Nate gestured. “Were you here when this happened? Did you see who took them?”
“No.” Scott said it softly, in abject torment. “I was off hunting. We were low on fresh meat, so I went after a buck.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“The hell I can’t! If I’d been here, I could’ve prevented this!”
“If you’d been here, Scott, you would be dead. Didn’t Winona tell you what Two Owls said?”
“Yes. She did. That’s what fired me up to get here as soon as I could.” Despondent, Kendall propped his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand. “Oh Lord, Nate. What am I to do? Lisa and Vail Marie mean everything to me.”
“We’ll find them.”
Tears were flowing freely. “I can’t let myself think anything else or I’ll go crazy in the head. The whole ride up to your place, I was so worried, I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t stop to rest or eat or anything.”
Nate remarked how puzzled he was that his friend hadn’t gone after the war party by his lonesome.
Scott’s torment worsened. “I started to. When I came back and found the cabin like this, I was beside myself. I followed their tracks to the southwest, all stoked to rub out every last one of those scum. But I lost the trail.”
“You?”
“Me.” Scott’s wide shoulders slumped. “I don’t know how they did it, hos, but those devils skunked me proper. It was as if they’d vanished off the face of the earth. I knew that I needed someone even better at reading sign than I am, so I went after you.”
Nate was perplexed. First the Utes, then his friend. All were highly competent trackers. Yet the invaders had hoodwinked them as slick as bear grease. The only Indians capable of such a feat were Apaches, but Apaches never roved so far north. “I’ll do what I can,” he pledged.
Scott gripped Nate’s wrist. “You’re my last hope. If you fail, my wife and daughter are as good as dead.”
Not quite, Nate thought. It was unlikely the war party would slay Lisa and Vail Marie. Kendall had to know that, too, but he was refusing to acknowledge it. Which was for the best. Down that nightmarish road lay rampant rage and the borderland to madness. “Let’s try to get some sleep.”
“Are you serious? I’m so worried, I won’t be able to get a lick of rest until my family is safe.”
“Try,” Nate said. “As a favor for me.”
Scott’s spirit wasn’t willing, but exhaustion wouldn’t be denied. Hardly had they spread out what little bedding could be salvaged and lain down than he was sawing logs loud enough to be heard back in Boston.
Nate stared at the shattered doll’s crib, overcome by sympathy. The one aspect of wilderness life he liked least was the ever-present threat to his loved ones. He never knew from one day to the next if his family would still be alive to greet the next dawn. They’d all learned to live with it, to accept the danger as part of their normal routine. Yet it gnawed at him, like a beaver gnawing into wood.
Whenever he left home for any length of time, Nate constantly fretted. Oh, he could shove his worries into a corner of his mind and keep them there if he erected a mental wall. But all it took was the sight of a painter or sign left by an enemy tribe to bring the wall crashing down, and his worry would rush out of that corner like a riled griz out of a den, slashing and chewing at his innards.
Nate drifted off but slept lightly. He long since trained himself to wake up at the slightest noise, an essential skill for any trapper. He’d also learned how to will himself to get up at certain times. If he wanted to be on the go by, say, five in the morning, almost always he would wake up right on the button.
This morning was no exception. Nate had been awake for half an hour and had coffee brewing before Scott Kendall stirred. Dawn wasn’t far off when his friend sluggishly sat up and groaned.
“Land sakes. I feel like I’ve been stomped by a mule. Every part of me that can hurt, does.”
“As soon as we have some breakfast, we’ll head out.” Scott threw off his blanket. “I couldn’t eat if I tried. Let’s just mount up and go. Every minute we waste is like a knife in my vitals.”
Nate opened his parfleche. Removing the bundle of pemmican, he unwrapped it and held out a piece. “If you want my help, then you do as I say from here on out. We’ll do this right or we won’t do it at all.”
“That’s awful harsh, isn’t it, pard?” Scott sounded hurt.
Nate didn’t think so, not when their lives and those of Lisa and Vail Marie were at stake. So he didn’t hold back. “You’re not thinking straight. You said so yourself, last
night. I don’t blame you, because if I were in your moccasins I’d feel the same. But it’s made you careless. You almost died. That cracked skull of yours should be all the proof you need that I’m right.”
“Sure, I—”
Holding up a hand, Nate cut him off. “One of us has to stay as sharp as a briar, Scott. I’ll gladly help track your family down, on the condition that I’m in charge. Do you agree to abide by whatever I say? At all times?” he emphasized, then waited for his friend’s reaction. Truth was, Nate would help even if Scott didn’t accept, but it would be best for everyone if they came to an understanding before they lit out.
Scott Kendall wrestled with his pride. Part of him balked at what he felt was an unfair demand. Another part realized Nate was imposing on him in his own best interests. He imagined Lisa’s lovely face shimmering in the air, and his pride withered. “I reckon this coon has no choice.”
“Good.” Nate grinned. “My first order as booshway is for you to get some food and coffee into you. Whether you want to or not. You’ll need all your strength for what’s ahead.”
Scott begrudgingly accepted the pemmican and bit off a sizable chunk. “You know,” he said, his mouth crammed full, “you’re the only person alive I’d let get away with this. I never did like being told what to do.”
“Me, neither,” Nate said. “And look at what we went and did.”
“Huh?”
“We got married.”
Scott laughed for the first time since the raid on his cabin. “True enough, hos. The minute we say ‘I do,’ we’re done for. From then on it’s ‘Honey, do this,’ and ‘Honey, do that.’ Makes a fella wonder if he’s got a mind of his own.”
Nate agreed, glad his ruse had worked. If there was one topic that could get a married man to joke and relax, it was wives. Every husband had a hundred stories to tell, usually exaggerated and embellished to the point they’d qualify as epic literature. And the womenfolk were no different. He’d overheard a few of Winona’s chats with other ladies and learned they liked poking fun at their husbands just as much as their husbands like poking fun at them.
In this instance, though, the effect didn’t last as long as Nate hoped.
“That Lisa!” Scott declared. “I ever tell you about her cleaning ritual? Twice a year we give this place a going-over from top to bottom. She has me move everything outside so she can clean both rooms at once. Well, one spring there were some clouds to the west and I warned her it might rain before she was done. But she thought I was making an excuse to get out of work and had me move ail the furniture out anyway.”
“Did it rain?”
“Rain? Tarnation! It poured! A regular gully-washer. So there I was, heaving chairs and whatnot in through the door just as fast as I—’’ Scott stopped, his gaze on the broken table. When he went on, he spoke quietly, almost tenderly. “And what did she do while I was grumbling and fussing and getting soaked to the skin? She laughed, is what she did. She laughed, and when I was all done, she kissed me and—” He could go no further.
Nate filled a battered tin cup. “Gulp a few of these and we’ll be on our way.”
As Scott accepted it, his features became as flinty as quartz. “I swear by all that’s holy, Nate, if they’ve harmed her or my daughter I’ll make them pay. I’ll wipe out the whole damn tribe. Just see if I don’t.”
Nate said nothing. It
wasn’t his friend talking, it was spite. Usually Scott was the most amiable man alive, always even-tempered, always tolerant of others. Scott wasn’t one of those whites who despised Indians simply because they weren’t white. He didn’t look down his nose at them, as Simon Ward was prone to do. All that might change if the worst came to pass.
Nate was determined to see that it didn’t.
The tracks were easy enough to read, at first.
Ten warriors on unshod mounts had approached the cabin from the southwest, dismounted, and taken Lisa by surprise. Afterward, they’d made her and Vail Marie climb on one of the horses in the corral. Leading the rest, the war party had galloped off the same way they had come.
For over two miles the prints were as plain as day. They led up out of the valley and toward a rocky spine. As Nate passed through a verdant track of woodland, he noticed the stump of a low limb recently broken off. Recent, because the exposed wood was still a light shade of brown. Exposure to the elements would darken it in time.
Higher up, steep slopes had to be negotiated, then a broad, dry shelf. Halfway across the shelf the tracks ended, exactly as if the ground had yawned wide and swallowed the war party whole.
“See, pard,” Scott said in dismay. “This is where I lost them.”
Nate dismounted and walked in a small circle, contemplating. The ground was hard, but not so hard hoofprints wouldn’t show. Where the tracks ended, the soil changed from bare earth to gravel. Ten yards ahead a gravel slope linked the shelf to the high spine.
“Any ideas?”
“Keep your britches on.” Nate’s circles widened. He kicked at the gravel, noting how loosely packed it was. He picked up some here and there and sifted it in his palm. At the base of the slope he did the same, then ten feet higher.
Scott, still on horseback, was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. “Well, well?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I rode clear to the top and never saw a single print. I couldn’t see any on the other side, either. So I got down on my hands and knees and crawled all over this area, figuring there had to be one or two. Yet I couldn’t find so much as a scrape.” Exasperated, he tugged at his beard. “No one can completely erase sign. Can they?”
“No.”
“Then how did this bunch erase theirs?”
“They didn’t. They covered them.”
“They what?”
Nate pointed at the gravel slope. “They spread handfuls of gravel between here and there, then used a tree limb to sweep the gravel over the tracks they made climbing to the top. I suspect they did the same on the other side.”
“Handfuls?” Scott said skeptically. “That would take forever.”
“Ten men, working fast? No more than half an hour.” Nate had to hand it to the invaders. Whatever else could be said about them, they were damned clever. They’d made it appear as if the gravel on the bench was an overflow from the slope. Talus in miniature, so to speak. He was curious to learn if they had used the same tactic on the Utes.
Scott couldn’t believe the answer was so simple. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“See for yourself.” Hunkering, Nate brushed some of the gravel aside. He only had to dig down half an inch to expose a track. “Satisfied?”
“If that don’t beat bobtail.” Scott smacked his thigh in annoyance. “I’m a blamed fool for not catching on myself. If I had, I’d have caught up with them by now. Lisa and Vail Marie would be safe.”
“Or you’d be dead,” Nate countered. “Ten to one aren’t very favorable odds. As it is, they’re only about five days ahead of us.”
“Five?” Scott said, appalled.
“It’s not the calamity you make it out to be. We can catch them before the week is out if we spend twice as much time in the saddle as they do.”
“What’s today?”
“Monday” Nate wasn’t surprised his friend had to ask. It wasn’t uncommon for mountaineers to lose all track of time. Calendars were as scarce as hen’s teeth, pocket watches and clocks even rarer. The only reason Nate knew what day it happened to be was the almanac he had in his personal library of some forty books.
Scott gazed westward, wringing his hands. “Another four or five days? Lordy, do you know what that means?”
“They’re not liable to lay a finger on her until after they get to their village. And since they live somewhere beyond Ute country, it could be two weeks before they get there.”
“I pray you’re right.”
So did Nate.
The opposite slope had been brushed clear and gravel strewn for over thirty yards at the bottom. From above no tracks were evident. But where the gravel ended, at the edge of a stand of firs, Nate found hoofprints winding in among the trees.
The trappers forged rapidly on until the middle of the afternoon. Scott complained when Nate called a brief halt for the sake of their horses. He also groused when Nate insisted he eat a strip of jerked venison. But after they were back in the saddle and on the move, he apologized for being so contrary.
The region through which they were passing was one of the most picturesque in the Rockies. Lofty peaks wearing snowy crowns were cloaked in evergreen mantles. Sprinkles of aspens and a few belts of broad-leafed trees lent splashes of color. Lush valleys bisected the mountains, and were in turn bisected by gurgling streams. It was paradise on earth. And it belonged exclusively to the Utes, who had protected their slice of heaven from all outsiders for countless winters.
Some whites were under the mistaken notion that Indians believed the land should belong to everyone. But that was true only to a point. All tribes had certain regions they claimed as their own, and within those regions tribal members were entitled to roam as they saw fit. Let someone from another tribe dare violate their territory, however, and open war would break out.
Most were even less tolerant of whites. They rightly blamed the white-eyes for nearly exterminating the beaver. They had heard about the Mandans and others, whole peoples wiped out by white disease. Was it any wonder, then, that they refused to let a single white man set foot in their domain?
Nate was acutely aware of all this as he rode deeper into the Ute homeland. Two Owls, the only warrior he could depend on to speak on his behalf should they be taken captive, was still far to the north. So while he tracked, he had Scott stay alert for Utes.
Sunset was imminent when Nate drew rein to study the landmarks ahead. All afternoon the tracks had been bearing toward the distant twin summits of a mountain the Indians called Bear Claw. To cross it entailed a long climb to a narrow pass. Taking a calculated gamble, Nate rode on, relying on the war party’s tracks until the sun sank into its sheath below the horizon. Once darkness descended, Bear Claw’s two spikes guided him. They glowed like faint candles, reflecting the starlight.
Scott Kendall had been unusually quiet for hours. Now he sat straighter in his saddle and placed a hand on the rifle resting across it. “Ever hated anyone, pard?”
“Once or twice.”
“I don’t mean a mild case. I mean hatred so strong it bunches you up inside like a knot. Hatred that won’t let you think of anything except those you hate.”
“You’re taking this awful personal.”
Scott snorted. “Wouldn’t you if it was the heart of your heart, the flesh of your flesh? I remember you telling me about the time Apaches stole Winona. You wanted to rip them to shreds, as I recall.”
“But I don’t recollect hating them. They were doing what Apaches have been doing since before the Spaniards came.”
“So? Does that excuse what they did?” Scott’s cheeks were growing ruddy, a sign he was becoming agitated. “Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me you didn’t hate them? Just a smidgen?”
“I was mad, yes. But hating them would be like hating a grizzly for tearing a person apart. Or a rattlesnake for biting someone who steps on it. That’s just their nature, just like it’s Apache nature to steal and kill.”
“I should tu
rn the other cheek? Is that what you’re saying? I know that’s what Scripture says we’re supposed to do. But—Lord help me—I can’t. I just can’t. I want to wrap my fingers around the necks of the men who did this and crush their throats to a pulp. I hate them that much.”
“Remember your promise.”
“What? You’re afraid I won’t be able to control myself? That I’ll make a mistake and it will cost us our lives?”
Nate was afraid of that very thing, but he didn’t let on. They had a long ride ahead of them, long days of hard travel under hard conditions. Surely, in that amount of time, he could calm Scott down.
If not, there would be hell to pay.
Seven
“Hellfire and damnation! What the blazes do you mean we haven’t been following their tracks for hours?” Scott Kendall was astonished. “Then how do you know which way they took?”
“I’m guessing,” Nate confessed.
Scott reined up. They were on the highest slope on Bear Claw, within a stone’s throw of the pass that would take them over the range. “And you’re the one who claimed I wasn’t thinking straight! What if you’re wrong? It could take us a month of Sundays to pick up their trail again.”
Nate clucked to the bay. “Hogwash. All we’d have to do is go back to where they threw you off their scent. It wouldn’t cost us more than ten or twelve hours.”
“When every second counts, an hour is an eternity,” Scott declared. Shaking his head in irritation, he dogged the bay’s hooves. “I know you’re as smart as a tree full of owls, so there must be a reason you’ve done what you did.”
“If I’m right, I’ve shaved half a day off the time it will take us to overtake them,” Nate said. The war party made a habit of sticking to game trails, but he had pushed directly for the pass.
“I hope you’re right, hos.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
The final leg of their climb was done in tense silence. On reaching the narrow defile, Nate halted and climbed down. The ground didn’t appear chewed up, as it should. He sank onto his left knee and ran a hand over the soil. His palm made contact with smooth earth—that was all. No gouge marks, no grooves, nothing.
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