Wilderness Double Edition 19, page 7
Melissa tried to stand and run, but Evelyn grabbed hold of her other arm and yanked her back down.
Ever vigilant, the cougar was astride its kill. Its sharp ears had caught Melissa’s movement, and it swung toward them. Slanted eyes glowed dimly in a stray moonbeam, that penetrated the forest canopy.
“It’s going to eat us!” Melissa cried.
A feral growl rose on the wind as the mountain lion stepped off the deer and sank low to the grass.
Facing it, Evelyn straightened. She mustn’t show fear. She mustn’t run. Fleeing from a painter provoked it to attack. Their only hope was to bluff their way out and hope the cat was more interested in its fresh kill than in them. “Stay close to me,” she said, and slowly sidled westward.
Again Melissa attempted to run. Again Evelyn refused to let go. “Stay calm. We’ll get out of this if we don’t lose our heads.”
The cat hadn’t come any closer. Its tail was twitching and it voiced repeated low snarls, but it didn’t attack. Presently the milky aspens gave way to tall spruce. Evelyn could no longer see it. The snarls ceased, but she held to a walk for another fifty yards anyway. Then she jogged for as long as her lungs held out.
Deep in the primeval woodland, beside a lightning-blasted tree, Evelyn halted to catch her breath. Melissa was wheezing loud enough to be heard in Missouri. They sagged onto the downed trunk, and Melissa was racked by a coughing fit that ended with her declaring, “I never want to go through anything like that again as long as I live!”
“It’s a good thing your uncle is taking you back to North Carolina,” Evelyn said. Shakespeare McNair liked to say that some people had no business living west of the Mississippi. Plainly, Melissa was one of them, if a little thing like a cougar rattled her so badly. To Evelyn the encounter was yet another in a long string, and she had already put it from her mind.
“I don’t see why you stay in these god-awful mountains,” Melissa husked. “I never wanted to live on the frontier, but my father and mother wouldn’t listen.”
“Parents do that,” Evelyn said lightheartedly.
Melissa smacked the log in irritation. “I begged them not to come west. I told them I didn’t want to leave my friends. That I was happy right where we were. But they said it would be a whole new life for us.” She paused, and said sorrowfully, “There was nothing wrong with the life we had.”
Through the trees a snowcapped peak was visible, rearing thousands of feet into the rarefied air. Evelyn compared it to her mental catalogue of landmarks but couldn’t identify it.
“Now look!” Melissa’s voice nearly broke, and she stifled a sob. “My parents are dead. My brother is dead. My sisters are dead. And all for what?”
“You can’t blame your folks for doing what they thought was right,” Evelyn mentioned.
“I can if it got them killed” was Melissa’s rejoinder. “I’m all alone in the world now. My uncle is nice and all, and living with him will be fun, but it won’t be the same. He’s not my pa. His wife isn’t my ma.”
Anticipating another deluge of tears, Evelyn changed the subject. “Once we’re rested, we’re heading lower. By morning we’ll need water, and there’s bound to be a stream in the valley below.”
“What will we do for food?”
“I’ll rustle up something,” Evelyn said. Truth to tell, though, without a gun it would be next to impossible to bring down game. Certain plants were edible, but finding them was sometimes even more of a challenge.
The next moment, catching Evelyn completely off guard, large wings beat heavily above them and a high-pitched screech assailed her ears. Instinctively, she recoiled and raised her arms to protect herself. Melissa screamed and dived flat. A few moments more the wings beat loudly, then they faded.
Evelyn glimpsed a silhouette outlined against the stars. “It was an owl!” she exclaimed. Why it had swooped so low, she couldn’t say, unless it had been roosting in a nearby tree and just flown off.
“An owl?” Melissa whined, gazing in abject fright at the sky. “I thought it was an eagle.”
“Eagles don’t hunt at night,” Evelyn said. She helped the smaller girl up and smoothed the blanket poncho. “Let’s keep going,” she recommended. They had a lot of ground to cover before dawn.
“I want to crawl into a hole and stay there until your folks come looking for us,” Melissa said.
That would be a while, Evelyn reflected. Her father’s meet-up with the kidnappers wasn’t for three weeks. She grasped Melissa’s hand and hiked on around the log and down the next slope. It was littered with loose stones and earth, and several times she slipped and nearly fell. Melissa trudged tiredly at her side. Below the talus were pines, and below the pines were acres of boulders and clumps of vegetation, intermixed.
Evelyn lost track of the passage of time, but it had to be hours. Her legs grew as heavy as her eyelids had been, and she walked stiffly, her sore feet protesting the uncommon treatment. She yearned to soak them in a basin of hot water and imagined that was exactly what she was doing. It seemed to help relieve some of the discomfort.
The dank scent of water brought Evelyn’s head up. They were lower down than she had thought and the ground was leveling off. Cottonwoods were a stone’s throw away, and as she had learned from her travels with her parents, where there were cottonwoods, often there was a waterway. She walked faster, sparking a grumble from her companion. “What’s your rush? I’m ready to keel over.”
“How would you like to slake your thirst?” Evelyn asked. Perking up, Melissa licked her dry lips and cracked a smile. “I’d give anything. Anything at all.”
A stiff breeze fanned the cottonwoods and the high weeds under them. To the east a faint hint of pink framed the horizon, herald for impending dawn. Predators would soon retire to their dens, and the rising sun would lure animals that preferred its light and warmth out of their burrows and hideaways.
Parting the weeds with her left arm, Evelyn made a beeline toward where she suspected the stream would be. She slowed when the weeds unaccountably fell away before her, and looking down, she saw they had been flattened in a four-foot-wide swath by a large animal that had passed by some time ago. The size of the trail was troubling. An elk was her first guess, but she scoured the earth in vain for hoof prints. A mountain buffalo was big enough, but it, too, had heavy hooves.
“What are you waiting for?” Melissa impatiently asked. “My throat is bone dry.”
Evelyn was torn between hastening on or searching for sign. The matter was taken out of her hands when Melissa hurried on by. Too tired to argue, Evelyn overtook her and they wound through the cottonwoods until they came to a low bank bordering the most wonderful sight in the world: a gurgling stream. Its rushing waters flowed swiftly past, the lighter-shaded shallows broken by darker depths.
“At last!” Melissa cried, and would have leaped from the bank had Evelyn not snagged her wrist.
“Can you swim?”
“Not very well, no. Why?” Melissa stamped her foot like a horse eager to begin a race. “All I want is a drink.”
“You were about to jump into a deep pool.” Evelyn moved to their left, down the bank to a gravel bar. Dropping onto her hands and knees, she dipped her mouth into the water and greedily drank. It tasted so cold, so delicious, she wanted to gulp until she was fit to burst. But she remembered her mother warning her that to do so after going without for a long spell could cause cramps. So after several deep swallows she sat up and wiped her dripping chin with her sleeve.
Melissa was on her belly, guzzling madly, soaking her hair and the top of the blanket in the process.
“Don’t overdo it,” Evelyn cautioned.
The pink tinge to the eastern sky was now banded by streaks of yellow and orange. As if by a prearranged signal, the cries of the meat-eaters stilled and an eerie silence reigned. It was the quiet hour before the dawn, the hour when the world seemed to nap, catching its breath before the pulse of life pumped anew.
Evelyn nudged Melissa with the toe of a shoe. “Don’t overdo it,” she repeated. “You’ll get sick.”
Wet from forehead to chin, Melissa looked up and grinned. “I don’t care. I could drink forever.”
“Well, I care,” Evelyn said. “I can’t carry you, and we have a long way to go.” They had another eight miles to travel, by her best reckoning. At the rate they were moving, they’d reach Zach’s by evening.
“We’re not stopping to rest?” Melissa rose onto her knees. “I need sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.”
“Later.” Evelyn moved onto the bank and scanned the stream for a likely spot to cross.
Melissa stood. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m tuckered out. My legs hurt and my shoes are pinching my toes and I’m hungry and I—”
Evelyn held up a hand. “I feel the same. But you don’t hear me complaining.”
“You’re older than I am!” Melissa declared. “Maybe you can go without rest and food, but I can’t! Go on without me if you want.”
“Killibrew knows we’re missing by now,” Evelyn said. “Haro will be on our trail, and he won’t rest until we’re caught.”
“Please. I’m begging you. Just a little while.”
Evelyn wavered. Melissa had a point about her being older. Plus, she had lived her entire life in the wilderness, and Melissa hadn’t. She was used to hardship, to going without when need be. She looked at the other girl to tell her it would be all right to rest for an hour and saw Melissa was gawking at her in disbelief. Or, rather, past her at something in the cottonwoods. Thinking it must be Haro, Evelyn spun.
Up out of the high weeds had risen the creature responsible for the swath of trampled stems. It had many nicknames: bruin, silvertip, Lord of the Rockies, humpback, the Man-Slayer. Staring balefully at them from under its sloped brow was the most ferocious beast on the continent—an enormous grizzly.
Six
Winona King couldn’t sleep. She tried. She honestly tried. Lying on her side next to her husband, she closed her eyes and sought to drift off, but she was too upset. Her mind raced faster than an arrow in flight. She couldn’t stop thinking about Blue Flower and Melissa. Her beloved daughter was in peril, and it vexed her unbearably that for the time being there was nothing she could do about it.
Being powerless magnified Winona’s misery a thousand fold. She wanted to get the kidnappers in her gun’s sights, wanted to blow out their wicks with well-placed shots and send them to the infernal hell her husband had told her many whites believed in. If anyone truly deserved to suffer in torment until the end of time, they did.
The cabin was quiet save for Nate’s even breathing and periodic muffled sounds from the front room where Ezriah Hampton was bedded down next to their fireplace. They intended to head out at first light for Bent’s Fort, and Nate had urged each of them to get as much rest as they could.
An impossible request, as far as Winona was concerned. She found herself recalling some of her fondest memories of her daughter. Of Blue Flower’s first words, the Shoshone words for mother and father, and of her daughter’s first awkward steps, giggling the whole while at her accomplishment. She remembered the many lazy summer evenings the family played tag and hide-and-seek, games taught them by her mate. She thought of their many journeys—to Santa Fe, to the Pacific Ocean, to St. Louis and elsewhere. But her fondest memory was of the many times Blue Flower had climbed into her lap on the rocking chair and the two of them had rocked back and forth for minutes on end, warmed by the crackling fire. At moments like those Winona had felt so loved, so very happy.
Being a mother was heartrending at times. Winona had never let on to her son, but she had been crushed when Stalking Coyote took a wife and moved north to a cabin of his own. Yes, she had known it would happen one day. Yes, it was part and parcel of raising a family. But that didn’t dull the pain. It didn’t diminish the loss.
In her more private moments of introspection, Winona admitted to herself that she was looking forward with great anxiety to the day the last of her offspring flew the nest. Blue Flower was all she had left. When her daughter went off into the world to make her own way, it would be the single saddest day of Winona’s life. She would never tell Blue Flower that, of course. She would never be so thoughtless. But merely thinking about it made her feel as if her heart were being squeezed through one of those clothes wringers attached to the washing tubs white women used.
Now this.
Winona had always tried to protect her children without being too obsessive. When Blue Flower was small, Winona had limited her play area to the clearing around the cabin. Later, as Blue Flower blossomed into a typical girl and learned to use a rifle, Winona had given her the run of the lake and the surrounding woods, but no farther. And even then, Winona was always watchful, always diligent for signs and sounds of trouble.
Parental love was a cruel taskmaster. On the one hand, parents wanted their children to grow and mature so one day they would have families of their own; on the other hand, once the children were gone, it left a gaping wound in the parent’s heart, an aching loneliness that couldn’t be relieved.
Nurturing a child to adulthood was an immensely taxing yet infinitely rewarding task.
There were times when Winona secretly envied white women, particularly those who lived east of the Mississippi. They lived in settled communities and raised their families in peace and relative ease. Predators had long since been exterminated. There were no grizzlies to contend with, no panthers or wolves or rattlesnakes. There were no hostile war parties to fret about, no Blackfeet or Sioux in search of coup to count and scalps to lift.
Winona could barely imagine such a wonderful life, but she had no hankering to move. The wilderness was her home. She had been born and raised in the mountains, and one day she would die there. She had learned to accept the bad with the good, and make the best of it. And for all her fears, all her worries, she had to concede there were many delightful aspects to life in the wild, aspects denied those who lived in the States. How many of them could step out their door and see a majestic mountain three miles high? How many daily enjoyed spectacular sunsets that defied description? Or were treated to sweeping vistas of pristine forest and the gleaming diamond of an alpine lake? How many were treated to the sight of eagles soaring aloft on outstretched wings? Or the bugling of elk and the clash of antlered giants during rut?
The wilderness was a fount of incredible beauty; it was also a fount of incredible deadliness. Winona thought she had reconciled herself to the fact long ago. But she had been deceiving herself. For now that her precious daughter’s life teetered on the brink of fickle fate, a bubbling cauldron of resentment boiled within her, resentment that the always-latent deadliness had struck too close to home. Literally.
Winona rolled onto her back and cupped a hand behind her head. Dejected, she gazed at the rafters bracing the ceiling and resigned herself to a night of tossing and turning.
“You can’t sleep either?” Nate softly asked, and rolled over onto his own back and glanced at her. Sadness lined his features. He put a hand behind his own head and sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“And Melissa,” Winona said.
“And Melissa.”
Winona idly toyed with the lace on her pink cotton nightgown, a gift from Nate on one of their visits east. “If we ride without stopping, we can reach the fort by eight tomorrow night. They bar the gate at sunset, but St. Vrain will open them for us.”
“We’ll take extra horses and ride them in relays,” Nate proposed. “It will shave time off.”
“What are we to do when we get there?” Winona asked. “Who are we to contact?”
“The kidnappers didn’t say.” Nate sighed. “All they told Ezriah was that directions would be waiting for us.” Winona’s fear became a clawing fury in the pit of her stomach. “What if we don’t find any? What if there is no one there to tell us where we are to deliver the gold? How will we find Blue Flower?”
Nate’s callused hand covered hers, dwarfing it. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If worse comes to worst, we’ll ask for volunteers to help us scour the countryside.”
That gave Winona an idea. “And I will ride to Touch the Clouds and ask him for the help of my people.” Her cousin was a renowned leader, chief of his village, adviser and counselor to three hundred and fifty-two men, women, and children, and one of the three most influential warriors in the entire Shoshone nation. He adored Blue Flower. She was sure she could prevail on him to send riders to other Shoshone villages. Within a week, hundreds of warriors would be involved in the hunt.
They were silent a bit, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Then Nate remarked, “Ezriah still wants to go with us.”
“No.”
“You can’t blame him for what happened. He’s lucky those men didn’t kill him.”
Winona saw things differently. Hampton should have brought the girls back to the cabin the instant he saw the footprints by the lake. The way he told it, only a few seconds elapsed between the time he saw the tracks and when the four men appeared. But he still should have tried to get the girls out of there. She bared her sentiments to her husband.
“You’re being unfair,” Nate said, not unkindly. “If either of us had been there, we’d have done the same thing.”
“Perhaps,” Winona grudgingly agreed. But she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive him. The old trapper had been a thorn in her side since they met him. Ezriah delighted in teasing her, in always citing the thousand and one faults of womankind to stress her own. He took almost perverse delight in making her angry, and would cackle like crazy whenever he succeeded. She was constantly mad at him, but it didn’t bother him one whit. Strangely enough, he thrived on her anger, and he went to considerable lengths to get her goat each and every day.
“He was outnumbered,” Nate defended the oldster. “If he had gone for his guns, the girls might have been caught in the crossfire. Would you rather have had that?”
