Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  When Standing Rock returned there later, he saw no sign of Blue Bull. A couple of hours passed, and Blue Bull still didn’t show up. Growing worried that something might have happened to his friend, Standing Rock went to look for him.

  This part of the country was peaceful for the most part, but a man alone who ran into a mountain lion or a bear might be in for trouble. Also, ravines cut across the landscape in places, and if a pony shied at the wrong time, its rider could be tossed off and fall into one of those deep, rugged gullies.

  “You were unable to find him?” Two Bears asked when his son-in-law paused in the story.

  “The antelope tracks led into a narrow canyon, and so did Blue Bull’s,” Standing Rock replied. “The ground was rocky, and I lost the trail.”

  The young warrior wore a surly expression. Preacher figured that he didn’t like admitting failure. Standing Rock was a proud man. You could tell that just by looking at him.

  But he was genuinely worried about his friend, too. He proved that by saying, “I came back to get more men, so we can search for him. He may be hurt.”

  Two Bears nodded and got to his feet.

  “Gather a dozen men,” he ordered crisply. “We will ride in search of Blue Bull while there is still light.”

  Preacher stood up, too, and said, “I’ll come with you.”

  “This is a matter for the Assiniboine,” Standing Rock said, his voice stiff with dislike. Preacher didn’t understand it, but the young fella definitely hadn’t taken a shine to him. Just the opposite, in fact.

  “Preacher is a friend to the Assiniboine and has been for more years than you have been walking this earth, Standing Rock,” Two Bears snapped. “I would not ask him to involve himself in our trouble, but if he wishes to, I will not deny him.”

  “I just want to lend a hand if I can,” Preacher said as he looked at Standing Rock. He didn’t really care if the young man liked him or not. His friendship for Two Bears and for Two Bears’s people was the only things that really mattered to him here.

  Standing Rock didn’t say anything else. He just stared back coldly at Preacher for a second, then turned and left the lodge to gather the search party as Two Bears had told him to.

  The chief looked at Preacher and said, “The hot blood of young men sometimes overpowers what should be the coolness of their thoughts.”

  “That’s fine with me, old friend. Like I said, I just want to help.”

  As they left the lodge, Preacher pointed to the big cur that had come with him to the village and went on, “Dog there is about as good a tracker as you’re ever gonna find. When we get to the spot where Standin’ Rock lost the trail, if you’ve got something that belonged to Blue Bull we can give Dog the scent and he’s liable to lead us right to him.”

  Two Bears nodded.

  “I will speak to Blue Bull’s wife and make sure we take something of his with us.”

  Several of the warriors were getting ready to ride. That didn’t take much preparation, considering that all they had to do was throw blankets over their ponies’ backs and rig rope halters. Preacher had planned to spend a few days in the Assiniboine village, but he hadn’t unsaddled Horse yet so the stallion was ready to go as well.

  The news of Blue Bull’s disappearance had gotten around the village. A lot of people were standing nearby with worried looks on their faces as the members of the search party mounted up. Two Bears went over to talk to one of the women, who hurried off to a lodge and came back with a buckskin shirt. She was Blue Bull’s wife, Preacher figured, and the garment belonged to the missing warrior.

  Two Bears swung up onto his pony with the lithe ease of a man considerably younger than he really was. He gave a curt nod, and the search party set out from the village with the chief, Standing Rock, and Preacher in the lead.

  Standing Rock pointed out the route for them, and they lost no time in riding into the hills where the two warriors had been hunting. Preacher glanced at the sky and saw that they had about three hours of daylight left. He hoped that would be enough time to find Blue Bull.

  Of course, it was possible that nothing bad had happened to Blue Bull at all, Preacher reflected. The warrior could have gotten carried away in pursuit of the antelope and lost track of the time. They might even run into him on his way back to the village. If that happened, Preacher would be glad that everything had turned out well.

  Something was stirring in his guts, though, some instinctive warning that told him they might not be so lucky. Over the years Preacher had learned to trust those hunches. At this point, he wasn’t going to say anything to Two Bears, Standing Rock, or the other Assiniboine, but he had a bad feeling about this search for Blue Bull.

  Standing Rock pointed out the tracks of the antelope herd when the search party reached them.

  “You can see they lead higher into the hills,” he said. “Blue Bull followed them while I went to the north. He wanted to bring one of the antelope back to the village.”

  “Why did you not go with him?” Two Bears asked. “Why did you go north?”

  Standing Rock looked sullen again as he replied, “I know a valley up there where the antelope like to graze. I thought they might circle back to it.”

  Two Bears just nodded, but Preacher knew that his old friend was just as aware as he was of what had really happened here. Standing Rock had thought he could beat Blue Bull to the antelope by going a different way. Such rivalry was not uncommon among friends.

  “Did you see the antelope?” Two Bears asked.

  Standing Rock shook his head.

  “No. My thought proved to be wrong.”

  Two Bears’s silence in response was as meaningful and damning as anything he could have said. Standing Rock angrily jerked his pony into motion and trotted away, following the same path as the antelope had earlier.

  Preacher, Two Bears, and the rest of the search party went the same way at a slower pace. Quietly, Two Bears said, “If anything happened to Blue Bull, Standing Rock will believe that it was his fault for not going with his friend.”

  “He wants to impress you, don’t he?” Preacher said. “Must not be easy, bein’ married to the chief’s daughter.”

  “He is a good warrior, but he does not always know that.”

  Preacher nodded in understanding. He had always possessed confidence in himself and his abilities, and he had learned not to second-guess the decisions he made. But he had seen doubts consume other men from the inside until there was nothing left of them but empty shells.

  Eventually Standing Rock settled down a little and slowed enough for the rest of the search party to catch up to him. The antelope herd had followed a twisting path into the hills, and so had Blue Bull as he trailed them. Preacher had no trouble picking out the unshod hoofprints of the warrior’s pony.

  The slopes became steeper, the landscape more rugged. In the distance, the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains loomed, starkly beautiful in the light from the lowering sun. They were dozens of miles away, even though they looked almost close enough to reach out and touch. Preacher knew that Blue Bull’s trail wouldn’t lead that far.

  The tracks brought them to a long, jagged ridge that was split by a canyon cutting through it. Standing Rock reined his pony to a halt and pointed to the opening.

  “That is where Blue Bull went,” he said. “The tracks vanished on the rocks inside the canyon.”

  “Did you follow it to the other end?” Two Bears asked.

  “I did. But the tracks of Blue Bull’s pony did not come out.”

  “A man cannot go into a place and not come out of it, one way or another.”

  Standing Rock looked a little offended at Two Bears for pointing that out, thought Preacher, but he wasn’t going to say anything. For one thing, Two Bears was the chief, and for another, he was Standing Rock’s father-in-law.

  “Let’s have a look,” Preacher suggested. “We can give Dog a whiff of Blue Bull’s shirt. He ought to be able to tell us where the fella went
.”

  The big cur had bounded along happily beside Preacher and Horse during the search. He still had the exuberance of youth, dashing off several times to chase after small animals.

  They rode on to the canyon entrance, where they stopped to peer at the ground. The surface had already gotten quite rocky, so the tracks weren’t as easy to see as they had been. But Preacher noticed something immediately.

  “Some of those antelope tracks are headed back out of the canyon,” he said to Two Bears. “The critters went in there, then turned around and came out. They were in a hurry, too. Something must’ve spooked ’em.”

  Standing Rock said, “There are many antelope in these hills. Perhaps the tracks going the other direction were made at another time.”

  Preacher swung down from the saddle and knelt to take a closer look at the hoofprints. After a moment of study, he shook his head.

  “They look the same to me,” he said. “I think they were all made today, comin’ and goin’.”

  He knew that wasn’t going to make Standing Rock like him any better, but he was going to tell things the way he saw them to Two Bears. He had always been honest with his old friend and saw no need to change that policy now.

  “What about the tracks of Blue Bull’s pony?” Two Bears asked.

  “He went on into the canyon,” Preacher said. “Can’t see that he came back out, so I agree with Standin’ Rock on that. The way it looks to me, Blue Bull followed those antelope here and rode up in time to see ’em come boltin’ back out. He was curious and wanted to see what stampeded ’em like that. So he rode in to find out.”

  “It must have been a bear,” Standing Rock said. “Blue Bull would not have been so foolish.”

  “Blue Bull has always been curious,” Two Bears said. “I can imagine him doing as Preacher has said.” He looked at the mountain man. “As you would say, old friend, there is one way to find out.”

  “Yep,” Preacher agreed. “Let Dog have Blue Bull’s scent. If there’s anybody who can lead us right to him, it’s that big, shaggy varmint.”

  Chapter Three

  Two Bears took out the shirt Blue Bull’s wife had given him from the pouch where he had put it and handed it to Preacher. Preacher called Dog to him, knelt beside the big cur, and let Dog get a good whiff of the shirt.

  “Find the fella who wore this,” Preacher said. “Find him!”

  Dog ran into the canyon, pausing about fifty yards in to look back at Preacher, and then resuming the hunt.

  Preacher swung up onto Horse’s back and nodded to Two Bears.

  “He’s got the scent. All we have to do is follow him.”

  They rode into the canyon, moving fairly rapidly to keep up with Dog. Now that they were relying on Dog’s sense of smell rather than trying to follow tracks, they could set a slightly faster pace.

  The canyon was about fifty yards wide, with rocky walls that were too steep for a horse to climb, although a man might be able to. Although there were places, Preacher noted, where the walls had collapsed partially and horses might be able to pick their way up and down as long as they were careful.

  Preacher frowned slightly as he spotted a shiny place on a flat rock. The mark was small, barely noticeable. Preacher knew that the most likely explanation for it was that a shod hoof had nicked the rock in the fairly recent past. Blue Bull, like the rest of the Assiniboine, would have been riding an unshod pony when he came through here.

  So another rider, most likely a white man, had been in the canyon recently. Preacher couldn’t be sure it was today, but the evidence pointed in that direction. The antelope herd had started through the canyon, only to encounter a man on horseback. That had startled the animals into bolting back the way they had come from.

  Then, Blue Bull’s curiosity aroused by the behavior of the antelope, the Assiniboine warrior had ridden into the canyon as well, and . . .

  Preacher couldn’t finish that thought. He had no way of knowing what had happened then. Blue Bull could have run into the same hombre. There might have even been more than one man riding through the canyon.

  This was Indian land, maybe not by treaty but by tradition, and the ranchers in the area had always respected that because of the long history of peace between the whites and the Assiniboine. They had never stopped white men from crossing their hunting grounds, as long as everyone treated each other with respect. It was possible some cattle had strayed up here from one of the ranches, and cowboys from that spread had come to look for the missing stock.

  However, that bad feeling still lurked in Preacher’s gut. It grew even stronger when he saw Dog veer toward a cluster of rocks at the base of one of those caved-in places along the canyon’s left-hand wall. There was no hesitation about the big cur’s movements. He went straight to the rocks and started nosing around and pawing at them.

  “Your animal has lost the scent,” Standing Rock said. “There is nothing there.”

  “We better take a closer look,” Preacher said. He glanced over at Two Bears, who nodded. The chief’s face was set in grim lines, and Preacher knew that his old friend had a bad feeling about this situation, too.

  The search party rode over to the side of the canyon. Nothing was visible except a pile of loose, broken rocks, some of them pretty big, but the way Dog continued to paw at the stones told Preacher most of what he needed to know.

  “Move those rocks,” Two Bears ordered.

  “But—” Standing Rock began. He fell silent when Two Bears gave him a hard look. Scowling, Standing Rock dismounted. He went to the rocks and started lifting them and tossing them aside. Several other warriors got down from their ponies and moved to help him.

  They hadn’t been working for very long before Standing Rock suddenly let out a startled exclamation and stepped back sharply as if he had just uncovered a rattlesnake.

  Preacher leaned forward in the saddle to peer into the jumble of stone. He had a pretty good idea it wasn’t a snake that Standing Rock had come across.

  It was a foot.

  Visible from the ankle down, the foot had a moccasin on it. The rest of the leg to which it was attached was hidden under the rocks.

  The other warriors had recoiled from the grim discovery as well. Curtly, Two Bears ordered them to get back to moving the rocks. They did so with obvious reluctance.

  Everybody knew what they were going to find. It didn’t take long to uncover the rest of the body. It belonged to a young Assiniboine warrior. The rock slide that had covered him up had done quite a bit of damage to his features, but he was still recognizable. Standing Rock said in a voice choked with emotion, “It is Blue Bull.”

  “He must have been standing here when those rocks fell on him and killed him,” one of the other men said.

  “Why did he not get out of the way?” another man wanted to know.

  “There must not have been time,” Standing Rock said. “My . . . my friend . . .”

  Deep creases appeared in Preacher’s forehead as the mountain man frowned. He said to Two Bears, “Somethin’ ain’t right here. You mind if I take a closer look?”

  “Go ahead,” the chief said with a nod.

  Preacher dismounted and approached the dead man. Standing Rock turned to face him. The warrior’s stubborn expression made it clear he didn’t want Preacher disturbing his friend’s body. Like all the other tribes, the Assiniboine had their own rituals and customs for dealing with death.

  “Standing Rock,” Two Bears said. “Step aside.”

  “I won’t do anything to dishonor Blue Bull,” Preacher said to Standing Rock. “It’s just that I don’t think this is what it seems to be. Look at how he’s layin’ on his back with his head toward the wall and his feet toward the middle of the canyon.”

  “That means nothing,” Standing Rock snapped.

  “I think it does,” Preacher said. “Let’s say he came over here and was standin’ facin’ the wall for some reason. When those rocks came down on top of him, likely they would’ve knocked hi
m facedown. If he heard the rocks start to fall and turned to try to run, not only would he be facedown, his head would be pointed toward the middle of the canyon.”

  “You cannot be sure about these things,” Standing Rock insisted.

  “Maybe not, but I think there’s a pretty good chance I’m right. What it really looks like is that somebody dragged Blue Bull over here, then climbed up the canyon wall to start the rock slide that covered up his body.”

  Two Bears said, “He would have had to be unconscious or dead for that to happen.”

  Preacher nodded.

  “Yep, more than likely. Maybe we can tell, if you let me take a good look at the body.”

  “He was my friend,” Standing Rock said. “Stand back. I will do it.”

  “Sure,” Preacher said. He moved one step back, but that was as far as he went. He wanted to be able to see whatever Standing Rock found.

  Standing Rock knelt beside his dead friend and looked him over from head to toe.

  “There are no injuries except the ones the rocks made when they fell on him,” Standing Rock announced.

  “Turn him over,” Preacher suggested.

  Standing Rock sent a hostile glance at the mountain man, but he did as Preacher said and gently took hold of Blue Bull’s shoulders. Carefully, he rolled the body onto its left side.

  A sharp breath hissed between Standing Rock’s clenched teeth. Preacher saw what had prompted the young warrior’s reaction.

  A bloodstain had spread on the back of Blue Bull’s shirt, just to the left of the middle of his back. In the middle of that bloodstain was a small tear in the buckskin.

  “A knife did that,” Preacher said. “Somebody stabbed him in the back, probably out in the middle of the canyon, and then tried to hide the body.”

  Two Bears said, “That would mean . . .”

  “Yep,” Preacher said. “This was no accident. Blue Bull was murdered.”

  The big man paced back and forth angrily. Despite his size, his movements had a certain dangerous, catlike quality to them. His hat was thumbed back over his blocky, rough-hewn face.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You didn’t have any choice but to kill the Indian.”