So Skittles was heading for the Judith country, the very area where Blackfeet had made off with Crow horses and wounded Victoria. Skye eyed his wife, who was riding with steely determination. She was well aware that they were retracing the route from the buffalo hunting camp to her village many months earlier.
There was no sign of the traders but that didn’t mean much. They were ahead. What worried Skye was that they had at least one brass spyglass in the outfit, and an ex-army outfit like that would be using it, studying the country from every rise. The chances were that Skittles already knew someone was following him. That would make it tougher, and also raise the prospect of an ambush. There was little Skye could do about it.
Still, stalking an armed body required more than a tracker’s skill. Skye wanted to know where Skittles was going. Once he knew that, he could quit following and circle around. Skittles was heading for a village of the Piegans or Gros Ventres, and probably would take those robes and pelts to Fort Benton, the American Fur post on the Missouri.
But all that was guesswork.
They rode across a vast land, with the noble Snowy Mountains, white-topped, guarding the north. Then, late that day, Victoria pointed.
Skye did not see what she was pointing at, but it was something far west.
“Flash of light,” she said.
Light? Sun off brass? “Where?” he asked.
She pointed, but he saw nothing. A chance flash had caught her eye. But it was enough to make Skye wary.
“They’re heading for the Piegans,” he said.
“Maybe we should let them.”
Let this southernmost nation of the Blackfeet suffer the fate her Crow band had suffered. Let them drink themselves into a frenzy, kill one another, disgorge all their robes and pelts for another round of spirits, and end up sick, ashamed, broken, and impoverished.
There was something flinty in her face.
“Each time Skittles succeeds, he’ll gain strength. He’ll come back time after time and destroy your people.”
She nodded.
They would continue, demolish Skittles’s wagonload of spirits if they could. Only then would the northern tribes, all of them, be safe from him.
But he was certain Skittles knew someone was behind him. Several times more that day they saw, or at least thought they saw, observers on ridges or peaks. One thing for sure, Skittles was not far ahead. Three, four, five miles. As the day warmed, so had the soil softened, and his big draft horses would have a tough time dragging wagons through the mire.
It would pay to be very careful. In fact, Skye thought he would wait for dark and then work north a few miles, and find shelter in one of the giant coulees issuing from the Snowy Mountains. There would be no safety now; no night of bliss, like the last one.
forty-two
Victoria was yelling at him, but the wind whipped her words away. He slowed the pony, and she caught up with him.
“Stop,” she said.
He did. The packhorse behind him bumped into the rear of his pony.
She pointed at a distant ridge to the west. He saw nothing.
“Riders,” she said.
He still saw nothing, but employed his old way of scanning one sector of the horizon at a time, piece by piece, until he might see what she saw. Her eyes were often better than his.
Then, he made out two moving dots, slightly blurred. He watched them closely.
“Coming our way?” he asked her.
“Damn right.”
“Two. Probably sent by Skittles to see what’s on his back trail.”
They waited quietly until they could get a clearer picture, and then a trick of light showed the distant riders clearly. Green shirts. Rifles.
Skye examined the nearby terrain. They had been crossing giant coulees and ridges that stretched like claws from the Snowy Mountains. But the country was naked. It was a bad place to be caught unarmed and defenseless by armed riders.
This was a day of sunlight and shadow, of fast-moving clouds driven by high winds, whose dark shadows plowed coldly across the endless open land. It was a day full of tricks of sunlight that made things appear to be moving, when only shadow and wind were galloping along the earth.
They were atop a ridge. Skye retreated from the riders, and descended a shallow grade into a broad, grass-bottomed coulee that had its origins many miles away, and would carry water in the spring. He turned north, sticking just a little off the bottoms even though the going was slower. The passage of four horses through the dried grasses of the bottoms would give them away.
He desperately needed some little side gulch or a gentle turn in the coulee to hide himself, Victoria, and the ponies. To preserve their lives, he thought. He kicked the pony into a slow trot, the fastest he could travel over a rough and eroded slope. At least they were below the ridge, and maybe had not been seen. That was optimistic, given the spyglasses that outfit owned.
For a time he found no place to hide, but then the coulee’s west wall retreated slightly, and he found himself riding around a slight bend, and in a moment he and Victoria were riding into a small, shallow side gulch, not much deeper than a mounted rider. He slid off his mount, and she did too. They pulled the horses farther up, past chokecherry brush that would help hide them, and into a shallow hollow that ran only six or eight feet below the surrounding rolling prairie.
Victoria held two horses, ready to slap her hand over their nostrils if they were about to whicker. Horses, famously gregarious, loved to greet other horses. Skye handed her hackamore loops of the two other ponies, removed his plug hat, and edged upward until he could see.
At first he saw nothing, but then he found them, not half a mile off, drifting up the coulee.
“We may have to run,” he told her.
It was an impossible situation. They without a firearm, the riders with rifles. Victoria had her bow and quiver but that would offer no help at all, not here.
More cloud shadows rolled across that vast country. One could watch them come and watch them slide by, mile after mile. The riders were identifiably green shirts and in no hurry. But they were out in the middle of the coulee, not on its western edge, and missing the plain trail. They approached another quarter of a mile, quit, and rode south. Skye watched them shrink back to black dots and then vanish.
It had been close.
He turned and found her just behind him, an arrow nocked in her bow.
“They quit,” he said. “But there may be more. Skittles knows someone’s behind him.”
He retreated into the gulch. A pony yawned, baring yellowed teeth. A heavy cloud rolled over, spitting pea snow from its belly, and then it passed. Skye found himself taut and sweaty, even in that chill.
He was a damn fool, going after Skittles this way. He knew it. What did he think he’d accomplish except to get himself and Victoria shot in some lonely gulch and left for the ravens.
“Don’t cuss yourself,” she said, reading him.
“I’ve been stupid.”
“What is stupid? I don’t know this word.”
“Dumb. Crazy.”
She walked up to him, touched his cheek, running her fingers gently along his jaw, and said nothing.
He didn’t want to move, not yet. Not with two snipers drifting nearby. It was cold in that little gulch. He turned his back to the blustering wind.
“Sometimes we are given to do things,” she said. “We must do them. We must try to do them even if the end is bad. Sometimes it leads to bad things. Sometimes we are given to do something and we die. Or fail. I think this is given to you to do. If it is given to you, then we will do it.”
He clamped his hat down when a gust threatened to whip it away. The wind was rising, and he sensed warmth in it, warmth that would slow down Skittles’s wagons when the frost went out and the iron tires of his wagons cut deep furrows.
“We’ll get in front of them,” he said. “We’ll find a place to camp and wait for the warmth to mire them.”
“I
t is coming,” she said. “It’s in the air.”
Skittles would be slowed, and Skye would get around to the front where maybe with some stealth he could slip into the camp and do what needed doing.
They worked patiently up the coulee to the timber and snow, and then cut along the foothills of the mountains until twilight veiled them and they could carve a camp out of a rocky grotto after brushing the snow away.
About midnight the warm winds eddied in, woke them both, and Skye didn’t hesitate. By the light of a tiny fire they collected their gear, loaded the packsaddle, clambered aboard their ponies, and set off across tumbled country, with nothing to guide them except the looming presence of high country on their right.
The temperature shot upward so fast that suddenly the air was delicious, the breezes almost tropical. Within the passage of an hour Skye felt his pony pulling mud with every step. The ponies labored but kept on. He heard dripping water. He listened to the thud of snow sliding off of pines just above.
“Sonofabitch! It’s getting hotter than you in the robes, Skye,” she said.
He laughed.
If Skittles had any sense, he wouldn’t travel much during the coming day. And if the thaw lasted, Skittles might be rooted to the spot for many days.
Dawn caught them several miles west and in rough country, but now it was their turn to study the surrounding land. The first sunlight poking out of the southeast, horizontal orange light, caught something at once: a column of gray smoke a mile or so away and down the long swales to country where wagons could move.
Skye exulted. He knew where they were. For a while, anyway, they could ride in sun-shadow, invisible to anyone down there. As they came abreast of the camp, he could see but two wagons, and a few men. One wagon held the spirits; the other held the gear. He itched to ride down, throw a lit torch into that wagon full of casks, catch them shaving and squatting and rolling up their bedrolls, and howl his way out.
“I just thought of a good way to kill myself,” Skye said.
She smiled.
He took some more long looks, and hurried by, wanting to get ahead before that horizontal light caught them and turned them into bull’s-eyes. They were protected by a long ridge clawing the prairies to the south, but even as they worked west, the rising sun narrowed the shadow they were racing through, and in minutes they would be exposed to its bright and deadly glare.
“We’ve got to drop,” he said.
She nodded.
He turned the pony downslope, ever closer to Skittles’s camp, down into timber that was even more dangerous than open country because he could not see ahead. But at least they were still shrouded by dawn shade.
They burst out of timber not half a mile from Skittles’s camp and could see it and its men clearly. But Skye and Victoria hurried west, racing past the camp, hoping his ponies wouldn’t betray him, and hoping that their big, stolid draft animals wouldn’t stir.
He could see the horses in a rope pen.
Jawbone squealed. Skye knew that sound as well as he knew his own voice. They hurried west, needing the safety of the next woods or ridge or whatever might shield them from those prying spyglasses.
Jawbone whirled around and around in the rope enclosure, and then bolted straight through the rope. The old mare, suddenly as wild as the colt, bolted with her colt. They raced straight toward Skye and Victoria, who froze in the deep shadow.
Skye heard a shot and another, and then the faint sound of laughter and annoyance. Jawbone and the blessed old mare kept going, and no one was coming after them.
forty-three
Jawbone kicked up his heels, bounced and leaped, and danced his way up the long grade, and then quit the sun and plunged into deep shade, the very shade that hid Skye and Victoria and their ponies.
Skye dreaded what would come next. Jawbone and the resolute old mare were racing full tilt toward them and would give them away. He was in more than enough peril from the rising sun, which in minutes would bathe the slope he stood on, leaving him exposed to every eye below.
And now this boneheaded colt was frisking and kicking and squealing his way up the long grade while men watched.
But a sharp command below set the green shirts to work. They had draft horses and their own saddlers to round up. For a moment Skye stood, paralyzed, and then began looking for cover. There wasn’t much, copses of naked-limbed trees, a few swales. He would edge toward those.
Jawbone danced and pranced his way uphill, ever higher, ever closer, until he was only a few yards away, squealing his greetings.
“Avast!” Skye bellowed.
The colt bucked, kicked, whirled, and plunged right past them, with the laboring old mare behind. Right past Skye, right past Victoria, right past the ponies, and bucked and kicked his way upslope until suddenly he was caught in the morning’s glare again, a bronzed horse bounding along a ridge.
Then the colt headed straight for the pine forest above, and plunged into it, bucking through the heavy snow at its base, while the razor-backed old mare followed. The sun caught them pushing into the forested flank of the mountain, and then they vanished.
It was beyond explaining. Skye stood, shaking, aware that if that colt had paused, had rushed up to Skye and butted him, started his ponies milling, it would all be over. Down below men were collecting the straying stock, but also glancing up the long grade straight at Skye and Victoria, who could not remain hidden in shade for long as the sun began its swift ascent.
Skye collected his animals and walked along the path he had chosen, desperate to find cover. But far above a strange squeal echoed down the mountain, and Skye found himself staring at the tiny figure of the colt, bathed in bright sun, on a small promontory overlooking the vast country below.
Down in Skittles’s camp men paused, pointed upward, and then resumed their business. They had stock to harness.
Skye shivered. What possessed that colt? What strange medicine, or luck, sent the little fellow straight up the mountain, far from Skye and Victoria? Were they free and saying good-bye?
They hurried to a place where a slope hid them in trees and soon they were out of sight of the camp. But not safe. They were leaving a plain trail that anyone, even a Yank soldier, could follow. Skye hurried westward, for distance was the sole protection he had.
Victoria followed, her gaze slipping upward, searching the empty mountain above, even as the shadows dropped lower and lower and eventually vanished. They were walking in full daylight now, the dawn was a thing of the past. Victoria paused at a ridge and studied their back trail, but no one followed. Skittles had probably abandoned the ugly colt and scrawny mare. Good riddance.
That suited Skye just fine. Good riddance indeed. Even if he never saw that colt again, his spirits lifted at the thought that the mustangs had found their liberty. Let that feisty creature and that faithful mare escape snares the rest of their days. They had blessed Skye, saved Victoria from death, and deserved whatever goodness nature had in store.
He began at last to relax. He was where he wanted to be, ahead of the Skittles party, riding the flank of the Snowy Mountains. Ahead was the gap, the broad flat between two ranges that permitted travelers to move north or south through country where the mountains ranged east and west Skittles would enter that gap sometime soon, depending on whether the ground would stay firm under the iron tires of his wagons.
Skye reached a ridge where he could see the gap, which spread below him, naked rolling prairie between the ranges. This was bloody ground. Here, Blackfeet pounced on unsuspecting Absarokas heading north, or Crows ambushed Blackfeet pushing south. Nature had conspired to funnel all manner of life through this hole in the wall of mountains, and war parties took advantage of it.
Victoria squinted at the place.
“Bastards,” she said.
Skye grinned.
They descended to prairie country along the flank of the Snowies, and turned north. Skye was looking for the right place to pounce on Skittles, but right places we
re in short supply. He didn’t know where Skittles would go. For that matter, Skye didn’t know just how he was going to jump Skittles’s company. But it would have to be in the dead of a moonless or cloudy night, when a man could hardly see ten feet. He was going to have to slip through Skittles’s defenses and torch that whiskey wagon. And collect his kit if he could. And do it without so much as a revolver to help him. And get Victoria, himself, and his horses away to safety.
He had one advantage. He had been here many times over his long life as a trapper and denizen of the wilds. He doubted that Skittles knew the country.
The more Skye thought about it, the worse his prospects looked to him. The best he could do would be to shadow the trading outfit and wait. Somewhere along the way there would be a chink in Skittles’s armor, and it would be up to Skye to find it and exploit it.
No wonder Skittles had recruited former soldiers. Somehow these traders understood that they might need to be a small army. Might have trouble with boozy Indians. Might have trouble with tribal leaders. Might have trouble with rival companies, of which there were several roaming the Northwest hunting for robes.
Skye wondered how he could shadow an outfit like that, especially with his pemmican running low, two more horses than he should have, and a lot of open prairie ahead where a man could see everything for miles, and a man with a spyglass could keep track of movement everywhere the lens could reach.
Nighttime, then.
He paused at an overlook and waited for her.
“I want to catch them here. Once they get through the gap, they could head any direction.”
“This is a bad place.”
“It will be for them.”
“We need a camping place on the flank of the mountain,” he said.
She nodded. They moved slowly upslope, studying the land, and finally selected a rocky ledge a couple hundred feet above the valley floor. It would do nicely, and was watered by a runnel from above. They picketed the horses on good grass nearby, made camp, and settled down for a wait. It had turned warm, and Skye didn’t doubt that the wagons would roll slowly, if at all this day with the mud so thick.
The Fire Arrow Page 22