Nate prayed he hadn’t taken them into a dead end. Ten minutes later, when they came to an incline on the left, he eagerly rode to the top. Before them stretched a seemingly limitless expanse of forest.
Satisfied that they had escaped, Nate decided to stay on the rim until morning. He communicated his desire to Evening Star, and after the horses were secure they found a comfortable spot under a spreading canyon maple. Laughing Eyes sat in her mother’s lap, staring at the country below. He shifted to face them. “I am sorry we cannot use a fire.”
“I understand,” Evening Star assured him.
“We will wait until daylight, then leave.”
“You need not stop on our account.”
“It is not safe to travel at night, as you well know,” Nate noted. “What difference can four or five more hours make?”
“The Utes will not rest until they recapture us.”
“I doubt you have anything to worry about. They will not find us now.”
Evening Star did not respond.
Nate leaned against the trunk and let the tension drain from his body. All in all, he’d handled himself well. Shakespeare would be proud. His stomach growled, reminding him of the onions and berries in his pouch, and he wondered if the others were hungry. “Would you like something to eat?”
“No. The Utes let us eat earlier.”
Nate went to the stallion and retrieved the pouch, then settled down and munched contentedly on the food. The escapade had taught him a valuable lesson in self-reliance. He could, when the necessity arose, hold his own against some of the toughest warriors in the West. Where before his heart pumped faster at the mere mention of the Utes, now he recognized they were no worse than any other tribe. All the Utes had going for them was an unjustified reputation.
Word of mouth, he determined, had a lot to do with the status of individual men or entire tribes. Embellished by drink or imagination, tales concerning the likes of Jim Bridger, Joseph Walker, and Shakespeare McNair tended to give those mountain men an exaggerated aspect, and the same held true for the Utes and the Blackfeet. For years everyone had been saying those two tribes were the terrors of the Rockies, and now the claim was widely accepted as verified fact. Actually, the Utes were no worse than the Bloods and the Piegans, two lesser-known tribes who also killed whites on sight.
Nate listened to animal noises carried by the cool wind. Wolves were particularly active at night, and their howls ranged far and wide. Owls hooted regularly. Now and then a panther would scream like a woman being tortured. And ominous, deep growls sounded from somewhere farther up the gorge.
Evening Star was intently studying Nate. The little girl had reclined on her back, her head on her mother’s leg.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” Evening Star answered. “But I wonder about something. May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why did you risk your life to save ours? We hardly know you.”
“Your family fed me, sheltered me, treated me as a friend. I could not stand by and let you be abducted.”
The woman nodded. “You are an honorable man, Grizzly Killer. You will become great if you do not die first.”
Nate smiled and took a bite of onion. In her own way, Evening Star was almost as attractive as Winona. Almost, but not quite. She possessed a calm, stately bearing he admired. Like most Indian women, she was earthy and self-disciplined, the exact opposite of her civilized white sisters in the States. What was it about civilization, he mused, that produced men and women who were overly dependent on the society in which they lived? The longer he lived in the wild, the more convinced he became that too much so-called culture tended to breed physical and moral weaklings.
“You must miss your wife,” Evening Star signed.
A frown curled Nate’s lip. “With all my heart.”
“She is very fortunate to have such a brave husband.”
“Sitting Bear is also brave. You should have seen him fight the Utes.”
“Did he get the feathers he wanted?”
“Yes.”
The Crow sighed and gazed at a small pine tree swaying in the wind. “Then the worst is yet to come.”
“What do you mean?” Nate inquired.
“Once he heals, he will try to steal enough horses from the Arapahos to make up for those that were stolen. It will be very dangerous, yet he insists on going alone.”
“I could go with him.”
Evening Star smiled. “Thank you. But we both know he is too proud. He will never permit you to accompany him. This is something he must do by himself.” She paused. “If only my sons were alive. He might have consented to take them.”
Nate suddenly lost his appetite. “I am extremely sorry about your boys. They were a credit to their parents and would have grown to be mighty warriors.”
The quiet night was abruptly shattered by the crack of a gun from the direction of the plain.
“It must be the Utes,” Evening Star declared.
“Why would they fire a shot?” Nate remarked.
“It could be a signal.”
“Perhaps,” Nate conceded. “But I doubt it has anything to do with us. They cannot possibly know where we are.”
“Never underestimate them. They are excellent trackers. By daylight they could pick up our trail.”
“By daylight we will be on our way to your lodge. They will never catch up.”
“You have much confidence for one so young.”
Nate chuckled. “I wish I did.”
“Never underestimate yourself,” Evening Star said, grinning, and looked at him. “There is another question I would like to ask. A trapper once told me incredible stories about white women and I have often wondered if he spoke the truth. You must know their customs well.”
“I know a little about women,” Nate said, then added a quote from his mentor, Shakespeare. “Any man who claims he knows all there is to know is a liar.”
Evening Star laughed lightly. “Women find men equally as difficult to understand.”
“Even Indian women?”
“Did you think we would be different? Women are women.” Evening Star began to tenderly stroke her daughter’s hair. “This trapper wanted me to believe that many white women do not marry until they are twenty winters or older. Did he tell the truth?”
“Yes. Some white women marry young, but the trend seems to be for them to marry older and older all the time.”
Evening Star shook her head in amazement. “But why do they wait so long and waste so many of their best child-bearing years?”
Nate was about to answer that it simply was the fashion, but there wasn’t an equivalent sign gesture. Instead, he shrugged.
“Very mystifying,” said Evening Star. “Indian women would not think of waiting twenty winters to marry. As soon as a girl becomes a woman, she is eligible for marriage. Most have a husband by the time they are sixteen.”
“How does a girl become a woman?” Nate naively asked.
Evening Star reacted as if surprised by the query. “When she bleeds for the first time.”
“Bleeds?” Nate repeated, and then comprehended her meaning. Extremely embarrassed, he pretended to be interested in the eastern horizon, and even made a casual, if inane, comment. “The stars are very bright tonight.”
“Yes,” the Crow woman replied.
“I do not think I have ever seen them this bright.”
“You must not look at the night sky very often.”
Taking another bite of onion, Nate saw a brilliant, thin streak of light shoot across the heavens from west to east. A meteor always enthralled him. As a child, he’d always wanted to chase one down and find where it crashed. Meteors served as reminders of the vast, unknown realms existing out among the stars. Many an idle hour had been spent dreaming about the other planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.
In a way, his early fascination with the heavens had carried o
ver into his adult life. From his childhood fascination with the mysteries of the universe grew his later fascination with the mysteries awaiting anyone who ventured beyond the Mississippi River in the Great American Desert, as the expanse between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean was so frequently called. The unknown held an irresistible allure, a siren call that had beckoned him into the wilderness.
More brave souls were answering that call every year. The numbers of trappers and traders was growing rapidly. Shakespeare believed that one day there would be as many people in the West as there were in the East, but Nate was skeptical. For one thing, the Plains and the Rockies were inhabited by dozens of Indian tribes who weren’t about to pack up and leave just because the white man wanted to move in. If there ever came a time when the whites did want the land for themselves, there would be hell to pay.
Besides, from what he’d seen, there was no reason the whites and the Indians couldn’t live together in harmony. There was enough living space for everyone, and there would never be a shortage of game. The immense herds of buffaloes alone fed millions, and there was little chance of the bison ever dying out.
Nate hoped that he’d never see the day when the current way of life came to an end. There were those, like Shakespeare, who maintained it would, who believed that whites were too greedy and too arrogant to leave well enough alone. There were also those who asserted the U.S. had a right to expand westward to the shores of the Pacific, if need be. So far, their voices were in the minority.
He would be the first to admit that times were changing, though. Why, only a few years ago, Colonel John Stevens, a veteran of the Revolution, had constructed a steam wagon on his estate, a contraption powered by steam and capable of carrying passengers. One day, some claimed, steam-powered devices would replace horses.
About the same time, in Quincy, Massachusetts, a man named Bryant had opened an enterprise he called the Granite Railway. It consisted of horse-drawn wagons that hauled heavy loads effortlessly along miles of hardwood tracks. More such railways were expected to spring up in the years ahead.
The world never stood still, Nate reflected. Change seemed to be the natural order of things, which didn’t bode well for the Indians or his peace of mind. All he wanted out of life was the opportunity to live it as he saw fit, without interference from anyone else. And in that respect civilization and the wilderness had something in common. There were always those who took delights in oppressing others, whether it be a tyrannical employer in New York City, or murderous Utes in the Rockies.
Nate glanced at Evening Star and saw she was lying on her back, Laughing Eyes beside her, asleep. He closed his own eyes and let his thoughts drift, savoring the tranquility and hoping it would last.
But it didn’t.
Chapter Fifteen
A faint trace of light tinged the eastern horizon when Nate awoke. He blinked a few times before he recalled where he was and the circumstances that had brought him to the top of the gorge. Rising, he stretched and went to relieve himself, then returned and gently shook the Crow woman.
Evening Star came awake instantly and glanced up. She nodded and went about rousing her daughter.
“Do you want food?” Nate asked.
“We will wait until midday,” Evening Star responded.
“I can shoot something for breakfast.”
“No. We should leave before the Utes come. But thank you for the offer.”
“The Utes are not coming,” Nate assured her, and headed for the horses. He halted when he heard a peculiar soft patter arising in the gorge. It couldn’t be, he told himself, and ran to the rim to listen. Amplified by the rock walls, soft and inaudible at times but nonetheless recognizable, was the dull thud of horse hooves striking the gravel floor. He whirled and motioned for Evening Star to mount.
“The Utes?”
Nate frowned. “You were right.”
“You killed two of the war party. They will chase us until they do the same to you and recapture us, or until all of them are dead.”
So much for the Utes having an exaggerated reputation, Nate reflected, and quickly climbed onto the stallion. Once the mother and daughter were on the mare, he lead the pack animal off to the northwest, entering a verdant forest carpeted with pine needles. He reasoned that the Utes must have been tracking them all night since the band was already in the gorge. Once the war party found the spot where they had slept, the Indians would pick up the pace in the expectation of catching them soon.
Nate rode as fast as he dared, constantly avoiding trees and boulders, and whenever he came to a knoll or hill he would look back to see if there was sign of pursuit. Gradually the sun climbed into the sky, bringing the woodland to life, and with it came a steady rise in temperature.
Two hours after the sun rose Nate was perspiring freely. The day promised to be very warm, which meant they must locate water if they intended to push their animals to the limit. But although he scoured the terrain ceaselessly, none of the precious liquid was to be found.
In four hours the ground slanted downward into a broad valley, and in the center a small lake sparkled invitingly. Nate pointed at it and smiled, and Evening Star nodded happily. They pressed on until they broke from cover and saw the shore ahead, then galloped to the water’s edge.
A flock of ducks was disturbed by their arrival, and across the lake a herd of deer moved warily off into the undergrowth.
Nate let the horses and the Crows slake their thirst first. When it was his turn, he dropped to his hands and knees and drank until he couldn’t hold another drop. He straightened, smacked his lips, and wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth.
“Do you think it is safe to stop for a while?” Evening Star inquired.
Turning, Nate surveyed the woods and hills they’d traversed. ‘There is no sign of the Utes yet. Yes, we can rest for a spell.”
“I saw raspberry bushes over there,” Evening Star signed, and pointed to the south. “If you will watch Laughing Eyes, I will collect them.”
“Go ahead.”
The Crow spoke a few stern words to her daughter, then ran off. Laughing Eyes gazed up at him, nervousness mirrored in her young eyes.
“You are safe with me,” Nate promised her.
An uncomfortable silence ensued. The girl seemed transformed to stone, her gaze locked on his face.
Self-conscious under the child’s scrutiny, Nate tried to initiate a conversation. “You are very mature for your age. I hope my own children turn out like you.”
Laughing Eyes did not reply.
“Soon we will have you back with your father. Would you like that?”
At last the girl responded, her hands moving tentatively. “Yes.”
“He will be very happy to see you,” Nate predicted.
“I will be very sad.”
“Why?”
“Because both my brothers are dead. I loved them with all my heart, and now I can never play with them again.”
“They were good boys,” Nate acknowledged sorrowfully.
“I hope my mother and father have another son one day so I can have a brother again.”
“Maybe they will.”
Silence descended once more. Nate didn’t know what else to say. No amount of soothing words would alleviate the girl’s suffering, and he’d rather keep quiet than remind her of the calamity. He squatted and splashed water on his throat and the back of his neck, then stood and watched their back trail.
Evening Star returned within minutes, her forearms cupped to her stomach and brimming with luscious red raspberries. She deposited them on the grass and smiled. “I can get more if you want.”
“I am not very hungry,” Nate said. “The two of you eat your fill.” He stood guard while they crammed berries into their mouths, grinning as juice dribbled down Laughing Eye’s pointed chin. Every now and then he bent down and grabbed a few berries for himself, and it was as he straightened for the fifth time that he saw the tendrils of dust rising approximately a
quarter of a mile away. Shoving the raspberries in his mouth, he glanced at Evening Star. “The Utes.”
She looked and stood. “We must leave immediately.”
In a minute they were mounted and riding along the western shore of the lake. Nate cut into the trees when they came to a rocky stretch of ground that would make their tracks harder to read, then resumed their original northwesterly bearing, driving the horses even harder than before, sweating more than previously as the temperature climbed higher.
When they arrived at the north end of the valley they ascended a hill and paused to gaze at the lake. Visible on the west shore were seven riders.
The sight spurred Nate onward with a vengeance. Despite his best efforts, the war party would catch them by nightfall unless he came up with a ruse to throw the Utes off the scent. But what? How could he lose men who had demonstrated the ability to track at night? Doubling back was out of the question; it would put them behind the band and increase the jeopardy. A mile or two of solid stone underfoot would do the trick, but the woodland soil was essentially soft except for small tracks here and there. He toyed with the notion of an ambush to even the odds, and pondered whether he could prevail on the Crow to ride ahead without him.
Evening Star rode up alongside the stallion. Her daughter now sat behind her, arms looped about her waist. She caught Nate’s attention and motioned while holding the reins. “There is a trick the Crows use to fool the Utes that might help us.”
“What trick?”
“If we drag a limb behind us, our tracks will be erased. An excellent tracker would still be able to follow, but it would slow him down.”
“It is a great idea,” Nate signed, and reined up. He swiftly jumped down and used his knife to chop a thin, long branch sporting an abundance of leaves from a cottonwood. Next came the matter of a rope, which they didn’t have.
Evening Star slid to the ground. “Give me your knife,” she said, and extended her right hand.
Puzzled, Nate complied, and stared after her as she walked into the brush until she was out of sight. He smiled up at Laughing Eyes, who sat stiffly on the mare, and waited anxiously for the woman to return.
Wilderness: Savage Rendezvous/Blood Fury (A Wilderness Western Book 2) Page 25
