by John Legg
“Ye understand English, boy?” Squire asked roughly as he tightened his grip around the struggling warrior’s throat.
“Some,” the Blackfoot grunted.
“Bon. Ye make the least little sound and I’ll cut your goddamn heart out and eat it.” Squire dragged the Blackfoot through the bush, tossed him on Noir Astre’s saddle and climbed up behind him. He rode out, silent as the night that surrounded them.
He cut the wide trail of the Colonel’s brigade in the pale moonlight and followed in its wake. He finally caught up with them it the morning, about a mile shy of North Fork. As he approached the column, Melton raced out toward him.
Melton stared briefly at the Blackfoot who sat silently in front of Squire. Then he turned his attention to the mountain man. “There’s more trouble, Nathaniel,” Melton said in irritation.
“Well?” Squire asked, face hard.
“Hank’s gone,” Melton blurted out. “And so is . . . so is Star Path.” He shook his head, knowing that he was ultimately responsible, but not willing to shirk his duty, no matter how unpleasant it might be.
“Merde. How long they been gone?”
“Since just after you left. An hour later, at the most. They just seemed to vanish. ”
“Well, there ain’t shit I can do about it just now,” Squire said, dismounting. “We’ll be lookin’ for ’em on the morrow.”
He was worried sick, but he was also exhausted and his head still throbbed. If it had just have been Carpenter he would have thought she had set out alone to find Train. But Star Path’s disappearance put a different light on the matter.
Melton stared at Squire for a moment, then asked tightly, “You think the Blackfeet took them?”
“Aye, Colonel. It were the Blackfeet. I be certain of it.”
“But why?”
“Star Path be a Sioux. The Sioux and the Blackfeet be enemies.”
“But what of Hank?”
Squire was set to tell Melton about Carpenter, but decided against it. “Can’t rightly say, Colonel. Mayhap Hank was just in the way when Star Path was took.”
“Maybe so. But it seems strange. ” He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. “And there’s more bad news.”
“Tell it.”
“You remember Hayes, that big, sandy-haired boy we hired on as a camp helper?”
“Aye.”
“He’s dead. One of the others found his body yesterday. Scalped.”
Squire nodded, weariness, hunger and worry settling down on him. “We’ll be makin’ camp here,” he said. He jerked the Blackfoot to the ground, dragged him to a tree and tied him there, one rope around the Indian’s neck so that he could not fall asleep.
Squire rolled into the comfort of his buffalo robe after a helping of roasted hump. But it was a long time before he fell asleep.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SQUIRE’S eyes were hot and hard. His huge right hand smashed the captive Blackfoot in the face. The Indian grunted and sagged until the rope caught him by the throat and he weakly pushed himself back up.
“Squire!” Melton shouted. “That’s not—”
“Shut up, Colonel. This ain’t your concern no more.”
Melton started to speak, but then clamped his mouth shut. He had little success in changing Squire to his will normally; there would be no chance, he knew, to do it now, with Squire in such a foul humor. So he stood with Bellows, a few feet behind Squire and the Blackfoot. Squire knew the other men were listening to him while they worked, even as they pretended to ignore him. “Where’n hell are your people takin’ my men?” Squire demanded. The Blackfoot spit out some blood and a tooth. “I tell nothing,” he said through mashed lips. “Batardl”
“Speak English, you shit-faced son of a bitch. What be your name?”
“He-Who-Stalks-The-Bear,” the Blackfoot said proudly, in halting English.
“All right, Stalkin’ Bear. Your people have took four of mine, my rifle and all my possibles. I do not take a shine to such doin’s, boy. ” The Blackfoot spit more blood, just missing Squire’s moccasins. Squire grabbed Stalking Bear by the throat and squeezed. “Do ye know who I be?” he hissed.
The Indian said nothing; the edges of fear crept into his eyes. “I be L’on Farouche.”
The Blackfoot’s eyes widened. “L’on Farouche is dead.”
“Ain’t goddamn likely,” Squire said, as puzzled as the Blackfoot had seemed. He paused a minute, trying to sort it out, but could not. Then he asked, “Ye know why I be called that?”
“No,” Stalking Bear gurgled.
“’Tis a pity. Might save us all a heap of grief, if’n ye did.” Squire released the Blackfoot’s throat and stepped back, shaking his head. He pulled out a knife and began honing it, glancing up now and again at Stalking Bear.
“Maybe you better learn why, boy,” Bellows said, stepping forward. He wore a smug grin. “Best learn about old L’on Farouche. Might even save your goddamn skin. He’s a mean one, is ol’ L’on Farouche. Meanest bastard ever roamed these mountains.”
“I’d like to hear it, Homer,” Melton said. Though he was getting into the act, he was also interested.
“I think maybe I’ll tell it. Might just grease up this here buffalo-humpin’ bastard’s tongue some.”
He cut off a piece of tobacco from the small twist in his possible sack. He chewed it slowly, letting the Blackfoot wait, and wonder.
“The way I heard it,” he said at last, “Squire and a couple Frenchmen named Marchand and LeGrande was trappin’ up in the Beartooths when Squire was still a youngster. Must be nigh onto fifteen years ago now. Anyways, a band of Blackfoot—your brothers, the Bloods—caught ’em on the trap lines one day. Caught ’em flatfooted, they did.”
As Bellows spoke, Squire relived the event, seeing it in his mind’s eye as if it had just happened.
Louis Jean-Pierre Marchand had never forgiven his parents for saddling him with such a name, and he often railed against it when he was in his cups. He was an old-timer in the beaver trade when Squire met him. He had trapped throughout the north, from Lake Michigan to the Great Slave Lake.
His partner, Emil Francois LeGrande, was a few years younger than the forty-year-old Marchand. But he still had many years in the business, mostly around Lake Winnipeg and the Red River of the North.
Marchand had taken Squire under his wing when he found the huge youth wandering the mountains, lost and weary. Squire, young, cocky and utterly confident in himself, had taken his leave of the Missouri Fur Company, thinking he could make it on his own.
Marchand had been alone at the time, with LeGrande off on an extended trip back east to Montreal to take care of personal matters. It was two years before he rejoined Marchand, surprised to see Squire in the camp. But he accepted the young man, though he was a little aloof.
The three had been together just into their second season when the war party of Bloods, one of the divisions of the Blackfoot confederacy, discovered them. LeGrande was at the camp making meat; Squire and Marchand were on the trap line not far away. Squire stood thigh-deep in the icy water, fishing the traps—and the drowned beaver—out. Marchand sat on the bank, skinning the beaver Squire tossed to him.
The Blackfoot seemed to pop up out of thin air, making a headlong dash toward them.
Marchand managed to shoot one of the Bloods and brain another with the rifle butt right off. Squire laid out one Blackfoot who had charged into the water by smashing his head in with one of the five-pound traps. He lost the trap in the process, but he grabbed another charging Blood in his large hands and broke the warrior’s neck.
Then Squire went down with an arrow imbedded in the lower part of his chest. As the fast-rushing water swirled over his head, he saw Marchand struggling to free himself from the clutches of five warriors.
Squire fought off the pain and pushed his nose far enough above the surface of the water to breathe. The icy water numbed the pain some as he let the current carry him downstream, until he managed to
grab a large rock. He remained in the water, out of sight, for more than an hour, listening to howling Indians. When he finally pulled himself up onto the bank, it was quiet. The Blackfeet had gone.
His teeth chattered as he glanced down at the feathered shaft of the arrow protruding from his lower chest. Numb with pain and cold, he pulled off his soggy woolen capote and dropped it to the ground. He gingerly reached around to his lower back, pushed his shirt up out of the way and felt the hard lump where the top of the arrowhead rested beneath the flesh.
He brought the hand back around to his front and wiggled the feathered shaft slightly. Pain seared straight upward from the wound to stab at his brain. He picked up a stick and clamped his teeth onto it. Quickly, before he changed his mind, he pushed the nocked-end of the arrow, trying to jam it through the flesh of his back. Chilling waves of agony wrenched through his body.
Sweat mingled with the river water on his face and streamed down into his thick beard as he bit hard on the stick and pushed the shaft again. The pain drove him to his knees as the arrowhead tore through tissue and skin.
He waited a minute, sucking in air. He held his breath, then pushed harder on the arrow, nearly blinded by the pain. He squawked, choking on the bile that bubbled up with the pain. Finally, chest heaving, he reached around with one hand and snapped the arrowhead off. Before he lost his courage—or passed out—he grabbed the feathered end and pulled it free. He dropped the bloody shaft and collapsed. Lying there, he gasped for breath, and fought to keep from blacking out.
A few minutes later he stood up. He fought back the nausea that boiled in his stomach as he tore off the long tassel from the hood of his capote and tied a crude bandage around his chest. When he had regained a little strength, he followed the river back upstream toward where he and Marchand had been attacked. It was nearing dusk when he finally arrived.
His heart sank and the contents of his stomach spilled out violently, reducing him to a retching hulk for some minutes. When he finally stood, it was with quivering legs. He tried not to look at what was left of Marchand; he was stunned by the savage butchery of the Blackfeet.
He moved off on weak legs, mouth foul, stomach empty but still churning. Within minutes he was at their camp. LeGrande was gone, and so was everything else: supplies, rifles, trade goods, horses, plews, saddle. Anything that would have been of any use at all was gone. Squire had only the clothes on his back, his tomahawk, knife and the small possible bag he wore on a belt around his waist. In it was an awl, extra flints, a small twist of tobacco, a fire-making kit, some sinew, a folding knife and several bone needles. He noticed the bloodstains on the matted winter grasses and wondered if LeGrande had been killed.
He had been hoping to find their shovel so that he could bury Marchand. But it, too, was gone. Squire knew he could not bury Marchand now, but he could not leave him for the wolves either. He had only one choice. Steeling himself, he retraced his steps. Trying not to look at the thing that once was his friend, substitute father and mentor, he lifted Marchand’s body, crying out as the pain lanced into his chest.
Staggering under the small, frail corpse, he made it to the edge of the water. He dropped the corpse into the river, then knelt and pushed it so that the current caught it and buried it. Squire knew that unless it snagged on something, the body would rise again later. But Marchand had been stripped, and there was no way Squire could tie rocks or other weights to the body to keep it down. He would just have to trust to God and Nature.
His spirits soared as he spotted a float stick. He waded into the water and pulled up the trap. He figured, what the hell, and started checking the river. Altogether he found four of his traps, two of them—which he had not gotten to check before the attack—with plump beavers in them.
He returned along the bank in the dark. He built up the fire and cooked the beaver, using a stick to hold them over the flame. The moon was high by the time he washed the beaver-tail dinner down with several mouthfuls of water from the river. He staggered back to the fire and sank down next to it. He slept fitfully.
In the morning he poulticed the wound with chewed tobacco and some leaves and tied the strip of wool around his chest again. He finished the last of the beaver meat and then headed back to the river for a drink and to say a final farewell to his friend.
When he turned away, he spotted the things he had left under a bush when he had entered the river the day before: his pistol, shooting bag and powder horns. He felt positively enriched as he checked over his things. His pistol was still loaded, though not primed. The powder in his horns was dry, but there was precious little of it left.
Saddened by Marchand’s death, worried about LeGrande’s fate, happy to be alive and hell-bent on revenge, Squire set out on foot, following the clear tracks left by the Blackfoot war party. He walked more than three weeks, his long legs putting the miles behind him. The first week was tough, weak as he was from the wound and loss of blood. The pain he just accepted. There was nothing he could do about it, so he refused to give in and let it run his life. After a week, the pain eased a little each day, until finally it was gone.
Late one day he spotted a small grizzly that had not moved into its den for the winter. Two well-placed pistol balls and a few mighty swings of the tomahawk laid the bear dead. Squire took the hide and some of the meat with him, and each night he hunched over the fur-rich hide, fleshing and beating it as best he could with his limited resources. Each night he used the hide for sleeping, even before he had finished tanning it.
It was near full winter now, and even though the nights turned bitter cold, he considered himself lucky to be on his feet all day, moving to keep warm. Snow fell frequently, and although it was not often heavy, it blanketed the ground and made it difficult to follow the trail. A week out, indeed, it made it impossible, so he went on faith.
After many days of trudging across the land, he spotted smoke beyond a ridge. He climbed the hill and topped the rocky, tree-studded summit, where he looked down on a small Blackfoot village. He counted only nine lodges, meaning there were perhaps twelve or fifteen warriors. The encampment sat near a small, frozen-over stream in the valley that was protected from the worst of the winter by the surrounding mountains, which were thick with pines and bare, spidery aspens.
Not sure that this was the village he was looking for, Squire sprawled prone and watched the Indians move about their camp in the late afternoon. Then he spotted his horse, a large-boned piebald gelding.
When he saw a mounted warrior coming up the hill toward him, he slithered back until he reached the cover of the trees. He grabbed a log and slipped behind a tree large enough to hide most of his bulk. He stood silent, unmoving, his dark green capote, full beard and fur cap blending in with the background. He waited as the Blackfoot rode along, unconcerned.
The warrior’s horse nickered as it neared Squire, but a guttural bark from its rider quieted it.
Squire waited and judged the distance. With perfect timing, he stepped out and slammed the log into the Blackfoot’s chest. The warrior toppled from his pony and crashed to the ground, gasping for breath.
Squire grabbed the horse’s reins and tied the animal to a tree before he walked over and stood over the downed Blackfoot.
“Where be LeGrande?” he asked, then repeated the question in French.
The Blackfoot did not answer. He struggled for air, clutching at his crushed ribs.
Squire rested a foot on the Indian’s chest and applied pressure until the warrior grunted in pain.
“Ou est LeGrande?” Squire asked again.
“Qui?”
Squire began to have some doubts. Perhaps LeGrande had escaped. Or perhaps he had been wounded and managed to get away, only to die alone somewhere. “Where’d ye get that big piebald horse in your camp?”
The Indian shrugged.
“OU?” he hissed.
The Blood pointed painfully back in the direction from which Squire had come. “On Rock Creek,” he said in labored Engl
ish.
“Three trappers. One died in water; one we killed, and scalped. One we shot, but he got away.”
Maybe LeGrande is still alive, Squire thought. More likely he had crawled off into the brush and died. Squire thought he would have to go back and look for the body—or what was left of it—maybe try to bury it, even if only in the river like Marchand. He liked old LeGrande, despite the trapper’s aloofness.
Without another word—and without remorse—Squire knelt and slit the warrior’s throat, then took the scalp. He grabbed the Indian’s buffalo robe and returned to his niche above the camp. Throughout the bitter night he watched the camp, ignoring the cold and wind that sliced in under the robe around him.
As dawn poked over the mountains, he arose and walked back to get the Blood’s horse. He mounted and rode to the rim of the hill. As he headed down the steep slope, clacking stones as he went, he heard the sounds of the awakening camp. He saw streamers of smoke drifting up from the lodges and smelled the cook fires. He did not care if he was seen.
When he was less than twenty-five yards from the ring of lodges, he drew his pistol. He bellowed a war cry and kicked the horse into a gallop. He thundered into the mass of startled Indians. Warriors ran for their horses and weapons. Women and children scrambled toward the trees and ravines for safety.
Squire fired at the closest Indian. The warrior crumpled to the ground. Squire jammed his pistol back into his belt and pulled out a tomahawk. He raced for the horse herd, where some warriors were already mounting. He rode in yelling and screeching, scattering the riderless horses. Squire lashed out with his tomahawk, killing a Blood and wounding still another.
He found his piebald and grabbed it by the mane. He vaulted onto the big horse and turned it back toward the heart of the camp.
In the center of the village, he yanked his horse to a stop. Images of Marchand’s mutilated body flickered in and out of his consciousness. His blood boiled with rage at the thought of it.