Wilderness Double Edition 19, page 4
“I bet Ezriah is to blame,” Winona said. “He is worse than she is. Always going off to explore and poking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Remember that cave they found? And the black bear?”
Stepping over the threshold, Nate laughed louder. The oldster and the girls had been exploring a slope to the south, in the shadow of Long’s Peak, and stumbled on an opening in the rock wall. Ezriah thought it might lead to a cave, so he’d squatted and was about to stick his head in when he came chin-to-chin with a black bear. It wasn’t much more than a cub, but it gave him a terrible fright. He’d squawked and fallen on his backside, and the bear had bolted on by, squealing up a storm.
“It is regrettable the bear didn’t bite his nose off,” Winona remarked.
“Now, now,” Nate said softly as he leaned the ax in a comer. The oldster was an ornery cuss and could get a rise out of her without half trying. The same with Evelyn. The truth be known, Nate suspected that Ezriah secretly enjoyed raising their hackles. Ezriah wasn’t happy unless he was arguing with someone, and he was happiest of all when he was arguing with females.
Nate slid his ammo pouch and powder horn from pegs on the walls and slung them across his chest. He already had a Bowie in a beaded sheath on his right hip. A flintlock pistol went on either side of his brass belt buckle. Last of all, he retrieved his Hawken from the mantel over the fireplace, then gave his wife a peck on the cheek. “I’ll have them back before you know it.”
“Unless they’re halfway to St. Louis,” Winona said dryly.
The sun was warm on Nate’s back for the few seconds required to reach the trail. Shadows closed over him as he broke into a run. On either side heavy foliage hemmed him in. He had been meaning to clear most of it out; cougars were unduly fond of lying beside game trails and springing on unwary prey as it went by, and the big cats didn’t care whether the prey was four-legged or two-legged.
The trail sloped gradually downward, emerging on the lake’s north shore. Once in the open, Nate surveyed the lake from end to end but failed to spot anyone. Obviously, Evelyn had gone her own merry way.
Nate examined the ground. A pair of small, fresh-as-could-be tracks showed where the two girls had ambled eastward along the shoreline. He paralleled them, holding to a steady, mile-eating jog worthy of an Apache. Another set of prints, left by Ezriah’s peculiar high-heeled boots, confirmed that the old man had gone after them.
Out on the placid lake swam a bevy of geese, their long necks curled into question marks. Ducks quacked noisily and fluttered their wings, or dipped their bills in the water after fish. The mallards always gave Nate a chuckle. They had a habit of upending and floating with their hind ends straight up.
Soon the tracks Nate was shadowing diverged. The girls had gone on along the shore, but Ezriah had veered into the vegetation. Nate could guess why. Hampton was an inveterate practical joker; next to arguing, the old-timer most loved to play tricks on people. A week ago Ezriah had caught a toad and put it in the bread box. When Evelyn opened it, the toad had hopped out, giving her a fright and causing Hampton a fit of convulsive mirth.
Nate came to where his daughter and Melissa had stopped and turned toward the trees. When they moved on, the lengths of their strides indicated that they had been running. He trailed them to a cluster of boulders and found where Ezriah had caught them off guard. From there the tracks drew him to the lake.
Suddenly Nate halted. His pulse quickened. Someone else was in the valley! He counted two, three, four new sets of tracks. One was a man who wore flat-soled boots, and whose short stride hinted at a corresponding stature. Another wore moccasins with stitching reminiscent of the Pawnees. The other two wore store-bought hunting boots available at any general store or trading post. Alarm filled Nate. Strangers had caused his family no end of trouble.
The prints filed toward a knoll, and as Nate sped toward it he heard the crunch of a footfall and glanced up to find Ezriah Hampton, looking as glum as glum could be. Hampton was holding his rifle in one hand and Evelyn’s Hawken in the other.
“There wasn’t anything I could do, hoss.”
“Ezriah?” Nate said, his alarm rising. He dashed up the knoll and gripped the older man by the arms. “Where are the girls?”
“The bastards had me covered the whole time. I’m sorry. Sincerely sorry.”
Anxiety lanced Nate. He dashed down the other side and on to a grassy glade. A small fire smoldered at its center. Footprints and hoof prints were everywhere, the tracks jumbled one over the other. As he studied them, Ezriah approached.
“There were four of them, Nate,” the older man said forlornly. “They took your daughter. They took Melissa.”
Nate spun, his head awhirl with terrible images. “Why?” was the foremost question. His fear for his daughter was so overpowering, he could virtually taste it.
“The idiots think you’re rich. They’ve kidnapped the girls for ransom.” Ezriah pointed to the northeast. “They went that way. They can’t have more than a ten-minute start. If we hurry—”
“Tell me as we go,” Nate said. Grabbing Hampton by the elbow, he raced toward the lake. It would take five minutes to reach the cabin, another five to saddle up. In under a quarter of an hour they could be hard in pursuit.
Nate was moving so rapidly, Ezriah was hard-pressed to keep up. “They caught us by surprise,” he said, huffing and puffing. “Their leader is an unsavory sort named Killibrew. They’d heard about you paying for provisions at Bent’s Fort with gold, and they want to exchange the girls for four saddlebags full.”
“I don’t know any Killibrew,” Nate said. Which wasn’t unusual. In recent years more and more cutthroats had been drifting into the Rockies, shiftless brigands who lived by hook or by crook and made life miserable for honest settlers and mountaineers.
“There are two other whites and a ’breed,” Ezriah revealed. “Were you to ask my opinion, I’d say he’s the most dangerous of the bunch. They usually are.”
Nate didn’t reply. It was generally held that half-breeds were notoriously savage, their violent natures the result of the mix of blood that went into their makeup. Whites and Indians alike tended to look down on them, a fact that had caused Nate’s son no end of grief. Evelyn, being a girl, was spared the brunt of the widespread prejudice, but she still received bitter looks from time to time from pilgrims at Bent’s Fort and elsewhere.
“I tried to tell them they were crazy,” Ezriah said, “that you’re not as rich as old King Midas. But they wouldn’t believe me. Killibrew thinks you know of a secret stream somewhere in the high country where nuggets can be plucked like dandelions.”
“He does, does he?” They were moving at a brisk pace, but not fast enough to suit Nate, so he increased his speed. Every second was crucial. By the position of the sun it had to be after four. Another couple of hours and the sun would set, and with it any hope of overtaking the kidnappers before nightfall. He shuddered to think of Evelyn and Melissa in the clutches of the cutthroats all night long.
The trail head seemed impossibly far away. Nate chafed at every yard they covered, and when they finally came to the trail he flew toward the cabin as if his ankles were imbued with wings. Bursting into the clearing, he raced toward the corral and shouted to Winona, who was waiting in the doorway.
“The girls have been taken!”
Winona never said a word. She didn’t scream or collapse in hysterics, as some women might have. She disappeared inside, and in less than two minutes she was back out again, bearing a rifle and pistols and toting a pair of parfleches crammed with supplies. By then Nate had saddled his big bay and was throwing a blanket onto her mare.
Ezriah cringed when Winona bestowed a withering glance. Flipping a saddle onto a horse, he said apologetically, “I don’t blame you for being mad at me, Mrs. King. But I did the best I could.”
Nate filled his wife in while tightening her cinch. He tied one of the parfleches behind his saddle, stepped into the stirrups, and was off down the trail at a trot.
“Wait for me!” Ezriah bawled. “I ain’t quite done!”
Nate had no inclination to slow up. Nor did Winona, who trotted alongside him as soon as they reached the lakeshore. Side by side they galloped eastward to the knoll and on over it to the glade.
The shadows were lengthening. Thankfully, the four men had made no attempt to conceal their sign, and Nate forged on at breakneck speed, indifferent to the risk to himself and the bay. When next he glanced back, Ezriah had caught up within a hundred yards and was gamely holding his own.
Winona’s face was a blank slate, but Nate could imagine the torment she must be suffering. Mothers and daughters always shared a special bond. Evelyn was Winona’s literal pride and joy; to lose her would be devastating.
Nate consoled himself with the thought that Evelyn was smart for her age and had remarkable grit and spunk. She could handle herself with the aplomb of a fifteen-year-old. Melissa was another story. She was nowhere near as levelheaded. Still miserable from the loss of her family, she had been moping around the cabin for weeks. Only in the past couple of days, after Nate received an answer to a letter he'd sent her kin in North Carolina, had Melissa shaken off her doldrums and begun to enjoy life again. She was keenly anticipating the arrival of her favorite uncle in another month, and going to live with him on his plantation.
A low limb shattered Nate’s reverie. Ducking low, he whisked underneath it with a needle’s width to spare. He turned to warn Winona, but she had spotted it and lithely swung onto the side of her mare, Comanche style.
They said little. There was no need. They both fully realized the gravity of their daughter’s predicament—and the price of failure.
The kidnappers had ridden to the northeast for over four miles, hugging wooded slopes crowned by regal peaks mantled in pristine white. Nate was intimately familiar with every square foot of his valley, and the whole time he was winding along the base of the mountains, he racked his brain, trying to deduce where the kidnappers were headed. It had to be out of the valley. That much was certain. And in that case, they had to use one of the passes.
Nate knew of eight: two to the south, two to the west, three to the north, and one to the east, where the stream descended into the foothills. The eastern pass wasn’t far from the glade. Logically, that was the pass they should have used, yet they hadn’t. Which begged the question: Why not?
Of the three passes to the north, the nearest was in a defile high on the barren slope of a needle-point peak. From up there the kidnappers could see for miles in all directions and study their back trail for pursuit.
The next pass, on the next mountain over, could be reached only after hours of laborious climbing. Every foot of the way was forested, so the kidnappers could reach it undetected.
Or was it the third pass? Nate had used it many times on visits to his mentor, Shakespeare McNair, and to his son, Zach, who had moved out not all that long ago and had a homestead of his own in a virgin valley a lot like Nate’s. The third pass was at the lowest elevation and thus was the easiest to reach. But it was the farthest.
Which would the kidnappers pick? Nate wondered. With his knowledge of the terrain, he could shave miles and save a lot of time if he guessed correctly. He knew of shortcuts the kidnappers couldn’t possibly know about. But if he guessed wrong, if he chose the wrong pass, Killibrew’s bunch would gain a great lead.
“Husband, hold up!” Winona suddenly cried, bringing her mare to a halt.
Nate drew rein and shifted in the saddle. He thought she had seen something, but it was her parfleche. She had tied it down too hastily. The rope had loosened and the parfleche was flapping against the mare.
Hooves drummed. Ezriah joined them at last. More winded than his mount, he leaned on the saddle horn and said urgently, “Before you go any further, there’s something I haven’t told you. You lit out before I could.”
Winona’s lips pinched together. “Wicked men have stolen Blue Flower. Nothing else matters.”
“This might,” Ezriah said. “Their leader, Killibrew, said he’d kill the girls if you tried to follow. I’d take him seriously, were I you.”
“This from the one who let them take the children,” Winona said scathingly. “We cannot let them get away,” she added in a tone that brooked no dispute. Completing a knot, she lithely forked her animal. “Before this day is done, my knife will drink their blood.”
“Thirsty knife you’ve got there,” Ezriah joked, and when it elicited a glare, he swiftly went on. “You’re not thinking straight, lady. Yes, your girl is in danger, and yes, those mangy no-accounts need to have their wicks blown out, but they have one advantage we don’t.”
“What would that be?” Winona asked.
“They have the girls.”
Nate was impatient to ride on, but the old trapper’s words had planted a seed of apprehension. Men coldhearted enough to steal children were coldhearted enough to murder them. Yet the mere thought of not going on was unbearable. His soul was wrenched both ways, and he let his wife decide. “It’s up to you.”
“Need you ask?” Winona said, and gave her mare a smack.
Half an hour passed uneventfully. The tracks wound to the bottom of the mountain with the needle-point peak; the kidnappers were making for the barren slopes on high.
Nate shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare and swept the mountain for movement. He was rewarded with the sight of riders half a mile above. Four horses, strung out in single file, picking their way toward the summit. “There they are!”
Winona shielded her eyes and uttered a rare oath. “They will reach the pass long before us.”
“I’d be more worried about them spotting us,” Ezriah commented. “Killibrew doesn’t strike me as someone we should trifle with. He was quite specific. Nate is supposed to go to Bent’s Fort for directions on how to deliver the gold-”
“You never told me that,” Nate cut him off.
“Excuse me all to hell. I’ve had other things on my mind. Besides, you two didn’t exactly let any grass grow under you. You were gone before I could saddle up.” Ezriah’s good eye twitched like a worm on a hook. “Let’s quit quibbling and get on with it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Winona assumed the lead. Her long black hair flying, she started up the lowest slope.
“I get the impression she’s a mite peeved at me,” Ezriah commented.
So was Nate, although he refrained from saying so. He couldn’t help thinking that if the situation had been reversed, if he had been with the girls instead of Hampton, things would have turned out differently. He would gladly have given his life in Evelyn’s defense, and taken as many of the kidnappers as he could with him. Meekness had never been his strongest trait. In the wilderness, turning the other cheek was a fatal flaw guaranteed to earn the cheek-turner a dirt nap.
The slope steepened, the climb requiring all of their attention. A single lapse might result in a spill and injury to both horse and rider. To the west the blazing sun dropped by degrees to the rim of the world, a fiery coal about to extinguish itself. Purple dusk slunk across the valley like a thief out to steal the light.
Nate lost sight of the kidnappers, but their tracks were still plain enough. More so since their mounts had cascaded stones and dirt in a steady rain, just as his own was now doing.
Ezriah, as was his wont, chattered on like a chipmunk. “When we catch up to these polecats, I want first crack. I owe them for playing me for a fool. They’re all a slice off the same rancid bacon, and should be buried like all rotten meat.”
Nate tried to shut the old-timer out, but it was like trying to shut out the constant sigh of the wind or the rustle of the dry grass.
“They talked big, but they’re small and yellow and few to the pod,” Ezriah waxed eloquent. “If I were ten years younger, I’d have pummeled them to a pulp and pissed on their remains. There was a time when I was considered a pretty formidable fellow.”
“With your fists or your tongue?” Nate asked over a shoulder, and was treated to a barrage of profanity that put his wife’s earlier oath to shame.
“Wait until your turn comes,” Ezriah upbraided him. “One day you’ll wake up to find your hair gray, half your teeth gone, and your muscles as puny as wet noodles. You’ll lie in bed with tears in your eyes, wondering how God can be so cruel.”
“It’s called old age,” Nate said. “It happens to all of us eventually.”
“Listen to the philosopher,” Ezriah retorted. “Do you want to know what old age really is? It’s the Almighty’s way of punishing us for our uppity attitudes when we’re younger. We strut around like bantam roosters, thinking we have the world in our palms, but we’re fooling ourselves. Our health goes, our minds fade, and we die as we were born, weak and helpless and not having any damn idea what’s in store for us next.”
“Now who’s the philosopher?” Nate said when Hampton paused. After that the oldster was silent.
The trees thinned, the grass ended, and by midway up the mountain they were in the open, exposed to view from the rocky ramparts far overhead. Nate swore he could feel unseen eyes marking their progress, watching them every foot of the way. He regretted being impetuous, and fretted that by not listening to Ezriah they were sealing their daughter’s fate.
The slopes grew steeper, but Winona never slowed. Her chin chiseled in relentless iron profile, she goaded the mare on, indifferent to its welfare and her own.
Sapphire shadows blanketed the lower elevations. Most of the sun was gone, its reign relinquished to a rising sliver of moon. Soon stars would mushroom and the firmament would darken. A sinking sensation in his heart, Nate was forced to concede that overtaking the kidnappers before nightfall was impossible. He looked up to say as much to his wife and abruptly drew rein so the bay wouldn’t collide with her mare.
Winona had stopped and was sitting as rigid as a board, the back of a hand pressed to her mouth as if to stifle a scream.
Nate glanced past her, seeking what she saw, and an icy sensation spread over him from head to toe.
