Jamie said, “It sounds to me like the creature put that tree there to use as a bridge. It probably goes back and forth there all the time.”
Preacher nodded. “That’s the feelin’ I got, too.”
“Did you get a better look at the varmint?” asked Lomax.
“A little, but still not good enough to figure out what it was. It’s skinny, like Jamie said, and it runs on two legs like a man, but it’s got hair all over, like a bear.” Preacher rubbed his beard-stubbled chin, and after a few seconds of hesitation, went on. “I, uh, even got to wonderin’ if there could be such a thing as a half-man, half-bear critter.”
Von Kuhner let out a disgusted, dismissive snort. “Madness. Utter madness.”
Preacher regarded him coolly. “Then I’m waitin’ for your explanation, mister.”
“I do not have to provide an explanation for yours to be foolish,” von Kuhner argued. “Its madness stands alone perfectly well.”
Jamie said, “We’ve got a mystery on our hands, no doubt about that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the job that brought us here. Whatever that creature is, it must roam through these parts pretty freely. We’ll just have to hope it doesn’t cause us any more trouble while we’re trying to complete our mission.”
“It sure as blazes won’t stop me from goin’ back out scoutin’ tomorrow,” said Preacher. “I’ll throw a little wider loop next time. Stone Bear’s out there, and I’ll find the son of a gun.”
The news of the mountain man’s second encounter with the mysterious creature spread quickly through the camp, adding a layer of nervousness to the tension that already gripped the expedition. The creature didn’t seem to be an actual threat, based on what had happened so far, but just the idea of something so odd and unknown lurking around was enough to give a man the fantods.
After supper, Jamie went over to Roscoe Lomax and said quietly, “I’ve got a special job for you tonight, if you don’t mind doing it.”
“Whatever you say,” he responded without hesitation.
“That thing was after our supplies last night. Now, I don’t know if it’s completely wild or not, but as skittish as it acts, it must be pretty close. And it must be pretty hungry to risk coming into a camp full of men where there was a fire burning not long before.”
Lomax scratched at his beard and said, “Yeah, wild animals don’t act like that unless they get mighty desperate. You think it’s gonna make another try for our grub tonight?”
“I think it might. That’s why I’m putting you in charge of guarding the supplies.”
“Fine by me,” Lomax said with an emphatic nod. “You want me to kill it?”
“I’d rather catch it and find out what it is. But you do what you have to do to defend yourself.”
“All right, MacCallister. You want it took alive, I’ll do my durnedest.”
The camp settled down for the night. The men on the first guard shift, including Jamie, took up their positions. Preacher rolled up in his blankets, with Dog stretched out on the ground beside him.
At Jamie’s suggestion, Lomax waited until after darkness had descended before quietly shifting over to lie down next to the packsaddles that had been taken off the pack horses when the group made camp. In case they were being watched, Jamie didn’t want anybody to know that they were taking extra precautions tonight.
Lomax spread his blankets and lay down, but he didn’t go to sleep. He knew better than to think he could stay awake all night, but he wanted to remain alert for as long as he could. He was a fairly light sleeper when he needed to be. No man traveled the Santa Fe Trail with all its dangers as much as Lomax had without developing that ability.
Eventually, despite his best intentions, he began to get drowsy and let himself drift off into a half sleep.
It was a smell that woke him, a stench that made him wrinkle his nose. It took a potent scent to make him do that, since the buffalo coat he wore was pretty odiferous.
He lay absolutely still as the smell grew stronger. Something moved nearby, so quietly he could barely hear the slight sounds.
Then he heard breathing. Not loud, but harsh. The blasted thing was practically on top of him, he thought. Just as Jamie had suspected might happen, the creature had slipped past the sentries again, probably taking advantage of some young dragoon’s inexperience. It never would have gotten by Jamie.
How it got into the camp didn’t matter. Jamie wanted it caught. Lomax opened his eyes and turned his head slowly and cautiously. He didn’t want to spook it. He knew how fast the thing was.
A tall, angular shape moved past him, almost indistinguishable in the thick shadows underneath the trees. Lomax was using those shadows to his own benefit, trusting them to conceal him as long as he didn’t move. The critter didn’t seem to have seen him rolled up in his blankets.
Suddenly, just as it was bending toward the stacked supplies, it stopped short. Its head came up, and Lomax heard it sniffing.
Instantly, he knew what was going on. He had smelled the creature, and the creature had just smelled him.
He knew it was going to bolt as it realized just how close one of the dreaded humans was.
Lomax flung aside his blankets and lunged. The creature tried to dart away, but Lomax’s right hand closed around an ankle in a desperate grab. He yanked, and the intruder spilled onto the ground.
“It’s here! The critter’s here!” Lomax bellowed as he scrambled up and threw himself on top of the creature.
He found himself with his arms full of something that felt like a bundle of sticks wrapped in a bearskin, but it still possessed enough wiry strength to fight like a wildcat and almost tear free.
Its foul breath gusted in Lomax’s nostrils, and he was gripped suddenly by a feeling of terror that it might try to bite his nose off. Despite that, he hung on and hoped that somebody would come to help him soon.
“Damn it!” he roared. “I can’t hold it much longer!”
It screeched in his face, but it wasn’t the mindless howl of a wild animal. It screamed what sounded like words.
“Nein! Nein!”
Chapter 30
The fact that the creature seemed to be counting at him threw Lomax for enough of a loop that his grip eased, and once again the thing almost slipped away from him. He grabbed at it and yelled, “Well, ten your own damn self!”
He knew that didn’t make any sense, but if the beast was going to count at him, he’d just count right back at it.
It was going to take more than that to subdue the varmint, though. Lomax balled a fist and struck a short, sharp blow, aiming where he thought the creature’s head would be. The punch landed, and though he could tell it was only a glancing blow, it packed enough force to make the thing stop fighting and go limp.
“I got him!” Lomax shouted as footsteps pounded around him and men called startled questions. “I got the critter!”
“Hang on to him,” Jamie ordered. “Somebody fetch a light.”
One of the dragoons stirred up the campfire embers and added kindling until the flames were leaping up again. He thrust a branch into the fire and waited until it caught then held the burning brand over his head as he walked to where Jamie, Preacher, and a number of other men clustered around Lomax and whatever it was he’d caught.
“Step aside,” Jamie told the men. “Let that fella with the torch through.”
The flickering light fell over Lomax and the creature. Since the thing was still stunned, Lomax pushed himself up and rolled to a sitting position beside it, where he could grab it again quickly if it was just shamming.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Preacher. “It’s a man . . . ain’t it?”
“Yeah, behind all that hair and that bearskin, I think it is,” Jamie said.
A gaunt, filthy face was visible behind a tangled, jutting brown beard. The beard grew so high and thick the man’s closed eyes and the tip of his nose were his only visible features. He wore some sort of crude garment fashioned from a b
ear’s hide that included a hood over his head. Strips of hide were bound around the man’s feet and wrapped around his ankles and calves to serve as makeshift boots. He didn’t appear too old. The beard was still brown, although it had some streaks of gray in it.
“A human being,” Colonel Sutton said in a slightly awed voice.
“But not exactly a tame one,” Jamie said. “The way he acts, he’s as much animal as human.”
Lieutenant Curry peered at the captive and asked, “Is he white or Indian?”
“White, I think. He’s got so much dirt and hair on him that it’s hard to say,” Lomax said.
“Reckon he’s crazy?” asked Preacher.
“Not so crazy he can’t count,” Lomax said. “He started yellin’ numbers at me while we were tusslin’. Well, one number, anyway. Nine. What do you reckon that means?”
The guttural laugh that came from Baron Adalwolf von Kuhner startled all of them. “He was not counting. He was saying nein. That means no, in your primitive language. He was pleading with you not to hurt him.”
“You mean he’s Prussian,” Jamie said sharply.
“I would assume so, yes.”
“Then he must be a survivor from the group we’re looking for,” Sutton said with excitement in his voice. “There’s no other reason a Prussian would be in this area.”
Jamie looked over at von Kuhner and asked, “Did you know any of the folks in that bunch? Do you recognize this man?”
Von Kuhner shook his head. “Not at all. I was aware of the nobles who undertook the journey to this godforsaken wilderness and had met some of them briefly, but I was not well acquainted with any of them. As for this man”—von Kuhner gestured toward the captive—“I never saw him before. Perhaps he was a servant. All the noblemen would have had servants with them to attend to their needs.”
“We’ll have to talk with this hombre once he comes around,” Jamie said. “Baron, do you mind handling the translating?”
“Of course not. I want to find out what he knows just as much as you do. If I might make a suggestion . . . ?”
“Go ahead.”
“Perhaps some schnapps would revive him sooner, instead of waiting for him to wake up.”
“That’s a pretty good idea,” Jamie said with a nod. “Go ahead.”
“Becker!” von Kuhner snapped at the feldwebel. “Fetch a bottle.”
“Jawohl, mein herr.”
“As for the rest of you,” said Sutton, “clear off and give us some room. Guards, return to your posts. The rest of you men, try to get some sleep.”
After all the excitement, Jamie didn’t know how well the men would sleep, especially since they knew fate might have delivered one of the people they were looking for into their hands. But within a few minutes, an open area had been cleared around the supplies. Jamie lifted the still unconscious man into a sitting position, pushed the bearskin hood off his head, and propped his back against the stacked packsaddles. He took the open bottle of schnapps Becker brought and lifted it to the man’s mouth. Carefully, he trickled some of the liquor between the man’s lips.
That caused a sputtering spasm as the man swallowed it. Jamie took the bottle away and steadied him with a strong hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, old son. You’re all right. We won’t hurt you.”
The man’s eyes flew open, and his head jerked from side to side. Everyone there knew that he wanted to bolt to his feet and try to get away. Jamie held him down. The man had given Lomax a pretty good tussle, but he was no match for the strength of the massive frontiersman who gripped him.
Von Kuhner bent closer, rested his hands on his thighs, and spoke to the man in German. Jamie recognized a few of the words, but not enough to know what von Kuhner was saying.
The captive’s face was so gaunt his eyes seemed sunken in deep pits. They widened as he grasped what the baron was telling him. After a moment, sounds came from somewhere under all that tangled hair. The man’s voice was rusty and halting, as if he hadn’t used it for a long time. He struggled to form a response to von Kuhner.
After a moment, the baron nodded and said to Jamie, “Give him some more of the schnapps.”
“Don’t let him have the bottle,” added Sutton. “He probably hasn’t had any liquor in a long, long time. It’ll hit him hard, and we don’t want him too drunk to talk.”
Von Kuhner scowled, but he nodded and motioned for Jamie to proceed.
He raised the bottle, and although the man wrapped his own hands around it, Jamie maintained his grip and pulled it away after a couple of swallows. The man’s hands, which were nothing but skin and bone, weren’t strong enough to hold on.
He mumbled some more, and then von Kuhner said, “He claims his name is Helmuth. He served Baron von Stauffenberg, one of the members of the expedition.”
“How in blazes did he wind up in this condition?” Jamie wanted to know. “Did the Blackfeet capture him, and he got away from them later?”
Another exchange of harshly voiced questions from von Kuhner, followed by halting, mumbled responses from Helmuth, and the baron reported, “When they were attacked, he was wounded. Something struck him in the head. He lost consciousness and knew nothing of the battle after that.”
Jamie raised a hand and started to brush aside the thick, brown hair above Helmuth’s left ear. Helmuth flinched and started whining like a trapped animal.
“I won’t hurt you,” Jamie told him. “You’re going to be all right now, Helmuth. You’re among friends.”
Helmuth recognized his name, if nothing else, and took some reassurance from Jamie’s calm, steady voice. He allowed Jamie to push the hair aside and explore the side of his head above the left ear.
“I thought I spotted something here,” Jamie said to the others. “He’s got a scar where a rifle ball must have struck him. It had to have glanced off instead of penetrating. If it hadn’t, he’d be dead, but it was enough to knock him out cold. The Blackfeet must have thought he was dead.”
Preacher put in, “He’s mighty lucky they didn’t come along afterward and cut his throat, just to make sure he was finished off. That’s what they’d do most of the time.”
Von Kuhner said, “The wound must have bled so much that he appeared to be dead beyond any doubt. Head wounds usually bleed excessively.”
“That’s true,” Jamie agreed. “Ask him what he remembers after that.”
Helmuth took them all by surprise by saying, “I . . . I can tell you. Ich sprechesie Englisch. Ein bisschen. A little.”
“Well, all right, then, old son,” said Preacher. “Tell us what happened.”
“It has been so long . . . I could not remember . . . at first . . . how to speak . . . either in Deutsche . . . or English. But now . . .” Helmuth cleared his throat. “It is starting to . . . to come back to me. If I could have . . . another drink . . . ?”
“All right,” Jamie said. “But only a little one.”
Once again, he allowed Helmuth to take a couple of swallows, then pulled the bottle away. Helmuth took a deep, shaky breath, then resumed the story.
“When I . . . woke . . . I was alone . . . except for . . . the dead. My friends . . . among the other servants . . . the soldiers . . . the Americans . . . all dead.”
“The entire party was wiped out except for you?” asked Sutton. That was the information they had come to find.
Helmuth was far from finished. He shook his head, the movement slow and weak, and went on. “No. When I felt . . . strong enough to do it . . . I looked at all the bodies. Some . . . were not there.”
Sutton looked quickly at Jamie. “The Blackfeet took prisoners.”
“That’s what it sounds like,” Jamie said. “Who was missing, Helmuth?”
“Graf . . . Graf von Eichhorn.”
“Earl Peter von Eichhorn, as we’d call him,” Sutton said. “The leader of the expedition.”
“That is correct,” von Kuhner confirmed.
“Anybody else?” Jamie said to Helmuth.
“My . . . my lord . . . Baron von Stauffenberg . . . and three ladies . . . Countess von Falkenhayn . . . Countess von Arnim . . . Countess von Tellman . . .”
Von Kuhner muttered something that sounded like a curse, no doubt thinking about the fate of those women if they were taken captive by the Blackfeet.
“I did not see . . . the ladies’ maids . . . either,” added Helmuth.
“Did any of the Americans survive?” Jamie asked.
“I . . . I do not know . . . I was not . . . well-acquainted . . . with any of them . . .” Helmuth paused. “But I do not recall seeing . . . the leader of . . . the American soldiers . . . or the man called . . . Herr Coburn.”
“Reese Coburn,” said Preacher. “The head guide, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right,” Sutton said. “So, Coburn may have survived, too, as well as Lieutenant Barton?”
Helmuth shook his head again and said, “I did not . . . see their bodies. I do not know . . . if they lived. But I do know . . . about the ladies . . . They are alive. I have seen them . . . many times.” He looked around at the men encircling him. “They still live.”
Chapter 31
Excitement gripped the men at Helmuth’s words.
Jamie knelt beside him and asked, “How do you know that for sure, Helmuth? Where have you seen the women?”
“At . . . at the savages’ village,” the half-wild man replied.
“You know where it is?” Preacher asked.
Helmuth’s head bobbed tentatively. “Y-yes. I have been there. Not . . . not in the village. I am afraid.” His gaze dropped to the ground as if he were ashamed. “The savages would kill me, and I am afraid.”
“Hell, old son, any man with any sense’d feel the same way,” Preacher assured him.
“Why don’t you go on with your story?” Jamie wanted to get a better feeling for just how coherent Helmuth was, how well his brain was working, before he accepted at face value anything the man had to say.
“Yes. I saw the bodies . . . around the wagons, saw that so many were . . . were dead. They frightened me, and I wanted to get away from there. And my head hurt . . . so bad.”
When All Hell Broke Loose Page 19