Wilderness Double Edition 17, page 1
Fang and Claw
When an elderly Shoshone warrior comes to frontiersman Nate King asking for help, Nate agrees to lend a hand — no matter how strange the request may be. The old warrior knows he doesn’t have long to live and he wants to die in the remote canyon where his true love was killed many years before, slain by a giant bear straight out of Shoshone myth. No Shoshone will dare accompany the old warrior, so he and Nate will brave the dreaded canyon alone. And as Nate soon learns the hard way, some legends are far better left undisturbed.
Trackdown
Life in the wilderness of the Rockies is filled with dangers, some natural, some man-made. Any man who hopes to survive there soon has to learn to face these dangers and battle them head on. That’s a lesson frontiersman Nate King learned long ago. So when a savage war party abducts his wife and daughter, Nate isn’t about to surrender to despair. No matter where the search takes him, he will bring his family home. Even when the trail leads him to an area previously unexplored by white men, an area shunned even by the neighboring tribes because of its bad medicine, Nate continues on undaunted. To find his family he would battle any foe and face any threat. But what’s waiting for Nate at the end of his search is something he never expected … something almost beyond belief.
WILDERNESS DOUBLE EDITION
33: FANG AND CLAW
34: TRACKDOWN
By David Robbins Writing as David Thompson
First Published by Leisure Books in 2001
Copyright © 2001, 2018 by David Robbins
First Edition: December 2018
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
To Judy; Joshua, and Shane
WILDERNESS 33: FANG AND CLAW
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
WILDERNESS 34: TRACKDOWN
Author’s Note
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
VIX
X
XI
XII
About the Author
WILDERNESS 33
FANG AND CLAW
One
Nate King stepped outside with a heavy Hawken wedged against his broad shoulder. His piercing emerald-green eyes raked the surrounding woodland as his keen ears strained to detect unusual sounds. He saw nothing to explain the strident whinny of his black stallion, which was in a corral on the south side of his cabin.
The big stallion was the next best thing to a watchdog. It nickered whenever anyone approached or when it caught wind of predators.
Sidling along the wall, Nate kept his senses primed. Fringed buckskins clothed his brawny, muscular frame, while his thick thatch of raven hair was crowned by a beaver hat. He moved with the fluid ease and unconscious grace of a man whose sinews had been honed to steely resilience by a life spent on the raw frontier.
A pair of matched flintlocks were tucked under Nate’s wide, brown leather belt. Also adorning his narrow waist were a Green River knife and a tomahawk. In effect, he was a walking arsenal. He had to be. Surviving in the wild was no easy task. The wilderness was a harsh mistress. Those who weren’t prepared to deal with danger as it arose paid for their folly with their lives.
Nate came to the corner of the cabin. The stallion stood with its head high, ears pricked and nostrils flared, facing east. Again Nate scoured the forest, with the same result.
None of the other horses displayed the least alarm. The mare belonging to Nate’s wife was at the water trough slaking its thirst. Several other horses were dozing in the heat of the midday sun. A pack animal was nibbling bits of hay left over from when Nate fed them early that morning.
About to venture into the vegetation, Nate saw the stallion lower its head and relax. Whatever had been out there had evidently gone.
Nate hoped it wasn’t another mountain lion. He had striven long and hard to rid his valley of the big cats, just as he had rid his domain of grizzlies. All so his loved ones could move about without fear of being attacked. And while his son, Zach, had recently taken a wife and moved out, Nate still had his wife and daughter to think of.
The stallion pranced over to the rail, begging attention. Nate stroked its neck a bit, gave the terrain a last scrutiny, and retraced his steps, his rifle cradled in the crook of his elbow.
“What was it, Pa?”
Ten-year-old Evelyn was framed in the doorway. As adorable as a kitten, she wore a green dress decorated with white ribbons, fashioned after a picture she had seen in a catalog from St. Louis. Her mother had sewn it using material obtained in trade at Bent’s Fort.
“I didn’t see hide nor hair of anything,” Nate said.
Evelyn’s Shoshone heritage showed in her high cheekbones and long, dark tresses, but otherwise she took more after Nate than she did Winona. “Want me to fetch my rifle and we’ll go have a look-see?” she asked.
Nate didn’t think it was necessary, but it was rare for his daughter to make such an offer, so he said, “Sure. Go ahead. Better safe than sorry.”
“I’ll be right back.” Evelyn scooted off. She was as feisty as a bobcat, but she rarely went hunting or fishing or indulged in activities she deemed “unladylike.” Her favorite pastimes were dressing up and playing with her collection of dolls. Which, all things considered, was perfectly normal for a girl her age. But it disappointed Nate sometimes that she didn’t have more interest in learning skills more suitable to wilderness life.
Evelyn reappeared trailed by the woman who had claimed Nate’s heart nearly two decades ago. To Nate, Winona was every bit as lovely as she had been when he first set eyes on her. A full-blooded Shoshone, she had striking dark eyes and luxurious waist-length hair. A beaded buckskin dress clung to her full, winsome figure, and high moccasins adorned her small feet.
“Is something wrong, husband?”
“I don’t think so,” Nate said. “We’re just going to have a look around.”
Evelyn hefted her rifle, a smaller version of Nate’s, custom made for her by Sam Hawken himself. It had a short stock and barrel, and took a 36-caliber ball. Which was handy enough for shooting small game, but nowhere near powerful enough to stop a griz or a buffalo. “Ready when you are, Pa!”
Side by side they walked into the trees, Nate smiling inwardly at how earnest and somber she was, with her gun extended and her thumb on the hammer, ready to cock it. “Expecting the Blackfeet to pay us a visit, are you?” he quipped.
“Not really, no.” Evelyn avoided a bush that threatened to snag her dress. “It’s just that with Zach gone, I have to be of more help to Ma and you.”
“You do plenty,” Nate said. “You sweep out the cabin every morning, you help your mother cook and sew, and you have your other chores.”
“I don’t mean that stuff, Pa. I mean being more like Ma wants me to be.”
Puzzled, Nate asked, “And how is that?”
“She thinks I’m too much of a girl.”
Drawing up short, Nate put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Hold on. Suppose you explain.”
Evelyn averted her gaze. “I heard Ma and Zach talking a while back, right before he left to live with Louisa. Ma was saying how she would miss him, how it had been comforting for her to know he was always there to lend you a hand when you needed it.”
Nate was still perplexed. “What does that have to do with you?”
“Zach mentioned how I was still here to help. But Ma said it wasn’t the same, that I’m not like she was when she was little. I’d rather play with toys than hunt or fish or go riding.”
Nate didn’t quite know what to say. Winona was of the opinion that Evelyn was too prissy for her own good. But then, Winona had been taught to ride almost as soon as she learned to walk. And she had been instructed in how to use weapons in case she was ever called upon to help defend her village. “Comparing yourself to your mother is like comparing acorns and walnuts,” he finally said. “You can’t judge the worth of one by the other.”
“Why not?”
“They’re not the same. Neither are you and your ma.”
“Maybe so. But I aim to pull my own weight from now on. I’ll make Ma proud by being just like she wants me to be.”
A comment was on the tip of Nate’s tongue, but he didn’t utter it. His attention had been drawn to a footprint in a patch of bare, soft soil. Hunkering, he made note of the length, width, and depth, and distinguished a trace of stitching along the outer edge. It told him a great deal.
No two tribes made their moccasins exactly alike. Consequently, seasoned trackers were able to tell which tribe an Indian belonged to by their footwear. In this instance, the print revealed its maker had been a Shoshone warrior — much to Nate’s surprise. It was one of his wife’s people. Why then was the man skulking around their homestead?
“Is it a Blood or Piegan?” Evelyn asked, referring to allies of the notorious Blackfeet who had given them trouble before.
“No.”
“A Ute, then?”
The Utes once claimed the valley. Not long past, however, they had agreed to let the Kings live there unmolested in return for a valuable service Nate did them. “It’s a Shoshone,” he said, peering off into the brush.
“Someone we know?”
“We’ll soon find out.” The track was fresh, so fresh that whoever had made it couldn’t be far off. Roving about, Nate discovered more and followed them. The warrior had skirted their corral and gone into the trees to the west of the cabin.
Hunkering beside a broad pine, Nate debated whether to go on. He’d rather not expose his daughter to potential peril if he could help it. “We’re going back,” he whispered. “Stay close and keep your eyes skinned.”
“I want to go with you, Pa.”
“Nothing doing.”
“You’re not being fair. You’d let Zach tag along if he were here instead of me.”
“Zach is nine years older than you,” Nate pointed out.
“ ’Fess up. The real reason you won’t let me go is because I’m a girl.”
There were times, Nate reflected, when Evelyn was remarkably mature for her age. “I won’t let you come because I want you with your mother in case there’s trouble,” he said, which was true as far as it went. Nate took her hand. “No more sass, now.” Hunching low, he hurried on around to the front. They were almost to the door when a jay started squawking to the northwest.
“Pa?” Evelyn said.
“I hear it.” Nate moved faster, crossing the open space in a quick dash and barreling inside.
Winona was at the counter, skinning a rabbit she had caught in one of the snares she regularly set. When the door crashed open, she jumped, the bloody knife rising to slash and rend. “Husband!”
“We have company,” Nate informed her, and bobbed his bearded chin at Evelyn.
Winona caught on right away. “Leave Blue Flower with me,” she said, using their daughter’s Shoshone name. “We will watch from the window and be ready to help if you need us.”
“Bar the door,” Nate directed as he slipped back out. Only when he heard the thunk of the oak bar sliding into place did he pad to the north. Keenly conscious of how exposed he was, he tried not to dwell on the fact that a carefully aimed shot would easily bring him down. He was glad when he reached the tree line and melted into the jumbled growth.
Moving as stealthily as an Apache, Nate searched for the intruder. The jay had stopped squawking, but now a squirrel in a high spruce was irately chattering a blue streak thirty feet distant. Nate concentrated on the area below the spruce and tensed when a thicket rustled to the passage of a large form.
Hurtling forward, Nate crashed through the thick brush and raced past the spruce, confident he had taken the Shoshone by surprise. But no one was there. Halting in consternation, he peered deep into the thicket, then checked the immediate vicinity.
The squirrel was chittering at him now. Nate ignored it and hiked in ever-widening circles, seeking spoor. But the ground was too hard, and the only thing he found was a scuff mark that might or might not have been made by a human heel.
Undeterred, Nate spent the next half an hour diligently scouring the woods adjacent to the cabin. When it proved unproductive, he ventured eastward to a broad lake situated less than a hundred yards from his home.
Ducks and geese milled a stone’s throw from shore, a male mallard raising a racket when he appeared.
Nate figured that the intruder might have paid the lake a visit to quench his thirst. He sought sign in the muddy earth at the water’s edge, but the only tracks he saw were those of wild animals.
Reluctantly, Nate hiked up the trail linking the lake to the cabin. He had failed, and he did not take failure well. Especially where the safety of his family was concerned. At that very moment, whoever was out there might be watching him and chuckling at his expense.
The door opened before Nate reached it. Winona didn’t need to ask how it had gone. She could tell by his expression.
“Maybe the person has gone.”
“And maybe elk will learn to fly.” Nate gave the woods a last scan, then went in.
Evelyn was over by the fireplace, two of her dolls in hand. One was a brightly dressed maiden, the other a trapper in miniature buckskins, both courtesy of a Shoshone aunt with a wonderful facility for constructing lifelike toys. “Did you catch him, Pa?”
“Not yet.”
“You will,” Evelyn predicted with all the confidence in the world. “No one ever gets the better of you.”
Her faith was charming, typical of a child in a parent, but Nate wasn’t about to take anything for granted. Taking a seat at their table, he leaned the Hawken against it. The window afforded him a clear view of the cleared area bordering the front of their home. “At times like this I almost wish Zach hadn’t gone off on his own.”
Winona took a tin cup from their cupboard, filled it with steaming coffee from a batch she had just made, and brought it over. “All fledglings leave the nest eventually,” she said in her impeccable English. “I miss him as much as you do. But we have always fought our own fights, husband.”
Nate gazed into her lovely eyes. When they first met, he’d never suspected that under her beautiful exterior was a will of steel and courage beyond compare. Over the years she had tangled with bloodthirsty whites and red men alike; she had fought fierce beasts; she had baked in the heat of a desert and nearly froze to death in the frigid ice of winter; yet Winona never complained, never gave in, never allowed life to defeat her. She was the kind of woman any man would be proud to call his mate.
“It is most strange, this warrior,” Winona said, sinking down across from him. “He can’t be from my village, or he would know you were formally adopted into the tribe. He would know, as my family and friends do, that you are our friend.”
Nate grunted in agreement. Her relatives had all paid them a visit at one time or another, most simply to marvel at their log lodge. To the Shoshones, the very idea of a lodge that was rooted to the ground, that couldn’t be transported wherever the owner felt inclined to go, was incomprehensible. They had to see it to believe it.
“Maybe he is a Digger,” Winona speculated.
The Shoshones, or Snakes, numbered some six thousand. A little more than half dwelled in large villages and subsisted mainly on buffalo. The rest lived deep in the mountains in small communities of two to ten families, surviving on roots, fish, berries, and seeds. “Diggers” the whites called them, poor, timid souls who wore breech-clouts and were generally looked down on. While they were regarded as part of the Snake nation, the Diggers were as different from the other Shoshones as night was from day.
Those who, like Winona’s people, depended on the buffalo, were a lot like the Plains tribes, like the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho. They wore fine buckskins and were armed with bows, lances, and fusees. Rich in horses, they were always on the go, their villages seldom stationary for more than a week to ten days. Other tribes rated their warriors as formidable enemies, high praise by any standard.
Winona’s clan belonged to one of the larger, more powerful groups, and their leader, her cousin Touch The Clouds, was a pillar of the Shoshone nation, a warrior of tremendous size and prowess who had become one of Nate’s closest friends.
Nate had visited her people countless times. Always, he extended an open invitation to anyone who wanted to return the favor, and scores had taken him up on it. So he couldn’t see the intruder being someone who knew him, or even knew of him.
Unless the warrior was up to no good.
Suddenly there was a scratching sound at the door.
Nate came up out of his chair as if shot from a canon. Scooping up the Hawken, he flung the door wide, leveling the rifle as he did. But no one was there. Bewildered, he glanced right and left. Then he glanced straight down, and his bewilderment grew.
