Wilderness Double Edition 17, page 24
“Think so, do you? I’ve tried a couple of hundred times and I’m still here. The Sa-gah-lee always catch me and bring me back.” Ezriah sighed. “About five years ago I stopped trying altogether. I reckon I’ll live out the rest of my days in this wretched place.”
“That need not be. The five of us working together can succeed where you have failed.”
“Five?” Ezriah’s eye swiveled to Evelyn. “Oh. You’re including the sprout. She’s just a kid. What good would she be?”
“My daughter is quite resourceful. Do not dismiss her out of hand because of her age or size.”
“It doesn’t matter how clever she is, or how clever you are. We’re boxed in up here. There’s no way off the mesa except through the tunnel, and it’s always guarded. At night they slide heavy logs across it, logs that take two or three men to move. Even if you managed to reach it, you couldn’t budge them on your own.”
“The five of us could,” Winona said.
Ezriah frowned. “Count me out.”
“Why? You do not want to escape after all this time?”
“Of course I do!” Ezriah snapped. “I just can’t take another disappointment, is all. I’ve tried and failed so many times, I couldn’t bear to fail again.”
“Trust me. We will succeed.”
Ezriah unexpectedly hopped to his feet and grinned impishly. “Ain’t you a peach? I admire a woman with confidence, just so it doesn’t get me killed. And as miserable as the past twenty years have been, at least I’ve spent them alive.” He ambled on out, muttering to himself and shaking his head.
The Flatheads had huddled on the other side of the room, but now that he was gone, they bustled over and sat.
“You should not go near the crazy one,” Spotted Doe said. “He is dangerous.”
“We do not trust him,” added Eagle Shadow. The younger sister had thinner eyebrows and a slimmer nose than her sibling. “He has threatened to harm us on occasion.”
“Why?”
“He accused us of pestering him,” Spotted Doe said.
Eagle Shadow nodded. “All we did was ask him questions. He speaks our tongue. Not as well as he speaks yours, but enough for us to understand him.” She glanced at the entrance and lowered her voice. “He is a mean, bitter man.”
“Can you blame him?” Winona looked around. To her left was a doorway leading into another room. “I have questions of my own.” She rattled them off: “Do we all share this dwelling? How often do the Great Ones feed us? Do they post guards at night, or are we on our own?”
“Why should they bother with guards when they block off the tunnel so there is no way down?” Spotted Doe rejoined.
“They feed us twice a day, at morning and sunset,” Eagle Shadow said. “And yes, we share this lodge with the crazy one. He sleeps in there.” She nodded at the other doorway. “He snores like a bear.”
Winona could think of a lot of other questions she wanted to ask, but her eyes were growing leaden. She had gone without a decent night’s sleep for so long, her vitality was at a low ebb.
So was Evelyn’s. Stifling a yawn, she placed her cheek on Winona’s shoulder and said in Flathead, “I’m tired, Mother. I could sure use a nap.”
“That is not allowed, young one,” Eagle Shadow said.
Spotted Doe embellished. “The Sa-gah-lee do not let us sleep during the day. They think the only reason we would is to try and escape at night. If they catch you, they will punish you by making you go without a meal or two.”
One thing Winona needed was food. She had to get her strength up; either tomorrow night or the next she would make her bid for freedom. “Are we permitted to go where we please during the day?” Keeping busy was the best way to stave off sleep until sunset.
“Yes. Would you like us to show the two of you around?” Eagle Shadow eagerly asked.
“Very much,” Winona said.
Their first stop was the central square where dozens of Great Ones had laid out mats and placed various items on them: dead rabbits and squirrels, chunks of deer meat, roots, acorns, herbs, edible plants, and much more. Other Great Ones strolled about examining what was on display.
“They do this every day at the same time,” Spotted Doe revealed. “Those who have extra food barter it for things they want.”
“But they will not let us take part,” Eagle Shadow said. “It is only for members of the tribe.”
Winona gazed at the adobe tower. “What is in there?”
Spotted Doe turned. “A ladder to the top, and little else. The Sa-gah-lee do not go in it. They say it is not safe.”
Eagle Shadow impulsively clasped Winona’s hand. “Come. There is a lot more for you to see, and there is not much time. We must head to our lodge as soon as the sun starts to go down.”
“Dawn to dusk, that is the rule,” Spotted Doe said resentfully.
The city was divided into districts. In the center were residential dwellings, uniform in construction, single-story or two stories in height. To the north were the tall structures Winona had spied from outside the east gate, the tallest half as high as the tower but all of them imposing in their own right. On the south side of the city was a mix of buildings, no two exactly alike, most in much better shape than those elsewhere. Winona had the impression they had been built last, shortly before disaster befell the occupants.
“Most of the Great Ones live in this area,” Spotted Doe disclosed. “The married ones, that is. Women and men who have not married are required to live apart from the rest.” She jabbed a thumb at a tall edifice not far from the tower. “The women live in that lodge, the men in the lodge behind it.”
“Unmarried women are not permitted to live with their parents?” Winona said. The edict was unthinkable to Shoshones, who placed a premium on family. Unmarried women always lived with their mothers and fathers.
“No,” Eagle Shadow said. “Not if they have seen sixteen winters. The Sa-gah-lee say that the Dabi-muzza like to abduct women more than men, especially young women. It has something to do with female flesh being tastier.”
“So the Sa-gah-lee put all their eggs in one basket,” Winona said. “The easier to protect them, no doubt.”
“Eggs?” Eagle Shadow said.
“A white expression. Show me more.”
The high wall completely surrounded the city. At regular intervals it was inset with doors, which were kept barred every hour of the day and night. Near each door a flight of stairs led to a parapet much-like those at frontier Army forts.
“Come see the view,” Eagle Shadow said, and scooted up.
A breathtaking panorama spread before Winona’s marveling gaze. From that altitude the valley floor seemed to be on the bottom of the world. The majestic mountains that secluded the valley from the outside world were aglow with the golden rays of the sinking sun, and doubly imposing.
“I feel as if I could flap my arms and fly,” Eagle Shadow said. “I love to stand up here for hours, just looking.”
“I don’t,” her sister said crisply. “It reminds me of how far we are from home, and of our loved ones who have cried themselves to sleep in misery over our disappearance.”
“You will see them again,” Winona declared.
“So you keep saying,” Spotted Doe said. “But you must excuse us if we are skeptical. You are one woman and the Sa-gah-lee are many.” She folded her arms across her chest. “The Dabi-muzza are many, too, and they worry me more. Even if we escape from the Great Ones, the Death Devils will be waiting for us.”
Winona sought to lighten her mood by saying, “They are men, are they not? And I have yet to meet the man women cannot outwit. My grandmother used to say the Great Mystery balanced things out by giving men great strength and women great minds.”
The sisters laughed. Evelyn was too tired to do much more than smile.
Eagle Shadow placed a hand on Winona’s shoulder. “You are a remarkable person, Winona King of the Shoshones. For the first time since the Great Ones abducted us, I have hope we will truly see our loved ones again.”
“I, too,” Spotted Doe begrudgingly admitted.
The sun had brushed the peaks. Soon it would vanish. “We better go back,” Eagle Shadow said. “If we are not there when they bring our meal, we will go hungry.”
“Then let us hurry,” Winona said. “My daughter and I cannot go another night without food.”
They barely made it. They had just entered when a pair of Sa-gah-lee women showed up bearing a large clay pot and five clay bowls. Without comment the women set the vessels down and left.
Winona bent over the pot. It was filled with a curious mixture, a soup consisting of bits of meat, pieces of root, and lumps of dough in a thick brown sauce, or gravy. “What is this called?”
“Pig slop.” From out of the other room walked Ezriah Hampton. “When you’ve had it day in and day out, month after month, year after year, you grow to hate it with a passion.”
“They must vary the meals from time to time.”
Ezriah’s eye rolled toward the ceiling. “Listen to her. Hasn’t been here a day and already she’s knows better than me.” Shouldering Winona aside, he helped himself to a bowl and tilted the pot to fill it. “This is their main fare. What most of them eat most of the time. And what they always feed their prisoners.” He raised the bowl to his lips and sipped. “Mercy, what I wouldn’t give for a nice juicy steak! Or an apple pie! Sometimes when I dream at night, I dream about food.”
“When we reach my cabin I will cook you venison steak and bake you a berry pie,” Winona offered. “How would that be?”
In the act of taking another sip, Ezriah turned to stone. “You would do that for me? Straight tongue?”
“Of course. I always do what I can to make our guests feel at home, as my husband would say.”
“Venison steak and berry pie,” Ezriah said softly in undisguised awe. “I’d do anything for a meal like that. Anything you wanted.”
“All I ask is that you help us escape,” Winona said. His aid would be invaluable. He had been in the lost city for so long, he must know every street, every building, every hidden nook and cranny.
Ezriah’s wrinkled features hardened. “I should have known there would be a catch. Dangle a carrot in front of me as if I’m a mule and think I’m too stupid to catch on.”
“We cannot do it without you,” Winona said. Maybe they could, but his involvement boosted their chances. “And if we never escape, you never enjoy the steak and pie. It is that simple.”
“See these white hairs of mine?” Ezriah said, plucking at his beard. “I didn’t fall out of the sky with the last cloudburst. Nothing in life is simple, lady. About the time we start taking it for granted, that’s about the time life jumps up and bites us in the behind.”
“So will you help?”
The old man chortled. “You’re a caution. Devious, too. But womenfolk have always been shifty critters, ever since Eve in the Garden of Eden.”
Winona knew the story well. Nate owned a Bible and read aloud from it every night. “What did Eve do that was so devious?”
“She ate of the forbidden fruit, didn’t she?”
“I thought she was tricked into it.”
Ezriah Hampton snorted. “When was a woman ever tricked into anything? No, Eve wanted to eat that fruit. She had it all planned out.” Holding his bowl so it wouldn’t spill, he sat cross-legged.
“What was her plan?”
“Don’t you remember? How Adam and her were traipsing around the Garden in the altogether? How they didn’t wear any clothes? No britches or nothing?”
“My husband says they were living in a state of innocence.”
“Sure they were. And Eve didn’t like it one bit. No, sirree. So when that serpent Satan slithered up and offered her a way to change things, she leaped at the chance.”
“I have lost your trail,” Winona confessed.
Hampton took a sip, smacked his lips, and continued. “Before I headed west to trap, I had a gal. A pretty filly she was, as sweet as the year is long. Naturally, being a woman, she also liked to nag me to tears and was forever pointing out my faults. And like every other woman, she loved to shop for clothes and such. She’d spend hours nosing into every shop there was and fingering the merchandise.”
Winona still did not see the connection. “What does all that have to do with what Eve did in the Garden?”
“I’m getting to that,” Ezriah said. “That’s another flaw women have. They’re too danged impatient.”
“Men have no room to talk.”
His eye narrowed. “Are you saying men have faults, too?”
“Are you claiming they do not?” Winona countered. “Men are much too stubborn, for one thing. They are much too prone to anger. And they always think they know what is best even when they do not.”
“Says you. Remember, the Almighty created men first. That makes men better than women.”
“Or it could be the Almighty saved the best for last.”
Belly laughs burst from Ezriah, and he rocked back and forth in an excess of merriment. “Oh, that was a gem, ma’am! You’re downright comical. If there was a job for telling jokes, you’d be a natural at it.”
“Thank you. Now, you were saying about Eve?” Winona prodded. Despite herself, she was curious.
“Oh. Well, she was no different from you or my gal or any other female critter. She had the same hankerings, the same failings. So you can imagine how bored she must have been.”
“In the Garden of Eden? I thought it was the most perfect place that ever existed!”
“Hardly. What did Eve have to do all day? She walked around admiring the plants and the animals. That was all there was. Hellfire, after a hundred years or so she must have been bored out of her mind.”
“Go on.”
“There weren’t any of the things women really like to do. There weren’t any stores, any shops, any dressmakers. There weren’t even any other women for her to gossip with. So when that serpent gave her a notion, she lit on it like a Comanche on a mustang and went right off and grabbed her a heap of forbidden fruit to munch on.”
“You’re saying she did it on purpose? To what end?”
“Why, to get God mad at her, of course.”
Winona stifled a laugh in order not to offend him. “You must have read a different Bible than the one my husband owns.”
“They’re all the same. Read the story for yourself. Read between the lines, like I did, and you’ll see I’m right.”
“But why would Eve want to make God mad?”
“So she could go shopping.”
This time Winona was unable to contain herself. She laughed heartily, and so did Evelyn. Thankfully, Ezriah simply smirked until they were done.
“Poke fun all you want, but there’s no denying the truth. Don’t you remember what happened? When the Almighty found out, he booted Adam and Eve out of the Garden. They were free to roam the land, to do whatever their little hearts desired. And what’s the first thing they did? They went looking for clothes to wear.”
“I do not remember that part.”
“It says it right in the Bible. How they covered themselves because they were all ashamed. They were the first shoppers. And womenfolk have loved shopping ever since.”
Winona began to wonder if Ezriah truly were addle pated. “If this is true, why is it men do not like to shop as much as women do?”
“Because men never wanted to be kicked out of the Garden. We still think like we did back then. All we want is to be out among the animals and trees. That’s why men like to hunt and fish more than anything else.”
Winona grinned. A thread of sanity was woven into his absurd assertions. It was true men were not fond of shopping. Or, to be more specific, they liked to shop only if it took under five minutes. Any longer than that, and they fidgeted and groused and made snide comparisons between women and turtles. Her Nate was no different. On their visits to Kansas City and St. Louis she had wanted to explore every store. He tagged along, insisting it was the right thing for a husband to do. But he couldn’t stop grumbling about how long she took.
“If there’s any other Scripture you’re unclear on, you just let me know,” Ezriah commented. “I’ll set you straight.”
“The one thing I still need to know is whether you will help us,” Winona said.
“You’re asking a lot, lady. It could get me killed.”
“It could also earn your freedom, and that steak and pie you crave.”
Hampton stuck a finger into his soup, licked it, and said, “My supper is getting cold. I should be eating instead of jabbering.”
“You are stalling.”
“And you’re pushing me,” Ezriah responded irritably. Sighing, he gazed out the front doorway at the gathering twilight. “You know, after all these years, I’ve sort of gotten used to living as I do. I gave up trying to get away long ago. But now you come along with your pretty smile and your devious ways, and all of a sudden you’ve got me thinking we just might pull it off.”
“We will,” Winona declared.
“See what I mean? If wishful thinking was gold, you’d be richer than old King Midas. But I must be as touched in the noggin as you are. Because, damn my soul, you can count me in. We’ll bust out of here or die trying!”
Eight
Nate King had to act. At the rate the cannibal was barreling upward, it would reach him within seconds. Since the creature’s spear was a lot longer than his Bowie and tomahawk, the outcome was foreordained. All the brute had to do was stay out of reach and keep thrusting until Nate was impaled or forced over the edge.
The only alternative was for Nate to keep climbing, and he would have except for the five-foot hole in the ledge. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be much of a jump. But the shelf was so unstable that even if he made the leap, he stood the risk of having it break. And it was a long way to the bottom.
A hideous growl from below drew Nate’s gaze to the cannibal’s contorted countenance, and was just the incentive he needed. Backing up a stride, he coiled, then spurted forward like a runner at a footrace. He took three long steps and hurled himself into the air.
