“Grizzly Killer is correct,” Red Moon said. “The Blackfeet will attack when they are ready and not before.” He paused. “Maybe they have sent someone for more warriors.”
Nate hadn’t considered that angle. It worried him profoundly. If there were more Blackfeet in the general area, and if another ten or more joined the first bunch, the likelihood of escaping from the valley was almost non-existent.
“Do we stay put or move elsewhere?” Milo inquired.
The encroaching veil of night allowed only one answer. “We stay right where we are,” Nate said. “It would be useless to go traipsing around in the dark searching for a better spot.”
Milo nodded in agreement. “Can we have a fire?”
“A small one, if you build it behind the boulders where the glow can’t be seen and keep it small so there isn’t much smoke,” Nate instructed him.
For the next half an hour they were busy tending to their stock. The horses were watered and picketed to graze. Since they weren’t anticipating an attack, the packs and saddles were removed. Milo got a fire going and made a pot of coffee and cooked venison steaks carved from a buck Red Moon had shot with an arrow the day before.
None of them was talkative. Each ate quietly, immersed in his thoughts. Every so often Tom Sublette would turn to the south and glare into the darkness, his thoughts transparent.
Nate dwelled on their predicament and tried to devise a way out. Trying to sneak past the Blackfeet at night would be impossible since they were bound to post braves at various points across the valley floor until morning. He weighed the merits of sneaking down to the Blackfoot camp and shooting as many as possible, finally deciding the risks were greater than any prospect of reducing the odds.
When the meal was over, Milo took the utensils down to the stream to wash them. Tom went along as escort.
No sooner were they out of hearing range than Red Moon swiveled to face Nate. “None of us may leave this place alive.”
“I know.”
“The Blackfeet will find us. Then they will surround us and close in on us when our guard is down.”
“I know.”
“I am a warrior, Grizzly Killer. I have counted twenty-seven coup in my life. I have fought the Blackfeet, the Bloods, the Utes, and the Cheyennes. I have killed men with my knife, my tomahawk, my bow, and my rifle. It is not in me to sit by and let my enemies pick the time and place for me to die.”
Nate lowered his coffee cup. “What do you propose?”
“Before the sun rises we must be awake and have our horses ready to ride. Then we must sneak down the valley, past the Blackfoot camp, and head for the valley entrance,” Red Moon proposed.
“They’ll probably spot us.”
“Would you rather sit here and wait to die?”
“No,” Nate admitted. “I like your plan.” He leaned against the boulder and let the fire warm his feet. Although once he would have scoffed at the notion, he was a fighter. Repeatedly he’d been thrust into life-threatening situations where he either had to resist or die, and each time he’d chosen to struggle with all his might to live. Yes, he was a fighter, and it galled him to contemplate defeat. He had a wife and a son who loved him. He fully intended to see them again, and he would fight tooth and claw to preserve his life.
The two Pennsylvanians returned. Nate outlined the ploy they would use, then offered to take the first watch while the others slept. They spread out their blankets at the edge of the firelight so they wouldn’t be easy targets should a Blackfoot creep up on them, leaving Nate alone at the boulder.
He tried not to dwell on the war party. Instead, he mused on the whims of circumstance that often dictated the course of a person’s life. A man or woman never knew from one day to the next what subsequent days would bring, and each was at the mercy of a capricious fate that held no regard for anyone. How many trappers had he known, good men who worked hard, who were honest to a fault, but who had perished at the hands of marauding Indians? How many decent trappers had lost their lives through a freakish accident, never to see their kin back in the States again? What had those men done to deserve deaths? Nothing. And yet they went to meet their Maker ahead of their allotted time.
A month ago he had been comfortable and safe in his cabin. Now he was on the verge of battling bloodthirsty Blackfeet and might well lose his life. And all because of a series of circumstances over which he had no control. Had the Pennsylvanians never gotten it into their heads to enlist his help, he would still be comfortable and safe in his cabin.
Still, the decision to come with them had been his. When a man got right down to the bone of the matter, decisions determined a man’s fate more than circumstances. Decisions were reactions to circumstances, and it was those reactions that determined whether a man lived or died, grew rich or poor, lived happily or miserably.
Lost in reflection, he didn’t realize how much time elapsed until with a start he saw the fire had burned down to glowing embers. He rose and gathered more wood, then fed the embers until a crackling fire again brightened the night. Walking to Milo, he shook the lean trapper.
“What?” Milo mumbled, his eyelids fluttering.
“You agreed to take the second watch,” Nate said. “Spell me.”
“Oh. Yes,” Milo said sleepily. Rousing himself, he pushed to his feet, wiped his eyes with the back of his hands, and took his rifle over to where Nate had sat. “Anything?”
“Nothing. Keep your eyes skinned.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Milo replied, and stretched.
Nate spread out his bedroll and lay on his back, the Hawken at his side. Samson claimed the left side of the blanket, his back pressed flush against Nate.
“Did you see this fire?” Milo asked.
“What’s wrong with it? I just gathered more dead branches,” Nate answered.
“No, not our fire. This other fire.”
Milo was standing out past the boulder when Nate joined him. In the far distance to the south, flickering faintly, was another camp fire.
“The Blackfeet,” Milo deduced.
“Yep.”
“How far do you reckon they are?”
“It’s hard to judge at night,” Nate said.
“I’m surprised they’d let us know where they are,” Milo said.
“They’re not afraid of us. The Blackfeet are the most murderous lot of Indians this side of the divide, but there is no denying their courage. They don’t care if we know where they are. If we should attack them, so much the better. They won’t need to come looking for us.”
Milo cocked an eye. “You give me the impression you admire these savages.”
“I admire courage in any man, Indian or white,” Nate responded, and rotated. He took a stride when his ears caught a fluttering sound, so indistinct as to make him believe he had imagined hearing it. Pausing, he turned and listened.
“What is it?” Milo inquired.
“I don’t know,” Nate said, and then he heard a slightly louder sound, a long, high-pitched, wavering cry.
“Dear Lord!” Milo exclaimed. “What in the world was that?”
From behind them came the clipped voice of Red Moon. “A scream,” he said, walking forward.
“The Blackfeet must have captured someone else,” Milo speculated. “Perhaps another trapper.”
The wind, which had been wafting from north to south, chose that instant to die completely and the air hung still as death around them. Without the wind to stir the trees and grass, an eerie silence ensued. In that silence, from the direction of the speck of light to the south, there came a hair-raising series of terrified screams and screeches attended by the boom of gunfire. Once, as clear as a church bell on a Sunday morning, a horse whinnied as if in abject fright.
“What’s happening over there?” Milo breathed.
The frantic screams and screeches rent the night interminably. Their own horses neighed and stamped in nervous agitation.
Milo cast a bewildere
d gaze at Nate. “It’s like they’re in a war or something.”
“Or something.”
“Now it begins,” Red Moon declared solemnly.
“What begins?” Milo asked.
The Crow didn’t answer.
Every time Nate heard one of those horrifying cries, a twinge rippled along his spine. His skin crawled as if of its own volition. There could only be one explanation in his estimation, and the knowledge created an icy chill in the depths of his soul.
“What the hell is happening?” Tom Sublette demanded as he stepped past the boulder. “Why are the horses—”
“Shhhhh,” Milo hissed. “Listen!”
The distant din went on for another minute or two before diminishing in volume and tapering off on a single plaintive note of raw despair.
“What was that?” Tom inquired.
“The Blackfeet,” Nate said. He moved to the fire and squatted on his heels to pour coffee into his tin cup.
“I don’t understand,” Milo said. “Why would the Blackfeet be carrying on that way?”
“It was a trick,” Tom stated. “They want us to ride to their camp to investigate so they can spring an ambush on us.”
“You didn’t hear as much as we did,” Milo disputed him. “It was no trick. Those devils were fighting for their lives.”
“Against who?” Tom demanded.
Nate let some of the warm coffee trickle into his mouth and swished the brew with his tongue before swallowing. “We must go find out.”
“Are you touched in the head? It’s a trap, I tell you,” Tom insisted. “Go there and some buck will be showing your hair to his sweetheart when he gets back to his village.”
Red Moon knelt and commenced folding his blanket. “We must go.”
“You too?” Tom responded. “What’s gotten into the two of you? At least wait until morning when we can see.”
“Now,” Nate said, and swallowed once more. He spilled the rest of the coffee on the grass and stood.
Milo frowned and stepped closer. “What is it? What do Red Moon and you know that we don’t? What will we find down there?”
“I don’t know,” Nate said. But he did. He knew, deep within the well of his being. He knew, and he cursed himself for being the biggest fool who’d ever lived.
Tom made an angry gesture. “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on? Since when do we go riding around in the middle of the night?”
“If you don’t want to tag along you’re welcome to stay here by yourself,” Nate told him.
Glancing to the south, Tom took less than five seconds to reach a decision. “No thanks. Where you gents go, I go. I just hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”
So do I, Nate thought. So do I.
Chapter Fifteen
A crimson hue tinged the eastern horizon when Nate drew rein and tilted his head to sniff the air. He smelled the lingering scent of wood smoke and something else, a revolting stench that nearly made him gag. Hundreds of feet away, rising sluggishly on the slight air currents, was a thin column of gray smoke.
“The Blackfoot camp,” Milo said softly.
Nate nodded and attached the lead rope to his pack-horses to a low branch. The Crow was already moving to the right to approach the site from a different angle. He looked at the Pennsylvanians and pointed to their left.
Tom promptly tied his pack animals to a tree limb and waited for Milo to do likewise, and together they started circling.
The feel of the invariably reliable Hawken in Nate’s left hand, which usually inspired him with confidence when he confronted danger, failed to assuage his growing uneasiness. Placing the rifle across his thighs, he glanced down at Samson and rode onward. The nauseating smell grew stronger and stronger with each stride his stallion took, forcing him to breathe shallowly to keep his stomach from tossing.
He was within twenty-five yards of the wispy tendril of smoke when the stallion suddenly shied from an object lying directly in their path, an object he’d assumed to be a broken limb. Stopping, he bent forward and involuntarily gasped.
The limb wasn’t from any tree. Lying in the shadow of a pine, the skin bronzed from constant exposure to the sun, was a human arm. The fingers were locked like claws. Ribbons of severed flesh dangled from the top of the upper arm where it had been violently torn from the shoulder.
Nate skirted the grisly legacy of the nocturnal battle and made for the smoke. He hadn’t gone another five yards when he came on the body to which the arm had once belonged.
The Blackfoot lay on his back, his lifeless eyes fixed blankly on the canopy of limbs above him. A puddle of blood had seeped into the ground from his ravaged shoulder. Torn leggings covered his legs.
Nate stared at the man’s face and scowled. The Blackfoot wore an expression of stark terror, his features contorted in a grotesque mockery of a human visage. What had the warrior seen in those last moments of life that provoked such terror?
He prodded the stallion with his heels. Soon a clearing opened up before him. All that remained of the fire were flickering coals and the ascending smoke. Littering the area around that fire in all directions, sprawled in postures of gruesome death, were more Blackfeet.
Nate stopped at the edge of the trees and tucked the stock of the Hawken against his side, his thumb on the hammer. He surveyed the clearing and bile rose in his throat. With an effort, he swallowed it. Never had he seen such carnage. Never would he care to view such unspeakable slaughter again.
The clearing might aptly be termed a battlefield. That a tremendous fight had occurred was evidenced by the many dead and the many pools of drying blood, by the arrows and lances and guns scattered about, and by the torn parfleches, the ripped blankets, and the occasional articles of scattered clothing.
There were seventeen Blackfoot warriors in all, young and old alike, most splotched with bloodstains. Quite a few had dried blood ringing their parted lips. Every one bore evidence of having received a vicious beating. Bruises marred their faces and torsos. There were bite marks on nearly each brave, and over half showed several spots where their flesh had been ripped from their bodies. Many had broken arms or legs, as displayed by the unnatural angles at which the limbs were extended. One warrior was on his stomach but his head had been twisted completely around so that his wide-eyed gaze was fixed on his heels.
Nate heard retching and glanced to his left. Milo was hunched over a bush, his back to the clearing. Sublette, still on horseback, seemed pale. Nate swung to the right and saw Red Moon walking among the fallen. Easing from the saddle, he stepped into the open.
A husky brave nearby had been gutted, his abdomen ruptured. A pile of pale, pulpy intestines rested on the crushed grass beside him. Another warrior had a caved-in chest. His ribs and sternum curved sharply inward and jagged tips of busted rib bones poked from his taut skin. A third brave had lost half of his forehead and his left cheek.
A fly flew close to Nate’s face and he swatted it aside. It recovered in midair and flew to a corpse, where it settled on the warrior’s smashed nose. There were more flies on the same man, and gazing over the clearing Nate spotted scores if not hundreds of flies flitting about on the bodies.
“Who could have done this?” Tom Sublette asked.
“Who?” Nate said.
“Which tribe? The Utes don’t range this far north, or so I’ve been told,” Tom mentioned. “Could it have been the Crows?”
Red Moon heard the query. “My people did not do this.”
“Then who? Are there tribes to the west I don’t know about who can lick the Blackfeet so handily?” Tom inquired.
“This was not done by men,” Red Moon informed him.
Sublette halted, blinked, and grinned. “You’re not going to try and convince me that the goblin who supposedly lives in this valley was responsible, are you?”
“See for yourself,” Nate said, halting near the fire where there was bare earth. Next to the shattered leg of a Blackfoot was the outline o
f a by-now-familiar track.
“See what?” Tom said, and walked over. Consternation lined his countenance and he squatted. “This can’t be what it looks like.”
“It’s the same sort of track I saw up the left fork,” Nate stated.
“There must be a logical explanation for it,” Tom said, his tone lacking much conviction. “Maybe it’s a bear print.”
“Then where are the claw marks?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it lost its claws in an accident.”
“You know better.”
The stocky Pennsylvania touched the track, then stood. His eyes were troubled when he faced Nate. “The creature did all of this?” he asked, sweeping the clearing with an emphatic wave of his arm.
Red Moon walked toward them, and for the first time his emotions were plain for anyone to read. He was profoundly upset, as his strained tone confirmed. “Yes,” he answered Sublette. “There are not many tracks of the thing that lurks in the dark, but the sign is clear enough to know what happened.”
“Tell us,” Tom urged.
The Crow nodded at the west side of the clearing, the side nearest the stream. “It came up out of the water and stood for a long time watching the Blackfeet. They did not know it was there. Knowing them as I do, I would say they were busy getting ready for their attack on us. They must have talked until late about their plan. Then, when their weapons were all in order, most of them went to sleep. They would have wanted to be rested when morning came.”
“And then?” Tom said when the Crow paused.
Red Moon scanned the ground, pointing at specific points as he talked. “The beast made some noise to draw the guard into the forest. His tracks lead off that way,” he said, indicating due north.
“I found him,” Nate revealed. “His arm had been torn from its socket.”
“With the guard dead, the thing was free to do as it wanted,” Red Moon said. He motioned at four Blackfeet lying in a row, each with his throat crushed. “It came into the camp and killed those four before the Blackfeet knew what was happening. Another must have woken up, seen it, and shouted the alarm.”
Nate scoured the vegetation, wondering if the thing was still lurking nearby or whether it had gone off to its lair, wherever that might be.
Wilderness: Mountain Devil/Blackfoot Massacre (A Wilderness Western Book 5) Page 11
