Nate, his hands and forearms covered with blood and gore, glanced up. A slow smile curled his mouth. “Be our guest. Just try not to stick one of us by mistake.”
Skinning the second buffalo took longer because Eric slowed them down, but neither Nate, Winona, or Shakespeare objected. Nate was secretly pleased at the enthusiasm the Englishman showed, and corrected him where necessary.
When, in due course, the job was done, Eric stepped back with a childish grin and held his arms up to inspect the fresh blood and bits of tendon and flesh sticking to his forearms and upturned sleeves. Breaking into laughter, he waved his arms toward Diana and said. “Do you see? I’m virtually a mountain man!”
Diana turned her nose up and sniffed, “I see. And I think you’re a sorry sight.”
Eric kept on laughing. “I say, if I don’t get those buckskins soon, I’ll reek to high heaven.”
“I will have them done in four or five sleeps,” Winona promised.
Nate was already on his way to the last bull. He hadn’t known that his wife had lugged the half-made clothes along when they fled from their camp, but it was just like her, he mused, to bear the extra weight if it meant helping someone else out.
The third buffalo was skinned swiftly. All three hides were stretched out, and while Winona scraped them clean both Nate and Shakespeare sought out willow trees along the Missouri and stripped off enough branches for the frames. Since they were all keenly appreciative that time was critical, they worked much faster than they ordinarily would have, and by evening had finished the bull boats to their satisfaction.
Eric, Jarvis, and even Diana Templar lent a hand. It was the giant who dragged two of the completed boats to the river’s edge. Eric took the third.
“Anything?” Nate asked his son as he tossed an armload of parfleches and the coyote skins into one of the boats.
“Not a sign of a soul, Pa,” Zach answered. “I saw a few deer come for a drink, and once a grizzly.”
“Are we going to launch these craft now?” Diana inquired somewhat nervously. She gazed at the setting sun, which had painted the western sky with a riotous blaze of colors, then at the bull boats, and lastly at the swirling current. Everyone present could read her thoughts. She didn’t trust the boats a whit.
“I reckon not,” Shakespeare answered. “If the ones who are after us haven’t come by now, they won’t until tomorrow sometime. Indians don’t much like to travel at night.”
Right there on the bank they made camp, dividing up the chores as they normally did with one exception. Nate returned to the buffalo carcasses to slice off enough thick steaks to satisfy their hunger. But he wasn’t the only one interested in eating. Five gray wolves had been drawn to the remains by the scent, and were now tearing into the buffalo Nate had slain.
On spying him, three of the wolves slunk away from the kill. Their fellows were not so meekly disposed, and stood next to the grisly bulk with their teeth bared and feral growls rumbling from their throats.
Nate didn’t bother contesting their right to feast on the carcass, not when there were two other buffalo to choose from. He had reloaded the rifle and had the pistols at his belt, so he was ready should the pack prove quarrelsome, which he doubted would happen. By and large wolves avoided conflict with humans. The only times he’d seen this violated had been when the wolves were nearly starved or driven to madness.
The pack watched Nate hack off a half-dozen large pieces. One wolf snarled at him as he departed, and when he was almost to the river they all resumed feeding in a frenzy.
A fire was crackling in the shelter of several cottonwoods. William Templar’s litter had been aligned close to it and a robe draped over him up to his chin. Diana knelt beside her brother looking worried.
“How is his fever?” Nate asked after giving the meat to Winona.
Diana forced a smile. “A bit better. The medicine your wife gave him has done wonders. What was the name of those roots she used again?”
Nate told her the Shoshone name, adding, “There is no word for the plant in English. Doctors back in the States have never heard of it.” He leaned his rifle against a tree and sat down with his back to the trunk. “There are a lot of cures the Indians use that white people know nothing about, which isn’t surprising since the Indians have been living off the land for ages. They know all about the plants found here. They know which roots, stems, and leaves can be used to treat all manner of diseases, and I’ve seen them cure ailments that would have proven fatal east of the Mississippi.”
“The way you talk about white people sometimes,” Diana said, “gives one the impression you don’t consider yourself one of us any longer. Do you? Or have you gone totally Indian?”
The question surprised Nate since he’d not been aware of any attitude toward whites on his part and had never given the matter much attention. “I’m an adopted Shoshone and I’m right proud of the fact,” he responded.
“Does that mean you’re white or an Indian?”
“Some of both, I suppose,” Nate said.
“And you truly like being the way you are?”
“I’ve never been happier.”
Lady Templar shifted to stare at Eric Nash, who stood ten yards off with Zach watching the antics of ducks out on the broad river. “Someone else is acting happier than I can ever remember, and I don’t like it.”
“Why the blazes not?”
“Don’t hold it against me for saying this, Nate, but he’s an artist, not a ruddy frontiersman like you and Mr. McNair. If he’s not careful hell get in deep trouble. Some people are not meant to be anything other than what they always have been.”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” Nate told her. “What harm can it do?”
“Time will tell.”
Chapter Fifteen
Nate was on watch when the war party came. He’d volunteered for the final stint of the night, between roughly three
Stars still dominated the heavens, although to the east a pale glow signified they would soon be gone, when Nate, walking along the shore with his Hawken slanted across his shoulder, detected the shriek of a startled bird to the west. Ordinarily such cries would not arouse much interest since birds were forever being stalked by predators, but this time Nate looked and saw a flock of grosbeaks take wing. He identified them by their distinctive, shrill calls of p-teer, p-teer, p-teer.
Nate figured the birds were a hundred yards distant, possibly more. Crouching, he scanned the shoreline, and was soon rewarded for his diligence by spying the black outlines of several figures moving slowly eastward. They would be on the camp in less than two minutes.
Turning, Nate dashed to Shakespeare and nudged his friend once, all it took for the mountain man’s eyes to snap open. “Company calling,” Nate whispered. “We have to get everyone into the boats.”
Quickly they went from sleeper to sleeper, rousing each quietly. The last to be awakened was Diana Templar. Nate sank to one knee, lightly touched her shoulder, and shook gently, as he had done with Winona and Zach. Both of them had simply woken up without saying a word; they knew better than to make any noise. But not so Diana. The instant his fingers contacted her body, she let out a screech and sat bolt upright, eyes wide in fright.
“What?” she blurted out, yelling. “What is it?”
“Hush!” Nate said, clamping a hand over her mouth before she could compound her mistake. Putting his lips to her ear, he whispered urgently, “Blackfeet. Get in the same bull boat as Winona. Hurry.”
Swiftly, the parfleches were loaded. Jarvis and Nate carried the litter to the water’s edge. There, Jarvis lifted the marquis into a boat in which Shakespeare waited, then stepped in beside them. They were cramped for room, but Nate, Shakespeare, and Winona had decided before retiring that they should each be in separate boats since the greenhorns had no experience handling the crafts and they did.
The previous evening Nate had given instructions in how to properly handle the shallow boats. Long, wide
branches had been chopped from trees and trimmed down to make serviceable poles for steering and paddling. Pieces of wood had been tied to the tails. At a question from Eric Nash, Nate had explained that the tails of the buffalo were left on the hides for that very purpose as they stopped the crafts from spinning.
Now Nate handed a pole to Jarvis and gave the bobbing boat a shove. He moved to the next one, which contained Winona, Diana, and Zach, and did the same. Only when they were safely away did he step to the last boat, place his Hawken inside, and press both palms to the buffalo hide to push.
“Behind you!” Eric Nash shouted.
A glance revealed a dozen or more silent, ghostly shapes flitting toward them, coming along the shore and from the trees. When they realized they had been spotted, the Blackfeet uttered a savage chorus of whoops and screeches and bounded ahead, each anxious to be the first one to count coup.
Nate’s shoulders rippled as he applied his might to the boat and sent it sliding out into the current. He held tight to the top edge and let himself be hauled into the water. Then, by hooking a leg over the rim, he slid in beside the Englishman. None too soon.
The four fleetest warriors had reached the spot from which the craft had been launched. One let fly with an arrow, the shaft narrowly missing Eric’s head. Two others plunged into the river and swam after the boat, which was not yet traveling fast enough. to outdistance them.
But Nate wasn’t worried. The swimmers had eight or nine yards to cover. Drawing both pistols, he extended his arms, and was about to send the Blackfeet into eternity when an abrupt shift in the current caused the bull boat to swing around toward shore. The very next second the craft righted itself and floated on downriver, but by then the damage had been done. The unexpected movement had pitched Nate to one side, on top of Nash, and before Nate could scramble to his knees one of the warriors reached the side of the boat.
Nate saw the brave rise up, dripping wet, a war club in the man’s grasp. Snaking a hand out, he leveled the pistol at the warrior’s forehead, then fired.
The ball ripped into the Blackfoot’s cranium and sent him flying backwards into the river with a loud accompanying splash.
Meanwhile, the other warrior had caught hold of the craft and was working his way around to the far side so he could get at the two white men from the rear.
Unaware of this, Nate pushed onto his right knee and saw the majority of the Blackfeet moving along the shore, paralleling the course of the boat, which was now thirty feet from the water’s edge and gaining distance rapidly. He heard an arrow buzz overhead and ducked low, his eyes at the rim, seeking some sign of the other warrior who had dived into the Missouri. His perplexity was intense when he saw no one.
Eric Nash had struggled to a sitting posture and grabbed one of the poles. Leaning to his left, he paddled as he’d been taught, in short, clean strokes.
“Where is the other one?” Nate wondered aloud.
“Maybe he knew he couldn’t reach us in time and swam back to land,” Eric opined.
“No Blackfoot ever gave up so easily,” Nate disagreed, glancing at the artist. Behind Nash the Blackfoot surged into view, a tomahawk held high in the air. So instantaneous was Nate’s reaction that a ball cored the warrior’s brain before Nate quite realized he had fired his other flintlock.
From the bank came howls of rage.
Grabbing the second pole, Nate threw his weight into paddling and steered the boat further out. Ahead were the dark silhouettes of the other two boats. The current increased, adding to their speed, soon carrying them beyond the reach of arrows or lances.
A golden halo crowned the eastern sky, a halo that expanded to become a belt of yellow, which in turn expanded into the glory of a new day as the sun peeked out over the world, imbuing the surface of the Missouri with a fiery hue that lent the river the appearance of molten lava.
Nate looked back twice. The first time, the Blackfeet were in persistent if futile pursuit. The second, the war party had halted and was screaming insults. Even if they went back for horses, they had no hope of getting anywhere near the boats without being picked off, and they knew it.
“We did it!” Eric cried.
“But we’re not out of danger yet,” Nate informed him. “We’re not quite in Mandan country. For the next twenty miles we always have to be on our guard for more Blackfeet.”
“If I never see another one again my life will be complete,” Eric muttered.
Traveling on the flat, smooth surface was like floating on a sea of glass. They held the boat a quarter of a mile from land, and stayed well behind the others so that they would have time to avert a collision should one of the leaders hit a snag.
For the first time in days Nate could relax, and he felt the tension drain from him like water from a sieve. During a tranquil spell, while Eric guided the boat alone, he leaned back and reloaded his pistols.
Nash glanced at the trapper repeatedly. He had made up his mind to bring up a subject dear and near to his heart, yet he had refrained for fear of seeming an idiot. Now, taking a breath, he declared, “This is nothing to do with you, but there is a question I need to ask.”
“Go on.”
“What would you say if I told you that I want to stay in this country when the Templars leave?”
“Your life is your own.”
“But do you think I can make a go of it? There’s no joy for me in England anymore, not after having experienced the thrill of living like you do.”
Nate adjusted his ammo pouch and powder horn, stalling so he might consider how best to respond. Uppermost in his thoughts were the comments made by Diana Templar. “What will you do to live?” he asked with a grin. “Take up trapping beaver?”
“Hardly. I don’t know the first thing about the trade. Somehow I’d like to continue as an artist, although how I can do that while living in the wilderness is beyond me at the moment.”
“Some other painters have gone around making portraits of the Indians and buffalo and such,” Nate said.
“I recall hearing about some of them. Even saw a little of their work,” Eric said, his expression reflective. “One is a man named Catlin, I believe, from Philadelphia, who has done more than anyone else. They say he brings the Indians to life as no one can.”
“I heard tell he nearly got himself scalped.”
“How?”
“He paid the Sioux a visit. They’re none too friendly to most whites, but they let him stay with them a while and paint portraits. One day he painted a prominent warrior. Some other Sioux were watching, and one of them poked fun at the portrait. Naturally, the warrior didn’t like it much, and the next thing Catlin knew there were warriors going at one another tooth and nail. The warrior he had painted was killed and Catlin barely got out of the village alive.”
“Yet he kept on painting,” Eric said softly. “And there is another man, a Swiss by the name of Karl Bodmer. He visited the frontier with a German prince named Maximilian and brought back paintings that captivated Europe.”
“I didn’t know about him,” Nate said.
Eric didn’t respond. Absorbed in serious deliberations, he paddled mechanically, hardly aware his arms were moving. If, he asked himself, Catlin and Bodmer could make a record of Indians and wilderness life in general, why couldn’t he do the same? Only he would do a more thorough job. They had only worked here and there as they traveled about; so much more remained to be done, and he was just the man to do it.
Nate could see the Englishman was deep in thought and he didn’t know what to make of it. He hoped Diana wasn’t right, and that Nash wouldn’t make a grave mistake he’d long regret. To give up one’s whole life and start over in another country was a big step for anyone to take. For Nash, who was accustomed to mingling with nobility and the very rich, the change would be drastic.
Picking up his pole, Nate bent his arms to rowing. He smiled at Zach when the boy looked back at him and waved. Later Winona did the same. In the lead boat Shakespeare and Jarv
is were making rapid headway despite the craft being burdened by the giant’s great weight and the unconscious marquis.
As always, Nate kept a lookout on the two shores, his main concern being that they would meet a band of Blackfeet with canoes or bull boats of their own, a slim prospect since the Blackfeet were not known to travel often on the waterways. Gradually the sun climbed and reached its midday zenith. A few dark clouds materialized on the western horizon, to the north of the Missouri, and sailed eastward.
Nate hoped they would find one of the Mandan villages soon. There were several, exactly how many he didn’t know, strung out on a long stretch of river. Each village, Shakespeare had informed him, was headed by two leaders, one a war chief, the second a man who oversaw everyday peacetime affairs, while over the whole nation presided a single grand chief.
Unique to the Mandans was their love of farming. They were the only tribe Nate knew of who routinely cultivated the soil. The women did, anyway. The men, as in most tribes, were more involved with warfare, buffalo hunting, and religious ceremonies.
Nate wondered if the Mandan women were as beautiful as everyone claimed. Trappers and traders who had visited them were all unanimous in their insistence that Mandan women possessed physical charms few could rival. Crow, Flathead, and Shoshone women were also noted for their lovely features, but the Mandans were supposedly the most fair of all.
As the hours went by, Nate became drowsy. He’d enjoyed little sleep during the night, and what with the constant stress he had been under since the Blackfoot trouble began, his overwrought body craved a long, restful sleep. By shaking his head vigorously and occasionally pinching himself, he managed to stay awake.
The majestic Missouri River flowed peacefully onward, serenaded by the chirping of birds along its banks, attended by the frequent splashing of leaping fish, and visited by countless animals that came to the shore to quench their thirsts.
Season of the Warrior (A Wilderness Giant Edition Western Book 2) Page 17