Zach straightened up. He had a hankering to go down too. But he never voiced it. He knew why his pa would rather have him stay with his ma and sister.
“Be careful,” Winona advised. Since Nate was white, she doubted the Absarokas would try to harm him. But he was also an adopted Shoshone, and that made him fair game, as he might say. She was worried.
“Always,” Nate assured her.
The trail was in deep shadow until near the bottom. Nate reached the valley floor without being seen and rode slowly toward the stockade. He loosened both flintlocks under his belt and adjusted his Bowie so that the hilt angled forward.
Whites and Crows mingled outside the enclosure. It all seemed peaceful enough, but it never paid to take the Crows at face value. They had a reputation for being as crafty as the day was long, and while they were friendly when they wanted to be, they had killed their share of trappers over the years.
A Crow woman digging roots at the edge of the encampment was the first to spy Nate. At a yell from her, a number of warriors clustered close to a lodge advanced to meet him.
Nate drew rein when still forty yards from the stockade. He saw a white man dash into it while others gathered at the gate. Then he confronted the Crows, his hands flowing fluently in sign language, saying, in effect, “Come no closer.”
The five warriors halted. All wore knives, several had slung bows, and one man, the smallest, carried a lance. This last jabbed the butt of his spear into the ground and leaned it against his shoulder to free his hands. “Why do you treat us as if you cannot trust us, cap wearer?”
Cap wearer was a sign equivalent for white man. There wasn’t a mountaineer alive who didn’t favor a hat or cap of some sort, and Nate was no exception. He was partial to a beaver hat that he adorned with a single eagle feather. “I know the Crows,” he responded. “I know that you like to speak with two tongues.”
It was the same as calling the tribe a pack of liars. The small man darkened and several of the others muttered in their own tongue.
The warrior with the lance surprised Nate by saying in passable English, “You mistake, white man. Absarokas like whites. Absarokas good friends.”
“Then you won’t mind keeping your distance,” Nate said. “I don’t want the same thing that happened to Ike Webster to happen to me.”
Webster, a free trapper, had been on his way to Fort Laramie and had happened on a Crow village. He had agreed to stay the night after a warrior offered his wife in exchange for a point blanket and a few trinkets. The next morning, Webster’s gutted body had been found in nearby bushes. No one was ever held to account, and his possessions were never recovered.
“I not hurt you,” the small warrior declared. “I friend. Called Little Soldier. Maybe you hear my name, eh? Many know of me.”
The name was indeed familiar. Of all the Crow leaders, Little Soldier had a reputation for being the most devious. Joe Meek liked to say that a mountaineer could trust Little Soldier about as far as he could fling a moose.
“I know of you,” Nate signed.
The Crow swelled his chest. “I count thirty-one coup,” he declared matter-of-factly. “One day I be high chief of all Absarokas.”
Nate resorted to English. “Then you will need to count a lot more coup, and none of them will be at my expense.”
It was common knowledge throughout the Rockies that the warrior who ranked as the supreme leader of all the Crows had counted over sixty coup. His name was Long Hair, and it was said that he had seen at least eighty winters. Not once in all that time had a blade touched his head. As a result, his hair was over eleven feet long, and he wore it in an enormous queue. Perhaps his age had something to do with it, but Long Hair was one of the few tribal leaders the whites could trust.
“Again I say you mistake, white man,” Little Soldier said. “I not count coup on you. Who you be, friend? I think maybe I see you at a rendezvous.”
This time Nate employed sign. “The Shoshones, the Flatheads, the Cheyennes, the Dakotas—they all know me as Grizzly Killer.”
Little Soldier’s expression was almost comical. Hatred and canny intent waged a fleeting war. Then an oily smile creased the Crow’s thin lips. “I have heard of you,” he signed. “I have heard you have a Shoshone wife. I have also heard that her people adopted you into their tribe. Is all this true?”
Switching to English again, Nate responded, “Since when are my personal affairs any of your business?” He gestured sharply. “Stop badgering me and move aside.”
Nate lifted the reins. He was fixing to ride right on through them whether they liked it or not.
Suddenly four white men arrived. Two wore buckskins. The third was a veritable giant in a wool shirt and pants of the type in style in St. Louis. But it was the fourth man who interested Nate the most. He was tall and dapper and dressed in the height of New York fashion. He wore an immaculate black suit complete with a dress beaver hat and a black cape. He even carried a polished black cane, which he twirled as if it were a baton. Around his slim waist were strapped a pair of matching pistols with inlaid ivory designs in the shape of flowers.
“What’s the meaning of this, Little Soldier?” the man in black asked. “I can’t have you accosting every white man who pays us a visit. If this keeps up, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to have your people move their lodges. You gave me your word that you would behave yourself, and I intend to hold you to it.” The man wagged his cane in reproach at the Crow. “Gentleman’s honor and all that.”
Nate King was stupefied. How any white man in his right mind could expect an Absaroka to know anything about a code of conduct peculiar to the upper crust of white society was beyond him.
“I sorry,” Little Soldier said. “I only want be friend. Crows good people. Crows help you.”
“So you keep saying,” the man in black said. Tucking the cane under an arm with a flourish, he smiled evenly up at the mountain man. “Welcome, stranger. Have you come to enlist in our grand expedition?”
“Let me guess,” Nate said. “You’re Ashworth?”
Ashworth tapped the brim of his hat. “That I am, sir.”
The truth was Richard Ashworth happened to be in extraordinarily fine spirits. And why not?
Everything had gone superbly since he had left New York City.
Traveling westward via the Erie Canal, Ashworth and his constant companion, Emilio, were conducted by boat the entire 363 miles of the waterways length. After buying horses, they rode south to the Cumberland Road. More commonly known as the Great National Pike, it had been built mainly with federal funds to facilitate the westward exodus.
On arriving at St. Louis, Ashworth had made no secret of his intentions. Within days over forty trappers down from the high country for the summer had hired on, and others would do so over the course of the next several weeks. By the time the expedition departed for the frontier, Ashworth had fifty-one men under him.
At Bent’s Fort, Ashworth had picked up another nine mountaineers. One of them, Scott Kendall, had so impressed him that he had offered to make Kendall his second-in-command. To his amazement, Kendall had recommended someone else.
All that Ashworth needed was for Kendall to return and he could be on his way. He couldn’t wait to get started. The heady intoxication of adventure, the thrill of triumph over insurmountable odds, and the promise of great wealth charged him with vitality. They inspired him with a lust for life he had never experienced before.
At that moment, gazing up into the piercing emerald-green eyes of the stranger on the black stallion, Ashworth was happier than he had been in years. “Who are you, sir? And how might I and my company of fine fellows be of assistance?”
“I’m Nate King.” Nate would have gone on had the man from New York City not stepped up and clasped his leg as if he were long-lost kin.
“King! As I live and breathe!” Ashworth declared. At last he could get underway for the north country! It made him giddy with joy until he noticed that someone was mi
ssing. “Wait a minute! Where are Scott Kendall and his charming wife and daughter?”
Briefly, Nate told about the mishap. He didn’t emphasize that it was his fault or explain that he was there to atone. “I told them that they’re welcome to stay at my cabin for as long as they need to.”
“How very decent of you,” Ashworth said sincerely. He had heard a lot of stories about this solitary mountain man, and he could not help but wonder how many of them were true. More Shoshone than white, it was claimed. Responsible for slaying twenty grizzlies in half as many years. Next to Jim Bridger and Shakespeare McNair, King was more widely respected by his peers than any other trapper.
“Is your offer still good?” Nate asked, secretly hoping that perhaps Ashworth had changed his mind and no longer needed his services.
“It is,” Ashworth answered. “I would be grateful if you would agree to be my second-in-command. I assume Scott filled you in on all the details?”
Nate nodded. “I still have some questions.” He gazed at the stockade, where a considerable number of mountain men had gathered. Among them was a sprinkling of females. Most were Indian women from various tribes, although two or three whites were also present.
“Certainly,” Ashworth said. “Come to my quarters for refreshments and I’ll explain everything to your satisfaction.”
“I have to fetch my family first,” Nate said. Out of one eye, he saw Little Soldier perk up. “My wife is interested in hiring on in place of Lisa Kendall.”
“She’s more than welcome to,” Ashworth stated. While he was sorry to lose the Kendalls, he was ecstatic to have everything else falling so neatly into place. “I’ll tell you what. It’s almost time for my evening repast. Why not bring your family in and be my supper guests?” As an added inducement, since he had learned the mountain men were fond of it, he added, “We’re having roast elk with all the trimmings.”
“In about half an hour be all right with you?” Nate asked.
“Perfect.”
Nate reined the stallion around to depart, but paused when someone hailed him. From out of the throng of trappers strolled a lanky frontiersmen with greasy black hair well past his shoulders and an equally greasy mustache. His skin was tanned bronze from spending almost all his time outdoors. Lively brown eyes sparkled with amusement. “As I live and breathe!” Nate exclaimed. “Henry Allen!”
“It’s been a while, ain’t it, Nate?”
The two trappers shook hands. As best as Nate could recollect, he had last seen the feisty Tennessean over five years ago when they had tangled with the Blackfeet. “I thought you were heading back to the States to take up farming?”
Allen chuckled. “Hell, I tried. I must have been set to leave twenty times or better, but I could never bring myself to do it.” He made a show of sniffing the air. “Blame the scent of freedom. It gets in a man’s blood and won’t let go.”
“Do you have a horse handy? You can ride on back with me and let me know exactly what I’m letting myself in for,” Nate proposed. “I know Winona and Zach will be glad to see you again.”
“My dun is in the stockade,” Allen said with a jerk of his thumb. “Give me two shakes of a lamb’s tail and I’ll fetch it.”
“Go ahead.” Nate sat back to wait while his good friend ran off. Ashworth and his entourage were filing back inside, but the Crows lingered.
“Grizzly Killer,” Little Soldier called out. “Maybe you come my lodge, eh? Maybe you smoke pipe.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Nate said flatly. The Absarokas were all smiles as they left, but Nate wasn’t deceived for a minute. As Allen had once noted, a Crow could claim to be the best friend a man ever had one minute and stab him in the back the next.
Soon the lean man from Tennessee trotted out on a splendid dun. As they headed for the game trail, Nate posed the question that would determine whether he went through with the insane scheme. “What’s your opinion of Ashworth?”
Allen was one of the few people Nate would trust to give him a reliable assessment. The Tennessean had been in the mountains almost as long as he had and knew the ways of the different tribes and the wildlife as well as Nate himself, if not better in some respects.
“You want to know if we can count on him to lead us halfway decent? Judging by how he’s behaved so far, I’d have to say he’ll do right fine.”
“He’s done that well, has he?”
The Tennessean removed his blue cap to scratch his hair. “Oh, sure, he’s as green as grass and as full of himself as a balloon, but he tries hard. He listens to those who know better than he does, and he takes their advice. That stockade, for example. When we first got here, some of us took him aside and told him that, for all our sakes, we needed one to make sure our throats weren’t slit in the middle of the night.”
It was a definite plus in Ashworth’s favor. Many a booshway, as the trappers referred to leaders of expeditions, acted as if he was the only one who had a lick of common sense and knew how to get things done right. Some, in their arrogance, had wound up leading a lot of decent men to their deaths.
“Ashworth is a rare coon,” Allen continued. “He knows he’s as ignorant as a rock and he’s not ashamed to ask for advice when he needs it.”
“Does he have any notion of what he’s letting himself in for?” Nate wondered. “Does he know how fierce the Blackfeet can be?”
“He has as good an idea as any man who hasn’t actually locked horns with them. In his opinion, sixty men are more than enough to hold off a small army of those devils.”
“I don’t know—” Nate began. The Blackfeet were hardly cowards.
“There’s a method to his madness,” Allen interrupted. “He’s brought two rifles and four pistols for every man.” The Tennessean patted one of his. “He likes to go on about how it’s not the number of men that’s important. It’s our firepower.”
“Firepower?” Nate repeated quizzically. The word was a new one on him.
“Near as I can tell, it boils down to how much lead we can throw at the Blackfeet at any one time,” Allen detailed.
“What about the men who are with him? Are they all as up to bear as you are?”
Allen was plainly flattered by the compliment. “This child thanks you. And, yes, I’d have to say most of them are good men. There are a few flashes in the pan and some coffee coolers, but that’s to be expected in an outfit the size of ours.” They came to the game trail and Nate took the lead. “Is it true he has money to spare?”
“The man must be rolling in it, going by how fast he spent it back in St. Louis and at Bent’s Fort. Honestly, Nate. He’s got enough provisions to last us five years. And north of the stockade, guarded by twenty-five men day and night, is a herd of four hundred horses.”
It boggled Nate’s brain. “That’s almost as many as Bridger had the time he got into a racket with The Bold over Joe Meek.”
Meek, by common consensus, was the champion tall-tale teller of all time. Whenever trappers gathered to spin yams, Meek beat them all, hands down.
Four years previous, Meek had been taken captive by a war party of Crows led by a warrior called The Bold. In typical flamboyant fashion, Meek outfoxed the bloodthirsty warrior by tricking The Bold into taking him to Bridger’s camp. Meek had convinced the Crows that Bridger only had a few men with him and could be easily wiped out. But the truth was that at the time over 250 were in Bridger’s party. Their horse herd had numbered twice that many. Needless to say, Bridger had forced The Bold to hand Meek over.
And Joe Meek? His former captors bestowed a new name on him, Shiam Shaspusia, or He Who Can Outlie Crows.
The memory spurred Nate to ask, “Why is Little Soldier’s band staying so close to the stockade? What is he up to?”
Allen was silent a few seconds. “It’s the only mistake Ashworth has made.”
“What is?”
“He went and signed on Little Soldier to be his Indian guide.”
Nate whipped around. “The hell, you say!
”
“Afraid so. Some of us convinced Ashworth that it would be wise to have a few Indians along who knew the lay of the land. We had in mind a couple of Delawares, but Ashworth took it into his noggin to hire Little Soldier.”
“Can’t you talk him out of it? That reptile will sink his fangs into us the first time we turn our backs on him.”
The Tennessean sighed. “You know that, and I know that, and pretty near every coon fit to wear buckskins knows that. But Little Soldier has been licking Ashworth’s boots from the day they first met. Ashworth thinks he’s plumb harmless.”
Above them appeared the stand of saplings. Nate peered deep into the slender boles, but did not catch sight of his loved ones. “I’ll have a palaver with Ashworth. If the man doesn’t have the gumption to tell the Crows to go stand in front of a herd of stampeding buffalo, I don’t want anything to do with him.”
At the same point where Nate had entered the stand before, he did so again, trotting swiftly back to the clearing. As the stallion passed the last of the trees and the open space unfolded before them, Nate’s heart jumped in his chest and he reined up short in alarm.
“Something the matter?” Henry Allen inquired.
“My family!” Nate exclaimed, stunned.
The Tennessean looked all around. “What about them?”
“They’re gone!”
Seven
Nate King vaulted off the black stallion and scoured the ground, reading the tracks as readily as most Easterners could read the print in a book. He saw where Winona had ground-hitched the horses, where she had carried Evelyn to a grassy spot and sat down. Zach had come over, and apparently they had been talking for a while.
Scuff marks showed where a struggle had broken out. Moccasin tracks indicated four warriors had sneaked up on Winona and Zach, leapt out of the undergrowth, and overpowered them before they could get off a shot. The type of moccasins worn by the quartet revealed their identity just as effectively as if they were standing there before Nate. “Crows!”
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