The weather cooperated. The fire started, and Tim added a few sticks. Next, he went back to Reno, still unconscious, perhaps dying, and grabbed the powder horn. He poured enough in the second entrance wound, the one closer to the side of the knee, reached over and grabbed a small burning stick, and without thinking or considering what he was doing, touched it to the powder.
He vomited at the stink and realization of what he had done, but kept working, wiping his mouth and rolling Reno over just enough so that he could work on the exit wounds made by the two arrows.
Twice more, he touched off the gunpowder. He wondered if Reno’s legs would look like the dead trapper’s face. The wounds looked ugly, and Tim remembered seeing a few old soldiers who had fought in the War of 1812. The ones with wooden legs. He wondered if a doctor would have to amputate Reno’s leg.
That caused him to laugh. Where would anyone find a doctor here?
Looking up, he saw the mountains, the trees, the river. All loomed around him, foreboding, massive, deadly. He was all alone, except for one mountain man who lay unconscious with burned legs and sweat coating his forehead, two dead Indians, and one dead white man. He looked over at the white man. What was his name? Murchison?
The small fire crackled, and Tim decided he might have need of it. To heat water. To cook. Maybe to seal those ugly wounds if they reopened. He found stones to make a fire ring and added a few larger sticks and limbs until it blazed well enough that it would not die down anytime soon. He kept finding fuel and depositing it in a pile near the fire.
He looked at the fire and frowned. The smoke was rising skyward. Reno had always said to keep the smoke to a minimum. No need in letting other men see you, warn them of your presence. Well, he could do nothing about the smoke, unless he put out the fire, and that, he would not do.
Again, he checked on Reno, who mumbled in some delirium about doctors and Kentucky and why his pa had never cared a whit about him.
Tim remembered the beaver scent and picked up the container. No, he told himself, use the whiskey first. There wasn’t much left, but he found a canteen and poured a splash or two inside the jug, which he swished around and slowly poured over the wounds in Reno’s leg. He added the last of the beaver scent and found the bandanna Reno had used.
That was filthy, blackened some by the gunpowder. Tim raced again to the pack mule and went through the packs until he discovered Reno’s possibles sack, where he uncovered a dingy pair of underdrawers. Not certain as to their cleanliness, he hurried across the grass until he reached the river. He soaked the garment, rubbed it against a rock, soaked it some more, his hands chilled by the surprisingly freezing water in the river.
A few minutes later, he had wrapped the undergarment around Reno’s leg wounds. The bandanna he picked up, washed it off with the remnants of what remained in the jug, and began dabbing at the sweat on Reno’s brow.
This he kept up, until at last, Reno seemed to be in a deep sleep, no longer fidgeting.
Tim made himself work. He didn’t want to move Jed Reno. He seemed huge, and Tim wasn’t sure if he could even drag him to some sort of shelter. Instead, he covered him with a robe, propped his head up by using the wolf skins as a pillow, and set about cleaning up the campground.
Moving the dead younger Indian was easy enough, as long as he did not look at the boy too much. He dragged him to the edge of the timbers and thought that maybe he should bury him. Yet he seemed to recall hearing that Indians buried their dead on platforms above the ground. That did not seem appropriate, but he would not disrespect the boy or the older Indian so he left him there, although he did fold the kid’s hands over his chest. He remembered seeing dead men and women in their caskets at wakes, and that seemed how it was done.
The other Indian was harder to move, but he managed it, laying him beside his companion.
Finally, Tim went to the dead white man, Murchison. Bracing one foot against the man’s rib cage and squeezing his eyes shut, Tim gripped the lance just beneath some feathers secured with sinew and jerked. The lance made a hideous noise as it pulled free of the ground and the dead man, and Tim flung it away as far as he could before he dared open his eyes.
Trying to keep his eyes off the dead man, Tim dragged him away, too. He started for the two Indians then stopped and looked at the dead braves. “No.” His voice surprised him. It did not sound like him at all. It seemed an older man’s voice, similar to how his pa had spoken.
Tim wiped his eyes and wet his lips. “No. Those Indians were brave.” Deciding that he did not like how he sounded, he fell quiet again and dragged the dead trapper with the blackened face and the ghastly hole between his ribcage and navel to the opposite end of the camp.
He was sweating by then, so he stopped and slaked his thirst from a canteen, although he didn’t know if his stomach, feeble as it felt, could even keep water down.
The dead horses he knew he could not move. That reminded him of his own stock. After a quick glance at Reno revealed the man still breathed, Tim went back to picket and hobble the horses and mules. The last thing he needed was to have those animals wander off and leave Jed Reno and him afoot.
That done, Tim returned to Reno’s noble, dead dun horse. His fingers and hands were raw by the time he had unfastened the hackamore and saddle. He returned to Reno and laid them in the sun, the blanket atop the saddle to dry, although they had not ridden far enough for the dun to work up much of a sweat.
He looked around. What next?
He shook his head at his stupidity. He should unsaddle his own horse. He started for the pinto but quickly stopped. “Idiot. The guns.”
He gathered all the weapons, but especially Reno’s rifles, which he loaded and leaned against the saddle for easy access. Keeping his two pistols in his belt, he returned to his horse and removed its saddle.
When he finally realized that he had done all he could around camp, he returned to Reno. The man seemed hotter, so he pulled back the robe and again bathed the mountain man’s forehead.
Around noon, he reached into the greasy sack he had taken from the dead raider back at South Pass, fingered out a handful of the goop Reno had called pemmican, and made himself eat it. It tasted faintly of berries, but mostly of grease, and maybe some kind of meat he could not identify and probably did not want to. He drank water, checked on the trapper, and picked up the rifle the Indian had carried. It was a Lancaster. That much he knew, for he had seen more than his share of those long rifles back in Danville.
Tim found a tree and used it for a backrest. For a few hours, he just sat, watching to the north and west, as that was the direction the two Piegan Indians and the little man with the blackened face had come from.
The birds chirped, and he even saw several elk grazing at the edge of the woods. He thought about chancing a shot, remembering just how good fresh meat tasted, but he also recalled Reno’s warnings about shooting off weapons. After all, that’s how the three now-dead men happened upon him and Reno. He had already eaten, the pemmican filling his stomach and not, to his surprise, upsetting it.
Satisfied that the three dead men had been traveling alone, he returned to Reno, who still slept, but no longer appeared to be sweating. As soon as he set the Lancaster on the saddle, Reno’s eyes fluttered.
Tim dropped next to him.
Reno mumbled something and looked up at Tim. At first, he did not seem to recognize him, but after several seconds, he ran his tongue along his lips and somehow croaked out, “Water.”
Lifting the trapper’s big head in his arms, Tim held a gourd to Reno’s lips. He drank till he coughed, and Tim strained to lift him up a little more, wondering if he should pat the mountain man’s back the way a mother did a baby. He did not have to.
Reno stopped coughing and muttered a raspy, “Thanks, boy.”
By the time Tim laid the man’s head back atop the makeshift pillow of wolf pelts, Reno was asleep again.
Tim put the back of his hand on Reno’s forehead. Earlier, he had found
the man burning up with fever. It was not what his mother used to call “cool to the touch,” but it did not feel like the fire.
That reminded him of the fire, which he stoked and added a few small limbs.
* * *
He did not remember falling asleep or even closing his eyes, but he woke with a start. The day had cooled, and the sun was sinking behind the mountains off to the west. They had wasted an entire day, but Tim knew there was nothing he could do about that. He thought about the dream he had been having, but the memory had been shattered when he awoke. He again felt Reno’s head—still cool—and looked at the wounds in his leg.
A lifetime ago—when the wagon train had been crawling past the Blue River and Mr. Dawson had accidentally buried an ax blade into his thigh—someone had mentioned gangrene, how it had killed many a man, and might kill Mr. Dawson. It stank. It probably had some color to it, too, but Tim did not recall that. He did remember that Mr. Dawson had survived, though he was still limping when the wagon train had left Tim’s family and the Scotts at South Pass.
He smelled the wounds, which stank of burned flesh and gunpowder and beaver glands. “I bet I looked like a fool,” he said, again surprised by the sound of his—or any—voice. Shaking his head, laughing at the scene he imagined of him smelling a man’s thigh, he stepped over Reno’s leg, picked up the Lancaster rifle, and walked back to the livestock. He led them to water one at a time, giving each a handful of grain, before double-checking tethers and hobbles.
When he returned to Reno, he ate and drank again, leaned back on the grass, and slept like a dead man for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 31
Patricia Scott woke up and sat up quickly, bringing her hands to her chest to tighten her chemise. She felt the rancid breath of the man staring at her, hovering over her. Yet, still not wide awake, still halfway in the pleasant dream she had been having, she whispered, “Tim . . . ?”
The animal before her chuckled. “Tim?” The breath stank. The voice mocked her.
Patricia stiffened. She knew who it was. She hated him.
Dog Ear Rounsavall came closer until she could see him so clearly in the light of the fires.
Quickly, she shot a glance at Margaret and Nancy Colter, both asleep a few yards away underneath a tree, and her mother, snoring slightly by one of the many small fires across the camp.
“They cannot help you, wench.” The hideous mountain man laughed. “Nor can”—Dog Ear Rounsavall sniggered—“Tim.” He spoke the name in a high-pitched voice, but quiet enough not to wake anyone nearby.
“But Jackatars can,” Patricia said.
Dog Ear Rounsavall’s smile vanished.
* * *
Patricia remembered the French renegade during the attack that seemed like a lifetime ago.
Hearing shots, whoops, horses, and screams, she leaped out of the back of the wagon. Tim’s mom was shouting at him. Then a big bear of a hideous man had slammed a tomahawk into poor Mrs. Colter’s head.
Tim’s sisters screamed. Patricia heard another shot. Arrows whistled overhead. Her father’s dog, Wilbur, whined, yelped, and fell silent. Several Indians—no, white men dressed like Indians—were throwing her mother back and forth, laughing as if it were some child’s game.
The hideous man sprinted toward her, letting out a yell that curdled her blood. She looked for Tim, but could not see him, and then ran. She ran as hard and as fast as she could. Through the woods, feeling limbs swat at her, brambles rip her chemise. It had been so hot that day, and she had wanted to put on something new, a clean dress—or relatively clean—so she might look halfway decent for Tim.
She ran from the laughing brute, a giant, a monster. The tomahawk flew over her head, slammed into a tree, burying the blade deep in the bark.
She screamed louder and tried to run faster, only she tripped over a root, went sprawling, and tumbled down a slight incline until a tree stopped her. It felt like she had busted a few ribs, but when she rolled onto her back, she understood that she had only had the wind knocked out of her. No ribs had been cracked. She was all right. But soon, she thought, she would be dead.
Or, she feared, worse.
Dog Ear Rounsavall dropped beside her. He licked his lips and tugged on the braids that hung to his ears, feathers dangling from the dark, coarse, ugly hair.
He laughed and quickly snatched a knife from a sheath on his left hip. He straightened slightly, running the blade along his thumb, then showing her the blood, which he licked.
Patricia felt she might vomit.
Suddenly, the man shifted the knife and brought it down.
She screamed and saw the knife tear between her legs, cutting the undergarment, pinning it to the earth. Patricia almost wet herself. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Please,” she begged, hating herself for being so weak.
The bearded man with the painted face just laughed again to mock her. Grinning, he pulled the knife up, but not completely free of the fabric. Slowly, in a move to torture her, the blackheart began pulling the knife back toward her, the blade ripping the homespun muslin all the way to the hem.
After he sheathed the knife, he wiped his bloody thumb on the fabric. “Now, you can ride a horse.”
The accent was French, a language Patricia had always found romantic, pleasant . . . until that moment. Nothing about the man was romantic or pleasant. He was horrible, terrifying.
Suddenly, he leaned forward, grabbed her right wrist, and yanked her against him and his bear-claw necklace. She slammed so hard against him, she came away stunned.
He cursed her in French, stood, still holding her wrist in his massive hand, and then he began squeezing so hard, she feared that the brute would crush her wrist, break every bone in her body, or maybe just rip the hand off her arm.
He jerked her to her feet, whirled, and strode through the woods, pulling her behind him. When she fell, he did not stop, just dragged her. The flesh on her legs was torn by rocks and pine cones and briars. She thought her arm would be pulled out of its shoulder socket. She felt she would die.
A thought chilled her. She wished she would die. Now. Quickly. The way Mrs. Colter had died.
Patricia heard no more gunshots or arrows whistling by, but laughter and the unholy sounds of wild men plundering through the chests, the sacks, and the grips the Colters and Scotts had packed. The ravagers littered the campsite with items they did not want. They smashed her mother’s fine China. They shattered the dreams of the Colters and Patricia’s own family.
A breath escaped her, for she saw several men in buckskins surrounding Margaret and Nancy Colter. She looked for Tim, but did not see him, and cried. Her mother stepped from behind a thin man with a small mustache who pushed her back, slapped her, and turned, smiling as Rounsavall dragged Patricia forward and slung her to the ground. She landed and rolled toward the circle of men surrounding her mother and her boyfriend’s two sisters.
Slowly, gasping for breath, praying for death, Patricia pushed herself up on her hands and knees.
The man with the small mustache spoke in a language Patricia had never heard. Dog Ear Rounsavall answered Louis Jackatars with a grunt.
Jackatars said something else, laughed, and took two steps toward Patricia. He grabbed her by her hair and pulled. She screamed. More tears flowed. Her mother shouted, cursed, and was slapped to her knees.
Patricia felt herself turned around. The man who held her was not as big as the brute who had dragged her back to the camp, but he was just as tough. Maybe tougher. “We ride.” He, too, spoke in a strange accent.
He let go of Patricia, and she fell to her knees. They would not kill them. At least, not yet.
She started to pray, and then she saw her father. He was dead. And he had been scalped.
Over the days of captivity, Patricia Scott had hardened. She had steeled herself. No longer did she pray for death. She prayed for God to smote the fiends who called themselves men . . . or for the Lord to give her the strength to kill them—every mis
erable one of them—herself.
Shaking off her memories, she told Dog Ear Rounsavall, “You won’t touch me.”
He laughed again. “Why not?” he asked, and added some mocking French phrase she did not care to hear.
“Because I’ve seen what Jackatars, that pig, has done to those who disobeyed him. And so did you.”
How many lifetimes in Hell had that been, when Jackatars had killed the two vermin who had attacked Patricia’s mother? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember the post at Fort Laramie. She couldn’t picture Independence. She had no idea what life had been like back in Danville, Pennsylvania. Sometimes, she could not even picture Tim Colter anymore.
Was he dead? Like her father. Like Tim’s parents. Like poor Wilbur, that sorry old dog who had loved her dad with all his heart.
It felt as if her life had begun when Jackatars’s fiends attacked the camp. When Dog Ear Rounsavall had caught up with her and ripped her undergarments with his razor-sharp knife.
There had been no life before that moment. And there was no future to look forward to.
Maybe she was in Hell.
She sat up, keeping the rock she had slept with hidden in her hand. David, she remembered vaguely, had killed a giant with a slingshot. Dog Ear Rounsavall was a giant. Tim Colter had once had a slingshot. She had watched one of the brutes find it, and smash it to bits back at the camp. She figured she did not need one. She would just stove in Goliath’s head with the sharp stone she held.
She looked the cur in the eyes.
Dog Ear Rounsavall grinned. “Jackatars can wait. He won’t live forever. Neither will you.”
Of course, Patricia Scott knew she would not live forever. She might not live another week . . . or even through the night.
Traveling across some of the roughest, wildest country she had ever seen had played hell on every muscle in her body. Her backside was raw, and the inside of her thighs chaffed.
Louis Jackatars and Dog Ear Rounsavall treated their captives cruelly, brutally. Oh, those evil men had not forced themselves, or tried to, on the prisoners—at least not since Jackatars had killed the two men who had disobeyed his orders back in the flat country near the Red Desert . . . a lifetime ago.
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