“I’ll explain to Erleen and Peter when we stop for the night.”
“What I would like to know,” Ryker said much too casually, “is which tribe they belonged to.”
“Does it matter?”
“It does Tome. Were they Cheyenne? Nez Percé? Utes? Which?”
“I suspect Tyne already told you.”
Ryker hissed in anger. “You’re damn right she did. They were Blackfeet. And only four bucks.” He jerked on the reins to swing his sorrel back down the mountain. “Take the Woodrows on by your lonesome. I’ll catch up when I can.”
“No you don’t.” Lunging, Nate grabbed the sorrel’s bridle. “You’re staying with us. They hired you, not me.”
“Let go.” Ryker sought to break away. “I have a score to settle with those sons of bitches.” He went to raise his rifle.
In the blink of an eye Nate had a pistol in his hand. “I am not one for threats. But if you try to ride off, I’ll shoot you out of the saddle. Rile the Blackfeet and the Woodrows might suffer.”
“What about me?” Ryker was livid. “How about my suffering? Who do you think did this?” He snatched off his floppy hat and smacked the jagged scar tissue. “It was Blackfeet. A war party caught me when I was camped near the Missouri River. I thought for sure I was a goner. But do you know what those devils did?” He didn’t wait for Nate to answer. “They made me run a gauntlet. Instead of filling me with arrows and lifting my scalp, they stripped me naked and made me run between two rows of painted bucks armed with war-clubs and knives. Do you have any idea what that is like?”
As a matter of fact, Nate did. But he held his tongue.
“I was never so scared in my life, and I am not ashamed to admit it. There were twenty of them on either side, screeching and whooping and waving their weapons. I didn’t think I would live to reach the end. But when their leader prodded me with a lance, I took off like a spooked rabbit. I held my arms over my head but it didn’t do me much good. I hadn’t gone ten steps when it felt like every bone in my body was broke.” Ryker stopped, and trembled.
“You don’t need to tell me this.”
Ryker didn’t seem to hear him. “And God, the pain! I hurt so bad, it is a wonder I didn’t pass out. Then one of them hit me on the shin and I tripped and fell to my knees. That was when a tomahawk caught me on the side of my head.” Ryker ran his fingers over the hideous scar. “Took off my whole damn ear. But in a way it was a good thing.”
“How could that be good?”
“Because it brought me out of myself. It sank in that I was going to die unless I did something. Something they didn’t expect.” Ryker chuckled a strange sort of chuckle. “I went to my hands and knees, as if I was about to collapse, and they stopped beating on me. Maybe they figured I was done for, what with all the blood and my ear torn off, and all. But I tricked the bastards! I pushed between two of them and lit out of there like my backside was on fire.”
“And you got away,” Nate stated the obvious.
“It wasn’t easy. Some of those bucks were fast, damn fast. But I ran and I ran and somehow or other I outlasted them. They still might have caught me, but I found a hollow tree to hide in. They didn’t think to look in it and I heard them go right on by. I was never so glad of anything in all my born days.”
“You were lucky.” Nate knew of other frontiersmen who hadn’t been. Only three men, as far as he was aware, ever ran a gauntlet and survived. He was one of them.
“Ever since that terrible day, I’ve made it a point to kill every Blackfoot I come across. So far my tally is seven. That doesn’t count the three squaws I caught last winter out gathering firewood—” Ryker stopped.
“You killed women?”
“So what? They were Blackfoot and that was enough.” Ryker glared down the mountain. “Now you want me to let four of those vermin get away? You ask a lot. You and me aren’t even pards.”
“All I care about are the Woodrows,” Nate told him. If Ryker only killed one or two of the Blackfeet, the rest might go fetch friends.
“All right. All right.” Ryker swore. “I gave my word and I took their money so I reckon I have to see it through. But just so you know. I don’t appreciate you keeping it to yourself.” He gigged his sorrel toward the gap but abruptly drew sharp rein. “What the hell? What are you doing there, you old biddy?”
Aunt Aggie came out of the pass. “Watch your mouth, Mr. Ryker. I am a lady and you will treat me as such.”
“And if I don’t?” Ryker taunted.
“I will cut you some night when you are asleep. Cut you down low so that you can forget ever having children.”
“I’m shocked. I thought ladies don’t do things like that.”
“Some ladies have claws.”
Ryker snorted. “As for kids, who wants them? Raising a pack of brats isn’t one of my ambitions.”
“Nice man,” Aunt Aggie said as the frontiersman swung past her and on into the pass.
Nate kneed the bay over. “Did you mean what you said about cutting him?”
“At my age it is a waste of what precious time I have left to squander it saying things I don’t mean.”
“You are a hoot, Aunt Aggie.”
“And you aren’t one of the children, so Aggie will do. Or Agatha if you are of a mind.”
They followed after the rest. She kept glancing at him and cleared her throat but didn’t say anything.
“What?” Nate prompted.
“Tyne told me what you did. I suggested she not tell her parents, but she did anyway. Erleen is fit to scratch your eyes out over that lock of hair. She thinks you had no right.”
A shadow passed over them and Nate glanced up. He glimpsed a bald eagle with its pinions outspread go soaring off on the air currents. “I suppose I would feel the same in her shoes.”
“You had to give them the lock?”
“They wanted all of her.”
“Oh. Damn.”
“Don’t let Ryker hear you swear. He’ll think you are less of a lady than ever.”
Aggie chuckled, then sobered. “Erleen will still be mad. I love my sister dearly, but she can be a lunkhead at times. We’ve never been all that close. It’s the age difference. I am nearly twenty years older than she is.” Aggie chuckled louder. “Erleen was not supposed to happen. Our parents were considerably surprised when our mother found out she had a new loaf of bread in the oven.”
“I have never met a woman who talks like you do.”
“Open and frank? It comes with age. I hate to admit it, but when I was younger I was a lot like Erleen. Stuffy and snooty and convinced I had all the answers. Then I lost my Harold after thirty-eight years of wedlock. My oldest son went off to visit Europe, and stayed. My youngest took up with a woman of loose morals and under her influence wanted nothing more to do with me.” Aunt Aggie sighed. “That was when I woke up. When I realized that not only did I not have the answers, I didn’t even know the right questions.”
“I’m sorry,” Nate said.
Aunt Aggie’s face grew haunted with memories. “It’s not me. It’s life. We get so set in our ways that it never occurs to us that our ways might not be the way things really are. I took it for granted my husband would live as long as I did, and his heart up and gave out. I took it for granted my sons loved me so much they would never up and leave me alone in this world. But that is exactly what they went and did.”
They were well into the pass. Shimmering dust particles, raised by the others, hung suspended like so many tiny fireflies.
“Now I don’t know what to think,” Agatha went on. “Except that I still have my nieces and my nephews. They adore me and I adore them, and I will be there for them when they need me, even if it kills me. Family is everything.”