“About an hour.”
“Then we have the bastards!” Simon exclaimed. As an afterthought, he added, “How many of them are there, by the way?”
“I counted fourteen, but that’s not the worst of it.” Nate faced him.
The news was disheartening to Simon. Two against fourteen were bad odds. “What can possibly be worse?” he snorted.
“Your wife is in the clutches of slavers.”
Three
Slavers! The very word was enough to bring goosebumps to the flesh of every woman living in the mountains, red or white. They knew that if they were to fall into the hands of the coldhearted rogues, they would never see those they most cared for again.
No one knew exactly how many women had been stolen over the past decade or so. The total bandied about by the trapping community stood at seventy, or better.
It was widely known that the slavers had taken women from eight or nine different tribes as well as white settlers. There was an unconfirmed rumor that a few blacks, females and males, had also fallen prey. Some of the hapless victims were sold to Comanches, who paid extremely well for white wives. Others were sold south of the border to wealthy Mexicans. The blacks, according to the rumor, were carted to the deep South and handed over to certain unscrupulous plantation owners.
Only once had the slavers been caught in the act, and that by a tribe of Sioux who had harried them for scores of miles before the slavers finally released the four maidens they had kidnapped.
All the other times the slavers got clean away.
Nate had thought that merely mentioning them by name would give Ward some notion of what they were up against. But he had overlooked the younger man’s profound ignorance of frontier life.
“Slavers? Who are they? Are you telling me that they make slaves of the women they abduct?”
Motioning at a log that lay beside the charred remains of a camp fire, Nate straddled it and sat. “Have a seat, pilgrim. We need to palaver a spell and set you straight on a few things. It won’t do to get into a racket with this bunch with you not knowing the facts.”
Simon stayed right where he was, next to his bay. “We don’t have time for this nonsense, King! Every second we dawdle is another second my precious wife is in peril! I say that we ride out this very moment.”
Unfazed by the outburst, Nate tapped the log. “Sit, pronto. Unless you want me to fetch you over and plunk you down.” If the situation had not been so deadly serious for Mrs. Ward, he would have laughed at the comical pout her husband wore as Simon did as he wanted. Emotionally, the man was about as mature as his son, which was downright pitiful.
“Now, first things first,” Nate said after Simon was settled. “I don’t take it kindly of you to keep giving me a hard time. I don’t have to do this, you know. There’s nothing to keep me from turning right around and heading for the Shoshone village.”
“I thought that you claimed you live in a cabin,” Simon said sullenly. He did not like being treated as if he were next to worthless, and he still did not trust the mountain man completely.
“We do about ten months of the year,” Nate disclosed. “But in the summer my wife likes to spend a couple of moons with her kin. My wife and children are with them now. I was off elk hunting when I bumped into you.”
“Oh.”
“Now listen, and listen good.” Nate leaned forward. “Slavers are the foulest, meanest sons of bitches on two legs. They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way without a second thought. Do you understand? If you were to charge into their camp and demand to have your wife handed over, you’d be dead the moment after you got the words out of your mouth.” He paused. “Unless, of course, the slavers were in a frolicsome mood. Then they’d likely carve you up a bit to hear you scream before they rubbed you out.”
Simon figured that the frontiersman was exaggerating a little. He’d heard that mountain men were fond of spinning tall tales. “You make them sound as bad as heathen savages.”
“Indians aren’t savages,” Nate said stiffly. “But in one sense, you’re right. Slavers are worse than any Indian alive. I know, because at one time or another I’ve tangled with practically every kind of Indian there is, from Blackfeet to Bloods to Apaches.”
“If they’re so evil, why haven’t they been arrested and put in prison?”
Nate could not stifle a guffaw. “Who is going to arrest them, pilgrim? In case it hasn’t sunk in yet, there’s no law out here. None at all. Once a man leaves the States, he’s on his own.”
Simon realized that he had made a stupid remark, but he was so flustered by the nightmare that had beset his wife that his mind was clouded by anxiety. “So what do we do when we catch up with these cutthroats?”
"I'll get to that in a moment.” Nate stared off across the plain. He, too, was impatient to get under way, but he had to make Ward see the light. “First you have to learn who these slavers are. Some are renegade whites who are wanted back in the States, others are Mexicans wanted in their country, while still others are outcast Indians and breeds. They're no account any way you lay your sights. And each and every one of them has a string of kills to his credit.”
Simon shuddered. To think that his Felicity was in the clutches of such fiends! He wished now that he had never talked her into making the journey. He wished that he had left well enough alone and stayed in Boston where they belonged. What in the world had gotten into him?
“As for how well handle it,” Nate went on, “it depends on what we find when we overtake them. If all goes well, we’ll be able to rescue your missus without much of a fuss. If not—” He shrugged.
“What then?”
“Then we do what we have to. Now let’s light a shuck while we still have some daylight left. And hope to high heaven that the slavers make camp and don’t elect to keep on going through the night as they sometimes do when they suspect someone is dogging their heels.”
It did not dawn on Simon until they had been in the saddle fifteen minutes that the trapper had a point about being treated unkindly. It was wrong of him to still be suspicious. King was putting his life in jeopardy for two complete strangers. If the slavers were everything the trapper claimed, then King had to know that he might wind up dead before too long. It gave Simon considerable food for thought.
The tracks led them down out of the foothills and onto the prairie. Simon tried not to dwell on the fact that each passing minute took them farther from the packhorses and Felicity’s animal.
Presently twilight shrouded the landscape. Simon thought that maybe the mountain man would slow down, but King held to a steady trot.
The sunset was spectacular. Framed by the pristine peaks, the sky blazed red and orange and pink. Golden rays shot over the Rockies like shafts from heaven. Any other time, Simon would have been mesmerized. As it was, he looked, then looked away.
With nightfall rose a cool breeze. Simon would have given anything to be by a warm fire. To have his wife snuggled in his arms. He fantasized of doing just that, and so vivid was his fantasy that he didn’t notice Nate King had stopped. Suddenly the black stallion was right there in front of him.
“Dear God!” Simon cried. He wrenched on the reins so hard, he snapped the bay’s head around. It caused the horse to veer just enough to one side to miss the black stallion by a hand’s width. Simon let out the breath he had not known he was holding. He pretended not to notice that Nate King was glaring at him.
“Yell again a little louder, why don’t you, pilgrim? I don’t reckon the slavers heard you the first time.”
“We’ve caught up with them?” Simon asked, elation coursing through him at the prospect of soon being reunited with his wife.
“They’re yonder a little ways,” Nate said, nodding to the southeast. “We’ll leave the horses here and go on foot. Try not to make much noise if you can help it.”
The young Bostonian stared hard into the night but saw no sign of those they were after, not even the faint glow of a distant camp fire.
Figuring that the slavers had made a cold camp, he slipped from the saddle, waited for the trapper to lead off, and dogged the frontiersman’s footsteps.
On all sides, chest-high grass enclosed them. Nate King hunched low and glided forward, parting the stems with the barrel of his Hawken, his ears straining to hear more of the sounds he had heard a minute before. Other than a faint rustling of the grass, he made no noise at all.
Simon tried to do the same, but try as he might, he kept stepping on clumps that crackled underfoot. Or he would push against the grass in front of him a bit too hard and it would snap off. Once King glanced around. “Sorry,” Simon whispered. “I’m doing the best I can.”
Nate knew that. Which was why he did not find fault with the greenhorn, but went on, moving slowly in the belief that the slower they went, the less noise Ward was likely to make. It worked to some extent.
Simon was impatient to catch sight of his wife again. He expected to come on the slavers at any second. So when a minute went by, then two, then five, and more, he began to think that maybe the mountain man was wrong, that maybe they were chasing shadows. It angered him so much that he tapped King on the back and whispered testily, “Are you sure the slavers are camped nearby? If you ask me, were wasting our damn time.”
Nate stopped and turned. It galled him to have his judgment questioned by someone whose claim to sound judgment was almost laughable. Grabbing Ward by the front of his woolen shirt, Nate hoisted him erect and pointed. “Any more questions, mister?” he growled.
Fifty yards away were the dancing flames of a camp fire. Figures were seated around it. Others moved about in its vicinity.
Simon could hardly credit his own eyes. It stupefied him that the frontiersman had spotted the camp from so far off. And he was deeply ashamed for having doubted him. He nodded, and King let go. “What now?” he whispered.
“You stay put while I go have a look-see,” Nate said. He expected an argument and was pleased when Ward merely bobbed his chin. Bending low, Nate padded forward on cat’s feet. When he glimpsed the fire through the thick grass, he slowed to a snail’s pace.
That the slavers had seen fit to make a fire was encouraging. It meant they had no notion that someone was after them. They were bound to post guards, but not until most of the band had turned in.
Nate strained to hear snatches of conversation. A pair of men were talking in Spanish. While he had learned a little of the language down in New Mexico, he did not know it well enough to be able to understand what they were saying. Others were chatting in English, but he was not quite close enough to eavesdrop.
A dozen yards from the camp, Nate shifted his pistols. Usually he wore them wedged under his belt on either side of his big metal buckle. Now he slid them around to his hips so they would not drag on the ground.
Easing onto his belly, Nate snaked nearer. He would crawl a foot or so, then pause to look and listen. In this cautious manner he drew within six feet of the flattened area in which the slavers had made their camp.
The grass had not only been bent flat, but wide areas had been grazed to the ground. In some spots the soil had been torn up, as if by a pick and shovel.
Nate recognized the handiwork of buffalo when he saw it. The slavers had gathered a pile of dry chips and were using the dung as fuel. Its dusky scent hung heavy in the air, mixed with the aroma of tobacco and the smell of horses.
As Nate had determined earlier in the day, there were fourteen cutthroats in the band. Eight were clustered at the fire, swapping stories. A few others played cards. One man was cleaning his rifle, another honed a butcher knife. Saddles and packs were lined up near the horse string for a quick getaway if need be.
It worried Nate that there was no trace of Felicity Ward. Given the vicious temperament of slavers, he would not put it past them to have slit her throat and dumped her body on the plain if she had given them too much trouble. Simon and he might have passed within a few yards of her cold corpse and never known it.
Then a lean slaver who wore a black sombrero and Mexican-style clothes rose from near the fire with a tin plate in his left hand and walked over to the saddles. The toe of his boot nudged what appeared to be a large bundle wrapped in a brown blanket, and the ‘bundle’ uncoiled and stiffly sat up.
It was a young woman. Felicity Ward. She was slight of frame and had sandy, disheveled hair. Her face was streaked with dirt, as were her underclothes, the only garments she had on.
“I brought you some food, señora,” the slaver declared. “It is not much. Beans and dried beef. But it is all we have.”
“I’m not hungry, Julio,” Felicity said.
“Por favor, you must do as I say. You have no choice. Gregor says you are to eat if I have to force it down your throat.”
“Tell that brute—” Felicity began, and froze when another slaver stood and came toward them.
This one was a huge man with the torso of a bear and a face scarred by many fights. Greasy brown hair hung down past his sloped shoulders, held in place by a coonskin cap. He wore grimy buckskins and carried four pistols in his belt. “Tell me what, woman?” he demanded in a gravelly voice.
Felicity was not given a chance to answer. The man called Gregor struck with lightning speed, lunging and slapping her across the cheek with a resounding crack. She crumpled, dazed, and Gregor seized her and shook her as a terrier might shake a rabbit.
“You still haven’t gotten it through your thick skull, bitch! When we tell you to do something, you do it, no questions asked. You don’t say no. You don’t gripe. You don’t insult us. You just do it!”
Gregor flung her down and jabbed a thick finger under her nose. “The next time you rile me, I’ll strip you buck naked and drag you behind my horse for a mile or two. That ought to teach you to hold your tongue.”
Spinning, Gregor shook a fist the size of a ham at the Mexican. “What the hell is the matter with you, Trijillo? I thought you’re supposed to be one mean hombre? When a woman won’t do what you want, slap her around some until she does. Don’t ever let me hear you say ‘please’ again.”
Julio’s contempt was thick enough to be cut with a knife. “My apologies, señor. But I am not used to treating women the way you do. Where I come from, a man does not go around beating on those who are weaker than him.”
Gregor motioned in disgust. “Is that a fact? Well, you’ll never make a good slaver then. A good beating is the only thing that keeps most of these cows in line.” He started back to the fire, then paused. “I never should have let you join up. When we get back below the border, go find yourself another line of work.”
The other slavers had not shown much interest in the exchange. One man, though, a beefy breed who wore only a breechcloth and knee-high moccasins, had picked up his rifle and held it as if ready to shoot should Gregor and the Mexican come to blows. He did not lower the gun until Gregor had rejoined the group around the fire.
Nate was mildly puzzled. The leader’s brutality was typical of slavers, but Julio Trijillo’s behavior had not been. The Mexican had acted genuinely concerned for the captive’s welfare. He gathered that Trijillo was new to the slaving trade, perhaps a bandit who had thrown in with them not really knowing what he was letting himself in for.
Not that it mattered much. The other thirteen would as soon beat their captive silly as look at her.
Of immediate concern to Nate was how to get the woman out of there without being killed in the process. Nate studied the layout of the camp. He saw Mrs. Ward sit back up and morosely pick at her meal. She was the perfect picture of misery.
It made Nate think of his own wife, Winona, and how he would react if she were to suffer the same fate. He thanked God that she was safe and sound, many miles away in the Shoshone village.
At that moment, back in the grass, Simon Ward squatted on the balls of his feet and impatiently waited for the frontiersman to return. To stay there and not do anything, knowing that his wife was so close, was one of the hardest things Simon h
ad ever had to do. Horrid images fired his brain, images of vile acts the slavers might be inflicting on her. He wanted to jump up and go charging into their camp. It took every ounce of self-control he had not to.
The wait stretched Simon’s already frayed nerves to the breaking point. He was so overwrought that when a dark shape reared up in front of him, he whipped his rifle to his shoulder and started to pull back the hammer.
“It’s me,” Nate whispered, ready to grab the barrel and shove it aside if he heard a click. He’d rather not, though, since the gun might go off and alert the slavers. Fortunately, Ward lowered the Hawken.
“Did you see her?” Simon asked urgently.
“Yes.”
“Has she been harmed?”
Most mountain men were shrewd judges of human nature. They had to be in order to survive. So Nate knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he told the truth, nothing he could say or do would stop Simon Ward from barreling to Felicity’s side without a thought for his own welfare, or anyone else’s.
“She’s fine,” Nate fibbed. “Eating supper, the last I saw.”
“They’re feeding her?” Simon said in surprise, having assumed the fiends would half starve his beloved to death.
Nate sank to one knee. “Keep in mind that to them, the slave trade is a business. They can’t get top dollar for their goods if the merchandise is damaged.”
“Do we go get her now?”
“No, we wait until they’ve turned in.”
Simon was none too happy. “Since she's my wife, I think I should have the greater say. And I vote that we rescue her right this minute. You can distract them somehow while I go in and whisk her out of there.”
“Won’t work,” Nate said, sitting. “Even if I lured them off, they’re not about to leave her unguarded. Four or five would stay put and gun you down the moment you showed yourself.”
There was no denying the trapper’s logic, but Simon still simmered at yet another delay. Bowing his head, he tried to shut thoughts of poor Felicity from his mind.
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