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Back before the poison of civilization had corrupted the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, brave mountain men struggled to carve a life from virgin land. But few of these hardy souls had ventured beyond the mountains to the Oregon Territory and the vast Pacific Ocean.
Lewis and Clark, Kit Carson and other living legends blazed trails through the unknown regions, often leading settlers. When one party of pioneers disappeared, Nate Kind and his mentor, Shakespeare McNair, were hired to track them down. The perils along the way were unending, but if Shakespeare and Nate survived, they would earn the greatest reward imaginable – the courage to live free.
WILDERNESS GIANT EDITION
ORDEAL
By David Robbins Writing as David Thompson
First Published by Leisure Books in 1995
Copyright © 1995, 2017 by David Robbins
First Smashwords Edition: January 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Mike Stotter
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
To Judy, Joshua, and Shane.
One
It was an accident, plain and simple. Nate King certainly had no desire to tangle with a furious bobcat, no more than he’d care to confront a riled grizzly. Yet that was exactly what happened, all because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nate had just gathered an armful of wood for the fire he was set to make. He strolled back to the clearing, admiring the blaze of pink and orange streaks that framed the jagged western horizon. Around him birds sang gaily. Somewhere higher up on the mountain a hungry hawk shrieked. Deer grazed in the verdant valley below, while off in the distance a small herd of shaggy buffalo drank at a meandering stream.
It was a tranquil scene. So Nate had no reason to expect trouble when he stepped from the pines and made toward the middle of the clearing. Lying there was the buck he’d shot twenty minutes earlier, and as he strode into the open, he saw something move beside it.
With twilight shrouding the countryside, Nate was unable to see the creature clearly. Suddenly it rose on all fours to utter a savage growl, and Nate froze. He hoped the bobcat would wander elsewhere if he didn’t provoke it.
Seldom were bobcats dangerous. Unlike their much larger cousins, bobcats were rarely seen and always fled when encountered. Almost always, anyhow. Occasionally trappers ran into contrary bobcats and wound up sporting nasty scars.
Nate King already had more than his share of scars and no hankering to add to them. He stood stock still as the cat took a slow step toward him. Burdened as he was with firewood, he couldn’t resort to his flintlock quickly even if he’d wanted to. And his prized Hawken was propped against a fir tree across the way.
The animal crouched, ears flat, thin lips curled to expose razor-sharp tapered teeth. Over five feet long from nose tip to tail’s end and packing upwards of seventy pounds onto its sinewy frame, the cat was capable of disemboweling a man.
Nate saw blood trickling from the bobcat’s tufted chin and figured the scent had drawn it to the carcass. Normally, bobcats shunned carrion.
Again the creature advanced, body slung low to the ground, wide paws soundless on the grass.
A gut feeling told Nate the cat was going to attack. It was an instinctive feeling born of years spent in the raw wilderness, of honing that most basic of human drives, simple self-preservation, to the keenness of a finely tempered blade.
The bobcat’s stubby tail twitched as it slunk forward. Nate cast a longing glance at his heavy-caliber rifle, knowing he couldn’t reach it before the cat reached him.
There was one trick Nate could try. Hoping to spook the bobcat, he stamped a moccasin and vented a Shoshone war whoop. Instead of fleeing, the bobcat snarled and lunged at Nate.
So fast were the feline’s reflexes, it was on Nate before he could so much as move. Without thinking, he let go of the firewood. The broken branches clattered at his feet, causing the bobcat to weave to one side. Nate stabbed at a pistol as the cat swung, its claws digging into his shin deep enough to draw blood.
Nate back-pedaled, drawing as he did, the bobcat pressing against him, its paw moving so fast the motion was a blur. He had no idea how many times he had been cut when the flintlock cleared his wide leather belt. Thankfully, the bobcat didn’t leap at his chest or neck, giving him the opportunity needed to level the pistol and take a hasty bead.
As if the creature possessed an uncanny sixth sense that warned it of imminent death, it abruptly whirled and fled, streaking into the forest too swiftly for Nate to react and shoot. In the blink of an eye it was lost in dense undergrowth, its parting snarl carried by the stiff breeze.
Nate lowered the .55 and examined his leg. The legging had been shredded below the knee and there were a dozen or so stinging furrows, some deep, some not. Hardly life threatening, but there was always the risk of infection.
Working briskly, Nate removed his fire steel, flint, and tinderbox from his possibles bag and soon had a fire going. Pulling his butcher knife from its beaded sheath he proceeded to slice his legging higher so he could tend the wounds, but his task was interrupted by footsteps at the south side of the clearing.
Shakespeare McNair was an elder member of the trapping fraternity. Some claimed he had been the first white man to ever set foot in the central Rockies, a claim McNair never disputed. Sporting long hair and a bushy beard every bit as white as the snow-crowned peaks of the mountains he called home, McNair was widely regarded as the best trapper in the business.
Now, coming across the clearing, Shakespeare saw Nate’s leg and grinned. “Lordy, this coon can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you getting in a racket with the local wildlife.”
“It was a bobcat,” Nate said.
“No fooling. I heard it cuss you in cat talk.” Shakespeare deposited the full water skin he had brought from the spring and sank to one knee beside the younger man. “Let me have a look, Horatio. You’re liable to chop off your own foot by mistake.”
“Keep badgering me and well be the ones getting in a racket.”
“Go, go,” Shakespeare began quoting from the book he knew as well as he did the palms of his hands. “You are a counterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, began upon an honorable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased velour, and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice.”
“Like hell,” Nate grumbled. “I’ve never gleeked anybody, so far as I know.” He paused. “And once, just once, I’d be happy if you spoke normal English like everyone else.”
“Normal English?” Shakespeare repeated, then cackled as if demented. “Son, Americans don’t know the meaning of the word. We take to mangling language the same as we mangle everything else.”
“If you say so,” Nate responded. His leg had begun throbbing, and he was in no frame of mind to spar words with his mentor. “Do you happen to be toting any poultice makings in that bag of yours? I’m plumb out.”
“I’ve got me some woodie leaves,” Shakespeare said, referring to a type of plant commonly used by the Shoshones to treat war wo
unds. “Not much, but it should be enough.”
“Have at it.” Nate leaned back, gritting his teeth against the pain, which grew worse with each passing minute. It was as if he’d been stung by a hundred bees.
The grizzled mountaineer removed a battered coffeepot from a worn parfleche. “I’ll have to boil water first.” He chuckled. “Gives me a chance to tell a story.”
“Oh, no,” Nate groaned, but he secretly pricked his ears.
“Yep. This reminds me of the time old Bob Walker came up short in a tussle with a bobcat.” McNair commenced pouring water into the pot. “It seems his Nez Percé wife wanted to fringe all her dresses with bobcat fur. Something to do with a dream she had. She believed the fur would be right powerful medicine. Turn Old Bob into a tiger under the robes at night.”
“You re joshing me again.”
“As I live and breathe, that was her reason,” Shakespeare swore. “So Old Bob went traipsing all over Creation after bobcats. The hide had to be from kittens for the medicine to work, which meant he was poking his nose into every hollow log and under every fallen tree he came across. He found a few dens, too, and naturally the she-cats weren’t none too thrilled about having him take their young, so he had to fight them off first.”
“Hardly seems worth the bother,” Nate commented.
Shakespeare arched an eyebrow. “This from a married man. When was the last time you told your wife to go take a walk off the nearest cliff when she gave you something to do?”
“Get on with your tale.”
“Well, long about the fifth or sixth den, Old Bob met his match. He had to reach way down into a tree stump, and when he did that she-cat boiled out of there like a hairy volcano. About tore one of his cheeks to ribbons and bit off the end of his nose. Left a big hole, she did. He had to put a ball in her brain or she would have rubbed him out for sure. Then, proud as could be, with enough kitten hides to hem a dozen dresses, he rode back to the village.”
“Must have made his wife happy, I reckon.”
“No. She left him and moved back in with her folks.”
“Whatever for?”
“She couldn’t stand the sight of him without his nose. That big hole about made her sick to her stomach every time she looked at him.”
“The nerve! After all the poor man had been through.”
“That wasn’t the worst of it.”
“What was?”
“She took those hides with her and used them to decorate the shield of her new lover.”
“How did Old Bob take her treachery?”
“He got so drunk at the next rendezvous, he challenged the lover to a duel. Her new beau got to pick the weapons and he decided on lances, from horseback.”
“Did Old Bob win?”
“Not hardly. I saw the fight with my own eyes. They were sitting on their cayuses, waiting for the signal, when Bob sort of oozed off his animal like all his bones had turned to mush. Out cold, he was, for a whole day. When he came around he didn’t remember a blessed thing.”
“So that was the end of the affair.”
“Almost. The woman married the warrior. About a year later they were in their lodge one night when someone pushed on the flap and tossed a big sack inside. Before they quite knew what was what, a bobcat came barreling out of that sack primed for battle. A she-cat, it was. She scratched the warrior something awful, then tore into that woman and ripped off her lower lip.”
“Old Bob.”
“No one could ever prove it,” Shakespeare said. “The Nez Percé grumbled for a spell about making war on all whites for the outrage, but they were just making chests for the benefit of their women.”
“What did Old Bob do?”
“Married his woman when she came crawling back, begging his forgiveness.”
“I’ve done lost your trail.”
“Didn’t I tell you? That warrior didn’t want any part of her after the bobcat was through. Without her lip she couldn’t kiss good enough to suit him, so he sent her packing. Since no one else wanted her either, she had to choose between Old Bob and spinsterhood.” Shakespeare fed a few small limbs to the fire. “Goes to show there is justice in this world of ours, no matter what those with blinders on might say.”
They lapsed into the amiable sort of silence only the best of friends can enjoy, Shakespeare pleased with himself for having taken Nate’s mind from the cuts if only for a short while, Nate thinking about his wife, Winona, and wondering whether she would still love him if he were to be horribly disfigured as Old Bob had been, which, given the violent sort of life he led, was a distinct possibility.
Not that Nate dwelled on such morbid matters. Since leaving the choking confines of New York City for the untamed frontier, he’d never sincerely regretted his decision or fretted over the future. “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” he liked to say when looking ahead to specific events.
At this particular moment the young free trapper was quite content with his lot in life. He had a dependable wife, a strapping son and a lovely little girl. They lived in a remote cabin high in the Rockies with eagles and bighorn sheep for neighbors. Their water came from a spring as pure as any in the Garden. Food in abundance was theirs for the taking most months of the year. To Nate’s way of thinking, he dwelled in paradise and wouldn’t trade places with anyone for all the gold ever mined.
Shakespeare McNair was equally content but for different reasons. Like Nate, he had a devoted wife. Like Nate, he lived far back in the mountains where other men left him alone to do as he damn well pleased.
But Shakespeare had the added perspective of a man well on in years, of someone who had lived life to the fullest, who had wrung every precious drop of enjoyment there was to wring from existence and could count his cup as full.
Only one piddling fact marred Shakespeare’s outlook, a trifling desire he had harbored for more years than he cared to recollect, a strange pulling on his heartstrings that had nothing to do with physical love. And for a mountain man it was all the more bewildering because it didn’t concern the land he so passionately cherished.
Shakespeare had told no one. Not Blue Water Woman, not Nate or Winona. Yet he wanted to confide in someone. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up,” he said casually while checking on the water.
“No, I won’t lend you a hundred dollars until the rendezvous,” Nate joked.
“What’s here?” Shakespeare quoted. “The portrait of a blinking idiot, presenting me a schedule.” He shook his head. “No, I wanted to talk about this hankering I have.”
“For painter steak?”
“No, not panther meat.”
“Fly-blowed buffler meat?”
“You’re a funny gent.”
“A prairie queen?”
“My wife would shoot me and you know it.” Shakespeare laughed, then turned serious. “I want to see the ocean again.”
Nate sat up, his brow puckered. McNair despised the civilized life as much as he did, and he couldn’t see the old-timer making the long journey to the Atlantic just to stare at the sea. “It would take months,” he remarked.
“Years.”
“The Atlantic Ocean isn’t that far.”
“I was thinking of the Pacific.”
Shakespeare might as well have announced he wanted to fly to the moon. It would have had the same effect on Nate. “You’re touched in the head. No one has done that except Lewis and Clark, and they had a whole expedition to back them up.”
“Wrong,” Shakespeare said. “Jedediah Smith went to California in ’24. Joe Walker went just a few years back. Kit Carson has been there, too. So has Ewell Young.”
“There must be a regular highway,” Nate said, only half in jest.
“You know all this,” Shakespeare chided. “You’re just trying to get a rise out of me.” He gazed wistfully westward. “But this hoss meant what he said. I’d like to see the Pacific again before I die.”
“Getting there and back would take
the better part of a year,” Nate noted.
“I know.”
“You couldn’t leave Blue Water Woman for that long.”
“I know.”
“And there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. You’d have to contend with hostiles, grizzlies, rattlers, long spells without water and food, the fickle weather—”
“I know all the perils,” Shakespeare said testily. “I’m the one who has been there, remember?”
“When, might I ask?”
“That’s right. I’ve never told you, have I?” McNair propped himself on his hands. “It was in 1798. I got an itch to see the Oregon Country, so I set off with a pair of Delawares. Ever met one of their tribe?”
“Can’t say as I have,” Nate said, distracted by the question. He was eager to hear the story.
“Upstanding tribe. Generous and reliable to a fault. The Lenni-Lenape, they call themselves. They greeted the white man with open arms and were forced from their homeland by their white brothers.” Shakespeare gave a little snort to show his contempt and was about to go on when he glimpsed movement on a ridge to the southwest. The encroaching darkness kept him from distinguishing details, but the glimpse was enough to galvanize him into lunging, grabbing the water skin, and upending it over the fire.
Nate didn’t bother seeking an explanation. They had ridden together so long they knew each other’s thoughts. Despite the pain, Nate pushed himself erect and gathered their belongings, rushing to the horses with parfleches, packs, and bales of plews. It took ten minutes for the two of them to slap their gear on their pack animals and saddle up. They’d done a sloppy job but neither made an issue of it. Staying alive was more important.
Shakespeare led off into the pine forest, winding among the tightly spaced trunks with marvelous skill.
Nate twisted often to check their back trail. The stock of the Hawken rested on his right thigh. He had forgotten about the pain in his leg.
From a hill a quarter of a mile from their camp they surveyed the night, and Shakespeare said, “They were bound to have spotted our fire.”
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