Wilderness Giant Edition 4

by David Robbins

  Shakespeare watched the Shoshokos to see if they would catch on. Thankfully, the warriors were too preoccupied. He walked over to the expedition’s leaders and said, “Are the two of you ready?”

  “I hope this insane scheme works,” Cyrus Porter said.

  “Just remember to keep your heads low and ride like hell,” Shakespeare said. “Once you’re out of bow range, you’ll be safe.”

  “How far can they shoot?” Adam Clark asked.

  “A hundred yards or better. More when they angle their bows into the air.”

  Clark stared westward. The nearest cover of any sort was over a mile away. “Some of us won’t make it,” he predicted.

  “That depends on how many Diggers take the bait,” Shakespeare said. Leaving the leaders to fret, he went to where the women stood beside Winona’s horse. She still had the cradleboard strapped to her back, but she had taken Evelyn out and tenderly held the girl in her arms. “It won’t be long,” he said.

  “We know,” Blue Water Woman said.

  “Remember what I told you,” Shakespeare reminded them. “Keep the pack horses between you and the Shoshokos. I’d rather lose an animal or two than either of you.”

  “You are so considerate,” Blue Water Woman teased. She had a knack for staying cheerful in the midst of adversity that Shakespeare had always admired.

  “Where’s the sprout?” Shakespeare wondered. His question was answered when he spied Zach over by the rim, observing the Diggers. “Dam that boy. I told him to stay near his horse.”

  “He listens about as well as his father,” Winona said. “I can only hope our daughter takes more after me.”

  Zach started when Shakespeare’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Goodness, Uncle. You caught me by surprise.”

  “If you don’t get over to your horse, I’m liable to catch you by the scruff of your neck and plant my foot on your backside,” Shakespeare said.

  “Shucks, you’d never lay a finger on me,” Zach said, unruffled. “Told me so yourself. Said you liked the Indian notion of never beating their young ones.”

  “You’re not so young anymore.” Shakespeare refused to be bested at his own game. “And there are those who say that if we spare the rod, we spoil the child.”

  “I was just curious,” Zach said.

  “There’s a time and a place for everything,” Shakespeare said. “For being born and for dying, for weeping and laughing, for talking and listening, and for being curious and knowing when not to be.” He gave the boy a light push toward the horses. “Now do as I told you and don’t give me any more nonsense.”

  By this time the returning party was approximately three miles off. Many of the Shoshokos stared at the top of the knoll as might a pack of starving wolves at a herd of elk. Shakespeare smiled and waved at them to make them think he was a bigger idiot than they suspected. Then, since there was nothing else he could do, he simply waited.

  A few of the younger Shoshokos were too impatient for their own good. Several started toward the slope but were intercepted by older warriors and herded back.

  Shakespeare tried to pick out the leader in Coyote’s Brother’s absence. A stocky warrior appeared to be the one; the man gave orders to a number of warriors who promptly did his bidding. “Chop off the head and the tail won’t be of much use,” Shakespeare said softly to himself.

  As the dust came nearer, the Shoshokos worked themselves into a killing mood. More and more of them stomped the ground and quietly chanted, their arms stabbing the air as if they struck foes.

  Rotating slowly on a heel, Shakespeare was pleased to note that every expedition member except him stood beside or close to a horse. Everyone, women and Zach included, had rifles in hand, pistols under their belts.

  Out on the plain, the five riders were now visible. Shakespeare was upset at seeing the warriors who encircled them, and he could only hope Nate was able to break through. Walking a few yards to his left, he kept one eye on the stocky warrior and another on the plain.

  Soon, Shakespeare told himself. It had to be soon. The seconds crawled by like snails. Nate and company rode closer, too close, in Shakespeare’s opinion. Thumb on the hammer of his Hawken, Shakespeare wondered if something had gone wrong, if maybe Nate had changed his mind.

  Suddenly, the air was rent by the wavering howl of a wolf. Gunshots rang out as a battle erupted on the plain. Swirling dust arose, enveloping the fighters like a veil.

  The Shoshokos at the base of the knoll were riveted to the sight. At a bellow from the stocky warrior, they charged to the aid of their chief, momentarily forgetting about the whites they had trapped.

  That was exactly what Shakespeare had counted on. Whirling, he bawled out, “Now!” and dashed to his white horse as the expedition members hurriedly mounted. He swung up, gripped the reins and lead rope in his left hand, and poked his heels to bring his horse to a gallop. Down the slope he raced. At the bottom he veered to the left and reined up, motioning urgently for the rest to bear to the west and keep on going.

  All would have gone well if not for the New Englanders.

  Shakespeare had placed Winona and Blue Water Woman right behind him, since those at the front stood the best chance of getting safely away. Behind the women rode Porter and Clark. The trouble started when Porter decided to get in front of the Shoshone and Flathead, and with Clark and a short string of pack animals in tow, he tried to swing around the women. There was barely room for four horses riding abreast, certainly not more, yet Porter paid no mind and crowded Blue Water Woman and Winona aside.

  Shakespeare saw, and wanted to shoot the man then and there. The women wisely gave way, slowing so the New Englanders could get past them. But Clark, in passing Blue Water Woman, crowded her pack string too close, and one of his pack animals collided with one of hers. Both stumbled and almost fell. His pack animal squealed in pain, and it was this squeal which fell on the ears of a few slow Shoshokos.

  Five or six warriors turned, realized a mass escape was under way, and yipped to warn the rest of the war party. More of them spun. By twos and threes they bounded back, raising their bows to shoulder height.

  Cyrus Porter and Adam Clark swept out onto the plain and thundered westward. Winona was next, then Blue Water Woman. Winona bent low over Evelyn, protecting the girl with her own body. They had not gone ten yards when the arrows began to fly.

  Shakespeare twisted, aimed at the foremost warrior, and fired. The Shoshoko pitched forward, arms akimbo, bow flying. Other warriors leaped over his twitching body or skirted him, loosing arrows right and left.

  One of the pack horses being pulled by Blue Water Woman whinnied as a shaft penetrated its flank.

  Another nickered when hit in the neck.

  Zach and Brett Hughes were the next riders down from the knoll. Hughes snapped off a shot. Zach hugged his saddle and rode for dear life. Behind them came the rivermen.

  Fully half of the Shoshokos had awakened to the deception played on them and were hastening back. They howled, whooped, yelled in their tongue.

  Shakespeare had to discourage them. Whipping out a pistol, he took a bead on one of the fastest runners and put a ball through the warrior’s head. The Shoshoko toppled without making a sound. A half-dozen others halted, sighted down their shafts, and gave their arrows wing.

  Slapping his legs against his horse, Shakespeare sped westward beside one of the rivermen. Arrows rained down, some imbedding in the soil at the very spot he had just occupied. Other shafts fell wide. He jammed the spent flintlock under his belt.

  Other Shoshokos fired. Shafts cleaved the air in swarms.

  Shakespeare heard a horse screech, heard the buzz of an arrow that missed his ear by inches. Then a human scream added to the din. He shifted, saw the riverman transfixed through the neck.

  The man let go of his reins to futilely tear at the shaft, but couldn’t get a grip because of spurting blood. He coughed, spit more blood. His eyelids fluttered. Desperately, he tried holding on to his mount’s mane
but lost his grip and fell. He bounced once.

  Scores of arrows cleaved the sky, seeking targets. Shakespeare weaved, making himself hard to hit. The rivermen shot wildly, using rifles and pistols both. Grouped together, they were easier to bring down, so more of the Shoshokos tried to do just that.

  Shakespeare was unpleasantly surprised by the endurance of their pursuers. He had expected the warriors to tire quickly, but they didn’t. Exhibiting the stamina of antelope, the nimble-footed Shoshokos held their own even though they were on foot.

  Bit by bit the horses pulled head. A fined flight of arrows, more than ever before, flashed down out of the blue. Men and horses cried out. An arrow clipped Shakespeare’s elbow, shearing off a pair of whangs but leaving his flesh unhurt.

  Shakespeare pulled his second pistol and swung it around. Some of the warriors had stopped. Others were slowing. A few went faster, expending their last iota of energy. Few of the random arrows scored.

  Saving his shot, Shakespeare galloped westward at the tail end of the expedition. He could see dust where Nate had last been. It was impossible to determine whether the others had escaped. He offered a short prayer that Nate still lived, then devoted his attention to overtaking the women to see how they had fared.

  ~*~

  As the first note of Nate King’s wolf howl rang out over the plain, Coyote’s Brother turned and brought up his bow. His reflexes were swift, but not swift enough. For as the bow leveled, Two Humps cut loose with a war whoop and hurled his lance.

  The Nez Percé, though old, was as wiry as a man of twenty and stronger than most men half his age. His lance glittered as it cleaved the air, the point striking Coyote’s Brother in the sternum. Shattering bone, ripping through flesh, it impaled the Shoshoko chief. Coyote’s Brother looked in disbelief at the smooth new appendage jutting from his torso, whined, and toppled.

  While the clash between chiefs occurred, others were also fighting for their lives. Simultaneous with Nate’s howl, LeBeau wheeled his mount to the west and sought to break free of the warriors before one put an arrow into the woman.

  LeBeau wasn’t afraid for himself. He had a philosophical bent despite his youth, and he had long ago realized that when a man’s time on this earth was up, there was nothing anyone could do to postpone the inevitable. So why bother worrying about it?

  A pair of Shoshokos blocked LeBeau’s path. In unison they swept bows into play. LeBeau already had his rifle pointed at one. He fired on the fly and the man crumpled. The second Shoshoko tried to leap aside and was bowled over when LeBeau ran him down.

  Another warrior, unseen by the riverman, raised a bow to plant an arrow in LeBeau’s back. A rifle cracked, and the warrior melted to the soil, having no idea which one of his enemies had struck him down.

  It was Nate. On firing, he charged the line, swinging his Hawken like a club. An arrow zipped past his face. Another nicked his shoulder.

  A Shoshoko leaped and caught hold of the stallion’s reins. Clinging on, yelling for help, he tried to keep Nate from getting away. Nate swung the rifle but missed. He saw another warrior bearing down on him from the right, yet another from the left. Barbed arrow points were trained on him. They had him dead to rights.

  Then two pistol shots boomed, so close together they sounded as one. The warriors spun and fell. Nate landed a heavy blow on the man holding his stallion, and the Shoshoko thudded to the earth.

  Chavez appeared at Nate’s side, smoke curling from both fancy dueling pistols. “Ride, señor!”

  Nate needed no encouragement. Side by side they burst through the scattering Shoshokos. Ahead of them sped LeBeau. “Two Humps!” Nate remembered, slowing and glancing over a shoulder. He would not desert the Nez Percé.

  On foot, wielding a tomahawk right and left, the aged warrior was holding his own against four Shoshokos, the rest having fled. He would already have been dead, but the quartet wanted him alive and were using knives instead of their bows.

  Nate drew a pistol, turned the stallion, and voiced a lusty roar as he swooped to the rescue. A stringy Shoshoko spun to face him, and Nate sent a lead ball into the man’s right eye. He rode into a second foe, trampling the man. The third fled. The fourth lay on the ground, his brow split wide. Over him stood Two Humps, beaming. “Come on!” Nate urged. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “You go,” Two Humps responded, and drew his knife. Leaning low, he inserted the blade under the Shoshoko’s hair and sliced deftly, expertly.

  Nate looked around, dreading another assault. But the Shoshokos still alive were sprinting toward the main war party, which was rushing to help in an enraged body. “We have to go!” he persisted.

  Two Humps casually lifted the dripping scalp. He waved it high and shouted in his own tongue, “I thank you for this coup, Great Mystery! You gave this Earth Eater to me, and now my people will see my medicine is as strong as ever!”

  The war party was almost within bow range. Nate bent to nudge the chief’s shoulder. “Do you want to die?”

  The Nez Percé shrugged off the hand. “Must have chief’s,” he said in English, and walked to Coyote’s Brother.

  Tom between self-preservation and loyalty, Nate took a gamble. He had no time to reload the Hawken, and the distance was too great for the pistol, but he fired the pistol anyway at the front ranks of Shoshokos. He relied on the Diggers having had little experience with guns. They wouldn’t know how far the pistol could shoot.

  Sure enough, the foremost Shoshokos slowed or dived for cover. It bought ten seconds, at most, before they were all up and charging once more.

  Nate was about set to grab the Nez Percé and haul him off against his will when Two Humps raised a second trophy, pivoted, and bounded to his Appaloosa. Arrows started falling as they galloped westward. They soon caught up with Chavez, who had stopped to wait for them. Half a mile off sat LeBeau.

  “We did it!” Nate marveled.

  “Si,” Chavez said. “I hope Señor McNair and the others were just as lucky.”

  Nate thought of his wife and son and picked up the pace.

  ~*~

  Cyrus Porter and Adam Clark had both been bred in the lap of luxury. They were used to a comfortable, relaxed life where their most taxing task of the day was to take a carriage from their palatial homes to their favorite men’s club.

  Oddly enough, both men believed they were adventurous spirits, as brave as the next man, stronger than their peers. Lulled by the warmth of soft armchairs, they had waxed eloquent about how they would teach the heathens respect for the white race when they went west.

  Experience had taught them a vast gulf existed between brave words and brave deeds. It was one thing to boast of facing down hordes of bloodthirsty savages, another to have a shrieking horde actually thirsting for their blood.

  Neither man would admit it, but both had been badly scared several times during the long journey. The worst had been the awful moment when it appeared they would be overrun by Blackfeet. Neither thought anything worse could ever happen. Then along came the Shoshokos.

  Surrounded, with no hope of escape, never knowing when the savages might see fit to storm the knoll and finish them off, Porter and Clark had barely held their fear in check. When the time came to flee, they had tried to behave calmly, rationally. But their fear, so long contained, overwhelmed them as they rode past the two Indian women, and when the arrows began falling thick and heavy, they beat their fists and kicked mercilessly to goad their mounts on.

  Miles flew behind them, and still the greenhorns raced westward. The mountains beckoned them, havens, they thought, where they would be safe. They sent herds of antelope into panicked flight, sent birds into taking startled wing, and once, passing a gully, they both saw the head of a small grizzly rear above the rim. It added fuel to their flight.

  Their horses flagged long before they came to the mountains. Both men slapped and kicked, but their mounts were played out. Having no choice, they reined up and looked behind them. A cloud of dust re
vealed the rest of the expedition was a full mile back.

  “What a bunch of turtles,” Clark jested.

  “Remember this moment, Adam,” Porter said. “We outrode mountain men and squaws. No one will ever doubt our horsemanship.”

  “Say,” Clark said, holding his hands up and staring at his palms, “what happened to our pack horses?”

  Cyrus Porter blinked. Each of them had been responsible for three animals. He remembered his three trailing him as he descended the knoll, and seemed to recall they had been with him for the initial hundred yards or so. After that, he couldn’t account for them. “Why, they must have been so terrified, they tore loose.”

  “That’s it!” Clark said. “For a second there I was worried we had been negligent.”

  “Not us.”

  “No, not us.”

  Climbing down, they sat on nearby boulders and fanned their hot faces with their dusty hats. After a while Clark laughed, then commented, “That wasn’t so terrible, after all. McNair and King knew what they were doing.”

  “We escaped by the seat of our pants,” Porter said. “Competent guides wouldn’t have put us in such an untenable position in the first place.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I only hope the next leg of our journey goes smoother,” Porter said. “I’d hate to think we have to put up with various bands of simpleminded heathens the entire way.”

  “Say, that reminds me,” Clark said. “What if this woman they found is Hetty? Then we don’t need to go on. We can head back for Hartford right away.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t.”

  Adam Clark stared in amazement at the older man. “I don’t understand, Cy. We’ve gone to all this trouble to find your daughter and take her back to the States. What do you mean, we can’t?”

  “If I could explain, I would. Just take my word for it and let the matter drop. You’ll see Hartford again—eventually.” Porter stretched his legs and smiled. “Maybe well sail instead of retracing our route and going through this ordeal again. Take a boat from San Francisco around the Cape. Wouldn’t that be nice?”