Smoke was rising from the cabin’s chimney when Nate reined up at the corral. The wound the bay had suffered wasn’t deep and would keep awhile. He’d get to it as soon as he checked on Kendall. Hurrying around the corner, he saw his son emerge with a bucket in hand. “How’s Scott?”
Zach was on his second trip to the lake. “Pa!” he exclaimed, glad to see his father unharmed. “You shook the griz!”
“It took some doing,” Nate said.
“Mr. Kendall is in a bad way. He had convulsions a while ago, but Ma got him quieted down. Now she’s boiling water and wants more.”
“Then off you go.”
Nate stepped indoors and was immediately buffeted by a wave of heat. Evelyn was adding a log to the crackling fire. His wife was beside the bed, applying a damp cloth to Scott Kendall’s flushed face. “How bad is he?”
“Husband!” Winona was overjoyed, but she didn’t rush into his arms as other women would have done. Her expression conveyed the depth of her love as eloquently as any hug. “I have gotten some herbs into him, but if he lasts another day it will be what you whites call a miracle.”
From the fireplace rose a shriek of pure delight. “Pa! You’re all right!” Evelyn flew at her father and leaped into his arms, squeezing him in glee. “Zach and Lou told us about the bear.”
“Where’s Louisa?”
Winona looked up. “I sent her after some of the yellow flowers that help reduce fever. She will not be back for a while yet.”
“What can I do?” Nate offered.
“Help me get Scott’s buckskins and moccasins off. Then we need to bathe him often to keep his temperature down”
For the next half an hour Nate was so busy he gave little thought to the question uppermost in his mind. Zach returned, filled the sink, and went for a third bucketful, Evelyn tagging along. All that could be done for their friend had been done, and as Nate wrung out the cloth, Winona stretched and gave voice to what puzzled him the most.
“Why did Scott try to come over the south ridge? He knows how treacherous it is. What could he have been thinking?”
“He had to be in a great hurry to reach us, so great he figured the risk worth it” was the only conclusion Nate could come to.
“Which has me worried, husband. There is only one reason he would be so reckless. Scott is not the kind to take needless chances.”
No, he isn't, Nate mused, and realized what he had to do. “As soon as Lou gets back, I’m leaving for the Kendall place to check on Lisa and Vail Marie. Will you be all right here while I’m gone?”
Winona gave him a quizzical look. “Need you ask?” Nate chuckled. Indian women in general, and his wife in particular, never needed coddling. They were as self-reliant as any man and resented being treated as inferior. His wife had made that plain shortly after their marriage began. For the first few weeks he had pampered Winona silly, acting as if she were the Queen of Sheba. Then one evening after supper she had reached across the table, clasped his hands in hers, and bluntly asked, “Why do you treat me like a child, my husband?”
Nate had been so shocked, he’d sat there speechless.
“You insist on going everywhere with me. You won’t let me ride alone. You even guard me when I go to the lake. In the cabin you always hover over me, like a sparrow over its young. You are always underfoot, doing things when I have not asked you. If I lick my lips, you bring me a glass of water. If I comment I am hungry, you leap to bring me pemmican. Why do you do all this?”
“I love you,” Nate had blurted.
“And I love you. But this is not love. This is smothering. You upset me, husband, by not letting me do things on my own. I am a grown woman. I can take care of myself. And I take great pride in being able to do so. In not being a burden on you. Do you understand?”
At the time Nate hadn’t, but he’d mumbled that he did and from then on he’d tried his best not to “smother” her. At length he came to see what she meant, and admired her all the more for being so self-sufficient. It was a source of unending pride that so independent a woman had chosen to give her heart to him because she rated him worthy of her affection.
So now, giving Winona a kiss on the cheek, Nate walked to the cupboard and took down a tin filled with pemmican and another crammed with jerked venison. He filled a parfleche with enough to last a week, then filled his powder horn from the keg of black powder in the far corner.
“What can be keeping Lou?” Winona asked. “It should not take her this long.”
“Maybe she had trouble finding the flowers you needed.”
“I told her right where they are. It must be something else.”
Louisa May Clark had found the hill easily enough, as well as the rocky area beyond where the yellow flowers grew. She dismounted and moved briskly from plant to plant, pulling them out by the roots. Winona had said a dozen would suffice, but Lou decided to pluck an extra eight or nine to be sure. Scrappy little devils, they resisted being uprooted, and she was caked with perspiration before she was half done.
A strident screech drew Lou’s gaze overhead, to a hawk soaring high on the air currents. It sailed in wide loops in search of prey, its shadow flitting across the ground as if it were a separate creature. A smaller hawk, the female, winged on high to join her mate.
The pair made Lou think of Zach. Before long they would be just like those hawks, the two of them together forever, doing everything as a couple, always at one another’s side until death did them part. She couldn’t wait.
Being in love made Lou giddy. She hadn’t foreseen how glorious it was, how deliriously grand. Her mother and father had been in love, but in their later years they spent so much time bickering it was a wonder they shared the same roof. Lou’s marriage wasn’t going to turn out like theirs did. In twenty years Zach and she would still be just as much in love as they were at that very moment. They wouldn’t fight, they’d never squabble. They would get along as a married couple should, in perfect harmony.
The ring of a hoof on stone shifted Lou’s attention toward the mare. An impatient critter, it didn’t much like waiting under a blistering sun for her to finish. “Hold your horses,” she said, and giggled. Telling a horse to hold its horses! Too bad Zach wasn’t there to hear her. He’d have a merry laugh.
Rising, Lou went to the next plant. She hunkered, gripped the bottom of the stem, and prepared to lever upward.
The mare stomped again, nickering.
“You don’t listen worth beans, do you?” Lou remarked. It was staring at her in a most peculiar fashion. “Behave or you won’t get any oats tonight.” The grain was hard to come by, and a rare treat.
Lou firmed her hold and was starting to uncoil when it occurred to her that the mare wasn’t staring at her—but past her. She glanced over a shoulder and felt her insides churn. Winding down a slope to the west was a line of seven riders, and while they were too far away for her to identify, something in how they rode told her they were Indians.
Lou forgot about gathering more plants. Scooping up those she had already collected, she ran to the mare and stuffed them into a saddlebag. The war party—if that is what it was—had several hundred yards to cover before it reached the hill. She would be well on her way to the cabin to alert the Kings.
Swinging up, Lou reined the sorrel around. She had gone only several yards when she stopped in consternation. Approaching from the southwest were seven more warriors! They had spotted her and were spreading out to cut off her escape!
“Not if I can help it,” Lou said grimly. She was not going to let the Kings be taken by surprise. When her father was slain, she’d had to stand by and do nothing; she would be damned if she would fail her new family as she had failed him.
“Heeyaw!” Lou jabbed her heels and fled, heading due east to swing wide of the bunch to the south. But no sooner did she break into a gallop than they did likewise, paralleling her, evidently intent on cutting her off. They must know where the cabin is! she deduced, with growing dread. To make
matters worse, the warriors to the west had also given chase. Her only other recourse was to head north, but that would take her farther from the Kings.
Lou hunched forward in case the hostiles weren’t of a mind to take her alive. They had bows and lances, and the leader had a rifle. She assumed he was the leader, anyway, since he was in front of the rest and she had seen him gesturing at the others as if giving orders.
The mare was game but tired. In the past few hours it had been ridden at breakneck speed from the cabin to the ridge where Kendall had his mishap, then been ridden almost as fast back to the cabin and from there to the hill where the flowers grew. Now, when Lou needed it most, it was flagging.
A warrior to the west whooped and shouted. The tall Indian leading the group to the south responded, and within seconds those to the west were spreading out just as the others had done.
Unbidden, memories of her father’s final moments washed over Lou. She recalled all too vividly how his blood had spurted. She remembered how stupefied he had been, remembered the sorrow that etched his features. Until the day she died she would be haunted by the look of love in his eyes as his life faded. That one look had made up for all the days and months and years when he hardly ever told her he cared. She could count the times he had said “I love you, daughter!” on one hand. To be fair, though, her pa had hardly ever said it to her mother, either. What is it about men that they find it so hard to express their feelings?
Another shout brought an end to Lou’s reverie. A stocky warrior on a pinto had pulled well ahead of the Indians to the south and was angling toward her. He was smiling as if it were a great game, but his smile faded when Lou swiveled and pointed the Hawken at him. The warrior looked at the leader, who nodded and motioned, and the man kept on coming.
Lou thumbed back the hammer. She would die before she would let them take her. If nothing else, the Kings might hear the shot and be forewarned.
“Do you reckon something happened to her, Pa?”
Nate King found his son’s anxiety amusing. Louisa’s absence could be explained by any number of ordinary events, everything from the mare throwing a shoe to Lou confusing Winona’s directions and not being able to find the flowers.
Zach rose in the stirrups to scour the terrain ahead. “I get so worried about her sometimes, it hurts. Do you ever feel that way when Ma is in trouble?”
“Odds are, Lou is just fine, son,” Nate stressed. “But yes. I’ve fretted about your ma something awful on occasion. It can’t be helped. Not when you care for someone as much as we care for them.”
“I wish Lou had waited for me to get back,” Zach complained. “I should have gone with her. She has no business traipsing around alone.”
Nate opened his mouth to relate his own dealings with Winona, but changed his mind. Some lessons had to be learned through personal experience. Louisa had a lot of spunk. She would put Zachary in his place eventually, all on her own.
“I never knew it would be like this.”
“What would?”
Zach replied in a whisper, “Love.”
“It isn’t what you expected?”
“Blazes, Pa. Not at all. When I’m around Lou it’s like I’m not me, if that makes any sense. My thoughts get all jumbled. It’s worse when she touches me. My mind goes as blank as a slate.” Zach gnawed on his lower lip. “When we’re apart, she’s all I think about. I worry every minute. Like now.” He stared hard at Nate. “What in tarnation is wrong with me?”
“Nothing. You’re as normal as the rest of us.”
“Is this what it was like for you? When you met Ma?”
“It’s still like that,” Nate confessed. “Only, I don’t let it affect me as much.”
“I don’t see how. I always thought that when I met the woman of my dreams, I’d go around as happy as a lark. Now I spend half my time feeling sickly. What do they call that?”
“Love.”
Zach blinked, then laughed, and Nate couldn’t help but join in. It had been months since they’d had a father-son talk, which bothered Nate some. Until Zach turned twelve, or thereabouts, they’d had talks like this all the time. But once Zachary became a teenager, he no longer seemed to value Nate’s opinion on anything.
“Can I ask you another question?” Zach inquired. Normally, he would come right out with it. But this one was so important, he was half afraid of what his father would say.
“I’m always here for you.”
“I know.” Zach girded himself. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? By taking Lou as my wife, I mean?”
“I have no say in it, son.” Nate wasn’t hedging. He truly did feel it wasn’t his rightful place to meddle in his son’s personal affairs. There came a time when every nestling had to learn to fly under their own power. And in no case was this more true than in the realm ruled by Cupid.
“Please, Pa. I’d really be grateful.”
Zach’s bearing gave Nate an inkling of how crucial his reply was. What he said next could change the youth’s life forever. “Whether I like Lou or not isn’t important. It’s whether you do.” Nate saw his son’s mouth curl downward. “But I’ve made no secret of how fond I am of her. She’ll be a fine wife and mother.” Suddenly Nate spied movement to the northwest. A rider, perhaps? It must be Louisa on her way back. Nate went on. “Are you doing the right thing? If you love her, if she’s won your soul, then it’s the only thing to do. You can’t deny fate.”
“Do you think we were meant to be together?”
“If a man’s meant to drown, he’ll drown in the desert,” Nate quoted a favorite saying. “If we’re meant to meet a certain woman, we’ll meet her no matter what we do in our lives.” The movement had stopped, but Nate couldn’t shake the notion it had been someone on horseback.
“So you’re saying that Lou and I were matched up somehow before we were even born? That even if I’d gone off to live with the Shoshones, she and I would have somehow fallen in love?” Zach wasn’t a big believer in Fate or Providence, or whatever it was called. His outlook was that things “just happened.” Take, for instance, a trapper out working a trapline when a mountain lion jumps him. No one planned for the painter to attack that trapper. It was a random circumstance, a fluke. The same applied to his meeting Louisa.
“Something like that, yes.”
“I think—” Zach began, but got no further. To the north a rider galloped into sight, a lithe figure on a small mare, riding pell-mell to the east. “There’s Lou!” He was so glad, he showed more teeth than a raccoon that had stumbled on a pond full of frogs. “But where in the world is she going?”
A ragged line of painted warriors provided the answer. The foremost was a hefty warrior on a pinto who would overtake the mare in another fifty or sixty yards.
“Hostiles!” Zach cried, and in a twinkling he was gone, quirting the dun like a madman.
As always, Nate’s bay responded to the slightest pressure and he was off after the dun like a hound after a rabbit. But he couldn’t catch up. Zach’s dun was more than a match for any horse, which had a lot to do with why Nate had traded the Nez Percé for it. To a frontiersman, a reliable mount was worth more than all the precious gems in the world. Nate called for his son to wait, but he might as well ask the moon not to rise.
Zach heard his father, dimly. His blood was roaring in his veins, his whole body was aflame. He choked down frustration and outrage as the stocky warrior reduced the gap. Another minute and the man would have her.
Louisa shared that view. She had held off firing out of fear that killing one of her pursuers would incite the rest to do her in. Now she couldn’t wait any longer. Extending the Hawken, she fired at the warrior’s stout chest. It should have blown a hole in him the size of a melon. But a fraction of a second before the sizzling lead and spewing smoke belched from the muzzle, the man performed an astounding trick; he dropped onto the far side of his mount, hanging by a crooked elbow and a bent knee. The shot missed, and the warrior, unharmed, rose up
onto the pinto’s back.
Lou clawed at a pistol. It was sliding clear when a bronzed hand fell on her wrist. Twisting, she was nose to nose with the smirking warrior. She tried to bring the flintlock to bear, but his fingers were an iron vise. Her strength was no match for his. “Let go!” she protested, struggling.
The warrior did another amazing thing. He released his reins and let the pinto run unguided, then lunged for her reins to bring her to a stop. “Noooo!” Lou wailed, pushing at his other hand. Leaning closer, the warrior tried again and almost snagged them. She couldn’t fend him off for long. So she didn’t try.
Sweeping her leg up, Lou kicked him in the ribs. She was praying she could drive him away, but she did even better. He swayed, lost his grip on her wrist, and was on the verge of falling. Instantly, Lou brought up her leg to kick him a second time. But the warrior was resourceful. His hand wrapped around her calf and pulled. Lou futilely clutched the saddle as she was ripped from her perch as if she weighed no more than a feather. Corded arms looped around her waist. She had the sensation of falling and a mild jolt. The warrior had absorbed most of the impact on his shoulder, then rolled.
Lou made another stab for a pistol, but her captor tore it from her belt and started saying the same words over and over. Words that were so much gibberish. For all she knew, he was telling her to behave or he would slit her throat. She scrambled to one side, but a steely grip on her lower leg foiled her escape.
“Let go of me!” Lou railed. She had lost her rifle and one of her pistols, and the second flintlock was pinned underneath her. But the butcher knife strapped to her side was still there. Whipping it out, she resolved to sell her life dearly.
The warrior was grinning, or as Lou believed, leering at her, which fueled her anger. She thrust at his chest, only to have her wrist snared. Again the warrior addressed her, urgently, excitedly. Was it her final warning? Lou punched at his nose, striking his cheek when he jerked aside.
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