That Zach cared for her so much surprised no one more than him. She was not a beauty by most standards. She did not have the rich black hair or full body of a Shoshone. Nor did she possess the creamy softness or saucy bearing of a white. Louisa was unique, a combination of traits he had never beheld in any other. Perhaps that was why he liked her so much. Why sometimes his heart ached with longing. Why, at night, he would take her on long walks and kiss her until his lips felt fit to burn off.
“Hey, you almost cut me, silly goose.”
Zach blinked, and straightened. He had slashed into the elk close to Lou’s fingers. “Sorry.”
Nate King turned, pretending to be interested in a raven soaring overhead so they would not see his smirk. By the age of ten, Zach could carve up a carcass as expertly as men twice his age. Of late, though, the boy had become remarkably absentminded. “I’d best fetch the rest of the horses,” Nate mentioned. Walking briskly off, he noted that the sun was on its downward arc. Making it home by nightfall was unlikely, but he would do the best he could.
Memories of his own youth washed over the mountain man. Recollections of when he met Winona, of how they fell for one another at first sight. There was no predicting love. The human heart pulsed to rhythms often beyond the control of the heart’s owner. But he had no regrets. Taking Winona for his wife had been the smartest thing he ever did. She was his joy, his treasure, his life. And if his son felt the same about Louisa May Clark, neither heaven nor hell could stem the tide of their devotion.
The three packhorses and Nate’s stallion were in a gully a quarter of a mile to the northeast. Nate had left them there when he spotted the elk and gone on afoot. It had taken him the better part of an hour to get close enough for a perfect shot. For him that was important. While feeding his family and earning a livelihood demanded Nate slay game, he did not like the animals to suffer. He always tried to bring them down with a single, well-placed shot to the brainpan or the heart.
Some mountaineers were not quite as conscientious. They fired even when they did not have clear shots. They inflicted painful wounds, then had to track the stricken creatures for miles to put them out of their misery. More often than not, the hunters gave up and went after something else.
With his own eyes, Nate once saw a man put twenty-two lead balls into a buffalo. Enough to wipe out a small herd. Yet the man’s marksmanship was so poor, the riddled bull did not go down. Nate had to dispatch it because the other man ran out of ammo.
The horses were right where Nate had left them. Nate rejoined his son and the young woman, and helped carve up the elk. The hide was saved and would be cured when they got home. The meat, the hooves, even the skull was strapped onto a packhorse. Only the guts and a few scraps were left; they would be devoured by scavengers.
Nate took much more than most white men would. Living with the Shoshones had taught him never to let any part of a kill go to waste. The skull, for instance, would be cracked open and the brain extracted. It would be dissolved in warm water, then simmered into a thin paste, which was rubbed on the hair side of the hide to treat it. Bones were used to make awls and scrapers. Hoofs were a main ingredient in glue.
Even more uses were found for buffalo. Nate had totaled them up once and was astounded to discover his adopted people relied on the shaggy brutes for eighty-eight everyday items, things like blankets and robes, lodge covers and parfleches. Bowstrings were made from bull sinew, arrowheads from buffalo bone, shields from the thick hide around a bull’s neck, knives from the hide on its sides.
Boats, snowshoes, travois hitches, lariats, hackamores, the Indians owed them all to the buffalo. Tobacco pouches were made from calf hide. Berry pouches were fashioned from the hides of unborn calves, because they resisted staining and leakage. So highly prized were buffalo calves that after a hunt Indian women were quick to cut the calves out of all the pregnant cows.
Cooking vessels were made from buffalo paunches. Water buckets too. Horns made excellent spoons and cups. Hair brushes were made from the rough side of the tongue. Tails were used to make swatters for killing flies. Soap came from buffalo fat. Not even the buffalo’s dung went to waste; it was fuel for fires.
Many tribes were totally dependent on the great beasts. Should the buffalo ever die out, Nate did not know what they would do. But that was highly unlikely. Buffalo numbered in the millions, in herds so vast it took a whole week for the teeming rivers of muscle and hair to pass by.
Indians believed the buffalo would exist for as long as there were stars in the sky. Nate tended to agree. Then he would think of the beaver, and how trapping had so reduced their number that they were on the verge of being wiped out. What would happen if one day settlers poured onto the prairie and thronged the mountains? Would the buffalo be killed off? The notion was not as far-fetched as it sounded. Once only thirteen colonies existed. Now cities and towns teemed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River, with more springing up every year.
Nate would hate to see the wilderness overrun. It was the last refuge for those who yearned to live free, for those who refused to be slaves to law and custom, who would rather die than have self-righteous politicians tell them how they should live. Nate could never go back. Once having tasted life as the Almighty meant it to be, no man in his right mind would give it up to live in a cage.
Zachary King had something else on his mind. It was the same dilemma he’d been pondering for weeks now, ever since he met Louisa May Clark.
Zach wanted her to be his mate, his wife. But he was at a loss as to how to go about broaching the subject to her. Especially since Lou had once commented that she had no interest in marriage whatsoever.
As for his folks, the one time he’d mentioned it, they’d looked at him as if he’d been stomped in the head by a buffalo. He fretted they would object, they’d say he was too young, that he should wait. Yet he knew many Shoshones his age who had wives, and he was just as mature as they were.
It shocked him, though, wanting to marry a white girl. Until recently he had not thought highly of his father’s people. All the hatred and abuse he had suffered were to blame.
In the white man’s eyes Zach was a “half-breed,” an object of contempt and scorn. An accident of birth had branded him a ‘breed for life. He had just about decided he wanted nothing more to do with whites, that except for his father and Uncle Shakespeare and a few of his father’s friends, he would shun the white man as they shunned him.
Then along came Lou.
While growing up, Zach had always admired how deeply in love his folks were. He saw it in their eyes, in the things they did for each other. Often, he had pondered the secret of love: What was it? Would he know it when he felt it? Would he ever feel it, or was he destined to go through life alone? Love had been one of the monumental mysteries of life.
It was a mystery no more. Zach loved Lou with every fiber of his being. He could not stop staring at her when they were together and not stop thinking of her when they were apart. Before they met, his daydreams were of glory in battle, of coups counted, of earning honors due mighty warriors. Now he daydreamed about her during the day and dreamed about her at night. She was his whole world, his whole universe. The thought of going through life without her caused a cold hand to clutch his heart.
What should he do about it? Should he propose? Many an evening over the years, while seated snug and warm in front of the fireplace, Zach had listened to his parents relate how they had first met, the events that resulted in their being husband and wife. His father had never gotten down on bended knee to formally propose, as was traditional with white men. But should Zach do that? Should he ask Lou to marry him as a white man would?
So many questions, so few answers.
At that moment, Louisa May Clark was asking a question of her own: How much longer would she stay with the Kings? She did not want to impose, yet neither could she bear to leave Stalking Coyote. He had become everything to her. He was her joy, her life. He put a smile on her
lips the first thing each morning and scorched those same lips with hot kisses the last thing each night.
Lord, how she wanted him! Her feelings bewildered her at times. They were so strong, so potent. Her dear departed mother had told her that one day she would undergo a “change,” that she would view men in a whole new light. But Lou never imagined anything like this. She never imagined caring for a man so much that she could not bear the thought of living without him.
Part of her confusion over what to do stemmed from the fact that Stalking Coyote had not told her he loved her. His fondness for her went without saying. Their nightly walks confirmed as much. But she needed to know how deep that fondness ran. Was it pure physical passion, or did he love her as she loved him? And if he did, why hadn’t he said so? Should she bring it up? Should she take the bit in her mouth and come right out with how she felt?
Lou wished her folks were alive to advise her. Her mother, Mary Bonham Clark, had been the sweetest woman who ever lived. Her father, Zebulon Clark, had been a fine father and done his best to rear Lou alone after Mary passed on. Lou could not bear to think of his last moments, when hostile Indians swept out of nowhere and laid him low with an arrow in his ribs. That she was still alive was a miracle. That she loved Zach King was another.
What to do? What to do?
Lou just didn’t know.
Nate King pushed hard to reach his homestead before the sun set, but they were still five miles away when the blazing orb dipped below castle-like ramparts to the west. Sunsets in the Rockies were usually spectacular, and this one was no exception. The invisible hand of the Almighty painted the horizon with vivid hues of red, orange, and pink.
As Nate started to turn his head, movement caught his eye. On a ridge to the southwest were two horsemen. They were too far away for him to note details. He kept on riding so they wouldn’t suspect he had seen them, and when he was in among pines, he drew rein and shoved the lead rope at his son. “Take this. Tell your mother I spotted a couple of strange coons. I’m going to see who they are.”
Zach was stunned. He should have seen them too, but he had been absorbed in thought about Louisa.
“Stick to heavy cover and keep your eyes skinned,” Nate said. Smacking his heels against the stallion, he angled to the right.
“Let me go with you.”
“No. Where there are two there might be more. Stay at the cabin with the ladies and your sister.”
Zach understood. If the worst came to pass, if hostiles were abroad, his father was relying on him to help safeguard the women and their home. “Don’t you worry, Pa. We can take care of ourselves.”
Lou could not say what sparked her to pipe up with “How about me, Mr. King? I’d be glad to tag along.”
Nate admired her spunk, but he declined. To lessen the sting he said, “I know you’re a good shot. Zach will want you at his elbow if the Blackfoot Confederacy is paying us a visit. The last time we went up against them, we were lucky to keep our hair.”
The mountain man trotted down the slope. Following his own advice, he never exposed himself to the pair on the ridge. He saw them from time to time, though, off through the trees. He regretted not packing his spyglass in the two beaded parfleches that served as his saddlebags. If he had, he could tell if the riders were white or red, and if red, which tribe they were from.
The ridge was only half a mile distant, but reaching it took over half an hour. Nate chose a roundabout route so he came up on the duo from the rear. A steep slope littered with talus had to be negotiated, Nate picking his route with care to avoid giving himself away. A stone’s throw from the rim, Nate stopped and climbed down. He wrapped the reins around a rock, then stalked higher. His moccasin-shod feet made no more noise than would a mouse. At the summit he crouched low.
No sounds indicated the pair were still there. Nate uncoiled, leveling the Hawken at the spot where they had been. Sure enough, they were gone. Frowning, he strode over to inspect the ground. Hoofprints were all he found. One of the horses had been shod, one had not. The two men – if they were both men – had headed due south. He estimated they had a five-minute head start.
Hastening to the stallion, Nate forked leather and galloped in pursuit. A tract of dense forest gave way to a tableland dotted with boulders the size of his cabin. Washes and ravines had to be crossed or skirted. The ground was hard-packed, so the tracks were faint and growing fainter, thanks to the gathering twilight.
Soon it was almost too dark to see. Nate forged on, though. He had to be sure the pair had not turned toward his cabin. For all he knew, these two might be the ones who had been spying on him. He would like to learn why.
With the advent of night, the woods came alive with new sounds. Nighttime was predator time, when the beasts that fed on other beasts came out of their dens and caves to feast until the sun rose.
The wavering, lonesome howl of a wolf was the cue for other predators to let the world know they were on the prowl. Painters screeched like tormented women. Grizzlies grunted and rumbled in monstrous disdain. Coyotes yipped in feral chorus.
Assorted screams and outcries punctuated the bedlam.
The stallion was not fond of being abroad after dark. It moved with inbred caution, ears pricked, nostrils constantly flaring to catch wind-borne scents.
The likelihood of encountering a meat-eater did not bother Nate. Wolves avoided humans unless starved. Coyotes posed no threat whatsoever. Painters – or cougars, as some had taken to calling them – normally attacked only when provoked. Grizzlies were the greatest danger. As unpredictable as they were temperamental, they were the kings of their domain. For sheer ferocity no living creature matched them.
The last of the light faded.
Nate rode on, expecting to spot the campfire of those he sought. Myriad stars lent the landscape an eerie pale glow. He avoided a deep, narrow ravine, roving along the rim until he found a spot where the two sides had buckled to form an earthen ramp. The stallion floundered in soft dirt on the way down but stayed upright.
The farther Nate traveled, the more perplexed he grew. Riding at night was risky. Most would stop and make camp. But the two he was after apparently had no such inclination. For as far as the eye could see, an inky mantle cloaked the wilds.
Going on was pointless, but Nate did so anyway. He figured the pair had somehow realized he was on their heels and had gone to ground. He might have passed them already. That they were lying low tended to confirm his suspicions.
Men who had nothing to hide would not take to cover. Men who were up to no good would.
By Nate’s reckoning it was nine o’clock when he chose to head home. Further searching was pointless. Mountains towered like Titans on all sides. Rounding the base of one, he twisted to open a parfleche. Winona had packed enough jerky and pemmican to feed an army. He selected a piece of each and was raising the jerky to his mouth when a shot rang out.
A leaden hornet buzzed past Nate’s ear. Dropping the food, he hauled on the reins. A wispy cloud of smoke pinpointed the location of the shooter, sixty yards above. The would-be killer had to have the eyesight of a painter to make a shot like that.
Nate spurred the stallion into a headlong charge, the last thing the ambusher would expect. There was a method to his madness. By charging, he would not give the man time to reload. Stones clattered out from under the stallion’s flying hoofs as he rapidly narrowed the gap. A shifting patch of blackness alerted him the shooter was on the move, fleeing to the west. Nate jammed the Hawken against his shoulder and fired.
The rider cried out but did not slacken speed. Within moments he had raced into a large stand of aspen.
Palming a pistol, Nate plowed in among the slender boles. When he came out the other side the slope was empty. Reining up, he glanced right and left. His quarry had given him the slip.
Fuming at being duped, Nate plunged back into the stand. He searched it from end to end. When that failed to turn up the culprit, he roamed the slope above, then the slope be
low. Whoever it was had gone, melting into the night like a will o’ the wisp.
Bafflement and fury boiled in Nate like water in a hot spring. Now there could be no doubt the pair had evil intent. They had tried to slay him once, and they would try again. Neither he nor his family were safe until they were caught. He had half a mind to make a cold camp and resume the hunt in the morning, but he could not bring himself to leave Winona and the others alone that long. Anxiety for his loved ones ate at him like acid.
Reluctantly, Nate rode eastward. He made a mental note to get word to his two nearest neighbors, Shakespeare McNair and Simon Ward. They must be warned. Here they were, hundreds of miles from civilization, living in remote valleys far up in mile-high mountains, and they had to be on their guard against common cutthroats!
What was the world coming to?
Three
Hours earlier, Simon Ward stared into the muzzle of imminent death and opened his mouth to shout, to tell his wife there was no need to shoot. It was only him. But he did not yell soon enough. For at that instant her pistol discharged. With only fifteen feet separating them, evading the slug was out of the question. Simon was a dead man. Or he would have been, had Felicity’s hand not been shaking. The ball whizzed within a whisker’s width of Simon’s left ear, then thudded into a tree trunk.
“Simon!” Felicity exclaimed, horrified at what she had nearly done. Rushing up, she threw her arms around him. “Oh, Simon! I didn’t know it was you. I thought someone was stalking me.”
Simon felt weak at the knees. He’d had close shaves, but never one that close. Clearing his throat, he said, “There was someone. I saw him. A bearded guy. He ran off, and I couldn’t catch him.” Holding her close enough to feel her heart pound, he tenderly kissed her neck. “I was worried something had happened to you. I couldn’t bear it if anything did.” Without her, he would not want to go on living.
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