Wilderness Double Edition #8

by David Robbins

  A shriek for his parents was on Zach’s lips when he spied a dark four-legged shape moving rapidly through the forest on a bearing that would take the animal past the camp, not into it. He started to cock his rifle anyway, in case it should swerve toward him. The next second he distinguished the general outline of the creature and identified it as a harmless elk, a bull from the size of the thing.

  Relaxing, Zach frowned, upset by his display of fear, and lowered his rifle. He must keep a tighter rein on his imagination, he told himself, or he would never grow up to be a noted warrior like his father. And above all else, that was his goal in life. The name of Grizzly Killer was known far and wide, highly regarded by many and feared by some. It was rumored that even the dreaded Blackfeet, the most powerful tribe west of the Mississippi, regarded Grizzly Killer as a worthy enemy, and every warrior in the nation was eager to be the one to add Grizzly Killer’s hair to his collection of scalps.

  Turning, Zach watched his folks as they slept. He was thankful for having two such wonderful parents to help guide him through life, and he longed to show them his gratitude for the love and care they had bestowed on him by one day becoming a man they would be proud of. There would come a time, he promised himself, when the name of Stalking Coyote would be as widely respected as that of Grizzly Killer, when he would be a credit not only to his folks but to the Shoshone tribe as well. They would talk of the many coups he counted for years to come.

  Another twig snapped in the woods, prompting Zach to idly pivot on his heel. He saw the horses were all upright, gazing nervously after the departing elk. To calm them and keep them from waking his parents, he headed over, and he was almost there when he realized that he was wrong. The horses weren’t, in fact, staring at the elk; they were looking at something much nearer, at the edge of the pines.

  Puzzled, Zach halted and tried to see what they were seeing. There were trees and bushes and clumps of weeds, but nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe they imagined that they saw something, he reflected, just as he had earlier. Chuckling at their stupidity, he advanced a few more yards.

  Movement registered in the corner of Zach’s eye. Stopping again, he swung toward the wall of murky vegetation, seeking the source. But he saw the same scene as before. Not so much as a leaf or pine needle had changed position.

  Further mystified, Zach took a step, then, racked by uncertainty and not wanting to be caught unawares should there actually be a menace prowling nearby, angled toward the woods. There was a boulder in his path, which he had started to swing around when one of the horses whinnied. Zach glanced back, put a finger to his lips, and said softly, “Shhhhhhhh! you dunderhead.”

  Facing forward, Zach abruptly drew up in mid-stride. The boulder had moved while his attention was distracted, had uncoiled and risen from the ground, assuming the proportions of a muscular brave who even as Zach set eyes on him leaped at Zach and seized hold of the rifle.

  Instinctively Zach held fast. He tried to shout for help, to alert his parents, but his vocal chords refused to cooperate. It was as if they were frozen solid. The warrior’s fist leaped at his face and he narrowly evaded the blow. Hauling rearward, he tried to tear his rifle loose, but the warrior was far stronger. He felt the gun slipping from his grasp, and it was fear of losing his rifle more than anything else that spurred him to tilt back his head and bellow, “Pa! Ma!”

  ~*~

  Winona came out of a sound sleep with all her senses fully primed, a feat Shoshone girls learned to do at a very early age if they hoped to avoid capture during one of the many raids made by enemy tribes. She was rising, her rifle in her hands, before the sound of her son’s shout had died away. With one look she comprehended the danger and dashed to Stalking Coyote’s aid.

  Someone else was a shade faster. Winona saw her husband charge, saw the pistol in Nate’s hand. But the Ute saw it too, and he suddenly gave Zach a shove that sent the boy crashing into Nate. Both went down. Nimbly as a bobcat, the Ute whirled and dashed into the forest, covering the ground in prodigious bounds.

  Winona took swift aim. She had the hammer back, her finger on the trigger, when the warrior made a sharp turn and vanished in the shelter of some pines. Upset at his escape, she vented her husband’s favorite oath: “Damn!”

  Nate had disentangled himself from Zach and stood glaring into the darkness. “I should go after him,” he said.

  “With one of your arms almost no use at all?” Winona responded. Although she never admitted as much to him, she often worried that his impetuous nature would one day be the cause of his death. “And remember,” she prudently added. “There are two of them. You would be outnumbered.”

  “I know, but I hate to let him get away knowing full well he’ll try again the first chance he gets,” Nate said.

  Zach was straightening, his features crestfallen. “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “He surprised me. I didn’t see him until it was too late.”

  Winona stepped to his side and put a hand on his head. “Are you hurt?” she asked in Shoshone.

  “Just my pride.”

  “You did well. None of us were harmed.”

  “I should have done better. A true warrior wouldn’t have let himself be tricked like I was.”

  “All warriors are boys first, and boys learn from their mistakes,” Winona reminded him. She stepped over to her husband, who was intently studying the woodland. “Do you think he is gone?”

  “For now.” Nate let down the hammer on his pistol and slid the flintlock under his belt. “We’re lucky it was just the one and not both or they might have slit Zach’s throat before we could be of any help.” He paused, his brow furrowed. “One of them, most likely the warrior I shot, must be bad hurt.”

  Zach joined them. “But why didn’t the one who jumped me just kill me right off? He could have put an arrow into me with no trouble at all.”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Nate said, “unless they have some crazy notion of taking Winona and you captive so they can show you off to the other Utes when they get back.”

  “All he seemed interested in was my rifle,” Zach commented.

  “There is the explanation,” Winona said. “He was hiding nearby spying on us, and when he saw you on guard all alone he figured he could take your gun right out of your hands.”

  “That makes sense, Ma,” Zach said. “The coup would count more that way.”

  “Yes, it would,” Winona confirmed, pleased he understood. The counting of coup was widespread among practically all the Western tribes. It was a means of gauging manhood, of determining who was qualified to bear the title of warrior. In effect, men attained higher standing by earning more and more coups. Among the Shoshones, the Crows, and others, any man who had not counted coup by his twentieth winter was made to work with the women and denied the right to sit at council. Small wonder, then, that the braves competed so fiercely to outdo themselves in warfare.

  Coup honors were graded according to the deed. Among all Indians, a higher coup was accorded to those who struck enemies with their bare hands or with a coup stick or lance. It took little bravery to slay a foe from afar with a bow or rifle, but great courage to rush up to an armed adversary and engage him at close quarters.

  Some tribes allowed a coup to be earned for the stealing of horses and guns. The latter, especially, were highly prized since they were so hard to obtain. So Winona could readily see why the Ute had tried to wrest the rifle from her son by brute force rather than kill the boy and take it, and she gave thanks to the Great Mystery that the warrior had let his craving for recognition get the better of his judgment.

  Nate, evidently certain the threat had passed, scrutinized Zach from head to toe. “Are you up to standing watch a while longer? If you’re rattled one of us can take over for you.”

  “I’m Stalking Coyote,” the boy said indignantly. “I do not get rattled just because a mangy Ute shows his face. You and Ma can go back to sleep, and I’ll wake her like we agreed when it’s time.”

&
nbsp; “As you wish,” Nate said.

  Winona suppressed a grin when he winked at her. Arms linked, they strolled back to the fire and sat down on their respective blankets. “I am so proud of him,” she confided.

  “Me too,” Nate said, “but I’m keeping one eye open until it’s your turn. I wouldn’t put it past that dam Ute to slink on back here.”

  “Then there will be two eyes on him,” Winona confided. She leaned down to check on Evelyn, who was snug in her cradleboard and fast asleep. “I am amazed sometimes at the noise our daughter sleeps through.”

  “Maybe she’s hard of hearing,” Nate said. “We should test her and find out. Remind me tomorrow and I’ll fire off a pistol next to her ear to see how she reacts.”

  “You do, and I will fire one into your foot to see how you react.”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I know, dearest,” Winona said sweetly, lying down with her arm draped over their daughter. “But would it not work just as well if we whispered in her ears? If she hears us, she will show it.”

  “I suppose,” Nate said. “But it would be a lot easier to tell with a gunshot.”

  “Did you hear that, Blue Flower?” she asked the child. “You should be very grateful you have me for a mother.”

  ~*~

  Nate snorted as he made himself comfortable on his back. He put one arm under his head and the other across his forehead, just above his eyes, which spared them from the glare of the firelight and at the same time permitted him to peek out at Zach without being detected.

  The incident had left Nate greatly disturbed. Proud as he was of his son, he was scared to his core of losing the boy. Many times had he reflected that the possibility of losing a child was one of the worst fears a parent entertained, even more so than the death of a mate. The reason was simple. Children were undeniably precious. All parents expected to pass on sooner or later and had learned to live with the likelihood, but when the same parents regarded their own children, who were so young and innocent and bubbling with vitality, they quite naturally wanted their offspring to live on indefinitely.

  Adding to Nate’s agitation was the Ute’s attempt to steal the gun. He thought Winona’s idea about the warrior trying to earn greater coup was valid, but at the same time he was amazed the Ute had taken such a blatant risk and in the process alerted them to his presence. He couldn’t shake the nagging feeling there must be more to it, that the Ute had an ulterior motive for what he had done. But what could it be?

  Like a bolt of lightning illuminating the heavens, insight flared in Nate’s mind and he jerked up, his gaze roving over the saddles, the packs, and the horses. The first thing he noticed was that one of the parfleches had disappeared, a bag containing part of their supply of food. The second thing was more critical; one of the horses was missing.

  “Wagh!” Nate exploded, showing his rage Indian fashion. While there were no Indian curse words—leading some misguided souls back in the States to mistakenly believe that Indians were more noble than whites—the Indian had a colorful and effective manner of expressing anger or displeasure. As in all else Indians did, they imitated the animal world. Warriors, when aroused, gave vent to the same sort of sound a riled grizzly made, a rumbling grunt-snarl that adequately expressed their feelings just as Nate’s cry now expressed his at finding he had been duped.

  Leaping up, Nate ran to where the animals were tethered. He wanted to smack himself in the head with his own tomahawk for not noticing sooner, for not seeing that the attempt to steal the gun had been a diversion so the other brave could sneak into the camp unnoticed. The missing horse was one of the pack animals, a reliable pinto he had obtained from the Flatheads a while back. Which figured. Indians were more partial to pintos than any other kind of horse, except for the Nez Perce, who were fond of their special Palouse breed.

  Winona and Zach had raced over.

  “It’s all my fault,” the boy said sadly.

  “Nonsense,” Nate said. “No one is to blame. They skunked us, plain and simple. Be glad they didn’t take them all.” He gave the black stallion a pat. “Maybe the warrior tried, and Midnight here came close to bashing his head in.”

  “Is anything else missing?” Winona asked, looking at their possessions.

  “The parfleche with our jerky in it,” Nate revealed.

  “Why the dickens would they take that?” Zach questioned.

  “Either they haven’t had time to do much hunting on their own,” Nate speculated without conviction, “or they just want to make it harder on us to get where we’re going.”

  “But stealing the jerky won’t bother us much. We can live off the land as we go along,” Zach said. “They must know that.”

  “You’d think so,” Nate allowed. He went to each of the horses and verified none of the other tethers had been tampered with. Unlike many of his fellow trappers, who secured their animals at night to a single rope, Nate took the time to pound wooden stakes into the ground and tie each horse separately. A single rope, in his estimation, made it ridiculously easy for anyone to come along and steal stock with a single slice of a knife. By using the tactic he did, he made it more difficult for would-be horse thieves by forcing them to cut through a rope for each and every animal, which took longer and increased the odds of being found out.

  “This is all becoming very strange,” Winona commented. “These Utes are not acting like Utes should.”

  “What could they be up to?” Zach asked.

  “Who can say?” Nate replied. “But something tells me we’ll find out sooner or later, and we won’t like it one bit when we do.”

  Chapter Six

  The village of Chief Broken Paw was situated in a picturesque valley between the diverging forks of a bubbling stream. There were 356 lodges in all, arranged in traditional order, covering acres and acres of ground. Among them played carefree children, many of the girls using dolls crafted by their mothers or grandmothers, while the boys ran around with small bows or lances imitating the valiant deeds they would one day perform as grown men. Dogs were plentiful, and they were owned not merely as pets, but as beasts of burden when the village was on the move and as sentries at other times. They served an added purpose when the hunting of game produced meager results; they were plunked into pots of boiling water and afterward eaten with relish, dog meat being considered a delightful delicacy.

  Most numerous of all in the village were women since they outnumbered the men by a two-to-one margin. There were scores upon scores of them, busily curing hides or mending or making clothes or cooking or engaged in a variety of other tasks. And unlike some of their white sisters, who viewed all work related to the home as menial and beneath their dignity, the Shoshone women took great pride in being able to accomplish their work as expertly as possible. They knew that a well-maintained lodge was essential to the happiness of their families; they knew that their work was every bit as important as that of the men. The women even had their own societies in which they advanced according to their competence as lodge keepers.

  Since the men reserved their energies for hunting and war, during quiet times they sat around repairing or making weapons, gambling, relating accounts of coups earned, or, one of the favorite pastimes, discussing the affairs of their nation and others.

  Seated in one of the largest lodges in the camp, in the position of honor to the left of the owner, was Nate King, his legs crossed in front of him. He had just taken his turn at the pipe offered by Broken Paw, and now he solemnly regarded the renowned chief and the four other elders who were waiting to hear his words.

  “I thank you for honoring me by agreeing to this meeting,” Nate said in barely accented Shoshone. He had mastered the musical tongue well, although nowhere near as well as his wife had mastered English. “The words I have to speak are important not only for the people of Broken Paw, but for all Shoshones.”

  “You have us very curious,” the venerable chief responded. He was an older warrior who had counted over
forty coups in his lifetime. Beyond him hung over a dozen scalps, trophies of his prowess. “I was very surprised when I was told you had arrived in camp since you never pay us a visit so early in the season. I knew you must have a good reason.”

  “And you are right,” Nate said, choosing his words carefully, “proving the wisdom of Broken Paw is as great as everyone says.” He paused. “I am here to ask you to consider a proposal I am about to make, and if in your wisdom you agree, then perhaps you will see fit to go with me to Pah da-hewak um da to help convince him to see things our way.” Nate waited for a response to gauge Broken Paw’s allegiance to the high chief Mighty Thunder in Sky.

  “This must be a grave matter indeed,” Broken Paw said, “for you to make such a request. If I accept what you say, I will do all I can to help you. And Mighty Thunder in Sky will do the same. His heart is as big as a mountain, and all he cares about is the welfare of our people.”

  There were murmurs of assent from the other elders. One, Lame Elk, commented, “Mighty Thunder in Sky is a better man than that hotheaded brother of his, Dog with Horns. He always goes around spitting fire.”

  Nate grinned at the colorful description of Moh woom hah. He had never met the man personally, but all the stories he had been told corroborated Lame Elk.

  “Give us your words, Grizzly Killer,” Broken Paw urged.

  So Nate did. In painstaking detail he related the visit to his cabin by Two Owls and their long talk. He even told about the attempts on the life of the Ute chief and himself. Finally, he concluded, “As an adopted Shoshone, I take great pride in my new people. I know the way of the warrior, and how we live to count coup. But there are times, such as now, when warriors must put the good of everyone above their hunger for glory. Bow Valley is special to the Shoshones. For many generations our people have gone there to make bows and commune with the Great Mystery. Is it not fitting that we be free to do so again? I believe we should accept the Ute offer and try to set up a truce.” He gave a slight shrug. “If the truce cannot be worked out, it will be through no fault of ours. And then we will show the Utes why the Shoshones are considered the bravest fighters in the mountains.”