Two days later, as the sun crested the far eastern horizon, the Ashworth expedition began its long trek northward. Riding well ahead of the main column were six heavily armed mountaineers who would scout the terrain ahead and keep their eyes peeled for hostiles. Six others rode about the same distance to the rear, just in case.
The main body was strung out over hundreds of yards, some of the men riding four and five abreast, others riding alone. Immediately behind them came the horse herd tended by twenty trappers, ten strung out on either flank to prevent any of the animals from straying.
All precautions that could be taken were taken. By and large the mountain men stuck to open ground. When that wasn’t possible, a dozen would fan out wide to either side to insure no nasty surprises were sprung by unfriendly tribes or savage beasts.
The first day passed uneventfully. Richard Ashworth was in tremendous spirits when camp was made that night. They had covered seventeen miles. If they duplicated that every day, they would arrive at their destination in three weeks, perhaps less. It would give them time to spare before the next trapping season began.
Ashworth had been perturbed to learn that the mountain men did not lay traps twelve months of the year. There were two seasons, the first starting in early fall and lasting until winter set in, while the second began in the spring and came to an end about the middle of the summer, when hot weather induced the beaver to shed a lot of hair and rendered their hides next to valueless.
Ashworth had counted on trapping all year long. The lost time meant he had to stay longer in the wilderness than he had bargained on in order to acquire as many pelts as he needed. It would delay his return to New York. It also increased the odds of being discovered by the Blackfeet or their allies.
Even so, Ashworth was not about to call the expedition off. He had invested all the funds he had plus most of the money loaned to him by the Brothers. He had to succeed or else lose everything.
Ashworth shrugged off such disturbing thoughts as he rose to greet his supper guests. A table with swivel legs occupied the center of his tent. Around it had been placed seven collapsible stools. “Greetings, fine people!” he declared happily. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
Nate held the tent flap open for Winona and the children. As he entered, he glanced back to find Emilio giving him the same sort of a look a grizzly might give prey it was sizing up for the slaughter. No one needed to tell him that the giant harbored a grudge over being knocked down the day before. Sooner or later they would lock horns again.
Winona matched their host’s smile and stepped to the table. Among her people, women always bore to the left when going into a lodge and sat apart from the men. She had never given the practice much thought since it had been the accepted Shoshone way since the dawn of time. After meeting Nate and learning how his kind did things, she had to admit that she much preferred the white custom of men and women mingling as they so desired. “Thank you for inviting us, Mr. Ashworth,” she said.
“My pleasure,” Ashworth replied, marveling at her impeccable English. He hastened to pull out a chair for her.
Winona did not know what the man was doing. Nate always let her seat herself. She wondered if perhaps Ashworth were being forward with her, as Nate would say, and whether she should slap him for the affront. But then she decided that he would hardly be stupid enough to insult her with her husband present.
Puzzled by her perplexed expression, Ashworth glanced at the mountain man. “You can assure your wife that I don’t bite, Mr. King. It’s safe to sit.”
Nate turned from the flap. “He’s just being polite,” he told Winona. “Holding a chair for a lady is considered the proper thing to do.”
“Then why have you never done it for me?” Winona asked.
“It’s done in public, at restaurants and such,” Nate explained. “A man doesn’t do it in his own house.” He snickered at the quaint notion. “Heavens, he’d never get to relax.”
Young Zach listened with half an ear. They hadn’t been there two minutes and already he was bored enough to cry. He’d begged his folks to be allowed to stay with the mountain men around one of the campfires, but they had insisted that he come. “The invite is for all of us,” his pa had said. “It would be rude if only three of us showed.”
Zach was resigned to several hours of dull talk. He didn’t think much of the expedition leader. The man reminded him of an oversize chipmunk, always chattering and never able to sit still for more than a few seconds at a time. Besides that, Ashworth’s handshake was clammy and weak, a sure sign of a puny nature.
The Kings sat, Winona holding Blue Flower in her lap. Nate leaned his Hawken against the table within easy reach. No sooner did he do so than a shadow fell across him. Someone had opened the tent. He grabbed for the rifle, expecting it to be the man called Emilio, but it was only Henry Allen and Clive Jenks.
“Come in! Come in!” Ashworth hailed them.
“Pull up a chair and we can start.”
Nate exchanged nods with the two lieutenants. He didn’t know if Ashworth intended to make supper together a daily ritual. If so, the man was in for a disappointment. His place was out with his fellow mountaineers, sharing the work. Not to mention overseeing the hundred and one tasks that needed to be done.
Ashworth surveyed his guests and had to suppress a smirk. At his last supper party before leaving New York City, a city council member, a state senator, and one of the richest men on Long Island had attended. Contrasting their expensive clothes with the rustic buckskins of the bumpkins before him was outright comical.
Clapping his hands, Ashworth yelled, “Lester! You can serve the first dish now!”
Nate’s brow knit. He’d seen a scrawny trapper named Lester Maddox hovering around Ashworth like a hummingbird around honey water throughout the day, but he hadn’t really given it much thought until now. Into the tent came the man in question, awkwardly trying to carry five small platters at once.
“Careful! Careful!” Ashworth warned. Those plates were the finest china money could buy. They had belonged to his grandmother. He rubbed his hands in anticipation as one was set in front of him. His smiled died. Aghast, he raised his fork and picked at five charred lumps.
Nate was flabbergasted. He hadn’t set eyes on a set of china in more years than he cared to recollect. His nose crinkled at the burnt odor but he picked up one of the lumps and plopped it into his mouth. He had to chew a bit before he recognized it for what it was. “Roasted mushrooms. Now that’s something we don’t see out here every day. They’re quite tasty,” he said to complement their host.
Ashworth could feel the blood drain from his face. He was so embarrassed, he wanted to shrivel into a ball and die. “You’re too kind,” he said lamely.
Rising, Ashworth watched Lester fumble with a plate and place it with a thump in front of Winona King. He cleared his throat. “Mr. Maddox, when I agreed to take you on as my manservant, I knew I couldn’t count on you to do as sterling a job as my butler and chef back in New York. But I did think you would be able to cook a pot of mushrooms without burning them to a crisp!”
“Sorry, hoss,” Maddox said. “But this coon ain’t never et no rabbit food before. So I cooked ’em the same way I like my meat. Tough as shoe leather.”
Ashworth was apoplectic. “You did what?” he said. “After I went to all the trouble of having some of the men pick them for me just for this occasion? I’m sorry, Mr. Maddox, but you really won’t do. I know you wanted the extra pay, but I’ll have to find someone else to fill the position.”
Nate had heard enough. “I’m sorry, too,” he said, “because no one else is going to bother.”
“What?” Ashworth said blankly, unable to come to terms with his supper being ruined.
Folding his arms, Nate did not mince words.
“You’re not in the States any longer,” he began. “Out here, no one has the right to lord it over anyone else. There are no servants. We’re all free men. Equals.”
“Equals?” Ashworth repeated, dazed by the concept. How could a bunch of ragtag ruffians rate themselves on a par with the cream of high society?
“You’ve hired eleven women to do our cooking,” Nate continued. “It’s only fair that you eat whatever they fix, just like the rest of us.”
“Now see here,” Ashworth broke in. “Never forget who is the leader of this expedition and who is the second-in-command! I have every right to demand special treatment. Without me, none of this would be possible.”
Nate glanced at Allen, who rolled his eyes. “You’re missing the point, Ashworth,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. It’s us. Mountaineers don’t take kindly to anyone putting on airs around them.”
“Well, I never!”
“You won’t catch a trapper having a servant,” Nate detailed. “It’s just another word for a slave, as far as we’re concerned. Out here, when a man wants something done, he does it himself.”
Richard Ashworth blinked. “But that’s preposterous! What good is having money if a man can’t use it to make life’s burdens easier to bear? Why, I’ve never had to cook a meal in my life!”
“Not once?” Winona found it unbelievable that any person could have been so pampered. “What about your clothes?”
“What about them?”
“Did you make them yourself?”
“Oh, my dear woman, be sensible!” Ashworth at back down, his chin in his hand. Having to stoop to sharing the common meal was too destressing for words. “Surely there must be some way around this? Some compromise we can each?”
“No,” Nate said bluntly. “It’s in the best interests of everyone for you not to act as if you’re our lord and master.”
Ashworth sulked. He was beginning to regret ringing King along. “Any other changes you’d like to make?” he sarcastically quipped.
Taking the New Yorker seriously, Nate said, “If it were up to me, we wouldn’t have any women or kids along. But it’s too late to send them packing.”
“Where’s the equality in that?” Ashworth said. Aren’t you saying the women can’t hold their own? That they’re inferior to all you trappers?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Nate said. “The omen shouldn’t be here because the Blackfeet don’t hesitate to wipe them out along with the men. And the men won’t be able to put up a good fight if they’re worried about their women.”
Ashworth, rankled at being made to submit to conditions fit only for primitives, groused, You’re assuming that the Blackfeet will find us, of course. Which they won’t. The route I’ve plotted will see us safely into their territory and out gain.”
Nate was not going to bandy words. He was content to remark, “On a map, all routes look safe.” He let it go at that for the time being.
Two more days went by. The expedition headed northwest across Bridger Basin, as the mountaineers called it, to the foothills of the Wyoming Range, which they hugged as they traveled north ward. They never ventured too far out onto the plain, where they would be exposed to hostiles nor did they cross arid tracts where they were li able to raise dust clouds that could be seen for miles.
Nate was kept busy every minute. Before firs light he was up to see that the cook fires were lit and pots of coffee brewed. The stock had to be watered and counted. Scouts had to be sent out. Then the expedition would get under way, the women and children at the center where they could be protected.
Until noon the column would wend along through the rolling hills, stopping at whatever source of water happened to be convenient whether a spring or a stream. Half an hour of res was all they were allowed. Jerky and pemmican sufficed to fill the empty bellies of those who couldn’t wait until evening.
During the afternoons, Nate always pushed their animals to cover as much ground as possible before sunset. Twilight would find them in camp the horses being bedded down, the women and few trappers at the cook pots, married men erecting lean-tos for some privacy.
A third day came and almost went. Nate mad it a point to rove the line from front to rear seven times a day. They weren’t in Blackfoot country yet, but the Blackfeet were known to roam far afield.
On this occasion, Nate had just left the horse herd and was riding back to check on the rear guard. His son and the Tennessean were along.
Zach had a question he was burning to ask. “Pa?” he began. “Do you really think we can get out of Blackfoot land without having our hair lifted?”
“We’ll try our best,” Nate said, rising in the stirrups to scour the woods for the men supposed to be dogging their steps.
“But will that be good enough?” Zach gnawed on his lower lip. “I heard some of the men jawing last night. They seem to think none of us will see the Green River again. But they came anyway. They say it’s the last chance they’ll ever have to raise enough beaver to fill their pokes.”
Henry Allen swiveled. “Shucks, son, most of us feel the same way. It’s nothing to fret about. If anyone can get us through this, it’s your pa.”
Zach had every confidence in his father. But the talk he’d overheard had upset him intensely. He’d been so thrilled to join a fur brigade that he hadn’t given the threat posed by the Blackfeet much thought. Now he knew why his pa had balked at taking the job.
Nate rose in the saddle again. His orders called for six mountain men to ride one hundred yards behind the horse herd at all times. Yet there was no sign of them. “Something is wrong,” he announced, jabbing his heels into the stallion.
Holding the Hawken across his waist, Nate hunted for sign. It wasn’t hard to find. Hoofprints revealed the six men had wheeled their mounts and trotted off to the south for some reason. He did likewise, but only at a brisk walk to avoid riding into an ambush.
“Yonder they are,” Henry Allen declared, pointing.
Coming through the pines were the six buckskin-clad trappers. In their lead was a lean man known as Wild Tom for his habit of getting so drunk at the rendezvous that he made a spectacle of himself. Seldom did he remember his antics, either. The man hollered and angled to meet them.
“What drew you off?” Nate inquired.
“Injuns,” Wild Tom answered. “Jud spotted four of them on that crest.” His rifle extended toward an adjacent ridge. “We went for a look but they had lit a shuck by the time we got there.”
“Tracks tell you anything?”
“Unshod horses is all,” Wild Tom said. “They were too far off for us to tell which tribe. Could have been Flatheads or Shoshones.”
Nate doubted it. The Shoshones and the Flatheads were the two friendliest tribes in the Rockies. Warriors from either tribe who spotted the expedition were bound to ride on down for a parley and to smoke a pipe. The fact that the Indians had sped off before the rear guard could reach them did not bode well.
“Keep your eyes skinned,” Nate advised. “I doubt they had our best interests at heart.”
“Maybe so,” Wild Tom allowed, “but at least we know they weren’t Blackfeet.”
The horses were the reason. Although practically every other tribe from Canada to Mexico relied heavily on the four-legged critters introduced by the Spanish, the Blackfeet still liked to go on raids on foot, just as their fathers had done, and their fathers” fathers before them.
“The Dakotas roam this far west,” Nate noted.
“Or it might have been Utes,” suggested one of the mountaineers beside Wild Tom. His idea was greeted with a few guffaws.
“Utes never come this far north,” another man stated. “Don’t you know anything?”
Henry Allen had the final say. “Which tribe doesn’t matter if they’re hostile. One knife is as good as another when it comes to scalping a man.”
The group made for the horse herd. By the position of the sun, Nate calculated they had an hour of travel time left. He left the rear guard, skirted the herd to keep from swallowing enough dust to choke a moose, and came abreast of the knot of women.
Winona was one of those in the lead, Blue Flower nestled in a cradleboard on her back. Her daughter had grown so much in recent months that in another few weeks Winona would have to wean her of the habit. As comfortable as the cradleboard was, at the end of each day her shoulders ached terribly.
Spying her husband approaching, Winona smiled and slowed so he could pull alongside her mare. She winked at Zach, who scrunched up his nose at his sister. “Three days and all is well,” Winona remarked.
“Maybe not for long,” Nate said. He related the latest news, adding, “Spread the word among the women. They’re not to wander off alone after we make camp. Have them go everywhere in pairs, even into the bushes. And make sure they carry rifles. There are plenty to go around, thanks to Ashworth.”
“Did you hear what he did last night?” Winona asked.
Nate shook his head.
“Clay Basket took him his supper. She had made stew from a deer her man had killed. Ashworth turned up his nose when she put it in front of him.”
“Typical greenhorn.”
“I am not finished, husband.” Winona chuckled. “He ate three helpings and six of her biscuits.”
“You don’t say?” Nate said. “Maybe he’s not hopeless, after all.” Twisting, he surveyed the ridge and the towering mountains beyond, bothered by the sensation of unseen eyes watching their every move.
“Is something wrong?” Winona probed. After a dozen years of being by her man’s side day in and day out, she was sensitive to his every innermost feeling.
“A case of bad nerves maybe,” Nate said.
Winona doubted it. He wasn’t the type to jump at shadows, at anything else.
The hour passed quickly. Between two hills that served as the gateway to a wide canyon, Nate called a halt. The horse herd was ushered into the canyon for safekeeping until dawn. Little forage was available, but Nate would rather have the animals hungry than missing. He directed that extra sentries be posted, and that at least four fires be kept lit all night.
Richard Ashworth observed all this while seated on a log in front of his tent. Munching on a piece of pemmican given him by one of the squaws, he reflected that he was glad King had come along. The man had proven invaluable in so many respects, among them a knack for getting the trappers to do work long and hard without complaining.
Ashworth went to take another bite, then saw his watchdog giving King what could only be described as the evil eye. “Don’t you dare, Emilio,” Ashworth said. “You’re not to lay a finger on him. Ever.”
The giant didn’t answer. Emilio had promised himself that before the expedition was over, he would show the big mountain man why he was the most feared member of La Cosa Nostra in all of Little Italy. No one put a hand on him and lived to tell of it. No one at all.
Nate came toward them. Ordinarily he would have ignored the swarthy giant, but after three days of being glared at, he wasn’t in the mood. Walking right up to Emilio, he said, “I don’t like how you stare at me all the time, mister. If you have something on your mind, speak your piece.”
Ashworth was on his feet and between them before Barzini could reply. “Now, now, Nate,” he said casually. “I realize there has been some bad blood between the two of you, but let’s put it behind us, shall we? We’re all on the same side.”
“Tell that to him,” Nate said.
“Emilio means you no harm,” Ashworth declared, and he nudged the hulking brute, trying to prompt him into confirming it. The giant stayed silent.
“I have enough to keep me busy without having to worry about him slipping up on me when I least expect it,” Nate said. He was inclined to goad the man into a fight then and there to settle matters.
“I give you my word that he won’t,” Ashworth said, even though he suspected that given the opportunity, Emilio just might. The man broke bones and killed people for a living; he was not about to adhere to any rules of proper conduct.
“Maybe it would help if you were to give him some work to do so he doesn’t stand around staring at folks all damn day,” Nate mentioned.
“He already has a job.”
“You could have fooled me. All he ever does is follow you around.”
“Believe it or not, that’s what he is supposed to do,” Ashworth said. “Emilio is here to guarantee that the money invested in our expedition isn’t wasted.”
Nate’s curiosity was piqued, but before he could learn more, a strident sound brought the entire camp to a standstill. It was the piercing scream of a woman.