Touch the Clouds and the Shoshone war party paralleled the fresh tracks left by Artemis Borke and his two friends on their way to the trading post. Touch the Clouds assumed that the whites would ride straight through, so he was more than a little puzzled and curious when the three men halted in a small clearing a third of the distance there.
The reason became evident when more tracks were discovered. Three riders on unshod horses had trotted down off a nearby mountain to the same clearing. Then all seven had gone on together at a leisurely gait.
Touch the Clouds found it extremely interesting that the mountain happened to flank the defile where Shoulder Blade and Buffalo Hump lost their lives. His suspicions, and his anger, climbed. Whites rarely rode unshod animals. Which meant the three newcomers were Indians, and must be the Crows who had pushed the boulders down onto his friends. It was apparent the Crows and the whites were working together.
But why? Touch the Clouds reflected. What did the whites hope to gain? Why go to so much trouble to establish a trading post in Shoshone territory and then ally themselves with Shoshone enemies? What could Borke gain by an alliance with the Crows that he couldn’t through an alliance with the Shoshones? It made no sense. But then, much of what white men did defied understanding. They were a wild, reckless, mystifying people, tireless in their quest to line their pockets, as Nate King once described it. It was money that brought them flocking to the mountains in search of beaver. It had to be money that brought these traders now. To whites, becoming rich was the dream of dreams.
It followed, then, that there must be a secret motive behind Borke’s dealings with the Crows. A motive that involved making money. But in their greed the whites had committed a grievous mistake. Touch the Clouds’s people wouldn’t stand for having a trading post in their territory that did business with tribes out for their blood.
As usual, Drags the Rope was thinking in a similar vein. “What will we do when we reach the post? Wipe the whites out?”
The question was a weighty one. Touch the Clouds’s decision could impact the Shoshones for generations to come. For the Shoshones to take a white life, even if provoked, might invite violent reprisals. “We will demand an explanation from Artemis Borke,” he replied.
“Is that enough? When we both know Borke speaks with two tongues? He has misled us from the beginning.”
“What would you recommend?”
“Escort the whites from our land. Order them never to return. Then send word to Grizzly Killer. Invite him to sit at council with our elders. He is uniquely fitted to help us preserve peace with his kind, and his advice will be invaluable.”
As always, Drags the Rope was to be commended for his wisdom, and Touch the Clouds did so. He wished Grizzly Killer were with them at that moment. Who better to see into the heart of a white man than another white man? Nate would have seen through Borke from the beginning and spared the Shoshone people profound misery.
The sun was well on its westward arc when a broad green belt of lush vegetation betokened their arrival at the Green River valley. Soon they would reach Dead Elk Creek. From the tracks, Touch the Clouds could tell Borke’s group wasn’t far ahead. Signaling for the other warriors to halt, he told Six Feathers to hold them there while he went on ahead with Drags the Rope.
Touch the Clouds wanted to see for himself. He had to witness the whites and the Crows together so there would be no doubt whatsoever. Accordingly, he raced on at a gallop until he came to a wooded slope. He could hear his quarry below, winding lower. They would come out near the rear of the trading post.
Slanting to the left, Touch the Clouds sped along a rise to a vantage point that gave him an unobstructed view of the valley floor. Soon a column of horsemen filed from the trees. Six in all, with Artemis Borke at their head.
“Do you see what I see?” Drags the Rope whispered.
All six were white men. Men Touch the Clouds had seen before. Men from the trading post. Three wore moccasins, not their customary boots, and were riding bareback. Riding Indian horses, animals the whites had acquired in trade.
“Somehow Borke obtained Crow moccasins and had his men wear them to put the blame on the Crows,” Drags the Rope summed up the wily trader’s plot.
Touch the Clouds grunted his agreement. That much was obvious. But the crucial question still remained: Why? Why had Borke gone to such extraordinary lengths to try and slay him? Was it his stand on the sale of firewater? Was Borke that greedy? That petty?
A hail rose from the tower. The sentry grinned and waved, and Artemis Borke responded in kind. Quickly climbing down a ladder, the sentry opened the gate. Amid lusty shouts, Borke and the others drew rein in front of the corral and swung down. The men wearing moccasins tramped into their living quarters and reemerged after a bit wearing boots, at which point everyone except the sentry flocked into the post. Soon rowdy laughter and gruff singing filled the compound.
Drags the Rope’s jaw was sculpted from quartz. “I do not know why they turned on us, and I do not care. We cannot let this stand. If we do, word will spread and whites everywhere will think we are weak.”
The comment ignited Touch the Clouds’s memory. Of a time at a rendezvous when a whiskey-soaked trapper had bumped into him. The man had bristled like a porcupine, grabbed him by the front of the shirt, and spewed oaths as foreign to Touch the Clouds as the language of the Comanches or Apaches. He had been more amused than anything else. The trapper, a feisty badger of a man notorious for his temper, was barely as tall as his chest. Touch the Clouds could have swatted him like a fly. But in keeping with the Shoshone practice of always treating whites decently, he had refrained.
Emboldened, the trapper had drawn back a hand to slap him. But the blow never landed. Nate King saw to that. He dashed out of nowhere and slugged the trapper on the jaw. They left the man lying in the dirt.
“Don’t ever let no-accounts like that walk over you,” Nate had said. “Never show weakness, or they’ll pick on you every chance they get. The only thing they respect is strength. Be strong when you need to be, whether they’re white or not.”
Whether they’re white or not. Touch the Clouds shifted toward Drags the Rope. “Bring Six Feathers and the others. We will—” He stopped, for more riders were approaching from across Dead Elk Creek. And this time there could be no doubt. They were definitely Crows. Nine in number, and one appeared to be wounded.
“Those dogs dare to invade our land!” Drags the Rope exclaimed.
As boldly as could be, the Crows rode straight to the palisade. The sentry didn’t act the least bit surprised. When he hollered, out of the main building rushed Artemis Borke and a majority of the other whites. The gate was pulled wide to admit their visitors. Stepping forward, Borke greeted the Crows warmly—in sign language.
“I was not aware he knew sign.”
Nor was Touch the Clouds. It was yet another of the many secrets the trader had kept from them.
Borke invited the Crows into the main buildings. All but one accepted. The last warrior stayed with the horses, proof the Crows didn’t trust the whites completely. How ironic, Touch the Clouds thought, that his enemies displayed more intelligence than he had. “Ride and bring the rest. We are going to show Borke and these Crows that they have made the worst mistake of their lives.”
Sliding off his sorrel, Touch the Clouds wrapped the reins around a low tree limb and moved to a nearby log to sit. He couldn’t get over how gullible he had been. How foolhardy. He thought having a trading post would benefit his people. Instead, its presence had brought nothing but heartache and trouble.
Touch the Clouds had learned an important lesson. Never again would he take white men at their word. They must prove they were worthy of his trust.
The sentry was making a circuit of the tower. Another couple of steps and he faced toward the rise.
Touch the Clouds wasn’t worried about being spotted. At that distance his buckskins blended perfectly into the underbrush. No one could spot him. Or so he imagined.
It made his shock doubly great when the cool metal of a gun muzzle was pressed against the back of his neck.
Zach King had been following the Crows for over half an hour when he stealthily began to narrow the distance. He planned to pick them off one by one until every last invader was dead or had fled for home. They were moving at a trot, the wounded man gamely holding his own. Few ever glanced back; their attention was on the land ahead.
Zach drew within rifle range and brought the dun to a stop. Tucking his Hawken to his shoulder, he took deliberate aim. Some people had compunctions about shooting another person in the back. Not him. Killing was killing. The Crows wouldn’t hesitate to turn him into maggot bait any way they could. Why should he be any different?
At the very instant Zach’s finger curled around the trigger, the Crows abruptly slanted to the northwest. If they held to that course they would give Touch the Clouds’s village a wide berth.
Zach slowly lowered his rifle. Maybe the Crows were leaving Shoshone territory, in which case it would be pointless to tangle with them. To be safe, he elected to follow a while yet. The decision, though, ate at him like a wolverine chewing on his innards. It would delay him in reaching the healer, delay him in returning to his parents’ cabin with the medicine. But it also might save untold lives if the Crows were working their way around to come at Touch the Clouds’s village from a different direction. He would give them another hour. By then it should be apparent what they were up to.
Only half that amount had gone by when the Crows descended toward a tributary of the Green.
Zach slowly approached the crest of a ridge to avoid silhouetting himself against the ridgeline. One peek satisfied him that the Crows were well below him. He was about to slip over the rim when he saw where they were bound. Bewilderment froze him with the reins half raised.
On the other side of Dead Elk Creek stood a structure that had not been there six months before. It was a post of some kind, complete with palisades and a guard tower.
Keeping the ridge between him and the lookout, Zach circled for a closer inspection. The Shoshones would want to hear about this. And his father, too, once his pa was on the mend. The thought speared him with remorse. He had squandered too much time already. The Shoshones were safe enough for the time being, so inspecting the fort could wait. He would continue on to the Green and find Raven’s Wing.
A hint of movement gave Zach pause. A hundred yards away a rider was hurrying to the north. Much closer than that a lone figure in buckskins crept through the vegetation, his gaze cemented on the guard tower.
Bringing the dun to a stop, Zach left it there and catfooted to a spot above and behind the crouching warrior. A tingle ran through him. A surge of excitement at the prospect of doing something he had never done before. As silently as a ghost, he stalked forward, expecting at any second for the figure in buckskins to hear or sense him, and turn.
Zach almost laughed aloud as he touched the end of the Hawken’s barrel to the warrior’s neck and joked in his mother’s tongue, “Does the mightiest Shoshone who ever lived have plugs of wax in his ears?”
Touch the Clouds rose and spun. Smiling warmly, he clapped a hand the size of a ham on Zach’s shoulder. “Stalking Coyote! I cannot describe how happy I am to see you again. You could not have come at a better time.”
“I followed the Crows,” Zach related, with a nod at the fort. “What are you doing here? What has been going on?”
“Where do I begin?”
The giant warrior’s account kindled anger that gradually flared to red-hot fury. Zach had known Hungry Wolf, Wallowing Bull, and Buffalo Hump extremely well. They were childhood friends, and he had spent many an hour hunting and cavorting in their company. He had also shared meals with Shoulder Blade, one of the kindest warriors he ever met.
“Soon Drags the Rope and the others will join us and we must decide on a course of action,” Touch the Clouds concluded. “We cannot let this go on.”
“I agree,” Zach said. “But there’s nothing to decide. Let me deal with them.”
Touch the Clouds’s eyes narrowed. “I have
known you since the morning you were born, Stalking Coyote. I know
how much you like to count coup. So I must caution you. We want to
punish these whites, but we do not want a war.”
“Oh, we’ll punish them, sure enough,” Zach said in English. In
Shoshone he responded, “Do not fear.”
Zach refrained from mentioning that in his opinion the Shoshones had brought the bloodshed down on their own heads. They were always so willing to bend over backward for whites. They had to learn to take a stand and not let themselves be pushed around.
“It is unfortunate your father is not here,” Touch the Clouds commented. “We could use his advice.”
“I can handle this as well as Pa,” Zach said a tad defensively. Always being compared to his pa used to rankle him until he realized the comparisons were compliments. “We will wait until dark and then pay Mr. Artemis Borke and his friends a visit. I will tend to the whites. You and your warriors can deal with the Crows.”
“I can trust you, Stalking Coyote?”
“The Shoshones are my people too. The last thing I want is to bring trouble down on their heads.”
“For all our sakes, I hope so.”
A gray fog blanketed him. Everywhere he looked it was the same. He took a stumbling step, his legs oddly wooden and terribly sore. He tried to recollect who he was and where he was, but the knowledge eluded him. Then something softly stroked his forehead and from impossibly far away came a tender voice. He couldn’t pinpoint the source, try as he might. Again something caressed his brow. A conviction came over him that he wasn’t truly awake, that everything around him was the product of a dream. And with the conviction came consciousness.
“Husband! Oh, husband!”
Nate King felt warm hands on his neck and hot tears on his cheeks. “Winona?” he croaked. “Is that you?” A vision of loveliness floated above him, her face glistening. Her soft lips lovingly brushed his.
“Who else would make such a fuss over you?” Winona said, forcing a grin. She burst into more tears. “I was never so scared of losing you.” Lowering her cheek to his chest, she enfolded him in her arms.
Small fingers entwined with Nate’s own. A smaller version of his wife planted a kiss on his temple.
“You had us both powerful worried, Pa. If it hadn’t been for those Utes, we’d have lost you. Zach still isn’t back with the healer he went after.”
“Utes?” Nate tried to sit up, but his arms weighed tons.
“Just lie there,” Winona directed. “It will be days before you are strong enough to get out of bed.” She paused. “An Ute named Neota came here looking for you. He showed us how to break your fever. Yesterday he had to leave. I promised him, on your behalf, that when you are fit enough you will repay his kindness.”
“This Neota needs my help?”
“His whole tribe does. Eleven of their people have been killed by a grizzly. They say it hunts them for food, that it raids their villages and carries people off. Their warriors tried to slay it, but their arrows and lances have no effect. So they held a council and decided to send Neota to appeal to the one man who might be able to help them.” Winona beamed with pride. “The famous Grizzly Killer.”
Nate’s mouth went dry. Horrid images of the black bear tearing and rending at his body caused him to ball his fists until his nails bit into his palms.
“This will give you something to look forward to, Pa,” Evelyn declared. “You used to say there aren’t many grizzlies left to hunt in our neck of the woods. Now you get to go after one just like in the old days.”
“Lucky me.”
“Niwot told me you’re their last hope. His people are counting on you.”
“Niwot?”
“A young warrior,” Winona answered in a tone that implied she wasn’t excessively fond of him. “I will tell you about him later.” She drew the blanket up to his chin. “Would you care for a bite to eat? I’ve been forcing soup down your throat, but you must be half starved.”
At the mention of food, Nate’s stomach rumbled.
Rising, Winona moved toward the counter. “You rest, husband, and leave everything to me. I will have you back on your feet before you know it.”
Nate glanced at the bandage on his right shoulder and relived that awful moment when the black bear’s teeth ripped his flesh open to the bone. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “No hurry at all.”
Twilight was giving way to night when Zach King forded Dead Elk Creek and approached the trading post. He had taken off his buckskin shirt and replaced it with a homespun shirt from his saddlebags. Lou had crafted it from dark blue material, and it blended well into the gathering darkness. To further disguise his appearance he had folded a red handkerchief and tied it around his head. Now, adopting a friendly smile, he waved and shouted to the sentry. “Say there! Are you coons open for business, or should I come back tomorrow?”
The sentry was fiddling with a folding knife. Giving a start, he snatched his rifle and bent over the rail. “Tarnation, mister! You about scared ten years’ growth out of me! I didn’t see you come riding up.”
“Sorry, friend,” Zach said, playing his part. “I didn’t mean to spook you. This beaver feels a mite like chawing, is all.”
“Got anything to trade?” the sentry asked.
“No,” Zach admitted, then shook his possibles bag so the loose bullets he had dropped inside earlier rattled and clattered somewhat like money would. “But I’ve got me some coins to spend on hard liquor if there’s any to be had.”
“You’ve come to the right place. We’ve got some of the best drinking whiskey this side of the Mississippi.” Pivoting, the sentry called down into the compound. “Harve! Get your carcass over here! There’s a feller at the gate. Let him in.”
Zach nodded amiably at the rough-hewn character who admitted him. The shout had drawn several whites from the trading post, and among them was one who answered to Touch the Clouds’s description of Artemis Borke.
“Hold up there, hoss. Who might you be?”
“Scott Kendall,” Zach fibbed. “I have a homestead a couple of days’ ride from here. I was passing through and happened to spot your place, so I moseyed over for a look-see.” Smacking his lips, he patted his possibles bag. “If you’re willing, I’d like to treat myself to some rotgut. It’s been ages since I had good sipping whiskey.”
“You talk like a white man, but you sure don’t look like one,” Borke commented.
“I’m part Arapaho on my mother’s side.” Zach piled lie on top of lie. “My pa and her met back in the trapping days.”
“I hear tell a lot of those old boys took up with squaws,” Borke said. For a span of ten to fifteen seconds he gnawed on his lower lip and then appeared to come to a decision. “Make yourself welcome. You can keep your horse in the stable overnight and bed down in the hay if you’re of a mind to.”
Zach dismounted. The Crow was taking his measure, but near as he could tell the warrior didn’t recognize him. From the long building came rowdy mirth. Above the door hung a sign that read, ‘Snake River Trading Emporium.’ He noticed that there were no windows. “Wait until my friends hear about this place. You’ll have customers lined up waiting to get in.”
“The more the merrier,” Borke said.
Zach heard the creak of leather hinges. A pair of whites were swinging the gate shut. He had hoped they would leave it open. Now the task he had set for himself would be doubly difficult. Which suited him just fine. He relished the impending combat. Relished the thought of counting coup. Relished the thrill of pitting his wits and brawn against an adversary as devious as Artemis Borke.
“We’ve got some Crows payin’ a visit right this moment,” Borke said, eyeing Zach speculatively to gauge his reaction.
“Just so they aren’t Blackfeet,” Zach responded. “I don’t know about you, but I’m right partial to my hair.”
Borke laughed. “I like you, sonny. You have a sense of humor. Come on in and I’ll pour your first drink myself.”
“Just so you’re not stingy with the liquor.” Zach allowed the older man to usher him through the doorway.
Lanterns lit the room as brightly as day. At the counter were five Crows, bottles in hand. Three more were hunkered over in a corner, one of them the warrior Zach had wounded. To a man, they glanced around sharply at his entrance.
Hoping his change of attire was enough to fool them, Zach smiled and brazenly strolled to an unoccupied table. A skinny white man was behind the bar; two others were at a far table playing cards. Conscious of being the focus of attention, Zach eased into a chair and placed his rifle in front of him. He was trying to act casual, but a million butterflies were fluttering in his gut. All hell would break loose if any of the Crows recognized him. He doubted they got a good look at him, but he could be wrong.
Artemis Borke brought over a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and sank down across from him. “So tell me, Mr. Kendall. You’ve lived in these parts all your life, I take it?”
“Since I was knee-high to a cricket,” Zach said.
“Then I bet you’ve heard tales of gold and silver being found from time to time. Like that mountaineer a few years ago who showed up in St. Louis with a poke full of nuggets as big as walnuts.”
“Everyone hears stories,” Zach said, and flicked a finger at the Crows, one of whom was guzzling whiskey as if it were water. “There’s a rumor their tribe knows where to find some gold, but the Crows say it’s not true.”
“How about you? Do you know where to find some?”
About to reach for the drink Borke had poured, Zach was struck by the intense, almost feral expression of raw and total greed Borke bestowed on him. Then and there he knew why the trader had established the post. And why Borke was courting the Crows.
“If you did, I’d make it well worth your while to show me.”
Zach savored a slow sip before replying. “I’ve never found any gold myself.” Which was another lie. His father had shown him a stream high in the mountains where nuggets were as common as clover in a field. But they had no interest in gathering it up and moving back to civilization to live in opulent ease. They were content with their lives as they were. “I have a friend, though, who claims to know of a cave where there’s so much gold, it practically blinds a body to look at it.”
Borke rimmed his lips with the tip of his tongue like a starving man about to bite into a juicy steak. “You don’t say? Do you suppose I could impose on you to introduce me?”
“I suppose.” Zach did not want to appear too eager or it would seem strange. He raised his glass again, and as he tilted his head back he noticed one of the Crows by the bar giving him an intent scrutiny. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He doesn’t cotton to strangers much.”
“You never know,” Borke said with a shrug. “I can be pretty persuasive when I need to be.”
The Crow whispered to another and the second warrior turned to stare. Zach took that as an omen. He needed an excuse to leave without arousing suspicion. “I reckon I’ll take you up on your offer to use your stable tonight,” he casually mentioned. “So maybe I should go tend to my horse before I drink so much I’m liable to forget.”
“It can wait,” Borke said. “Tell me more about this friend of yours.”
“All I know is that it’s way back in the high country, up above the snow line. It takes about a week to get there.” The two Crows had nudged a third, and all three were studying him as if he were the first half-breed they ever met. Taking another sip, Zach placed the glass down and rose. “I really should bed down my animal. We’ve been on the trail since before first light.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll be waitin’ right here.”
Nodding, Zach ambled toward the door. He didn’t like turning his back to the Crows, but it had to be done. His scalp itching as if from prickly heat, he passed a white man who had just entered and reached for the latch.
A fierce shriek rent the room. Not a heartbeat later, a knife flashed past Zach’s cheek and embedded itself in the door with a loud thunk. He didn’t glance behind him. He didn’t stop. Yanking on the latch, he sprang out into the night with another shriek ringing in his ears. Shouts erupted, Artemis Borke bellowing loudest of all.
Another of the trader’s accomplices was a few yards away, sharpening a knife. He glanced at the doorway, then at Zach, and lunged, his blade raised to slash.
Ducking under the blow, Zach twisted and slammed the Hawken’s stock against the man’s forehead. It felled him like a heart-shot elk. Instantly, Zach ran on, but not toward the dun. He had to accomplish what he had set out to do or his life would be forfeit. Necessity lending wings to his feet, he sprinted toward the gate.
“You there! Stop or I’ll shoot!”
The sentry was raising his rifle. Without breaking stride Zach did likewise, his Hawken cracking a split second before the sentry’s rifle boomed. A slug whistled past his left ear. Up on the tower the sentry grabbed at his chest, tottered backward, and disappeared over the far rail.
Zach chanced a look back. Crows and whites were spilling from the trading post in a savage jumble. The warrior watching the warhorses had recovered from his initial confusion and was drawing back the sinew string to his bow. Zach veered just as the shaft shot toward him. It missed, but not by more than a cat’s whisker.
Forty feet more and Zach would be there. But the gate might as well be in Missouri. Gunfire rocked the night as leaden hornets sought his blood. Another arrow streaked out of the gloom and he felt a twinge of pain in his right arm. The barbed tip had sliced through his shirt, creasing him.
“Stop that bastard!” Artemis Borke raged. “He’s the one the Crows tangled with this afternoon!”
The warriors were bounding in pursuit, yipping and howling at the top of their lungs, out to repay Zach for getting the better of them.
A rifle cracked and a ball buzzed within an inch of Zach’s neck. A bow string twanged and a glittering shaft nearly clipped his ear. Only the enveloping darkness saved him. The traders hadn’t gotten around to lighting any outside lanterns yet and the compound was mired in murk.
Zach flew the final ten feet, dropped his Hawken, and gripped the long wooden bar that secured the gate. Another arrow thudded into the wood near his elbow. A slug ripped into the gate above his head.
“Stop him!” Artemis Borke screamed.
Feet smacked the earth to Zach’s rear. Letting go of the bar, he whirled, his right hand swooping to one of the pistols at his waist. An onrushing Crow with an upraised war club was almost on top of him. Snapping back the hammer, Zach fired when the Crow was only two strides away. His aim was true. The shot took the Crow low on the jaw and exploded out the rear of his cranium, killing him, but the warrior’s momentum carried him forward the final few feet and he would have slammed into Zach with the impact of a charging buffalo if Zach hadn’t leaped aside.
More Crows were streaming toward him in a frenzy of bloodlust.
Spinning, Zach locked his arms on the bar and slid it up over the braces. He tossed it down, pushed on the gate, and attempted to turn to confront his attackers. But a glancing blow to the side of his head buckled him to his knees. The world swam and danced. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked up into the hate-filled eyes of a brawny Crow about to dash out his brains.
The Crow sneered in triumph. And the next moment he was dead on his feet, the feathered end of a Shoshone arrow jutting from his ribs.
Shoshone war cries rose above the din as through the open gate hurtled Touch the Clouds and Drags the Rope at the head of the war party. Three stunned Crows were caught flat-footed. With ruthless efficiency, the Shoshones slashed through them like scythes through grain. More guns thundered. The whites and the remaining Crows retreated toward the trading post, Borke yelling commands no one could hear.
Zach heaved upright, drawing his other pistol. Steadying himself, he took a deliberate bead at Borke’s face, but a skinny white blundered between them just as he fired. Borke backpedaled into the trading post followed by other underlings, and slammed the door. The next moment a long, slender object slid through a loophole in the front wall.
“Take cover!” Zach shouted in Shoshone, but it was too late. The rifle spat lead and smoke and a Shoshone dropped.
Casting about for his other guns, Zach scooped them up and moved into inky blackness to reload. As he opened his powder horn another rifle was thrust through a loophole, but the hasty shot missed.
Touch the Clouds was urging his warriors to seek shelter. Few heeded him. They had lost too many friends and wouldn’t rest until they had repaid those responsible. Screeching like banshees, they threw themselves at the door, seeking to bust it down.
Zach’s fingers moved with practiced skill. He had reloaded his guns so many times, he could do it with his eyes shut if he had to. The routine never varied: pour in the powder, wedge a ball and patch into the muzzle, tamp both down with a ramrod. In no time he had his rifle and spent pistols reloaded and was racing to join the fray.
The Shoshones had found a log somewhere and were battering at the door like medieval knights at a castle. A crack had appeared in the center and was widening swiftly, infusing the Shoshones with renewed vigor. A pistol barked and one of their number fell, only to be immediately replaced by another. A Crow arrow transfixed a Shoshone’s arm, but the warrior hardly slowed.
Zach weaved around fallen Crows, eager to get there before the Shoshones broke inside. He leaped over the skinny white he had slain and was in among the warriors at the door, yipping with the best of them. At their next swing of the log the door crumpled like so much paper. Inside, four or five guns blasted and several Shoshones fell. The rest wavered.
Zach darted past into the mushrooming clouds of gun smoke. He figured the whites needed time to reload, but one materialized in front of him, armed with a pistol. Zach shoved the Hawken’s muzzle against the man’s stomach and fired. Letting the rifle follow the white to the floor, he whipped out both pistols and shot a Crow on his left and another white man on his right. Another gun discharged over by the counter, but the bullet came nowhere near him.
Discarding his spent pistols, Zach unlimbered his butcher knife and tomahawk and waded deeper into the smoke. Suddenly there were whites and Crows on all sides. Knives and war clubs and lances sought his heart and jugular. Zach responded in kind, swinging and stabbing and hacking and dodging. He felt the tomahawk bite into bone, felt his knife shear into flesh. Curses and screams pummeled his ears. He slashed. He cut. He ducked under a war club and sank his tomahawk into the wielder.
Then the smoke parted and there, not a yard away, stood Artemis Borke. Borke had just reloaded a pistol, and at the sight of Zach he jerked it up to fire. It was not quite level when Zach’s tomahawk cleaved Borke’s skull like a soggy melon, clean down to the top of the trader’s nose.
A deafening silence gripped the room. Zach glanced about for new foes, every nerve on fire. But there were none. Bodies lay on all sides, two deep in spots. He was caked with sweat, blood, and gore, and breathing as if he had run ten miles. Sucking in a breath, he slowly turned, grateful for a gust of cool air.
Touch the Clouds and Drags the Rope stood just inside. Other Shoshones filled the doorway or gazed over the shoulders of those in front. To a man, their faces betrayed shock. Shock and something else, something akin to awe.
“What?”
Touch the Clouds surveyed the slaughter and said softly, “Truly, you are the son of Grizzly Killer.”
Stepping over grotesquely contorted shapes, Zach moved toward the door. As he stepped into the open, he acquired a shadow twice his size.
“Stalking Coyote, we must have words.”
“I know what you are about to say,” Zach responded, “and you can stop worrying. The whites will not declare war on the Shoshones.”
“How can you be certain?” Touch the Clouds asked. “We have killed their own kind.”
“I killed the whites,” Zach amended. “But I won’t be blamed, either.”
“Then who will?” Touch the Clouds was genuinely confused.
Zach walked to a slain Crow and nudged the body with a toe. “Three guesses. I told you I would take care of everything. Only white and Crow remains will be found in the ashes.”
“Ashes?”
“After I burn the place down.” Zach grinned. “Word will reach Bent’s Fort that the Crows attacked the post and in a pitched battled wiped them out. During the fight a lantern was knocked over and it set the buildings on fire. If other whites come to investigate, all they will find are charred embers and a few Crow arrowheads and arrows I will leave lying about.”
Touch the Clouds’s face was inscrutable. “You would do such a thing?”
“I will do whatever it takes to spare the Shoshones harm.” Zach straightened. “Trust me. The whites will never learn the truth. Everything will work out fine.”