Wilderness: Mountain Devil/Blackfoot Massacre (A Wilderness Western Book 5)

by Robbins, David

  Nate shared a melancholy look with Winona. They both understood John Burke now. Nate, in particular, could identify with how the minister must be feeling. Should anything ever happen to his wife or Zach he would probably react in the same way.

  “I had no intention of becoming involved in this,” Shakespeare said. “But now I guess it’s my duty to sit down with your brother, George, and explain the facts of frontier existence to him.”

  George mustered a wan smile. “I appreciate the offer but it won’t do any good. John has his mind made up. Nothing we can do will change it.”

  “With time maybe we can change it,” Nate said confidently. “And we’ll buy that time by taking his horses and supplies over to Touch the Cloud’s lodge and asking Touch the Clouds to keep them there until we fetch them. John can’t go anywhere on foot and without provisions. If we do our best, in three or four days he might see reason.”

  “I don’t know,” George said uncertainly.

  “What have we got to lose?” Nate responded. “Touch the Clouds will be busy at the celebration tonight, so first thing in the morning, before your brother wakes up, I’ll sneak everything over. John will have no choice but to hear us all out if he wants to get his effects back.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” George said. “But you don’t know my brother like I do. When he sets his mind to something, watch out. If there’s a way to foil us, he’ll think of it.”

  “Relax. Everything will be fine,” Nate assured him. “For the time being let’s enjoy the celebration and forget all about it.”

  Not twelve hours later he was to deeply regret those words.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dimly Nate became aware of a hand roughly shaking his right shoulder. He instantly sat bolt upright, blinking to focus while trying to clear lingering tendrils of sleep from his mind. The interior of the lodge was dark except for burning embers in the fire. The acrid scent of smoke tingled his nostrils. To his right lay Winona, sound asleep. Also asleep were Zach and George Burke. Beside him squatted Shakespeare wearing a pensive expression.

  “Sorry to wake you,” McNair whispered, “but I figured you should know that the minister is gone.”

  “Gone?” Nate repeated, and again gazed around the lodge. “Maybe he’s out watering the grass.”

  “What do you think I was just doing?” Shakespeare said. “That’s when I noticed his horses were missing. So are all of his supplies.”

  Suddenly Nate was completely awake. He rose and glanced at the vacant spot where John Burke’s provisions had been piled. “Damn,” he muttered, hastening outdoors. A faint pink tinge lined the eastern horizon, signifying dawn was an hour or so off. Dashing around to the rear of the lodge, he saw Pegasus and his other animals, Shakespeare’s white mare, and the two horses belonging to George Burke. Nowhere was there any sign of the minister’s bay and pair of pack animals.

  “I figure the reverend skunked us but good,” Shakespeare said at his elbow. “He lit out last night while all of us were at the celebration.”

  Nate turned. Could it be true? Come to think of it, he didn’t recall seeing John at the festivities, nor had he seen him when they all returned to the lodge shortly after midnight. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, assuming John was still mad at George and had gone off somewhere to pray or simply to be by himself.

  “Either he overheard our talk about taking his horses and supplies, or he just wanted to put as much distance as he could between his brother and him so George couldn’t stop him from riding into Blackfoot country,” Shakespeare speculated.

  “We have to go after him,” Nate declared, staring at the eastern sky. If they left at first light they might be able to overtake the reverend by noon.

  “We might be wasting our time,” Shakespeare said. “What if we catch up with him and he doesn’t want to come back? Do we truss him up and haul him back here anyway?”

  Nate shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. All I know is we can’t let him go off and kill himself. He’s throwing his life away for nothing.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t see it that way.”

  “I’ll never be able to live with myself if we don’t try,” Nate said, and hastened inside.

  George Burke was propped on his elbows. “What’s going on?” he asked with a yawn. “I saw Shakespeare and you whispering, then you both ran outside. Is something wrong?”

  Nate would much rather go in pursuit with only Shakespeare at his side. George was a greenhorn who knew next to nothing about wilderness survival and inevitably would slow them down. But George was the minister’s kin, and as such Nate had no right to refuse him. “Your brother has run off.”

  “What?” George exclaimed loud enough to rouse a bear from hibernation, and came off his blanket as if he’d been shot from a cannon. “When?”

  “We think he left last night sometime before we got back,” Nate disclosed, shifting to see both Winona and Zach now awake and sitting up.

  “Then we must go after him right away,” George declared, stooping to grab his boots. “We can’t let him reach Blackfoot territory.”

  “I know,” Nate said, “but we can’t go off half-cocked either. We’ll have breakfast, pack some jerky and whatever else we’ll require on the trail, and ride out as soon as the sun rises. We’ll need the light to follow his tracks.”

  “All right,” George said sourly. “You know best.”

  I thought I did, Nate thought to himself, and went over to his loved ones.

  ~*~

  A few tiny clouds, like balls of cotton adrift in an azure sea, were the only things moving in the morning sky when Nate, Shakespeare, and George Burke rode out of the Shoshone village, heading to the northeast. Nate had asked Winona’s aunt and her husband to keep an eye on his family while he was gone. Spotted Bull, Touch the Clouds, and Drags the Rope had all offered to help, but Nate had declined their generosity.

  This was his problem. Since he had been the one who brought Reverend Burke to the village, and since his lapse in judgment had enabled the minister to get such a substantial head start, he felt directly responsible for John Burke’s welfare. In addition, he was annoyed at himself for not taking the man’s horses and supplies over to Touch the Clouds before leaving for the celebration. If he had, Burke could never have given them the slip.

  They found the tracks left by the minister’s three animals right away. Reverend Burke had hugged the shore of the lake, leaving clear prints the whole time, until he reached the north end, at which point he turned into the forest.

  Shakespeare leaned down to study the trail. “He was moving fast,” he remarked.

  “Can he elude us?” George asked.

  “Not in a million years. He’s leading two packhorses while we have our grub in our parfleches,” Nate said, giving the rawhide pouches draped behind his saddle a pat. Parfleches were the Indian equivalent of saddlebags, and his were crammed with enough jerked venison and pemmican to last him two weeks. “We can go faster than he can. It’s only a matter of time until we overtake him.”

  “I hope you’re right,” George said.

  For the next ten miles they traversed dense woodland. Then the tracks slanted almost due east for a mile along a winding valley before turning to the northeast once more. Minutes later they found themselves at the top of a bald hill.

  “He stopped here for a bit,” Shakespeare noted as he read the hoof prints.

  “Why?” George wondered.

  “He was getting his bearings,” Nate said. “My guess is he hoped to spot the prairie from here but he wasn’t quite close enough yet.”

  George gazed eastward at the sprawling vista of tree-covered foothills. “What significance does the prairie hold?”

  “He can make better time on the plains and spot others coming a long way off. Too, he probably knows the Blackfeet have their villages on the plains to the east of the Rockies, but north of here. All he has to do is continue north and in a week or so he’ll be in
the middle of their country.”

  “If he doesn’t run into one of their roving war parties before that, or something worse,” Shakespeare said.

  “What could be worse?” George asked anxiously.

  “All sorts of nasty fates await men who presume to tackle the wilderness on their own terms instead of learning Nature’s habits and acting accordingly.”

  “Is that more from William Shakespeare?”

  McNair chuckled. “Good Lord, no. That was original. But I know what I’m talking about, son. I’ve lived in the Rockies for more years than Nate and you have lived combined, and I know the dangers better than anyone.” He clucked his white horse into motion and took the lead.

  Nate fell in behind George Burke. Since Shakespeare was preoccupied with following the tracks, he had to keep alert for hostiles, grizzlies, and whatnot. One of them had to be on the watch at all times, or they might blunder into an ambush or a lurking bear.

  In a way, they were lucky. Reverend Burke’s pack animals were heavily burdened and left deep impressions. If Burke was on foot, tracking him would be impossible from horseback because they would need to get close to the ground to properly read the telltale smudges, crushed blades of grass, and partial prints that walking men made. That was why the Shoshones who came to his rescue had not used their horses; the Bloods had all been on foot.

  Another hour brought them to a valley leading due north. Nate was puzzled when the trail led up it. If Reverend Burke was heading for the plains, as he surmised, then the tracks should continue on eastward. Why this new change of direction?

  The air was crystal clear. A bald eagle glided high up, seeking prey. A marmot squatting beside its burrow near a cluster of boulders spotted them, vented a shrill whistle, and disappeared in a flash into the security of its den.

  As always, Nate drank in the magnificent splendor of the untamed land. Shakespeare was of the opinion that one day, far in the future, the West would be just like the East: overrun with people, crowded with towns and cities, the wild creatures reduced to small populations or killed off completely. They had discussed this bleak outlook on several occasions, and Nate fervently hoped his mentor was wrong. To have the unspoiled wonder of the rolling prairie and the lofty Rockies reduced to mere stepping-stones on man’s relentless trek to the Pacific was a travesty of progress and an affront against Nature. Why, if humankind kept on as they had been doing, one day the whole world would be filled to overflowing with more people than the planet could handle. What then? Where would the people of the future go to enjoy the natural beauty now so abundant once the wilderness was gone?

  Movement in trees high on a foothill brought his reflection to an end and he squinted up at the pines. Shortly a large bull elk stepped into a clearing and gazed down at them. It was alone. Later in the year, during the mating season, the bull would congregate with others of its kind and battle other bulls for the attentions of the cows. Nate had witnessed the spectacle many times. The bulls would challenge one another with their distinctive bugling cries, then rush at each other, their racks clashing with a crash that could be heard a hundred yards away. Rarely was one killed. Those bulls that proved stronger gathered harems that would make a sheik of Arabia jealous, sometimes numbering fifty or more.

  They came on a stream and halted to water their mounts. Shakespeare dismounted to squat and examine the ground. “The reverend stopped here too. Not long, though. He was still in a hurry.”

  “He knows I’ll come after him,” George said. “He’s counting on outrunning me.”

  “Have you given some thought to what you’ll do when we catch him?” Shakespeare asked.

  “Not really,” George answered. “I figure I’ll try to talk him out of carrying through with this foolishness. What else can I do?”

  “Tie him up and lug him back to the village.”

  “Bind my own brother? A man of the cloth?”

  Shakespeare rose. “He’s already proven he won’t listen to reason. And I, for one, don’t intend to sit around a camp fire close to Blackfoot territory for two or three days while you try to persuade him. It would be safer to take him back whether he wants to go or not.”

  George bit his lower lip. “I don’t know if I could do that to my own flesh and blood.”

  “Your choice. Just bear in mind he won’t have flesh or blood if the Blackfeet get ahold of him.”

  Soon they were on their way, riding to the end of the valley where the tracks headed up and over another foothill.

  “He’s scouring the country again,” Nate commented when they were at the top.

  From the hill, the minister had traveled due east, keeping to the low ground to make better time.

  “Thank goodness he’s not sticking to the high ground,” Shakespeare remarked. “A man stands out like a sore thumb up there.”

  A small pond was their next stop. In the soil at the water’s edge were the reverend’s boot tracks and a single hand print where he had leaned down to drink.

  “Your brother must not be feeling up to snuff,” Shakespeare told George. “There’s no need for him to be stopping to drink as often as he does. ”

  “He’s not fully recovered from what happened on the plains,” George said. “If he’s not careful he’ll have a relapse.”

  “Could be,” Shakespeare said, “and if he collapses out here with no one to tend him, he’s in big trouble.”

  Reverend Burke, inexplicably, had borne to the northeast once he left the pond, into dense forest of large fir and spruce. They followed the hoof tracks, passing under trees in which squirrels scooted about and birds sang. Periodically frightened rabbits would bound from their path in prodigious leaps.

  George twisted to see Nate. “Is it always like this, always so indescribably beautiful?”

  “Always,” Nate said.

  “I think I understand why you stay in these mountains instead of going back to civilization,” George said wistfully. “In the States there are a lot of people who believe men like McNair and you are crazy. Now I know better.”

  Nate gazed around and smiled. “It does grow on a man. I never planned on becoming a free trapper, but once I’d been out here a spell I knew I’d never be able to go back and live in the States again. Give me the wide open spaces and freedom over a crowded city and a hectic life any day.”

  The forest thinned out and they rode out onto a spacious meadow. They’d only gone a dozen yards when Shakespeare abruptly reined up and jumped down.

  “What is it?” George asked.

  “Your brother has company. Four Indians are following him now.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nate was promptly at Shakespeare’s side, bending low to read the spoor. Sure enough, he saw where four sets of hoof prints, all unshod horses, had come out of the woods and fallen into a line as they stalked Reverend Burke.

  “What kind of Indians are they?” George inquired, his anxiety as plain as the nose on his face.

  “Can’t tell from the tracks,” Nate replied. “They could be Bannocks who are just curious.”

  “Bannocks are friendly to whites?”

  “Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. All depends on their mood at the time,” Nate said, and when the younger Burke blanched he added as reassurance, “They have close ties with the Shoshones and some of their bands are just as friendly.”

  “What other tribes frequent this area?”

  Nate rested the stock of the Hawken on the ground. “Oh, the Crows, Arapahos, even the Cheyennes.”

  “Don’t forget the Blackfeet,” Shakespeare interjected.

  “But since they go about mostly on foot, these Indians are probably from one of the tribes you mentioned.”

  George gestured impatiently. “Let’s quit wasting time. My brother could be at death’s door as we speak.”

  “Don’t get yourself in an uproar,” Shakespeare cautioned, stepping to his mare. “Whoever these Indians are, they came on your brother’s trail quite a spell after he w
ent by. Their tracks are so fresh I’d guess they’re not more than half an hour ahead of us.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” George demanded, moving out ahead of them.

  “Uh-oh,” Shakespeare said softly as he swung up. “Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as earwax.” He urged the mare into a gallop.

  As before, Nate brought up the rear. He followed his companions and kept a constant eye on the surrounding hills. Miles to the west reared the first line of jagged peaks denoting the mountains proper, peaks glistening bright with snow. Miles to the east, but out of sight, lay the grass-carpeted prairie.

  He hoped the four Indians were Crows. Like the Shoshones and the Nez Percé , the Crows were invariably friendly to whites. There had been an incident a few years ago at a Rendezvous when a couple of thoughtless trappers had gotten an old Crow drunk. An irate band of young warriors had threatened to beat the fools within an inch of their lives, and had only been dissuaded by trappers they respected. The Crows hated the white man’s fool water, as they called distilled spirits of any kind. They believed that once a Crow drank liquor, he ceased to be a Crow and became a stupid animal. Trying to sell spirits to a Crow was as chancy as trying to feed raw meat to a panther.

  An hour and a half went by. From the evidence presented by the tracks, the Indians made no attempt to narrow the gap between them and Reverend Burke, who stuck to valley after valley.

  George pressed on ahead, able to follow the trail himself since the trampled grass and gouged earth was now so easy to read.

  As they were passing a bluff on their right, Shakespeare called sternly, “You can slow down, son. Wearing out our horses will only delay us.”

  “I’m not slowing down until my brother is safe.”

  Shakespeare moved up beside him. “I wasn’t asking you, George. As much as I share your concern, the horses come first. Do as I say or I’ll make you walk.”

  Nate had opened his mouth to agree with McNair when he happened to glance at the bluff and detected a glint of sunlight at the top. The distance, close to two hundred yards, prevented him from seeing the cause. But he dared not ignore it. “Keep acting normally and don’t look at the bluff,” he warned the others. “There’s someone up there.”