Case said softly, “There’s the scoundrel.” He had already pulled his rifle from the holster.
Halting, they both dismounted and found a washed out gully where they could hobble the horses.
It took them several minutes to maneuver over the rough mountainside close to the Indian’s horse. They didn’t want to scare the animal and alert anyone. They began to move the way they did when Case was his father’s partner and they were hunting for a rogue bear. Their feet barely crushed the sand and their bodies slunk down like cats on the prowl. There was no time for talk or planning.
Drawing near, they saw a sight that rooted them both in their tracks. Moonlight revealed the Indian cross-legged on the ground, his shoulders hunched over the carcass of an animal that looked like a buffalo. It was a great hillock of dark brown fur down on it’s side and unmoving. Its legs stuck out straight. The Indian sat just in front of the animal’s torso alternately chanting and hacking at the belly of the buffalo. Once he had a chunk of the meat in his hand, he brought it to his mouth and ate like a wild dog, blood dripping down his chin and onto his bare chest decorated with a necklace of claws.
Travis almost gagged at the sight. Case swallowed hard and gripped his rifle tighter. Now they could see Rose, too. Limned in moonlight she sat on the ground close by, hands in her lap. She didn’t appear to be bound. Her head hung almost to her chest and once the Indian threw a chunk of meat into her lap but she didn’t react. She sat still, head down, the meat creating a puddle of blood on her skirts.
Travis couldn’t stand it another minute. He glanced once at Case, letting him know it was time to do it. They both rushed the campsite at once. Travis didn’t know it but he was yelling like a banshee. Screaming at the very top of his lungs. He wanted the blood on the Indian to be his heart’s blood. He wanted this savage to die savagely. He wanted him to pay dearly for doing harm to poor Rose—his love, his life.
The Indian rose and was on his feet instantly, knife in hand. Neither Travis nor Case wanted to use their weapons until they got closer for fear of accidentally hitting Rose. Before they got in range, the Indian turned and headed up the mountain through rocky outcroppings, fleeing fast as his feet could take him.
That’s when Travis stopped and took aim. The recoil thundered against his shoulder, but he didn’t see the Indian fall. He swore and began reloading the powder and shot. While he did so Case rushed forward, chasing the enemy. Thinking Case could handle it, Travis’s priority shifted to Rose. She still sat on the ground, but now her face was lifted to him and there was recognition in her eyes. He hurried over, his throat closing in grief that she had suffered at the hands of a maniac. He lifted her to her feet. “Rose, oh Rose.”
She clasped him to her and began to sob. Over her shoulder he saw Case disappear behind the rocks. He waited for a shot, wishing for it, but as he stood holding Rose in his arms silence came to wrap them in an uneasy blanket. Finally, Travis held Rose away and looked in her face again. He saw a bruise on her cheek. The sight of it filled him with rage. “He beat you?”
What else had he done? But he knew, he knew. The thought of Rose being brutalized by the Indian had haunted him the entire four days she was away from him. Looking into her eyes he knew now that’s what had happened. The bruise on her face was the least of it.
“Oh, honey,” he said, gently lowering her to the ground again. He arranged her filthy skirts over her legs and smoothed the hair back from her upraised face. “Stay here,” he said. “I’m going after him.”
He scrambled up the outcroppings and over large rocks. He slipped and fell, catching himself with one hand. Gravel dug into the heel of his hand, but he barely noticed. He gripped the edge of another rock and pulled himself forward and up. It worried him that he hadn’t heard Case use his gun. If he’d had any kind of clear shot at all he would have taken it.
Breathing heavy from the exertion, Travis made it around the impediments in his way and almost stumbled over Case before he ever saw him. He lay wedged between two boulders, the front of his chest bright red with new blood.
Case raised one of his hands and tried to speak. Bloody bubbles formed and broke on his open lips.
“Jesus, Case!”
Travis looked around quick to be sure the Indian wasn’t near. He then stooped over Case and placed his hand over the chest wound. The knife must have sliced into Case’s lung. He was struggling for air, gasping like a fish out of water.
“Go get him,” Case said faintly.
“I need to stop this bleeding,” Travis said, pressing down on Case’s chest.
“I’m done.” Case could hardly find enough air to speak. “Leave me. Go get him now.”
Travis knew he was right. He had no way to repair a punctured lung. Even if he could staunch the bleeding, how was he going to keep Case breathing?
Suddenly the unfairness of it all rushed through Travis like a lightning bolt. Not just the abduction and rape of a woman he loved, not just Case dying out here in the middle of no man’s land at the hands of a sneaky savage—but the unfairness of life itself. Poor Rose rising from the burning debris of her home where her mother’s body still smoldered. Travis’s own father dying young just because he got cold and wet and didn’t get to shelter and a good fire in time. The endless days Travis had endured alone, trying to fend for himself when he was just a boy. The bitter feeling of despair when the beaver played out and knowing he had been partly responsible by taking too many pelts. He and hundreds of others had swept through the streams and rivers like ravenous killing machines, laying waste to the beaver population in order to scratch a living from the selling of fur. All of it, everything—it all pointed to a universe that had no rules and no purpose, except the continuation of suffering of mankind.
This sudden gloom drove Travis to his feet. He didn’t know what to say to Case, his old friend. He couldn’t say goodbye. Instead, he said, “I’ll get him.”
He was moving up the mountain now like a wolf, sure-footed and full of hunger. Hunger to pay back in kind what the savage had taken from the people he loved. His face was set in stone, his hand gripped his rifle hard, and fierce determination fueled his every quick movement. He heard the sounds of his enemy fleeing now. Small avalanches of rock and shale signaled the blatant sounds of someone desperately on the run.
Within minutes he found himself just yards below the Indian. He saw his bare back glistening with sweat and his braided hair flopping behind him as he jogged first this way and that between boulders and outcroppings. Travis raised his gun and carefully sighted. He steadied his hands, calmed his nerves, and then he held his breath. He squeezed slowly on the trigger. The resultant blast almost knocked him back on his heels and threw him down the mountain, but he threw out his arms to hold his balance. He saw the Indian fall and almost shouted in victory. Instead, he ran up through the boulders. He pulled his knife from its scabbard.
When he reached the place where he’d shot the man, the savage was gone. An incredible sense of feeling cheated overwhelmed him. He knew he’d shot him. He thought it had been a deathblow. Yet the Indian had disappeared. A blood trail led off to the right. Travis replaced his knife and pulled out his powder and shot bags from inside his shirt.
It wasn’t over. He had to reload his rifle. He had to track this monster to the grave.
And then Travis thought of Rose, how he’d left her alone, and worry began to gnaw at him. The savage might get back to her some way.
His hand paused just a moment as he packed the shot in his rifle. Then he began to hurry, his hands steady as he replaced the rod on the bottom of his musket.
He followed the blood trail as fast as he could, banishing all doubt from his mind. He might have lived a hard life, but he wasn’t used to failure. The word wasn’t even in his vocabulary.
#
Broken Bear found the small cave on the other side of the mountain. It faced another mountain across a deep valley. Shadows already crouched in the crevice. Just for a minute Broken B
ear hesitated. Plunging into the cave was a terminal decision. If he went in there he’d be trapped if Travis caught up with him. Or there might be a bear in there or a cougar. If he disturbed an animal’s lair, and the animal was present, he wouldn’t even have time to retreat into the open again.
He looked back, imagining the white man on his trail. Fear decided for him. He couldn’t run any farther. He was shot in the right shoulder. The ball had gone right through, which was a piece of luck, but it must have done great harm to his muscles or nerves. His right arm hung useless, swinging down at his side. The wound burned like fire. He had to cauterize the ragged hole in front and back to stop the bleeding and the possibility of infection.
He couldn’t have a fire in the open. And he couldn’t have a fire until he was sure Travis was gone. He had to go into the cave, no matter what happened there.
He approached the opening cautiously. He was grinding his teeth against the pain in his shoulder and the fear of what might be waiting inside the cave. Stepping lightly into the deeper darkness he smelled the musk of an animal. He halted, sniffing the air, waiting for something large and dark to charge him. When nothing happened, he moved further into the dark. He felt discarded bones and feathers beneath his feet. The cave was empty. If the animal that had used it didn’t come back, he was safe. At least for now.
#
Travis tracked into late evening. He hated the thought of giving up the chase, but there was no way he could track the Indian in the night. Once darkness set in, he hurried back the way he’d come, hoping to find Case still alive. He hoped against hope. All the while he knew what he would find when he reached the spot where Case had fallen. His old friend lay wedged between the rocks and his blood had pooled beneath him and run in a rivulet down the mountain below his body. His eyes were closed as if he was sleeping, but Travis knew he was dead. He touched two fingers to the side of Case’s throat to feel for a pulse anyway. The flesh was cold and the living blood had ceased movement.
Climbing past Case’s body, he hurried down to where he’d left Rose. He found her sitting exactly where he’d left her. She watched him cross to her. He saw her face was wet with tears.
“Come on,” he said, lifting her to her feet. “Let’s get to a level place for the night. I’ll make you something to eat.”
They slept in the bottom of the ravine where he and Case had left the horses tied. Rose slept, at least. Travis might have dozed, but only for seconds at a time. He woke often, staring wild-eyed into the sky, thinking of the wheezing, bubbling death his friend had endured. When morning dawned he would go back and bring Case down the mountain to be buried in the desert floor. Travis’s sleeping moments were filled with nightmare—gun blasts, knives, and the whistling of arrows. His waking moments were filled with remembrance of blood.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
September in the high mountains was the beginning of unpredictable weather. Travis might have found another route, a more southern route, had it not been for Rose’s abduction. The Indian had taken a northwesterly direction with his hostage and that led them off trail into harder terrain. There was no point in going back and losing more time. It was already late in the year to be in the mountains. He and Rose had been on the journey for seven months now and they still had a long way to go to reach the gold fields of California.
A chill wind was blowing and the sky was dark with storm clouds, predicting snow, or at the least freezing rain.
“We need to find some kind of shelter,” he said.
Rose did not reply. Rose had not spoken since he’d rescued her from the savage. He had treated her gently and didn’t press for a response. Mornings now she often was sick, holding her stomach and retching what little she had in her stomach. He didn’t know what might be wrong with her. What could the monster have done to the woman Travis loved? He might have been carrying some kind of plague and Rose was infected.
But it was her mind that worried Travis most--or rather, her mindlessness. She did anything he said, followed any instruction, but her reactions were slow, and, of course, she did not speak. She never asked for anything, even for a chance to relieve her bladder, so Travis stopped periodically and led her to some area where she could squat. He washed her when she was dirty, fed her when it was time to eat, and put her down to sleep with covers when it was night.
He talked to her, believing she heard and understood him, the same as she had when he’d taken her from the burning hovel of her home in Texas. But the first time she was like this she came out of fairly quickly. Now it had been a month and not one word. Not one spontaneous action. Not one glint in her eye that signaled she had found her center again.
He spied a river, heading toward it. He saw near the bank a grooved slab of rock jutting from the slope. He tied off the horses and the donkey. He led Rose from where she stood at river’s edge over to the rock shelf. Beneath it he built a small fire and put on a pot of coffee. The rain started not long after they’d filled their cups. It came down in sheets, splashing them with mud. Rose huddled close to him, under his arm around her shoulders, and he held her.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said so softly she probably couldn’t even hear him above the sound of the pounding storm rains. He had told her this a hundred times since he had found her. “Life ain’t fair, but it’s been blame outrageous unfair to you. I’m really sorry. I wish I knew a way to change it.”
He rested his chin on the top of her head and watched the rain come down. He thought about winter’s approach and how he had to get them out of this north country before then. He thought about gold and a city with people milling everywhere, everyone rich and sumptuously dressed. California was a Mecca in his thoughts now, a place like heaven if only he could reach it. The Bible his father read aloud to him as a boy spoke of heaven---golden palaces and jeweled roads, angels and cherubs and a throne of light.
That’s what California had become to him. It offered an end to this long, difficult journey. It promised riches and a new life. For Rose, it would bring her back to her family, to people who could watch over her in case something ever happened to Travis.
They had not seen another human being since leaving Tucson. Travis didn’t count the mad Indian warrior. He had not been quite human. Travis hoped he’d died a slow, painful death from the gunshot wound he had inflicted on him. For many days Travis couldn’t sleep thinking he’d wake to see the fierce face staring down at him, ready to take his scalp. After a couple of weeks he felt more at ease, sure the evil had died back on the rocky mountainside. Case was a better shot, but the blood trail the Indian had left testified to the fact he’d been hit. It was possible Travis had administered a lethal blow.
All they had to do was keep going, that’s all, he and his pretty Rose. He had to keep her well and get her to California, to paradise. After that she’d be all right again, she’d speak and smile. She would return to him as her sweet self, the woman he loved more than his own life.
#
Whitley was his name, Whitley Bartholomew. He had lived in the mountains most of his life, the past ten years of that time all alone. When he spoke it was too loud as if he wasn’t used to speaking, and Travis thought that must be why he also couldn’t look them in the eye at first. It unnerved the old man some way to be around other people.
He was a mountain man, and although Travis had heard of them, he’d never met one before. Whitley had a rustic cabin on the mountainside that leaned a little and let in cold drafts through the roughhewn boards when the wind blew hard. But it had a stone fireplace and the warmth from the fire was delicious. Travis noted Rose sat before the fire every minute he didn’t have her sitting at the table to eat or lying in the rope bed to sleep.
They had been caught in an early October snow that turned into a blizzard. Travis feared they’d both succumb to the elements even though he’d killed a buffalo and taken the skin for a robe to cover them from the worst of the cold.
Then he’d seen the smoke ahead and hurried their horses
through a long draw and onto a plateau of the mountain where he found the cabin. He banged hard on the door, snow blowing so wildly it blurred his vision. Whitley let them in, at first grunting and pointing to the fire and to the pot hanging there full of deer stew. Later he talked, but with such volume that at first Travis cringed.
“I’m mighty glad for the company,” Whitley shouted.
Travis raised one finger in the air and said, “I can hear you just fine, you don’t have to yell.”
Whitley hunkered closer and frowned. “What?”
“I said I can hear you.”
“I don’t got good hearing,” he shouted. “It’s gotten me into a peck of trouble, I can tell you. You never know how much you use your ears when you’re hunting until you don’t hear so good no more.”
Travis nodded, understanding now why the old man shouted. He couldn’t hear himself so he had no idea how to regulate the volume of his voice. Deaf and the nearly deaf seemed to either speak too softly or too loudly.
The blizzard lasted two days and dropped almost a foot of snow. Travis helped Whitley gather firewood and cook the meals. He spent one afternoon washing their clothes while Rose sat near the fire wrapped in a blanket.
“What’s the matter with your woman?” Whitley asked early on the first day.
“She’s…she was taken by an Indian for four days. She hasn’t spoken since.”
“Why that’s a damn shame! No telling what he done to her. I hope you killed the bastard.”
“I tried. I shot him, but he got away in the rocks somewhere. I’m pretty sure he died.”
“Well, I know what’s wrong with your woman’s sick-making in the mornings, anyway,” Whitley said.
“You do? Is it the flu? She hasn’t had fever. I was afraid she’d…caught something.” He didn’t want to mention disease or plague. That might frighten the old man and get them put out into the snow.
Whitley laughed like a braying donkey. “Tell you what she’s caught with, boy. You never been around women who are caught with a baby?”
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