‘Question: You hurt?’
‘I be weak,’ Lou responded. She could feel her strength slowly returning, but she didn’t want them to know. The longer they delayed, the better her chance of spotting Zach, or what was left of him, and she dearly wanted to see him one last time, even if he lay in the repose of death.
To his friends Skin Shredder said, “We will wait, unless one of you wants to carry her.”
No one did.
‘Question,’ Lou signed. ‘What you do with me in village?’
Skin Shredder held his hand close to his chest, his fingers hooked like claws. He pretended to claw his chest open and pull his heart out. Then he held his hand up to his mouth and pretended to take a bite.
The other warriors laughed.
Louisa King shuddered.
Chapter Thirteen
A small herd of mountain buffalo called King Valley home. Shaggier than their flatland cousins, they stayed deep in the woods most of each day, coming out at dawn and late afternoon to drink and graze. They posed no threat so long as they were not disturbed. Many a time Shakespeare had watched them from his window and been reminded of the days when he hunted their cousins with his Indian friends. He didn’t hunt these. Nate had suggested they leave the herd be. As Nate put it, “We’ll hunt them only if we’re starving. That way, we’ll always have a pantry on the hoof we can fall back on.”
Shakespeare got a chuckle out of pantry on the hoof.
But now, with his wife helpless on the travois, Shakespeare worried their decision would cost him dearly.
The bull snorted and shook its shaggy head, its horns glinting in the sunlight.
Blue Water Woman heard the snort and craned her neck to see over the top of the travois. A tongue of fear licked at her and she swallowed it down. As she always did in a crisis, she willed herself to stay calm, to focus and not give sway to fright. “Husband?” she said softly.
Shakespeare didn’t take his eyes off the buffalo. He was holding his Hawken across his legs, but he made no attempt to raise it. “Not now, chipmunk. We have a problem.”
“I see him. You should cut the travois loose and ride off before he charges.”
Shakespeare almost gave a snort of his own. “And abandon you? That’s the silliest thing you’ve ever said in all the years I’ve known you.”
The bull stamped and tossed its head and came several steps nearer. Over six feet high at the shoulders, with a bulging hump and broad head, it was a living, breathing monster.
Shakespeare fingered his rifle. It would take a lucky shot to bring the brute down. It must weigh between fifteen hundred and two thousand pounds, a lot of it muscle.
Blue Water Woman rose on an elbow. The bull looked at her and rumbled in its chest.
“For God’s sake, don’t move,” Shakespeare cautioned. “If it charges I might not be able to protect you.”
“If it charges I want you to save yourself.”
Shakespeare did what he had just told her not to do; he moved. Turning in the saddle, he declared, “I can hardly forbear hurling things at you.”
“I cannot help it if I love you and do not want you hurt.”
“Grant me the same courtesy.” Shakespeare had never told her, but he secretly hoped he died before she did. He would be so lonely without her, he didn’t know if he would want to go on living.
Blue Water Woman was watching the buffalo. She was taken aback when other dark shapes appeared. Six, seven, eight, she counted, all as shaggy but none as big as the huge bull. “Carcajou!”
Shakespeare’s pulse quickened. One buffalo was bad enough. Nine was a nightmare. All those horns, on creatures as unpredictable as the weather. He eased the Hawken from his lap. He couldn’t get all of them, but he would bring the big bull down.
“Do not shoot,” Blue Water Woman cautioned. She worried that he might drop the bull in the hope the rest would run off.
“What do you take me for?” Shakespeare wedged the hardwood stock to his shoulder and took aim.
“What are you doing then?”
“Just in case.” Shakespeare intended to fire and throw himself in front of the travois, if it came to that.
“You are not to shoot no matter what,” Blue Water Woman insisted. She was all too aware of how stubborn he could be once he set his mind to something.
“That will be for me to decide.”
A cow started toward them, but stopped at a bellow from the bull.
“That was nice of him,” Blue Water Woman said. Her gratitude was short-lived.
Head bobbing, blowing noisily, its hooves ringing on rocks, the big bull advanced.
Shakespeare took a bead on the buffalo’s right eye. The skull was so thick that a brain shot rarely penetrated, and facing it head-on, he didn’t have a lung shot. His best bet was the eye, but with the head bobbing as it was, it was like hitting a bobbing dark pea.
Blue Water Woman gripped the travois. She had seen for herself how savage buffalo could be when they were provoked. Once, after a surround, she had gone with the other women to skin and carve the many buffalo the warriors killed. She had been slicing a belly open when she heard cries and shouts. A bull everyone thought was dead wasn’t. It had regained its feet, and before any of the warriors could loose more shafts, it had been among them, ramming with its broad forehead and ripping with its great horns. Four horses had gone down, one with its insides spilling out. A warrior had rode up and buried a lance in the buffalo’s side, and the buffalo whirled and gored his horse. As the horse fell, the man was pitched onto an upcurved horn. For as long as she lived, Blue Water Woman would never forget his death shriek.
Shakespeare’s impulse was to fire before the bull reached them. His finger curled around the trigger.
“Please, Carcajou.”
Against his better judgment, Shakespeare took his cheek from the Hawken. His nerves jangled as the bull came ever closer. The mare nickered and tried to shy but couldn’t because of the travois. “There, there,” he said quietly, and stroked the mare’s neck.
Blue Water Woman held her breath.
A swarm of flies buzzing around it, the big bull reached the mare. It looked at her, grunted, and walked on by.
Now it was beside the travois. Blue Water Woman could have reached out and touched it. She saw its nostrils flare, and suddenly it stopped. The great head swung toward her. For a few heartbeats she feared the worst. The bull sniffed the buffalo robe she was bundled in, then nuzzled it and rubbed against the travois so hard that the entire travois shook and threatened to shatter.
Shakespeare put his cheek to the rifle.
The bull ambled on. After it came the bull’s harem, none of them so much as giving the mare or the travois a glance. They crossed to the lake and dipped their muzzles to drink.
“I’ll be switched,” Shakespeare said in relief, and gigged the mare to get out of there.
Blue Water Woman sank onto her back. Tension drained like water from a sieve. “Are you glad you listened to me?”
“I always listen to you, heart of my heart.”
“Oh my,” Blue Water Woman said.
“What?”
“All this time I thought you were deaf.”
A ringing in Zach’s ears was his first sensation. He clawed up out of a dark well and floated in a pool of pain. Where he was and why he was in pain eluded him until he tried to move and discovered his arms and legs were pinned. Then it all came back in a rush: the talus, Lou, the Blood warrior, everything. He opened his eyes and brown specks fell into them, making them water. Blinking, he raised his head. He was on his back. Dirt and rocks formed a cocoon around him. Only his face was exposed.