Wilderness Double Edition #9, page 9
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Shakespeare cautioned. “Some of them might have been legitimate. We won’t know who to hold accountable until we catch this outfit.”
“And catch them we will, mon ami.”
Both Nate and Shakespeare turned at the angry bellow and saw Pepin striding toward them, Labeau’s cap still clutched in his brawny hand.
“I heard some of what you just said,” Pepin informed them, “and I have never been so mad in my life!” He gave the cap a furious shake, as if throttling a throat. “The ones who butchered poor Labeau will not live long enough to butcher anyone else. This I vow!”
“We’re in this together,” Shakespeare said, “and we can’t go rushing off half-cocked. We have to be mighty careful. The men we’re after are utterly ruthless.”
“So?” Pepin touched his knife. “I can be just as ruthless when the need arises.” He spat, then wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “Just thinking of these sons of bitches puts a rotten taste in my mouth. We must go after them and stay on their trail until we catch up, no matter how long it takes us.”
“What about all the extra horses we have?” Nate mentioned. “They’ll slow us down.”
“We’ll have to let them loose in a meadow and hope they’re still there when we get back,” Pepin proposed.
Shakespeare walked over. “I have a better idea. We can do like the Comanches do when they hunt wild horses.”
“The Comanches?” Pepin said. “They are the Indians who live far down in the Red River country, are they not? I do not know much about them.”
“All you need to know is how they hunt mustangs.” Shakespeare grinned as he went into detail. “Several warriors will go out together, each with a string of two or three mounts. When they spot a wild herd, they give chase, and as each one of their mounts tire, they change to another horse without their feet so much as touching the ground.”
“I get it,” Nate said, excited by the possibilities. “They run the wild herd into the ground and then catch whichever ones they want.”
“Exactly,” Shakespeare said. “There’s no reason we can’t do the same thing. With all the horses we have, we should overtake these butchers in a third of the time it would ordinarily take us.”
“Trés intelligent!” Pepin exclaimed. “Why did I never think of that?” He held out his hand, palm downward, and said, “Now we make the pledge.”
Nate looked at him. “Pledge?”
“Oui. Put your hand on mine and I will commit us to our noble cause.”
Feeling somewhat sheepish, Nate obeyed the voyageur. Shakespeare added his hand, his expression grave.
Pepin gazed skyward and cleared his throat. “We solemnly pledge to track these fiends to the ends of the earth, so help us God! And if we fail, may maggots eat our innards and worms crawl in our ears!” Pleased, he smiled at each of them and nodded. “Now we are committed.”
Together they headed down the hill. Nate, bringing up the rear, couldn’t shake the mental picture of maggots squirming in his entrails, which he sincerely hoped wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.
Eight
For the rest of that day the three trappers put the Comanche system to the test, and found it worked extremely well. Where possible, they held their horses to a steady trot, and when an animal flagged they simply switched to another and added the tired horse to their individual strings. In this way they covered twice as much ground as they ordinarily would have, and by sunset they were many miles from the hill where Labeau lay in a shallow grave, and at a much lower elevation.
Camp was made in a gully where they could build a small fire without fear of it being seen from afar. Supper consisted of jerky and water. Afterward, they turned in so as to be able to get an early start the next day.
Sunrise found them already on the trail. The killers had tried to hide their tracks, but with so many pack animals in tow, they had wasted their energy. Even on the rockiest ground there were plenty of chips and scratch marks to guide the three trappers.
Toward the middle of the day, as they came to a narrow valley, Shakespeare, who was in the lead, suddenly drew rein and gestured. “Smoke,” he announced.
Two miles distant a tendril of gray was rising to meet a puffy white cloud.
“It’s them!” Pepin cried. “Now we make good on our pledge! Soon the ground will run red with their blood!” Working his legs, he began to swing his horse past McNair’s string so he would be the one in front.
“Hold on,” Nate said. “Charging on in there would only get us all killed. We’ll take it nice and easy, just as if we were up against hostiles.”
“Bah!” Pepin waved his rifle at the smoke. “I say we ride in with our guns blasting and cut them down before they can so much as lift a finger against us.”
Shakespeare leaned on his saddle horn and grinned. “There isn’t much that amazes a man my age. When you’ve seen and done practically everything, surprises are few and far between. But Pepin, you fit the bill.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know how in the world you’ve lived as long as you have,” Shakespeare said. “As impetuous as you are, you should have gone under by the time you were ten.” He lifted his reins and his horse moved out. “Since Nate and I aren’t partial to the notion of pushing up buffalo grass, you’ll do as we say and go about this slow and careful.”
A few mumbled words were Pepin’s only comment. Another mile fell behind them. Shakespeare slanted northward, sticking to thick cover but never losing sight of the smoke. When within half a mile of the camp, he drew rein, dismounted, and secured his horses to a cottonwood. “One of us has to go on ahead for a look-see.”
“Me,” Nate said.
“Not this time,” Shakespeare replied, hurrying into the woods before anyone could stop him. He heard Nate curse, and chuckled. The younger man’s concern was touching, but Shakespeare didn’t need anyone mothering him and felt that it was high time Nate realized the fact.
Holding his Hawken in his left hand, Shakespeare stealthily crept closer and closer to the few wisps of smoke still hovering in the air. The fire, evidently, was going out. He was puzzled as to why the band had stopped so early, but was glad they had. The sooner the whole gory business was done with, the happier Shakespeare would be.
The acrid scent of burning wood brought Shakespeare to a stop behind a pine. Peering out, he spied several tiny flickering flames at the edge of the forest, where the grassy valley floor began. Oddly enough, he saw no one, nor any horses.
Bending low, Shakespeare advanced cautiously. The area around the fire was completely deserted, causing him to conclude the band had already gone on. Prudently, he didn’t show himself until he was at the very last tree and had verified it was indeed safe to step into the open.
Tracks were everywhere, both the footprints of the cutthroats and the hoofprints of their many horses. Shakespeare walked to the fire, then gazed out across the valley. The band had no more than an hour start, he deduced. “We’ll get you soon,” he said softly, and was about to leave when his eyes fell on moist drops of blood.
Shakespeare touched a fingertip to the largest drop. Having skinned so many beaver and other animals over the years, he knew exactly how fast blood dried. The sticky consistency of the drops indicated they had been made within the past two hours. A trail of them led into the high grass.
“Not again,” Shakespeare said to himself. Cocking the rifle, he followed the trail, noticing how the drops grew bigger and bigger the farther he went. About thirty feet out he saw the body, lying face down. Unlike the other victims, this one was fully clothed. “Damn!”
Shakespeare knelt, set the Hawken down, and gripped the man’s shoulders to roll him over. Suddenly a hand darted out, a bloody hand grasping a gleaming dagger, the blade spearing at Shakespeare’s throat. Shakespeare jerked his head to the right and felt the man’s sleeve brush his neck. He grabbed the arm, then held fast. “Hold on there! I’m a friend.”
“McNair?” A bearded, lined face, seamed with pain, gaped up at him. “Is it really you?”
“Nelson?” Shakespeare released the arm and quickly rolled the man onto his back. “Tim Nelson?”
“Help me, please.”
Shakespeare was already lifting the trapper to carry him to the fire. He’d met Nelson at a Rendezvous four years ago, and on several occasions since they had played cards and shared drinks. “Hold on. We’ll do what we can to patch you up.”
“Help—” Nelson said, his voice fading as his eyelids fluttered and trembled as if having a fit. Gasping loudly, he passed out.
A rare rage seized Shakespeare McNair as he hastened out of the high grass and gently deposited Nelson close to the fire. He drew a pistol, pointed it at the ground, and banged off a shot as a signal to his friends. Then he bent down.
The cutthroats had done a thorough job. Blood seeped from bullet holes in both ankles and both knees. The left shoulder, broken by a ball, was bent at an unnatural angle. And as if those wounds weren’t enough, someone had stabbed Nelson three times low in the back.
Shakespeare marveled that the man was still alive. Depending on how severe the stab wounds were, Nelson might survive provided he had a lot of doctoring. That in mind, Shakespeare rekindled the fire and had the flames crackling when his companions showed. “We need hot water,” he announced.
Nate was first off his horse. He stared, then commented, “I know him from somewhere.”
“That you do,” Shakespeare established, and quickly explained, finishing with, “If we can stop the bleeding, maybe he’ll pull through.”
Pepin was standing a few yards away, his arms folded across his chest. “Why go to all the bother?” he asked. “It might be a waste of our time, and those we are after will get farther and farther away.”
“I can’t believe you can be so cold-blooded,” Shakespeare snapped. “So what if they gain a little lead on us? This is a fellow trapper we’re talking about.”
“Is it?” Pepin said. “I wonder.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“How do we know he isn’t one of them? How do we know he didn’t have a falling out with the others and they left him for the vultures, no?”
The idea had not even occurred to Shakespeare. He studied Nelson’s face while reflecting that he actually knew very little about the man. And now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen Nelson for a year or better. What had the man been up to in all that time?
While the grizzled mountain man pondered, Nate was searching for water. It stood to reason that no one would make camp where water was unavailable, so he was certain there must be some within short walking distance of the fire. Since there was no stream anywhere in sight along the valley floor, he concentrated on the forest behind the camp and located a small spring. There, as he knelt to fill the coffeepot, he noticed a small footprint in the soft mud at the water’s edge. The size was such that it had either been made by an extremely small man or a woman. Assuming a man had to have been responsible, he thought no more about the track as he hastened the filled pot back to heat it over the rekindled fire.
Nate told Pepin about the spring, and the voyageur took the horses to drink. Then Nate turned to his mentor. “What do you think? Could Pepin be right?”
“Nelson always struck me as the honest sort, but honest men go bad on occasion. I don’t know,” Shakespeare admitted. “It would explain why he’s the only one we’ve found who wasn’t stripped and hacked apart.”
Shakespeare drew his knife and leaned over Nelson’s left leg. Nate did likewise with the right. Together they carefully cut the buckskin leggings open to fully expose Nelson’s severely swollen ankles and knees. They did the same with the shoulder wound.
“We’ll have to set this broken bone soon,” Shakespeare mentioned. “It’ll hurt like hell. I hope he doesn’t come around until after.”
But Nelson revived as they were dabbing hot water on his ankles. Groaning, he sluggishly tried to lift his head but couldn’t.
“You lie still, Tim,” Shakespeare said. “Save your energy for later.”
“Can’t,” Nelson said weakly.
“Mister, you do as we tell you,” Nate advised. “We’ll do our best to pull you through, but you have to help.”
“Forget about me,” Nelson said. “This coon is a goner.”
“Nonsense,” Shakespeare responded.
“You saw where I was stabbed,” Nelson said, and winced. “I’m bleeding inside. I can feel it.” He coughed once. “The knife Belker uses is over a foot long.”
“Belker?” Nate said.
“One of those riding with Galt.” Nelson coughed some more, and when the fit subsided there was a drop of blood at the corner of his mouth,
Nate and Shakespeare exchanged knowing looks. “Forget about me,” Nelson reiterated. “Save her.”
“Who?” Shakespeare asked.
“Clay Basket, my woman. They took her, the scum!” Nelson flushed with outrage and the drop of blood became a trickle. “She fought them as best she could, kicking and clawing like a wildcat, but they tied her to a horse as if she was some animal and rode off with her. They all laughed at me too as they went by, laughed and bragged of how they’re fixing to treat her.” He tried to raise a hand to seize Shakespeare’s wrist, but couldn’t. “She won’t last two days in their clutches. Promise me you’ll go after her, McNair! Promise me you’ll get her safely to her people, the Crows!”
“Calm down,” Shakespeare said. “We’ll do what we can for her just as soon as we tend to you.”
“No!" Nelson cried. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? I’m not important. She’s the one you have to help.” His skin turning ashen, he tried to push up on his elbows.
“You’re making yourself worse,” Nate said, putting his hands on the man’s chest and pressing. “Just lie quietly.”
“I don’t care about me! Save her, damn it!” Nelson glanced from one of them to the other. “Haven’t either of you ever had a wife? Haven’t either of you ever been in love? Clay Basket is everything to me! Don’t let those bastards have their way with her.”
“We’ll head out in a bit,” Nate said, touching the wet strip of buckskin he held to the blood on Nelson’s chin.
“Fill us in, Tim,” Shakespeare coaxed. “We need to know who we’re up against.”
Nelson gave a curt nod, then closed his eyes. “They showed up about sunset yesterday, just as we were sitting down to supper. Acted real friendly at first. They hailed us, then rode on in with their hands empty to show they meant us no harm. When I found they were white, the first white men I’d laid eyes on in over a year, I was glad for the chance to chaw and catch up on the latest news.”
“You’ve been living with Clay Basket’s people?” Nate guessed.
“Yep. They took me in when I was about froze to death, and half starved to boot. Clay Basket herself doctored me.” Nelson’s voice acquired a wistful quality. “I’ve never known a woman like her. So kind, so caring. She brought me back from the dead, and ever since I’ve been with her village, helping hunt and fight off the Blackfeet and such.” He stopped, took a lingering breath, then continued. “About a month ago I got the fool notion of taking up trapping again. I’d lost all my fixings, but I figured I could find someone to stake me at the next Rendezvous.”
Nate saw that the man was weakening fast. “About the men who did this to you? About Galt and Belker?”
“There are seven of them. Galt is the brains of the bunch,” Nelson said. “When they first rode in, I couldn’t believe how many peltries they had. Eleven horses piled high as could be! They claimed they’d had a run of luck and like a jackass I believed them.”
“When did they turn on you?”
“This morning. We had just finished up breakfast when Galt grinned at me, said he’d taken a liking to my woman, and wanted to know if I’d be partial to selling her. When I told him she was my wife and I wouldn’t give her up for all the furs they had, Galt laughed and said he’d just have to take her.” A low moan escaped Nelson’s lips. “I wouldn’t let any man talk that way to me, so I jumped up and was set to bash his face in when all the rest of them pounced on me and pinned me down. Clay Basket tried to help but one of them wouldn’t let her.”
“You don’t have to go on,” Nate said.
“I want to.” Nelson opened his eyes. “They taunted me, called me an Indian-lover. Galt bragged of how he and his friends are growing rich by robbing every trapper they can find. They were going to let me live when they learned I didn’t have any pelts, but then Galt took a fancy to Clay Basket.” His voice broke and he sobbed. “They beat me, and they made her watch. They shot me in the knees so I couldn’t walk, then they made me crawl. But that wasn’t enough for them. They put balls through my ankles and shoulder. And Belker finished the job by stabbing me.”
“What about that dagger you had?” Shakespeare inquired.
“I always keep one hid under my shirt for emergencies,” Nelson said. “I knew they’d kill me right off if I tried to draw it, so I waited, hoping Galt would come close enough for me to kill him. But he never did.” His mouth twitched. “I remember how it felt when Belker’s knife plunged into my back, then everything went black. The next I knew, you were turning me over.” He stared at McNair. “You be careful of that Belker. He’s a natural-born killer and he has a wicked streak a yard wide.”
Nate had encountered the type before. “I’ll take care of him personally,” he said.
“Thanks,” Nelson said, turning his head until his left cheek rested on the ground. Almost immediately his body went completely limp as he succumbed to the deep sleep of utter exhaustion.
“Like I told you, an honest man,” Shakespeare commented rather sadly.
“Do either of those names he mentioned ring familiar to you?” Nate asked. “I seem to recall having heard of Belker somewhere before.”
