Replacing the mirror on the small chest by the window, she chided herself for indulging in self-pity and turned back to the stew she was making for supper. Slim Wooten had brought her a shoulder of deer that morning, as he often did, and as warm as it had been in the valley, she didn’t want the meat to sit too long before she cooked it. It was handy having Buck Ransom and Slim Wooten close by. Buck had built a small cabin just north of them—little more than a shed actually, with one room. Her father had helped him build it, and Buck, in turn, had helped her father build their two-room cabin. By comparison even to Buck’s humble dwelling, Slim had fashioned little more than a lean-to for himself. He was a few years older than Buck, and while both of the old trappers still talked about the mountains, Jamie suspected their wild days were long past.
It’s a pretty little valley, she thought as she gazed out the window at her father struggling to break some new ground beyond his garden patch. There was still a lot of the summer left, and he wanted to see if he could get in a crop of fall beans before it got too late to plant. Jordan Thrash was a hardworking man, and he had done well by them, even if he wasn’t much of a hunter. Buck and Slim supplied them with all the meat they needed, anyway, and Jordan repaid them with vegetables from the garden.
Promise Valley—Reverend Longstreet had named it that because of the prosperity it promised for all those souls who had survived the long trek from the East. He saw a great future for the modest community, built on both sides of the river. He was already talking about building a church next summer. Jamie would be satisfied just to acquire some chickens and maybe a cow. Longstreet had promised that they would soon come, along with a general store, and a blacksmith shop. Maybe enough to entice Trace McCall to settle down, she thought. Dammit, there I go again.
She picked up the bucket from the corner of the table and started toward the largest of two springs that fed into the river just below the cabin. The Tyler brothers had promised to come and help her father dig a well out back next week. She was looking forward to having a well, even though for a few days while the well was being dug, it would mean having Bradley Tyler looking moon-eyed at her. Bradley, a rail-thin, hawk-nosed bachelor, had made the trip out here with his twin brother, Bentley, and his family. Mrs. Tyler had hinted on several occasions that her brother-in-law was looking for a wife, a thought that usually made Jamie’s skin crawl. Bradley Tyler was forty years old if he was a day. Jamie smiled as she thought about a comment Buck Ransom had made when he didn’t know he was being overheard. He had joked to her father that it probably took both of those bony little Tyler twins to satisfy a woman as big as Bentley’s wife, Rosemary.
She knelt down beside the spring and watched as the water bubbling out of the small opening in the ground slowly filled the wooden bucket. Their little valley was alive with color, which Jamie paused to appreciate. Much of the bottomland was already cultivated, but there was enough yet untouched to cast a green carpet that was sprinkled with thousands of bright summer flowers, spreading up the hillsides to the darker green of the fir trees.
She stood up and breathed in deep gulps of the gentle breeze flowing down through the valley. From where she stood, she could see Reverend Longstreet’s log house across the river. Looking north, she could just see the front corner of the Bowens’ place. It was a lovely little valley. Turning her gaze back toward the south, she looked at the undisturbed portion of the valley. Reverend Longstreet said that it wouldn’t be long before folks would be coming to claim that land. Giving in to the temptation to stick a toe in the river, she put her bucket down and walked down to the water’s edge.
Pulling her skirt up to her knees to keep it out of the mud, she started to step down from the low bank when she glanced down into the painted face of an Indian warrior, naked except for a breechclout. Stunned, Jamie stopped in her tracks, still holding her skirt, suspended in time for what seemed like minutes, his savage eyes locked on hers. Then, as if her nervous system was suddenly switched back on, she found her voice. Screaming, she turned and ran for the cabin. The warrior immediately sprang after her. On both sides of her, half-naked savages leaped out of the bushes and from behind trees, filling the air with terrifying war whoops and cutting off her escape. Turning away from the cabin, she tried to run toward the garden, but was overtaken in seconds. A hand grabbed her hair and almost yanked her off her feet. In the next instant she was snatched off the ground by powerful arms that held her helpless. She continued to scream until a hand was clamped roughly over her mouth, almost suffocating her. She tried to bite the hand and received a hard slap across her face in response. Still she struggled, but soon she was exhausted, and she knew there was nothing she could do to save herself. Her eyes wide with fright, she looked toward the lower end of the garden and saw her father running toward the cabin. Halfway through the garden, he suddenly stopped, seeing the overwhelming number of warriors swarming around his cabin. Jamie could see the terror in his eyes when he looked at her, helpless in the grasp of a naked brave. He looked back at a group of warriors destroying the inside of his cabin, then again at his daughter. “Run, Pa,” Jamie cried softly, knowing he was too far away to hear her. He turned and fled for his life, leaving his daughter and his burning cabin behind him.
* * *
Buck Ransom pushed his hat back on his head and scratched his scalp thoughtfully as he listened to Jordan Thrash’s recounting of the attack. Jordan was beside himself with grief, and though Buck was sympathetic with the slight man’s anguish, there was little he could offer to give the man hope.
“They just grabbed her up and carried her off,” Jordan wailed, tears welling in his eyes as he recalled the events of that terrible day a week before. “I did the best I could, Buck, but there was too many of ’em. I couldn’t do nothin’ to help my Jamie.”
Buck nodded his understanding. “Don’t reckon there was much you could do.” It appeared to Buck that Jordan was looking for forgiveness for letting his daughter be carried away by an Indian raiding party. He wasn’t in a position to judge, having been away from the valley when the Indians struck. Some folks would condemn a man for not giving his life in an attempt to save his own flesh and blood. Others would say it didn’t make any sense to sacrifice yourself if there was no hope of success. Buck knew that Jordan Thrash was a hardworking man, and tough. But he was sweat and toil tough. He was not a fighter. Buck formed a mental picture of the Indian raid and how terrifying it must have been for poor Jamie. He wondered where Jordan had hidden while the abduction took place. Every man’s got to live with himself, he thought, then quickly turned his attention away from the woeful little man.
“How many more got hit?” He asked the question of Reverend Longstreet.
“Just Jordan here, and the Tyler brothers’ place upriver.” In answer to the question on Buck’s face, Longstreet answered, “Both men and Rosemary murdered. The little girl, Polly, ain’t been found yet—we reckoned the Indians must have stole her.”
Buck shook his head solemnly. “Dang. That shore is a shame. They was nice folks, too.” He pictured little Polly—eight, maybe nine years old and bright as a new dollar. “What bunch was it? Anybody know?” He looked at Jordan, who shook his head sadly in reply.
“Slim Wooten said from the way Jordan described them, he thought they were Kutenai,” Longstreet said.
Buck cocked his head and looked back at Jordan. “You got a look at ’em?”
“From a distance,” Jordan answered weakly.
Buck fixed his gaze upon the mournful little man for a long moment before turning back to Longstreet. “Where’s Slim?” He didn’t like the picture that was rapidly forming in his mind. Of all the little group of settlers in the valley, he figured Slim Wooten might have had the gumption to form a posse and go after the raiders.
“He went to find Trace McCall,” Longstreet answered. “You were gone, and nobody else knows the mountains but you and Slim. He said he needed help to track them savages. You know, Slim ain’t so young anymore.�
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This surprised Buck. Nobody had even seen Trace for almost a year. Buck himself had begun to wonder if his young friend might have gone under. It was a dangerous life Trace had chosen, living alone in the mountains, especially during these times when many Indian tribes were in a warring mood.
“How’d Slim know where to look for Trace?”
“Feller came through a couple of weeks back—said he camped one night with Trace above Three Forks, on the Missouri. So Slim set out that way, hoping to cut Trace’s trail.”
Buck scratched his chin while he considered what Longstreet said. “Three Forks, huh?” He speculated Trace McCall’s probable whereabouts after passing through that territory. Knowing something of Trace’s habits, he said with confidence, “Well, I guarantee you he ain’t there now. He won’t stay in one place for more’n a day or two until he holes up for the winter.”
“I guess we should have formed a posse and gone after that raiding party, but we couldn’t leave our own women and children unprotected,” Longstreet said.
“Reckon not,” Buck answered. He didn’t say more about that suggestion, but he was thinking that if they had formed a posse from the farmers of Promise, they most likely would have gotten lost once they left the valley.
Just as he was reluctant to judge Jordan Thrash for not having the courage to stand and fight a Kutenai war party, Buck also could not question Slim Wooten’s decision to go in search of Trace McCall, even though it meant losing a lot of time to a raiding party that already had a sizable head start. Slim knew the mountains as well as Buck did, but he was a couple of years older than Buck, and Buck was well aware of the toll that age takes on a man, especially in Indian territory. Although he would never admit it, he was painfully cognizant of the fact that his days of scouting were rapidly nearing an end—and it had happened so suddenly. He could still lead a party of immigrants up from Grand Island, up the Platte, over South Pass, and along the Oregon Trail. That trail was so familiar and well traveled by now, that he could follow it blindfolded. But to track a Kutenai war party through the mountains? Slim was right, you needed a younger pair of eyes for that. And there was no better man for the job than Trace McCall, the man the Indians called Mountain Hawk. Finding him, however, would be the problem.
Suddenly aware that Longstreet and Thrash were gazing steadily at him, awaiting his advice, Buck reluctantly confessed. “Slim’s right, he’s too dang old to follow sign that’s a week old—and so am I.” He shifted his gaze to fix on Jordan Thrash. “I’m sorry to have to say it, but I don’t hold much hope for finding them girls after all this time.” When he saw the painful reaction to his statement in Jordan’s eyes, he quickly added, “But if there’s any man who can find ’em, it’d be Trace McCall.” Glancing back at Longstreet, he said, “The thing I’d like an answer to right now is, where the hell is Slim Wooten? If Trace was on the Missouri, he should have found him by now.”
“We can’t just give up on it,” Jordan wailed. “It’s my daughter, Buck.”
“No . . . and we ain’t,” Buck quickly responded. “I’ll go look for Trace, myself. I know a lot of spots we used to camp when we was trappin’. Maybe I’ll run into Slim, too. I’ll start out first thing in the morning.”
* * *
Slim Wooten had gotten careless. He should have known better. He had ridden these mountains since the summer of ’29, and he had survived to the ripe old age of sixty-two simply because he’d always kept his nose to the wind and his eyes peeled for Injuns. There weren’t many who lasted as long in the mountains as Slim had before the odds went against them. He had made it through more scrapes with hostiles than he could remember. But this time he was thinking that his number had finally been called. He’d made a bad mistake, and he was afraid he was going to have to pay for it with his life.
If he had kept to the ridges and worked his way along the hills to the west and north, he most likely would never have been spotted. But he had let himself get in a hurry, spurred on by the urgent nature of his mission and the knowledge that he had already taken too long to find Trace McCall. Desperate to save time, he had cut across the wide flat that led to the river. And like a damn greenhorn, he had been caught in the open. He had no choice now but to ride like hell and hope his horse was up to it.
They were Blackfoot. He was sure of that. A war party, out looking to raid the Crows maybe, and by pure coincidence—and his bad luck—they had flushed him out alone. He had already started across the flats when the war party emerged from a low draw to the south. Too late to avoid being seen, he at first continued along at a fast walk, hoping the Blackfeet would have no interest in him, though he knew better. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Arapahos had been on the warpath all summer. They were getting testy, what with the ever-increasing numbers of white settlers passing through their territory on their way to the Oregon and California territories—and the Blackfeet were always at war with damn near everybody. He was praying that since he was obviously not a settler, this bunch might pass him by and continue on to wherever they were heading.
In years past, Slim had been on quite friendly terms with the Sioux and the Cheyenne, even traded with them as recently as last fall. But this summer had brought an entirely different atmosphere for white men in this part of the territory. A year ago he might have ridden over to greet them, even if they were Blackfeet, swap a few polite greetings, maybe trade for a little tobacco or coffee. But not this year. This year he was just one more unwanted white man trespassing on their hunting grounds.
He looked back in their direction. They had veered from their original path and were now riding on a line to intercept him. He kicked his horse into a faster pace, almost a trot, and set a course for a long string of cottonwoods lining the river. He thought that if he could reach the safety of the riverbanks, he might be able to discourage them with his rifle. He looked back again to see the war party loping along now, steadily increasing their pace. Glancing back at the trees, he judged them too far away for him to hold to his present speed. Knowing that it was always unwise to show fear in the presence of a party of Indians, he had hoped to keep to a seemingly casual pace. But the war party was rapidly closing the distance between them. So much for bluffing, he thought. Time to run for it.
As soon as he broke for the river, he heard the whoops and yells behind him. He didn’t have to look back to know that the war party was in full gallop after him. Lying low on his horse’s neck and holding his packhorse’s lead line, he begged for all the speed the beast could give him. It didn’t take long to see that it wasn’t going to be enough. The Blackfeet were rapidly overtaking him on their swift little ponies. He could hear the wild shrieks and taunts above the thundering of his horses’ hooves as he rode hell-bent for leather across the rough prairie. An arrow landed with a smothered thump and embedded itself in his bedroll behind the saddle. He kicked his horse hard, but the already tiring animal was doing the best he could, and losing ground to the Indian ponies with every stride.
Desperate now, Slim dropped the lead rope and let his packhorse go, hoping the Blackfeet would break off the chase to go after it. No such luck. Two of the warriors veered off to chase the packhorse, but the rest, a dozen or more, never hesitated in their pursuit, their taunts and jeering yelps filling the dusty air around him. His horse was beginning to stumble with weariness. Still, Slim kicked his heels frantically, demanding more speed as an arrow whistled by him, followed by several more as the warriors closed the gap between them. In the next moment an arrow found its mark in the horse’s flank, causing the crazed animal to kick and break his stride. Slim almost came out of the saddle as the wounded animal bucked and stumbled and came close to going down before regaining his footing. In that brief span of time, the pursuing warriors were able to close to within twenty yards.
At close range now, the Blackfeet filled the air with arrows. Slim tried to stay low on his horse’s neck, but he could not avoid the hailstorm of arrows that swirled about him. He was no more than fi
fty yards from the banks of the river when the first arrow struck him in his lower back. It was like a solid blow from a man’s fist, and he grunted as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. Although he could feel the burn of the arrowhead as it lay embedded deep in the muscles of his back, he did not let up on his frantic spurring of his exhausted horse, battering the poor animal’s sides with his heels.
A second arrow struck his shoulder, causing him to curse aloud in pain. Still, he managed to pull the pistol from his belt and turn to fire at the warrior closest behind him. He spat out another oath as the startled warrior doubled up and rolled off his horse’s back. A third arrow and then a fourth slammed into Slim’s back and his thigh, but he remained in the saddle, refusing to go down. Still driving his stumbling horse toward the river, he was aware of a numb feeling beginning to creep over his entire body. All around him the river basin was filled with the angry shrieks of his enemies as he continued to feel the blows of arrows—too many to count now—stabbing at his body. The bright morning sun seemed to fade, although there were no clouds to block it, and his vision became blurred and strained.
Suddenly the ground before him seemed to roll as if the earth had suffered an upheaval. The last thing he remembered before he was suspended in midair was his hand gripping his rifle as his horse went out from under him. He landed hard, breaking the arrow shafts in his back, driving one of them deeper into his lungs. The sound he heard was his own scream of agony, followed by the discharge of his rifle. His impact with the ground had caused him to squeeze the trigger and send a rifle ball whistling harmlessly into the air.
“Damn,” he swore, when his head cleared enough to realize that he had wasted the shot. He knew he was finished, but he fully intended to take one or more of the screaming devils with him. He fumbled with his powder horn, trying to reload for at least one good shot. But his fingers were stiff and numb, refusing to cooperate, and try as he might, he was unable to pour a measure of powder in the barrel. Letting his rifle fall, he pulled his long Green River knife from his belt and held it under his leg where it could not be seen by his assassins. He lay back and waited, the arrow in his back like a burning-hot iron, as big as a tree limb. It sent a lightning stab of pain through his body whenever he moved.
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