by Ron Schwab
She-Bear had risen with the sun and replenished the fire and was now roasting what remained of a rabbit she had killed yesterday. Skye had tried to get up with her but dizziness and vertigo struck and plopped her back down on the robe. Ethan woke up and lifted himself from the ground. He seemed unperturbed by his rocky mattress, but she supposed he had endured such accommodations many times during his years as an Army Scout. He cast a look her way, apparently checking her condition. Then he walked away from their nest, she suspected to relieve himself.
When he returned, he moved toward the robe and stood above her. "I wish I could say you looked better, but the sunlight doesn't help. How do you feel?"
"Thank you for the compliment. You have looked better yourself. A shave and a bath might help, but I'm not certain. As to how I feel, I guess better than one might expect after being nearly clubbed to death. But outside of an unrelenting headache, dizziness is my main issue. I can't seem to stand up without falling over. I'm sure that will pass."
"Well, we can't stay here. We need to leave this morning. Everybody is going to wonder what happened to me. I'd like to be at camp by mid-afternoon."
"Who is 'everybody'?"
"That would be my cowhand, Jeb Oaks, my small friend, Running Fox, and Badger Claw. At some point, One Ball McLarty will turn up."
"You make no sense. Running Fox, Badger Claw, and someone named One Ball? This is a rescue party?"
"Best I could come up with. I've told She-Bear the story. She can fill you in." He turned away and approached the fire.
She-Bear had finished roasting the rabbit and cut off a hind quarter and some ribs and handed it to him, and the remainder she took to the robe and sat down next to Skye and began parceling out the rest of the meat. Ethan stood next to the fire and chewed the meat off the bones, depositing the remnants in the fire as he cleaned the meat off.
Skye thought he looked rather uncouth as he stood there gnawing on the bones, but then she considered they were not dining in a fancy hotel ballroom. She admitted she was annoyed with the man this morning. She was angry because he had hit her with the rifle barrel, although she knew her reaction was irrational. She guessed most folks being charged by someone brandishing a skinning knife would not sit still and wait for the blade to start carving. But then he had just walked into the nest and taken charge and slept late to boot. She could not resist needling him. "The Puma has become lazy it appears, sleeping in his den while the woman gets up and cares for the fire and prepares breakfast. Someone could have murdered us all while we slept."
He gave her a look that indicated she had struck a raw spot. "I would have heard if a stranger approached. I can sense those things."
"Well, don't think we are going to become slaves for the camp chores and cooking when we join your little party."
"That's the furthest thought from my mind. But don't expect to be treated like a queen, either. Frankly, I don't know what we're going to do with you. She-Bear said the other women were alive when you escaped."
"Yes. They were afraid to come with us."
"Then we've got to try to help them. I'll probably send the two of you back to my ranch with Running Fox and Badger Claw, and Jeb and I will connect up with McLarty and continue tracking that bunch."
His words infuriated her. "You are not sending us anyplace, mister. We're going with you, and you had better get used to that idea right now."
"You'll just hold us up. You're in no condition to be chasing after a gang of killers."
"Allow me a day, and I will be ready to walk or ride. As for the killers, I think we have already shown we can do our part. We have taken down two more barbarians than your so-called rescuers have killed so far . . . and we escaped without any help from you. The only things I have received from you is a knot on my head and a closed eye."
Ethan said nothing and began kicking dirt and rocks in the fire pit. He picked up the canteen and headed to the stream to fill it. She-Bear stood and began gathering up their weapons before she returned to the robe. "You and the Puma are like mountain cats in breeding season," she remarked, "you have to fight and fuss before you mate."
"That is a terrible thing to say."
She-Bear ignored her reply and helped Skye off the robe, leading her to the stone wall of the escarpment where she could lean and try to get her bearings. Skye watched while She-Bear rolled the buffalo robe into a tight bundle, but the dizziness returned, and she found herself slipping down the side of the stone wall and landing on her butt. Ethan returned with the canteen and walked over to her, his face grim. "You're not going to be able to walk back."
"If you can allow me another day, I am certain I will be fine."
"I can't do that. We've got a few medical supplies in my saddle bags at camp, and, with all due respect, your face needs some work."
"I guess you can shoot me and leave me for the vultures," she said sarcastically.
"Not this time." He turned to She-Bear. "Can you carry all the guns and gear?"
"Yes, I can do that."
"I'm going to help Skye down the mountain slope, and when we get to level ground, I'll carry her. She can ride my back."
"You cannot do that," Skye said. "I would feel like a fool, and I am too much of a load."
"It doesn't matter how you feel right now, and you're light as a feather. I weigh twice what you do. We'll be fine." He reached down and grasped her hand and pulled her up, and supporting her with his arm wrapped around her waist, they stepped out from behind the escarpment and started down the steep incline. He half carried her part of the trek, and at other times, she slid on the loose rock. She refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing her complain, but she couldn't help wincing when a sharp stone gouged her from time to time.
Ethan commented wryly, "We'll need to apply some horse liniment to your sore fanny when we get to camp."
She did not appreciate his sense of humor. "You won't be getting within ten feet of my fanny once we get out of here."
When they finally reached level ground, they rested and passed the canteen back and forth. "Save half," Ethan admonished. "We'll be moving mostly in shade, and it's cool enough one more stop should be good before we get to camp."
Too soon, Ethan got up. He helped her off the ground again and let her stand a few minutes. "Can you walk?"
She was determined that she would and took off in the lead. After a dozen steps, her head began to spin, and she collapsed to her knees. Ethan moved in front of her and waited a few moments.
"She-Bear, you'll need to help get her on my back."
It was one of those moments that Skye was acutely aware of her missing lower arm. An extra hand would have made the climb relatively easy, but she had trouble latching onto a solid anchor. Finally she positioned herself with her legs locked around Ethan's waist and her good right arm latched around his neck and her other upper arm locked under his chin. Her face rested against the side of his head. Once settled in, she found she was not that uncomfortable, and she would never tell the man, but she decided it was rather pleasant to be nestled close to him like this. She felt the tension slipping from her body for the first time in weeks.
He walked at a steady pace on the trail Skye and She-Bear had first broken through the forest. They stopped at least three times to rest before sharing the remaining water. She could see that Ethan was tiring and she felt guilty that she was causing this burden. She had tried walking on her own for a spell after each halt and was encouraged that she held out longer each time, but she admitted she would never have made the trek on her own. As they travelled on what she hoped was the last leg of their journey, she thought about how to handle the matter of Quint's search for the gold. It suddenly struck her for the first time that her people had been killed, raped, and maimed because of the gold. The barbarians had been searching for her as a route to the gold. If she had not been in the village, her band would not have been attacked. This was a terrible burden, and she wondered how she would come to terms with the guilt. S
he clutched Ethan a little tighter.
She heard the roaring of the river tumbling over the rocks before she saw it, and she sighed with relief that the trip was nearly ended. When they came to the river bank, she released her grip on Ethan and slid off his back. He drew his Colt from its holster, raised the gun in the air and fired it three times. No more than fifteen minutes later, a tall, dark-complexioned man appeared on the other side of the river. He was soon joined by a boy she recognized as Running Fox, whom she remembered was Good Heart's son. He had been a pupil at the Quaker school for a brief time, and she had tutored him in English with a small group of other young children while she was at the village.
"Good to see you, Boss. Your young friend has been worried something fearsome. And I was getting a mite concerned about my pay."
"We need some help with the river. Skye is injured, and I don't think I can carry her and keep my balance in the current."
"I'll get my lariat. My rope should reach across this river. It's not exactly Texas-wide."
Jeb headed downstream and was gone in an instant, but Running Fox remained. "Puma," he called, "me afraid you not come back. Maybe bad people kill you."
"I am okay, and I found two of your friends. How is Badger Claw?"
"He be good. Jeb cut bullet from head. Much better now. Sleeps much."
Skye said, "You have something of a sorry crew, don't you?"
"I suppose you could say so. And we can't take much time to recuperate. We need to be on the trail in the morning, or we'll never catch up. I hope McLarty has located them."
"You don't need to fret about finding them."
"Why not?"
"I know where they're headed. I'm not sure how far it is, but they'll be stopping for a spell."
"How do you know?"
"Captain Quint as much as told me when he was demonstrating his quirt. It has something to do with gold. I will tell you about it later."
"I also know something about gold. I think we'd better share some information."
21
Ethan leaned against a fallen trunk at the edge of the clearing, his legs stretched out in front of him. He decided there wasn't a muscle in his body that didn't ache, and his back and shoulders felt like they had been squeezed with a giant vise. He vowed he would have more empathy for his horse in the future.
The river crossing had been uneventful. Jeb had tossed a rope across the river and they had anchored it to sturdy trees on both sides. She-Bear had crossed first, wading through the current and grasping the rope as she followed it hand over hand to the opposite side. Jeb seemed to be watching her with more than casual interest and had stepped into the water unnecessarily, Ethan thought, to pull her up to the bank. With Ethan's help, and the rope as a stabilizer, Skye had struggled across the river, clutching the rope with her single hand while he anchored her narrow waist with his arm and held on to the rope with his free hand. It had been a clumsy journey, but they were greeted at the end by an excited Running Fox who raced to Skye, hugged her warmly, and then shifted to Ethan and threw his arms about his waist.
Jeb had shot a deer during Ethan's absence and they all ate heartily of venison strips Jeb roasted over the fire with She-Bear's help. The feisty Sioux woman also brewed up a concoction of deer fat and some chopped roots she had gathered from the surrounding woods with which she greased Skye's wounds and then applied to Badger Claw's scalp as well. Badger Claw had sat sullenly at the fire and eaten his share of the venison. He responded to questions asked by Skye and She-Bear in Sioux, but his responses seemed abrupt and brief. Ethan noted that Running Fox was listening attentively to the conversations among his tribesmen, and, a bit guiltily, he figured the boy would pass on any information Ethan should know.
The sun was starting to disappear over the mountain peaks, and he realized it was time for some decisions. They could not camp here indefinitely. He had hoped One Ball McLarty would have returned by now, but they should head out tomorrow morning regardless. They would follow the Powder River Trail, and, hopefully, the mountain man would intercept them before they found trouble. But he needed to talk to Skye. She seemed to be avoiding him ever since their return to the camp. And, perhaps not. He had learned quickly after their first meeting that predictability was not a Skye dePaul trait.
He heard someone moving in behind him, and he tossed a look over his shoulder. It was Skye, grasping a crudely-chopped walking stick for balance, walking unsteadily toward him. She sat down on the log that he was reclining against, her back toward him, which he thought strange.
"Thank you," she said, "for carrying me all those miles. For coming for us. I am sorry I attacked you with the knife."
"I didn't give you a choice about my carrying you, and I made the choice to try and find you. You can't be faulted for coming at me. You had no way of knowing it was me. I'm sorry I hit you. Your eye's a mess."
"My whole face is a mess."
"Your face is beautiful."
"Don't say that," she snapped.
"You know how I feel about you. I've been sick with worry. At first, I thought you were dead. That idea was unbearable."
"Jeb and Running Fox told us what you did for our village. I am grateful for that, also. Now we must free Antelope and Prairie Flower. And we must kill those bastards, every one of them." She spoke softly and without emotion.
"We will leave tomorrow morning. We will find the young women." He was not certain they would be alive.
"I became a Quaker, you know, when I was teaching at the school. I was even baptized. But I have killed, and I will kill more. I am no longer a Quaker. I have returned to the religions of my people."
"Follow the trail that gives you comfort."
"No platitudes, please. They annoy me. You cannot understand the guilt I feel. My mother and so many of my people died because of me."
"That's ridiculous. These men did not have to kill and do the terrible things they did to all the others to take you. They chose to do that."
"It has to do with gold. You said you know something about gold."
He told her about the letter from her Cheyenne lawyer, and then he plucked her father's note from his coat pocket and handed it to her. She looked at the note and passed it back.
"That is consistent with what Captain Quint told me. He knows of this gold. As a matter of fact, he stole it from an escorted military wagon. I will tell you more later. My father acquired this gold from the Cheyenne. He did not steal it . . . at least not in the sense that he was involved in the attack on military escort. But he came to possess it. Quint thought I knew where to find it."
"And you don't?"
"I did not until now. We must find the old trading post, and then after we kill these barbarians, I will show you where I think the gold may be."
"Can you travel tomorrow?"
"Yes. I am much better. I can certainly ride a horse. I have practiced many hours since I lost my hand."
"I brought Razorback with me, if you think you can handle him."
"That is good. He is a fine animal and very gentle."
"Only for you. He will be glad to see you."
She got up and walked slowly away.
22
There was an uncomfortable chill in the air as the little caravan picked its way along a narrowing trail into the high country. Badger Claw, with a string of four ponies salvaged from his dead comrades, brought up the rear, and Skye, mounted on Razorback, rode in front of the Sioux warrior. Skye felt at home on the sorrel stallion she had ridden when she and Ethan journeyed to Lame Buffalo's village some months earlier. Ethan and everyone else who dealt with the big horse found him mean and untrustworthy, and he was kept at the Lazy R primarily for stud service for the small quarter horse herd Ethan was developing separately from his favored Appaloosas. She had argued with Ethan on more than one occasion about the relative merits of the breeds. She favored the shorter, thickly-muscled quarter horses that she considered far more practical as fast, rugged cow ponies. She told him he was
just enamored with the exotic color patterns of the generally black and white Appaloosas. Perhaps one day she would challenge Ethan and Patch to a race with her and Razorback.
She gathered that Razorback was a one-person horse, for he betrayed none of his alleged unpleasantness when she rode him, and he responded unbelievably to her neck-reining, which helped greatly with her single-handed grip on the reins. She would have to see if she could buy the horse from Ethan. It would not be feasible, anyway, for him to retain Razorback for more than another generation of colts without encountering inbreeding problems in the herd.
Running Fox rode in front of her. She remembered him as an exceptionally intelligent boy, and it saddened her greatly that he had been left an orphan. His attachment to Ethan was obvious. She noticed when she got up before sunrise that the boy was burrowed in his robe only a few feet from Ethan's bedroll. Ethan pretended to tolerate the boy, but she sensed a bond, and wondered what this portended when the inevitable time to separate came.
Jeb Oaks and his pack horse trailed Ethan with She-Bear not far behind. A smile crossed her lips. The feisty She-Bear and the towering, muscular black man had formed a team from the instant of their meeting. Jeb was obviously taken with the tall, lithe She-Bear, and the woman—girl actually—did nothing to discourage him. After her experiences with the raiders, Skye would have thought She-Bear would be wary of men, but she seemed unaffected. Skye and She-Bear, with some extra blankets taken from the pack horses, had shared their buffalo robe last night, but she suspected the girl might be sharing someone else's bedroll before the journey ended. Well, that was not her concern.