The weasel addressed his two comrades, and together they rode not more than fifteen feet and reined up, waiting.
“I knew it,” Shakespeare said, and scowled.
“What?” Nate asked.
“They’re going to give us some trouble.”
“Do you know them?”
“Just the one wearing the blue cap. His name is Laclede. He’s a Frenchman. Never turn your back on him.”
“Why do you expect trouble?”
“Two years ago at the rendezvous I came across Laclede whipping a Nez Percé woman. Seems he bought her, then wasn’t satisfied with the purchase.”
“What happened?”
“I beat him with his own whip.”
Nate glanced at the frontiersman. “Didn’t you once tell me not to butt into the personal affairs of others?”
“The Good Lord gave us common sense so we can tell the difference between things like private matters and unjustified brutal behavior. He was whipping the poor woman out in the open. Her face and back were all bloody. She pleaded for him to stop and he wouldn’t. I took all I could stand, then tore the whip from him. The bastard tried to knife me in the back when I turned away. Made me a bit angry, so I gave him a taste of his own treatment.”
Nate studied the three men. “How can they cause trouble? Isn’t the rendezvous supposed to be neutral territory, as you put it, where no fights take place?”
“I never claimed fights don’t occur. The neutral part applies to the whites and the Indians. Almost any tribe can come here to trade without fear of being attacked. There are exceptions, of course, like the Blackfeet. But fights take place every single day. Some of them result in killing,” Shakespeare detailed. “So stay alert at all times and remember the advice I’ve given you.”
They drew nearer to the trio. Laclede said something to his friends that elicited bawdy laughter.
An intuitive feeling that something would indeed happen gripped Nate, and his visage hardened. He’d traveled to the rendezvous to enjoy himself, learn about the trapping trade, and mingle with the men of the mountains, not to spend his time brawling. Back in New York City he’d rarely been compelled to defend himself. His size alone deterred potential assailants. At six feet, two inches tall he possessed a naturally powerful physique that had been tempered by the elements and the arduous events of the past couple of months. His face had been bronzed by the sun and his long hair resembled a dark mane.
“Well, what have we here?” the weasel declared loudly in a distinct accent. “Are my eyes deceiving me, or is this the great Carcajou?”
Shakespeare halted six feet from the three men. “Still haven’t learned to curb that tongue of yours, have you, Laclede?” he said harshly. His right hand rested on his rifle.
Laclede smiled and extended both his arms in an exaggerated gesture of pure innocence. “I meant no disrespect, mon ami.”
“I’m not your friend and I never will be.”
“Vraiment! And how do you know? No one can predict the future, eh?”
“There are some things a man can predict with certainty. For instance. I know I’ll never eat buffalo droppings. In the same way I know I’ll never think of you as a friend.”
“Are you perhaps comparing me to buffalo droppings?”
A patently fake smile curled the frontiersman’s lips. “Would I do such a thing?”
For a fleeting instant transparent hostility flickered across Laclede’s countenance. He recovered quickly, though, and his smile returned. “No, of course you wouldn’t.” His gaze drifted to Nate and Winona. “And who might your companions be?”
“Nathaniel King, the man the Indians call Grizzly Killer, and his wife.”
“So, you are the Grizzly Killer?” Laclede said, regarding Nate intently.
“I am.”
“There was talk around the camp last night that you killed one of the mighty beasts not far from here.”
“Yesterday.”
“Tell me. How does one so young become so skilled at killing grizzlies?”
“Practice,” Nate said, and noticed Shakespeare grin.
“I have slain a few of them myself,” Laclede said. “They die hard.”
Nate didn’t bother to respond. He strongly disliked the man and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. One of the other men, he realized, was staring at Winona with a scarcely concealed lecherous expression.
“Will you be staying through the rest of the rendezvous?”
The frontiersman answered before Nate could reply. “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.”
“It is a good gathering this year. They say over four hundred white men are present. Magnifique, eh?”
“I suppose,” Shakespeare said noncommittally. “We’d like to go see for ourselves. Why don’t you move aside and let us pass?”
“Certainment, mon ami.” Laclede moved his horse to the left while the others moved theirs to the right.
Shakespeare rode forward between them.
His left hand holding the reins, his right on the Hawken, Nate slowly did likewise. He waited until he came abreast of the man with the lewd aspect, then suddenly leaned to the right and swung the heavy Hawken in a vicious arc.
None of the three men anticipated the move. The man smirking at Winona awakened to his peril too late. He grunted when the barrel slammed into his mouth, splitting his lips and jarring his teeth, and catapulted to the ground, his rifle flying. An audible thud sounded when he landed hard on his back. For a moment he lay there, dazed, then tried to rise. He froze when he saw the rifle pointed at his head.
“Not so much as a twitch,” Nate warned. He glanced around and saw Shakespeare covering Laclede, then focused on the man he’d hit.
Astonishment had been replaced by fury, and the lecher’s face was now a crimson hue. Blood trickled from his lips. “Why the hell did you strike me?” he demanded, and began to rise.
Nate cocked the Hawken, causing the lecher to freeze. “I won’t tell you again. Don’t move unless you want to die.”
“Fou! You’re crazy!”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“What did I do, bastard?”
“You know damn well what you did,” Nate said, the words clipped and low.
“I do not,” the man protested.
“Hey, Grizzly Killer,” Laclede interjected. “Around here men do not take kindly to being treated like a mongrel.”
“And I don’t take kindly to any man who looks at my wife the way your friend just did,” Nate responded.
“Maybe you imagined it, eh?”
Nate looked at the weasel. “Are you calling me a liar?”
Laclede seemed about to give a sarcastic retort until he gazed into the younger man’s eyes and changed his mind. “No,” he said. “I would not call you a liar. If you say Henri showed disrespect to your wife, then he did.”
“What?” Henri exploded. “Whose side are you on?”
“Be quiet or I’ll shoot you myself,” Laclede stated. “Everyone knows you have a fiery passion for the ladies. Too often your eyes roam where they shouldn’t roam.”
The man named Henri gingerly touched his lips and glared at Nate. “You have the advantage for now, monsieur.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I never threaten a man who is aiming a rifle at me,” Henri stated.
“Let’s go, Nate,” Shakespeare said.
Reluctantly, still angered by the man’s effrontery, Nate motioned for Winona to precede him, and once she had ridden past with the pack animals in tow he urged the mare after her, keeping his gaze on the trio all the while.
The frontiersman angled his white horse closer and rode to the left of the mare.
None of the three men so much as moved for a full fifteen seconds. Then the injured lecher stood and commenced arguing with Laclede.
“You’ve made an enemy there,” Shakespeare mentioned softly, looking over his left shoulder. “Maybe three enemies.”
“Did I handle myself properly?”
“Yes, and no.”
“Explain,” Nate prompted, also watching the trio.
“Well, you did right by defending Winona’s honor. I saw how he stared at her and I almost taught him some manners myself. But you did wrong by leaving him alive.”
“Are you saying I should have shot him?”
“You’d have saved yourself a lot of aggravation if you had. Mark my words. That man won’t rest until he’s taken revenge. You’d be wise to keep one eye over your shoulder at all times. Any way he can cause you misery, he will.”
“I couldn’t just up and shoot him, no matter how much he deserved it.”
“True. But you could have goaded him into trying to shoot you, then killed him in self-defense. That’s what I would have done.”
Nate looked back one last time. The lecher and Laclede were still quarreling. He hoped the frontiersman was wrong about future trouble, but realistically he knew Shakespeare was speaking the truth. Already his first rendezvous had been tainted by the prospect of impending violence. For that matter, life in the wild seemed to be an unending chain of one violent incident after another. As if having to worry about Indians and beasts wasn’t enough, he also had to be on his guard with other white men.
“Thank you, husband,” Winona interrupted his reflection, using proper English.
Employing sign language, Nate let her know he’d simply done as any husband would do.
Winona’s hands flew as she praised him for having the courage to defend her honor. There were some men, she maintained, who would not stand up for their wives no matter what.
“She’s right,” Shakespeare chimed in. “Some men don’t know the meaning of the word backbone. They’re weak in more ways than one. Sometimes it’s not their fault, though. They’re bred that way by parents who spoil them when they’re young, who spare the rod and spoil the child. Too much kindness can be as bad as too little.”
Nate recalled many sermons he’d listened to at church. “But what about turning the other cheek?”
“The Good Book says to turn the other cheek if someone slaps you on the face. It doesn’t say to lay down and let the other fellow stomp you to death.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Nate said, and chuckled. He abruptly remembered the Hawken and eased down the hammer. “Have you read the Bible, Shakespeare?”
“Yep. Once.”
“Do you believe in all you read?”
“Let’s just say I believe in more than I practice.”
“Did you understand all that you read?”
The frontiersman glanced at his friend, noticing the earnest expression cast his way. “Any man who claims to understand every word in the Bible is a fraud.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because no one man can claim to know all there is to know. Haven’t you ever wondered why there are so many religions? It’s because a dozen men will read the Bible and come up with a dozen different ideas about what it means. Oh, they’ll all agree on the essentials. But they’ll find enough to argue about so that they wind up at each other’s throats instead of loving one another like the Good Book tells us to do.”
“I’ve never read the whole Bible,” Nate said. “But my parents took me to church once a week whether I wanted to go or not. I have all the Commandments memorized. One of them seems to have no meaning whatsoever for men living out here, and that bothers me.”
“Thou shalt not kill?” Shakespeare said.
“How did you know?”
“Because you take after your Uncle Zeke. When he first came West, he was bothered by the same thing. After living all his life in New York City, where a person can go a whole lifetime and never have to kill a soul, it took some time for him to adjust to the conditions out here. He asked me about all the killing once, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told him,” Shakespeare stated. “First of all, the Indians know nothing about the Ten Commandments. Where an enemy is concerned, a warrior knows just one law. Kill or be killed. And in the case of the Blackfeet, they generally kill almost everyone else because they regard everyone else as enemies. They hate white men in particular.”
“Why is that?” Nate interrupted.
“Some folks attribute their hatred to the Lewis and Clark expedition, although I’m inclined to doubt that was the cause.”
“What did Lewis and Clark do?”
“Lewis, not Clark. In 1806, on their way back from the Pacific Ocean, they separated for a while so Lewis and a few other men could explore the Maria’s River country. A band of Blackfeet tried to steal the guns and horses of Lewis’s party, and Lewis was forced to shoot one of them in the belly. Another man stabbed a Blackfoot to death. Ever since, the Blackfeet have been out for white blood.”
“Why do you doubt that incident is the reason the Blackfeet hate all whites?”
“Because the Blackfeet were a contrary tribe long before Lewis met up with them. They love to make war, plain and simple.”
Nate pondered the disclosure and stared to the north. They were almost past the last of the Flathead lodges. Before them lay a wide field packed with trappers and Indians engaged in various activities. Some were merely talking. Others were taking part in horse races. Mainly the trappers were also engaged in foot races, wrestling matches, hopping contests, tossing a ball, and sundry sports. “Is there another reason a man should accept all the killing and the violence as just the way of life for those living in the wilderness?”
“Yes. The best one of all.”
“Which is?”
“You can go to sleep at night with a clear conscience.”
The frontiersman’s irrefutable logic made a profound impression on Nate. When he’d slain his first man the feat had bothered him for days. He’d been unable to sleep and eat. And he still hadn’t fully reconciled himself to the need to shed blood now and then. In New York City, as Shakespeare had noted, citizens were rarely compelled to slay other people. Apparently there were benefits to civilization, after all.
A raucous din filled the air, the whoops, cheers, and oaths of the participants.
“Does this go on throughout the entire rendezvous?” Nate inquired, having to raise his voice to be heard.
Shakespeare nodded. “Doesn’t let up for a minute until the last day.”
“They must need eleven months to rest up for the next one,” Nate joked.
Just then a piercing shriek arose from a lean man astride a black stallion. Attired in buckskins, a big wool cap on his head, the man waved a rifle overhead and galloped straight at them. “Shakespeare McNair, you mangy son of a bitch!” he bellowed. “I’m going to skin you like the polecat you are!”