“Who are they?” Myra echoed. “They’re two by-God angels. That’s who they are.”
“What are we going to do?” Lucy asked. It was something she was wondering about, now that there was a chance there was a future in store for her, and her life might not end in an Indian camp. “Where are they taking us? I don’t know what to do without Carlton.” Thinking of her late husband, she started to cry softly.
Myra put her arm around her and pulled her close. “I think they’ll take us wherever we want to go.”
Lucy struggled to keep from sobbing. “I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t have a place to go. The only family I have left are my aunt and some cousins back in Missouri, and Carlton’s folks. I can’t go back there after what’s happened to me.”
Myra understood her young friend’s despair. Lucy had not spoken of it, and Myra would not ask her, but she could imagine the abuse and violation that Lucy had suffered at the hands of the savage Bloody Hand. Lucy’s mind might never heal, but if it did, it would surely take a long, long time. There were healing scars on her face and arms that spoke of the abuse she had endured. They would heal rapidly. It was the serious scarring, deep inside the girl’s mind and body, that would take its toll.
“Honey,” Myra told her, “you’ve got your ol’ aunt Myra. You’re not alone. Hell, I don’t have any family to go back to, either. We’ll just start over, you and me.”
“What would we do to support ourselves?” Lucy asked. “Carlton was a farmer. I don’t know much about raising crops. I don’t own a thing to my name, but this ol’ animal skin dress—not even a brush or comb.”
“I don’t know,” Myra said. “We’ll get somewhere safe and then think about it. We’ll find something. You just rest now. You look like you need to build up your strength, so I’m taking it as my responsibility to fatten you up a little. Why, when we get back to civilization, there ain’t nothing that can stop two determined women like you and me.”
She was not a great deal more confident about her abilities than her younger friend, but she would never admit it. Her greatest attribute was the belief that, like a cat, she would always land on her feet, no matter how far she was thrown. And this time, she was determined to put Lucy back on her feet as well.
And so it came to be that four souls set out the following morning, after a night that brought no attack by Piegan warriors, with no clear destination beyond Fort Benton, and no notion what they would do once they arrived. Still, they rode with a confident air, for they were within short miles of Fort Benton and the military stationed there. The abduction of the two women, which was the flashpoint that had started this ill-conceived adventure, had been successfully crushed, and the women rescued. This was as far into the future as Bret had planned. His years of education and military training had all gone for naught with his dismissal from the army. As he rode his paint Indian pony toward the Missouri River once again, he tried to turn his options over in his mind. The only occupation that continued to come up as the most likely was to re-enlist in the army as a private, and he was determined not to do that.
Perhaps the only member of the rescue party with a firm idea of where he was heading was the big scout, Nate Coldiron, for he had seen the writing on the wall. He had always been a free and independent man. His skills in the wild were such that he needed no one to rely on for food or clothing. Things beyond those basics, like guns and ammunition, he could always trade animal hides for. Frequent agreements to scout for the army brought him the money he needed for his amusement.
But now Coldiron saw the end of his existence as a free soul getting closer every day. He had accumulated too many years. His life path was supposed to have ended a decade ago, before his eyesight began to deteriorate, and his hearing began to fade—and the onset of the trembling of his finger on the trigger.
Well, I might have one foot in the grave, he thought, but it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more to pull the other one in.
• • •
Morning brought the light that Bloody Hand needed to follow the trail left by the six horses, and he was on it as soon as the predawn light found its way into the Marias River Valley. Retracing their steps of the night before, they confirmed their findings of that search in the dark. After careful study of the tracks, they found the spot where the white men had crossed the river, still heading north according to the tracks across the small island in the middle of the river.
“Yi!” Bloody Hand yelped in anger when there were no tracks leading out of the water on the other side. “They stayed in the water, hoping to lose us. A trick a child might use. Come!”
He kicked his horse firmly and the spotted gray war pony charged up out of the water to the bank.
“They had to come out somewhere.”
Lame Dog followed him and they studied the riverbank carefully as they continued in a northerly direction.
After riding over half a mile, Lame Dog complained, “They must not have stayed in the water this long. I think they tried to trick us. I think they crossed back over the river again.”
This seemed a possibility to Bloody Hand, so they crossed back to the other side, but they found no tracks on that side, either.
Almost at the same time, both men realized how easily they had been fooled. They crossed over for a third time and raced back to the spot where the little island showed the last tracks. From that point on, they traced the riverbank in the opposite direction until coming to the rocky outcropping, a likely place to leave the river if trying to conceal their tracks. Careful examination of the chalky rock revealed faint scarring by the iron shoes of the two packhorses. The trail through the grass beyond the rock was faint, but it was there, so they knew now that their prey was heading for Fort Benton. And it was likely that, with the head start the party had, the two hunters would not catch them before reaching that settlement. That fact seemed to be no deterrent to Bloody Hand. His obsession pushed him on in spite of the small chance of overtaking them before they reached the fort.
“I think maybe they are too far ahead of us,” Lame Dog suggested to his fearsome companion.
“They will never be too far,” Bloody Hand replied heatedly. “I will follow these two white men until I have them under my knife. Then I will kill the woman, too, for she is no longer worthy to be the wife of Bloody Hand. And as long as she lives, she brings shame to my tipi.”
• • •
As the vengeance-crazed savage held doggedly to the trail across a rolling prairie, broken by ragged ridges and barren mesas, the four people he stalked were even then no more than a mile or two from Fort Benton. Making their way through a line of rocky hills, they had come down to the Teton River, which paralleled the mighty Missouri just north of the fort.
With no sense of alarm now, they paused to water the horses. They were grateful to find a few trees along the banks, after having traveled through a long stretch that had none. Since nothing had been discussed about what their plans were when they reached Fort Benton, Myra suggested that this might be a good time to do so.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” she said, “but I could use a little coffee while we’re spelling the horses.”
Coldiron couldn’t resist japing her, now that they were out of danger of being overtaken by a war party. “You mean, right now, before we cross this river?”
Accustomed by now to his tendency to tease when the situation was not dire, she responded in kind. “I can walk across this one and help an old man like you while I’m about it.”
The river was shallow with gravel along the banks and apparently no deep holes in the moderately running current. There was nothing to concern her.
“I’m gonna build a fire and make some coffee, so if you want some of it, you’d best watch your mouth.” Her sassy comment brought a chuckle from the big scout. She turned then to Bret. “If you don’t mind, I think Lucy and I would like to talk
over just what’s gonna happen to us, now that we’ve reached Fort Benton and we’re no longer in danger.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Bret replied. “I guess it is time to make some plans for you and Lucy—hell, for all of us. And I suspect you’re right about the Indians. You think so, Nate?”
“I reckon,” Coldiron answered. “We had a good head start on ’em, and they’d be crazy to come in this close to Fort Benton.”
Myra built her fire, and coffee was soon on to boil. However, the making of plans was not a simple matter, for in truth, no one knew what to do. There had really been no time to talk about it during their escape from the Piegan village.
“I reckon I could try to see you two ladies through to wherever you wanna go,” Bret finally offered. “From the start of this thing, I guess I figured I’d be taking you back to Fort Ellis, or Benson’s Landing on the Yellowstone, since that was where they captured you. I have to confess that part of the reason I was gonna take you back to Fort Ellis was to prove they were wrong to court-martial me. But the more I think about it, the more I don’t care whether they know or not. Somehow I’ve kinda lost my interest in being reinstated in the army. And you’ve both been saying there’s nothing and nobody to go back there to, so it wouldn’t be right to drop you off at Benson’s Landing and leave you without anything. I guess you’re gonna have to decide what you’re gonna do and where you want to go.”
“What about you?” Coldiron asked him. “If you ain’t wantin’ to go back to bein’ an officer in the army, what are you gonna do?”
Bret shook his head helplessly. “Damned if I know. After we take care of the ladies, I don’t know where I’m heading.” He could readily see the signs of despair in Lucy’s face, so he said, “I plan to take the little bit of money I’ve got with me and spend it on some clothes for you women. You can’t go anywhere dressed like that.” Lucy looked relieved immediately, even though new clothes wouldn’t solve her bigger dilemma.
Myra gave him a great big smile and said, “Damn, I’m gonna miss you.”
Coldiron sipped his coffee and studied the remarks of his fellow travelers. When there was a lull in the discussion, he asked a question. “Why don’t we just stick together? We’re almost like a family, the four of us. Why don’t we set up on our own?”
“And do what?” Bret asked.
“I’ve always had a hankerin’ to find me some good pasture land and raise cattle and horses,” Coldiron replied. “I never did anythin’ about it, ’cause there weren’t nobody but me, and I weren’t sure I could cut it alone.”
“You know anything about cattle?” Bret asked.
“A little bit,” Coldiron answered.
The idea struck Bret as interesting, worthy of consideration. “Ranching, huh? I could help you with the horses, but I’ve never had much to do with cattle, except eating them. I reckon I’m not too old to learn. Of course, it’s not as simple as that. You need some land to build your ranch on, and pasture land to raise livestock.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Coldiron said. “I’ve had the country picked out for a long time. We rode through it when we were trailing those Blackfeet, prettiest land there is anywhere. Above Big Timber, west of the Crazy Mountains, that’s the place to raise stock—water, grass, everythin’ you need—and most of it’s free range.”
“I believe you have been thinking about it,” Bret said, really surprised. “I thought you wanted to be alone, preferred not to have anyone else around to bother you, holed up in that cabin of yours on the Gallatin River. Now you’re telling me you want to be a family?”
Coldiron shrugged. “When you’re young, maybe a man don’t need nobody else. But when you get a little older, you get to feelin’ that it wouldn’t be bad to have somebody around.”
Myra found the discussion very interesting. While there was a temporary lull, she looked at Lucy, questioning. Getting a shrug of noncommittal from her young friend, she chose to interpret it as indifferent, so she made a suggestion.
“Why don’t we vote on it? I say we oughta try it as a family, and stick together. Lucy and I are already used to hard work on a farm, so we’ll do our part. What about the rest of you?”
“I vote we make a family,” Coldiron spoke up, a wide grin straining to shine through the whiskers.
Still insecure in her place among them, because of what she feared as a stigma as a result of the abuse she had suffered in the Piegan camp, Lucy nevertheless voted to join Myra, leaving Bret to make it unanimous.
“I guess we’re gonna be a family,” he said.
Myra cheered and Lucy’s face lost its worried frown for the first time since she had been rescued. Coldiron grinned, knowing that he had formed a partnership with a strong, young, dependable man, and his recent worries about advancing age seemed no longer of importance.
Bret was not sure it was what he wanted to do with his life, but he believed that this was the best option at the moment. The thought of being part of a family was a strange one to him, for he had never really experienced it. He was the son of a career military man who was a widower. His young life was spent moving from post to post, with no roots sunk in any one place. And it had always been the natural progression for him to follow his father’s profession. Maybe having a family, even one of unrelated members, would be a good thing for him. The idea caused him to smile to himself when he thought of the unlikely combination of characters.
Each of the four had reached a critical juncture in his or her life with no clear future in sight. A family of misfits, he thought, but one that might possibly have a stronger bond than a blood family. So he made up his mind he would honor this commitment, knowing that of the four, he would contribute the most. The balance of money he had left in the bank at Bozeman was the only money available to finance their endeavor. He wondered if his late father would approve of his use of his inheritance.
They sat by the Teton River until the coffee was finished, then climbed into the saddle again to complete their trip to Fort Benton. High-spirited, they looked forward to a future. Even though it was not set in stone, it was a step in that direction. They rode into town at half past four o’clock in the afternoon. With a pretty strong notion that Lucy would like to throw away her doeskin dress, Bret led them directly to the dry goods store where Myra had purchased her clothes. He gave Myra some money to buy Lucy a complete set of clothes with a little extra in case Myra desired some clothes of a more feminine nature. Since they were across the street from the Missouri Saloon, he anticipated Coldiron’s question and offered to buy a drink before he asked it.
“Just to make our new agreement official,” Coldiron said with a twinkle in his eye. “Otherwise, I never touch the stuff.”
Hank Lewis recognized the two men when they walked in the door. “Well, howdy, boys,” he greeted them cheerfully. “Did you find that Injun camp you was lookin’ for?”
“Yep, we sure did,” Coldiron answered. “And we thought we’d give you a little business on our way back through town. Have you still got some of that good stuff you gave us last time?”
“I do, indeed,” Hank said with a grin. Looking directly at Bret, he japed, “Want me to send somebody over to the fort to see if your ol’ friend Corporal Murdock can come over and have a drink with you?”
“I’d just as soon you didn’t,” Bret replied. “We’re kinda hoping to have a quiet drink and be on our way. We’ve got two ladies waiting for us outside.”
“Oh,” Hank said. “Well, you don’t have to hurry off. Tell ’em to come on in and have a drink.”
“I said two ladies,” Bret repeated, emphasizing the word ladies.
“Beg your pardon,” Hank was quick to reply. “No offense.” He filled two shot glasses and stood ready to refill them if so directed.
Coldiron lifted his glass and held it out before him, proposing a toast. “Here’s to our new partnership.”
Hank obliged. “Where you fellers headin’, now that you’ve found that lady?”
“Headin’ south,” Coldiron said, “down across the Musselshell to that big valley of grass above Big Timber.” He looked at Bret and grinned. “And we can’t get there too soon, right, partner?”
“South, huh?” Hank asked. “I might can give you a little piece of advice. A couple of soldiers were in here the other night. And they was talkin’ about goin’ out on patrol down that way, because of some trouble some Blackfeet was causin’ east of the Little Belt Mountains. I don’t know if that’s the way you was thinkin’ about goin’, but if it is, you might wanna ride to the west of them mountains.”
“Much obliged,” Bret said. “We were going that way. Maybe we oughta take your advice and go west of the mountains. Whaddaya think, Nate?”
“Maybe you’re right,” Coldiron said. “It’ll put us outta our way a little, but what the hell have we gotta be in a hurry for, anyway?”
• • •
The women were still inside the dry goods store when Bret and Coldiron walked back across the dusty street.
“Might as well go in and look around,” Bret suggested, “see what they’ve got to sell in there.”
Seeing Myra at the counter with an accumulation of items stacked up before her, including some basic supplies like flour, salt, lard, leavening, and sugar, Bret stepped up to give her a hand.
“I figured you’d use all the money I gave you on things to wear,” he said.
She smiled and replied, “I thought you might rather have some biscuits. I’m satisfied to wear the clothes I’ve got right now.”
“Where’s Lucy?”
“She’s in the storeroom in back, changing clothes,” Myra told him. “She couldn’t wait to get outta them Injun clothes.”
“I reckon,” Coldiron said, then walked over to the other side of the store to look at a rack of firearms.
Wrath of the Savage Page 17
