“I liked his black friends. Their skin is like the night. And did you see their hair? A black scalp would be powerful medicine.”
“Grizzly Killer told me there are many blacks where those came from. More blacks than there are Pawnees.”
“Do you believe him?”
“If I am any judge of men, Grizzly Killer always speaks with a straight tongue.” Red Fox gazed thoughtfully to the east. “And if he does, then the day will come when our people must make an important decision.”
“Explain.”
“Grizzly Killer says there are more of his own people than there are blades of grass. He says they are as numberless as the stars at night. He says that they have taken up all the land east of the father of rivers and that there will come a day when they push west of it and take up all this land, too.”
Hawk Takes Wing laughed. “Perhaps he boasts. There cannot be that many whites. Why, that would mean there are more of them than there are buffalo.”
“It troubles me,” Red Fox said.
“Fagh! Even if he does speak true, that day is many winters away. You and I will not live to see it.”
“I hope you are right.”
In the distance, the belt of trees and undergrowth that fringed the Platte River lined the horizon. The river itself was visible as patches of blue amid the boles.
As they drew near, Hawk Takes Wing remarked, “I see smoke.”
Red Fox straightened. So did he. And there shouldn’t have been. The women knew not to give away their presence by being careless. Smoke could bring enemies; the Sioux or the Blackfeet would delight in counting coup on Pawnees.
“We must scold them for this,” Hawk Takes Wing said, and jabbed his heels against his horse.
Red Fox made no effort to catch up. He would let his friend handle it. Hawk Takes Wing would be harder on the women than he would. He was content to ride at a leisurely pace and enjoy the splendor of the prairie. He saw Hawk Takes Wing gallop in among the trees, and then there was a commotion of some kind. Out raced Hawk Takes Wing’s sorrel, only without a rider. Thinking his friend had dismounted and something must have spooked the horse, Red Fox flicked his reins and rode to cut it off. Fortunately it stopped and didn’t shy when he came up and grabbed the rope reins to lead it back.
The strip of woodland was quiet. Somewhere a robin sang. Sparrows flitted about.
Red Fox came to the clearing and for a few moments could not make sense of what he was seeing. Everyone seemed to be asleep. The women and children were sprawled on their backs and their bellies. Even Hawk Takes Wing had lain down. Then Red Fox saw the blood. Shock slowed him as he raised his hand to his quiver. He didn’t quite have an arrow out when men rushed from both sides. Hands seized him and threw him to the ground. He lost his bow. He tried for his knife, but his attackers had hold of his arms, and the next instant he was roughly hauled to his feet. He struggled, but they were too strong.
“Behave and you’ll live a little longer, redskin.”
The speaker was a tall white in buckskins, a fine rifle cradled in the crook of an elbow.
Red Fox stood still, his chin jutting in defiance. Inwardly, he struggled to contain his grief and his rage.
“He understood you, Wesley,” said a bear of a man with a great beard. “He must speak English.”
“Is that true, redskin? Do you savvy the white tongue?”
Red Fox had to clear his throat. “I speak it well.”
“Will wonders never cease,” a short man said.
The one called Wesley placed the stock of his rifle on the ground and leaned on the barrel. “Listen, redskin. We’re after Nate King and the darkies he’s helping. If you speak English, like as not you and him had some long talks. Did he say where he’s headed? Will he stop at Bent’s Fort on his way up into the mountains? I doubt he’ll live to reach it but you never know.”
“I will not tell you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Wesley drew a hunting knife and wagged it so that the blade glinted in the sunlight. “I’m in no hurry. I’ll carve on you all day if that’s what it takes. And in the end, you’ll tell me. You’ll tell me everything. They always do.”
Red Fox gazed at his dead wife and their dead children, and his sorrow was boundless. From it he drew strength. He refused to show weakness.
“Say something,” Wesley said. “Show me you’re not as stupid as most of your kind.”
“I have had a good life,” Red Fox said.
“Well, bully for you,” mocked a man with a bristly mustache.
“I have one regret.”
The man called Wesley tilted his head. “What would that be, redskin?”
“That I will not live to see Grizzly Killer kill you.”
Chapter Six
Nate King was enjoying himself. He was enjoying himself too much.
If there was one lesson Nate had learned during his years on the frontier, it was that only the alert and the quick and the strong survived. The evidence was all around him. In the natural world, the unwary fell to the meat eaters. The slow fell to the fast. The weak fell to the strong.
Predator-and-prey was the order of things. The elk past its prime was pulled down by wolves. The careless doe was pounced on by a mountain lion. The rabbit that didn’t jump at shadows was impaled by the talons of the hawk.
The same held true when predators clashed. When two bears fought, inevitably the strongest won. When bull buffalo bumped heads, invariably the strongest head beat down the weaker.
It was a lesson Nate learned the hard way. Too many times to count, he let down his guard and paid for his mistake with his blood or a narrow escape from the grave. He learned to always be alert, no matter where or when.
So it was that as his party wound along the Platte River toward the far off Rockies, Nate grew upset with himself. He liked the Worths; he liked them a lot. Samuel was a good companion. Emala made him laugh. Randa and Chickory were endless founts of curiosity. The trouble was, he liked them too much. He was paying attention to them and not to their surroundings.
On this particular day, with the blazing sun high in the afternoon sky, Nate mopped his brow with his sleeve and remarked to his sager half, “We need to be more watchful.”
Winona was admiring the antics of a goldfinch and its mate. “Have you seen sign I’ve missed?”
“No, only animal tracks. But we’re close to Sioux country.”
“Strange you should mention it, Husband.”
“Why?”
“It is probably nothing. But I have been uneasy for a while now. Nerves, I suppose.”
“You have the calmest disposition of anyone I’ve ever known,” Nate said, praising her.
“Thank you. But that is not true. Blue Water Woman never lets anything fluster her. I often wish I were more like she is.”
Nate grunted. Blue Water Woman was the Flat-head wife of his best friend, Shakespeare McNair. “Why haven’t you said something?”
Winona shrugged. “I thought I was being silly. I wake up at night thinking something is wrong, but everything is fine. I feel I am being watched, but I never am.”
“Damn.”
“I do wish you would stop saying that. You never swore when you were younger. It is a habit you can do without.”
Nate remembered the language used by his fellow trappers at the rendezvous, back in the days when beaver plews were worth good money. “You’re starting to sound like Emala,” he teased.
“She is a good woman. We will be fast friends.”
Nate raised his reins. “This unease of yours…Maybe I should take a look around.”
“Now?”
“It will be hours yet until sundown. There’s plenty of time.” Nate touched her arm, then wheeled his bay and rode back along the line, passing each of the Worths.