Wilderness Double Edition 26

by David Robbins

  None of the bodies had been eaten. Not one showed a trace of bite marks. They had been slain and left to rot. What made it all the more bewildering was that coyotes, vultures, and other scavengers had left the bodies alone. It was unheard of.

  That evening, as the Utes huddled around their campfires debating what to do, they heard an eerie cry from high up on the mountains. An awful cry, part roar, part shriek, part howl. It was repeated, again and again throughout the long night.

  Few of the Utes could sleep.

  It did not take a profound stretch of logic to link the torn bodies with the bestial cries. Whatever was up there had come down and slain them. And there was every chance the creature would come down again.

  The next morning the lakeshore was empty. From that day on the valley was considered bad medicine and shunned. Not a single Ute set foot in it until that fateful day when Neota, at the head of two dozen warriors, brought To-Ma there, draped over a horse. Ten of them lowered him to the ground. He snarled and tried to bite them but quieted after they stood back.

  Neota, himself, snuck up behind To-Ma and cut the ropes. To-Ma lay there awhile before he realized he was free. With a shrug he cast the ropes off, then rose and bounded on all fours toward the trees. He did not look back. The last they saw of him, he was well up a mountain, rapidly climbing.

  The Utes did not linger. Now the valley was bad medicine twice over.

  To-Ma was never mentioned again, not at council, at any rate. The subject was as taboo as the valley.

  But in the solitude of their lodges, he was sometimes discussed, and many came to think that what they had done was wrong. They had banished someone incapable of understanding why he was being banished. That they had left him in that terrible valley, of all places, compounded their feelings of guilt.

  Which explained why none of the Utes came to warn the Kings and the McNairs when it was learned they had moved there. Many Utes, Neota among them, believed To-Ma to be long dead. Neota visited the valley a few times to see how the white men and their families were faring and reported to his people that all was well.

  When Niwot decided to court Evelyn King, Neota said nothing. To-Ma’s banishment took place nearly thirty winters ago, long before Niwot was born. Niwot had heard the tale, of course, but he was young and in love and would not be put off by talk of bad medicine.

  Now, in the silence that fell after Neota stopped speaking, Nate and Winona looked at one another.

  “What do you make of it, husband?”

  “The Utes did what they had to,” Nate said. “Head injuries can do strange things. To-Ma was a danger to them and their children.”

  “Not him,” Winona said. “What do you make of the other thing? The creature that wiped out those three Ute families?”

  “It could have been anything,” Nate remarked. “A bear, a mountain lion, you name it.”

  “But Neota said the tracks they found were not those of any animal the Utes knew,” Winona reminded him.

  Nate shrugged. “Whatever it was, that was thirty years ago.”

  “Something is up there. We heard it earlier. We have heard it many times since we came here. And now our son and his wife are up there with it and their lives might be in danger.”

  “Which is why I am going up after them,” Nate announced, rising.

  Winona, too, stood. “I am going with you. He is my son as well as yours.”

  With a nod at the closed bedroom door, Nate said, “Someone has to stay with Evelyn. If she woke up and found us both gone she would panic. Pack a parfleche for me and I’ll go saddle my bay.”

  “Why must I be the one to stay and not you? I can ride as well as you. I can shoot almost as well.”

  “Because you are her mother.”

  “You are her father.”

  “Because she is closer to you than she is to me.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Because I am the man, and a man protects those he loves.”

  “And women do not?”

  Exasperated with her, Nate asked, “Why are you making such a fuss? You know it has to be me.”

  “I do not want you to go alone,” Winona said. “Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman can watch Evelyn.”

  “I’m not going alone. Neota is going with me.”

  “How do you know? You have not asked him.”

  To Winona’s annoyance, Neota agreed. She filled a parfleche with pemmican, jerky, coffee, and other items and carried it out to the corral. Nate had the bay saddled and was tightening the cinch.

  “Why not ride to Shakespeare’s and ask him to go along? There is safety in numbers. Is that not what the whites say?”

  “It will be a long, hard ride, and he’s not as spry as he used to be,” Nate responded. He mustered a grin. “Tell him I said that and I’ll deny it.”

  Winona folded her arms across her chest and regarded the Ute. “Why do you suppose he confided in us after all this time?”

  “Guilt, maybe,” Nate speculated. “Niwot’s death hit him hard. He likes Zach and Lou. Maybe he doesn’t want anything to happen to them.” Nate tied the parfleche on the bay and was ready. Embracing her, he kissed her full on the month. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You have that backward.” Winona dug her nails into his arms. “Come back to me, husband. I am used to you keeping my bed warm at night.”

  “Hussy,” Nate said, and laughed.

  Winona did not let go. “I mean it. You are my man. I am your woman. If you die my heart will break.”

  “Enough of that kind of talk,” Nate chided. “I aim to die of old age in my rocking chair.” He swung onto the saddle.

  Neota was already on the pinto and slapped his legs against it when Nate gigged the bay.

  Nate glanced over his shoulder at his wife, an hourglass silhouette in the dark. “I will always love you.”

  “And I you, husband.”

  The hoot of an owl woke him.

  Zach sat up and yawned. The fire had burnt down to a few embers and was giving off smoke. A faint blush on the eastern horizon promised daylight soon.

  He had slept for hours. His lapse appalled him. He was lucky the creature from the glacier had not come back. Rising with his rifle in his hand, he stretched, then pivoted on a heel, surveying the phalanx of firs. His foot bumped the melon-sized rock. Proof the creature had to be a human being. But the notion seemed preposterous. People did not roar, or howl, or act like a beast.

  Zach picked up the rock. It was so heavy he had to use both hands. To spare Lou the sight of it—and her blood—when she woke up, he carried the rock a dozen steps and set it down.

  Their mounts were still there. He went over and patted them. They were calm, proof the creature must be long gone. He smiled at the thought. He could not stop thinking of it as a thing.

  Hunkering by the embers, Zach rekindled the fire. The warmth felt good. He broke a limb and added more wood. Lou liked her coffee piping hot in the morning.

  Zach glanced at where she lay, and his world came crashing down around him. Unwilling to accept the testimony of his eyes, he groped her blankets, which were flat on the ground.

  “Lou?”

  Zach jumped up. The natural assumption was that she had gone into the woods.

  “Lou?”

  He was not worried. Not yet. She had got up before he did and was off doing what most people did. That must be it.

  “Lou!”

  Zach turned right and left, seeking movement in the vegetation. He cupped his hand to his mouth and sucked in a deep breath.

  “Louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”

  His entire body tingling with expectation, Zach waited for her to answer. His shout had spooked a bunch of sparrows into taking wing, but that was all. “Louisa, please,” he said softly, and hurled himself at the firs. He plunged in among them, calling her name over and over, calling her name as many times as there were trees, but he received no reply.

  Anxiety gnawed at his insides like a thousand ravenous moles.
Zach ran back to the clearing. If she were anywhere near, she would come to the clearing.

  The horizon was gray, but the sun was not visible. Tapping his foot with impatience, Zach begged, “Come on, come on, come on.”

  Neither Lou nor the sun acknowledged the request. Gradually the clearing brightened. What he saw sent a wave of fear coursing through him: drag marks, a pair of them, spaced far enough apart that they could have been made by a pair of legs, human legs, the legs of his unconscious wife.

  Zach shook his head. “It can’t be.” Why hadn’t he heard anything? Why didn’t the creature kill him? Or take him, too? Why only take Lou? A possible answer hit him with the force of a falling tree. He swayed, his head suddenly light, his thoughts scrambled.

  The caw of a raven brought Zach out of himself. He saddled his horse faster than he had ever saddled it in his life. He was going to leave Lou’s saddle and saddle blanket there, but at the last instant he changed his mind and saddled her horse as well. If he found her she would be grateful.

  If. Zach swore at himself. There was no if. There was when. When he found her. He would find her and spirit her to safety and come back to end the life of whatever took her if he did not end it rescuing her.

  “Lou, Lou, Lou,” Zach said, a lump in his throat as he climbed into the stirrups.

  Lifting the reins, Zach gigged his mount up the slope. He did not need to track them. He knew where the creature was headed.

  As he broke from the firs, a golden arch crowned the sky to the east, heralding the new day.

  Zach spied the white mass of the glacier. He also spied a black shape far above. His eyes narrowed as he tried to tell what it was. Given its size, he thought perhaps it was an elk. But it was moving on two legs, not four. He could not be certain due to the distance, but he would swear it had something—or someone—thrown over a shoulder.

  “No!” Zach cried, and used his heels to bring his horse to a gallop. “I’m coming, Lou! I’m coming!”

  As if the creature heard him, from on high came a mocking howl.

  Eleven

  There are degrees of fear.

  Louisa King learned that long ago. The fear she felt when a horse threw her when she was ten was nothing like the fear she felt years later when hostiles were out to kill her and her father. That was the worst fear, or so she imagined until the day men showed up at her cabin to kill her husband. She had been so afraid for Zach’s life that the fear sapped the vitality from her limbs and the will from her mind. She thought she had plumbed the depths of fear that day, but she was mistaken.

  She felt a new depth of fear when she woke up to the sensation of pressure on her mouth. A hairy hand was clamped over it to keep her from crying out. The next instant a muscular arm encircled her waist, and she was lifted bodily from under her blanket, lifted as easily as she might lift a blade of grass.

  Sluggish from sleep and her injury, Lou was slow to react. Belatedly, she began to struggle, but by then the abyss of the night had closed around them and she was being borne at bewildering speed up the mountain.

  The creature had her!

  The thought struck Lou numb. She stopped struggling and twisted to try and glance back at the clearing and see if Zach was still alive. She could not conceive of him letting the creature take her. The only conclusion, then, was that the thing had killed him.

  A pervasive sadness overcame her. She felt sick to her stomach but was able to swallow the bitter bile back down. Tears started to well, but she blinked them away and concentrated on her plight. Her fear was fading. Now she had purpose. Now she would bide her time and when her chance came, she would slay the thing that had killed the man she loved.

  Lou loved Zach dearly, loved him more than she had ever deemed it possible to love anyone; more, even, than she had loved her father and mother, and her love for them had been boundless. Or maybe it was better to say it was a different kind of love rather than the degree.

  That was it, Lou decided. Love for a husband was not the same as love for a parent. Both were deep and abiding in their way.

  The realization of what she was doing almost made Lou laugh. Here she was, being abducted by God-knew-what, and instead of fighting and screaming, she was thinking about the nature of love. But she soon discovered there was little she could do even if she wanted to. The arm that encircled her also clamped her own arms to her side so that she could only move her wrists and hands, and then barely enough to touch whatever had her. She could not hurt it in any way. When she did touch it, she shivered, for her fingers encountered matted hair much like the hair of an animal. But whatever had taken her was human. It had to be. Animals did not have arms and legs.

  That the cries they had heard were produced by human vocal cords added to her fear. What manner of human could it be? Or was she jumping to conclusions? Lou asked herself. Was the creature inhuman? Lou never lent much credence to tales of spooks and hobgoblins. Oh, she heard the stories, growing up, but she regarded them in the same vein as she did tales of pixies and fairies and magic carpets.

  A sudden violent jar ended Lou’s reverie. Her abductor had tripped and nearly fallen. Inadvertently, its grip around her middle tightened like a vise. Her insides were fit to burst. Then the creature righted itself and the vise eased.

  Lou craned her neck and saw the light of their campfire, much smaller than before. Her abductor had covered a lot of ground. The sight galvanized her into thrashing her legs and pumping her forearms, but she had no more effect than a kitten would in the grip of a mountain lion. Her captor continued climbing at the same breakneck pace.

  The smell was awful. The creature gave off the foulest odor this side of a skunk. It was so rank that several times when Lou breathed too deep, she came close to gagging. Its matted hair, so bristly and coarse, suggested it was unacquainted with the concept of bathing.

  Lou tried to tell if her pistols were tucked under her belt. They had been there when she fell asleep. She definitely had her knife, unless the thing had disarmed her before it grabbed her. The knife fit snugly and never fell out.

  Lou stared at the receding flames below. Maybe Zach was still alive. Maybe he was hurt, lying wounded, bleeding his life out with every second she was carried farther and farther away. She hoped not. She would rather he were dead than have him suffer.

  A question jumped out of the borders of her mind, a question she had refused to ask herself because one of the possible answers was too horrible to contemplate: What did the creature intend to do with her? That it had not killed her outright suggested another purpose. Would it kill her later? Would it eat her? Or was there a more sinister design?

  Lou was no babe in the woods. She knew what men sometimes did in the heat of pillage and violence. The very word was odious. It was perhaps the one thing women dreaded most. A violation of the body and the mind so deep, so personal, most women never fully recovered. Her father once told her that men sometimes felt the same, that if a man was beaten or had something he valued stolen, a man felt the same despair and ache deep in his being that a woman felt when a man forced himself on her, but Lou doubted that. Violation was hideous in the extreme. It was the hurt of hurts, a ravaging of all that a woman was.

  Her captor abruptly stopped.

  Lou tensed and tried to see its face, but her back was to it and she could not twist far enough. She gathered it was staring down the mountain, maybe listening to hear if they were pursued. In which case Zach must still be alive. Or maybe it was only catching its breath.

  The creature moved on, but now at a slightly slower pace.

  The cold air made Lou yearn for her blankets. To take her mind off the chill and the smell and the pain, she thought about what she would do when the thing finally released her. Inwardly, she smiled. She was a woman, and some claimed women were frail, but she was living proof that was not the case. She would kill the thing that had her, or die trying.

  The air grew colder. To the east a pale tinge marked the advent of dawn. She tried to turn
her head to see, but the hand over her mouth squeezed so hard she thought her jaw would break.

  Time crawled by on snails of worry.

  Dawn was not far off when her captor veered toward a thicket. Lou barely had time to turn her face so her eyes would not be poked out before they plunged in. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back with the thing on top of her. Panicked, she tried to beat at it with her fists, but she could not move her arms. She could not move anything. When it did not seek to molest her, she subsided. Soon its rhythmic breathing told her it was asleep.

  Lou was flabbergasted. She pushed against it, but she was hopelessly pinned. The stink, the pressure, were nearly unbearable. They only got worse as the sun climbed the sky. Again and again she sought to slip out from under the beast. She actually got a leg free, only to have her abductor stir and growl and cuff her so hard she nearly blacked out.

  Without exception, it was the longest day of Lou’s life. She sweated as she had never sweated. Her ribs ached to the point of collapse.

  Twilight was falling when the thing abruptly rose with her in its arm. Once again she was subjected to the ordeal of being toted like a sack of flour.

  Hours elapsed. Midnight came and went and still the thing loped on, as tireless as a steam engine.

  Without any warning, Lou was roughly dumped on the ground. She landed on her right elbow, and her entire arm flared with torment. When she looked up, her captor was a black mass against a backdrop of white.

  The glacier reared above them, an ice cliff higher than the tallest tree. It appeared to be as smooth as glass, but that proved deceptive, as the creature demonstrated by once again scooping her up and doing the impossible; it began to climb the ice.