Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 3
“Let’s tell Pa right away,” Evelyn suggested, starting to turn.
“What’s your hurry?” Zach snagged her arm. “Why bother him when he has enough on his mind? If it is a kid, we’ll catch him ourselves.”
“What makes you think it’s a boy?” Lou said. “It could just as well be a girl.”
Zach hadn’t thought of that.
“The thing is,” Louisa went on, “where did it come from? How did it get here? Your valley is so remote, so high up.”
“A few days’ ride to the north is South Pass and the route to the Oregon country,” Zach reminded her. “Scores of wagons pass along it every month in the summer. Maybe a white kid strayed from camp, became lost, and wandered down here.”
Even Evelyn saw the flaw in his reasoning. “Then why don’t they show themselves? Pa and Lou are white. What do they have to be afeared of?”
Zach shrugged. “Who knows? White people do strange things.” He winked at Lou to take the sting out of his remark. “Or maybe it’s an Indian, someone whose parents were made outcasts.” The odds were slim in either case, but they were the only possibilities he could think of.
Evelyn giggled. She liked the idea of snaring the culprit by themselves. It was exciting, an adventure all their own, a welcome break in the boredom of cabin cleaning. “How will we go about it? What do we do?”
“Since we can’t track this kid down, we’ll have to make him, or her, come to us,” Zach proposed.
“How do we do that?” Evelyn asked.
“Simple. We do what every hunter does when an animal is too elusive to find. Or what Pa does to lure beaver into his traps. We’ll set out some bait.”
Evelyn liked their adventure more and more by the second. “Set out something the kid can’t resist, you mean? Like honey, maybe? Or a plate of Ma’s sweetcakes?”
“Something like that,” Zach said, warming to the enterprise too. Capturing the elusive prankster would be a challenge, and he loved challenges. Besides, his father would be tremendously impressed if he succeeded where his pa had failed.
“Just so we agree on one thing,” Lou commented. “We don’t harm this kid. He’s lost and scared and needs our help. So no deadfalls, or pits with stakes at the bottom. Fair enough?”
Zach couldn’t help feeling that she was taking some of the fun out of it, but he had to admit he would make his folks extremely mad if he squashed some little kid with a log rigged to drop on their noggin. “All right. We’ll start tonight, after supper.”
Just then, from up the trail to the cabin, a deep voice boomed. “How long does it take to fill a bucket?”
“Uh-oh,” Evelyn said. “Pa’s coming.”
Nate King was a big, brawny man, as rugged as the land he called home. His buckskins and moccasins were typical of a full-blooded Shoshone—or a white man with a Shoshone wife, a man who had been formally adopted into the tribe. His shoulder-length black hair, unlike his son’s, wasn’t braided in the Shoshone fashion, but an eagle feather did jut from the back of his head. Crisscrossing his broad chest were his powder horn and ammo pouch, while under his left arm hung his possibles bag. He never went anywhere without them. Nor did he go beyond the clearing in which his cabin sat without taking his heavy Hawken and a brace of matched smoothbore flintlock pistols. As if that were not enough, also wedged under his wide brown leather belt was a tomahawk, and on his left hip in a beaded sheath hung a long-bladed knife with an antler hilt.
Nate King’s eyes were as green as the lush vegetation flanking the trail. They alertly roved over the undergrowth, questing for clues, for spoor that would give him a clue to the identity of their recent visitor.
Nate hadn’t said anything to the others, but he was worried. So far the visits had been harmless, if annoying. But what if that changed? What worried him most was that for once in his life, he was powerless to protect his loved ones. Try as he might, he couldn’t track their visitor down. He knew as little now as he had that morning the ax was taken, which had been a harbinger of things to come.
Well, Nate mused, that isn’t entirely true. He did know a little more. When the saddle was dragged off, he’d found what appeared to be a partial print in a patch of bare earth. Only thing was, the heel print, if that is what it had been, was so small that it couldn’t belong to whoever took it. No one that size could move his saddle, let alone drag it a hundred yards.
Then there were the claws. Several times now, near the cabin, Nate had come on faint, tiny marks that reminded him of a cat’s claws. Which would lead to the conclusion that whatever was bedeviling them was a wild beast. Yet what wild animal would swipe an ax? Or a rope or old water skin?
Nate shook his head to dispel the troubling questions. He was becoming obsessed with the mystery. Maybe he should forget about it for a while and tackle the problem afresh later. Emerging onto the lake shore, he grinned at the sight of his youngest hauling the bucket from the lake and spilling water all over the front of her dress. “Your mother thought you might have drowned.”
“Ah, Pa,” Evelyn said, grunting. “It weighs a ton.”
“Sorry we’ve taken so long, Mr. King,” Louisa said. “We got to chatting and didn’t realize.”
Nate glanced at his oldest, whose cheeks tinged red, and almost laughed. The two lovebirds were like two halves of the same coin. They couldn’t stand to be apart, and were forever contriving excuses to go off alone. He remembered being the same way once. Young love was romantic love, and could no more be held in check than the tide or the waxing and waning of the moon. “I needed to stretch my legs anyway,” he said.
“We were talking about whoever’s been playing tricks on us,” Evelyn said, receiving a sharp glance from her brother. She shot him one right back. How dumb does he think I am? She wasn’t going to tell what they were up to.
“Oh.” Nate frowned. So much for forgetting about the mystery for a while. “And what did you decide?”
Zach answered before the others could. “We’re as stumped as you are.”
Evelyn said jokingly, “Maybe it was that little man I saw a while back.” To her astonishment, her father spun toward her as if he were fixing to pounce.
“What little man?”
Zach chuckled. “Don’t listen to her, Pa. She’s being childish, like always.” He elaborated. “A couple of weeks ago she told us that she’d seen a shriveled old man in a pit, and she wanted us to go have a look-see. It was a story she made up to make us look foolish.”
“I did not make it up!” Evelyn stomped a foot. “He was there, I tell you! In a cave in the ground, not a pit! He was all brown and dried up, like a berry that’s been in the hot sun too long.”
Nate tended to agree with his son. The story was ridiculous. But then there was that heel print he’d discovered. And his daughter was so sincere. Resting a callused hand on her shoulder, he asked, “Why didn’t you let your mother or me know?”
“I figured you’d laugh at me, like Zach did,” Evelyn said, which was only partly true. There had been something about the little man, something she couldn’t describe, that had scared her so terribly she didn’t want to go back.
“You know better, sweet one,” Nate said, gently squeezing. “So long as you always tell us the truth, we’ll never doubt your word. Not ever.” He gazed skyward. They had five or six hours of daylight left, more than enough. “Take me there.”
“Right this minute?” Evelyn said, troubled by the request yet at the same time overjoyed to get out of doing more work. “What about the water Ma needs?”
“Lou and Zach will take it back up, with the horses.” Nate clasped his daughter’s hand. “Let’s go. Is it far?”
“Not at all.” Evelyn smirked at Zach and guided her father toward the north tree line. She had nothing to fear with him along. Her father could handle anything. Why, before she was born, he’d slain a grizzly with just a hunting knife!
Zach and Louisa watched the pair enter the forest. “Did you see how your father acted?” she inquired. “Like he was stuck with a pin?”
“I saw. You’d almost think those old legends were true.”
It had been quite a while since Nate and Evelyn King had enjoyed a leisurely stroll in the wild. So long, the father regretted not doing so regularly. A velvet blue sky was decorated by fluffy clouds, and a soft breeze from the northwest provided a bit of relief from the late-summer heat.
Insects buzzed, butterflies flitted from flower to flower, and high on the air currents a pair of golden eagles soared. All in all, it was the kind of day Nate appreciated most. The kind that made him glad to be alive, and reminded him of why he had taken to living in the Rockies instead of in New York City, where he was born.
Roseate shafts of sunlight penetrated the foliage, gleaming like precious yellow ore. In the higher terrace a gray squirrel scampered. A grazing doe and fawn inspected the intruders, then gracefully bounded off, tails erect.
Evelyn wasn’t in any mood to admire the beautiful scenery. As confident as she was her pa could protect her, she couldn’t shake the nagging unease that had afflicted her when she stumbled on the withered little man. It was similar to the heart-stopping fear she’d experienced when she was exploring the south shore of the lake last year and happened on a snake den, a wide crack filled with hundreds of writhing serpents, rattlers and others, all roiling and hissing. Petrified, she had thrown back her head and screamed, screamed, screamed, probably scaring the snakes as much as they scared her. Luckily, her mother had rushed to her rescue, pulled her to safety, and calmed her down.
Ever since, Evelyn hadn’t much liked anything that wriggled and squirmed.
Now, studying the landscape, she tried to recall exactly where the little man had been. She hadn’t been paying much attention that day, just wandering here and there, dallying. There had been a dead tree close by. And a knoll to the northeast, a knoll with a large, flat boulder at the top.
“So,” Nate said to break the quiet, “what do you think about your brother and Louisa getting married?”
“I sort of feel sorry for her.”
“Your brother is a fine young man. He’ll work hard to be a good husband. She could do a lot worse, princess.”
“Will they squabble like he and I do, Pa?”
“Sometimes married couples fight a lot, sometimes they don’t. It depends on the couple. The important thing is that they learn to work their problems out, that they always kiss and make up, as people like to say.”
“I’d rather kiss a toad than Zach.”
Nate snickered. “When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
“Ma and you sure do say that a lot. But if kissing boys is part of growing up, I’d rather stay just as I am my whole life long.” Children said the darnedest things, Nate reflected. Then again, childhood was supposed to be a time of innocence, of blissful ignorance of the harsh realities of the world. Let Evelyn have her flights of fancy. All too soon, she would grow up. All too soon, she would taste the bitter pills every person swallowed on the perilous road from the cradle to the grave.
“So where’s this cave of yours?” Nate asked, hiding his doubt. He had been over practically every square foot of their valley, and never in all his meandering had he seen any sign of one.
“It shouldn’t take long,” Evelyn said, secretly worried she wouldn’t find the landmarks. He wouldn’t believe her, and she’d be a laughingstock to her brother.
“This close to the lake?” Nate said, his doubt rising. Were it at the base of the ring of peaks surmounting their valley, he would be more inclined to accept her account.
Evelyn bobbed her oval chin. “It surprised me, too, Pa. I was searching for some of those blue flowers Ma named me after.” Like her brother, Evelyn had a Shoshone name, which, translated into English, became Blue Flower. “I went around a tree and there was a hole in the ground, a pit that had never been there before.”
“You said it was a cave.”
“Well, it might have been. I mean, it looked like one. As if the roof had fallen in. And at the bottom was the shriveled little man. You should have seen his face, Pa. It gave me goose bumps.” Evelyn suddenly clapped her hands and squealed. “There! There’s the dead tree!”
Hurrying around it, Evelyn spotted the knoll with the flat boulder. “This is the place!” She swiveled to the left, to where the hole should be—only, the ground was unbroken, the surface littered with fallen pine needles and dead leaves.
“Here?” Nate said, moving a few strides past her. “Are you sure?”
“God’s honest truth, Pa,” Evelyn said earnestly. She couldn’t understand it. She just couldn’t. “I was standing right about where you are. The pit was right in front of me.”
“It’s not here now,” Nate said, stating the obvious. And equally obvious, it never had been, nor had there been a wrinkled old man. It had all been in her head. Her childish imagination had gotten the better of her. He must inform Winona so she could sit Evelyn down and have a long talk about the difference between reality and make-believe.
Evelyn’s eyes moistened. “I don’t know what to say, Pa. It’s gone. Someone must have filled in the hole.”
Doesn't she see how silly that is? Nate mused. Turning, he sadly smiled and patted her back. “Don’t let it bother you. We all make mistakes.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
Nate King could have lied. He could have told her he did. But it went against every personal value he held dear. From the time his children could toddle, he’d taught them to always tell the truth. Taught them that lying was evil. That it was a nasty habit, a refuge of the vile, the weak, the confused. Speaking with two tongues, as the Shoshones phrased it, was despicable, something no King would ever do. So now, confronted by his own ideal, he practiced what he preached.
“I believe you think you saw a little man. But he wasn’t really there.”
They departed, the father tenderly holding his daughter’s hand, the girl softly weeping.
Three
Touch the Clouds was a legend among the Shoshones. Rightfully so. In the entire history of his people no warrior had counted more coup. No warrior had stolen more horses. His prowess in combat was extraordinary, befitting someone of his gigantic stature. Over seven feet tall, weighing in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds, Touch the Clouds was a solid mass of muscle, melded to a keen mind.
On this sunlit day the Shoshone legend was on his way back to his village after a dozen sleeps spent hunting in a high valley nestled among pristine, snow-crowned peaks. On four packhorses were the results of his labor, enough elk meat to last his family for moons to come. Ever prudent, Touch the Clouds planned to dry and salt the meat to be ready for the upcoming winter. All the signs hinted it would be long and hard.
Prominent among those signs were the long-necked geese. For some time now, the big warrior had seen V-shaped flocks winging southward—much earlier than usual. The Hunting Moon had begun, yes, but the Falling Leaf Moon was many sleeps off yet. For the geese to be traveling so early must mean the moons ahead would be cold, and heavy with snow.
Touch the Clouds was alone. Usually warriors traveled in pairs when far afield for mutual protection, but the mighty Shoshone had no need of someone to watch his back. He was supremely confident in his ability to prevail over any and all threats, man or beast. Hadn’t he bested the Blackfeet, the Piegans, the devious Sioux? Hadn’t he had slain silvertips with nothing but his lance, or in one instance his seventy-five-pound pull ash bow? Only the famed Grizzly Killer had killed more.
Now the lance was in Touch the Cloud’s left hand, a broad shield strapped to his left wrist. His bow and a quiver bulging with arrows were slung across his back. Intricate beadwork decorated his buckskins, and his raven hair hung in thick braids.
As the Shoshone neared a squat structure close to a bubbling stream, his dark eyes narrowed. The wooden lodge was the home of Charles Walker, or Talks to Himself, as the Shoshones called the oldster. It had been three—no, four—winters since Touch the Clouds saw the wizened white-eye last. They’d shared a pot of coffee and swapped tales of the days before the beaver trade, when the number of white men in the mountains could be counted on one hand.
Touch the Clouds liked the old man, which was more than he could say about most whites. Those like Walker and Nate King, those who had learned to adapt and lived much as the Indian did, Touch the Clouds respected highly. The others, the greedy ones who were interested only in filling their pockets with jingling metal coins, and those who looked down their noses at the red man on general principle, Touch the Clouds avoided.
The big warrior’s knowledge of the white man’s tongue was scanty. He simply hadn’t bothered to learn it. The strange chirping hurt his throat, which was why it always amazed him that his cousin, Winona, Nate King’s wife, had been able to master it so completely.
Straightening, Touch the Clouds called out in Shoshone, “Talks to Himself, you have a visitor.”
Ordinarily, that was all it would take to bring the oldster from his nook, all smiles and nonstop words. But the door stayed shut. Nor did the mule appear at the corner of the corral, as was its wont.
Touch the Clouds noticed other things. The ground in front of the cabin had not been trod on in some time; no fresh tracks were visible. The acrid scent of wood smoke wasn’t hanging in the air, as it usually did. And across the top of the door was a recently woven spider web.
Dismounting, Touch the Clouds let the reins dangle. He adjusted his heavy shield and transferred the lance to his right hand. Then, hefting it, he cautiously moved forward, aware that the customary sounds of wildlife were absent. Something was wrong here, drastically wrong.
Touch the Clouds was close enough to see the spider in the center of the gossamer webbing when he also spied a symbol painted low on the door, at knee level. Painted in red, it wasn’t like any symbol Touch the Clouds had ever seen, yet he felt he should know what it was.
