Nate related, briefly, the clash with the Pawnees.
“We’ll keep our eyes skinned. If those devils show their red hides, we’ll blister them with lead.”
The valley lay still and peaceful under the stars. Most of the freighters had turned in, but Jeremiah Blunt was still up and Nate had to recite his fight again between sips of piping-hot coffee.
“We’ll inform Lexington in the morning,” Blunt declared. “His people are at risk.”
“Not that it will do any good,” Maklin said bitterly. “Not one of those yacks will lift a finger to defend themselves.”
“The Pawnees don’t know that,” Blunt mentioned.
Nate hadn’t thought of that. Since most whites carried guns, Kuruk would assume the Shakers were armed and might not attack. “It could be what saves them,” he said, and was raising his tin cup for another swallow when he went rigid.
The ground was shaking. Not hard, not violently, but enough that Nate felt uneasy. The horses set to whinnying and the oxen to lowing. A nearby cauldron bubbled loudly and a prolonged hiss filled the air. In less than a minute the shaking stopped.
“I don’t like it when it does that,” Jeremiah Blunt said. “I am not a student of geology, but I know when ground is unstable. The Shakers would be well advised to set up their new colony elsewhere.”
Nate agreed, but he mentioned that trying to convince Arthur Lexington would be a waste of breath.
“The man is too fond of himself. He believes he is right and everyone else is wrong.”
“People like him rub me wrong,” Maklin said.
At last Nate was able to turn in. He lay on his back with his saddle for a pillow. Every muscle seemed sore. He was so tired he figured he would drift off quickly, but his mind refused to shut down. It was three in the morning when sleep claimed him.
The clink of a coffeepot woke him. Dawn was about to break and Blunt and several others were already up. Blunt planned to start unloading the wagons as soon as the sun rose in order to get it done in one day.
Nate offered to lend a hand, but the captain said it wasn’t necessary, that his men had strong backs and worked well together.
Along about ten, with the freighters unloading and the Shaker men busy building and the Shaker women doing their daily chores, Nate decided to explore the rest of the valley. He drifted past the cabins, then past hot springs too numerous to count. Some constantly bubbled and boiled while others bubbled now and again. When they did, they hissed like serpents.
Nate noticed a foul odor that was stronger near the cauldrons and vents.
The skulls and bones fascinated him. There were so many. Their size staggered the imagination. One leg bone was bigger than he was. A skull had teeth longer than his fingers. Whatever these creatures were, they had been huge.
Slopes sparse with vegetation led up to the cliffs. Nate counted over forty on the north side of the valley alone. An ancient footpath wound up to them.
Nate stood in the entrance to the lowest and peered into its depths. The reek was strong here, too, although why that should be puzzled him. He started in, but had only gone a dozen steps when it became so dark he couldn’t see his hand at arm’s length. He deemed it best to back out and was about to do so when he heard the unmistakable tread of a foot.
Someone, or some thing, was in there with him.
Nate raised the Hawken. The Indians claimed that the race that once lived in the valley had long since died out, but maybe the Indians were mistaken.
“King? Are you in here?”
Lowering his rifle, Nate answered, “I’m coming out, Maklin.” He felt like a fool. Even more so when he nearly bumped into the Texan. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you I wanted to tag along. Blunt saw you hike off and let me know.”
“He would make a fine wife.”
The Texan grinned. “Don’t let him hear you say that. I’ve seen him lift an anvil over his head.” He stared into the dark tunnel. “So what did you find in there? Anything?”
“No.”
The trail continued upward, a groove in the rock worn by untold thousands of feet untold thousands of years ago.
“Any sign of those things we saw last night?”
“Not yet.”
The next cave was smaller. The cave floor was inches thick with dust and the cave had a musty smell. The sun penetrated into it far enough to reveal bones scattered all over. Only they were different from those below.
“These were people,” Maklin said.
The dome of a skull poked from the dust. Nate picked it up and brushed it off and turned it over. It was twice the size of an ordinary skull and the eye sockets were twice the size of human eyes. Patches of red hair clung to the crown. He plucked at a strand and it broke apart. The jaw was intact, and when he examined the mouth, he received a shock. “Maybe not.”
“What have you got there?”
Nate showed Maklin the skull and touched a finger to the mouth. “You tell me.”
“I’ll be damned.”
The mouth was rimmed with two rows of teeth on both the top and bottom. All were the same size and shape, unlike a human mouth where the back teeth were different from the front. Each tooth was as big as Nate’s thumbnail, the enamel still strong after all the years the skull must have lain there.
“It has to be a freak of some kind,” Maklin guessed.
Nate roved about and found a smaller skull. A child’s, if the size was an indication. It, too, had two rows of teeth, top and bottom. He showed it to the Texan.
“These people were monsters.”
Tufts of red hair poked from the child’s skull, too. Nate touched one and said, “Some Indian tribes have tales of a time long ago when redheaded cannibals lived in the mountains. They say they fought with the cannibals and eventually wiped them out.”
Maklin picked up the large skull. “These were those cannibals, you reckon?” He held it in one hand. “I heard a lot of strange tales myself from the Lipans and others.” He drew one of his knives.
“What are you doing?”
“No one will believe me if I don’t have something to show them.” So saying, Maklin pried a tooth loose and slid it into a pocket. “The Lipans wouldn’t like that. They’re afraid to disturb the dead. They think the spirits of the dead can come back from the land of the dead to haunt us.” The Texan chuckled. “I loved Na-lin dearly, but her superstitions were plumb ridiculous.”
They emerged into the light of day. Nate craned his neck to scan the caves higher up. Nowhere was there sign of life, nowhere a clue to the pale things he had seen the night before.
“Are you fixing to climb all the way to the top?”
Nate was thinking about it. He would like to know if there were more skulls with two rows of teeth. He started up but stopped at an exclamation from Maklin.
“Will you look at that!”
The Texan was staring at the mountain rim to the south. There, clearly outlined against the blue of sky, stood a lone figure. Nate didn’t have his spyglass, but it had to be one man and one man only. “Kuruk.”
“The bastard is letting you know he’s still out there.”
Nate turned and made for the bottom. A gauntlet had been thrown in his face, and he accepted.
“Hold on, hoss. What’s the rush?”
“I aim to end it,” Nate vowed. “One way or the other.”
“Think a moment. That’s exactly what he wants you to do. Go hurrying off to find him and ride right into a trap.”
“Could be,” Nate allowed.
“You’re going anyway?”
“If I don’t I’ll be looking over my shoulder the rest of my days.” Nate refused to let that happen.
“I savvy. You’re worried he might follow you to that valley where you live and do harm to your missus and your kids and friends.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, then. We’ll go to where they camped last night and track them down. It will be the
m or us.”
“Not us. Me.”
“I have my orders, remember.”
Nate went in search of Jeremiah Blunt. The captain was busy overseeing the transfer of crates and goods from the wagons to the cabins. Tools, salt, flour, blankets, the Shakers had enough of everything to last years. Nate tapped Blunt on the shoulder. “We need to talk.”
“I’m listening,” Blunt said, and in the next breath bellowed, “Williams! Careful with that. It has china plates and dishes. Drop it and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“The Texan,” Nate said.
“What about him?” Blunt asked, and turned to a man carrying a pack. “That one goes in the women’s quarters. You’re not to go in yourself. Just hand it to them at the door.”
“Call off your shadow. I have something to do and I’m doing it alone.”
“Can’t,” Blunt said.
“Why in hell not?”
“Now, now. Don’t lose your temper. I can’t and I won’t because I like your daughter.”
“What does Evelyn have to do with this?”
Blunt faced him. “The night before she left with McNair, she asked me to watch out for you.”
“She did what?”
Blunt grinned. “She’s your daughter. She loves you. All that talk about the Valley of Skulls worried her so much, she took me aside and asked if I would do what I could to make sure you get back to your family safe and sound.”
Nate sighed. It sounded like something Evelyn would do. Behind his back, no less. In that, she was much like her mother. Winona, too, had a mind of her own and was not shy about having her say and doing as she pleased.
“A promise is a promise,” Jeremiah Blunt said. “Where you go, Maklin goes. What you do, he does. That’s how it will be until we part company.”
“Why him out of all your men? Just because he’s killed?”
“I figured you had a lot in common. You’ve lived with Indians. He’s lived with Indians. You like the wilds. He likes the wilds. And when I asked for a volunteer he raised his hand.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
Nate cradled his Hawken. “I’m putting my foot down. He’s not to come with me. I mean it.”
“You can’t stop him short of shooting him, and you won’t do that. It’s not in you.” Blunt clapped Nate on the arm. “Cheer up. You’re a good man, Nate King. A decent man. You put your family before all else. You treat others with respect so long as they respect you. You don’t drink much and you hardly ever swear. Truth is, you’re different from about every other mountain man I’ve met.”
“There must be a lot of men like me.”
Blunt sobered and shook his head. “I wish there were. A lot of men find goodness boring. They’d rather drink whenever they want and bed any woman they want and they don’t give much of a damn about anyone but themselves.”
Nate had more to say, but just then hooves clomped and up rode Maklin leading the bay by the reins.
“I’m ready to shed blood when you are, pard.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Pawnee camp was deserted, the charred embers of their fire long gone cold.
Nate expected as much. Still, he took precautions. He drew rein a quarter of a mile below and climbed the rest of the way on foot, Maklin at his side every step.
“Where do you reckon they got to?”
Nate cast about for sign. Their horses had left plenty. The tracks pointed to the southwest.
“That’s damn peculiar. I thought Pawnee country is to the east.”
“It is.”
“Then why the blazes are they heading southwest?” the Texan wondered.
Nate wondered, too. Given Kuruk’s wily nature, there was no predicting what he was up to.
They retraced their steps to their mounts and began the hunt in earnest. And what a difference the sun made. Nate could hold to a rapid gait with little threat from logs and boulders and low limbs.
The Pawnees had ridden hard, which mystified him. They weren’t running away. Kuruk wouldn’t give up so long as breath remained in his body, and the other warriors would want revenge for their fallen friends. It was almost as if they were in a hurry to get somewhere.
Nate had assumed they didn’t know the country, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe they had been there before.
Another possibility occurred to him. Maybe after last night Kuruk expected Nate and a lot of other whites to come after them. Maybe the Pawnees were riding hard to find a spot to spring an ambush.
The tracks entered a dense forest of mainly spruce. A thick carpet of fallen needles muffled their hoof falls. No other sounds pierced the quiet. Not the warble of a bird or the chatter of a squirrel.
A disturbing sign. Nate held the Hawken across his saddle. Here was as good a place as any for the Pawnees to strike. Maklin evidently felt the same; he rode with a hand on one of his silver-inlaid pistols.
Nothing happened. They emerged from the shadowed woodland into a sunny meadow. Several blacktailed does fled. Two cow elk stared and then imitated the does.
The tracks led across the meadow into tall firs. Here, the shadows were deeper. Once again the wild creatures were unusually quiet.
The short hairs at the nape of Nate’s neck prickled. He would almost swear unseen eyes were watching. They went another mile and came on a clear ribbon of water. The tracks showed that the Pawnees had stopped to let their horses drink. Nate did the same. He scoured the brush, ready to seek cover at the first hint of danger. But all he saw moving was a butterfly.
“I don’t like this, hoss,” Maklin commented.
“Makes two of us.”
“I have the feeling we’re being led around by the nose like a bull on a rope.”
“Makes two of us,” Nate said again.
The Pawnees had stuck to the stream bank even though the waterway twisted and turned like a crazed snake. It made for slow going, another puzzlement given that until now the Pawnees had been riding like Mohawk-topped bats out of Hades.
Nate began to have second thoughts. There was just him and the Texan against seven warriors. Many a man had fallen prey to his own overconfidence, and he could be another.
The firs were so close together that at times there was barely space for the bay to pass between them. It gave Nate a feeling of being hemmed in. He never knew but when a Pawnee might pop out from behind one of the trees and let fly with a barbed shaft.
Another mile, and still nothing happened.
Maklin cleared his throat to ask a question. “Do you reckon this Kuruk wants to take you alive?”
“He’s said as much,” Nate said. “The better to torture me. Why?”
“Less chance of you taking an arrow between the shoulder blades.”
The tracks climbed. In due course they were out of the firs and at the edge of a broad tableland dotted with stands of pine and deciduous trees interspersed with grassland. A park, the old-timers would call it. As picturesque as a painting.
“This makes no damn sense,” Maklin grumbled.
Nate relaxed a bit. There was nowhere for the Pawnees to hide except the stands, and the track didn’t go anywhere near them. In one a robin was singing. He spied movement in the high grass, but it was only a gray fox running for cover.
A mile more brought them to an unusual sight that high up in the mountains: a buffalo wallow. At one time buffalo had been common in the mountains. Shaggier cousins of their prairie brethren, they hid in deep thickets during the day, coming out at dawn and dust to graze. The wallow was old and had not seen use in a long time.
Nate skirted it as the Pawnees had done. He went perhaps fifty yards and came on another. Soon he passed a third and then a fourth. Once a sizeable herd had called the tableland home.
Maklin had been content to stay behind Nate, but now he brought his horse alongside the bay. “How much farther before we turn back?”
“I never said we were.”
The Texan frowned. “I wish
you had told me.”
“It makes a difference?”
“I didn’t count on staying out all night. Blunt is leaving tomorrow, and if I’m not there he might head out without me.”
“You can turn back if you want and no hard feelings,” Nate assured him. He didn’t add that he hadn’t wanted the help anyway.
“I don’t run out on a pard. I can always catch up to the freight wagons. Those oxen are molasses with hide on.”
A glint of light in the distance caused Nate to draw rein. He took out the spyglass. At the tableland’s western boundary rose a serrated ridge heavy with growth. Beyond, slopes rose like stepping-stones to the Divide. Fully half a dozen peaks glistened white with snow.
“Anything?” Maklin asked.
“It’s peaceful,” Nate responded.
“Too much so. I feel like a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”
Nate shortened the telescope and put it back in his parfleche and rode on. He thought of Winona and how much he missed her. Another wallow appeared on the right, its bottom mired in shadow.
“Notice anything about the tracks?” Maklin asked, interrupting Nate’s reverie.
Nate glanced down. The prints were still in single file, their depth corresponding to the softness of the soil. “They’re not riding fast anymore.”
“Not that. They’re going from wallow to wallow as if they’re looking for something.”
The notion struck Nate as humorous. The only thing in wallows was dirt. The buffalo liked to urinate in it and then roll around to cake their hides and ward off flies and other pests.
Belatedly, the notion dawned on Nate that maybe the Pawnees weren’t looking for something in the wallows. Maybe they were looking for a wallow deep enough to hide in. Even as the thought crossed his mind, a shadow at the bottom exploded into motion and hurtled up over the edge at him.
Nate’s Hawken was pointing the other way. He had no time to turn it to shoot, but he did raise it to ward off a flash of steel. The warrior drew back the knife to stab again. There was a crack behind them and a hole appeared in the Pawnee’s temple while simultaneously the other side of his head burst in a shower of skin and bone and blood.
The Tears of God Page 10