The girl was picking flowers. Amid a rocky area grew slender plants with striking blue-to-purplish blooms unlike any flower with which Dega was familiar. There was much about the mountains that was new to him, but his interest in the flowers paled compared to his interest in the girl.
She had drawn a knife, and cut a stem down low before adding it to a growing pile. Still humming, she sheathed the blade, gathered up the bouquet, and stood. She held the flowers to her nose and sniffed, smiling happily, then retrieved her rifle from where she had leaned it against a boulder.
Suddenly the girl stiffened. Her head jerked up and she peered about her as if she suspected she was being spied on.
Dega imitated a log, his eyelids hooded to slits. For tense heartbeats she seemed to stare right at him, but then she cautiously backed down the rise into the trees. He was impressed. She had sharp senses as well as beauty. That she came all this way for a handful of flowers said much about her character.
Dega had seen the girl several times since, and the more he saw of her, the more he liked what he saw. He did not tell anyone. It was the first time he had ever kept a secret from his family. Since childhood he had been taught he must always be open and honest, but this was too personal to share. Besides, he was convinced they would not understand. Not that he could blame them. He did not fully understand, either, why he felt as he did.
Now, as Dega turned to shadow the girl’s father and the white-haired man as they trotted on horseback toward the cabin on the north shore, he was given pause by the appearance of the one he could not stop thinking about.
The girl and her mother came out and stared after the men. Their expressions bore mild concern.
Dega would very much like to know why the whites were—He caught himself. He must stop thinking of them like that. Only the two men and the wife of the son were white. He must think of them as people, as individuals.
The mother went back in. The girl walked to the corral. A sorrel came over and she patted its neck and spoke softly.
To Dega’s consternation, he found himself imagining what it would be like to have her do the same to him. Warmth spread through his body, and he self-consciously shifted his weight from one foot to the other and willed himself to think about something else. But he couldn’t.
Faint rustling came to Dega’s rescue. He whipped around, hiking the rifle. Since he was not due to be relieved until the sun was overhead, he was mildly surprised to see his sister hurrying toward him. Teni was supposed to be with the others. They had agreed among themselves that at no time must any of the family be separated from the others unless it was to take a turn spying on the people in the cabins.
“You are early,” Dega whispered.
Teni was nearly out of breath. She had run all the way from their camp, which was a considerable distance into the forest. “Mother and Father sent me. You must come right away. It is Miki.”
“What about her?” Dega envisioned their little sister being attacked by a bear or a big cat.
“She is missing.”
“She probably wandered off and is lost.”
Teni motioned for him to hurry. “We are not sure. That is why they want you to come. You are the best tracker.”
Casting a reluctant glance at the girl by the corral, Dega said, “Let us go.” Side by side, they loped to the west.
“When did you see Miki last?” Dega asked. “How long has she been gone?”
“I cannot say how long,” Teni answered, “but I saw her last shortly after we ate breakfast. She was playing with the doll Mother made for her.”
Miki loved dolls. Dega remembered she’d had seven or eight of them at one time, all destroyed when their lodge was burned. The other day, their mother had skinned a rabbit and stuffed the skin with grass. A carved wooden head, tiny strips of buckskin for hair, and Miki had a new doll to play with.
“Have you searched for her?”
“Of course.”
“You found no sign at all?”
“We found—” Teni hesitated, “—something.”
“What?”
“You must see for yourself.”
Teni would not say more, even though Dega pressed her.
They had camped in a clearing near a stream fed by the gigantic block of greenish-white ice. It was far enough from the lake that there was little risk of being discovered.
Their parents were anxiously waiting.
“Still no sign of her,” Tihi said.
Waku gripped Dega by the arm. “Are all the whites accounted for this morning, my son?”
“They are not all white—” Dega began, then said, “What do you mean, Father?”
“Have any of them left their wooden lodges?”
Dega related what he had seen, leaving out the part about the girl rubbing his neck. “What do they have to do with Miki?”
“Come with me and I will show you.”
All four of them went, Waku in the lead, jogging along the stream for a stone’s throw. On a grassy bank Waku stopped and pointed. “There.”
Some of the grass was flattened, as if a struggle had taken place, and in the center of the trampled patch lay the large axe Dega had last seen the black-haired white man use to chop wood. “What is that doing there?”
“It must belong to whoever took Miki,” Waku said. Dega squatted and examined the grass and the area around it. “There are no footprints.”
“I told you there were none,” Waku said to Tihi.
“But that is impossible,” Teni remarked. “The axe did not fly there.”
Dega examined the grass a second time, more thoroughly. “No tracks,” he repeated. There were scuff marks where Miki had briefly struggled, then nothing.
“Whoever it was carried her off,” Waku speculated. “When she fought, he dropped the axe.”
Dega disagreed. The axe was not that heavy. A grown man would have no difficulty holding it and Miki both.
“Why did Miki not cry out?” Teni wondered. “Why did we not hear anything?”
Waku had an answer for that, too. “The man had a hand over her mouth so she could not scream.”
“There has to be sign,” Dega said. People did not disappear into the air. He commenced to search in earnest, in ever widening circles. The others followed, relying on him to do what they could not. But although he hunted long and diligently, in the end he held up his arms in exasperation and said, “Nothing. At all.”
“It is the whites, I tell you,” Waku said. “They found out we are here and want to drive us out.”
“So they abducted the youngest of us?” Dega said skeptically.
“To force us to do their bidding,” Waku said. “They will demand we leave their valley or else they will harm Miki.”
Dega could not imagine the black-haired man being so vicious, not after he had witnessed the affection and tenderness the man showed to his daughter. “I do not think it was them.”
“You defend the whites?” Waku asked in astonishment. “Have you not learned they can never be trusted?”
Teni had a proposal. “We should go to them and ask if they have her.”
“That is the one thing we must definitely not do,” Waku said sternly. “They will only deny it.”
“But you said they want to force us to leave by threatening to harm her.” Teni pointed out the contradiction.
“Who can predict what whites will do?” Waku responded. “The thing for us to do is to strike back at them before they expect.”
“Strike back how?” Tihi asked. She had not contributed much to the discussion, but she was hanging on every word. She could not bear the idea of losing her youngest as she had lost the rest of her relatives and friends. “By attacking them?”
“If we do that, they might kill Miki out of spite,” Waku said. “No, we must be smart. We must force them to bow to our will as they would have had us bow to theirs.”
“You speak in riddles,” Tihi said angrily.
“It is simple. They took
one of us. We will take one of them.”
“What?” Dega said.
“We will abduct one of the whites,” Waku proposed, “and demand they return Miki in exchange for the one we take.”
“But what if they do not have Miki?” Dega said. “We would be in the wrong.”
“Who else can it be?” Waku countered. “We have not seen anyone but the whites since we arrived.”
Tihi said hopefully, “If you have another explanation for your sister’s disappearance, I am happy to listen.”
“I do not,” Dega admitted.
“Then it is settled,” Waku said. “We must strike quickly before Miki is harmed, and take the whites by surprise.”
Before he could stop himself, Dega said, “I wish you would stop calling them that. Some of those people are Indians, like us.”
“You surprise me,” Waku said. “Yes, they are Indians, as the whites call anyone with red skin. But they are not like us. They are not Nansusequa. They are not People of the Forest.”
“That makes them our enemies?” Dega asked more harshly than he should. But he could not help it.
“It does not make them our friends,” Waku responded. “Were the Hurons friends to the Iroquois? Were the Sauk friends to the Dakota? Were the Fox friends to the Chippewa?”
The tribes Waku mentioned had all been bitter enemies, as Dega was well aware. “No.”
Waku was not done making his point. “We are the People of the Forest. But that does not make us brothers to the People on the Hills or the People of the Standing Stone or the People of the Mucky Land. It does not make us brothers to the women in those cabins, or to the tribes those women are part of.”
“Do you really think this plan of yours will work, husband?” Tihi anxiously asked. She was consumed with worry for Miki.
“There is only one way to find out. We leave now to take a white captive.”
“One of the women?”
“No,” Waku said. “I have been giving it some thought. They took our youngest, did they not? It is fitting, then, that we take their youngest.” He paused. “We will abduct the daughter of the black-haired man, and if he does not return Miki, we will kill her.”
Fifteen
Evelyn had always loved flowers. In their old valley flowers had grown in great numbers in the spring and summer. Many a lazy afternoon she whiled away lying in beds of wild flowers, breathing deeply of their fragrance.
Evelyn loved having flowers in her room. They added splashes of color and scent. It was not unusual for her to have half a dozen vases scattered about, brimming with various flowers.
Early on, Evelyn had discovered an interesting fact about flowers. The Shoshones had a name for every flower in the mountains, but the whites did not. Part of the reason was that many were not found east of the Mississippi. Then, too, the early trappers had been more interested in beaver and plews. Naming flowers was not high on their list of priorities.
When she was eight, Evelyn had asked her father if he could find a book on flowers, and to her delight he returned from St. Louis with a volume by a noted botanist. It included paintings of every known flower. She had read it avidly, and been disappointed because so many of the flowers she knew and liked were not represented.
There was the bright yellow flower, with five petals, which was common above timberline. Also rife that high up were small blue flowers that grew on plants with leaves covered by silvery strands, like hair. Less common was a purplish-green flower that resembled a bell. Marigolds grew along the waterways. Primrose grew close to streams and rivers, but while the pinkish-purple flowers were lovely, they smelled exactly like a skunk. That always perplexed her. Why have a flower so lovely that stank so bad? There was a large red flower the Shoshones called Red Sun. Deep blue larkspur was yet another that favored moist areas.
On dry hillsides grew purple flowers that arched outward from their stems. So did a plant that produced bright pink flowers with a honey scent.
But it was the mountain meadows where most flowers thrived. Daisies, columbines, and a host of others: a creamy white flower that grew in pods; a purple flower with a tiny hood, which the Shoshones said was poisonous; a yellow, fuzzy flower with a minty odor; a type of flower so red, it resembled globes of blood; and a large orange-yellow flower with a red center that always made her think the flower was on fire.
These, and many more, Evelyn enjoyed and collected. Some bloomed early in the year, others in the heat of summer, still others in the cool of fall. In her diary she noted the types and seasons.
A particular favorite of hers was a bluish-purple flower that grew in rocky areas. Usually it thrived near the timberline, but she had discovered a patch only a few minutes’ walk from their new cabin.
The last handful she had gathered was starting to wither, so she decided to go for more.
Winona was at the counter cutting up potatoes and carrots for the stew they were having for supper.
Easing her bedroom door open, Evelyn quietly slipped out. Her father and Shakespeare had gone to talk to her brother about the strange tracks they had found. To Evelyn, it looked as if someone had gone around poking the ground with a stick. They were hardly cause for worry, although her father seemed to think so. When her father worried, her mother worried. They had asked that she stay inside until they decided it was safe.
But Evelyn wanted those flowers.
She started for the door. She had her Hawken and her pistols, so it was not as if she couldn’t defend herself. The real challenge would be slipping by her mother. On cat’s feet she tiptoed past the rocking chair and the fireplace and neared the table. She remembered a floorboard that creaked and stepped over it. The front door was open a few inches. All she had to do was lightly pull on the latch.
“Where are you going, daughter?”
Startled, Evelyn almost dropped her rifle. Her mother’s back was to her. “How did you know it was me?”
“You and I are the only two here.” Winona scooped up a handful of chopped potatoes and dropped them into the stew pot.
“No, I meant, how did you know I was going out?” Evelyn had lost count of the number of times her mother had done something like this. “I didn’t make a sound.” She quickly added to justify being so quiet, “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“How considerate,” Winona said dryly, and turned.
“It is no great mystery. I can see out of the corners of my eyes as well as straight ahead.”
“Oh,” Evelyn said, feeling foolish. “Well, I won’t be long.” Again she reached for the latch.
“You have not told me where you are going.”
“I just want to walk a bit,” Evelyn fibbed. “I don’t like being cooped up on a nice day like today.”
“Do not go far from the cabin,” Winona directed. “Not until your father says it is safe.”
“I don’t see what the fuss is about,” Evelyn groused. “It’s not as if he found grizzly tracks or the tracks of hostile Indians. All they are is circles in the dirt.”
“They are out of the ordinary,” Winona said with her usual maternal patience, “and the out of the ordinary can be dangerous.”
“Those little circles?” Evelyn said, and laughed.
“Be that as it may,” Winona said in her flawless English, “you will stay close to the cabin until your father returns or you will not go outside. Agreed?”
“I promise I won’t go gallivanting up to the glacier,” Evelyn said, and skipped out with guilt riding on her shoulders. She disliked misleading her mother. But in ten minutes she would be back with fresh flowers.
Evelyn was careful to close the door after her. She did not make for the woods right away in case her mother was watching out the window. Playing it canny, she went to the corral and petted her sorrel. Then, keeping one eye on the window, she quickly crossed the cleared space and was soon in among the pines. As soon as she was out of sight of the cabin, she went even faster.
Evelyn was pleased with herself.
She supposed she was being immature, but what harm could it do? The flowers were only in bloom for another few weeks.
Thus preoccupied, Evelyn had gone a hundred yards when it occurred to her that the woods were much too still. Normally, the sparrows and juncos and warblers were merrily chirping. Chipmunks would chitter at her and scamper away with their tails raised in alarm.
Evelyn stopped and looked about her. Not so much as a leaf stirred. She debated going back and shrugged off her unease as nervousness. All because of a bunch of silly circles. Chuckling, she ran on.
The rise where the flowers grew came into sight. Evelyn smiled. But the smile faded the very next moment when she heard her mother calling her name. Stopping, Evelyn turned. She cupped a hand to her mouth to answer and was transfixed with shock. Converging on her from out of the vegetation were four green-clad figures. She had turned so unexpectedly, they did not have a chance to conceal themselves.
“What on earth?” Evelyn blurted.
The four rushed her.
“Ma! Help!” Evelyn cried, even as she brought up her Hawken. She fired when it was nearly level, but as the rifle went off a warrior in green swatted the barrel and the lead plowed a furrow in the earth.
Evelyn thrust the muzzle at his face, at his eyes, but the warrior ducked and grabbed at her dress. Skipping backward, she dropped her rifle and stabbed for the pistols wedged under her belt. She had the flintlocks half out when the warrior’s iron arm looped about her waist and she was bodily lifted off the ground. A hand clamped over her mouth.
Then an older warrior shouted something in a tongue Evelyn had never heard, and the next instant the four bounded into the forest with her as their captive.
Winona King stiffened at the rifle blast. She heard her daughter’s cry for help, and, spiked with fear, she whirled and raced into the cabin. Her pistols were on the table, her rifle propped in a corner. In a twinkling she was armed and slinging her ammo pouch and powderhorn across her chest.
Wilderness Double Edition 25 Page 32