White Buffalo said, “Then we should go. Talk, talk, talk. Just a waste of time.”
That was a mite humorous, coming from the biggest talker in their group, Preacher mused, but even White Buffalo knew there was a time to shut up and get moving.
And it was one of those times.
* * *
Preacher kept them moving at a brisk pace the rest of the afternoon, checking their back trail from time to time to see if he could spot anybody back there. He didn’t, but as a precaution, he told Dog to hunt, anyway. Dog knew what that meant and turned to lope back the way they had come.
Butterfly still looked a little shaken and subdued, and she didn’t say much as she rode behind Hawk on the young warrior’s pony. Preacher had to think for a spell before he came up with the phrase he was searching for to describe what his questions had done. They had opened a bag of worms, he finally decided was the right way to put it. He had opened up the past in the girl’s mind and showed it to her in all its slimy, squirming unpleasantness.
And worst of all, Hawk was right. Knowing what they now knew about Butterfly didn’t change a damned thing. They were still in danger from Angry Sky and maybe the band of fur thieves, too.
Late in the day, Preacher spotted a line of thicker vegetation up ahead and knew it probably marked the course of a river. That jogged his memory. There was a river that ran through that area, and the last time he had been there, several years earlier, a Crow village had been located on that river about twenty miles upstream from where they were. It might still be there or it might not. The Crow weren’t as nomadic as some tribes, but they moved around from time to time. If it was, that would be the closest place he and his friends could find a new home for Butterfly. The village Preacher remembered was big enough that even Angry Sky might think twice before attacking it.
All they had to do was stay ahead of the Blackfeet for the day or two it would take to reach the village.
Preacher pointed out the trees that grew along the river and told the others, “We’ll make camp up there. We’ve covered a lot of ground today, and the horses need to rest.”
“What about the Blackfeet?” White Buffalo asked. “I feel . . . a disturbance among the spirits, as if they are trying to warn us.”
“Blackfoot ponies have to rest just like ours do. Anyway, it ain’t gonna do us any good if we ride these horses into the ground. Then those varmints would catch up to us for sure.”
White Buffalo frowned and muttered something about disregarding the wisdom of the elders, but Preacher just waved the others on and led the way to the river.
If the stream had a name, he didn’t remember it. It was shallow but at least a hundred feet from bank to bank, flowing swiftly in several channels that wound their way among sandbars and outcroppings of rock and gravel. Preacher seemed to recall that rapids ran in other stretches and could be challenging to somebody in a canoe if they didn’t know what they were doing. He and his companions wouldn’t have to worry about that, however.
The banks were grassy on both sides, but those open areas were narrow and beyond them the pines, spruce, and fir grew thickly. Aspens and cottonwoods dotted the banks in places. With snowcapped mountains in the distant background, it was as pretty a location as anybody was likely to find in the high country. Preacher could have stayed in a place like that for the rest of his life. Sometimes he wondered why he didn’t do just that. Build himself a cabin, live off the land, just enjoy peace and quiet and the Good Lord’s handiwork.
Problem was, tranquility never lasted. Some son of a buck always came along and messed it up, usually by trying to carve out Preacher’s gizzard with a knife or bust his skull open with a tomahawk or blow a hole in him with a rifle or pistol. If it weren’t for those things, he’d be a plumb peaceable man.
Sometimes when he told himself that, he even believed it.
Preacher walked Horse across the river with the others trailing behind him. The water came up about three feet on the stallion’s legs in the deepest part. They emerged onto the western bank. “This’ll be a good spot to camp. Charlie, Aaron, you boys gather some of those good-sized rocks along the edge of the river and we’ll use ’em to build a fire ring. Be nice to have some hot food and coffee this evenin’. The flames won’t show and the breeze is from the southeast, so it’ll carry the smoke smell away from anybody who’s followin’ us.”
He didn’t say anything about the Crow village he thought might be relatively nearby. He could do that in the morning when they turned north again and followed the stream toward what he hoped would be Butterfly’s new home. He couldn’t think of her as Caroline just yet. As long as she wore buckskins and had bear grease in her hair, he probably never would.
CHAPTER 16
Preacher knew that Aaron and Charlie wanted him to try to find out more about Caroline’s past. Hawk and White Buffalo thought he ought to leave her alone, though, and that evening by the fire, they sat on either side of her and glared protectively. Preacher didn’t see any need to force the issue, so he just smiled across the fire ring at her and went on eating the salt pork he had fried up for their supper.
Caroline surprised all of them by saying, “I have been thinking about the things you asked me, Preacher.”
“You do not have to talk about that,” Hawk told her. “You should put all of it out of your mind.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “No, it is part of me,” she declared. “How can I be who I really am if part of me is missing?”
Hawk’s frown made it clear that he didn’t like the way the conversation was going, but he wasn’t going to sit there and argue with her.
Preacher said, “Anything you want to talk about is all right with us, Caroline.”
His use of her white name caused a troubled look to pass over her face for a moment, but then she said, “I have been thinking about the man and the woman I remembered earlier. The man always had something with him. A thing with . . . with tanned hide on the outside . . . and inside many things that were thin like rubbed leaves. He did this with it, many times.” She pantomimed opening a book and turning the pages.
Preacher had had a pretty good idea what she was talking about, and her actions confirmed his hunch.
Aaron and Charlie had been listening intently to the conversation, even though they didn’t understand a word of the Crow tongue.
Charlie said, “What’s she talking about? She looks like she’s pretending to read a book.”
“I reckon she is,” the mountain man said. “She’s talkin’ about her pa, the one I figured might have been a preacher. She said he always had a book with him and read from it all the time.”
“A Bible,” Aaron said. “A minister would always have a Bible with him.”
Preacher nodded. “Yep.” To Caroline, he went on in Crow. “What else do you remember about him?”
“He never smiled or laughed.” She glanced over at Hawk. “Like Hawk That Soars, only worse.”
“I smile,” he protested. “Whenever there is something to smile about.” His solemn expression weakened his argument, though.
“The woman was much happier,” Caroline continued. “I remember her singing. Not the kind of songs the Crow sing, but the sound was pleasing. I remember . . . a big lodge . . . with hard walls and floor.”
“A house,” Preacher said.
Caroline shook her head. “I do not know that word. But I think we lived there, although it was so long ago that I have almost no memories of it. I remember the lodge on wheels better. Hide was stretched over the top of it, to block the sun.”
“A covered wagon.”
“If you say that is what it was called, then so it is,” she said.
“Did you ever see any more like it? Did any white settlers ever come to the village of your people?”
Caroline shook her head. “I never saw another lodge on wheels. Whenever I thought about it, when I was younger, I decided it must not be real. I believed that it had come to me in a dream, and perh
aps I would see one like it someday, but mostly I just thought that it was not real.”
“It was real, all right,” Preacher assured her. “These days, immigrants use ’em to travel west. Folks have started talkin’ about somethin’ called the Oregon Trail and say it won’t be long before thousands and thousands of people will be rollin’ along it in wagons just like the one you described.”
“Thousands and thousands,” Caroline repeated. “What is this?”
“You saw the sandbars in the river?”
She nodded.
“Think of each grain of sand in one of those bars. Now think about that many white people headed west to farm and run stores and build houses . . . big lodges with hard walls and floors.”
Caroline’s eyes widened. She shrank back against Hawk’s shoulder, and he put his arm around her again.
“That sounds . . . terrible,” she said in an awed voice. “That is too many. Too many!”
Preacher smiled and told her, “I can’t say as I disagree with you. But that’s what’s comin’. Shoot, it may already be here. And I don’t reckon there’s a blasted thing any of us can do to stop it.”
“Now what are you talking about?” Aaron asked, a little impatiently.
“Civilization,” Preacher said. He added dryly, “We ain’t all that sold on it.”
* * *
Jefferson Scarrow sat beside the fire and enjoyed the warmth radiating from it. Even at that time of year, nights in the high country were often quite chilly.
Actually, considering how close he and his companions had come to death, he was very happy to be feeling anything.
Hogarth Plumlee, wearing a perpetually worried scowl, looked around at the camp and said quietly to Scarrow, “If them heathens start doin’ some sort of war dance, I’m gonna try to fight my way outta here, Jeff. I probably won’t make it, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna just sit here and let ’em slaughter me.”
“There’s not going to be any slaughtering,” Scarrow said with more confidence than he really felt. What if the Blackfeet had brought them along simply so they could torture and kill the white men at their leisure? That possibility couldn’t be ruled out, but so far he hadn’t seen any signs of it happening.
In fact, the Indians were ignoring the whites, other than a couple of warriors armed with flintlock rifles who stood nearby, obviously acting as guards. The rest of the Blackfeet had a separate, larger campfire a dozen yards away where they chattered to each other in their mostly incomprehensible tongue.
Scarrow would have been more worried, and Plumlee would have been spoiling for a fight even more, if they had been able to hear and understand the conversation going on between Angry Sky and Red Rock, the most senior and trusted of his warriors.
“The warriors believe you are making a mistake by trusting the white men,” Red Rock advised Angry Sky as they hunkered at the edge of the light cast by the larger campfire.
“Why do they believe I trust the white men?” Angry Sky asked.
“You have not taken their guns.”
Angry Sky grunted disdainfully. “They will not use their guns against us. There are too many of us and not enough of them. Their guts are like water. They know if they try to hurt us, we will kill them all faster than a hummingbird can beat its wings.”
“Most believe we should have killed them when we first found them. I have heard many say as much.”
Angry Sky finished gnawing the meat off the leg bone of a rabbit he had roasted over the fire earlier. He threw the bone into the flames. “Any who dare to talk against me should do so to my face. Any who wish to challenge me for leadership are free to do so.”
“No one wishes to do that,” Red Rock replied without hesitation. “You are our war chief, Angry Sky, and will remain so, but Blackfoot warriors have their own minds. They want to know why our sworn enemies remain alive.”
“And so they sent you to find out.”
“No one had to send me,” Red Rock said. “I would like to know the same thing.”
Angry Sky’s lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. “Because the white men are fools! When we find the ones who stole the Crow woman, they will be the first to attack. They will die while killing our other enemies. And any who survive will die as soon as the battle is over.”
Red Rock drew in a deep breath. “Where is the honor in that?” he demanded. “It is not the Blackfoot way to use others to slay our enemies!”
“It is not the Blackfoot way to be foolish, either,” Angry Sky snapped. He jerked a hand in a curt gesture. “That may not be the way it happens, but there is no harm in keeping the white men alive to see if we can use them to our advantage.”
Red Rock shook his head. “Every white man who continues to draw breath harms our people. Our warriors can never be content as long as one white man lives.”
Then they were doomed to never be content, Angry Sky thought. He understood there were far too many white men for all of them to ever be slain. As war chief, he had accepted as his mission in life the killing of as many white men as possible. He could only hope that when his time came to enter the realm of the spirits, he would carry the lives of enough enemies with him to ensure happiness for the rest of all time.
Now practical matters occupied his attention. He told Red Rock, “Send two scouts ahead in the night to see if they can find the ones we seek. Choose good warriors, strong and fast.”
“Tall Pony and Bent Finger,” Red Rock said without hesitation.
Angry Sky nodded, satisfied with Red Rock’s choices. “If they find the men who stole the Crow woman, they are not to attack. They will come back here and tell us where our enemies are.”
“I will be sure they understand,” Red Rock agreed. He started to stand up, then paused and chuckled softly. “Using white men to kill white men . . . It is an odd idea, but I can understand why you thought of it, Angry Sky. In the end, all the white men die.”
Angry Sky nodded and repeated, “In the end, all the white men die.”
* * *
Charlie Todd rolled over in his blankets and muttered something as he came half-awake. He wasn’t alert enough to know what he said. He settled down again, using his saddle as a pillow, and tried to sink back into the welcoming darkness of slumber.
A few seconds later, his eyelids flickered open and he sighed quietly. His bladder wasn’t going to allow him to go back to sleep right away. The pressing fullness of it urged him to get up and go off into the bushes.
He remembered his father back in Virginia complaining about how many times he had to get up during the night to use the chamber pot. That common malady got worse with age, according to Charlie’s father. Charlie was starting to believe that was right, and he wasn’t even old yet! He was still a young man. He shouldn’t have the same problem.
But try arguing with a full bladder, he thought. It wasn’t going to listen to reason. He had no doubt of that.
So he pushed his blankets back and sat up.
Charlie looked around the camp, which was dark and quiet except for the river bubbling along a few yards away and a few night birds chirping in the trees upstream. Hawk was on guard duty, sitting cross-legged on the ground with Dog beside him. The big cur was stretched out, chin resting on his paws, but his ears were up and alert. He had trotted into camp late that evening. White Buffalo talked with Dog, or at least claimed to, and reported that Dog had not found their enemies anywhere close behind them.
Charlie didn’t believe for a second that White Buffalo actually could talk to animals or that they could talk to him, but the elderly Absaroka seemed convinced of it, and Charlie didn’t see anything wrong with humoring him. He and Aaron had talked about it, and Aaron felt the same way. They liked White Buffalo, and if it made the old-timer happy to chatter away at animals, then more power to him.
Charlie stood up, and Hawk was on his feet instantly, too. “What are you doing?” the young warrior asked in a whisper.
“I have to relieve myself,” Char
lie explained.
Hawk nodded in the moonlight. “Then go.”
Charlie made a face. “Not here, right out in the open.”
“There is nothing to be ashamed of, Charlie.”
“I’m not ashamed. I just like a little privacy, that’s all.”
“On the frontier, privacy can be dangerous,” Hawk warned.
Charlie pointed and said, “There are some bushes right there, not twenty feet away. I’ll just go in there and be right back. You know there’s nothing around to be worried about or you and Dog would have noticed it by now.”
Hawk considered, then nodded slowly. “This is true. Do not waste any time, and do not go farther than the edge of those bushes.”
“Of course,” Charlie agreed. In his sock feet, he walked over to the bushes, being careful not to make enough noise to wake anyone else. Behind him, Hawk and Dog settled back down to standing guard again.
Charlie parted the branches and stepped into the gap he had created. The brush closed in around him. Some of the branches poked at him uncomfortably, so he moved around, trying to find a better place.
He didn’t really realize how far into the brush he was penetrating until he looked back and could no longer see the camp through the screen of vegetation. This spot would do as good as any, he decided. He lowered his buckskin trousers and sighed with satisfaction as he started going about the business that had taken him there.
An arm circled his throat, clamped down on it like an iron bar, and jerked him back a step. He felt something digging into his back, through the buckskin shirt just below his left shoulder blade, and knew the tip of a knife was poised to thrust all the way into his heart.
CHAPTER 17
Dog lifted his head and growled. The big cur’s actions made Hawk’s muscles stiffen with alarm. He looked around quickly but didn’t see anything amiss.
Charlie hadn’t come back from the bushes yet, Hawk realized. The young trapper hadn’t been gone long enough to worry about him yet . . . but Dog was looking in that direction.
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