Wilderness Double Edition 26

by David Robbins

  Lou smiled as she walked. She had looked forward to getting away for so long. Zach was not one for what he termed ‘wastes of time,’ which seemed to be just about anything that had an element of romance. Time and again she had to drag him up into the high country for a day or three of just the two of them, but those times had been few and far between since they had moved to the new valley. There had been too much to do: building their cabins, chopping a store of wood for the winter, drying and salting enough deer and elk meat to last until the snow melted.

  Lou was only a few yards from the forest when it occurred to her that she was about where the lurker in the woods had been the night before. She stopped, troubled by sudden dread. The bright sun and the tranquil woods reassured her. Surely, she told herself, whatever had been there was long gone. She took another step and looked down at herself.

  Her carelessness appalled her. She had forgotten to bring her Hawken and her pistols. All she had was her belt knife.

  Lou was glad Nate and Winona were not there to see her. They would take her to task, Nate in particular. He was always going on about how all it took was a single mistake to turn a person into worm food. She never much liked that term, worm food. It implied human beings were no more than fodder for nature’s scavengers.

  Lou scanned the undergrowth. She could hear the stream, but a thicket blocked it from sight. About to turn back for her guns, she squared her slender shoulders and entered the woods. To be scared was silly. Zach was within earshot and would come on the run if she shouted for help.

  Amused by her worries, Lou skirted the thicket. A shallow pool spread before her. She had visited it the evening before when they filled the coffeepot. Now she stepped to the same spot, knelt, and dipped the pot in the stream. The cold water sent goose bumps up her arm and down her back. She shivered, then glanced down.

  The world receded around her. The chorus of songbirds faded. Lou heard only the pounding of her heart and saw only the tracks that had not been there the evening before, the same sort of tracks they had found at the gravel bar: huge, misshapen, yet human in outline. The claws had sunk inches deep where the thing crouched. Four claws, she counted, the middle claw longer than the rest. They were suggestive of a bear, but no bear ever made tracks like these.

  Suddenly Lou heard the birds and the wind and felt the warmth of the sun on her face. It reminded her that she was alone and unarmed and in the same woods as something that had apparently come down from the glacier to stalk them in the dead of night. Another shiver ran through her, but this one had nothing to do with the cold water.

  Lou stood and started to back away from the stream. Too late, she sensed a presence behind her. She started to open her mouth to shout for Zach when her shoulder was gripped and she was spun halfway around.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  A constriction in her throat prevented Lou from replying.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Zach thrust her rifle at her. “I should think you would know better.”

  Instead of taking the Hawken, Lou threw her arms around him and hugged him close. “Good morning, handsome,” she said huskily.

  “Don’t try to weasel out by acting nice,” Zach said sternly. “If my parents and I have told you once, we have told you a thousand times—”

  “Never go anywhere without my guns,” Lou finished for him.

  “I’m not being mean,” Zach said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. When I woke up and saw you were gone and your rifle and pistols lying there, I about laid an egg.”

  Lou chortled. “So long as you lay a golden egg like that goose.”

  Zach surveyed the forest. “Well, no harm done, I reckon. But I still ought to take you over my knee and spank you.”

  “Ha. You’ve never laid a hand on me.” Lou was trying to act lighthearted, but she had to let him know. “There is something you should see.” Turning, she pointed.

  Zach was past her in a stride and squatted to examine the tracks. “Damn. I knew it. I just knew it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t swear,” Lou said. She never swore. Her father had never cussed, at least not when he was around her, which was nearly all the time after the death of her mother.

  “It was watching us,” Zach said. “It watched us for a good long while.”

  “It’s gone now,” Lou said.

  Rising, Zach stared thoughtfully up at the glacier. “Maybe it only comes out at night. That’s the only time we ever hear it.”

  “Some animals are more active at night than during the day,” Lou mentioned.

  “Mostly the meat-eaters.” Zach indicated the tracks. “This settles it. We are packing up and heading down, and I don’t want to hear a word to the contrary.” He headed for their camp.

  Falling into step beside him, Lou took two strides for every one of his. “You’re going to hear some whether you want to or not. I had my heart set on this, and I refuse to let a few tracks spoil it.”

  “You saw those prints. You saw how big they are. You saw the claws. Do you really want to tangle with whatever made them?”

  “It didn’t attack us last night, did it?” Lou said.

  “Maybe it was scared of the fire,” Zach argued. A lot of beasts were. Even grizzlies were shy of fire.

  “Then it won’t bother us so long as we keep a fire going at night,” Lou said.

  Zach stopped and faced her. “No, you don’t. You are not going to change my mind.”

  “Don’t I have a say?” Louisa countered. “You do realize how important this is to me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Zach conceded. “But we can’t have a baby if we’re dead.”

  “Someone is overreacting. We have our rifles and pistols, and we are not babes in the woods.”

  Zach’s temper flared but he held it in check. “Someone is not thinking clearly. Sure, we have weapons, but does that mean we go out looking for trouble, does it?”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Lou said. “Since when have you become the voice of caution?”

  Simmering, Zach strode to the fire. Lou snagged at his sleeve, but he continued walking.

  “I’m sorry, hon’,” Lou said when he finally stopped and picked up the coffeepot. “That was uncalled for. But you must admit that you have a history of rash behavior.”

  Zach stared at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that. You know you do. You jump into trouble feet first and worry about the consequences later—if you worry about them at all.”

  Sighing, Zach sat and patted the ground beside him. After Lou sank down, he filled her tin cup with coffee and handed it to her. Taking a sip of his own, he said, “I won’t deny that when I was younger I was a hothead. And yes, before you say anything, I suppose I still am, to a degree.”

  Lou went to speak, but Zach held up a hand. “Hear me out. Before I met you, my goal in life, as my pa might say, was to be the most famous Shoshone warrior who ever lived. To do that I had to count coup. A lot of coup. More than anyone else. So, yes, I was in my share of scrapes.”

  “You have been in more than a few since we met,” Lou noted.

  “Not since my sister was kidnapped,” Zach said. “I’ve made it a point to stay by your side and not go traipsing off looking for enemies to slay.”

  That was true, and Lou allowed as much, adding, “So you’re saying that you have changed your ways?”

  “Do any of us ever really change?” Zach wondered. “I’m not much different now than I was when I was ten. I’m older and bigger, but I still like to do the same things I did back then.”

  “Now you are confusing me,” Lou said. “Have you changed or have you not?”

  “I wouldn’t mind counting more coup. I wouldn’t mind going on raids with the Shoshones. But I don’t, because of you.” Zach clasped her hand. “I love you too much to put you through the worry.”

  “I thank you for that,” Lou said. “But none of this explains why you want to tuck tail
and run from whatever made those tracks.”

  “Do you remember that grizz my father killed? The one that chased me and drove me over a cliff?”

  “You nearly died.”

  Zach nodded. “Exactly. It got me to thinking. When we’re young we tend to think we are invincible, but we’re not.”

  Louisa grinned. “You’re not ready to be put out to pasture yet.”

  “Quit quibbling. I’m serious, damn it.”

  “I asked you not to swear.”

  “And I am asking you to help me pack up and go back down. Not all the way. Say, within half a mile of our cabin. It’s far enough that we should be safe.” Zach had never seen sign of the creature that far down. Ideally, he would like to get his father and Shakespeare and hunt it, but that could wait until after.

  Lou gazed into her cup and swirled her coffee. “That would be all right. I only wanted to come up here in the first place because you were always saying how you’d like to see the glacier up close one day.” She smiled and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Just so we have some time alone. I don’t much care where. The important thing is to start our family.”

  “We’re agreed, then.”

  In less than half an hour they were under way. Zach deliberately hung back so that Lou went first and he came after, leading the packhorse.

  They rode all day. The descent was a lot easier than the climb up had been, and they only stopped once to rest the horses. Lou wanted to cook a meal at midday, but Zach told her he was not hungry and would rather wait until evening to eat. Fortunately she did not hear his belly growl all afternoon.

  Twilight found them in a clearing in a tract of firs not far from the stream. Zach wanted to push on to the next meadow, but Lou said she was sore from so much time in the saddle and needed to stop. Against his better judgment, Zach gave in.

  In due course the sun relinquished its aerial reign and the stars blossomed like so many sparkling flowers, filling the firmament with their multitude. There was no moon.

  Lou cooked. Zach sat with his rifle by his leg and one hand on a pistol, listening to the sounds spawned out of the black veil of night and hoping they had descended far enough that the creature would not come after them.

  Deep down, he doubted it.

  Seven

  The Thing roused early. It had not slept well. It could not stop thinking of the female, of her scent. It tossed and turned and grew hot and itchy. Several times it got up and paced.

  The sun was still high in the sky when the Thing rose and padded to the lair entrance. It did not step into the sunlight but rested with its chin on its forelimbs and gazed off down the mountain at the meadow. Suddenly its head snapped up. The female and the male and the animals they rode were not there.

  The Thing rose and took several quick steps. The instant sunlight struck it, the Thing recoiled back into the dark. From its throat rose a growl of frustration.

  Anxiously, the Thing waited, its gazed fixed on the meadow. Every so often it would sniff and growl.

  At length the sun dipped to the horizon. Bit by bit it was devoured, until only a crescent morsel remained. That, too, was swallowed, and the next instant, the Thing was out of its lair and hastening to the stream. It did not stop to voice its challenge as it was wont to do. In grim silence it flew on the wings of a need it could not define and could not deny. In its urgent need it glanced neither to the right nor the left but hurtled on through the growing dark with tireless vigor.

  The meadow lay quiet and still. This time the Thing did not stop at the edge of the trees. It bounded to the middle, to the charred remains of the fire. Squatting, the Thing sniffed and poked. The acrid scent tingled its nose. Turning, the Thing lowered its nose to the ground and sniffed in ever wider circles. Soon it had established which direction its quarry had taken. The tracks of their mounts confirmed his nose.

  The Thing started after them. It moved at a steady jog, a pace it could sustain for half a day if need be.

  A rabbit in its path was startled into flight. A doe and a fawn panicked at the Thing’s scent and fled. Roosting birds took wing.

  The Thing was oblivious of the fear it spawned. It cared only about the tracks and the scent.

  The night pulsed with sounds. A cougar screeched somewhere to the southwest. To the north a bear roared. Wolves were on the prowl, and as always there were coyotes.

  None gave the Thing pause. Coyotes and wolves were no threat; they invariably ran at the Thing’s approach. Mountain lions, too, never came near. Perhaps it was his size. Or perhaps it was his strangeness.

  Only bears ever dared stand up to him, and even they, when he rushed at them roaring and shrieking and flailing his claws, took flight.

  The Thing did not like having its domain invaded. The male who had intruded would find that out.

  The female was a different matter.

  A very different matter indeed.

  Nate King had always loved to read. He had begun the habit at an early age. When he played as a child, he often acted out the parts of characters in the books. At ten he was a Greek warrior in the army that sacked venerable Troy. At eleven he was a gallant knight in armor fighting for a maiden’s honor. He made a slingshot and toppled Goliath as David. His father had thought it nonsense; his mother had smiled in her caring manner as he crept through the house with a yardstick to his shoulder in imitation of Daniel Boone.

  Nate still loved to read. A particular favorite was James Fenimore Cooper. Critics claimed Cooper’s stories were too romanticized, but to Nate, who adored his wife as he adored life itself, romance was part and parcel of existence. Others nitpicked that Cooper belittled the red man, presenting Indians as dull and vulgar, but it was patently untrue. Some of Cooper’s Indians were as vivid as real life. Chingachgook, the Deerslayer’s friend for many a year; noble, heroic Uncas; cunning, vicious Magua. In Cooper’s tales there were good and bad Indians just as there were good and bad whites, and smart and not-so-smart Indians, as there were smart and not-so-smart whites.

  Nate was seated in the rocking chair in front of the fireplace, engrossed in The Deerslayer, when his wife came in.

  “The door to the chicken coop is closed,” Winona confirmed. “If that fox comes around it will be disappointed.”

  Without looking up from his book, Nate remarked, “Sometimes I think those chickens are more bother than they are worth.”

  “I don’t hear you complain when you’re stuffing yourself with eggs or when we have roast chicken. But if you want, we can give them away. I’m sure Shakespeare or Zach would be more than happy to take them off our hands.”

  Nate lowered the book and straightened. “I wasn’t saying we should get rid of them. I just said they are a bother.”

  Winona showed her even white teeth. “That is just as well. You are a bother sometimes, but I would not give you away, either.”

  Chuckling, Nate let his gaze rove from her resplendent raven hair to her beaded moccasins. For a woman who had been married for two decades and bore two children, she was remarkably fit, her hips not much wider than they had been when they met.

  Nate loved her dearly. She was the best helpmate a man could ask for. That she had stuck with him for so long was a never ending source of wonder. She could have had her pick of any Shoshone warrior she took a fancy to, but she had chosen him, a white man. Sure, her people were about the friendliest tribe west of the Mississippi, but she was only the second Shoshone woman ever to marry a white man.

  “A slice of apple pie for your thoughts, husband,” Winona said. She had made the pie that morning.

  “I was thinking of how lucky I am that you care for me,” Nate confessed.

  “Yes, you are lucky,” Winona agreed, her English flawless. A natural-born linguist, she spoke English much better than he spoke Shoshone.

  “That is one of the traits that drew me to you,” Nate said. “How humble you are.”

  Winona laughed. “The trait that drew me most to you is your simple natur
e.”

  Nate was genuinely shocked. “Did you just call me a simpleton?”

  Again her merry laugh filled the cabin. “No. What I admire most is that you do not put on airs. You do not pretend to be someone you are not. You are a simple man.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  Winona opened a drawer and took out a carving knife. “It is a compliment, husband. Many men and women pretend to be that which they are not. They do not see themselves as they truly are but as they would like to be. You are always you.”

  “Who else would I be?”

  Winona lifted the pie from the counter and carried it to the table. “How big a slice would you like?”

  “Half should do me.”

  “Half the pie? What are you trying to do? Put on so much weight I must make you new buckskins?”

  “That will be—” Nate began, and stopped, struck by how she had thrown up her head and cocked it toward the window. “What is it? What do you hear?”

  Winona did not answer. She hurried to the door, worked the bolt, and flung it open. “Come and listen.”

  Nate did not need the urging. He was already out of the rocking chair. Still holding The Deerslayer, he stepped out into the brisk night air. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Wait,” Winona said, her face raised to the benighted peaks to the northwest. “Maybe it will do it again.”

  “Do what?”

  An answer came in the form of a wavering howl unlike any ever made by a wolf or coyote.

  “Strange,” Winona said. “Usually we only hear it when the moon is out, but there is no moon tonight.”

  “I wish Zach and Lou had not gone up there,” Nate said. He had more to say, but just then a large bulk loomed around the corner of their cabin and bore down on them.