Four

Shakespeare McNair also saw the danger in the direction the talk was taking. A full lifetime had permitted him to see rash folly for what it truly was, and since he had no hankering to lose his hair at such a ripe age, he sided with Nate by saying, ‘it could take us weeks, and there’s no guarantee we’d ever find them.”

“The effort will be worth it if we avenge the memory of our fallen fellow!” Pepin replied.

Jenks nodded. “I have nothing to lose. They’ve already got my goods.”

“But not ours, nor our plews,” Shakespeare said bluntly, “and I don’t figure to give them the chance to get their hands on any of my fixings.”

Pepin nodded at his own hides. “But that is easily solved, mon ami! We can cache all the pelts here with most of the supplies. The extra horses can be let loose to roam as they please since it is doubtful they will try to go down the cliffs by themselves. Simple, non?”

“Some of us have families to think of,” Nate mentioned.

“Is this the famous Grizzly Killer talking?” Pepin rejoined. “Is this the man I heard so much about I couldn’t wait to be his partner? The man the Blackfeet, Piegans, and Bloods consider their greatest white enemy? The man who has beaten the Sioux? The man who saved his wife from a life of captivity among the Apaches?”

“I had no choice in those instances,” Nate lamely said.

“And you do now? After Pointer has been slain? After Jenks was nearly killed?” Pepin made a clucking sound. “How can you say such a thing? What about the next trappers who lay their lines in this region? Are they to be butchered and scalped because we did not have the courage to deal with this?”

Such unexpected eloquence caught Nate off guard. He didn’t know quite what to say, so he said nothing.

“I’ll go with you, Pepin, if no one else will,” Jenks said scornfully. “I’m not afraid of any damn hostiles, and I mean to have my things back come hell or high water.”

“That is the spirit, my young friend!” Pepin faced McNair. “And you, Carcajou? Will you see justice done? Will you join us in our noble cause?”

“Noble causes have a habit of getting folks killed.”

“Does that mean no?”

“It means I’ll ponder some and let you know when I make up my mind,” Shakespeare promised.

“As you wish, mon ami.”

Pepin produced a short spade from his supplies, and the remainder of the day was spent digging the hole where the hides and other possession would be cached.

There was a certain technique the trappers always employed. First a straight, round hole was dug, usually to the depth of five or six feet. Next a chamber was made adjacent to the hole, a chamber big enough to accommodate all the items to be cached. Afterward, the hole was filled in with dirt. Any excess earth was scooped up and scattered, in this case into the pool. Finally branches were used to rake over the top of the hole and bits of grass and leaves were added to completely cover it. When all was done, only an experienced eye could tell that the ground had even been disturbed.

Nate helped dig, but his heart wasn’t in it. He had liked Pointer as much as any of them, and he was as outraged as they were by Pointer’s death and the theft of Jenks’s peltries. By the same token, he had learned the hard way that vengeance was a two-edged sword; those who sought it often reaped it. He did not care to die without seeing his family again. But—and that word seemed to stick in his throat—he did have an obligation to his trapping partners, a responsibility to do what was best for all of them. It would be selfish of him to think only of his own interests.

By evening most of the stores had been cached. Pepin took Jenks off to hunt supper. Nate strolled to the pool and sat glumly down at the water’s edge. He swirled the surface with a finger and saw the reflection of his mentor appear. “Have you made up your mind yet?”

“I was waiting for you to make up yours first.”

“I made my feelings clear earlier.”

“Did you?” Shakespeare asked, sinking down. “I heard your common sense speaking but not your heart.”

“Women think with their hearts. Men don’t.” Shakespeare chuckled. “Men like to pretend they don’t, but they do. Just as much as women. We just lie about it because we don’t like to admit we let our emotions get the better of us.” He tossed a pebble into the water. “No man likes to ’fess up to losing his self-control. It makes him seem weak.”

“If we go after that war party, we’re as dumb as turnips.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

“It’d be plain stupid.”

“As stupid as anything.”

“Who knows when we’d get home?”

“Time would tell.”

“It would be a dunderhead thing to do.”

“True enough.”

“Feebleminded is a better description.”

“Then feebleminded it is. Throw in featherbrained, empty-skulled, and doltish too.”

Shifting, Nate stared into Shakespeare’s kindly eyes. “But we have it to do, don’t we?”

“As surely as the sun rises and sets every day.”

“Damn.”

“That’s what we get for being men and not boys. A boy can always make up excuses to get out of doing what has to be done, but a man, he’s a man, has to face facts and do what has to be done without complaint.”

“Sometimes I wish I’d never grown up.”

“Don’t we all, son. Don’t we all.”

Pepin and Jenks returned an hour later with a bighorn sheep. “You should have seen the shot I made,” the Canadian boasted. “There was this gorgeous sheep, so high up on the rocks his horns were touching the bottoms of the clouds, and I put a ball through his head with my first shot!”

“Amazing,” Nate said dryly, and coughed. “There’s something you should know,” he continued. “Shakespeare and I have decided to go along.” Before he could elaborate, the voyageur sprang at him, embraced him in a bear hug, and spun him in circles while whooping like a demented Comanche.

“Trés bien! Trés bien! I knew you would! Does a panther run from chipmunks? Does an eagle flee from jays? Does a bear hide from ants? Non! Never!”

Nate was spun a few more times for good measure. He couldn’t help but laugh when Pepin stepped back. “You’re plumb crazy. You know that, don’t you?”

“Oui. But without a touch of craziness, life can be so dull, non!”

“Dull, maybe. Longer, definitely,” Shakespeare muttered.

That night Pepin regaled them with exaggerated tales of his escapades in Canada. He told of Lake Winnipeg, “so deep a coureur de bois once found a Chinaman floating on the top.” And of rivers where the current was so swift, “a man can fire his rifle, paddle a few strokes, and be in position to catch the ball as it comes down.” He claimed “the grizzlies in Canada are so big, the full-grown ones you have here are no bigger than their cubs.” And after dark had settled, he mentioned the time he found mammoth tracks.

“What the dickens are mammoths?” Jenks asked. “No one ever told me about them.”

“That’s because no white man has ever laid eyes on one,” Pepin said. “And the Indians who have seen the things don’t like to talk about the creature because they’re mighty bad medicine. The Indians believe that anyone who sees a mammoth will die soon after doing so if the mammoth doesn’t kill the person first.”

“Sounds like another one of their nature spirit yams to me,” Jenks said.

“Not the mammoth, mon ami. The Lillooet, the Bella Coola, the Yuroks, they all say that mammoths are flesh and blood.” Pepin pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch. “And after what I saw, young one, I think they are right.” He pondered a bit. “It was eight years ago. I was crossing the Canadian Rockies through Yellowhead Pass when I saw these peculiar tracks. The Indians with me went into a panic and begged me to leave the area before the thing found us.”

Nate, although he well knew that telling tall tales was an established tradition around campfires at night, and suspected the voyageur was having fun at the greenhorn’s expense, was prompted by curiosity to ask, “What were the tracks like?”

“Strange. Very strange,” Pepin answered as he tamped tobacco into the pipe bowl. “They sank over four inches into the packed snow, where our tracks sank less than an inch. Each one was as long as both of my feet combined. There were no claws, just toes.”

“Toes?” Jenks asked skeptically.

“Toe prints just like those you or I would make, only five times bigger,” Pepin said.

The youth snorted. “If I ever see prints like that, I’ll know I’ve had too much to drink.”

“Peut-etre. But I was sober. And I know what I saw.”

The conversation turned to other topics. Nate stretched out on his blankets, making himself comfortable. The events of the day had left him fatigued, and he had no trouble at all in falling asleep. So soundly did he sleep that he was shocked when, on feeling a firm hand shaking his shoulder, he opened his eyes to find the rosy rim of the sun already crowning the eastern horizon, setting the sky ablaze with a riot of color.

“Getting a mite lazy, aren’t you?” Shakespeare said. Coffee was already boiling. Pepin had taken the horses to the pool and was watching them drink. Only Jenks hadn’t yet quit his bedding.

“I’ll let you do the honors with the greenhorn,” Shakespeare said, grinning. “That way you won’t feel so bad.”

“Thanks,” Nate grumbled. Sitting up, he stretched and thought of the task they had set for themselves, hoping they weren’t making the gravest mistake of their lives. Despite the justness of their cause and the necessity for doing it, he couldn’t shake lingering doubts. He made no mention of his feelings to the others. Why bother, when he had given his word he would go and it was too late to back out?

Breakfast consisted of leftover meat from the night before. They were in the saddle before the sun rose completely, and making their way down the escarpment before the morning was an hour old. The previous night they had decided to head for the spot where the war party had last been seen. Consequently Nate was again in the lead. Anxious to overtake the hostiles as soon as possible, he kept the black stallion at a trot until nearly midday.

After a short rest, they pushed on. Few words were exchanged. This was serious business, and not a man among them, including the usually rowdy Pepin, was in a mood for small talk.

By going over certain ridges rather than around, and by taking a shortcut Shakespeare knew of, they were able to shave hours off the journey. Even so, they didn’t arrive at the particular mountain slope Nate sought until shortly after noon on the second day. Once there they spread out, seeking sign, and it was Shakespeare who first found the trail. At a whoop from him the others converged and sat staring at the hoofprints.

“Well, I suppose we’ll find these vermin soon enough,” Jenks said rather nervously.

“Within four or five days would be my guess,” Shakespeare commented.

“And then we will have some new scalps to show off at the next Rendezvous, non?’’ Pepin declared happily.

“You plan to lift their hair?” Jenks asked in horror.

“But of course!”

“But that makes us just as bad as them.”

“Bad?” Shakespeare interjected. “Do you think that what this band did makes them any worse than we are?”

“Certainly,” Jenks said. “We’re not murdering savages.”

“Neither are they,” Shakespeare responded.

The greenhorn was incredulous. “How can you say such a thing, McNair? They butchered Pointer, stole everything I own.”

“We don’t know yet whether the Blackfeet or the Bloods or some other tribe is to blame, but it doesn’t matter. Every one of them has made no secret of the fact that white men are their enemies. In their eyes, we’re trespassers, invaders who are killing off all the beaver and a lot of other game and spreading our diseases among them wherever we go. In their eyes, they’re doing what they think they have to do to protect their people, what they believe is right.”

“That doesn’t make it so!”

“As you go through life I think you’ll learn that being right or wrong, good or bad, often depends on which side of the fence you’re on.”

“Are you saying that you excuse what they did to Pointer?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Shakespeare said, wishing he could make the younger man understand. Many trappers despised Indians on general principles, and many Indians returned the favor for the same reason, or lack of it. He’d long speculated that if both sides could see the world through the eyes of those they hated, the constant bloodshed might stop, or at least taper off. The Shoshones and Flatheads were living proof that the red man and the white man could live together in harmony if they wanted. The pity was that so few cared to make the effort. “I’m only saying I understand it.”

Nate saw Jenks open his mouth to argue and spoke up himself. “Let’s keep going. I don’t aim to sit here on this mountain all afternoon listening to the two of you squabble.” Applying his heels, he moved out, following the prints. No rain had fallen in the interval since he’d sighted the war party, so the tracks were quite plain.

The younger man’s attitude bothered Nate. There had been a time, back before Nate had ventured from New York City to the frontier, when Nate might have sympathized with Jenks’s point of view. Since then he had learned that Indians and whites were more alike than either was willing to admit. And having lived with Shoshones for so long, he had learned to highly admire the Indian way of life. When someone branded them as evil, he took issue.

The Shoshones were friendly to all whites and always had been. Whenever a trapper visited a Shoshone village, he was made welcome with food and drink and a lodge to sleep in if he so desired. And the man need not fear for his belongings either. Unlike the Crows, who were addicted to petty thievery, the Shoshones were scrupulously honest in all their dealings.

Nate thought of them later that evening, after camp had been made and chunks of rabbit meat were roasting on the fire. “Did you happen to notice which direction the war party is heading?” he remarked.

“I did,” Shakespeare said. “Toward Shoshone country.”

“You’d think they’d be satisfied with Pointer’s hair and my peltries,” Jenks said bitterly.

“If these devils are Blackfeet,” Pepin said, “they won’t be content with anything less than a scalp for every one of them, and a new horse besides.” He adjusted the stick suspended over the fire, turning the meat so the uncooked portions were nearest to the flames. “Maybe they’re fixing to steal a few Shoshone women as well.”

“Not the Blackfeet,” Nate said. “They aren’t much for taking wives from other tribes.” He remembered a battle in which he had taken part some years back. “Men, women, children, it’s all the same to them. The Blackfeet kill everyone.”

“Like I said,” Jenks mentioned smugly. “Savages, pure and simple.”

The next day was a repeat of the first. About mid-morning Nate came to a creek where the war party had stopped to water their mounts. Not far beyond was a gravel bar the Indians had crossed. Mixed liberally with mud, the bar gave Nate a chance to study each and every set of hoofprints in detail. As he was doing so, he spotted a set of tracks much deeper than the rest. “This one was packing a heavy load. Maybe pelts.”

“Could be,” Shakespeare said, “although Jenks claims he had enough for two horses.” He scratched his beard. “But where are all the other pack animals? What happened to all the supplies they stole? And Pointer’s peltries?”

“Maybe we have the wrong band.”

“Keep looking. We might find a clue.”

Nate continued searching, and on a long muddy strip where the warriors had ridden strung out instead of in single file he found something odd. “I count eleven horses now.”

“Me too,” Shakespeare confirmed. “I thought I did back yonder and this proves it.”

“Two more than I saw,” Nate said thoughtfully. “This answers our question. I didn’t see the whole band. There must have been more in the trees, and some of them are taking most of the plunder back to their village even as we speak.”

“It’s possible,” Shakespeare conceded. “They wouldn’t want to traipse all over the country with a lot of pack animals and provisions slowing them down.”

“Especially if they’re mainly after scalps,” Nate said, pleased by the cleverness of their deduction.

That night they camped in a ravine sheltered from the blustery winds and enjoyed venison thanks to Pepin, who downed a small doe at seventy yards. Their horses were pushed to the limit the next day, and the next. Jenks’s mount, normally used as a pack animal, was hard pressed to keep up the pace.

Nate was beginning to think it would be three or four days more before they caught their quarry when they had a stroke of luck. They discovered a spot where the war party had camped for two days, and the remains of an elk explained why.

“Soon now!” Pepin cried. “Soon we avenge our friend!”

It was the following day, early in the evening when the sun was slowly sinking behind a stark range of glistening peaks, that Nate came off a bluff and spotted in a basin below a pale pinpoint of light. Instantly he reined up and pointed. “There they are,” he announced.

“At last,” Jenks said. “I can’t wait to get my hands on my furs.”

“You’ll have to wait a while longer,” Shakespeare said. “We can’t go barging on in there. First we scout out their camp, then we decide how best to kill them.”

“I’ll do the scouting,” Nate said to forestall the others. He was concerned either the hotheaded Pepin or the brash Jenks might make a blunder that would prove costly to them all. Slanting into a stand of slender aspens, he climbed from the saddle, looped the reins to a limb, and started down the slope.

“Mind some company, son?” Shakespeare asked, falling into step.

“Not at all,” Nate said gratefully.

A stretch of shrub and pines brought them to the basin floor, which was covered with high grass shaded greenish-gray by the gathering twilight. Halfway across the basin, at the base of a hillock dotted with trees, was the campfire.

“Cocky bunch,” Shakespeare said. “Most war parties wouldn’t bother with a fire this close to enemy territory.”

“I’ve got three plews that says they’re Blackfeet.’’

“You’re on. I think they’re Bloods.’’

Dropping low, Nate entered the grass and snaked forward. He loosened both flintlocks in case he needed them quickly, and slid his butcher knife partway out of its sheath once. The wind was on his back, a bad place for it to be since the war party’s horses would pick up his scent if he wasn’t extremely careful.

Three hundred yards were covered in virtual silence. Nate had learned the art of being stealthy from the Shoshones, some of whom were so adept they could sneak up on a bear and swat the beast on the rump before it knew they were there. He knew just how to lower his feet—toes first, with the weight borne on the balls—to muffle the sound of his footsteps.

Low voices and laughter brought Nate up short. He guessed he was twenty to thirty yards from the fire, too close to dare rising for a look since his pale face would be a dead giveaway against the dark background. Easing onto his hands and knees, he crawled forward, glancing to the right where Shakespeare had been a few moments before. His friend was gone.

Nate wasn’t worried. No other white man alive could handle himself like McNair, who would probably sneak so close to the camp he’d hear the warriors break wind. Nate, on the other hand, had no desire to push his luck; he crawled until he glimpsed the flames, then halted and contented himself for the time being with merely listening.

The tongue being used wasn’t Blackfoot. Nate couldn’t claim proficiency in the language, but the time he’d spent as a captive had given him an ear for recognizing it when he heard it spoken. Which narrowed the choices down to Piegans or Bloods, both allies of the Blackfeet in a fierce confederacy that controlled the northern Rockies and plains.

Presently, satisfied the band had no idea there was anyone else within fifty miles, Nate worked his way to the right, toward the hillock. He needed to know what sort of arms the warriors had, how many guns and bows and lances. At least one gun had been fired at Jenks, and they had to have at least one additional rifle and two pistols because that was how many guns Pointer had owned. Nate also wanted to learn where the horses were tied since he hadn’t heard so much as a nicker out of them yet.

A faint rustling caused Nate to stop and look to his left. The rustling grew closer and closer. His gaze dropped, and so did his mouth when he distinguished the outline of a long, thin shape crawling directly towards him. A snake! he realized, instinctively tensing to draw back. Only he couldn’t. He was closer to the camp, too close. The warriors might notice any sudden swaying of the grass.

The next moment the head of the reptile appeared, and Nate had to bite down on his lower lip to keep from crying out. Of all the types of snakes it could have been, this one turned out to be one of the deadliest of all: a rattlesnake.