Wilderness Double Edition 25

by David Robbins

  Nate hated talus. He had nearly lost his life to it several times. He always strived to avoid it, as he would the den of a grizzly. He would not have come as close as he had to this particular slope, except that the pass was just above it, and he had been eager to reach the pass before nightfall.

  Nate shot a glance at the warriors only to find they had disappeared. The threat of an arrow catching him in the back or the side was very real. But it was the talus that demanded his immediate attention. If he lived, he would deal with the hostiles. One threat at a time. But would he survive it? The leading point of the slide was much too close.

  Shakespeare was having similar thoughts. He gauged the distance to solid ground and the distance the talus had to cover before it crashed into him, and knew he would not make it. Not if he stayed with the pack animal. Glancing back, he said sadly, “I’m sorry!” and let go of the rope. A few jabs of Shakespeare’s heels, and the mare proved her mettle by flying like the wind.

  Neck and neck, the two horses exerted their sinews to their fullest. She overtook Nate’s bay.

  The roar of the talus was like thunder in their ears as they swept into the trees. Instantly, they drew rein, and turned.

  “No!” Nate said.

  The sorrel was doomed. Head extended, nostrils distended, mane flying, it was putting forth all it had into reaching them, but was still ten yards away when the flood of cascading rocks and dirt slammed into it. Squealing in terror, the sorrel was smashed onto its side. It kicked and whinnied and struggled to stand, but the talus swept up and over, burying the horse alive. In a span of seconds the animals was lost to sight.

  For another hundred yards the talus tumbled and flowed, seeming to shake the very earth. It came to a stop almost as abruptly as it had started. Stones rattled and bounced and spumes of dust rose. Then all was still.

  Nate tore his gaze from a solitary hoof that jutted up out of the mound. Raising his Hawken, he scanned the top of the slope. “Where did they get to?”

  Shakespeare was wondering the same thing. His joints might creak, but his eyes were as sharp as that eagle’s they had seen, and try though he did, he saw no trace of the three warriors. “One of us has to try for the keg while the other keeps watch,” he proposed.

  “I’ll go,” Nate said without hesitation.

  “Why you?” Shakespeare was more than willing to do it himself.

  “As you keep pointing out, you’re not as spry as you used to be. This is a job for a hare, not a tortoise.”

  “Damn my leaky mouth, anyhow,” Shakespeare said. “You be careful, son. It might start sliding again. And there are the sinkholes.”

  Nate understood perfectly well. The talus had stopped, but it was still unstable. The loose rocks made footing treacherous enough, but there were also soft spots where a man could sink in over his head and suffocate within seconds. Dismounting, he hefted his Hawken.

  “Better leave that here so your hands are free.”

  Nate heeded the advice. He leaned the Hawken against a fir, then warily moved into the open. He had seldom felt so exposed. At any moment glittering shafts might come flashing out of the sky to do to him as had been done to poor Niwot. But it was on the talus he must concentrate. Only the talus. He had to trust that McNair would watch out for him.

  A wall of vegetation had brought the talus to a stop, resulting in a mound as high as Nate’s cabin. Small noises came from under the mound, shiftings and scritchings where the talus was settling. Puffs of dust rose at various spots.

  Nate made sure his pistols were tightly wedged under his wide leather belt and that his Bowie knife and tomahawk were snug before he took his first step onto the talus. The sorrel’s hoof was forty feet away. It looked to be a mile.

  His mouth dry, Nate slowly advanced. He placed each foot with care and tested before applying his full weight. The expectation of a barbed shaft piercing his body caused the skin on his back to crawl. He moved his right leg. Pie moved his left. The talus stayed firm underfoot.

  Shakespeare could not stop glancing at Nate even though he knew he should keep his eyes on the timber. He was not so old that he no longer became scared, and he was scared to death for Nate. In the wilderness, the difference between living and dying was often measured in a whisker’s-width of reflex. No one lived forever. That he had lasted as long as he had was more the result of luck than anything else.

  A flicker of movement stiffened Shakespeare in his saddle. He took a quick bead on the spot but did not see the hostiles. It could be, he reasoned, that the warriors were circling to flank them from several directions at once. In that case, he could not possibly protect Nate. His palms grew slick with sweat but he did not take his hands off the Hawken to wipe them. A moment’s lapse was all the warriors needed. “How is it coming?” he hollered without looking.

  “I’m almost there!” By almost, Nate meant fifteen feet to go. Each step left a shallow depression. Nervously licking his lips, he eased his leg forward.

  From out of nowhere came an arrow. The buzz of its flight was the only warning Nate had. He glanced up, saw it, and sprang to the right. The arrow cleaved the space he had occupied, struck a rock, and went skittering. Nate twisted to yell to Shakespeare, and suddenly the talus gave way under him.

  Seven

  Talus was not like quicksand. Sinking into quicksand was like sinking into wet mud. A person caught in quicksand could still move, to a degree, although the more the person moved, the faster he sank. With talus, it was more like falling into a hole in the ground, and then having the hole cave in.

  Nate King felt the talus give way under him and tried to stop his plunge by casting the Hawken aside and throwing out his arms. But it happened so quickly, he was in the hole up to his elbows before he could throw his arms out. Worse, he was wedged fast. He told himself he should be grateful he was not completely buried.

  Then another arrow thunked into the talus not a yard away, and Nate realized what an inviting target he made.

  Shakespeare had glimpsed the arrow’s flight out of the corner of his eye, and spun. His shock at Nate’s predicament slowed his reaction a trifle. The shot he snapped off at the furtive figure who had loosed the arrow was a shade late. The figure ducked behind a tree as Shakespeare squeezed the trigger.

  Shakespeare would have to take his eyes off Nate to reload, but he didn’t want to do that. Instead he jerked a heavy flintlock from under his belt, and hollered, “Can you free yourself?”

  Nate was striving mightily to do just that. Wriggling furiously, he twisted back and forth in an effort to enlarge the hole enough for him to slide his arms out. But the talus had him so tightly wedged, he could barely move.

  “Can you get free?” Shakespeare yelled a second time, worried. By now all three warriors had to be aware Nate was helpless.

  “Give me a bit!” Nate replied. He did not want McNair to rush out to help and take an arrow on his account.

  “Hold on!” Shakespeare broke from cover.

  “I can manage! Stay where you are!”

  “Bite your tongue!” For twenty years Shakespeare had looked after the younger man, helping him out of one scrape after another. He would be damned if he would stop now.

  A whizzing sound made Nate look up. His breath caught in his throat. Not one, not two, but three arrows were near the apex of their arcs and about to rain down. He redoubled his struggles, but he was lucky if he could move half an inch, if that.

  “Look out!” Shakespeare bawled.

  Nate hunched his broad shoulders and tucked his chin to his chest. The next instant the arrows struck—chak, chak, chak—two missing him by inches and the third clipping a whang on his shoulder.

  Shakespeare spotted one of the bowmen and fired. He was sure he missed. Shoving the spent flintlock under his belt, he drew the second. Heedless of the danger, he crossed the talus and sank onto a knee next to Nate.

  “Go back.”

  “Not without you.” Shakespeare hooked a hand under Nate’s right a
rm and pulled. Nothing happened. “Have you been overdoing it with the pies again?”

  Watching the vegetation, Nate responded, “They’ll get us. They’ll get both of us. Go back before it’s too late, damn you.”

  “It’s not only the joints that bother coons my age,” Shakespeare said. “We don’t hear so well, either.” Wedging the flintlock under his belt, he slid behind Nate and slipped both hands under Nate’s arms. “On the count of three, I’ll lift. You pretend you are a fish on a hook.”

  “You are the most contrary cuss alive! Do you know that?” Nate growled to mask his true feelings. He could not bear the thought of anything happening to McNair.

  “That’s the trouble with sprouts like you,” Shakespeare said. “Always jabbering when you should be wriggling.” He firmed his hold. “Ready? One. Two—”

  “More arrows!”

  Shakespeare had seen them. Two shafts let fly simultaneously, the third a few heartbeats later. “Three!” he bellowed, and strained upward.

  Nate wrenched madly from side to side. But instead of dislodging enough of the dirt and stones to free himself, he only succeeded in wedging himself tighter. “Down!” he roared. He expected McNair to throw himself out of harm’s way.

  Shakespeare bent over, using his body as a shield.

  “No!” Nate cried.

  The arrows reached them. One broke in half on hitting a rock. Another sank into the talus to its feathers.

  “Again!” Shakespeare bellowed, and pulled.

  Desperation transformed Nate into a heaving, twisting dervish, but he remained stuck. When they paused to catch their breaths, he urged, “Get out of here! I mean it this time.”

  Puffing for breath, Shakespeare asked, “Has anyone ever mentioned that you resemble a beet when you’re mad?”

  Nate squinted at the sun-drenched vault above. “Why do they wait so long before firing more arrows?”

  “They might not have many left,” Shakespeare speculated. “Most warriors carry ten or so, and they lost some when they killed Niwot.”

  “Lucky for us.” Nate did not relish dodging more shafts. He tried to move his hands and found he could shape them into scoops. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, he clawed at the dirt.

  With repeated glances at the forest, Shakespeare began clawing at the edge of the hole. “Notice anything about our friends in the trees?”

  “You mean besides the fact that they want us dead?” Nate grunted between jabs and scrapes.

  “They haven’t let out a peep. Not once here, not once when they attacked down below.” Shakespeare was accustomed to warriors who shrieked and whooped like banshees to scare their enemies and bolster their courage. “The only other Indians I’ve ever tangled with who fought this quietly were Apaches.”

  “I don’t know who they are,” Nate grunted, “but they sure as hell aren’t Apaches.” He had fought Apaches once, years ago, when Shakespeare and he decided to treat their wives to a trip to Santa Fe. Zach had been a mere slip of a boy, Evelyn not even born.

  “I didn’t say they were Apaches,” Shakespeare noted. “I said they fight like Apaches.”

  “Small difference.” Nate had other things on his mind, foremost getting the hell out of that hole. He could move both hands freely and was scooping as fast as he could, but his progress was much too slow. “Find a limb to use as a lever. Maybe you can pry me out.”

  “I’m not leaving your side.”

  “Consarn your thick skull,” Nate growled. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No.”

  “Damn it—” Nate began, then saw the red rivulets spreading outward from his friend’s left foot. An arrow had sunk into McNair’s leg a few inches above the ankle, from side to side. Nate’s anger evaporated like dew under the morning sun. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You have enough troubles at the moment.” It had been all Shakespeare could do not to scream. The pain had nearly caused him to black out. “Now stop pretending to be a gopher so we can get you out of there and you can remove this cussed arrow.”

  “You old goat,” Nate said, his voice choked with emotion.

  “Finally. You admit it.”

  “Admit what? That I care for you?”

  “That I’m old. Now hush and help me. The sooner you’re out of this fix, the sooner I can stop bleeding.”

  With renewed vigor they applied themselves to extricating him. Constant glances at the fringing woods betrayed their nervousness. Nate’s right wrist came loose, and soon after, his left. Shakespeare made headway at loosening the talus that pinned Nate’s upper arms.

  “It’s been minutes,” Nate commented. “Why haven’t they done something?”

  “Like what? Rush us? We’re out in the open. We can shoot them before they reach us. Either that or they have enough brains to stay away from talus. Unlike someone whose name I could mention but won’t.”

  “We need the keg.”

  Shakespeare stared at the jutting hoof. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?”

  “You kiss horses?”

  Shakespeare snorted and shifted his full weight from his wounded leg to his good one. “There is no hope for you, sir, no hope at all.”

  “Evelyn kisses her horse. I bet she picked up the habit from you. They say the young like to mimic their elders, no matter how silly their elders might be.”

  “I would shoot you but it would be a waste of lead.”

  They were joking to keep their spirits up but never for a second did either let down his guard. Since the arrows had come out of the trees on the opposite side of the slope, they focused their attention there. But Nate also scanned the nearby woods, and it was well he did, for just as he finally freed one arm and thrust it out of the hole, the vegetation parted sixty feet away, revealing a swarthy form with a barbed arrow notched to a sinew string.

  “Behind you!” Nate cried, and pointed.

  Shakespeare whirled, or tried to, palming a flintlock. His left leg gave out under him and he fired as he fell. In his haste he rushed his shot and the lead ball cored a fir next to the man.

  The warrior jumped back, steadied his bow, and pulled the string.

  There was no time for Shakespeare to reload, and at that range the warrior could hardly miss. Then Shakespeare saw Nate’s Hawken, lying almost at his fingertips. Grabbing it, he pointed, thumbed back the hammer, and fired. He had no chance to aim. He was hoping to force the warrior to seek cover. But fickle fate smiled on him.

  The top of the warrior’s head burst in a shower of hair and brains. The man staggered, dead on his feet, and the arrow intended for Shakespeare or Nate left the string and imbedded itself in the soil. The bow fell from fingers gone limp, and was joined by the owner of those fingers. “That was some shooting,” Nate marveled.

  “I cannot tell a lie,” Shakespeare said as he set to reloading. “Yes, it was.”

  “Give me a pistol and I will cover you. If that one snuck over here, the others might have, too.”

  Bending to the task, Shakespeare quoted, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

  “I vote we oppose,” Nate said. He had never been one to turn the other cheek. If he had, he would have died long ago. On the frontier it was kill or be killed. Only those willing to stand up for themselves had any hope of living to old age. The wilderness was no place for the weak of body or the weak of mind.

  One of the great shocks of Nate’s life had been the first time a man tried to kill him. His sheltered life as an aspiring accountant in New York City had not prepared
him for the harsh reality of existence in the wild. It was one thing to sit in the warm comfort of an easy chair and read about the exciting exploits of Jim Bowie and the famous sandbar duel, and quite another to find oneself staring into the muzzle of a flintlock or at a gleaming blade held by someone bent on killing you.

  Suddenly Nate became aware that McNair was talking to him.

  “—a nap or do you want me to do all the work?” Shakespeare was tearing at the rocks and dirt. “A pair of very unfriendly gentlemen are still out there somewhere, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Several minutes of steady digging resulted in Nate being able to climb out. He accepted his Hawken, and together they carefully crossed to the jutting hoof and knelt on each side of it.

  Shakespeare scratched his white beard. “Appears to me the horse is upside down. It could take us forever to reach the keg.”

  “However long it takes,” Nate said, and began digging. Once again they were alert for the hostiles but the remaining two did not show themselves.

  Nate had dug down about a foot and Shakespeare not quite as deep when McNair’s knuckles rapped an object with a telltale thunk. “Can it be?” he said, and hastily scraped more dirt away.

  It was the keg. Evidently it had come loose when the talus slammed into the sorrel, and ended up near the top of the mound rather than deeper down. Cradling it, Shakespeare inspected the seams. “In one piece,” he chortled. “We can proceed as planned.”

  “First you let me doctor you.” Nate in the lead, his Hawken leveled, they entered the vegetation. Nate made his friend sit. Gingerly hiking McNair’s pant leg, he found that the arrow had missed the bone and gone through the fleshy part of the calf. “You are one lucky coon.”

  “If that were true, the arrow would have missed.” Nate gripped the shaft with both hands. “Grit your teeth. This might hurt. Are you ready?”

  “You ask the silliest questions.”

  A quick snap, and Nate could pull the arrow out. “Want to save it as a keepsake?”