partner next year. He hoped not because Luke Ransom was the best man he’d ever met in this business. He had not seen any signs of anything beyond polite kindness, but there was always the chance that Luke might decide to become a squaw man by the time this winter was done. Some of the boys did. It offered a lot of advantages besides the obvious one. The Indian wives he had seen were real partners to their white husbands. They cooked his meals, sewed his clothes, treated his wounds, skinned and butchered his kills, scraped and stretched his beaver plews, and more. If I was younger, I might consider marryin’ one myself, he thought.
After supper, both men went outside to take a look around as the darkness quickly moved in to cloak the waterfall and the tipi for the night. They split up and walked the perimeter of the small clearing, searching for any sign of a visitor. When they met at the top of the circle, just even with the frozen waterfall on one side, and the corral made of fir trees on the other, they paused to talk about their plans. “I wanna start diggin’ out a hole to cache our pelts,” Luke said, “but I don’t wanna be stuck in a hole in the ground while that bunch of Blackfeet are roamin’ all over hell and creation, lookin’ for this place.”
“No, I reckon not,” Jug replied. “I expect we’ll both have to keep our eyes peeled in case they happen on our little valley. We’ll need to load up all our rifles and the fusils we took from the Blackfoot, if they do show up here. We can show Willow how to load one, so we can keep shootin’ in a hurry.” He paused for a second or two, shook his head, and spat. “You reckon there’s any chance they got scared off? Maybe decided they’ve lost enough with them two?”
“I don’t think so,” Luke answered. “I think they’re gonna have to lose a couple more before they start thinkin’ about headin’ home. I’d like to find out if I’m right or wrong. And if they’re still here, I suspect they’ll move their camp, and we need to know where to. I reckon that’s up to me to find out. So I’ll be out of here at first light in the mornin’.”
“I don’t know, Luke,” Jug hedged. “That sounds a little risky. If they catch you out in the open, there ain’t no place you can hide in this snow. We might be better off to just hole-up in our dug-out tipi, and we oughta be able to shoot enough of ’em to make ’em give it up.”
“What you say is true,” Luke replied. “But even if they couldn’t kill us, they could cause us a heap of damage, and not just the tipi. They could shoot that to pieces, maybe set it on fire durin’ the night. But they could steal the horses and leave us with nothin’ to carry our packs back to rendezvous. So I expect it’d be best if we knew where their camp is.”
“You’ve been doin’ all the scoutin’ and fightin’ for us, and that don’t hardly seem right in a fifty-fifty partnership. I expect, if we need to know where they move their camp, it’s my turn to do the scoutin’.”
“Well, that is right, I reckon,” Luke responded. “And I’d hold you to that if you had two good arms. But this job calls for two hands and two long legs, if I get caught in the open. And you ain’t got neither one right now. So you be patient and let that arm heal up. Then, by Ned, you can chase your tail all over these snow-covered mountains, and I’ll set at home here with Willow eatin’ coffee and Johnny-cakes.”
“I didn’t ask to get shot,” Jug said in his defense and rubbed his wounded arm with his other hand. “Won’t be much longer and it’ll be good as new.” Luke suspected the arm was close to being ready right now. Jug had quit favoring it whenever he was doing any chore, but he was glad to give him an excuse. With that settled, they went back inside the tipi to report to Willow that there was no sign of the war party on the hill. “We’ll be checkin’ again in a little while,” Jug reassured her.
Luke didn’t tell Jug all the details about his plan, but when it was time to go to bed, Willow asked him where he was carrying his bedroll and a large buffalo hide to. She seemed especially alarmed when he picked up his rifle, bow, and possibles bag. “I gotta do a little chore early in the mornin’,” Luke answered her. “I’m gonna sleep with the horses tonight. I think Smoke is gettin’ lonesome and thinks I don’t love him anymore.”
He could only avoid Jug’s eyes for so long before having to hear from him. The little man shook his head slowly several times before complaining. “I swear, partner, I reckon I could guard the horses just as good as you. I weren’t too worried about ’em tonight. Figured it was too soon for them Blackfoot to be showin’ up here.”
“I figure the same thing,” Luke assured him. “It’d be one helluva lucky thing for them to stumble on this camp this soon. But I got to thinkin’ about the fix we’d be in if they did just happen to get up here and drive our horses off.” He looked at a wide-eyed gaping Willow, grinned, and said, “Why, that would be a helluva long walk all the way to Horse Creek for a young Crow woman.”
“I can still sleep with the horses tonight,” Jug insisted.
“No such a thing,” Luke replied. “I’ll be leaving early in the mornin’, anyway.”
Willow looked at them, shaking her head. “You both loco.”
Chapter 14
Luke was awake with the first flicker of light penetrating the branches of the fir tree he slept under. He didn’t hesitate and rolled out of the heavy buffalo hide he had wrapped around his bedroll. Before moving out into the meadow, he stopped to listen for the usual morning sounds of his camp, the horses shifting about quietly, the muted sound of the frozen waterfall. Hearing nothing out of the ordinary that might cause him concern, he rolled his blankets up and stuck them on a tree limb. The buffalo robe he planned to take with him. It was warm protection, and the white skin side of it might be needed if he had to try to hide on a snowy hillside. He quickly saddled Smoke and climbed aboard, taking one final look around to make sure he was the only early riser on the hillside. Satisfied, he rode up past the waterfall, holding the bay gelding to a slow walk up over the top of the hill, since he was concerned about the horse’s footing under the three-odd feet of snow. As soon as he reached the top of the hill, he guided Smoke into the thick forest of fir trees and began a very deliberate path weaving through the trees until reaching the narrow valley below. It was his hope that it would be a difficult path to discover, should the Blackfoot party come this way.
Once he was down on the valley floor, he remained in the trees until he circled back close to the place where he had killed the elk cow. He had been right in thinking the bull and his three cows were part of a herd of elk and they had bedded down in the cottonwoods below his camp. There were ample signs of the elk feeding on the cottonwoods, sprouts of other bushes and trees, even twigs and branches of firs. He continued along the edge of the meadow until he found what he was looking for, thousands of tracks left by the large animals where they crossed the snow-covered expanse of grass. With no concern for Smoke’s tracks now, he could cross over the meadow and go directly back to the river and the Blackfoot camp. Directly below his camp now, even though it was not visible because of the stand of cottonwoods at the foot of the hill, he did not tarry. He held Smoke to a lope in case there might be one scout to happen to see him as he crossed over the frozen creek that split the meadow.
Once he left the meadow, he guided Smoke through the trees beside the trail that circled the mountains. The snow covering the trail had not been disturbed, which was somewhat reassuring because it meant the Indians had not ridden in the direction of his camp. It had been his guess that they would likely go in the opposite direction, since everything that had happened had come from that direction. And since they would likely find the bodies of their two warriors back that way, that would be the direction they would start looking—if t
hey were going to stay. He still had hopes that they might have decided to head back to their village. He reined Smoke up to a stop when he recognized the fallen tree from which he had scouted the Blackfoot camp before. There was no fire and no one in sight. They had gone!
At once hopeful, he pressed Smoke forward, riding up to twenty yards or so toward the remains of the large fire in the center of the small clearing before stopping again to take another cautious look around him. Finally, he rode into the center of the camp where he could see the signs of their leaving. But the tracks did not head across the river to swing north on the trail beside the Judith as he had hoped. They led back along the frozen stream, into the mountains, the same direction they followed Willow in, and the same direction they found the bodies of their brothers. They are not leaving, so they must be looking for a better campsite, he thought. And I sure as hell didn’t scare them. The point of his scout this morning was to see what the Indians were up to, so he followed their tracks away from the original campsite.
He continued following the tracks of the eleven warriors as they moved along the stream that Crooked Foot and Wounded Horse had followed. But when they reached the foot of the hill where he had dragged the two bodies, they circled around toward the river again, instead of continuing up the narrow valley between the hills. He was not surprised. They would have better luck getting water out of the river than the tiny stream they had been following. His mind skipped back to a time before this when he had ridden along the foot of this hill. He had been riding after the three Blackfoot hunters who had raided the first camp he and Jug had built. If his memory served him, there should be a bold stream coming down this hill through a large stand of lodgepole pines. A good place to camp, he told himself, so he reined Smoke back to a slow walk while he decided what to do. His concern was the way the foot of the hill was shaped, like a wall of rock protruding out from the hill, forming a half-pocket that acted as a wind break. If the Indians had decided to make their camp inside that pocket, and Luke thought there was a good chance they had, he might not want to ride blindly around that rock protrusion. “Maybe we’d best find another way around that hill,” he said softly to Smoke. Smoke nodded his head up and down as if in agreement, but firmer confirmation came in the form of a thin ribbon of smoke that drifted casually up from inside the pocket. He interpreted that as a sign that they had not moved during the night, but had started right at daybreak, just as he had. To confirm his thinking, the thin ribbon of smoke began to darken, suggesting a fire just starting to burn with more enthusiasm.
To the River's End Page 16
