“From gettin’ grazed by that rifle ball,” said Preacher.
“But even though I hurt . . . and was afraid . . . I knew I would need food. I searched among the wagons . . . took all the supplies I could carry—”
Von Kuhner barked something in German.
Helmuth cringed as if the baron had struck him. “Nein! I was not . . . was not a grave robber. Those poor people were not buried . . . and nothing in the wagons could help them anymore. But I thought it might keep me alive.”
“Hold on,” Jamie said. “The Blackfeet didn’t loot the wagons and then burn them?”
Helmuth shook his head. “No, the . . . the wagons were still there. They took away the horses and mules . . . but left the wagons.”
Jamie and Preacher glanced at each other.
“That’s a mite odd,” Preacher said. “Most times, Injuns’ll strip the canvas off a wagon, since they can make use of it, and then burn the rest, just outta sheer meanness.”
“Maybe they were in a hurry for some reason,” Jamie said. But he agreed with Preacher that what Helmuth had just told them sounded strange. Figuring that out could wait until later, though. He told Helmuth to continue.
“I am not a terrible person,” Helmuth said with a sullen glance toward von Kuhner. “I simply wanted to live. I found cloth in one of the wagons and bound the wound on my head. Then I took the food I could carry and went to look for shelter.”
“Why didn’t you stay with the wagons?” asked Lieutenant Curry.
“I thought about it, but”—a shudder went through Helmuth’s cadaverous frame—“all those bodies were there. I could not . . . could not stand the thought of spending the night so close to them.”
“A decent man would have buried them,” snapped von Kuhner.
“I thought about it,” Helmuth said again. “I meant to . . . bury them. I told myself . . . I would come back the next day . . . and do that . . . after I had rested. I did go back, sometime later. I do not know . . . how long. But the bodies were . . . gone.”
Of course they were, thought Jamie. Wolves and carrion birds would have taken care of them. The idea repulsed him, yet he couldn’t bring himself to think too badly of Helmuth because of what had happened. The man had been injured and far, far out of his element.
“I suppose you found a place to get out of the weather?” Jamie asked.
Helmuth nodded. “Yes, I went higher into the hills. There was a cave . . . I had seen the men make fire using flint and a knife, and I had brought both things with me from the wagons . . . I stayed there for”—he sighed—“I do not know how long. Time meant nothing to me. For days . . . weeks . . . maybe longer . . . I was sick . . . I imagined the wild animals came and . . . and danced for me . . . They spoke to me . . . Told me I was one of them . . .”
Quietly, Preacher said, “He was outta his head with fever, more ’n likely, Jamie.”
Jamie nodded. “That’s what it sounds like to me, too.”
Helmuth eyed the bottle of schnapps that Jamie had set aside. “Could I . . . if I could have another drink . . . ?”
“One more little one,” Jamie told him.
He didn’t have to take the bottle away. Helmuth took one swallow of the liquor and then handed the bottle back to him.
“The time came when I was not as sick.” With practice talking to other people again, and the bracing effect of the schnapps, his voice had grown stronger. “I was hungry, so I went back to the wagons. But the rest of the food was either gone, stolen by animals, or spoiled. I had to find things I could eat . . . roots, plants . . . Some of it made me sick, but none of it killed me. I . . . I learned how to catch rabbits. At first, I cooked them, but . . . I was too hungry, and it was too much trouble . . .” He shuddered again.
Jamie felt a mite like shuddering, too, at the thought of this wreck of a man gnawing on raw, bloody rabbit carcasses.
“Ever since then, I have lived in the forest. I have learned how to avoid or hide from the animals that might harm me. The bears, the mountain lions, the wolves . . . they have not troubled me.” Helmuth glanced around slyly. “I hide from the savages, too, but sometimes, when I cannot stand to think I am the only one of my kind left in the world, I steal close to their village and watch them. That is how I . . . I saw the ladies. Their maids, too. They all live as savages now. I think . . . I think I saw my master, too. Baron von Stauffenberg. He was with Countess Katarina.”
“So one of the noblemen is alive?” Von Kuhner’s voice was like a lash.
Helmuth flinched at the sharp words. “I . . . I am not sure! I think I saw him . . . but he was not like he once was, when I knew him. The countess led him by the hand . . . she treated him as if he were a child.” Helmuth shook, and tears ran down his cheeks. “The poor baron! What have the savages done to him?”
Jamie didn’t know, but he was beginning to accept Helmuth’s story. A handful of survivors from the attack were still alive. Or at least . . . they had been. There was no way of telling how time worked in Helmuth’s hardship-ravaged mind. Years might have gone by since he’d actually seen anybody else from the Prussian expedition.
Jamie leaned closer and said, “Helmuth, it’s been five years since the Blackfeet attacked you and the others. Have you been living out here in the wilderness by yourself for all the time?”
“I was alone.” Helmuth’s voice was utterly sincere. “Nobody here but poor Helmuth.”
“He’s lost his mind,” von Kuhner said callously. “We can put no stock in anything he says.”
“Well, he’s here, right in front of us,” said Preacher. “He had to have survived somehow. And if he did, I reckon some of the others could’ve, too.”
“Not necessarily. There is no reason this man could not be the only survivor,” the baron said.
Jamie nodded and said, “I reckon that’s true, Baron, but we came all this way to find out.”
“Of course. And we must take advantage of this opportunity to discover the truth. Kurtz!”
Helmuth looked up. At the tone of command in the baron’s voice, instinct and almost-forgotten habit made him respond, “Ja, mein herr?”
“Can you take us to the village of those savages, the place where you saw the others?”
“Oh, jawohl, mein herr.” Helmuth nodded. “I know how to get everywhere in these mountains now.” He looked at Preacher. “You and your hund tried to catch me. But I got away!” He began to laugh, a low cackle that gradually built in volume.
Preacher reached down and closed a hand to Helmuth’s shoulder to stop the sound. “Yeah, you done a mighty fine job of givin’ us the slip, fella. You know your way around these parts, all right. I’ll give you credit for that.”
“You never would have caught me . . . none of you would have ever known I was there . . . except I smelled your food, and I was so hungry. I knew better than to come into your camp, but . . . I was so hungry.”
Jamie knew that had to be true. Eating roots and whatever small game he could catch had kept Helmuth alive, but only barely. Anybody could tell that by looking at him. Jamie figured he had been starving for something else, too.
Human contact.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Jamie said. “Helmuth, we’ll fix some food for you. Real food, but not too much of it to start with. I figure after all this time, if you eat too much it’ll make you sick. But we’ll give you food and some blankets, and you can get some rest. You won’t have to run away from us anymore. We’re your friends.” He thought about the bit of German he had picked up from being around the Prussians and added, “Verstehen sie?”, asking Helmuth if he understood.
“Ja, ich verstehen.” It was hard to tell under all that beard, but Jamie thought Helmuth smiled. “You are . . . friends.”
“Lomax,” Jamie went on, “I’m putting you in charge of our new friend here. You stay with him. Keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s all right.”
Lomax frowned. “You mean make sure he don’t run away a
gain?”
“I mean take care of him,” said Jamie. “We’re all on the same side.” He patted Helmuth on the shoulder. “Friends.”
“Ja”, Helmuth said.
Jamie caught the eyes of Preacher, Colonel Sutton, and Baron von Kuhner. The four men moved away, over by the campfire out of earshot.
“The man may be delusional,” von Kuhner spoke up before Jamie could say anything. “Going through such ordeal may have left him insane.”
“Maybe,” Jamie allowed. “But if he’s not loco, he can lead us to Stone Bear and those captives, if they’re still alive. One way or another, first thing in the morning I intend to find out.”
Chapter 32
Helmuth didn’t try to get away during the night. In fact, once he had eaten a biscuit, he dropped off into a sound sleep, fueled by the schnapps and utter exhaustion.
Roscoe Lomax kept an eye on him, anyway, just in case. Now that they had found a survivor from the ill-fated expedition, they didn’t want him slipping away again.
He might just be the key to completing their mission successfully.
Nothing else disturbed the peace and quiet, and when they were all awake in the morning, Jamie went to Helmuth and asked, “Do you feel up to showing us where that Blackfoot village is?”
Helmuth, who was sitting on a big slab of rock, had a tin cup of coffee in one hand and a flapjack wrapped around a piece of salt pork in the other. His mouth was full, and he had to chew and swallow before he was able to answer Jamie’s question.
He didn’t meet the big frontiersman’s eyes as he said, “If they find out you are in their land, they will kill you. If I am with you, they will kill me.”
“We’re not going to let that happen, Helmuth.”
“I have stayed alive for a long time. So long. I do not wish to throw my life away now.”
“You said yourself that you’ve been to the village,” Jamie pointed out. “You saw the captives there. You want to help them, don’t you?”
“The savages frighten me,” whined Helmuth.
“I know. They’re scary folks. They frighten anybody who’s got any sense. But we’re your friends, and we’ll be there to protect you and help you if there’s any trouble. We’ll make sure you’re far away if anything like that happens.”
Jamie wasn’t going to make promises he couldn’t keep, but he meant every word of what he said to Helmuth. The man had been through a great deal already. Jamie had no desire to add to Helmuth’s hardships. However, if there were white captives in Stone Bear’s village, he wanted to rescue them. “How about it, Helmuth? Can you do it?”
Helmuth sighed and said, “I . . . I will try. I will show you where the village is. But I will not get too close!”
“Fair enough,” Jamie told him with a nod of acceptance.
When he consulted with Preacher and Colonel Sutton about the plans for the day, the colonel asked, “Should some of the men stay here to maintain the camp?”
Jamie thought about it and then shook his head.
“It’s a good place, but we’d better stay together. Even if we can get those captives away from the Blackfeet without being discovered right away, which is pretty unlikely, they’re bound to notice before too long that the prisoners are gone. When that happens, they’ll be after us, and you can’t hide the trail of a group this big.”
“Besides,” added Preacher, “we’re liable to need every gun we’ve got. The chances of sneakin’ those folks outta Stone Bear’s village without bein’ caught are pretty slim.”
“So you believe we’ll have to fight his entire band,” said Sutton.
“Maybe,” Jamie said. “But we’re a good-sized force, almost seventy men. Stone Bear may not have any more warriors than that. Like I said before when we had that run-in with the Sioux, the trick to winning against the Indians is to make pushing a fight too expensive for them.”
“What we’ll do,” Preacher said, “is get close to the village and then have most of the men hunker down somewhere that can be defended. Jamie and me, maybe Lomax and a few others, will get a closer look at the village and grab those prisoners if we can. Then we’ll all have to light a shuck outta these parts as fast as we can. We’ll probably have a runnin’ fight with the Blackfeet for a spell, too.”
The colonel sighed and nodded. “Nothing is easy out here on the frontier, is it?”
“If it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth it,” Preacher said.
* * *
They broke camp and moved out a short time later. Helmuth, who seemed very uncomfortable on horseback, rode between Jamie and Colonel Sutton. Preacher was up ahead with Lomax.
Before leaving, Helmuth had talked for a while with the mountain man, describing the area where Stone Bear’s village was located and the route they would have to take to get there. Preacher, who had been in these parts years earlier, claimed to have a pretty good idea of where he was going.
Jamie didn’t doubt that for a second. You could drop Preacher down in almost any trackless wilderness . . . and he would have a pretty good idea where he was going.
Baron von Kuhner hadn’t objected when Sutton told him their plans, but he urged his horse up alongside Jamie and spoke across him to Helmuth in German. Helmuth muttered an answer.
Colonel Sutton said, “Since both of you men speak English, perhaps it would be better if you conducted your conversations in that language, Baron.”
“I will speak how I wish, Colonel, but I assure you, this servant and I are not conspiring against you.”
“I didn’t think you were, but whatever you’ve got to say might have a bearing on our mission.”
“I was merely asking him what sort of shape the ladies appeared to be in the last time he saw them,” von Kuhner explained. “I am concerned about their welfare, of course.”
“Of course. What did you tell the baron, Helmuth?”
“The ladies were alive,” Helmuth answered in a surly tone. “They were dressed like Indians. Their hair was slicked down with something.”
“Bear grease, more than likely,” said Jamie.
“They looked like Indians. I thought they were Indians, at first. But Countess Katarina’s hair is too light for her to be a savage. And then when I looked closer, I recognized her, and the others, as well.” Helmuth shook his head. “They all looked much older than they should.”
“They’ve probably had pretty hard lives. The Blackfeet regard white captives as slaves. Sometimes they’ll take a female prisoner as a wife, or take a boy into the tribe to raise as a warrior, but those instances are rare. Mostly they just work them so hard and mistreat them so much that slaves don’t live long. If all those survivors are still alive after five years, they’re either mighty lucky or mighty determined.”
“I find it difficult to believe that pampered aristocrats could endure such hardship,” von Kuhner said.
Jamie looked over at him. “I thought you were one of those aristocrats, Baron.”
“I am, but I am a Junker! A member of the warrior class. I live for strife and struggle.” Von Kuhner scowled. “Having weaklings in charge is one reason our glorious German Empire has declined. Too many concessions have been made in recent years. Someday a truly strong leader will take the reins once more, and our homeland will again be what it once was.”
Jamie had a hunch von Kuhner considered himself “a truly strong leader” and believed that he, or someone like him, ought to be running things. Political wrangling on the other side of the world was none of Jamie’s business. All he cared about was doing what they had set out to do. Listening to the baron’s arrogant ranting just put a bad taste in his mouth.
“Well, I reckon we’ll find out how the survivors are doing once we get there,” he said. “After talking to Helmuth, Preacher figured we ought to reach the Blackfoot village by nightfall. That’ll give him a chance to get in there and see for himself what the situation is.”
“What? You mean inside the Blackfoot village itself?”
Jami
e grinned at von Kuhner. “It sure won’t be the first Blackfoot camp Preacher’s slipped in and out of. Get him to tell you the story sometime about why they call him the Ghost Killer.”
Von Kuhner snorted. “I have no interest in stories. Only in finishing the job I have come to do.”
“That’s good,” Jamie said. “I reckon that one way or another, this mission isn’t far from over.”
* * *
Following Helmuth’s directions, Preacher led the group through winding valleys, over hogback ridges, and through rocky badlands. Their route tended generally higher and higher in elevation, and in some places, they could pause and look back over breathtaking vistas of miles and miles of wilderness spread out below them. The sky was so clear and blue it almost hurt the eyes to look at it for too long.
First thing that morning, the air had been cold enough to make a man’s breath fog in front of his face, but by mid-morning it was just crisp and cool, and it stayed that way until late afternoon when the wind picked up and added an extra chill to it.
During one of the pauses to rest the horses, Preacher went to Jamie and said, “Snow by mornin’. Question is, how much and how long will it last?”
Jamie nodded solemnly. “I thought the same thing. Can smell it on the air. I don’t reckon we’re in for a blizzard, though. Probably just a few inches.”
“I hope you’re right. Although a nice little blizzard’d make it harder for them Blackfeet to trail us once we’ve grabbed the captives.”
“Make it harder for us to travel, too,” Jamie pointed out. “We might wind up getting snowed in somewhere and freezing to death.”
“Well,” said Preacher, “it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do, and it’s up to us puny human bein’s to cope with it as best we can. That’s always the way life goes, ain’t it?”
They started up another long ridge. Helmuth looked more worried behind the bushy beard as he said, “The village is not far now. On the other side is a trail that leads down into a small valley where a stream runs. The Blackfeet live there. The forest is so thick you cannot see the lodges until you are almost in the village.”
When All Hell Broke Loose Page 20