Chapter 7
Dorsey Braxton pulled up at the edge of the trees that bordered the Gallatin River, surprised by the scene he had come upon at the riverbank. “Look what I found,” he called back to his two brothers, who were following behind him. Being the eldest, Dorsey usually led. He and his brothers had spent more than two years, off and on, combing the mountains between the Absarokas and Virginia City, looking for the man who shot their younger brother. Their lack of success in finding the man and the Blackfoot woman did nothing to discourage Dorsey’s lust for vengeance, and he kept coming back to the valley of the Gallatin. He was convinced that this was the most likely country Levi Crabtree would have picked to hide in.
“Damn,” Cobb Braxton uttered when he pulled even with his brother and saw the remains of two bodies. “Looks like somebody had a little piece of bad luck. The buzzards didn’t leave nothin’ but rags and bones.”
Gentry Braxton guided his horse around his two brothers and dismounted to take a closer look at the pile of rocks that was Luke Tucker’s grave. “Reckon what’s so special ’bout this one?” He started pulling rocks away until he had made a hole big enough to see what they guarded. “Another dead one,” he announced. “The buzzards didn’t get to this one, but the worms are doin’ a pretty good job.”
“Anything on him worth takin’?” Cobb asked.
“Hell, I don’t know. I can’t see that much. If you wanna see him, you dig him out. He’s smellin’ too rank to suit me.”
“Does it look like that bastard we’re after?” Cobb asked.
“How the hell do I know? I ain’t ever seen the son of a bitch. Franklin’s the only one that saw him.” The youngest of the four brothers might have gotten a good look at Levi Crabtree moments before Levi shot him, but Franklin was dead when they got to him.
“How long you reckon he’s been dead?” Dorsey asked. Something else had caught his eye at the edge of the clearing.
“Hard to tell,” Gentry replied. “Two weeks, maybe.”
“About the same as these marks cut in the dirt, if I had to guess,” Dorsey said. The hoofprints were barely discernable, but there were two reasonably sharp marks left by what surely must have been a travois. “Somebody hauled somethin’ or somebody away from here. Wonder what it was?”
Cobb and Gentry came over to take a look for themselves. “I don’t know,” Gentry answered his brother after studying the two deep marks left in the sandy soil, “but it sure looks like there was a shoot-out here over somethin’.”
“I’m thinkin’ we oughta find out if we can see where these tracks lead,” Dorsey decided.
Since there was no better suggestion from either of his brothers, they set out along the trail left by the two poles of the travois. After this much time, it was no easy trail to follow, but there were enough areas of soft dirt here and there to leave occasional imprints to tell them they were still on the trail. Leading away from the river, the riders paused when they lost the tracks in a wide field of shell rock at the base of the mountain.
“This don’t make sense,” Cobb snorted. “Ain’t no horse gonna pull a travois up that mountain.”
“Look around, dammit,” Dorsey snapped. “They sure as hell went somewhere.” He had a feeling about the bodies they had happened upon. Maybe it had nothing to do with the man who killed Franklin. On the other hand, it fit right in with the picture of a man hiding out in these mountains, bushwhacking some innocent souls, and scurrying off up to his secret camp with the plunder.
After a frustrating thirty minutes of searching the rocky outcropping, they were rewarded when Gentry discovered a pair of ruts leading through a thick forest of firs that led to a meandering game trail just wide enough to accommodate a horse pulling a travois. “By God, he did go up that mountain,” Dorsey pronounced solemnly. “I aim to see where this leads to.” His mind was beginning to work on the possibility that the rider of the horse pulling the travois and the man he’d hunted for more than two years might be one and the same. He could envision a scene where this squaw-stealer had bushwhacked the men whose bodies they had just left and hauled off the spoils on a travois. There were two unanswered questions. What happened to the victims’ horses—and why the one rocky grave? Maybe, he thought, he would find the answers at the end of the trail they were now following.
Late afternoon found the three brothers high up in the mountains with still no sign of human existence. “It’s gonna be gettin’ dark before long,” Cobb complained, “and we ain’t seen nothin’.” The trail had led almost to the top of the mountain and now started down.
“Dammit,” Dorsey snapped, “somebody hauled a travois up here. He’s gotta be goin’ somewhere.”
“Hell, maybe it ain’t even a travois,” Cobb commented. “There ain’t enough tracks to tell for sure.”
“Yeah, Dorsey,” Gentry chided, “maybe it’s a deer with a peg leg.” His remark caused him and Cobb to chuckle.
Their elder brother chose not to appreciate the humor in the suggestion. He was about to say so, when he suddenly paused and sniffed the air. “I smell smoke,” he said. All three looked around them, searching for a telltale column of smoke.
“There!” Gentry exclaimed, pointing to a thin ribbon of smoke on the mountain next to them.
“We’re on the wrong damn mountain,” Cobb complained.
Not ready to admit he had led them up a false trail, Dorsey frowned and peered through the maze of juniper ahead. “I ain’t ready to turn around yet. Them tracks was left by a travois, and they lead to somethin’.”
“Maybe,” Cobb muttered begrudgingly. He was not so sure. He looked at Gentry, who shared his lack of faith in the tracks, and shook his head. They were accustomed to following their older brother’s lead, however, so there was no vocal objection from either.
Half an hour later, when rounding the base of a rocky cliff, Dorsey was vindicated. A narrow hogback joined the two mountains, and the trail led across it. “I knew it, dammit,” Dorsey crowed. “It’s a good thing you two half-wits have me to tell you what to do.”
Levi walked from the edge of the clearing carrying an armload of wood for the fire Willow had built between the cabin and the lean-to where he kept his horse. She often cooked outside during the summer months. It was cool up this high, but cooking inside sometimes made the cabin too warm. He dropped his armload down next to the fire and started to add a couple of pieces onto the flame. “What’s the matter, girl?” he said, pausing to listen. The bay mare had heard something. He strained to listen, thinking it might be a mountain lion or a bear. It wouldn’t be the first time a mountain lion ventured this close to the cabin. Glancing back toward the door, he saw Willow coming out with the meat to cook. “Honey,” he called back to her, “fetch my rifle when you come. We might have a visitor.”
Lying on their bellies, concealed by a thick stand of pines, the three stalkers watched the man tending the fire beside the cabin. “Whaddaya think, Dorsey?” Gentry whispered. He waited for a few moments. When his brother failed to answer, he said, “There ain’t no real way of knowin’ if he’s the one we’re after or not.”
Dorsey was about to agree, but he was of a mind to bush-whack the man kneeling by the fire anyway, although he doubted there was much to gain in the way of plunder. Just as he started to speak, Willow emerged from the cabin carrying a rifle and some meat. “Now there is,” he said, responding to Gentry’s comment. “Lookee yonder!”
“That’s her!” Cobb blurted in a hoarse whisper.
“Keep your voice down!” Dorsey scolded, a sly grin forming behind his whiskers. It was her, all right. There was no doubt in his mind. He was not a patient man, but he had patiently searched for over two years for the man who killed his youngest brother. The Indian woman was of no real concern to him, but she was his property, bought and paid for, and he had been equally determined to find her. He would probably cut her throat once he and his brothers were through with her. Ignoring Cobb and Gentry’s anxious expressions, he took time to enjoy the moment he had been looking forward to for so long. “All right,” he finally whispered. “Be careful, and don’t hit the woman. We ain’t done with her yet.” He pulled his rifle up and aimed it.
“What is it?” Willow asked, bringing the rifle.
“I don’t know,” Levi said, “maybe nothin’, but somethin’s makin’ Bess nervous.” He turned to take the weapon from her when the late-evening air was suddenly shattered by the crack of a rifle. In the process of rising from one knee, Levi was struck in the shoulder, the shot spinning him around to drop at Willow’s feet. She screamed and dropped down beside him. “Git in the cabin!” Levi gasped desperately as she tried to help him up. A couple more shots snapped close beside them to strike the cabin wall with a solid thunk-thunk. With Willow trying to support him, Levi crawled to the cabin door under a hail of angry lead. Splinters of wood were sent flying as they just made it inside the door and Willow slammed it shut and barred it. Levi took only a moment to examine his wound before crawling over to the window. Dorsey’s bullet had caught him in the left shoulder. The shoulder felt numb at that moment, and he motioned Willow away when she started to tend to it. “It ain’t that bad,” he said. “I can still shoot. Stay low to the floor and get me that box of cartridges.” She immediately went to fetch them.
“There are not many left,” she said, her voice trembling with fright.
It was a fact that Levi already knew, but he sought to reassure her. “They may be enough. We can make it pretty hot for them to try to break in here. They might decide it ain’t worth the trouble.” He eased his head up to a corner of the window, trying to see where their assailants were hidden. With no way of knowing for sure who was attacking them, he could only speculate. He felt sure they were not Indians. The Indians on the other side of the canyon were Crow, and friendly. Simple logic told him that it was not a party that just happened upon his cabin on this remote mountaintop. It made more sense that it was someone who had come specifically to find him—and he feared who that someone might be. A few minutes later, his fears were confirmed.
“Hey, you in the cabin there,” Dorsey Braxton’s deep voice boomed out. “You know what we come for. You might as well come on outta there, and maybe we’ll let you go. We just come for the woman.”
“You go to hell,” Levi replied. It wasn’t very likely he’d be excused for killing their brother. He told Willow to crawl over beside the fireplace where the stones might better shield her. “Keep an eye on that back window in case they sneak around behind,” he said. She nodded and did as he instructed, pausing under the window long enough to reach up and close the shutters.
Outside, Cobb and Gentry moved a little farther away from Dorsey in case the man inside had pinpointed their older brother’s location by the sound of his voice. “Too damn bad you missed him with that first shot,” Cobb complained. “Hell, he was settin’ right there waitin’ for it.”
“He moved, dammit,” Dorsey blurted, “just when I pulled the trigger. I didn’t see any better shootin’ from you two.” All three had been overly cautious trying to target the wounded man as he struggled to seek cover—none wanting to hit the woman and spoil the sport they planned to enjoy with her.
Dorsey called out again. “Mister, you ain’t got much sense. We’ve got you cornered. You ain’t got no place to go.” The cook fire caught his eye then. “There’s a nice little fire goin’ out here. We just might decide to burn you outta there.”
“Why don’t you just do that?” Levi called back. “I got a clear shot at that fire and the first one that tries to get across the yard from them trees you’re hidin’ behind is a dead man.” He ducked quickly away from the window seconds before a volley of shots ripped into the shutter and the frame.
The siege continued until it was almost dark, with sporadic shots from the three in the pines, borne mostly out of frustration. “It’s gonna be dark before long,” Dorsey said, his eyes studying the tiny cabin. “One of us can get around behind that cabin while the other two keep that bastard pinned down.”
“There might not be a window in the back,” Gentry said.
“We could smoke him out,” Cobb suggested. “When it gets dark, I could climb up on the roof and stop that chimney up with somethin’—smoke ’em out.”
Dorsey didn’t bother to comment. Gentry did. “You ain’t got brains God give a tumble-turd,” he said. “Do you see any smoke comin’ outta that chimney? Whaddaya think they built a fire outside for?”
Cobb had to think about it for a moment before coming up with an angry retort. “Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you think of somethin’?”
“How ’bout you walk up to the door and knock, and when he opens it to see who it is, I’ll shoot the son of a bitch.”
“Shut up, both of you.” Dorsey had tired of the senseless drivel between the two. His frustration with the situation was wearing upon his nerves. Over two years in tracking down the man who shot his brother, and it had come down to a standoff. “We’re gonna rush that son of a bitch as soon as it gets a little darker. Gentry, you go ahead and work your way on up the slope, and get around behind that shack. See if there’s a window in back. Then get back here and let me know.” Gentry nodded and backed away from the edge of the trees.
Smiling to himself, Gentry Braxton made his way up through the thick forest of pines, climbing for several dozen yards before sidling along the slope to descend toward the cabin again. If there was a window in the back of the cabin, and he could get a clear shot, he didn’t plan to wait for Dorsey and Cobb. The death of his brother, Franklin, didn’t sorrow him as much as it did Dorsey. He was more interested in the Blackfoot woman. She was a right handsome woman, and from the glimpse he got of her a couple of hours ago, it looked like she hadn’t changed.
Darkness had already found the thick forest by the time Gentry slid down a steep mound that landed him in a little patch of fir trees. From there he could see the rear of Levi’s cabin and a single window in the back. The shutters had been closed, but he figured he might be able to squeeze a gun barrel through the strap hinges on the side. It’s gonna be you and me, little missy, he thought as he made his way carefully up to the rear log wall.
As he had figured, the shutters, though drawn and latched from the inside, were hung using leather straps as hinges. Working as quietly as he could, he took his knife and cut enough of the leather away on one side until he had a hole big enough to see into the cabin. There she was! Huddled over next to the fireplace, a gentle creature, small and timid, like a rabbit cornered by a coyote. Gentry felt the lust filling his veins, even stronger than his excitement over killing the man who had stolen her. Moving slightly, he could see most of that man crouched by the front window. The hole he had cut in the strap was big enough to stick a gun barrel through, but would not allow him to aim his rifle at Levi. Stumped for a second, he then realized he could cut through both leather hinges and jerk the whole shutter away. With a wide grin upon his face, he immediately set to work with his knife.
Back in the pine trees facing the front of the cabin, Dorsey began to wonder why Gentry was taking so long to report back. “Maybe you oughta get around behind that cabin and see what the hell he’s doin’ back there. Dammit, I told him to come back here as soon as he found out if there’s a window or not.” With a quick nod, Cobb backed away from the tree that hid him, and followed the route his brother had taken up the slope.
Having already cut through the bottom strap, Gentry was working furiously away at the top. Timing was going to be important he told himself, so he propped his rifle against the wall next to his leg. He had heard no shots for perhaps ten minutes or so, telling him that Dorsey and Cobb had tired of plinking away at the solid log wall. They’ll shit, he thought. By the time they figure out what happened, I’ll already have that little squaw bedded down. He pictured Cobb’s look of jealous anger, and smiled.
The top hinge was hanging by a thread now and Gentry prepared for the sudden move. Finally, his knife cut through. The wooden shutter was held in place by nothing more than the tightness of the fit and a latch on the inside. Easing his rifle up with one hand, he placed the other on the edge of the shutter between the severed straps. When he thought he was ready, he suddenly gave the shutter a hard jerk and flung it aside. With a triumphant roar, he quickly brought his rifle up to sight on the startled man at the front window. Before he could pull the trigger, he was staggered by the impact of the arrow that slammed into his throat. His eyes, blown wide-open by the shock, stared in horror at the Indian woman who had just released the bowstring. Too stunned to do anything but drop his rifle and clutch his throat with both hands, he stumbled backward and fell on his back.
Startled as Gentry had been, Levi reacted quickly. Scrambling to his feet, he ran to the back window to discover his would-be assailant struggling to get up from the ground, the arrow protruding all the way through his neck. Gurgling with each panic-stricken breath he attempted, he managed to get to his knees before Levi sent him on his way to hell with one rifle slug through his brain.
Levi looked at Willow, his face reflecting the devastation of his life if he had lost her. She tried to give him a brave look in return as she drew another arrow from the quiver by the fireplace. Thanks to her quickness, there was one less assailant to deal with, but Levi now had to be concerned with an open window behind him while he watched the front. Guessing his concern, Willow notched her arrow, and giving him a reassuring nod, moved closer to the open window.
Halfway down the hill, Cobb Braxton was stopped in his tracks by the sound of the rifle shot from the back of the cabin. Pausing to listen, he wasn’t sure whether it sounded like Gentry’s rifle or not. He heard no additional shots, so he clamored on down the slope, stopping again about twenty yards from the back corner of the cabin. Although darkness had set in, he could clearly make out the form slumped under the back window. It could be no one but Gentry. The first reaction in Cobb’s simple brain was disbelief. It had never entered his mind that anyone but the man in the cabin, and eventually the woman, would die. The sight of Gentry lying dead upon the ground brought confusion and then anger. “You’re a dead man, Mister!” he suddenly roared out. “I’m gonna cut you up in little pieces.” Unaccustomed to making decisions on his own, however, he knew that first he had to get back to tell Dorsey. He turned then to confront a shadowy figure standing in the trees above him. Surprised, he stopped and called out. “Dorsey?”
“Yeah, Dorsey,” Cade Hunter uttered through clenched teeth and pumped two rounds into Cobb’s belly. Cade remained where he stood for a minute or two, making sure Cobb was dead before moving off through the forest to take care of the last of the stalkers.
What the hell’s goin’ on? Dorsey Braxton wondered. Cobb seemed to have been gone for a long time when Dorsey heard the shots on the other side of the cabin. The gunfire worried him. Something was wrong. What had his brothers run into? As a precaution, he decided to change his position and drop back closer to the horses. He suddenly felt a clammy uncertainty about the new quiet that settled around the small cabin after the last two shots. After a few minutes more, he called out. “Cobb? Gentry?” He waited, but there was no answer. With a strong certainty now that something had gone wrong, he decided he’d better move again, this time even closer to the horses.
Inside the darkened cabin, there was an equal amount of uncertainty. Mystified by the last two shots that came from off the back corner of the house, Levi decided to back away from the front window. He motioned for Willow to follow him, and then crawled over to station himself in the middle of the side wall. With his wife behind him, he sat next to the wall where he could watch both front and back windows. There was nothing to do then but wait.
Dorsey shifted his body slowly, making a concerted effort not to cause a sound. Something had happened to his brothers. He was certain of that now. It had been too long without hearing from at least one of them. The leaden quiet of the mountain weighed heavily upon his senses. It was as if all life had ceased, and the longer he knelt there in the dark, the more uneasy he became. He called out to his brothers again and waited for their response. As before, there was only silence, and his mind started working on the possibility that he was alone. The man by the fire with Willow—he had shot him—he was certain of that. There had to be someone else or something prowling these dark woods.
Finally, his sense of self-preservation caused him to wonder whether it was wise to hang around to find out. Maybe he’d better get while the getting was good. Something unnatural was at work here. Once that thought took hold of him, he decided not to linger. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Cobb and Gentry, but he told himself he wasn’t fool enough to wait to find out. His decision made, he gave no more thought to the fate of his two brothers, but sprang up from the thicket he had chosen to hide in, and ran for his horse. The animal sensed his panic and sidestepped away from him, causing Dorsey to have to grab for the reins and lunge for the saddle. Getting one foot in the stirrup, he swung his other leg over, but instead of finding the other stirrup, he felt two powerful hands around his ankle. In one continuous move, Cade grabbed Dorsey’s leg and pulled the hapless man off the horse. Dorsey grunted with the pain that knocked the wind from his lungs when he collided with the ground. Terrified as if attacked by a demon, he managed to pull his pistol from his belt. Gasping for breath, he fired blindly around him, his assailant unseen in the dark. His shots scattered harmlessly through the trees, except for one. His horse screamed in pain when the bullet struck it, and it bolted, revealing the man who had been standing behind it. Seeing his target at last, Dorsey pulled the trigger, only to hear the damning click of an empty chamber. Cade unhurriedly raised his Winchester and dispatched the last of the Braxtons to join his brothers and whatever awaited them on the other side.
Left in a state of total confusion, Levi automatically shifted his attention from the rear window back to the front when he heard the burst of gunshots from that direction. Clueless about what was going on outside the darkened cabin, he was at a loss as to what actions he could take to protect Willow and himself. The shots he had heard were not directed at them. None had hit the cabin walls. With no options available to him but one, he sat against the wall with Willow pressed close to him, waiting, his rifle aimed at the door. There was no more shooting, and in a few minutes he heard the call.
“Levi, are you all right in there?”
Levi sat up straight. “Cade? Is that you?” He could not mistake the familiar voice.
“Yeah,” Cade called back. “It’s me. I’m comin’ in.”
Still mystified over what had just happened, Levi went to the door and lifted the bar. Even though he recognized Cade’s voice, he stood to one side of the door with his rifle ready to fire. “Come on in, then,” he said. In a few moments he released a sigh of relief when the door swung open and it was indeed Cade Hunter. “Boy, am I glad to see you,” he exclaimed. “Have they gone?”
“Well, yeah, they’re gone, and they ain’t comin’ back from where they’ve gone,” Cade replied. Then noticing the bloody shoulder, he said, “Damn, looks like you stopped a bullet. You better get that fixed up.”
Willow hurried to light a lantern. “I fix that now,” she said, and pulled Levi toward a chair at the table.
Impatient to hear what had gone on outside the cabin, Levi pressed Cade for details. He sat quietly and submitted to Willow’s doctoring while Cade related the events that led up to the elimination of the other two Braxton brothers. “I don’t know how long we coulda held ’em off,” Levi admitted. “I didn’t have many cartridges left.” He paused to think about it. “But where’d you come from? You were long gone.”
“I took the short trail down, and they musta come up the way you hauled me up on the travois. I was already down the mountain when I heard the shootin’. I wish I coulda got here sooner, but that’s a steep climb back up, and I had to walk and lead my horse most of the way.”
“Well, friend,” Levi exclaimed. “I’m mighty grateful you showed up when you did. You sure as hell saved our bacon, didn’t he, Willow?”
The Blackfoot woman looked up from Levi’s wound and smiled at Cade. “We owe you much,” she said.
Cade nodded and said, “I just lost one friend. I couldn’t afford to lose two more.”
There was not much they could do about cleaning up after the attack until daylight. Levi went out with Cade while he brought his and two of the Braxtons’ horses in. One of the horses was missing, the one that Dorsey shot. “I’ll try to find him in the mornin’,” Cade said as they stood over Dorsey’s body with a lantern. “Reckon I’ll take care of him and the others in the mornin’, too.”
“He don’t look like he’s goin’ anywhere,” Levi said.
“Are these the men you and Willow were runnin’ from?” Cade asked.
“Yep,” Levi replied. “They’re the ones.”
“Well, I reckon you and Willow don’t have to run anymore.”
“Reckon not.” The thought just then struck him that this was a fact. There was no longer a need for him and his wife to hide out in the mountains, fearful that someone might find them. “I reckon not,” he repeated, now with a different tone. A sudden feeling of freedom came upon him as he realized the significance of the night’s conflict. “Hell, let’s leave the bastards where they lay tonight. Maybe the wolves’ll eat ’em. Let’s go build up the fire and fix us somethin’ to eat. Me and Willow was about to cook some supper when they hit us.”
All had not escaped harm, however. When they led the three horses back to the lean-to that Levi used as a stable, it was to find his horse lying dead, a victim of the barrage laid down by the three brothers. The horse had been shot several times in the head and neck, evidence of a deliberate execution of the animal. The loss of the horse lent a sad note to Levi’s feeling of celebration over his new freedom. But Cade remembered that out in the forest somewhere there was still a horse with a bullet wound. He would have to wait till morning to find out if it was dead or alive.
There was work to be done when morning came to the little cabin high up in the mountains. Utilizing the two Braxton horses as a team, Cade dragged Levi’s horse to a cliff on the opposite side of the mountain that dropped two hundred feet to a ridge below. Dumping the carcass at the rim of the cliff, it was almost as much work to force it over the edge as it was to haul it up there. Finally, after chopping down a small tree to use as a lever, he was able to move enough of the carcass over the edge that it fell on its own. Later, Cade returned to drop three bodies to the rocky ridge below to join Levi’s horse. The last to go over was Gentry Braxton’s body with Willow’s arrow still protruding awkwardly out of his throat. His grim chore finished, Cade stood on the brink of the cliff looking down at the previous night’s carnage. Two of those men below him on the rocks had met their death at his hand. Just as there was no satisfaction in that fact, there was also no sorrow. Like the killing of mad dogs or preying wolves, it was a cold act of necessity. There was passion in his heart for only one killing, Lem Snider, and he reminded himself that it was time now to get on with it.
Dorsey Braxton’s horse wandered back early that morning looking none the worse for its wound. The pistol bullet had struck the animal high in the left withers, where it had lodged deep in the muscle. There had been a minimal amount of blood from the hole in the horse’s hide, so Levi said he would watch it, and if it festered, he’d try to remove the bullet. All told, the Braxton brothers left Levi and Willow quite a bit better supplied, with an extra horse, saddles, tack, guns, and ammunition. There was even a sack of coffee beans in one of the saddlebags. Cade satisfied his need for a packhorse with one of the horses. He decided to take the one with a bullet in him instead of leaving it with Levi. In truth, Cade had to admit that Loco picked the horse, as it had originally picked Cade. Lucky, as Cade decided to call the sorrel gelding, was the only horse of the three that Loco had not tried to take a nip out of.
“If I can ever help you,” Levi started as Cade tied down the pack he had fashioned on Lucky’s back.
“Don’t mention it,” Cade interrupted. “You and Willow took real good care of me. I owed you, and I’m glad I was able to repay you in some fashion.” He turned to give Willow a smile. “Take care of him, Willow.” She nodded, smiling. Turning back to Levi, he asked, “You gonna stay up here on this mountain?”
“I don’t know,” Levi answered. “For a while yet, I guess. Since there ain’t no reason not to, we might decide to go down below where the winters ain’t so rough—maybe someday head north to find Willow’s folks. She don’t complain none about it, but I know she’d like to see her people again.” He looked at his wife and grinned. “I don’t know if that would be a smart thing for me to do, though. The Blackfoot ain’t really partial to white men.”
“That’s somethin’ to think about all right,” Cade said, and stepped up in the saddle.
“Good luck to you, Cade,” Levi said. He and Willow watched until the rider and horses disappeared below the ridge. “You know what I think?” he said to his wife. “I think the Good Lord was lookin’ to answer our prayers when he sent Cade Hunter floatin’ down that river to come back from the dead and help us.”
Willow looked up into Levi’s homely face and smiled, nodding her agreement. She had heard of stranger tales at the feet of her grandfather when she was a small girl.
