“Damn!” Nate groused. He started to go after it, but Chavez beat him to the bank.
“Should I help?” LeBeau asked.
“He doesn’t need any,” Nate said.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a tremendous roar caused all the horses to shy and prance. Nate had heard such roars many times before. “Stay with these,” he shouted, and flew across the stream and into the brush.
A gunshot sounded. Another. The roaring grew louder, seeming to shake the trees. Nate burst into a clearing and there was the gray, down on its side, its entrails spilled out over the ground, while astride the stricken horse reared a slavering grizzly, one enormous paw on the gray’s chest. Chavez had emptied both pistols and was bringing his rifle into play.
“No!” Nate bellowed. “Leave it be!”
Chavez glanced at him. “I must finish it off.” The bear took the matter out of their hands by charging the tracker. Chavez, distracted, would have been caught unawares if not for his bay, which spun and bolted.
Grizzlies were fast but only over short distances. This one came within a claw’s breadth of ripping open the bay’s flank when the horse swerved to avoid a thicket and a paw nipped at its tail.
Chavez applied his spurs. The bear went faster, snarling horribly, gaping jaws wide to bite. Twice its huge teeth clamped shut, gnashing air.
Nate, meanwhile, attempted to overtake them. He tried to get a bead on the grizzly but the many twists and turns thwarted him. The bear began to lose ground and Nate relaxed a little, sure that Chavez would escape. Then he spied what lay ahead. -
Directly in the tracker’s path lay a wide gully. Twelve feet from rim to rim, it spelled certain death for Chavez if he slowed or swung wide to go around. The bear would be on him in a flash.
Nate raised the Hawken again, convinced he had to shoot to distract the bear long enough for Chavez to reach safety. He saw Chavez bend forward, saw the tracker lash his reins and pump his legs.
The bay marshaled more speed. Hoofs pounding, it swept to the very brink of the gully and jumped, hurtling skyward in a magnificent arc. For a heartbeat it seemed to hang in midair, the outcome in doubt, Chavez’s life in jeopardy. But it landed evenly, well clear of the rim, and Chavez reined up in a spray of dust.
The baffled grizzly halted at the edge and roared its anger. It looked down, apparently decided the walls were too steep to negotiate, and turned. It saw Nate.
So concerned had Nate been about Chavez’s welfare that he had neglected his own. He was only thirty feet from the bear when it came after him, and he knew that even if he put a ball into the beast it would still reach him. Accordingly, he reined the stallion to the left and fled.
The brush was thick, some thorny. Nate was nicked and scraped, the stallion suffering worse. Rending of limbs told him the bear had taken a beeline and was almost upon him. He dared a glance and saw the monster within feet of his horse. It was going to catch him!
Nate brought up the Hawken, then glimpsed a cottonwood directly ahead. Instead of swerving, he galloped right at the trunk and, at the last possible instant, cut to one side, missing the tree by inches.
Grizzlies were massive brutes. Once they got up steam, they needed space to slow down. They couldn’t simply stop dead, as a cat might do. This one tried, though, when it saw the cottonwood, digging in its hind paws and pushing at the ground with its front ones. But it was hopeless.
The impact shook the tree from roots to treetop. Nate heard a resounding crack and looked back to find the grizzly reeling as if drunk while shaking its head over and over. He continued on until he could no longer see it, then he slanted to the right and soon reached the gully.
Chavez had paralleled his course on the other side. “That was a close one, amigo,” he said, smiling. “For both of us.”
“I figured you for a goner,” Nate agreed. He peered down at the bottom, forty feet below. “That was some jump. I never could have made it.”
“I refuse to end my days in the belly of a dumb brute,” Chavez said. “Not when I have so much to live for.” He paused, went on wistfully. “Anita is her name, and a prettier señorita can’t be found. She promised to wait for me. I will not let myself die until I have held her soft hands in mine and gazed into her lovely eyes.”
Many questions presented themselves, but Nate wouldn’t pry. “I hope you get to see her again,” was all he said.
From the brush rumbled a savage token of the bear’s fury.
“Do you think it hunts us?” Chavez asked.
“Yes.” Nate scoured the slopes for a spot to cross, but there was none. “Let’s go east a spell. Maybe the gully will end.”
Abreast, they rode briskly, both keeping an eye on their back trail. The cracking of undergrowth dwindled, and soon Nate judged they had gone far enough to resume talking. “Porter will have a fit over his horse, but it couldn’t be helped.”
“The bear came out of nowhere,” Chavez related. “The horse was down before I could lift a finger.”
“It happens.”
Chavez motioned at the mountains. “This wilderness of yours is muy grande, but it is too savage for my taste.”
“You have bears in your neck of the woods.”
“Black bears, si. Which usually run rather than fight, and which do not grow as big as carriages.”
“We have grizzlies, you have Apaches. I reckon we’re even,” Nate said, only half in jest.
Chavez chuckled. “It is said that if you were to put an Apache and a hungry bear in a locked room, the Apache would be the one who came out.”
“You must have fought them a few times, growing up where you did.”
“Many times. But not all Apaches are so wild. Some are friendly.” Chavez wore that wistful expression again. “One worked for my father. He was an old White Mountain Apache, and he could track better than anyone I have ever known.”
“He taught you?”
“Si. I took a liking to him when I was small. Used to bring him cookies and things my madre made. So in return he took me under his wing, as you would say, and shared all he knew with me.” Chavez’s voice dropped. “It was a sad day when I buried him.”
“Old age?”
“No. Some Chiricahuas raided our rancho.”
Nate reined up. The gully wall on the other side had buckled long ago, and erosion had worn a groove to the bottom. Unfortunately, his side was as steep as ever. “Think you can cross here?”
“Does a bird have wings?”
The tracker rode a dozen yards from the rim. Then, with a slap of his sombrero, he flew like the wind. He galloped into the groove at breakneck speed, the bay sending dirt and small rocks flying. A bound brought it to the near side, where, muscles rippling, it surged clear to the top without losing its footing once.
“That’s a fine animal you have there,” Nate complimented him. “Did you raise it from a colt?”
“No. I took it from a man who had no further use for it.”
The meaning was obvious, and while Nate would have liked to learn more, he refrained from prying a second time. They rode to the stream in silence.
LeBeau paced the bank, his brow furrowed. On beholding them he grinned and clapped his hands. “There you are! I was getting worried, mon amis.”
“We wouldn’t run off and leave you,” Nate assured him.
“But you be killed, non? I heard shots, and roars.” LeBeau stepped into the stirrups. “Without you, I think maybe I not find the others, and I do not care to be stranded in this harsh land.”
“First Chavez, now you. It’s not all that bad once you grow accustomed to the way things are.
“Maybe, friend. But on the Mississippi I need not look over my shoulder every minute of every jour for Indians, bears, or cougars. The worst that happen to you on a riverboat is you fall overboard. And I be a good swimmer.”
The pack horses in tow, Nate retraced their route through the valley and into the high mountains bordering the lake. He changed cou
rse to come up on it from the southwest. On spying the shimmering surface, he stopped, tied the stallion, and moved forward alone to reconnoiter.
As Nate expected, the expedition was long gone. Swarming over the camp site were dozens of Blackfeet, over a hundred painted for war. A half-dozen were huddled near the lake, no doubt the leaders, mulling their next move. Nate did not have long to wait for them to make up their minds. A muscular warrior sporting a pair of eagle feathers in his hair spoke at length in their tongue, then the entire war party loped north along the shore.
Nate sprinted to the horses. LeBeau and Chavez were waiting tensely, rifles in hand.
“Well?” LeBeau said.
“The Blackfeet are after the expedition,” Nate stated, mounting.
“What do we do? Maybe get ahead of these devils?”
“No. Well follow for the time being.”
The riverman shifted in the saddle. “Is that wise, my friend? I not know these Indians as you do, but I know they kill us if they catch us. We should be with our friends to help.”
“Ever tried to push hard through heavy timber with a string of horses? Can’t hardly be done.” Nate responded. “For another thing, we’d make a godawful racket, which the Blackfeet might hear. And we could wind up straying far off the trail. Then what good would we be to anyone?”
Neither man liked the proposition, but they fell in behind him as Nate went around the southern tip of the lake and up the east shore. By all rights the Blackfeet should be too absorbed in the chase to notice anyone dogging them, but to be safe Nate never strayed from cover.
The war party jogged tirelessly for half an hour. When it dawned that they wouldn’t be able to overhaul their quarry anytime soon, they slowed and walked.
The morning dragged. Nate stopped every now and then to scour the woods for stragglers. His foresight saved their lives, for shortly after noon he halted and distinguished eight or nine Blackfeet standing by an aspen grove.
Nate had nearly blundered into the open. He sat stock still, wondering what the Blackfeet were up to. They were gathered around a warrior seated on a log who appeared to have something wrong with his leg. After a few minutes two Blackfeet helped the hurt man to his feet, and the group departed.
By late afternoon the Blackfeet had slashed their pace in half, leading Nate to conclude they were about to give up. Then he saw a column of smoke rising from a hill, saw the war party fanning out, and his heart sank.
“What has happened?” LeBeau asked. “Did McNair stop?”
“Looks that way,” Nate said, at a loss to understand why his friend would have done so. He slid off the stallion and studied the nearby trees. “I need to see what is going on,” he declared, walking to a pine.
The bark was rough and dotted with sap which clung to his fingers. Nate gained the upper terrace without mishap. From there he could see the expedition encamped on the hill. Breastworks were being hastily erected in a gigantic circle, the men scurrying about like so many ants. He eased a leg to a lower limb to descend but changed his mind on seeing figures beyond the hill.
Suddenly Nate comprehended. Another party of Blackfeet were closing in from the north. The distance made counting them next to impossible, but he estimated there must be fifty. The wily Blackfeet had executed a pincer movement to catch Porter’s expedition between the two groups, and it had worked admirably.
Quickly Nate descended to inform the others. “Mon Dieu!” LeBeau exclaimed. “One hundred and fifty against twenty! They are doomed, yes?”
“Not so long as I’m still breathing,” Nate vowed. “What can we do?” Chavez asked. “The three of us would throw our lives away if we attacked so large a force.”
Nate pondered deeply. They couldn’t stand there twiddling their thumbs while their friends and loved ones were wiped out. There had to be something they could do. But what?
Nate recollected hearing once about a small party of trappers surrounded by a Blackfoot band that outnumbered the trappers two to one. The whites had faced imminent death but were spared by a timely display of the northern lights that persuaded the superstitious Blackfeet to call off the attack.
Which didn’t help Nate much. It was broad daylight. And supposing the Blackfeet held off until the next day. There was no guarantee the northern lights would be visible that night. No, he had to think up a strategy the three of them could put into effect.
“When the leader of an Apache raid is killed, they call off the attack. Would the same work with these Blackfeet?” Chavez asked.
“Sometimes it does,” Nate said. “Usually when the war parties are small and there is no one to take the leaders place.” Unconsciously, he fingered the trigger of his Hawken. “A war party this big is bound to have two or three who can fill the leaders moccasins at a moment’s notice.”
“Maybe we draw the Blackfeet off, non?” LeBeau suggested. “We ride half a mile, then shoot our guns.”
“Wouldn’t work,” Nate said. “We’d draw off half, at the most. The rest would keep the expedition pinned down. All we’d do is get ourselves killed.”
“I hate to be helpless,” LeBeau said.
“Not half as much as I do,” Nate told him. Having his wife and son up on that hill and knowing he was powerless to save them tore him apart inside. He hurried back to the tree and climbed to his roost. Little had changed. The defenders worked furiously on their breastworks while the Blackfeet were in the act of completely encircling the hill.
Nate noted the lay of the land, seeking an advantage there. North and east of the hill grew forest. To the west lay the placid lake. To the south, the shore, a bare strip sixty feet wide. He figured the three of them might be able to sneak close to the base of the hill from the east and dash to the breastworks when the time was ripe.
Evidently the Blackfeet were in no hurry to launch an assault. Nate saw several dragging limbs from the woods and others busting the limbs into pieces to use as firewood. It was the sight of a particular warrior that gave Nate a flash of inspiration and sent him clambering downward so rapidly he nearly lost his handhold twice.
“What has gotten into you?” Chavez inquired.
“I had a brainstorm,” Nate declared. “If it works, well send those Blackfeet scurrying off like a spooked herd of buffalo.”
“And if it does not?”
Nate smiled grimly. “Then the three of us will wind up looking like porcupines.”
Nine
Shakespeare McNair had been in a lot of tight spots during his many years in the wild. Not that he sought trouble. Rather, danger was a daily part of the life he had chosen to lead. And none knew better than he that the survival rate for mountaineers, as the trappers liked to call themselves, was abysmally low. Few precise records were kept, but it was known that in one year alone, 1826, one-hundred and sixteen daring men had gone boldly into the mountains after beaver; sixteen came out at the end of the season.
Shakespeare had almost been put under more times than he cared to recollect. Notable among them was the time a war party of Bloods backed him to the edge of a five-hundred-foot-high cliff. And the time a grizzly had cornered him in a cave, blocking the only way out.
Now McNair had a new situation to add to his list. As he stood on the crown of the hill and watched the Blackfeet prepare to make an assault, he felt in his bones that his time had finally come to meet his Maker. Despite the brush breastworks hastily erected at his command, the Porter party had a snowball’s chance in hell of living through the day.
Shakespeare looked around him. The men were spaced at regular intervals around the perimeter, each one with a rifle and a brace of loaded pistols. At the center, tending the fire Shakespeare had instructed be built, were the women and young Zach. Cyrus Porter had balked at starting one, saying it was a waste of time and wood since nightfall was hours off. Shakespeare had to explain that if it appeared the Blackfeet were going to break through the breastworks, he would have burning brands tossed on the barrier to keep the warriors out just
a little longer.
Shakespeare wished he had been brought to bay with a party of seasoned trappers instead of greenhorn rivermen and uppity snobs. The rivermen were brave enough, but they would prove no match for the Blackfeet, who were bred to warfare from the day they were born. To be as fierce as an Indian, one had to live as an Indian.
Shakespeare had another regret. He would have liked to spare his wife and the Kings from the savagery about to unfold. If the women didn’t take part in the battle and meekly submitted to the Blackfeet, they might be spared. But Shakespeare knew them too well. Both would rather die than give in. These were strong, independent-minded women who would pull their own weight, not prissy puppets such as those who often graced parlors with their coiffured presences back in the States. Blue Water Woman and Winona stood on their own two feet and made apologies to no one for their actions.
There were only two bright spots in the whole predicament. One was that Shakespeare had had the foresight to send a pair of riders ahead as a precaution. Thanks to them, the second war party had been spotted when it was yet a long ways off, giving him time to prepare.
The second bright spot was Nate King’s absence. It comforted Shakespeare considerably to know that the man he looked upon more as a son than a friend would live on. Nate would be heartbroken for a few years, but eventually he’d recover and go on to make something of his life.
Commotion among the Blackfeet shattered McNair’s reverie. He stepped onto a stump for a better view and saw a muscular warrior who wore two eagle feathers moving along the line, girding the warriors for the clash.
Smiling, Shakespeare raised both arms to the heavens and bellowed as would a professional orator, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!”
Every last Blackfoot stopped whatever he was doing to stare upward.
“In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men,” Shakespeare quoted on, “the sea being smooth, how many shallow bauble boats dare sail upon her patient breast, making their way with those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage the gentle Thetis, and anon behold the strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut, bounding between two moist elements, like Perseus’ horse—”
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