“Maybe the ravine was too steep.”
“For Blackfeet? You know as well as I do that they can climb like mountain sheep when they set their minds to it,” Old Bill said. “No, if you ask me, whoever did this was a mite sloppy. And we both know Indians ain’t ever sloppy.”
Nate was about to go to the fire when he saw that small letters had been carved on the dead branches used to make the crosses. Hunkering down, he read the first inscription aloud. “Here lies my darling wife, Yellow Flower. My soul died with you.”
“Damn,” Old Bill said.
“In memory of Bethany Sawyer,” Nate said, reading the second. “She met her Maker before her time.”
“It must have taken him days to carve all them words.”
The last was the hardest to read. The letters were fainter, as if Sawyer had become too weak to wield the knife effectively. “Here lies little Claire Sawyer,” Nate read, “whose only sin was being born.”
The old mountain man leaned down to run his fingers across the words. “Pitiful, ain’t it? But that’s the way life is sometimes. Just when we think we have it licked, it tears our innards out.”
“Is that experience speaking?” Nate asked idly.
“What else? When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn a thing or three.” Old Bill adopted a melancholy air and raised his hand to touch below both eyes. “When I was your age, King, I was a regular hellion. Now look at me. I never figured on ending my days as blind as bat, of no use to anyone, not even myself.”
“You’re of use to me,” Nate said. “You know this neck of the country much better than I do.”
“So what? I can hardly get around by myself anymore. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I’d still be stuck in my little valley, blunderin’ around, trying to live off the land as best I could, knowin’ damn well that sooner or later a bear or a painter or somethin’ else would come along and make wolf meat of me.”
“Yet you stayed on.”
“What else was I to do?” Old Bill said bitterly. Turning, he walked off before he made a mistake and gave King a clue to his real motivation in tagging along. He saw the boy unsaddling the horses and joined him. “I’ll unsaddle my own.”
Zachary, downcast, merely nodded.
“Cat got your tongue?” Old Bill asked.
“I knew his daughters really well,” Zach said, indicating Sawyer, who was sound asleep.
“That’s death for you.” Zeigler gripped the cinch.
“How can you be so coldhearted about it?” Zachary asked. “Didn’t you know this family?”
“I did,” Old Bill said. “But when you have as many gray hairs as I do, you know that death can strike anyone at any time. Few of us have any say over when and where we’ll pass on. It’s like rollin’ a pair of dice. You never know what will come up.”
“I hope I get to choose.”
Old Bill smirked. “You and me both, son. You and me both.”
In due course the animals were bedded down for the night, Zachary and Zeigler had filled the water skins, and Winona had fixed rabbit stew, courtesy of a fine shot Nate made. Jeremiah Sawyer slept the whole time, until hours after the sun had set.
Nate was sipping a delicious cup of coffee when he heard Jeremiah groan. The man had been tossing and turning ever since he’d fallen asleep, occasionally muttering incoherently. Twice he had cried out, an animal cry of sheer torment, but he had not awakened.
Now Nate saw Jeremiah’s face contort into an agonized mask. Jeremiah rolled onto his right side, then back onto his left. His fingers clenched and unclenched as if he were throttling someone in his dreams. His teeth gnashed together so loud it sounded like metal grinding on metal. He started mumbling, the words growing louder and louder.
"I'll save you! I’ll save you, girls! No one will hurt you! No one will harm your mother!”
Zachary listened with bated breath from across the fire. “Should we wake him, Pa?”
“No,” Nate said, aware that sometimes those in the grip of terrible nightmares lashed out at anyone who tried to bring them around. “We’ll wait a bit.”
Jeremiah flipped onto his back. He made tiny mewling sounds, like those a frightened kitten might make. Next his mouth worked but no words came out. His hands rose to his throat and he sucked in air as if drowning. Eyelids quivering, he shook from head to toe.
“Are you sure he’s not dying?” Zach asked.
As if in answer, Jeremiah sat bolt upright, his eye the size of a walnut, his face slick with sweat. He gazed into the night, his jaw muscles twitching, his hands shaking convulsively. “I’m coming, dearest!” he wailed. “Wait for me! I’m coming!” Propping both palms under him, he went to rise.
Nate guessed Sawyer’s intent and intercepted him. Jeremiah took but a single step when Nate seized him around the shoulders and coaxed him toward the blankets. “Easy there, friend. You not going anywhere in the shape you re in.”
Jeremiah motioned at the inky forest. “What are you doing? Can’t you hear her?”
“Who?” Nate asked while attempting to ease him down.
Sawyer resisted, pushing weakly at his chest. “Yellow Flower! There! See her!” Jeremiah pointed, aglow with excitement. “She’s still alive! I only thought she was dead! Please let me go to her!”
“I can’t,” Nate said.
“You must!” Jeremiah had worked himself into a fever pitch of desperation. He lunged, shoving hard, but Nate held firm. “What kind of pard are you? She needs me. Damn it!”
“Calm down!”
Nate might as well have railed at the wind. Jeremiah struggled fiercely, a virtual madman. What he lacked in brute force he made up for in devilish cunning. He raked at Nate’s eyes with his fingernails, and when Nate raised his arms to deflect the blow, Jeremiah jumped to the left to scoot around him.
From two sides Winona and Old Bill closed in. They snared Jeremiah between them and held fast. He kicked and shouted and cursed until he was too weak to open his mouth. As they lowered him down, he burst into tears of abject misery, burying his face in the blankets.
“Will he ever be his old self again, Pa?” Zachary whispered.
“There’s no telling,” Nate asked. “When a man’s spirit is broken, he can lose the will to live.”
“Mr. Sawyer is no quitter. He’ll be as good as new before too long.”
The boy’s confidence seemed misplaced to Nate but he held his tongue and was glad he did. For the very next morning he awoke to the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched, and when he rose on an elbow, he discovered his intuition hadn’t failed him.
All the others were sleeping, except for Jeremiah, who had his back supported by the stump and was regarding the brightening sky with intense interest. “Good morning,” he said, sounding more like his old self. “Before you say a word, I want to apologize for yesterday. I don’t quite recollect everything that happened, but I know I wasn’t myself and that I gave you a hard time.”
“How are you feeling now?”
“Just dandy,” Jeremiah said. “Fit enough to ride. I’d be obliged if you’d let me have one of your horses. I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can.”
“When we leave, we leave together. I have a hunch we’re after the same men you are,” Nate said and related the pertinent facts about Buffalo Hump and the Utes.
“It could be the same outfit,” Jeremiah said. “If it is, we’re better off working together. There are seven of them, every man as mean as a rabid dog.”
From a few yards away Bill Zeigler’s voice piped up. “You can count me in. I know that I only offered to act as your guide until we got here, but I wouldn’t miss this frolic for the world.”
Nate King glanced from one to the other. He had deep doubts about taking them. Sawyer’s quest for vengeance might endanger them all. And Zeigler couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn at twenty feet. Relying on either could prove disastrous.
Refusing both was the logical thing to do. Logic, how
ever, was no match for the one emotion that makes a man do things time and again against his better judgment.
Nate looked at his wife and children. The odds being what they were, he needed all the help he could get. “Fair enough. We ride together.”
Old Bill chuckled. “Now the real fun starts.”
Seven
Earl Lassiter wasn’t in the best of moods. For one thing, he’d lost a fine tracker and interpreter when Cano’s brains were blown out by the Blood. For another, his men were growing more and more restless as they traveled farther and farther north. If they didn’t find some plump pilgrims to pluck soon, Dixon and Bear might see fit to strike off on their own.
Holding a bunch of callous killers together for any length of time had proven more trying than Lassiter counted on. There were countless petty squabbles to be handled, days on end when one or the other was in a foul temper and as likely to kill one of their own as anyone else.
The business with Cano had only made matters worse. None of his men cared for the Blood but they had all accepted the breed, more or less, because the breed had some white blood in his veins.
After Cano’s death, there had been muttering behind Brule’s back. Bear had come right out and said they should do to Brule as he had done to Cano.
Lassiter was inclined to agree. But he couldn’t lay a finger on the Blood, nor allow anyone else to do so, until they found someone to replace him, which wouldn’t be that simple. Warriors from friendly tribes weren’t about to join his band. And warriors from hostile tribes would rather kill them than join.
Hooking up with Brule had been a once in a lifetime fluke, and at first Lassiter had been elated. The Blood was more deadly than a grizzly, more silent than a stalking mountain lion, more brutal than an enraged wolverine. He was the perfect killer, and Lassiter had been thrilled at having him on a short leash.
Now Lassiter knew otherwise. He no longer trusted the Blood. When they were together, Lassiter never turned his back to him. Brule was like a coiled sidewinder, set to strike at the slightest provocation.
Such was the train of thought that occupied Lassiter as he wound down a switchback to a ridge that overlooked a tableland to the north. He heard his name mentioned and looked around.
“Are you deaf?” Dixon asked. “I wanted to know how much farther you think it is?”
“You’ll find out when we get there,” Lassiter said gruffly, then remembered that he had to keep in Dixon’s good graces or he would lose the man. He extended his arm to the northeast. “About a day’s ride, I think. If I’m right, South Pass is that way. The wagons come over the pass and make straight for the Green River Valley. Somewhere between the two we should strike paydirt.”
“You hope,” Dixon said.
“He’s not the only one,” Ben Kingslow said. “I wouldn’t mind having a few dollars in my pocket for a change. After we get this over with, maybe we can head east to the nearest fort. I want to get so drunk I can’t stand up.”
“We can’t go to no fort,” Snip said. “We’d be shot on the spot.”
“Why, pray tell?” Kingslow asked.
“Have you forgotten what we did to that old Injun and his daughters? And that stubborn cuss and his family? And those three trappers Brule wiped out? Hell, man. Every mountaineer this side of the Rockies must be looking for us.”
Ben Kingslow laughed. Of them all, Bear was the densest between the ears, but Snip had his moments. “No one is after us for those killings because no one knows we’re to blame,” he said. “So long as we keep covering our tracks, we’ll be fine.”
“Which is why we never leave witnesses,” Lassiter said. “Kids, women—you name it. If they see us, they die.”
“I don’t much like killing sprouts,” Bear said.
“Would you rather they squawked and Bridger or McNair came after us?” Lassiter said. “You know as well as I do that neither of those uppity sons of bitches would stand for having a pack of killers on the loose. They’d round up as many men as they needed and stay on our trail until hell froze over or they caught us.”
“I don’t want that,” Bear said, “but I still don’t like putting holes in kids. My mama raised me better than that.”
Bear was sincere, which made it all the harder for him to understand why the rest of his friends burst into rollicking waves of laughter. “What did I say?” he asked when the mirth tapered off. It provoked another round of mirth.
Annoyed, Bear slapped his big legs against his mount and began to ride past Lassiter. Because he was glaring at the others and not watching where he was going, he nearly rode into the finely muscled figure blocking the way. He reined up in the nick of time.
Instantly the laughter ceased. Lassiter advanced, trying not to let his true feelings show. He resorted to sign language. “Have you found the trail, Brule?”
The Blood’s fingers flew. “Yes. Far ahead. I have also found three wagons. There are three whites in the first, four in the second, only two in the third. Six are adults, the rest children. They travel very slowly.”
Overjoyed, Lassiter yipped like a coyote, then relayed the news to his men. Only Kingslow also knew the universal hand language of the Indians. “How long will it take us to get there?” Lassiter asked the stoic warrior.
“You will be at the trail before the sun touches the horizon.”
Lassiter thought fast. “No, we won’t. I can’t risk giving ourselves away before the time comes to pay those pilgrims a visit. Find us a good spot to camp for the night. Tomorrow we’ll start stalking them.”
“As you wish.”
“I knew our luck would hold,” Lassiter told his eager listeners. “We’ll shadow them for a day or two, then help ourselves.”
“To the women too?” Dixon asked and smacked his lips hungrily.
“To whatever the hell you want.”
~*~
Her name was Katie Brandt and she was in love. In love with her husband of only six months, in love with the vast prairie and the regal mountains, in love with the bold notion of venturing to Oregon Country, where few had gone before, and in love with life itself.
On this day she sat beside Glen on the high seat of their creaking schooner and smiled as a yellow butterfly flew past. In front of their team of plodding oxen were two more wagons, the foremost driven by the Ringcrest family, the second the property of the Potters.
“What a grand and glorious adventure this is,” Katie said breathlessly. “I’m so happy that I let you talk me into making this journey.”
Her handsome husband arched an eyebrow at her. “Oh? For a while there, I thought you would pack your bags and go back east to your folks before you’d set foot past the Mississippi.”
“I’m sorry I was so stubborn,” Katie said. “I just didn’t want to lose you so soon after tying the knot.” She had made no secret of her fear. And who could blame her? The tales told about the savages that populated the wilderness were enough to turn a peaceful person’s hair white.
“How do you feel now that you’ve learned all your fretting was for nothing?” Glen asked.
“Like a fool for acting so silly,” Katie said. “But need I remind you that we’re not out of the woods yet? It’s many hundreds of miles to Oregon Country.”
“Always optimistic, aren’t you, dearest?” Glen said. “I keep telling you that the route we’re taking doesn’t pass through the territory of a single hostile tribe, but you won’t listen.”
“Only because I happen to know that hostile tribes like the Blackfeet roam anywhere they so please. We’re in Shoshone territory now, but that doesn’t mean we won’t run into a Blackfoot war party.”
Glen laughed. “And here I thought you had a sunny disposition. If I’d known you always looked at the dark side of things, I might never have proposed.”
“Is that a fact?” Katie grinned and gave her man a playful smack on the shoulder.
Laughing, Glen Brandt clucked at the oxen. His cheerful demeanor hid a constant gnawing worry
. For the truth was that he shared his wife’s concern. They were taking a great risk making the trip, so great that he had debated with himself for weeks before committing himself. Many Oregon-bound travelers had lost their lives on the perilous journey and he didn’t want his lovely wife to share their horrid fate.
Glen felt confident they would make it though. It was spring, and at that time of the year, the Blackfeet usually stayed close to their own region, busy hunting and stockpiling jerky and pemmican after the long, hard winter.
Plus their small caravan was being led by a man who had made the trip on horseback once before. Peter Ringcrest had gone to the Pacific Northwest some years ago with Dr. Marcus Whitman’s party. Whitman had been sent by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions to learn whether the Nez Percé and Flatheads tribes were receptive to missionary work. Once they established the Indians would accept them with open arms, Ringcrest had hastened back to the States to fetch his wife and son and anyone else who wanted to go along.
To hear Peter Ringcrest tell it, the Oregon Country justly deserved its reputation as the Promised Land. A mild climate, abundant rainfall, and rich soil made it a paradise for those who eked their living from the earth. Astoria and other growing communities afforded promise to those whose bent was more toward town life. And already the verdant forests were being tapped for their vast reserves of lumber.
“Oregon is heaven on earth!” Ringcrest liked to exclaim, and Glen believed him. He couldn’t wait to stake a claim to a choice parcel and build a house that would do his wife proud. Not just any old dwelling or rustic cabin would suffice for the woman he loved.
“Oh, look,” Katie said, giggling. “They’re at it again.”
Glen glanced at the back of the Potter wagon, where the two girls, Tricia and Agatha, were making faces at them. Agatha scrunched up her lively features and stuck out her tongue so Glen did the same. Both girls went into hysterics.
“Aren’t they little darlings.” Katie sighed. “I can’t wait to have a girl of our very own.”
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