The Blackfoot Trail

by Charles G. West

  On this evening, Callie did not volunteer to help set up the camp. After settling her comfortably by a fire, he filled his coffeepot in the cold mountain stream, and set it to boil at the edge of the flames. With nothing to offer again but jerky, he said, “This’ll give you some strength till I can get us somethin’ better.” The gnawing in his stomach told him that he couldn’t go much longer without something substantial himself. When she was settled, he left her to take care of the horses; then, assuring her that he would not be far away, he took his bow and disappeared into the forest.

  Deer frequented the slope he had camped on; he was sure of that. There was plenty of sign: droppings, tree bark rubbed off, even hoofprints, but there were no deer close around. He figured they had been frightened away by the approach of the two horses and riders. Finally, when it became dark, he had to abandon the hunt for the night, knowing Callie might be fearful that something had happened to him. It’ll have to wait till morning, he reluctantly decided. It mattered little to Callie because she was sound asleep when he returned to camp. He carefully removed the coffee cup from her fingers, and covered her with his blanket. I’ll go out again before sunup and see if I can’t sneak up on game of some kind, he thought and sat down to finish the coffee.

  Lame Horse and Two Bears walked along the trail leading down the broad valley, one on each side, searching for the hoofprints they had followed from their village. Behind them, some two hundred yards or so, the others waited so as not to obliterate the fresh tracks. So sure were they that the two they chased were running as hard as they could down the length of the valley, they had evidently failed to consider that their prey might have left the main trail and turned up into the hills. Finally Two Bears stopped and said, “They did not come this far unless their horses grew wings.” There was not one track between the two warriors and the place where the rest of the riders waited.

  “We must go back and find the place where they left the trail,” Lame Horse responded impatiently. “I want the woman and the one who freed her.” They turned around then and started back toward the others. “Do you think it is the big grizzly bear who traded her to me for the meat?” Not waiting for an answer, he said, “I hope it is. I want his scalp for my lance.”

  Back with the other warriors, they reported that they had been too hasty in their assumptions, and it was now necessary to backtrack to search for the place where the two had eluded them. The warriors were quick to take on the challenge, and everyone began searching the back trail, eager to be the one to find the missing tracks. As the afternoon grew shorter, the enthusiasm for the chase began to drain. With no luck in finding the clue they sought, some of the warriors began to grumble that maybe Two Bears was right. Maybe the horses did grow wings and fly. They searched all the way back to the point where tracks were found in the trail. It was at the crossing of a small stream and obvious then that the woman and her rescuer had ridden up the stream.

  Lame Horse’s passion was refreshed. He immediately started up the stream, but he sensed a loss of enthusiasm by his followers. Halting his pony briefly, he paused to consider the situation. “I will go on alone,” he said. “There are too many of us to surprise them. I can get close without alerting them.”

  “I will go with you,” Two Bears said. “There are two of them, so there should be two of us.”

  “This is true,” Lame Horse replied, “but one of them is a woman. I will kill the big man who stole her.” He was convinced that the man he chased had to be Starbeau.

  “If this is your wish,” Two Bears conceded, knowing Lame Horse felt the need to redeem himself for the times he thought he had been cheated.

  There were no objections from the other warriors, they having tired of the chase. They wished him good hunting and turned back toward the village, leaving him to track the escapee and her accomplice alone. He hurried up the stream, in an effort to make use of what daylight remained.

  Just before the forest became shrouded in the early darkness, Lame Horse came upon a place where the stream became wider, and the remains of a small fire. He smiled to see they had not ridden far before stopping to rest. Already he was gaining ground. The charred bones of a squirrel told him that they had lingered long enough to eat. With increasing confidence, he pushed on through the thick forest of firs, intent upon following the tracks for as long as there remained enough light to see them. When darkness set in, he paused to look at the crown of the ridge above him. Judging by the path he had followed so far, he considered the intended direction and at approximately where they may have gained the top of the ridge. With that point in mind, he pushed on into the night, fueled by his anticipated pleasure upon running them to ground.

  Upon reaching the top of the ridge, he was forced to rest his tired pony before continuing his search. He took the time to ponder his next move. At best, he had gained more time on his prey, but he had to accept the fact that, though he may be somewhere close to their trail, he could not find their tracks in the dark. It was cause for despair, for his passion for Starbeau’s and Callie’s blood had progressed to a state of lust. The thought that they might yet escape him agitated him to the point where he felt the necessity to pace back and forth. In an effort to walk it off, he walked out to the edge of a rocky shelf and stood gazing out over the dark forest below him. Suddenly there was a quickening in the beat of his heart, for he thought he had caught something out of the corner of his eye. Nothing more than the brief flicker of an insect possibly, but it was enough to compel him to fix his gaze upon the western side of the ridge. There it is again—a faint reddish flickering about halfway down the slope, and he smiled as he realized it was a campfire. He had caught them!

  His initial reaction was to charge down through the black forest, but a second thought cautioned him to take time to plan his attack. The bearlike brute that had taken her had the rifle that shoots many times, and he had no weapon to match that. So he must work in close to the camp and strike before Starbeau knew he was under attack. It was already past the middle of the night, but there was time to cautiously make his way down through the trees and be in position to strike before the sun came up. He complimented himself for his show of restraint, and smiled again when he thought about the respect he would gain with the big white man’s scalp—and the power he would gain with the acquisition of the repeating rifle. As for the woman, he would use her, as he had originally intended. Then he would kill her.

  Joe Fox awoke early, before daylight. Pausing only to look in the girl’s direction to make sure she was sleeping, he gently laid his rifle beside her. With only his bow and quiver, he disappeared into the forest that surrounded the tiny clearing. He thought his best chance to get a shot at a deer would be a few hundred yards below his camp, so he followed the stream down until he came upon a game trail. He figured that this might be a spot where the deer came to drink, so he sat down beside a sizable tree and waited.

  Above him, a menacing figure knelt, also beside a large tree, and watched the camp intensely. Lame Horse hesitated, scanning the clearing, searching for the man whose empty blanket he could see on the opposite side of the fire from the sleeping woman. Cautious of the possibility of walking into an ambush, he crept closer to the very edge of the clearing and waited. When minutes passed with no sign of the huge white man, Lame Horse became impatient. The sun was coming up, its fingers already stealing through the trees. Still the white man was nowhere to be seen. As a precaution, Lame Horse turned to look behind him. There was nothing. Behind the sleeping woman, he could see his little white mare standing beside a paint pony, and he began to wonder, remembering the large bay that Starbeau had ridden before. Shifting his gaze back to the woman, he noticed the object lying beside her bed. As the sun began to break through the predawn gloom, he could better make the object out and realized it was a rifle—the repeating rifle!

  He was astonished to think that the white man had left the deadly rifle with the woman and gone to relieve his bowels or look for food, or whatever. It
didn’t matter where he was if Lame Horse could get his hands on the rifle. He would have the power! Taking a last look around the clearing, with no one else in sight, he got up with an arrow notched in his bowstring, and moved quickly and silently across the clearing.

  He paused for a moment to gaze at the sleeping woman, casting a churlish grin upon her scarred face. Then he carefully reached down and removed the rifle from her blanket. Unable to contain the feeling of power now within him, he thrust the weapon over his head in one hand and threw his head back to issue a triumphant war cry. Callie was instantly snatched from a deep sleep, horrified to find the evil demon standing before her, a scornful grin upon his cruel face. She screamed and tried to scramble away from him, but he was quick to place his foot on her chest and pin her to the ground. “Where is the white man?” Lame Horse demanded, pointing the rifle at her face.

  With the shocking realization that the nightmare she once again found herself in was real, Callie could not answer. “Where is he?” Lame Horse demanded again.

  “Right behind you, you Flathead son of a bitch,” Joe Fox answered.

  Lame Horse spun around ready to shoot, but hesitated, startled to discover the tall, lean man in buckskins, a warrior like himself, instead of the bulky brute, Starbeau. His astonishment caused him to pause only for a moment, replaced by contemptuous amusement at the sight of the drawn bow aimed at him. “Hah,” he grunted, “I have your gun,” and he raised it to aim at the imperturbable man slowly walking toward him, closing the distance between them. With a sneering grin on his face, he calmly pulled the trigger. The grin turned into a look of disbelief when the rifle failed to fire. He glanced quickly down at the recalcitrant weapon. When he looked back up, the arrow was already on its way. It struck him in the throat. He dropped the rifle and clutched at the arrow with both hands. The second arrow struck his chest and he staggered backward, and would have fallen on Callie had she not rolled out of his way.

  Landing heavily on his back, the impact with the hard ground causing the arrows to rip away at his neck and chest, he was helpless to defend against the inevitable. His eyes stared wildly at Joe as the knife was about to be drawn across his windpipe. “It is Joe Fox of the Piegan Blackfeet who sends you to the dark place,” he growled. The fatal stroke was swift, and Lame Horse was no more.

  Callie sat on the ground, still shivering from the frightening awakening and the execution of Lame Horse. Only moments before, she was certain that Joe was going to be killed, and she found it hard to believe even now that he was not. The fierce countenance that was Lame Horse’s last sight on earth, relaxed to return to the calm and gentle face that she knew to be Joe. “You’re safe now,” he said, then watched her carefully before asking, “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” she answered, though not convincingly.

  He reached down and helped her to her feet. “He was alone,” he said. “There are no others, so you’ll be all right now.” He freshened the fire before turning to leave again. “I’ll be right back. I killed a nice young doe that I left in the woods back there. There’s also a black horse tied to a tree up the slope a ways.” He smiled. “We’ve both got saddles now.”

  “How did you know the rifle wouldn’t fire?” she asked as he walked away.

  “He didn’t cock it. There was no cartridge in the chamber. I left it that way in case you grabbed it while you were still asleep. I figured if you wanted to shoot at somethin’, you’d have sense enough to cock it.”

  Since there was no longer a sense of danger from the Salish warriors, they remained in their camp for the rest of that day while Joe skinned and butchered the deer. They both ate roasted venison until they could hold no more, and Joe showed Callie how to smoke most of the rest of the meat to use later on. It was a healing time for Callie. More than the physical rest, she was able to recover some of the confidence that had been a characteristic when first he met her. The mental scars were far from healing, and in all likelihood would never be forgotten completely. But she felt comfortable in Joe’s company, and she was glad that it was he who was there to help her, and not her parents. Maybe, she thought, she would be able to face them by the time they returned to Missoula Mills. Thinking back now on her horrible captivity, she realized that her prayers for rescue had all been for Joe. And in answer to those prayers, he had come for her. She also knew that it was to be her secret, and that unless bridled, thoughts like that could cause her a great deal of heartbreak.

  Just to be sure, Joe left again for a short time that afternoon to scout the upper slope and the trail they had come down. There was no sign of anyone and he felt reassured that Lame Horse had been the lone warrior with the incentive to follow them once they had left the valley. Callie could take as much time as she thought she needed before starting out again because there should be plenty of time before the mule train was ready to leave for Oregon. He was relieved to see signs of her recovery. He could well imagine the agony she had endured at the hands of her captors. The physical scars were evidence enough of that. The thought of her torture was enough to renew his promise to himself to see that Starbeau paid for his crimes, not only those inflicted upon Callie, but also for the murders of Bradley and Nancy Lindstrom. There should be no place on earth for vermin like Starbeau, and he vowed that there would be no place on earth where the ugly brute would be safe from him.

  Upon awakening the next morning, Callie decided that she should not wait any longer to return to her family. She wished that she could delay until her wounds healed, but it was obvious by the touch of her fingertips on her cheek that there would remain thick scars even after healing. She tried to resign herself to the fate that her face would be marked for life.

  Joe packed up the camp, along with their supply of smoked meat, and tied the bundles on Lame Horse’s pony. Continuing in the direction they had traveled the day before, he looked for a way around the mountains to the west, planning to strike the Bitterroot Valley and follow the Bitterroot River north to its junction with Clark’s Fork River and the pilgrim’s village of caves at Missoula Mills.

  Chapter 12

  They came out of the mountains and descended into the valley of the Bitterroot, striking the river at a point where tall Ponderosa pines stood guarding a sandy bank. Looking north up the broad valley, Joe figured they were two days from her parents’ camp at Missoula Mills. Upon Callie’s insistence that she was tired, they made camp by the river early in the day although there were still a good two hours of daylight left. She didn’t want to confess that she was really not ready for their journey to end. She secretly wished it would take a week to get to Missoula Mills. To him, she would only confess that she was reluctant to meet her mother and father and the rest of the people she had traveled with from Dakota until she had regained her strength. Although she had no mirror to verify it, she was pretty certain that she looked as if she had been mauled by a grizzly, which was not too far from what had actually happened to her. There were bound to be many questions asked. Knowing that they would be next to impossible to ignore, she did the only thing she could at the moment, and that was to stall, playing upon Joe’s patience and hoping the extra time would give her a chance to take better control of the mental anguish of a reunion after her abduction. She longed to see her mother and father, but she dreaded to have them see her.

  When the two-day journey stretched into the third day, Joe decided that it was time for Callie to face her family and friends. After plenty of rest and solid food, she had apparently recovered her physical strength, so she might as well get it over with. He told her as much on the morning of the third day, when they had camped the night before just twelve miles from Missoula Mills.

  “You’re right,” she confessed. “I know I’ve been dragging my feet. I just dread for everyone to see me like this.” She felt the stigma of having been violated, and could not help the feeling that she would be forever looked upon as damaged and unclean. She wanted to say how she wished she could stay with him, but she didn�
�t dare for fear of his rejection.

  He could read the anguish in her eyes and guessed what was really distressing her. “Callie, you’re not to blame for what happened to you. You’re not guilty of a damn thing.” He smiled at her then. “As far as how you look, I think you’re looking fit and fine now,” he insisted. “Most of the bad places have healed over pretty good—just a few little pink scars on your face. Those bruises on your arms and legs are already turnin’ yellow. They’ll be gone in a few days.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at his attempt to appear earnest. “I swear, Joe Fox, you’re about the poorest liar I’ve ever seen.” No one had to tell her that her cheek was disfigured permanently from a slash that should have had stitches before it started to heal, and from the feel of the lump left by her broken jaw, the bones would never knit successfully again.

  He blushed, having been caught in his attempt to lift her spirits. “Well, you look fine to me,” he said, “but you might as well go on back and let ’em all take a good look at you, and then you can get on with your life.”

  His words sent a sharp pain through her heart, but she knew he was right. She couldn’t hide in the bushes all the rest of her life. “All right,” she said with a show of determination, “let’s quit lollygagging here by the fire and go home.” Her decision made, she got up and went to fetch the white mare. Not waiting for his help, she threw the saddle on the horse and led it back to the fire. Responding to her actions, he loaded the packs on the black horse, and then saddled the paint. In a short time, they were in the saddle again and headed for the reunion.