Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 16
“And I love you.” Zach gazed into her lovely eyes for what would be the final time. She mustn’t suspect, or she would seek to stop him. “Never forget that. Not for as long as you live.”
“As long as I—?” Lou said. Something in his voice, in his eyes, spiked dread through her and she held him close. The giant was clawing higher, but she didn’t care. She molded herself to her betrothed and gave him a kiss to end all kisses.
Zach couldn’t delay another moment. The brute would soon reach them. Gently prying Lou off, he gloried in the beauty of her features, then abruptly took a step back, turned, and pressed a hand against the wall to push off.
“What are you doing?”
Just as Zach shoved, Lou grabbed him. They teetered outward, above the creature, and would have dropped had Zach not slammed both hands against the other wall and pushed them back onto the ledge.
Lou clung to him, quaking uncontrollably. “No, no, no.” She realized what he had been about to do, and the depth of his sacrifice moved her to tears. “I would rather die with you than go on living without you.”
Zach was too choked up to speak. He had to save her in spite of herself. He could still shove her, then jump. But knowing her, she’d probably leap after him. The only way to ensure she didn’t was to punch her on the jaw, to daze her long enough for him to accomplish what had to be done. But then she might fall.
“Did you hear me?” Lou asked, afraid he would try again.
Barely. The giant’s bellows and growls, the scrape of its nails, the pounding of its mallet fists, nearly drowned her out. Zach smiled, even as he bunched his right fist. He must act quickly, before he changed his mind.
Light suddenly bathed the cleft. Squinting up, Zach saw a pair of silhouettes framed by a blazing torch. “Grab hold of this! We’ll pull you up!” someone hollered. His pa, he thought.
“Grab hold of what?” Lou said.
Into the cleft dropped a rope. It dangled in front of them, within easy reach, and Zach snagged it. “You first,” he said.
Unwilling to leave him, Lou balked. “What about you?”
“They can’t lift us both at the same time,” Zach noted. “Now, hurry!” Shoving the rope into her hands, he tugged, then shouted, “Pull, Pa, pull! She’s ready!” He stepped back as Lou fairly flew toward the rim, swinging like a pendulum. Her legs clipped him on the shoulder, and he had to gouge his fingers into the wall to keep from doing what he had been intent on doing just a minute before.
A shriek ripped from the giant. It saw its quarry eluding it and redoubled its frenzied efforts.
Relief washed over Zach like spring rain as Lou was hauled out of the cleft to safety. He sidled to the end of the ledge to wait for the rope to be thrown back down. By now the creature was so close it could almost seize him, but it had slowed, squinting against the torchlight. Like the NunumBi, a lifetime of underground existence had rendered its eye sensitive to bright light.
A gigantic hand groped upward. Zach had gone as far as he could, and he watched in helpless fascination as its thick fingers made contact with the ledge and probed over the lip, questing for his legs. They were six inches away, then five, then four. He started when something hit him across the shoulder and chest, and swatting at it, he saw it was the rope.
“Hold on, son! We’ll get you out of there!”
Zach gripped it tightly. “Now, Pa!” The giant’s hand was an inch from his foot. As he rose, a finger brushed against his ankle. Instantly, the giant grabbed at his leg but narrowly missed. “Faster, Pa, or I’m a goner!”
The rope shot upward. Zach knew his father was strong, but he never imagined his pa could lift him as if he weighed no more than a feather. Another colossal roar thundered as he rose clear of the rim and was dragged a dozen feet. Strong hands raised him by his shoulders, and he turned, smiling, expecting his father. But it was someone else. “Touch the Clouds!” he blurted.
The tall Shoshone was haggard and worn, his buckskins streaked with grime. Clapping Zach on the back, he said in his own tongue, “Finding you alive makes my heart glad, Stalking Coyote.”
“But how did you get here? Where did you come from?” Of all the warriors in the tribe, Zach had always admired Touch the Clouds most.
“It is a story for later,” the living legend said.
Nate and Winona came from the shadows. Evelyn, holding the torch, was backing away from the opening. “Your sister heard you leave and woke us up,” his father revealed. “Touch the Clouds showed up as we were coming after you. Good thing that we did.”
Louisa darted to Zach, flinging her arms around his neck. “We’re safe now, darling! We’ve nothing to worry about!”
As if to prove her wrong, the ground around the cleft heaved and a gargantuan arm flailed skyward. The giant commenced tearing out clods of earth to make the opening wide enough to clamber out.
Evelyn screeched and ran to her mother. “What is it, Ma? What is that thing?”
“Give me a gun!” Zach said. “We can’t let it reach the surface!”
Nate flung the rope down and ran toward the monstrosity, yelling, “Get them out of here, Winona! Take cover!”
Winona did as she was bid. The girls and Touch the Clouds trailed her, but not Zach. He hadn’t deserted Lou, he wouldn’t desert his father. “Pa! You can’t fight that thing!” Zach had no weapons other than his knife, which he whipped out as he broke into a run. His father didn’t realize what they were up against. Zach had to get him out of there before the giant broke through.
At the west end of the cleft, Nate squatted. From his possibles bag he quickly took his fire steel and flint.
“Pa, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Zach said, hunkering beside him. The ogre’s arm was only a couple of yards away, clawing at the soil, the monster rumbling like a steam engine. “We have to—” Zach began, then saw what his father was doing. Sparks leaped, igniting thin lines of black powder, and flames and smoke flashed toward kegs that had been wedged into the cleft. “Oh, Lordy.”
Nate rose, grasped his son, and hurtled toward the pines. He had a log already picked out, and, practically heaving Zach behind it, he dived flat just as the kegs went up. The explosion was everything he had hoped it would be. Tons of dirt and rock spewed into the air as the ground underneath shuddered, then the debris cascaded down onto the cleft, which was collapsing in on itself. An earsplitting shriek was smothered by the titanic blast. Nate didn’t move until the last of the earth and stones showered down, until the ground subsided and the dust thinned. He was caked with dirt and stinging from bruises. Coughing, he swatted at particles hanging in the air, and slowly stood.
“You did it, Pa,” Zach said, not quite able to grasp that they had really been saved. It had happened so fast.
The cleft was no more. The entrance to the netherworld had been obliterated. A mound of dirt and stones would serve as a lasting marker—and a lasting warning.
Winona brought Evelyn and Lou into the open. Giggling, the girls clasped each other and danced in a circle.
Touch the Clouds joined them, raising his hands to the heavens and beginning a singsong chant. He was thanking Apo for their deliverance, and for his own, when the NunumBi chased him into that tree, and he had spent the night in the highest branches he could reach, the creatures prowling below until the crack of dawn.
Nate looked at his son. He should be mad, he should punish Zach for disobeying and going off alone. But he had to remember that Zach was on the verge of manhood, and no man would have done differently when the life of the woman he loved was at stake. “We did it,” he amended.
Winona was glad it was finished. Their lives could return to normal. Their valley, their home, was safe. “The terror is over,” she said in Shoshone, and her husband, her son, and her daughter all looked at her and smiled.
Touch the Clouds stopped singing. He had not told them yet about Old Charlie Walker. They were so happy, so relieved, he was reluctant to bring them bad tidings. But they had to know, they had to be warned. He cleared his throat.
Afterword
Transcribing the King journals presents unusual challenges.
Most entries detail the day-to-day life of an average mountain man, or mountaineer, as they liked to call themselves. Dramatic moments, such as clashes with unfriendly tribes, encounters with vicious whites, and conflicts with savage beasts, have formed the crux of the Wilderness series. I have done my best to retell them as faithfully as possible, to relate them as stories you might hear were you seated around a roaring campfire with those who experienced them.
But what are we to make of the more sensational entries? The hairy man-beasts Nate battled in Wilderness #9? The time he says he was sucked up into a tornado and lived? The lost valley in Wilderness #23? And now the NunumBi?
Did the events occur as Nate King recorded them? Or was he “pulling our leg”? Mountain men were notorious for telling tall tales. Bridger, Meek, Russell, they all enjoyed swapping yams to see who could outdo the other. Are some of Nate King’s entries in the same vein?
Ultimately, you, the reader, must decide.
What do I believe? I try to stay impartial, but some of the accounts do strain belief. There are a few I’ve hesitated to transcribe for that very reason.
But who knows. Perhaps one day you’ll read about his run-in with the “red-headed cannibals” of Shoshone legend. Or that lake, high in the Rockies, where a water beast lurks. Or the great bear, the last of its kind, that decapitated buffalo with a swipe of a paw.
Time will tell.
WILDERNESS 30
SAVAGES
Chapter One
“How much farther, do you reckon?”
Zachary King rose in his stirrups to scan the prairie ahead. For what seemed ages they had been traveling steadily eastward across the vast sea of grass, and he knew his companion was eager to reach their destination. He wasn’t, though. Not when there would be thousands upon thousands of whites, with nearly every one looking down their nose at him. “Another day or two,” he guessed.
Louisa May Clark sniffed in irritation. She was tired of the heat, the dust, the endless hours spent in the saddle. Every morning when she woke, her legs were so sore and stiff she could hardly walk. Tilting her head back to squint at the sun, she muttered, “Well, a couple of more shouldn’t kill us.”
They had come close to dying several times. Once from a buffalo stampede. Once during a fierce afternoon storm when a bolt of lightning crashed to earth twenty yards from the gully they had sought shelter in. And a third time when curious wolves nearly spooked their horses into running off.
Both Zach and Lou were dressed in buckskins that clung to their youthful frames. Zach was strongly built for his age, his piercing green eyes in stark contrast to his raven-black hair, which hung in thick braids. Across his chest were slanted a powder horn, ammunition pouch, and possibles bag. On his left hip hung a Bowie, a gift from his father for his eighteenth birthday. Tucked under his wide brown leather belt, on either side of the big buckle, was a matched set of flintlock pistols. A heavy Hawken rested across his thighs.
Louisa’s eyes were deepest blue, her face tanned bronze yet still a lighter shade than his. Befitting someone who had recently turned seventeen, her lovely features were taking on an air of maturity. Sandy hair cascaded well past her slender shoulders. Now, arching an eyebrow in response to his sour expression, she asked, “Having second thoughts?”
“I want you to be happy,” Zach said. Which avoided the question nicely.
Smiling, Louisa leaned toward him and gave his arm a gentle squeeze. For once in her life she had done something right. She had found someone who loved her with his whole heart and soul, someone who would do anything for her. Lou couldn’t wait to become his, officially. She couldn’t wait for the preacher to declare, “I pronounce you husband and wife.”
Zach returned her smile, but his gut tightened into a knot. He wouldn’t be bound for St. Louis if not for her. In his estimation, it was unnecessary. There was no need for a formal white wedding, not when a Shoshone ceremony would suffice.
“I still can’t believe they went to so much bother on my account,” Lou commented, patting her possibles bag. In it was the letter she had received from her aunt, delivered by a friend of Zach’s father. “And how in tarnation did my aunt track Jim Bridger down?”
“He’s fairly famous, as mountaineers go,” Zach mentioned. “Your aunt paid a visit to the Hawken gun shop, and he just happened to be there. She’d heard tell that’s where most trappers and mountain men are outfitted for the Rockies.”
“Mighty clever of her,” Louisa said. She had always liked her aunt Martha, her mother’s older sister. When she was a little girl, Martha used to perch her on a knee and tell her fables and stories. And later Martha had given her a doll she’d treasured until a neighbor’s dog ripped it to ribbons.
“I suppose,” Zach said. The way he saw it, Martha Livingston was more a meddler than anything else. He’d been all set to take Lou as his wife and had even picked out a site for their cabin when the letter came, saying how Martha and other in-laws of Lou’s would be in St. Louis for the entire month of August, and requesting Zebulon and Louisa join them there. Lou’s relatives had no idea that Zeb, her pa, had been killed by a war party, slain while trying to defend his hard-earned furs.
Lou recognized her betrothed’s tone. “You’ll enjoy meeting them. They’re fine folks, all of them. As friendly as can be. Trust me.”
Zach trusted her with his life. It was her relatives he was wary of, just as he was wary of every white. Half-breeds weren’t held in high esteem by most, an injustice that rankled him like an open sore.
“As I recollect,” Louisa chattered on, “Aunt Martha was four years older than Marcy, my mother. She’s married to a lawyer by the name of Earnest. Her oldest son, my cousin Harry, also came. Then there’s my uncle from my pa’s side of the family, and his two daughters.” Beaming, she declared, “Oh, Stalking Coyote, it will be grand to see them again!”
Zach grunted. She had used his Shoshone name, as she often did at emotional moments. He would try to like her relations, but it might prove difficult. By and large, whites held dim views of those of mixed blood.
Their horses, his dun and her mare, plodded wearily on until shortly past noon. Thanks to Zach’s keen eyesight, he spotted a bump on the horizon long before Lou did, a bump that grew larger and larger, slowly taking on the dimensions of an isolated dwelling made mainly of sod. Zach had never seen the like. Fresh-hung laundry strung between two saplings was proof the house was occupied, as were three horses in a small corral.
“Oh, look!” Lou exclaimed. “We must be getting close to civilization.”
“Wonderful.”
A ten acre plot had been tilled. Rows of corn were the result. Examining the stalks was a gangly man in overalls and a floppy hat who glanced up sharply at their approach. His mouth going slack, he spun and sped to the homestead, bawling at the top of his lungs, “Beth! Beth! Fetch my long gun! Injuns are comin’!”
A stout woman in a homespun dress and faded apron filled the doorway and handed the farmer a Kentucky rifle. He had it snug against his shoulder when Zach and Lou reined up a dozen feet out.
“Howdy, mister,” Lou said amiably. “Sorry if we startled you. But as you can see, I’m not an Indian.”
“Dog my cats!” the farmer blurted. “A white gal, ridin’ alone with the likes of a mangy redskin.” He emphasized his point by swinging the rifle’s muzzle toward Zach. “What tribe are you from, Injun? You don’t look like no Otoe or Pawnee I ever saw.”
Lou answered before Zach could. “He’s part Shoshone, and as friendly as I am. There’s no need to be waving a gun at us.”
“Says you, missy,” the settler responded. “Not three months ago some redskins massacred a family north of here. We never did learn what kind are to blame. Not that it’s important.” The man glared at Zach. “In my book, all Injuns are the same. The world’s better off without ’em.”
“You can’t mean that,” Lou said. “Indians are people, just like us. There are good ones and bad ones—”
The farmer wouldn’t listen. “I’ve yet to hear tell of an Injun worth the powder it would take to make worm food of him. Didn’t Andrew Jackson, back when he was president, say we should rub out every last one? Seems to me if anyone should know what to do with ’em, it’s a leader of our country.”
Zach wanted to tear the gun from the man’s hands and shove it down his throat. Time and again he’d run into bigots just like this settler. Men who shared the same senseless attitude, who spouted the same mindless hatred. Beckoning Louisa, he raised his reins to ride off.
“All we want to know is how far we are from St. Louis,” Lou said.
“You’re not thinkin’ of going there with him?” the farmer said. “Hell, girl. They eat Injuns alive in the big city.”
His wife, who had listened to the exchange as calmly as could be, abruptly tapped the farmer on the left shoulder. “Tell her, Jeb.”
“Ah, Beth. They’ll find out soon enough on their own. I don’t much like helpin’ an Injun.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Beth said, and gestured to the southeast. “You’ve got about a two-day ride, dear. Just keep going east until you come to the Mississippi, and follow it south. You can’t hardly miss St. Louis.”
“We’re grateful, ma’am,” Lou said sincerely, adding, “You have my sympathy, being tied to a mule who goes through life with blinders on.”
“Who are you calling a mule?” the farmer demanded, taking a step toward them.
“Behave yourself, Jeb,” Beth said. “She’s young. She doesn’t mean any harm.”
Lou flicked her reins and Zach kept pace, smoldering like an ember in a fire. It wasn’t in his nature to suffer abuse meekly, as a white missionary had once told him he should do. No Shoshone warrior worthy of the name would stand for being insulted. At the very least, he should have counted coup on the farmer by bashing the fool over the head with his Henry.
