by Win Blevins
When the boy’s legs stilled, Sam looked and thought the flesh was properly cauterized.
Julia lay down beside her son and held him.
Sam heard hoof plops. He stuck his head out the flap.
“Come on out,” said Remoulet. “You better see this.”
He and Jay lifted the breed off the saddle of his horse and dumped him on the ground. Flat Dog and Sam slipped outside, held the flap open for light, and looked at the dead face. The skull was split open. The corpse was Hawaiian.
“Everybody,” said Jay, “meet Delly.”
“I SAW KANAKA Boy in my field glass,” said Sam. “I think you better tell us whatever you know.”
Jay looked at the faces around the fire. A thin, icy wire of fear coiled around his heart and squeezed. If they find out, will these people kick me out?
“It was Kanaka Boy. He let this man beat me up,” Jay said. He swallowed hard, because he’d almost said “rape.” He looked into Julia’s eyes and took comfort in their warmth. “Boy told him to beat me up.
“Delly was one of his henchmen. They came after us because of me. Stealing the horses was just a handy way to deliver the insult.”
He saw that his right hand was shaking and put it on the ground to stop the trembling.
“The shot that killed Kauai wasn’t meant for her. It was me. Her head just got in the way, and saved my life.
“Kanaka Boy was in the ambush on the other side. I saw Warrior, too.”
All the adults looked into Jay’s face. Will they guess now? Jay wondered. Will Julia tell them?
“I’m lucky Kanaka Boy wasn’t on my ridge,” he said. “He’s harder to stop.”
“How did they know?” asked Sam. His look was severe.
“Someone of the Cayuses or Nez Percés must have spotted me. Or one of the Hawaiians from Fort Walla Walla. I was scared that would happen. Boy has spies everywhere.”
“Anything else?” said Sam.
Jay thought. He breathed in once and out once and decided. “Yeah, now he’s got the herd, he may come back after me.”
“I don’t think so,” said Sam. “I think we’re going after him.”
Thirty-nine
“HANNIBAL AND I will track the herd and get it back,” Sam said.
“I’m coming,” said Remoulet.
“On what horse?” said Sam.
“The small boy’s.”
“That’s my horse,” said Rojo.
“Son,” said Remoulet, “I’ll give you my pistol for it.”
“You will not,” said Julia.
“I’ll give you my tomahawk and knife,” said Remoulet.
Rojo bit his lower lip.
“Look, me son, your brother can no walk. He must be dragged on a litter. You must walk an’ lead his horse. No way around zese things.”
Rojo teared up a little.
“And me, I must go,” said Remoulet. He extended the tomahawk and knife, and the eleven-year-old took them. His parents held their tongues.
“Soon as Azul can be moved, probably tomorrow,” said Flat Dog, “we’re getting off this mountain.”
“Go on all the way to Oregon City,” said Sam. “It’s just a few days.”
“Jay, you go with them,” said Sam.
“Thank you,” he said. Jay could feel his legs trembling.
“No thanks to it. They need your help. Flat Dog, teach him to use that pistol he carries.” Sam looked Jay hard in the eyes. “You can do that, can’t you? Learn to shoot?”
He hesitated.
“You better,” said Flat Dog.
Sam finished up. “We’ll be along. If we’re not in Oregon City in three weeks, we’re not coming.”
Everyone avoided one another’s eyes.
“Find Esperanza for me,” Sam said.
Jay said, “The horses, are they so very important?”
“The horses?” said Sam. “To hell with them. They shot my nephew. They tried to kill you. Nobody attacks my family and walks away.”
THE TRAIL OF the herd was high, wide, and handsome.
Sam, Hannibal, and Remoulet dared not follow it. “Kanaka Boy will set up ambushes along the trail, for sure,” Hannibal said.
Luckily, Mount Hood was big and steep and the canyons ran like spokes off the peak. Sam and Hannibal backtracked two canyons to the east of the herd trail and rode like hell.
If Jay was right, Boy would head back to his outpost on the Owyhee. First off, he would get the hell off this mountain. The terrain to the south turned quickly to high desert, easy traveling if you knew where to find water. Jay had drawn a map for them, how Boy would run south to the upper Warm Springs River first, two days away, and follow it for three more days to the Deschutes River. One of the main tribes that bought whiskey from him lived at the mouth of the Warm Springs, Wascos. If Boy didn’t rest the herd on the upper Warm Springs, he certainly would at the village. He also might trade some of the horses there.
Sam, Hannibal, and Remoulet didn’t intend to let them get that far.
“HE’S GOT A lot of men,” Hannibal said. He was using his field glass.
“I make out nine,” said Sam, also glassing. Remoulet had nothing to say. He was just waiting to fight.
The three were stretched out flat on a ridge north of the river, looking east, the setting sun behind them.
“Three on guard, six lounging around that fire.”
“And boozing,” added Sam.
The herd was scattered over a wide bottomland along the Warm Springs River. Kanaka Boy had stopped at the first good grass and water. Probably he’d had trouble getting the weary herd even that far. Sam and Hannibal wondered whether he’d killed some horses from exhaustion, especially mares in foal, pushing them too hard.
Beyond the fire, against the river, Boy’s men had rope-corralled their mounts. Nine—it checked out.
Sam, Hannibal, and Remoulet had beaten Kanaka Boy here and watched him ride in.
“Tonight, you think?” said Sam.
“Tomorrow night,” said Hannibal. “Tonight the horses will barely be able to walk. We wouldn’t have a chance against pursuit.”
“You figuring he’ll rest the herd tomorrow?”
“If he doesn’t, we’ll still have the same chance tomorrow night.”
Remoulet said, “Me, I am hot to go now.”
“And maybe I got a good idea for that,” said Sam.
They waited while Sam double-checked it in his mind.
“What about when Boy’s bushwhackers came back? When they told Kanaka Boy we weren’t coming after them?”
“If it was me,” Hannibal said, “I would think we were too worn down to chase him.”
“If I am Boy,” said Remoulet, “I t’ink we no have ze sand to try. We being so few. And zat would make zis child careless,” said Remoulet.
“I suspect he is careless,” said Hannibal, “but ‘maybe’ gets people killed.”
“Well, if he guards against anything,” said Sam, “it will be someone trying to run off the herd.”
“Or maybe just part of it,” said Hannibal.
“That’s where my idea comes in,” Sam said.
They talked the notion out. It was daring.
“It must be a buffalo bull’s balls you joined with,” said Hannibal.
Sam grinned. “The whole buffalo,” he said. “And a buffalo bull protects his relatives.”
THE NIGHTTIME ARRANGEMENT was the same as the day, three guards on watch at any one time, the others resting, sleeping, or drinking.
“Swig that jug,” whispered Sam. Not that he needed to whisper, two hundred yards out. They’d left the horses in some firs to the north. Azul’s pony was tied hard, Paladin and Brownie only ground tied. This was an on-foot attack.
They’d waited for the three-quarter moon to rise. They’d also stashed their rifles. If they needed the rifles, they’d probably be dead.
Sam started the crawl forward. Inching up palm by palm and knee by knee was the hardest part. He like
d doing, not skulking.
They spent an hour getting within fifty paces, hidden behind the sagebrush. Now they were dependent on hand signals, Sam in the middle, Hannibal and Remoulet on either side.
After a long time three drinkers got up and walked out to change the guard. One of the men departing was Kanaka Boy.
Sam motioned forward. This was the time to be silent and quick.
The attackers stood upright and padded forward slowly, every sense turned up. They had to hope the guards didn’t see their relief and start back. They had to hope the three men left were groggy with sleep or half-drunk. This part had to go absolutely right.
Sam stopped behind a bush about ten paces away. Hannibal and Remoulet did the same. From the look of it, one of the three men remaining had rolled up in his blankets and fallen asleep or passed out. The other two, a big one and a shrimp, were sitting and staring into the fire, passing a jug back and forth.
Sam wished he had some sound for cover. He wished he spoke Hawaiian. He wished a lot of things.
He pointed at Remoulet with his hand, meaning, take the man on the far left, the sleeper. He signaled to Hannibal with his right hand—take the one on the right, the shrimp.
Both comrades nodded.
Very quick and very quiet—the three guards would be returning soon.
Sam took off like a herd bull, stock-still one moment, a blaze of speed the next.
The giant Hawaiian cocked his head and then turned it backward. Sam slammed his pistol barrel hard into the man’s forehead.
Sam heard sounds of scraping and panting from Hannibal’s direction but had no time to look. He dropped the pistol and drove his butcher knife deep into the man’s chest.
He looked at Hannibal. His friend had his man in a bear hug from behind. Hannibal dropped him, and the shrimp fell like a loose blanket.
Remoulet stood up, grinned, and held his knife up in the moonlight, gleaming and dripping.
Sam despised fighting people. When he killed someone, his dreams were haunted. Price to pay, he knew.
They slipped back into the darkness to wait. The three sentries would be coming back.
THE FIRST MAN straggled in alone. Hannibal cocked his arm and sank his throwing knife hilt deep into the man’s belly. He crumpled, one arm flung across the fire.
The three comrades smiled grimly at one another. That burning arm might mess things up.
The other two came back talking low. In the dark, behind their bushes, the assassins couldn’t hear their words.
Cocked pistols raised, the assassins waited until firelight lit the figures. They wanted noise now, and a lot of it. The moment one of the guards began to look queerly at the dead man, Sam shot him in the chest.
Hannibal fired within a split second.
In a flash they grabbed the fallen men’s rifles and checked that they were capped or primed. Grim smiles showed that they were.
Sam and Hannibal whistled—first a long, ululating call from Sam, then a short, low-high shriek from Hannibal.
They couldn’t hear their mounts over the shouting of the returning guards.
They crouched back behind some bushes, reloading their pistols in a fury. Hannibal and Sam had the luxury of loaded rifles.
Sam prayed, Give me Kanaka Boy.
The first man dashed into the light bellowing. He must have thought his war cry would stop a lead ball. Hannibal showed him otherwise.
Where in hell are the other two guards? The minds of all three attackers were screaming to know.
Paladin galloped into the circle of firelight and hesitated. Just as she smelled Sam and started toward him, a dark figure leaped out of the bushes and grabbed her reins.
The mare shook her head violently, and the man fell to his knees. Sam shot him for his arrogance.
Sam jumped onto Paladin, Hannibal onto Brownie. They looked around wildly for Kanaka Boy. Where is the son of a bitch?
Then they heard hoofbeats.
“The rope corral,” Hannibal shouted. They kicked Paladin and Brownie in that direction.
They couldn’t get any better fix on the location than the drumming hoofs until they heard the splash.
“The river!” Sam yelled.
By the half-moon they saw the dark shadows of horse and rider against the meandering water.
Only Sam had a loaded weapon. He reined Paladin still and took the only shot he had.
Horse and rider didn’t even flinch as they disappeared into the darkness.
Sam and Hannibal rode back to the fire. “They’re all dead,” said Remoulet. “You boys are wild ones.”
They looked over the herd. “They would have run off—,” said Hannibal.
Sam finished his sentence, “If they had any energy to run on.”
“We’ll rest them tomorrow.”
“Tonight we can sleep any place but here,” said Sam.
They bivouacked in a rocky gully.
The next morning Sam tracked the man who got away for a short distance, but it was a fool’s errand. Kanaka Boy could bushwhack him from a hundred places. And the tracks headed straight away at a run.
All day they watched the eastern hills for a sign of Kanaka Boy.
“You think he’s gone?” said Hannibal at sunset.
“I guess so,” said Sam.
“My bones, they feel more easier,” said Remoulet, “when we get a hundred miles away.”
“Mine will feel easier,” said Hannibal, “when this herd is sold.”
Remoulet said, “Sam, that was no a bad idea. Forget the herd and go for the guards.”
Sam grinned.
Forty
SAM DISCOVERED, DURING the week he spent driving the herd to Oregon City, that the struggles of fighting Mount Hood and then Kanaka Boy and his crew had one great advantage. They kept Sam from thinking about Esperanza.
His first grandchild was born by now, and he had missed it. He had left his daughter alone. He was at the age when the fruit drops off the tree and now was the propagator of a grandson or a granddaughter. He was amazed at what a grand-height age thirty-six could be.
As he dawdled along behind the herd, gentling the animals down the easy route of the Clackamas River, pictures fuzzed into his mind. Esperanza giving birth. A child, which in his mind was nothing but an obscure object swaddled in a blanket. Joe Meek holding the blanket, rocking the baby. Himself holding the blanket and rocking the baby.
“More than half a lifetime,” Sam said to Hannibal. “Middle-aged. I wonder if I’ve learned anything.” The day’s ride was done, coffee perking, meat broiling, and Remoulet on guard.
“Supposing you have,” said Hannibal, “what is it?”
“There’s a lot of earthquakes,” said Sam.
Hannibal looked at him quizzically.
“You get a wife, you lose her. You get a tribe to live with, they kick you out. You get a son and a daughter, you lose them.”
“Feels like quakes,” said Hannibal, “but change is what it’s about. Changes are sure as water runs downhill. You wake up in the morning and the lay of the land is different.”
Sam said, “No satisfaction in those words.”
“ ‘Nothing endures but change,’ ” quoted Hannibal. “Heraclitus.”
“Philosophy isn’t good for much, is it?”
“Another word for it is ‘the human condition,’ ” said Hannibal.
“A man can’t ride under a flag with those words. You got anything better?”
“Sure. Vita Luna!”
“What does it mean?”
“Crazy life!”
“Now you’re talking. I’ll take that as my motto. Let’s see, in Spanish Vita Loca?”
“Or Vita Lunatica.”
“That’s the flag I ride under from now on. Not as much fun as rideo, ergo sum, but more home truth.”
“A man who goes the route of family ends up mixed around, and tumbled up and down besides.”
Sam eyed his friend and decided to ask. “Say it. You’re tem
pted.”
“Yes, I am. Then I’ll be just like you.” He smiled and shook his head.
“Prairie Chicken will never know he has a son.”
“He got what his contribution was worth. And he probably has others he doesn’t know about, right there in the village.”
“I was going to California to make a home for a son and daughter who were going to get married and go off somewhere else.”
Hannibal grimaced and looked across the rumps of the horses. Sam wondered exactly what was on his mind. “The bread always lands butter side down,” Hannibal said.
THEY DROVE THE herd upstream of Willamette Falls and made a crossing that was harder than they expected. Sam couldn’t get used to these coastal rivers. Mountain rivers were long, stringy, and crooked, like fly-fishing lines. Coastal rivers were short and thick, like thumbs. Also deep.
Two old-time French-Canadian trappers came out from their cabins on French Prairie to help with the crossing. Remoulet knew them both and greeted them heartily.
Now Sam started to get the lay of the land around here. The country upriver for ten or twenty miles or more was settled by retired Hudson’s Bay Frenchies, even named after them. The little community by the falls, Oregon City, and the country west of it was settled by Americans, mostly Methodist colonists. One language on your left, another on your right.
The Frenchies knew about Doc Newell and Joe Meek and gave Sam directions to their cabins, well west of the river in a region known as the Tualatin Plains.
“A Crow named Flat Dog?”
“And his beautiful wife who is Spanish?” said the Frenchy built like a bear. “Ever’ personne know her. They live in their tipi on the Tualatin River two, maybe three miles above ze mouth.”
“The husband,” put in the one slinky as a weasel. “Flat Dog? Fonny name. Zere is empty cabin he could use, but he want last time to live in a circle instead of a square, so he say.”
“Zere be good grass zere by the Tualatin,” said the bear.
“We and me,” said the weasel, “ze both us, we would like to trade for horses.”
“Come see us at Flat Dog’s lodge,” said Sam. “We’ll give you a good price. Thanks for your help.”