Wilderness Double Edition 18, page 2
“These mountains sure have gotten crowded since I was away,” Ezriah commented sarcastically. “It’s getting worse than New York City.”
“No place is more crowded than New York,” Nate said. The last he’d heard, the population was a staggering two hundred thousand and growing by boatloads of immigrants each year.
“It sure is a puzzlement,” Ezriah said, squinting up at the towering peaks. “I reckon the answer is on the other side of this range.”
Nate had the same hunch.
They pushed on, alert for signs. Presently Nate thought he spied a couple of riders on an adjoining hill, but they turned out to be a pair of elk grazing at the tree line. Later he spotted white shapes moving high among the rocky crags. Mountain sheep, a dozen or so, gamboling about at dizzying heights no other creature could reach without wings.
Toward the end of the afternoon Nate came to a talus slope. Avoiding the loose rocks and dirt, he angled to the left. Hoof-prints revealed that the four riders had done the same.
Above the talus was the notch, flanked by low cliffs. From the convenient cover of dense firs Nate scoured the immediate area. Only when he was certain it was safe did he venture into the open.
Sparrows flitted overhead. Otherwise there was no sign of life. The Hawken extended, Nate stepped to the gap. More prints were evident, enough to convince him the notch was used regularly by the mysterious riders. He entered the gap dappled by shadow, with his back to the left-hand wall.
Winona imitated him, her rifle to her shoulder. “We could use horses of our own,” she mentioned in a tone that hinted it was more than an offhand statement.
“Do you want me to try and steal some if they belong to hostiles?” Nate asked. This would be no worse than what a war party would do to them.
“What is good enough for the Sioux is good enough for us,” Winona impishly responded. “If the men are white, perhaps they will have a spare mount or two to sell us.”
Ezriah overheard her. “Where do you expect to get the money to buy these nags, lady? It won’t be with my gold, I’m telling you here and now. I’m not spending a cent until I reach St. Louis. Then I’m going on a spree the likes of which would make John Jacob Astor envious.”
As Nate was aware, Astor had made millions in the fur trade and was reputed to be the richest man in America.
“I’ll live in a mansion and have servants wait on me hand and foot,” Ezriah said. “I’ll wear tailor-made clothes that will put the duds I have on to shame. And when I go places, it will be in the most expensive carriage money can buy, one with satin seats and silver trim, pulled by four white horses.
“You have it all thought out,” Nate said.
“You bet your britches I do,” Ezriah gloated. “I’ve got a lot of living to make up for. Twenty years’ worth. So I’ll only eat the best of food, drink the finest liquor, and spend my time in the company of the best-looking women since Cleopatra.” A faint noise from the opening twenty feet away brought Nate to a halt with his arm raised for quiet. A second later a human form was silhouetted against the backdrop of sky. All Nate had was the briefest of glimpses. Then Evelyn hollered, “Pa! Look!” and the figure bolted.
“After him, King!” Ezriah goaded. “If it’s an Indian, he’ll bring a whole passel down on our heads!”
Nate needed no prodding. He raced out of the notch onto a bluff overlooking a verdant valley but had no time to admire the scenery. Thirty feet below a man clad in homespun clothes was about to enter heavy pines.
“Wait!” Nate hollered.
The man glanced up, his face marked by fear. He had no rifle, no pistols, only a long knife on his left hip.
“We won’t hurt—” Nate began, but the fellow dashed into the forest before he could finish. Bounding in pursuit, Nate bawled, “Winona! Keep the others with you!” And then he levered his long legs in a flurry, eager to overtake the man.
Plunging into the undergrowth, Nate paused to listen and was rewarded with the crackle of brush off to his right. Veering in that direction, he caught sight of a patch of checkered shirt. “Come back!” he shouted, but he might as well have saved his breath.
Nate lost sight of his quarry until he burst from the pines to find a massive deadfall ahead, a section of slope where every last tree for hundreds of yards had been toppled, years ago, by an earth slide or chinook. Trunks and branches lay in an impenetrable tangled snarl.
The man in homespun was just disappearing amid the maze.
Nate tried one last time. “We mean you no harm!” Again no response was forthcoming, and he hurtled into the tangle, resolved to catch the man no matter what. But it was one thing to want to, and quite another to accomplish the deed with an unending barrier of fallen trees blocking his every step. He vaulted logs. He pushed through branch barriers that tore at his buckskins and scratched at his eyes. He scaled trunks as high as his chest and a few even higher.
Thirty yards in, Nate halted again to listen. Either the man had learned from his previous mistake or he was lying low.
A freshly broken limb gave Nate a clue. Cat-footing forward, he found a heel print, then more broken limbs, all leading him deeper, to a twisted mound of trees stacked the height of his cabin. Reaching overhead, he gripped a limb and pulled himself up.
There were plenty of nooks and recesses, and Nate started to poke into each one. A yell to the north interrupted his search. Winona, Evelyn, and Ezriah were at the edge of the deadfall, Evelyn waving and hopping up and down.
“Pa! Pa! We saw him! He’s to the right! The right!”
Nate pivoted. Simultaneously, a latticework of limbs parted and out barreled the man in the checkered shirt. In his right hand was the long knife. Uttering an inarticulate cry, he leaped, shearing the blade at Nate’s chest. Instantly Nate swept up the Hawken, deflecting it, and shifted to drive the heavy stock into the man’s stomach. But as luck would have it, his foot lost its purchase on a smooth trunk, and the next thing he knew, he was falling.
Somewhere, someone screamed. Nate barely heard. He slammed onto the wide bole with bone-jarring force and the world exploded in a riot of bright dots and dancing colors. Struggling to sit up, he shook his head to clear it.
The man was dropping toward him with the knife upraised to cleave his skull in half.
Nate flipped to one side and the glittering steel thudded into the log instead. Sweeping the Hawken up and around, he clipped his attacker on the back of the legs and toppled him onto his back.
“No!” the man wailed, scrabbling to his hands and knees. “I won’t let you! Do you hear me? Not in a million years!”
Nate had no idea what the lunatic was raving about. He gained his feet first and arced the stock at the man’s temple to end their clash. But the madman was quicker than he anticipated and rolled out of harm’s way.
Reversing his grip, Nate trained the Hawken on the man’s abdomen and thumbed back the hammer. At the metallic click, the man froze halfway erect.
“Drop the knife or I’ll blow out your wick,” Nate warned.
Glaring raw spite, the man reluctantly did as he had been instructed. He was lean of build, with high cheekbones and curly sandy hair. “Do your worst!” he snarled. “I still won’t let you!”
“Let me what?” Nate said, utterly mystified.
“As if you don’t know!”
“How should I? I don’t know you from Adam,” Nate stated flatly. “Calm down and tell me what this is all about.”
The man’s brow creased in confusion. “Are you trying to tell me that he didn’t send you?”
“Who are you talking about?” Nate said, inadvertently raising his voice in irritation. “My family and I are passing through on our way home. I saw you—”
“Did you say family?”
“Over yonder,” Nate said, and pointed.
Tension drained out of the man like water from a sieve. A lopsided grin curled his mouth and he said, “I’m awfully sorry. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding.” He began to unfurl, then gazed past Nate and his dark eyes widened in shock. “No! Don’t kill him!”
Nate whirled, thinking another man had snuck up on him from the rear. But it was a woman. A petite brunette in a homespun dress who had an ax hoisted aloft, and as he rotated, she swung it at his face.
Two
Winona King’s heart leaped into her throat when she saw the white woman materialize out of nowhere and lift an ax to slay her husband. She snapped her rifle to her shoulder and fixed a hasty bead, but Nate sidestepped the descending ax head, stepping into her sights, and she held her fire. She heard her daughter squeal with joy when Nate grabbed the ax handle and wrenched it from the woman’s grasp.
“They didn’t hurt him! He’s all right!”
“Who are those folks?” Ezriah Hampton wondered aloud.
“Whoever they are, they’re sure not very friendly,” Evelyn said.
The man in the checkered shirt darted to the woman and they clung to each other, the woman weeping, as Nate ushered them out of the deadfall.
Winona trained her own rifle on the duo, furious at the attempts on Nate’s life. Then, as the pair drew nearer and she beheld the misery etching the woman’s face, her fury dampened and was replaced by intense curiosity. Up close, Winona saw that their clothes were smeared with grime and the woman’s dress had been tom in spots. Both were haggard, with dark splotches under their eyes from lack of sleep.
The woman was in such despair that she tottered when the man let go of her for a moment, and he promptly wrapped his arm around her again to support her.
“Have a seat,” Nate directed, nodding at a log. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
Winona’s eyes caught his and she smiled, conveying her relief and her love. She kept her rifle on the strangers as Nate tossed the ax aside and planted himself in front of them. The woman’s head was bowed and her shoulders were heaving in heavy sobs.
“Now let’s find out what this was all about,” Nate said. “Start with your names.”
The man looked up, anxiety oozing from every pore. “I’m Jack Weaver. This is my wife, Molly.”
“I’m Nate King. The woman ready to blow your brains out if you so much as twitch is Winona, my wife. Evelyn, there, is our daughter. And the peacock with the sword is Ezriah Hampton.”
“Peacock?” the trapper said.
Nate ignored him. “Why did you run off like you did, Weaver? Why did the two of you try to kill me?”
Jack Weaver gnawed on his lower lip, afraid to reply.
“I’m waiting,” Nate said harshly. He felt little sympathy, not after what they had done. They were settlers, was his guess. Both were in their early twenties and undoubtedly green behind the ears, but that was no excuse for their monumental stupidity.
“If we tell you and—” Weaver said, then caught himself. Clamping his lips shut, he shook his head.
“And what?” Nate prodded.
Molly raised her head. Her cheeks were damp and she was shivering as if she was cold. “Can’t you let us be? We’re sorry, mister, truly sorry. It was a mistake, is all. We mistook you for an Indian.”
“An Indian with a beard?” Nate said skeptically. In all his years in the wild he had only ever met one, and that had been a warrior so hairy he resembled a bear.
“It was your buckskins and your dark hair and all,” Molly said. “We thought you were after our scalps and we panicked.”
Her excuse didn’t quite wash, but for the moment Nate let it pass. “What are the two of you doing here? Do you have a homestead nearby?”
“We’re from the settlement,” Jack Weaver said.
“Good God!” Ezriah exclaimed. “I was right! It is getting worse than New York City! Why, next thing there will be outhouses behind every tree!”
“Pay him no mind,” Nate told the couple. “He was dropped on his noggin when he was a baby and hasn’t been right in the head ever since.”
Sputtering with indignation, Ezriah rasped, “I was not! And I’ll have you know people have always respected me for my pearls of wisdom.”
Nate stared out across the broad, lush valley. He saw no evidence of habitation. But intervening trees blocked his view of much of it. “Where’s this settlement of yours?”
Jack jerked a thumb to the north. “You can’t see it from here. It’s called New Eden.”
“Never heard of it,” Nate said. To a degree, he shared Ezriah’s dismay. He had always dreaded that one day pilgrims would swarm to the mountains like bees to pollen, and settlements and towns would spring up everywhere. New Eden might be the beginning of the end for the way of life he enjoyed.
“Colonel Proctor started it up about eighteen months ago,” Jack said. “He led a wagon train here for that express purpose.”
“Proctor is an army officer?”
“North Carolina militia. He comes from a military family. His grandfather was a famous hero of the Revolution.” A certain bitterness crept into the younger man’s voice. “The colonel owned a prosperous plantation. He was real rich and powerful. Two terms running he was a senator in the state legislature.”
“He gave all that up to start a settlement in the middle of nowhere?” Nate said in disbelief.
“The colonel is a unique man,” Jack said.
“Your colonel is a jackass, pup,” Ezriah declared. “If I had me a plantation, I’d live out my life in the lap of luxury. I sure as hell wouldn’t go traipsing off into the wilds for the thrill of it.”
“Oh, Colonel Proctor had a reason,” Jack said, but he didn’t say what it was.
Molly had stopped crying and was dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve. “Will you please let us go now? Again, we’re terribly sorry about the misunderstanding. But we need to be on our way.”
“Back to the settlement?” Nate said. “We’ll tag along with you.”
Both husband and wife blurted “No!” in unison, and Molly leaped to her feet in consternation.
“No, no! We’re not going back! Not ever. In fact, we were on our way out of the valley when we bumped into you.”
Winona prided herself on being a fair judge of human character, and it was obvious to her the pair were scared to death. Why that should be, she couldn’t say. She also sensed they were not being completely honest. “Where were you headed?” she asked.
Jack and Molly visibly hesitated. Finally Jack said, “We’re on our way back to the States. We’ve had enough of frontier life.”
Nate did not appreciate being lied to. “Without horses? Without supplies? With just the clothes on your backs and a knife and an ax?”
“It was all we could get our hands on,” Jack said.
“But if you intend to return to the States,” Winona brought up, “why were you going west instead of east?”
Jack nervously licked his lips. “There are only two ways in and out of the valley. The notch just happened to be closer.”
Their story became more preposterous by the moment, Nate mused. “It’s good we came along when we did, then. You’d never make it out of the mountains alive.” For that matter, they probably needed help crossing a street so they wouldn’t be run over by a carriage.
“You’re traveling east, aren’t you?” Molly said, brightening. “You could take us with you! We’ll go up through the notch and around to the south. There has to be another way through this range.”
“There is,” Nate said, “but cutting across this valley will take a lot less time.”
“We’re in no rush.” Molly clasped her hands to her bosom. “Please, Mr. King. We beseech you. Help us reach Bent’s Fort. We’ll be fine on our own from there.”
“I’d like to see the colonel about buying some horses first.”
Again panic gripped them, and Jack said, “He doesn’t have any to spare. If he did, we wouldn’t be traveling on foot.”
“Let’s just go, now, while we still can,” Molly urged. “Before it gets dark, I mean.”
“My wife and I need to talk this over. Stay right where you are,” Nate instructed them, and backed off half a dozen yards.
Winona joined him. “What do you think?”
“Something isn’t quite right,” Nate said.
Ezriah Hampton had tagged along, and he let out with a loud snort. “Hell, anyone with half a brain can see those two are lying through their teeth. If you ask me, they just can’t take the strain of living in the wilderness. I’ve seen it before.”
So had Nate. Settlers who tried to make a go of it and failed. The daily struggle for survival, the constant threat of Indian attacks or of being set upon by wild beasts, was more than most could endure. “Maybe, but I suspect there’s more to it than that.”
“Whatever their problem,” Winona said, “the issue for us to decide is whether we will help them. And I think we should. We have come this far without horses, we can go the rest of the way without them.”
“Speak for yourself, lady,” Ezriah grumbled. “My feet are worn to a frazzle.”
“It’s those high-heeled boots you’re wearing,” Nate said. “You should have stuck with moccasins.”
“But these boots have such shiny buckles!”
Sighing, Nate walked to the Weavers. “All right. We’ll forget about getting horses and help you reach Bent’s Fort. But you’ll—” He got no further. To his amazement, Jack and Molly threw themselves at him, hugging him close.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Molly said, sniffling. “You don’t realize how much this means to us!”
“You’ve saved our lives!” Jack exclaimed. “And after what we almost did to you! You’re a saint, Mr. King! An angel sent to answer our prayers!”
Ezriah Hampton made a show of scrutinizing Nate’s head. “I think his halo is on crooked.”
Keenly uncomfortable at being held so close by two people who minutes ago had tried to murder him, Nate shrugged free. “As I was about to say, we’ll help, but you’re to do as I say at all times. Savvy?”
“That’s fine by us, yes,” Jack said sincerely.
Molly was crying again but now her tears were tears of joy. She gripped her husband’s arms. “We’ve done it! Truly done it! In a couple of months well be back in Illinois, safe and sound.”
