The leader went on at some length.
“He’s sorry for disturbing us,” Nate translated. “That’s awful decent of him. But that business about scalp hunters is far-fetched.”
The leader let out a sharp cry. It wasn’t a war whoop; it was a signal to the rest of his party. Out of the trees filed eight more warriors leading their horses and pack animals.
Nate was doubly glad he hadn’t tried to fight his way out. He’d be bristling with arrows right about now. “Do we offer to ride with them or go on alone?”
Shakespeare put the question to them in sign. The leader answered that they would be happy to have the two white men ride with them.
Although Nate couldn’t recall hearing tell of any instance where the Pend d’Oreilles killed whites, he wasn’t entirely comfortable riding at the head of the band with all those bows at his back. He kept shifting and looking back.
Finally Shakespeare chuckled and said, “You’ll give yourself a crick in the neck if you keep doing that.”
“Do you trust them not to kill us if they have the chance?”
“Lordy, you have a suspicious nature.”
“I just like to breathe.”
“They could have done it back there at the creek if they wanted.”
“That doesn’t mean they might not try now.”
“ ‘By my troth,’ ” Shakespeare resorted to the Bard, “ ‘a man can die but once. We owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base mind, an’t it be my destiny.’ ”
“You’re saying I worry too much.”
Beaming, Shakespeare bent toward Nate and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re learning, Horatio. There’s hope for you yet.”
To Nate’s considerable relief, the Pend d’Oreilles didn’t badger them with questions about white ways. Some tribes would. To them the white man was a perplexing mystery. The things most Indians held dear, the white man didn’t. The things that white men held dear, the Indians couldn’t understand. Especially the whites’ lust for money and desire to possess land was another. Many tribes, like his adopted people the Shoshones, considered the land as there for all to use, humans as well as wildlife. The concept of owning it was added proof that whites had their heads in a whirl.
The two hours seemed a lot longer, but at last the winding Arkansas River came into view. The high adobe walls of Bent’s Fort were bathed in the afternoon sun. Nothing short of a cannon could break those walls down. They were impervious to lances and arrows and immune to fire. Small wonder that hostiles seldom attacked.
Nate had been here often. He was always impressed by its size: almost one hundred and eighty feet from front to back and nearly one hundred and forty feet from side to side.
The Pend d’Oreilles drew rein a hundred yards out. Indians were permitted into the post only at certain times and kept under close watch. Whites could enter any time but first had to go up to a gate in the south wall and wait while they were scrutinized through a porthole. The Bent brothers and their partner, Ceran St. Vrain, took every precaution.
No sooner did Nate come to a stop than the porthole opened and a voice thick with a brogue declared, “As I live and breathe, it’s Nate King, himself.” The bar on the inside rasped and the gate was hauled open, revealing a young man with a bristly red beard and a knot of red hair.
“It’s been a while, Finnan,” Nate greeted him.
“That it has,” the Irishman agreed, all smiles. “I haven’t set eyes on you since you had your dispute with that horrible Jackson fellow and blew out his wick.”
Nate didn’t need the reminder.
Finnan flashed his teeth at McNair. “And who might this ancient gentleman with all the wrinkles be?”
Shakespeare’s head snapped up. “Who are you calling ancient, you danged infant?”
“Here, now. Don’t take that tone. I was being friendly, is all.”
“I’ll friendly you,” Shakespeare said, and launched into another quote. “ ‘I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables.’ ”
“Huh?” Finnan said.
“ ‘Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the best way to give poor Jade the bots.’ ”
“Huh?” Finnan said again.
“ ‘Zounds. I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my father’s brother dad.’ ”
“What language is that you’re speaking, old man? It sounds like English and yet it’s not.”
“ ‘You are duller than a great thaw.’ ”
“I understood that one, I think,” Finnan declared, “and if I understood it correctly, I resent it.” He glanced at Nate. “Is your friend drunk? Is that it?”
Nate was shaking with suppressed mirth. “Finnan, allow me to introduce my best friend in all creation. You are talking to none other than Shakespeare McNair.”
“The saints preserve us!” the younger man blurted, and stepped to the mare. “I’ve heard so much about you, sir. You’re as famous as Jim Bridger and Joseph Walker. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”
Shakespeare had raised a hand and was about to deliver another bombastic quote. “It is, is it?”
“Yes, indeed. They say you were the first white man to ever set foot in the Rocky Mountains.”
“Not quite, but I was a close second. Or possibly third.”
“May I shake your hand? I can’t wait to tell everyone. I can hardly believe my luck.”
“There’s hope for you, after all,” Shakespeare said, and leaning down, he offered his hand. “But take heed, boy. When you meet a person my age, the last thing you want to do is remind him of his years.”
“Oh, I understand, sir. I’m sorry I did that. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone as old as you before.”
Nate snorted.
“ ‘This is the very coinage of your brain,’ ” Shakespeare said with a sigh.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Stand aside so we can enter. I feel myself in serious need of hard liquor.” Shakespeare gigged the mare and rode through the gate, casting a dark glance at Nate. “One word of this to my wife and I’ll have your guts for garters.”
“Now, now,” Nate responded. “She is entitled to laugh the same as the rest of us.”
Raising his face to the heavens, Shakespeare declared, “ ‘There’s many a man that hath more hair than wit.’ Was that a jest on your part or do you just like hair?”
Nate went to follow him.
“Does he always talk like that?” Finnan asked.
“There are days when I think he must have talked like that in the cradle,” Nate said, and tapped his heels to the bay. Nothing much had changed since he last visited Bent’s. The post was quieter than normal, in part because no wagon trains were there.
Nate crossed the compound and drew rein next to McNair in front of the trading room just as the door opened.
“As I live and breathe, Nate and Shakespeare. I’ve missed you, my friends.” Ceran St. Vrain emerged, his aristocratic features lit by a warm smile. He was dressed in the best of fashion, his hair neatly slicked, his boots polished.
“Ceran de Hault de Lassus de St. Vrain,” Shakespeare said. “It is a joy for this old coon to set eyes on you again.”
St. Vrain chuckled. “McNair, you are the only person alive who ever uses my full name, and how in the world you remember it is beyond me.”
“His memory is formidable,” Nate praised his friend. He had long been astounded by Shakespeare’s ability to quote the Bard at will.
The three shook, and Ceran said, “How is it you’re here? You can’t be out of supplies so soon.”
Nate’s good humor evaporated like fresh rainwater under a hot sun. “I’m looking for my daughter.”
“Evelyn? Yes, she was here some weeks ago with that family of Indians from the East you let settle in your valley. I’m afraid my memory isn’t the equal of McNair’s. What are they called again?”
“Nansusequas,” Nate answered. “Wakumassee is the father. From what I
gather, he took them off to hunt buffalo.” Nate wished he had been home when they decided to go, but he’d been in St. Louis having his rifle repaired by the Hawken brothers.
“I seem to remember your daughter telling me that.” Ceran stopped. “They haven’t returned?”
“No.” The simple word tore at Nate’s heartstrings like his keen-edged bowie. “They’ve been gone much too long.”
“We’ll find them, Horatio,” Shakespeare vowed. “If we have to scour the prairie from end to end, we’ll find them.”
Nate refused to delude himself. The plains were vast beyond measure, stretching countless leagues from Canada to Mexico and from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Granted, he doubted that Evelyn and Waku had gone that far, but the task was still daunting. “Have you heard anything?” he asked St. Vrain. “Has anyone seen them? Has there been any word at all?”
“Would that there had.” Ceran’s broad brow furrowed. “I’ll be more than happy to organize a dozen men to go with you. You can cover that much more ground in much less time.”
Nate was tempted. Time was crucial. The longer it took, the less the odds of finding them. “Have there been any reports of the Blackfeet down this way? Or have the Sioux been on the prowl?”
“The Sioux are always on the prowl,” Ceran said, and caught himself. “But no, nothing recent. The Sioux are staying up in their Black Hills, and the Blackfeet haven’t sent a war party this far south since last summer.”
“When you talked to her, did she happen to mention which way they were headed?” Nate asked.
“East, as I recall. I reminded her that most of the buffalo are to the south, but she was confident they…” Ceran gave a slight start and visibly blanched. “Oh, my word.”
“What?”
“I just remembered.”
“What?” In his excitement, Nate gripped St. Vrain’s arms. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
Ceran swallowed and forced a smile. “Calm down. As you say, it’s a vast prairie. It’s unlikely they ran into them.”
“Ran into who?”
“There’s been word,” Ceran began, “of trouble to the east. The first accounts were sketchy. I thought it couldn’t be true, but then other reports reached my attention.”
Nate was practically beside himself. “Reports of what?”
“Of a band of white scalp hunters who have been killing and scalping every Indian they come across.”
“God, no,” Nate said. It was true, then. And it meant his friends the Nansusequas—and his daughter—were in deadly danger.
Chapter Three
A map never gave a true sense of scale. It said X was five hundred miles from Y, or that at its closest point the Mississippi was nine hundred miles from the Rockies. A person could picture it in his head, but the picture never matched the reality.
This was what went through Nate King’s mind as he hurried eastward from Bent’s Fort on the morning of the sixth day out. There was so much prairie; a sea of it, flowing on, mile after mile after mile. Finding someone in that immense ocean of grass was akin to looking for a tiny bit of driftwood in the middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific.
Nate thought of Evelyn and choked down despair. Ceran St. Vrain had told them that the scalp hunters were ranging wide over the region, killing men, women, and even children and lifting their hair. The question Ceran couldn’t answer was why they were so far north of their usual haunts. It was well known that Texas and the government down to Santa Fe both offered money for scalps. In Texas it was for Comanche hair. In New Mexico it was for Apache scalps. But Texas and Santa Fe were a thousand miles away.
Rumor had it that some scalp hunters weren’t particular about whose hair they lifted. Some would scalp whites and Mexicans, too, so long as the hair could pass for Comanche or Apache. Nate suspected that the band doing the marauding had come north because it would be easy to fill their hair sacks to bulging and then take them to Texas or Sante Fe and claim thousands of dollars in bounty.
Nate couldn’t see them lifting Evelyn’s hair. Hers would never pass for an Indian’s. But the Nansusequas with her had the kind of hair a scalp hunter would love. And if they killed Waku and his family, what might they do to Evelyn? They might not want a witness.
Again despair nipped at Nate and he pushed it back down. Suddenly he realized Shakespeare was calling his name and drew rein. “What is it?” he asked, turning in the saddle.
Shakespeare brought the mare to a stop and pointed. “You need to come out of yourself.”
A mile to the northeast smoke curled to the sky, rising in gray coils like a thick snake climbing into the clouds.
“White men made that fire,” Nate remarked. Indians invariably made their fires small so as not to give them away.
Shakespeare grunted in agreement. “Whoever they are, maybe they’ve seen Evelyn and Waku. We should pay them a visit.”
It took all Nate’s self-control not to push at a gallop. He had already been riding too hard for too long and his bay showed signs of flagging. He held to a quick walk, his insides churning.
“How are you holding up?” Shakespeare asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Horatio.”
Nate rubbed his jaw and scowled. “I can’t help it. I love that girl so much. It’s hard being a parent, the hardest thing there is.”
“If it will help, you can talk about it.”
“All talking will do is make me feel worse.” But Nate couldn’t keep it in. “We raise them and nurture them. We are there as they grow day by day. We grin at their antics and smile at their silliness and feel our hearts fit to burst when they hug us and tell us they love us. We do the best we can to make them ready for the world and one day they go off to take up their own lives and we pray to God nothing bad will happen to them.”
“Evelyn didn’t go off to live somewhere. She went buffalo hunting.”
“We love them so much and it hurts that the world will do to them as it does to everyone. It will rip at them and claw at them and try to crush them and there’s not a thing we can do.”
Shakespeare chuckled. “Aren’t you exaggerating just a tad?”
“You think it’s funny, but it’s not. Every parent’s worst fear is that something terrible will happen to their children. It is the worst that can happen, even more than a wife or husband dying.”
“Good Lord. For all we know, she’s fine. Pull yourself together. Your fear is getting you carried away.”
“I know,” Nate said, and sighed. “I can’t help it. It’s like wrestling with your own heart.”
“Sometimes I wish Blue Water Woman and I had been able to have children,” Shakespeare said wistfully. “But it wasn’t meant to be.”
They could smell the smoke now. A low rise hid the source. Nate placed his Hawken across his saddle, his thumb on the hammer, his finger on the trigger. Not all whites were friendly.
“I hear voices.”
So did Nate. A lot of them, talking in low tones. He slowed as he neared the top of the rise and drew rein the moment he could see over so as not to show himself before he was sure it was safe.
“By my troth,” Shakespeare said. “Freighters, unless I miss my guess.”
Nate came to the same conclusion. He counted ten wagons of the prairie schooner variety. All were red and blue and covered by arched canvas tops. The wagons had been drawn up in a circle, and close to thirty people were moving about or seated at the fire. The wagons hid some from his view. Oxen were being taken from their traces and horses had been gathered to one side. “Bound for Bent’s Fort, I reckon.”
“Let’s ride down and introduce ourselves,” Shakespeare suggested. “We never know. They might have word of Evelyn.”
Nate slapped his legs and rode over the rise. Almost instantly a man with a rifle appeared, a sentry Nate hadn’t noticed. The man hollered and all the men in the circle grabbed rifles and came to watch Nate and Shakespeare approach.
“They are
well trained,” Shakespeare remarked. “Whoever is in charge runs a tight train.”
“I bet that’s him there.”
A broad man with bulging shoulders had stridden to the forefront. His big hands were on a pair of pistols. A short-brimmed hat crowned rugged features. From under it poked brown hair a shade darker than the several days’ growth on his square chin.
“I’ve seen that redwood somewhere,” Shakespeare said.
Nate brought the bay to a halt and nodded at the human tree. “Howdy. My name is Nate King. I’m—” He got no further. The man broke into a smile and many of the others glanced at one another and commenced to whisper.
“The Lord, He works in mysterious ways,” intoned their captain. “I’m Jeremiah Blunt. This is my train and these are my men. I can’t tell you how pleased we are to meet you.”
“Why would that be?”
“We have something that belongs to you, in a manner of speaking.” Blunt chuckled, and turning his head, raised his voice. “It’s all right, girl. It’s safe for you and the others to show yourselves.”
For one of the few times in his life Nate was struck speechless when a squealing vision of budding womanhood bounded toward him with glee writ all over her.
“Pa! Pa! It’s you!”
Nate vaulted down. No sooner did his feet touch the ground than Evelyn flew into his arms and hugged him close. Choking off a sob, she said softly, “You don’t know how happy this makes me.”
Nate couldn’t talk for the lump in his throat. He closed his eyes and held her and his thankfulness knew no bounds.
From around the wagons came five people dressed in green buckskins: Wakumassee and his family. Warm greetings were exchanged and then everyone sat around the fire at Jeremiah Blunt’s invitation and over coffee Nate heard of how the scalp hunters had chased his daughter and the Nansusequas and would have slain them had it not been for the freighter captain.
“I’m in your debt,” Nate said, pumping the other’s hand. “Anything you want of me, any time, you have only to ask.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Nate learned that the freighters had made for Bent’s Fort, only to be delayed by a Sioux war party.
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