Zach King owned several horses. His favorite was his dun, a wellspring of energy and stamina he had acquired in trade with a Cheyenne. It could go for hours over the roughest terrain without tiring. Twice in as many years it had saved his life by outrunning hostiles—once when he blundered over a rise onto a war party of Bloods and another time when some Sioux tried to sneak up on him out on the prairie while he was hunting buffalo.
On leaving his parents’ cabin, Zach held to a trot until he came to the mountains that rimmed their valley to the north. A long, arduous climb brought him to a pass about nightfall, and once through to the other side, he descended into the next valley at a breakneck pace, aware he was gambling with the dun’s life but more afraid of losing the man who meant everything to him.
Zach had always been close to his pa. His ma, too, but it had been his pa he’d spent the most time with once he was old enough to tie his own moccasins. They had done everything together—riding, hunting, fishing, exploring. His fondest childhood memories were of the times his pa took him into remote regions of the high country, just the two of them, after game for their larder or just to see what lay over the next mountain range.
Zach hadn’t realized it while growing up, but his childhood had been the kind most boys would give an arm or a leg to have. White boys he had talked to back in the States had mentioned how much they envied him, living way off in the Rockies as he did, and having adventures the likes of which they could only daydream about. Shoshone boys had often told him how lucky he was to be spared the boredom of village life, and to have a father universally acknowledged as a fierce fighter by red men and white alike.
Zach’s father once mentioned that childhood was the furnace in which a person’s character was forged. If that was true, what did it say about his own nature? In many respects he was a chip off the old block, as the whites had it. He loved the wilderness, loved living free, just as his pa did. He cared deeply for the Shoshones and greatly admired their way of life, just as his pa did. But they were different in one crucial respect: His pa thought more highly of white men than he did.
A half-breed’s life was a living hell. Many whites and some Indians alike tended to look down their noses at “‘breeds,” but the whites were worse. Growing up, Zach had suffered, firsthand, the bitter bards of prejudice. He had been treated with contempt for an accident of birth over which he had no control whatsoever.
Some of the incidents were more memorable than others, like the time a trader wrongfully accused him of stealing a knife simply because he was a half-breed, and everyone ‘knew’ half-breeds were ‘liars, thieves and killers.’
Another time, a drunken trapper had tried to take his pony on the grounds it wasn’t fitting for a ‘breed’ to own so fine an animal. His pa had set the trapper straight, but had to knock out four of the man’s front teeth in the process.
Small wonder, then, that Zach strongly distrusted most whites. There were exceptions, Shakespeare McNair and Scott Kendall notable among them. But by and large, most whites regarded half-breeds as walking piles of buffalo manure and wanted nothing to do with them.
Which was fine by Zach. Until he met Louisa, he’d wanted little to nothing to do with whites, either. It never ceased to amaze him that after all the hatred he had endured, a white woman had claimed his heart and not a Shoshone maiden or a maiden from some other friendly tribe. Apparently Fate had a sense of humor.
The dun suddenly nickered. Chiding himself for letting his attention wander, Zach scanned the forest. His skin prickled at the sight of spectral forms keeping pace with the dun on either side. Long, grayish, lupine forms, their presence as unexpected as it was unnerving.
Wolves.
Zach automatically lowered his right hand to one of the pistols at his waist, but he didn’t unlimber it. Wolves rarely attacked humans. He could count the number of times he had heard about on two hands, and most of those incidents had been in the frigid dead of snow-blanketed winter when their normal prey was scarce and they were half-starved. The animals flanking him were healthy, well-fed specimens in their prime, their coats sleek and thick, their bodies layered with muscle. He doubted they would try to bring the dun down. But then again, his pa had another saying well worth remembering: Never take a predator for granted.
The lead wolf was a big male, loping along on the right, a splendid beast with a luxuriant coat. Zach grinned, and on an impulse let out with a wolfish howl. To his delight, the leader threw back its head and outdid him. That served as a signal for the rest of the pack, which unleashed an undulating chorus that wafted down the mountain and out over the foothills.
Zach laughed in pure glee. The wolves at his side, the wind whipping his hair, the feel of the dun under him, sent an intoxicating zest pumping through his veins. He howled again, and the big wolf echoed him. Zach shifted. For a moment their eyes met, the wolf’s glowing palely in the light of the half-moon. Then, as mysteriously as they materialized, the pack was gone. One instant he could see them; the next they melted into the inky night.
Disappointed, Zach raced on. Presently heavier timber rose before him. The moonlight didn’t penetrate the forest canopy, forcing him to slow. He had gone perhaps a mile and a half when a sharp crash alerted him he wasn’t alone. He had acquired another shadow, only this one wasn’t long and gray and lupine. It was huge and brown and ursine, hundreds of pounds of solid sinew and bone sculpted into the most formidable beast in the wild.
A grizzly was shadowing him.
Cold sweat broke out, and Zach almost lashed the dun into a gallop. But fleeing might incite the bear into giving chase, and in the thick woodland, outrunning it was out of the question.
The dun’s eyes were wide, its ears pricked, its nostrils dilated. It was, in short, scared to death, and it wouldn’t take much to goad it into making a mistake that could cost them both their lives.
Keeping a tight rein, Zach watched the grizzly for some sign of what the brute intended. The monster had a deceptively awkward, lumbering gait. Many a trapper and mountain man had made the mistake of thinking silvertips were as slow as molasses when in reality the only animals fleeter of foot were antelope.
A low growl emanated from the bear’s massive chest, and it raised its enormous head to test the wind.
Zach wrapped his hand around a flintlock. The next few seconds would decide the outcome. Bears were walking stomachs attached to a nose. If this one was hungry, their scent would provoke it into attacking in a flurry of snapping jaws and rending claws. He might get off by a shot, but the odds of hitting a vital organ were slim. A bear’s brain was protected by the thickest skull in the animal kingdom, and its heart and lungs by enough tissue, fat, muscle, and hair to absorb the heaviest of slugs.
The grizzly angled nearer. It was only ten feet from the dun, the giant hump between its front shoulders as distinct as the wicked set of rapier teeth visible when it abruptly shattered the night with a ferocious roar.
The brute had made up its mind! Zach reined to the right and slapped his legs against his mount. Whether he survived depended on the dun, and on a heaping portion of pure luck. Behind him, brush and small trees crackled and snapped to the grizzly’s headlong passage. It wasn’t moving at its top speed yet, but it soon would be.
Exhibiting horsemanship that would fill his father with pride, Zach hauled on the reins again, cutting to the left. The change of direction forced the bear to turn, too, slowing it a trifle. And every yard gained added precious moments to his life span.
Another roar shook the very ground.
Zach reined to the right, between a pair of tightly spaced oaks, and smiled when the grizzly slammed into them like a runaway wagon and was knocked back onto its haunches. He gained more ground. But not enough. Not anywhere near enough.
Head down low, the bear hurtled around the oaks and bore down on the dun like a dislodged ten-ton boulder on a high slope. It plowed straight through a thicket Zach had skirted, regaining the ground it had lost.
Zach twisted around. The hulking behemoth was so close, he swore he could feel its hot, fetid breath fan his neck. Enormous legs powerful enough to rip apart logs were pumping in ponderous cadence. Four-inch claws glinted yellowish. The creature was gigantic, its great hump as high as the horse. Zach was pitted against a colossal engine of destruction, literal savagery incarnate, inviolate in its domain, the lord of all it surveyed.
The bear was now close enough to tear the dun’s rump open with a single swipe. But fortunately for Zach and his mount, it couldn’t run and slash at the same time. It snapped at the dun’s flanks instead, gnashing and rending its array of saber teeth. So far its iron jaws hadn’t connected, but it was only a matter of time. Perhaps mere seconds.
Zach faced forward just as a tree hove out of the gloom, a forest patriarch, a white pine that had to be fifty feet high with a trunk three feet wide. A less experienced rider would not have been able to avoid it. But Zach had been taught to ride as soon as he could sit a pony. In addition, a lifetime of perilous wilderness existence had honed his reflexes as sharp as a straight razor. With him, thought and action were nigh instantaneous. The very split instant he saw the obstacle, he reined sharply to the left to avoid it.
The dun missed reaping disaster by the width of a whisker.
The grizzly’s reflexes weren’t quite as quick. At full speed it slammed into the bole. There was a resounding thud and the entire tree swayed, the impact flinging the griz onto its side.
Zach whooped for joy. He figured the bear had to be crippled or at least dazed. It couldn’t possibly catch him now. But he was mistaken. For with a tremendous roar of commingled pain and baffled rage, the monster shot to its feet and took off after him with renewed vigor, showing no ill effects of the collision whatsoever. The bear was, if anything, moving faster than before, its eyes seeming to glow with an inner bestial light all their own. This time there would be no stopping it short of death—its, or his own.
Zach was in for the ride of his life. He flicked his reins and bent low over the pommel. But not low enough. A low branch swept out of nowhere and caught him flush across the chest. Excruciating torment spiked through his body as he was swept out of the saddle and sent tumbling to earth in a whirl of arms and legs. His shoulders bore the brunt. He couldn’t tell where he had landed in relation to the griz but feared it was directly in the animal’s path. Desperate, he struggled to get his hands under him and stand. Before he could, a black veil enveloped his senses.
The last sound he heard was a terror-struck whinny.
Her husband stopped breathing in the middle of the night.
Winona had fallen asleep in the chair by the bed. She dozed fitfully, in snatches, waking up at the slightest sound or the slightest movement on his part. Often she touched his brow, and whenever she did, the lines in her haggard face deepened. His temperature was as high as ever. Her teas, her herbs—it had all been ineffective. She was losing him, losing the love of her life, losing the noble heart with which hers was entwined, and it tore at her insides like the molten cauldrons in the land of many geysers.
“Please, Nate,” Winona whispered, her eyes damp with the overflow of her emotions. “Please do not die on me. I love you too much to lose you.”
Dabbing at her tears with a sleeve, Winona got up, moistened a cloth, and placed it on his forehead. The cabin was chilly. Earlier she had opened the window to admit the brisk night air, hoping it would help cool his fevered form. But it, too, had proved unavailing.
Winona glanced toward the corner where Evelyn slept, bundled under a heavy Mackinaw blanket. There was no telling how losing Nate would affect her. But Winona guessed it would intensify Evelyn’s dislike of the wilderness and heighten her resolve to move to civilized parts once she was old enough to make do on her own.
Over against the right wall was another bundled blanket, with Louisa’s head poking from the top. She had been of great help, and only turned in at Winona’s insistence. No one could ask for a better daughter-in-law.
Settling into the chair, Winona closed her eyes. She had to face the terrible truth: Zach wouldn’t return in time. Four days was too long. Nate would die before the healer reached them. The burden of saving him was on her shoulders, and her shoulders alone. But she had tried everything her mother and grandmother ever taught her. She couldn’t think of a single thing she had overlooked.
Thinking took effort. Her fatigue was chronic, as much a part of her as breathing. She had never been so tired for so long. It was bound to inhibit her mental faculties. She had doubled her coffee intake to combat it, but the coffee no longer helped.
Shifting to relieve a cramp, Winona heard the crack of a twig through the open window. Something was out there, something large. Ordinarily she would get up to investigate, but she was too physically spent and mentally sluggish to try. All she did was lift her head, and when the sound wasn’t repeated she sank back down.
Winona needed sleep. She was honest enough with herself to admit that unless she caught up on her rest she would be of no use to anyone. Certainly not to Nate, who needed her as he had never needed her before. Slumber eluded her, though, and for restless minutes she tossed and fidgeted, brimming with anxiety she couldn’t contain.
Finally Winona’s brain refused to function. She was on the verge of total collapse when her frayed mind succumbed.
At the precise second Winona passed out, she happened to be gazing at the window. In the depths of her fatigue, she imagined she saw a face peering in at her—a cold, emotionless face carved from stone.
Then her world faded to black.
Once again a new day dawned, but Touch the Clouds did not greet it the usual manner. He was no longer at the village. At the head of a large war party, he had left the day before and ridden hard toward the trading post. They had not been able to reach it before nightfall, so they made camp on a grassy flat bordering a gurgling stream. The thirty warriors accompanying him were in a somber mood. Painted for war and fully armed, they were determined to drive the Crow invaders from Shoshone territory or die trying.
Artemis Borke and his two friends were in surprisingly fine spirits, given the circumstances. Borke couldn’t stop apologizing for letting the Crows steal rifles from under his nose.
The whites made their own camp a short distance from the Shoshones. After posting guards, Touch the Clouds walked over, taking Drags the Rope and Shoulder Blade along. He had the former ask, “Why do you sleep by yourselves? You are welcome to join us.”
“That’s right hospitable, Chief,” Borke responded, “but I’ve seen how some of your bucks look at me and my pards. They’re holdin’ a grudge on account of Hungry Wolf and those others the Crows shot. It’s best if we stay apart.” Touch the Clouds understood. Some warriors did blame the whites for the deaths, just as the whites were blamed for the shame reaped by Runs Across the River and the banishment of Bear’s Backbone.
“I’d like to get in their good graces again,” Borke commented. “But short of givin’ merchandise away for free, I’m stumped as to how to go about it. What would you suggest?”
“Side with us against the Crows.”
Borke leaned back. “In case you ain’t noticed, I already have. I came to warn you about the rifles being stolen, didn’t I? And I’m willin’ to lead you to the Crow camp so you can wipe them out. What more do you want?”
“Fight with us,” Touch the Clouds clarified. “When my people see you shed Crow blood, they will accept you as a friend.”
“Kill Crows?” Borke looked as if he had swallowed a burning ember. “I’m a trader, hoss, not a soldier. I don’t go around makin’ war on folks. This business is between your two tribes.”
“You asked what you could do,” Touch the Clouds said.
Borke pursed his thick lips. “It would land me in a heap of hot water. The Crows will count me as an enemy and try to burn my post to the ground.” He shook his head. “I have enough of a hard time keepin’ your people from runnin’ me off. I don’t want to add to my woes.”
Orley whispered something. Borke nodded, then said, “How about if I gave five or six rifles to some of your closest friends? Wouldn’t that show I was sincere?” He looked at Touch the Clouds and blinked. “Wait a second. Where’s the rifle I gave you? Why didn’t you bring it along? Don’t you like it?”
“The rifle is a fine weapon,” Touch the Clouds conceded. But he had fired a rifle only twice in his entire life, and then only after Nate King loaded it for him. Guns felt alien in his hands, and he was so slow at loading and so poor at hitting a target, for him to use a gun in battle would be rank stupidity. With a bow, on the other hand, he was a master. He could unleash a dozen shafts in the time it took a white man to fire a rifle twice, and all twelve would hit their targets dead center.
“It seems to me you’d be happy to have a Hawken,” Borke grumbled. “Tribes with guns always beat tribes without guns. It’s happened time and again.”
Touch the Clouds did not like being reminded. Firearms were upsetting the balance of tribal power to a degree not seen since the advent of the horse. Long ago, most tribes had been evenly armed, and the number of warriors a tribe could muster counted for more than anything else. But the horse changed that. Tribes with horses could travel farther, strike harder, and escape faster. Soon every tribe had to have them, and once again a balance was struck.
Now came guns. The Blackfeet had appreciated their potential early on and acquired all the guns they could lay their hands on. As a result, the Blackfoot Confederacy had become the most powerful tribal group in the northern mountains and plains. They raided far and wide with impunity, striking into the heart of Cheyenne, Crow, Dakota, and Shoshone country. So the rush was on for other tribes to acquire guns.
Borke sipped some coffee and said, “Play your cards right, hoss, and I’ll see to it your people have more guns than they know what to do with. With my help you can become the strongest tribe in these parts. Wouldn’t you like that?”
The temptation was appealing. Touch the Clouds had seen too many of his people killed in raids or ambushed from hiding by cold-hearted invaders bent on a ruthless campaign of extermination.
It had always been thus. Since as far back as any Shoshones could remember, back into the dim depths of legend and antiquity, warfare was woven into the skein of Shoshone life. Simply put, there was never a time the Shoshones weren’t at war with someone. Their first enemies had been the red-haired cannibals who once dwelled in the western ranges of the Rockies. Holdovers from an earlier era, the cannibals had preyed on humans much as humans prey on deer and elk. Over the course of countless winters the Shoshones had worn their foes down, a war of attrition that ended when a famous chief drove the few remaining cannibals into a cave and sealed it so they could never get out.
Then came conflicts with other tribes. Everyone from the Blackfeet to the Utes to the Dakotas. A constant cycle of attacks and counterattacks, raids and reprisals. War without cease. Bloodshed without end.
As a consequence, the Shoshones became a warrior nation. They adopted many of the practices of the militant plains tribes. They acquired the horse. In an increasingly hostile world, they were able to hold their own.
Nate King once joked that if it hadn’t been for waging war, most Indians would sit around twiddling their thumbs. Uttered in jest, his comment contained a kernel of truth. No one knew that better than Touch the Clouds. As war chief of the Shoshones, he was as versed in the history of tribal war as he was in its practice.
Touch the Clouds had never told anyone, but he was sick to his spirit of the continual killing. When he thought of all the loved ones and friends he had lost, when he realized that long after he was gone war would continue to rule Shoshone life, a pall of sadness descended. Surely there had to be more to life than that? Surely the Great Mystery wouldn’t be so capriciously cruel?
“Wouldn’t you like that?” Artemis Borke repeated when he didn’t receive an answer.
“To be the strongest tribe in the mountains?” Touch the Clouds said. “I would settle for being the safest.”
“Then you need guns. Other tribes won’t dare lift a finger against you if your people have a rifle in every tepee. Think of it! The Snakes would be invincible!”
Touch the Clouds did think of it. Long after he lay down to sleep, he pondered what it would be like if every warrior owned a gun. And the conclusion he came to was that it wouldn’t change a thing. Because their enemies would also acquire more guns, and the unending cycle of battle and bloodshed would never end. If anything, it would grow worse. There would be more lives lost on all sides, until eventually every tribe would share the fate of the ancient red-haired cannibals.
Touch the Clouds thought about it some more the next morning over a breakfast of pemmican and water. Before sunrise they were on their warhorses, and by the middle of the morning they were within sight of Dead Elk Creek. They followed its meandering course to the trading post and were warmly greeted by the whites who had stayed.
Artemis Borke conferred with them and excitedly relayed the latest news. “My men say a passel of Crows paraded around the post last night, showin’ off. That war party must still be camped where I saw it last. We’re in luck.”
“How far to their camp?” Touch the Clouds asked. Borke pointed at a range of jagged peaks to the northwest. “Yonder. We can be there by mid-afternoon, but I wouldn’t push too hard if I were you. We don’t want to give ourselves away.”
Touch the Clouds was ready to leave immediately, but Borke insisted his men needed to change horses. Touch the Clouds saw no sense to it; their animals were in fine condition. But he did not object. As a result, a lot of time was wasted as Borke, Orley, and Kantner took their mounts into the stable, unsaddled them, and transferred the saddle blankets and saddles to fresh horses.
Soon after, Borke led the Shoshones through the gate. They moved in single file, as quietly as the terrain allowed. What little conversation there was, they conducted in sign language.
Touch the Clouds had been to this stretch of country before. A maze of gorges and erosion-worn ravines made it ideal for a war party to hide in. The extremely rocky ground bore few prints, and enemies could be seen from a great distance from atop any of the many high ridges.
Unhesitatingly, Artemis Borke guided them to the mouth of a narrow defile. Barely wide enough for a horse, it wound deep into the wasteland between walls of solid stone that towered higher than an arrow could reach. Drawing rein, he whispered, “This is the place. Follow this and it will take you right to the Crow camp.”
Touch the Clouds scanned the ramparts, wondering why it was the Crows had not posted lookouts.
“You and your braves better go ahead,” Borke suggested. “You have more experience at this sort of thing.”
A jab of Touch the Clouds’s heels sent his warhorse into the opening. He did not like being hemmed in, but it couldn’t be helped. Drags the Rope and the rest of the warriors followed his example. They negotiated a number of turns and were midway along a straight stretch when a shadow flicked across the defile, attended by a crunching noise. Snapping his neck back, Touch the Clouds was stupefied to behold a large boulder roll over the right rim and plummet toward them.