Thirteen
Nate King was filled with fleeting shock on seeing the scourge of the Rockies not fifty feet off. Satan had spied him the same moment he had spied the panther and, voicing a guttural snarl, the mountain lion bore down on him at incredible speed. Nate cocked the rifle and snapped off a shot, in his haste neglecting to aim properly. At the blast Satan swerved into the undergrowth and was swallowed by the gloom.
Whirling, Nate ran, fleeing in uncontrolled fear. He went only a few yards when shame brought him up short. Turning, he whipped out a pistol, then stepped to the side to a fir tree. Low branches provided firm purchase, and in seconds he had climbed twenty feet and was squatting in the fork of a pair of thick limbs.
Nate glimpsed a tawny coat to the east and took precise aim, but Satan wasn’t staying in one place. The panther blended into a thicket. Although Nate scoured the vegetation intently, he saw no trace of the big cat.
Now what should he do? Nate quizzed himself. The lion had him treed, effectively trapped again, just like in the cavern. Only this time his stallion wasn’t close at hand to lure the panther elsewhere. And this time Satan could spring at him from any direction, at any time. His being in the tree made little difference to a predator capable of scaling the vertical trunk and reaching him in two swift leaps.
Nate set the flintlock at his feet and rapidly reloaded the rifle, stopping only once when a twig cracked behind him. He spun to see if Satan was sneaking up on him. Breath bated, he scanned the plant growth, saw a chipmunk scampering from cover to cover. Thus reassured, he finished ramming the ball and patch into the barrel.
All that remained of the setting sun was a crimson crown. A spreading pall of darkness obscured the landscape, and the shadows were now themselves in deeper shadow. Soon the moon would rise.
Replacing the pistol under his belt, Nate sat, his legs curled under him. If he was Satan, he’d wait until night had the forest firmly in its inky grip before attacking, but panthers were known for being unpredictable. Satan might not want to wait that long.
Nate peered upward, marking the positions of limbs. With a bit of luck he’d be able to climb another twenty feet. After that the branches were spaced too far apart.
The only problem with going higher was that the limbs higher up were thinner, less able to bear Nate’s weight. And nowhere was there as wide a fork as the one supporting him. Better, he reasoned, to stay right where he was and bide his time until the panther made a move.
Nate rubbed his eyes and fought a yawn. He’d been up since well before dawn and had not partaken of food or water since the night before. Since his parfleche was on the stallion, he’d have to do without a while longer.
The heavens dimmed to black; the canopy of blue gave way to an indigo canopy sprinkled with sparkling pinpoints. In the east blossomed the gleaming moon, bathing the Rockies in its iridescent light. A coyote greeted its advent with a wavering howl and was answered by another elsewhere.
Holding the Hawken on his knees, Nate leaned forward, bending low over one of the branches in order to make it harder for the panther to distinguish him from the tree. A flutter of wings to the west heralded the flight of a large owl, and Nate watched as the aerial artist looped upward and was silhouetted against the radiant lunar surface.
Typical night sounds reached Nate’s ears: the lonesome wails of wolves, the snort of a black-tailed buck as it fled on smelling Satan’s scent, the grunt of a roving grizzly to the southwest. Noticeably lacking was any sound made by Satan, which did not bode well for Nate. His skin pricked as if from a rash, and he had the sensation of being spied on by unseen eyes. But try as he might, he couldn’t locate the panther.
Nate had to change position after an hour due to a cramp in his left leg. He tried to do so noiselessly but his left legging scraped the branch loud enough to be heard yards away.
There was plenty of time for Nate to think, about Shakespeare, about Winona, about Zach, and his daughter, Evelyn, and how each time he braved the wilderness he gambled his life that he would ever see them again. The wilderness was a harsh taskmaster. Those who survived the lessons it taught were those who never let their guard down for a moment.
Was it worth it? Nate speculated. Was it worth being a free trapper when he stood to lose everyone and everything he truly loved every time he went up against a bestial nightmare like Satan or tangled with a war party of hostile Indians? Was the pure, precious freedom he enjoyed living in the wilderness worth the price he might have to pay for it?
There could only be one answer: Yes! A million times, yes! Freedom was worth any price. Not the watered-down kind of freedom found back in the States where politicians conspired to dictate how people should live, but true freedom, that personal state where men and women could live as they damn well pleased without being accountable to anyone other than their Maker.
Such thoughts, and many others, occupied Nate for some time. Two more hours went by, then a third. The moon climbed steadily. Nate yawned frequently and fought off an urge to sleep.
About midnight Nate found himself dozing fitfully off and on. His leaden eyes would close, his chin would sag, then he would realize what he was doing, jerk his head up, and try to stay awake until the next time.
Nate probed the nearby vegetation over and over but did not see the panther. By about three in the morning he began to suspect that Satan had left and there was no need for him to remain vigilant. Fatigue eclipsed his caution, and despite his intentions, he slipped into a deep slumber.
Nate would never know what awakened him. One moment he was asleep, the next his eyes were open and it was much lighter than he remembered it being and he was staring at one of the limbs forming the fork in which he sat and there on the limb, crouched low, ears drawn back, was Satan.
The instant Nate saw the panther, Satan sprang. Nate clutched the Hawken and tried to bring it to bear but his sleep-dulled reflexes were much too sluggish. Satan slammed into the rifle, batting it loose with a single sweep of an iron paw, and landed on the limb inches from the fork, close enough to disembowel Nate with the next stroke.
Only Nate wasn’t there any longer. He threw himself backward and deliberately let himself fall, taking the chance he wouldn’t break his neck hitting a branch on the way down. A jolting impact lanced his hip with agony, then he was falling again. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and rose to one knee.
Satan was already in midair, snarling fiercely, claws extended.
Nate took a hasty bead. His finger was constricting on the trigger when the mountain lion plowed into him with the force of a battering ram, sending him tumbling. He felt his shirt rip, felt blood drawn. But the new wound was far from fatal, and when Nate stopped tumbling he pushed to his feet and grabbed at his pistols. His arms twin blurs, he drew and aimed and cocked and fired, just as Satan reached him. The twin balls bowled the cat rearward but it was up in a flash and pressing its attack.
A paw nearly took Nate’s leg off at the knee. He retreated, throwing the pistols at Satan’s head, making the panther duck and giving him the opportunity to grasp both his butcher knife and his tomahawk. Then Satan closed in.
Now the fight was joined in earnest. There was no time for Nate to think, no time for him to plot a means of beating the monster, no time for anything other than simply staying alive, for preserving his life as best he was able.
Satan came in low, trying to bring Nate down by tearing into his legs. Nate countered with a wicked slash of the tomahawk that drove Satan to one side. The panther spun, angled in again, and was again driven back by a flick of the butcher knife. Baffled, the lion stood still a few moments, growling and hissing.
Nate lunged, aiming a tomahawk blow at the panther’s skull. In doing so he noticed a recent gash where he had struck the cat by the stream days ago. Evidently Satan remembered too, because the mountain lion wanted no part of the tomahawk. Whenever Nate swung it, the panther darted aside, giving the weapon a wide berth.
Satan started circling, walking swiftly, steely body hugging the ground, tail snaking back and forth. Every so often Satan would swipe a paw as if probing for weakness. Nate had to keep turning in order to keep facing the feline fury. When the panther swung, so did he, holding Satan at bay.
The stalemate lasted minutes. Nate’s blood raced, his temples pounded. He didn’t need to be told what would happen if he made a single small mistake. Satan would be on him before he could blink, tearing his flesh from his body. No matter what, he must not blunder!
But he did.
It happened in this fashion: Nate was turning, always turning, inadvertently bearing to the left as he did, his gaze locked on the panther to the exclusion of everything else, and so it was that he failed to see a short sapling growing right under his nose until, as he pivoted yet one more time on his heel, his foot bumped into the obstacle and he tripped, tripped forward, toward the panther.
Satan recoiled, but not quite quickly enough to evade Nate’s knife which by sheer chance speared into Satan’s left eye. Nate came down on all fours, saw Satan tense, and barely got the tomahawk up before the mountain lion leaped. The edge of the tomahawk bit into Satan’s face but hardly slowed the enraged beast. Nate was bowled over, the cat on top, his tomahawk arm under the panther’s chin as he desperately tried to stop Satan’s razor teeth from finding his throat. Claws tore his shirt, his leggings. In desperation Nate plunged his long knife into Satan’s side, over and over and over.
Without warning Satan jumped off, whirled, and came at Nate again. Nate attempted to rise, to meet the rush standing, but his speed compared to that of the savage feline was as that of a tortoise to a hare. He thrust the knife, burying the blade to the hilt, as the panther bowled him over. By a quirk of fate he wound up flush against Satan’s side so he looped an arm around the lion’s thick neck and held tight while simultaneously stabbing again and again and again.
Satan became a whirlwind, spinning and flipping and clawing in a frenzied bid to shake the tormentor off. Nate clung on for dear life, stabbing, stabbing, always stabbing. He nearly lost his grip when they rolled into a tree or a boulder. Fangs sank into his shoulder, causing him to cry out. The next moment, there in front of him, was Satan’s other eye, and as the lion drew back, he rammed the blade into it.
No one could have held onto the panther after that. Satan erupted into a berserk rage, twisting and jumping and rolling as if demented. Nate lost his grip on both the knife and the lion and flew through the air, smacking against a pine. Sitting up, he was startled to discover he had lost the tomahawk. He pushed upright, empty-handed, defenseless, and backed against the tree, prepared to sell his life dearly even though he was feeling weak and faint.
Abruptly, Satan emitted a high-pitched shriek and vaulted straight up into the air, clawing at the emptiness in a last act of ferocious defiance. Then Satan crashed down, convulsed, and was still.
Nate gaped at his bestial foe, unable to believe his own eyes. He took a halting step, searching for the Hawken and the pistols, when suddenly a wave of vertigo brought him low, buckling his legs and pitching him onto his face. The last sight he saw was a patch of grass sweeping toward him.
The pungent scent of wood smoke brought Nate around. He sniffed, opened his eyes, and went to sit up; stopping when he found a blanket covered him to his chin and realized he was propped on a saddle. His own saddle.
“Glad you could join the world of the living.”
Nate stared across the fire at his mentor. “You?” he croaked. “How?”
“How else? I was a mite worried when you didn’t show for supper so I came looking for you. Had to track by torchlight, which is as hard as the dickens to do unless you know what you’re doing. I was up on the cliffs when I heard shots.” Shakespeare poured coffee into a tin cup and brought it over. “I found you this morning about dawn.”
The afternoon sun told Nate how long he had been unconscious. “Thanks for coming after me.”
“I’m just glad I found you when I did. You lost a lot of blood, son. You’re damned lucky to be alive.”
“Where did you find the stallion?”
“I didn’t. It came wandering into camp about the middle of the morning.” Shakespeare handed over the cup. “Careful. That’s hot.”
Nodding absently, Nate took a slow sip. “It’s over,” he said softly.
“Sure is. I skinned the painter for you.” Shakespeare grinned. “’Course, the pelt won’t amount to much with all the holes you put in it.” He gently touched Nate’s brow. “There’s no fever. Do you feel all right?”
Nate King felt the warmth in his belly from the delicious coffee, felt the wind in his hair and the pleasant sunshine on his face, and he smiled in heartfelt contentment. “Never better, my friend. Never better.”