Hawken Fury (Giant Wilderness Book One)

by Robbins, David

  The mention of his mentor caused Nate immense grief.

  “I’m sorry,” Adeline said on seeing his expression. “I shouldn’t have brought up his name.”

  “It will take a while for me to accept the fact Shakespeare is gone. Had you known him you would understand. He possessed a zest for life unmatched by anyone else I know.”

  They stood in silence for several minutes. A cardinal flitted from bush to bush until with a frantic flapping of wings it darted into the sky. A moment later the reason for its flight became apparent when a man appeared with a pair of large brown dogs on separate long leashes. The man was short and squat, built like the trunk of a tree, wore dirty clothes. He crossed the garden from south to north and vanished around a shed.

  Nate’s eyes narrowed. There was something about that fellow he hadn’t liked, although he couldn’t identify what it might have been. “Who was he?” he inquired.

  “That was Yancy. He works for Jacques.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Oh, whatever needs doing. He’s the foreman of the estate. A more loyal man you couldn’t ask for.”

  “And those dogs?”

  “Jacques owns a dozen or so. He uses them to patrol the estate and keep things calm.”

  Nate looked at her. “How do you mean?”

  “The estate encompasses over two thousand acres. As you must know, there are a lot of thieves and other brigands in St. Louis and along the Mississippi River. They give Jacques trouble from time to time by trying to steal some of his cattle and horses. The guards and the dogs usually prevent them from succeeding.”

  “I see,” Nate said’ bothered by a vague feeling she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. Which was ridiculous. Why would Adeline deceive him? He rubbed his brow and attributed his unwarranted suspicion to being excessively tired and still tremendously upset over the deaths of his family. His mind wasn’t functioning as it should. “When will I get to meet Monsieur Debussy?”

  “In a few days,” Adeline replied. “He’s off on a business trip and I expect him back soon.”

  Nate walked to the bed and sank down in relief. His legs were weaker than he thought and he would have to be careful not to overextend himself for the time being. “You say he was an old friend of your father’s?”

  “Yes,” Adeline said, stepping to a chair. “My father, as you surely remember, oversaw a vast business empire. He was one of the wealthiest men in New York City. In the country, for that matter.” She smoothed her dress. “He met

  Jacques eight or nine years ago when he visited St. Louis to arrange for grain shipments to points in the East.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Nate began, then hesitated, not wanting to upset her by bringing up the subject of her parents.

  “How did my father and mother die?” Adeline finished for him.

  “If you care to tell me.”

  Adeline folded her hands on her lap and took a deep breath, her bosom expanding as if inflated. “My father’s health started to fail him about three years ago. Somehow I always thought he would live forever, but he never did know how to slow down or how to eat properly or how not to worry over his many financial ventures. Eventually it all caught up with him. One morning my mother found him in his study, slumped over his desk. She contacted his physician right away, but by the time the doctor arrived at our mansion my father had passed on.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Nate said, and meant it. Adeline and her father had been very close and he knew they had both sincerely loved one another. Personally, he had always rated her father as too stern and dictatorial to suit him. But he had to admit Stanley Van Buren had been a devoted parent and always had Adeline’s best interests at heart.

  “My mother took Father’s death extremely hard,” Adeline continued in a low, reserved, almost timid voice.

  For a few seconds Nate had the illusion that it wasn’t a full-grown woman sitting there but a little girl who had been cruelly thrust into the dark by a capricious fate.

  “She stopped eating regularly and shut herself in her room for days at a time,” Adeline said. “I tried my best to change her attitude. I tried to convince her that she had so much to live for, but she would have none of it. She couldn’t bear going on without father. Within a year of his death she took ill and died despite the efforts of two doctors to save her.” She stopped and touched a hand to the corner of one eye. “They told me she simply gave up the ghost. She lost the will to live.”

  Nate was reminded of the story Shakespeare had told about his mother and remorse seized him. He was profoundly sorry he had brought up the subject, undoubtedly disturbing Adeline by stirring memories better left alone. To take her mind off the tragedy he said the first thing that came into his head. “I wonder if Monsieur Debussy would see fit to extend me a loan.”

  “What?” Adeline said, perplexed by the sudden change in their topic of conversation.

  “I sold a great many furs at the Rendezvous this year and kept the money in a pouch in my saddlebags. Since my horse was stolen, I’m penniless. And I’ll need money to buy the provisions I’ll need for my trip out onto the plains.”

  “You need not concern yourself about money. What is mine is yours. I will give you whatever you need.”

  A realization struck Nate and he snapped his fingers. “That’s right. You must be wealthy now. As your father’s sole surviving heir you stood to

  inherit the family fortune.”

  “I inherited every penny he had,” Adeline said.

  “Then perhaps you would lend me a couple of hundred dollars until next summer. By then I’ll have trapped enough beaver to be able to pay you back and pocket a tidy profit besides.”

  Adeline stared at him as if stunned. “You plan to continue living as a free trapper?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “After what happened to your family I had assumed you would be willing to give up living as a savage in the mountains and return to your roots, where you belong.”

  “I belong in the Rockies. Trapping is all I know. It’s in my blood.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Adeline said. “You were a fine accountant once, remember? You had a head for figures and complicated calculations. You stood to do well in the business world.”

  Nate leaned on an elbow and sighed. “Adeline, everything you say is true up to a point. I worked as an accountant at P. Tuttle and Sons, but mainly at the insistence of my father, who convinced old man Tuttle to take me on. And it was your father, with a lot of prompting from you, who offered to launch me on a career in the merchant trade.”

  “And what did you do?” Adeline said, resentment in her tone. “You ran off without a word to anyone to join your uncle in the wilderness.” She cocked her head, studying him. “I will never, ever understand how you could throw away a promising future to live as a grubby trapper.”

  “I like being free.”

  “Free?” Adeline said, and laughed. “You were just as free in New York City as you are in your precious mountains. Name me one thing you can’t do in New York that you can do in the Rockies.”

  Before Nate could elaborate there arose a shriek of terror from outside. He jumped up and saw a man racing across the twilight-shrouded garden, a lone black man in tattered clothing. Around the shed appeared a pair of bounding brown dogs, perhaps the same pair he seen earlier. They were no longer on their leashes and they bore down on the hapless black in snarling fury. “What is going on?” he demanded.

  “I—” Adeline began, and froze as the tableau beyond the window reached its inevitable conclusion.

  The dogs rapidly overtook the fleeing black. He spun to confront them, holding his arms up to protect his face, and the superbly trained animals took him low down, each dog tearing into a leg. The man screamed and toppled and there was a swirl of legs and arms and snapping jaws as he fought the dogs.

  Nate took a step toward the closet, planning to grab his rifle, throw open the window, and enter the fray, but Yancy
and two men raced into view. The men held clubs. They closed on the thrashing figures in the grass, and while Yancy pulled the dogs off to one side the two men beat the bloody black senseless. Then they each grasped an ankle and dragged the man to the north. Yancy and the leashed dogs trailed them.

  It had all happened so fast, Nate was flabbergasted. He looked at Adeline and saw her features were flushed. “Do you know what that was all about?”

  “No,” she responded, shaking her head. “But I assure you I’ll get to the bottom of this and let you know.” Lifting her hem off the floor she swept out of the room.

  Nate had to sit down on the bed again. The excitement had caused minor dizziness and he needed to rest. No one had lit the lamps in his room yet, so he sat there in the gathering darkness and reviewed what he had witnessed. The cruelty of the men with the clubs had greatly impressed him. If they were employed by Jacques Debussy, then there was more to Debussy than Adeline had let on. He gazed through the window at the benighted estate and wondered what in the world he had blundered into.

  One way or the other he was going to find out.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Upon awakening the next morning as dawn broke, Nate lay in bed and thought of the incident he had witnessed. Adeline had never returned to offer an explanation, which he regarded as highly peculiar, and he was still determined to discover what had happened to the black man.

  He was also hungry enough to eat a bull moose. As he slipped out from under the blanket he felt renewed vitality in his limbs. Stretching, he savored the strength flowing in his arms; he was stronger than he had been since the panther attack, and he craved a heaping portion of solid food, any solid food, not the porridge and soups the doctor had insisted he eat the past few days.

  With that in mind, Nate dressed in his buckskins. He strapped on his knife, wedged the tomahawk under his belt, and tucked a flintlock on either side of his belt buckle after reloading each pistol. Feeling like a man renewed, he left the Hawken in the closet and ventured out of the bedroom.

  A large hall ran in both directions. His room, as it turned out, was situated at the middle of the corridor. There were other doors on both sides, all closed.

  The house was as still as a tomb as he walked down the hall until he reached an enormous dining room opulently adorned with exquisitely crafted furniture and a huge glass cabinet containing gleaming china. Beyond the dining room was an equally spacious living room.

  He halted, noting doorways to the right and the left, and speculated on which way to go. At that moment the left-hand door opened and out came the elderly maid bearing a tray of steaming porridge. She stopped in shock on beholding him.

  “Good morning,” Nate said, and walked over. Through the doorway behind her he could see a large kitchen and a young man hanging pots over a fire. He smiled at the maid and started to bypass her.

  “Non, monsieur!”

  Nate had to halt when she blocked his path. “Excuse me,” he said, and again tried to go around her.

  The maid stepped to the side to stay in front of him. “Non!” she insisted. “Oú allez-vous?”

  “I’m sorry,” Nate said. “I don’t understand.” He pointed at the kitchen. “Now if you’ll let me by I’d like to get something to eat other than porridge.”

  “Je ne comprends pas,” the maid said, vigorously shaking her head.

  “Pardon me,” Nate persisted. He put a hand on her shoulder and prevented her from interfering as he started into the kitchen. The delicious aroma of boiling coffee and simmering bacon made his mouth water. “Hello,” he stated to announce his presence.

  The cook turned, a large spoon in his right hands and gaped. “What are you doing here, sir?”

  “You speak English! Excellent,” Nate said, moving closer. “My name is King and I’ve been laid up in bed since my arrival.”

  “Yes, I know,” the cook answered. “Doctor Mangel instructed me on the foods you can eat until you have healed.”

  “No more porridge and soup. I want solid foods.”

  “But the doctor” the cook protested.

  “I don’t care what Mangel told you,” Nate said. He rested a hand on each flintlock and ambled up to the fire. “I want bacon and eggs for breakfast, a mountain of each. And I’d like flapjacks if you have them, six or seven ought to do me.”

  “I could get into trouble if I do as you wish,” the cook declared.

  “I’ll take full responsibility,” Nate assured him. “And if you won’t cooperate I’ll make the meal myself.”

  “No one works in my kitchen except me.”

  Nate grinned. “Then I’d get to work on my order if I were you.”

  The cook glanced at the pistols, then at the doorway where the maid stood. He addressed her in French and she nodded and hurried off.

  “I’m waiting,” Nate said.

  Displaying marked reluctance, the young man complied. He fetched eggs from a pail resting on a shelf near a door to the outside, and brought over a bowl containing batter already mixed.

  Nate watched eagerly. His stomach rumbled continuously. He couldn’t resist plucking a strip of bacon from a pan over the fire and cramming the juicy morsel into his mouth.

  “Perhaps Monsieur would care for utensils?” the cook asked, his nose crinkled in obvious repugnance at Nate’s lack of manners. “There is an entire drawer of forks, knives, and spoons by his right elbow.”

  “What’s your name?” Nate replied.

  “Henri, sir.”

  “Haven’t you ever eaten with your fingers, Henri?”

  “Not since I was an infant, sir. We French pride ourselves on behaving as proper gentlemen at all times.”

  “Do you now?” Nate said, amused by the man’s superior airs. “Then don’t ever visit any of the Indian tribes west of here or you’ll be in for the shock of your life. Why, once I was at a Shoshone village when some warriors brought back a buffalo bull they’d killed. It was the middle of winter and no one in the village had eaten much for weeks. So the braves hacked that old bull into smaller pieces and roasted the meat over a roaring fire.” He grabbed another strip of bacon, trying not to laugh at Henri’s indignant expression. “But most of the Shoshones were too hungry to wait, so they took to tearing the meat apart with their bare hands and stuffing it into their mouths as fast as they could eat. There was blood and fat and gore smeared all over them by the time they were done. And there wasn’t a shred of flesh left on that buffalo.”

  “You exaggerate, sir. Not even Indians are that barbaric.”

  “Henri, you have a heap to learn about life,” Nate said. “The point I’m trying to make is that behaving like a gentleman isn’t all that important in the scheme of things.”

  “If you say so, sir,” Henri said. He cracked four eggs open on the edge of a pan. “But I would no more think of eating bacon without a fork than I would of stepping outdoors without my clothes on.”

  “The Digger Indians do it all the time. Doesn’t seem to hurt them any.”

  “Indians,” Henri sniffed, “cannot be held accountable for their actions because they know no better. They’re raised as uncouth savages so that is how they live.”

  Nate’s amusement evaporated and he resisted an impulse to dunk Henri in the flapjack batter. He was fed up with hearing whites who had never so much as talked to an Indian insult the Indian way of life. When Winona was alive he had never tolerated such degrading talk, and he would be damned if he’d do so now that she was gone.

  From the doorway came Adeline’s testy voice. “What are you trying to prove?”

  He turned. “So there you are. I figured you must have left St. Louis since you didn’t come back last night.”

  “I went to talk to Yancy, and by the time I got back it was late so I retired,” Adeline said, advancing. Today she wore a bright yellow dress that accented the color of her lustrous hair. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “Are you hungry? Henri is making a breakfast fit for a king,” Na
te said. He saw the maid in the hallway, still holding the tray and the porridge, and raised his voice. “There’s enough for you too, ma’am.”

  “We do not eat with the hired help,” Adeline informed him.

  “Why not?”

  “The servants have their own quarters, their own dining area. They eat at designated times and the maid has already had her breakfast. So enough of this foolishness and come with me. We’ll wait in the dining room while Henri cooks our meals so we can talk in private.”

  Although disposed to argue the issue, Nate went with Adeline and pulled out a chair for her near the head of the table. She took her seat and he sat down across from her. “I’m surprised you didn’t raise a fuss over my eating bacon and eggs instead of porridge.”

  “I know better now. Why waste my breath when you’ll do as you please no matter what I say?”

  Nate leaned back and rested his right arm on the table. “You must regret going to such lengths to track me down.”

  “Not at all. I came for a reason.”

  “Which you have yet to reveal.”

  “Only because I didn’t want to add to your woes. Since you had just lost your family and friends, I thought it best not to burden you with more bad news.”

  “What?” Nate said, stiffening. He leaned toward her. “Tell me now.”

  Adeline’s face might have been chiseled from marble for all the emotion she showed. “Very well. I wanted to spare you a while longer. But since you insist, I have the unenviable task of letting you know that both of your parents have died.”

  For an insane instant Nate told himself she must be joking. Then, with terrible certainty, he knew she was relating a fact, and the full magnitude of the loss hit him with all the force of a runaway wagon. Coming as it did so soon after he had lost his wife and son compounded the severity of the shock. He blinked, stared at the top of the table, and felt his insides twist into excruciating knots.