“Yes, Brother John. They ten, twelve sleeps ahead. But we catch.”
“I’d sure as hell better, or my boss will drown me in the Potomac.” Shores scratched a bug bite on his neck. “That’s assuming I live long enough to make it back to Washington. The mosquitoes last night about ate me alive.” He scratched another bite. “I thought they are only found near water.”
“We were near creek,” Red Fox informed him.
“We were? Why didn’t you say something? I could use a bath.” Shores had not had one since Cheyenne, and he was a little on the rank side. Many Westerners, and, to be fair, many from the East, had an aversion to water. Regular bathing was believed to weaken the constitution and make one sickly. Shores disagreed. In Chicago he had grown fond of taking a hot bath daily. So much so, he now owned his very own porcelain tub.
“We be near other water soon, Brother John.”
Shores was astounded by the Shoshone’s remarkable knack for always knowing where water was. They hadn’t gone thirsty once, for which he was grateful, given that daytime temperatures hovered near one hundred degrees. Today was no exception.
Removing his hat, Shores flicked a quick glance at the sun. “I don’t see how you stand this heat.” The old Indian never seemed to tire, never seemed to need water or to eat much food.
“Land hard, man hard,” was Red Fox’s reply.
“Where I’m from, a man doesn’t need to be hard to survive. All it takes is money.” And money was something Shores wouldn’t mind having more of. The assistant director had promised that if he arrested or slew the Hoodoos, he would be entitled to the bounty. Seven thousand dollars was a sizeable amount.
“You whites and money. It be silly.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you were in my boots,” Shores assured him. “Without it, a white man can’t buy clothes to wear or food for the table.”
“Make clothes, shoot food,” was the warrior’s solution.
“If only it were that simple.” Every time Shores tried to get the white view across to the old man, he had the impression he was talking to a stone wall. Shoshone ways and white ways were worlds apart.
“Bear,” Red Fox announced and extended an arm.
“What the hell do you mean, ‘bear’?” Shores asked. But by then he had spotted it himself, a large, hairy form plodding ponderously toward them from the northeast. “Must be a black bear.” The morning sun lent its coat a cinnamon hue, but he was well aware black bears were not always black.
“No. Grizzly.”
“That can’t be.” The last Shores had heard, the only grizzlies left were in the mountains. Once quite numerous on the plains, they had been exterminated to the point where no one ever saw them there anymore.
“Grizzly,” the Shoshone repeated. “Him see us, Brother John.”
“Don’t sit there and tell me you can see its face from here.” Shores could barely tell it was a bear. He gauged the distance and wasn’t worried. The grizzly had to be a quarter of a mile off, and their horses were fresh from a night of rest.
“Young bear,” Red Fox told him. “Hungry bear.”
“Can you hear its stomach growl?” Shores grinned. Sometimes the old Indian was too preposterous to be believed.
“No. It run now. Come eat us, Brother John.”
Shores looked again, and damned if the grizzly wasn’t loping toward them at a rapid if ungainly pace. “Damn stupid bear. It’s too far off. It can never catch us.”
“Stupid white man. Bear faster. Maybe catch horses.” Red Fox slapped his heels against his paint and lit out of there like his life depended on it.
Perhaps it did. Shores was appalled to see the grizzly barreling toward them like a steam engine at full steam. He pricked the claybank with his spurs and galloped after the Shoshone. Every ten or fifteen seconds he looked over his shoulder and saw the grizzly had gained.
Soon the bear was close enough for Shores to distinguish its massive head and the bulging hump atop its broad front shoulders. God, but the thing looks bigger than the claybank, he thought. He had his Winchester in its scabbard, but he wasn’t positive he could hit the bear while riding flat out. And hadn’t he heard grizzly skulls were inches thick and deflected anything short of a cannon ball?
Red Fox was motioning for him to ride faster.
Shores knuckled down to do just that. He didn’t glance at the grizzly again for a while, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t. The bear was less than thirty feet behind him. Its maw gaped wide, exposing teeth as long as daggers.
Goosebumps prickled Shores’s spine and up over his scalp. He imagined those teeth shearing into the claybank’s rear legs and the horse taking a tumble. He imagined being spilled into the long grass. Imagined the grizzly reaching him before he could stand. He might get off a shot, maybe two, but it wouldn’t be enough, and the bear would open him up like a husked ear of corn. “God help me,” he breathed.
Red Fox had let go of his reins, twisted at the waist, and was notching an arrow to his bow. Pulling the string back to his cheek, he held the bow steady.
Shores was sure he could hear the thud-thud-thud of the grizzly’s paws. He didn’t want to look back again because he was afraid of what he would see, but, steeling himself, he did. And saw exactly what he had feared.
Mere yards separated the claybank’s flying hooves from the grizzly’s teeth and claws. The bear was huffing and puffing but showed no signs of slowing. If anything, the nearness of its prey had lent it speed.
Shores reached down for his rifle, but in so doing he shifted his weight in the saddle and the claybank slowed. Not much, only a trifle, yet it was sufficient incentive for the grizzly to take a prodigious bound and swipe at the claybank’s hindquarters. The claybank squealed, and Shores felt its rear legs start to sweep out from under it. He tensed to try and leap clear. But somehow the claybank stayed up, and another few seconds took it out of the bear’s reach.
The grizzly, though, wasn’t about to quit. Uttering a roar that blistered Shores’s ears, it surged forward.
Shores had momentarily forgotten about Red Fox. Now he saw the Shoshone let fly with the arrow. He glanced back, thinking the warrior had gone for the neck or the throat. The shaft, however, embedded itself in the ground in front of the bear. Shores couldn’t believe Red Fox had missed. The old man nocked a second arrow and sent it after the first, and once again the arrow bit into the earth in front of the bear instead of into the bear’s flesh.
So much for the stories about Indian prowess with a bow, Shores thought. Red Fox had to be the worst archer in the history of the world. Red Fox let loose a third shaft, and this too struck the ground in front of the bear. That was when Shores noticed something he hadn’t noticed before. Each time an arrow hit, the grizzly slowed. And each time the bear slowed, the claybank and the paint increased their lead.
Another arrow flew. The grizzly swerved to avoid it and lurched to a stop. Its sides heaving, it watched them race off, voicing a snarl of frustration at being thwarted.
They hadn’t gone two hundred yards when Red Fox reined up. Against his better judgment, Shores did the same, wheeling the claybank so he could keep an anxious eye on the bear. “Why did you stop so soon?”
“Need arrows, Brother John. Wait bear go. Then get them.” The old Shoshone had the patient air of a parent enlightening a small child.
“But we’re too close.” Shores shucked his Winchester out. “If that monster comes after us again, we might not get away in time.”
“Bear tired, Brother John. Bear go rest. See?”
The grizzly had turned and was shambling north, its head hung low in fatigue. It looked back at them once and grunted.