“All right. If you don’t want to cooperate, I won’t force you. But we have to palaver a bit before I cut out.”
“Palaver?” the hefty one repeated.
“We need to have a talk,” Nate translated, making a mental note to refrain from speaking mountain-man lingo when in the company of greenhorns. His whole vocabulary had changed remarkably since he departed New York City, and he now unconsciously spoke “mountainee jargon,” as a trader at a Rendezvous had once referred to the trapper way of talking, as a matter of course. It was interesting, he mused, how a person adapted to new ways so completely that those who knew him in former times wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him again.
“Talk about what?” Brian demanded.
“You two,” Nate said. “Why are you trying to get yourselves killed?”
“You’re crazy,” the hefty one said.
“No, you are for building your fire near the top of South Pass, right out in the open where every Blackfoot within ten miles can see it. Or do you want a war party to pay you a visit come daylight?”
Brian glanced at the crackling flames, then out over the surrounding countryside. “We liked the view,” he said softly.
“So do I, but it’s not worth dying over,” Nate said. “If you’re smart, once I’m gone you’ll move your camp down into the trees. And from now on don’t camp out in the open like this.”
He studied them for a minute. “I don’t know what you two are doing here and it’s not my rightful place to meddle. But unless you have a damn good reason, you should head for Fort Leavenworth or Independence or some other settlement just as fast as your horses will take you. Unless, of course, you’re going to the Oregon Territory.”
“Only part of the way—” the hefty one said, but his friend slapped his arm.
“Damn it, Pudge! Keep your mouth closed!” Brian snapped. “We don’t know anything about this man. How do we know we can trust him?”
Nate was becoming annoyed. “I don’t care if you trust me or not. I’m just trying to help you live a little longer.” He lowered the rifle and crossed his legs. Since they wouldn’t confide in him, maybe he could convince them to ride with the Banner party. He suspected there was some link between them and the settlers anyway, and this way he’d be able to keep an eye on them at all times and perhaps learn what they were up to. “At first I figured you might be cutthroats out to steal from a party I’m guiding to Fort Hall, but now I doubt whether the two of you could steal candy from a baby.”
Brian’s lips became thin lines.
“Face facts. Neither of you know much about the wilderness. You won’t last a week in these mountains on your own. So here’s an idea for you to consider. Why not join up with the group I’m guiding? There’s safety in numbers, and you’d be treated to some fine home cooking every night.”
“No,” Brian said.
“Why not?”
“No.”
“Some extra company on the trail is always welcome. What if one of you has an accident?”
“No.”
“Brian, please,” the one nicknamed Pudge said. “He has a good point. I would feel safer with them.”
“Do you really think he’d let us ride along?” Brian countered.
“Who?” Nate asked.
“No one,” Brian said sullenly.
“What’s your connection to this group I’m with?” Nate probed. “Why are you following them?”
“None of your damn business. Now go away and leave us alone.”
Nate recognized a hopeless cause when he confronted one. Pushing to his feet, he cradled the Hawken and thoughtfully regarded the pair. He doubted whether either of them posed a threat to anyone under his care, but he wasn’t about to take unnecessary chances. “Since you won’t be neighborly, I’m going to lay down the law. I don’t want to catch either of you skulking about the people I’m with or I’m liable to shoot first and ask what you were doing later. If you want to pay us a visit, ride right up in the open where I can see you.”
“You have no right ordering us around,” Brian said.
“I reckon I am rubbing folks the wrong way lately, but it can’t be helped. I have seven lives to think of.” Nate nodded at each of them and walked off. “Don’t forget about moving your camp,” he said over his shoulder.
Neither of them uttered a word. Brian glared angrily, his fists clenched. Pudge appeared extremely upset, and if his expression was any indication he didn’t want Nate to go.
Once Nate was back in the saddle, he glanced at the pair and saw them energetically preparing to relocate. A jab of his heels started the stallion westward. He pondered the incident as he rode, trying to make sense out of what they had said. There was little to go on. Apparently, though, Brian had a grievance against one of the emigrants. It would have been easy to force the young man to talk, but Nate balked at resorting to violence unless there was a clear and present danger to those under his care.
His best hope lay in mentioning the names of the pair to the pilgrims. The one who knew them might then provide whatever background there was to the affair. Resting the Hawken across his saddle, he rode at a leisurely pace until he came within a mile of the valley. It was then he saw the grizzly.
An immense black shape materialized to the southeast, moving northward. Nate reined up, his scalp prickling, and recognized the bear by its enormous outline and its distinctive shuffling gait. The monster was seventy feet away, at the very limit of his vision in the moonless gloom. Since the wind was blowing from the grizzly to him, it had not yet registered his scent. But the beast must have heard the stallion, so it might charge at an instant’s notice.
He fingered the rifle, his eyes glued to the hulking form. Grizzlies were even more unpredictable than buffalo. Primarily nocturnal, they would attack anything that moved if they were hungry enough. And they were exceedingly hard to kill. He’d heard of a case where a grizzly had been shot twelve times, including balls in the head and lungs, yet still it kept coming.
Perhaps because he had ranged so far and wide over the plains and the mountains, it had been his misfortune to run up against more grizzlies than most mountaineers. So far he had always prevailed, but each time he’d barely escaped with his life. Trappers and Indians alike gave grizzlies wide berths, with ample cause.
Measuring over eight feet in length and standing four and a half feet high at the shoulders, grizzlies often weighed upwards of fifteen hundred pounds. They were veritable behemoths, capable of slashing a man to ribbons with a single swipe of one of their huge forepaws. The mighty bears were, in every respect, the lords of their vast domain.
Nate’s mouth went dry, his palms became damp, as he watched the bear pass in front of him and continue on. Thankfully, Pegasus stood stock still, not so much as a nostril flaring. The stallion instinctively sensed they were in great danger. Since grizzlies were capable of loping as fast as a horse over short distances, there was no guarantee Pegasus’s speed would enable them to escape.
Nate heard the bear grunt a few times. Its ponderous head was close to the ground, perhaps following a scent. When the gigantic shape finally disappeared in the murk, he waited a full minute before goading the stallion forward. A quarter of a mile was covered at a gallop, then he slowed and looked back. There was no trace of pursuit. Nor did he see the campfire on South Pass. Brian and Pudge had done as he’d bid them.
Relaxing, smiling, Nate rode into the valley, passing through the trees and out into the open. The white canvas covering the wagons was a stark contrast to the inky night, and he made a beeline toward them.
Two hundred yards from the camp, Pegasus suddenly halted and gazed to the northwest. Mystified, Nate looked but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He lifted the reins, and was set to lash the stallion when he heard a low whinny. Squinting, he made out the forms of a number of horses heading northwest, and he immediately assumed some of the animals belonging to the pilgrims had strayed off.
Thinking he should catch them before they went too fa
r, Nate angled to intercept the half dozen or so he could see. But he went just a few yards when he spied several figures walking with the horses. Puzzled, he stopped, wondering where Banner and the others could be taking the stock at that time of night. The answer, courtesy of a whispered string of words wafted on the wind, filled him with consternation.
One of those men had spoken in an Indian tongue!
The language was unfamiliar, so the Indians weren’t Shoshones, Crows, Nez Percé, Flatheads, or Cheyennes. They might well be Blackfeet, in which case the odds of any of the settlers being alive were slim. But if there had been a fight, why hadn’t he heard gunshots? Or had the raiders taken the whites completely by surprise and slit the throats of all the men before a single rifle could be brought to bear?
Nate hesitated, tempted to go after the stock but worried about the pilgrims. Dismounting, he took the reins in his left hand and hurried toward the freight wagons. The fire had long since gone out. Now only the embers glowed dully. He halted twenty feet out to study the situation.
From inside the lead wagon rumbled the sound of someone sawing logs. So at least one of them was still breathing. Nate let the reins dangle and padded closer. The wagons were all intact and there were no bodies lying scattered about. He was almost to the Banner wagon when he spotted what appeared to be a slender log to one side. But he knew better. In two strides he was kneeling beside the limp body of Harry Nesmith. A hand to the man’s throat revealed a slight pulse, and a swift examination showed a nasty bump and a small amount of warm blood on the back of Nesmith’s head. One of the Indians must have snuck up on Nesmith and used a war club or a tomahawk to knock him out.
Nate swiveled, debating whether to awaken the rest of the emigrants or to go after the stolen horses. The Indians were still close enough to hear the commotion the pilgrims were bound to make if he roused them, and he doubted whether any of the party would be much help in a running battle. It would be wiser, then, to try and recover the stock alone before the Indians got much farther away.
He rose and stepped to Pegasus. Scores of yards off, nearly to the forest, were the thieves and the horses. Swinging up, he bent down to gather the reins in his hand. Unexpectedly, the stallion shied.
Onrushing footsteps pounded on the earth.
Nate swept upright, twisting in the direction of the noise, toward the wagons, and he was just in time to see a lone warrior hurtle at him from out of the darkness. His thumb was curling around the hammer when the warrior leaped with arms outspread, and before he could fire the Indian slammed into him.
They both went down.
Chapter Four
The impact of the warrior’s heavy body knocked the Hawken from Nate’s fingers. He fell backwards, the Indian on top, a hand clawing at his throat. The dull glint of steel told him what the warrior’s other hand was doing, and he barely got his arm up in time to deflect a vicious swipe that would have sliced his throat wide open.
Nate hit hard on his shoulders and rolled, heaving the warrior from him as he did. In a twinkling he was in a crouch and drawing his butcher knife. The Indian lunged and swung but Nate skipped aside and countered. He missed. They silently circled one another. The warrior feinted but Nate didn’t take the bait.
Uppermost in Nate’s mind was concern that another brave would come at him from behind while he was preoccupied with the man in front of him. It was hard to tell, but he believed the warrior was a Blood or a Piegan, the two tribes allied with the Blackfeet. All three were devoted to the extermination of all whites, so using sign language to try and convince his attacker that he was friendly would be a waste of time and would only get him killed.
The warrior closed and swung again. Nate darted to the right. He felt the man’s knife nick his buckskins, and he thrust out, his blade biting into the warrior’s side but not going deep. The Indian promptly moved back and hissed like an enraged rattler.
Nate knew the warrior was deliberately holding him at bay long enough for the other Indians to reach cover with the stolen horses. But he must get after them before they got to the trees. Since stealth and silence no longer mattered, he streaked his left hand to the left flintlock. His fingers were wrapping around the pistol when a shrill scream pierced the night.
The Indian involuntarily glanced at the wagons.
In that instant Nate pointed the flintlock and fired, the heavy-caliber gun booming and bucking. Hit squarely in the chest, the warrior was flung onto the ground. Nate didn’t linger to confirm the kill. He dashed to Pegasus, wedging the pistol under his belt as he ran, and bellowed, “Indians! They’re stealing the stock! Get up and grab your guns!”
The Hawken was lying at the stallion’s feet. In a twinkling Nate scooped the rifle up. He swung into the saddle, turned Pegasus to the northwest, and galloped toward the trees. The horses were still in sight, but it was doubtful he could get there before the woods closed around them. Two Indians, one on either side of the stolen animals, were urging the horses on, yipping and yelling now that they knew they had been discovered.
Nate took a chance. He tucked the Hawken to his shoulder and sighted on the center of the Indian on the right. It was the best he could do given the range and the gloom, and he mentally crossed his fingers when he squeezed the trigger. For a second the cloud of gunsmoke obscured the target; then Pegasus swept him onward and he saw the Indian prone on the ground.
The other warrior, the only one to be seen, had broken and was in full flight for the forest.
Without anyone to prod them on, the stolen horses came to a stop. Nate reloaded the Hawken, spilling some of the black powder before he poured enough down the barrel, and had the rifle cocked when he rode up to the one he had shot. A dark stain on the man’s chest showed him where the ball had struck. The Indian’s eyes were locked wide in death.
Circling around in front of the horses, Nate hunched low over his stallion’s neck in case the lone survivor entertained the notion of taking revenge. Nothing moved in the forest. Speaking softly, he got the stock turned around and headed back toward the wagons, where a lantern had been lit and the emigrants were talking in loud, excited tones.
A few things were cleared up to his satisfaction. Now he knew why the Indians had not bothered to go after the sleeping pilgrims in the wagons. There had only been three warriors. Rather than risk someone sounding the alarm and having to face possibly superior numbers and the accurate guns of the white man, the three Indians had concentrated on getting away scot-free with the horses. One of them must have spotted him approaching and snuck up on him.
But not all his questions were answered. Why had there only been three hostiles? The only logical reason upset him tremendously for it meant the Banner party was now in dire peril. But it could have been worse. If he had not returned when he did, the whole bunch would now be stranded and without any hope of getting away.
“Look!” someone shouted. It sounded like Neil Webster.
“It’s Mr. King!” This from Alice Banner.
Nate rode up and dismounted. Half of them were clustered around Harry Nesmith, the rest around the slain warrior. “Neil, I want you to take these horses and tie them good and proper to the wagons. We can’t afford to lose a single one.”
Webster opened his mouth as if to object, then thought better of the idea. “Whatever you say.”
Simon Banner, who was on one knee beside the dead Indian and had a lantern upraised in his right hand, looked up. “Is this heathen a Blackfoot?”
“No,” Nate said, going over to examine the body. The long hair parted in the middle and swept back at the front, the fringed buckskin shirt painted with symbols, and the style of moccasins confirmed his earlier hunch. “He was a Piegan.”
“A what?”
“The Piegans and another tribe called the Bloods are close friends of the Blackfeet. Between them they pretty much control all the land between the upper Missouri and Saskatchewan Rivers.”
Simon sighed in relief. “Thank goodness it wasn’t the Blac
kfeet who hit us. None of us would be alive.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” Nate said. “The Piegans and the Bloods are every bit as fierce as the Blackfeet. We’re in for the fight of our lives after the one that got away tells the rest and they come after us.”
Banner stood. “The rest?”
“We’re nowhere near Piegan territory, which means there must be a war party in the area. These three were part of it. They were probably out scouting around when they saw our camp and they couldn’t resist trying to steal our horses.”
“How large do you think the war party is?”
“I’ve never known one to have less than ten warriors,” Nate replied, gazing at Harry Nesmith. Eleanor, Harry’s wife, was applying a damp cloth to his head and he was slowly reviving. The man was either incredibly lucky or had a skull as hard as granite. “Most have more. The biggest Blackfoot war party I ever heard tell of had sixty-nine.”
Alice Banner, standing beside her husband, swallowed and fearfully stared at the woodland to the north. “Dear Lord! If there’s that many we’ll all be killed!”
“Not if I can help it,” Nate assured her. He stepped nearer to Eleanor. “How is Harry?”
“He’ll live, thank God,” she answered, never taking her eyes off her husband. “The dirty cowards hit him from behind! They’re worse than animals.”
“They do what they have to,” Nate said. He saw Libbie next to the wagons, a red shawl draped over her slim shoulders, her features downcast, and went over to offer an encouraging smile. “Are you all right?”
“Just dandy, Mr. King. I heard what you told my pa. How soon before the savages get here?”
“It all depends on how far their camp is from ours. I figure they’ll come after us at first light, so they could show up at any time after that.”
“Good.”
Nate, surprised by the vehement bitterness in her voice, gazed into her eyes. What he saw there shocked him. “How can you be glad? If we get away with our scalps intact it will be a miracle.”
Wilderness: Northwest Passage/Apache Blood (A Wilderness Double Western #6) Page 4
