“Nate and I are gonna ride on up the creek this evening to see if we can come up on some deer—see if there’re as many around here as Jake claims. I’m hoping we can kill a couple so we can smoke a good supply to take us down to that valley Nate’s so set on.” He paused then to take a look at Lucy, kneeling at the creek. “How’s she doing?”
Myra turned to look at her as well. “She’s doing just fine. She’s just having a hard time letting go of the awful things that happened to her. But she’s getting a little better. I can’t see how anybody else would handle it any differently.”
Bret smiled and asked, “How about you? Are you doing all right?”
“Me?” Myra responded, surprised. “Hell, I’m gonna always do all right. Ain’t you figured that out by now? If you’re worrying about having a couple of weepy women on your hands, you can stop now.” Her response caused them both to chuckle. “One thing, though,” she said, turning serious for a moment. “I need some ammunition for my pistol. The only cartridges I’ve got are the ones it’s loaded with, and if you and Coldiron are going riding off into the woods somewhere, I’d feel better with a gun and plenty of bullets.”
“Oh,” Bret said, surprised by the request. He had forgotten that she still had the revolver that Corporal Murdock had carried. “I’ve got plenty of forty-fours. I’ll leave you some.”
• • •
A little before the sun dropped behind the hills west of the river, Myra and Lucy served up plates of beans and deer jerky, with some more of Myra’s fresh-baked biscuits, causing Coldiron to comment, “If I keep fillin’ up on your biscuits, I ain’t gonna be able to climb on my horse. I believe I could get used to this.”
“I expect you’d better,” Myra told him, “’cause I aim to be doing a lot more of it, me and Lucy. Ain’t that right, Lucy?” Lucy nodded with a faint smile.
In a little while, Jake walked down from the store and helped them finish up the coffee. “I thought I’d give you a little tip on how to get your deer right quick,” he volunteered. “If you ride back up the creek about a mile, you’ll see a little meadow that runs down to the water. The deer like to cross there, comin’ outta the woods on the other side to get to that meadow. You’ll know it when you see it. There’s an old cottonwood tree layin’ on its side—got hit by lightnin’. I have sat on that tree and shot a deer comin’ across the creek.”
“Is that a fact?” Coldiron replied. “Well, we’ll go see if the deer will do that for us.”
Jake stayed and talked until Bret said it was time to go. Twilight was setting in and he figured that the deer would be coming out of the thick forests to feed. With a promise to bring Jake and Ruby some of the fresh meat, Coldiron and Bret rode off, following the creek upstream. When Jake said good night to the women and returned to the store, Lucy asked Myra, “How long do you think they’ll be gone?”
Myra saw right away that her young friend was nervous without the men around. She attempted to set her mind at ease.
“They won’t be gone long. Didn’t you hear what Jake said? He said that place was only about a mile away. Us ladies could use a little time without the men around, anyway.” Lucy appeared to find no comfort in Myra’s words, so she added, “Anyways, I’ve got my Colt pistol handy in case we need it, but I don’t think we will this close to the trading post.”
She couldn’t help wondering just how severely damaged Lucy was, and whether or not she was ever going to rid herself of the fears that held her mind captive.
• • •
It was already growing dark by the time Jake walked back by the corral and stopped for a few minutes to take a look at his horses and the cow. He didn’t have any reason for concern; it was just from habit. There was a time when he would have put his livestock inside the barn and padlocked the door, but that was long ago. His friendly terms with Black Bear over the last decade ensured his peaceful relations with the Blackfeet tribes that hunted and lived in the Missouri River Valley.
Satisfied that his livestock was all right, he stepped inside the door of the trading post and pulled up short, startled to find Lame Dog talking to his mother.
“John!” Jake blurted. “When did you get here? I didn’t see your horse in the corral. Hell, I didn’t figure you’d be back here for at least a month.”
“Why do you still call me John, old man? I am Lame Dog,” he growled. “I go and come when it pleases me. My horse is where I left it—in the trees.”
“Well, what the hell did you leave it there for?” Jake asked.
Lame Dog ignored the question. “Those two white men, they’re camping here tonight, right?” Jake said that was true. Lame Dog scowled when he asked, “They have two white women with them?”
“That’s right,” Jake said. “But they’re peaceful folk set on stayin’ over for a day or two to do some huntin’. Then they’ll be on their way. Ain’t nobody you’ve got any reason to be interested in.”
Lame Dog continued to question. “Did they camp in the same spot they did last time they were here?”
Jake was beginning to dislike the way the questioning was going. “What have you got workin’ in that ornery mind of yours? You come sneakin’ in here at night, leaving your horse in the woods—didn’t you learn your lesson last time when you tried to steal their horses? And don’t try to tell me that wasn’t you they ran off that night.”
Lame Dog rankled with the accusation. “If I had wanted their horses, I would have taken them. I had no interest in their horses.”
“Is that a fact?” Jake replied sarcastically, recognizing a lie when he heard one. “Well, let me give you a piece of advice. If you’ve got any crazy notions about those people, you’d best forget about it, ’cause you’d be goin’ up against more’n you can handle.” His advice was met with a sullen smile from his renegade son.
“You should just worry yourself about your store here,” Lame Dog said. “And don’t worry about what I’m doing.”
Faced with the usual exasperation in trying to communicate with his son, Jake gave up on the attempt. “How long you stayin’ this time?”
“I’m leaving right now,” Lame Dog replied smugly.
He picked up a sack of dried meat and coffee beans his mother had given him, and turned to give her a smile before going out the door. There was nothing more he needed at the moment. His mother had told him that the two white men planned to go hunting that evening, so he was anxious to tell Bloody Hand that the women would probably stay behind in their camp. And with Coldiron and the other man gone, it would be a simple matter to snatch the women.
• • •
Lucy wanted to release her fears, but the memory of the horror she had endured was still too fresh in her mind. The image of Bloody Hand’s horrible face came to her in her dreams, to the point where she sometimes feared that he was more an evil spirit and not a mortal man at all. His savage friend, Lame Dog, treated him as such. She shuddered when she thought of the pleasure the vile half-breed enjoyed in translating Bloody Hand’s threats.
Realizing that she was letting herself be pulled into one of her frequent panic spells again, she shook her head in an effort to rid her brain of these fearful thoughts. The night must come, where every shadow might be the one-eared monster coming for her. She could not live in eternal sunshine, so she resolved to overcome her fears. The men had gone to hunt. They would return, and all her worrying would have availed her nothing but a nervous stomach.
In spite of her resolve, she was reluctant to leave Myra and the fire to walk a little way into the willow trees to answer nature’s call. She had held on as long as she thought she could, hoping that the men would return, but they had not, even though it was well after dark. Myra speculated that they must have had no luck in finding game, and so had to ride farther. If they had had luck as close as Jake predicted, the women would have heard gunshots. Finally Lucy’s bladder won the standoff.<
br />
“I’ve got to pee,” she announced.
Myra looked up, noticing the slight tremor in Lucy’s voice. “You want me to go with you?”
“No, of course not,” Lucy replied. “I’m just going over in the willows there.”
She was ashamed to say that it would have made her more comfortable had Myra chosen to go with her. However, she had challenged her urge to go for so long that now the possibility of wetting her underwear became a bigger concern than who might be lurking in the willows.
Stepping as quickly as she could while straining to hold on until she could reach the cover of the trees, she barely made it in time to pull her underpants down and squat. She had held on for so long that she now wondered if she was ever going to finish. When at last she did, she relaxed for a moment to enjoy the relief. A moment later she was sprawled on the ground, having bolted sideways when she was startled by the touch of a hand on her shoulder.
Her worst fears seemed confirmed, as she stared up at the dark shadow standing above her. He had found her, and she was too paralyzed with terror to scream.
“You and the other woman must get away from here,” the voice told her.
Still terrified, Lucy could only lie there on the ground, confused by the strange voice. It was not the harsh guttural tone so familiar to her when Bloody Hand had cursed her.
“You are not safe here.” The warning was repeated. “You and the other one must get away from here as quick as you can.”
Cowering in fear, Lucy realized that it had to be Jake Smart’s wife.
“Bloody Hand comes for you,” Ruby said. “You not have much time. Go into the woods and hide.” When Lucy was slow in responding, she finally scolded, “Get up!” The harsh command was enough to shake Lucy out of her fearful paralysis.
Satisfied that the frightened girl was at last responding, Ruby said, “I must go now.” With that, she turned and disappeared into the dark shadows of the willows.
Intent upon slipping back into the house before she was seen, Ruby made her way quickly through the trees. Lame Dog had told her that Bloody Hand was waiting for him with their horses. She had not told Jake what the two warriors were planning, and she wanted to get back before he knew she had gone.
Myra’s opinion of Ruby Red Bonnet was nearly accurate. The Blackfoot woman had no use for whites in general, and she encouraged her son’s adoption of the Blackfoot ways. But there was a modicum of conscience in the otherwise savage woman, and this obsession Bloody Hand had for this white woman was not a good thing. The conflict between white man and red man should be a war between warriors and soldiers, and not involve women. Consequently, she felt no sense of betrayal to her son and the Piegan brute he rode with. She had warned the woman. It was now up to Lucy to save herself.
Behind her, the frightened young woman, having scrambled to her feet, stumbled through the willow branches, oblivious of the thrashing her arms and legs suffered.
“Myra!” she screamed in a half whisper as she ran to the fire. “We’ve got to run!” she implored as Myra watched her approach, baffled by her bizarre behavior. While pulling a reluctant Myra away from the fire, Lucy told her what had just happened.
When Myra realized that Lucy wasn’t having fearful hallucinations, she quickly responded. Snatching up her revolver, she put a handful of extra cartridges in her pocket and took command.
“Come on,” Myra said, “across the creek, over by those big trees!”
The two women crossed over the shallow creek as quickly and as quietly as they could manage in their panic to find safety.
With Myra leading, they followed the creek upstream, moving as fast as they possibly could on the dark bank. It was imperative that they should warn Bret and Coldiron before they rode into an ambush. She only hoped the men would return on the same trail on which they had departed, and that she and Lucy would intercept them before they got too close to the camp.
• • •
On foot, leading his horse, Bret stopped dead still when he caught a slight movement in the bushes on the left side of the creek bank ahead. Thinking it likely caused by a deer, he signaled Coldiron behind him. Both men dropped their horses’s reins and pulled their rifles out of their saddle slings and cocked them. Walking silently, they watched the bank, following the movement in the foliage as it tracked along a line that would bring it to a gap about five yards wide. It appeared that the gap was the only chance they had for an open shot, so they both knelt, aimed, and waited. The bushes parted.
“What the hell . . . . ?” Bret exclaimed, and reacted quickly enough to shove Coldiron’s rifle barrel sideways, causing his big friend to send a .44 slug ripping through the treetops. The rifle shot forced a scream of fright from both women.
“Myra!” Bret exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing, trying to get yourself killed?”
“Jesus’ whiskers!” Coldiron gasped. “I damn near shot you!” He was visibly shaken by the close call, and extremely grateful for Bret’s younger and sharper eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Bret repeated as Myra and Lucy scurried out of the berry bushes and ran to meet them.
“Bloody Hand,” Myra exclaimed. “The son of a bitch followed us here!”
“You saw them?” Bret demanded, assuming it was a war party from the Piegan camp. “How many?”
“I don’t know,” Myra said. “We didn’t see them. Ruby told Lucy to run, that Bloody Hand was coming to get her.”
“Ruby?” Coldiron asked, finding it hard to believe the hostile Blackfoot woman would bother to warn them.
“Yes,” Lucy exclaimed. “It was her. She sneaked up on me when I was in the bushes and told me I had to run and hide, because Bloody Hand had come to take me back.”
“We didn’t see any Indians,” Myra repeated. “But I didn’t see any sense in taking any chances that the woman was just up to some mischief—out to frighten two white women.”
“You did the right thing,” Bret said. “She doesn’t strike me as the kind to do much joking, so I expect we’d best take her word for it and get ready to have some visitors. We’ve got to figure they heard that shot, so they’ll be coming this way pretty quick.” He turned to Coldiron. “What do you think, Nate? Better to pick us a spot to sit and wait awhile, instead of taking a chance on bumping into a war party in the dark. Whaddaya think?”
“I think you’re right,” Coldiron agreed. “It’s best we sit tight till we find out what we’ve got to deal with.” He had to pause to comment then. “I swear, though, I wouldn’ta believed they’d come after us, after we got to Fort Benton.”
“It’s Bloody Hand,” Lucy cried. “He said I’d never get away from him, and now he’s here, just like he said. I think he’s the devil and he’s determined to take me back to his hell.”
“Well, it’s gonna cost him more than he might wanna pay,” Bret assured her. “Let’s quit wasting time and find a place to make a stand.”
Myra put her arm around the near-hysterical girl and tried to calm her. “There’s three of us that son of a bitch has to go through to get to you.”
• • •
Bloody Hand looked up when he heard the rifle shot echoing through the darkness. He dropped the strip of smoked venison he had found on a metal plate beside the fire. Lame Dog came from the creek, where he had been looking at the horses left to graze there.
“That was not far away,” he said. They both paused, waiting to see if there were other shots fired. When there were none, Lame Dog said, “Maybe they shot a deer.”
“Why would they take the women with them?” Bloody Hand wondered aloud. He could not understand why it happened that the women were not in the camp. When he and Lame Dog were scouting the campsite, it appeared that the party had left in a hurry, because of the plates by the fire and a coffeepot still sitting in the coals.
In a fit of anger, he kicked the cof
feepot, sending it bouncing over the ground, splashing coffee. What he had expected to be a simple capture of the two women had resulted in adding to his wrath and frustration. Simple logic told him that the two white men had not taken the women hunting with them.
“Somehow they found out that we were coming, and they have run into the woods to hide.” He cast an accusing gaze at Lame Dog. “The white trader, Smart, must have warned them.”
His nostrils flared in anger at the thought.
“No,” Lame Dog responded immediately. “I didn’t tell Jake Smart that you were here to take your woman back.” He was still reluctant to refer to his father in any context other than the third person. “He doesn’t know you’re with me.”
“Your mother, then,” Bloody Hand said.
Again Lame Dog was quick to refute. “No, my mother is pure Blackfoot. She has no use for any white man except Jack Smart, and she doesn’t tell him anything about me, or what I’m doing. He is only good for providing a house and food for my mother, and with his trade goods, he is useful to the Blackfeet. If that were not so, he would be dead already, by her knife or mine.”
Bloody Hand was still not convinced. “If they ran to hide because they saw us approaching this camp, then they cannot be far away. They didn’t have time to take their horses, so they must be hiding somewhere near the creek banks like frightened fawns.” Convinced that was the case, he said, “Come, we’ll search both sides of the creek and flush them from their hiding places.”
“What about Coldiron and the other man?” Lame Dog asked. “They might show up here, if they killed a deer.”
“Then we will kill them,” Bloody Hand stated frankly. “I came to kill them. It will save me the trouble of having to find them.”
He pulled a limb from the fire and, using it for a torch, crossed over the creek, searching for likely hiding places. Lame Dog set out combing the darkened bank on the near side.
While he searched, under every bush and vine, he thought about Bloody Hand’s suspicions earlier, and he wondered if his mother had told his father. How else would he know to warn the women? If that was what really happened, then Jake Smart had betrayed him in favor of the white men. That made Jake Smart his enemy, and he wished death to his enemies. He decided then to kill Jake and rid his conscience of his shameful ties to the white man. His mother would no longer need the miserable little man for her food and lodge. He, Lame Dog, would take her back to the Piegan village with him and she would be free to live as she was born to live, with her people.
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