Lisa saw the one with the graying hair dodge a thrown lance. He had a war club, which he raised as he smacked his heels against his mount. The horse leaped forward at one of her abductors who was notching an arrow. He lifted his head just as the war club arced down, and it crushed his skull like an overripe melon, brains and gore splattering everywhere.
Men were screaming, howling, dying. Some lay prone, others convulsed in bloody pools. No quarter was asked, none given. Out of the trees swept a Ute with a bow. In the time it took Lisa to step from concealment he put three arrows into as many enemies. Single-handedly he almost turned the tide, but as he was stringing a fourth shaft, a lance impaled him.
In the mad whirl of mayhem and bloodshed, Lisa lost sight of the kindly Ute until his horse appeared from behind another. He was battling two foes at once, one armed with a lance, the other wielding a club. They fiercely attempted to topple him, but he fended them off with sweeping blows.
The Ute evaded a thrust lance tip, shifted, and lunged, slamming his club onto the shoulder of his assailant. Then, as fluid as water, he swung around and crashed his club into the face of his other foe, who had bounded in close.
Momentarily in the clear, the kindly Ute glanced at Lisa. He started to goad his mount toward her. To save her and her daughter, Lisa realized, her heart leaping for joy. She dared to believe he would swing them on behind him and they would escape. But it wasn’t meant to be.
The kindly Ute was halfway to the trees when an arrow transfixed his right shoulder and nearly knocked him off. How he clung on, Lisa would never know. But he did, and as he righted himself more enemies converged to finish him off. He shot Lisa a last look, a look of regret and dismay that tugged at her heartstrings. Her spirits sank as he did what he had to—namely, he wheeled his horse and rode for his life.
He was the only one to get away. The rest of the Utes were down, some alive but too severely wounded to lift a finger against the triumphant war party, which had little to celebrate. Four of their own lay in the grass, lifeless, and three others had been hurt.
It had all happened so incredibly fast. Lisa was dumbfounded. She’d never witnessed anything like it, never seen so much blood shed in so short a time. Unconsciously, she was holding Vail Marie’s face pressed to her bosom so her daughter couldn’t see the carnage.
“Ma—?”
“Hush. Be still.”
Lisa thought the worst was over, but she was mistaken. The victors dragged five Utes who were still breathing to a clear spot and placed them side by side. The tallest warrior, the one she took to be the leader, drew a knife and stood over one of the wounded men. She figured he would slit the poor Ute’s throat and that would be that.
The tall man bent low, taunting his victim, who was in such agony from a head wound, he didn’t appear to hear. Smirking, the tall man drove his blade into the Ute’s belly, burying it, and the Ute arched his spine, opening his mouth wide to scream. But no sound came out. Even when the tall warrior methodically commenced to slice from right to left, shearing through flesh and internal organs as if they were mush, the Ute never cried out. Spittle frothed his lips and convulsions seized him.
Lisa wanted to tear her gaze away but couldn’t. Her horror turned to loathing when the tall warrior slid his fingers into the cut he’d made and yanked out a thick ropelike strand of slimy intestine. Bitter bile rose in Lisa’s throat and she had to swallow to keep from being sick.
Some of her captors were laughing at the Ute’s expense. Their laughter grew louder when the tall man wrapped the intestine around the Ute’s neck and proceeded to strangle him with his own guts.
The barbaric spectacle repulsed Lisa. Rotating, she stalked off, whispering to Vail Marie, “Don’t look! Whatever you do, don’t look!”
Footsteps pounded. A hand fell on Lisa’s shoulder, and she was spun around. The man who had been guarding her gave her no hint of what he had in mind. He simply hauled off and slapped her across the mouth. Rocked on her heels, Lisa staggered against a tree. The man hiked his hand to hit her again, but he grabbed her arm instead and hauled her to the small clearing.
The torture was continuing. One man was chopping fingers off the Utes, another toes. A third was making a collection of ears, while a fourth was involved in an act so unspeakably vile, Lisa couldn’t bear to watch.
“Ma? What’s that fella doing?”
Lisa had forgotten about Vail Marie. Twisting from the warrior’s grasp, she put her back to the horrid scene. “I told you not to look! Listen to me when I tell you what to do!”
“I’m sorry, Ma.”
Upset that she had vented her anger on her daughter, Lisa hugged Vail Maire and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, truly sorry. But there are some things it’s better you don’t see or they’ll torment you the rest of your days.”
“I wish Pa was here.”
So did Lisa. More than anything else in the world, she yearned for her husband to fly to their aid before the same thing that had happened to the Utes happened to them. Lisa now knew her captors were capable of the most wicked atrocities imaginable.
It filled Lisa with dread. Maybe they hadn’t stolen her to be the wife of one of their warriors. Perhaps they had another, more loathsome fate in mind. For her, and her sweet daughter. Overcome by emotions too long contained, unable to fend off tears any longer, Lisa bowed her head and quietly wept.
Vail Marie squeezed her mother’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Ma. Don’t you fret. I’m here to protect you.”
Lisa Kendall cried as she had never cried before.
The two mountain men and their Ute allies settled into a routine. Up at the crack of dawn, on the go before sunrise, they would ride all day, stopping briefly now and again to rest their horses. Nightfall didn’t deter them from forging on, though it did slow them down. They adopted Nate’s tactic of fixing on distant landmarks their enemies were headed toward, and not stopping until they reached them.
They pushed themselves for eighteen hours out of every twenty-four, with only one meal to sustain them. After two days Nate was sore and tired, minor inconveniences he shrugged off.
Usually Swift Elk rode beside him, and between sign language and Nate’s smattering of the Ute tongue, they became well acquainted. The young warrior had ambitions typical of warriors everywhere. He desired to become a man of renown, like his father, to count many coup, own many horses, and marry a certain lovely who had caught his eye. He valued honor above all else, and would rather cut out his own tongue than tell a lie. His sole weakness was his pride.
Swift Elk believed his people were better than any others, nobler, finer, more perfect. Ute men were braver warriors than the Sioux, the Comanches, the Piegans. Ute women were more beautiful than women anywhere. He also took enormous pride in himself, in his appearance and his prowess. He had a small mirror he’d obtained at Bent’s Fort, and Nate lost count of the number of times he caught the young dandy admiring his own reflection.
But for all that, Swift Elk was a personable fellow, ready of wit and humor. He was also every bit as tough and true as he liked to say he was.
The rest of the young men seemed in awe of Nate. At night they’d pester him to tell about his exploits. Of all white men, only the “Blanket Chief,” as the Utes called Jim Bridger, was more famous.
Scott Kendall rarely spoke. He had withdrawn into himself. Every waking moment, he struggled against a flood tide of anxiety and despair that clawed at his soul. His wife and daughter were all he thought about, all he cared about. Each day he’d forget to drink and eat unless reminded by Nate. At night he lay under his blanket with his eyes closed, but he was lucky to get an hour’s sleep. His mind wouldn’t shut down. Worry encased him like a cocoon.
Scott found himself reminiscing a lot. About meeting Lisa for the first time, and how smitten he had been by her charm and her intelligence. About the birth of Vail Marie, the single greatest experience in his whole existence. About the joys of having a family.
His fonde
st memories were of ordinary things. Lisa dusting the cabin, Lisa hanging out clothes, Lisa, with an apron around her waist, butchering a grouse for supper.
Vail Marie, playing with her dolls. Vail Marie, dashing gleefully around the cabin, a sprite in her glory. And best of all, Vail Marie at bedtime, when he would tuck her in and she would give him a hug and kiss him on the cheek. Those were the moments that made life worthwhile.
Thus preoccupied, Scott was the last to become aware of a dozen or so buzzards circling ahead. Only when Nate nudged him did he look skyward. So many vultures together was rare. Scott recalled seeing it only once before, after a surround conducted by the Shoshones, when more than seventy-five buffalo had been slain. Hot fear spiked through him, and he urged his horse into a trot.
“Wait for us!” Nate hollered.
Scott would wait for no man. Not when those ugly carrion eaters might be circling over Lisa and Vail Marie. Heedless of limbs that tore at him, he took the straightest course, crashing through whatever barred his path. The racket he made would forewarn whoever might be up ahead, but he didn’t care.
More buzzards were on the ground, congregated around dark forms sprawled at random. As Scott drew near, the vultures took ungainly wing, flapping loudly. So did a cloud of insects, buzzing upward in a writhing black mass. Flies! So many, they had blackened the bodies they covered.
Swatting to shoo them off, Scott reined to a halt. A foul odor assaulted him, a stench fit for a charnel house, a stink that churned his stomach. Covering his mouth and nose, he went from corpse to corpse, seeking his wife and daughter. What he found were Utes, butchered and bloated and left to rot in the sun.
Nate King and Swift Elk were next on the scene, Nate spying a warrior who had endured the anguish of the damned. The man’s eyes had been gouged out, his nose and lips hacked off, sharpened stakes driven into his limbs to pin him to the earth. Hideous as that was, compared to some of the others, the man had gotten off lightly.
The remainder of the young Utes arrived, and were as stunned as Swift Elk. He had dismounted and was stumbling among the dead as if he were almost dead himself. The handsome young warrior’s face was a mask of disgust tinged by growing outrage. At one of the fallen figures, he cried out. Falling to his knees, he went to place a hand on the man’s ruptured, festering flesh, but stopped at a shout from the skinny Ute.
Nate was watching Scott Kendall closely. His friend made a circuit of the area, then stood with tears streaking his cheeks. “What’s wrong?” Nate asked, walking over. “They’re not here.”
“I should think you’d be glad.”
“I am.”
‘Then why the tears?”
“Joy. Pure joy.”
“Ah.” Nate motioned at a log. “Why don’t we light a spell? It’ll be a while before we can ride on.”
Scott’s legs were as weak as a newborn’s, his knees like pudding. Wobbling like a foal taking its first steps, he reached the log under his own power and planted himself. As he wiped an arm across his face, Nate’s statement sank in. “What? Why can’t we?”
“The Utes will want to tend to their dead. It could take the rest of today and most of tomorrow.”
A rush of indignation restored Scott’s vigor. “I can’t wait that long and you know it! We’ll have to go on without them. They can catch up later.”
“We can use their help, pard.”
“Be reasonable. You can’t expect me to sit here twiddling my thumbs while the bastards we’re after spirit my family farther and farther away.” Scott screened his eyes with a hand so he could note the position of the sun. “It’s almost noon now. In another half an hour I cut out whether anyone comes with me or not.”
Nate had anticipated as much. “Don’t go off half-cocked. Let me work some jawbone medicine with Swift Elk.”
“Palaver until you’re blue in the gills. I’m leaving regardless.” Scott watched his friend move off and frowned. Being curt with Nate went against his grain, but he couldn’t help himself. The warriors who had Lisa were to blame for the slaughter, and the abominable deeds they had committed could just as well have been done to Lisa or Vail Marie. From now on, he couldn’t slack off for a single minute. As hard as they had been pushing, he must push harder. God willing, in another two to three days he would overtake the fiends and the nightmare would end.
Scott saw Nate hunker beside Swift Elk. Why wait, he asked himself, when every second is so vital? Standing, he sidled toward the buckskin. Nate’s back was to him, and the Utes were busy with their dead.
No one saw Scott grip his mount’s reins. No one looked around when he slowly ambled off on foot, leading it past other horses left unattended.
Scott paused a few times to give the impression he was stretching his legs. One of the warriors gazed at him, so he smiled. The Ute was too downcast to return the favor, and turned to a companion.
Another ten feet and Scott was in the pines. His saddle creaked under him as he climbed on, then glanced at Nate King one last time. Goodbye, old friend, he thought. They had been through a lot together, stood shoulder to shoulder against impossible odds. Nate would be mad at him for running out on them, but he had it to do. Something deep inside was spurring him on, and it would not be denied.
Scott Kendall flicked his reins and rode off to confront his destiny.
Ten
“How do you think your pa is faring?” Louisa May Clark asked.
Zach King paused in the act of swinging back his arm to hurl a flat stone. “Pa? I reckon he’s doing just fine. Why do you ask?”
They were on the west shore of the lake, the water as still as the air, the surface a polished mirror reflecting their images. The two of them were standing close to one another, Lou with her hands clasped behind her slender back. “Oh, I don’t know. I figured you must be worried.”
“About Pa?” Laughing, Zach threw the small stone and grinned as it hopped like a grasshopper. “Six times! The best I’ve done today. Let’s see if I can do seven.” He bent to find another.
This was one of those times when Lou didn’t know what to make of him. Were it her father, she would be worried sick. She mentioned as much, adding, “Don’t get me wrong. Your pa is as strong and brave as anyone I’ve ever met, but even he can die. I don’t understand why you’re not gnawing your nails over whether he’ll make it back.”
Zach stopped searching. “Sometimes you just beat all, you know that? You make it sound as if I don’t care because I’m not thinking about him every minute.”
“I never said that,” Lou responded, bewildered by the accusation. “All I’m saying is that you never seem to fret about him much, and that doesn’t seem normal.”
“So now I’m addle pated?”
Lou placed her hands on her hips. “Stop putting words in my mouth. What’s gotten into you? Can’t you answer a simple question without being so darned defensive?” Zach had never seen her so mad at him before. “What’s gotten into me?” he countered. “You’re the one acting like a badger with a burr stuck to its butt.”
“Why—why—” Lou didn’t quite know what to say, she was so incensed. And hurt. Here they were, having their first spat, over something so silly it hinted that maybe her life wouldn’t be all peaches and cream when they became man and wife. That scared her. A lot.
Feeling regret, Zach gave her a hug and kissed her lightly on the lips. Usually that was enough to bring a smile to her face. But she was looking at him as if he were someone she had just met. “What? What did I do?” Lou tried counting to ten in her head. Her ma always claimed that worked when her pa was being particularly dense.
“Of course I’m worried,” Zach said. “But I don’t dwell on it. Besides, Pa has tangled with hordes of Blackfeet, Bloods, and Sioux, and always gotten the better of them. He’ll come riding up here as big as day anytime now.” While Lou found Zach’s confidence in his father admirable, she thought he was taking it a mite too far. “No one is invincible. That includes your pa. I pray you never
have to find that out the hard way.”
Zach felt that she was the one being unduly hard, and he was about to tell her so when his sister came skipping out of the trees. Rather than direct his anger at Lou, he directed it at Evelyn. “Where the blazes have you been? You’ve been gone for pretty near half an hour, and Ma told you to stick close to us.”
The youngest King wasn’t intimidated one bit. “You’ve got it backwards. As usual. Ma told you to stick close to me. Which you didn’t do.”
“You’re the one who ran off,” Zach said defensively. “No, I told you I wanted to go for a walk in the woods. But you didn’t want to. You wanted to stay here and make cow eyes at your sweetie.”
At moments like this, Zach was sorry his parents ever had another child. “We’re going back now,” he announced. And good riddance to both of them. He would saddle his dun and go for a ride. A long ride, to give Lou time to cool off.
Evelyn grinned. “Don’t you care to hear where I went and what I did?”
“No.” Zach started for the trail to the cabin.
Maybe it was to spite him, or maybe Lou was sincerely curious, but she said, “Well, I do. What have you been up to, little one?”
It annoyed Evelyn, a girl who wasn’t all that older than she was calling her “little one.” But she had such a tremendous secret to share, she overlooked the insult and replied excitedly, “I found a cave.”
Zach halted. “You did not.”
“Did too.”
“You’re making it up to trick us.” Zach knew how his sister thought. “You’re hoping we’ll traipse around the woods with you for an hour or so, then you’ll tell us the whole thing was a big joke and laugh yourself silly.”
Evelyn wondered why God ever saw fit to invent brothers. “I’m serious, Stalking Coyote.”
Folding his arms, Zach pondered. She never used that tone or called him by his Shoshone name unless she was sincere. And he recollected a story told by Touch the Clouds, to the effect that in the old days there were several caves in the valley but the Shoshones had sealed them up. “Where did you find it?”
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