Wilderness Double Edition 27

by David Robbins

  The boom of a rifle was unnaturally loud. At the blast, the top of Buffalo Calf Woman’s head exploded

  Bodin was gasping for breath. He pushed her body off, swiped at the gore on his shirt, and growled, ‘Teak, what the hell!’

  ‘Would you rather I let her stab you?’

  ‘No. But you didn’t have to kill her. You could have winged her. Now all we have left is the one.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Teak said.

  Sitting up, Bodin glared at Spotted Wolf. ‘That bitch of yours had sand. I’ll say that for her.’

  His head spinning in a whirlwind of emotion, Spotted Wolf managed to choke out. ‘She was fine woman.’

  Bodin drew a pistol and thumbed back the hammer. ‘Any last words, chief? We’ll take your furs up into the high country with us, kill time for a month, then mosey down to Bent’s Fort to trade them. By then no one will connect us with you if by some miracle someone is looking.’

  In his own tongue, Spotted Wolf said, ‘I call on Old Man Coyote for revenge. I ask that you be punished, all of you. I beg that you die, and die horribly.’

  ‘I don’t know what all that prattle was about,’ Bodin said, ‘but I trust it was worth spending your final moments.’ He smiled and squeezed the trigger.

  Six

  Degamawaku drew rein in shock. Nansusequa never took life without cause. To defend themselves, or when they hunted, those were valid reasons. Even then, the Nansusequa believed that life must be taken with reverence, keeping in mind that That Which Is In All Things was also in whatever they killed. For the girl he adored to whip up her rifle and point it at a harmless cub was, to him, a breach of all he held dear. ‘No!’ he cried.

  Evelyn’s skin was crawling. It always did at the sight of a bear. Ever since she was little, hardly a year went by that her family did not tangle with one. She had seen her father severely mauled, and sat by his bedside as he fought for life. It would be fine with her if all the bears in the Rockies were to keel over. The world was a safer place without them. ‘The mother!’ she yelled back at Dega. ‘Where is the mother?’

  That was the danger. Normally, black bears avoided humans. But a mother bear with young cubs was not normal. Her maternal instinct was aroused, and it did not take much to send her into a towering rage.

  The cub stopped and looked at them and uttered a low cry.

  ‘Scat!’ Evelyn shouted, waving an arm. ‘Shoo!’

  But the cub did not move. It stared at them, evidently curious.

  ‘We will swing around,’ Evelyn proposed. ‘If the mother comes after us I’ll try to bring her down.’ It would not be easy. Bears were notoriously tough to kill. In addition to thick layers of muscle and fat that protected their vitals, their skulls were exceptionally thick. Thick enough to deflect a lead slug.

  Dega was worried the mother bear would appear. He wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible to forestall the taking of life. Kneeing his horse past Evelyn’s, he reined to the left to put more distance between them and the cub.

  Evelyn followed. She got a crick in her neck from gazing back for so long. Eventually, though, they were in among pines, and safe. The cub had stayed by the thicket. ‘That was a close one,’ she remarked.

  Dega had never thought to ask her how she felt about killing. He had taken it for granted she felt as he did, but now it dawned on him that she was not Nansusequa. She was, in fact, half white and half red. Granted, she had more of her father in her than her mother; that was plain from her face and her hair and her eyes. But she was still what most called a half-breed, and it was said that half-breeds had violent natures. Clearing his throat, he asked, ‘You kill many things?’

  ‘What kind of question is that?’ Evelyn asked. ‘If the mother bear had come after us, I wouldn’t have had any choice.’

  ‘We ride from her,’ Dega said.

  Evelyn rested her Hawken across her saddle. ‘You haven’t owned that horse long. And if I remember right, your people back east did not have horses, did they?’

  ‘No,’ Dega confirmed.

  ‘Then there is something you should know. Bears might be big and heavy They might look to be as slow as turtles. But they’re not. Over short distances, some bears can overtake a horse.’

  ‘You say bears catch horses?’

  ‘They can, yes. If I have to decide between outriding a bear and shooting it, I’ll shoot the monster.’

  This was a revelation to Dega, and deeply troubling. To take his mind off it, he asked, ‘What be monster?’

  ‘A monster is a scary creature, like a bear,’ Evelyn explained. ‘One of my pa’s books tells the story of a man who makes one from the parts of dead people.’

  Dega glanced at her to see if it was some sort of joke. Now and again her humor eluded him. ‘Dead people?’

  ‘Yes. The book is called Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus. It was written by a girl slightly older than I am.’

  ‘Dead people?’ Dega said again.

  ‘Victor Frankenstein takes a bunch of body parts and sews them together and reanimates the whole thing.’

  Dega absorbed that. He considered her words every way he could think of, and it still led to the same conclusion. ‘Whites can do that?’

  Evelyn laughed merrily. ‘Goodness gracious, no. It’s a story. Make-believe. Fiction, we call it. When you learn to read you can read it for yourself, but be warned, it can scare the socks off you.’

  Dega tried to remember what socks were. ‘You like read story?’

  ‘I sure did. I can’t think of any book that scared me more.’

  ‘You like be scared?’

  ‘So long as it’s a book and not real life,’ Evelyn said. ‘It’s a lot more fun to read about a monster ripping throats out than to have a bear try to rip out yours.’

  ‘That fun?’ Dega could not imagine how. Throat-ripping was throat-ripping, no matter how you looked at it.

  ‘Sure is,’ Evelyn said. ‘To tell you the truth, I have been wondering if maybe I should try my hand at writing. I think it is something I would like. Something I would like very much.’

  ‘You make book?’

  ‘I might write one, yes. Getting it published is another matter. I would not know how to go about it.’

  Dega glanced back. ‘What you write?’

  Evelyn shifted in her saddle and encompassed the valley with a sweep of her arm. ‘I would write about this. About life in the wild. You have to admit, I know more about it than most since I’ve lived in the wilderness all my life.’

  ‘Other whites read book?’

  ‘I would hope so. Most live east of the Mississippi River and have no notion of what the frontier is like.’

  Memories of his family’s perilous crossing of that broad, turbulent waterway on their journey west washed over Dega.

  ‘Let’s pick up the pace,’ Evelyn suggested. ‘I’m still not convinced we are safe from that mother bear.’

  The sun continued on its golden arc as they climbed. The rocky crags that once seemed so impossibly high above them were near enough now that a few stunted trees and snippets of vegetations could be discerned.

  Evelyn let herself relax. She breathed deep of the invigorating mountain air and reveled in the view and the beauty around her. She did not get up this far very often. Miles off to the west glistened the pale sheen of the glacier that fed the lake. Her brother and his wife had gone up for a closer look at the glacier a while ago and nearly paid for their curiosity with their lives.

  Her gaze drifted to Degamawaku. She admired his handsome profile when he turned his head. She admired, too, how he sat his horse. He had a natural ease about him that she found appealing. The notion bore home the fact that she’d become quite fond of him. He was the best friend she ever had.

  They skirted a talus slope and came to a barren bench. From here they could see clear to the far end of the valley. The lake was a blue jewel in the center of green velvet. The cabins were smaller than thimbles.

  �
��Here will do us,’ Evelyn said, and drew rein.

  Dega regarded the high ramparts still a goodly distance off. ‘We see mountain sheep?’

  ‘That we will.’ Grinning, Evelyn swung down. She stretched, then opened a parfleche and rummaged inside.

  Dega stiffly dismounted. He was not accustomed to spending half a day on horseback. His lower back was particularly sore, and he arched it to relieve a cramp. He turned as Evelyn took a metal cylinder from the parfleche.

  ‘Ever seen one of these?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are in for a treat. It’s called a spyglass.’ Evelyn beckoned and moved along the bench about fifty yards to where they had a clear view of the cliffs. Leaning her rifle against her leg to free her hands, she extended the telescope to its full length and put the eyepiece to her eye. A slight adjustment and the cliffs were brought so near, she felt as if she could reach out and touch them. Grinning in anticipation of Dega’s reaction, she held the spyglass out to him. ‘Have a look-see.’

  Dega did as she had done. At first he saw nothing. Then, with startling clarity, he was looking at a crack in a rock wall from which jutted several blades of grass. He lowered the spyglass, raised it to his eye, then lowered it again. ‘Where?’ he asked uncertainly.

  Evelyn pointed at the cliffs. ‘It brings things that are far off up close,’

  Dega aligned the spyglass with a patch of white on the summit. The patch became snow. He told her what he saw.

  ‘Even in the summer, snow falls that high up. But it won’t last long. It’s not like in the winter when the snow up here is twelve feet deep. Here, let me look again.’

  Evelyn took the telescope and scanned the cliff face for half a mile in both directions. Soon her patience was rewarded. ‘So you have never seen a mountain sheep? Well, there’s one.’ Holding the telescope steady, she moved aside. ‘Take a gander.’

  Dega put his eye to the spyglass. The animal he beheld was standing on a rocky point above a precipice, its head erect, its large horns curling around its ears. He saw it blink, saw its nostrils flare. ‘I want reach out to touch it’

  ‘You would think you could say boo and make it jump,’ Evelyn said.

  Boo was a new one to Dega. But he worked out that she meant they could scare it.

  ‘You can borrow the spyglass any time you want, you know,’ Evelyn mentioned. ‘Show it to your family.’

  Dega pulled back and accidentally brushed her arm. The contact, though fleeting, sent a tingle through him, clear down to his toes. His mouth went suddenly dry, and he quickly looked away so she would not notice his discomfort.

  ‘We will eat the food I packed, then head down in an hour or so. Unless you have an objection.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Dega’s head was in an odd sort of whirl.

  ‘If it’s all right with you.’

  ‘Yes. All right.’

  They walked toward the horses, Evelyn chatting about the fine weather and the view and wasn’t it wonderful their families had the valley all to themselves. Dega barely heard her. His lightheadedness persisted, until, by force of will and a shake of his head, he cleared it.

  ‘—have a cabin of my own, I wouldn’t want it on the lake,’ Evelyn was telling him. ‘It is downright crowded. No, I want my cabin along one of the streams that feed into the lake. The stream farthest south, say. What do you think?’

  ‘Think fine.’

  ‘You do? I have a spot picked out. Maybe you have seen it? Where a meadow runs along one side of the stream? Plenty of graze for livestock. And that meadow is downright gorgeous in the spring and summer, what with all the wildflowers.’

  Although she could not say why, Evelyn had been to the site half a dozen times in recent weeks. She would go and sit on the bank with her feet dangling in the water, and imagine a cabin and a corral and how peaceful life there would be. Which was ironic, she reflected, because at one time she had been dead set on living anywhere but the mountains. She had hated frontier life, hated the dangers and the uncertainties. To her way of thinking, civilization had been better. Civilization, where a person could walk out their door without fear of running into a grizzly or a painter. Civilization, where there were no hostiles out to count coup and renegade whites were held in check by minions of the law.

  Then came her kidnapping, and Evelyn had learned a painful truth. Civilization had dangers of its own, dangers every bit as deadly as a grizzly or a mountain lion.

  When it came right down to it, Evelyn had discovered, the main difference between life on the frontier and so-called civilized life was that on the frontier the dangers did not hide behind a friendly smile or a lecherous eye.

  ‘The horses,’ Dega abruptly said.

  Evelyn glanced up. She had been so deep in thought, she had not been paying attention. ‘What was that?’

  ‘The horses. They dance.’

  Evelyn looked. The two mounts had their ears pricked and were staring at the ground and prancing. She broke into a run, struck by a premonition.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Dega asked, matching her stride.

  ‘Could be,’ Evelyn said, flying now. She was upset with herself for not using picket pins. If her father had warned her once about leaving a horse untended, he had warned her a thousand times. Yet still she forgot.

  The dun whinnied in fright. Her buttermilk reared.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Evelyn said, exerting herself to her utmost. A faint sound reached her, reminiscent of dry seeds in a gourd. A rattling sound as distinct as the screech of a mountain lion or the howl of a wolf. Only one creature in all existence made that sound.

  Dega heard, too. He had been puzzled by the antics of their animals and Evelyn’s urgency, but now he understood. He pulled ahead of her, afraid his dun would be bitten. Suddenly, to his consternation, the dun wheeled and raced toward the end of the bench. He shouted to it to stop in Nansusequa, but it paid him no heed.

  Evelyn was afraid her buttermilk would do the same, leaving them stranded afoot. She saw that both horses had drifted to an area littered with rocks. The perfect place for rattlesnakes to lie in the sun and warm themselves.

  The dun disappeared over the rim.

  Dega kept running. He could not catch his mount, but he could help Evelyn get hers.

  Suddenly the buttermilk reared a second time. When its front hooves came down, the rattling ceased.

  With a lunge, Dega snagged the bridle. He turned toward Evelyn just as she ran up.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll go catch your horse.’ Evelyn reached for the reins, then froze. Directly in front of her a sinuous form had risen up out of the rocks.

  The rattling resumed, only louder, as the rattlesnake bared its venomous fangs.

  Seven

  Nate King was trying, for the fourth time, to impale a worm on the bone hook at the end of his fishing line when he heard someone approach. He did not need to look up to know who it was. A throaty chuckle told him.

  ‘How now, Horatio? I see you are wrestling a worm and the worm is winning.’

  ‘These critters are too blamed slippery,’ Nate complained. He had dug a handful of worms out of the ground half an hour ago. Two had been taken by fish that pulled free of the hook.

  Shakespeare McNair hunkered and regarded the worm with amusement. Like Nate, he wore buckskins. Like Nate, he had a powder horn, ammo pouch and possibles bag crisscrossed across his chest. Similarly, he was armed with a brace of pistols and a knife, but not a bowie like Nate’s. They both had beards, but where Nate’s was black, Shakespeare’s beard and hair were as white as snow. ‘My money is on the worm.’

  ‘Don’t you have someone else to bother?’

  ‘Not at the moment, no.’ Shakespeare settled back, placed his Hawken beside him, and gazed out over the placid blue of the lake. ‘Nice day for fishing if you know how to fish.’

  Nate sighed. ‘I would kick you, but I might drop the worm.’

  ‘It might be best if you did.’

  ‘You would use another?’ Nate sa
id while jabbing the hook at the worm and sticking it in his own finger.

  ‘How prove ye that in the great heap of your knowledge?’ McNair said, quoting his namesake. ‘I would use that one, but I would drop it in the dirt first and let it roll around some.’

  ‘What good would that do?’

  ‘The dirt sticks to the worm and makes the worm easier to hold, and easier to thread onto a hook.’

  Nate tried it. He rolled the worm back and forth using a fingertip. When the worm was good and covered with bits of dirt, he picked it up again and found it simple to impale. ‘Dang you.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Shakespeare rejoined. ‘I offer sage advice and you castigate me? Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it.’

  ‘Spare me the bard for a moment and explain something,’ Nate said. ‘How is it that in all the years I have known you, you never saw fit to mention that trick?’

  ‘I had no idea you were so godawful at hooking worms or I would have,’ Shakespeare answered. ‘It is embarrassing to have a friend who is so puny.’

  Nate flicked the line out over the water and watched the worm sink from sight. ‘For some reason Winona wants fish tonight. She hardly ever wants fish.’

  ‘Given how much trouble that worm was giving you,’ Shakespeare said, ‘it is a good thing your wife is not hungry for chipmunk.’

  ‘Enough about the worm.’

  ‘A serviceable villain, as duteous to the vices of thy mistress as badness would desire,’ Shakespeare quoted. ‘But very well. Let us have enough of worms and talk about more important matters.’ He opened his possibles bag and removed a silver flask. ‘Care for a nip?’

  Nate was surprised. ‘Since when did you take to drinking in the middle of the day?’