Wilderness Double Edition 23, page 28
But that wasn’t entirely true, either, Nate reflected. Human beings were not completely helpless. They need not always be victims of circumstance. They could carve a niche for themselves. They could live where they wanted, live how they wanted. He was living proof. He had left New York for the frontier and built a new life for himself. And he was happier by far than he had ever been back east.
Freedom has a lot to do with it. Nate cherished being truly free. Cherished being able to do as he pleased, when he pleased. West of the Mississippi, a man did not have someone looking over his shoulder telling him what he could and couldn’t do. There were no laws to abide by other than the natural laws imposed by Nature. There were no rules to follow other than the personal code of each individual.
How sweet life was, Nate thought, when a person was genuinely free. When the only dictates they need follow were those spawned by their affection for those they loved. It was as things must have been back when humankind first appeared, before civilization and laws were invented, before humans imprisoned themselves in cages of their own devising.
What in God’s name was he doing?
Nate drew rein, shocked at his lapse. Here he was, about to fight for his life against four foes who had no qualms about extinguishing his, and he was indulging in idle musings. He must empty his mind. He must concentrate on staying alive and nothing else. He must not let his attention wander even for an instant. Not if he wanted to hold Winona in his arms again.
Rising in the stirrups, Nate tried to see the canyon mouth, but the woods were too thick. He guessed he was a quarter of a mile below it. Close enough that he might encounter the hostiles soon.
The very next instant, an arrow streaked past Nate’s ear and thudded into a tree. He had not seen the bowman, had not heard the twang of the string. Breaking into a gallop, he reined to the right while sliding onto the right side of the bay and hanging by his elbow and ankle, as Rabid Wolf had done that first day they fought. He traveled another sixty feet, then suddenly let go and dropped.
Rolling up into a crouch, Nate darted behind a pine as the bay went crashing off through the underbrush. With a little luck, the bowman would think he was still on it.
Something flashed through the vegetation a dozen yards to his left. Nate spun, raising the lance. He glimpsed buckskins and a swarthy visage, but the Ute was focused on the bay and did not spot him. Quickly, Nate ducked low and padded in pursuit.
The warrior was on foot, but he did not need a horse. He was as fleet as a deer. Nate had to run all out to keep the Ute in sight. He saw him hop into the air, then abruptly stop. Nate stopped, too, aware that the crashing sound had ceased. The bay had come to a halt.
The warrior was intently scouring the undergrowth. He looked right. He looked left. He glanced into the trees. But the one thing he did not do was look behind him. He had taken it for granted that Nate was somewhere in front of him, a mistake Nate capitalized on.
Carefully placing one foot in front of the other, Nate drew steadily near. He was not Touch the Clouds. He could not throw a lance thirty feet and hit a target dead center ten times out of ten. He did not trust his aim at ten feet. He must be close, extremely close, much too close, if he was to lay the warrior low.
At any second, one of the other Utes might appear. At any moment, a shout might ring out and the bowman would spin and unleash a shaft before Nate could cock his arm. Or more than one shaft. Experienced warriors could let fly with six or seven arrows in under a minute.
Nate moved as stealthily as a panther. He made no noise whatsoever, and he was within fifteen feet of his quarry when the Ute did the unexpected.
The warrior turned around.
For a few seconds, both of them were frozen in surprise. Then the warrior whipped his bow up and pulled back the string, and Nate took a long step and let fly with the lance. Even as Nate released it, he dropped flat, and it was well he did, for the arrow cleaved the air above him.
The Ute twisted to one side, but he was not quite fast enough. He grunted as the lance sheared into his torso. Passing through his ribs, the tip burst out his back, low down, piercing his vitals and bringing him to his knees.
Drawing his pistol, Nate slowly stood. He started to thumb back the hammer, but the Ute was making no attempt to nock the bow.
Doubled over, scarlet oozing from his mouth, the warrior coughed and shook as if he were cold. Blinking in bewilderment, he gazed up at Nate and said a few words Nate did not understand.
How young he was, Nate thought, just like Chases Rabbits and Rabid Wolf. And now he would get no older. He would never marry, never sire children, never hold a grandchild in his arms. He had squandered his life for hate’s sake. From the cradleboard to worm food in twenty years or less.
Gripping the lance, the Ute tried to pull it out. He lacked the strength. His stomach and thighs were red with blood, and a pool was forming around his knees.
A rustling noise behind him brought Nate around in a crouch. He scoured the shadows, but no one was there. When he turned back, the warrior was on his side, both legs quivering and his hands shaking. After a minute, the convulsions ended.
Tucking the flintlock under his belt, Nate gripped the end of the lance and tugged. It wouldn’t budge. He tried again. He placed his left foot against the dead Ute’s chest, bunched his shoulders, and put all his sinews and weight into it. Reluctantly but gradually, the lance slid out until, with a loud sucking sound, it was free.
Nate held it with the tip pointing at the ground so the blood dripped off. Then he hurriedly helped himself to the Ute’s bow and arrows. He slung both over his right shoulder and, with the lance in hand, crept toward the canyon.
It wouldn’t do to delude himself. He had slain one handily enough, but he must not become overconfident.
The silence grated on Nate’s nerves. He paused often to listen, but he might as well be stalking ghosts.
A flicker of movement gave the next warrior away. It was high in a pine, and Nate might have dismissed it as a squirrel if he hadn’t spotted a buckskin-clad arm amid the green boughs.
Dropping flat, Nate braced for the whish of an arrow or an outcry. There was neither. He studied the pine long and hard before he pinpointed the warrior, who was in a perfect position to spot anyone approaching the canyon. It was pure luck he hadn’t seen Nate.
A thicket offered haven if only Nate could reach it. He began crawling, but slowly. Sharp movements might give him away. The lance and the bow and the quiver complicated things. He had to lift the lance an inch or so each time he moved forward so it would not drag on the ground, while the bow and the quiver kept sliding off his shoulder. He was barely a yard from the thicket when the warrior in the pine shifted and gazed in his general direction.
Nate pressed his chin to the soil but did not take his eyes off the Ute. Or was it a Ute? This one’s buckskins were slightly different from the last. It was a Crow, Nate realized, a friend of Chases Rabbits’, no doubt.
Nate did not want to kill him, but what choice did he have? From the way the Crow was holding his bow, it was clear he would use it the instant he set eyes on him.
A bead of sweat trickled down Nate’s back. He was too exposed, too vulnerable. But he resisted an impulse to rise and bolt for cover. He must wait. Stalking an enemy was no different from stalking an elk or a buffalo. Patience was paramount.
The Crow turned to the north, and Nate resumed crawling. He was relieved when he reached the thicket. But he was still not close enough to trust using the bow. He had to reduce the distance by half, if not more.
Reluctantly, Nate crawled toward the other end of the thicket. Threading through the thickly woven branches was a challenge. He held them as he went by so they wouldn’t rustle.
Suddenly, a pair of legs materialized directly ahead. A warrior was slinking from north to south. Rabid Wolf himself, moving with the caution of his namesake. Were it not for the intervening thicket, Nate could have put an arrow into him.
Then again, were it not for the thicket, Rabid Wolf would have spotted him.
Nate had to lie there and do nothing as the Ute slunk out of sight. He waited a full minute to ensure Rabid Wolf was out of earshot before he inched forward. Intent on the spot where Rabid Wolf had disappeared, he did not glance at the pine until he was almost to the open.
The Crow wasn’t there! Nate thought it must be a trick of the light and shadows, but no, after looking and looking, it was obvious the Crow had climbed down while his attention was elsewhere.
Nate was furious at himself. He couldn’t keep making mistakes like this. One day a lapse like this would be the death of him.
Now Nate had no idea where any of his would-be killers were hiding. He snaked into knee-high grass. It was cover, but it rustled slightly no matter how slowly he moved, so he stopped. He would stay where he was and let the hostiles come to him.
The problem with that was Chases Rabbits. By now the boy was bound to have either chewed through the whangs or rubbed them on a rock or boulder to sever them, and was on his way up the mountain. Knowing Chases Rabbits, he would blunder right into a barbed shaft.
Nate rose to his knees. The other Crow had to be around there somewhere. He swiveled to the south, swiveled to the north. But the streaking shaft that sought his life came from the east. Had it not been for the lance at his side, he would have died then and there. But the arrow struck the lance and was deflected. It passed within a hair’s width of Nate’s eyes, so close that a feather brushed his eyelashes.
Casting the lance aside, Nate tucked at the waist and zigzagged toward a tree. He glanced back, trying to spot the Crow, and felt his left foot catch on something. It was an exposed root. He tried to keep his balance, but he was running too fast. Headlong, he pitched to the ground just as an arrow buzzed over him and struck the trunk with a loud thwack.
As Nate heaved erect, the quiver over his shoulder upended. Out spilled his shafts. He grabbed for them but caught only one, and then he was behind the tree and trying to still the pounding in his ears and the hammering of his heart. It had been close, so very close.
The Crow began shouting. Nate was not fluent in Crow, but he did not need to be. The warrior was shouting for Rabid Wolf and the other one to come on the run.
Nate had to get out of there. Backing away from the trunk, he notched the arrow to the bowstring. A twig crunched to his left and he spun and pulled the string to his cheek, and all the blood in his body turned to ice.
Not ten yards away was a grizzly. The grizzly. The one that had left the prints he saw earlier. Maybe it was not the largest Nate ever saw, but it was huge nonetheless, huge and broad with a massive head and the characteristic high hump on its front shoulders. And teeth! Lord, what teeth!
Teeth as long as knives, teeth that could shred a man to the bone with one bite, teeth the grizzly bared in an ominous growl.
Nate never told Winona, but he always suspected it would be a griz that did him in. He had tangled with so many since he came to the Rockies that eventually the odds would catch up with him. Sooner or later, he was bound to go up against one and the griz would come out on top. It was inevitable.
The bear raised its head and sniffed.
The Crow was still shouting. Nate heard the snap and crackle of undergrowth from two directions. Rabid Wolf and the other one were on their way. But he dared not move, dared not seek cover, not with the grizzly right there. It would be on him before he took three or four steps, and with only one arrow and one pistol and his Bowie to defend himself, he stood no chance, no chance at all.
Grunting, the grizzly shuffled closer.
Nate broke out in a cold sweat. After all he had gone through to find a new home for his family, to be slain by the one creature he had done his best to avoid in recent years seemed like the Almighty’s notion of a warped joke. The only exception had been a bear known as Scar. It had killed dozens of people when he took up its trail and ended its savage spree. Otherwise, his attitude toward grizzlies could be summed up as live and let live.
Now this.
This griz was about to do what Nate had always known a bear would do one day. He sighted down the arrow at the grizzly’s head, then lowered the bow. It was pointless. An arrow could no more penetrate all that thick bone than it could penetrate an anvil. He placed his hand on his pistol, but he did not draw it. Instead, he bowed his head and thought of Winona and Evelyn and Zach, and how deeply he loved them. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Prepared for the worst, Nate looked up. For a few seconds, he doubted the evidence of his eyes. The grizzly was gone. Grizzlies could move silently when they wanted, but he was sure he would have heard something. It couldn’t have gone far, but although he scanned the forest in all directions, it was nowhere to be seen.
“It can’t be!” Nate blurted, and realized the Crow had stopped yelling and the woods were quiet again.
Nate ran. He had to put distance between himself and the hostiles. Again and again he glanced back, but much to his puzzlement no one was after him. A boulder loomed in his path and he skirted it, running half twisted so he could be sure he did not take an arrow in the back.
A shadow rippled across the boulder and a tremendous blow bowled Nate over. He thought the grizzly was to blame, that it had slammed him to the ground and was about to tear him to pieces. Then a dark visage filled his vision and a muscular hand holding a long-bladed knife swept at his throat. How he dodged he would never know, but he did, and locking his arm around the Ute’s wrist, he heaved and flipped the warrior to one side but did not let go.
A cry was torn from the Ute’s throat as his arm was nearly wrenched from its socket.
Nate rolled and lunged, pinning the warrior before he could rise while grabbing for his Bowie. The other’s hand clamped onto his right wrist. Grappling, they rolled one way and then the other, each striving to sink his knife into the other. Nate winced when he slammed against a tree. He almost lost his grip. The razor tip of the Ute’s knife was poised a whisker’s length from his jugular.
Tensing, Nate smashed his forehead against the young Ute’s nose. Cartilage crunched and blood spurted. He drew back his head and did it again, slamming his forehead against the Ute’s mouth. More blood spurted, but the pain was not entirely all the Ute’s. Nate’s vision swam. Tearing loose, he leaped to his feet.
The Ute was much slower. Blood and bits of broken teeth were dribbling down his chin.
“Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” Nate said, and drove his Bowie to the cross guard into the warrior’s chest.
Stiffening, the Ute stumbled back a few tottering steps. His face was a ruin, his left side a crimson geyser. He was dead on his feet, but it took half a minute for his brain to shut down and his legs to crumple.
Nate’s head was a drum. He could not think, it hurt so much. About to move on, he saw the Ute’s bow lying near the boulder. Why the Ute had not used it, he would never know, unless the warrior had wanted the thrill of killing him up close.
Taking the bow and the Ute’s arrows, Nate plunged into the verdant growth. Only two to go! But they would not throw themselves in front of his shafts or onto the Bowie. He must find them and slay them.
Several firs growing close together were enticing enough cover for Nate to move around behind them and lean against the largest. He must figure a way of luring his last two enemies to him. Shouting might do it, but it would tell them where he was. He was still debating what to do when an arrow flew out of the foliage and passed completely through the fir he was leaning against. He felt a sharp stab of pain and dropped to his knees. A glance revealed that the tip had sliced through his buckskin shirt and cut his flesh, but not deeply.
Another arrow whisked out of nowhere and stuck a fir at his elbow. Nate dropped onto his side and crawled to the left. He thought he was low enough to the ground that whoever was trying to kill him could not see him, but a third arrow disabused him of the notion by ripping into the dirt under his chin and raising puffs of dust.
Nate broke for cover. He was almost to a log when a shaft passed between his legs, narrowly missing his private parts. Throwing himself over it, he hugged the other side.
No more arrows were loosed in his direction, but Nate wasn’t fooled. The archer was waiting for him to show himself. All he had to do was raise his head. But that worked both ways. Crabbing to the end of the log, Nate rolled onto his back and notched an arrow. He slid his possibles bag off, held it low against his hip, and took a few long, deep breaths.
Nate was ready. He must throw the parfleche as far as he could, and while it was in midair, he must sit up, raise the bow, and hope the hostile took the bait. And that was exactly what he did.
The Crow was in dense brush, only his head and shoulders showing, aiming an arrow at the possibles bag.
Nate’s shaft streaked from the string. As if the world and everything in it were moving ten times slower than normal, he saw the shaft spin around and around yet unerringly straight and true. The Crow was ducking back down, but had not quite made it when the arrow ripped through his right eye socket.
Nate forgot himself. In his elation, he stood. He had done it! He stepped toward his possibles bag and his right leg seemed to catch on fire. But it was a trick his mind played on him. The leg was not really on fire—it burned from a gash in his thigh. As he stopped and gaped in mute incomprehension, another gash appeared. He had it, then, and he dropped the bow and palmed the Bowie while backpedaling, but Rabid Wolf was right there next to him, as grim as death, swinging a tomahawk like a madman.
Nate got the Bowie up, but Lord he was slow, as sluggish as a turtle on a cold fall day. The tomahawk bit into him again and his left leg would not work. The next he knew, he was on his back and Rabid Wolf reared above him, the bloody tomahawk awash in sunlight.
It was about to happen and it was not a bear after all, just a young hothead who measured the worth of others by his hatred for them. Nate thrust the Bowie up to block the blow, but the tomahawk did not descend. It hung in the air as if frozen. The arm that held it was frozen, too, which was strange, so unbelievably strange, because the arm was no longer attached to Rabid Wolf’s body.
