So it was to Nate King’s credit that, the instant he heard the feral challenge of the savage cat, he goaded the black stallion out in front of his wife and offspring so that he was in a better position to protect them should the painter attack.
And it was equally to young Zach’s credit that he did the same. Ablaze with excitement, the boy hefted his heavy Hawken to his shoulder and cocked the hammer.
“Don’t shoot unless you see the varmint,” Nate said. “A man who shoots at shadows can wind up with an empty gun when he needs it the most.”
The cry had issued from an inky stand of trees where the undergrowth was especially dense. Nate glued his eyes to the tract, seeking a telltale tawny flash that would be all the forewarning he had of the beast’s onslaught. High grass rustled, but whether from the wind or the passage of a large form, he couldn’t tell.
Nate was not about to give the painter the chance to spring on them from ambush. Sometimes the best way to handle a contrary critter, he had learned, was to give the critter a taste of its own medicine. With that notion in mind, he urged the stallion into a trot, straight at the high grass. Whooping and yipping like a demented coyote, he flapped his arms and legs.
The panther was there, all right. A feline shape streaked from concealment, but instead of charging, it made off to the south in smooth bounds that covered fifteen feet at a time. In the bat of an eye it was lost among the vegetation.
Nate reined up and elevated his rifle but he held his fire when he saw there was no need for it. He spotted the mountain lion for a fraction of a second as it crossed a clearing; then it was gone for good.
“Dam,” Zach said. “I was hoping to have me a new painter hide.”
“Just be grateful it didn’t draw blood,” Nate said. He waited for Winona to catch up and took the lead rope from her. “Now let’s get home before that cat has a change of heart and comes back for its supper.”
Once the horses were safely bedded down and the elk meat lay on a counter in the corner of the cabin, Nate could finally unwind. He took a seat at their table and propped his feet on top. “I dried the strips proper, but ran out of salt before I was done,” he said for his wife’s benefit.
Winona was examining the jerky closely. “None of it spoiled. We will eat the unsalted meat over the next few days.” Opening a cupboard he had constructed from soft pine, she removed a parfleche and began stuffing the jerked meat inside. “You did well, husband.”
“I have my days,” Nate said.
“You mentioned something about trouble, Pa,” Zach said. He was seated on the bed, tickling Evelyn with a jay feather.
“That I did,” Nate said and launched into the full story of his encounter with the Ute leader and the information that had been imparted.
“It was kind of Two Owls to warn us,” Winona said afterward. “You are supposed to go off trapping soon. We would have been alone when the Utes came for us.”
Zach straightened up. “But what do we do now that we know? We can’t hardly fight off forty or fifty warriors at a time.”
“There is only one thing we can do,” Winona said. “We must find the ones who slew Buffalo Hump before the Utes drive us off or wipe us out.”
It shouldn’t have surprised Nate that his wife made the suggestion. Bred from infancy to be worthy partners of their warrior husbands, Shoshone women could be as fierce as their mates when the need arose. He had seen firsthand how they fought like tigers when their villages were attacked. But he was unwilling to put her in danger when there was an alternative. “What’s this we business? I aim to go after them by my lonesome.”
“And what will we be doing?” Winona asked. “Are we supposed to stay here doing nothing?”
“No. I figured that the kids and you can stay with your uncle while I tend to whoever brought this aggravation down on our heads.”
“I see,” Winona said, clipping the two words as if spitting them out rather than speaking them. “You would feel better if we were safe in a Shoshone village.”
“I’m glad you understand.” Nate grinned, trying to appease her, although he knew full well he was in for a dose of her temper.
Winona gave him the sort of look that could melt ice at ten paces. “You want us to cower among our kin while you risk your life on our behalf?”
“Who said anything about cowering?” Nate asked. “I just think it’s for the best, what with you having Zach and Evelyn to look out after and all.”
“We have them to look after, husband.” Winona walked to the table. “In the past, when they were younger, I was content to stay here while you went off time and time again. But no longer. This time I will not stay behind. Our whole family is in peril, so we will deal with the problem as a family.”
“But what about the boy and Evelyn?”
“Zach is old enough to handle himself. Didn’t he save you from those Gros Ventres a while ago? And who was it who escaped from the Blackfeet all on his own?”
“True, true,” Nate said. “But this is different.”
“Tell me how.”
Nate opened his mouth to speak, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of a convincing argument. Truth was, she had a valid point. In frontier terms, Zach was on the verge of manhood. Sheltering the youth would do him more harm than good in the long run. A body had to learn to stand on his own two feet at an early age or he never would.
Nate glanced at his son and saw the earnest appeal in the boy’s eyes. Zach wanted to help, to prove he could carry his weight. It would be wrong to deny him.
Then there was Winona. Nate knew she had an independent streak in her a yard wide, and once she set her mind to something, only an act of the Almighty could change it.
In this case Nate couldn’t blame her for wanting to lend a hand. She had every right. Her family and home were at risk. What sort of husband would he be if he raised a fuss over her doing what came naturally?
“Well?” Winona said.
Sitting up, Nate regarded his wife and son soberly. “I must be as crazy as a loon. But I’m not about to try to buck you on this. The danger is to our whole family, so as a family we’ll clear ourselves of blame.”
Zach came off the bed as if shot from a cannon and leaped so high into the air his head nearly brushed the ceiling. Like a virile young wolf reveling in being alive, he howled and spun. “Thank you, Pa! I’ll pull my own weight. You’ll see. Whatever you want, whatever you say—”
“Calm down, son, before you bust a gut,” Nate said grinning. “I know you’ll do right fine.” His grin evaporated as he pondered how best to proceed. Their first step was to find those responsible for the grisly deaths. But how, when they lacked a single shred of information that might identify the guilty party or parties other than the jackknife? “Maybe we’ll have to make a trip to Dream Lake.”
“What could we hope to find after all this time?” Winona said. “It has been over a month.”
“I’m open to a better idea,” Nate said.
Zach was listening intently. Now that he had been given a chance to show his folks that he was no longer the small boy they all too often treated him as, he was bound and determined not to let them down. “I have an idea,” he said tentatively.
“What is it?” Nate asked.
“Well, Two Owls thinks whites are to blame. If there have been any strangers in this neck of the woods in the past month or so, doesn’t it stand to reason, Pa, that some of the other mountain men have seen them?”
The insight was so obvious that Nate was amazed he hadn’t thought of it himself. There were at least two trappers he knew of who lived within a few day’s ride of Dream Lake. Paying them a visit might prove rewarding. “I think you’ve got the right idea, son. We’ll head for Old Bill’s place at first light.”
“Bill Zeigler’s?” Winona said sharply.
Nate nodded. “He lives closest to Dream Lake.”
“But is it safe? You know the horrible stories told about him. What if they are true?”
>
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
~*~
Miles from the King cabin, six men sat around a crackling fire. Several held tin cups filled with black coffee. One chewed loudly on jerked buffalo meat. A string of tired horses had been tethered nearby.
Earl Lassiter sank to one knee to refill his cup. He cursed when he accidentally rubbed the back of his hand on the scalding pot and pain lanced up his arm. One of the others snickered but fell abruptly silent when Lassiter glared at him. “Do you think it’s funny that I burned myself, Yost?”
The stringbean addressed shook his scarecrow head vigorously. “No, sir, Earl. Not on your life. I just sort of thought the look on our face was a little bit comical, is all.”
“Oh?” Lassiter’s voice was as cold as ice, as hard as granite. “Maybe I should shove the pot down your britches and see how comical you act.”
Yost gulped. Every member of the gang knew it wasn’t very smart to rile their leader. There was no telling when he might unexpectedly snap and fly into a fit of violence that made grizzlies seem tame by comparison. “I didn’t mean anything. Honest. You’ve no call to be so testy.”
“I don’t like being laughed at,” Lassiter growled. He never had. As a boy, he’d been notorious for pounding anyone who had the gall to poke fun at him. To his way of thinking, to be mocked was the ultimate insult. It reminded Earl of all those awful childhood years when his drunkard father had belittled him every time he turned around. He’d been jeered, slapped silly, and called all kinds of names: jackass, idiot, good for nothing, plumb worthless, and many, many more. The memory was enough to make Lassiter clench his fists in budding rage.
One of the others noticed. He was much older than his rough companions, his hair the hue of freshly fallen snow. Ben Kingslow was his name, and he took it on himself to avert possible bloodshed by clearing his throat and saying, “I swear! That squaw sure did put up a scrap, didn’t she? It’s too bad we couldn’t have kept her alive and brought her with us.”
“Why?” asked a stocky man partial to a blue cap. “So she could slit our throats in our sleep the first chance she got? No thank you. I’m glad that Earl had Bear put a ball into her.”
The giant with the greasy hair and clothes chuckled. “Did you see the way she squirmed after she was shot, Dixon? I saw a snake do that once after its head had been chopped off.”
Ben Kingslow was studying Lassiter on the sly. “I just meant it would be nice to have a woman or two to accommodate those of us who might be inclined at night. None of us have been getting it regularly since we left the States.”
Dixon chuckled. “I didn’t know old goats your age could still get a rise.”
“My age?” Kingslow snorted. “Haven’t you heard, you young pup, that the older the wine, the better it is? I’ll have you know that, the last time I was with a woman, she compared me to a tree.”
A scrawny man whose lower lip had been split long ago in a knife fight spoke up for the first time. “A dead tree, I’ll bet.”
At this there was rowdy laughter.
“That’s putting the geezer in his place, Snip,” Dixon said. “To hear him talk, you’d think he had females fawning over him everywhere he goes.”
Kingslow was pleased to note a smile curl Lassiter’s lips. For the time being trouble had been averted. But sooner or later someone would say the wrong thing and he wouldn’t be there to bail whoever it was out.
Only one soul there did not join in the mirth. The half-breed sat apart, his arms folded across his chest, his rifle in his lap. “I do not care about women,” he said gravely in his heavily accented English. “I want my share of the gold.”
Bear thumped his thigh in irritation. “So did I, Cano. It got my dander up when we couldn’t find that bastard’s cache.”
“Don’t fret yourself,” Lassiter said. “There are a lot more sheep out here waiting to be fleeced. One of these times we’ll strike it rich so we can all go back to civilization and live like kings.”
“That would be fine by me,” Dixon said, “but I doubt all the mountain men combined have that much money.”
“They have proved slim pickings,” Lassiter said, “leaner than I counted on. So maybe it’s time we did like all good hunters do when the game they’re after proves scarce.”
“Which is?” Bear asked.
“Go after different game,” Lassiter said, leaning back and propping an elbow under him. “I’ve heard tell that a lot of pilgrims have taken to heading for the Oregon Country by way of South Pass and the Green River Valley region.”
Snip poked a stick into the flames. “What makes you think we’ll be any better off?”
“Think for a minute,” Lassiter said. “Most of these pilgrims travel in big old wagons piled high with all their worldly goods. Odds are they also tote all their money along, since it’s not likely they’d leave their nest eggs behind.”
Greed sparkled in Dixon’s eyes. “I’ll bet you that some of those goods are worth a lot, besides. Why, we could have full pokes in no time.”
Lassiter took a long sip of coffee. “My notion exactly, hoss. So what say we drift up toward the Green River and keep our eyes skinned for plump wagons ripe for the plucking?”
“This is your best idea yet.” Kingslow saw fit to compliment the plan to make up for his blunder earlier. “We’ll be hip deep in bootie.”
Dixon twisted and scanned the surrounding forest. “What about the Blood, Earl? Think he’ll go along with the scheme?”
“Brule has stuck with us this far,” Lassiter said. “I doubt he has anywhere else to go.”
Scrawny Snip gave a little shudder. “I don’t mind admitting that he gives this coon a bad case of the fidgets every time he looks at me. I don’t rightly see why we keep him around when he might up and scalp the bunch of us one night while we’re sleeping. It’s no damn secret that his kind hate our kind worse than anything else.”
“Usually that’s the case,” Lassiter said. “But you have to remember that Brule hates his own people just as much because they booted him out of the tribe. It was a lucky day for me when I stumbled on him up by the Tetons.”
Ben Kingslow had heard of that fateful meeting several times since throwing in with Lassiter’s wild bunch. Lassiter had been trapping during the spring season when he’d come on the Blood at the top of a precipice.
The warrior had been on the verge of throwing himself off. Apparently Brule had been so shamed at being made an outcast, he hadn’t cared whether he lived or died.
“We need the buck,” Lassiter said, bringing Kingslow back to the present. “He’s a better tracker than any of us will ever be. And he has an uncanny knack for sniffing out trouble.”
“It’s like having a caged panther,” Snip said. “You never know when it might turn on you.”
Dixon appeared afflicted by the same unease. “Where is he anyway? Why does he always go off by himself at night? Ain’t our company good enough for him?”
“He’s a loner at heart,” Lassiter said. “But he’s always by our side when we need him the most, so I don’t want any of you saying anything to him. If you have a grievance, you go through me.”
“Think I’m loco?” Dixon said. “I’m not about to get into a racket with that red devil. He’s the meanest son of a bitch alive. You can tell just by looking into his eyes.”
Earl Lassiter set down his empty cup. “Maybe he is. So what? Think of the bright side.”
“What bright side?”
“If anyone comes after us, I’ll just sic Brule on him. As much as that Blood enjoys shedding blood, no one will last two minutes.”
~*~
Bold strokes of pink and yellow framed the pale eastern horizon when Nate King stepped from his warm cabin into the chill morning air and around to the rough-hewn corral. Hardly half an hour was required to saddle the three mounts and load provisions onto three packhorses. When he led the animals around front, he found his loved ones waiting for him. Winona and t
he baby were bundled in a heavy green shawl he had traded for at a prior rendezvous.
There were no locks to make secure, no bolts to be thrown. The door was simply closed, the windows covered.
This was the high country, where thievery was rare. Anyone caught stealing was likely to be shot on sight, which served to discourage those inclined to step over the line.
In New York City it had been different. How well Nate remembered the growing epidemic of robbery and assaults that had made life there so miserable. Footpads had roamed at will, secure in the knowledge that if they were apprehended they would likely get off with a slap on the wrist or a small fine.
Nate never tired of thinking about the startling contrasts between life in the States and life in the wilderness. In New York the people were crammed together like rats in a run-down tenement. Small wonder they snapped at one another all the time and couldn’t get along except during emergencies, when their common humanity forged a temporary bond.
In the Rockies, men and women were truly free. They behaved as they pleased, doing what they wanted when they wanted. There was no overcrowding. There were no power-hungry politicians dictating how folks should live. None of the pressures New Yorkers experienced every single day of their sad lives existed.
Consequently, Nate had never met a happier lot of people than the mountaineers and Indians who inhabited the mountains. As a rule, if one excluded the hostile tribes, they were friendlier than their counterparts back east. They were more trusting. Best of all, they respected one another. There was none of that casual contempt Easterners unconsciously cultivated.
Nate would never go back to live in the States. He had ventured to the frontier for all the wrong reasons and discovered the right reasons to stay. Personal freedom, individual happiness, robust health—they all mattered more than the few conveniences civilization had to offer.
Such was Nate King’s train of thought as he led his family northward out of their precious valley. Once on the ridge, he bore to the northwest.
From the lofty rampart, they watched the golden sun rise into the azure sky. Nate always found dawn to be invigorating. The rosy splendor, with its promise of life renewed for another day, caused him to regard the world in which he lived with abiding respect and reverence.
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