Suddenly the Thing froze. It had been careless. Beyond the four, hidden in the shadows, were the animals that had brought the four. The animals their kind always rode rather than go about on their own two legs. And one of the creatures had raised its head and whinnied. It had caught the Thing’s scent.
The whinny silenced the four at the fire. They rose to their feet, their weapons in hand, and regarded the animal that had warned them. Then they stared in the direction the animal was staring, straight at the Thing.
The Thing did not move, did not twitch, did not voice its annoyance. It knew it must not do anything to spook the four or they would jump on their mounts and race like the wind for the valley floor. As fast as it was, the Thing could not hope to catch them. So it froze and waited, and presently its patience was rewarded. The animal that had whinnied lowered its head, and the four by the fire sat back down and resumed their chatter.
The Thing still did not move. It was too wise, too canny in the ways of the stalk and the kill. It waited, and when the four at long last ceased their babble and lay down to sleep, the Thing crept near the ring of firelight and crouched.
The time had come.
One
If there was anything more exasperating than a woman, Zachary King had yet to meet it.
Zach was mad. Mad at his wife for her latest silly notion. She wanted to traipse up into the high country, just the two of them, and spend a week alone together. She had first suggested the trip several weeks ago, and when Zach did not respond, she had brought it up several more times, until finally she had announced they were going, and that was that.
Zach was mad at himself. Mad that he had not spoken, mad that he had not told her he had no real desire to spend a week up in the mountains when they had a perfectly good and comfortable cabin. Mad that she took it for granted he would go without even asking if he wanted to. But most of all, Zach was mad that his wife wanted to do it because of something he had said—and for the life of him, he could not remember what it was.
Zach had only himself to blame. One day some weeks past, his wife had been prattling away, as women were wont to do, and he had not been paying attention, as men were wont to do, and she had asked him a question and he had answered yes, without having any idea what she had asked.
“Consarn all women, anyhow,” Zach grumbled aloud as he walked to the corral at the side of their cabin. Out on the lake a large fish jumped, but he paid it no heed. Fishing was the last thing on his mind. He was determined to solve the riddle of his wife’s strange insistence on the trip to the high country.
If only he could remember! A hundred times Zach had cursed his stupidity in not paying attention that day. As best he could recollect, they had been talking about his father and mother, and what it had been like raising him and his younger sister in the remote vastness of the Rocky Mountains. But what could that possibly have to do with anything?
Zach was so deep in thought that he did not notice the rider on the white mare until the man drew rein and addressed him.
“How now, Horatio Junior? Your brow appears most unseemly troubled this fine day.”
At the first word Zach had instinctively whirled and started to level his Hawken. Now he jerked the rifle down and snapped, “You can call me Zach, my white name. Or you can call me Stalking Coyote, my Shoshone name. But one name you are not to call me is Horatio Junior.”
Shakespeare McNair chuckled. He had hair as white as his mare and a beard to match, and enough wrinkles to justify his eighty-plus years. But the playful twinkle in his eyes belied his age, as did his fluid ease in dismounting and turning to the younger man. “My, my. Isn’t someone in a mood today?”
“Sheath that barbed tongue of yours,” Zach said.
“What a blunt fellow is this grown to be,” Shakespeare quoted, looking at the mare when he said it.
“You would be grumpy too if you were me,” Zach said. He had the dark hair and swarthy features of his Shoshone mother but the green eyes and broad shoulders of his white father. He wore beaded buckskins a lot like McNair’s, and moccasins. Wedged under his wide leather belt were a pair of flintlock pistols, slanted across his chest were a powder horn, ammo pouch, and possibles bag. “My wife is about to drag me off into the high country.”
“So I heard,” Shakespeare said, for once not quoting the Bard. He placed the stock of his Hawken on the ground and leaned on the barrel. “The missus told me. She sent me over to ask if your missus wants her to water your indoor plants while you are away.”
“Why didn’t Blue Water Woman come herself?” Zach asked.
“How long have you been married?” Shakespeare teased. “You should know by now that a female never does anything she can get a male to do. Since all I was doing was honing an axe, she figured she could put me to better use.”
“Women!” Zach spat. “If I live to be a hundred I will never understand them
“Don’t even try,” Shakespeare advised. “The Almighty put them on this earth to beguile us with their wiles and confound us with logic that is anything but logical.”
“I figured if anyone would know what women are about, it would be you,” Zach said. “You’re almost as old as Methuselah.”
Shakespeare made a show of sputtering. “ ‘I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way,’ ” he quoted. “Age has nothing to do with it, stripling. It is simply that men are men and women are women and never the twain shall meet.”
“When you talk like that,” Zach said, “I have no idea what you are saying.”
“Perhaps I should lend you my volume on old William S.”
Zach was surprised. McNair’s collected works of the Bard of Avon was his most prized possession. “You would do that? You would trust me with it?”
“So long as I am with you when you read it, yes.” Shakespeare grinned.
“I should have known.” Zach sighed and opened the gate to the corral. “Louisa is inside if you want to ask her about the plants. Me, I have fretting to do.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Shakespeare said. “It will work out. Look at your father and mother.”
About to step into the corral, Zach paused. “What are you talking about?”
“It is a momentous decision, yes,” Shakespeare said. “But it’s not like you are the first. The human race would have come to an ignoble end long ago if that were the case/”
“Wait a minute,’’ Zach said. “Are you saying that you know why Lou wants to drag me up into the mountains?”
Shakespeare blinked and blinked again, then grinned. “Are you saying that you don’t?”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
McNair snorted and started to laugh but caught himself. “For real and for true? You have no clue?”
“It’s not the least bit funny,” Zach said. “If you know, you must tell me or I’ll be in a pickle.”
“You already are,” Shakespeare responded, and cackling merrily, he slapped his thigh. “Oh, this is precious. Wait until I tell your father. We all do chuckleheaded things from time to time, but this, boy, beats anything your father or I ever did, all hollow.”
“I am not amused.”
“I sure am,” Shakespeare said, and laughed some more. “At last I realize why youth is squandered on the young. It’s to give old coons like me something to laugh about.”
Zach sniffed, then adopted a hurt expression. “All these years I have been calling you my uncle even though we are not blood kin, and you go and treat me like this. I expected better of you.”
Shakespeare shook his head. “A fine try. But appealing to my affection won’t work. You have dug a trench and jumped in feet first, and I, for one, can’t wait for the trench walls to come tumbling down.”
“Speak sense, will you?”
Just then the cabin door opened and out came the apple of Zach’s eye. Louisa King was slender to the point of boyish, but her lustrous sandy hair, sparkling blue eyes, and lithe grace more than ma
de up for her less than ample bosom. She was pretty, exceedingly so, even dressed in buckskins. “Shakespeare!” she squealed in delight, and came over to give him a warm hug. “I thought I heard your voice.”
McNair showed more teeth than a politician giving an election speech. “Dang, girl! It’s good for these old eyes to see you again. You and this contrary he-cat of yours have been keeping to yourselves too much of late.” Grinning, he winked and added, “Which is understandable, all things considered.”
Lou blushed and gave him a swat on the arm. “Behave, or I will inform on you to your wife.”
“I wouldn’t want that,” Shakespeare bantered. “She might take it into her head to lift my hair.” He abruptly changed the subject. “How long do you aim to be gone?”
Lou brushed at her bangs. “A couple of weeks should be enough. I want him to relax and enjoy himself while we’re up there, but you know how he gets.”
“Yes, I surely do,” Shakespeare said with exaggerated sympathy. “How you put up with him, I will never know.”
“I’m right here,” Zach said.
“Good,” Lou replied. “Then I won’t need to repeat myself. I would like to be ready to go in an hour. If we push, we can reach that ridge where we had our picnic a while back before night sets in.”
“And where a wolverine nearly had us for supper,” Zach reminded her.
Lou put her hands on her hips. “You sure do grumble a lot about trifles.”
“Being ripped apart and eaten is a trifle?”
“It’s called being male,” Shakespeare said to Louisa.
“It’s called being a natural-born grump,” Lou amended. “My husband isn’t satisfied unless he is complaining.”
Zach had started into the corral but stopped. “I will have you know my mother thinks I have a sunny disposition.”
“She lied. Mothers do that.” Lou started to turn to go back into the cabin, but his expression stopped her. “What?”
“My mother would never speak with two tongues,” Zach said indignantly. “She is the most honest woman I know.”
“Thank you ever so much,” Lou said dryly. “But it won’t work.”
“What won’t?”
“Trying to get me mad at you so I’ll change my mind about our holiday,” Lou said. “We’re going and that is final.”
“But I didn’t—” Zach went to protest.
“Oh, I see right through you,” Lou said. “You have regretted agreeing ever since we had our little talk, and now you want to weasel out of your promise. But I am holding you to it, come what may.” Her back as stiff as a ramrod, she marched inside and slammed the door.
“You handled that well,” Shakespeare said dryly.
Zach glared, then bit his lower lip and said more to himself than to McNair, “I wish I knew what I agreed to.”
“Would you like a hint?” Shakespeare asked.
Zach placed his hands on the top rail. “I would be in your debt.”
Shakespeare drew himself up to his full height. With a hand on his chest, he quoted, “This mock of his hath turned his balls to gun-stones.”
Zach waited, and when no more was forthcoming, said, “What kind of hint is that? It makes no more sense than anything else your namesake wrote.”
Ordinarily quick to take offense at a slight against his idol, Shakespeare merely grinned. “It will, stripling. It will. And when it does, I hope you look back and remember and find it half as humorous as I do.” Chuckling, he led his mare over to tie her but paused when hoofs thudded and around the corner of the cabin swept a large man on a large bay.
“Pa!” Zach said happily.
Nate King was dressed in buckskins much like those of his son and his best friend. Like them, too, he was a living armory; pistols, knife, tomahawk, and rifle were his weapons of choice. His long hair and beard were raven black, his features so composed that most women would rate him handsome. He smiled warmly at Zach and Shakespeare as he swung down from his saddle. “Glad I caught you before Lou and you rode off.”
“Something on your mind?” Zach asked, hoping there was, hoping his father needed him to go to Bent’s Fort for provisions or maybe to hunt meat for their respective larders. Anything to get him out of going up into the high country.
Nate placed his big hand on his son’s shoulder. “I just wanted to wish you well. This is a big step you’re taking.”
At that juncture Shakespeare stepped forward and whispered in Nate’s ear, but loud enough for Zach to hear, “Horatio Junior has no notion what it is about.”
“How is that?” Nate quizzically asked.
McNair nodded at Zach, and snickered. “Your boy is in a fog about why his wife wants to drag him up into the mountains.”
“No,” Nate King said.
“Yes,” Shakespeare confirmed.
Nate stared at the fruit of his loins. “Is this true?”
“I’m a mite confused,” Zach admitted. “You see, we were talking one day, and I wasn’t paying as much attention as maybe I should have—” He got no further. His father was bent over, laughing. “Why does everyone find this so hysterical?”
“ ‘Heavens make our presence and our practices pleasant and helpful to him,’ ” Shakespeare quoted.
“What is it, Pa?” Zach asked. “What do you and Uncle Shakespeare know that I don’t?”
“A lot of things,” Shakespeare answered before Nate could. “But pertinent to the moment is this.” He paused, then quoted, “ ‘Two hot sheeps, marry.’ ”
Nate laughed harder.
“What do sheep have to do with it?” Zach demanded. He was close to losing his temper.
“Nothing, since you were not counting them,” Shakespeare said, then once again quoted his namesake, “You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent.”
Zach clenched his fists. “If I listen to much more of this, my head will explode.” Wheeling, he stalked toward the horses on the other side of the corral.
“Should we enlighten him?” Shakespeare asked.
Nate shook his head. “He is old enough to wipe his own feet. Let him find out the hard way. Maybe it will teach him to listen when his wife talks to him.”
“Not that we have ever been guilty of the offense,” Shakespeare said, his seamed faced curled in a lopsided smirk. “I try, I truly try, but most of it goes in one ear and bounces out again.”
“Ever confessed that to Blue Water Woman?” Nate inquired.
“And have her take a rolling pin to my head? No, thank you. That woman has picked up a lot of white ways she could do without. Most Flathead gals don’t give their husbands half the sass she gives me. I have told her that, too.”
“Your wife and my wife are of the opinion you deserve it,” Nate commented. “They were talking the other day when Blue Water Woman came over for tea, and I happened to be outside the window and heard every word.”
“Just happened to be there, huh?” Shakespeare said, then recoiled as if he had been pricked with a pin. “Did you say deserved to be sassed?”
Nate nodded.
“How did those contrary females come to that conclusion?” Shakespeare asked in a mild huff.
“It had to do with you always quoting old Willy S.,” Nate said, and scratched his chin. “Let me think. What was it your wife said?” He snapped his fingers. “Now I remember. She said that if she had to put up with living with a talking book, you shouldn’t quibble over a tiny bit of sass.” Nate grinned. “ ‘Tiny bit.’ Her exact words.”
Shakespeare’s mouth was moving, but no words came out. Finally he uttered a cross between a bark and a bleat and shook his rifle as if he yearned to brain someone with it. “A pox on her and all her kind! Her kisses are Judas’s own children! Women stab us in the back and call it a favor.”
“I think you are overreacting.”
“Which shows how much you know about women!” Shakespeare blustered. “They are catamounts in skirts, and not to be trusted.”
As if to prove his
point, Louisa came striding out of the cabin with a pistol in her hand. “Where is that no-account husband of mine? I aim to blow out his wick and be done with him.”
Two
“I rest my case,” Shakespeare McNair said.
“What has you so riled?” Nate asked his daughter-in-law, but she stomped past him to the corral, her jaw muscles twitching.
Zach came to the open gate leading a sorrel.
“Dang,” Shakespeare said. “I wish I had some jerky. I could sit down and enjoy this. It’s better than watching bull elk in rut.”
Nate arched an eyebrow. “At your age. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I meant the fighting, not the other,” Shakespeare said, “but now that you mention it, what do you think keeps me so young and handsome?”
“Thank you. I will carry that image around in my head for the rest of the day and won’t be able to touch food.”
“Only the rest of the day?” Shakespeare countered, then raised a finger. “Hush now. It’s about to get interesting.”
Over at the corral, Lou was shaking the pistol at Zach. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe you deliberately ignored me.”
Unsure over what she was incensed about, Zach asked, “What did I do now?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, mister,” Lou said. “You know very well what you did. Or, rather, didn’t do. Last night I asked you to pack the pemmican and other things I wanted to take along and you told me you would. But I just opened the cupboard, and lo and behold, you didn’t pack a lick.”
“I forgot,” Zach said.
Lou stamped a small foot. “Do my requests mean so little to you? What happened to the days when you doted on my every word?”
Shakespeare nudged Nate and whispered, “Oh, this is a good one. It appears the luster has worn off the peach.”
“Be nice,” Nate said.
Zach tied the sorrel to a rail and turned to his wife. He was uncomfortable arguing with his father and uncle right there. Then, too, he and Lou rarely fought. He truly was devoted to her, even if at times she drove him to distraction. “You can’t blame me. It’s your fault I forgot.”
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