“But they can’t track at night. Maybe we’ve given them the slip.”
“No,” Shakespeare said, pointing. “There.”
They had the aspect of centaurs prancing under the dim starlight. A full dozen riders roved over the campsite, scouring for sign.
“Hostiles, you reckon?” Nate whispered even though they were well beyond earshot.
“Blood country is closest,” Shakespeare answered, referring to one of the three tribes that constituted the dreaded Blackfoot Confederacy. Along with the Blackfeet and the Piegans, the Bloods waged relentless war against all invaders, white or otherwise.
“They don’t like to fight at night,” Nate remembered.
“Not ordinarily. But they will if they’re hungry for coup.”
The centaurs had fanned out, bearing eastward.
“Damn!” Nate fumed. “They’ve found our trail.”
“They’re guessing,” Shakespeare disagreed. “They’ve figured out that we’re trappers and they know most trappers head east to one of the forts when hard pressed by Indians.”
“Then I say we go north.”
The carpet of pine needles underfoot enabled them to travel quietly for the next hour. They shied from meadows and valleys, staying in the shelter of woodland where they could safely ride undetected. On a rocky slope they reined up to scour the land they had crossed, and Nate saw the dully glittering lances first. “I’ll be dogged! How the devil are they doing that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Onward into the night the two trappers galloped, taking risks now that their lives were at stake. Shakespeare had an uncanny knack for sniffing out the path of least resistance. Toward midnight they finally halted for the sake of their animals on an upland bench that afforded a sweeping view of the countryside.
“We’ve shaken them now. I can feel it in my bones,” Nate said, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his buckskin shirt. He took off his beaver hat to let the crisp air cool his head.
Shakespeare had risen in the stirrups. “That’s rheumatism, you dunderhead.”
“Calling yourself a doctor now, are you?”
“Take a look and you tell me, Horatio.”
Vague shadows moved at the limits of the night, a compact group sticking to their trail like sap to a tree.
“They can’t be doing that,” Nate snapped. “It just can’t be done, not at night.”
“Someone forgot to tell them.”
Their tired mounts balked and had to be goaded into resuming the flight. Nate resisted a wave of fatigue that threatened to dull his mind and senses. He’d been on the go since before first light and had worked hard all day raising beaver. So had McNair, yet the older man was as spry as a bantam rooster. One thing Nate never tired of doing was marveling at his mentor’s constitution. He hoped he’d be half as lively when he was the same age, provided he lived that long.
From the bench they wound down into a canyon and through it to a steep incline that brought them to the top of a sparsely treed tableland. It wasn’t until they came to the opposite rim that they realized their mistake; the tableland ended at a sheer bluff hundreds of feet high. They had boxed themselves in!
Wheeling, the trappers went to retrace their steps to the slope but they were too late. Advancing toward them in a skirmish line were their pursuers.
Two
Nate King and Shakespeare McNair were not about to let themselves be taken alive. They knew all too well the horrid tortures countless of their kind had endured at the hands of pitiless captors. Resolved to fight on for as long as breath remained, they started to swing around behind their pack animals to allow the beasts of burden to serve as a buffer between their attackers and them. Suddenly one of the oncoming figures hailed them in English, and to say the trappers were surprised would be an understatement.
“Hold on there, you two! We’re Americans and we mean you no harm! We’d just like to talk.”
Nate and Shakespeare exchanged puzzled looks as they drew rein. It was McNair who replied, bellowing, “Stop right where you are! Come no further until we’ve jawed with the captain of your outfit.”
“That would be me,” the speaker said, his voice deep, and resonant. “I’ll be unarmed, so for God’s sake don’t shoot.”
The tall figure handed weapons to a companion. Nate watched the man knee his mount forward while holding his arms aloft to show he was defenseless. Nate had to admire the stranger’s grit even though he suspected it was a trick of some kind. The only Americans in the mountains at that time of year were trappers, and this bunch lacked both traps and pack horses.
The stranger wore an expensive riding outfit and heavy coat, a flowing red scarf, and polished black boots. “My apologies for accosting you in this manner,” he declared as he neared them. “But I’m hoping you’ve seen two men—” He broke off, gawking at them. “Can it be? After all this time?”
“What the dickens are you raving about?” Shakespeare prompted.
“Your white hair and beard. And the young Atlas with you,” the man exclaimed. “Do I at long last have the distinct honor of addressing Thaddeus August McNair and Nathaniel King?”
Nate was so shocked by the disclosure that he swung toward his friend. “Thaddeus August?”
Shakespeare studiously ignored him. “You do,” he told the stranger. “Who might you be?”
“Cyrus Porter, at your service,” responded the other with a flourish. “And I have been searching for the two of you for months.”
“With a small army?” Shakespeare asked, nodding at the eleven riders waiting patiently for their leader.
“Hirelings, all save one,” Porter said, then leaned forward. “Oh! There is so much we must discuss. I don’t really know where to begin.”
The mountain man hefted his Hawken. “Mister, for the past six hours you’ve been dogging our trail like a hound dog after coons, and in the process you’ve about run our horses into the ground. Before I’ll offer you a glad hand, I want to know why. Just the meat will do. I don’t need Chapter and verse.”
Cyrus Porter stiffened, then sniffed as if afflicted with a cold. “Fair enough, Mr. McNair. I have traveled to this godforsaken country all the way from Connecticut to find my daughter, who went missing out here about a year ago. I’ve been asking around, and everyone tells me that you’re the man best able to track her down, as they say in frontier parlance.” He leaned forward, hands propped on his saddle horn. “I trust you’ll be civil enough to hear me out. If not for my sake or that of my darling Hetty, then for the one thousand dollars which will be yours once you’ve accepted my proposal.”
“A thousand dollars is more than most folks make in a whole year,” Shakespeare remarked.
“To me, it’s a paltry sum, a mere pittance,” Porter said matter-of-factly. “I probably make that much interest on my money every day.”
Nate’s curiosity had been piqued and he had to ask, “What exactly do you do for a living, Mr. Porter?”
“I count the interest on the money bequeathed to me by my parents,” Porter said sarcastically. “Yes, gentlemen, I’m as rich as Midas and I make no bones about it.”
“It’s not a fact I’d advertise hereabouts, were I you,” Nate cautioned.
“Why not, pray tell?” the New Englander inquired with perfect innocence.
“Some of the men living out here would slit a man’s throat for a hundred dollars. Imagine what they’d do for wealth beyond measure.”
“I’m not worried. I’m amply protected.” Porter gestured at McNair. “What is your decision? Will you hear me out or not?”
“I will,” Shakespeare announced. “You and your men can lead the way. The first suitable spot, we’ll pitch camp and put a coffeepot on the fire.”
“Wonderful. Simply wonderful.” Porter nodded happily, then rejoined the members of his party. In a group they rode eastward.
“What do you make of all this?” Nate wondered as he guided his pack animals in
their wake.
“I don’t rightly know yet,” Shakespeare replied. “He seems sincere but I’ll reserve judgment until we’ve heard him out.”
Below the tableland, in a clearing in a tract of fir trees, the rich man’s party tethered their stock and built a roaring blaze. By the time Shakespeare and Nate finished with their own string, a coffeepot was boiling. Both noticed that Cyrus Porter was waited on hand and foot by an elderly man wearing a formal suit, of all things. Beside Porter sat a man of twenty-five or so who wore an expression of perpetual melancholy.
“This is Adam Clark,” Porter introduced them. “His father and I are the best of friends, and Adam was very close to Hetty before she went off on her lark.”
Clark shook hands with all the vigor of a limp rag. Nate masked his reaction as he took a seat on a log that had been strategically placed close to the fire for their benefit. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said to be polite. Clark simply nodded.
“Not half as glad as I am to meet the two of you,” Porter avowed. “You’re hard men to locate.” He stretched his legs and sighed. “I swear, I’ve spent more time in the saddle in the past sixty days than in all the years before combined.”
“You get used to it after a while,” Nate said.
“Not at my age.” Porter faced McNair. “Before I take up more of my valuable time and yours, of course, I must know a crucial fact.” He paused as if half afraid to go on. “Have you ever been to the Oregon Country?”
Everyone stopped whatever he was doing to stare at Shakespeare. Adam Clark perked up, waiting expectantly.
“I have,” the mountain man admitted, puzzled by all the fuss.
“Thank God!” Porter cried, leaping erect in his excitement and clapping Clark on the shoulders. “We’ve found our man!”
“I’m not the only one who has been there,” Shakespeare commented. “There’s—”
“I know. I know,” Porter rudely cut him off. “Smith and Young and Fitzpatrick, to name just a few. But Smith is dead, Young is too busy to help, and Fitzpatrick is the last man on this planet I would hire.”
“Tom is a good man. I know him well.”
“That may be,” Porter said, “but since he’s partly to blame for my daughter’s plight, I wouldn’t demean myself by looking him up.”
“The idiot!” Clark chimed in.
Again Shakespeare was perplexed. He’d trapped with Fitzpatrick back when the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was a going concern, and they’d shared many a tall tale around campfires just like this one. Fitzpatrick was intelligent, soft-spoken, and moderate in all his habits. Not an idiot, by a far sight, and Shakespeare declared as much.
“Please don’t be offended,” Porter soothed. “Adam is letting his feelings show, is all. You’ll understand better once you hear the whole story.”
“My ears are primed,” Shakespeare said.
Nate was being largely ignored, which didn’t bother him in the least. It gave him an opportunity to study the rest of the New Englander’s party, and he didn’t particularly like what he saw.
Of the ten men, eight wore the cocky insolence of St. Louis river rats on their grimy sleeves. Clad in city clothes and boots, they were as out of place in the mountains as the two from the East. Most favored short beards; all carried a brace of pistols and a pair of knives.
The ninth man was a rarity, a Mexican in flared trousers, boots with spurs, and a broad-brimmed sombrero. Around his slender waist was a red sash into which he had slid two fancy pistols, both with inlaid silver butts.
The last man was difficult to pin down. He wore buckskins, but they were new and ill fitting. He mingled freely with the river rats, but his bearing and conduct were more on the order of an aristocrat than riffraff. In added contrast, his hair was sandy blond, his eyes strikingly blue; the others all had dark hair and eyes.
Cyrus Porter had begun pacing in front of them, hands clasped behind his stout back. “To fully appreciate why I’ve sought you out, Mr. McNair, I must tell you about my daughter, my pride and joy.”
“Your only child?” Shakespeare guessed.
“Yes. Born twenty-two years ago in Hartford, where she lived all her life until intoxicated by the spirit of adventure and the charms of a serpent.”
“Pardon?” Shakespeare said, thinking he had missed something.
“A rogue by the name of Oliver Davin. Swept my sweet girl off her feet with his rakish ways, then convinced her to journey to the frontier to seek out a new life together. They joined a group of twenty settlers heading for the Oregon Country and hired Tom Fitzpatrick to guide them.”
“Ah,” Shakespeare grunted, making the connection.
“I protested against the foolish enterprise, to no avail,” Porter lamented. “To all my entreaties, dear Hetty would bat her eyes and say how it was her wifely duty to stand by her husband.” Emotion choked him a moment. “I raised her well, Mr. McNair. Perhaps too well.”
No one interrupted and the New Englander went on.
“Perhaps if my beloved Martha were still alive, we might have prevailed. Hestia always listened to her. But my wife was lost to the coughing sickness about five years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Shakespeare said to be polite.
Porter bowed his head a moment. “But I digress. The main point is that Hetty and Oliver departed Independence in the company of those other misguided souls and headed westward in wagons.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Wagons! In this awful country!”
Nate opted to mention, “They say it can be done.”
“And they say men will travel everywhere in trains one day, but only an utter jackass would take it as gospel.” Porter stamped his foot in anger. “I tried and tried to dissuade her. I talked until I was blue in the face. Yet off she went with that worthless vagabond. Only later did I learn they didn’t make it all the way to the Oregon Country.”
“They didn’t?” Shakespeare asked. This was the first he’d heard of Fitzpatrick’s expedition. Based on prior experience, he doubted the man had up and abandoned them in the middle of nowhere.
“No, sir. Apparently they camped in the Bear River region and decided they’d gone far enough. That was where they’d settle down and plot their homesteads.” Porter glanced at the mountain man. “Are you familiar with the region?”
“Been there a few times.”
“Excellent.” Porter held his palms out to the crackling flames. “That’s where we’ll have to start.”
“Start?”
“Other parties have been through the area since. There was no sign of the settlers. Not a trace.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course!” Porter exploded. “Did you think I would give up on my Hetty? I hired a man in Independence whose sole job was to contact anyone and everyone leaving for the Oregon Country and to request that they check on her welfare, if possible, and send him a note with returning guides or travelers.”
“Where could they have gotten to?” Nate mused aloud.
“That’s the most crucial question in my life,” Cyrus Porter stated, “and the reason I’ve spent so much time and money outfitting an expedition to go find her. Which is where you come in,” he addressed McNair.
Shakespeare stalled by giving a loose moccasin more attention than it deserved. The idea appealed to him, if only because he could push on beyond Bear River clear to the Pacific and fulfill his heart’s desire, but he foresaw problems, serious problems, so he hedged by saying, “You want me to guide you to the Bear River Country, I take it.”
“You take it correctly.”
“Forgive me for saying this, but you do realize there’s no guarantee we’ll find your daughter?”
“I must try.”
“The journey could prove more costly than you expect.”
“I must try,” Porter stressed.
Nate had listened intently to the exchange. His mentor’s tone told him that McNair was inclined to accept, and suddenly he had a powerful hankering to go along. I
t might be the only chance he ever had to visit the Oregon Country, and he meant to take advantage.
Shakespeare was fiddling with a moccasin. “You mentioned organizing an expedition?”
“The men you see here, plus four others with our pack animals.”
“Where are they?”
“Camped at your cabin.”
McNair shot off the log as if it was scorching hot. “You’ve been to my place?”
Porter nodded, appearing disturbed by the frontiersman’s gruff bearing. “How else did you think I knew where to find you? A trapper gave us directions to your cabin, and after I explained my dilemma to your wife, she graciously gave us a map showing where you were going to trap this season.” He cocked his head. “Is something wrong? She assured me it would be all right.”
“She would,” Shakespeare said absently. “Blue Water Woman doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”
Nate saw his friend glance at the river rats and could imagine his thoughts: Four of their notorious ilk were alone with his wife. In confirmation, Shakespeare shifted toward him.
“Will you bring my pack animals?”
“Did you even have to ask?”
Moving rapidly, McNair grabbed his Hawken, jogged to his white horse, and began saddling up.
Adam Clark roused himself to speak. “I don’t understand, Mr. King. Where is he off to in such a hurry?”
“Home,” Nate said, conscious of the glares bestowed on the mountain man by several of the St. Louis crowd.
“But he should wait and travel with us,” Porter said.
“He wants to ride fast and light,” Nate elaborated. “Well get there in a week and a half. It’ll only take him three days.”
“No man can cover that much ground in so short a span,” Porter declared.
“You’d be surprised,” Nate said. “Knowing the lay of the land makes all the difference in the world.” Draping his own rifle across his legs, he frowned while watching McNair vault astride the horse, whip the reins, and speed off into the night without so much as a parting wave. Nate didn’t blame him. Were the situation reversed, he’d be doing the same—after punching Porter square in the face for stupidly endangering his wife.
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