Wilderness Double Edition #9, page 12
Clay Basket paused, looked down at George’s rifle, and hastily retrieved it. “I will keep up,” she pledged.
A horse and rider were barreling through the undergrowth less than thirty yards away. Nate whirled and fled once again, southward this time, skirting the thicket and crossing a moonlit glade. Clay Basket might have been part of him, so smoothly did she run at his side. When he swerved, she did. When he vaulted over a log, she did the same without breaking stride or causing him to either. Whatever he did, she duplicated it flawlessly. They ran in virtual silence thanks to the thick carpet of pine needles underfoot.
“Quince! Roarke! The rest of you! Over here!”
Nate knew that Johnny and George had been found. Soon the others would be in pursuit, provided they could track at night. Some Indians could. The average trapper became a fair hand at it out of necessity, but few became adept enough to rival the Indians. Then Nate thought of Belker, and something told him that there was a man who could track an ant over solid rock.
At least, Nate reflected, he had reduced the odds by one, possibly two, since if George lived he would be in no shape to pose a threat. Which left Galt, Belker, Roarke, Sterret, and Quince. Nate needed to remember those names. If he survived, if the renegades got away, he would let all the other trappers at the upcoming Rendezvous know who had been part of the bloodthirsty band. The word would spread like wildfire to all friendly Indian tribes, and be taken back to St. Louis with the caravan traders. Galt and company would find themselves the objects of the biggest manhunt in the history of the frontier. Their lives wouldn’t be worth a pile of buffalo chips.
Galt was smart. He had to realize that. So Nate couldn’t count on the renegades giving up easily. They’d scour the countryside for miles around, take days if need be. Evading them was going to be a chore.
Just how much of a chore became apparent when Nate heard the pounding of hoofs. Darting behind a pine, he crouched down in the nick of time. A pair of renegades galloped past, not fifty feet to the east. They neither slowed nor spoke and were presently out of sight.
“That was close,” Nate whispered in Clay Basket’s ear. “We’d best sit tight for a minute. They just might swing on around.”
“You are very brave, Jess Smith. I can never thank you for what you have done.”
“King. Nate King,” Nate corrected her. “I gave them a different name because they might have heard of me.”
“I do not understand.”
“If they’d known who I really was, they’d have killed me as soon as I stepped into their camp.”
“Are you a friend of the Blanket Chief?”
That was the Indian name for Jim Bridger, without a doubt the most widely respected trapper alive. His word carried more weight with the Indians than the word of practically all other white men combined. Only Shakespeare McNair had an equal reputation. “I am,” Nate admitted. “And I’m an even closer friend of the man your people know as Wolverine Killer.”
Clay Basket was trying to study his features in the darkness. “How else are you known?” she inquired.
“The Shoshones and Flatheads call me Grizzly Killer.”
“I have heard of you. Once, many moons ago, Wolverine Killer and you visited the village of our high chief, Long Hair. It was said you brought him horses and eagle feathers to restore the honor of a warrior who died in disgrace.”
Nate had nearly forgotten about that day. “He was a good man. I owed it to him,” he answered, and let it go at that.
To the southeast the two riders could be heard sweeping the area. Nate elected to stay put for the time being since they were safe from detection.
“Is it true you are an adopted Shoshone?” Clay Basket whispered.
“It is.”
“My Nelson wants my people to adopt him,” she said proudly. “I hope they will agree.”
“He loves you very much,” Nate mentioned. “When we found him, he told us to forget about him and go after you. Your safety came first. He didn’t care about himself.”
Clay Basket’s head bowed, her hair falling across her face. “My heart is his forever. I could not live without him.”
Just then Nate stared northward and caught a hint of someone moving. He put a hand to her mouth and pulled her lower. The stout figure glided nearer, a lone renegade bent at the waist, examining the ground. Nate didn’t need to see the man clearly to know who it was: Belker, he of the huge knife and sinister eyes.
Nate put a hand on his left pistol. He’d let Belker get closer, right up to the pine in fact, and fire at almost point-blank range so he couldn’t miss. Then there would be two down and only five to deal with. But the cutthroat thwarted him.
Belker halted twenty feet away and bent down to touch the ground. His head snapped up, but he looked to the southeast, not at the pine. For several seconds he was like a statue. Unexpectedly, he turned and headed due west, dashing into the trees.
The move perplexed Nate. Why, if Belker had been tracking them, had the killer gone in an entirely different direction? And why had Belker stared to the southeast? Nate did the same, and saw the two riders returning. Spaced a dozen yards apart, they were searching around every bush, under every tree.
“Damn,” Nate whispered. He gestured at Clay Basket, turned, and bore to the southwest. There was plenty of cover, so he had no difficulty in eluding the horsemen. Once he felt they had covered enough ground, he rose and resumed running.
Nate often thought of being abroad in the forest at night as a dream-like experience. The delicate play of shadows and pale moonlight lent the terrain an eerie aspect heightened by the often total silence and complete lack of wildlife. It was so different from the same forest during the day when the sun blazed and the wild creatures were singing or scampering about, when the forest was so vibrant with life.
Ten minutes elapsed. Nate stopped at the edge of a meadow to reload the spent pistol and to allow Clay Basket to catch her breath. Somewhere close at hand an owl hooted.
“They will keep looking for a long time, will they not?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have horses?”
Nate nodded as he opened the flap on his ammo pouch. “But the only way to get to them without attracting attention is to swing wide to the west. If we push ourselves, and if we don’t run into any problems, we can reach the spot by dawn.”
“Then let us keep going. I want to see my Nelson.”
“Whatever you want.”
Nate had a course worked out in his head. Since the renegades were concentrating on a narrow area, all he had to do was outflank them. He did so by bearing to the south-west for an hour and then turning westward. Besides a few crickets and coyotes, they had the night to themselves.
“Do you have a woman, Grizzly Killer?” Clay Basket asked at one point.
“Yep. The prettiest Shoshone ever born,” Nate boasted, grinning. “And we have two sprouts too. A boy and a girl.”
“Do you ever regret taking her for your wife?”
The unanticipated question prompted Nate to glance at her. “Never. Why would you ask such a thing?”
“I sometimes think Nelson will one day believe he made a mistake and he will go back to his own people.”
“If you’d heard him urging us to save you, you’d know how silly you sound,” Nate told her. “I’ve never met a man anywhere more in love than he is. He’ll stick by you through thick and thin.”
“I hope so,” Clay Basket declared.
The conversation made Nate think of his own wife, and he longed to be holding her in his arms again and inhaling the fragrant scent of her hair. As much as he enjoyed the life of a free trapper, there were certain drawbacks every trapper had to accept, one of them being long periods away from loved ones. He was about to remark as much to the Crow woman when there arose a loud crackling in the trees directly ahead.
Nate halted and motioned for her to do the same. He trained his Hawken on a dark blotch of trees, then crouched. Clay Basket imitated him, ready to back him up with the rifle she had taken from George.
The trees moved, some of the limbs swaying violently.
Nate saw, and blinked. Those limbs were seven or eight feet off the ground. Whatever was in there had to be enormous. Mentally, he ticked off a short list of likely creatures: an elk, a grizzly, or something smaller in the tree itself. Whatever it was suddenly grunted, a deep, guttural grunt such as a bear would make, only much deeper than any bear Nate had ever heard.
“What is it?” Clay Basket asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Nate admitted. Unbidden, he remembered the tale Pepin had told of the mysterious Canadian mammoth. He peered intently into the inky gloom, and swore he saw the vague outline of a gigantic beast standing on two legs. Yet when he closed his eyes a second and opened them again, the outline was gone.
“I thought I saw something,” Clay Basket said.
Nate listened to the crackling as the strange animal moved about. The thing didn’t seem to be in any great hurry to move on, so to avoid a confrontation, Nate took Clay Basket’s wrist and slanted to the right to go around.
There was a crack, as of a tree limb being broken, followed by a disturbing silence.
Nate didn’t stop. He wanted no part of the unknown creature. As he hurried along, he experienced the sensation of unseen eyes watching him, and the short hairs at the nape of his neck prickled. A glance at Clay Basket confirmed she was equally anxious. Frayed nerves, he figured. The two of them had been under a constant strain for so long that their minds were playing tricks on them.
After several minutes Nate allowed himself to relax. The animal hadn’t given chase, so they were safe. He surveyed the landscape, trying to guess their position in relation to where the horses were tied, and calculated they were a mile or more to the southwest. On all sides reared heavy timber, with a lot of downed trees and thick brush that would slow them down. They would be lucky if they reached the horses by first light, as he wanted to do.
Half an hour went by. Nate had the Hawken resting on his shoulder and was strolling along the bottom of a gulch they had stumbled on. Here there were fewer obstacles and the going was easier. He checked on Clay Basket, and saw her fiddling with a moccasin. And then, as he was partially turned toward her, there was the rattle of dirt on the gully slope, a swishing noise, and something heavy pounced on his back.
Eleven
Nate King’s first thought, on hearing the rattle of the dirt, was that the creature they had encountered earlier had stalked them and was attacking him. He tried to spin, but was way too slow. The impact smashed him to the ground so hard the breath whooshed from his lungs. He felt the Hawken being tom from his grasp, and through a haze of pain he saw Clay Basket bringing her rifle to bear even as a sharp object gouged him in the side of the neck and a gruff voice spoke.
“Try it, squaw, and this son of a bitch dies!”
It was Belker! Nate realized, and tried to move, but the renegade was on his back, kneeling on him, pinning him in place. Clay Basket glanced at him, then at the killer. Reluctantly, she lowered her rifle and took a step back.
“How touching!” Belker quipped. “I knew there was more to this bastard than he let on. What, is he your lover?”
“He is a friend,” Clay Basket answered indignantly.
“And I’m the king of England,” Belker said. “The two of you didn’t fool me for a minute. I saw the way he was watchin’ you when he thought no one else would notice. Idiots!”
Nate was trying to get his right arm out from under him so he could reach for his tomahawk. He had almost succeeded when the knife point gouged deeper into his neck and a hand seized hold of his hair and yanked on his head.
“Try that, fool, and I’ll slit you from ear to ear!” Belker hissed. He slid off Nate and stood, hauling Nate erect by the hair. “Give me any excuse and you’re a dead man, no matter what Galt wants.”
Nate was given a rough shove that sent him stumbling toward Clay Basket. He kept his balance, drew up short, and was poised to draw a pistol when he saw the renegade had already done so.
“Drop all your weapons, Smith. Nice and slow.”
Only a fool resisted while staring down the barrel of a .55-caliber flintlock. Simmering with anger at being caught so handily, Nate removed all four of his belt weapons. The smirk on Belker’s grimy face only aggravated him more.
“That’s a good boy,” the cutthroat taunted. “I knew you’d be reasonable about it.” Chuckling, he wagged his pistol. “Now back up.”
Nate’s blood boiled as he helplessly watched Belker taking possession of their arms, and he wanted to kick himself for being so careless. He had to rein in a suicidal urge to make a mad dash at the renegade. Presently he was looking down the barrel of his own Hawken instead of a pistol.
“Next we march out and around to the top of this gully so I can fetch my rifle,” Belker said. “Keep your hands where I can see them, because I assure you I have no qualms about shootin’ either of you in the back if you give me the slightest cause.”
Nate believed him. Turning, he allowed Clay Basket to go first. That way, he could block Belker’s view of her if he had to. He tried to catch her eye and signal her with a bob of his head to let her know she should make a bid to escape if the opportunity presented itself, but she was staring at the ground, dejected. They retraced their steps to the mouth of the gully, and began climbing a gradual incline to the top.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Smith,” Belker commented. “You gave the others a merry chase. But then, they’re not the tracker I am. I found your trail right away and almost blundered onto you when you were hiding behind that pine. Remember?”
Nate wasn’t going to respond, but a sharp poke between the shoulder blades changed his mind. “I remember,” he said sullenly.
“I knew the two of you were hidin’ there, so I went off into the brush and waited for you to show yourselves. Then I followed you until I saw my chance. Pretty clever, huh?”
“Was that you in the trees?” Nate asked.
“What trees?”
“In that stand a while back, breaking limbs and making those sounds?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I never got too close because I didn’t want you spottin’ me before I was ready to make my move.”
Nate came to the rim of the gully. Grass and bushes grew to the very edge, and he was obliged to step around some of the latter as he followed Clay Basket toward the spot where Belker had jumped them from the rim. A germ of an idea formed, and he scanned the slope in front of them. He glanced back, measuring the distance between the renegade and him, and suppressed a grin.
“Have you ever seen someone have their belly slit and their innards ripped out?” Belker was saying. “I have. It ain’t a sight for the squeamish.” He snickered. “I expect I’ll get to see it again when Galt starts in on you. Trust me, pilgrim. He’s not the kind of man you want to rile. Something inside of him snaps and he goes all crazy. Why, once I saw him carve a man up so bad the man didn’t hardly look human no more when Galt was done.”
“I bet you’ve done your share,” Nate remarked.
“Meaning?”
“I’ve heard about you, Belker. You’re no saint.”
The renegade chortled. “No, I ain’t. I’ve planted a few jackasses in my time. But I always do the job neat and clean, not like Galt. He likes to see people suffer, likes to see them squirm and hear them beg for their lives. One time he reached inside a guy he’d cut open and pulled the feller’s heart out with his bare hand. Lordy, was that a sight!”
Nate had slowed a bit so Clay Basket could gain a couple of yards on them. He didn’t want her to be too close when he made his move.
“I swear that Galt was born wrong,” Belker had gone on. “He should have been born a Blackfoot or an Apache instead of a white man. He’d have been right at home with them.”
“And you don’t mind riding with someone like him?”
“Mind, hell! He’s making us rich, ain’t he? I don’t care how crazy he gets just so we keep on filling our pokes with fur money.”
Another bush appeared in front of Nate, the largest yet, over three feet high. This time, instead of going around the plant on the left side, where the ground was level, he went around on the right side, where the slope dropped away to the bottom of the gully. Almost immediately the loose earth gave way under his foot and he started to slip.
“Not that way, damn you!” Belker bellowed.
Nate deliberately fell onto his stomach and clawed at the slope, pretending he was caught in gravity’s grip, while at the same time he dug in his toes to arrest his descent. He also pretended to pay no attention at all to the renegade, who stepped close to the edge and glared down at him.
“Get back up here!”
“I’m trying,” Nate lied, scrambling faster, his left hand moving closer and closer to Belker’s legs each time he dug his fingers into the earth.
“Try harder, idiot.” Belker motioned impatiently, and when he did the barrel of the Hawken swung to one side.
This was the moment Nate had been waiting for. Braced on his toes, he lunged upward, still pretending to be clawing at the slope when in reality he was diving at Belker’s legs. His left arm looped around both of the cutthroat’s ankles and with a tremendous heave he upended Belker and pulled.
Venting a string of oaths, the renegade plummeted over the edge, tumbling downward, one rifle flying but not the Hawken. Together they rolled to the very bottom, where Nate released his hold and seized the Hawken by the barrel. With a terrific wrench he gained control of the gun, but as he did it went off almost in his face.
“Damn you!” Belker roared, rising. His hand swooped to his belt and flashed out holding the long knife he favored. “To hell with Galt! I’m putting you under right here and now!”
