Wilderness: Vengeance Trail/ Death Hunt (A Wilderness Western Book 4) Page 2

  The stallion had also hit and rolled, and now the horse lay on its side, dazed, waving its legs and wheezing.

  Shoving upright, Nate ran to his animal, fearing one of its legs had sustained a break. He moved around to its head and gripped the bridle, intending to help the horse rise. Then he heard a hateful screech and spun.

  Charging toward him were the three Utes, who had fanned out to give themselves room to maneuver and to make it more difficult for him to slay them. They were slightly over one hundred yards off and each warrior already had a shaft nocked to his bowstring.

  Nate knew there was no time to try and get the stallion up and ride off. If he attempted the feat, he’d be a pincushion before he traveled a dozen feet. His sole recourse was to fight and hope for the best.

  He whipped the Hawken to his right shoulder, cocked the hammer, and took a bead on the centermost Ute. The warrior saw him aim and began swerving from side to side. Stubbornly, he tracked the rider, and when he felt certain he couldn’t miss, he fired. At the booming retort lead streaked from the barrel accompanied by a cloud of acrid smoke.

  Ninety yards out the middle warrior flung his arms into the air and pitched from his mount.

  Nate quickly placed the rifle stock on the ground and went to work reloading, his fingers flying. He didn’t want to rely on the pistols just yet. Move! his mind screamed. They’re getting closer! He swiftly poured the proper quantity of black powder from his horn into the muzzle, using a crease in his palm as the mark to determine how much powder was sufficient. Then his fingers flew to the ammo pouch and removed a ball and patch. It took all of his self-control to prevent panic from overcoming him. He wrapped the ball in the patch and shoved both into the barrel using his thumb. With a wrenching motion he extracted the ramrod, glancing at his foes as he did.

  The Ute on the right let an arrow fly.

  Nate saw it coming, saw the glittering tip and the spinning feathers, saw that it had been aimed unerringly. All this he noticed in the span of a second, and even as the shaft arced down toward his chest he nimbly stepped to the right. The arrow thudded into the earth several feet past the spot where he had stood.

  He glimpsed the other warrior about to fire and shoved the ramrod down the barrel. Don’t stop! he urged himself. Stay calm and keep going. The ramrod tamped the ball home and he yanked the long rod out, let it fall, and pressed the stock to his shoulder once more.

  Out of the blue flashed a whizzing arrow.

  Acute pain flared in Nate’s left shoulder. He looked down to find he’d been hit, creased by the shaft, his shirt and skin torn open. Ignoring the wound, he sighted on the warrior on the right, pulled back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger when the man was sixty yards distant.

  The second Ute jerked when struck, then soundlessly toppled.

  Only one left, Nate told himself, placing the rifle at his feet. He drew the twin flintlocks, pivoting to confront the last attacker. The Ute had a shaft ready to fly, and as Nate laid eyes on him he did just that.

  Darting to the left, Nate extended both pistols. The shaft sped harmlessly past him. He couldn’t fire yet, though. Pistols had a limited range and the final Ute was fifty yards away. He had to get closer, and instead of waiting for the warrior to come to him, he charged.

  The Ute appeared surprised by the tactic. He was nocking yet another arrow, riding straight for the young mountaineer. In a smooth motion he brought the bow level.

  Nate still couldn’t fire. Both of his pistols were smoothbore single-shot .55 caliber flintlocks, powerful man-stoppers under thirty yards and forty yards still separated him from his enemy. He ran faster, hoping to shoot before the Ute let the arrow go. But the very next instant, the warrior fired.

  Taking one more stride, Nate dived, landing on his elbows and knees, pain jarring his limbs. He was barely aware the shaft had passed harmlessly over his head. All that mattered was ending the battle then and there. From his prone position he held the pistols steady, angled the barrels upward, and when the onrushing Ute materialized in front of both sights, about to loose another arrow, he squeezed both triggers.

  The twin balls struck the warrior high in the chest, smacking into his body and lifting him from his horse. He grimaced as he fell, landing flat on his back and not moving again.

  Nate lay equally still, catching his breath, trying to calm his nerves. He looked at each Ute; none displayed any hint of life. Then he remembered a crucial lesson he’d learned the hard way, namely to never leave his weapons unloaded for any longer than necessary. A mountaineer could never tell when a new danger might crop up, sometimes immediately on the heels of another.

  He rose to his knees and proceeded to reload both flintlocks. Once done, he hurried to retrieve the Hawken and loaded it. As he slid the ramrod back into its housing he looked around for the stallion. To his delight, the horse was not more than fifteen yards to the south, standing still. He ran to the grazing animal and bent down to examine its legs. To his immense relief, none were broken.

  Nate straightened and saw the Ute mounts running off to the southwest. He let them go. They were of no use to him and he had more urgent business to attend to. Mounting, he glanced at the corpses. A year ago he would have given them a proper burial. But he’d learned a great deal since coming West, and one of the lessons had been that carrion eaters existed for a reason. Who was he to deprive the coyotes and the buzzards of their food? The good Lord had put such critters on the Earth for a reason, and he wasn’t about to buck divine foresight.

  Shrugging, still ignoring his flesh-wound, Nate rode hard to the northwest. He eyed the nearby mountains excitedly, seeking the ideal spot. A deer trail leading up the slope of a high peak to his left attracted his attention. He estimated he could climb hundreds of feet before he would need to turn the stallion around, and from such a height he might be able to see the distant party on the far plain.

  Up the slope he went, the stallion responding to his guidance. There were trees and high weeds on both sides until he rose above the vegetation and reined up. The plain was visible, but the party was nowhere in sight. Frustrated, he squinted, and at the extreme limit of his vision he spied them, a cluster of riders still bearing to the northwest. For a moment he thought he saw a white horse among the group, and then they were too indistinct for him to note any details at all.

  Had he really seen Shakespeare’s mare, or had his eyes played tricks on him? Nate frowned, debating what to do next. If he pressed the stallion to its limit, he might overtake that party by tomorrow afternoon at the very latest. It meant another day’s delay in returning to Winona, but if Shakespeare was indeed in trouble, then he owed it to his best friend to make a rescue attempt.

  The decision sparked prompt action. He turned the stallion and went to the bottom of the mountain, then headed toward the plain. Now that he had a definite destination in mind, he stuck to as straight a route as possible given the ruggedness of the terrain.

  Slowly the day waned, the golden sun climbing ever higher in the blue sky and dipping toward the western horizon. The shadows lengthened. As evening approached, deer and elk came out to feed in larger numbers.

  Nate ignored them. He was too concerned over Shakespeare to think about food. Reaching that plain before nightfall became his singular goal. His thoughts strayed as he rode, dwelling on the beautiful woman he proudly called his wife and his anxiety over the impending birth. He’d never been a father, but he knew that childbirth could be dangerous for a woman, knew that many women died in delivery. The idea of such a fate befalling Winona was too horrible to contemplate, but contemplate it he had, which was one of the reasons he’d gone to visit Shakespeare.

  The mountain man had been married before and must know all about the act of giving birth, Nate reasoned. He figured he could ask his mentor for advice on how best to guarantee Winona’s delivery went without a hitch. There must be something he could do. When he’d broached the subject with Winona, she had bestowed one of her enigmatic wifely smiles on
him and advised him not to worry, that she knew what to do and everything would be fine. So he’d bluntly asked her how she intended to deliver the baby by herself, and her answer had shocked him to his core.

  “Indian women have been giving birth since the dawn of time,” Winona had explained in the manner she might adopt to instruct a six-year old child. “I will go outside when the baby is ready, find a quiet spot in the woods, squat, and the baby will be born.”

  Nate had mistakenly believed she was joking and laughed. Her eyes had flashed in the manner they often did when he made a fool of himself, and he’d realized she was serious. “Dear God. You don’t mean it?” he’d blurted.

  “Is something wrong?” Winona had responded rather indignantly.

  “Are you telling me that Shoshone women always go off by themselves to have babies? They must have help of some kind.”

  “Well, yes, we do.”

  “I knew it.”

  “We usually squat next to a sapling so we can grip the tree as tight as we want. It helps us when we push the baby from our womb.”

  “A tree?” Nate had repeated in amazement.

  “Yes. How do white women give birth?”

  “They lie in bed, as any sensible person would, and they have a doctor come to help them. If a doctor isn’t available, then they get a midwife or a friend or two to help out.”

  Winona had stared at him in evident confusion. “White women give birth on their backs?”

  “Certainly. Why?”

  “But a baby must come out from between a woman’s legs. It is so much easier if the woman is upright. Then the baby’s own weight helps to bring it into this world. Why, the way you describe it, the woman must push and push to get the baby out,” Winona had said, and then blinked as if in sudden comprehension. “Perhaps that is the reason white women need so much help.”

  “I’d be a lot more comfortable if we had some help,” Nate had said.

  Winona had laughed. “Since when does a Shoshone woman need help in using her body in the manner in which the Great Mystery intended it?”

  Nate’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the memory of that conversation. He hadn’t been able to come up with a good answer for her, and now she was intent on delivering the baby alone. Why did women have to be so obstinate all the time? If there was one other lesson he’d learned since setting off on his own, it was an observation most men seemed to share: Women were damned peculiar.

  He chuckled at the notion and absently scanned the forest ahead. By his reckoning he should reach the plain within an hour. He went around a thicket, over a knoll, and along a stream. Birds were chirping nearby and a squirrel chattered at him from a high tree. The tranquility lulled him into complacency, so he didn’t notice the creature eyeing him hungrily until a bestial snarl rent the air and he glanced to his left to behold the terror of the Rocky Mountains, the scourge of every Indian and white man alike.

  Lumbering toward him was a mighty grizzly bear.

  Chapter Three

  Nate urged the stallion into a race for its life, watching the bear charge and dreading the consequences should the horse falter. He’d tangled with grizzlies before and knew from firsthand experience why they were so formidable. Adult males weighed fourteen hundred pounds or more and possessed five long claws on each paw that could be used to slash flesh to ribbons with a single swipe. And although grizzlies walked with a slow, clumsy gait, when necessary they could run as fast as a horse.

  Now Nate found that out the hard way. He saw the grizzly gaining and goaded the stallion to greater speed. Since trying to shoot the grizzly while galloping on horseback would be a waste of the ball, unless by some miracle he hit an eye or the heart, he didn’t bother to fire. He knew its thick skull protected the bear’s brain from all but shots fired at very close range.

  He could see the bear’s sides heaving as the brute ran. A pronounced hump above its shoulders distinguished the terrible beast from its lesser cousin, the black bear. The concave face, enormous in its own right, was set in feral determination.

  Not this time! Nate thought, hunching over in the saddle.

  On three prior occasions he’d been forced to fight grizzlies; once, while en route from St. Louis to the Rockies with his Uncle Zeke; again, when on the way to the 1828 rendezvous just last summer; and the third time while off with Shakespeare learning how to trap beaver. All three times he’d barely survived the encounters.

  Thinking of those attacks brought to mind the Indian name bestowed on him by a Cheyenne warrior who witnessed the first scrape. ‘Grizzly Killer,’ the Indians now called him in honor of his prowess. Although, if it had been up to him, he would gladly have avoided each run-in with the fierce beasts. Having an Indian name was fine, but gaining it had nearly cost his life.

  The grizzly vented a furious roar.

  Nate looked back, elated to find the stallion had pulled out well ahead of the bear. Grizzlies weren’t able to sustain their top speed for any great distance, so the stallion’s stamina would prove the determining factor. He stared anxiously down at the ground, afraid there might be more prairie dog burrows in his path, but the ground was level and clear.

  After a minute the grizzly gave up the chase and slowed to a disgruntled walk. It glared at the departing horse as if indignant that any animal would decline the privilege of being its main course.

  Laughing in delight, Nate straightened and continued toward the plain. But he was more alert, constantly scanning the countryside for bears. Grizzlies were everywhere in the Rockies and the Plains, and their aggressive temperaments made them the most dangerous creatures in the wilderness.

  The sun sank below the horizon and twilight enveloped the landscape. Still Nate pressed ahead, and the shadows had merged into an inky blanket by the time he ultimately reached his destination.

  At the southern edge of the plain he halted, planning to make camp right there, but the stallion raised its head and sniffed loudly, then tapped one hoof on the ground, seemingly eager to keep going. He gave it a free rein and the horse cut to the right, traveled fifteen yards, and stopped beside a small spring.

  Nate patted the stallion’s neck in gratitude. “Always trust your horse’s instincts,” Shakespeare had once advised him, and the admonition had proven remarkably beneficial. He climbed down and let the stallion drink.

  Should he make a fire or not? Nate mused, and decided against the notion. Campfires stood out like sore thumbs in the vast sea of benighted forest, and for all he knew the party he’d seen might spot his. He had plenty of jerked venison in his saddlebags and fresh water to drink. A fire wasn’t necessary, although he was tempted to start one just so he could spend a few hours reading his copy of James Fenimore Cooper’s latest book. He’d already read The Last of the Mohicans once and liked it so much he’d begun reading it again.

  He stripped off the saddlebags and the saddle, then tied the stallion to a nearby tree using a twenty-foot length of rope so the horse could graze at its leisure. Not tying a horse in Indian country was downright foolish, since the animal might wander off or Indians might steal it. The trappers had a saying along those lines: “It’s better to count ribs than to count tracks.”

  Which meant it was wiser to let a horse go a little hungry by limiting its grazing space rather than let it loose to roam and not have it in the morning.

  He took a handful of venison from the saddlebags, spread his blanket near the water, and settled down for the night. From near and far arose the sounds of animals; the deep coughs of panthers, the hoots of owls, the howling of wolves, and the yipping of coyotes. Stars filled the heavens, more than he had ever seen at any one time in New York City, and he propped his head on his left hand to admire the celestial spectacle.

  Nate wondered about Winona, hoping she was well. He felt slightly guilty over leaving her to visit Shakespeare, but the trip had to be made. Besides her upcoming delivery, there was the matter of the guns to discuss.

  Recently three men had tried
to trade crates of rifles to the Utes in exchange for prime beaver pelts. Had they been successful, the Utes would have acquired the firepower necessary to become the dominant tribe in the Rockies. Only through sheer chance had Nate discovered their greedy scheme and thwarted it. Now all three were dead and he had the crates safely buried near his cabin. He hoped Shakespeare could give him advice on what to do with the guns.

  He finished the jerked meat and drank heartily from the spring. He could hear the stallion munching on grass, and deep in the forest an animal shrieked in pain, perhaps under attack by a predator. Laying down again, he pondered his predicament and debated whether to turn around by tomorrow night if he failed to overtake the riders he’d spotted. Gradually his eyelids drooped and he entered the realm of dreams, although in his case they were nightmares. Once he imagined Shakespeare being hacked to bits by a band of hostiles wielding butcher knives, and later he dreamed that Winona had fallen and hurt herself and was calling his name over and over in vain.

  ~*~

  The chirping and raucous cries of countless birds roused him from slumber before the sun rose. He sat up, listening to them greet the dawn in their own cheery manner, then rose and stretched. The stallion eyed him expectantly. He led it to the spring, chewed on a piece of venison while it drank, then saddled up. Twenty minutes after opening his eyes he was on the way again.

  Nate found the tracks left by the band and followed them. Crossing the plain took hours; the sun was high by the time he reached a tract of woodland and found where the band had paralleled a stream for a spell. In a spacious clearing he came on the warm embers of a dying fire, the site where the band had camped for the night. The find encouraged him. It meant he was closer to them than expected.

  He pressed onward, noting the riders were continuing to bear generally to the northwest. Unfortunately, the mystery party left no clues behind as to their identity beyond the obvious fact they were Indians.