As the mountain lion sprang, cleaving the air in a graceful arc, Nate King yanked his tomahawk from under his wide leather belt. The cougar didn’t quite reach him, though. It landed several feet away and crouched low, its tail snapping back and forth. Growling, it bared its razor fangs.
Nate braced for the inevitable rush. He had always known that one day this might happen. The wilderness was rife with threats to life and limb, and frontiersmen daily lived with the prospect of horribly violent deaths. It was part and parcel of their existence, and they learned to take it in stride. Still, given his druthers, Nate would have liked to die quietly in bed with his family by his side to comfort his soul in its passage from this world to the bosom of his Maker.
Nate had read the Bible from cover to cover. Back in his trapping days, on those long winter nights when snowdrifts ten feet high socked the trappers in their dingy cabins with little else to do, he had read anything and everything he could get his hands on. The fictional works of James Fenimore Cooper. The plays of Shakespeare. Poetry. And the Good Book. He couldn’t claim to understand all of it. But he did come to believe there definitely was a God, and if a person had faith, however feeble, then they were destined to live on beyond their mortal coil.
Nate mentally clutched at that now, like a drowning man clutching at a log. He would die, but he would live on. What lay beyond the veil, he couldn’t rightly say. No one could. But there had to be something. There just had to.
Images of Winona, Evelyn, Zach, and Louisa floated before him, and Nate’s chest grew heavy and tight. He would miss them, miss them unbearably. His family was everything to him. He took great pride in the fact that whatever else he had done, however many blunders he had made, he had always striven the best he knew how to be the best husband and father he could be.
The cougar growled again. Keeping one eye on him, it inched to the black bear and sniffed the body.
Nate scarcely breathed. His musings on death had been premature. He might yet live, if all the cat was interested in was the bear.
The mountain lion sank its teeth into the bruin’s neck. Planting all four paws, it attempted to drag the heavy bulk toward the coulee entrance. Mountain lions were immensely strong and could partially lift fair-sized deer in their powerful jaws, but the bear outweighed a typical deer by hundreds of pounds. The painter had dragged it only a few yards when the cat halted, panting and hissing.
“Try again,” Nate coaxed. Better for him if the cougar went elsewhere. The longer it stuck around, the more tempted it might be to take a bite out of him.
The mountain lion swiveled toward him. Its fierce eyes narrowing, it dipped its belly to the ground and crept toward him, its intention transparent. It had changed its mind about the bear and was after live prey.
Nate raised his tomahawk. The brief rest had done him some good, and while he was still woozy, he had regained enough strength that he thought he could stand. His back against the wall, he started pushing himself up.
The cougar halted, its tail darting like a bullwhip.
“Get out of here!” Nate hollered, seeking to bluff it into fleeing. But no such luck.
Ears flat, lips pulled back over its tapered teeth, the painter continued stalking him. Another second or two and it would spring.
Then the unforeseen occurred.
From the mouth of the coulee came a cry of “Pa!” The mountain lion hesitated; for a moment it appeared the cat would turn and flee.
“Evelyn?” Nate answered, and inadvertently incited the painter into launching itself at him. Almost too late, Nate swung the tomahawk. It struck the cat a glancing blow with just enough force to knock it down but not enough to kill it.
The effort proved costly. Nate’s newfound strength drained from him with startling rapidity. He sought to raise the tomahawk again, but his head was spinning and his arms were leaden.
Growling horribly, the cougar crouched for another try.
Fear flooded through Nate—fear for his daughter, not for himself. Should she come rushing around the bend, the cat might turn on her instead. Getting his legs under him, he lurched toward it, swinging wildly, weakly. The cat rushed head-on, its front paws flashing, clawed lightning in feline form. Nate reeled from a sweeping slash to the chest. Another second and he was flat on his back with the cougar’s front paws on his sternum and its jaws descending toward his throat. His vision blurred, and for that he was grateful. He tensed for the searing sensation of his neck being ripped apart. Darkness enclosed him, and he seemed to pitch into a great inky void. Dimly, he heard thunder, and a screech, and after that, he heard and felt nothing at all.
Winona King had learned long ago to trust her intuition. Like many women, she became aware of certain special feelings when she was quite young. An urge to do something would come over her, an urge so strong, denying it was impossible.
Once, when Winona had barely seen ten winters, she was out gathering firewood with a couple of other girls when she felt danger was near. She experienced an impulse to hide, and hide quickly. She told her friends, but they gazed at the sunny sky and the bright forest and they scoffed at her silliness. There was nothing to fear, they said, and walked on without her.
Winona had begun to follow, but the feeling became stronger. Confused, torn between her strange, inexplicable terror and common sense, she had compromised and darted behind a spruce tree. A stifled scream changed her blood to ice. Not twenty paces away, half a dozen painted shadows had detached themselves from the vegetation and pounced on her friends. It was a Piegan raiding party. Their brawny hands clamped over the mouths of her friends, the Piegans retreated into the woods as soundlessly as they had come.
Winona’s heart had pounded in her young breast. She was sure the Piegans had seen her and would grab her next. But no, they faded into the distance, and marshaling her courage, she flew to the village to spread the alarm. Warriors poured into the woods to rescue the two girls. They chased the Piegans for sleeps on end, but the wily raiders eluded them and the two girls were never seen again.
The incident was the first inkling Winona had that she possessed an amazing inner power, a sense that defied reason yet the reality of which could not be denied. She had discussed it with her mother and learned that many women, and quite a few men, also possessed it. No one could explain exactly how the strange sense worked, only that those who ignored it did so at their own peril.
Another time, fifteen winters along, Winona was on her way to a spot on the Green River favored by the women for washing clothes. Her intuition halted her in her tracks. She had a feeling that she must get off the trail right that instant. Feeling slightly silly, she darted behind a thicket.
That was when a massive grizzly appeared. Lumbering up the very same trail, it came to the exact spot where she had been standing and sniffed loudly, its nose to the ground. It had caught her scent.
Quaking in uncontrollable fright, Winona was debating whether to sneak off toward the village when the giant bear reared onto its hind legs and stared at her over the top of the thicket. Her own legs wobbled, and she came close to fainting. Grizzlies were indestructible monsters that had taken many a Shoshone life, and hers was about to be counted among them. She couldn’t possibly outrun it even if she could compel her legs to work.
For an eternity the bear stared. Then it dropped onto all fours, snorted, wheeled, and padded off into the woodland, leaving an astounded Winona in its wake. More incidents were to occur, establishing beyond any shred of doubt that denying her intuition was tantamount to stupidity.
So it was that on this bright and carefree morning, as Winona puttered around her cabin cleaning up after the morning meal and making the bed, she became greatly upset when a familiar feeling came over her. A feeling of imminent danger. Only, the danger wasn’t to herself. She clearly felt that her husband and her daughter needed her, needed her badly, and she must reach them swiftly, without delay.
Going to the cabin door, Winona scanned the trail to the lake. The last she had seen of them was when she watched from the window as her daughter raced to catch up to her husband. She listened but heard nothing to indicate they were in any trouble. Still, the feeling persisted.
From pegs on the wall Winona took her ammunition pouch and powder horn and slung them across her chest. Her Hawken, always loaded and primed, was propped against the wall. Grasping it, and helping herself to a pistol from over the hearth, she hastened across the clearing.
“Nate?” Winona called, and received no response. Her sense of inner urgency mounted. She ran down to the lake-shore and jogged down to the water, but they were nowhere to be seen. “Blue Flower?” she shouted, using her daughter’s Shoshone name. “Where are you?”
Out on the water a duck quacked, and from nearby brush several sparrows took swift wing. Other than that, the valley was still and silent.
Winona bent to the ground. The soil was soft enough that she could read their tracks. Blue Flower had caught up with Nate and together they had hiked around the lake toward the east end. Winona also saw fresh bear tracks and surmised what her husband was up to. She hurried after them, pacing herself so she would not tire too soon.
The tracks were those of a black bear. Since her husband had slain more grizzlies than any man living or dead, red or white, she saw no reason to be unduly concerned. He could kill a black bear with one hand tied behind his back, as white men liked to say.
Why, then, was her intuition urging her to go faster?
Winona came to where her loved ones had gone into the forest. Low limbs and brush tore at her beaded buckskin dress, but she paid them no heed. Leaping a shredded log, she paralleled their tracks toward a high ridge and increased her speed. The feeling that something was amiss, that something dreadful was about to occur or had occurred, was so potent it was almost paralyzing.
“Nate? Blue Flower?” Winona yelled. Where were they? Why didn’t they answer? Surely they could hear her?
Winona was flying now, her moccasins slapping the earth as swiftly as the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. The Hawken was heavy in her hand, and she firmed her hold. “Nate? Nate?”
“Ma?”
The reply slowed Winona to a brisk walk. “Blue Flower?” She looked right and left, seeking to pinpoint the direction the cry came from.
“Ma! This way! Hurry! Pa’s hurt!”
Winona raced on. A branch nearly speared her eye, but she didn’t care. An inner voice was shrieking for her to run as she had never run before. Her mate needed her and she wouldn’t let anything keep her from him. “Blue Flower? Where are you?”
“Over here, Ma!”
Evelyn materialized out of the undergrowth so abruptly, they nearly collided. Grabbing hold of Winona’s left hand, she pulled Winona toward the ridge. “The bear got him, Ma! It got him bad!”
“A black bear?” Winona said in stunned disbelief.
“It ripped Pa up,” Evelyn clarified, “and he’s bleeding something awful.” She motioned at a steep-sided coulee ahead. “In there.”
Winona pulled loose and sprinted into the coulee. She hadn’t gone five strides when she heard a feral snarl from the shadowed depths before her. The bear must still be alive. Cocking the Hawken, she rounded a bend. The snarling grew louder. She wedged the rifle to her shoulder and moments later burst onto a scene birthed in her worst nightmare. Her husband was on his back, bleeding profusely from a dozen wounds. Over him stood not a black bear, but a mountain lion, its fearsome maw about to clamp onto Nate’s jugular.
“No!” Winona cried.
The cougar whirled. A living embodiment of elemental ferocity, it leaped off Nate and came at her in a blur of claws and fur.
Winona stroked her rifle’s trigger and the Hawken boomed like thunder in the narrow confines, belching lead and smoke. The impact of the slug punched the mountain lion onto its haunches. But not for long. Venting a bestial shriek, it streaked toward her again in a fit of raw fury.
Her Hawken was empty, but Winona still had the pistol. She flashed it up and out, thumbing back the hammer as she extended her arm, and fired just as the mountain lion sprang. At virtual arm’s length she shot it between the eyes.
The cat executed an aerial flip and smashed onto its belly. Seemingly unfazed, it began to rise, but it had risen only a few inches when its legs buckled and it sank down with a strangled hiss, blood and brains seeping from the bullet hole.
“Nate?” Winona rushed to her man’s side. Anguish seared her heart at the horrid spectacle he presented. He had suffered a terrible wound on his forehead, and a flap of skin hung over one eye. His shoulder had been bitten down to the bone. His shirt was in tatters, pink flesh showing underneath where the cougar’s claws had sliced, and his leggings were in little better condition. Everywhere there was blood. So much blood.
Winona prided herself on her self-control, but she couldn’t suppress the tears that filled her eyes or stop her stomach from churning. “Husband,” she said softly, tenderly touching his chin. “My darling, dearest husband.”
“Ma, what do we do?” Evelyn had come up unnoticed and was gawking in absolute horror at the ghastly apparition that a mere half hour before had epitomized vitality and endurance.
“We get him home,” Winona said.
“But how? He’s too heavy for us to carry.”
That he was. As a lark, Nate had weighed himself once on a visit to St. Louis and pegged the scale at two hundred and fifty-seven pounds, all muscle and bone. Winona had no illusions about being able to tote him to the cabin unaided. “One of us must go for my mare, a rope, and an ax. The other must stay and guard him.”
Without hesitation, Evelyn said, “I’ll stay. You run faster than me and can get back that much sooner.”
Winona was loath to leave them, but it had to be done. Rising, she swept both sides of the coulee from bottom to top, verifying that there were no other imminent threats. “Is your rifle loaded?”
“No,” Evelyn said a shade sheepishly.
“What has your father taught you about that?”
“To always reload the first chance I get,” Evelyn recited. “But all I could think of was bringing you.”
“Reload now,” Winona instructed, and did the same herself, first her Hawken, then her pistol. She knew exactly how much black powder to pour in without having to measure it. The balls and patches were next. Then she tamped the bullets down with their respective ramrods. “Here.” She handed the pistol to her daughter, butt first. “Just in case.” Evelyn nodded. “Hurry on back, you hear?”
“I will fly like the wind,” Winona promised, and was true to her word. She ran flat out, out the coulee and down the short slope to the forest and on through the dense trees to the lake. Her legs protested, but she didn’t care.
At the cabin Winona quickly gathered up a coil of rope and an ax, and led her mare from the corral. She didn’t bother with a saddle. Since she couldn’t carry her rifle and the ax, both, she left the Hawken indoors. Sliding the rope over her left shoulder, she clambered on, gripped the mare’s mane, and was off.
It had been years since Winona rode bareback. Fond memories of her childhood surfaced, but she smothered them and focused on reaching the coulee with all deliberate haste. None of Nate’s wounds appeared to be life-threatening in and of themselves, but the loss of blood worried her. So did the risk of infection. It was a little-known fact that more people died of infection from animal attacks than from the attacks themselves. She needed to clean him and get him bandaged as soon as possible.
The mare had not been ridden in a while and was glad to be given her head. Fleet and surefooted, she covered the distance in a tenth of the time it had taken on foot.
Near a stand of saplings close to the coulee Winona brought her mount to a stop. She vaulted down, selected a slender bole, and chopped at it in a frenzy of worry. Chips flew fast and furious, and soon there came a rending crack. The sapling keeled earthward. Winona chopped down four more in rapid succession. Trimming the branches took only a couple of minutes.
Winona set about fashioning a travois. Used by various tribes, it was a means of transporting everything from lodges to clothes to kids. She lashed two poles together in an inverted V shape, then applied cross-braces. Ordinarily, a hide was spread over the braces for extra support, but she didn’t have the time.
Attaching the travois to the mare was simple. Winona dragged it over behind the horse, arranging it so the narrow end was to the mare. To hold it on, she cut several lengths of rope and tied one end of each to the right pole and the other end to the left. By leaving enough slack, she was able to fit the ropes snugly over the mare’s back. Lastly, she looped yet another rope around the animal’s neck and knotted it to the outer poles.
Her work done, Winona swung on. Her weight was added insurance that the travois wouldn’t slide loose. Chafing to reach Nate, she prodded the mare toward the coulee, the travois dragging behind them.
Evelyn was hunkered beside her father, her face twisted in misery. “He’s hardly breathing, Ma. I can’t get him to open his eyes or anything.”
One glance and Winona couldn’t resist a shiver of apprehension. Her mate was as pale as a sheet and as motionless as a rock slab. Terror nipping at her heart, Winona knelt and placed an ear to his chest. A beat pulsed, oh so faintly, telling her he was still alive.
“We must get him out of here,” Winona said, stating the obvious, and moved around to slide her hands under his armpits. “I have a travois waiting.”
“I can help.”
Winona surged upward but succeeded only in raising Nate’s head and shoulders off the ground. “Lend a hand, daughter. We must drag him.”
They strained. They pulled. They heaved. The best they could do was a turtle’s pace. They had to stop frequently to catch their breaths. Winona was exasperated by the delay. Every moment spent increased the likelihood of infection setting in.
After an eternity they reached the opening. But worse lay before them. They had to drag him a short distance yet, over sharp rocks, and hoist him up. The first part they accomplished, but the second defied them. Each time they tried to lift him, gravity thwarted their attempt. They could get him partway up, but their arms always gave out and they had to set him down again before they dropped him.
“It’s like trying to lift our cabin,” Evelyn complained.
Winona had an idea. They dragged Nate to a small earthen hump and laid him lengthwise on top. Mounting the mare, she brought it over and aligned the travois, lengthwise, so that all they had to do was roll Nate onto it.
Riding double, they made a beeline for the cabin. Or tried to. Logs and boulders and trees necessitated constant detours, continual delays. It didn’t help any that they had to hold to a walk for fear of jostling Nate too severely.
Over an hour after they set out, Winona halted the mare near their front door. How to get Nate inside was another problem. Winona wasn’t fond of the idea of dragging him over the doorstep. As she stood there mulling it over, she remembered how Nate carried heavy objects when need be, and she figured she would try his technique. Squatting at the broad end of the travois, she gripped him by the front of his shirt and slowly pulled him toward her. By bending the upper half of her body, she was able to drape him across her.
“You’re not fixing to try what I think you’re fixing to try, are you, Ma?” Evelyn anxiously asked.
“Do you have a better idea?” Winona rejoined.
Bracing herself, she adjusted Nate’s weight evenly across her shoulders and slowly straightened. Her knees crackled in protest and her legs quivered. For a few harrowing moments she thought they would buckle, but they didn’t. Slightly stooped over, Winona paused to take a few deep breaths and gather her strength. It truly did feel as if she had the cabin resting on her shoulders, and she was unsure whether she could make it inside.
“Is there anything I can do, Ma?”
“Hold the door open,” Winona said.
Her daughter scooted to obey, and Winona gingerly slid her right foot toward the doorway. She did the same with her left. In that manner, inches at a time, she reached the doorstep, which was a hand’s width higher than the ground. Exercising exquisite care, she eased her right foot high enough to place it flat on the floorboards. Now came the moment of truth. Winona applied their combined weight to her right leg and lifted her left foot. It put her momentarily off balance. Frightened of losing her balance, she flung her hands at the jambs for support, gripped hard, and pulled.
It worked, but not as she had hoped.
Winona stumbled inside. She got both feet under her but tottered wildly. Without warning Nate shifted, and the added pressure bent her nearly in half. She couldn’t see where she was going.
Evelyn yelled a warning. Before Winona could stop, she staggered against a chair and her left leg was bumped out from under her. “No!” she cried as she pitched forward, crashing into their table. It upended under them.
Winona lost her grip on Nate and they went down in a whirl of human limbs and table legs. Her shoulder bore the brunt, and she rolled, unharmed except for a pang in her side. Nate wasn’t as fortunate. His chest cracked into the edge of the table and he was catapulted head over heels, striking the floor with a loud thud.
Her heart in her throat, Winona scrambled over and eased him onto his back. It was impossible to tell if the fall had hurt him internally, but fresh drops of blood speckled his lower lip and he had a nasty scrape on his left cheek.
Evelyn was glued in shock.
“Help me,” Winona said. Together, they dragged Nate to the big bed. Together, they elevated him by gradual degrees until they had him spread-eagle on the quilt. “We need hot water, daughter. Lots and lots of hot water. Run to the lake and fill the bucket while I start a fire.”
“Will do, Ma.” Evelyn was out the door in a twinkling.
Collecting logs from a stack near their fireplace, Winona knelt in front of it and placed them on top of the charred coals from their last fire. She added kindling from a special box on a small shelf above the hearth, then used a fire steel and flint to ignite it. Once the sparks had produced a tiny flame, she delicately puffed until larger flames licked the wood.
Undressing Nate was next. Winona tugged his moccasins off and removed his belt and pants. The gashes in his legs were horrible, but nothing compared to his chest, shoulder, and forehead. Angry at the cruel caprice of fate that had stricken the one she loved, she tossed his crumpled, bloody shirt into a corner.
“You will not die on me, husband!” Winona declared. “I will not let you.” Bending down, she kissed his cheek—and recoiled in alarm. He was burning hot to the touch. She placed a palm on his forehead, confirming that a raging fever had claimed him. Not only that, the flesh where his scalp had been torn was becoming discolored. It could only mean one thing.
Infection had set in.