Wilderness Double Edition 14

by David Robbins

  Nate was mulling their options. Too much daylight remained for them to give the Utes the slip. The bay and the buckskin were about played out and would soon need to slow down. So either he tried to drive the warriors off with a few well-placed shots, and brave the wrath of the entire Ute nation, or else he held a palaver and convinced the warriors he had a valid excuse for being in their territory.

  Scott was taken aback when his friend drew rein on the crown of the last hill. Doing the same, he wheeled the buckskin and unslung his rifle. “What’s it to be? We drop as many as we can before they drop us?”

  “We show them empty hands and pray they’re peaceable.”

  Scott fumed at yet another potential delay; each lessened his prospects of saving Lisa and Vail Marie. He had half a mind to drive the Utes off anyway, then realized he had fallen into the same mistake as before. He wasn’t thinking straight. Killing just one of them would bring hundreds more down on his head. It might take the Utes a month or a year, but eventually they would extract their vengeance. Thank goodness Nate was along to set him straight! “Empty hands it is.”

  The warriors slowed a hundred yards out. There were nine in all, younger men painted and primed for war, bristling with enough weapons to battle an army. In the forefront rode a handsome Ute whose finely beaded buckskins and superb white horse marked him as a man of importance.

  “They’re itching for a scrape,” Scott commented.

  Nate placed the Hawken across his thighs and elevated both arms. “Let’s not give them cause to scratch.”

  Against his better judgment, Scott imitated him. “Why do I feel like a lamb about to be slaughtered?”

  The warriors were forming into a line, the fancy Ute in the center and slightly ahead of the others. Nate was encouraged by the fact that none had notched arrows to their bowstrings or hiked their lances. He saw no guns. “Let me do the signing,” he suggested.

  “Be my guest. But make a point of how pressed for time we are.”

  Head held high, the handsome Ute came to a stop. He stared at the buckskin and the bay, both covered with dirt, then at the two white men.

  Nate’s fingers flowed. In essence, he signed, “I am Grizzly Killer, friend to the Utes. Friend to Two Owls. My hand is always offered in friendship to my brothers.” Some of the warriors whispered to one another. The handsome one leaned his shield against his chest to free his hands and signed, “We know who you are, Grizzly Killer. All Utes know of you. And of the help you have been to our people. I am Swift Elk, son of Two Owls.” Nate remembered now. He had met the son during the council held by the Utes and Shoshones to settle their dispute over Bow Valley. Swift Elk had been a small boy then. “My heart is happy to see you again. Not four sleeps ago I spoke with your father.”

  Swift Elk smiled. “He is after killers of my people. So are we.”

  “They have stolen the woman of my friend.” Nate indicated Scott. “We were on their trail when we saw you.” He pointed at the tracks, then tactfully signed, “We did not stop to greet you as we should have. For that I am sorry.”

  “I understand,” Swift Elk signed. Sliding off his white stallion, he examined the prints. “This is wrong. My father told me our enemies are twelve in number. I only count ten.”

  “Maybe the other two were separated from the rest,” Nate speculated.

  Swift Elk touched a set of prints. “Do these shod horses belong to your friend?”

  “Yes. They were taken when the woman and the girl were.”

  The young Ute rose. “Girl?”

  “The daughter of my friend. She has seen but eight winters.”

  A flush of anger crept over Swift Elk’s handsome features. “So these enemies make war on children? I will be glad to count coup on them.” Squaring his shoulders, he signed, in effect, “Grizzly Killer, as you are a friend of my father, you are a friend of mine. That you are a friend of my people you have shown again and again.” Swift Elk paused as if to choose his next signs carefully. “We have heard many tales of your prowess. How you killed the father of all bears. How the Blackfeet made you run their test of tomahawks and knives, and you survived. How you slew the hairy men who eat the flesh of people. And more.”

  Nate didn’t reply when the younger man stopped. Swift Elk was leading up to something, and Nate had a hunch what it was.

  “You have fought our own enemies on our behalf. As your friend, can I do less? If my enemies are yours, yours are also mine. So I hope you will honor us by granting our request.”

  “What would you have of me?”

  Swift Elk looked at his fellow warriors. In the Ute tongue a skinny one said, “Ask him. We are all with you on this.”

  Scott Kendall was impatient to be off. He was nowhere near as skilled at sign talk as his friend, so he hadn’t understood all the young warrior said. Assuming it had nothing to do with their quest, he asked out of the corner of his mouth, “Can’t you quit this jabbering so we can move on?”

  “Patience,” Nate said in English. Then, in sign language, he said, “Finish what is in your heart.”

  “Your enemies are our enemies,” Swift Elk repeated. “My friends and I would be honored if you would let us ride with you against them. We will help you save the woman and the girl. And we will teach these strangers what it means to invade the land of my father and my father’s father.”

  Nate had seen it coming, and he liked the idea. But when he relayed the warrior’s request to Scott, his friend hesitated.

  “Are you sure we can trust them, hos? They’re Utes, not Shoshones. I know I’ve fed a few when they’ve stopped at my cabin, but I’ve never been comfortable when they were around. What’s to keep them from sticking steel into our ribs when we least expect it?”

  Nate couldn’t blame Scott for being uneasy. While the Utes didn’t hate whites to the degree the Blackfoot Confederacy did, they hadn’t exactly welcomed the white man to the mountains with open arms, either. For years they had tried to drive out Nate’s uncle, and later Nate himself. But it was ridiculous to judge an entire tribe by the actions of a few. As Nate had learned, people everywhere were a lot like apples. In every barrel there were green apples, those that weren’t ripe, or in the case of people, those who didn’t know any better. There were apples ripened to fullness, the same as people whose maturity brought wisdom. And then there were those that were rotten to the core, worthless apples and men alike that had to be destroyed before their rottenness was inflicted on others.

  Two Owls’s son was sincere, though. Nate would stake his life on it. “I vouch for Swift Elk,” he told Kendall. “But I won’t let them tag along if you say they shouldn’t. It’s your decision.”

  All the Utes were staring intently at Scott as if they had deduced it was up to him. In their youthful, eager faces he saw no evidence of hostility, only a keen willingness to catch those who had brought so much death and sorrow to their people.

  Swift Elk stepped closer and signed at Nate, “Your friend is not pleased?”

  “He sees you as he would the Sioux or the Cheyenne. He does not know the goodness of the Ute heart as I do.” In a smooth motion Swift Elk drew his long knife and marched up to the buckskin. Scott automatically dropped a hand to a pistol, then sat there dumbfounded as the Ute reversed his grip and extended the weapon, hilt first. “What’s this?” Scott asked.

  Nate admired the younger man more by the minute. As the trappers would say, Swift Elk had more horse sense than most, and was a credit to his illustrious father. “He’s showing that he trusts you by giving you his knife to stab him with, if you want.”

  “He’d never let me. It’s a bluff.”

  “Put him to the test. He won’t lift a finger to defend himself.”

  Accepting the weapon, Scott hefted it. The young Ute stood motionless, chest thrust out, braced for a deadly plunge. “I do believe you’re right,” Scott marveled, observing that the other warriors were as rigid as boards. “Will wonders never cease.” Holding the knife by the tip of the
blade, he returned it to its owner. “You’re welcome to join us, friend. Just save a few heads for me to bash in.” Nate translated, and the Utes yipped like coyotes. Now the chase could resume in earnest. And come what may, they wouldn’t give up until Lisa Kendall was safe—or they were all dead.

  Nine

  Lisa Kendall was sore and chafed from hours spent crossing some of the most rugged terrain in existence. She was hot and tired and hungry, and incensed that her daughter was forced to endure the same hardships. Vail Marie sat in front of her, holding on to the pommel, bouncing with every step their mount took.

  Her abductors were traveling to the southwest at a mile-eating pace. Apparently they were in a hurry to get out of Ute country quickly. Which made Lisa all the more grateful they had let her throw a saddle on her horse before tearing her from hearth and home.

  Ever since being taken, Lisa had been trying to figure out who her captors were. She had met Shoshones, Crows, and Utes. She’d seen Flatheads and Nez Perce at the rendezvous. She’d heard descriptions of the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and more. Her captors were none of them.

  Little details sometimes told a lot, so Lisa had noted every little detail she could, thinking that it might jog her memory. They were tall and generally stocky, well-muscled and swarthy. Instead of buckskins they wore simple breech-clouts and skimpy moccasins. Hardy and stoic, neither heat nor cold affected them. Their language might as well have been Chinese for all she understood of it.

  An interesting quirk that Lisa thought might be an important clue to where they were from was that they never used sign language. Granted, among themselves they wouldn’t need to. But when ordering her around they always used simple gestures anyone could understand, not the elaborate sign symbols favored by most tribes.

  They were armed with knives and war clubs and longbows. Slender quivers brimming with feathered shafts were either slung across their backs or worn on either hip. Their hair was cropped short in front, into bangs that fell to their eyebrows, and longer in back. A few wore necklaces made of shells that Lisa swore had to come from the Pacific coast. But that couldn’t be. Surely they hadn’t come all the way from California or the Oregon Country!

  Lisa reckoned they had obtained the seashells in trade. Few whites realized it, but according to Nate King, Indians had a far-flung network of commerce set up. Tribes up in Oregon, for instance, traded with the Nez Perce and Flatheads, who in turn traded with the Crows and the Shoshones, who in their turn on occasion traded with the Cheyennes and the Arapahos. In that way, a pretty seashell from Oregon might adorn the dress of a Cheyenne maiden, while a buffalo robe crafted by a Shoshone might wind up over the shoulders of a strutting chief somewhere along the Columbia River.

  Lisa regretted she wasn’t as fluent in Indian languages as Nate. It could help her peg who her captors were.

  A husky warrior near the front glanced back at her, his dark eyes betraying no clue as to his sentiments. Lisa had noticed him staring before, several times in the past hour alone. It didn’t bode well.

  Sunset would occur in less than an hour, for which Lisa was grateful. The war party always stopped for the night, making camp in dense woods or dry washes where they were less likely to be detected. Rabbit or squirrel stew was their usual fare, plentiful game they could kill silently with arrows. She and Vail Marie were both given as much food and water as they wanted, not out of kindness, but in order to keep their strength up. The warriors did not want them slowing the war party down.

  Typically, the men were strung out over a hundred yards or better, spaced at thirty-foot intervals. Two husky specimens were assigned to guard Lisa, staying close enough that if she tried to make a break for it, they would catch her before she took three steps. At night the men took turns standing watch in pairs, and although she stayed awake until her eyelids were leaden in the hope they would doze off, they never did.

  Another precaution they took was to have a warrior ride ahead of the main group. In the Army that was called riding point, as Lisa had learned from a cavalry officer whose detachment accompanied Scott and her partway to St. Louis.

  It surprised her a bit, Indians using sage military tactics. But it shouldn’t, she reflected, since Nate King and other mountain men had regaled her with details of Indian warfare. Some tribes were ruthlessly efficient, as organized and skilled as any fighting force ever known.

  Suddenly a commotion broke out ahead. Lisa saw the warrior who had been riding point race to the front of the line and have an excited exchange with another. Words were passed back along the line. One of the men guarding her seized the reins from her hand and led her horse into the undergrowth.

  All the warriors were taking cover. Lisa was made to dismount and stand behind a wide pine. The warrior pointed at her mouth, at Vail Marie’s mouth, then at his knife. The threat was crystal clear. If either of them let out a peep, he would silence them permanently.

  Several others had been given charge of the horses and were hastening them deeper into the forest.

  The majority were soon well hidden. Lisa saw them nocking shafts to sinew strings and hefting lances. With a start, she realized they weren’t trying to hide from an approaching enemy; they were preparing to spring an ambush.

  All movement ceased. A deathly hush fell over the woodland. Vail Maire began to fidget, and worried she might say something, Lisa bent low and whispered, “Not a sound or the bad men will harm us.”

  Vail Marie nodded.

  When Lisa looked up, the warrior who had threatened them was glaring at her. He gestured sharply, signifying she must not move or speak again, or else. The long lance in his other hand was poised for flight.

  Lisa scoured the country to the southwest. Acres of forest blended into a belt of aspens on the lower slope of a mountain that had to be over ten thousand feet high. Shining snow gleamed in the radiant glow of the setting sun. The scenery was so spectacular, so breathtaking, it was difficult to believe that in another few minutes blood would be spilled.

  Off in the trees a horse nickered. The warriors all dropped lower, tense and alert. One of them had climbed an oak tree and was balanced on a limb. His hand moved up and down, a signal of some sort, and he began to extend his fingers one at a time. Four, seven, ten, eleven.

  That must be how many riders are approaching, Lisa guessed. Blundering right into certain death.

  The man on the limb pressed against the bole.

  From out of the pines appeared a horseman. Lisa recognized him as an Ute by his buckskins and his hair. He was absently gazing at the sky, not at the ground. Behind him came others, none with so much as a bow notched. They were tired from a long day of riding, thinking about the camp they would soon make and the meal they would soon eat. They weren’t concentrating on what they were doing. They weren’t inspecting the ground for tracks or keeping an eye on their surroundings.

  Lisa clamped her mouth shut to stifle a warning shout. Carelessness would cost the Utes their lives, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  Suddenly her breath caught in her throat. Lisa had met the third Ute before! She distinctly recalled the gray streaks on his temples. He had stopped at the cabin about five months before, along with a handful of others.

  Scott had been away at the time. But Lisa had done as she customarily did and given the warriors some water and food. Going back inside, she had closed the door, thinking that was the end of it. But a minute later someone timidly knocked.

  Holding a small pistol behind her back, Lisa had cracked the door to find the one with the gray temples. Smiling tentatively, he’d held out a small beaded pouch, a token of his gratitude. It touched her deeply.

  When Scott came home, he was upset. He said she had taken a great risk, that at most she should have gone to the window and signed for the Utes to go away. Lisa did what women always do when their menfolk grumble; she let it go in one ear and out the other.

  Now here was that same kindly Ute about to be cut down without a chance to defend hims
elf.

  Lisa glanced at the warrior who had threatened her. His attention was riveted to the Utes. A check of the rest showed none was looking in her direction. So, snaking her left hand above her head, close to the trunk, she poked her fingers out the other side and wriggled them. It wasn’t much, but it was the best she could do.

  The Utes plodded closer, their mounts as tired as they were. Lisa kept waiting for at least one of them to gaze down and see the tracks her captors had made. But they never did.

  The warrior who was guarding her turned his head, and Lisa immediately froze. He gave her a suspicious scrutiny, then faced the Utes. She wriggled harder, praying it would be noticed before the trap was sprung.

  Eight of the Utes were now in the open.

  Lisa felt awful. They were going to die! She considered springing toward them and screaming, but the thought of Vail Marie being struck down by a barbed arrow tip or a heavy lance rooted her in place.

  Abruptly, the older warrior sat straighter and stared at the tree Lisa was behind. He had seen her fingers! To her consternation, he acted more puzzled than alarmed and rubbed his eyes as if he thought he was imagining things. She had to do something else. On an impulse, Lisa showed herself, just her shoulders and head, and slashed a finger across her throat.

  The Ute’s shock at recognizing her was almost comical. He scanned the trees, lifting his reins to stop, then jerked forward. A shrill cry escaped his lips.

  Even as the yell shattered the stillness, the war party attacked. Glittering shafts whizzed, piercing five Utes in half as many seconds. Venting war whoops, the rest of Lisa’s abductors burst into the open and let fly with their lances or closed in for man-to-man combat. In a span of heartbeats a swirling melee resulted, with the now outnumbered Utes fighting valiantly for their lives.