Winter Woman, page 2
Jacob kept his eyes moving, searching for enemies. The danger of being discovered by the Crows was much greater here on the plains where a horseman could be seen for a very long distance. Still, the land was big and trappers could sometimes cross it without seeing an Indian.
As they hurried east, they saw several small herds of buffalo. The dark, shaggy animals stood motionless, like fields of boulders washed by the rain. They barely lifted their heads to watch the horsemen ride past.
The rain stopped as the day wore down. Jacob was glad for that. Perhaps they could find some dry wood and have an evening fire.
"Indians!" Renne called sharply from his position on the right, and thrust his arm out to the southwest.
Jacob snapped a look to the right past his comrades and in the direction Renne pointed. Horsemen, miniaturized by distance, tiny men on tiny horses, had come up from some low area and onto the skyline. Even as he watched, the horsemen broke into a run directly for the trappers.
Renne called again. "There's too many of them for us to fight, and we'll never outrun them with the pack-horses."
"Couldn't even without them," Jacob said, his pulse quickening with dread. Soon there would be a battle and they were dangerously outnumbered.
"But we've got to give them a damn good run and hope we find a place to fort up," Glen said.
Renne took another turn of the packhorses' lead rope around the pommel of his saddle. "I'm ready. Let's make tracks."
"You take all the packhorses," Glen directed Renne and handed him his lead rope. "Jacob, tie yours to mine. Hurry!"
Jacob swiftly fastened his tow rope to one of the straps that held the packs on Glen's packhorse. He let the rope long so that the animal could run behind Glen's.
"Ready," Jacob said.
Glen spoke quickly to Renne. "Jacob and me'll hold behind. If the Crows get too close, we'll see if we can slow them down. Now ride man, ride for your hair."
Renne did not question the plan, for he knew Glen and Jacob were better marksmen than he was. He raised his whip and lashed his mount. The stung animal bolted, dragging the packhorses on taut ropes.
Jacob slapped his gray horse smartly on the neck. In two strides, the big horse was in a run on the heels of the packhorses. Glen reined his mount into station beside him.
The trappers ran their horses across the gray plain and into the growing dusk of evening. Now and again, Glen or Jacob darted forward and laid their whip on the rump of one or another of the packhorses that was lagging and slowing the group.
Jacob often looked to the rear, watching the Indians as they steadily closed the gap separating the two bands of men. He clearly counted fifteen warriors. He could see their arms rising and falling as they whipped their mustangs onward.
The Crow warriors began to cry out, their voices rising shrill and eager, and as threatening as that of a pack of hunting wolves that sensed their quarry weakening.
"Trees ahead," Renne cried out over his shoulder.
Jacob heard Renne's shout over the thundering pound of the horses' hooves. He stared hard to the front and could make out two objects rising above the horizon. They were darker than the gray grass of the prairie and could indeed be small groves of trees.
He checked the Crows again. They were now only three hundred yards behind. He doubted there was time to reach the trees before the warriors would be within gun range.
His nerves tightened and began to strum. This would be a fight to the death, no quarter given or received. But for the next couple of minutes he rode with his friends, and they and he were still alive. He savored the cut of the cold wind on his face. He focused on the sensation of riding, the knotting and stretching of the gray's muscles between his legs. He listened more keenly to the suck and blow of the horse's deep lungs. Run, you big brute. Run until your heart bursts.
Jacob turned toward Glen riding beside him and found the man looking at him. They had ridden thousands of miles together, and had fought through many battles. They grinned at each other with grim humor, simultaneously, as if each read the other's thoughts. The terror of death was lessened when a comrade faced it with you.
Glen watched his young friend. His blond looks made him appear younger than his age. That appearance was greatly misleading, for Jacob had a streak of pure, hard metal in him and was a fierce fighter. Then Glen nodded.
At the signal, both pulled their Sharps from their scabbards and looked to the rear to measure the gun range to the Crow warriors.
Muskets began to boom out from the band of Indians. A bullet tugged at Jacob's coat. Another whizzed by close to his face. He tensed, waiting for one of the hurtling lead balls to hit him.
The guns of the braves fell silent and Jacob knew they had emptied their single shot weapons. He flung a look at Glen and Renne. Both seemed unhurt. The Indians had fired before they were close enough to strike a target from the back of a running horse. He felt relief that neither his friends nor he had been hit.
"The trees! The trees!" Renne cried out. "We're going to make it!" He pounded on, lashing his horse toward the nearer and larger grove of trees.
As the racing trappers drew closer, the grove of trees broke apart, becoming thirty or so huge, leafless cottonwoods growing in a shallow swale. Renne drove his horses straight in among the cottonwoods. Jacob and Glen plunged in beside Renne and jerked their animals to a sliding halt. All three men swiftly sprang down to the ground with their rifles in their hands. They jumped behind the thick trunks of trees for protection.
The Crows pulled their mustangs to a stop two hundred yards from the trappers and began to fire in among the cottonwoods. Jacob heard bullets tearing past with a whirring sound. One hit a tree trunk near Jacob, peeled bark, and ricocheted away with the snarl of a small deadly animal. Jacob swiftly raised his rifle. He caught one of the warriors in the sights of the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The gun crashed and bucked against his shoulder.
The Crow tumbled from the back of his mustang and hit the ground, all slack-muscled and hard hit. Glen's rifle cracked an instant after Jacob's. A second warrior was hit. He dropped his rifle and slumped forward across his mount. He gripped the neck of the animal to keep from falling to the ground.
"My turn," Renne said. He stepped out from behind his tree and raised his weapon.
Jacob saw one of the Indians fire his gun. An instant later, he heard the crush of a lead ball hitting flesh and bone, and a guttural gasp of pain. He whirled to see who was hit.
He saw Renne drop his rifle and clutch his chest. He had a surprised, disbelieving expression on his face. He fell backward to the ground.
Jacob jumped to Renne and knelt beside him. Renne's face was twisted with pain as he stared up at Jacob. He tried to speak, his lips moving, but no sound came. He felt his strength draining out the bullet hole with his blood, draining so fast that in a few seconds he couldn't see Jacob's face. Renne's eyes went blank and his head rolled to the side.
Glen threw a look at the Indians to see if they were going to charge now that they had downed one of the trappers. He saw they were whirling their mustangs to ride out of rifle range. He hurried up beside Jacob and squatted beside him.
"We're safe for the moment." Glen said. "The Indians are pulling back. How bad is Renne hit?"
"We'll soon find out," Jacob said as he swiftly worked on the buttons of Renne's clothing.
He finished unbuttoning Renne's coat and shirt and pulled them open. The bullet had hit the man in the left side of the chest. Blood oozed steadily from the round, deep hole. A vicious wound. Jacob turned the unconscious man to look for a wound in his back where the bullet would have torn through. There was no exit wound. Jacob laid Renne on his back again.
"God! I don't know how he's still alive," Jacob said. "The bullet's still in him and must be right next to his heart."
"That'll make it dangerous to get out?" Glen said.
"I don't think we can," Jacob said in anguish. "I'm sure I don't want to dig for it. I'd kill him for sure."
"Goddamn thievin' Crows," Glen cursed. "They'd kill a man for a few furs."
Jacob cut the tail off Renne's shirt, folded it into a pad, and bound it over the wound. He buttoned the shirt and the coat around the injured man.
"We've got to keep him warm," Glen said.
He moved to the packhorses and dug Renne's buffalo sleeping robe from his pack. Then he and Jacob gently placed the injured man in the thick, soft hide, and pulled it snugly around him to keep out the cold.
Glen and Jacob straightened from their task and looked out across the prairie at the Crows sitting their mustangs out of rifle range. They were gesturing and talking among themselves.
"One of them is a damn good shot," Jacob said. "And that sounded like a Sharps rifle. Not many Indians got Sharps."
Glen spoke. "We're in a hell of a fix. Renne's bad hit and maybe dying, and the Indians got us penned down with no way out."
Three
The black night crept in under the overcast sky, and darkness, so dense that a man could catch a handful, congealed around Jacob. The cold north wind sounded a dirge, cut by the bare limbs of the cottonwoods. In the center of the grove of trees, the trappers' horses stood silent and unmoving, too weary to graze.
Jacob sat in the darkness beside Renne and looked across the three hundred yards of prairie to the grove of trees where the Crow warriors had made camp. The Indians felt sure they had the trappers caged and had built a leaping fire that threw a yellowish red light upon the boles of the cottonwoods. Now and again, Jacob could see one or another of the warriors moving in the firelight.
The Crows weren't taking any chances on the trappers escaping. Just as night fell, they had stationed three warriors at strategic locations around the grove of trees the trappers were using for protection. The remainder of the Crows had withdrawn to the trees to the north. Jacob knew that now with darkness shrouding the prairie, the lookouts would have stolen in close, lying in the grass just beyond the view of the trappers. They would be watching for movement against the faint light of the night sky and listening with keen ears for the sound of the trappers moving. Jacob knew the Crows did not like to fight in the dark, and perhaps these warriors would follow that custom ... but come sunrise they would mount an attack.
Beside Jacob, Renne's shallow breathing stopped. Jacob turned quickly to look at his injured comrade. He could see only the outline of the man on the ground. He hastily knelt and whispered into Renne's ear. "Breathe, Renne! Breathe, damn you, and live! You promised me that we'd go to California to grow grapes and start a winery."
As if in answer to Jacob's command, Renne began to breathe again, but ragged and feeble. Jacob sat back on his haunches. How could the man live with such a terrible wound? Jacob wondered. Surely not for long. Something must be done, and soon. He looked through the grove of trees in the direction where he knew Glen was hunkered down watching the black prairie.
Glen and Renne were Jacob's only family. He thought of them as favorite uncles, or older brothers. He had acquired them in a strange manner five years before in New Orleans.
Jacob had been born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother died when he was thirteen. Her death had greatly saddened him. The effect on Oscar, his father, had been devastating. Oscar had always liked his whiskey; now he began to drink more and more.
As the months passed, Oscar became undependable at his trade of bricklayer, going on drinking binges and not working for days on end. The time came when he could not find anyone to employ him as a mason.
Oscar found a job firing the boilers of a steamboat that transported live hogs from Cincinnati downriver to New Orleans. The two top decks of an old and once grand steamboat had been cut away and converted, except for the wheelhouse, into one huge railed deck. The "pigboat" was crowded stem to stern with grunting, squealing hogs. Their shit was so rank that it burned Jacob's nose. The slop of shit and urine leaked through the deck to the boiler room below, and there in the heat from the boilers, stank even worse.
A "pigboat" was the lowest, the meanest of all the boats on the river. The noisy, stinking vessel could be heard and smelled for long distances. The other river-boat men laughed and shouted insults when they passed. The men who shoveled coal in the boiler rooms of the pigboats were considered the lowest of all workmen.
Oscar's drinking became even heavier. Oftentimes he would fall down dead drunk in the boiler room. Jacob would drag him out of the way and take up the shovel and keep the flames leaping in the fire pit beneath the boiler.
Several times a day, the captain would come down to the boiler room and check the temperature gauge on the boiler. He would look at young Jacob, ignoring Oscar drunk or sober, and point at the marker he had put on the gauge. He always growled the same words, "Keep the temperature right there boy, or I'll kick your ass and your old man's ass into the river."
Jacob would stare out from his face black with coal dust, grip his shovel, and say nothing. He wanted to swing the shovel and smash the hard face of the captain, his drunken father, and the goddamned temperature gauge. But he held himself in. The moment the captain left, Jacob would spring into the coal bunker, grab up the sledgehammer and pulverize the lumps of coal until the sweat streamed down his body and exhaustion cooled his hot anger.
By the time Jacob was fifteen, he had made many trips down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. His growing body was corded with muscle. His hands were as hard as the lumps of coal he shoveled. The women in the river towns had begun to take notice of his fair good looks.
One night while the pigboat was under way, Oscar fought his way up from a drunken stupor on the floor of the boiler room. He stumbled to the ladder and climbed to the upper deck. Jacob never saw him again. He knew the river had taken his father. When the steamboat docked at New Orleans two days later, he rolled his scant belongings into a bundle and escaped.
Evening arrived as he drifted through the growing shadows up from the waterfront and into the Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter of New Orleans. On Decatur Street, he turned and walked leisurely toward a restaurant he knew of that served good food at a reasonable price. He had enough money to last him for a few days. Before it was all spent, he had to find a job.
Half a block ahead of Jacob, a brown-headed girl of twelve or thirteen came out of a dress shop and crossed the street. She continued on in the same direction he traveled. She walked with an easy, free, swinging stride that Jacob found enjoyable to watch. He quickened his pace to get closer. Not that she would talk with a boy off a pigboat.
Further along the street, three young men of Jacob's age were loafing, leaning against the front of a building. As the girl approached the young men, they began to ogle her, and talk and laugh among themselves. When she was almost abreast of the fellows, they spread out across the sidewalk to block her path.
The girl slowed cautiously, watching the boys, then hastened her steps to go between two of them. Before she could pass through, the larger fellow caught her by the arm and stopped her. He said something to the girl. She shook her head vehemently and tried to pull free. But the fellow held her and shifted his hands to her shoulders, pressing her against the wall of the building.
Jacob increased his pace as he recognized the members of the River Rats Gang. Twice before when his boat had docked in New Orleans, he'd had trouble with the waterfront toughs. There was no use trying to talk with them; he had tried that and in the end still had to fight his way clear.
Jacob was close enough now to see the gang member's hands fondling the budding breasts of the girl, and to see her white, frightened face. He dropped his bundle on the sidewalk and leaped the last few feet, driving past the two Rats watching the girl, and straight at the one holding her.
He caught the Rat by the hair on the top of his head and yanked savagely backward. Instantly he crashed his hard right fist into the temple of the Rat, snapping his head to the side. He swung again, landing a hard blow to the Rat's face. The Rat's hands came loose from the girl.
"Run, girl! Run!" Jacob shouted.
She stood for a brief moment looking at Jacob, her large brown eyes staring into his gray ones. Then she sprang away from the wall and sprinted off along the street.
Jacob released his hold on the stunned Rat and let him fall to the sidewalk. He pivoted to face the other two Rats—-just as they pounced on him.
Jacob knocked the closer gang member flat with a hard wallop to the chin. Then immediately he backed into a doorway of the building where only one opponent could get to him at a time. Three Rats against him were bad odds, but still Jacob's heart beat nicely at what he had done to help the girl. When her eyes had touched his, it had felt like a kiss.
The two Rats Jacob had knocked down regained their feet. They joined with the third and advanced on Jacob, with the Rat who had not yet felt Jacob's fist in the forefront.
Jacob exchanged blows with the fellow, giving more blows, and harder ones, than he received. Then the three pulled knives and he knew things were going to get ugly and bloody.
Before the River Rats could use their knives on Jacob, Glen and Renne came into the street a short distance away. They stopped and stood silently eyeing the situation. The River Rats halted their advance upon Jacob and watched the two trappers armed with pistols and knives.
One of the trappers, whom Jacob learned later was Glen Kinshaw, had called out, "Do you need some help, young fellow? A pretty girl said you did."
"Just take their knives away from them and then I can handle the rest," Jacob had replied.
Glen had laughed at Jacob's brave words and pulled his long-bladed skinning knife. He stepped toward the River Rats and made a round-house sweep through the air in their direction with his knife. "Run, you river bastards, before I cut off your little dicks and make you eat them."
