Wilderness Giant Edition 3

by David Robbins

  Nate allowed as how he might be able to swallow a few bites.

  “How you get by on so little food is a mystery to me,” the medicine man signed. “Your appetites are not those of a human being, Sky Walker.” He snickered slyly. “But why should they be?”

  “Did I wear the guards out?” Nate asked.

  A blank look came over White Calf. “What guards?”

  “Do you take me for a simpleton?” Nate retorted. “All day I was followed by warriors, everywhere I went. And I resent it.”

  “I am sorry, but they protected you for your own good,” White Calf signed. “You have seen for yourself that there are those who want to kill you. I do not intend to let that happen.” He adjusted his cap. “Are you ready to go?”

  “As ready as I will ever be.”

  The pounding of drums issued from a lodge they passed. Outside another a man and woman argued, a rare public display having to do with the woman’s tardiness in fetching water. In front of yet another an older warrior carved up a freshly killed buck. “Sky Walker!” he signed on spying Nate. “I will give extra thanks to Tirawa tonight for your saving my granddaughter.”

  “That was a masterly stroke,” White Calf signed when they had left the warrior behind. “More of my people have come around to our side. And when I am done, they will all look up to us with the respect we deserve.”

  Nate was about to explain that the encounter with the bear had been an accident when he noticed Red Rock and other men entering a lodge.

  “The Bear Society,” White Calf signed, his contempt transparent. “They are the ones you must watch out for. Should they be able to convince the people you are less than I say, your days will be numbered.”

  “Red Rock would like nothing better than to gut me,” Nate agreed with the medicine man for once.

  “It would be much worse, believe me.”

  “What can possibly be worse than dying?”

  “How you die.” White Calf stopped. “If Mole On The Nose and the Bear Society prevail, your skull will join the rest.”

  “What?”

  “Why must you always pretend you do not know things? You are as aware as I am that our sacrifices do not always involve maidens.” White Calf brushed at a bit of dust on one sleeve. “Sometimes we sacrifice men.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Damnation! It’s Blackfeet!” Bob Knorr bellowed in alarm as seven dusky riders sped toward the north shore of the Yellowstone. “Paddle like hell, Lane, or we’re gone beaver!”

  Shakespeare McNair could do nothing except lie there and watch the young trappers bend their shoulders, stroking powerfully, sending the canoes flying toward the south bank. His Hawken had been reloaded for him but he was too weak to pick it up and too woozy from his fever to hit anything beyond ten feet even if he could.

  The Blackfeet bore down on the Yellowstone at a gallop. Oddly for them, they rode silently, airing none of the customary war whoops warriors incited themselves with.

  Once the canoes passed the center of the river, Shakespeare slumped onto the blankets.

  They were safe so long as they stayed out of rifle and bow range. And he couldn’t see the Blackfeet plunging into the Yellowstone after them, not when the braves would be sitting ducks.

  “This should be far enough,” Lane cried to his companion as he steered the canoe up river. Resting the paddle on his thighs, he allowed the speed they had built up to drift them along as he picked up his rifle.

  The Blackfeet reached the water’s edge and trotted parallel to the Yellowstone. Two held rifles, the rest bows, arrows nocked to their sinew strings. They made no overt hostile gestures, another oddity.

  “Why ain’t they trying to pick us off?” Bob Knorr mused. “It’s spooky the way they’re just staring at us like that.”

  “They may be heathens but they’re not dunderheads,” Griffen said. “They know they can’t get at us so they’re putting the evil eye on us.”

  “Who are you trying to fool? Injuns can’t hex worth a hoot.”

  A lean Blackfoot suddenly pumped his rifle in the air and yelled the same two words again and again.

  “What’s he doing that for?” Knorr asked. “Does his armpit itch, you reckon?”

  “He wants something, but it beats me what,” Griffen said.

  Shakespeare leaned over, the better to hear. Wind whistled inside his head and thunder rumbled in his stomach. His mouth tasted bitter. He was sicker than he’d been in a coon’s age and as helpless as a baby. Still, he could translate. “He wants you to go over to their side.”

  “Not in this life,” Griffen said. “He must think we have rocks between our ears.”

  “Or else he figures we’re greenhorns and we’ll mistake them for friendlies,” Knorr suggested.

  The Blackfoot uttered a string of sentences, waving inland the whole time.

  “Now what?” Griffen said.

  “Maybe he’s extending an invite for you to go meet his sister,” Knorr said.

  “No,” Shakespeare interjected. “He wants us to go visit his village. He says it’s important.”

  Lane and Bob both laughed, which had the effect of confusing the Blackfeet. “Sure!” Griffen declared. “Once we’re there, the whole blamed tribe jumps us and has us hairless and skinless in three shakes of a dog’s tail. No thank you.”

  Shakespeare saw the Blackfeet jabbering like chipmunks. He was as mystified as the younger men. Knowing how devious the Blackfeet could be, he chalked their bizarre antics up to a trick on their part, just as Lane believed.

  Once again the lean Blackfoot shouted across the water, the same word a dozen times or more.

  It was hard for Shakespeare to hear. The whistling in his head was now more in the nature of a howl. To compound matters, his vision swam periodically, rendering the shorelines as murky as the water under the canoe. “What’s he saying now?” he asked.

  “Wish I knew,” Griffen said. “Doesn’t sound like no red lingo I ever heard.” He paused.

  “Acker-eee-ing, I think it is.”

  “Something like that,” Knorr concurred. “Makes no sense.”

  Shakespeare slumped, the last vestige of strength deserting him. It made no sense to him, either. Or did it? A vague feeling that he should know the phrase nipped at his consciousness, a persistent pricking that faded as his sentience did.

  Abruptly, night replaced day. Shakespeare sluggishly opened his eyes to behold stars where the azure sky had been. In front of him came a series of light splashes, the dipping of a paddle into the Yellowstone. “Lane?” he said, his mouth crammed with cotton.

  “Right here, McNair. It’s close to midnight.”

  “The Blackfeet?”

  “Must have got their hands on some whiskey. They never did attack, never fired off a single shot. For the better part of an hour they kept us company, taking turns saying those three words, like they were chanting or something. Ever hear of them doing anything so harebrained?”

  “Never.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Pain pays the income of each precious thing.”

  “Huh?”

  “William S.,” Shakespeare said.

  “How can you think about him, the shape you’re in?”

  “I’ve been worse off.”

  “When?”

  “Before I was born.”

  Griffen shifted, his skin a pale contrast to the darkness. ‘‘The fever must be tearing you up. You’re making less sense than those Blackfeet. Rest easy, old-timer. We’re making good time.”

  “Time,” Shakespeare mumbled, the stars fading in and out. “I remember the first time Caesar put it on. T’was on a summer’s evening, in his tent.”

  “You’re raving, man. Go to sleep.”

  Shakespeare tried to organize the jumbled bits of scattered thoughts in his head into a coherent whole and could not. “Sleep,” he repeated, tottering on the verge. “To sleep, perchance to dream.”

  “We’ve already heard that
one. Please, McNair. You need the rest. We’ll stop at first light and dress your wounds again. It’s all we can do for the time being.”

  “Time again?” Shakespeare said. An elusive quote dangled in front of him and he snatched at it as would a starving man at a morsel of food. “My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, and makes as healthful music. It is not madness that I have uttered.” He sank deeper into the canoe. “Or at least it did once.”

  “Hush, will you?” Griffen urged.

  Shakespeare tried to lift his head, was unable. “What if I do not?” he quoted. “As, indeed, I do not. Yet, for I know thou art religious, and hast a thing within thee called conscience, with twenty.” His voice trailed off as he slipped into the nether realm of disjointed dreams. He thought someone pulled the blanket tighter around him.

  And then it was morning. Shakespeare blinked, licked his dry lips. With a herculean effort he rose on one arm. The scenery was much the same, the river flowing a shade faster. Griffen and Knorr had to paddle harder to overcome the current. “We should stop so you can rest,” he commented.

  “Soon,” Lane said. “Around the next bend, if memory serves, is a clear strip of sandy shore where we can see for miles around. No one can sneak up on us there.”

  Griffen’s memory proved accurate but they were unable to land. As they sailed around the curve the shore hove into sight, and so did a large female grizzly and her two cubs lying at ease, sunning themselves. The mother shot up off the ground, growling fiercely. She came to the edge of the water, glaring at the two canoes as they drew abreast of her. Then, mouth wide, she plunged into the river in pursuit.

  The two trappers paddled for all they were worth and for a few tense moments it seemed they would lose the race. They had already veered shoreward in anticipation of beaching the canoes. Consequently they were a mere twenty feet from the she-bear when she jumped in.

  Shakespeare was nearest the beast. He fingered his Hawken, doubtful he could lift it. The grizzly narrowed the gap with astounding rapidity, plowing through the water as if it were nonexistent. Just when Shakespeare braced for the impact of her heavy body against the canoe, salvation came from an unlikely source.

  The two cubs had bolted to the top of the adjacent bank and stood watching their mother’s heroics. One of them chose the very instant she was about to reach her quarry to bawl in distress and the second heartily took up the refrain.

  On hearing the cries, the mother bear stopped to look around. She saw her cubs were in no danger and turned back to destroy the interlopers, but the delay had cost her.

  The canoes flew up the river out of reach, Griffen and Knorr laughing nervously at their narrow escape. Thereafter they stayed in the middle of the river until certain it was safe to venture onto shore.

  The excitement had taken a severe toll on Shakespeare. He sank onto his side, one eye level with the top of the canoe, too enfeebled to so much as lift a hand. In this position he dozed, and when next he awakened, it was afternoon. Someone had propped him on his back so that he could see over the side and covered him with a blanket. Both canoes were making good headway even though Shakespeare could tell the trappers were fatigued.

  Over the next several hours Shakespeare fluctuated between wakefulness and dreamland. Every time he opened his eyes it was to a new sight.

  Once he saw a panther of considerable size. It had killed a deer on the south bank, devoured a portion, and was in the act of hiding the rest in the brush. On hearing them it looked up, let go of its prize, and darted into the vegetation.

  Later there were two antelope swimming from south to north. They passed close to the canoes, nostrils flared, eyes wide in fear.

  Griffen was of a mind to shoot one for supper but Knorr pointed out the pair were lean and sickly looking so they permitted both to swim on untouched.

  A third time, toward evening, Shakespeare saw several beaver at work on the north bank. The country on either hand was more broken than previously, with intermittent low hills. The bottoms had narrowed. Now there was more high grass and reeds bordering the river, and less timber.

  The next time McNair awakened, the stars were out. He knew the trappers had hardly rested in over twenty-four hours, all on his account. His lips and mouth were moist, as if someone had recently trickled water down his throat. “Griffen?” he croaked.

  “Back among the living, are you?” Lane responded. “How are you holding up?”

  “My innards are on fire,” Shakespeare confessed.

  “I know. Which is why I’ve been giving you some water every so often and moistening your forehead. It’s the best I can do until we rejoin our companions.”

  “How soon, you reckon?”

  “It depends on if we can hold to this pace. Maybe tomorrow evening provided all goes well.”

  “When will Knorr and you sleep?”

  “We won’t. We’ve decided to go straight through.”

  “I’m that bad off, am I?”

  “Hell, man. Anyone else would have been worm food long ago. What keeps you going I’ll never know.”

  Shakespeare was inclined to do more talking but his body had the final say and he slept again. Feverish phantasms inhabited his dreams, creatures and figures unlike any ever witnessed by mortal man. Bears with two heads, beaver with claws and fangs, and more. Then she appeared, and he stirred, tossing fitfully. Long ago he’d shut his mind to anything having to do with her to spare himself the anguish. Now, seeing her beautiful face hovering over his, as young and vital as she had been the day they were forced to part, he felt the old gnawing pangs and reached out to touch her. “Little Doe!” he said in his dream. “Little Doe! What happened to you? How did your life turn out?”

  Little Doe’s cherry lips moved but Shakespeare couldn’t hear her voice. A tear trickled from her right eye and rolled slowly down her face. He tried caressing her cheek but her features shimmered like the reflection on a lake and began to break apart. “No!” he cried. “Not again! Come back!”

  The image wavered, fading in and out. “You were the first!” Shakespeare shouted in his dream. “You were always special! Always so dear!” He snatched at the ethereal face and it suddenly blinked out, leaving a black, gaping hole which in turn resolved into the nighttime sky. A hand was on his arm.

  “McNair? McNair? Snap out of it, old coon! You’re having a bad dream!”

  Perspiration drenched Shakespeare. A shadowy form was bent over him. “Lane? Sorry.”

  “No need to be. Had me worried for a while the way you were thrashing around. I was afeared you’d upend the canoe.” Griffen placed a palm on McNair’s forehead. “What language was that you were using?”

  “Language?”

  “You were calling out in your sleep. Injun tongue, I’d say. But none of those I know, like Flathead or Crow. Damned if it didn’t sound more like Blackfoot. Do you know their tongue?”

  “A little,” Shakespeare said.

  “Is it okay to go on?”

  “Be my guest. I’ll be fine now. Thanks.” Shakespeare folded his hands over old William S. and sadly gazed at the darkened landscape. Seeing those Blackfeet had dredged up recollections better left alone. Or maybe it was just the end was near and his mind was coming to terms with all the unanswered questions in his life. She was one of them. Their separation had plagued him for years afterward, and he had often wondered if she had found another man to love. In morbid moments he liked to flatter himself that she had been so heartbroken she had mourned herself to death. But Little Doe had been too fond of living and too full of life to pass so meekly into the next world.

  Sleep shortly claimed him. When his leaden eyelids cracked open, the sun grinned down at him. And a putrid stench clung to the air like the reeking clothes of a scab covered beggar. For a few harrowing seconds he thought the smell came from him. Then he looked up and saw the buffalo, or what was left of them.

  On the north side rose a cliff one hundred and fifty feet high, the rock wall sheer and unbroken.
At its base were scattered the fragments of hundreds of buffalo carcasses. Large bones jutted from the surface at scores of points, mainly rib cages and legs, forming a sort of buffalo graveyard with the ribs resembling outlandish tombstones. The shaggy brutes had been stampeded over the rim by Indians and finished off while they writhed and kicked in the shallow water. Some had probably drowned.

  Along the shore lolled scores of wolves, all fat and lazy. Not a one bolted at the approach of the canoes. Tongues drooping, they stared in listless curiosity at the white men.

  “It’s a good thing there aren’t more cliffs in this country,” Griffen remarked, “or the silly savages would wipe out all the buffalo there are.”

  “Just like we’re doing with the beaver,” Shakespeare wanted to say, but did not make the attempt. For the longest while he lay there listening to the swash of paddles, the rippling of water. The hot sunlight added to his distress, leaving him as weak as a kitten.

  A flurry of yelling brought him around for the umpteenth time. Shakespeare heard snorting and grunting and more splashing than a thousand paddles could make. He looked, and it seemed as if the river had sprouted an endless sea of horns and humps and tails. Buffaloes, hundreds upon hundreds of the dumb animals, were swarming across the river forty yards away. Both canoes had stopped and floated next to one another.

  “Damn contrary cusses,” Bob Knorr grumbled. “They would pick now to decide the grass is greener on the south side.”

  “It’ll be half an hour before they’re done,” Griffen predicted wearily, then yawned. “Maybe we should go ashore and rest until then.”

  “Nothing doing,” Knorr said. “We’re both plumb tuckered out. We lie down and we won’t be waking up for two days.”

  Shakespeare swallowed to relieve his parched throat, then dipped a hand into the water and cupped a handful to his mouth. It was tepid and tasted faintly of mud. The buffalo must have stirred up the sediment for quite a ways.

  “What are you doing, old coon?” Griffen said. “Don’t be drinking that stuff. Here.” He passed back a half-filled water skin. “Spring water from the last one we stopped at. Need me to lift it for you?”