“But Lou,” Zach said, marshaling his best smile. “The wolverine was spying on my sister. If I hadn’t come along, it might have jumped her.”
“Tosh,” Lou retorted. “It didn’t attack either of you when you went into the woods.” She shook her head. “You are staying put and that’s final.”
Zach felt himself grow hot with anger. He never liked being told what to do, even by his parents. He was notorious for his temper, but since he took up married life he had made great strides in keeping it under a tight rein. He reined it in now, and kept his voice level and polite. “You are making a mistake. I’m as good a tracker as my pa or Shakespeare. I will find the wolverine and kill it.”
“Yes, you are a skilled tracker,” Lou conceded, “but there’s no telling how long it will take.” Suddenly switching tactics, she placed her hands on his shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. “Don’t you like being with me?”
Zach faced defeat. She had cleverly boxed him into a corner. That was the kind of question a man could answer only one way. “Of course I do—” he began, and she went for his throat like a ravenous she-wolf.
“Then enough of this wolverine business. You could be a week or more and I refuse to wait that long.”
Zach clamped his mouth shut. What had ever prompted him to say he would stay home with her for several days?
Sensing victory, Lou smiled and kissed him on the chin. “I have been looking forward to this, Stalking Coyote.” She only used his Shoshone name when she was particularly pleased with him, as a sort of special treat. “We’ll go on a picnic today, and spend tomorrow fishing if you want. As for the third,” she said huskily, rubbing against him, “we can spend that doing something else.”
Zach wondered if they could spend it with him throwing her off a cliff, then was pricked by his conscience for the childish notion. “Whatever you want, Lou. I gave my word and I will stick by it.”
She kissed him again. “Why don’t you sit back down and finish your breakfast while I tend to our chickens?”
Resigned to an extended period of domestic bliss, Zach slumped in his chair and stared glumly at his oatmeal. There were times, he wryly reflected, when marriage was a lot like being in jail. He should know. He had been in an army stockade once.
Lou picked up a basket and moved merrily to the door. “We’ll have great fun! Wait and see! I’ll spoil you rotten even if you don’t necessarily deserve it.”
Zach rolled his eyes. Why did she go and say something like that? Women were genuine marvels. They could be silken-tongued and barb-tongued all in the same breath. But he could give as good as he got. He smiled and said, “Be careful the wolverine doesn’t jump you.”
About to work the latch, Lou glanced around sharply. “You never can let something drop, can you?” And with that, she went out.
The harsh glare of the bright sun made Lou squint, but she barely noticed. She was thinking about men. Lordy, but they were exasperating! They could be as sweet as molasses one moment, grumps the next. If she lived to be a hundred she would never understand them.
Stopping, Lou indulged in a few deep breaths and cleared her mind. She refused to let him spoil things. He had promised, and they would have a good time whether he wanted to or not. She would make him.
Head high, Lou marched to the chicken coop. The chickens were a delight. She loved having fresh eggs every day. She was extremely grateful to her father-in-law for being so considerate. Nate had traded for eighteen chickens and three roosters and divided them evenly among the three families.
Zach had built the coop. It was a source of great pride to her that he had done as good a job as Nate and Shakespeare had on theirs. For all his faults, and Zach did not really have that many although she sometimes made it seem like he did, he was a good husband and a wonderful provider. Sure, he left her alone too often for her liking, but he had to hunt if they were to eat.
It was the other times, when he went off exploring, that peeved her. He would be gone for days at a stretch, leaving her to knit or visit with the others or twiddle her thumbs. She always managed to keep busy, and she was safe enough with her in-laws and the McNairs so close. But she did not like being alone. The nights, especially, were trials. She missed having him in her bed, missed his companionship.
So Zach could get as mad as he liked, but Lou was going to hold him to his word. She grinned as she bent and opened the coop door. Almost immediately the rooster poked his head out.
“Good morning, General Jackson.” Lou had named it after the former president and military leader because it strutted around as if it were the boss of not just the hens but their whole homestead.
General Jackson came partway down the ramp, flapped his wings, and gave voice to a loud cock-a-doodle-do.
Grinning, Lou waited for the six clucking hens to file out, one after the other. The last was always Matilda, the smallest and the feistiest, and her favorite. All six were leghorns, the most popular of the laying breeds. Five of the six were white, but Matilda was buff. They laid white eggs, not brown like some. Each chicken weighed three to four pounds, compared to General Jackson, who weighed about six.
While they pecked at the feed Lou scattered about, she opened the side door and went in. She had to stoop. The roof was five feet high, the coop six feet from end to end. More than enough space for the nests and roosts. Today she found eight eggs but only took six. She and Zach were hoping some would hatch. Extra chickens meant extra eggs, and there was always the supper pot on special occasions.
Lou went back out, closed the side door and barred it. She was turning to go to the cabin when her gaze fell on a lone track clearly imprinted in the dirt. She had never seen one like it, and she knew all kinds after her years of living in the wild.
Puzzled, Lou hunkered. It wasn’t a raccoon track. Raccoon tracks resembled human hands, only with long toes instead of fingers. It wasn’t a porcupine print either; porkies often came around late at night.
This new track was large. Five inches long and almost as wide. The outline of its pads and claw tips was remarkably clear. It reminded Lou a bit of a wolf track, but wolves had four toes and this print showed five. The rear pad was also differently shaped than a wolf’s.
Lou sorted through her mental file of tracks and came up short. She was reaching out to touch it when the truth seared her like a red-hot brand. She knew what made it. The thing had sniffed around the chicken coop, just like its mother the other night at her in-laws’.
Fear knifed through her, but Lou smothered it. She had heard tales about the Skunk Bear. About how its kind were savagery incarnate, the ultimate killers. Rising, she walked quickly to the cabin and slowly circled it while examining the ground. Under the window she found what she dreaded: another print. Not as clear as the first but complete enough for her to tell what it was.
A damned wolverine had been skulking about.
Louisa bit her lip in indecision. She should let Zach know. She should also inform her father-in-law. But if she did, they might go after it, denying her the time alone with Zach that she had looked forward to ever since she talked him into it.
What to do? Lou paced back and forth. She refused to let the glutton spoil things. Zach would not go gallivanting off yet again. It could wait three days, maybe more. The glutton had not tried to kill their chickens or their horses. It had come and gone, that was all.
Lou speculated that maybe the stories told about Skunk Bears were exaggerated. Heaven knew, mountain men loved to tell tall tales. Her father-in-law and Shakespeare, in particular, took enormous delight from spinning colorful yams. Many a night she had sat up listening to their escapades, wondering how much was true and how much was embellished.
Lou stopped pacing. She had made up her mind. She would not say anything. Not until after she enjoyed a few days with her husband. Then she would casually mention it, and if they wanted to go charging off to slay a bunch of hairy dragons, let them.
The week alone with Zach was what mattered
.
Glancing at the door to be sure he had not come out, Lou swiped her foot across the print under the window, erasing it. She did the same with the track near the chicken coop. Satisfied, she carried the egg basket back inside and placed it on the counter. “General Jackson is in fine fettle this morning,” she remarked, hearing the rooster crow.
“Is he?” Zach did not much care about the chickens. The eggs were nice to have, but their constant clucking annoyed him. As for the rooster, he had tried to pet it once and it had pecked him. One day he would repay the favor and have rooster for supper.
“Where would you like to go for our picnic?” Lou asked.
“I don’t really care,” Zach said, and winced the instant the words were out of his mouth. He made up for it by quickly saying, “Wherever you want is fine by me.”
About to give him a piece of her mind about his attitude, Lou checked the tart reply on the tip of her tongue. Instead she said, “I’ll bring venison and potatoes and the pie I baked yesterday, and we’ll make a day of it up on that ridge I like. You know. The one with the great view of the valley.”
“I can’t wait,” Zach fibbed. The prospect held as much appeal as a toothache. He might be able to induce her to cuddle, though, and he did so like to cuddle. But she rarely did it outdoors.
Not quite an hour later, they were underway.
Zach saddled their mounts, Lou packed the parfleches and he tied them on their saddles. They both were well armed with rifles, pistols and knives, and in his case, a tomahawk.
Lou beamed and gestured, “I’m so happy I could bust! Don’t you just love our new valley?”
At last something Zach could agree on. “Yes,” he admitted. Which was ironic, given that he had been against the move at first.
Their last cabin had been in a valley well to the north of his father’s, and there had still been plenty of game. Zach had not felt any great need to move. But he liked the idea of being close to his parents and the McNairs, if only for Lou’s sake. Now when he went off to explore new country, he need not worry as much. She would be well looked after.
As they rode toward the forest, Zach raised his gaze to the northwest. Far up on the highest mountain was a blue-green patch. It was a glacier, one of several his father said were scattered the length of the Rockies. Zach had not been up to it yet but he very much wanted to go.
A young Ute by the name of Niwot, who was courting Evelyn, had told Zach the glacier was considered bad medicine by Niwot’s people. It was why the Utes shunned the valley and never set foot in it.
Since Niwot did not speak English and Zach did not speak Ute, they communicated in sign language. Skilled sign talkers could carry on conversations as fluidly as they would in their own tongues, and Zach was very skilled, indeed, but try as he might, he could not find out exactly why the glacier was taboo. The last time Niwot visited, Zach had brought it up again.
“Question. Why rock ice bad medicine?” Zach had to combine the signs for “rock” and “ice” because there was no sign for “glacier.”
A stocky, handsome youth, Niwot had signed his answer slowly, choosing the signs with care. “Many winters past, nine Ute warriors visit rock ice. One come back. Friends all go under.”
“Question. How they die?”
Niwot had thought long and hard, and frowned. “No sign.” But he tried. He held his right hand close to his forehead, his fingers curled except for the first two, which were straight up. Then he moved his hand upward while twisting it from right to left.
It was the sign for “medicine,” or “mysterious.” Zach had responded with, “Question. How mysterious?”
Repeating the sign, Niwot slashed at the air with his fingers hooked like claws.
Zach had been at a loss. He went to his father but his father had never heard anything. Even Shakespeare, a living library of every story ever told about the mountains by red and white men alike, recalled only a vague legend that might or might not apply. Something about a thing that lived in ice and came out from time to time to slay every creature it found. It made no sense.
Abruptly, Zach realized Louisa had been talking to him.
“—no better time than the present, if you ask me. We’re not getting any younger. Do you agree?”
“Of course,” Zach said, wishing he knew what he was agreeing to. He shifted in his saddle and smiled at her to give the impression he had been listening. Suddenly a hint of movement seventy or eighty yards below snapped him fully alert. He thought he glimpsed a hairy form dart under cover. An animal of some kind, moving low to the ground. He waited for it to reappear but over a minute went by and the undergrowth was undisturbed.
“What are you looking at?” Louisa inquired, turning sideways to scour the lower slope.
Zach shrugged. “I guess it was nothing.”
Six
Shakespeare McNair headed south. That was the direction the mother wolverine had gone. It stood to reason, or at least he hoped it stood to reason, that her den was in that direction, and if it was, that was where he would find her young ones.
There was a trifling problem, however. “South” covered a lot of territory, square mile after square mile of rugged mountainous terrain, terrain that was heavily timbered and provided plenty of cover. Finding the wolverines would be akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
But Shakespeare had to do it. He refused to give up before he had really begun. He recognized the danger of allowing the wolverines to go on living, even if no one else did.
It was a grand day for a ride. The sun shone brightly, birds sang gaily, butterflies flitted among the flowers.
The feeling lasted until Shakespeare came to the forest. A preternatural gloom gripped the woodland. The trees were so high and so close together that they blocked much of the light, transforming the sun-splashed landscape into a pseudo nether realm. Only a few birds sang, and those that did sang timidly, as if afraid of being overheard by something that would silence their song forever.
Shakespeare rode with his Hawken in his right hand, the stock on his leg. His new white mare stayed alert, her ears pricked, which was a good sign. A new mount was always a bundle of unknown traits and temperament. But he had needed a new horse, and a settler at Bent’s Fort offered him a good deal.
His old mare was in the corral attached to his cabin. She had given him years of near-flawless performance, always doing exactly as he wanted her to do without hesitation or fear.
Horses that balked or fought their riders could get their riders killed. The new mare had not been put to the test yet, but he was hopeful she would prove as nerve steady and reliable as her predecessor.
As Shakespeare climbed, the enormity of the challenge he had set for himself bore heavily on his shoulders. The wolverines could be anywhere. A single wolverine was bad enough. Two were twice the menace. Three or four were the equivalent of a horde of grizzlies.
Some might scoff and say Shakespeare was making more of their fierce dispositions than he should, but if there was one thing life had impressed on him during his decades in the mountains, it was to never, ever take danger, any danger, too lightly.
He was often asked how he managed to live so long when ninety percent of those who came to the Rockies were lucky to last five years. He always answered that each of his white hairs was a lesson learned, and that to stay alive a man had to always stay alert. And by always, he meant every second of every day of every week in every month of the year, a man had to stay as sharp mentally as his knife. Anything less, and he might as well dig his own grave.
Shakespeare tried to impart the lesson to Nate when they met, and ever since. It galled him that his “Horatio” still did not take some things seriously enough. The wolverines were an excellent example.
Nate should be with him, helping to exterminate the gluttons. Shakespeare understood Nate’s new stance toward killing, though. There were times when he became mighty sick of it, himself.
The wilderness crawled with host
iles, cutthroats and hungry meat eaters, any one of which would take the life of the unwary without a moment’s hesitation. Often the only way to deal with them was to end their lives.
Small wonder, Shakespeare mused, that those who lived east of the Mississippi River were fond of saying that anyone who ventured west of it took their life in their hands. Even so, Easterners did not know what they were missing.
Despite the varied perils, the mountains and the prairie were marvelous wonderlands of natural beauty. Peaks that towered to the clouds, capped by mantles of pristine snow. Cascading rivers and beautifully clear lakes. A wealth of timber: ranks of lodgepole firs, phalanxes of blue spruce, quivering aspens riotous with color in the fall, and more. A wealth of wildlife: gigantic grizzlies, shaggy buffalo, mountain sheep at dizzying heights, squawking ravens and noble eagles with their pinions spread wide, elk and deer and owls and chipmunks and all the rest. A great pulsing sea of life to be experienced and enjoyed, so long as the enjoyer remembered to watch out for the land sharks.
Noon found Shakespeare miles above the valley floor. He let the mare graze while he sat on a flat boulder and contemplated his long life, and the short span left to him. He was getting on in years. Over eighty, to be more or less precise, and while he was as healthy and as robust as a man half his age, eventually the years would catch up with him. They were already doing so in small ways. His joints ached on chilly mornings, and his body was sluggish until he had been up and about a while and downed half a dozen cups of coffee. Nor was he as spry as he used to be. There was a time he could go all day, like a steam engine, but nowadays the steam was harder to get up and harder to keep up once he did.
Chuckling, Shakespeare gazed skyward. “Quite the joker, aren’t you?” he said aloud. “Stick us in these skin suits and send us out into the world with a smack on the fanny and your best wishes. We run the race, we overcome the obstacles, and when we get to the finish line, our reward is to fall apart and end our days as weak and helpless as when we came into it.”
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