Nate glanced over his shoulder and adopted a stern expression as his nemesis approached. Robert Campbell wore the most lavishly beaded buckskins in the mountains and a blue cap in a style currently popular with the mountain men. The big eagle feather fluttered in the breeze. “I was hoping the Blackfeet had plucked out your black heart by now,” Nate said.
“They only want specimens with hair,” Campbell responded, and doffed his cap to display his nearly bald pate. Putting it back on, he stepped right up to Nate’s horse and started to lift his hand. “Why don’t we take care of business here and now,” he said, and then froze when a rumbling growl issued from beside his left leg.
Samson stood menacingly, his lips curled up, his teeth glistening with saliva.
“Lord, Nate, call your mongrel off,” Campbell said, easing his arm down again.
“Why should I?” Nate asked, and made as if to ride on.
“You’d let your dog do me in?” Campbell declared, and grinned. “Why, of course you would. You’re too scared to face me man-to-man.”
“Started having delusions, have you?” Nate quipped. “You’re the one who should be scared to face me. After all, you’ve lost the past four bouts.”
“That I did,” Campbell agreed, then smirked. “But each year I practice, and each year I get better and better. This is the year I pin your ears back and I have a hundred pelts to back my words.”
Nate hesitated. One hundred beaver hides was almost a third of his grand total. If he lost the match he’d also lost hundreds of dollars in income. It was all well and good for Campbell to boast and bet when the man didn’t have a family to support.
“What’s the matter, Mouse Killer?” Campbell taunted him. “Has someone painted a yellow stripe down your backbone since last we tangled?”
“I accept,” Nate said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Shakespeare roll both of his. “Name the time and the place and I’ll be there.”
“Let’s wait until after the caravan arrives,” Campbell suggested. “The more folks that see your defeat, the harder it will be for you to deny it later.” Cackling, he spun on his heels and stalked off, whistling happily.
“That lunatic will break your neck one of these days,” Niles Thompson remarked.
“He’s not touched in the head,” Nate said. “He’s just determined.”
“You wouldn’t praise him so freely if you knew what I know,” Niles stated.
“Which is?”
“When Campbell told you he’s been practicing, he wasn’t fooling. For the past four months he’s spent every spare moment wrestling a bear.”
If a grain of blowing dust had suddenly struck Nate, he would have toppled from his saddle. “A bear?”
“A big black bear. It belonged to that French Canadian, Chevalier. He raised the bear from a cub and taught it to wrestle, then he took it around offering twenty dollars to anyone who could beat it. No one ever could.”
Nate had heard of the wrestling bear a few years back, but the last he knew the bear and its owner were up in Canada.
“After a while word about that bear spread and Chevalier couldn’t find any takers, so he came south to visit Campbell. I hear they worked together as voyageurs once. Campbell bought the bear and has been tussling with it every darned day since.”
No wonder Campbell had been so confident! Nate stared after the departing trapper, realizing he might have been duped. Campbell had put on a bit of weight and none of it appeared to be fat.
“There’s a rumor going around that Campbell can now pin that bear four out of five tries,” Niles
went on. “The money will be on him this year, I reckon.”
As well it should. Back in the States there were many traveling acts that toured the country and entertained for a modest price. Nate had seen men eat fire, women walk on high wires, and performers who worked with wild beasts in cages. And once, when only six or seven, his Uncle Zeke had taken him to see a man who wrestled a tame bear. The man had been big and strong but the bear had handled him as if he were a child. Afterward, the man had offered anyone in the audience a chance to wrestle the bear for a half dime, and five or six hardy souls had tried their best. The bear had pinned every last one.
Shakespeare chuckled. “Seems to me you’d better head into the mountains and rustle up a grizzly you can practice on.”
“I bet everyone at the Rendezvous turns out for this match,” Niles predicted. “Why, even the missionaries might like to see it.”
Nate’s shoulders slumped. The last thing he wanted was to be humiliated in front of every trapper in the Rockiest not to mention strangers he didn’t even know. Stories about the match would spread by word of mouth until every white man and Indian between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean heard the tale.
“To wrestle, or not to wrestle. That is the question,” Shakespeare declared impishly. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”
“You are no help whatsoever,” Nate told him.
“Excuse me, husband,” Winona threw in. “Blue Water Woman and I have decided we should make our camp together. It will be nice to sit and talk and we can visit our own people any time we please.”
“Fine,” Nate said absently, and then perceived the women must have been discussing where to stay the whole time and had hardly paid attention to the talk about Robert Campbell. “Did you happen to hear about the wrestling bear?” he asked.
“I heard,” Winona said.
“And you’re not the least bit worried that Campbell might beat me?”
“No.”
“Why not, may I ask?”
“No man can beat you.”
Nate almost took her in his arms to give her a hug to end all hugs. Her unbounded confidence in him sometimes made him feel uncomfortable, especially since he had no idea what he had done to deserve it. Sure, he’d slain a few grizzlies and saved her from the Blackfeet and others, but many free trappers had done as much for their wives and his feats weren’t remarkable in any respect. Yet she regarded him as a supremely capable man. At times he suspected she believed he was practically invincible, which disturbed him.
One of the lessons he’d learned since coming to the mountains was that no one knew when their time on this earth was up. Death claimed everyone sooner or later, and for trappers it often came suddenly and was totally unexpected. A man might be out checking his trap line and be attacked by hostile Indians, or a grizzly might pop up out of the brush and crush his skull with a single swipe. A rattlesnake might spook the man’s horse, and the horse would throw him and break his neck. There were a thousand and one ways a man could die and the majority were unpleasant.
Winona’s inspiring assurance in his ability filled Nate with pride, yet it troubled him at the same time. He was afraid a day would come when he would fail her, and his failure would occur when she needed him the most.
“I’d better be on my way,” Niles commented, shattering Nate’s contemplation. “I’m staying with a Nez Percé friend and he’ll be expecting me.” He turned his horse. “I’ll look you up tomorrow.” With a wave he was gone.
“We should set up our camp before it gets dark,” Shakespeare proposed.
They rode north along the bank of the Green River until they found an isolated spot in a clearing among pines and a few quaking aspen. The horses were picketed, the saddles removed, and their supplies and pelts piled high to one side. Then Nate and Shakespeare constructed a serviceable lean-to for the women and Zach.
The sun hovered above the western horizon when Shakespeare went off to bag meat for their supper. Nate arranged their packs and parfleches next to the lean-to and took the horses to the river to drink. Gazing out over the serene encampment, he heard a man singing an old Scottish song. Dozens of columns of smoke drifted skyward from the four Indian camps. At the Flathead village, which was the closest, children ran and laughed accompanied by a frisky barking puppy.
The primitive scene etched itself indelibly in Nate’s mind. He could smell the wood smoke and the aroma of roasting buffalo. Looking at the lean-to he saw Winona talking to Blue Water Woman while Zach played with Samson. For that idyllic moment, in that suspended moment of time and that tranquil, picturesque place, he was content and happy. He had a wife and son who loved him, good friends who cared for him as much as he cared for them, and all around them reared the majestic Rocky Mountains.
What more could any man want?
He had the horses picketed and was seated beside a growing fire when Shakespeare returned bearing three dead rabbits. The mountain man gave them to his wife, then joined Nate.
“After we eat I’m going to rustle up a bottle.”
“Have you been in a lot of pain?” Nate asked, careful to speak in a low tone so the women couldn’t overhear.
“In the mornings, mainly. Just like always,” Shakespeare said. He stared blankly into the crackling flames, then sighed. “If my time does come, I want you to help Blue Water Woman the best you can.”
“Quit talking that way. You’ll be around for years.”
“I’d like to. I surely would. There’s so much I haven’t done yet, so much I’ve always wanted to
do. I’ve never been south of Santa Fe and I hear the country down there is worth seeing. I never found that gold I was looking for, and—”
“Gold?” Nate interrupted. “Since when have you been interested in gold?”
“Ever since I heard tell about the mining the Spaniards used to do in the Rockies. An old Ute once told me there was a mine not too far south of your cabin.”
“He was wrong. The Spanish never came that far north.”
“Yes, they did, but few know it. Old Badger Hair never told a lie in his life and he got the news straight from his own grandfather. Seems the Spaniards took a fortune in gold from those mountains before they were driven out.”
Nate had heard tales too. Every trapper had. But few gave them much credence, and those who did had no idea where the Spanish mines were located, and weren’t about to waste precious time that could be better spent trapping beaver in searching for the lost wealth.
“Will you?” Shakespeare asked, looking at him.
“Will I what?”
“Do whatever you can for Blue Water Woman. It would be better for her to go back to her people, but I expect she’ll try and remain at our place. If I know you’ll watch out for her, I’ll go easier.”
Nate disliked thinking about the possibility of his friend dying. He glumly wrapped his arms around his knees, and a hand fell on his arm.
“Please.”
“You know I will,” Nate said, and shifted uncomfortably under McNair’s pleading eyes.
Shakespeare sat back and smiled in relief. “Thanks, son. I knew I could count on you.”
Remembering his plan to find Jim Bridger or Joe Meek to ask their advice, Nate tried to come up with a plausible excuse for slipping away the next day. He certainly didn’t want Shakespeare to tag along.
Footsteps crunched in the brush and four men suddenly appeared out of the dark, all trappers similarly attired in buckskins and toting rifles. Niles Thompson was in the lead.
“Hello, the fire. Mind some company?”
“Light and sit a spell,” Nate replied, glad for the diversion. He wondered if Thompson might be able to help him. “I thought you were at the Nez Percé camp.”
“I was,” Niles replied, advancing with the others. “But two things came to my attention and I figured I’d best see you right away.”
“What two things?”
“A Nez Percé hunter found Blackfoot sign north of their village. He estimated twenty warriors in the raiding party. They’re all on foot, but knowing those bastards they won’t be for long if they can get their hands on some stock.”
Nate nodded. The Blackfeet often conducted their raids on foot. That way, if a brave wanted to save himself a lot of wear and tear on his feet and ride back to his village he had to steal a horse. Perhaps because of that, when it came to stealing horseflesh none were more skilled than the Blackfeet.
“Bridger thinks we should get together some men and scout around, see if we can find these Blackfeet before they attack. Since you’re one of the best trackers I know of, I naturally thought of you.”
“I’ll go,” Nate volunteered without hesitation. “Provided someone is handy to protect my family.”
“Good,” Niles said, and glanced at a lean trapper on his right. “There’s one more thing, though. This here is Charley Gordon. He was in St. Louis about five weeks ago and ran into someone who knows you.”
“Oh?” Nate said, and stared at Gordon, a young trapper who sported curly black hair.
“Yes, sir,” Gordon responded. “I was at the Hawken shop stocking up on my ammunition and powder when Sam Hawken asked me if I was going to the Rendezvous. When I told him I was, he asked me to stop by the Chouteau House. There was this woman, he said, who was real anxious to get in touch with one of the mountaineers and he figured I could take a message for her.”
“A woman?” Nate repeated, mystified. He knew no women in St. Louis.
“Yep. A real pretty lady, she is. Her name is Adeline Van Buren.”